Carbon dating spots new neurons

摘要

Human cells renew themselves in the striatum, a brain region involved in cognition and coordinating body movements. Neurons are known to regenerate in the human adult hippocampus. To find out whether regeneration occurs in other areas, Jonas Frisen at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and his colleagues developed a carbon-14 dating technique. They compared levels of the isotope in DNA extracted from different areas of post-mortem brains with levels of atmospheric carbon-14 during the birth year and lifetime of the donors.