Off the Beaten Track: New Neurons in the Adult Human Striatum

摘要

Humans are unique in many regards, some less appreciated then others. In terms of neurogenesis, it has long been held that, compared to other species, humans produce very few neurons in the adult brain. However, recent findings from the lab of Jonas Frisén at the Karolinska Institute have been debunking that myth. Frisén and colleagues first confirmed the pessimistic view that humans have very little adult neurogenesis in the neocortex (Bhardwaj et al., 2006) and olfactory bulbs (Bergmann et al., 2012) using a groundbreaking birth-dating method relying on measurements of carbon-14 (14C) that was generated by the cold war atomic tests and that is lastingly incorporated into the DNA of dividing cells. Last year, however, they found that the dentate gyrus of the adult human hippocampus, a gateway to memory critical for our cognitive abilities, has substantial levels of adult neurogenesis (Spalding et al., 2013).