WIKIMEDIA, LIFE SCIENCE DATABASECertain neurons in the human striatum—a brain region involved in movement and cognition—are renewed throughout life, according to a study published today (February 20) in Cell. At one time, researchers thought that human neurons regenerated in fewer brain regions than in rodents and nonhuman primates. Now it appears that regenerated neurons simply show up in different brain regions in humans compared with other mammals—a findings that has potential implications for the origins of learning and other higher-order cognitive processes.
“New neurons are integrated in another part of the brain in humans,” said Jonas Frisén, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and a coauthor of the paper. “There’s a unique pattern of neurogenesis in humans compared to other animals.”
“This is the clearest demonstration that [adult neurogenesis in the striatum] is happening in humans,” said Arnold Kriegstein, a developmental neurobiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study. “It reenergizes the notion that . . . in the future, it would be possible to harness these cells in some way to repair the injured brain.”
Previously, it had been shown that nonhuman mammals undergo adult neurogenesis in two brain regions: the hippocampus, which is involved in memory, ...
