A HARSH DECREE

Everything may die, nothing may be regenerated

ARTICLE EXTRAS

1 "I think it really was a turning point in the acceptance of the phenomenon as being real," Gould says. In the late 1990s Gould observed neurogenesis in the adult tree shrew as well,2 but the question remained: Did it occur in humans? "For us to believe it's more than an epiphenomenon, we needed to see if it occurs in humans," Gage says.

Fortunately, the experiment was essentially already set up. Some cancer patients received BrdU injections to check for dividing cells in tumor biopsies. Gage sent requests for brains to every pathologist he knew. When the brains arrived they were brought to the microscope room and indeed, BrdU lit up the confocal with labeled cells in the hippocampus and cortex. But the problem was in determining whether these cells were neurons. Double-labeling them with neuronal or...

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