Does The Growth Of New Neurons Repair Brain Damage Fom Strokes?

Can you grow new brain cells? — *Neural stem cells. (Credit: Dana Bradford)*

Brains are incredibly adaptive organs. Our brain cells (neurons) and the connections between them are constantly changing, which enables us to larn and retrieve, acquire new skills, and recover from encephalon injury.

It's a property referred to as 'neuroplasticity' – the power of the brain and nervous system ability to remodel in response to new information, whether that be due to experiences, behaviour, emotions, or injury.

1 of the methods the brain does this is through a procedure known as neurogenesis – the creation of new neurons. Neurogenesis is a specially of import process when an embryo is developing. Until only recently, it was thought that the number of neurons we're born with is fixed – that the central nervous system, including the brain, was incapable of neurogenesis and unable to regenerate.

The encephalon tin can produce new cells

But neuroscientists led by QBI'southward founding director, Professor Perry Bartlett, discovered stem cells in the hippocampus of the adult brain in the 1990s. Because stem cells can divide, and differentiate into many types of cells, the game-changing discovery suggested that neurogenesis could concur the key to treating conditions such equally Alzheimer's disease.

Neurogenesis is at present accepted to be a process that occurs ordinarily in the healthy adult encephalon, particularly in the hippocampus, which is important for a learning and spatial retentiveness. Damage to the hippocampus tin lead to difficulties with navigation, as Dr Lavinia Codd found when, at historic period 31, she had a stroke that damaged her right hippocampus.

Before this twelvemonth, QBI researchers fabricated the earth-outset discovery that new adult brain cells are too produced in the amygdala, a region of the encephalon important for processing fear and emotional memories.

The amygdala, an ancient function of the encephalon, is important for attaching emotional significance to memories, and also plays a key office in fear learning, which causes us to learn that an experience or an object is frightening.

"Fear learning leads to the classic flight-or-fight response – increased middle rate, dry mouth, sweaty palms – only the amygdala also plays a function in producing feelings of dread and despair, in the case of phobias or PTSD, for instance," says pb researcher Dr Dhanisha Jhaveri.

Disrupted connections in the amygdala are linked to depression, and anxiety disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the promise is that the discovery could lead to new treatments for these conditions.

"Finding ways of stimulating the product of new brain cells in the amygdala could give united states new avenues for treating disorders of fear processing, which include feet, PTSD and depression," says Dr Jhaveri. The discovery shed further light on the brain'due south ability to change and adapt, and further enquiry will look at agreement the role of new cells in the the amygdala.

Stimulating the growth of new encephalon cells

As the brain ages, our power to learn and remember gradually declines. Information technology's thought that these changes in retentivity occur every bit a result of decreased neurogenesis – that stem cells in regions such as the dentate gyrus, in the hippocampus, lose their ability to produce new neurons. The hippocampus is known to shrink with age.

Merely it'southward not all bad news – these changes aren't necessarily permanent. "While y'all can become shrinkage in hippocampus, there is certainly evidence now that you could change that – contrary that shrinkage and reverse any loss of learning in memory past stimulating both the production of these new nerve cells, but besides stimulating greater connectivity inside the hippocampus," says Professor Perry Bartlett.

He and Dr Daniel Blackmore have constitute in mice that exercise is able to increase production of new brain cells and better learning and retentiveness in the ageing brain. They are now heading up a clinical trial monitoring 300 people aged 65 and older to place the right amount, intensity and type of practice that leads to cerebral improvement.

"Ultimately, nosotros would hope to take articulate public health guidelines every bit to how exercise can both preclude and opposite dementia," says Professor Bartlett.