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Swedish researchers have found that even as people age, the hippocampusthe part of the brain responsible for memory, continues to produce new cells. The team identified the early-stage cells that eventually develop into neurons by analyzing brain samples from individuals of all ages using sophisticated instruments.These discoveries support the idea that our brains are still more flexible than previously thought, which may lead to new therapies for conditions affecting the brain and memory loss.The journal Science has published the study. It offers strong new evidence that neurons in the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center, continue to develop well into late adulthood. Scientists from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet conducted the study.One area of the brain that is crucial for memory and learning as well as emotion control is the hippocampus.In a well-known study conducted back in 2013, Jonas Frisen’s team at Karolinska Institute shown that mature humans’ hippocampal regions are capable of producing new neurons.The time at which the cells were generated was subsequently ascertained by the researchers by measuring the amount of carbon-14 in DNA extracted from brain tissue. Identifying cells of originThe scope and importance of this neurogenesis—the creation of new neurons—are still up for discussion, though. The existence and division of neural progenitor cells—the cells that come before new neurons—in adult humans has not been conclusively demonstrated.“We have now been able to identify these cells of origin, which confirms that there is an ongoing formation of neurons in the hippocampus of the adult brain,” says the study’s lead researcher, Jonas Frisen, a professor of stem cell research at the Karolinska Institute’s Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. From 0 to 78 years of ageIn the new study, the researchers used a variety of cutting-edge techniques to analyze brain tissue from international biobanks belonging to individuals ranging in age from 0 to 78.They employed flow cytometry to examine cell characteristics and single-nucleus RNA sequencing, which examines gene activity in individual cell nuclei.They were able to distinguish between several stages of neuronal development—from stem cells to immature neurons, many of which were in the division phase—by fusing this with machine learning. The researchers employed RNAscope and Xenium, two tools that indicate the location of active genes in tissue, to locate these cells.These techniques verified that the newly generated cells were situated in the dentate gyrus, a particular region of the hippocampal region. Learning, memory developmentand cognitive flexibility all depend on this region.The findings indicate that while adult neurons’ progenitors resemble those of mice, pigs, and monkeys, there are some variations in the genes that are active.Individual differences were also significant; although some adult people had a high number of brain progenitor cells, others had almost none.
