X-Message-Number: 12558 Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 17:30:01 -0400 From: Jan Coetzee <> Subject: New Cells Grow In Highest Brain Area! New Cells Grow In Highest Brain Area - Study WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers said Thursday they had reversed one of the oldest beliefs about the brain -- that brain cells do not regenerate. A team at Princeton University said it had shown that new neurons are born in the cerebral cortex of adult monkeys -- the part of the brain where the very highest functions originate. They said their findings hold huge potential for treating and preventing brain disease and damage caused by strokes or head injuries. ``This is an absolutely novel result,'' William Greenough, director of the neuroscience program at the University of Illinois, said in a statement. Call For New Brain Research ``These data scream for a reanalysis of human brain development. ... If what they have shown holds true for all primates, including humans, it means we really need to rewrite the book on brain development and the way that experience can affect the brain.'' Doctors have long been taught that once the brain matures, no new brain cells are generated. If a neuron dies, it can never be replaced. Recent research has suggested that is not necessarily true, and scientists have even found and grown neural stem cells -- master cells that can generate any kind of brain cell. They have transplanted them into animals and seen them grow and function. But new, growing cells had not been found in the cerebral cortex, the most complex region of the brain where decision-making, recognition and learning take place. New Brain Cells In Monkeys Using unique chemical tracers, Elizabeth Gould and Charles Gross of Princeton found new cells growing in the cerebral cortices of lab monkeys. Writing in the journal Science, they said their finding will transform a good deal of brain research. ``People thought, 'If the cerebral cortex is important in memory, how could it change?''' Gross said in a statement. ``In fact the opposite view is at least as plausible -- if memories are formed from experiences, these experience must produce changes in the brain.'' Gould said the information might one day be used to help find treatments for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, both associated with the loss of brain cells. ``It shows there are natural mechanisms in the brain that, someday, might be harnessed for therapeutic purposes to replenish damaged areas of the brain,'' she said. It also suggests that humans are much more like animals than had been believed. Neurons have long been seen to grow in the brains of birds and rodents, but scientists assumed that this was because they were primitive. Advanced human brains, they believed, were not so quick to change. ``What you can say now is that the primate brain is more like that of songbirds,'' Fernando Nottebohm of Rockefeller University in New York said. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12558