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.

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