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New neurons may explain why adults can’t remember being infants Unlike the proverbial elephants, babies always forget. Infants’ memories may be wiped clean by the genesis of new brain cells, a study in rodents suggests. The findings offer an explanation for why people can’t recall memories from early childhood, a century-old mystery. The study’s authors “make a very interesting and compelling case,” says neuroscientist and psychiatrist Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute for Mental Health in Bethesda, Md. “It’s just truly fascinating,” he says. “Nobody has actually looked at this very carefully before.” More than 100 years ago, Sigmund...

Enlarge Image Nuclear fallout. Radioactive carbon-14 atoms released by atomic bombs are helping scientists determine the birthdays of new neurons in the hippocampus (inset). Credit: Spalding et al., Cell (2013);(inset) Weissman, Livet, Sanes, and Lichtman/Harvard University The mushroom clouds produced by more than 500 nuclear bomb tests during the Cold War may have had a silver lining, after all. More than 50 years later, scientists have found a way to use radioactive carbon isotopes released into the atmosphere by nuclear testing to settle a long-standing debate in neuroscience: Does the adult human brain produce new neurons? After working to...

Public release date: 5-Jul-2012 Contact: Elisabeth (Lisa) Lyons elyons@cell.com 617-386-2121 Cell Press Diabetes drug makes brain cells grow The discovery is an important step toward therapies that aim to repair the brain not by introducing new stem cells but rather by spurring those that are already present into action, says the study's lead author Freda Miller of the University of Toronto-affiliated Hospital for Sick Children. The fact that it's a drug that is so widely used and so safe makes the news all that much better. Earlier work by Miller's team highlighted a pathway known as aPKC-CBP for its essential...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers said on Tuesday they had made a type of nerve cell out of ordinary skin cells in a new approach to stem cell research. They made motor neurons out of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells -- a type of cell made from ordinary skin cells that resembles human embryonic stem cells. Scientists hope that iPS cells might offer a substitute for embryonic stem cells and a short-cut to tailored medical therapy for a range of diseases. Motor neurons make muscles contract, and being able to make new motor neurons might help treat diseases such...

GAINESVILLE, Fla., June 14 (SPX) -- Regenerative medicine scientists at the University of Florida's McKnight Brain Institute have created a system in rodent models that for the first time duplicates neurogenesis - the process of generating new brain cells - in a dish. Writing in today's (June 13) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers describe a cell culture method that holds the promise of producing a limitless supply of a person's own brain cells to potentially heal disorders such as Parkinson's disease or epilepsy. "It's like an assembly line to manufacture and increase the number of brain cells,"...

Recent research has revealed that brains continue to produce new neurons throughout life, helping create new neural networks. This neurogenesis only takes place in a few specific areas, such as the area in which the brain and spinal column meet. The new cells, however, can migrate throughout the brain and turn up as far away as the olfactory bulb--a cluster of nerve cells at the front surface of the brain responsible for the sense of smell. A recent study in mice has revealed that these neurons make the long and complicated journey by going with the flow of spinal fluid...

SASKATOON, Saskatchewan, Oct. 14 - Advocates for medical marijuana can take heart over the findings of two Canadian research teams. A synthetic cannabinoid -- similar to the compounds found in marijuana, but substantially stronger -- causes the growth of new neurons and reduces anxiety and depression, investigators at the University of Saskatchewan here reported. And researchers at the University of Calgary said they've found evidence that the brain contains so-called CB2 cannabinoid receptors, previously seen in immune tissue but thought not to exist in brain tissue. The discovery, they added, could lead to new drugs to treat nausea associated with...