New brain cells made throughout life
People keep making new brain cells throughout their lives (well at least until the age of 97), according to a study on human brains.
The researchers at the University of Madrid showed that the number of new brain cells tailed off with age.
And it falls dramatically in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease – giving new ideas for treating the dementia.
Most of our neurons – brain cells that send electrical signals – are indeed in place by the time we are born.
Studies on other mammals have found new brains cells forming later in life, but the extent of “neurogenesis” in the human brain is still a source of debate.
The study, looked at the brains of 58 deceased people who were aged between 43 and 97.
The focus was on the hippocampus – a part of the brain involved in memory and emotion. It is the part of the brain that you need, to remember where you parked the car.
New neurons
Neurons do not emerge in the brain fully formed, but have to go through a process of growing and maturing.
The researchers were able to spot immature or “new” neurons in the brains that they examined.
In healthy brains there was a “slight decrease” in the amount of this neurogenesis with age.
Researcher Dr Maria Llorens-Martin told BBC News: “I believe we would be generating new neurons as long as we need to learn new things.
“And that occurs during every single second of our life.”
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But there was a different story in the brains from Alzheimer’s patients.
The number of new neurons forming fell from 30,000 per millimetre to 20,000 per millimetre in people at the beginning of Alzheimer’s.
Dr Llorens-Martin said: “That’s a 30% reduction in the very first stage of the disease.
“It’s very surprising for us, it’s even before the accumulation of amyloid beta [a hallmark of Alzheimer’s] and probably before symptoms, it’s very early.”
Alzheimer’s disease remains untreatable, but the main focus of research has been targeting clumps of amyloid beta in the brain.
However, even last week more trials using this approach have failed and the latest study suggests there may be something happening even earlier in the course of the disease.
H.Z