Life And Death In The Living Brain: Recruitment Of New Neurons Slows When Old Brain Cells Kept From Dying
Thursday, August 20, 2009 - 10:28
in Biology & Nature
Like clockwork, brain regions in many songbird species expand and shrink seasonally in response to hormones. Now, for the first time, neurobiologists have interrupted this natural "annual remodeling" of the brain and have shown that there is a direct link between the death of old neurons and their replacement by newly born ones in a living vertebrate.