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posted by martyb on Thursday March 08 2018, @04:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-a-nerve! dept.

Study questions whether adults can really make new neurons

Over the past 20 years, evidence that adult humans can produce hundreds of new neurons per day has fueled hope that ramping up cell birth could be therapeutic. Boosting neurogenesis, researchers speculate, might prevent or treat depression, Alzheimer's disease, and other brain disorders. But a controversial study in Nature this week threatens to dash such hopes by suggesting that the production of neurons declines sharply after early development and grinds to a halt by adulthood.

The results of the "exhaustive search" for new neurons in adult human and monkey brains "will disappoint many," says neuroscientist Paul Frankland of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. "It raises concern that levels of neurogenesis are too low to be functionally important" in humans, adds another observer, René Hen, a neuroscientist at Columbia University. But he and others suggest that the study left much room for error. The way the tissue was handled, the deceased patients' psychiatric history, or whether they had brain inflammation could all explain why the researchers failed to confirm earlier, encouraging studies, Hen says.

Also at STAT News.

Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults (DOI: 10.1038/nature25975) (DX)


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:54PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 08 2018, @07:54PM (#649660)

    Our understanding of this stuff is so rudimentary and the endless stream of press releases so misleading...

    Anyway, it amounts to explaining why they saw less ki67 staining in the tissue from older people. They chose the most hyped up explanation (of course) but perhaps the tissue of older people was just handled differently or decays differently, etc. The job of scientists is to explore these possibilities, not sure why they weren't expected to do that here.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @04:04AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @04:04AM (#649851)

    This is what capitalist funding of science and science journalism looks like.

    Capitalists are like children and want shinies. Scientists who make shinies are successful. Journalists who report on shinies are successful. Soon, you've created a culture in both professions to inject as much hype as possible.

    Capitalists can't think far enough ahead to when scientists and journalists start being dismissed by the general public, which has grown bitter of the hype. It's the tragedy of the commons. Also, because the public will become confused and uninformed about a great many things, they become easier for the capitalists to swindle.

    It's win, win, win if you're in the capitalist class. Even after society completely collapses back into feudalism, the capitalists will be lords and barons and kings.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @12:50PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 09 2018, @12:50PM (#649929)

      Possibly, the rise of the junk science really did coincide with the US government becoming its primary source of funding after WWII though. It seems more like a monoculture problem to me.

      Before that it was more individual institutions (eg universities) competing with each other and hence double checking each others work. Also, a lot fewer people needed to "produce results to survive" (a common excuse for bad research behaviors) since it was more of an "elite" activity.