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Mexico.- A new study published in Nature Medicine points out that even people of average age (aged 43 to 87) can produce new brain cells, and that previous studies that had not detected these newcomers may have already used defective methods.
According to UNAM Global, the work "provides clear and definitive evidence of the persistence of neurogenesis throughout life," says Paul Frankland, neuroscientist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada.
María Llorens-Martín, co-author of the study and scientist at the Center for Molecular Biology Severo Ochoa (CBM), shows that a region of the brain called dentate gyrus produces new neurons up to the ninth decade of life.
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Llorens explains further that the birth of new neurons in the adult human brain is of great importance to modern medicine because this particular type of neurons generated in the hippocampus participates in the acquisition of new memories and learning in the mouse. "Our study provides unknown data to date on the maturity of these cells in the human gyrus," adds the Spanish researcher.
"These findings are of great importance in neurodegenerative diseases.The early detection of a decrease in the generation of new neurons could be an early marker of Alzheimer's disease," he said. he declares.
Some scientists are still skeptical, especially the authors of the Nature article of last year. "While this study contains valuable data, we find no compelling evidence of ongoing production of new neurons in the adult human hippocampus," said Shawn Sorrells, neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. . The process of neurogenesis disappears in adolescence.
Much of the debate depends on the techniques used for the tests, such as DCX staining, which, according to Sorrells, is not an adequate measure of younger neurons because the DCX protein is also expressed in mature cells. This suggests that the "new" neurons discovered by the team were actually present since childhood, he says. The new study also revealed no evidence of the existence of stem cell groups likely to provide new neurons, he said.
Llorens-Martín said his team had used several other proteins badociated with neuronal development to confirm that DCX-positive cells were actually young and that they were "very strict" in their criteria for identifying young neurons. .
(With Science and Nature information)
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