Human Hippocampal Neurogenesis Persists throughout Aging

By M. Boldrini, Camille Fulmore, Alexandria N. Tartt, Laika R. Simeon, Ina P. Pavlova, V. Poposka, G. Rosoklija, A. Stankov, V. Arango, A. Dwork and 2 more. 2018

1,188 citations recorded by the source corpus.

SUMMARY Adult hippocampal neurogenesis declines in aging rodents and primates. Aging humans are thought to exhibit waning neurogenesis and exercise-induced angiogenesis, with a resulting volumetric decrease in the neurogenic hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG) region, although concurrent changes in these parameters are not well studied. Here we assessed whole-autopsy hippocampi from healthy human individuals ranging from 14 to 79 years of age. We found similar numbers of intermediate neural progenitors and thousands of immature neurons in the DG, comparable numbers of glia and mature granule neurons, and equivalent DG volume across ages. Nevertheless, older individuals have less angiogenesis and neuroplasticity and a smaller quiescent progenitor pool in anterior-mid DG, with no changes in posterior DG. Thus, healthy older subjects without cognitive impairment, neuropsychiatric disease, or treatment display preserved neurogenesis. It is possible that ongoing hippocampal neurogenesis sustains human-specific cognitive function throughout life and that declines may be linked to compromised cognitive-emotional resilience.

Subfields: Developmental Neuroscience, Genetics, Neurology, Neuroscience

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Developmental Neuroscience

1. Stefan Wermter
2. Jun Tani
3. Cornelius Weber
4. Jose L. Part
5. German Ignacio Parisi
6. Christopher Kanan
7. Ronald Kemker

In Genetics

1. Stefan Wermter
2. Jun Tani
3. Cornelius Weber
4. German Ignacio Parisi

In Neurology

1. Christopher Kanan

In Neuroscience

1. Christopher Kanan
2. German Ignacio Parisi
3. Stefan Wermter
4. Jun Tani
5. Cornelius Weber
6. Ronald Kemker
7. Ali Ayub
8. Alan R. Wagner

Citations in the corpus

• Continual Lifelong Learning with Neural Networks: A Review (2018, background): “On the other hand, other studies suggest that hippocampal neurogenesis sustains human-specific cognitive function throughout life (Boldrini et al. 2018).”
• Lifelong Learning of Spatiotemporal Representations With Dual-Memory Recurrent Self-Organization (2018, background): “Recent research has suggested that hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children (Sorrells et al., 2018) and becomes undetectable in adulthood, whereas other studies suggest that hippocampal neurogenesis sustains human-specific cognitive function throughout life (Boldrini et al., 2018).”
• Neuroinflammation and depression: A review (2020, background): “Nevertheless, convincing data now strongly support the idea that this process is still present in adults (Boldrini et al., 2018, 2019; Moreno-Jiménez et al., 2019; Spalding et al., 2013).”
• Human adult neurogenesis: evidence and remaining questions (2018, neutral): “In the Sorrells paper, many subjects had very long PMDs of ‘less than 48 hrs’ (that is, up to 2 full days before fixation), whereas in Boldrini et al. (2018) the PMD was up to 26 hours.”