The discovery of stem cells in the adult brain has generated a great deal of excitement in the neurosciences. Thousands of new cells are produced each day in a healthy hippocampus, a key brain area for learning and memory. However, soon after the cells are born, many of them die unless they are exposed to a learning experience. Thus, new neurons in the adult are rescued from death by learning. With this award, a number of important questions about the relationship between learning and neurogenesis will be answered: What do new neurons do once they are rescued from death? Are they used for memory or for acquiring new information? Are new cells retained with each new learning experience and if so, do they then contribute to learning in the future? Also, do the absolute numbers that are born relate to the numbers kept alive by learning? And finally, what physiological mechanisms and brain rhythms keep them alive? To answer these questions, behavioral, electrophysiological, molecular and biochemical techniques will be used. These studies are important because they will identify the critical features of learning that keep new neurons alive and in turn how those new neurons then contribute to optimal learning in the future. The discovery of neurogenesis has transformed the way we think about the adult brain and generated much interest in the public, especially educators of children and young adults. These findings will be disseminated to the public with writings in lay magazines (i.e. Shors, Scientific American, 2009) and public presentations (i.e. Quark Park, a public art installation about science). The project will train postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate students in this new field of research which intersects biology, psychology, physiology, as well as biomedical and stem cell engineering.

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As the working hours get longer and as communication scientific knowledge improves, folks are socially communicating less. We are just awfully busy to make new friends let alone construct authentically meaningful bond. At the end of the day, who needs face to face communication when you could do it in Twitter, Facebook and the numerous online talking services?

This seclusion trend is unfortunate at best because your brain, in addition to brain food, craves social interaction to function at its top. So critical is that it is on our health that a few specialist in the field believe that the amount of social interaction an individual had is one of the golden guide of health and independence in an individual’s old age.

How come social interactions so essential to a healthy brain?

Because your brain is able of neurogenesis (the procedure of developing brand new brain cells). Nevertheless neurogenesis results only when you sufficiently challenge your brain.

Well, communicating with other individual is one of the ultimate challenging task that an individual can take on. As Lawrence Katz once said, “There is a lot of evidences that another person is the ultimate in uncertain things you can encounter. So activities that have you communicating with another human beings is an awesome way of brain exercise.”

As you turn into more isolated, you are thus using less of your brain. As reported by Hebbian Learning principles, you lost what you don’t use. Thus brain cells die off and synapses breaks down as you grow older.

Unfortunately, people who are older also tend to live a more lonely life – thus starting a vicious cycle of mental decline. Sure, making new friends can be challenging and as any worthwhile relationships, you require plentiful energy to make it extraordinary.

Rest of article here.

LONDON – Scientists have discovered a new source for the generation of nerve cells in the brain.

Professor Magdalena Gotz of Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat (LMU) Munich and colleagues have discovered progenitor cells, which can form new glutamatergic neurons following injury to the cerebral cortex.

Particularly in Alzheimer’s disease, nerve cell degeneration plays a crucial role. In the future, new therapeutic options may possibly be derived from steering the generation and/or migration mechanism, according to the researchers.

Until only a few years ago, neurogenesis – the process of nerve cell development – was considered to be impossible in the adult brain.

Then researchers discovered regions in the forebrain in humans in which new nerve cells can be generated throughout life. These so-called GABAergic cells use gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), a neurotransmitter of the central nervous system.

Now, the research team, led by Gotz, has taken a closer look at this brain region in the mouse model. They found that even in the forebrain, there are other nerve cells that are regularly generated – the so-called glutamatergic nerve cells, which use glutamate as neurotransmitter.

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What is the single fastest growing segment of the United States population: people over a hundred years old.

Why do some people live so long? For years, medical researchers have been studying this select group, identifying some key factors to a long life. Now, a growing body of research is suggesting that longevity isn’t just linked to good genes and a healthy lifestyle; it’s also tied to cultivating a positive, resilient attitude toward life. These results validate a simple idea: that centenarians can teach us how to live not just longer lives, but better ones.

At the fore of this research is the New England Centenarian Study (NECS), which has enrolled more than 1,500 centenarians from around the world over the past 15 years. The study’s director, Thomas Perls, says these participants dispel the belief that the older someone gets, the sicker he or she becomes. Instead, he says, “the older you get, the healthier you’ve been.” In other words, people who demonstrate exceptional longevity tend to have had a lifelong history of good health.

Indeed, people who die in their 70s or 80s are plagued by degenerative illnesses in the years before their death; in contrast, Perls has found that nearly two thirds of centenarians either delay the onset of diseases such as heart disease, stroke, and diabetes—or escape them altogether. Plus, a substantial proportion of centenarians who survive such age-related illnesses do so without developing physical disabilities, enabling them to remain socially, mentally, and physically active. As a result, in a culture that romanticizes youth, Perls argues that centenarians embody “a thoroughly optimistic view of aging”—one that shows that prolonging life and enjoying it go hand-in-hand.

How do they do it?

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The idea that the adult brain changes with experience was once a radical idea, but it is now well accepted that certain areas—say, the motor cortex, when learning a new physical skill—can grow new neurons or create stronger connections.

Now scientists report that the brain is even more mutable than suspected. Thanks to an unconventional research technique, neuroscientists have found the first physical proof that new experiences and information have wide-ranging effects throughout both hemispheres of the brain, rather than just creating connections in one discrete area.

“We have learned that what we call neuronal plasticity isn’t exclusive to individual synapses or even the neurons where they contact but rather occurs throughout the functional network in which synapses and neurons are embedded,” Canals says. “Those networks are absent in brain slices, so they couldn’t be studied before.”

By showing how activity in the hippocampus causes widespread changes in brain structure, Canals says the findings could explain why new memories are at first dependent on the hippocampus but can eventually be recalled without triggering that part of the brain at all.

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They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but scientific findings seem to indicate otherwise. Research shows that our brains literally rewire in response to new stimulation. And when it comes to computer use, Internet activity may stimulate and possibly improve brain function, according to scientists at UCLA.

“Technology may be changing our minds and changing the way we think,” said Dr. Gary Small, a neuroscientist speaking last month at the UCLA Technology & Aging Conference at the Skirball Cultural Center.

Small, director of the UCLA Center on Aging, described results of research he and colleagues performed with volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half of the participants were familiar with how to search the Internet, and the other half were new to it. The participants engaged in Internet searching while simultaneously undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The MRI images clearly showed activity in the areas of the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning — but only in the Web-savvy group. The inexperienced group showed no such activity.

However, after just five one-hour sessions of practice, the Web newbies showed activation in the same areas of the brain as the savvy group.

“Five hours on the Internet and the naive subjects had already rewired their brains,” said Small, writing about the findings in “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind” (HarperCollins). “Recent studies demonstrate that older brains do remain malleable and plastic throughout life. Even areas of the brain that were reserved for specialized tasks can be recruited and retrained.”

In other words, “use it or lose it” applies to the brain. Indeed, Small notes, “Several studies have shown that exercising the brain with mental aerobics not only can improve cognitive performance scores but also may delay brain degeneration.”

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Australian scientists have confirmed what many chocoholics already know, that “comfort food” can reduce stress.

Eating foods rich in fat and sugar can alter the chemical composition of the brain and reduce anxiety, says Professor of Pharmacology Margaret Morris.

Prof Morris, from the University of NSW’s School of Medical Sciences, conducted a study of rats which showed the effects of past trauma could be erased through “unlimited access to yummy food”.

“Implementing that diet reversed their anxiety … it took an animal back to the non-stressed state,” Prof Morris told AAP.

“We really don’t know why that happens, but there seems to be a biochemical link.”

The research started with different groups of baby rats – one group grew up with normal contact with their mothers, while the other group had lengthy periods of separation.

Rats with a more traumatic early life were found to have higher levels of stress hormones and fewer steroid receptors in the part of the brain which controls behavior.

The signals for “anxiety and depression” eventually disappeared among those rats who were later switched to the all-you-can-eat junk food diet.

“The control group had no effect from the diet really, but the stressed animals had a deficit … which was restored by the diet.”

“(The) food seems to affect neurogenesis similar to the way anti-depressants promote nerve growth in the brain.”

Prof Morris cautioned while the results were not immediately transferable to people, it did show support “the therapeutic value of comfort food” and hint at explanations for other patterns of human behavior.

“If you ask people what they eat when they are stressed, they eat more chocolate, cakes and sweets, and less fish, vegetables and fruit,” she said.

And: “There is good evidence that if we look at people who have experienced trauma as a child tend to be heavier as adults”.

The study also should not be seen as an endorsement of eating junk food, Prof Morris said, noting this would set people on a path to other serious health problems.

Future research would aim to determine whether other rewarding activities – such as exercise – could have a similar stress-busting affect on rats’ brains.

The research was conducted jointly with PHD student Jayanthi Maniam, and it is published in the journal Psychoneuroendrocrinology.