Adult Neorogenesis

The Discovery

Adult neurogenesis was an incidental discovery during the process of perfecting the complex ³H-thymidine autoradiographic technique. Adult-generated neurons were found sparsely scattered in the neocortex (Altman Science 1962.pdf). More studies in the 1960s showed extensive adult neurogenesis in the hippocampus, and in the 1980s Shirley Bayer showed that the new neurons in the dentate granular layer actually added to the adult population in rats. In the 1990s adult neurogenesis was “rediscovered,” and those studies often did not give credit to the original Altman – Bayer work. Adult-generated neurons are routinely found in the granular layer of the dentate gyrus in the hippocampus and in the granular layer the olfactory bulb (see the olfactory development page). Here are our studies on the adult-generated hippocampal dentate granule cells; the new literature on hippocampal adult neurogenesis has expanded on what we presented many years ago.

Altman Anat Rec 1963.pdf
The arrow indicates a labeled hippocampal granule cell in a young adult rat that was injected two times intraperitoneally with ³H-thymidine at 4 months (one week interval between injections) and survived to 5 months (counterstained autoradiogram). This is Figure 13 in the above paper and is the first illustration (among others in the paper) of a hippocampal neuron generated during the adult period.

INFORMATION ADDED OCTOBER, 2014: A brief communication from our laboratory documents the histological evidence for a subgranular zone in the dentate gyrus of children aged 1 month to 6 years. This finding supports the hypothesis that the dentate granular layer in humans has the same developmental pattern as in other mammals.

BRIEF COMMUNICATiON 1: HIPPOCAMPAL POSTNATAL NEUROGENESIS IN CHILDREN

Bayer et al Science 1982.pdf These data are volumetric counts of the total number of granule cell nuclei throughout the entire hippocampus in rats at ages 30, 120, 200, and 365 days. The important finding is that the granule cell population substantially increases its numbers with age. The dentate granule cell population has this unique feature.

Initially, ³H-thymadine is picked up by precursor cells in the subgranular zone during the S-phase of the cell cycle. Some progeny become neurons that differentiate into mature granule cells. The graph in figure 4 shows that when animals survive longer after injections, there is a higher proportion of labeled mature granule cells(black bars) compared to immature cells (clear bars). See also fig. 5 in Altman&Das JCN 1965.pdf

Figure 2 in Altman&Bayer hippo dev 1975.pdf that shows the heavy ³H-thymidine label uptake by presumptive granule cell precursors in the dispersed subgranular zone in the hilus (HI) of the dentate gyrus. As rats mature, the subgranular zone is scattered small cells at the junction between the base of the granule cell layer and the hilus (Fig. 3 center). Many of the postnatally-generated and all of the adult-generated dentate granule cells arise in the subgranular zone. (AH, Ammon’s horn; GL, dentate granular layer; MO, dentate molecular layer)

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Altman Science 1962.pdf–first demonstration of labeled neurons in adult brains

Bayer et al Science 1982.pdf–the dentate granule cell population grows in adults

Altman&Bayer hippo dev 1975.pdf–review paper on dentate gyrus development

Altman Anat Rec 1963.pdf–adult neurogenesis in hippocampus and cerebral cortex

Altman&Das JCN 1965.pdf–early postnatal and adult neurogenesis in hippocampus

Bayer-Exp Br Res 1982.pdf–method for determining that the granule cell population is actually growing