Reacción a "New neurons detected forming in adult human brains"

This work corroborates the results obtained previously in the so-called “bomb study”. It took advantage of the radioactivity incorporated into the environment slightly contaminated by experimental nuclear explosions carried out in the Nevada desert (United States) to demonstrate that, in the hippocampus, specifically in the dentate gyrus, there was postnatal neuronal proliferation. The result broke the dogma that there was no appreciable neuronal enrichment after birth.

This work denies the existence of a time barrier beyond which our brain cannot induce the proliferation of neurons. Even Ramón y Cajal firmly believed in this dogma, which stated that we were all born with a number of neurons that could only decrease, but never increase after birth.

However, this study indicates that, at least until the age of 78, our brain is capable of replacing neurons in order to maintain the most important function of our hippocampus, namely memory. This fact, coupled with the fact that the hippocampus is of particular interest because of its leading role in Alzheimer's disease, highlights the scale and importance of these discoveries.