No More Cortical Neurons for You

摘要

The cerebral cortex is the seat of human intelligence, language, and creativity. This may be why the question of whether new cortical neurons are generated during a person's life span is so fascinating. In particular, whether the human neocortex (see the figure) receives new neurons during adulthood has remained highly controversial. In a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U.S.A., Bhardwaj et al. (1) add to the evidence that establishes the absence of neurogenesis in this region of the adult human brain. They accomplish this by using an advanced approach based on the car-bon-14 (~(14)C) assay for determining the age of cells in the human body.