Adult neurogenesis: New neurons, new opportunities.
Birte Doludda, Warsha Barde, Francesco D'Egidio, Carlos P Fitzsimons, Jonas Frisén, Fred H Gage, Sebastian Jessberger, Orly Lazarov, D Chichung Lie, Paul J Lucassen, Chiara de Lucia, Evgenia Salta, Hongjun Song, Juan Song, Sandrine Thuret, Tomohisa Toda, Gerd Kempermann
Abstract
The 38 currently registered clinical trials with the keyword "adult neurogenesis" indicate growing interest in new neurons as a target for intervention. Today, we have strong evidence that adult neurogenesis is involved in hippocampal function and can contribute to brain functions in health and disease. Neurogenesis research can now ask new questions, such as (1) the identity of stem cells and their input integration for initiating neurogenesis, (2) the nature of the neurogenic niche and neurogenesis without stem cell activity, (3) the complex functionality beyond the hippocampus, and (4) evolutionary and computational theory, including neurogenic neural networks for artificial intelligence.