The Adult brain cells stop growing myth
Tue, Dec 11, 2007
Post filled in: Domestic Science, Studies
Since there are still a big number of things we fail to understand about our brain it is somewhat understandable that such theories appear. They turn into myths and thanks to the oh so well documented media everybody thinks that they are true; and such a belief is hard to shatter even when it reffers to something untrue.
This could just be the case here. The fact that after a man has reached adulthood his brain cells stop growing is just not true. Researchers at MIT led by Wei-Chung Allen Lee have showed this. In fact the busting of this myth means proving that adult brain cells, or neurons, are not largely static and that they are able to change their structures in response to new experiences. The study they made showed that the branch-like projections on some neurons, caled “dendrites,” were still physically malleable.
They conduct electricity received from other neurons to the parent neuron’s cell body. The changes occurred both incrementally and in short bursts, and involved both growth and shrinkage. The results were surprising. A dendrite was able to double its length in two weeks. In the early years of your life you manufacture an estimated 250,000 neurons per minute and then spend the next few years wiring them together. The myth assumes that plasticity settles down when you reach adulthood.
“The scale of change is much smaller than what goes on during the critical period of development, but the fact that it goes on at all is earth-shattering,”said study co-author Elly Nedivi, a neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
They studied interneurons which were not studied before; these interneurons make up about 20 to 30 percent of the neocortex (the part of your brain responsible for higher functions) and on average, about 14 percent of the interneurons they observed showed structural modifications. So this myth is not true.
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Andrei is no scientist, but from an early age, he has been fascinated by science; that's why he went to college, and signed up for Geophysics. Feeling that there's a huge gap between science and average people, he rallied TP, started ZME Science, and gave it a green twist too.
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December 12th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
There is no myth that your neurons stop expanding in adulthood. That is how you learn. Dendrites make new connections to other neurons and BAM…you learn something new (or a faster way of remembering something or you put a new emphasis on a memory, etc.).
The belief that NEW neurons are no longer made in adulthood is absolutely true.
December 12th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
SLEZE, you are incorrect. Recent findings have shown that new neurons are constantly created in the hippocampus. Beware of absolutes in science.
December 12th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
This is pretty cool; it might mean that since adult neurons are still capable of growth, there might be a way to stimulate greater growth in adults that suffer CNS injuries. I heard something similar about ova and menopause. They once thought that females are born with a set number of eggs and when they start to reach a critical “lack of mass,” menopause kicks in. From what I’ve heard, new research suggests that females continue egg production throughout life and that menopause occurs when egg cell death rate starts to surpass the rate of their regeneration.
Ryan S
http://www.scienceinotherwords.blogspot.com
December 14th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Yea, you can rewire your own circuitry after severe cerebral trauma. Look at Quantum physics, maybe it just goes to your belief systems? After my accident, I would have been lucky to be sitting in a chair drooling. We can change anything in our realm.
January 6th, 2008 at 9:51 am
it is amazing that no accurate facts are available to suggest when the brain grows at what age. and also , i would contest your conclusion - as change in shape is not always equivalent to growth.
with thanks’
sagar
August 24th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Thank God! My 25th birthday is coming up, and I’ve been worrying about this myth since I was 15 when I saw a show on PBS, and heard neuroscientists giving their lectures.