Microscopic study of cell division in the cerebral cortex of adult brains after experimental focal cerebral ischemia

It had long been a dogma in medical history that adult mammalian brains do not have the capacity to generate new neurons to replace the demised ones. This dogma was challenged in 1965 when Altman and Das reported their finding in postnatal rats that certain neurons became labeled by the radiolabelled DNA precursor [3H]-thymidine in their nuclei, suggesting that new-born cells had been generated, i.e., so called neurogenesis. With the same technique, Altman found postnatal neurogenesis in the olfactory bulb in 1969. With the advance of modern immunohistocytochemistry techniques, BrdUimmunolabeling has become one of the most commonly used techniques in cell regeneration research