BACKGROUND The term adult neurogenesis constitutes a series of developmental steps including the birth, survival, differentiation, maturation, and even death of newborn progenitor cells within neurogenic niches. Within the hippocampus progenitors reside in the neurogenic niche of the subgranular zone in the dentate gyrus subfield. At the different stages, designated type-I, type-IIa, type-IIb, ...

UNLABELLED The mechanisms regulating hippocampal neurogenesis remain poorly understood. Particularly unclear is the extent to which age-related declines in hippocampal neurogenesis are due to an innate decrease in precursor cell performance or to changes in the environment of these cells. Several extracellular signaling factors that regulate hippocampal neurogenesis have been identified. Howeve...

The subgranular zone (SGZ) of hippocampal dentate gyrus (HDG) is a primary site of adult neurogenesis. Toll-like receptors (TLRs), are involved in neural system development of Drosophila and innate immune response of mammals. TLR2 is expressed abundantly in neurogenic niches such as adult mammalian hippocampus. It regulates adult hippocampal neurogenesis. However, the role of TLR2 in adult neur...

Trimethyltin (TMT) is a toxic organotin compound that induces acute neuronal death selectively in the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG) followed by cognition impairment; however the TMT-injured hippocampal DG itself is reported to regenerate the neuronal cell layer through rapid enhancement of neurogenesis. Neural stem/progenitor cells (NS/NPCs) are present in the adult hippocampal DG, and generat...

Cortico-hippocampal interactions during sleep are believed to reorganize neural circuits in support of memory consolidation. However, spike-timing relationships across cortico-hippocampal networks-key determinants of synaptic changes-are poorly understood. Here we show that cells in prefrontal cortex fire consistently within 100 ms after hippocampal cells in naturally sleeping animals. This pro...

Attractor neural network theory has been proposed as a theory for long-term memory. Recent studies of hippocampal place cells, including a study by Leutgeb et al. in this issue of Neuron, address the potential role of attractor dynamics in the formation of hippocampal representations of spatial maps.

Hippocampal neural stem/progenitor cells (hipp-NS/PCs) of the adult mammalian brain are important sources of neuronal and gial cell production. In this study, the main goal is to investigate the plasticity of these cells in neuronal/astroglial differentiations. To this end, the differentiation of the hipp-NS/PCs isolated from 3-month-old Wistar rats was investigated in response to the embryonic...

Epilepsy is one of the most common neuroinflammatory disorders that affect more than 50 million people worldwide. Excessive electrical discharges in neurons following neural cell damage or loss leads to recurrent seizures, which are described as epilepsy. One of the most common and difficult to treat types of epilepsy is Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE), which results from hippocampal sclerosis. Cu...