Large chains of migratory cells forming braided streams break down into a shower of young migrating neurons that continue to integrate into the entorhinal cortex and neighboring regions until 2 to 3 years of age. Credit: Shawn Sorrell/Pitt Lab
The human brain continues to build after we are born for much longer than previously thought, suggests research by Shawn Sorrells, assistant professor of neuroscience at the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. Sorrells’ research on postnatal brain development, published in the journal Nature, highlights the fundamental processes that contribute to the development of important brain functions, such as learning, memory and spatial navigation.
New research suggests that a subset of inhibitory neurons within the entorhinal cortex, or EC, an area of the brain critical for the formation of memories, continues to migrate to this region where they build new neuronal connections from birth until birth. ‘in early childhood.
The study suggests that extensive postnatal neuronal migration across the EC may underlie critical periods of neuroplasticity during which the brain is particularly receptive to changes and adaptations. The finding also points to a possible reason why EC neurons are more susceptible to neurodegeneration, since other recent studies have shown that this same type of neuron is affected early in Alzheimer’s disease.
By analyzing brain samples provided, in part, by the UPMC Children’s Hospital Epilepsy Tissue Bank and the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital Neuropathology Department, Sorrells’ research team was the first to show that, contrary to previously thought, neuronal migration of such magnitude and duration is extended in regions that control thoughts and emotions.
This discovery explains how the human brain produces billions of new neurons in a very short time thanks to a mechanism that allows neurons to continue arriving after birth.
“It is generally thought that the brain has finished recruiting neurons by the time an individual is born,” Sorrells said. “We were incredibly excited to learn that not only does large-scale neuronal migration continue in specific regions of the brain, but that this process also continues at ages when children are crawling and beginning to walk.”
More information:
Prolonged neuronal recruitment in the temporal lobe of young children, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06981-x
Provided by the University of Pittsburgh
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