Brain Boosters

Parts of our brain produce new nerve cells, or neurons, to help sustain our mental capacity. It’s a process that‘s not well understood but could hold clues to new treatments for disorders such as strokes and Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists recently found an ingenious way of studying these nerve cell nurseries in mice. They infected newborn neurons with two viruses; one that remained inside the cell and produced a coloured protein, the other that spread outwards along nerve channels to connecting cells, marking them out in different colours according to cell type, in stained tissue samples. After several weeks, it was possible to map out the position of the new neurons and the network of connecting cells. Here, appearing yellow, we see a type of cell known as a neuroconnector, which has clearly linked with a new neuron.

Written by Mick Warwicker

Mick Warwicker

Writer

A freelance communications consultant and writer, Mick specialises in science and education. A science graduate and award-winning print and broadcast journalist, he was Head of Communications at Newcastle University from 2000–2011.

Website

• Henriette van Praag
• National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, USA
• Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature Communications Copyright 2012
• Published in Nature Communications 3