Brain Watch

When we learn new things, or make new memories, new cells are formed in part of our brain called the hippocampus. It’s happening right now in your head. But this constant renewal is something of a mystery to us, hidden as it is by our skull and outer brain. A new technique has managed to record the process in situ, as it happens in a mouse brain (shown in the video, with two marked cells spawning new lineages over months) by removing some of the obstructing layers. This unprecedented view on the process reveals some lines of cells dying off while others thrive, and both symmetric and asymmetric cell divisions, all of which builds scientists’ knowledge of how sequences of cells develop from an initial ‘stem cell’ – a concept crucial to hundreds of new treatments, but poorly defined in the complex brain.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image/video from work by Gregor-Alexander Pilz and Sara Bottes, and colleagues
• Laboratory of Neural Plasticity, Faculties of Medicine and Science, Brain Research Institute, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
• Video/Image reproduced with permission from the AAAS - the American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Published in Science, February 2018