Neurogenesis

Question 1

What is lesioning?

Answer 1

small areas of damage (lesions) are made in your brain

Question 2

What happened in the morris water maze after lesioning?

Answer 2

hippocampus impaired recall of the hidden platform location over the long-term (subsequent days), but not short-term (same day).

Question 3

What does depolarization do?

Answer 3

release of ions as the neuron becomes less polarized with an action potential

Question 4

What is LTD (long term depression of synaptic strength)

Answer 4

yeah

Question 5

What did Mark Rosenweig do for the field?

Answer 5

experiment with mice in bare cages vs enriched ones showed that the more there was to interact with, the more the brain grew

Question 6

What are the importance of stem cells?

Answer 6

can be used to grow into the body’s organs and other parts (but not the brain?? dogma)
many scientific and experimental uses

Question 7

What did Fred “Rusty” Gage do?

Answer 7

researched adult neurogenesis and tested on adults with terminal cancer
BrdU (marker for newly formed cells)
NeuN (neuron marker)

Question 8

What is the difference between a stem cell and a progenitor cell?

Answer 8

Progenitor cells are descendants of stem cells that then further differentiate to create specialized cell types.

Question 9

what are the importance of newborn neuron cells in the brain?

Answer 9

shows that the brain can make new cells, make new connections and repair damaged ones (maybe other areas that don’t make new ones will be able to in the future)

Question 10

What are factors affecting adult neurogenesis?

Answer 10

Uncontrollable: genes (-/+), sex (female (+)), aging (-)
Controllable: exercise (+), enrichment (+), drugs (-), stress (-)