Previous studies by Shetty and others had demonstrated that as the brainages, fewer new nerve cells, or neurons, are born in the hippocampus, the brain's learning and memory center.
The common assumption had been that the brain drain was due to a decreasing supply of neural stem cells in the aging hippocampus, said lead study investigator Bharathi Hattiangady, Ph.D., research associate in neurosurgery.
In the current study, however, the researchers found that the stem cells in agingbrains are not reduced in number, but instead they divide less frequently, resulting in dramatic reductions in the addition of new neurons in the hippocampus.
BrainAging International Journal (BAIJ) is an international journal published by the Ana Aslan International Academy of Aging, Bucharest, Romania.
Thus, brainaging and the associated diseases are major public health problems in the modern world, the significance of which is estimated to grow markedly in the foreseeable future.
Appropriately, research on brainaging has become the major area of neuroscience research and there is hardly a pharmaceutical company which is not working on developing therapeutic drugs to prevent, inhibit or reverse the loss of cognition associated with Alzheimer disease and other age-associated neurodegenerative conditions.
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