Abstract
Thousands of hippocampal neurons are born in adulthood, suggesting that new cells could be important for hippocampal function. To determine whether hippocampus-dependent learning affects adult-generated neurons, we examined the fate of new cells labeled with the thymidine analog bromodeoxyuridine following specific behavioral tasks. Here we report that the number of adult-generated neurons doubles in the rat dentate gyrus in response to training on associative learning tasks that require the hippocampus. In contrast, training on associative learning tasks that do not require the hippocampus did not alter the number of new cells. These findings indicate that adult-generated hippocampal neurons are specifically affected by, and potentially involved in, associative memory formation.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Charles Gross for comments on the manuscript and Joseph Goodhouse for assistance with confocal imaging. This work was supported by MH52423, MH59970 and IBN9511027.
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Gould, E., Beylin, A., Tanapat, P. et al. Learning enhances adult neurogenesis in the hippocampal formation. Nat Neurosci 2, 260–265 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/6365
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/6365
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