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Potential role for adult neurogenesis in the encoding of time in new memories

Nature Neuroscience volume 9, pages 723–727 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

The dentate gyrus in the hippocampus is one of two brain regions with lifelong neurogenesis in mammals. Despite an increasing amount of information about the characteristics of the newborn granule cells, the specific contribution of their robust generation to memory formation by the hippocampus remains unclear. We describe here a possible role that this population of young granule cells may have in the formation of temporal associations in memory. Neurogenesis is a continuous process; the newborn population is only composed of the same cells for a short period of time. As time passes, the young neurons mature or die and others are born, gradually changing the identity of this young population. We discuss the possibility that one cognitive impact of this gradually changing population on hippocampal memory formation is the formation of the temporal clusters of long-term episodic memories seen in some human psychological studies.

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Figure 1: Growth and maturation of adult newborn granule cells.
Figure 2: Schematic showing how newborn granule cells may encode temporal memories in the hippocampus.
Figure 3: Cartoon example of how temporal associations may exist in long-term human memories.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Elman, T. Sejnowski, L. Squire and C. Stevens for useful discussion and comments, M.L. Gage for editorial comments, and J. Simon for assistance with figures. This work was funded in part by the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind, the Lookout Fund, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the US National Institutes of Health (NS-05050217 and NS-05052842) and National Institute of Aging (AG-020938).

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  1. Laboratory of Genetics, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, 92037, California, USA

    James B Aimone & Fred H Gage

  2. School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Queensland, Queensland, 4072, Australia

    Janet Wiles

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Correspondence to Fred H Gage.

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Aimone, J., Wiles, J. & Gage, F. Potential role for adult neurogenesis in the encoding of time in new memories. Nat Neurosci 9, 723–727 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1707

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