Immature Adult Brain Cells (IMAGE)
Caption
A Princeton University and National Institutes of Health study suggests that our response to stressful situations originates from structural changes in our brain that allows us to adapt to turmoil. Adult rats with disruptions in their social hierarchy produced far fewer new neurons in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for certain types of memory and stress regulation. They also reacted to the disruption by favoring the company of familiar rats. Their behavior manifested six weeks after social disruption, during which time brain-cell growth, or neurogenesis, had decreased by 50 percent. The photo shows adult hippocampal neurons that are less than two weeks old.
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Image courtesy of Maya Opendak, New York University
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