(Credit: vitstudios/Shutterstock)If your parents ever warned you that your childhood behavior would kill your brain cells, you may want to call them and say thank you. New research in the journal Nature finds that some of our brain cells may not regenerate as far into our adulthood — or even adolescence — as previously thought. In other words, you get one shot at growing brain cells in a critical region of the brain — so make them count.
Based on previous research in animals, and indirect tests in humans, researchers thought that our brains did indeed continue to create new cells throughout our lives. One study indicated that adults add as many as 700 new neurons to the hippocampus each and every day.But, while animals do seem to continue making new neurons as they age, it might be more difficult to extrapolate those findings to humans than we thought. This ...
