Profound behavioural changes occur in the mother at parturition, together with extensive remodelling of neural circuits. These changes include neurochemical, morphological and functional plasticity. The continuous generation of new neurones in the hippocampus and the olfactory system is an additional form of neuroplasticity that contributes to motherhood. This review describes the reciprocal re...

During the past decade, the modulation of adult neurogenesis has been an intensively studied area of neuroscience due to the implications for understanding of physiological mechanisms in the adult brain and the potential clinical applications for neuropsychiatric disorders. This research has resulted in countless discoveries during a relatively short period of time elucidating mechanistic detai...

It has not been reported whether thiamine deficiency (TD) affects hippocampal neurogenesis or not. Here, we explored the influence of TD at early pre-pathological lesion stage on hippocampal neurogenesis and the correlation between affected hippocampal neurogenesis and cognitive dysfunction. We prepared TD mouse model by feeding a thiamine-depleted diet. Learning and memory functions of TD mice...

Alcoholism is characterized by successive periods of abstinence and relapse, resulting from long-lasting changes in various circuits of the central nervous system. Accumulating evidence points to the endocannabinoid system as one of the most relevant biochemical systems mediating alcohol addiction. The endocannabinoid system regulates adult neurogenesis, a form of long-lasting adult plasticity ...

Drugs of abuse dynamically regulate adult neurogenesis, which appears important for some types of learning and memory. Interestingly, a major site of adult neurogenesis, the hippocampus, is important in the formation of drug-context associations and in the mediation of drug-taking and drug-seeking behaviors in animal models of addiction. Correlative evidence suggests an inverse relationship bet...

Studies using the Morris water maze to assess hippocampal function in animals, in which adult hippocampal neurogenesis had been suppressed, have yielded seemingly contradictory results. Cyclin D2 knockout (Ccnd2(-/-)) mice, for example, have constitutively suppressed adult hippocampal neurogenesis but had no overt phenotype in the water maze. In other paradigms, however, ablation of adult neuro...

In olfactory epithelium (OE) cultures, bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) can strongly inhibit neurogenesis. Here we provide evidence that BMPs also promote, and indeed are required, for OE neurogenesis. Addition of the BMP antagonist noggin inhibited neurogenesis in OE-stromal cell co-cultures. Bmp2, Bmp4 and Bmp7 were expressed by OE stroma, and low concentrations of BMP4 (below the threshold...

Exercise is known to have numerous neuroprotective and cognitive benefits, especially pertaining to memory and learning related processes. One potential link connecting them is exercise-mediated hippocampal neurogenesis, in which new neurons are generated and incorporated into hippocampal circuits. The present review synthesizes the extant literature detailing the relationship between exercise ...

The growth of research on adult neurogenesis and the development of new models and tools have greatly advanced our understanding of the function of newborn neurons in recent years. However, there are still significant limitations in the ability to identify the functions of adult neurogenesis in available models. Here we report a transgenic rat (TK rat) that expresses herpes simplex virus thymid...

Tamoxifen is frequently used in murine knockout systems with CreER/LoxP. Besides possible neuroprotective effects, tamoxifen described as having a negative impact on adult neurogenesis. The present study investigated the effect of high-dose application Theiler’s encephalomyelitis virus (TMEV)-induced hippocampal damage. Two weeks after TMEV infection, 42% untreated TMEV-infected mice were affec...