Adult hippocampal neurogenesis and its role in Alzheimer's disease

The hippocampus, a brain area critical for learning and memory, is especially vulnerable to damage at early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Emerging evidence has indicated that altered neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus represents an early critical event in the course of AD. Although cau...

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Main Authors: Mu, Yangling, Gage, Fred H
Format: Online
Language:English
Published: BioMed Central 2011
Online Access:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3261815/
id pubmed-3261815
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spelling pubmed-32618152012-01-20 Adult hippocampal neurogenesis and its role in Alzheimer's disease Mu, Yangling Gage, Fred H Review The hippocampus, a brain area critical for learning and memory, is especially vulnerable to damage at early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Emerging evidence has indicated that altered neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus represents an early critical event in the course of AD. Although causal links have not been established, a variety of key molecules involved in AD pathogenesis have been shown to impact new neuron generation, either positively or negatively. From a functional point of view, hippocampal neurogenesis plays an important role in structural plasticity and network maintenance. Therefore, dysfunctional neurogenesis resulting from early subtle disease manifestations may in turn exacerbate neuronal vulnerability to AD and contribute to memory impairment, whereas enhanced neurogenesis may be a compensatory response and represent an endogenous brain repair mechanism. Here we review recent findings on alterations of neurogenesis associated with pathogenesis of AD, and we discuss the potential of neurogenesis-based diagnostics and therapeutic strategies for AD. BioMed Central 2011-12-22 /pmc/articles/PMC3261815/ /pubmed/22192775 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1750-1326-6-85 Text en Copyright ©2011 Mu and Gage; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
repository_type Open Access Journal
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building NCBI PubMed
collection Online Access
language English
format Online
author Mu, Yangling
Gage, Fred H
spellingShingle Mu, Yangling
Gage, Fred H
Adult hippocampal neurogenesis and its role in Alzheimer's disease
author_facet Mu, Yangling
Gage, Fred H
author_sort Mu, Yangling
title Adult hippocampal neurogenesis and its role in Alzheimer's disease
title_short Adult hippocampal neurogenesis and its role in Alzheimer's disease
title_full Adult hippocampal neurogenesis and its role in Alzheimer's disease
title_fullStr Adult hippocampal neurogenesis and its role in Alzheimer's disease
title_full_unstemmed Adult hippocampal neurogenesis and its role in Alzheimer's disease
title_sort adult hippocampal neurogenesis and its role in alzheimer's disease
description The hippocampus, a brain area critical for learning and memory, is especially vulnerable to damage at early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Emerging evidence has indicated that altered neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus represents an early critical event in the course of AD. Although causal links have not been established, a variety of key molecules involved in AD pathogenesis have been shown to impact new neuron generation, either positively or negatively. From a functional point of view, hippocampal neurogenesis plays an important role in structural plasticity and network maintenance. Therefore, dysfunctional neurogenesis resulting from early subtle disease manifestations may in turn exacerbate neuronal vulnerability to AD and contribute to memory impairment, whereas enhanced neurogenesis may be a compensatory response and represent an endogenous brain repair mechanism. Here we review recent findings on alterations of neurogenesis associated with pathogenesis of AD, and we discuss the potential of neurogenesis-based diagnostics and therapeutic strategies for AD.
publisher BioMed Central
publishDate 2011
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3261815/
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