5/28/2014 – Learning keeps cells alive in young brains

Scientists have known for years that the neurons in adult rats could be saved with learning. What they didn’t know was if this would be the case for young rats, which produce two to four times more neurons than adult animals.

When scientists looked at the hippocampus—a portion of the brain associated with the process of learning—after the young rats learned to associate a sound with a motor response, they found that the new brain cells injected with dye a few weeks earlier were still alive. The cells didn’t survive in rats who failed to learn the new task.

Read the full article at Futurity.