Metaneurogenesis

Neurogenesis: The creation of new neurons in the brain.

Metaneurogenesis: The physical sensation of your brain growing as you read about neurogenesis.

Via Angelica, this is a simply astonishing article in Seed Magazine about the relatively new, and still a bit heretical field of adult neurogenesis. It's definitely "read the whole thing" material, but to summarize: A few plucky scientists have overturned the long-held belief that primates' brains do not create new neurons as adults. Their discoveries have shown that not only does the brain continue to form new neurons, but that it is immensely susceptible to environmental conditions. Stress and depression in particular retard the growth of new neurons, and this is doubly true in children - young marmosets who've been subjected to youth trauma show their neurological "scars" much later on in life.

As one of the pioneers in the field (Dr. Elizabeth Gould) says:

“Poverty is stress,” she says, with more than a little passion in her voice. “One thing that always strikes me is that when you ask Americans why the poor are poor, they always say it’s because they don’t work hard enough, or don’t want to do better. They act like poverty is a character issue.”

Gould’s work implies that the symptoms of poverty are not simply states of mind; they actually warp the mind. Because neurons are designed to reflect their circumstances, not to rise above them, the monotonous stress of living in a slum literally limits the brain.

Imagine, for a moment, that Al Qaeda were surreptitiously slipping a non-fatal neurotoxin in to the breakfasts of our children every morning that retarded their mental development. Is there anything we wouldn't do to destroy them, anything we wouldn't dare do to protect our children from harm that would stay with them the rest of their lives?

That's what poverty is doing, now, here, today, in Canada. And we yawn.

On a less rant-prone note, the article also notes how lethargic the academy can be to change:

Beginning in 1962, a researcher at MIT named Joseph Altman published several papers claiming that adult rats, cats, and guinea pigs all formed new neurons. Although Altman used the same technique that Rakic [a traditionalist] would later use in monkey brains—the injection of radioactive thymidine—his results were at first ridiculed, then ignored, and soon forgotten.

As a result, the field of neurogenesis vanished before it began. It would be another decade before Michael Kaplan, at the University of New Mexico, would use an electron microscope to image neurons giving birth. Kaplan discovered new neurons everywhere in the mammalian brain, including the cortex. Yet even with this visual evidence, science remained stubbornly devoted to its doctrine. Kaplan remembers Rakic telling him that “Those [cells] may look like neurons in New Mexico, but they don’t in New Haven.” Faced with this debilitating criticism, Kaplan, like Altman before him, abandoned the field of neurogenesis.

We could have been working on this stuff decades ago, and the scientific community ridiculed it out of serious study until the evidence finally piled up to the point where it was indisputable. Scientists will tell you this is responsible, that the community can't chase down every new heresy and accept it without criticism. And they're right. But Kaplan's story makes it clear he wasn't even taken half-seriously, and science paid the price.

Anyway, read the whole thing.

No, really. Read the whole thing.

What are you still doing here? Read the whole thing already.