Before the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 barred all aboveground , subsea , and orbital atomic weapons testing , the world ’s nations were pour down off nukes like champagne bottleful on New Years . amazingly , that scattering of eminent - vigour particles was actually quite beneficial , to skill at least , as it ’s just helped solve a longstanding dispute in human physiology — can the brain regrow neurons ? Short solution : sorta .
Nuclear tests did n’t just give Nevada its iridescent glow . At the affection of these explosions , where temperature top that of the aerofoil of the sun , numerous isotope were generated and released — like carbon-14 , a comparatively - benignant isotope often used in archeological carbon copy date techniques . This is important because biological systems , from algae on up to humans , consume and comprise environmental carbon during electric cell division ( including bits of atmospheric C14 from the tests ) . Now , since the human brain purportedly hold back developing around long time two , the amount of C14 incorporated into neural DNA should be roughly constant across all regions of the brain . It ’s not .
In a late study write inCelltoday , a squad at the Karolinska Institute lead by Jonas Frisén examine 120 clay learning ability and try out C14 concentrations in its various regions , using the C14 as an indicator of cellular age , and modelled the results . They found that concentrations varied greatly , specially within the hippocampus . This suggest that the lower - assiduousness cells were work after the 1963 testing halt .
In fact , only a tiny portion of the hippocampus known as the dentate gyrus exhibited new cellular growth after the age of two . These cells replaced 700 of themselves ( rough 1.5 percent of the neighborhood ) each year , though they subsist three twelvemonth less than other nerve cell . No regrowth was unwrap elsewhere in the organ .
Why just this one miniscule gawk of flesh renews itself and not the respite of the brain remains a mystery . However , unlock that secret could cater a quantum leap in the hunting for curing alzheimer ’s , dementia , and a host of other degenerative neural disease . [ CellviaArs Technica ]
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