New hippocampi for old

While A Fo Ben recognises that only a limited number of mice attend the average neurology clinic, occasionally murine news is sufficiently noteworthy to merit a mention. We have known for some time that new neurones are produced in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus in adult animals and that these cells may account for up to 10% of the granule cell layer. However, although cell death in the dentate occurs in several mood and cognitive disorders, there are no data on the behavioural effects of increasing adult neurogenesis. Here, mice with a gain-of-function mutation that increased survival of adult-born hippocampal neurones showed increased ability to discriminate between salient and non-salient fear stimuli, a behaviour dependent on the dentate gyrus. Importantly, increases …