New neuron growth
Neurogenesis
Also searched as Neurogenesis.
You want it active: ongoing neurogenesis supports learning capacity and emotional resilience.
In depth
The birth of new neurons in the adult brain — concentrated in the hippocampus, tied to memory formation and to mood. The strongest human evidence here is indirect; most direct measurement is animal, and each edge says so.
What drives it
Supports BDNF signaling increases it.
Kuipers 2016, Sci Rep 6:21222 — BDNF infusion enhances adult hippocampal neurogenesis (dentate BrdU+). DOI 10.1038/srep21222 Verbatim: “The results demonstrate that BDNF administration to the dentate gyrus leads to increased neurogenesis of granule cells”. doi 10.1038/srep21222 · PMID 15755552
Lowers cortisol reduces it.
10.1371/journal.pone.0046224 — It is well accepted that elevated glucocorticoid levels lead to downregulation of adult neurogenesis. MDPI Int J Mol Sci 2021;22:7339. doi 10.1371/journal.pone.0046224
What it drives
It increases Memory & focus.
Shors 2001, Nature 410:372 — reducing adult hippocampal neurogenesis impairs trace-memory formation. PMID 11268214. Adult hippocampal neurogenesis is exquisitely sensitive to neuronal activity, and post-mortem human studies (Boldrini 2018; Moreno-Jimenez 2019) report neurogenesis persisting throughout adult life with a progressive and significant decline in Alzheimer's patients. Whether adult humans make new hippocampal neurons at all is one of the most contested questions in Neuroscience — the review's own phrasing that recent studies 'have confirmed the existence' concedes that it was in doubt, and other post-mortem work has reached the opposite conclusion. The rodent evidence is not disputed; the human translation is. Acetylcholine is among the signals regulating it, tying this edge to the Cholinergic → Cognition link. PMID 11268214
It increases Learning & memory.
10.1371/journal.pone.0050455 — 10.1038/nrn2822 — This process, named adult hippocampal neurogenesis (AHN), participates in hippocampal functions such as memory and mood regulation. S2589958925000118. doi 10.1371/journal.pone.0050455
It increases Recognition memory.
Rats in which lentiviral knockdown restricted to the dentate gyrus strongly reduced the number of newborn granule neurons performed worse on a hippocampus-dependent object recognition task, showing that adult neurogenesis is required for normal recognition memory. doi 10.1101/lm.1172609 · PMID 19181621
Blends that modulate it
Each blend page names this pathway and carries the study behind its claim.
See it on the map
Open the causal map to follow this pathway upstream and downstream, arrow by arrow, each with its study.