The Secret Life of the Brain

THE SECRET LIFE OF THE BRAIN reveals the fascinating processes involved in brain development across a lifetime. The five-part series, which will premiere nationally on PBS in winter 2002, informs viewers of exciting new information in the brain sciences, introduces the foremost researchers in the field, and utilizes dynamic visual imagery and compelling human stories to help a general audience understand otherwise difficult scientific concepts (go).

Neurogenesis in the Adult Olfactory Bulb

Active neurogenesis from neural progenitors continues throughout life in discrete regions of the central nervous system of most mammals. However, human adult neurogenesis is still a contentious issue. Signs of adult neurogenesis have been reported in the hippocampus, but a second neurogenic niche described in rodents has not been found in recent human studies. Curtis et al. have just published a paper in Science not only describing this missing rostral migratory stream in great detail but also showing that it is organized around a tubular extension of the lateral ventricle that reaches into the olfactory bulb. (view figures).

Brain development

The embryonic and fetal brains of all mammals develop in similar ways. The embryonic spinal cord develops along common sequences and patterns. The nervous system emerges from a simple elongated tube of cells, called the notochord. The head (cranial) end of the embryonic tube expands and differentiates more robustly (than does the spinal end) into several clusters of cells which emerge as the forebrain (telencephalon and diencephalon), midbrain (mesencephalon) and hindbrain (metencephalon and myelencephalon) portions.
Please, compare to brain evolution.