Topic: excitotoxic lesion

In the adult brain, subsets of astrocytes act as neural stem cells in two specialized niches, the sub-ventricular zone and hippocampal dentate gyrus, where they produce olfactory bulb interneurons and dentate gyrus granule cells throughout life. In specific conditions the genesis of new neurons can occur also outside these niches in the adult brain parenchyma. This ectopic neurogenesis is prominent in the striatum where it occurs in both physiologic, in adult rabbits and adolescent guinea pigs, or pathologic conditions, such as mouse models of both progressive and acute neuronal degeneration.

In the adult mammalian brain neural stem cells (NSCs) are considered rare cells restricted to two specialised niches, the subventricular zone (SVZ) and the subgranular zone. Recent findings demonstrated that in response to injury new neurons can be generated also by parenchymal astrocytes, however the prevalence, distribution, and behaviour of these ectopic NSCs remained elusive. Consequently, the extent to which the neurogenic potential of the mature brain parenchyma differs from that of conventional neurogenic niches remains to be determined. To tackle this issue, here, we reconstructed the