Every time I get worked up about all these neurogenesis findings I think about two words that return me to a state of inner peace, calmness, and….mental turmoil that all of my experiments will have to be performed twice: Septal and Temporal. Neurogenesis aside, the septal and temporal ends of the hippocampus are connected to different brain structures that cause the septal hippocampus to be more involved in spatial processing/cognition and the temporal hippocampus to be more involved in regulating stress and emotion. Which has the potential to explain everything.

Two posters today did a great job of analyzing neurogenesis in these different parts of the hippocampus and relating these findings to function. First, Tanti et al. showed that while a chronic stress model of depression reduced neurogenesis along the entire septotemporal axis, the antidepressant fluoxetine (aka Prozac) rescues this deficit specifically in the temporal hippocampus. In contrast, environmental enrichment, which may be viewed as more of a spatial and cognitive stimulus, selectively (and massively!) increased neurogenesis in the septal hippocampus with no effect in the temporal hippocampus. A nice dissociation where different classes of stimuli (drugs that regulate emotion vs. knowledge about objects and environments) regulate plasticity in different parts of the hippocampus.

This was complemented by a thorough study by Lehman et al., who recently showed that new neurons aid in the recovery from psychosocial stress, they asked whether “depressed” mice that suffered social defeat showed regional differences in neurogenesis. The prediction would be that neurogenesis should be specifically reduced in the temporal hippocampus, since this is the region that regulates the stress and emotional responses. They too were curious about the effects of environmental enrichment, since they’ve previously found that enrichment can rescue mice from a depressed state, but only if neurogenesis was present. The story sounds complicated when I tell you that they did all these experiments in normal mice and mice that had their adrenal glands removed, and had low levels if stress hormones (glucocorticoids). But a surprisingly clear picture emerged:

Social defeat (getting beaten up by a big bully mouse and then having to constantly live next to him) increased glucocorticoids and led to anxiety/depressive behaviors. Furthermore, social defeat specifically reduced neurogenesis in the temporal (i.e. “emotional”) hippocampus. The culprit was glucocorticoids - by removing glucocorticoids both the “depression” and neurogenesis impairments could be reversed. In a complementary experiment, they found that environmental enrichment is also a stressor, but a good stressor. Environmental enrichment increased glucocorticoids yet its other effects were beneficial – the mice were less anxious, less depressed, and they had increased neurogenesis. And just as with social defeat, the effects of environmental enrichment were also dependent on glucocorticoids: when glucocorticoids were removed, environmental enrichment did not reduce anxiety/depression and it did not increase neurogenesis.

The take home message is that stress hormones have bad effects on behavior and neurogenesis in the context of social stress, but they have good effects on behavior and neurogenesis in the context of environmental enrichment. And while we don’t yet know if septal neurogenesis is more important for spatial/cognitive behaviors and temporal hippocampus for emotional regulation, both of these posters did a great job of convincing me that this is a direction we need to pursue if we are to understand the many functions of new neurons. They also made it clear that there are complex interactions between stress, neurogenesis and behavior. To the point that I can live (for a little bit) with not knowing exactly how these neurons are working, but knowing that these diverse functions are clearly possible.

The purpose of these experiments was to determine the immediate and delayed effects of stress on anxiety/depressive behavior. For the open field and elevated plus maze experiments male CD1 mice (Charles River) were used (n=6-8 per group; arrived at 7 weeks of age, tested at 9-11 weeks, handled for 5 days prior to testing). The GFAP-tk mice used for the novelty-suppressed feeding test were as described in Snyder, 2011, Nature. Mice were housed 4/cage, kept on a 12 hour light/dark cycle with lights on at 6 am and were tested during the light phase. Testing was performed either directly from the home cage (controls), immediately following 30 min restraint (stress) or following 30 min restraint with a 30 min post-restraint delay interval (stress+delay).

Figure 1: Increased fear/anxiety in the open field immediately following stress. a) The open field was a white plastic box (50cm x 50cm x 50cm) which was divided into outer (o), middle (m), and center (c) regions. Mice were tracked with Ethovision software (Noldus) and latency to approach the center region and time spent in the 3 regions during a 15 min test was calculated. Light intensity was approxmiately 150 lux. b) The presence of an object (~2 cm diameter, 3 cm tall wire metal cylinder containing a marble) in the center of the open field increased time spent in this subregion, and was therefore included in subsequent experiments (i.e. d-h; ****t-test P<0.001 vs. no object). c) The presence of the object did not affect the latency to approach the center of the open field. d) Neither stress condition affected the latency to approach the center of the open field. e) Stress significantly reduced the time spent in the center of the open field but this effect was absent after 30 min (stress+delay group; 1 way ANOVA main effect P=0.001, #Tukey post-test P<0.001 vs. control & P<0.05 vs. stress+delay). f-h) Time spent in the center, middle and outer regions across the test’s 3 x 5 min bins. Compared to controls, stress reduced time spent in the center and middle regions and increased time spent in the outer region (2 way repeated measures ANOVA, main effects of treatment all P<0.01, effect of time and interactions ns; Bonferroni post-test *P<0.05, **P<0.01, ***P<0.001 vs. control).

Figure 2: Reduced anxiety in the elevated plus maze 30 min after stress. Mice were subjected to a 5 min test in the elevated plus maze under bright (~150 lux; a-g) and dark (15 lux; h-n) conditions. The elevated plus maze had two open arms and two opaque closed arms and was located in the center of the testing room. a) Stress+delay increased the amount of time spent in the open arm during the first 2.5 min of the test (bin 1; *t-test, P<0.05). b) There was no difference between groups during the 2nd bin. c) For the entire test, there was a trend for stress+delay mice to spend more time in the open arms (†t-test, P=0.09). d) Stress+delay mice specifically spent more time in the inner third of the open arms (repeated measures ANOVA, effect of stress+delay P<0.05, open arm subregion P<0.0001, interaction P<0.001, ***Bonferroni post test P<0.001 vs. control). e) Stress did not alter distance travelled. f) Stress did not alter the number of stretch-attend postures (scored every 5 sec from video stills). g) Stress increased the number of head dips during the 5 min test (scored every 5 sec from video stills; t-test, P<0.001). h-n) In all of the same measures, stress+delay did not alter behavior relative to controls when the elevated plus maze was performed under dark conditions. Distance travelled was greater in the dark condition (2 way ANOVA effect of lighting P<0.001).

Figure 3: Reduced anxiety/depressive behavior in the novelty-suppressed feeding paradigm 30 min after stress. Mice were food deprived for the novelty-suppressed feeding test, which was performed in the same boxes as the open field tests, but with bedding covering the floor and a food pellet in the center, placed on a platform (protocol identical to Snyder, 2011, Nature but with a 30 min delay between restraint and testing). Stress+delay reduced the latency to begin feeding, equally in v-WT and neurogenesis-deficient v-TK mice (2 way ANOVA, effect of stress+delay P<0.001, effect of genotype P=0.7, interaction P=0.9).

In sum, stress can increase anxiety immediately after termination of the stressor: stressed mice spent less time than controls in the center of the open field. Stress can also reduce anxiety at later times after termination of the stressor: stress+delay mice spent more time in the open arms of the elevated plus maze, stress+delay mice displayed more head dipping behavior in the elevated plus maze, and stress+delay mice ate sooner in the novelty-suppressed feeding test. Also, in the open field, 1/3 of mice in the control and stress groups did not approach the center until 4+ min had elapsed. In contrast, though not significantly different, there was less variability in the stress+delay mice with all approaching the center by ~2 min, consistent with the possibility that stress+delay is reducing anxiety in some of these mice.

The idea that adult neurogenesis protects individuals from depression is perhaps the single greatest motivator driving neurogenesis research. Not surprisingly, “neurogenesis depression” is the most common behavioral keyword that brings people to this blog (followed closely by “pattern separation”). So I’m excited to say that we will soon be publishing what (I think) is the best evidence that impaired adult neurogenesis actually causes depressive symptoms (in mice). The neurogenesis-depression hypothesis is over 10 years old and yet there is largely only correlational evidence linking neurogenesis to depression and no direct evidence that impaired adult neurogenesis leads to depressive symptoms. Naturally, this has led to skepticism (e.g. see this paper by Robert Sapolsky, and discussion by fellow bloggers: scicurious, neurocritic, neuroskeptic). A key factor in our study was stress: mice that lacked neurogenesis often seemed very normal when they were happily going about their business (as in previous studies by other groups). However, following stress, mice lacking neurogenesis had elevated levels of stress hormones and they also showed more depressive behaviors (or depressive-like, if you prefer). I hope to go into more detail soon.

For now, here is the abstract:

Adult hippocampal neurogenesis buffers stress responses and depressive behaviour. Jason S. Snyder, Amélie Soumier, Michelle Brewer, James Pickel & Heather A. Cameron. National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

Glucocorticoids are released in response to stressful experiences and serve many beneficial homeostatic functions. However, dysregulation of glucocorticoids is associated with cognitive impairments and depressive illness. In the hippocampus, a brain region densely populated with receptors for stress hormones, stress and glucocorticoids strongly inhibit adult neurogenesis. Decreased neurogenesis has been implicated in the pathogenesis of anxiety and depression, but direct evidence for this role is lacking. Here we show that adult-born hippocampal neurons are required for normal expression of the endocrine and behavioural components of the stress response. Using either transgenic or radiation methods to specifically inhibit adult neurogenesis, we find that glucocorticoid levels are slower to recover after moderate stress and are less suppressed by dexamethasone in neurogenesis-deficient mice than intact mice, consistent with a role for the hippocampus in regulation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis. Relative to controls, neurogenesis-deficient mice showed increased food avoidance in a novel environment after acute stress, increased behavioural despair in the forced swim test, and decreased sucrose preference, a measure of anhedonia. These findings identify a small subset of neurons within the dentate gyrus that are critical for hippocampal negative control of the HPA axis and support a direct role for adult neurogenesis in depressive illness.

*image is of GFAP-driven thymidine kinase in a mouse brain (GFAP in green and thymidine kinase in red). In the presence of ganciclovir, any cell that expresses thymidine kinase dies when it attempts to divide. In this case those cells would be the radial glial stem cells that produce new neurons. These were the mice used to stop neurogenesis in the majority of the experiments.

UPDATE: Ed Yong at Discover Magazine and Scicurious at Scientific American have great summaries of the findings and their significance. And the Drugmonkey blog attacks the question of whether or not a depression study in mice can be relevant for humans.

“Random” roundup because any posts linking to articles or ideas I’ve recently found noteworthy will never occur on a regular basis (as others manage to do – I applaud you) but only when enough interesting material has accrued and I have a spare moment. The links will, however, not be random. For example, you can expect many links to point to articles on adult neurogenesis or hippocampal function but will likely find few links directing you to photos of puppy dogs.

Dopaminergic Modulation of Cortical Inputs during Maturation of Adult-Born Dentate Granule Cells. A pretty thorough examination of dopaminergic modulation of synaptic transmission and synaptic plasticity in the dentate gyrus. Dopamine reduced synaptic transmission in both immature and mature granule neurons, but through different receptor subtypes. Additionally, dopamine reduced long-term plasticity in immature neurons but not mature neurons. Given the suggestion that dopamine could gate the entry of information into long-term memory, these findings suggest young and old neurons could have quite different behavioral functions.

Mu Y, Zhao C, & Gage FH (2011). Dopaminergic Modulation of Cortical Inputs during Maturation of Adult-Born Dentate Granule Cells. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 31 (11), 4113-23 PMID: 21411652

————————-

Lidocaine attenuates anisomycin-induced amnesia and release of norepinephrine in the amygdala. Memory consolidation is the phenomenon by which memories are encoded through enduring structural changes in the brain and is often demonstrated by showing that memory loss occurs when you inhibit protein synthesis around the time of learning. This paper shows that one of the most commonly-used protein synthesis inhibitors, anisomycin, leads to increased norepinephrine release in the amygdala which could, by itself, impair memory.  The interesting final experiment showed that the effects of anisomycin on memory and norepiniphrine were reduced when the amygdala was totally shut down with lidocaine.

Sadowski RN, Canal CE, & Gold PE (2011). Lidocaine attenuates anisomycin-induced amnesia and release of norepinephrine in the amygdala. Neurobiology of learning and memory PMID: 21453778

————————-

Evidence for the Re-Enactment of a Recently Learned Behavior during Sleepwalking. I’ve written a number of times about how neuronal firing patterns observed during waking experience are replayed during sleep, and could therefore reflect consolidation of memory and even dream content. Of course no one knows what rats are experiencing during sleep or whether they dream like us. To get around this problem, these authors trained sleepwalkers on a motor task with very defined arm movements and then examined sleepwalking behavior on the following night. Indeed, a video shows one subject who wakes up the following night and, for a few seconds, seems to be performing the same stereotyped task movements. Only one subject but tantalizing evidence and a cool experimental strategy nonetheless.

Oudiette D, Constantinescu I, Leclair-Visonneau L, Vidailhet M, Schwartz S, & Arnulf I (2011). Evidence for the Re-Enactment of a Recently Learned Behavior during Sleepwalking. PloS one, 6 (3) PMID: 21445313

————————-

Increasing adult hippocampal neurogenesis is sufficient to improve pattern separation. One of the biggest questions in the neurogenesis field is whether adult-born neurons are important for behavior. Usually this is tested by examining behavior in animals that lack adult neurogenesis but many studies have correlated increased neurogenesis in enriched or athletic animals with “improved” behavior (smarter, less depressed etc). Of course, the major confound is that enrichment and exercise do many other things besides increasing neurogenesis. To get around this Sahay et al. made a mouse in which neurogenesis could be specifically increased in adulthood. These mice were better at discriminating between related contexts and, after exercise, showed much greater exploratory activity in an open field.

Sahay A, Scobie KN, Hill AS, O’Carroll CM, Kheirbek MA, Burghardt NS, Fenton AA, Dranovsky A, & Hen R (2011). Increasing adult hippocampal neurogenesis is sufficient to improve pattern separation. Nature PMID: 21460835

————————-

Necessity of Hippocampal Neurogenesis for the Therapeutic Action of Antidepressants in Adult Nonhuman Primates. This study potentially bridges a big big gap by extending the role of adult neurogenesis in the antidepressant response from rodents all the way to monkeys. Chronic stress induced anhedonic and subordinate behaviors and these effects could be reversed with fluoxetine, but not in irradiated monkeys that had reduced neurogenesis. Could someone follow this up with a transgenic model?

Perera, T., Dwork, A., Keegan, K., Thirumangalakudi, L., Lipira, C., Joyce, N., Lange, C., Higley, J., Rosoklija, G., Hen, R., Sackeim, H., & Coplan, J. (2011). Necessity of Hippocampal Neurogenesis for the Therapeutic Action of Antidepressants in Adult Nonhuman Primates PLoS ONE, 6 (4) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0017600

————————-

Systemic 5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine induces conditioned flavor aversion and c-Fos in the visceral neuraxis. OH NOOO! Rats don’t like BrdU! These authors show that pairing a BrdU injection with exposure to a sweet palatable drink causes rats to avoid that drink in the future. It also leads to a mildly elevated stress response and elevated c-fos expression in areas of the brain that represent viscera, consistent with the possibility that BrdU could be exerting unpleasant effects in the gut, where there is a lot of cell division. The authors conclude that the effects on behavior in subsequent days and weeks are probably minimal (phew!), but I’d certainly keep these data in mind when considering injecting BrdU around the time of behavioral testing.

Kimbrough A, Kwon B, Eckel LA, & Houpt TA (2011). Systemic 5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine induces conditioned flavor aversion and c-Fos in the visceral neuraxis. Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.), 18 (5), 292-5 PMID: 21498563

————————-

Compensatory network changes in the dentate gyrus restore long-term potentiation following ablation of neurogenesis in young-adult mice. In an interesting study of plasticity following neurogenesis reduction, these authors find that LTP was dramatically reduced after arresting neurogenesis, but only transiently. LTP recovered within weeks, possibly because of compensatory reductions in inhibition and enhanced survival of neurons born before neurogenesis ablation. Hat tip to Sil for this one.

Singer BH, Gamelli AE, Fuller CL, Temme SJ, Parent JM, & Murphy GG (2011). Compensatory network changes in the dentate gyrus restore long-term potentiation following ablation of neurogenesis in young-adult mice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108 (13), 5437-42 PMID: 21402918

————————-

That’s it.

At 0.6% of the way into the decade, we’re well beyond the timeframe when most “things of the decade” articles appear. Now that “decade hype” has settled down I thought it would be fun to write a series of posts that discuss some of the major themes in adult neurogenesis over the last decade. A lot has happened in this time; depending on how you birthdate the field (i.e. not counting the work of Joseph Altman), the last decade represents over half the lifetime of the field. BDHXV8966V35

One very influential theme that emerged, only to gain momentum, is the neurogenesis-depression hypothesis. Generally, the idea is that adult hippocampal neurogenesis is protective against depression. This idea was initially quite novel because, 10 years ago, most people were fixated on the hippocampus as a structure involved in learning and memory. Indeed, it’s not implausible that the ability to form rich, detailed memories (which the hippocampus is known for) could enable one to make associations and see perspectives that allow them to escape a depressive funk. But more direct evidence linking the hippocampus to mood has come from studies showing that manipulations to the hippocampus alter stress and anxiety-related behaviors. Searching “neurogenesis” and “depression” in Pubmed I can find papers by Daszuta, McEwen, and Duman discussing reduced adult neurogenesis as a potential factor in depression and mood disorders just before the decade, in 1999. But the study that really got the field going was the finding that antidepressants can increase neurogenesis, by Malberg et al., in 2000. And so, with the turn of the last decade, depression officially replaced epilepsy as the most popular disorder that is potentially related to neurogenesis (the neurogenesis-epilepsy hypothesis was killed in dramatic fashion briefly wounded in 1999*). Within the next few years it was clear that every type of chemical antidepressant increased neurogenesis, as did electroconvulsive shock, as did environmental influences such as running and social housing, which are known to have antidepressant effects. Furthermore, factors that precipitate depression, such as chronic stress, potently downregulate neurogenesis. But while these findings are all consistent with the possibility that neurogenesis plays a role in depression, antidepressants / ECS / exercise / stress also have many other effects on the brain that could explain their effects on mood. So more experiments were needed.

In 2003, Santarelli et al. delivered findings everybody was waiting for: without neurogenesis, antidepressants don’t work. Thinking about this study I am inspired to write a post on the “Top drool-producing papers in the field of adult neurogenesis.” Undoubtedly, this would be near the top, as it seemed to provide the killer evidence needed to link neurogenesis to depression. Moreover, merely reducing neurogenesis was not sufficient to induce anxiogenic or depressive behavior, it just blocked the benefits of antidepressants. This finding was welcome (to me) because it suggested neurogenesis is involved in regulating depressive behavior, but it is not the only factor, consistent with other studies that had failed to find neurogenesis-depression links. The remainder of the decade was rounded out with studies that, while partially confirming a role for neurogenesis in anxiety/depressive behavior, also illustrated the complexity of the situation. For example, neurogenesis does not mediate the effects of antidepressants in some strains of mice, and may mediate antidepressant effects in distinct behavior tests in different species (e.g. forced swim test in rats but not mice). Also confirming but complicating are the findings from Abrous’ group showing (with a transgenic model of reduced neurogenesis as opposed to irradiation in the previously mentioned studies) that merely reducing neurogenesis can be anxiogenic.

So we started the decade with a mere proposal that neurogenesis was relevant for depression/anxiety/mood disorders. We ended with hundreds of correlative studies and several studies spanning several groups showing that relatively specific reductions in adult neurogenesis can lead to depressive behavior if the conditions are right. What will 2010-2020 unveil? How about: 1) One hundred more studies of depressive behavior in neurogenesis-deficient animals, 2) the first test of the neurogenesis-depression hypothesis in humans, and 3) a switch to autism as the most popular disorder that is potentially related to adult neurogenesis.

*Lots of recent and interesting research points to a role for neurogenesis in the pathogenesis (also here) and also recovery from seizures

Malberg JE, Eisch AJ, Nestler EJ, & Duman RS (2000). Chronic antidepressant treatment increases neurogenesis in adult rat hippocampus. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 20 (24), 9104-10 PMID: 11124987

Santarelli, L. (2003). Requirement of Hippocampal Neurogenesis for the Behavioral Effects of Antidepressants Science, 301 (5634), 805-809 DOI: 10.1126/science.1083328

I’ve always enjoyed making lists. As a kid I can remember writing lists of rhyming words, lists of all the Ocean Pacific clothes I owned, lists of all the people I knew. Many years later, I hope I’ve now made a list that is actually useful.

Adult neurogenesis is now undisputed. Pretty much on a weekly basis there is a new paper that examines both levels of adult hippocampal neurogenesis and behavior, attempting to draw a functional connection. The good news is that the argument for a behavioral function for adult neurogenesis continues to get stronger. The bad news is that there’s a massive pileup of data, and it’s becoming hard to filter through the relevant studies – first you have to find them amongst the 1000+ studies of adult neurogenesis. Then you have to read them. What behaviors are examined? Is there an effect of reducing or enhancing neurogenesis? What method is used to manipulate neurogenesis? What do other studies find that performed a similar analysis?

In this spreadsheet I’ve tried to provide summary answers to these questions. The data can be sorted by the type of behavior examined (e.g. depressive behaviors, memory etc), how neurogenesis was manipulated (e.g. via irradiation, transgenic tools or exogenous factors like anti-mitotic drugs), and behavioral effect.

It should be noted that I essentially took authors’ claims at face value and nothing here should be blindly accepted as evidence for or against a behavioral function for neurogenesis – read the papers! Task, neuronal age, and other methods should all be considered. Also, at this time, I have only entered data for a fraction of the studies, namely those that have claimed to use a technique specific for reducing neurogenesis. In reality, no such technique exists and I’d like to enter the same data for all studies that correlate neurogenesis with behavior, even those that have manipulated neurogenesis using methods that have widespread effects in the nervous system (e.g. exercise, enriched environment).