Long-lasting plasticity of hippocampal adult-born neurons

Abstract

Adult neurogenesis occurs in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, which is a key structure in learning and memory. It is believed that adult-born neurons exert their unique role in information processing due to their high plasticity during immature stage that renders them malleable in response to environmental demands. Here, we demonstrate that, in rats, there is no critical time window for experience-induced dendritic plasticity of adult-born neurons as spatial learning in the water maze sculpts the dendritic arbor of adult-born neurons even when they are several months of age. By ablating neurogenesis within a specific period of time, we found that learning was disrupted when the delay between ablation and learning was extended to several months. Together, these results show that mature adult-born neurons are still plastic when they are functionally integrated into dentate network. Our results suggest a new perspective with regard to the role of neo-neurons by highlighting that even mature ones can provide an additional source of plasticity to the brain to process memory information. © 2012 the authors.