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I want to know whether or not the nerves regenerate in human adults.

My Question

  • Please give me evidences for this issue.
  • What experiments and logic do they use to prove that the nerves are/are not regenerate?

If there's proven evidence that this is completely the case since many studies provide great amounts of margins of error then please link me to all those updated studies or even personal findings.

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    Welcome to Medical Sciences! Please take the tour and read the help center. For reasons mentioned in this post and in How to Ask, we require some degree of prior research when asking questions. See this list of helpful resources. Please help us to help you and edit your question to provide more information on what you have read on this subject, what made you ask this question, and any problems you are having understanding your research. If you found nothing, what did you Google?
    – Carey Gregory ♦
    Oct 15 '20 at 20:39
  • I've made some improvements to clarify the issue of this question. I think his/her question itself is beneficial to this community. There may be a lack of prior study, but it should also be considered that it would be difficult to conduct a meaningful preliminary survey for this issue without some academic ability in this area.
    – Blue Various
    Oct 31 '20 at 17:07
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The followings are English translations of quotations from one commentary, written by a Japanese brain expert. (Unfortunately, the commentary itself is written in Japanese)

By closely examining brain tissue samples from patients who died after taking anticancer drugs, researchers found that even in adult brains, neurons were nascent, at least in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9809557/

On the other hand, a study using 14C as a tracer suggest that neurogenesis in the neocortex is very limited.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1567918/

From the abstract of the first literature, you can achieve general understanding of how to prove neurogenesis. The following is a definitive statement of the first literature.

Human brain tissue was obtained postmortem from patients who had been treated with the thymidine analog, bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU), that labels DNA during the S phase.

The nature of the anticancer drug of first literature was such that it was only taken up into the DNA when the cells were dividing. The fact that these anticancer drug-incorporated nerve cells were located near the hippocampus seems to prove neurogenesis.

The second paper used 14C level in DNA as a date mark for when a cell was born based on following facts.

  • Concentration of environmental 14C (these are produced in nuclear tests) has decreased exponentially since the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
  • The DNA is stable after a cell has gone through its last cell division.

The key is to use substances having both of following properties; if we can prove that the substance was taken up at least after adulthood, then we can prove that the cells divided after adulthood.

  • only taken up into the cell when the cell divides, and
  • stay stably inside the cell after the cell divides.

For more information, read the references　(written in English) cited above.

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  • Greatly informed answer, thank you.
    – user14257473
    Oct 22 '20 at 4:26
  • @user14257473 Thank you for choosing my answer as best answer. Unfortunately, your question has been closed. I certainly think it needs to be improved in terms of format. But I think your question makes a good point.
    – Blue Various
    Oct 22 '20 at 6:06

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