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Having blogged here several times on various and sundry roles of BDNF in cognitive function, it was pretty cool to see the recent paper, “Neural stem cells improve cognition via BDNF in a transgenic model of Alzheimer disease” [doi: 10.1073/pnas.0901402106]. It seems that in a transgenic mouse model for Alzheimer’s Disease that injection of neural stem cells into the plaqued/tangled hippocampus can rescue hippocampal-dependent behaviors. This rescue however, seems to have been dependent on the secretion of BDNF since knock-down of BDNF ablated the rescue, while increasing BDNF improved the rescue. The stem-cell treatment did not however reduce levels of plaques or tangles but did increase synaptic density – which I’d be happy to have more of – plaques/tangles notwithstanding. Promising findings!
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Genes 2 Brains 2 Mind 2 Me 
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