What is the Functional Role of New Neurons in the Adult Dentate Gyrus?

Abstract

The exponential growth in research results in the area of regulation of adult hippocampal neurogenesis, the life-long addition of new neurons to the hippocampal dentate gyrus, is paralleled by an increasing puzzlement about the potential function of these new cells. To determine the functional relevance of these new neurons, several fundamental problems have to be overcome. Two of them are discussed here. First, it will remain impossible to define the functional contribution the new neurons in the dentate gyrus make to hippocampal function as long as we do not know how the dentate gyrus itself contributes to hippocampal function. Our hypothesis is that adult hippocampal neurogenesis serves to avoid a stability-plasticity dilemma between learning new information and preserving old information, by allowing the dentate gyrus to adapt to new input pattern statistics while preserving the ability to process old patterns appropriately. Second, we still do not know whether, in adult neurogenesis, the structural alteration follows a specific functional stimulus and serves to consolidate a functional change triggered by that stimulus, or if less specific stimuli of novelty or complexity induce more general structural changes that prophylactically prepare the ground to better process information in similar novel or more complex situations in the future. Herein, our experimental findings and theoretical considerations argue for the latter possibility.