That our adult brains create new cells and can repair themselves is good news for all of us. For sufferers of diseases such as Parkinson's, Huntington's, Alzheimers and epilepsy, it's downright brilliant.
The discovery was made this year by Professor Richard Faull and his team at Auckland University's medical school andturns the way we think about our head on its head.
"When I went to medical school I was told that by the age of 15, whatever size of brain you had, that was it for life, and you had to look after your brain because you were gradually going to lose a few more brain cells each year," Faull told the Herald when he announced his team's findings in July. It turns out his teachers were wrong. Studying brains of deceased victims of brain disorders, Faull found that even diseased brains continued to make new cells. In Faull's words, that means getting older does not necessarily mean getting dumber. Now, "we have to to try and see how we enhance this process".
