Adult neurogenesis and neural stem cells of the central nervous system in mammals

Neural stem cells (NSCs) are the self-renewing, multipotent cells that generate neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes in the nervous system (Fig. 1a). Over the past decades, the confirmation that neurogenesis occurs in discrete areas of the adult brain and that NSCs reside in the adult brain has overturned the long-held dogma that we are born with a certain number of nerve cells and that the brain cannot generate new neurons and renew itself. In this article, we review the evidence that neurogenesis occurs in the adult mammalian central nervous system (CNS) and that the adult CNS contains NSCs.