Meeting Abstract
Previous to the 1990’s, it was thought that no new neurons were produced in the brains of adult animals. We now understand that neurogenesis is a common and plastic process in the adult brain, although researchers have not come to a unified understanding of the functional significance of neurogenesis. Several factors have been shown to be significant modulators of hippocampal neurogenesis including stress and aspects of environmental change, but questions still remain. How do these modulating factors overlap? Which aspects of environmental change induce a stress response? Is there a relationship between hippocampal neurogenesis, stress, and environmental change? Can this relationship be altered when taking into consideration other factors such as perception, predictability, and novelty of the environment? Finally, are results from neurobiological research on laboratory rodents applicable to wild systems? Here, we attempt to address some of these questions in order to integrate research from the fields of psychology and behavioral neuroscience within an ecological context.
