Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience· 2019Q2· Review
Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor: A Key Molecule for Memory in the Healthy and the Pathological Brain
- 1,413citations
- Q2SCImago
- 2019year
Short summary
Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) plays a crucial role in learning and memory, with its expression levels varying significantly and being altered in aging and psychiatric conditions affecting memory structures like the hippocampus.
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Key points
- BDNF is central to neural plasticity involved in learning and memory.
- BDNF expression levels vary in healthy individuals and are altered in aging and psychiatric disorders.
- Memory-related brain structures like the hippocampus are particularly affected by changes in BDNF.
- Interventions such as exercise and antidepressants can enhance BDNF expression.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) is a key molecule involved in plastic changes related to learning and memory. The expression of BDNF is highly regulated, and can lead to great variability in BDNF levels in healthy subjects. Changes in BDNF expression are associated with both normal and pathological aging and also psychiatric disease, in particular in structures important for memory processes such as the hippocampus and parahippocampal areas. Some interventions like exercise or antidepressant administration enhance the expression of BDNF in normal and pathological conditions. In this review, we will describe studies from rodents and humans to bring together research on how BDNF expression is regulated, how this expression changes in the pathological brain and also exciting work on how interventions known to enhance this neurotrophin could have clinical relevance. We propose that, although BDNF may not be a valid biomarker for neurodegenerative/neuropsychiatric diseases because of its disregulation common to many pathological conditions, it could be thought of as a marker that specifically relates to the occurrence and/or progression of the mnemonic symptoms that are common to many pathological conditions.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, 2019 · DOI ↗
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Field: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
Cellular and Molecular NeuroscienceNeuroscience