Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor: A Key Molecule for Memory in the Healthy and the Pathological Brain

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 path...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inFrontiers in cellular neuroscience Vol. 13; p. 363
Main Authors Miranda, Magdalena, Morici, Juan Facundo, Zanoni, María Belén, Bekinschtein, Pedro
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland Frontiers Research Foundation 07.08.2019
Frontiers Media S.A
Subjects
Aging
Alzheimer disease
Animal cognition
BDNF
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor
depression
Epigenetics
Gene expression
hippocampus
Kinases
Memory
Mental disorders
Neuroscience
Neurosciences
Parahippocampal gyrus
perirhinal cortex
Plasticity
Proteins
Schizophrenia
stress
memory
hippocampus
Alzheimer disease
BDNF
depression
perirhinal cortex
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary: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.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ObjectType-Review-3
content type line 23
Reviewed by: Fabrizia Cesca, University of Trieste, Italy; Marco Canossa, University of Trento, Italy
This article was submitted to Cellular Neurophysiology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience
Edited by: Emilio Carbone, University of Turin, Italy
ISSN:1662-5102
1662-5102
DOI:10.3389/fncel.2019.00363