Do Adults Keep Making New Brain Cells? Cold War-Era Radiation Reveals Answer
Stokes Test The Stokes atmospheric nuclear test, conducted in Nevada in 1957 Nevada Division of Environmental Protection A different kind of carbon-14 dating When the U.S. and Soviet Union tested nuclear weapons aboveground in the 1950s and 1960s, they left their mark on everyone alive at that time. The tests released unusual amounts of carbon-14 into the atmosphere, which people's cells would sometimes incorporate into their DNA when they divided-whenever skin cells renewed themselves, for example, or hair strands grew one cell longer. In 1963, the Limited Test Ban Treaty banned such aboveground tests. Those isotopes of carbon-14, which are unstable, decayed. Now, a team of biologists from Europe and the U.S. has used that timely marking in an innovative way. The researchers looked for carbon-14 in the brain cells of those who were adults during aboveground nuclear testing, but since died and donated their brains to research, Science reported. The team's results...