medium · LSAT Reading Comprehension
For decades neuroscientists assumed the adult brain was structurally static. That assumption was overturned by the discovery that certain regions, notably the hippocampus, continue to generate new neurons throughout adulthood. This finding has raised hopes that such regeneration might one day be harnessed to treat conditions like stroke and Alzheimer's disease. Yet substantial obstacles remain: newly formed neurons must survive, migrate, and integrate into existing circuits before any human therapy becomes feasible, and the human rate of neuron production appears far lower than that observed in rodents.
Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main point of the passage?
- The discovery that the adult brain can form new neurons is a major advance of real therapeutic promise, though formidable hurdles block its clinical use.
- The longstanding belief in a fully static adult brain held true for every region of that organ but the hippocampus, where fresh neurons keep arising daily.
- Researchers ought to redirect funding away from Alzheimer's drug development and toward dedicated programs that actively promote new-neuron formation.
- The human brain generates far more new neurons than the brain of any other mammalian species so far examined by working research neuroscientists today.
- Adult neurogenesis has already been translated into safe and genuinely effective clinical therapies for both stroke and Alzheimer's disease in patients.
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