Professor Rusty Gage, president of the Salk Institute and holder of the Vi and John Adler Chair for Research on Age-Related Neurodegenerative Disease.

Rusty Gage concentrates on the plasticity, adaptability and diversity observed in the brain. He showed that, contrary to longstanding dogma, the creation of new neurons (neurogenesis) does occur in the adult human brain and that environmental enrichment and physical exercise can enhance this growth. His lab demonstrated that neural stem cells exist in the adult hippocampus and can give rise to neurons that are physiologically active.

Gage and his colleagues discovered that the human brain can give rise to new neurons throughout life. He also found that exercise and cognitive enrichment can increase the brain’s ability to generate more neurons.

Using new stem cell technologies, his team has shown that neurons generated from the skin cells of people with schizophrenia are dysfunctional in early developmental stages, providing a hint as to ways to detect and potentially treat the disease early.

By sequencing the genomes of single cells, Gage and collaborators showed that the genomic structures of individual neurons differ from each other even more than expected. This may help explain differences between closely related individuals.