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Two decades of huge investigation in adult neurogenesis (AN) provided us with an utterly new vision of brain plasticity, involving stem/progenitor cells capable of generating new neurons and glial cells throughout life. Most neurobiologists addressed this biological process in the perspective of brain repair. Nevertheless, in spite of striking efforts, the question whether AN can be exploited for healing neurologic diseases remains unsolved. Such an impasse is mainly due to the fact that most vertebrates produce brain repair using AN as a byproduct of evolution in addition to its physiological function, whereas mammals do not. Among scientists, a scarce perception of this fact might have produced misinterpretations. Our knowledge in mammals allows to fix four main statements: i) two neurogenic zones harbouring stem cell niches provide neural cell renewal in certain systems (olfactory bulb and hippocampus); ii) wide areas of the nervous system host many parenchymal progenitors, which appear to be quite heterogeneous and obscure in nature, outcome, and function; iii) both neurogenic zones and parenchymal progenitors are activated in different physiological/pathological conditions; iv) in spite of such activation, the response to pathological conditions is generally non-coordinated and/or abortive, not leading to brain repair. This topic is intended to address the relationships between existence of neural stem/progenitor cells (playing homeostatic roles in AN and resp...

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