Abstract
Taurine is present at high concentrations in the fetal brain and is required for optimal brain development. Recent studies have reported that taurine causes increased proliferation of neural stem/progenitor neural cells (neural precursor cells, NPCs) obtained from embryonic and adult rodent brain. The present study is the first to show that taurine markedly increases cell numbers in cultures and neuronal generation from human NPCs (hNPCs). hNPCs obtained from 3 fetal brains (14-15 weeks of gestation) were cultured and expanded as neurospheres, which contained 76.3% nestin-positive cells. Taurine (5-20 mM) increased the number of hNPCs in culture, with maximal effect found at 10 mM and 4 days of culture. The taurine-induced increase ranged from 57 to 188% in the 3 brains examined. Taurine significantly enhanced the percentage of neurons formed from hNPCs under differentiating conditions, with increases ranging from 172 to 480% over controls without taurine. Taurine also increased the cell number and neuronal generation in cultures of the immortalized human cell line ReNcell VM. These results suggest that taurine has a positive influence on hNPC growth and neuronal formation
…she weighed only 4 lbs when she was born but has developed a big brain and has been able to exert control over her stomach muscles, rolling it like waves on the ocean. These suggestions above may well be true. The only thing I found negative was her inability to recall events during her childhood, whether she was telling me the truth is still in question. Most of these memories did not involve her parents so this may be part of the propensity to store and recall information. I was never breast fed and was given carnation evaporated milk sometimes with karo syrup. I have also taken a considerable amount of choline in the form of chloride and some bitartrate. Information I read about taurine in the New Harvard Guide to Psychiatry suggested it’s effects were more to keep the infant alive in-vivo rather than brain development. It may be possible, after brain development that taurine is produced less frequently and choline is produced more frequently, because the developing brain is more interested in the environment and storing information which requires more choline than taurine both produced from the amino acid methionine. Maybe our accelerated society with all our devices distractions marketers and corporations want us to recall has exceeded our brain’s capacity to keep up. Maybe by consuming choline via supplements has helped up-regulate my brain’s capacity to produce it, while also enabling my brain to produce more taurine at the time I was consuming it. I was not a big carbohydrate eater but did eat more fat, but suffered gastrointestinal difficulties which led to my use of choline chloride. I have found raising carbohydrates to be of benefit in my brain capacity and in increasing neurotransmitters. Since fat and carbohydrates both produce adenosine from ATP, and adenosine has a regulatory effect on neurotransmitters, maybe the higher fat was of benefit as an infant but not so as an adult.
I am more concerned about this lack of mother-child bonding than any of these things. The pay-off has been about something other than selling lots of milk.
