The degree of neurogenesis in the adult hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG) is the center of the discussion in the field of adult neurogenesis. Although there is an on-going controversy, accumulating evidence suggests that the neural stem cells (NSCs) in the adult human DG are very few. The question remains open as to why there are so few NSCs in the adult human DG when compared with the rodent DG. In order to address these questions, it seems necessary to understand the developmental process of the NSCs in the adult human DG. In this thesis, the neural stem and progenitor cells in the fetal human DG are characterized. In addition to these findings, a semi-automatic method for counting and categorizing cells in their expressions of immunochemistry markers is developed.
