Why do brain cells come and brain cells go, but fat cells are forever?

Brain cells don’t come and go. That’s why it’s so difficult to treat diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and even spinal cord injury (since the spinal cord is also part of your central nervous system, it also has non-renewable cells). Ordinary cell death leads to a general brain atrophy as you age, and pathological cell death as seen in the diseases I just mentioned facilitates this process leading to the cognitive deficits associated with them.

The only areas of your brain that can produce new cells are the subventricular zone of the lateral ventricles and the subgranular zone in the dentate gyrus.

You deserve so much lurve for that answer!

Neurons of the cerebral cortex are the longest lived cells of the human body, with most lasting the lifetime of the human body. Fat cells typically live only ten years. The difference, as Niki pointed out, is that whereas dead fat cells are diligently replaced, neurons are not.

Because for our primitive ancestors, being fat was a much more desirable alternative than dying due to having no energy reserves (being thin). Our primitive cousins didn’t live past 20–25, 35 years rarely and 40+ if really lucky, during this time brain cells might be lost at a slow but minimal rate and doesn’t really affect cognitive ability. It’s only in today’s modern world, in the last 100–200 years, where calories are cheap and plentiful so we have eaten too much and seen the effects of it on our bodies, and we live long enough (or have other parts of us repaired) such that it’s our brain cells that are the key part that’s dying. Once we figure out how to strengthen and heal the brain, as well as remedying the brain diseases mentioned by nikipedia, that’s one giant step towards a massive lifespan.

Most of these answers have been about brain cells, which I know very little about, but I know a lot about fat, and fat cells do come and go. I think you’re getting confused because a person typically has the same number of fat cells throughout their adult life. That doesn’t mean they are the same exact cells. Fat cells die and regenerate just like the majority of the rest of the cells in the human body.

Wow. More stupider?

@mo: don’t be stupider at school!

”..... I must of walked into the adjacent room, ‘cause my mental rolex, upon reading “fat cells” that linger-on, brought a very vivid and graphic imagery of “lipo-suction” to reduce the accumulation of them pesky globuals. However, I don’t think that would apply to a collective on-conscience. OOoh, the Humanity!!
Yet, after my elective voluteering a similar obscure experimental technique, just to pay the rent, I can’t perceive any big difference,... yet anyway. Of couse, when the bandages come off, there may be a complication, or two waiting in that first room, or the next floor up?
Waite a minute, this a test isn’t it. All right, just give me my promised $15.00 dollars and we’ll call it even. Does my head look fat?

@vanslonski : what are you talking about? i am so confused