This study investigated age-related changes in hippocampal neurogenesis, as well as possible associations between new hippocampal cells and learning and memory impairment during aging. 38-day and 12-month old, male Sprague-Dawley rats were injected with 5-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine (BrdU) in order to label cells dividing in the dentate gyrus, and to follow their fates. Examined at eight time points following injection, aging rats showed a 90% decrease in proliferating cells, but similar proportions of surviving, differentiating, and maturing neurons relative to young. These results indicate that hippocampal neurogenesis, although it occurs on a drastically reduced scale relative to young levels, continues to proceed normally in aging rats. Further, spatial learning following the birth of new granule cells did not appear to directly affect or correlate with cell survival in aging rats. Decreased proliferation will not inevitably lead to deficits in learning, but the new hippocampal cells may be important for long-term memory formation.