The brain may be able to repair itself — with help

Day 35 / 365

Our brain is not that great at repairing itself, which is why damage to the brain through stokes or accidental trauma is mostly permanent. In this Ted talk, Jocelyne Block presents the findings of a research that shows a way to make neural repair possible

The Discovery

The research team experimented with swollen brain tissue, trying to come up with conditions to artificially enhance cell growth. They succeeded and found that the cell growth around the tissues resembled stem cells. This is surprising as the brain doesn’t have a lot of stem cells, and even the ones it has are located quite deep.

These cells weren’t exactly stem-cells. Stem cells are immortal, but these cells died after a few days.

It’s still not clear where these cells come from in the brain. They are found in significant quantities near lesions in the brain, which pointed towards their role in neural repair.

The Proof

To test whether these cells can help the brain repair itself, the team devised the following experiment

• A small sample of the cells would be taken from a brain.
• These will be multiplied artificially and marked.
• The cells will then be put inside the brain again and their movement will be monitored

This experiment was to be done with both a damaged brain and an undamaged one.

The subjects of the experiment were monkeys. The monkeys were first trained to solve a puzzle, and then a part of their brain was damaged electrically which caused their performance on the task to decrease.

After inserting the cells in the damaged brain, it was observed that within a few days these new cells moved towards the damaged part. After 2 months the monkey was able to regain the ability to solve the puzzle.

Further research is needed to see if such a process would work with human brains as well, but the results are still quite promising.

This story is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Getting Things Done