Chelsea Whyte, contributor A 27-year-old woman has lost her place the London 2012 Paralympic Games in what appear to be the most unusual of circumstances: Monique van der Vorst, formerly paralysed from the waist down, has regained her ability to walk. Perhaps surprisingly, though, neuroscientists say her experience is not unprecedented. van der Vorst was a handcyclist with national and international titles to her name. She has now traded her handbike for a bicycle - and has just been given one of 11 spots on the Dutch women's professional cycling team, Rabobank, according to IoL News. When she was 13, van der Vorst lost the use of her right leg after routine ankle surgery damaged her nerves. She took up handcycling, but in 2008, while she was training for the Beijing Olympics, she was hit by a car. Her spinal cord was damaged, leaving her paralysed from the waist down, yet she still entered the Olympics later that year - and won two silver medals. Last year, she was involved in another accident, this time with a cyclist. The accident left her legs tingling, and after a spell in hospital and some rehabilitation, she was able to walk again. Although van der Vorst's recovery remain unexplained, that's largely because of the speed of her recovery, according to IoL News. In fact, regaining the use of paralysed limbs is more common than we realise, according to Geoff Raisman, a neurologist at University College London. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 16074 - Posted: 11.26.2011

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News The ability to breathe has been restored to mice with spinal cord injuries, in what US researchers describe as a medical first. Some patients with damaged spinal cords need ventilators as they are unable to breathe on their own. A report in the journal Nature showed a nerve graft, coupled with a protein, could restore breathing. Human trials could begin soon, which the charity Spinal Research said could be "potentially life-changing". Damage at the top of the spinal cord, around the neck, can interrupt messages to the diaphragm - a layer of muscle involved in breathing. The cord is notoriously resistant to repair. Techniques such as nerve grafts, which worked in the arms and legs, had shown limited success with the spinal cord, doctors at the Case Western Reserve University said. The spinal cord scars after it is damaged, and molecules - chondroitin sulphate proteoglycans - prevent nerves repairing and forming new connections. The researchers used a nerve graft to form a bridge across the scar at the same time as injecting an enzyme - chondoitinase ABC - which attacked the inhibitory molecules. BBC © 2011

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 15552 - Posted: 07.14.2011

By DENISE GRADY A young man paralyzed by an injury to his spinal cord has regained the ability to stand for short periods, take steps with help and move his legs and feet at will, with the help of an electrical stimulator implanted in his lower back. Rob Summers, 25, paralyzed for five years, regained some ability to stand after surgeons implanted electrodes in the lower part of his back to stimulate his spinal cord. The device is experimental and not available to other patients, and because it has been studied in only one person it is not known whether it would work as well in other people with different types of spinal injury. But the researchers say that scientifically the work is an important advance, because it shows that a bit of electrical stimulation can unlock the ability of the spinal cord to control movement — even if its signals from the brain have been cut off by injury. Similar findings had been made in animals. “It’s been thought that the brain controls all our movement,” said Susan Harkema, research director at the Kentucky Spinal Cord Injury Research Center in Louisville and the lead author of an article about the research being published online on Thursday in the journal Lancet. “But the spinal cord is the primary controller.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 15347 - Posted: 05.21.2011

NEW YORK — Compared to a sleek new laptop, that three-pound mass of fatty tissue called the brain may not look like much. But when it's injured, it adapts and rewires its circuits in new ways. That's the kind of flexibility that doctors and rehabilitation specialists hope to encourage in Gabrielle Giffords, the brain-injured Arizona congresswoman. Details about her recovery have been thin. But members of her staff say she recently began speaking for the first time since the Jan. 8 attack by a gunman in Tucson. Brain injury patients who regain speech typically begin to do that about four to six weeks after the injury, experts say. Still, recovery for the 40-year-old Giffords will be a long, tough journey, as it is for anyone with a significant brain injury. Patients can make remarkable progress. But experts caution that they shouldn't expect to return to exactly the way they were before. Too little has been revealed and it's too early to say if Giffords might be able to return to her job in Congress. One expert questioned whether that would be the best thing for her to do. Most people with such injuries have some level of impairment for the rest of their lives. The New York Times on Sunday reported that some of Giffords' efforts to relearn how to speak include mouthing the words to song lyrics, such as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," and briefly talking with her brother-in-law by telephone while he orbited aboard the International Space Station. Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 14999 - Posted: 02.14.2011

by Andy Coghlan NERVE cells with huge potential for treating paralysis could be made from a person's own skin or hair follicles, making spinal repair a more realistic prospect. Studies in rats and dogs have already demonstrated that olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), which insulate bundles of nerve cells, can help repair damage to the spinal cord and nerves leading to animals' paws. In rats and dogs, these cells can repair damage to the spinal cord and nerves leading to animals' paws The prospects for using them in treatments have been limited, however, because their only sources were thought to be the lining of the nose and the olfactory bulb in the brain where smell signals are processed. Biopsies from the human nose lining have only yielded tiny numbers of OECs, and obtaining them from the olfactory bulb would be invasive and potentially dangerous. Clare Baker of the University of Cambridge and colleagues injected chicken and mice embryos with neural crest cells genetically engineered to glow green under ultraviolet light. Neural crest cells are primordial cells that have the potential to develop into nervous system cells, among others. By visually tracking the cells in the growing embryos, they found some became OECs (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1012248107). Because neural crest cells can also be isolated from skin and hair follicles, OECs could potentially be grown from a patient's own cells. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 14697 - Posted: 11.22.2010

By Katherine Harmon Researchers have been searching for decades for a way to mend damage to the spinal cord, an injury that can lead to life-long paralysis. Even the smallest of breaks in these crucial central nerve fibers can result in the loss of leg, arm and other bodily functions. And attempts to prompt healing, through stem cells or growth factors, have yet to achieve widespread success. Previous research had been stepping closer to encouraging neuronal growth—which usually stops after physical maturation. And a 2008 study coauthored by Zhigang He, a neurologist at Children's Hospital Boston, announced success in shutting down a gene that stops neuron cell growth, thus enticing damaged nerves to start growing again. Through that process, the team was able to reestablish a severed optical nerve connection in mice. A new study, coauthored in part by He and other members of the 2008 team, demonstrates that voluntary movement can be reestablished in mice with spinal cord damage after removing a common enzyme that regulates the neuronal cell growth. The results were published online August 8 in Nature Neuroscience (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group). The removed enzyme PTEN, a phosphatase and tensin homolog, helps to dictate activity in the mTOR pathway, which plays a role in cell growth. During maturation, PTEN is activated, halting cell regeneration, but after removing it from a group of experimental mice with spinal cord injury, the neurons grew as they did in the development phase. © 2010 Scientific American,

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 14338 - Posted: 08.09.2010

By NICHOLAS WADE Two research reports published Friday offer novel approaches to the age-old dream of regenerating the body from its own cells. Animals like newts and zebra fish can regenerate limbs, fins, even part of the heart. If only people could do the same, amputees might grow new limbs and stricken hearts be coaxed to repair themselves. But humans have very little regenerative capacity, probably because of an evolutionary trade-off: suppressing cell growth reduced the risk of cancer, enabling humans to live longer. A person can renew his liver to some extent, and regrow a fingertip while very young, but not much more. In the first of the two new approaches, a research group at Stanford University led by Helen M. Blau, Jason H. Pomerantz and Kostandin V. Pajcini has taken a possible first step toward unlocking the human ability to regenerate. By inactivating two genes that work to suppress tumors, they got mouse muscle cells to revert to a younger state, start dividing and help repair tissue. What is true of mice is often true of humans, and although scientists are a long way from being able to cause limbs to regenerate, the research is attracting attention. Jeremy Brockes, a leading expert on regeneration at University College London, said the report was “an excellent paper.” Though there is a lot still to learn about the process, “it is hard to imagine that it will not be informative for regenerative medicine in the future,” he said. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14329 - Posted: 08.07.2010

By Nikhil Swaminathan Often spinal cord injuries result in the severing of the long nerve fibers connecting the brain to the spinal cord, disrupting one's ability to walk, among other things. But even with the primary top-to-bottom signal highway rendered out of order, the nervous system can, over time, reroute itself, finding neural detours and side streets that restore movement, according to a new study out of the University of California, Los Angeles (U.C.L.A.). "It's been known for some time that after certain types of lesions, animals and human[s] will recover their ability to walk," notes Michael Sofroniew, a professor of neurobiology at U.C.L.A.'s David Geffen School of Medicine. For instance, if the long nerve fibers on only one side of the spinal cord are damaged, "the previous explanation is that the other [intact] side was able to activate things," he adds. Recent work in Sofroniew's lab contradicts that theory. Using mice, the U.C.L.A. researchers first severed the nerve fibers coming from the brain to one side of lumbar spinal cord (in the lower back), which controls walking. This resulted in a complete loss of movement in the corresponding hind limb, causing the animal to drag it along when it moved. Over a period of 10 weeks, Sofroniew says, "the swing of the injured leg starts coming back and gets to become 80 percent of normal," on average. © 1996-2007 Scientific American Inc.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 11172 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WASHINGTON - It’s a delicate and daring experiment: Could doctors switch a leg nerve to make it operate the bladder instead? Families of a few U.S. children whose spina bifida robs them of the bladder control that most people take for granted dared to try the procedure — and early results suggest the surgery indeed may help, in at least some patients. With the technique, pioneered in China, the kids are supposed to scratch or pinch their thigh to signal the bladder to empty every few hours. But surprisingly, some youngsters instead are starting to feel those need-to-go sensations that their birth defect had always prevented. “It feels like this little chill kind of thing in me,” marvels 9-year-old Billy Kraser of Scranton, Pa. “When he goes in there and he’s dry and he’s clean, it’s such a triumph,” adds his mother, Janice Kraser. “I’ll hear him going, ‘Yesss!”’ The U.S. pilot study consists of just nine spina bifida patients and still is tracking how they fare — no one is finished healing yet. But already desperate families are lining up for a chance at this nerve rerouting, even as William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., is trying to raise money to expand the study and provide better evidence. © 2008 Microsoft

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12220 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Wendy Zukerman Rats with damaged spines can walk again thanks to acupuncture. But it's not due to improvements in their energy flow or "chi". Instead, the ancient treatment seems to stop nerve cell death by reducing inflammation. Acupuncture's scientific credentials are growing. Trials show that it improves sensory and motor functions in people with spinal cord injuries. To find out why, Doo Choi and his colleagues at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, South Korea, damaged the spines of 75 rats. One-third were given acupuncture in two locations: Shuigou – between their snout and mouth, and Yanglingquan – in the upper hind leg. Others received no treatment or "simulated acupuncture". After 35 days, the acupuncture group were able to stand at a steeper incline than the others and walk better. Staining their paws with ink revealed that their forelimb-hindlimb coordination was fairly consistent and that there was very little toe dragging, whereas the control groups still dragged their feet. The rats in the acupuncture group also had less nerve cell death and lower levels of proteins known to induce inflammation after spinal cord injury and make neural damage worse. One explanation is that sharp needles prompt a stress response that dampens down inflammation. In humans, the inflammation that follows spinal cord injury is known to be responsible for nerve cell death. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 14015 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Helen Phillips A study of the "miraculous" recovery of a man who spent 19 years in a minimally conscious state has revealed the likely cause of his regained consciousness. The findings suggest the human brain shows far greater potential for recovery and regeneration then ever suspected. It may also help doctors predict their patients’ chances of improvement. But the studies also highlight gross inadequacies in the system for diagnosing and caring for patients in vegetative or minimally conscious states. In 1984, 19-year-old Terry Wallis was thrown from his pick-up truck during an accident near his home in Massachusetts, US. He was found 24 hours later in a coma with massive brain injuries. Within a few weeks he had stabilised in a minimally conscious state, which his doctors thought would last indefinitely. It did indeed persist for 19 years. Then, in 2003, he started to speak. Over a three day period, Wallis regained the ability to move and communicate, and started getting to know his now 20 year old daughter – a difficult process considering he believed himself to be 19, and that Ronald Reagan was still president. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 9089 - Posted: 06.24.2010

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A successful method for healing spinal injuries in dogs has been developed by Purdue University researchers, offering hope for preventing human paralysis. Lab tests have shown that an injection of a liquid polymer known as polyethylene glycol (PEG), if administered within 72 hours of serious spinal injury, can prevent most dogs from suffering permanent spinal damage. Even when the spine is initially damaged to the point of paralysis, the PEG solution prevents the nerve cells from rupturing irrevocably, enabling them to heal themselves. "Nearly 75 percent of the dogs we treated with PEG were able to resume a normal life," said Richard Borgens, Mari Hulman George Professor of Applied Neuroscience and director of the Center for Paralysis Research in Purdue's School of Veterinary Medicine. "Some healed so well that they could go on as though nothing had happened." The research, performed at Purdue, Indiana University—Purdue University Indianapolis, and Texas A&M University, appears in the December issue of the Journal of Neurotrauma.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 6520 - Posted: 06.24.2010

For the first time, researchers have used human embryonic stem cells to create new insulating tissue for nerve fibers in a live animal model – a finding that has potentially important implications for treatment of spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis. Researchers at the UC Irvine Reeve-Irvine Research Center used human embryonic stem cells to create cells called oligodendrocytes, which are the building blocks of the myelin tissue that wraps around and insulates nerve fibers. This tissue is critical for maintenance of proper nerve signaling in the central nervous system, and, when it is stripped away through injury or disease, sensory and motor deficiencies and, in some cases, paralysis result. In this study, neurologist Hans Keirstead and colleagues at UCI and the Geron Corporation devised a novel technique that allows human embryonic stem cells to differentiate into high-purity, early-stage oligodendrocyte cells. The researchers then injected these cells into the spinal cords of mice genetically engineered to have no myelin tissue. After transplantation into mice, the early-stage cells formed into full-grown oligodendrocyte cells and migrated to appropriate neuronal sites within the spinal cord. More importantly, the researchers discovered the oligodendrocyte cells forming patches of myelin’s basic protein, and they observed compact myelin tissue wrapping around neurons in the spinal cord. These studies demonstrated that the oligodendrocytes derived from human embryonic stem cells can function in a living system. © Copyright 2002-2004 UC Regents

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Cells and Structure of the Nervous System
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 1: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System
Link ID: 6468 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHAPEL HILL -- Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered key steps involved in regulating nerve growth and regeneration that may have implications for spinal cord research. The new research, published in the June 24 issue of the journal Neuron, for the first time describes how nerve growth factor (NGF) stimulates a sequence of proteins – a molecular pathway – that promotes nerve growth. "It is the first study to show the link between NGF and the building blocks that form the axon," said Dr. William Snider, professor of neurology and cell and molecular physiology at UNC's School of Medicine and director of the UNC Neuroscience Center. Axons are long tendrils, or processes, that extend from nerve cells to form connections with other nerve cells, muscles and the skin. Injury to the peripheral nervous system – that portion of the nervous system outside the brain and spinal cord – typically results in spontaneous regeneration and repair. However, this is not the case with the spinal cord, where disruption of connections from injury leads to paralysis

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 5734 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Two-pronged approach synergizes growth BOSTON -- Researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School have advanced a decades-old quest to get injured nerves to regenerate. By combining two strategies – activating nerve cells' natural growth state and using gene therapy to mute the effects of growth-inhibiting factors – they achieved about three times more regeneration of nerve fibers than previously attained. The study involved the optic nerve, which connects nerve cells in the retina with visual centers in the brain, but the Children's team has already begun to extend the approach to nerves damaged by spinal cord injury, stroke, and certain neurodegenerative diseases. Results appear in the February 18th Journal of Neuroscience. Normally, injured nerve fibers, known as axons, can't regenerate. Axons conduct impulses away from the body of the nerve cell, forming connections with other nerve cells or with muscles. One reason axons can't regenerate has been known for about 15 years: Several proteins in the myelin, an insulating sheath wrapped around the axons, strongly suppress growth. Over the past two years, researchers have developed techniques that disable the inhibitory action of myelin proteins, but this approach by itself has produced relatively little axon growth.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 4992 - Posted: 06.24.2010

NEURONS IMPLANTED IN STROKE-DAMAGED BRAIN TISSUE SHOW FUNCTION, SAY UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH RESEARCHERS
PITTSBURGH, – An imaging study of neurons implanted in damaged areas of the brains of stroke patients in the hopes of restoring function has shown the first signs of cellular growth, say University of Pittsburgh researchers. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans taken six months after surgery to implant LBS-neurons showed a greater than 10 percent increase in metabolic activity in the damaged parts of some patients' brains compared to scans taken just a week prior to surgery. The increased metabolism corresponds with better performance on standardized stroke tests for behavioral and motor function. The study was funded by Layton BioScience Inc. © 2001 UPMC Health System

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 471 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Rachel Ehrenberg A blue dye found in Gatorade and Rocket Pops could play a protective role in the cellular mayhem that follows spinal cord injury. In rats, the dye — known as FD&C Blue No.1 — appears to block a molecule that floods the injury site and kills nerve cells, a team reports in the July 28 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Rats dosed with the dye after injury showed greater improvement in motor skills than rats not receiving the dye. And the food colorant’s low toxicity suggests a new approach for treating spinal cord trauma in humans, injuries for which there are few therapies. “It’s not a cure,” says neuroscientist Maiken Nedergaard of the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., who led the new study. “I don’t think that anything can cure this, but for the patient it could be a big improvement.” The results are impressive and realistic, comments Lynne Weaver, a neuroscientist at the Robarts Research Institute in London, Canada. Weaver notes that the side effects of any new potential therapy must be considered, but “the principle is interesting.” ATP, for adenosine triphosphate, is known as the energy currency of cells, and the molecule is used like a battery whenever cells need to get stuff done. But a few years ago Nedergaard and her colleagues reported that ATP has a darker side. It wreaks havoc when the central nervous system is injured, flooding the injury site and hitting a receptor that sits on some immune system cells. ATP binds to this receptor, called P2X7, resulting in a cascade of events that leads to cell death. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 13103 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Heidi Ledford Tadpoles can achieve something that humans may only dream of: pull off a tadpole's thick tail or a tiny developing leg, and it'll grow right back — spinal cord, muscles, blood vessels and all. Now researchers have discovered the key regulator of the electrical signal that convinces Xenopus pollywogs to regenerate amputated tails. The results, reported this week in Development, give some researchers hope for new approaches to stimulating tissue regeneration in humans1. Researchers have known for decades that an electrical current is created at the site of regenerating limbs. Furthermore, applying an external current speeds up the regeneration process, and drugs that block the current prevent regeneration. The electrical signals help to tell cells what type to grow into, how fast to grow, and where to position themselves in the new limb. To investigate, Michael Levin and his colleagues at the Forsyth Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology in Boston, Massachusetts, sorted through libraries of drug compounds to find ones that prevent tail regeneration but do not interfere with wound healing. One such drug, they found, blocks a molecular pump that transports protons across cell membranes; this kind of proton flow creates a current. ©2007 Nature Publishing Group

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 10024 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ATLANTA ( — When Yadong Wang, a chemist by training, first ventured into nerve regeneration two years ago, he didn’t know that his peers would have considered him crazy. His idea was simple: Because neural circuits use electrical signals often conducted by neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) to communicate between the brain and the rest of the body, he could build neurotransmitters into the material used to repair a broken circuit. The neurotransmitters could coax the neurons in the damaged nerves to regrow and reconnect with their target organ. Strange though his idea might have seemed to others in his field, Wang, an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, discovered that he could integrate dopamine, a type of neurotransmitter, into a polymer to stimulate nerve tissues to send out new connections. The discovery is the first step toward the eventual goal of implanting the new polymer into patients suffering from neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson’s or epilepsy, to help repair damaged nerves. The findings were published online the week of Oct. 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “We showed that you could use a neurotransmitter as a building block of a polymer,” said Wang. “Once integrated into the polymer, the transmitter can still elicit a specific response from nerve tissues.” ©2006 Georgia Institute of Technology

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 9570 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Lauran Neergaard, The Associated Press WASHINGTON — Injections of human stem cells seem to directly repair some of the damage caused by spinal cord injury, according to research that helped partially paralyzed mice walk again. The experiment, reported Monday, isn't the first to show that stem cells offer tantalizing hope for spinal cord injury — other scientists have helped mice recover, too. But the new work went an extra step, suggesting the connections that the stem cells form to help bridge the damaged spinal cord are key to recovery. Surprisingly, they didn't just form new nerve cells. They also formed cells that create the biological insulation that nerve fibers need to communicate. A number of neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, involve loss of that insulation, called myelin. "The actual cells that we transplanted, the human cells, are the ones that are making myelin," explained lead researcher Aileen Anderson of the University of California, Irvine. "We're extremely excited about these cells." The research is reported in Monday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Stem cells are building blocks that turn into different types of tissue. Embryonic stem cells in particular have made headlines recently, as scientists attempt to harness them to regenerate damaged organs or other body parts. They're essentially a blank slate, able to turn into any tissue given the right biochemical instructions. © Copyright 2005 USA TODAY

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 7930 - Posted: 06.24.2010