On Brain Health | Will the Brain Heal Itself after a Severe Brain Injury?

TED TALK |  After a traumatic brain injury, it sometimes happens that the brain can repair itself, building new brain cells to replace damaged ones.

But the repair doesn't happen quickly enough to allow recovery from degenerative conditions like motor neuron disease (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease or ALS).

Siddharthan Chandran, a regenative neurologist, walks through some new techniques using special stem cells that could allow the damaged brain to rebuild faster.  In a related topic, Siddharthan Chandran also explores how to heal damage from degenerative disorders such as MS and motor neuron disease (ALS).

In a TED Talk, Siddharthan Chandran states:

Well, you know what? I think there is hope. 

And there's hope in this next section, of this brain section of somebody else with M.S., because what it illustrates is, amazingly, the brain can repair itself. It just doesn't do it well enough. And so again, there are two things I want to show you. 

First of all is the damage of this patient with M.S. And again, it's another one of these white masses. But crucially, the area that's ringed red highlights an area that is pale blue. But that area that is pale blue was once white. So it was damaged. It's now repaired. 

Just to be clear: It's not because of doctors. It's in spite of doctors, not because of doctors. This is spontaneous repair. It's amazing and it's occurred because there are stem cells in the brain, even, which can enable new myelin, new insulation, to be laid down over the damaged nerves. And this observation is important for two reasons. 

The first is it challenges one of the orthodoxies that we learnt at medical school, or at least I did, admittedly last century, which is that the brain doesn't repair itself, unlike, say, the bone or the liver. But actually it does, but it just doesn't do it well enough. 

And the second thing it does, and it gives us a very clear direction of travel for new therapies -- I mean, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know what to do here. You simply need to find ways of promoting the endogenous, spontaneous repair that occurs anyway."

See and hear Siddharthan Chandran's 2013 TED Talk by click here:
"Can the Damaged Brain Repair Itself?"