Advances in Restoring Functionality of the Brain and Spinal Cord after Injury and Death

  The topic of brain regeneration and the restoration of function within the nervous system after injury or death has been an intriguing one medically and culturally, showing itself through our interest in things ranging from zombies to super soldiers. In the clinical field, however, nervous system repair following injury, concerning both the brain and spinal cord, has been making advances in recent years fueled by technological innovation, and thus has had critical importance in attempting to help those who have suffered strokes, been affected by disease, or have in one way or another been impacted by loss of physiological function as a result of central nervous system damage.

    One of these advances has come from Yale University, where researchers were successful in restoring partial functioning in the brain of a pig following death. In order to achieve this, the team placed the brain of the animal four hours after death in an enclosed chamber. Into this chamber, a fluid designed to provide nutrients and oxygen was circulated in for six hours; blood flow was subsequently restored, and the structure of the brain as a whole was not affected. Following this exposure, slices of hippocampal tissue were cut, as it had been previously thought that this fluid used would be able to preserve cells in certain regions of the hippocampus. Surely enough, in electrically stimulating these brain slices, action potentials were generated. It should be noted, however, that this activity was limited to being strictly cellular and did not involve communication between brain regions; the brain in this state shouldn’t necessarily be thought of as “living”. Nevertheless, researchers have acknowledged these findings as “masterful” but also “baby steps” and building blocks “toward restoring full brain function” in those who have suffered a severe accident (Hernandez).

    Similarly and in a more recent study conducted by Li et al., the effects of a nanofiber-hydrogel composite were demonstrated on an injured spinal cord of a rat, where the injected composite greatly aided the repair efforts at the site of injury, and overall showed “strong translational potential for treating the injured spinal cord” (Li et al, 2020).

    Though injuries of the spinal cord and brain are oftentimes detrimental, research is continuously being done and progress is being made in an attempt to improve the lives of those who are affected, though as research moves into humans, ethical dilemmas will need to be resolved and experiments “will require careful considerations about what is ethically acceptable” (Hernandez). These dilemmas, however, are already being debated, and rules will undoubtedly shift as time goes on.

References

Hernandez, Daniela. “Scientists Restore Some Brain Function after Death in Animal Experiments.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 17 Apr. 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/scientists-restore-some-brain-function-after-death-in-animal-experiments-11555520400. 

Li, Xiaowei, et al. “The Effect of a Nanofiber-Hydrogel Composite on Neural Tissue Repair and Regeneration in the Contused Spinal Cord.” Biomaterials, vol. 245, 2020, p. 119978., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biomaterials.2020.119978.