Quote (cloudkicker @ Dec 9 2016 02:11pm)
Dead neural tissue is dead tissue. If you destroy the soma, it's not coming back. You can damage or sever axons and they will regenerate but once the cell body is dead the neuron is dead. Unless by neurogenesis you are referring to the healing of axons. Why do you think stroke survivors have such permanent functional loss? The cortex is highly plastic and the remaining tissue will rearrange it's functional organization but once neurons die they are dead and not replaced
wot
In the cns, even severed axons aren't rejuvenated typically, mostly from formation of a glial scar, and negative feedback to axonal sprouting from astrocytes and microglia. In the PNS, they ofc can regenerate, but also it's not perfect and neuromas can form. No, neurogenesis is proliferation and subsequent differentiation/survival of neural precursor cells, but it's restricted to certain neurogenic niches, that's why I said inducing it is worthless for most things, but may have implications for chronic/severe depression and related morbidities. One drug is already doing that (NSI-189) and has shown some good efficacy in treating treatment-resistant depression in clinical trials hitherto. That also opens up into the intriguing field of nootropics, though. On one hand, hippocampal neurogenesis could "overwrite" some memories and actually cause forgetting, but can also ramp up overall processing power. That's an aside I just love the field, albeit it has been lackluster thus far. And yes, we're saying the same thing as far as stroke goes. That's why I said neurogenesis wouldn't be a good target for repairing the damage, but instead something like stem cells once we develop adequate specificity. Certain pro-neurogenic drugs, anti-inflammatories, etc, could be an avenue but they'd need administration in temporal propinquity to the injury which probably isn't likely. Would talk about more possibilities but gotta leave at the moment to the gross lab (awesome btw).