(March 30, 2011) Researchers from UT Southwestern Medical
Center have described for the first time how the brain’s memory center repairs
itself following severe trauma – a process that may explain why it is harder to
bounce back after multiple head injuries.
The study, published in The
Journal of Neuroscience, reports significant learning and memory problems in
mice who were unable to create new nerve cells in the brain’s memory area, the
hippocampus, following brain trauma. The study’s senior author, Dr. Steven G.
Kernie, associate professor of pediatrics and developmental biology at UT
Southwestern, said the hippocampus contains a well of neural stem cells that
become neurons in response to injury; those stem cells must grow into functioning
nerve cells to mend the damage.
“Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has
received a lot of attention recently because of the recognition that both
military personnel and football players suffer from debilitating brain
injuries,” Dr. Kernie said, adding that memory and learning problems are common
after repeated severe head injuries.
“We have discovered that neural
stem cells in the brain’s memory area become activated by injury and remodel
the area with newly generated nerve cells,” Dr. Kernie said. “We also found
that the activation of these stem cells is required for recovery.”