Primates have a hidden ability to repair their own damaged spines

Primates have a hidden ability to repair their own damaged spines
2010 11 15

For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that primates, including humans, have an innate ability to repair some spinal damage, including recovering from paralysis. The next step is to enhance this ability, so that we can regrow injured spinal nerves.

It’s been known for a long time that people with moderate injuries to the nerves in their spinal cords can sometimes spontaneously recover - regaining the ability to move and walk over time. Now a group of researchers have published a paper in Nature Neuroscience that suggests this may be a trait shared by all primates. Many spinal injuries are followed by fresh nerve growth in monkey spinal cords.

The researchers found that the injured nerves didn’t regrow. Instead, new nerves sprouted in a process called "spontaneous plasticity," essentially routing the spinal column around the injury. This kind of neural sprouting doesn’t occur in rodents, which are the animals that scientists typically use in neuroscience experiments. As a result, nobody had noticed this phenomenon before. This new study may lead to more testing on monkeys, but hopefully it will lead to discoveries that allow all primates to grow new nerve cells in the future.

Read the full scientific paper in Nature Neuroscience.

Article from: io9.com

Share |

Latest News from our Front Page

So It Begins: Darpa Sets Out to Make Computers That Can Teach Themselves
2013 06 18
The Pentagon’s blue-sky research agency is readying a nearly four-year project to boost artificial intelligence systems by building machines that can teach themselves — while making it easier for ordinary schlubs like us to build them, too. When Darpa talks about artificial intelligence, it’s not talking about modeling computers after the human brain. That path fell out of favor among computer ...

Atacama Humanoid: Stanford-Geneticist Says Specimen "not worth scrutiny"
2013 06 18
The documentary SIRIUS has intrigued and shocked many, and has stirred debate about the scientific findings regarding the ’Atacama Humanoid’. Recently, daily German science news site GreWi.de followed up with Dr. Garry Nolan, the Stanford geneticist that headed the investigation into the mummified remains. grenz|wissenschaft-aktuell reports: Since the documentary movie "Sirius" showed the first results of an investigation of a just 15 ...

The Illuminati Depopulation Agenda
2013 06 18
While the global elite construct underground bunkers, eat organic and hoard seeds in Arctic vaults; the global poor are being slowly starved thanks to high commodity prices and poisoned with genetically modified (GMO) food. Austerity measures aimed largely at the poor are being imposed on all the nations of the world. Weather events grow more deadly and brushfire wars more ...

Ron Paul on Syria: This Is How Vietnam and Iraq Started
2013 06 18
President Barack Obama’s pledge to initiate a limited operation in Syria will likely escalate into a full-blown war, with Americans supporting a rebel cause that is backed by al-Qaida, retired Texas Rep. Ron Paul is arguing. "The president has opened a can of worms that will destroy his presidency and possibly destroy this country. Another multibillion dollar war has begun," Paul ...

Google’s deep CIA and NSA connections
2013 06 18
The Western media is currently full of articles reporting Google’s denial that it cooperated in a government program to massively spy on American and foreign citizens by accessing data from Googles servers and those of other U.S. software companies. The mainstream media has, however, almost completely failed to report that Google’s denial, and its surface concern over ’human ...

More News »