alt Hacker NewsMy understanding was that strokes caused brain cell death, and that there was no coming back from that, but my neurologists would speak of 'bruised' brain cells, and that after weeks or months or even years you can see recovered function. UCLA's work here is targeting this disconnection and the lost rhythm in the surviving, distant networks. However there is, as yet, NO concievable intervention that could recover function from cell death at that center of the infarct.
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This talks about connections.
My understanding is that while brain cell death (outside of the hippocampus, at least) cannot regenerate, the connections and networks can.
But neurons regenerating connections between each other is, afaik, been pretty mainstream for awhile. The brain can't generate new cells, but it can rewire the connections between them, is what I understand. From reading the article, it seems to only claim rewiring connections, not regenerating cells.
There are a ton of upcoming drugs that help stimulating rewiring, for instance:
https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/new-drug-candidate-targeting-sy...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8190578/
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324410
etc.
My understanding is that brain is composed of way more neurons than required, for resiliency. So if it gets a "bruise" in some part, when even a large portion of the cells are dead -- it can still function at 100%. Like a programmer without a finger. The problem is visible only when all the cells in some part are dead.
That's why crows, with their low brain mass are pretty clever (and why all arguments equating brain size and smartness are wrong).
Just my layman understanding.
it is more like that the brain learns to use other regions or neurons to do the tasks of the dead brain cells. The brain cells that are dead due to ischemia are dead and will usually be collected by microglia and after some time there are defects in the brain where the ischemia was.
One wonders if someday we might be able to resurrect the neural network from dead cells by somehow reviving the connections between neurons. I imagine that the connections stay, but become dormant when the neuron dies.
There are people who are missing huge percentages of their brain from injury or other issues and lead a seemingly normal life.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-...