Nerve Regeneration
It has been demonstrated that neurogenesis can sometimes occur in the adult vertebrate brain, a finding that led to controversy in 1999. However, more recent studies of the age of human neurons suggest that this process occurs only for a minority of cells, and the overwhelming majority of neurons comprising the neocortex were formed before birth and persist without replacement.
It is often possible for peripheral axons to regrow if they are severed. A report in Nature suggested that researchers had found a way to transform human skin cells into working nerve cells using a process called transdifferentiation in which "cells are forced to adopt new identities."
Read more about this topic: Neuron
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