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
Famous quotes containing the words nerve and/or regeneration:
“Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce great poetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historical, macrocosmic triumph. Whereas the former—the youngest or despised child who becomes the master of extraordinary powers—prevails over his personal oppressors, the latter brings back from his adventure the means for the regeneration of his society as a whole.”
—Joseph Campbell (1904–1987)