Development, Plasticity, and Regeneration in the Mammalian Brain

NEURO 180 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Why do neuronal axon extensions within nerves of limbs regenerate after traumatic or combat injuries, but analogous axon tracts in the spinal cord and brain do not, e.g. in spinal cord injury? Why do diseases often have mutations in every cell of the body, and in every neuron type of the brain, but only 1 or 2 neuron types out of thousands degenerate or fail, e.g. in ALS or Parkinson’s disease? Why and how does often remarkable recovery from brain surgery or injury occur in young children, but not so much in later life? How is the brain set up to sense the world, integrate incoming sensory information, and lead to movement and behavior, and how is that organized during development? Might we overcome lack of spinal cord regeneration? Might we reverse or repair neuron degeneration in ALS, e.g.? How might advanced brain-computer interface prosthetic devices add value? What’s up with stem cell biology– including hope, hype, and reality? To address these questions, we motivate ourselves by disease and what it might take to develop therapeutics, then study initial development, then study blocks to regeneration and the remarkable work-arounds of “plasticity”, then integrate these toward future solutions.

We will highly interactively study regenerative biology of the mammalian central nervous system (CNS), motivated by a focused and related set of human CNS disorders: This course will discuss molecular and cellular mechanisms of regeneration and repair in the mammalian central nervous system (CNS), motivated by prototypical examples in the motor control systems and circuitry of the cerebral cortex and spinal cord centrally relevant to spinal cord injury, ALS / Lou Gehrig’s disease (“amyotrophic lateral sclerosis”, and related disorders), and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).  We will take an approach integrating developmental and regenerative biology: we will compare and contrast aspects of embryonic neural development (molecular and cellular) with adult neural plasticity; discuss limitations to neuronal and axonal regeneration in the mature mammalian CNS following degeneration or injury; examine CNS regeneration approaches directed at overcoming intrinsic limitations; explore developmental molecular controls, gene manipulation, and cellular reprogramming to promote neurogenesis (birth of new neurons), axonal regeneration, and directed differentiation of progenitors and stem cells in diseased adult mammalian brain; and consider technology such as “brain-computer interfaces”. This course has always functioned as an interactive seminar rather than a lecture course, and includes the trajectory of knowledge and thinking over the past century, plus the state-of-the-art in these fields, emphasising the need for a healthy measure of skepticism in some fields. Sections cover advanced experimental approaches, critical reading of the literature, and conceptual thinking.

Course Notes

Expected to be offered in alternating fall terms in even years.

Recommended Prep

Life and Physical Sciences A or Life Sciences 1a; Life Sciences 1b; Nuero 80 or equivalent “Introduction to Neuroscience” course, or permission of the instructor