Presentations from the just completed Neuroscience 2011

Studies highlight the brains resiliency to damage
Presentations from the just completed Neuroscience 2011 show some fascinating possibilities for stroke recovery. None of these will help us directly but for future strokees, if enough research is done there may be some hyperacute therapies.
Previous studies, led by Ron Frostig, PhD, of the University of California, Irvine, found that anesthetized rats undergoing an ischemic stroke could be protected from brain damage if they received sensory stimulation within two hours of stroke onset. The current study found rats were also fully protected if immediately awakened from anesthesia after ischemic stroke and placed in an “enriched environment” replete with buried treats, tunnels, and toys.
http://www.sfn.org/siteobjects/published/0000BDF20016F63800FD712C30FA42DD/7EEDCCFAE51E16A50C47ADCDB808E614/file/Brain%20Repair%20Release%20Final%20Draft.pdf
This does contradict what Jill Bolte-Taylor did to recover from her stroke, she went into shutdown mode with overstimulation.

This one is weird, it seems to say that small blood clots in capillaries can be enveloped and pushed out thru the walls. Great picture at the link.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20505729
The picture shows pericytes which are suspected of not opening up the small capillaries even after the main arteries are cleared via tPA. This becomes one of the problems in the neuronal cascade of death.
Pericytes talked about here:
Even after a clot is gone, about half of capillaries remain constricted—at least in mice—even though blood flow is restored in larger vessels. Researchers have found that free radicals in blood vessels lead to this constriction.
http://www.dana.org/news/brainwork/detail.aspx?id=23436