I would expect this to be a great line of stroke research but there is no great stroke association to ask if this is being researched in humans. We just may never know the answer to such a simple question.
http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/news/2014/01/low-levels-pro-inflammatory-agent-help-cognition-rats?#.UulmfhDljXY
Although inflammation is
frequently a cause of disease in the body, research from The University
of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio indicates that low levels
of a pro-inflammatory cytokine in the brain are important for cognition.
Cytokines are proteins produced by the immune system.
Jennifer Donegan, graduate student, and David Morilak, PhD, professor
of pharmacology in the School of Medicine, found that neutralizing the
cytokine interleukin-6 in the brain impaired reversal learning in both
stressed and nonstressed rats. Reversal learning is a form of cognitive
flexibility that is diminished in psychiatric diseases such as
depression, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder. Cognitive
flexibility is the ability to change previously learned thoughts and
behaviors in response to changes in the environment.
“When we started the project, we thought cognitive flexibility would
be impaired by stress-induced inflammation in a region of the brain
called the prefrontal cortex,” Donegan said. “We decided to block
interleukin-6 during stress to prevent the cognitive deficit, and to our
surprise this made things worse. This suggested that it may actually be
beneficial to maintain a low level of this pro-inflammatory cytokine in
the brain.”
As a key next step, the scientists were then able to fix the
cognitive deficit caused by stress by restoring a low level of the
cytokine specifically in the prefrontal cortex. Both scientists caution,
however, that there is still much to learn about interleukin-6’s role
in cognition and in diseases like depression. “We’ve replicated just one
piece of a very complex disease so we can understand the biology,” Dr.
Morilak said. “We found that, in one brain region, one cytokine
facilitates cognitive flexibility and is beneficial after chronic
stress. But we delivered the cytokine specifically into that brain
region using a virus, which we cannot do in people. And its role in
inflammation may be very different than in normal conditions. There’s
still a lot of work to do.”
Source: University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
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