A patient’s budding cortex — in a dish?

If this could possibly be used to correct brain circuit functioning in a mentally ill patient then we should be able to use this for stroke repair. At least if we assign some genius researchers to the problem. Ask the ASA, NSA and WSO when they are going to sponsor such research. If not, their boards of directors and CEO need to be replaced with stroke survivors willing to take on the most difficult challenges.
http://loonylabs.org/2015/05/31/cortex-in-a-dish/

March of Dimes Canada, U of T sign deal to advance research in brain injuries, stroke

If you are a member of the March of Dimes - Canada or know someone at the University of Toronto, you  need to contact them and ask very very specifically what their strategic plan is to address the problems in TBI and stroke. With no plan this is doomed to failure. And I bet no one associated with this is smart enough to understand their problem. With no plan they have just wasted 1.5 million Canadian.
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20140619/March-of-Dimes-Canada-U-of-T-sign-deal-to-advance-research-in-brain-injuries-stroke.aspx

$1.5 million donation establishes March of Dimes Canada Early Career Professorship

Today, March of Dimes Canada and the University of Toronto (U of T) signed a $1.5 million agreement to advance research in recovery from brain injuries and stroke, making the donation to the University the largest made by the national charitable organization in its over 60 year history.
Brain injuries and stroke affect 80,000 to 100,000 Canadians every year and are the leading cause of disability worldwide. Survivors often have difficulties with daily activities and participating in their communities due to mobility, communication, cognitive and perceptual impairments, and only about half are able to return to work. With this donation, March of Dimes Canada is acting on its mission to "maximize the independence, personal empowerment and community participation of people with physical disabilities" by establishing the March of Dimes Canada Early Career Professorship in U of T's Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy.
"This is the first major partnership we have with a university and we are excited at the prospect of working with the selected faculty member, with graduate students and with the wider university network to benefit Canadians with disabilities as it relates to our mission," said Andria Spindel, President and CEO of March of Dimes Canada.
The March of Dimes Canada Early Career Professorship will provide a faculty member in the early stages of her or his research career with a well-established framework for investigating interventions and pathways to increase the independence and social integration of brain injury survivors. The professorship will also provide research evidence to enhance existing March of Dimes Canada programs, which serve more than 60,000 Canadians annually.
"We are thrilled and proud to be the recipient of this landmark gift by March of Dimes Canada," says Dr. Susan Rappolt, Chair of U of T's Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. "This professorship creates tremendous capacity for new scientific evidence to improve the quality of life and productivity of individuals with acquired brain injuries and their families through new opportunities for training students and collaborating with our partners across the Rehabilitation Sector."
The University of Toronto's rehabilitation scientists and practitioners work collaboratively to translate new research evidence into therapies that help individuals with brain injuries capitalize on their post-injury strengths to get them out of the hospital and back into their roles in their communities. The Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy is an international leader in research on acquired brain injuries at the individual, community and societal levels.

Source:

University of Toronto

“Bold and game-changing” federal report calls for $4.5 billion in brain-research funding

I would hope that our stroke associations are heavily involved in this, but I can almost guarantee that doing actual work like supplying them with ideas on how this could help stroke survivors has not occurred. Write in the comments exactly when you are doing ASA and NSA and we can discuss if you did a good job or not. I'm betting not.
http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2014/06/05/bold-and-game-changing-federal-report-calls-for-4-5-billion-in-brain-research-funding/
Here are the working group reports;

ACD Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Working Group

A new role for sodium in the brain

Find out from your doctor what this knowledge will be used for in your stroke protocol.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=133798&CultureCode=en
Researchers at McGill University have found that sodium – the main chemical component in table salt – is a unique “on/off” switch for a major neurotransmitter receptor in the brain. This receptor, known as the kainate receptor, is fundamental for normal brain function and is implicated in numerous diseases, such as epilepsy and neuropathic pain.
Prof. Derek Bowie and his laboratory in McGill’s Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, worked with University of Oxford researchers to make the discovery. By offering a different view of how the brain transmits information, their research highlights a new target for drug development. The findings are published in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.
Balancing kainate receptor activity is the key to maintaining normal brain function. For example, in epilepsy, kainate activity is thought to be excessive. Thus, drugs which would shut down this activity are expected to be beneficial.
“It has been assumed for decades that the “on/off” switch for all brain receptors lies where the neurotransmitter binds,” says Prof. Bowie, who also holds a Canada Research Chair in Receptor Pharmacology. “However, we found a completely separate site that binds individual atoms of sodium and controls when kainate receptors get turned on and off.”
The sodium switch is unique to kainate receptors, which means that drugs designed to stimulate this switch, should not act elsewhere in the brain. This would be a major step forward, since drugs often affect many locations, in addition to those they were intended to act on, producing negative side-effects as a result. These so called “off-target effects” for drugs represent one of the greatest challenges facing modern medicine.
“Now that we know how to stimulate kainate receptors, we should be able to design drugs to essentially switch them off,” says Dr. Bowie.
Dr. Philip Biggin’s lab at Oxford University used computer simulations to predict how the presence or absence of sodium would affect the kainate receptor.
The research was made possible in part thanks to a grant from The Brain@McGill, a partnership between Oxford University, Neuroscience Center Zurich (ZNZ) and McGill aimed at enhancing research collaborations in neuroscience.

BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative

A Great Stroke Association would already have a great list of research questions to be answered as part of this. The leader would be personally involved.
1. How exactly does neuroplasticity work? So we can create protocols that work.
2. How do you measure brain reserve? How do you create brain reserve? How much brain reserve is necessary to not get felled by dementia, Alzheimers or stroke?
3. What neurogenesis is possible? How do we measure it? How do we control it?
Mr. Baranski, you were there, what are you doing to assist in this? Not just getting it thru Congress.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/infographics/brain-initiative
And the wackos/conspiracy theorists among us.
Obama's Brain-Control Map to Come