Neurogenesis following Stroke Affecting the Adult Brain

Who the hell is going to actually write up a stroke protocol on exactly how to create neurogenesis for our rehabilitation? IT WILL NEVER GET DONE.
Because we have no stroke strategy due to our fucking failures of stroke associations. Survivors shouldn't have to figure out everything about their recovery, but right now you do because laziness and maybe stupidity.
http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/7/11/a019034.short

1. Olle Lindvall and
2. Zaal Kokaia

+ Author Affiliations

1. Laboratory of Stem Cells and Restorative Neurology, Lund Stem Cell Center, University Hospital, SE-221 84 Lund, Sweden

1. Correspondence: olle.lindvall@med.lu.se

Abstract

A bulk of experimental evidence supports the idea that the stroke-damaged adult brain makes an attempt to repair itself by producing new neurons also in areas where neurogenesis does not normally occur (e.g., the striatum and cerebral cortex). Knowledge about mechanisms regulating the different steps of neurogenesis after stroke is rapidly increasing but still incomplete. The functional consequences of stroke-induced neurogenesis and the level of integration of the new neurons into existing neural circuitries are poorly understood. To have a substantial impact on the recovery after stroke, this potential mechanism for self-repair needs to be enhanced, primarily by increasing the survival and differentiation of the generated neuroblasts. Moreover, for efficient repair, optimization of neurogenesis most likely needs to be combined with promotion of other endogenous neuroregenerative responses (e.g., protection and sprouting of remaining mature neurons, transplantation of neural stem/progenitor cells [NSPC]–derived neurons and glia cells, and modulation of inflammation).

Speech Recognition from Brain Activity

Would this be good enough to help in aphasia? I wonder what area of the brain they are reading?
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=153748&CultureCode=en
Speech is produced in the human cerebral cortex. Brain waves associated with speech processes can be directly recorded with electrodes located on the surface of the cortex. It has now been shown for the first time that is possible to reconstruct basic units, words, and complete sentences of continuous speech from these brain waves and to generate the corresponding text. Researchers at KIT and Wadsworth Center, USA present their ”Brain-to-Text“ system in the scientific journal Frontiers in Neuroscience (doi: 10.3389/fnins.2015.00217).
”It has long been speculated whether humans may communicate with machines via brain activity alone,” says Tanja Schultz, who conducted the present study with her team at the Cognitive Systems Lab of KIT. ”As a major step in this direction, our recent results indicate that both single units in terms of speech sounds as well as continuously spoken sentences can be recognized from brain activity.“
These results were obtained by an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers of informatics, neuroscience, and medicine. In Karlsruhe, the methods for signal processing and automatic speech recognition have been developed and applied. ”In addition to the decoding of speech from brain activity, our models allow for a detailed analysis of the brain areas involved in speech processes and their interaction,” outline Christian Herff und Dominic Heger, who developed the Brain-to-Text system within their doctoral studies.
The present work is the first that decodes continuously spoken speech and transforms it into a textual representation. For this purpose, cortical information is combined with linguistic knowledge and machine learning algorithms to extract the most likely word sequence. Currently, Brain-to-Text is based on audible speech. However, the results are an important first step for recognizing speech from thought alone.
The brain activity was recorded in the USA from 7 epileptic patients, who participated voluntarily in the study during their clinical treatments. An electrode array was placed on the surface of the cerebral cortex (electrocorticography (ECoG)) for their neurological treatment. While patients read aloud sample texts, the ECoG signals were recorded with high resolution in time and space. Later on, the researchers in Karlsruhe analyzed the data to develop Brain-to-Text. In addition to basic science and a better understanding of the highly complex speech processes in the brain, Brain-to-Text might be a building block to develop a means of speech communication for locked-in patients in the future.
A video on the functioning of Brain-to-Text:
http://csl.anthropomatik.kit.edu/publikationen_2934.php
http://www.kit.edu/kit/english/pi_2015_16889.php

The cerebral cortex: we can rebuild it, we have the technology

I'm guessing 50 years before it is useful for humans, this is going after the holy grail while all the smaller and more likely steps are skipped. Thus leaving survivors with more disability during that 50 year wait.
A great stroke association would be following a defined strategy and wouldn't allow researchers to skip steps. But we seem to have no strategy that anyone can point to.
We're supposed to oh and ah over this step in mice. I personally think this is a waste of time at this point.
http://loonylabs.org/2015/03/11/cerebral-cortex-pluripotent-stem-cells-engineering-transplant/