The incredible elastic brain: how neural stem cells expand our minds

Abstract

Brain development was thought to be largely hardwired and accomplished by birth, and the brain was thought to have essentially no regenerative capacity. The remarkable discovery of adult neurogenesis and neural stem cells (NSCs) existing in the mature CNS changed that, allowing us to think optimistically about CNS repair. These discoveries helped to generate a robust field of neural progenitor cell biology, with relevance to CNS development, pathogenesis, the search for novel neurological therapies, as well as our understanding of how the brain works.