NeuroNote 1


          I watched a TEDtalk called “Can the Damaged Brain Repair Itself?”, which was given by Siddharthan Chandran, a neurologist. He discussed how the brain can repair itself, but it cannot repair itself well enough or fast enough for people who have Lou Gehrig’s disease or other degenerative conditions. He proceeded to then discuss some techniques using adult stem cells that could help the brain reconstruct itself. He told us of clinical trial that he did with some colleagues where they took bone marrow, grew them up to stem cells, and then injected them into the participant’s veins. The results lead them to believe that the the stem cells promoted endogenous stem cells to do their job and lay down new myelin.           
            I chose to watch this video because one of my best friend’s dad passed away from Lou Gehrig’s disease and my grandfather has dementia. Therefore, this topic was very interesting to me. I just love to learn about techniques that can help degenerative diseases, and I’m always looking for new topics to learn about degenerative conditions and how they can be treated.
            Something I took away from this talk was learning about stem cells. I have never really known much about stem cells except for things I heard in the media when I was growing up and opinions of other people around me. Therefore, this topic was interesting for me to learn more about and learn about some things that stem cells can do in the body especially with degenerative conditions.

https://www.ted.com/talks/siddharthan_chandran_can_the_damaged_brain_repair_itself/transcript

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