Dr. Gary Steinberg

That's not controversial anymore.

We know that other circuits can take over for circuits that were dead.

And we know now, and this is some of the work that we're doing with chronic stroke patients who we thought could not recover after six months at all, we know that there are ways of promoting regeneration or recovery of function.

We're still working out the details of that.

But, for instance, we've done studies, and this is still in clinical trial phase, with patients who are years out from a stroke.

They've been through rehab.

They've been through physical therapy.

90% or more of recovery after a stroke occurs in the first six months.

After that time, you know patients are not going to recover.

And now we are finding in some of our early trials with patients that if you, for instance, put in stem cells into the brain,

Or another treatment which was approved by the FDA, the very first for chronic stroke, if you put a stimulator on the vagus nerve in the neck and stimulate coupled with physical therapy, intensive physical therapy, you can improve arm function in those patients.

In our patients that we've treated in multiple trials, we're seeing early indications that patients years out from a stroke

can start to recover function in their arms, in their legs, in their speech.

And we don't know all the mechanisms, but the old notion that these circuits are dead is simply not true.

They can be resurrected.

And so this is part of the excitement about discovery and doing research and trying to translate into the clinical arena.

Right.

It has to do with plasticity.

And we all wish we were neonates or infants because the body, including the brain, is so plastic.

That's the ability to regenerate tissue and circuits and recover.