Natural Repair Strategy

After a stroke, the brain is quick to work restoring blood flow around the damaged site by re-arranging and re-structuring the neighbouring vessels. However, scientists aren’t clear to what extent this vascular remodelling process helps a patient recover the skills and behaviours they lost during the stroke. To answer this question, neuroscientists used microscopy to track how blood vessels in the mouse motor cortex changed over a two-week period following ischemic stroke. By labelling different parts of the vascular system, including the thin layer of cells that line blood vessels (in green), they were able to identify the exact vascular remodelling time window during which blood flow was restored around the stroke site, which is often a sign that motor skills are about to come back. Understanding this natural repair strategy in the brain could help scientists design new therapies to make the process better and quicker for stroke patients.

Written by Gaëlle Coullon

Gaëlle Coullon

Writer

Gaëlle is a consultant and trainer in research communication and commercialisation. As an ex-neuroscientist, she is always looking for new ways to combine her love of writing with everything brain related.

• Image by Michael R. Williamson and colleagues, published on the cover of Journal of Neuroscience, Sept 2020
• Institute for Neuroscience, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
• Image copyright held by and reproduced with permission from the Journal of Neuroscience
• Published in Journal of Neuroscience, September 2020