Healing Brain Injuries

Injuries to the brain can leave people paralyzed or brain damaged.

Injuries to bones and joints can leave people with a lifetime of pain

Now doctors are working to fix both problems.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are trying to fix injured brains.

Doctors are injecting tiny strings of amino acids in the brain and actually regrowing nerve cells.

The strings form a framework for nerves to grow across.
“You inject this into the area that has been injured in the brain and it forms a gel, and it actually causes the brain to heal itself,” explains MIT Neruroscientist, Rutlege Ellis-Behnke.

It worked on hamsters with lost vision and 75% had their sight return.

Across the country at the University of Missouri scientists are fixing another body part.

Using dogs, researchers are hoping to create biological implants with living cells that would eventually replace metal and plastic.

They are actually transforming cells from a Petri dish to cartilage that would work in your knee.

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