Pharmacological Approaches to the Treatment of Brain and Spinal Cord Injury

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxi

   PDF

2. Therapeutic Approaches in Subjects with Brain Lesions

   • Simón Brailowsky

   Pages 1-21

3. Arachidonic Acid Metabolites and Membrane Lipid Changes in Central Nervous System Injury

   • Paul Demediuk, Alan I. Faden

   Pages 23-42

4. Experimental Spinal Cord Injury

   • Michael S. Beattie, Bradford T. Stokes, Jacqueline C. Bresnahan

   Pages 43-74

5. Serotonin Antagonists Reduce Central Nervous System Ischemic Damage

   • Justin A. Zivin

   Pages 75-88

6. Opiate Antagonists In CNS Injury

   • Tracy K. McIntosh, Alan I. Faden

   Pages 89-102

7. Adaptive Changes in Central Dopaminergic Neurons after Injury

   • Franz Hefti, William J. Weiner

   Pages 103-119

8. Catecholamines and Recovery of Function after Brain Damage

   • Dennis M. Feeney, Richard L. Sutton

   Pages 121-142

9. Ganglioside Involvement in Membrane-Mediated Transfer of Trophic Information

   • R. Dal Toso, G. Ferrari, G. Vantini, G. Toffano, A. Leon, S. D. Skaper

   Pages 143-165

10. Anatomic Mechanisms Whereby Ganglioside Treatment Induces Brain Repair

    • Bernhard A. Sabel

    Pages 167-194

11. Gangliosides and Functional Recovery from Brain Injury

    • Gary L. Dunbar, Donald G. Stein

    Pages 195-218

12. Acute Ganglioside Effects Limit CNS Injury

    • Stephen E. Karpiak, Yu S. Li, Sahebarao P. Mahadik

    Pages 219-231

13. A Rationale for the Use of Melanocortins in Neural Injury

    • Paul De Koning, Willem Hendrik Gispen

    Pages 233-258

14. Developmental Neurobiology and the Physiopathology of Brain Injury

    • Gustave Moonen, Paul Delree, Pierre Leprince, Jean-Michel Rigo, Bernard Rogister, Philippe P. Lefebvre

    Pages 259-280

15. Growth-Associated Triggering Factors and Central Nervous System Response to Injury

    • Michal Schwartz, Adrian Harel, Cathy Stein-Izsak, Vered Lavie, Yosef Bawnik, Arie Solomon et al.

    Pages 281-300

16. Growth Factor Induction and Order of Events in CNS Repair

    • Manuel Nieto-Sampedro

    Pages 301-337

17. Nerve Growth Factor

    • Bruno Will, Viviane Pallage, Guy Toniolo, Franz Hefti

    Pages 339-360

18. Recovery from Stroke

    • Andrew Kertesz

    Pages 361-376

19. Back Matter

    Pages 377-385

    PDF

Although there are over 400,000 people each year in the United States alone who suffer from traumatic injury to the central nervous system (CNS), no phar­ macological treatment is currently available. Considering the enormity of the problem in terms of human tragedy as well as the economic burden to families and societies alike, it is surprising that so little effort is being made to develop treatments for these disorders. Although no one can become inured to the victims of brain or spinal cord injuries, one reason that insufficient time and effort have been devoted to research on recovery is that it is a generally held medical belief that nervous system injuries are simply not amenable to treatment. At best, current therapies are aimed at providing symptomatic relief or focus on re­ habilitative measures and the teaching of alternative behavioral strategies to help patients cope with their impairments, with only marginal results in many cases. Only within the last decade have neuroscientists begun to make serious inroads into understanding and examining the inherent "plasticity" found in the adult CNS. Ten years or so ago, very few researchers or clinicians would have thought that damaged central neurons could sprout new terminals or that intact nerve fibers in a damaged pathway could proliferate to replace inputs from neurons that died as a result of injury.

• CNS
• brain
• brain injury
• catecholamines
• dopamine
• forebrain
• nervous system
• neurobiology
• neurons
• opioid
• physiology
• rehabilitation
• research
• spinal cord
• trauma

• Clark University, Worcester, USA

  Donald G. Stein

• University of Munich, Munich, Federal Republic of Germany

  Bernhard A. Sabel

Policies and ethics