Brain Repair

This course will start with an overview of the evolution of ideas about the brain and how we came to think about what it does and how it works. Then there will be several lectures discussing the causes and the mechanisms of traumatic brain injury and stroke. This will be followed by a review of current approaches to treatment and repair of the damaged nervous system. In this context, we will then examine how males and females may differ in the outcomes of different types of brain injury occurring early or later in life. We will conclude the course with a discussion of aging and the brain. As we age, the chances of developing a degenerative nervous system disease or injury increase substantially. Accordingly, there will also be a class on: “What we think we know about dementia and related diseases” and how to repair them.

Suggested Reading: A list of readings will be provided prior to the start of the course. 

Don Stein retired in 2021 from Emory University School of Medicine as Asa G. Candler Professor and Distinguished Professor in Emergency Medicine and Neuroscience. His early work on sex differences in recovery from brain injury led to decades of research on the role of hormones in plasticity and repair of CNS injury.