Effects of starch/polycaprolactone-based blends for spinal cord injury regeneration in neurons/glial cells viability and proliferation

Spinal cord injury (SCI) leads to drastic alterations on the quality of life of afflicted individuals. With the advent of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine where approaches combining biomaterials, cells and growth factors are used, one can envisage novel strategies that can adequately tackle this problem. The objective of this study was to evaluate a blend of starch with poly(ε-caprolactone) (SPCL) aimed to be used for the development of scaffolds spinal cord injury (SCI) repair. SPCL linear parallel filaments were deposited on polystyrene coverslips and assays were carried out using primary cultures of hippocampal neurons and glial cells. Light and fluorescence microscopy observations revealed that both cell populations were not negatively affected by the SPCL-based biomaterial. MTS and total protein quantification indicated that both cell viability and proliferation rates were similar to controls. Both neurons and astrocytes occasionally contacted the surface of SPCL filaments through their dendrites and cytoplasmatic processes, respectively, while microglial cells were unable to do so. Using single cell [Ca2+ ]i imaging, hippocampal neurons were observed growing within the patterned channels and were functional as assessed by the response to a 30 mM KCl stimulus. The present data demonstrated that SPCL-based blends are potentially suitable for the development of scaffolds in SCI regenerative medicine.Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology through funds from POCTI and/or FEDER programs (Funding to ICVS, 3B's Research Group and post doctoral fellowship to A.J. Salgado-SFRH/BPD/17595/2004)

Evolution in the Brain, Evolution in the Mind: The Hierarchical Brain and the Interface between Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience

This article first aims to demonstrate the different ways the work of the English neurologist John Hughlings Jackson influenced Freud. It argues that these can be summarized in six points. It is further argued that the framework proposed by Jackson continued to be pursued by twentieth-century neuroscientists such as Papez, MacLean and Panksepp in terms of tripartite hierarchical evolutionary models. Finally, the account presented here aims to shed light on the analogies encountered by psychodynamically oriented neuroscientists, between contemporary accounts of the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system on the one hand, and Freudian models of the mind on the other. These parallels, I will suggest, are not coincidental. They have a historical underpinning, as both accounts most likely originate from a common source: John Hughlings Jackson's tripartite evolutionary hierarchical view of the brain

Short periods of cyclic mechanical strain enhance triple-supplement directed osteogenesis and bone nodule formation by human embryonic stem cells in vitro

10.1089/ten.tea.2012.0308Tissue Engineering - Part A1919-202130-213