Bellander, Bo-Michael

Cullheim, Staffan

Risling, Mårten

English

PubMed

Mårten Risling

Bo-Michael Bellander

Staffan Cullheim

Frontiers - Publisher Connector

Traumatic Injuries in the Nervous System

Mårten eRisling

Bo-Michael eBellander

Staffan eCullheim

Directory of Open Access Journals

Frontiers in Neurology

Crossref

Traumatic injuries in the nervous system
Mårten Risling*, Bo-Michael Bellander and Staffan Cullheim
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
*Correspondence: marten.risling@ki.se
started an era of ultrastructure research at the Department of 
Anatomy that provided details on the fine structure of the nerv-
ous system.
Herbert Olivecrona had an instrumental role in developing neu-
rosurgery into a modern specialty at Karolinska institutet. After 
Lars Leksell’s description of the gamma motor system, he contin-
ued with clinical work and became a professor of neurosurgery, 
succeeding Olivecrona. He developed instruments for stereotactic 
surgery and the Gamma Knife for non-invasive treatment of brain 
tumors. Thomas Carlstedt started his work on surgical replantation 
of avulsed spinal nerve roots at Karolinska institutet and the hos-
pital. Sweden’s largest trauma center is now located at Karolinska 
sjukhuset in Solna. A new modern hospital building will replace 
the old hospital in 2016, adjacent to new research buildings at the 
campus of Karolinska institutet.
Neurotrauma
The seminal works of Ramon y Cajal demonstrated that on a 
cellular level, the central and peripheral nervous system (CNS 
and PNS), share many injury response patterns. He also provided 
a detailed description of the general lack of regeneration in the 
central nervous system. Furthermore, Cajal predicted the impor-
tance of neurotrophic factors and also showed a few examples 
of regenerative growth in the CNS. Research has not yet been 
able to drastically improve regeneration in the CNS, in spite of 
current knowledge regarding growth factors, inhibitory mol-
ecules, axon guidance mechanisms, and stem cells. Traumatic 
brain injuries (TBI) also face the problem of limited space inside 
the scull, which means that an edema or bleeding rapidly can 
become lethal. To the complexity of the CNS adds a complex 
cascade of secondary injury mechanisms. Development and test-
ing of curative drugs is complicated due to the great variation 
among patients and injury patterns. The only factor that can 
improve this situation is more research. For obvious reasons, 
research must be carefully planned and significant efforts are 
required to ensure a good translation between experimental 
and clinical work.
the 200 year aNNiversary Neurotrauma symposium
The three sessions of the symposium covered a number of 
themes in current neurotrauma research, such as injury mecha-
nisms and new injury models for experimental work. A couple 
of the lectures provided detailed information on the influence 
small differences in genetic background, such as single nucle-
otide polymorphism, can have on the outcome of an injury. 
Current trends in diagnosis and drug development were dis-
cussed. Army Col. Jamie Grimes, MD, national director of the 
a Brief history of KaroliNsKa iNstitutet
Like many other countries in Europe, nineteenth century Sweden 
had suffered from an extensive period of wars. After a dev-
astating Finnish war against Russia 1808–1809, the Swedish 
king Karl XIII decided to start a new training facility for Army 
surgeons. This new institute was named “Medico-Chirurgiska 
Institutet,” but soon the prefix “Karolinska” was added. The word 
“Karoliner” had been used to denote soldiers during the reign 
of the warrior kings Karl XI and Karl XII. After 200 years of 
peace, this word has fortunately become more associated with 
a medical university.
Originally, the institute was located in central Stockholm close 
to the Royal castle, but it moved in the late 1940s to Solna, on 
the north side of the city. Karolinska institutet is now Sweden’s 
third oldest medical school and is associated with the Karolinska 
University Hospital. A committee at the institute appoints the laure-
ates for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Several laureates 
have been awarded for outstanding studies on the nervous system, 
including Camillo Golgi, Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Charles Scott 
Sherrington, Otto Loewi, Joseph Erlanger, Herbert Spencer Gasser, 
Andrew Fielding Huxley, Julius Axelrod, Ulf von Euler, Bernard 
Katz, Roger Sperry, Ragnar Granit, David Hubel, Torsten Wiesel, 
Arvid Carlsson, Paul Greengard, Eric Kandel, Richard Axel, and 
Linda Buck.
Neuroscience research has been a strong area for a substan-
tial amount of time at both Karolinska institutet and Karolinska 
University Hospital. Future neurotrauma research at this location 
has a solid foundation to rest upon. It is impossible to name all 
the distinguished neuroscientists from Karolinska institutet in this 
editorial, but a few examples can be noted.
One early example is “Studien in der Anatomie des 
Nervensystems und des Bindegewebes” by Axel Key and Gustaf 
Retzius in the 1870s. Ulf von Euler’s studies on storage mecha-
nisms of adrenergic neurotransmitters were succeeded by the 
work of Nils Hillarp and his successful followers Kjell Fuxe, 
Tomas Hökfelt, and many others. Hökfelt is also well-known 
for his studies on neuropeptides, many of which had been dis-
covered by von Euler or Viktor Mutt. Neurophysiology has a long 
and strong tradition with scientists like Ragnar Granit, Curt von 
Euler, and Sten Grillner, who demonstrated the importance of 
circuits for locomotion in the spinal cord. The late Håkan Persson 
and his associates Patrik Ernfors and Carlos Ibáñez have studied 
and identified neurotrophic growth factors. Jonas Frisén and 
Ernst Arenas have conducted pioneering work with neuronal 
stem cells. Lars Olson has been active in many areas, includ-
ing experiments with surgical reconstruction after spinal cord 
lesions. The methodological development by Fritiof Sjöstrand 
www.frontiersin.org February 2012 | Volume 3 | Article 26 | 1
Editorial
published: 24 February 2012
doi: 10.3389/fneur.2012.00026
Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) introduced 
a session on military related neurotrauma. Keynote speakers for 
the three sessions were Andrew Maas, Thomas Carlstedt, and 
Jordan Grafman.
We are delighted to present a cross section of the presentations 
from the Karolinska anniversary symposium in this Research Topic 
and its associated book.
Received: 10 February 2012; accepted: 10 February 2012; published online: 24 February 2012.
Citation: Risling M, Bellander B-M and Cullheim S (2012) Traumatic injuries in the 
nervous system. Front. Neur. 3:26. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2012.00026
This article was submitted to Frontiers in Neurotrauma, a specialty of Frontiers in Neurology.
Copyright © 2012 Risling, Bellander and Cullheim. This is an open-access article distributed 
under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial License, which 
permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in other forums, provided the 
original authors and source are credited.
Frontiers in Neurology | Neurotrauma  February 2012 | Volume 3 | Article 26 | 2
Risling et al. Traumatic injuries in nervous system


http://doaj.org/search?source=%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%22bool%22%3A%7B%22must%22%3A%5B%7B%22term%22%3A%7B%22id%22%3A%227fa9df8a9b2e4e2fbcdc28be5d23f5a7%22%7D%7D%5D%7D%7D%7D

Traumatic Injuries in the Nervous System

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Frontiers - Publisher Connector

Directory of Open Access Journals

Crossref

Frontiers - Publisher Connector