> “The goal is to have a medicine that stroke patients can take that produces the effects of rehabilitation,” said Dr. S. Thomas Carmichael, the study’s lead author and professor and chair of UCLA Neurology. “Rehabilitation after stroke is limited in its actual effects because most patients cannot sustain the rehab intensity needed for stroke recovery.
Sounds truly amazing, I have known two people who had severe strokes - one's PT was contingent on triaging resources to whoever was likely to recover more, another simply hated PT and speech therapy and often refused to participate or do the exercises. Even if it didn't help recovery a medicine like this would have reduced the stress of everyone involved.
mlmonkey•May 11, 2026
Are there any supplements that can work for neurogenesis? I've heard Lions Mane extract can do this, but I'm not sure. Anybody know of anything?
dirtbagskier•May 11, 2026
Cardiovascular exercise and strength training. Both are thought to contribute to neurogenesis, even in healthy people
throwforfeds•May 11, 2026
There's (minimal) research on psilocybin doing just that. One of the tragedies of prohibition is that we just weren't able to study these psychedelic compounds easily for 50+ years.
grvdrm•May 11, 2026
Have any sources? I’d love to read what you are thinking about.
I haven’t used psilocybin in a clinical setting but have gone through an alternative psychedelic-assisted therapy process. Very interesting results and many positives.
Not to take away from your point about psilocybin but the mushroom brought up, lions mane, is not hallucinogenic.
toasty228•May 11, 2026
If you don't sleep 8+ hours a day every single day, exercise regularly, live in a place with clean air, eat clean food, don't drink alcohol, etc. you're losing your time, no amount of supplement will make up for our modern way of life, you're going to optimise the 0.1% while missing the 99.9% that matters
SilentM68•May 11, 2026
That is true, but keep in mind that routine is very difficult to do for someone that makes their living running the rat race, with stress, no time, responsibilities, worry, untreated health problems, etc. If you have the money, job security, then you'll have peace of mind. That will then allow one to live that kind of optimized lifestyle.
rexpop•May 11, 2026
This is why we cannot abide scabs.
SilentM68•May 12, 2026
I see your point :)
rexpop•May 12, 2026
Self-respect is an act of charity.
caycep•May 11, 2026
Of note, cautionary tale is too much neurogenesis is brain cancer...
dymk•May 11, 2026
No, brain cancer is brain cancer.
caycep•May 11, 2026
which is poorly differentiated cells undergoing unchecked neurogenesis...
dymk•May 12, 2026
That’s like saying a fire on an oil rig is the same as combustion in a car engine
adastra22•May 12, 2026
It’s not as bad an analogy as you make it sound. It is more like “fire is what makes our factories run, and oil fuels fire. So let’s douse our factories in gasoline to speed things up.”
Nicotine is the only psychoactive substance proven to increase intellectual function. Rote neurogenisis does not - much in the same way height isn’t a proxy for IQ. Stimulants like Adderall, Caffiene, etc are Dunning-Kruger by proxy.
oharapj•May 12, 2026
You mean placebo? Not sure that Dunning-Kruger is applicable here
sysreq_•May 12, 2026
Maybe a better term is “stimulant-induced metacognitive miscalibration”. An induced a state of overconfidence similar to Dunning-Kruger - even thought the underlying mechanism is different.
You perceive the idea as great not because you suddenly understand it better or know more. You think the idea is great because of the dopamine flooding your brain. And much like Dunning-Kruger, even thought you might think you did better, real world results don’t match your expectations.
aeonik•May 11, 2026
Alpha-GPC and Uridine Monophosphate appear to have some effect, though minor. Also not exactly neurogenesis, but adjacent stuff. Evidence is complicated, there seems to be a signal but it's a weak effect.
I've read online that "Bacopa Monnieri" is a particularly strong and researched herbal supplement for cognitive maintenance, enhancement and neuroprotection, with the potential of supporting neurogenesis.
I've not tried that stuff since money is hard to come by these days. There have been a few human studies.
I think savvy universities want PIs who are savvy enough to realize that the point of these is to boost measurable visibility like citation count and h-index, so the headline of a news release boosting the article doesn't matter. They can always blame a copy editor for the headlines. It could read "world peace solved with moon juice." The provost would only care if it generated negative feedback. So it's the PR department's job to juice it as much as possible without getting blowback.
somewhatgoated•May 11, 2026
Isn’t that where all drugs start out?
But yea the headline doesnt tell the full story
cwillu•May 12, 2026
“…in mice” isn't a criticism of the science, it's a criticism of the popularization.
adastra22•May 12, 2026
There are many drugs that don’t work on mice.
MattCruikshank•May 11, 2026
If you've read Ted Chiang's "Understand," you'll understand why this headline made my eyes pop out. For those who haven't, it's in the "Stories of Your Life and Others" collection, which includes the short story that the film Arrival was based on.
TheGRS•May 11, 2026
I just read this a few months ago and it was my first thought as well! Like Flowers for Algernon taken to its extremes.
jadbox•May 11, 2026
I'm a big fan of Ted Chiang's "Understand" short story, but I think your way over hyping the study there: more neuron growth does not even generally translate to higher intelligence and can often introduce a variety of degenerative effects because pathways are not being grown a an organized systematic way through natural process of experience adaptation.
locallost•May 12, 2026
Thanks for the hint. I'd always thought the movie was inspired by Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5. The premise was the same, and even the aliens looked somewhat similar. Vonnegut jokingly described them as an upside down toilet brush.
nubg•May 11, 2026
How do they test this on mice? Do they trigger brain seizures in them?
Traubenfuchs•May 11, 2026
Many different techniques for different types of stroke:
We can block certain arteries mechanically by inserting a tool, inject photosensitive agent then cause a targeted clot with a laser, inject clotting agent, choke, inject blood vessel dissolving agent and re-inject its own blood.
I understand why we research this but I just could not do it.
"DDL-920 is a potent, selective and brain permeable negative allosteric modulator (NAM) of the γ-aminobutyric acid type A receptors (GABARs), inhibits parvalbumin (PV) expressing interneurons (PV+INs) and consequently enhances γ-oscillations both in vitro and in vivo."
> This type of neuron helps generate a brain rhythm, termed a gamma oscillation, which links neurons together so that they form coordinated networks to produce a behavior, such as movement. Stroke causes the brain to lose gamma oscillations. Successful physical rehabilitation in both laboratory mice and humans brought gamma oscillations back into the brain and, in the mouse model, repaired the lost connections of parvalbumin neurons.
>Carmichael and the team then identified two candidate drugs that might produce gamma oscillations after stroke. These drugs specifically work to excite parvalbumin neurons.
Asking while being total layperson here - can we generate those gamma oscillations by an [may be implanted] electronic device?
Edit: and google search to help, judging by the dates seems to be a pretty fresh field :
"... by pairing robotic rehabilitation with a clinical-like noninvasive 40 Hz transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation, we achieved similar motor improvements mediated by the effective restoring of movement-related gamma band power, improvement of PV-IN maladaptive network dynamics, and increased PV-IN connections in premotor cortex. "
It also sounds like getting an exoskeleton for such patients can be helpful not only to perform immediate tasks, it also can be a part of the restoring process.
nose•May 11, 2026
Could this treatment also help with other neurodegenerative diseases?
padolsey•May 11, 2026
My understanding was that strokes caused brain cell death, and that there was no coming back from that, but my neurologists would speak of 'bruised' brain cells, and that after weeks or months or even years you can see recovered function. UCLA's work here is targeting this disconnection and the lost rhythm in the surviving, distant networks. However there is, as yet, NO concievable intervention that could recover function from cell death at that center of the infarct.
foota•May 12, 2026
One wonders if someday we might be able to resurrect the neural network from dead cells by somehow reviving the connections between neurons. I imagine that the connections stay, but become dormant when the neuron dies.
steve_taylor•May 12, 2026
Perhaps, but I think that by the time we're that far advanced, strokes will be entirely preventable.
OneDeuxTriSeiGo•May 12, 2026
Strokes will never be preventable. You can mitigate them but a stroke isn't really a disease. It's a symptom.
An ischemic stroke (i.e. stroke due to a clot) caused by vascular or cardiac issues can be mitigated. A cryptogenic stroke however is idiopathic and therefore has no understood cause. These types of strokes make up 30-40% of all strokes. Unless we figure out their cause, there's no way to really prevent them.
But then there's also hemorrhagic strokes which are an entirely separate category that has causes and mitigations more or less diametrically opposed to those for ischemic strokes.
And of course those are just your broad painted categories and they are generally looked at as the start of a medical emergency but strokes happen all the time as a consequence of other medical emergencies.
Even if you could perfectly prevent strokes in generally healthy populations, those same people may still end up suffering from a stroke during a surgery or during/after a major accident or injury. No amount of preventative medication can prevent someone suffering a stroke caused by a brain bleed after a car accident. Likewise for someone with a crush injury, internal bleeding, or broken bones that end up throwing a clot which makes it into the brain.
So any advancement in halting and reversing damage from a stroke will be a massive boon for emergency medicine until the end of time. Unless of course we somehow find a way to cure/render humans immune to blunt force trauma or lacerations.
adastra22•May 12, 2026
Sure you can. Just not with any technology on the horizon. But there is conceivable technology (e.g. medical nanotechnology) that could prevent strokes or stop them as they are happening.
asdff•May 12, 2026
There is nothing to resurrect. They get digested by the microglia.
foota•May 12, 2026
Ah, I didn't know that existed. TIL
asdff•May 12, 2026
There are people who are missing huge percentages of their brain from injury or other issues and lead a seemingly normal life.
The original paper did not say that a huge percentage of their brain was missing [1], that was the journalist's flourish based on their own misunderstanding.
Tissue can be compressed, stretched, reorganized, or displaced especially to compensate for a congenital condition - the patient's brain had a lifetime to adapt to hydrocephalus, which pushed on the other brain tissue. The gray cortical shell is clearly visible in those images and their volume on a scan is not representative of neuron count or synaptic capacity.
There are far more dramatic cases of brain damage and neuroplasticity that reorganizes major functions, but there are a lot of caveats.
My understanding is that while brain cell death (outside of the hippocampus, at least) cannot regenerate, the connections and networks can.
But neurons regenerating connections between each other is, afaik, been pretty mainstream for awhile. The brain can't generate new cells, but it can rewire the connections between them, is what I understand. From reading the article, it seems to only claim rewiring connections, not regenerating cells.
There are a ton of upcoming drugs that help stimulating rewiring, for instance:
There is lots of neural regeneration in the brain at the cellular level. The science on this is changing quickly.
But even though there are new brain cells growing, that does not mean you can reform lost structure.
oneshtein•May 12, 2026
Lion’s mane mushroom and extracts are used by boxers to repair their brains. But it cannot be patented.
deepsun•May 12, 2026
My understanding is that brain is composed of way more neurons than required, for resiliency. So if it gets a "bruise" in some part, when even a large portion of the cells are dead -- it can still function at 100%. Like a programmer without a finger. The problem is visible only when all the cells in some part are dead.
That's why crows, with their low brain mass are pretty clever (and why all arguments equating brain size and smartness are wrong).
Just my layman understanding.
sigmoid10•May 12, 2026
Crows (and certain other bird species) have a peculiar forebrain (different in structure but similar in function/evolution to the neocortex in mammals) with neuron counts rivalling primates. So the nr of neurons still matters, but likely not across the entire brain.
metalman•May 12, 2026
my understanding is that extream migrators actualy consume (use as energy) parts of there own brains durring there epic flights, and other species do something similar in the winter and regrow parts of there brains every spring.
sigmoid10•May 12, 2026
It is true that they can shrink some organs to reduce weight and store extra fat, but the brain is not one of them. Would be pretty bad, because brain cells can't regrow like e.g. a liver can.
rasmus1610•May 12, 2026
it is more like that the brain learns to use other regions or neurons to do the tasks of the dead brain cells. The brain cells that are dead due to ischemia are dead and will usually be collected by microglia and after some time there are defects in the brain where the ischemia was.
hank2000•May 12, 2026
My understanding was that psychedelics have proven to be effective at opening up a “critical period” where a brain can rewire itself like when in childhood. Wonder if this is related.
12 Comments
Sounds truly amazing, I have known two people who had severe strokes - one's PT was contingent on triaging resources to whoever was likely to recover more, another simply hated PT and speech therapy and often refused to participate or do the exercises. Even if it didn't help recovery a medicine like this would have reduced the stress of everyone involved.
I haven’t used psilocybin in a clinical setting but have gone through an alternative psychedelic-assisted therapy process. Very interesting results and many positives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omberacetam
You perceive the idea as great not because you suddenly understand it better or know more. You think the idea is great because of the dopamine flooding your brain. And much like Dunning-Kruger, even thought you might think you did better, real world results don’t match your expectations.
I've not tried that stuff since money is hard to come by these days. There have been a few human studies.
You can find more info here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=bacopa+monnieri+cognit...
and here:
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/bacopa-monnieri
I think savvy universities want PIs who are savvy enough to realize that the point of these is to boost measurable visibility like citation count and h-index, so the headline of a news release boosting the article doesn't matter. They can always blame a copy editor for the headlines. It could read "world peace solved with moon juice." The provost would only care if it generated negative feedback. So it's the PR department's job to juice it as much as possible without getting blowback.
We can block certain arteries mechanically by inserting a tool, inject photosensitive agent then cause a targeted clot with a laser, inject clotting agent, choke, inject blood vessel dissolving agent and re-inject its own blood.
I understand why we research this but I just could not do it.
"DDL-920 is a potent, selective and brain permeable negative allosteric modulator (NAM) of the γ-aminobutyric acid type A receptors (GABARs), inhibits parvalbumin (PV) expressing interneurons (PV+INs) and consequently enhances γ-oscillations both in vitro and in vivo."
https://www.probechem.com/products_DDL-920.html
>Carmichael and the team then identified two candidate drugs that might produce gamma oscillations after stroke. These drugs specifically work to excite parvalbumin neurons.
Asking while being total layperson here - can we generate those gamma oscillations by an [may be implanted] electronic device?
Edit: and google search to help, judging by the dates seems to be a pretty fresh field :
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
"... by pairing robotic rehabilitation with a clinical-like noninvasive 40 Hz transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation, we achieved similar motor improvements mediated by the effective restoring of movement-related gamma band power, improvement of PV-IN maladaptive network dynamics, and increased PV-IN connections in premotor cortex. "
It also sounds like getting an exoskeleton for such patients can be helpful not only to perform immediate tasks, it also can be a part of the restoring process.
An ischemic stroke (i.e. stroke due to a clot) caused by vascular or cardiac issues can be mitigated. A cryptogenic stroke however is idiopathic and therefore has no understood cause. These types of strokes make up 30-40% of all strokes. Unless we figure out their cause, there's no way to really prevent them.
But then there's also hemorrhagic strokes which are an entirely separate category that has causes and mitigations more or less diametrically opposed to those for ischemic strokes.
And of course those are just your broad painted categories and they are generally looked at as the start of a medical emergency but strokes happen all the time as a consequence of other medical emergencies.
Even if you could perfectly prevent strokes in generally healthy populations, those same people may still end up suffering from a stroke during a surgery or during/after a major accident or injury. No amount of preventative medication can prevent someone suffering a stroke caused by a brain bleed after a car accident. Likewise for someone with a crush injury, internal bleeding, or broken bones that end up throwing a clot which makes it into the brain.
So any advancement in halting and reversing damage from a stroke will be a massive boon for emergency medicine until the end of time. Unless of course we somehow find a way to cure/render humans immune to blunt force trauma or lacerations.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-thursday-...
Tissue can be compressed, stretched, reorganized, or displaced especially to compensate for a congenital condition - the patient's brain had a lifetime to adapt to hydrocephalus, which pushed on the other brain tissue. The gray cortical shell is clearly visible in those images and their volume on a scan is not representative of neuron count or synaptic capacity.
There are far more dramatic cases of brain damage and neuroplasticity that reorganizes major functions, but there are a lot of caveats.
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy
My understanding is that while brain cell death (outside of the hippocampus, at least) cannot regenerate, the connections and networks can.
But neurons regenerating connections between each other is, afaik, been pretty mainstream for awhile. The brain can't generate new cells, but it can rewire the connections between them, is what I understand. From reading the article, it seems to only claim rewiring connections, not regenerating cells.
There are a ton of upcoming drugs that help stimulating rewiring, for instance:
https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/new-drug-candidate-targeting-sy...
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8190578/
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324410
etc.
But even though there are new brain cells growing, that does not mean you can reform lost structure.
That's why crows, with their low brain mass are pretty clever (and why all arguments equating brain size and smartness are wrong).
Just my layman understanding.
https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/148/6/1862/8052899?gu...