Chatting with science now online: Can the damaged brain be repaired?

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Chatting with science now online: Can the damaged brain be repaired?

May 28, 2020 @ 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

The IV Cycle of colloquiums “Chatting with science”, organized by the Real Zaragoza Tennis Club with the collaboration of the Institute of Materials Science of Aragon, ICMA (CSIC-University of Zaragoza), will feature on Thursday, May 28, with the presence of Carmen Castro, PhD in Molecular Biology from the Autonomous University of Madrid and Professor of Physiology at the University of Cádiz.

During the conference, which, due to the health alert, changes its format to an online version, we will talk about the brain and whether or not it has the capacity to repair itself. In general, living beings have the ability to replace or restore parts of their organism that they have lost. Thus, a starfish is capable of completely regenerating from just one of its arms and the central disk. We also know that the human liver itself regenerates completely from a portion of it. However, when we talk about the brain things are somewhat different. Some pathologies such as strokes, trauma or neurodegenerative diseases destroy neurons in our brain causing a loss of function. The question is: does the brain have the ability to replace lost neurons and recover function? Although Cajal's studies indicated that nothing in the adult brain could regenerate, recent studies have shown that neurons can be generated from stem cells that are in the brain solely with the function of replacing lost neurons. In this talk we will explain how these new neurons are generated and how physical exercise and some good habits can help this replacement.

Carmen Castro has a degree in Biology from the Complutense University of Madrid and obtained a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the Autonomous University of Madrid, while working as a researcher at the Ramón y Cajal Hospital in Madrid. In her doctoral thesis she studied the molecular mechanisms underlying Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy. Subsequently, she moved to the University of Navarra to carry out postdoctoral work in the Department of Hepatology and Gene Therapy and later worked as a researcher in the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the USA. Finally, she returned to Spain after obtaining one of the prestigious Ramón y Cajal contracts and stabilized herself as a professor and researcher in the Area of ​​Physiology at the University of Cádiz. There she leads a research group aimed at studying the molecular and cellular mechanisms that govern neuronal replacement in both healthy and injured adult brains. She is the author of multiple research articles in international journals. In 2017 she received the Cortes de Cádiz Prize for Scientific Research.

In order to access the talk it is necessary to request an access code to the email address: palace@unizar.es before May 27, 2020.

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Date:
28 May 2020
Time:
7: 00 pm - 8: 30 pm
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IIS Aragon
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