The brain has an ability to regain function after traumatic injury, even though it is often said that neurons cannot regenerate. This raises an important question: how does healing occur? In a new JNeurosci paper published today (December 15), Athanasios Alexandris and his team at Johns Hopkins University used mice to investigate how the visual system responds and repairs itself after trauma.
Neurons Reconnect Through Extensive Branch Sprouting
The researchers examined how cells in the eye reestablished communication with the brain after injury. They found that the cells that survived the damage produced additional branches, allowing them to link with a greater number of neurons in the brain.
The growth of these new branches was so substantial that eye-to-brain connectivity reached levels similar to those seen before the injury. Measurements of neural activity confirmed that these restored connections were working.
The study also revealed a key difference between males and females: female mice showed slower or incomplete recovery.
Sex Differences in Brain Repair and Future Directions
The authors explain that their findings highlight a compensatory repair process that varies by sex. As Alexandris states, “We didn’t expect to see sex differences, but this aligns with clinical observations in humans. Women experience more lingering symptoms from concussion or brain injury than men. Understanding the mechanism behind the branch sprouting we observed—and what delays or prevents this mechanism in females—could eventually point toward strategies to promote recovery from traumatic or other forms of neural injury.”
The team plans to continue investigating what drives these differences and how these mechanisms operate in males and females.
Reference: “Recovery of retinal terminal fields after traumatic brain injury: evidence of collateral sprouting and sexual dimorphism” by Athanasios S. Alexandris, Jaeyoon Yi, Chang Liu, Joseph Belamarich, Zahra Alam, Abhishek Vats, Anthony Peng, Derek S. Welsbie, Donald J. Zack and Vassilis E. Koliatsos, 14 December 2025, Journal of Neuroscience.
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0792-25.2025
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