The role of type-2 astrocytes in the repair of central nervous system injury remains poorly un-derstood. In this study, using a relatively simple culture condition in vitro, type-2 astrocytes, differentiated from oligodendrocyte precursor cells by induction with bone morphogenetic pro-tein-4, were co-cultured with dorsal root ganglion neurons. We examined the effects of type-2 astrocytes differentiated from oligodendrocyte precursor cells on the survival and growth of dorsal root ganglion neurons. Results demonstrated that the number of dorsal root ganglion neurons was higher following co-culture of oligodendrocyte precursor cells and type-2 astrocytes than when cultured alone, but lower than that of neurons co-cultured with type-1 astrocytes. The length of the longest process and the length of all processes of a single neuron were shortest in neurons cultured alone, followed by neurons co-cultured with type-2 astrocytes, then neurons co-cultured with oligodendrocyte precursor cells, and longest in neurons co-cultured with type-1 astrocytes. These results indicate that co-culture with type-2 astrocytes can increase neuronal survival rate and process length. However, compared with type-1 astrocytes and oligodendrocyte precursor cells, the promotion effects of type-2 astrocytes on the growth of dorsal root ganglion neurons were weaker.

Myelin regeneration is indispensably important for patients suffering from several central nervous system (CNS) disorders such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and spinal cord injury (SCI), because it is not only essential for restoring neurophysiology, but also protects denuded axons for secondary degeneration. Understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying re-myelination is critical for the development of remyelination-speciifc therapeutic approaches. As remyelination shares certain common mechanisms with developmental myelination, knowledge from study of developmental myelination contributes greatly to emerging myelin regeneration therapies, best evidenced as the recently developed human anti-Nogo receptor interacting pro-tein-1 (LINGO-1) monoclonal antibodies to treat MS patients in clinical trials.

In this review, we outline the major neural plasticity mechanisms that have been identiifed in the adult central nervous system (CNS), and offer a perspective on how they regulate CNS function. In particular we examine how myelin plasticity can operate alongside neurogenesis and synaptic plasticity to inlfuence information processing and transfer in the mature CNS.

Spinal cord injury is a major cause of disability with devastating neurological outcomes and lim-ited therapeutic opportunities, even though there are thousands of publications on spinal cord injury annually. There are two major types of spinal cord injury, transaction of the spinal cord and spinal cord contusion. Both can theoretically be treated, but there is no well documented treatment in human being. As for spinal cord contusion, we have developed an operation with fabulous result.

Secondary degeneration occurs commonly in the central nervous system after traumatic injuries and following acute and chronic diseases, including glaucoma. A constellation of mechanisms have been shown to be associated with secondary degeneration including apoptosis, necrosis, autophagy, oxidative stress, excitotoxicity, derangements in ionic homeostasis and calcium influx. Glial cells, such as microglia, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes, have also been demon-strated to take part in the process of secondary injury. Partial optic nerve transection is a useful model which was established about 13 years ago. The merit of this model compared with other optic nerve injury models used for glaucoma study, including complete optic nerve transection model and optic nerve crush model, is the possibility to separate primary degeneration from secondary degeneration in location. Therefore, it provides a good tool for the study of secondary degeneration. This review will focus on the research progress of the mechanisms of secondary degeneration using partial optic nerve transection model.

Schizophrenia is a common severe mental disorder,the etiology and pathogenesis of which remains to be elu-cidated.Some schizophrenia patients respond poorly to the current pharmacological treatments.Repetitive transcranial mag-netic stimulation (rTMS)treatment is a simple,safe and non-intrusive physical therapy with little side-effects,which has been gradually applied as an adjunctive therapeutic technique for schizophrenia.Recent studies indicated that the rTMS treatment has efficacy on medication-resistant auditory verbal hallucination,negative symptoms and cognitive deficits.This article will briefly review the recent progress in rTMS treatment of schizophrenia,and summarize its potential therapeutic mechanisms. We suggest that rTMS may target damaged white matter and impaired neuroimmuomodulation.