Narrator: This is Science Today. Stem cells are providing new hope for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. A recent University of California, San Francisco study demonstrates the existence of adult neural stem cells in the human brain, proving that the brain has the potential for self-regeneration. According to Nader Sanai, who led the study, these findings may one day revolutionize clinical neuroscience as we know it.

Sanai: Up until now the field of the clinical neurosciences and neurosurgery has predominantly been a field where one attempts to eliminate and restrict damaging disease processes. After that initial intervention there aren't many tools at our disposal for actually reconstituting what was lost. So, here we have perhaps the first tool in a new line of therapies where one would have the possibility of reforming systems or cells that were damaged or lost in a disease process.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.