Nerve growth Growth factors Factors Commentary

Rita Levi-Montalcini, Stanley Cohen neuroscience

Nerve growth

• Rita Levi-Montalcini studied the growth of nerve fibers
• in chicken embryos, working in a laboratory she set up in her bedroom.
• By amputating limbs inside eggs, she found that nerve growth
• in the embryonic dorsal root ganglion is proportional to the size of the limb tissue.
• Then she discovered that a mouse tumor, transplanted into the embryo,
• produced a substance that promoted nerve growth,
• which Stanley Cohen was able to isolate and analyze.

Growth factors

• Nerve growth factor
• causes axonal growth.
• Other factors,
• proteins that bind
• to cell-receptors
• like keys that unlock doors,
• govern the growth
• of all other tissues.

Factors

• Curiosity,
• luck,
• ignorance,
• ego,
• and a good liberal education . . .
• some combination of traits,
• combined with environmental factors,
• ignoring inessential complaints,
• improves the mind, matures the soul.
• Some say the young must travel,
• learn a language, a musical instrument,
• be exposed to a variety of religious experiences,
• and experience the beauty of wilderness.
• Whatever we can do to counteract the processes
• of nationalism, tribalism, and fanaticism would be good.
• It would be nice if repeating our successes
• were not in conflict with wanting everyone to think for oneself.