ArticleNature communications2017
The soft mechanical signature of glial scars in the central nervous system.
Article in Nature communications, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 192 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
192 citing papers in PubMed, 395 citations in OpenAlex.
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- An ex vivo injury model perfused with whole blood reveals rapid mechanical and transcriptional changes within the spinal cord.Bioengineering & translational medicine · 2026Article
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- Piezo1 in the central nervous system: decoding the mechanical signature of neuroinflammation.Journal of neuroinflammation · 2026Review
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- Pathological Roles of Astrocytes in Traumatic Brain Injury.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2026Review
- Transcriptomic analysis of the physiological responses to injuries induced accompanying intracortical microelectrode implantation.Biomaterials · 2026Article
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- Regulatory T cells attenuate astrogliosis via IL-10/STAT3/PKC/vimentin signaling and promote neurological recovery after spinal cord injury.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2026Article
- Extracellular matrix remodelling in degenerative cervical myelopathy.Brain communications · 2026Article
- Mechanical Remodeling and Mechanosensing after Spinal Cord Injury: From Molecular to Translational Approaches.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2026Review
- Mechanobiology of hippocampal neurogenesis: directing neural stem cell fate through physical cues.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2026Review
- Measurement force, speed, and postmortem time affect the ratio of CNS gray-to-white-matter elasticity.Biophysical journal · 2025Article
- Article
132 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Injury to the central nervous system (CNS) alters the molecular and cellular composition of neural tissue and leads to glial scarring, which inhibits the regrowth of damaged axons. Mammalian glial scars supposedly form a chemical and mechanical barrier to neuronal regeneration. While tremendous effort has been devoted to identifying molecular characteristics of the scar, very little is known about its mechanical properties. Here we characterize spatiotemporal changes of the elastic stiffness of the injured rat neocortex and spinal cord at 1.5 and three weeks post-injury using atomic force microscopy. In contrast to scars in other mammalian tissues, CNS tissue significantly softens after injury. Expression levels of glial intermediate filaments (GFAP, vimentin) and extracellular matrix components (laminin, collagen IV) correlate with tissue softening. As tissue stiffness is a regulator of neuronal growth, our results may help to understand why mammalian neurons do not regenerate after injury.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.