Injury and repair in developing brain.

P reterm birth results in considerable disability, yet several reports suggest recovery from injury in developing brain. Developmental compensatory mechanisms may promote neural and functional plasticity, and numerous experimental studies have documented the brain’s ability to engage in regenerative mechanisms to potentially replace injured cells. We review available evidence for recovery from injury in models for the preterm brain and offer hypotheses for targeting time dependent molecular and cellular repair mechanisms that have been recently gathered from animal studies. A better understanding of these adaptive cellular and molecular mechanisms will help clinicians apply knowledge derived from animal models to clinical situations.