Special lecture: glial reactivity after damage: implications for scar formation and neuronal recovery.

It has been known for decades that acute neuronal damage caused by stroke, traumatic injury, infection, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and other central nervous system (CNS) insults sets in motion a complex cascade of events that ultimately leads to the formation of a long-lived glial scar (Fig. 5.1). The ability of glial scars to inhibit axon growth has provided strong motivation to determine the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in their formation. Moreover, manipulation of injury-induced gliotic scars could be of great clinical relevance and, thus, this has become an important goal in the neurosciences.