When these authors looked at the spinal cords of their rats, they found many spinal axons had crossed the injury site. OEG cells surrounded all such axons. Despite the presence of OEG cells, scar tissue of the kind normally produced by glial cells in spinal injuries still occurred. The OEG cells, however, somehow kept that scar tissue from stopping neuron growth. The pictures here show how different kinds of neuron regrow in the spincord using OEGs.
B shows the regrowth of noradrenergic axons invaded the gray areas.
Finally in C, the diagram shows how serotonergic axons grew not only in the same regions as noradrenergic ones, but also in a center area. Not all regrowth for all treated animals followed this pattern. The original diagrams show other regrowth as darkened spots, which occurred for all 3 kinds of axon but only for a minority of subjects. Regrowth was repair, but didn't always follow normal paths. However at least 2 different papers made experiments I shall describe here.