The human brain is one of the great mysteries of nature. Imagine an exquisite circuitry of 200 billion neurons, or nerve cells - with no blueprint of its design and no user's guide to show how it works. When things go wrong as a result of a stroke, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, blindness or spinal cord injury, the damaged pathways in the brain and spinal cord, unlike many other areas of the body, do not reconnect and heal.
Neurological disorders are a vast medical problem.
They affect millions of people around the world, every racial origin and age group. In Canada alone, neural injury and disease strike more than four million people. For most of these conditions, treatment is still either unsatisfactory or non-existent. This includes direct health care costs, as well as the indirect costs of lost productivity and the time spent by family members caring for the affected individuals. The world population is forecasted to pass 6 billion by the end of this decade.