Vascular permeability and axonal regeneration in skin autotransplanted into the brain

Pieces of skin were autotransplanted from the pinna of an ear into a cerebral hemisphere in 36 albino rats. The grafts were examined 2, 4 and 6 weeks later for signs of vascular permeability and for the presence of nerve fibres. An intravenously injected fluorescent protein exuded into the connective tissue of the dermis and into the spaces between epidermal cells. Extravascular leukocytes were also seen in the dermis. Nerve fibres, derived from the caudate nucleus, corpus callosum and neocortex, were seen in nearly all the grafts, entering both the dermis and epidermis. They were more numerous after the fourth and sixth than after the second post-operative week. A few of these axons were myelinated and a few contained acetylcholinesterase. It has thus been shown that central axons can regenerate into a region in which they are surrounded by proteins and cells derived from the blood, for at least 6 weeks. This observation does not support a recently advanced hypothesis invoking autoimmunity as the cause of the failure of most axons to regenerate following severance within the central nervous system. It is tentatively suggested that the presence of plasma proteins in the extracellular fluid around the tips of axons may be necessary for the occurrence of regeneration.