Baby comes with brain repair kit for Mom

Stray stem cells from a growing fetus can colonise the brains of mothers during pregnancy, at least in mice.

If the finding is repeated in humans, the medical implications could be profound. Initial results suggest that the fetal cells are summoned to repair damage to the mother's brain. If this is confirmed, it could open up new, safer avenues of treatment for brain damage caused by strokes and Alzheimer's disease. <readMore>

"In some regions of the mothers' brains, there are as many as one in 1,000 to sometimes even 10 in 1,000 cells of fetal origin," ~Xiao Zhi-Cheng
Singapore's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology.