ABSTRACT
Because of the impact made in the news media by reports of surgical implantation of human fetal mesencephalon into the neostriatum of Parkinson’s patients (e.g., Freed et al., 1990; Henderson, Clough, Hughes, Hitchcock, & Kenny, 1991) research in the area of neural transplantation has gained such immediate notoriety that the impression may be that neuroscientists have only recently discovered that neural tissue can survive transplantation to the brain. This is not true. Several observations relevant to research in neural transplantation had already been made by 1950 and included reports of grafting of forebrain tissue to the cortex of adult hosts. A representative sample of this work is reviewed in order to establish historical precedent for the experimental procedures selected for use in the experiments that we have performed to study the effects of transplants of fetal hippocampus on the brain and behavior of adult rats.
