I stacked my bike and split my head right open. About three weeks later the scab falls off and the skin is sealed over, like magic! How does it all work? How does the brain know that part of the body is injured and needs repair, or does the brain know at all? What kind of signals between brain/cells/body are involved.
Sorry it's probably a basic question for a biologist, but I come from a different field and have always wondered about this amazing process. It's also a very hard topic to google about, because most results are about spiritual healing, crystals, prayer and a lot of pseudoscience rubbish.
Answer
Healing in the body is normally independent of the brain. Following an injury, a process of inflammation attracts lots of cells to the site of the injury (including platelets, white blood cells, clotting factors). There's also vasoconstriction (tightening of your blood vessels) to reduce blood loss from the injury site. Your skin cells continue to divide rapidly until new skin replaces the damaged one which later falls off. This is a highly simplified version of the process but hope it makes sense. So in summary, healing takes place by cell division (also known as mitosis).
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