In the past decade the dogma that we are born with a certain number of nerve cells and that the brain is incapable of generating new neurons and renewing itself has been proven incorrect. There is a renewal process in the adult brain, called neurogenesis, facilitated by the presence of neuronal stem cells. The capacity of olfactory receptor neurons to regenerate from a pool of multipotent stem cells highlights the olfactory neuroepithelium as an important source of adult neuronal stem cells. The olfactory stem cell has the undeniable advantage that it can be easily used for autologous...