BDNF and Stroke: In general, BDNF is believed to have a beneficial effect on stroke recovery via several mechanisms: protection against acute ischemic injury (Schäbitz et al., 2007), increased angiogenesis (Kermani and Hempstead, 2007), neurogenesis (Schäbitz et al., 2007), and neural repair (Mamounas et al., 2000) as well as enhanced synaptic plasticity (Waterhouse and Xu, 2009; Clarkson et al., 2011).