LncRNAs regulate neuronal homeostasis via competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) mechanisms, exemplified by H19’s context-dependent duality: In adult cerebral ischemia, it sequesters miR-29a to activate ERK1/2-dependent autophagy via DUSP5 suppression, exacerbating injury (Wang et al., 2017); in neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, it sponges miR-29b to promote AKT3-mediated mTOR inhibition, reducing neuronal apoptosis (Zhu et al., 2022). The gene discussed is MTOR; the disease is brain ischemia.