Here is an article on two recent studies involving a compound, CNB-001, derived from curcumin:

http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=9725

An excerpt:

"Employing the same animal model of stroke that was used to develop TPA, Paul Lapchak, Ph.D., of the Department of Neurology at the Burns and Allen Research Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, collaborated with Schubert's team [from the Salk Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory] in a study that showed that CNB-001 was at least as effective as TPA in preventing the behavioral deficits caused by stroke. The study, published in the Dec. 2, 2010 edition of the Journal of Neurochemistry, also demonstrated that unlike TPA, which reduces clotting in the blood vessels of the brain, the Salk compound has a direct protective effect on nerve cells within the brain. Maher has found that it maintains specific cell signaling pathways required for nerve cell survival.

"Similarly, in a study to be published in early 2011 in Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, Ph.D., and his colleagues in the Department of Physiological Science and Division of Neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles used a rodent model of TBI to demonstrate that CNB-001 dramatically reversed the behavioral deficits in both locomotion and memory that accompany the brain injury. As with stroke, CNB-001 was again found to maintain the critical signaling pathways required for nerve cell survival, as well as the connections between nerve cells that are lost with the injury.

"The results of these two studies, which used two distinct models of brain injury, indicate that the Salk compound has clinical potential in conditions where there is currently no effective treatment."