Study: Brain Can Rewire Itself after Damage

Per ScienceDaily, "Credit: © unlim3d / Fotolia"Life scientists Michael Fanselow, Moriel Zelikowsky and Bryce Vissel from UCLA and Australia have conducted a research on rats that offers breakthrough results in brain science. The researchers found that the rodents can learn new tasks even after damage to the hippocampus. This experiment demonstrates that parts of the prefrontal cortex take over when the hippocampus, the brain’s key center of learning and memory formation is disabled. "I expect that the brain probably has to be trained through experience," said Fanselow, a professor of psychology and member of the UCLA Brain Research Institute, who was the study's senior author. "In this case, we gave animals a problem to solve." It is also the first demonstration of neural-circuit plasticity, which means that when the brain’s primary “learning center” is damaged, complex new neural circuits arise to compensate for the lost function. The regions of the brain involved in creating those alternate paths are often far from the damaged site. This finding could provide potential insights to help scientists develop new treatments for Alzheimer's disease, stroke and other conditions involving brain damage. More information is available at:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130515165027.htm 

"New research reveals exactly how the human brain adapts to injury"

The brain is an amazing human mechanism, as proven by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging. They’ve discovered, through a combination of neural imaging methods, that when an area of the brain is injured, other areas will band together to perform the task once assigned to the damaged area.

Researchers temporarily disabled the subjects’ Wernicke area –the area of the brain that plays a large part in forming sentences—and watched what happened. They noticed that the areas which helped the Wernicke area with its task were also impaired. However, they also noticed that the areas closest to and directly across from the affected area stepped up to help form sentences. A section of the frontal lobe, also, took charge “recruiting” areas with the same functions as the impaired Wernicke area.

This capacity for the brain to fix itself to the best of its ability shows just how amazing the human body is and gives hope to those who sustain these traumatic injuries that their bodies aren’t just giving up.

Check out the below article on MedicalXpress to learn more!

“New research reveals exactly how the human brain adapts to injury”