• Brain Rewires Itself After Damage or Injury
    18 replies, posted
[url]http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130515165027.htm[/url] [QUOTE][B]When the brain's primary "learning center" is damaged, complex new neural circuits arise to compensate for the lost function, say life scientists from UCLA and Australia who have pinpointed the regions of the brain involved in creating those alternate pathways -- often far from the damaged site.[/B] The research, conducted by UCLA's Michael Fanselow and Moriel Zelikowsky in collaboration with Bryce Vissel, a group leader of the neuroscience research program at Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, appears this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that parts of the prefrontal cortex take over when the hippocampus, the brain's key center of learning and memory formation, is disabled. Their breakthrough discovery, the first demonstration of such neural-circuit plasticity, could potentially help scientists develop new treatments for Alzheimer's disease, stroke and other conditions involving damage to the brain. For the study, Fanselow and Zelikowsky conducted laboratory experiments with rats showing that the rodents were able to learn new tasks even after damage to the hippocampus. While the rats needed more training than they would have normally, they nonetheless learned from their experiences -- a surprising finding. "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." After discovering the rats could, in fact, learn to solve problems, Zelikowsky, a graduate student in Fanselow's laboratory, traveled to Australia, where she worked with Vissel to analyze the anatomy of the changes that had taken place in the rats' brains. Their analysis identified significant functional changes in two specific regions of the prefrontal cortex.[/QUOTE] Our brains are a lot more resilient than we give them credit for it seems.
Bit of a deceptive headline, compensation like this has been known for a while, the news is that they've pinpointed the regions that create them.
What if it accidently disconnects you from the matrix.
[QUOTE=darth-veger;40665667]What if it accidently disconnects you from the matrix.[/QUOTE] tell the robo-squid tearing your limbs off that you'd like to go back
[QUOTE=darth-veger;40665667]What if it accidentally disconnects you from the matrix.[/QUOTE] That would be awful, I already forgot my password!
This is nothing new. That is why rehabilitation is so important in stroke patients. Even if tissue in speech or motor areas are damaged, some functions can be restored in other parts of the brain. It also works the other way around. There was an experiment where they mapped the different somatosensory areas (touch areas) in a hand of a monkey. When they amputated a finger of the monkey, they noticed, after some time, how the brain remapped itself so that the areas that previously took care of the finger in question, helped to work with the other parts of the hand in close proximity. This phenomenon is called [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity]Neuroplasticity[/url]. If anyone got questions of the subject I am willing to answer within my power. [editline]16th May 2013[/editline] Reshy. I've noticed that you are posting quite a lot about the brain. Are you a neuroscience student?
I've known about this. My grandfather expained it to me before he died of brain cancer. At some point after an operation, he was really confused and couldn't read or write, then after some weeks it just came back and he had no problems talking or doing normal stuff like driving etc, because the parts of the brain he had lost during the operation grew back or something. Later, he again started slowly losing his ability to read, write and remember short term things, then he died.
It's interesting when this process goes awry, leading to phantom limb syndrome, or phantom pain syndrome, or when areas of the somatosensory cortex are taken over when they are stopped being used normally.
If you're interested in this subject matter, this is recommended reading. [IMG]http://i43.tinypic.com/iwps39.png[/IMG]
This is basically how I learned English. I watched a lot of English cartoons when I was a kid, almost every day for a couple of years. When I was 4 years old, my father left me and my mom for another woman. After a little while, I have accumulated too much stress for me to handle, so I fell into a coma for 5 days, when I woke up, I started speaking English but I couldn't remember most of my life past the coma and I had a learning disability against the Lithuanian language (I heard that woman speaking it, so I began to hate it as-well).
Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt
Isnt this like almost common fact or is this site based in USA?
[QUOTE=Rankxerox;40670247]Isnt this like almost common fact or is this site based in USA?[/QUOTE] There's a lot of "common facts" that are just plain garbage so that's hardly relevant. Also, this is tested with a scientific method. Not to mention there's a lot more details then just that.
[QUOTE=P1X3L N1NJA;40665663]Bit of a deceptive headline, compensation like this has been known for a while, the news is that they've pinpointed the regions that create them.[/QUOTE] What happens if the part of the brain that tells the brain to rewire itself gets damaged?
[QUOTE=paul simon;40666044]I've known about this. My grandfather expained it to me before he died of brain cancer. At some point after an operation, he was really confused and couldn't read or write, then after some weeks it just came back and he had no problems talking or doing normal stuff like driving etc, because the parts of the brain he had lost during the operation grew back or something. Later, he again started slowly losing his ability to read, write and remember short term things, then he died.[/QUOTE] nah it didn't grow back, it's what the op talks about, neuroplasticity
[QUOTE=sltungle;40687818]What happens if the part of the brain that tells the brain to rewire itself gets damaged?[/QUOTE] Well then you're up shit creek without a paddle.
[QUOTE=sltungle;40687818]What happens if the part of the brain that tells the brain to rewire itself gets damaged?[/QUOTE] I imagine that's when you get people who have permanent brain damage/become vegetables
I've known about the brain's ability to rewire itself for a long time, but it's fascinating to find out more about how, exactly, that works. My mom suffered some major brain injuries in a car accident in the early 1950s. She was 6 years old and her head was pretty much crushed. She was in a coma for two weeks and the doctors told my grandparents that she'd be in a vegetative state. She (slowly) recovered, though. She even finished high school and got a degree in nursing. I'm guessing they didn't know nearly as much about the brain back then, for the doctors to originally have given her such a grim prognosis.
Could we someday use this research to enhance our brains to become even more efficient at certain things such as prestige and learning?
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