When the research team chemically plugged up the Nogo receptors in the brains of adult mice, they found that even mice whose brains had made the transition to plodding adulthood regained the speed of an adolescent brain at wiring and rewiring itself.
Adult mice with normal levels of Nogo Receptor 1 needed to live in cages that plied them with constant stimulation if their brain cells were to show evidence they were learning new skills. But the brains of adult mice whose Nogo receptors were knocked out were showing signs of intensive learning, even when they were housed in cages that offered them little stimulation.
The two sets of mice appeared in all respects the same in early childhood and adolescence: It was only with the transition to adulthood that the protein's power to tame the brain's constant rewiring act became evident.
A Promising Future
This may help explain why youngsters who survive spinal cord injuries and strokes, or who live through extremely traumatic events, tend to recover lost function and move on with their lives so much faster and better than do adults who've sustained the same injuries. Strittmatter suggests that if the brains of adult patients with stroke, PTSD or spinal cord injury could recapture the plasticity of youth, they too might repair as quickly and thoroughly as youths do.
These are the kinds of advances in neuroscience that not only promise help for patients with grievous injuries, they raise a glimmer in the eyes of healthy adults bothered by the loss of cognitive agility that comes with age. Cognitive enhancement to reverse the marginal insults of aging might look awfully seductive to healthy older adults too--probably because they don't remember the many downsides to having a teenage brain.
traumatic adj.
/trəˈmætɪk/
causing someone to become very upset in a way that can lead to serious mental and emotional problems
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