[Advanced] The Unstoppable Brain

New research may unlock the secret to recovering the brain of your youth
By Melissa Healy

Adults (especially parents) often find fault with the teenage brain. But they should admit that it is a powerful learning machine--and that sometimes, the grown-ups wish they could recapture its nimbleness. New research, conducted by researchers at Yale University and published in the journal Neuron, homes in on the genetic and chemical mechanics that could make that possible.

The new research, says the study's senior author, Dr. Stephen M. Strittmatter, helps point the way to therapies that might allow victims of stroke or spinal cord damage to "set back their brain's clock" to a stage of development that would foster the rapid relearning of lost skills. And, he added, it might aid those hobbled by post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD (5:28) to reconfigure their relationship to painful memories and learn to live again.

Aging Brain
In response to the world around it, the adolescent brain is a marvel of regeneration, wiring and rewiring itself constantly as its owner learns and refines the motor, social and perceptual skills that will form the foundation of his or her adult behavior.

Having lived through these wonder years, the adult brain becomes a bit, shall we say, plodding. Its cells continue to sprout the axons and dendrites that lash neurons together in a process we call learning. But there's nothing like the mad re-creation of brain architecture--the constant replacement of existing neuronal connections and their replacement with new ones--that characterizes the teen brain.

Mental Maneuvers
The Yale team focused on a gene that programs for the production of a central nervous system protein called Nogo Receptor 1. Earlier research had established that Nogo Receptor 1 stimulates the growth of connections between neurons, and that when it is plentiful in the brain, mice do not recover as well from brain and spinal cord injuries.


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