Scientists seek drug to ‘rewire’ adult brain after stroke

Therapies may one day enable healthy part of brain to take over tasks from damaged areas

Adults who have experienced a stroke may one day be able to take a drug to help their brain “rewire” itself, so that tasks once carried out by now-damaged areas can be taken over by other regions, researchers have claimed.

The ability for the brain to rewire, so-called “brain plasticity”, is thought to occur throughout life; however, while children have a high degree of brain plasticity, adult brains are generally thought to be less plastic.

Research looking at children and young adults who had a stroke as a baby – a situation thought to affect at least one in 4,000 around the time of their birth – has highlighted the incredible ability of the young brain to rewire.

Elissa Newport, a professor of neurology at Georgetown University school of medicine in Washington DC, detailed a new study involving 12 such individuals, aged between 12 and 25.

“What you see is the right hemisphere, which is never in control of language in anyone who is healthy, is apparently capable of taking over language if you lose left hemisphere,” said Newport, who presented the findings at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Austin, Texas. “This does not happen in adults,” she added.

Using brain imaging the team found that the regions in the right hemisphere of the brain that took over were in the mirror image location to those used on the left side of the brain in healthy people. That, she said, emphasises that it is not just any area of the brain that takes over a function should a region become damaged.


 Source :- theguardian