Welcome to the study chatting participants such as all of the other subjects, and the neuro-scientist Dorit Kliemann from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, had already investigated. “At first glance, one noted their findings hardly,” says the researcher. However, there were special subjects: a half your brain was missing ever. This had been years previously due to severe epilepsy in the Baby or toddler age away. This procedure Doctors car very rarely – only when no other therapy helps. The six subjects of the Operation had a normal life, without major cognitive or emotional limitations. Had aroused the curiosity of Kliemann and your colleagues: How can work half a brain anything like a complete?
The answer is to be found in those jam’s regeneration ability and moldability of the most complex of all organs. Although the brain is not able to compensate for any damage, and some patients suffering for example after a stroke or a Tumor life impairment, even if the affected brain region is much smaller than in the case of Kliemanns subjects. However, numerous studies show that the brain can sometimes be stronger and faster to change and regenerate, as it has long been thought possible. What is happening exactly and how the plasticity can promote, the studies show everyday learning processes in Healthy as well as magnetic resonance images of the six subjects, the Team Kliemann in the journal “analyzed Cell Reports”.
Optimal Connections in spite of Operation
the participants in The study of the brain, researchers had to lie still in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) without falling asleep, but also without thinking. So, the scientists were able to examine the various peace networks. The brain regions that stretch – when Healthy – in the rule over both halves of the Brain, and with nothing at all on synchronously active, i.e. connected to “functional”. As well and error-free a the brain works, depends crucially on the quality of such Connections. Only when each of a plurality of regions, working together, can think of a person, feel, and perceive. Surprisingly, were more pronounced in the operated subjects in the remaining half of the brain, the Connections within a network, almost normal. In contrast, the Connections between different resting networks were: they were even stronger than in Healthy.
“The work is methodically very well done and extremely exciting”, says Valentin Riedl from the Neuro-head-centre of the Klinikum rechts der Isar of the Technical University of Munich. Like the authors, he holds that it is plausible that the stronger Connections between individual networks to compensate for the failure of one half of the brain. A role is also likely to have played that the subjects had been in Operation between three months and eleven years old: A young brain is organized easier as the of Seniors.
had The more skillful a subject, had the changed clear his grey matter in the corresponding regions.
So amazing to the study results, it a series, but in many more references to the sometimes enormous plasticity of an incomplete brain. Ten years ago an American woman was known, the left hemisphere probably due to a prenatal stroke – not developed had. Nevertheless, the woman managed to graduate high school. In 2010, Doctors reported of a girl who live also born with only one hemisphere, and under no abnormalities suffer. Studies also point to people who are blind from birth, bear witness to the flexibility of the task distribution in the brain can drain. In such cases, the employment of lots of the visual cortex can take over other functions and help to process auditory and tactile stimuli, such as a study by the Georgetown University in the journal “Neuron” has shown.
Not all is resolved in the majority of cases, what happens during the reprogramming. Long suspected neuro-researchers, that Training intensified, only the Interaction between brain regions. Structural Changes, on the other hand, an increase in the volume of nerve cell bodies existing gray matter, were to create, it was said earlier. To a Team now operating in Hamburg neurologist Arne May and instructed twelve healthy volunteers, juggling to learn. Before and after the three month Training, the researchers, using MRI scans, compared the volume of gray matter. In fact, she was process is grown in the case of the jugglers after the Training in those areas, the complex optical signals as they emanate from three in the air swirling balls. The more skillful a subject had, the more clearly had changed his grey matter in the corresponding regions.
“Our results suggest that Learning-induced plasticity also shows on the structural Level,” the researchers wrote in 2004 in the journal “Nature”. Came to a similar conclusion a group from the Leipzig Max-Planck-Institute (MPI) and later for human cognitive and brain Sciences. Their subjects learned to hold on to shaky ground the Balance. After only two short training sessions, the researchers Patrick discovered Ragert in MRI functional and structural changes of the involved motor brain networks.
Full of the brain is not a superfluous luxury
Such findings are in their own way no less spectacular than the compensation power of half a brain. Finally, the juggling to demonstrate and balancing studies, what minimum incentives suffice a healthy brain to adapt to challenges.
of all the findings on brain plasticity should not hide, however: Even if it does, if necessary, for example, with only a half is a fully trained brain not a superfluous luxury. Many patient with only one hemisphere are coping well, but are limited in some respects; without loss of compensation for the missing hemisphere hardly works. The Munich-based neuro-researchers Riedl assumed that a healthy brain can work more energy-efficient and more responsive, for example, when several tasks are performed almost at the same time. Some of the areas of the Brain not, work, however, is missing this “Back-up”. The body then works at the Limit and is thus more vulnerable to any further disruption. So amazing plasticity of the brain is, so she’s pushing but at some point limits.
Created: 05.12.2019, 18:03 PM