Introducing the brain: recovery from damage (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, July 02, 2022, 15:39 (656 days ago) @ David Turell

A new mouse study:

https://www.sciencealert.com/stunning-maps-reveal-how-head-injuries-reconfigure-brain-w...

"The stunning visualizations of brain-wide connectivity could help scientists understand how a traumatic brain injury, or TBI, alters cross-talk between different cells and brain regions, first in mice and then in humans.

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"Repeated head traumas leading to a severe condition known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy have been well-documented in professional athletes. But even 'mild' head knocks called concussions can manifest damage years later, recent research shows.

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"What the researchers saw was striking. Two months after an injury to the hippocampus, a brain region involved in learning and memory, neural circuits in the mice brains had reconfigured themselves.

"Surviving somatostatin interneurons in the hippocampus became 'hyperconnected hubs', rich with close-range connections but disconnected from long-range inputs; the same connectivity changes were also seen in distant areas of the brain, not directly injured.

"'It looks like the entire brain is being carefully rewired to accommodate for the damage, regardless of whether there was direct injury to the region or not," explains Alexa Tierno, a neuroscience graduate student at UCI and co-first author of the study.

"'But different parts of the brain probably aren't working together quite as well as they did before the injury."

"In their imaging explorations, the team also found signs that the machinery brain cells use to establish distant connections remained intact after a severe injury. This bodes well for recovery because, Hunt says, it suggests there may be a way to entice the injured brain to repair lost connections on its own."

Comment: brain function is so vital it is easy to see a newly designed brain would come with repair mechanisms in place. A natural chance evolution of a brain might well start without such protective mechanisms. Protective plasticity would have to come as a later adaptation after experiencing injuries. Postulating a designer makes more sense when viewing what is present.