Can Brain Damage Be Repaired

Some animals have incredible regenerative abilities, growing new legs and tails to replace lost ones. Fish and salamanders tin even grow new brain cells to repair damaged portions of their brains. As mammals, though, our chapters for regeneration is more than limited, particularly where the brain is concerned.

"Lower vertebrates keep on replacing neurons quite happily throughout their life, but mammals don't," explains James Fawcett, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge. "We finish making new neurons before birth, pretty much, except for one or two small parts of the nervous organisation."

This ways that whilst we can repair a cut to our skin by growing new pare cells, we can't recover from a encephalon injury in the same way. Instead, our brain's just choice is to work with the existing neurons – cells that carry all the information required for usa to think, move and perform our normal bodily functions.

If the odd encephalon cell goes offline here or there, it's non usually a trouble, merely the impact of a major brain injury depends on the type and site of injury, and how many neurons have been lost.

To some extent, what'south left can be remodelled – the brain has what we call 'neuroplasticity'. Remember of your brain as if it were Google Maps or some other route planner. If i of the roads on the quickest route is beingness dug up, Google Maps volition discover you another route, fifty-fifty if it takes a scrap longer.

Similarly, because each brain jail cell has thousands of unlike connections, your brain is capable of some fairly all-encompassing re-routing of its signalling, says Mark Ashley, CEO of the The states-based Centre for Neuro Skills, which helps patients to recover from brain and spinal cord injuries. "Nosotros may lose a highway or two, or several highways, just theoretically, nosotros could notice other highways."

This ways when the brain is injured it can endeavor to featherbed the damaged cells past forming new connections between neurons in order to drive the lost functions. Neuroplastic processes besides occur when nosotros're learning new skills, but with a major brain injury information technology can result in some dramatic remodelling, even to the extent of entire functions being transferred to unlike parts of the encephalon – hearing, for example, tin can be taken over by the visual cortex, and vice versa.

Neuroplasticity relies on the nerve cells themselves, likewise as back up cells called glial cells that help make new connections and repair myelin, which is the protective covering around a nervus fibre that speeds up nerve impulses.

The nerve fibres (axons) that carry the signals practice likewise have some capacity for sprouting new branches, when the principal body of the nerve cell is still intact. As Fawcett explains, though, regeneration of nerve fibres that take been cut, as in a typical spinal cord injury, is restricted past the formation of scar tissue – which hinders regrowth – and normal changes during maturation that finish them regenerating their axons.

"At that place's some genetic programme that goes with maturation that turns off regeneration," Fawcett says. His team of researchers accept fabricated some headway in regeneration of axons in the spinal cords of mice and rats, but the fibres are much longer and trickier to regrow in humans.

Rehabilitation programmes focus on getting the near out of the brain's natural neuroplasticity and could involve up to 17 hours per day of therapy – the more intensive the better, Ashley says, as this constant 'demand for function' encourages the brain to rebuild in gild to respond.

However, our agreement of the brain is limited enough that trying to predict how a patient will recover based on brain imaging can exist futile. "I've adopted the notion that the early predictions of recovery are far more than likely to be incorrect than right," says Ashley, who adds that he'southward ofttimes "pleasantly surprised" past what'due south achievable, given admission to the right treatment.

• This article showtime appeared in consequence 370 ofBBC Science Focus Magazine –detect out how to subscribe hither

Nigh our experts

Professor James Fawcett is head of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge. His inquiry interests are axon regeneration, neuroplasticity and interfacing the nervous organisation with electronics.

Dr Mark Ashley is the Founder and CEO of Centre for Neuro Skills, which runs brain injury rehabilitation programmes. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Rehabilitation Institute of the College of Instruction at Southern Illinois University, Us.

Read more about the brain:

• Encephalon nutrient: The all-time foods to eat for better attention, memory and mental wellness
• A neuroscientist explains how your genes affect your mental health
• Neuroscience says there's no such matter as free will. A psychologist explains why that might not exist true
• The 6 best habits to keep your brain fit, according to neuroscience

Source: https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/can-brain-heal-itself/

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