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 Recent study shows the brain can reroute itself around injuries
The only destination that cannot be reached with a detour is a dead end. For years, scientists considered many crippling injuries just that—hopeless causes held hostage by a pre-wired brain.
However, a recent study on mice conducted at the University of California in Los Angeles showed, for the first time, that the central nervous system can rewire itself in response to injury.
In an interview with AFP, a Paris-based media outlet, research director Michael Sofroniew compared the brain’s ability to reorganize around injury as a detour. Or, in his words, “when there is a traffic accident on the freeway, [drivers] take shorter surface streets.”
He credits the short nerves of the spinal cord, propriospinal connections, for setting up “the alternate routes.”
Like most detours, propriospinal connections are slower than those that run through the long nerves. But Sofroniew pointed out that detours still get you where you want to go and that the results of the study offer scientists new hopes for developing more advanced and effective treatments for spinal injuries.
For the hundreds of thousands of people with spinal injuries, the detour has already begun. The fact that there is evidence that it might just lead somewhere is added reason for hope.
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