New Discovery Could Rejuvenate the Brain

This istruly amazing.

clipped from content2.clipmarks.com Researchers at The University of British Columbia have discovered why the brain loses its capacity to re-grow connections and repair itself, knowledge that could lead to therapeutics that “rejuvenate” the brain. The study, published today in The EMBO Journal, identified a set of proteins -- calpain and cortactin, which regulate and control the sprouting of neurons -- a mechanism known as neural plasticity. Neurons, or nerve cells, process and transmit information by electrochemical signalling and are the core components of the brain and spinal cord. During development, growing neurons are relatively plastic and can sprout new connections, however their plasticity levels drop rapidly as they mature and become integrated into neuronal networks. This discovery is exciting because we now know that neurons haven’t lost their capacity to re-grow connections, but instead are under constant repression by the protein calpain