29 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
Learning New Langugages Instills Brain Growth
Even something that has been
traditionally seen as the purview of the
young—the ability to learn new languages
—continues to change the landscape of the
brain late into life. When a group of adults
took a nine-month intensive course in
modern standard Chinese, their brains’
white matter reorganized progressively
(as measured monthly) in the left
hemisphere language areas and their right
hemisphere counterparts—as well as in
t h e genu (anterior end) of the corpus
collosum, that networ...Adults who learned Chinese showed white matter reorganization in their brains.
22 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
NgR1 Improves Brain Plasticity in Adult Mice
Experience rearranges anatomical connectivity in the brain, but such plasticity is suppressed in adulthood. We examined the turnover of dendritic spines and axonal varicosities in the somatosensory cortex of mice lacking Nogo Receptor 1 (NgR1). Through adolescence, the anatomy and plasticity of ngr1 null mice are indistinguishable from control, but suppression of turnover after age 26 days fails to occur in ngr1−/− mice. Adolescent anatomical plasticity can be restored to 1-year-old mice ...The plasticity lost from our youth is revived in mice by deletion of Nogo-A ligand.