UAB Magazine Weekly Archive
UAB Neuroscientists Stretch the Boundaries of the Mind
By Bob Shepard
This is the second in a two-part series on cutting-edge neuroplasticity research at UAB. Last week, we examined a revolutionary stroke therapy developed by UAB psychologist Edward Taub, Ph.D. This week we feature UAB researchers who offer fresh insights into memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease.
Image courtesy of J. Palop
The brain, as we saw in last week's story, is "plastic" in the sense that it can reshape itself after injury. But the power of plasticity doesn't stop there, says David Sweatt, Ph.D., chair of the UAB Department of Neurobiology, director of the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, and Evelyn F. McKnight Endowed Chair for Learning and Memory in Aging. According to Sweatt, the brain is also able to strengthen the connections between neurons—and even make new neurons.
Neurons, Sweatt explains, are the fundamental information-processing units of the brain. But they do not work in isolation; instead, each neuron communicates with thousands of its neighbors through specialized connections called synapses. “It turns out that perhaps half of the synapses in the adult nervous system have a robust capacity to change the strength of the connections between neurons,” Sweatt says. “That is an important part of how the brain works, how we store information, and how we adapt to environmental stimuli.”
It is also an important part of memory, says Sweatt—in fact, he argues, synapses are the keys to memory. And once scientists understand how the adult brain strengthens certain synapses, they can begin to manipulate the process—finding ways to slow down or delay the inevitable memory loss associated with aging.
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UAB Neuroscientists Stretch the Boundaries of the Mind
By Bob Shepard
The big news in neuroscience these days is that you can change your mind. Not just in superficial ways, either, such as opting for milk over creamer or paper instead of plastic, although plasticity has a lot to do with it. The field is abuzz with mind-bending research indicating that the adult brain can be shaped—repaired, expanded, optimized—in ways that were unimaginable only a few decades ago.
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, the saying goes. And for decades, scientists thought the same thing about the human brain. An adult brain, the textbooks said, is not plastic—that is, it has no ability to change, to grow, to repair itself if injured. At birth, in infancy, and through childhood, the central nervous system is malleable; it can grow and change depending on different stimuli. But researchers were certain that this ability fades upon maturity, leaving the adult brain with the capacity to diminish—through injury, disease, or simply old age—but not to grow new cells or structures, or to repair the damage it accumulates over a lifetime. Distinguished Spanish neuroscientist Ramón y Cajal summarized the viewpoint succinctly in 1913: “Everything may die; nothing may be regenerated.”
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A Meditation on Preservation
By Charles Buchanan
In the face of 500 years of change, one face has remained the same. Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of the Angel for the “Madonna of the Rocks” still looks as youthful and fresh as the day she was sketched, her alluring gaze free of crease or blemish.
The angel owes her clear complexion to progress in preservation, a specialty that blends art and science in a manner that would impress Leonardo himself. And while preservation was once the province of curators and archivists alone, today it is a crucial facet of many fields, including research, health care, and information management. An increasingly digitized society requires that agelessness extend to patient records, spreadsheets, and family photos, along with humankind’s greatest masterworks.
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