Trigger For Brain Plasticity Identified: Signal Comes, Surprisingly, From Outside The Brain
Saturday, August 9, 2008 - 00:21
in Psychology & Sociology
Researchers have long sought a factor that can trigger the brain's ability to learn -- recapturing the "sponge-like" quality of childhood. Called Otx2, it causes a key type of cell in the cortex to mature, initiating a critical period -- a window of heightened brain plasticity, when the brain can readily make new connections