Recovery from a stroke is unpredictable and can take months. But research in mice suggests that blocking off some functions of the brain can help it rewire itself to work around stroke damage.
, of Washington University, St Louis, and his team have found that when they trim the whiskers of mice, these animals recover from strokes more quickly, and show more of an improvement.
鈥淚t鈥檚 the first study to demonstrate that we can make certain parts of the brain more receptive to rewiring,鈥� says Lee. 鈥淲e have the ability to actually accelerate and improve recovery.鈥�
Advertisement
Brain remapping
In their experiment, Lee鈥檚 team gave mice strokes in a part of their brains that is responsible for processing sensations felt in their right forepaws. The team then trimmed the whiskers of half of the mice, and kept them short for 8 weeks.
They found that mice with trimmed whiskers recovered within 5 weeks 鈥� by this time, the animals were fully using their right forepaw again. The untrimmed mice took 7 weeks to reach their peak recovery level, and never regained full use of their forepaws.
Brain imaging revealed that the mice with trimmed whiskers underwent what is known as 鈥渞emapping鈥� 鈥� regions of the brain that used to process whisker sensations were rewired to compute those of the mice鈥檚 forepaws, allowing them to step in for stroke-damaged regions. This didn鈥檛 happen in the other mice.
Stroke treatment
This remapping is similar to what happens in blind animals and people, says Lee. When there isn鈥檛 any input from the eyes, visual areas of the brain can be rewired to process sounds, language or even maths.
Lee hopes to use the findings to develop new treatments to help people recover from stroke, either using sensory deprivation, or drugs that achieve a similar result.
听
Read more: See-through brains reveal how stroke damages vital blood vessels
