It is nice to know that you brain can grow — and it is still met with surprise when I explain how this can happen to audiences when speaking in public. But this recent research gives some fascinating insights into a new mechanism of growth in the brain.
Researchers around Terry Dean of the Children’s National Hospital in the USA have found a mechanism that is controlled by daily rhythms and this could lead to new insight and more effective methods to help recovery after brain injury.
Your brain cells, neurons are pretty fixed with new generation of cells only in very limited areas in the brain. However, they can rebuild and strengthen connections. There are also group of cells called micro glia or glial cells and these are considered the brains “helping” cells — they are also essential to healthy brain functioning performing many critical functions.
One of these goes under the technical name of NG2-glia, or “oligodendrocyte precursor”, sorry I know that won’t help you (in short, it’s one of those “helping” cells). And, it gets interesting because these are one of the few cells in the brain that can continuously regenerate.
What the researchers found is that these follow daily rhythms with proliferation of these cells coinciding with the highest levels of a factor known as…
