Growing brain is particularly flexible
Science has long puzzled over why a baby's brain is particularly flexible and why it easily changes. Is it because babies have to learn a lot? A group of researchers from the Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience, the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation in Goettingen, the Schiller University in Jena and Princeton University (USA) have now put forward a new explanation: Maybe it is because the brain still has to grow. Using a combination of experiments, mathematical models and computer simulations they showed that neuronal connections in the visual cortex of cats are restructured during the growth phase and that this restructuring can be explained by self-organisational processes. The study was headed by Matthias Kaschube, former researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organisation and now at Princeton University (USA)...