Did your favorite mouse just suffer a stroke and now you think you have to put him down? Maybe not, reports NewScientist (10 February 2018, paywall) – maybe you can repair him with a pair of scissors:
RECOVERY from a stroke is unpredictable and can take months. But blocking off some functions of the brain can help it rewire itself to work around the damage, according to research in mice.
Jin-Moo Lee of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, and his team have found that when they trim the whiskers of mice, these animals can recover from strokes more quickly, and show a greater improvement.
“It’s the first study to demonstrate that we can make certain parts of the brain more receptive to rewiring,” says Lee. “We have the ability to actually accelerate and improve recovery.”
In their experiment, Lee and his team triggered strokes in the mice in part of their brains responsible for processing sensations felt in their right forepaws. The team then cut the whiskers of half the mice, and kept them short for eight weeks.
They found that mice with trimmed whiskers recovered within five weeks: by this time, the animals were fully using their right forepaw again. The mice with untrimmed whiskers took seven weeks to reach their peak recovery level, and never regained full use of their forepaws.
Wow!
