Nature is capable of remarkable feats under the right conditions.<\/p>\n
Through our almost century-long study of the brain and how it works, we have made astonishing discoveries about ourselves and the multitude of animal life on our planet. But how can studying a mouse brain reveal a complex learning system that can restart itself<\/strong>, even in freezing temperatures?<\/p>\n How long do complex systems that you learnt stay in your brain for?<\/p>\n The human brain is a never-ending story with many pages to get through.<\/p>\n Neuroplasticity is the process whereby the brain sculpts itself and makes changes to our internal OS<\/strong>. That’s the reason why you will never quite be the same person you were five minutes ago, at least on a molecular level.<\/p>\n Our ability to learn never stops with age, so it turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks.<\/p>\n The iconic test that London Taxi drivers undergo proves this to be true. Black cab drivers in the British capital need to take a comprehensive and complex test to ensure that they know their city through and through. The test increases the size of the driver’s hippocampus<\/strong>, the part of the brain responsible for learning.<\/p>\n As it is not possible to study human brains unless the situation is fine-tuned, we mostly turn to animal life to understand the complexities of certain factors of life.<\/p>\n Science has made several remarkable findings in recent years by studying our brains. For instance, we now know that closing our eyes to concentrate is actually counterproductive<\/a> and less effective than we initially thought.<\/strong><\/p>\n Many odd findings have been made that widen and broaden our collective knowledge about human and animal brains.<\/p>\n The mysteries of consciousness have inspired some scientists to dedicate their whole careers to studying brain activity.<\/strong> Like one scientist who has studied thousands of human brains to better understand how negative thinking affects us.<\/a><\/p>\n But one study has been focusing on mouse brain tissue and how it behaves under certain situations.<\/p>\n A recent study, “Functional recovery of the adult murine hippocampus after cryopreservation by vitrification,” published in PNAS<\/em><\/a>, has<\/strong> detailed the remarkable findings made. <\/strong><\/p>\n A team of researchers was studying brain tissue from mice in -150 \u00b0C temperatures when they made a remarkable discovery.<\/p>\n Many of us have seen films about ancient people or animals stuck in ice blocks<\/strong> before coming back to life with no apparent damage to their brains or central nervous systems, other than the shock of still being alive.<\/p>\n We have spent an inordinate amount of time studying our own brains, revealing aspects such as how each of our individual cells has a “sleeping” alarm system.<\/a><\/p>\n The study found that mouse brain tissue that was vitrified at \u2212150\u00b0C for a week successfully restarted its metabolic and electrical activity<\/strong> once the brain tissue was “revived” after being frozen.<\/p>\n So wake and smell the coffee, if you’re able to, that is.<\/p>\n Once the mouse brain tissue was warmed up a bit, the team found that the potentiation, which is the basis for learning and long-term memory, remained intact. The study demonstrates the potential of functional preservation in cryopreserved neural tissue.<\/strong><\/p>\n While we now understand how some humans are able to wake up fully rested after only a few hours of sleep<\/a>, this study proves that even if brain tissue is essentially frozen, it can restart its brain’s engine system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nature is capable of remarkable feats under the right conditions. Through our almost century-long study of the brain and how it works, we have made astonishing discoveries about ourselves and the multitude of animal life on our planet. But how can studying a mouse brain reveal a complex learning system that can restart itself, even … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":19691,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_focus_keyword":"brain,mouse","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"A team of researchers froze mouse brain tissue for a week. After warming it up again, they found that the brain tissue retained its learning systems.","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ecoportal.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}How the brain is constantly evolving and never stands still<\/h2>\n
The connection between animal and human brains is becoming clearer<\/h2>\n
Scientists find that mouse brain tissue can actually reset itself, much like us<\/h2>\n
Wake and smell the fresh coffee, says this study<\/h3>\n