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Investigators from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) have demonstrated the ability of axons talamocorticales involved in the process that allows the transmission information received by our sensory organs to the cortex to reorganize and rebuild their connections with anomalies during development. The study was published in PLoS Biology.

As explained Guillermina López-Bendito, CSIC researcher at the Institute of Neuroscience: "This discovery represents a significant step to understand the mechanisms involved in adaptation and plasticity of talamocortical connection that will allow us to understand diseases in which the training these connections are affected, such as epilepsy or schizophrenia, as well as design future repair and / or regeneration of neural tissue. "

The study has also shown that the axons connecting talamocorticales visual cortex with a corresponding target requires the expression of the gene Semaforina 6A, molecule involved in axonal guidance processes. Genetic studies performed with mutant mice showed that when the molecule is not functional Semaforina 6A is a massive loss of axons that are visually "derailed", which causes a serious defect that specifically affects the visual projection. "For example, so amazing, Talamas projections from other sensory modalities, such as those affecting hearing or projections of touch, invade the visual area of the cerebral cortex supplanting the projection absent, "illustrates the CSIC researcher.

This process of reorganization of connections could be the anatomical basis underlying the functional changes observed in human congenital deaf or blind in that it has been shown to enrich the skills of perception and discrimination of the sensory systems that remain unchanged.

The work is the result of collaboration between research groups in Guillermina López Bendito, Institute of Neurosciences (center joint CSIC and Universidad Miguel Hernández) and Kevin Mitchell (Dublin University), Zoltán Molnár (University of Oxford ) and Alain Chedotal (Institute of Vision, INSERNM Paris).

This study shows that during postnatal development, axons talamocorticales visual recovery derailed his final destination via alternate routes amazing. This precedes the recovery process when the visual stimuli from the outside begin to reach the thalamus. "Now is a challenge for us to know what are the mechanisms that control this process of recovery of brain connections," Guillermina López Bendito impact.

Using different tests, the Spanish team showed that the visual axons reach their final destination, the primary visual cortex, extending through unusual paths for them as the cortical surface and the external capsule. At the same time, it appears that the arrival of these axons visual triggers the "withdrawal" of somatosensory axons from other sensory modalities that occupied this region thus restoring a normal topography in adult stages.

"The results demonstrate for the first time the extraordinary ability of the brain to recover from serious defects during the development of training restoring connections in an appropriate manner," concludes the researcher at the CSIC.