Traumatic Brain Injury: Young Brains Can Repair Injury

Monkeys who lose an important key memory center in the brain as infants recover much more quickly than older monkeys who suffer a similar injury. The results suggest that young brains may be capable of recovery from injury. The study was published in the Journal Nature Neuroscience and confirms what had been seen in humans and will monitor how monkeys with ruptured hippocampi remember their surroundings for the next few years.

Damage to young brain may fix itself, study finds

"Basically the brain has rewired itself in some way," said David Amaral, one of the three authors of the study. "If you understand what's happening here, that's the first step to trying to promote that kind of (brain) reorganization in disorders like cerebral palsy," in which damage to young brains affects children's muscle control," he said.