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NEUROSCIENCE: Enhanced: Freeing the Brain from the Perineuronal Net
Kevin Fox and Bruce Caterson
The brains of young mammals are remarkably plastic, but this plasticity is lost in the adult. In their Perspective, Fox and Caterson discuss an intriguing new study (Pizzorussoet al.) that attempts to restore plasticity to the visual cortex of adult rats. The authors of the study were able to restore plasticity after injecting into the adult rat visual cortex an enzyme (chondroitinase ABC) that degrades the extracellular matrix surrounding neurons and blocking axonal extension.
The authors are in the Neuroscience Research Group and the Connective Tissue Biology Labs, Cardiff School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3US, UK. E-mail: foxkd{at}cardiff.ac.uk
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In Science Magazine
REPORTS
Tommaso Pizzorusso, Paolo Medini, Nicoletta Berardi, Sabrina Chierzi, James W. Fawcett, and Lamberto Maffei (8 November 2002) Science298 (5596), 1248.
[DOI: 10.1126/science.1072699] |Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »|Supporting Online Material »
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