Study suggests that activity, more than rest, speeds recovery after a brain injury

( Natural News ) If you’ve ever suffered from a concussion or a stroke, you’ve probably been told to take things easy for at least a few days to give your brain enough time to recover. But this can be a nightmare, especially for those who are always on the go. Fortunately, a recent study by researchers from Columbia University has revealed that there’s no need to rest after a brain injury. The study, which was published in the journal Nature , even showed that keeping the brain active was more beneficial for the recovery of traumatic injury . The researchers arrived at this finding through an in vivo experiment in mice, which was part of their multi-year effort to understand how the brain’s cerebral cortex works. In this experiment, they focused on a specific part of the cerebral cortex known as the barrel cortex and its role in the sensing and analysis of signals detected by the whiskers. The whiskers are akin to the fingers in humans since they are both used to detect their surroundings. The mice were trained to find an item inside the dark box, and once they’ve found it, they pulled a lever that rewarded them with water. The team removed the barrel cortex and found that the mice were unable to perform their task on the following day. However, on the second day, they went back to doing their normal task at original levels. This proves that the barrel cortex isn’t the only part of the brain responsible for tactile perception. Moreover, mice that were allowed to rest for three days before they were given a chance to return to the task were unable to show full recovery. It took them some time before they could partially regain sensation, unlike the former group […]

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