Carla J. Shatz, Ph.D.
Department Chair and
Nathan Marsh Pusey Professor of Neurobiology
Harvard Medical School

“The human brain is the most complex computational machine imaginable. There are well over a hundred billion nerve cells and even more connections. It is this complexity of connectivity, and its precision that determines how the brain works. But how does this wiring happen during development? How do nerve cells know where to grow their connections? To what extent does the brain have to function in order to achieve its adult precision of connectivity? The major aim of research in my laboratory is to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms that establish this precision during neuronal development.”

The above is from her website. She was talking about control of brain growth and development. About two distinct portions, one fixed and the other malleable. The fixed part is connections between the eye and the brain. It always happens. The other is influence by environment and changes with age. There are molecules that act as signals for connections and others that slow or stop growth. She was suggesting that if the brakes could be turned off, then functions lost through injury, a stroke, might be returned. (Not the memory contained in dead cells, but the ability of the brain to learn again.)

I have continued to feel that you and I, everyone needs to know how the brain works in order to find strategies that are best suited to using it.

PW