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Source: ONE News -
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Australian scientists have studied how the brain is constructed to gain new insights into "wiring defects" suspected of causing Parkinson's disease, autism and other disorders.
Professor Geoffrey Goodhill says the brain's wiring - billions of tiny nerve fibres known as axons - are steered into position by a gene-based signal and this process could go awry.
"During the brain's development, billions of nerve cells send out nerve fibres which have to find the appropriate target to form the right connection," said Goodhill of the Queensland Brain Institute, based at the University of Queensland.
"If there are problems with some of genes coding for the proteins which set off these guidance cues, sometimes they can head off in the wrong direction."
Earlier research has shown how these axons could turn left or right in response to a strong signal, but questions remained as to what occurred when the signal was weak.
Goodhill's research has shown how the axons could slow down their rate of growth in response to a weak signal and then speed up again when they confirmed they were on the right path.
"We're continually generating new neurons throughout our life and they have to make connections with other neurons ... they send out axons and they have to all, somehow, get wired up in the right way," he said.
"What we're suggesting in addition to turning, under some circumstances, there is another speeding up or slowing down-type mechanism.
"Speeding up or slowing down is a way that can help them get to where they are going."
Goodhill said the research had uncovered "another piece of the puzzle" of how the brain was built and a new avenue for research into causes of cognitive disorders.
There was increasing evidence that the same genes which control the brain's wiring process were also implicated in disorders including autism and Parkinson's disease, he said.
"Wiring defects seem to underlie a lot of cognitive disorders, and therefore we need to understand what the basic rules are," Goodhill said.
"This new discovery is helping us to do that."
The research is to be published by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
