BRAIN PLASTICITY - AN EPIGENETIC EFFECT?

Ever wondered how we learn, retain, remember and apply in our day to day life? What does experience amount to? Why does salt pepper hair indicate age as well as wisdom?
Well , the answer is brain plasticity. It gives us the capacity to respond to our environment with maximising our own resources.

In fact the neonatal brain of cats need environmental visual stimuli for the development of the AES(anterior ectosylvian sulcus) region of its cortex . Wait there is more to it . In the absence of such stimuli, the neurons that were under the control of AEV(anterior ectosylvian visual) area in AES start responding to auditory stimuli and not the usual visual stimuli, thereby increasing the number of neurons responding to auditory cues while reducing the ones responding to visual cues. Such compensatory mechanisms are debated in humans though most beleive that it is possibl e only during early brain development.

Does this mean that once adults we loose our brain plasticity? No, in the adult rat brain its capacity to react to PEPS(pain and emotional stress) even after 2 months proves that brain plasticity is very much active in the adult brain. This is mainly carried out by the acetylation of H4 histone mediated by the process of phosphorylation carried out by Ca+ protein kinase C. Such a secondary chemical signalling pathway allows the effect to be seen even after 2 months contributing to memory. Interestingly, the cure for depression also lies in epigenetic regulation either by acetylation of histone H3 (in chronic depresion) or H4 (in acute depression) in the promoter regions (P3 and P4)of Bdnf (brain derived neurotrophic factor) mRNA.

NAME: ISHITA
STUDENT NUMBER 4187144