Researchers have long sought a factor that can trigger the brain’s ability to learn – and perhaps recapture the “sponge-like” quality of childhood. In the August 8 issue of the journal Cell, neuroscientists at Children’s Hospital Boston report that they’ve identified such a factor, a protein called Otx 2.
Otx2 helps a key type of cell in the cortex to mature, initiating a critical period — a window of heightened brain plasticity, when the brain can readily make new connections.
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