Source:
Edition:
Country:
Date:
Page:
Area:
Circulation:
Ad data:
Phone:
The Daily Telegraph {Main}
Keyword:
University College London
UK
Friday 17, October 2014
12
105 sq. cm
ABC 505473 Daily
page rate £46,000.00, scc rate £214.00
020 7931 2000
-D>FPK<I
DINOMPH@IO
<I?C@GKTJPM
=M<DIOJBMJR
By Sarah Knapton, Science Editor
MASTERING a musical instrument, or
another new skill, makes the brain grow,
scientists have found.
A fatty substance which is a major
component of the brain’s white matter is
laid down with each physical skill people
learn, researchers at University College
London found.
The substance, myelin, is constantly
produced by the brain and spinal cord
into early adulthood as it is needed for
many developmental processes.
When a child learns to walk or an adult
masters a skill such as juggling, new
neural circuit activity is needed and highspeed connections are made across large
distances between parts of the brain and
spinal cord.
Tests in lab mice showed that new
myelin must also be made each time a
skill is learned later in life. Mice which
had been genetically engineered so they
could not produce myelin failed to learn
how to run on a complex wheel. Normal
mice were able to pick up the new skill.
“From earlier studies of human white
matter we thought myelin might be
involved in some way in skill learning, so
we decided to attack this idea experimentally,” said Prof Bill Richardson,
director of the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research at UCL.
“We were surprised how quickly we
saw differences in the ability of mice
from each group to learn how to run on a
complex wheel, which shows just how
fast the brain can respond to wrap newlyactivated circuits in myelin and how this
improves learning.”
The study, published in the journal
Science, is the first to experimentally confirm the role of white matter in learning.
Prof Richardson said it could solve
“some of the mysteries still surrounding
how the brain adapts and learns throughout life”.
Reproduced by Gorkana under licence from the NLA (newspapers), CLA (magazines), FT (Financial Times/ft.com) or other copyright owner. No further
copying (including printing of digital cuttings), digital reproduction/forwarding of the cutting is permitted except under licence from the copyright
owner. All FT content is copyright The Financial Times Ltd.
Article Page 1 of 1
299815756 - SIMWAL - A20373-1 - 91480494