SCIENCE NEWS

Juggling your brain

Juggling and other physically complex activities may hold some promise for brain regeneration among those who have suffered stroke or are coping with other neurological diseases where the pathways that connect how people think with how they move their bodies begin to break down.

Researchers at Britain's University of Oxford used diffusion, a new type of magnetic resonance imaging, to compare the physical structure of white matter -- the nerve fibers that connect parts of the brain -- in a control group of 24 men and women to a second group of 24 who had practiced juggling for 30 minutes a day for six weeks. The MRIs showed an increase in white matter among the jugglers, regardless of their skill level. And the increase persisted even after the juggling sessions ended.

Scientists have long known that gray matter, where the brain processes information, increases when people tackle new tasks or have new experiences. But this was the first time researchers have shown that white matter can increase, too, according to Heidi Johansen-Berg, an Oxford neuroscientist and lead author of the study, which was published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

In an e-mail she said, "Gray matter consists of neurons, which can be thought of as computation units, processing and integrating the incoming information. White matter, on the other hand, is composed of the connections between different areas." Johansen-Berg said the MRIs only revealed that the white matter area of the brain had changed. "The findings may have a clinical relevance in the future -- but that would be a long way down the line. There are a number of brain diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, that result in degeneration of pathways. Our results show that, in healthy adults, those pathways can change positively as a result of training," she said. "Future therapies might try to use training regimes or drugs to enhance such positive changes in disease, to counteract degeneration."

"We tend to think of the adult brain as slowly degenerating with age," Johansen-Berg added. "Our results show that the connecting pathways of the adult brain are still able to change positively as a result of learning or new experiences. This reinforces the idea that we should continue to challenge our brains through adulthood."

-- Margaret Shapiro