Immune System keeps your Brain Tidy Too

[Guest guest]

Immune System Keeps Your Brain Tidy Too

Researchers have uncovered a link between the the brain's nerve cell

network and the immune system--the same protein that helps gets rid

of uninvited bacteria also eliminates unused neural connections.

Hopkin reports

You might not realize it, but you're born with more brain cells than you

know what to do with. Or at least more brain-cell connections. As you

grow older, through childhood and adolescence, you get rid of the

connections that aren't being used to store information or to tell you

which tie goes with that jacket

For years researchers have known about this cellular pruning. But they

didn't know how it worked. Now scientists from the Stanford University

School of Medicine report that it's the immune system that carries out

this critical brain maintenance. In fact, the same protein that helps

gets rid of uninvited bacteria also eliminates unused neural

connections. The findings appeared in the December 14 issue of the

journal Cell.

This routine cellular maintenance is important for normal brain

development. Mice that are missing this pruning protein wind up with

disorganized, abnormal retinas. And mice that are prone to getting

glaucoma make too much of the protein, particularly later in life--so

connections in their retinas are destroyed when they shouldn't be.

Reigning in this overzealous pruning process could provide a treatment

for glaucoma or for other diseases where neural connections are lost.

But it probably won't help you decide whether to go with the solid tie

or the stripes.