Healthy brain tissue 'compensates' for areas damaged by brain injuryRSS Feed

Brain injury damage to areas responsible for memory results in other parts of the brain taking over functions, scientists claim.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have found that when brain injury patients lose the amygdala - the area responsible for forming memories with emotional content - another brain region known as the bed nuclei takes over this function.

The study's senior author professor Michael Fanselow explained how it works: "When you do not have an amygdala, if you have an emotional experience, it is like neural plasticity (the memory-forming ability of brain cells) and the bed nuclei spring into action."

He said that normally the amygdala sends a signal to the bed nuclei not to learn, but "with the amygdala gone, the bed nuclei do not receive that signal and are freed to learn".

UCLA's Brain Research Institute, which carried out the study, was founded over 40 years ago by pioneering neuroscientists John French, Donald Lindsley and Horace Magoun.

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