Can our brains be rewired? According to researchers from Mississippi and California, whose paper was recently published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, yes. After thorough auditory training was performed on lab rats, the paper's primary author, Dr. Rick Lin, found that the rats' brains had actually been rewired as a result. These findings present an exciting new possibility for future autism treatment because the rats used in the study received a drug that incited symptoms highly similar to those of autism. By exposing the rats to specific distorted sounds that were known to cause plasticity in the brain, it was found that after two to three hours of this calculated auditory treatment each day over the course of two months, the rats' autism-like neurological behaviors had been mitigated. While the conditions of this study may not be feasible for exact replication in a human trial, the study does provide a useful foundation from which to build upon.
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