Your brain rewires itself after injury.

When the brains primary learning center is damaged, complex new neural circuits arise to compensate for the lost function, as concluded by life scientists from UCLA and Australia who have pinpointed the regions of the brain involved in creating the alternate pathways- often far from the damaged site. The researchers found that parts of the prefrontal cortex take over when the Hippocampus, the brain's key center of learning and memory formation, is disabled. Their breakthrough discovery could potentially help scientists develop new treatments for Alzheime's disease, stroke and other conditions involoving damage to the brain. For the study, Fenselow and Zelikowsky conducted laboratory experiments with rats that had suffered damaged to the hippocampus. While the rats needed more training than they would have normally, they nonetheless learned from their experiences- a surprising finding.