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Neurons Can Be Changed From One Type To Another, Communication Paths Rewired

Slashdot: Science - Fetched: November 14th, 2015, 2:00pm UTC

schwit1 writes: A newly published study from Harvard biologists [here's a link to the paywalled paper's summary] shows how neurons can be dramatically changed from one type into another from within the brain and how neighboring neurons recognize the reprogrammed cells as different and adapt by changing how they communicate with them. Building on earlier work in which they disproved neurobiology dogma by "reprogramming" neurons mdash; turning one form of neuron into another mdash; in the brains of living animals, Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers have now shown that the networks of communication among reprogrammed neurons and their neighbors can also be changed, or "rewired."pdiv class="share_submission" style="position:relative;" a class="slashpop" href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Neurons+Can+Be+Changed+From+One+Type+To+Another%2C+Communication+Paths+Rewired%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F1MIXHut"img src="http://slashcdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a a class="slashpop" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fscience.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F15%2F11%2F14%2F1810241%2Fneurons-can-be-changed-from-one-type-to-another-communication-paths-rewired%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook"img src="http://slashcdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a class="nobg" href="http://plus.google.com/share?url=http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/11/14/1810241/neurons-can-be-changed-from-one-type-to-another-communication-paths-rewired?utm_source=slashdotamp;utm_medium=googleplus" onclick="javascript:window.open(this.href,'', 'menubar=no,toolbar=no,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes,height=600,width=600');return false;"img src="http://www.gstatic.com/images/icons/gplus-16.png" alt="Share on Google+"//a /div/ppa href="http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/11/14/1810241/neurons-can-be-changed-from-one-type-to-another-communication-paths-rewired?utm_source=rss1.0moreanonamp;utm_medium=feed"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~4/O3utd7M6NeY" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

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