Question: is it possible to 're-wire' someones brain??

Helen Fletcher answered on 22 Jun 2011:

Our brains are not ‘wired’ in the sense that an electrical circuit is- there is no physical connection between the neurones, but rather they communicate across the spaces (or ‘synapses’) between them.. This means that the connections can change, and form or fade, in a single person during the course of their life. Technically, every time you learn things you are ‘re-wiring’ your brain, because you are forming new connections involved in memory. Even practicing something simple like moving a certain finger up and down a lot can alter neuronal connections in a certain area of the brain, and even change the size of it.

So I guess what you’re more interested in is whether we can artificially manipulate someone’s brain.. Some scientists have managed to do this in mice using lasers- they can ‘switch on and off’ connections in the brain to make the mice behave in certain ways, like running to the left. So what about humans? One of the most relevant situations here is people who have had strokes- they can experience difficulty with simple tasks such as speech because connections in the brain have been damaged. Some patients are in fact able to regain some or all of their previous abilities by re-forming the connections through learning or stimulation. In this sense, their brain is being ‘re-wired’ again.