SOCIAL NETWORKS

摘要

After the Romanian Revolution in 1989, the dismal reality of the country's orphanages was revealed: 170,000 children had been crowded into impoverished institutions, largely abandoned, and left without human contact. A few years later, even after being adopted into good homes, the children struggled with low IQ, depression, anxiety, and social and behavioural problems. Brain studies revealed the wiring between regions wasn't as efficient the myelin was lacking. Almost accidentally, Gabriel Corfas, now at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, discovered an analogous phenomenon in young mice. He was originally planning on studying something else - solo mice were a control - but the isolated mice turned out to be too interesting to resist. The oligodendrocytes of socially deprived mice looked deprived themselves, with scrawnier arms that didn't wrap as many times around the axons (see main story).