新生儿大脑发育机制之新发现

With their French colleagues, researchers at the University of Helsinki have found a mechanism¹ in the memory centre of newborn that adjusts（校准，调整） the maturation（成熟） of the brain for the information processing required later in life. The study was published this week in an American science magazine The Journal of Neuroscience. The brain cells in the brain of a newborn are still quite loosely（宽松地，轻率地） interconnected（连通的，有联系的） . In the middle of chaos², they are looking for contact with each other and are only later able to operate as interactive³ neural⁴ networks（神经网络） .

Many cognitive⁵ operations, such as attention, memory, learning and certain states of sleep are based on rhythmic⁶（间歇的，合拍的） interactions of neural networks. For a long time the researchers have been interested in finding the stage in the development of the brain in which the functional⁷ characteristics and interconnections are sufficiently⁸ developed for these subtle（微妙的，敏感的） brain functions.

Key players in this maturation process include a type of nerve cells called interneurones, and recent research sheds light on their functional development. The researchers have noticed that the activeness of the interneurones change dramatically during early development. In the memory centre of the brain they found a mechanism which adjusts changes in the activeness of interneurones.

The interneurones nerve cells are kind of controller cells. In the nervous system of a newborn they promote the creation of nerve cell contacts, and on the other hand they prevent premature⁹ rhythmic activity of neural networks. During development the controlling role will change, and the result is that the neural network becomes more efficiently¹⁰ rhythmic. This can be seen, for example, in the strengthening of the EEG signal during sleep.

The mechanism adjusting the activity of the interneurones is related to the development phase which prepares the brain to process and handle information needed later in life. The finding may also offer more detailed¹¹ means to intervene in the electric disorders¹² of developing neural networks, such as epilepsy（癫痫） .