The authors of the study said the key question moving forward is to understand what specific
changes in brain circuitry give rise to the effects observed in this study.
At 4 months, he has both the motor development to handle the task and the
maturity in his brain circuitry to coordinate all the moves needed to accomplish it.
Conversely, experiences that produce maladaptive changes
in brain circuitry underlie many neuropsychiatric disorders, and age - related decreases in brain plasticity contribute to age - related memory disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.
However, these other areas of the brain may not fire adequately into the basal ganglia due to various reasons, including imbalanced brain development in childhood, brain injury, brain inflammation, brain degeneration, or other
glitches in brain circuitry.
The observation could explain how a gene that specifies a particular behavior can adapt to accommodate changes
in brain circuitry that happen over evolutionary time.
An important key to cure or alleviate the symptoms of these diseases therefore lies in understanding these global changes
in the brain circuitry.