Dynamic progress and pathfinding of fibers inside a rising and folding bilayer system. Credit score: Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-56362-3
How an individual’s mind grows and makes connections can decide intelligence in addition to susceptibility to issues equivalent to epilepsy and psychological sickness. Nevertheless, numerous questions stay about how the method works, particularly the mechanics of mind folding.
In a research not too long ago revealed within the journal Nature Communications, researchers from Binghamton College suggest the primary dynamic mannequin predicting the sophisticated mechanics of connectivity improvement and folding within the cerebral cortex—the outermost layer of the mind the place reminiscence and reasoning happen.
Assistant Professor Mir Jalil Razavi—a college member on the Thomas J. Watson Faculty of Engineering and Utilized Science’s Division of Mechanical Engineering—led the analysis, with contributions from Ph.D. college students Akbar Solhtalab and Ali H. Foroughi. Dr. Lana Pierotich from Harvard Medical College and Boston Youngsters’s Hospital additionally contributed to the research, offering insights into the organic relevance of the proposed mannequin.
“Our motivation,” Razavi mentioned, “was to look at the physical interplay between the folding of the brain and connectivity development, and why if we have an alteration in one of them, there will be disruption in the other one. How are they connected?”
From left, PhD scholar Akbar Solhtalab, Assistant Professor Mir Jalil Razavi and PhD scholar Ali H. Foroughi are a part of the Mechanics of Comfortable/Bio Supplies Lab at Binghamton College. Credit score: Binghamton College
The researchers studied why axons—the lengthy, slender projections of neurons that transmit electrical impulses—have a a lot larger density within the gyri (convex elements) than within the sulci (concave elements). Due to what they’re calling axon reorientation principle, axons develop otherwise when uncovered to tensile or compressive forces inside the mind’s white matter.
“The folding brain creates a stress landscape,” Razavi mentioned. “The place we have now convex and concave patterns due to folding, we have now tensile stresses and compressive stresses. When axons transfer or increase from the core of the mind towards the cortex or outer layer of the mind and so they expertise a stress created by the folding within the white matter, they only change their path. They reorient themselves towards the tensile stresses, not compressive stresses.
“They love to be under tension rather than on compression. Although they grow faster in a stiffer medium, they tend to move toward a softer medium. The folding of the brain, which generates tensile and compressive forces, can alter the stiffness of the white matter, influencing the environment in which axons grow.”
Razavi has spent the final 10 years wanting on the mind from a mechanical standpoint, since his Ph.D. research on the College of Georgia. Now that he has a mannequin for axon progress habits, his subsequent step could be to validate it by way of experimentation. He is aware of different researchers who’re able to collaborate—all he wants is funding.
“This research has a lot of potential to reveal brain disorders and mechanisms, so if we have funding, we will extend this to a true scale model,” Razavi mentioned. “We could initiate fibers in different locations and let them grow to see what happens when we have the unfolding of the brain. Can we see the same pattern that we have predicted?”
Extra data:
Akbar Solhtalab et al, Stress panorama of folding mind serves as a map for axonal pathfinding, Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-56362-3
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New analysis seems at how axons join as brains develop (2025, March 18)
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