A recent MIT press release describes new discoveries about the plasticity of mammal brains. Mriganka Sur and other researchers at the Picower Center for Learning and Memory at MIT "rewired" the brains of mice to receive visual information in the region of their brains normally used for hearing. The modified mice responded to flashes of light as if they had heard sounds. The researchers suggest that if human brains share this level of adaptability, if may be possible to reroute signals in people with brain disease or injury, helping them recover normal sensory or emotional responses. For more information on the research visit the Mriganka Sur Lab website or see Sur's paper, Rewiring the cortex: Cross-modal plasticity and its implications for cortical development and function (PDF format).