Researchers in China got damaged mouse and pig brains to recover not by implanting electrodes in the skull but by tapping the shin bone twice a second for five days, leaving less brain-cell death and better maze runs.
There is a phone line between your bones and your brain that nobody usually notices. Doctors have long spotted that people with traumatic brain injuries heal their bones faster: damaged brain cells release little vesicles that travel to bone stem cells and tell them to grow.
So researchers turned the question around: can bones heal brains?
Two taps a second, for five days
A team at Southern Medical University in China first gave mice and pigs traumatic brain injuries and strokes. Then they fitted the animals with a device that tapped their shin bones twice a second for five days.
The result: less brain-cell loss, new neurons, and chronic inflammation eased. The animals lived longer, moved better and ran mazes better than controls.
The effect runs through a protein in bone cells called PIEZO1. Three spiral blades curve over an ion channel; under pressure the blades flex down, the channel opens, and positively charged sodium, potassium and calcium flow in. Remove PIEZO1 and the benefits of the tapping vanish.
Bones are endocrine organs
Odd as it sounds, bone already secretes things. It manages minerals, releases a growth factor, and puts out hormones that lower blood glucose and raise testosterone. The endocrine system runs on feedback loops, so a one-way brain-to-bone axis would be the stranger arrangement.
Still odd, though.
Why it matters
If mechanically stimulating bone really reaches brain tissue, the maths of rehabilitation after brain injury and stroke changes: today it is drugs and training, tomorrow maybe a tapping device. The catch is whether the effect reproduces in people, and animal results that pretty tend not to survive that trip.
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