Fernanda Tovar-Moll (Adjunct Professor, National Center of Structural Biology and Bioimaging at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and co-founder and president of the D’Or Institute for Research and Education, Rio de Janeiro)
Prof Fernanda Tovar-Moll and her colleagues are interested in how the brain reorganises itself following a disruption in early development. Her research team uses sophisticated brain imaging methods and found the two hemispheres of the brain still manage to communicate with each other and transfer information despite the absence of the corpus callosum. This suggests that alternative pathways can be formed that may be compensatory in nature. For example, the bundles of axons normally destined to cross the corpus callosum can become rerouted when the normal developmental process is interrupted. These white matter bundles (e.g., Probst bundles and sigmoid bundles) still play an important role in connecting brain regions and are involved in the “long-range” transfer of information between hemispheres.