To young kids, learning skills is so much easier than adults do, because the neurons in younger brain can reach out and form new connections quickly. “Malleability”, the word used to describe this phenomenon, for children, their malleability is much higher than elders, and this feature allows them to get skills like walking, eating and speaking in a short time. Following the process of growing up, this magic ability disappears day by day, and naturally, the time people cost in learning different skills prolong.
When this feature is accepted by all of us as a natural process to human, scientists in Stanford University induced the brain of adult mice to regain the high level of malleability via disturbing a kind of protein named Pir B (the same kind of protein is called Lilr B2 in human’s body). When we are young, our brain open windows to help us develop skills; and those windows would be closed when people became mature. This finding, however, may be the key to open those windows again. This news means a lot to today’s medical field- it will allow the brain to rebuild the inside construction from physical damage, stroke or Alzheimer those brain disease.
The research itself is not as complicated as people might think. The medicine used by the team leading by Carla Shatz, is called sPirB. This is soluble version of PirB, which can solve into the mice’s blood much more quick than PirB can do, by doing like that, the PirB is blocked from the blood. Followed, scientists in this team push adult mice seeing with only one eye by destroying the vision cortex of their brains. Under this condition, those mice’s brains have to rebuild the connection in order to recover the vision. Showing by the conclusion, compared with compare group, mice with disturbed PirB have better ability to cover up their cortex. That is to say, the PirB in cortex of the brain can affect the malleability of it, and this affection might work out with the same rule in the whole brain.
However, this research actually doesn’t as that meaningful as people hope. There are 5 different proteins LilrB 2 in human’s body; people need to figure out which one can makes influence to brain malleability exactly. Besides, it is still a mystery that if there’s any by-products showing when LilrB2 are blocked.
No matter how much related task need to be done in the future, the conclusion from this test gives scientists light in certain areas. After 20 years, it is full of hope for doctors to cure the Alzheimer, which might bother someone’s grand parents right now.

Citation: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/october/biox-brain-protein-10-13-14.html
http://www.guokr.com/article/439503/