A team of scientists has cured a brain disorder in adult mice by rebooting the rodents' brains and allowing them to rewire themselves.

The research demonstrates that certain features of young brains can be recreated in mature brains, even in parts of older brains that scientists believed were impervious to change.

It could also pave the way for treating a variety of developmental disorders that begin relatively early in life.

In the early years of life, brains in animals are malleable. The cells in the brains begin making connections at early ages and strengthen those connections throughout life. Those early stages where the brain is rapidly making connections among cells are called critical periods.



Read MoreAdvisors battle cyberattacks to protect clients

The brain continues to change throughout life, but it grows more and more difficult to break certain kinds of connections as time passes. That means it becomes harder for the brain to undo problems it may have undergone early in its development.

But Sunil Gandhi and his colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, have found a way to hit the reset button in certain regions of the brain even later in life, allowing the organ to rewire itself and iron out the kinks that can lead to disorders. (Tweet This)

The team published its results online in the journal Neuron this week. The research was funded by a grant from the High-Risk, High-Reward program at the National Institutes of Health.



Read MoreThe 5 US states where China invests the most



In their study, the scientists implanted special cells into the brains of adult mice that suffered from a disease called amblyopia, sometimes called lazy eye.

Amblyopia is not a problem with the eye itself, but usually results instead from a problem in the connection between the eye and the brain.

The cells that Gandhi's team implanted in the mice emit a chemical called GABA, which is found in many places in the brain. GABA is an "inhibitory neurotransmitter." It prevents certain parts of the brain from becoming overexcited and causing dysfunction. Scientists have connected deficiencies in those inhibitory neurons not only to amblyopia but also to disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.