Your Plastic Brain

Quick, what is your brain doing right now? Keeping your heart beating? Reminding your lungs to take in air? Reading these words? Your brain is pretty important and does a lot of things to keep your body functioning throughout the day. But do you ever think about how your brain changes? Does it change?

We used to believe that the human brain did the majority of its growing and changing during childhood; the human brain acquires an incredible amount of knowledge and skills during the early years of life. Babies go from simply crying to being able to walk, run, and acquire complex language in only a few years. But we largely assumed that past these early stages of growth, the brain remained largely unchanged. But, recent scientific advances and studies have revealed that our brains actually continue to change throughout our lives! And if our brains continue to change as we age, that means we can actually do things to help our brains change for the better. Read on to learn more!

So what IS brain plasticity?

Brain plasticity refers to the brain’s ability to change throughout life. It means that our brain isn’t set in early adulthood, but that it continues to change, grow, and respond to new circumstances.

Brain plasticity is a physical process; connections can be forced, refined, or even weakened and severed. These changes in neural pathways and synapses due to changes in behavior, environmental stimulus, thinking, and emotions. But these pathways can also change due to injury or disease. So, brain plasticity, known also as neuroplasticity, can mean both cellular changes due to learning, to larger, more complete changes in brain wiring, due to injury.

Brain plasticity is the growth of new neurons, each connected to existing neurons, much like a web. Each new connection exists alongside the original neurons in our brain. These pathways can be visualized by thinking of a forest. When you visit a location in the forest many times over, you create a new path through the terrain. The forest itself remains the same, but now there is a new pathway through. The pathways in our brain are much the same; when we learn something new and practice it again and again, we form a new pathway, or connection.

So how, exactly, do we create these pathways? Part of the answer can be found in a great, but nerdy, joke:

Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: One, but the light bulb really has to want to change!

Jokes aside, the brain is actually the same way! Ignoring your brain and doing the same routine, day in and day out will not lead to growth or change. Your brain, just like anything else you want to change, needs your time and attention. You need to adopt a plan and plan to stick with it for a period of time to see any change. The more time you put into this plan, the more likely it is to work. The great news is, taking a class such as this one for a semester is a great way to work on change!

For more on brain plasticity, you can check out this long, but very good, video from Dr. Michael Merzenich, co-founder and CSO of PositScience and the founder of BrainHQ (the program our SDCE Brain Fitness classes uses!). In it, he discusses brain plasticity and what he has learned from his extensive research on the brain. In his work, he has found that one important element to brain plasticity is reward. With reward, our brain enjoys the change and will continue to change and as a result. The bigger the challenge, the bigger the reward; the bigger the reward, the bigger change in the brain!

Of course not all brain changes result from learning. Unfortunately, illness or injury can also change the brain. Traumatic brain injuries, which we are only recently coming to understand, strokes, and severe/prolonged illness can all change the way our brain functions. These changes can manifest in vision, cognitive, or motor functions. In order to prevent these brain changes from becoming permanent, rehabilitation must occur as soon as possible.

Brain plasticity research, though newer, is a growing field! This week in class we will be discussing research and ways we can improve our own brain plasticity and function. If you want to read more, you can check out the website for NeuroscienceNews for an updated list on brain plasticity. Visit that site here:

Some great articles include:

The link between Vitamin D Deficiency and loss of brain plasticity:

https://neurosciencenews.com/vitamin-d-brain-plasticity-10777/

Bilingualism could offset brain changes in Alzheimer’s: https://neurosciencenews.com/alzheimers-bilingual-8439/

Brains are more plastic than we thought:

https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-plasticity-7124/

http://merzenich.positscience.com/?page_id=143

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neuroplasticity&oldid=669402247

http://brainsciencepodcast.com/bsp/2014/bsp-105-merzenich

http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2008/02/26/brain-plasticity-how-learning-changes-your-brain

https://neurosciencenews.com/neuroscience-terms/brain-plasticity/page/4/