Neuroplasticity

• Brain plasticity refers to the brains ability to change it’s own structure following changes between the body and the external environment
• The brain can literally REARRANGE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN IT’S NEURONS
• These changes occur in the brain as a result of learning or experience, our brain physically changes it’s structure to adapt to new information
• High levels of stimulation and lots of learning opportunities lead to neural connections becoming DENSER - As you learn and experience, your brain becomes dense with the information
• People with experience in different things have different densities - A musicians cortex related to the mastery of music would be a hell of a lot thicker than yours or mine
• Every single time we learn something new, the neurons connect to create a new trace in the brain, and their neural connections become denser - This is known as DENDRITIC BRANCHING
• DENDRITIC BRANCHING is when the dendrites of neurons grow in number and connect with other neurons to adapt to new information and experiences
• Rosenzweig, Bennet, and Diamond conducted an experiment on this where they placed rats into one of two different environments to measures how environments of enrichment or deprivation would affect the development and dendritic branching of neurons in the cerebral cortex. In the enrichment environment, the rats had stimulus objects, 11 companions and maze training. In the deprivation environment, one rat was all alone with no stimulation. After spending 30-60 days in their respective environment, the rats were killed to measure the effect of the environment on the brain structures. It was found that those who had been in the stimulating environment had increased thickness in the cerebral cortex as a result of increased dendritic branching in comparison to the rat in the deprivation environments. Parts of the brain associated with thinking, planning, and decision making (not that a rat really needs those) were significantly more developed - The combination of stimuli and having companions created the best condition for development of cerebral thickness.
• If learning always results in dendritic branching in other animals then it means that it’s significant to humans too. This can be positive or negative - Maguire investigated something neutral, where as Carrion Et al conducted a study that found that children who had been abused in the early stages of their life tended to show a smaller hippocampus than their peers of the same age.
• How does neuroplasticity even happen? How do new synapses form? Can they die? It happens due to a phenomenon known as SYNAPTIC PLASTICITY
• SYNAPTIC PLASTICITY is simple, you use it or you lose it!
• Synapses are like muscles - They become stronger through repeated use - This occurs due to a phenomenon known as LONG-TERM POTENTIATION - Long term potentiation is like the body’s workout - Synaptic connections between neurons become STRONGER the more frequently they are activated and put to high frequency activity
• Long term potentiation triggers protein synthesis and gene expression that is used for dendritic branching, and the process of dendritic branching happening is called NEURAL ARBORIZATION.
• When a synapse is not used or is under-stimulated - It will go through synaptic pruning - A good term because it literally kind of dries up - The brain removes synapses that are NO LONGER NEEDED in order to increase the efficiency of neural processes, though this process has not been fully understood yet.
• Draganski is a great study for this.