Plasticity & Functional Recovery

• Brain Plasticity is the brain's ability to change and adapt functionally & structurally as a result of experience/learning/training
• Maguire et.al. found that London taxi drivers have a significantly larger posterior hippocampi than control participants and the volume positively correlated with experience
• Brain plasticity can increase from having a skilled job, meditation etc
• Davidson et.al found that Tibetan monks had more brain activity than student volunteers due to meditation
• Kemperman et.al used two groups of rats in different environments and found that the group with a more complex environment had larger hippocampi and an increase of neurons in the hippocampi
• Functional Recovery is the regaining of abilities that have been damaged/lost due to brain injury or disease
• Neural Unmasking is when signals are rerouted through dormant synapses
• Neural Reorganisation is when homologous regions on opposite sides take over lost functions (laterality shift)
• Axonal Sprouting is the growth of new nerve endings
• Stem cells can be used for functional recovery by implanting them to directly replace cells, to repair nearby cells, or to create pathways around damaged areas by rerouting communication to a new area
• Plasticity is crucial for learning and recovery