Plasticity & Functional Recovery

• Plasticity

  The brain’s ability to change and adapt because of experience
• 2 things affecting plasticity

  • age
  • cognitive reserve
• functional recovery

  transfer of function after trauma from a damaged area of the brain to undamaged areas
• 2 ways functional recovery can occur

  • stem cells
  • neuronal unmasking
• kemperman et al

  investigated whether an enriching environment can alter the number of neurons in the brain. they found evidence of more new neurons in rats with a complex environment than in rats with lab cages
• Kuhn et al

  aimed to find out if games with navigational components have plasticity effects. 23 ppts in an experimental group trained for 2 months, 30 mins a day on Mario Kart. they had more grey matter than ppts in the control group
• Maguire et al

  found a positive correlation between between volume of grey matter in the hippocampus of taxi drivers’ brains and the time they had been a taxi driver for - shows that the brain can permanently change in response to frequent exposure to a task
• stem cells

  unspecialised cells that can give rise to cell types that have different functions
• Tajiri et al

  assigned rats with brain injury to one of 2 groups - one group received stem cell transplants and the control group didn’t. after 3 months, the stem cell rats showed development of neuron-like cells, whereas the control group didn’t
• Neuronal unmasking - Wall (1977)

  identified dormant synapses in the brain - the unmasking of these synapses can open connections to regions of the brain that aren’t normally activated
• dormant synapses

  synaptic connections that exist automatically but their function is blocked
• neurorehabilitation

  uses motor therapy and electrical stimulation to counter negative effects of accidents and injuries to the brain
• functional recovery - age

  young people have more synapses per neuron than adults, making it more likely for them to recover from traumatic bran injury
• Boyke et al

  ppts over age 60 were taught to juggle - they found increases in grey matter in the visual cortex but the changes stopped when they stopped practicing, suggesting that recovery is limited to simple occupational strategies
• functional recovery - cognitive reserve: Schneider et al

  found that patients with the equivalent of a university education are more likely to be disability free after brain trauma than people who didn’t finish high school.
• DFR

  disability free recovery