Brain Placticity

• Brain Plasticity:

  • the ability of neural connections to grow and reorginise with learning or damage
• Developmental placticity:

  • the ability ot neural conections in the brain to reorginise in reponse to sensory input from the environment
  • e.g. infants learning to suck on a bottle for food
• 5 steps of brain placticity during infancy:

  1. proliferation
  2. migration
  3. circut formation
  4. synapse pruning
  5. myelination
• Proliferation:

  • 1st step
  • growth and division of cells, including neurons, leads to increase in total cell number
  • most neurons already formed when born, some neurons created during infancy
• lifespan psycology:

  • the feild of study that examines patterns of growth, change ans stability in behavior that occur through the entire lifespan
• A change must be permanant or 'lasting' to be considered a developmental change
• example on developmental change:

  • biological and psycolocical changes reaulsing from puberty
  • decline in mental alertness in onder years
• cognitive development:

  • changes to inderviduals mental ability (language)
• physical development:

  • changes to body and its variouse systems (gross and fine motor skills)
• social development:

  • changes in an inderviduals relationships with others
• emotional development:

  • changes in how an indervidual experiences different feelings and how these feelings are expressed
• continouse development:

  • gradual, ongoing changes throughout lifespan with no sudden shifts
• discontinoues development:

  • distint and seperate stages, with different kinds of abilitys occuring in each stage
• quantative changes:

  • variation in the quantity of a thought, feeling or behavior
  • e.g number of words spoken in relation to age, vocab grows as gets older
• qualitative changes:

  • changes which vary in 'quality', 'kind' or 'type
  • e.g dont understand concept of honesty in childhood but do in adolecence
• Adaptive plasticity:

  • ability of neural connections in brain to reorganise in response to learning new info, or to compensate for lost functions ad take advantage of remaining functions
• Migration:

  • 2nd step
  • newly created neuronsmove around brain until they reach their final position
  • this allows connections to be made
• Circut formation:

  • 3rd step
  • they form neural circuts whereby neurons send electro-chemical messages to each other
• Synaptic pruning:

  • 4th step
  • neurons that dont form connections die
  • increses efficiency of NS
• Myelination:

  • 5th step
  • fatty substance called mylog starts growing over axons, insulating neural connections
  • contributes to dramatic brain growth typical in infants
• Cerebellum during adolecense:

  • only takes up 10% of brain but houses 50% of total neurons
  • activity in cerebellum linked to decision-making, reward learning, motivation etc
• Corpus callosum during adolescence:

  • thickness increases during adolesence through proccess of myelination
  • As neural networks strengthern leads to stonger connection between the two hemispheres, behavioral and emotional regulation continues to improve.
• Amygdala during adolescence:

  • plays role in emotional responses and immediate behavioral reactions as resonse
  • highly reactive to emotional stimuli
  • leads to teens being more likely to misinterpret other's emotions
• Pre-frontal cortex in adolecence:

  • synaptic pruning begins at back of brain with pre-frontal cortec being last.
  • responsiable for probolem solving, attention and ability to predict consoquences of behaviors.
  • ability to regulat emotions continues to improve during adolescence, as too does the ability to recognise emotions in others
• Development - Prenatal:

  • physical: small muscles in face used to smile and grimace
  • cognitive: at 30 weeks can listen to mothers speech
  • social/emotional: foetus can sence mother emotions
• Development - infancy:

  • birth - 1 yr
  • physical: gross motor skills to hold head up, crawl and roll
  • cognitive: show desire to communicate with other
  • social/emotional: imitates facial expressions
• Development - childhood:

  • 1-12 yrs
  • physical: increase in fine and gross motor skills
  • cognitive: by 11 have vocab of around 19,000 words
  • social/emotional: between 15 months and 2 yrs children begin displaying self awareness by recognising themselves in mirror.
• Development - adolescence:

  • 12-20 yrs
  • physical: gross motor skills fully developed
  • cognitive: improvement in language comprehension
  • social/emotional: mood becomes unpredictable
• Development - early adulthood:

  • 12-20 yrs
  • physical: motor skills operate at their best
  • cognitive: improvement in knowlage of words and their meanings
  • social/emotional: dependance of family decreases
• Development - Middle age:

  • 40-65 yrs
  • physical: find it harder to learn and maintain new motor skills
  • cognitive: improvement in knowlage of words and their meanings
  • social/emotional: decrease in negative emotions
• Development - older age:

  • 65+ yrs
  • physical: control over fine motor movements decline
  • cognitive: speed of language proccessing declines
  • social/emotional: common to have smaller and tighter social networks