plasticity

• what is plasticity?

  • the brain's tendancy to change and adapt as a result of experience
  • neuronal structures and functions are affected
• impacts of plasticity as a result of life experience

  • BOYKE- elderly learns to juggle
  • when a 60 year old learns to juggle there's evidence of increased grey matter in the visual cortex
  • grey matters are gone when learning stopped
  • new experiences strengthen nerve pathways and unused nerve pathwatys die away
  • brain is constantly adapting to changing life experiences
• plasticity strengths

  • Maguire analysed london taxi drivers' grey matter with MRI scanner compared to a control group
  • found taxi drivers have a bigger posteriori hippocampus meaning there's a positive correlation to amount of time spent as taxi driver (degree of experience)
• LIMITATIONS OF BRAIN PLASITICITY

  • decline with age
  • biological constraints
• what is functional recovery?

  • recovery of mental processes that have been compromised by brain damage
  • the brain can rewire itself to regain lost functions
  • neurons beside damaged areas can form new circuits
• what are the 2 mechanisms for recovery?

  • NEURONAL UNMASKING - WALL
  • STEM CELLS - unspecialised cells that have the potential to become any other cell type
• functional recovery strength

  • TAJIRI studied brain damaged rats and founf ecidence for stem cells in brain recovery and a solid stream of stem cells migrating to damaged site
• functional recovery limitation

  • HUTTENLOCKER studied age difference in functional recovey and found functional recovery reduces with age