Plasticity

• Brain’s tendency to change and adapt as a result of of experience and new learning.


  Plasticity
• As we age, rarely used connections are deleted and frequently used connections are strengthened.

  Synaptic pruning
• Undamaged axons grow new nerve endings to reconnect neurons whose links were injured or severed.

  Axonal sprouting
• Regions on opposite sides of the brain take on functions of damaged areas.

  Recruitment of homologous areas
• • During infancy, the brain experiences the rapid growth in numbers of synaptic connections, peaking at approximately 15,000 at age 2-3. (Gopnick et al, 1999)
  • About twice as many as there are in the adult brain.
• Recent research suggests that these changes in neural connections (synaptic pruning) are not restricted to a critical period during childhood. They can actaully occur at any stage of life.

  • Boyke et al (2008) found that 60 year olds taught a new skill - juggling - showed increases in grey matter in the visual cortex whcih then stopped and was reversed when practising stopped.
• Constraint induced therapy:

  Stopping the patient from using coping strategies.