Plasticity and functional recovery after brain trauma

• Plasticity is the brain tendency to change and adopt as a result of experience and new learning . Our experiences reorganise our neural pathways.
• In infancy, the brain experiences a rapid growth in the number of synaptic connections. It peaks at approximately 15000 by the age of 2-3 years old. This equates to twice as many as there are in the adult brain.
• In recent years, rarely used connections are deleted and frequently used connections are strengthen in in a process knowing as cognitive pruning.
• The negatives of plasticity is the effects the brain and creates trauma. This could be drug use, alcohol, consumption, functions, dementia and treatment.
• Plasticity research: Maguire et al (2000):

  Maguire studied the brains of London taxi drivers using a MRI and found significantly more grey matter in the hippocampus than in the match control group. This is part of the brain associated with the development of spatial and navigational skills in humans and other animals. As part of their training London cabbies must take complex test called 'the knowledge' which assesses their recall of the city streets and possible routes. It is also noteworthy that the longer they had been doing the job the more pronounced was the structural difference.
• The conclusion is that taxi drivers experienced change in structure of their brains. They also found the positive correlation which suggests that repeated exposures to experiences can build up and lead to neural change.
• One strength of Maguire's et al research is that the control group allows up to say that there is a significance difference between taxi drivers.
• One strength of Maguire's et al research is that they use scientific measures(MRIS)
• One strength of Maguire's et al research is that it is attempted to study a real world phenomena.
• One weaknesses of Maguire's et al research is that it cant sure difference is due to there experience because they weren't tested before. Become taxi drivers due to differences.
• Functional recovery is when following physical injury or other forms of trauma such as infection or experience of a stroke. Functional recovery that occurs in these cases.
• During brain recoveries, new connections called secondary pathways are formed between neurons that were not previously connected. They are able to rewire and reorganise itself to form new connections. these can carry out certain functions.
• Axon sprouting- New nerve endings drown and connect with undamaged areas
• Reformation- Reformation of blood vessels.
• Recruitment of homologous(similar areas)- Performed on the opposite hemisphere to do specific tasks.
• Tajiri et al(2013):

  This provides evidence for the role of the stem cells in recovery from brain injury. They randomly assigned rats with traumatic injury. The control group received a solution infused into the brain containing stem cells. Three months after the brain injury, the brain of the stem cell rats showed clear development of neuron-like cells in the area of injury. This was accompanied by a solid stream of stem cells migrating to the brain site of the injury. This was the case with the control group.
• This shows us how the brain creates new connections using neurons manufactured by stem cells.
• One advantage of Tajiri et al is supporting evidence.
• One advantage of Tajiri et al is that it enables us to monitor the function of the brain before and after trauma.
• One disadvantage of Tajiri et al is that it cant be generalised as it is using rats so it will not be generalised to human behaviour.
• One disadvantage of Tajiri et al is that it is not ethical and it would not be allowed into todays world.