Neuroplasticity: You can teach an old brain new tricks

[littlemissmartypants]

Neuroplasticity: You can teach an old brain new tricks
Brain imaging studies show that every time we learn a new task, we're changing our brain by expanding our neural network.
DANIEL HONAN
11 October, 2012

Your brain is more flexible than we've ever thought before. It changes because it is constantly optimizing itself, reorganizing itself by transferring cognitive abilities from one lobe to the other, particularly as you age. After a stroke, for instance, your brain can reorganize itself to move functions to undamaged areas. And yet, due to the lifestyles we lead we tend to not make full use of our brains.

Dr. Dennis Charney, dean of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, has studied how the brain responds to dramatic changes in peoples' environments. In the video below, Charney describes how prisoners of war who were placed in solitary confinement developed unusual cognitive capacities because the only activity they were allowed to do was think. The POWs were essentially exercising their brains. What can we learn from this?

Charney is using this research to conduct psychological therapies that can improve learning and memory, and solve problems with anxiety and depression. Watch the video here:

https://bigthink.com/think-tank/brain-exercise?jwsource=cl

What's the Significance?
Consider two examples of groups of people scientists have studied. The Sea Gypsies, or Moken, are a seafaring people who spend a great deal of their time in boats off the coast of Myanmar and Thailand, have unusual underwater vision -- twice as good as Europeans. This has enabled Mokens to gather shellfish at great depths without the aid of scuba gear. How do the Moken do this? They constrict their pupils by 22 percent. How do they learn to do this? Is it genetic? Neuroscientists argue that anyone can learn this trick. Simply put, the brain orders the body to adapt to suite its needs.

More at the link.

https://bigthink.com/think-tank/brain-exercise

[hlthe2b]

1. Interesting...

[littlemissmartypants]

2. It certainly flies in the face of what most believe.

I must admit, it has changed my thinking, pun intended.

[No Vested Interest]

3. I'm very interested in this topic, as my adult child's brain was injured by a stroke.

Many areas were affected, especially speech, but also numerancy.
Gradually speech returned, from one-word reponses to four- or more-word sentences.
Then speech declined somewhat, perhaps due to deep-rooted anxiety, loss of adequate sleep, a fall and then a 4-hour bout of seizures.

I continue to follow articles on neuro-plasticity and hope to adopt and use some of the simple brain exercises that can help this adult regain her speaking capacity.