The Plastic Brain

What is brain plasticity?

Have you heard the saying ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks’? Or perhaps, you’ve heard about people just not being good as art or good at maths. Maybe you’ve even said this about yourself. Who hasn’t said things like, well, “I’m just not a neat person” or “I’m a forgetful person”. We are surrounded by the idea that we can’t change. That our minds can’t change.

Scientifically, for a long time, it was believed that once the brain was fully grown, it was unable to change. For most of the last century, most researchers believed that our brains were fixed from when we were a teenager (think back to who you were when you were a teenager!). This grew the notion that people are fixed and our brains can’t change.

The opposing school of thought was neuroplasticity or brain plasticity. This was the idea that the brain was malleable and could continue to change throughout our lives. But how do you probe that? When it was thought that the Earth was flat, there were some that proposed it to be round. But how could you prove the Earth is round?! There was a time when we thought that the Earth was the centre of the universe and that everything revolved around it. Then there was the theory that everything revolved around the sun. Now, we now that gravity causes objects to orbit other objects like the Earth around the sun and the moon around the Earth.

How did we move on from a flat earth? How did we move on from Earth as the centre of the universe? We developed the technology to observe things. We developed technology to measure and record things. This allowed us to ‘see’ things for what they were. From these observations they allowed us to develop new theories to fit what we now saw.

Aristotle used his observations of the stars at different parts of the world to work out that the Earth was round. Galileo used his newly invented telescope to see the moons around Jupiter orbiting around Jupiter to show that not everything orbited around the Sun. Of note, despite his observations, he was laughed at and punished for his theories!

The same pattern occurred with neuroplasticity. Recently, technologies for brain imaging have advanced rapidly and have allowed us to really examine if the brain is fixed or malleable. For the geeks out there, we will look at these technologies here.

Neuroplasticity – The seeing is believing

With these advances in taking pictures of the brain described here, scientists started to find more and more evidence that neuroplasticity existed.

We have all seen the movies where blind have improved hearing and sense of smell. So the thought of the brain compensating for lost vision from birth doesn’t seem far-fetched. And it lines up with the traditional view that the brain is fixed after adolescence.

Now imagine the person who loses their eyesight in an accident later in life. He learns to read braille using his right pointer finger. If the brain was fixed from adolescence, there would be no change to this person’s brain. However, using fMRI (which shows the blood flow in the brain) we can see if there are any changes. In these cases, when scientists poke at the pointer finger in the non-reading hand, nothing out of the ordinary happens. However, when they poke at the braille-reading finger, huge areas of the brain light up.

There are two explanations for this. One is that the person’s genes ‘anticipated’ the loss of sight and connected large parts of the brain to their right pointer finger in preparation for the accident. The second, far more likely, explanation is that the brain changes in response to changes in the environment.

Another really, cool example is that of London taxi drivers. Those who have been to London, know that it can be difficult to get around. I tended to use the very easily accessible ‘tube’ (subway for New Yorkers out there). Thus, taxi drivers need to be able to visualise routes and have great spatial abilities.

Yep, you guessed it, fMRI scans show that the part of the brain used for spatial memory (the hippocampus) is larger in London taxi drivers.

So there you go, the brain continues to change and adapt as our environment changes.

I wonder if in decades time, technology will help us answer other questions which we think are true. Maybe the existence of alien life?! Now that would be cool…but may be left for a future blog!

In the meantime what does that mean for you?

Well, research has found that exercise, yoga and meditation have actually been associated with changes in the brain.

We will touch on this in a future article but, for now, if you’d like to change your brain through yoga and meditation, you can join our Recharge Classes