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Brain Plasticity
One of the key principles of behavioral neuroscience is that experience can modify brain structure long after brain development is complete. B Kolb, IQ Whishaw - Annual Review of Psychology, 1998 - Annual Reviews
The brain can spontaneously create new tools for better functioning with minimal but precise promptings.
The brain monitors its environment continuously and responds accordingly. Many of stimuli from the environment will prompt the brain to make changes to the way it is working and re-organize its structure. We call that learning. We call that brain plasticity. It is possible to craft experiences that will make the brain want to grow and repair itself in the process.
What the lab rats have taught us
Enhanced early experiences increase cortical thickness, and both neuronal and vascular complexity (Rosenzweig et al., 1972; Volkmar and Greenough, 1972; Globus et al., 1973; Greenough et al., 1973; Diamond, et al., 1964), as well as improve cognitive (Williams, et al., 2001; Duffy, et al., 2001; Pham, et al., 1999; Nilsson, et al., 1999), sensory (Engineer, et al., 2004; Cancedda, et al., 2004; Bourgeon, et al., 2004; Rochefort, et al., 2002) and motor skills (Anderson et al., 2002) in rats.
Enhanced early experiences also produce a brain capable of defending itself from a wide range of developmental challenges.
"Enriched rats" substantially recover from normally devastating neural assaults such as brain lesions, percussive brain injury, brain seizures, hypoxia, fetal alcohol exposure, gestational stress induced by inflammation, neurotoxins, lead exposure, and cocaine exposure.
Such experiences reduce spontaneous death of cells, increase brain neurogenesis, preserve cognitive function and neurogenesis in aging individuals, facilitate the anatomical and functional integration of intrastriatal dopaminergic grafts, as well as delaying the onset of Huntington’s disease in a mouse model.
This suggests that the developing brain may require an optimal level of stimulation for it to withstand neurological challenges.
It seems obvious that a rat reared alone in a box cage would be deprived, but it also may be the case that our culture deprives infants of both tactile stimulation and olfactory stimulation.
Indeed, while mothers in other cultures are in contact with their young at virtually all times, mothers in our culture are in contact with their young for a relatively brief period during the day and night. Statistics have evaluated the average time to be fifteen minutes a day.
Similarly, infants are kept in a world that is kept free from most odors.
Supplying increased tactile stimulation or an increased variety of olfactory stimuli to premature infants has been shown to be capable of speeding their development, improving their health, and allowing them to be released from intensive care more rapidly than UN-stimulated infants.
The developing brain raised with low levels of tactile and olfactory stimulation may be fundamentally normal, but not capable of withstanding neurological challenges such as a brief hypoxic episode, brief seizures accompanying a high fever, or exposure to low levels of neurotoxic substances.
We make a point of requesting from the parent a certain amount of reading and serious guided research into brain plasticity and brain functions before we talk about treatment for the child. We encourage everyone to verify for themselves that enriched neurosensory and motor exercises will prompt growth of new pathways and cells in the brain.
Click on any of these two logos to start researching brain plasticity in peer-reviewed journals.
More valid search terms could be:
- Environment enrichment
- Dopamine, norepinephrine and memory
- Serotonin and learning
- Serotonin and stress
- Brain plasticity and behavior
- Neuroplasticity
- Neurogenesis in the adult brain
- Dendritic arborization
God does not make mistakes.
If something can be damaged it can also be repaired, be it the skin, the bone, a toenail, or the brain. Repair modes are ready to proceed in any part of the body, naturally and with an amount of external help proportional to the severity of the damage.
If the toenail can repair itself spontaneously, why can’t the brain do at least as well?
A severed nail will grow back on its own, and patience is the only requirement to achieve the task. A small crack of the skull will repair itself with only patience and calm, requiring only that no infection come and impede on the process.
A large wound of the skin will demand stitches, not to repair the skin but to maintain the skin in perfect position while the stem cells do their work. In a few days the bandage will be removed, the stitches cut off, and the skin will be perfectly reattached.
Neither the stitches nor the bandage fixed the wound, but the repair process took place thanks to them, and the stem cells were able to fulfill their mission.
If the mild crack of a bone repairs with time, a full break of a long bone requires a cast, and sometimes screws and plates. The role of the screws or the cast is to maintain the bone in place while the stem cells slowly and surely reconstruct the solid bone back into one solid piece.
The cast does not repair the bone; the cast protects the bone and allows it to repair itself.
Only the brain can fix the brain.
There cannot be any way other than a cautious and natural prompting of the brain to mend itself in order to remove the painful symptoms and develop abilities and functions. There cannot be a better way to recover perfect brain vitality and activity than the way nature intended. To achieve this we must invite the inner mending strategies to take place at the brain cell level.
Synapses, where the talk usually goes wrong.
Synapses or synaptic buttons, the endings of each branch of every neuron in the brain, are the site of communication and exchange.
At the synapse the cells “talk” to each other, they transfer messages from one end to the next, the movement or the thought happens there, each neurotransmitter transferring one type of message or another.
At the synapse lie the reasons for mental disorder, and at the synapse the repair will occur as we use Multi-Sensory Therapy to modify the quality of the messages sent from one cell to the other.
Synapses are by nature plastic, which means, as we have discussed plasticity, that they are made to change; they are altered by the type and amount of information they send and receive.
Synapses can geographically change location in the brain.
In response to different impulses, different demands of the cortex, and different needs of the individual, synapses will change course and position in a slow but sure motion.
No one, you or I, or your child has the same brain geography over time. If you learn how to juggle or read in Braille, your brain will change, it is our nature, it is the essence of repair.
Because the synaptic button is plastic (it can change), and because the brain can repair itself, all that needs to be done now is to trust the evidence and give the child the life he deserves by using the plasticity principle.