Key Takeaways
- Neuroplasticity allows the brain to form new connections, prune unused ones, and adapt when injury occurs.
- Repeating thoughts and behaviors strengthens neural pathways, which makes them faster or more efficient.
- Brain plasticity continues in adulthood, including the growth of new neurons in key areas of the brain.
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change and adapt due to experience. It is an umbrella term referring to the brain’s ability to change, reorganize, or grow neural networks. This can involve functional changes due to brain damage or structural changes due to learning.
Plasticity refers to the brain’s malleability or ability to change; it does not imply that the brain is plastic. Neuro refers to neurons, the nerve cells that are the building blocks of the brain and nervous system. Neuroplasticity allows nerve cells to change or adjust.
Verywell / JR Bee
How Neuroplasticity Works
Neuroplasticity involves forming new pathways, strengthening existing ones, and eliminating those that are no longer needed.
- Forming new pathways: The first few years of a child’s life are a time of rapid brain growth. At birth, every neuron in the cerebral cortex has an estimated 2,500 synapses, or small gaps between neurons where nerve impulses are relayed. By the age of three, this number has grown to a whopping 15,000 synapses per neuron. Learning plays a role in the formation of these new neural paths.
- Pruning unneeded pathways: The average adult, however, only has about half that number of synapses. Why? Because as we gain new experiences, some connections are strengthened while others are eliminated. This process is known as synaptic pruning.
- Strengthening existing pathways: Neurons that are used frequently develop stronger connections. Those that are rarely or never used eventually die. By developing new connections and pruning away weak ones, the brain can adapt to the changing environment.
- Adapting to injury: Sometimes, if an area of the brain is damaged, other regions can take over functions previously controlled by the injured area.
- Neurogenesis: In some cases, new neurons may form in a process known as neurogenesis. While more common in early childhood, it can also continue to happen in adulthood.
Factors That Influence It
- Experience: Learning environments that offer plenty of opportunities for focused attention, novelty, and challenge have been shown to stimulate positive changes in the brain. This is particularly important during childhood and adolescence, but enriching your environment can continue to provide brain rewards well into adulthood.
- Sleep: Sleep plays a role in dendritic growth in the brain, which can encourage greater brain plasticity. Sleep also affects physical and mental health. Some researchers suggest that this is partly due to genetics and partly due to the makeup of the grey matter in the brain.
- Exercise: Regular physical activity may prevent neuron loss and encourage the development of new neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory and other functions. Exercise impacts brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF, a protein that impacts nerve growth), functional connectivity, and the basal ganglia—the part of the brain responsible for motor control and learning.
- Injury: The brain can sometimes rewire itself following an injury. However, some damage is permanent. Brain plasticity can be problematic when it allows detrimental changes caused by substance use, disease, or trauma (including brain injury or traumatic experiences that result in post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD). For example, lead poisoning can negatively impact brain plasticity.
- Medical conditions: Some medical conditions can limit or hinder brain plasticity. Among them are a variety of pediatric neurological disorders such as epilepsy, cerebral palsy, tuberous sclerosis, and Fragile X syndrome.
Types of Neuroplasticity
The human brain is composed of approximately 100 billion neurons. Early researchers believed that neurogenesis, or the creation of new neurons, stopped shortly after birth.
Today, it’s understood that the brain’s neuroplasticity allows it to reorganize pathways, create new connections, and, in some cases, even create new neurons.
There are two main types of neuroplasticity:
- Functional plasticity is the brain’s ability to move functions from a damaged area of the brain to other undamaged areas.
- Structural plasticity is the brain’s ability to actually change its physical structure as a result of learning.
What Are the Benefits of Neuroplasticity?
Without neuroplasticity, learning or improving brain function would be difficult. Neuroplasticity also aids in recovery from brain-based injuries and illnesses.
Allowing your brain to adapt and change helps promote:
- The ability to learn new things
- The ability to enhance existing cognitive capabilities
- Recovery from strokes and traumatic brain injuries
- Strengthening areas where function is lost or has declined
- Improvements that can boost brain fitness
Neuroplasticity can also help people adapt and function in their environments. For example, Research has found that children with blindness have increased connectivity and reorganized neurocircuits compared with children without this condition.
This suggests that the brain adapts to the inability to see by changing its structure and function, providing children with blindness a greater ability to use the information received from the other senses (such as hearing and touch).
Key Characteristics
There are a few defining characteristics of neuroplasticity.
Age and Environment Play a Role
While plasticity occurs throughout the lifetime, certain types of changes are more predominant at specific ages. The brain tends to change a great deal during the early years of life, for example, as the immature brain grows and organizes itself.
Generally, young brains tend to be more sensitive and responsive to experiences than much older brains. But this does not mean that adult brains are not capable of adaptation.
Genetics can have an influence as well. The interaction between the environment and genetics also plays a role in shaping the brain’s plasticity.
Neuroplasticity Is an Ongoing Process
Plasticity is ongoing throughout life and involves brain cells other than neurons, including glial and vascular cells. It can occur as a result of learning, experience, and memory formation, or as a result of damage to the brain.
While people used to believe that the brain became fixed after a certain age, newer research has revealed that the brain never stops changing in response to learning.
In instances of damage to the brain, such as during a stroke, the areas of the brain associated with certain functions may be injured. Eventually, healthy parts of the brain may take over those functions and the abilities can be restored.
Brain Plasticity Has Limitations
However, it is essential to note that the brain is not infinitely malleable. Certain areas of the brain are largely responsible for specific actions. For example, certain brain areas play critical roles in movement, language, speech, and cognition.
Damage to key areas of the brain can result in deficits in those areas because, while some recovery may be possible, other areas of the brain simply cannot fully take over those functions affected by the damage.
How to Boost Neuroplasticity
- Stimulate your brain: Try learning a new language, learning how to play an instrument, traveling and exploring new places, creating art and other creative pursuits, or reading.
- Get enough sleep: You can improve your sleep by practicing good sleep hygiene. This includes developing a consistent sleep schedule and creating an environment that promotes good sleep.
- Play: Games aren’t just for kids: Studies show that playing board, card, video, and other games can improve your brain’s neuroplasticity.
- Exercise regularly: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends getting at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio exercises (walking, dancing, swimming, or cycling) per week and at least two days of strength training exercises (lifting weights or doing bodyweight exercises).
- Practice mindfulness: Mindfulness involves focusing on the present moment without ruminating over the past or contemplating the future. Awareness of the sights, sounds, and sensations around you is key. Cultivating and practicing mindfulness can foster the brain’s neuroplasticity.
How Neuroplasticity Was Discovered
Beliefs and theories about how the brain works have evolved substantially through the years. Early researchers believed that the brain was “fixed,” while modern advances have shown that the brain is more flexible.
Early Theories
Up until the 1960s, researchers believed that changes in the brain could only take place during infancy and childhood. By early adulthood, it was believed that the brain’s physical structure was mostly permanent.
In his 2007 book, “The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph From the Frontiers of Brain Science,” which took a historical look at early theories, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge suggested that this belief that the brain was incapable of change primarily stemmed from three major sources:
- An ancient belief that the brain was much like an extraordinary machine, capable of astonishing things yet incapable of growth and change
- The inability to actually observe the microscopic activities of the brain
- The observation that people who had suffered serious brain damage were often unable to recover
Early on, psychologist William James suggested that the brain was perhaps not as unchanging as previously believed. Way back in 1890, in his book “The Principles of Psychology,” he wrote, “Organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity.” However, this idea went largely ignored for many years.
Modern Theories
In the 1920s, researcher Karl Lashley found evidence of changes in neural pathways of rhesus monkeys. By the 1960s, researchers began to explore cases in which older adults who had suffered massive strokes were able to regain functioning, demonstrating that the brain was more malleable than previously believed. Modern researchers have also found evidence that the brain is able to rewire itself following damage.
Modern research has demonstrated that the brain continues to create new neural pathways and alter existing ones in order to adapt to new experiences, learn new information, and create new memories.
Thanks to advances in technology, researchers can get a never-before-possible look at the brain’s inner workings. As the study of modern neuroscience flourishes, research has demonstrated that people are not limited to the mental abilities they are born with and that damaged brains are often quite capable of remarkable change.
