Brain Plasticity Can Help You Keep That Thought

The brain is an amazingly complex yet somewhat resilient organ. A feature called brain plasticity allows the brain to retain information as it learns new things. It can also enable different parts of the brain to perform functions they normally cannot do. Let’s explore this further.

In simple terms, brain plasticity refers to the ability of the brain to change throughout a person’s life. This is a physical process and it is driven by many factors. But repetition plays a very critical role in brain plasticity.

For example when we learn something new, then neural pathways are created to account for this action. If the learned activity gets repeated, more neural pathways can be created which can further help a person to retain and remember this new information.

This type of activity is very much in use with children. A young child has relatively few neural pathways. But as the child is exposed to new things and learns more, he/she creates many new neural pathways which plays a critical role in that child’s ability to learn and remember.

At the same time, as some functions degrade that can be related to a breakdown in neural pathways. So if we forget someone’s name, it may be because some of the neural pathways associated with that memory have become broken or damaged.

But the changes in our brains which can occur through brain plasticity can be either for the better as in the ability to remember things or negative as in a breakdown in neural pathways which can cause a lapse of memory.

The physical process of aging has been associated with a decline in mental functioning. This is due to a breakdown in neural pathways. But recent studies have shown that with the right kind of training, even an older person can apply the process of brain plasticity to reform new neural pathways and improve mental functioning at any age.

It is therefore believed that advanced techniques employing brain plasticity can be used to help people to regain many mental functions which were otherwise thought to be lost. So it need not be a fact that the older a person gets, the more his/her mental processes decline.

Brain plasticity can also be used to help to retrain certain areas of the brain to perform functions it otherwise is not designed for. Techniques have been used to help people to regain functions which were otherwise lost due to injury or disease of certain areas of the brain.

Employing techniques which take advantage of brain plasticity can be an exciting non surgical alternative to help people to retain their mental functions and even improve upon them no matter what their age. So very exciting breakthroughs are occurring every day and will continue to evolve.

As an example, by constantly brain training, you could really have an impact on your cognition and the quality of your cognitive skills. Brain fitness has been demonstrated to be an important part of a health lifestyle and everyone might want to try to keep their brain healthy the way you would for your body.

Thanks to brain plasticity, we can now help our mind be sharper and healthier over time.