Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to adapt and reorganize itself in response to learning, experience, or injury from insult or disease. This phenomenon allows the brain to form new neural connections and modify existing ones, which can help in times of injury or disease (such as a head injury or a stroke), and in learning and assimilating new information.
Keep reading to better understand the concept of neuroplasticity, and how you can improve or leverage it to remain cognitively sharp and possibly delay cognitive decline or dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
What Is Neuroplasticity?
Broadly speaking, neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change in response to something that happens in the world, says Anne Elizabeth West, PhD, a researcher and a professor of neurobiology at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina.
“That’s exciting, because we often think that we are fixed in some way by the genes we were born with. The idea of neuroplasticity is that even though your brain is wired a certain way when you’re born, it can still change in response to things you learn or that happen to you,” says Dr. West.
These adaptations can be the result of internal or external events — for example a stroke, brain injury, or our experiences, says Shehroo Pudumjee, PhD, a neuropsychologist at Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Cleveland.
There are basically two kinds of neuroplasticity:
- Structural Plasticity In response to learning and experience, the brain creates pathways that solidify information such as our ABCs or the name of a new acquaintance.
- Functional Plasticity When the brain sustains an injury of some kind, it is able to construct new pathways to work around the injured area.
What Is Its Role in a Healthy Brain?
A brain is made up of billions of neurons — nerve cells that collect and process information — and a network of electrical circuits that allow neurons to communicate with other neurons and send messages throughout the body via the nervous system.
In a healthy brain, when you take in new information, new neural connections are formed — that’s neuroplasticity.
This helps kids take in a lot of information quickly and form new neural connections, and it’s the reason they have an easier time learning new languages and concepts than adults.
Every experience helps shape the brain. As the psychologist Donald O. Hebb predicted in 1949, if neurons are temporally synchronous with each other, then the connection between the neurons is strengthened. In short, neurons that fire together, wire together.
From an overabundance of connections in childhood, the brain prunes unused connections to form a mature brain. So if you don’t hear and use a certain phoneme — a bit of sound — in a specified language by your teens, you’ll never be able to say the sound and will always have an accent.
Once we hit our thirties, the brain starts to shrink, and the “shrinkage rate” increases even more by age 60, which can affect things like memory, learning, and how fast we process new information.
But neuroplasticity allows the brain to remain flexible (able to change) throughout our entire life. That means that the brain can continue to form new pathways when we learn a new skill or engage with other people, even as older adults.
Are There Ways to Build Brain Plasticity?
If we continue to learn and engage in new activities, we can build on the advantages of neuroplasticity, which is good for the health of the brain, says Dr. Pudumjee.
There are compelling reasons to foster neuroplasticity as it can help maintain cognitive function as we age and potentially reduce the effects of neurodegenerative diseases, she says.
And by cognitively challenging yourself, you can expand your cognitive reserve, says Pudumjee.
How Does Cognitive Reserve Fit Into the Picture?
One way to think about cognitive reserve is “brain resilience.” There are people who have brain changes that are consistent with advanced Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias but who don’t show any symptoms. “Cognitive reserve” may play a role in offsetting the damage and allowing them to continue to function normally.
Learning a new language, pursuing other learning opportunities, and having a challenging job are all associated with greater cognitive reserve, says Pudumjee.
“Engaging in these activities engages the process of neuroplasticity in the form of building associations and creating and strengthening brain networks in response to internal and external stimuli,” she says.
What’s the Role of Neuroplasticity in Alzheimer’s Disease?
In Alzheimer’s disease, there is a loss of structure and function of neurons, atrophy or shrinkage of certain brain structures, and loss of synaptic density (the number of synapses, the places where neurons connect and communicate), says Pudumjee.
“It is critical to regularly stimulate and engage our brain to keep fostering the use of those networks, building and sustaining those connections, and employing that neuroplasticity to our advantage,” she says.
While there is no evidence from clinical trials showing this, finding ways to foster neuroplasticity could improve cognitive reserve and potentially delay decline. But there may be no benefit to activities or experiential therapy.
Is There a Way to Use Neuroplasticity to Slow the Progression of Cognitive Impairment?
What Can I Do Now to Maximize Neuroplasticity?
To maximize neuroplasticity and cognitive reserve, it’s essential that we keep our brain not only active, but also challenged and engaged, says Pudumjee.
Here are a few proven interventions that strengthen neuroplasticity, as well as a few that show promise.
New Skills
“Learning a new language or how to play a musical instrument or taking a course on interesting subject matter are ways to harness the benefits of neuroplasticity. It is important that these activities are done on a regular basis, as doing them occasionally does not have the same effect,” she says.
That means you should try to find activities or subjects you enjoy, because you’re more likely to sustain it, leading to greater benefit, says Pudumjee.
Sleep
Sleep is an important part of maintaining a healthy brain, says Brahyan Galindo-Mendez, MD, MPH, the chief neurology resident at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.
“Memory consolidation and removal of waste proteins in the brain happens during sleep. Most adults need from seven to nine hours of sleep nightly, and that is what is recommended to maintain a healthy brain,” says Dr. Galindo-Mendez.
Physical Activity
The data on the benefits of exercise for the brain is really quite good, says West.
Physical activity increases blood flow to the brain, which is good for the neurochemical environment of the brain, she says.
Mind-Body Practices
Any activity that gets your heart pumping is likely to have benefits, whether that’s jogging, swimming, or dancing.
Because most of the data on what happens in the brain comes from studies on mice and rats, there’s not a lot of evidence on the benefits of specific types of slower movement such as tai chi or Feldenkrais lessons for neuroplasticity.
The Feldenkrais method is a somatic practice (meaning “learning from within”) that teaches students that movement is based on meaningful intention and awareness. Practitioners of the method believe that it potentially changes the brain’s structure through the combination of movement and guided attention.
Brain Training
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Mindfulness Meditation
But the researchers believe that it’s possible that a longer duration of training with a more specific focus might promote brain changes.
Neurofeedback
In neurofeedback, electrodes are placed on the scalp to measure brain waves. When the brain waves change in the desired way — faster or slower, for example — the person is “rewarded” in some way, which encourages their brain to repeat the desired action.
When used as a cognitive training tool, neurofeedback can provide people with information about their brain activity and train them to control the activity. The theory is that this control results in a cognitive “boost” and triggers specific structural and functional changes in the brain and improves neuroplasticity.
The Takeaway
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to form new neural connections, which it does in response to experiences, learning, and sometimes injury to the brain. In young children, the brain is forming millions of new neural connections constantly, but in adults, the brain actually starts to shrink, and the number of connections decreases. The good news is that you can maintain neuroplasticity in your brain at any age by engaging in new and challenging activities, getting enough sleep, and participating in regular physical exercise.
link