Biopsych: Plasticity and functional recovery Flashcards
Synaptic pruning
Rarely used synaptic connections are deleted, and frequency used synaptic connections are strengthened
Posterior hippocampus
The part of the brain associated with spatial and navigational skills
Rehabilitative therapy/neurorehabilitation
After a few weeks of spontaneous recovery, physical therapy may be required to maintain improvements
Axonal sprouting
The growth of new nerve endings which connect with undamaged nerve cells to form new neuronal pathways
Reformation of blood vessels
The blood vessels are reformed to ensure the brain functions in affected areas
Homologous areas of the brain
Similar areas on opposite sides of the brain are recruited to perform specific tasks
Plasticity
Describes the brain’s tendency to change and adapt (functionally and physically) as a result of experience and learning
Functional recovery
A form of plasticity
Following damage through trauma, the brain’s ability to redistribute or transfer functions performed by damaged areas to undamaged areas
Maguire (2000)
The taxi driver study - used fMRI to image the brains of London taxi drivers and found significantly more grey matter in the posterior hippocampus
Draganski (2006)
The medical students study - imaged the brains of medical students before and after their final exams and found that the posterior hippocampus and parietal cortex had changed due to learning
Mechelli (2004)
The bilingual people study - found that bilingual people had a larger parietal cortex than monolingual people
Neurorehabilitation
Neurorehabilitation has improved as a result of plasticity research
Ramachandran and Hirstein (1998)
The phantom limb syndrome study - found that 60-80% of amputees experience PLS, thought to be due to cortical reorganisation in the somatosensory cortex
Bezzola (2012)
The golf training study - found that 40 hours of golf training produced neural changes in participants aged 40-60
Hubel and Weisel (1963)
The kitten study - sewed one eye of a kitten shut and found that the area of the visual cortex associated with the shut eye continued the process information from the left eye