Brain Plasticity Flashcards
What does brain plasticity describe?
The brain’s tendency to change and adapt to new information
When does the brain stop changing?
40s
How many synaptic connections do we have as a child?
15,000
What is synaptic pruning?
We use fewer connections as we age so they die off
Who are the three people who researched brain plasticity?
Maguire (2000)
Draganski (2006)
Mechelli (2004)
What were Maguire’s findings?
London cabbies have a larger hippocampus (more grey matter) due to learning the knowledge.
The longer they had done the job, the larger the hippocampus
Correlation NOT causation
What were Draganski’s findings?
Took images of medical students’ brains 3 months before and after final exams
Learning induced changes in the posterior hippocampus and parietal cortex
What were Mechelli’s findings?
Larger parietal cortex in bilingual people over monolingual people.
