Brain Plasticity And Functional Recovery Flashcards

1
Q

What is brain plasticity?

A

The brain’s ability to modify its structure and adapt in response to experience, learning or injury

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2
Q

What is meant by experience in terms of brain plasticity?

A

Everything outside the body

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3
Q

When do we have the most synaptic connections and why?

A

During infancy, brain experiences rapid growth in number of synaptic connections
- by 2-3, have around 15k of these connections
. As we age, these neural pathways are strengthened if they are used often, but the rarely used ones are deleted

Clearly the brain is in a continual state of change throughout life

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4
Q

What else can brain plasticity be called?

A

Neuroplasticity or cortical remapping

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5
Q

How are neural pathways relevant in brain plasticity?

A

Each time you learn something new, neural pathways are formed that get weaker unless frequently used
- this is important in memory and understanding why consolidation is important

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6
Q

What is it called when infrequently used neural pathways eventually become deleted?

A

Synaptic pruning

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7
Q

What was the procedure of Maguire (2000)?

A

. Brain scans of 16 London taxi drivers
. Completion of ‘the knowledge’ places great demands in LTM as well as spatial reasoning

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8
Q

What were the findings of Maguire et al (2000)?

A

. Increased grey matter found in brains of taxi drivers compared to controls in two regions, the right and left hippocampi
. Increased volume found in the posterior hippocampus

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9
Q

What are some key studies in this topic?

A

. Maguire et al
. Schneider et al
. Elbert et al
. Medina et al (2007)
. Ladina Bezzola et al
. Danelli et al (2013)

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10
Q

What did Schneider et al find?

A

The more time brain injury patients had spent in education, indicating their ‘cognitive reserve’, the greater their chance of a disability free recovery (DFR)
. 2/5 of the patients who achieved DFR had more than 16 years in education

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11
Q

What is the concept of cognitive reserve?

A

Your brain’s ability to improvise and find alternative ways of getting a job done

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12
Q

What did Medina et al find?

A

Prolonged drug use has been shown to result in worse cognitive functioning as well as increased risk of dementia later in life.
- this shows that plasticity can be negative as bad experiences will physically affect your neural structure

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13
Q

How is education related to successful functional recovery?

A

Greater educational attainment is associated with a high ‘cognitive reserve’, which could be a factor in neural adaption during recovery from traumatic brain injury (Schneider et al)
- education helps make recovery more successful
- this has practical implications on emphasising importance of education

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14
Q

What is functional recovery?

A

After experiencing trauma to neural pathways, the brain can re-wire itself over time so that the functions lost in one area of the brain affected by the trauma can be taken over by other parts of the brain.

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15
Q

How is functional recovery possible?

A

Due to neuroplasticity, otherwise it wouldn’t be possible to create new neural pathways that allow the transferring of functions

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16
Q

How does functional recovery occur?

A

Through neural unmasking - ‘dormant’ synapses open existing neural pathways to compensate for a nearby damaged area of the brain

17
Q

What are the structural changes that support neural unmasking?

A

. Axonal sprouting
. Reformation of blood vessels
. Recruitment of homologous (similar) areas
. Denervation super-sensitivity

18
Q

What is Axonal sprouting?

A

When new nerved endings grow and connect with underaged areas, creating new blood vessels and pathways around the damaged area

19
Q

How does reformation of blood vessels help support neural unmasking?

A

These new connections created through Axonal sprouting are reinforced with blood vessels

20
Q

How does recruitment of homologous areas work?

A

To make sure that functioning isn’t completely lost by neural damage, areas that have a similar function on the opposite hemisphere will be recruited to do specific tasks

21
Q

How does denervation super-sensitivity help to aid neural unmasking in functional recovery?

A

Axons with a similar function to the damaged ones are more aroused and so are more sensitive to input