plastic

Question 1

AO1 Intro to Plasticity + Maguire’s Work

Answer 1

Brain Plasticity- refers to the brain’s ability to change and adapt because of experience (positive/ negative experience)

Negative Plasticity- creation of new neurons that contribute to maladaptive behaviours (e.g. addiction)

Maguire et al. (2000)
- According to Maguire, the role of the hippocampus is to facilitate spatial memory, in the form of navigations
- Taxi drivers undergo extensive training, known as ‘The Knowledge’, and therefore make an ideal group for the study of spatial navigation.
- Aim: to examine whether structural changed could be detected in brains of people with extensive experience of spatial navigation
- Structural MRI scans (16 right handed male London taxi drivers participated, scans of 50 healthy right handed males who did not drive taxis were included for comparison

- She finds an increased volume of grey matter in the posterior hippocampus of the taxi drivers doing knowledge test, supporting the idea that our brain adapts

Question 2

What is brain plasticity?

Answer 2

Brain Plasticity- refers to the brain’s ability to change and adapt because of experience (positive/ negative experience)

Question 3

AO1- Neuronal unmasking

Answer 3

• Functional recovery is the transfer of functions from a damaged area of the brain after trauma to other undamaged areas.
  1. Neuronal unmasking was first identified by Wall (1977) through what he identified as “dormant synapses”
     within the brain
     2.Dormont synaptic connections exist within the brain but their functions are blocked and ineffective as the
     rate of neural input is too low for them to be activated.
  2. Damage to other pathways and structures causes these pathways to become “unmasked” and open the
     dormant synapses as new routes for neural input opening connections within the brain not normally
     activated.
     4.Axonal sprouting: the growth of new nerve endings to form new neuronal pathways
     5.Reformation of blood vessels
     6.This lateral spread of activation leads to the development of new structures which take over the functions
     of damaged areas.
     7.Recruitment of homologous (similar) areas on the opposite side of the brain to form specific tasks.

Question 4

What is funcional recovery?

Answer 4

Functional recovery is the transfer of functions from a damaged area of the brain after trauma to other undamaged areas.

Question 5

What are the 3 AO3s (you didn’t write out the last one)

Answer 5

AO3: Methodological flaws (-)
AO3 supporting evidence Kuhn et al. (2014)
AO3 statistical power schenider et al 2014

Question 6

AO3: Methodological flaws (-)

Answer 6

• Maguire (2000) tried to control for participant variables such as if participants were taxi drivers or not, he failed to consider extraneous variables like ability to ride a bike which may increase grey matter in the hippocampus, improving spatial awareness

taxi grey? -> robust -> longitudinal study? -> less accurate

Question 7

AO3- Supporting evidence (+)

Answer 7

Kuhn et al. (2014) had found that there was a significant increase in grey matter in many regions of the brain after participants played video games for 30 minutes over a 2 month period

clear evidence -> structural changes -> aligns with maguires theory - > substantiated

Question 8

AO3- statistical power (+)

Answer 8

of the 769 participants studied by Schenider et al. (2014), 214 had achieved disability free recovery after a year.

stasticial power -> population validity -> credible