Plasticity Flashcards
What happens to cab drivers grey matter?
Enlarges and adapts to help them store a detailed mental map of the city
Do taxi drivers have a larger or smaller hippocampus?
Larger hippocampus compared to other people
Their hippocampus grew larger as the taxi drivers spent more time in the job
Mechelli et al (2004)?
Larger parietal lobe in bilinguial- suggests plasticity as brain has adapted with learning multiple languages
What can happen after trauma?
Unaffected areas of the brain can adapt and compensate for damaged areas- shows neural plasticity
Healthy brain areas take over functions previously controlled by now damaged areas or destroyed areas
What ways can the brain recover?
Quickly (spontaneous recovery)
May take months (rehabilitative support)
How is the brain able to rewire/reorganise?
By forming new synaptic connections close to the damaged areas
What happens with secondary neural pathways?
They are activated or unmasked to enable continued functioning
3 structural changes in the brain?
Axonal sprouting- growth of new nerve endings which connect with undamaged to create new neural pathways
Reformation of blood vessels
Recruitment of homologous areas on the opposite side of the brain to perform specific tasks
Gabby Giffords case study?
Shot in the head
Physical rehabilitation
She could walk under supervision with perfect control of her left arm and leg and able to write with her left hand
Could read, understand and speak in short phrases
Jodie Miller?
Suffered from intense epileptic seizures
Had rare disease Rasmussen Encephalitis
Lost control of her left side- had the right side of her brain removed to treat the seizures
Her left hemisphere took control over her whole body and the right side of her skull filled with cerebral spinal fluid
Meant she had to have her right side of her brain removed
She was able to function normally due to brain plasticity and recovered well enough to walk and mostly control her left side of her body
Practical application?
Contributed to the field of neurorehabilitation
Spontaneous recovery
Movement therapy
AO3: weakness- negative plasticity (phantom limb syndrome)
60-80% of amputees develop phantom limb syndrome- symptoms are unpleasant and painful
Cortical reorganisation in the somatosensory cortex occurring as a result of limb loss
AO3:weakness- negative plasticity (brain rewiring)?
Brain repairing can be maladaptive
Prolonged drug use results in poorer cognitive functioning and increase risk of dementia
AO3: weakness- reduced plasticity?
Functional plasticity reduces with age
Brain is greater at reorganisation as a young child as you are always adaptive and have lots of new experiences
Bezzola? (2012)
40 hours of golf training produced changes in neural representation of ppts aged 40-60. FMRI showed reduced motor cortex activity in novice golfers compared to control group- demonstrates that neural plasticity lasts throughout a lifetime
AO3: animal studies?
Huber and Wiesel (1968)
Sewed the eye of a kitten shut and analysed critical responses
Visual cortex for shut eye continued to process stimuli from other eye
Can’t generalise animals to humans
Unethical
May influence how well the brain adapts functionally over injury
