to reflect on your feelings and thus suppress or inhibit more impulsive reactions that are activated lower down in the brain. The neocortex brain structures give you awareness of yourself.
The term neuroplasticity is derived from the root words neuron and plastic. It’s a term that refers to the brain’s ability to change and adapt as a result of experience. Up until the 1960s, researchers believed that changes in the brain could only take place during infancy and childhood. It was thought that by early adulthood, the brain’s physical structure was permanent. Modern research has proven that the brain continues to create new neural pathways and alter existing ones to adapt to new experiences and learn new information until the day you die.
Neuroplasticity has two forms:
❯❯ Your brain’s ability to move functions from a damaged area of the brain to other undamaged areas is referred to as functional plasticity. After a stroke, for instance, your brain can reorganise itself to move functions to undamaged areas.
❯❯ Your brain’s ability to actually change its physical structure as a result of learning is called structural plasticity. An example of this might be an increase or decrease in grey matter in specific brain areas as a consequence of experience and learning
The human brain is composed of approximately 100 billion nerve cells called neurons. Neural pathways transmit data from one neuron to another quickly by passing an electrical or chemical signal from one neuron to another neuron via the synapse (see Figure 3-2). Neurons that fire together wire together, forming strong connections over time. Each time you repeat a particular thought or action, you strengthen this connection, making it easier to repeat in the future.
A good example of neuroplasticity has been found in London taxi drivers. A cab driver’s hippocampus (part of the limbic system that holds spatial representation capacity) is measurably larger than that of a bus driver. By driving the same route every day, the bus drivers don’t need to exercise this part of the brain as much. The cabbies, on the other hand, rely on it constantly for navigation.
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