Brain plasticity (or neuroplasticity): what is it?

Even though all brains look almost the same, they are actually very far from it. It is true that superficially they all share a basic structure and a certain shape, but if we examine them in detail we will see that they are all incredibly different; each of them contains neural circuits of very different shapes and distributions.

In addition, these differences are not explained by genes, that is, we are not born with them and we keep them in a relatively stable form. In reality, these traits that make our brains unrepeatable have to do with a fact that is true in all cases: each life is unique, and the experiences we live make our brain change physically. This phenomenon is known as brain plasticity or neuroplasticity.

What is brain plasticity?

Neuroplasticity, also known as brain or neural plasticity, is the concept that refers to the way in which our nervous system changes from its interaction with the environment. Even in the case of monozygotic twins this interaction is not identical, which means that each person perceives the world and acts on it in a different way, depending on the sequence of contexts that touches it to live.

In addition, neural plasticity is not something that takes a long time to occur: it happens constantly, in real time, and even while we sleep. We are constantly receiving a torrent of stimuli and we are emitting a constant stream of actions that modify the environment, and all these processes make our brain go modifying.

To understand it in a simple way, we can think of what the term "plasticity" refers to. The brain, like plastic, can adapt to almost any mold. However, in this comparison, two things must be qualified. The first is that neuroplasticity depends on the intervention of an external intelligence that directs the process of modeling from outside to a specific purpose (in the case of the example, the manufacturer of figures or plastic pieces), and the second is that, unlike the plastic, the structure and shape of the components of our brain can change a lot in a constant way: not only in a “phase of manufacturing".

How does brain plasticity occur?

Neuroplasticity is based on the way in which neurons in our nervous system connect to each other. As the Spanish doctor Santiago Ramón y Cajal discovered, the brain is not made up of a tangle of compacted cells that form a single structure, but that are microscopic bodies with autonomy and physically separated from each other that, they are sending information without actually joining each other in a way definitive. They are, in short, morphological individualities.

When a group of neurons are activated at the same time, they tend to send information to each other. If this pattern of activation is repeated with a certain frequency, these neurons not only send each other information, but also tend to seek a more intense union with the others that are activated at the same time, becoming more predisposed to send information between they. This increased probability of firing together is physically expressed in the creation of more stable neural branches that bind these nerve cells and make them physically closer, which modifies the microstructure of the nervous system.

For example, if the neurons that are activated when we recognize the visual patterns of a chocolate bar are "turned on" at the same time as those that are activated When we experience the taste of sweet, both groups of nerve cells will connect a little more with each other, which will cause our brain to change even if it is a bit.

The same happens with any other experience: even if we do not notice it, we are constantly experiencing experiences (or, rather, small portions of experiences) that occur practically at the same time and that make some neurons strengthen their ties more and others weaken theirs more. This occurs both with sensations and with the evocation of memories and abstract ideas; the Halo effect can be considered as an example of the latter.

An evolutionary advantage

Does this capacity of our nervous system have any purpose when it comes to being shaped by our experiences? Not really; it is a simple product of evolution that, for hundreds of millions of years, has been carving our brain and making it have certain properties.

In reality, brain plasticity is the opposite of a design created to achieve specific objectives, since instead of making our behavior something stereotypical and predictable, makes it incredibly complex, connected to the many details of the context in which we live and dependent on our experiences past. That makes neuroplasticity have a negative side (the appearance of phobias, trauma, etc.) and another positive (our ability to learn from our experience and create complex and sophisticated ways of thinking, for example).

However, the fact that brain plasticity does not have a specific purpose does not mean that in the balance of pros and cons, the former have outweighed the latter. The creation of large and highly interconnected societies, our ability to invent artifacts and new technological advances, and of course, the ease of learning a language are phenomena that we have enjoyed thanks to brain plasticity and that explain much of the overwhelming evolutionary success that our species has had so far.

Brain plasticity makes our ability to adapt to changing situations very high, since we can deal with a good part of the new problems before which evolution has not had time to generate an adaptation mechanism through natural selection. Faced with a natural catastrophe, for example, it is not necessary to wait for environmental pressures to cause some individuals to reproduce more than the rest, causing thousands of years later the entire population has an appropriate genetic inheritance to deal with the problem: simply, individuals of a few generations learn to create technological and social solutions that have never before been conceived.

The personal implications

Beyond this cold analysis based on the growth of the human population, which does not have to correspond to the personal value that we can attribute to neuroplasticity, We could also say that a good part of our ability to be happy depends on this characteristic of our central nervous system.

Without brain plasticity we could not create abstract ideas necessary to generate an autobiographical memory that allows us to be conscious of ourselves, neither could we learn from our mistakes nor, in general, dispose of what we call "life mental". Brain plasticity is such a basic component of normal brain function that without it we would be the closest thing to an assembly-line robot that we could imagine.

Resilience and well-being

At the same time, brain plasticity makes us very good at developing resilience, which is our ability to overcome very tough situations. For example, it is known that the perception of subjective well-being does not diminish significantly as we age away from the moment of our birth, indicating that despite Of all the blows that life can give us, these do not "accumulate" or compromise our happiness in a chronic way. This maintenance in the level of well-being occurs thanks to the ability of our neurons to reorganize among them in the most convenient way, even when age makes many of them go disappearing.

In short, neuroplasticity allows us to stay afloat despite physical and emotional adversities. Although many times we tend to mythologize those aspects of the human mind that seem permanent, we must never forget that each of us we are beings in constant change, literally; and this also applies to our psyche.

Bibliographic references:

• Jäncke, L. (2009). Music drives brain plasticity. In: F1000 Biology Reports.
• Keller TA, Just MA (January 2016). "Structural and functional neuroplasticity in human learning of spatial routes". NeuroImage.
• Livingston R.B. (1966). "Brain mechanisms in conditioning and learning". Neurosciences Research Program Bulletin.
• Wayne N.L.; et al. (1998). "Seasonal fluctuations in the secretory response of neuroendocrine cells of Aplysia californica to inhibitors of protein kinase A and protein kinase C". Gen. Comp. Endocrinol 109 (3).