What is neuroplasticity of the brain? And why should you care does it matter to
you? Stay tuned and I'll explain. I am doctor Ekberg with Wellness For Life and
if you'd like to truly master health by understanding how the body really works
then make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't
miss anything.
So plasticity refers to the ability to mold or shape or change
or reshape something and we used to believe that the brain was kind of set
that it developed over the growing years and then once we reached adulthood
then it pretty much stayed the same and that is not true in the last twenty
thirty years we have learned a lot about the brain and about brain plasticity the
neuroplasticity the ability for the brain to actually physically change so
think of the brain as an enormous circuitry and like an electronic circuit
except this circuit has a hundred billion transistors and in the brain the
brain cells are called neurons and imagine each of these brain cells
connect to other brain cells and each cell makes on average five to ten
thousand connections times a hundred billion and some of these cells like in
the cerebellum that makes coordinates thought and movement the cerebellum some
of those cells can make a quarter million to half a million connections
per cell so the complexity of this neural network is enormous and it
manages everything about you so the purpose of the brain is to coordinate
and regulate things so you have a hundred trillion cells and each of those
cells is like an independent little unit of life and the brains job is to make
those hundred trillion cells work together as a unit so the brain receives
about 1 billion bits of information every second and none
those bits are ignored or missed so every bit coming in has a consequence of
the brain receives it processes and it executes the sum total of that is called
regulation the better it works the healthier you are but here's the
interesting part a computer can also process a lot of different things but
the processing doesn't change the computer the brain however it changes
with that information so if information comes in and takes a certain path then
it's going to increase the likelihood of that path being executed or firing again
so the more that we use a path the more that we strengthen it so that's how
plasticity works that the more of a certain input that we give to the brain
the more resources and the more pathways and the more synapses the brain is going
to allocate to that particular function so the brain is actually being recreated
every single day but if you give it mostly the same information today as you
did yesterday then it's going to recreate the same brain however if you
start changing things up if you do this on purpose especially and you start
thinking different you start acting different you start doing different
things then you're going to recreate another type of brain you're going to
make the brain change so if you keep things the same you'll recreate the same
if you keep changing then it'll change with you some interesting areas where
this is good to understand is in the case of a stroke for example in the case
of a stroke there is an occlusion there is a problem where the blood supply to
the brain is actually blocked and a portion of the brain
small or large is deprived of oxygen long enough that those cells actually
die so that function isn't there those cells are never going to
operate again but if we understand neuroplasticity and we understand that
the more that we can change things up and make the brain help the brain become
flexible the more the brain can allocate reallocate those functions to other
areas one very interesting aspect of that is with blind people when they lose
their vision or they never developed it then the areas in the brain that
normally process this vision are not needed for that purpose so the brain can
use them for other things so even though they're supposed to be used for vision
we don't need them for that so with blind people they use their
fingertips a lot more they start to read with their fingertips and as a result
the area that normally processes touch starts expanding and being using up real
estate in the visual cortex the area of the brain normally used to process
vision so they can essentially see with their fingers if you will and the brain
is amazing that it will constantly reallocate its resources to the things
that you do most so you have to ask how do you want it to work one definition of
genius is that it's just a persistent attention to a particular topic
if you persistently focus on a particular topic then the brain will
start allocating more resources to that and you get really good at it or someone
might call you a genius or an expert so by understanding a
little bit more about plasticity by understanding that the brain is not set
it is not what it is you can actually change it and by understanding how
plasticity is strongly influenced by factors such as attitude when you feel
positive about something the brain works better doubt and negativity and anxiety
and negative feelings interfere with a flow of those creative processes
and also by understanding visualization that you can visualize something and
that the brain experiences it as if it actually happened and by understanding
the value of repetition now you can start making plasticity work for you to
create a brain and to create some pathways and some habits that work
better for you for what you'd like to accomplish and do so let me know if this
was interesting if it makes sense to you and if there's any part of this that you
have experienced in your life I'd love to see some comments if you want to
share what this has done for you or if there's some past events where you can
kind of see how this has been working if you're new to this channel make sure
that you subscribe and that you hit that notification bell if you enjoy this sort
of content so that we can keep it coming your way
thanks for watching