Brain Plasticity Development

Neuroplasticity is the brain 's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. It allows the nerve cells in the brain, neurons, to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment. Think of your brain like the leaves of a sunflower. Their leaves grow and move to face the sun throughout the day so that it is more effective in its functions to maintain life. This is quite similar to the day-to-day changes in your brain because the sunflower is adapting to its environment by changing its structure just as the neurons are produced and make different connections throughout the brain.

Imagine going to school and really succeeding; you understand everything, you’re getting good grades and all the praise you can dream of from your parents and teachers. But then you move up and things get harder, you don’t understand everything, your grades are dropping and you are scared that you will no longer get that praise. You have two options, you can either take on the challenge and get back to where you used to be, or you can sit down when you feel threated by the hard work.

William Shakespeare 's iconic play “Romeo and Juliet” is commonly misinterpreted as a love story instead of the tragic tale of star-crossed lovers filled with death and sorrow. Throughout the play, a total of six characters will die including Romeo and Juliet. Lady Montague died of a heart attack and Mercutio, Tybalt, and Paris were murdered. Romeo and Juliet committed suicide but their deaths were not their faults. Although Romeo and Juliet took their own lives, brain development is actual cause of death in Romeo and Juliet.

Most of us are aware that things that happen in early childhood may impact us throughout our lives. Some individuals seem not so affected by them, while others have a hard time recovering from the events. This is especially true when it comes to living in abusive situations. In abusive situations, everyone is impacted, but children are more prone to negatives experiences. Why is that some may wonder? The answer is simple, the human brain is a plastic organism, and because of that plasticity children are more vulnerable to the effects of trauma. The Branch Davidian children are a prime example of the harm physical, psychological, emotional, and verbal abuse may have on young kid’s brain development.

As has been discussed previously, the role of concussive injuries in sport is currently controversial and subject to much discussion. It is notable that there are specific sports related attitudes to concussion as well as more general mechanistic approaches. The following section will seek to address these points in more detail utilising published literature.

The brain, in cahoots with the nervous and endocrine systems, controls our behavior, thoughts, and actions, involuntary and voluntary. Scientists have studied the brain and determined, to a reasonable extent, what regions of the brain control what skills. These studies of the brain have provided much valuable information about how injuries and any operations done to the brain can affect our behavior and ability to perform certain tasks.

The brain is known by many individuals as the most important organ in the human body. This is that the brain controls many functions of the body individuals use daily throughout the course of their lives. According to Brain Anatomy (2016) “The brain is arguably the most important organ in the human body. It controls and coordinates actions and reactions, allows us to think and feel, and enables us to have memories and feelings (para. 1).” Since the brain plays an important role in civilian life, it is unfortunate when it is injured because an individual’s functionality within their environments can become impaired. When the brain is injured, it is recognized/classified as Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). According to Menon, Schwab,

Physical activity has other neurophysiological benefits including improving neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Neuroplasticity is the brains ability to grow and develop new neural pathways . While neurogenesis is a form of neuroplasticity, it is different in the sense that it is particularly associated with the formation and growth of new neurons after birth (post-natal). Princeton University conducted a study to examine whether exercise does reduce anxiety in addition to augmenting the growth of neurons in the hippocampus (involved in thinking and emotional responses). There were two arguments to this study, firstly as the new neurons develop in abundance they are usually more excitable than their mature counterparts, and so it was hypothesized

The thinking patterns between a three year old preschooler and a nine year old student are different in many ways. The three year old is in preoperational stage of thinking and the nine year old is in the concrete operational stage. These two stages have differ in a few ways.

The main function of the midbrain is to process visual and auditory signals as well as help in movement. The midbrain is an area of brain that is in the middle of two other regions: the forebrain and the hindbrain. The forebrain is made up of the cerebral cortex and

In General Psychology, there are 5 distinct main approaches which include Psychoanalysis, Humanistic Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Behaviorism, and Biopsychology. Among these 5 approaches, Biopsychology touches the most on the effects of the internal parts of the human body, which include the nervous systems and neurotransmitters, on human behaviour, thinking, and emotions. It is basically a combination of neuroscience and psychology. To better understand Biopsychology, one has to learn about the three most crucial parts, which are the brain, neurotransmitters, and the nervous system. The brain is in-charge for the cognition, senses, motor abilities, and feelings through its’ four lobes of the

I understand and agree that adolescent brains aren’t fully developed and depending on their age, juveniles may display varying degrees of maturity. Young people experience many deficits in brain development when compared to adults and our textbook points out that Piaget believed that the final stage of development, the formal operational stage, is a time for expanded reasoning skills and it is the only stage that Piaget believed is not universally reached by all (Siegler, DeLoache, Eisenberg & Saffran, 2014, p. 142). This certainly creates a murky area when determining whether or not a juvenile should be viewed as fully culpable; especially if the process of brain development is so unique to each individual. This leads me to wonder if all

Another strength is that there is neuropsychological evidence for this model as a patient, HM (Milner, 1966) underwent surgery which impaired his hippocampus and in turn affected his long-term memory as it no longer functioned properly, whereas his short-term memory was rather functional. Due to this we can conclude that these two processes are involved in the process of memory, as one of the stores was affected when the brain was damaged but the other was not (Baddeley, 2009).

Maturation and experience are two main features of cognitive development that impact on the capacity of an individual to model problems using their spatial skills. “According to (Piaget and Inhelder, 1971) a person’s cognitive development determines the potential of what he/she could achieve.” (Alias, Black and Gray 2002, p.2) Cognitive development can be categorised into four distinct stages; the sensori-motor stage, the pre-operational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. Pupils in post-primary education are positioned at stages three and four. The concrete operational stage is associated with how an individual uses his/ her experience to make limited judgements/decisions from

The Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD) model is a framework for reaching an optimal training, competition and recovery schedule for all aspects of human development. This model should allow all individuals to be physically active through participation in sport and recreation. It is important to begin the learning process at a young age. Before an individual can become skilled in any activity, they must first acquire the fundamental skills. In soccer, developing the basic skills such as running, jumping, throwing, kicking, etc allows the child to utilise and incorporate them into practice and live games.