Essay On Brain Plasticity

INTRODUCTION

Brain plasticity is also known as Neuroplasticity. Does plasticity implies that brain is made of plastic? Of course the answer to this question is “No”. Here plasticity signifies that the brain can change its structure, behavioural working, properties etc., by changing the connections in the network of neurons inside it. In short it is the ability of the brain to change. About 40-50 years back, i.e., till late 60’s it was believed that the development of the brain stops after the early childhood (i.e., after the first few years of birth). In the 18th and 19th century, few anatomists conducted experiments on animals by training them extensively and then studying their dissected brains. One of these anatomists was an Italian anatomist, Michele Vicenzo Malacarne[1], he found that the animals who were trained had substantially larger cerebellums. In 1890, William James, an American psychologist

Nerve cells create connections with one another so that the sensory information may reach the brain in the form of impulses. The growth of brain is very rapid during the initial years of life. As the neuron matures, it spreads out many branches, out of which the axons pass the information out and the dendrites receive in the information. Thus, the number of synaptic contacts between the neurons increases. At the time of birth, each neuron present in the cerebral cortex has about 2500 synapses. This number increases to approximately 15000 synapses per neuron [7]. Average adult brain has about 7500 synapses per neuron. As the person grows up, the old connections get eliminated and this process is known as synaptic pruning [8]. The weaker synaptic connections get deleted and the stronger contacts are strengthened so as to increase the efficiency of the transmission between the neurons. The connections which get more frequent activations are kept