Brain Plasticity (or Neuroplasticity): What Is It?
Although all brains look almost the same, in reality they are 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.
Furthermore, these differences are not explained by genes, that is, we are not born with them and we maintain them in a relatively stable form. In reality, these traits that make our brains unique have to do with a fact that is true in all cases: each life is unique, and the experiences we live make our brains physically change. This phenomenon is known as brain plasticity or neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity, also known as brain or neuronal plasticity, is the concept that refers to the way in which our nervous system changes based on 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 in which they live.
Furthermore, neuronal plasticity is not something that takes long 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 flow of actions that modify the environment, and all these processes cause our brain to modify.
To understand it in a simple way, we can think about what the term “plasticity” refers to. The brain, like plastic, can adapt to practically 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 modeling process towards a specific purpose (in the case of the example, the manufacturer of plastic figures or pieces), and the second is that, Unlike plastic, the structure and shape of our brain components can change a lot constantly: not just in a “manufacturing phase”.
Neuroplasticity is based on the way the neurons in our nervous system connect with each other. As the Spanish doctor Santiago Ramón y Cajal discovered, the brain is not composed of a tangle of compacted cells that form a single structure, but rather they are microscopic bodies with autonomy and physically separated from each other that send information to each other without come to unite with each other definitively. 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 activation pattern is repeated with a certain frequency, these neurons not only send information to each other, but also tend to seek a more intense union with the others that are activated at the same time, becoming more predisposed to sending information to each other. This increase in the probability of activating together is physically expressed in the creation of more stable neuronal branches that unite these nerve cells and make them physically closer, which modifies the microstructure of the nervous system.
For example, if the neurons that activate when we recognize the visual patterns of a chocolate bar “light up” at the same time as those that activate when we experience the taste of sweetness, both groups of nerve cells will connect a little more with each other. yes, which will make our brain change even a little.
The same thing happens with any other experience: although 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 them more. his. This occurs both with sensations and with the evocation of memories and abstract ideas; The Halo Effect can be considered an example of the latter.
Does this ability of our nervous system to be shaped by our experiences serve any purpose? 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 somewhat stereotypical and predictable, it makes it incredibly complex, connected to the multiple details of the context in which we live and dependent. of our past experiences. This means that neuroplasticity has a negative facet (the appearance of phobias, traumas, etc.) and a positive one (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 surpassed the latter. The creation of vast and highly interconnected societies, our ability to invent gadgets and new technological advances and, of course, the ease when learning a language are phenomena that we have enjoyed thanks to brain plasticity and that explain a good part of the overwhelming evolutionary success that, so far, our species has had.
Brain plasticity makes our ability to adapt to changing situations very high, since we can deal with many of the new problems for which evolution has not had time to generate an adaptation mechanism through natural selection. In the face of a natural disaster, 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 to have an appropriate genetic inheritance to deal with the problem: simply , individuals within a few generations learn to create technological and social solutions that have never been conceived before.
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 aware of ourselves, nor could we learn from our mistakes or, in general, have what we call “mental life.” Brain plasticity is such a basic component of the normal functioning of our brain 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 difficult situations. For example, it is known that the perception of subjective well-being does not decrease significantly as we age, moving away from the moment of our birth, which indicates that despite all the blows that life can give us, they do not “accumulate” or compromise our happiness chronically. This maintenance of the level of well-being occurs thanks to the ability of our neurons to reorganize among themselves in the most convenient way, even when age causes many of them to disappear.
In short, neuroplasticity allows us to stay afloat despite physical and emotional adversities. Although we often 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 goes for our psyche.
