YOUR BRAIN IS CHANGING CONTINUOUSLY

So how do we learn and why does some of us learn things more easily than others. These are the questions that fascinate me. The brain research is one of the great frontiers in the understanding of human physiology and also in the consideration of what makes us who we are. what we know about brain is changing at breath taking pace  much of it we thought we knew and understood  about the brain turns out to be not true or incomplete. Now somebody’s misconceptions are more obvious to others for example we used to think that after childhood the brain didn’t or really could not change and it turns out that nothing could be farther from the truth. Another misconception about the brain is that you only use the parts of it at any given time and silent when you do nothing, well this is also untrue, it turns out even when you are at rest and thinking of nothing your brain is highly active. So it has been advances and technologies such as MRI that has allowed us to make these and many other important discoveries and perhaps the most exiting and most Interesting and transformative discoveries is that every time you learn a new factor skill you change your brain. It is somthing we call as neuroplasticity. As little as 25 years ago Researchers thought that after about puberty the only Chang that took place in the brain were negative like the loss of brain cells with ageing  result of damage like a stroke and then studies begin to show remarkable amounts of reorganization in the adult brain and newer research have shown us that all of our behaviors change our brain, that these changes are not limited by age and infect they are taking place all the time and very importantly brain reorganization helps to support recovery after you damage your brain. The key to each of these changes is neuroplasticity. Your brain can Chang in three basic ways to support learning  the first is chemical where brain actually functions by transferring chemical signals between brain cells what we call neurons and these trigger a series of actions and reactions. So to support learning your brain can increase the concentrations of these chemical signaling that is taking place between neurons. Now because this kind of change can happen very rapidly ,this supports short term memory or the short term improvement or the performance of a motor skill . The second way the brain can change to support learning is by altering its structure , so during learning the brain can change the connections between neurons. Now here the physical stricture of the brain is changing, this takes a bit more time. These types of changes are related to long term memory or long term improvement in a motor skill. These processes they interact , let me give you an example how we have all tried to learn a new motor skill may be playing the piano and you may have experienced of getting better with in a single session of practice and thinking I have got it and then may be you return the next day and all those improvements from the day before are lost, what happened? Well in the short term your brain was able to increase the chemical signaling between the neurons but for some reason those changes did not induce the structural change that are necessary to support long term memory. Remember that long term memories take time and what you see in the short term does not reflect learning. it is these  physical changes that are going to support long term memories and chemical changes that support short  term memories. Structural changes can also can lead to integrated networks of brain regions that function together to support learning and they can also lead to certain brain regions that are important to very specific behaviors to change the structure or to enlarge. Here are some examples of that, people who read brail they have larger hand sensory areas in there brain then those of us who don’t. Your dominant hand motor region which is on the left size of your brain if you are right handed is larger than the other side and research shows that Landon taxi cap drivers who actually have to memories the map of Landon to get there taxi cab license they have larger brain regions diverted to special or mapping memories. Now the last way your brain can change to support learning is by altering its function. As you use the brain region it becomes more and more excitable and easy to use agin and then your brain has these areas that increase there excitability the brain shows how and when they are activated. With learning we see that whole networks of brain activity are shifting and changing. Neuroplasticity is supported by chemical , by structural and by functional changes and these are happening across the whole brain .They can occur in isolation of one another but most often they take place in concert together they support learning and they are taking place all the time
Now you just know really how Neuroplasticelly awesome your brain is, so why can’t you learn anything you chose to with ease, why do our kids sometimes fail in school, why do we tend to forget thongs with age and why don’t people recover from brain damage. That is what is it that limits and facilitates neuroplasticity. This is what i study I study it specifically how it relates to recovery from stroke, Recently stroke Dropped from being the third leading cause of death, in the united states to be the forth leading cause of death. But actually, it turns out that the numbers of people having a stroke has not declined. We are just better at keeping people alive after a severe stroke. It turns out to be very difficult to help the brain recovery from stroke and frankly we have failed to develop effective rehabilitation interventions. The net result of this is that stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability in adults in the world, Individuals with stroke are younger and tending to live longer with that disability .Research  of  Dr. Lara Boyd’s group shows that the health related quality of life of Canadians with stroke has declined. So clearly we need to be better at helping people recover from stroke. This is an enormous societal problem and it’s one that we  are not  solving. So what can be done? One thing is absolutely clear, the best driver of neoplastic change in your brain is your behavior. The problem is that the dose of behavior , the dose of practice that’s required to learn new and relearn old motor skills, it is very large. So how to effectively deliver these large doses of practice is a very difficult problem. It’s also a very expensive problem. the approach that Dr. Lara Boyd’s research has taken  is to develop therapies that prime or that prepare the brain to learn .which have included brain simulation ,exercise and robotics but through Dr. Lara Boyd’s research I’ve realized that major a limitation to the development of therapies that speed recovery from stroke is that patterns of neuroplasticity are highly variable from person to person. As a lover of brain research, variability used to drive me crazy. It makes it very difficult to use the statistics to test your data and your ideas. Because of this, medical intervention studies are specifically designed to minimize variability but in Dr. Lara Boyd’s research it’s becoming really clear that the most important, the most informative data we collect is showing this variability. By studying the brain after stroke, we have learned a lot and I think these lessons are very valuable in other areas. The first lesson is that the primary driver of change in your brain is your behavior. There is neuroplasticity drug that you can  take . Nothing is more effective than practice at helping you learning and the bottom line is you have to do the work . In fact by studying Dr. Lara Boyd’s research I found that increased difficulty, increased struggle of you will, during practice  actually leads to both more learning and greater structural changes in the brain. The problem here is that neuroplasticity can work both ways. It can be positive , you learn somthing new and you refine a motor skill . It also can be negative though , you forgot somthing you once knew ,you became addicted to drugs, maybe you have chronic pain. So your brain is tremendously plastic and it’s been shaped both structurally and functionally by everything you do but also by everything that you don’t do. The second lesson that we have learned about brain is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to learning . So there is no recipe for learning . Consider the popular belief that it takes 10000 hours of practice to learn and to master a new motor skill. I can assure you it’s not quite that simple . For some of us , it’s going to take a lot more practice, and for others it may take far less. So the shaping of our plastic brain is far too unique for there to be any single intervention that’s going to work for all of us. This realization has forced us to consider somthing call personalization medicine. This is the idea that to optimize outcomes each individual requires there own intervention . The idea actually comes from cancer treatments and here it turns out that genetics are very important in matching certain types of chemotherapy with specific formers of cancer. Studying Dr. Lara Boyd’s research I also concluded that this also applies to recovery from stroke . There’re certain characteristics of brain structure  and function that we call biomarkers .These biomarkers are proving to be very helpful And helping us to match specific  therapies with individual patients. The data from Dr. Lara Boyd’s lab suggests its a combination of biomarkers that best predicts neuroplasticity change and patterns of recovery after stroke. That is not surprising , given how complicated the human brain is  but I also think we can consider this concept much more broadly. Given the unique structure and function of each of our brains , what I have learned about neuroplasticity after stroke applies to everyone. Behaviors that you employ in your everyday life are important. Each of them is changing your brain. I believe we have to consider not just personalize medicine but personalize learning. The uniqueness of your brain will affect you both as a learner and also as a teacher  .This idea helps us to understand why some children can thrive in tradition education settings and others don’t . Why some of us can learn languages easily and yet, others can pick up any sport and excel.  So when you close this book after some time, your brain will not be the same as when you started reading it .i think that is pretty amazing. But every one reading the book is going to have changed your brain differently . Understanding these differences , these individual patterns , this variability and change is going to enable the next great advance in neuroscience . It is going to allow us to develop new and more effective interventions, and allow for matches between learners and teachers , patients and interventions. This does not just apply the recovery from stroke, it applies to each of us as a parent, as a teacher as a manager and also as a life long learner . Study how and what you learn best . Repeat those behaviors that are healthy for your brain and break those behaviors and habits that are not . Practice, learning is about doing the work that your brain requires. So the best strategies are going to very between individuals. You know what, they’re even going to vary within individuals.  So for you learning music may come very easily, but learning to snowboard, much harder. I hope that when you complete reading this book with a new appreciation of how magnificent your brain is. You and your plastic brain are constantly being shaped by the world around you. Understand that everything you do, everything you encounter and everything you experience is changing your brain  and that can be for better, but it can also be for worse. So when you complete this topic today go out and build the  brain you want
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