What is brain plasticity and why does it matter?

Image source: Pixabay.com 

It’s been a while since scientists first noted that the brain is plastic. This doesn’t mean it’s made of plastic. Instead, neuroplasticity – or brain plasticity – is the ability of the complex organ to change throughout life. The central nervous system can adapt or change after some external stimulation, or the same principle used for restoring brain damaged areas and to heal from injury, according to neuroengineer Dr. Curtis Cripe.


Brain plasticity occurs at the beginning of life, a time when the young brain begins to organize itself. It also takes place during brain injury to compensate for lost functions or help remaining ones, and through your adult years whenever you learn or memorize something new. The scientific consensus is that the brain never stops changing via learning.

Image source: Pixabay.com 

Studies of neural connections also indicate that many damaged cells can lead to new connections based on a process known as synaptic reorganization, forming the basis for brain plasticity. Dr. Curtis Cripe noted that these concepts require the brain as well as the nervous system to be externally stimulated to make development or recovery – such as from trauma or addiction – to occur.

This emerges as a very important process in light of scientific findings that under the right circumstances, neuroplasticity can help an adult mind grow. While specific brain machinery can break down with age, people can still tap into plasticity and refresh this machinery. This can be done through targeted brain exercises as well as retraining the brain back to health at the onset of a cognitive condition such as schizophrenia and dementia.

Dr. Curtis Cripe is a neuroengineer with diverse multidisciplinary background that includes software development, bioengineering, addiction recovery, psychophysiology, psychology, brain injury, and child neurodevelopment. For similar reads, visit this page.

Mental activity as a contributing factor to brain resilience

For a long time, the medical sector had believed that the adult brain is immutable and fixed. Neurologists had assumed that the brain was a lot less flexible after a certain point, and the stubbornness of a few had done little to dispel that notion. Today, the brain is discovered to be more elastic than previously thought, and that an active brain contributes to this resilience in more ways than one. 

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Discoveries made as far back as the 1960s has pointed to the ability of the brain to repair itself. Key findings include the production of new neurons (previously thought to be restricted to those in the nose) within the hippocampus, a pivotal region of the brain associated with memory. Neuroscientists have also noted that, at times, patients have made gradual recoveries from traumatic brain injury, leading them to explore the true extents of the brain’s ability to heal itself. 

Today, two principles are now known to affect the resilience of the brain: neurogenesis, which involves the creation of new brain cells, and brain plasticity, which refers to the rearrangement of the connections between neurons. The brain is known to create new neurons and maintain the connections between them whenever it is active. Further studies have corroborated the ability for physically and mentally engaging activities to suppress the onset of mental illnesses like Alzheimer’s.

Besides this, the ability for activities to strengthen brain plasticity has opened new horizons for neuroscience. The discipline of neuroengineering, which applies brain plasticity to help resolve compromised neural connections, has found extensive use in rehabilitative medicine. By stimulating the brain, it can be coaxed to heal severed connections gradually. 

Image source: Sydney.edu.au

Dr. Curtis Cripe’s work in neuroengineering is the basis of the treatment programs used by the NTL Group. Visit this website for more on Dr. Cripe’s work.