Alright, at this point we have covered the basic structural and functional anatomy of the brain and how it influences and impacts how we function and respond in our daily lives. That’s all well and good to understand, but why should we care how our brain is responding? The answer is simple. If you understand how your brain is responding and why that was the response you can use that understanding to start training a different response that better suits your goals. Simple in concept, but incredibly difficult in execution and takes a lot of practice and repetition. The ability of the nervous system (aka your brain) to change its activity in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli by reorganizing its structure, functions, or connections is referred to as neuroplasticity, and serves as the topic of this part of the series. I’ll keep it brief and to the point, a quick and dirty rundown of neuroplasticity and how it relates back to adaptive brain theory. 

If you recall, in part 2 of this series I made a point that the brain is not a muscle but it does have an abundance of blood vessels and nerve cells, more specifically neurons. Neurons have the ability to modify the strength and efficacy of synaptic transmission through activity-dependent mechanisms. Neuroplasticity is a result of changes in strength of mature synaptic connections and formation/elimination of synapses in adult and developing brains. With practice and repetition these new neural connections and pathways in your brain get stronger. Therefore, when I refer to brain “plasticity” I am referencing the brain’s mechanism for encoding the changing of behaviors and implicit and explicit learning.

While I could dive deeper into what is actually happening to the neurons in your brain and how new synapses are formed while other unused connections disappear over time through a process called synaptic pruning, I would rather focus on why neuroplasticity is important. For the longest time, we thought that the brain’s structure is fixed and unchangeable after our developmental years. It wasn’t until recently that we have truly gained an understanding for how dynamic, adaptable, and malleable the brain is even into adulthood. That being said, there are different degrees of brain plasticity that vary based on age. Modern research has defined the brain as being “highly malleable” from 0-25 years old and “progressively less malleable” from 26 years old until death. An easy way to think of this is when children learn a second language when they are young, versus trying to learn another language as an adult. It is much easier for the child to learn the language and they can usually speak fluently and with the appropriate annunciation; whereas, the adult learning the same language will generally take longer, not be as fluent, and the pronunciation of words and phrases will have more of an accent than the child. However, it is important to note that regardless of age your brain still has some degree of plasticity and we can work to create new feedback loops and pathways.

Understanding and embracing the concepts of neuroplasticity in combination with the fundamental understanding that we have developed of the adaptive brain enables us to unlock new possibilities for personal growth, learning, and recovery by working with our brain and our body rather than against it. But how can we improve neuroplasticity? How can we use it to our full advantage and set ourselves up for success? The next part in this series will examine what is happening in our brain when we exercise and how this positively influences our ability to leverage our brain and optimize how we function.