The art of thinking · 7 · Brain and learning
Neuroplasticity
Also known as: Neural plasticity, Brain plasticity
German: Neuroplastizität
In neuroscience, neuroplasticity is the capacity of the nervous system to change its structure and function in response to experience, learning and injury — from the strength of single synaptic connections to the organization of whole brain areas.
- Cognitive psychology
- Brain research
- Learning
In one sentence
Neuroplasticity is the nervous system’s capacity to change its structure and function with experience, learning and injury.
Example
Studies of London taxi drivers (Maguire and colleagues, 2000) found a larger posterior hippocampus in drivers than in controls, related to years of navigating — a correlation that is read as a sign of experience-dependent change.
What the research shows
William James used “plasticity” for habit in The Principles of Psychology (1890): a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Donald O. Hebb (1949) proposed a cellular mechanism for learning, and long-term potentiation, described by Timothy Bliss and Terje Lømo (1973), showed lasting changes in synaptic strength. Alvaro Pascual-Leone and colleagues (2005) reviewed how the human cortex reorganizes with practice, sensory loss and injury.
Studies with structural brain imaging reported changes with experience: Eleanor A. Maguire and colleagues (2000) found a larger posterior hippocampus in London taxi drivers, related to their years of navigation; Bogdan Draganski and colleagues (2004) found a temporary increase in gray matter in visual-motion areas after three months of learning to juggle, which receded when practice stopped.
Manfred Spitzer presented learning from the perspective of brain research for a general German-speaking audience in Lernen: Gehirnforschung und die Schule des Lebens (2002).
Evidence status
Plasticity at the level of synapses and in animal studies is well established. Imaging studies in humans show that brain structure and function change with experience, but many of them are correlational or based on small samples, and what a change in gray-matter volume means at the cellular level is still debated. Popular claims that the brain can be “rewired” quickly or at will go beyond the evidence.
How it applies
- Practice and documentation: Neuroplasticity is the general background for why practice changes what people can do; it does not prescribe how often a reader must repeat a task or how instructions must be written.
- Careful wording: Texts that cite neuroplasticity should name the finding they mean (synaptic change, structural change in a study, recovery after injury) instead of using the word as a general promise.
External references
- Pascual-Leone, A., Amedi, A., Fregni, F., & Merabet, L. B. (2005). The plastic human brain cortex. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 28, 377–401. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.neuro.27.070203.144216
- Maguire, E. A., et al. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. PNAS, 97(8), 4398–4403. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.070039597
- Draganski, B., et al. (2004). Changes in grey matter induced by training. Nature, 427, 311–312. https://doi.org/10.1038/427311a
- Spitzer, M. (2002). Lernen: Gehirnforschung und die Schule des Lebens. Heidelberg and Berlin: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag.
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Entries, context cards and transitional topics
The art of thinking explains ways of thinking — where a method comes from, what it asks of you and how it was adapted later. You meet four kinds of content here, each with its own job:
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