Q: Is there any recent research that supports the idea of brain plasticity?

A: There have been a handful of studies over the last decade that can be considered to support the idea of brain plasticity, the brain’s ability reorganize in response to input, a very useful growth mechanism that can benefit traumatic brain injury (TBI) recovery. Here is one of the most recent areas of research:

A study from the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has shown through tests on the effects of blindness that the brain possesses more reorganization ability than originally assumed.

How does vision and brain plasticity mesh? The studies’ senior author Alvaro Pascual-Leone, the director of the Berenson-Allen Center, used blindfolded subjects to demonstrate how the area of the brain that controls vision quickly switches to touch when the use of the eyes are no longer available.

Pascual-Leone believes that this indicates an ability that was dormant while sight was intact. It’s not that our brain is creating new connections, according to the author, but that they already exist. In this study, the blindfolded participants were better at learning Braille than those without.

According to the Newswise article, “as predicted, the researchers found that the subjects who were blindfolded were superior at learning Braille than their non-blindfolded counterparts. Furthermore, the brain scans of the blindfolded subjects showed that the brain’s visual cortex had become extremely active in response to touch (in contrast to the initial scan in which there was little or no activity).”

We can all most likely recall times that we closed our eyes to better hear or taste something, and because of these automatic impulses, we have already experienced the brain’s ability to compensate with the other senses. Studies like this one bring our brain’s amazing potential into relief.

Those with brain injuries experience everything from a slightly impaired ability to recall things to a loss of all conscious awareness. It will be interesting to see how these discoveries can be applied to TBI patients and whether or not there is the potential to stimulate non responsive areas of the brain with these methods.

We’ve mentioned brain plasticity in a couple of our post regarding brain injury and brain repair, so this post is going to delve into exactly what this term means and why it’s so important.

Brain plasticity, also called neuroplasticity, cortical plasticity and cortical re-mapping, is a term used to describe the way the brain organizes itself in response to experience. More specifically, “neuro” stands for neuron, the nerve cells in our brains and nervous centers, and “plasticity” for changeable or malleable. Since scientists began to study the brain, the idea was fairly set in stone that it was hardwired to respond in certain ways, and much like a computer, when one drive failed, that drive and all of it’s information was gone for good. The knowledge (read synaptic connections) contained in that portion of the brain would be wiped out if damaged, to never be regained.

Looking back now, it seems surprising that people who could easily grasp that the brain grows both in physical size and knowledge from childhood to adulthood, would assume that such an amazing organ was as unchanging as a machine. When scientists in the late 60s and early 70s began to discover that the brain was able to change what parts it used for different activities, switching over to other areas as the previously used portions stopped working or were utilized for different functions, the idea of brain plasticity was born.

Now decades of research have given credence to the idea that the brain changes in reaction to new situations or in counterbalance to brain injury. Thinking, learning and even acting change not only the brain’s organization but its actual physical structure. Called “maps”, the way the sensory system in the brain is organized changes with stimulus, often moving from one part of the brain to the other. Picture a map overlaying the brain, then move it from one area to another and you have an idea of how it works.

No longer are we limited by the idea of a never changing mind… we can now work on various aspects that are poorly formed or badly damaged with the hope of creating the necessary connections in some other part of the brain - a part capable of the needed responses. For a great book on this process and how to help your own brain function better, visit Norman Doidge’s Website or order his book, The Brain that Changes Itself.