What Is Neuroplasticity and How Does It Work?

Our brains have a membrane and a skull to protect from blunt trauma; however, that protection is minimal. After suffering a severe injury, the brain looks for ways to self-heal, and this includes rewiring itself to do everyday tasks that are now difficult.

What is Neuroplasticity?

With neuroplasticity, our brains can not only change in a functional format; the actual structure of the brain can change and adapt.

Neuroplasticity is the ability to make or change synaptic connections in the brain

It improves learning, memory, and reduces the brain’s declining capabilities as we age.

To understand neural plasticity in its most basic form, we can compare a single neuron in the brain to a small battery. One small battery connected by filament wire to another battery is not enough to light your entire house. However, if you keep adding batteries, all connected; eventually, you could run your entire household on these batteries. The filament wire would subsequently break down, but there would be a solution. Just like neuron to neuron in the brain, you would not have only one wire connecting them. You would layer wire upon wire until you had a powerful cable made of wire from one battery to another.

As you work on enhancing the neuroplasticity of your brain, you are increasing not only the strength of the connections between neurons…you are also increasing the size of the strength of the dendrites that protrude from each neutron. The dendrites have been compared to tree branches, and having multiple healthy dendrites, allows for purer signal reception from neuron to neuron.

While the main focus on neuroplasticity is on the neurons, their connections, and dendrites, there are two other components we should not forget. There are two cells referred to as the glial and vascular. The glial cells have a three-part function, including the support and protection of those essential neurons. The vascular cells work on providing oxygen-rich blood to the brain to help support their overall functionality.

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Many people believe that the brain’s neuroplasticity is a singular item when it is a two-part process.Functional neuroplasticity occurs when one part of the brain has a section that is not working correctly, and that workload is shifted to another part of the healthier brain.

When we talk about brain exercises that strengthen neurons’ connections and improve dendrites, this is referred to as “structural plasticity.” Here we are changing the brain’s structure by focusing on building it, just like we focus on building muscles.

Every time we learn something new, we physically change the brain, whether it is learning to change a tire for the first time or doing actual brain exercises. We can illustrate daily learning by looking at the first few years of childhood. In that timeframe, we learn at a rapid rate and build thousands of connections for each separate neuron. A few years later, this connection building slows down as we have learned to walk, talk, count, and describe what we see and hear. Our base learning is done, and over the years, we add on what we require.

We talked about strengthening the connections by adding more and more from one neuron to the other. We also drop connections that are no longer required. We are weeding out expired connections to let the necessary connections have room to grow and strengthen. Eventually, some neurons will expire since our brain is also changing and looking to gain the most functionality possible.

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We all know there are good habits and the bad ones. Most people try to overcome bad habits and replace them with ones to make their lives more joyful. Having daily habits to improve your neuroplasticity means that you won’t do something good for your brain for 3-4 days and then just stop. Start these habits every day, and if need be, write them out, put them on your fridge, and put a checkmark beside each one you accomplish. Daily habits create strong connections between the neurons in your brain. Imagine for a moment that you can see two neurons that look like tiny marbles. When you do a habit as described below, a tiny silk string is created between the two. Right now, that connection is easy to break. Now image a new piece of silk bonding to that first one, and this happens every day until the connection of silk is like a steel cable between neurons.

Neuroplasticity Exercises

Do these five habits every day to improve your brain plasticity

1. The circadian rhythm is our natural sleep-wake cycle. Our ancestors went to sleep shortly after the sunset and rose when the sun came up. This internal rhythm repeats itself each 24 hours as the earth does its complete rotation. When we have a sleep cycle that is not even close to this, the interruption affects our stress levels and our “grey supercomputer” ability to do all the multi-tasks on its list properly. Our brains work 24/7 and have a set way of functioning properly. At 1:00 a.m. in the morning, the brain’s subconscious section is supposed to be working. It cannot do that if we are watching movies. Getting into the circadian rhythm will reset the brain and lead to greater brain plasticity.

2. With the proper sleep cycle, you can do daily brain exercises. To grow your biceps, you might be doing curls with weights. Most people will do reps until they can do no more because the muscle is exhausted, requiring a break until the next set. Your brain needs the same type of exercise. Look for mental work that has your brain saying, “No more, I have done my 100% effort.” For some people, this may be going online and finding algebra questions to complete. Another great exercise is to take a walk around the neighborhood and then come home to sketch out your neighborhood from memory, including house numbers. You can repeat this daily until you get it down pat and then try a city street.

3. Push yourself daily to do things that make you uncomfortable at first. The idea here is to get your brain working to come up with solutions to solve your fear of doing something. For example, if that footbridge near your house gives you the chills while looking over it, do it daily during deep breathing. Your brain will start coming up with solutions to fix this comfort zone issue, like telling you to look deep into the steam and find different shaped rocks or different sized fish. Afraid to speak up at the office? Get in the daily habit of addressing everyone by name and not being afraid to ask questions or voice concerns. This will build plasticity as your brain works on helping you get out of your comfort zone.

4. If you are not already taking fish oil capsules every day, then start right away. Suitable quality fish oil capsules like krill or salmon are full of Omega 3’s. Fish oil has been shown to help the dendrites that grow on each neuron to increase in size. Dendrites extend off a neuron to capture a signal from other neurons. Health dendrites are a must for your brain to function correctly.

5. Work not only on doing daily meditation but include mind focus exercises. The mind focus exercises are essential for neurological growth. A simple mind focus exercise would be memorizing a special affirmation. Once you have that first one memorized, move on to the next and keep going. Being able to repeat a list of highly focused affirmations is wonderful for the positivity it brings to the brain, along with accelerated brain plasticity.

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