For decades, mainstream medicine has argued that the human brain is incapable of change after the end of sensitive periods of childhood. Several scientists who dared to oppose the rigidity of academic science have changed this idea and proved in practice that our brain has a property that helped Homo sapiens become the dominant species on the planet. This property was called neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity is understood as the ability of the nervous tissue to change and develop throughout the life of the organism, the ability to modify its structure under the influence of learning, mental and physical training, to regenerate after damage, restore lost functions or transfer them to other parts of the brain.
Neuroplasticity implies continuous changes at the cellular level, in which the brain reorganizes and creates new neural pathways in the process of adapting to the internal and external environment. In other words, the brain constantly renews itself to better suit the situation and ensure that our needs are met.
New neural pathways and neuromaps are created when we learn something, be it a physical skill like playing the piano, a new fitness training program, or a new way of thinking and a radical rethinking of our worldview and values. For each new thought, the brain creates a separate neuromap, and the more often we turn to this new thought, affirmation or skill, the more detailed and stronger the corresponding neuromap becomes, and the sooner a new skill or way of thinking becomes a habit and part of the personality.
The first law of neuroplasticity is that what is not used dies. Or "not to use is to lose." Just a few years after leaving school, we have a hard time remembering what logarithms are and how to solve equations with parameters. The point here is not a weakening of memory, but the fact that the part of the cortex that stored the skill of solving such equations gave up its territory and functionality for the implementation of other mental processes that we did not neglect.
Neurologists Michael Merzenich, Paul Bach-y-Rita, Edward Taub and other scientists who have studied the phenomenon of neuroplasticity have finally explained at the synapse level why the more we focus on something and practice something, the better and more successful we are. getting into this area.