pooleeanderson asked: Hey, I'm new to reading your blog, and I haven't gotten to all the posts, but I was wondering what opinions you had on the theory of neuroplasticity? I know many neurologists have long thought in terms of localizationism. I find neuroplasticity to be a very compelling topic and certainly something that could open entirely new doors in the study of the brain. By the way, your blog is awesome and very informative. Thanks!
This is an interesting debate. Neuroplasticity says that the brain can change with use, while localizationists believe that the brain has fixed uses, such as one place for representation of a leg or finger, etc.
I am sure a lot of people would have their own opinions about this, but I do completely believe in neuroplasticity. Well, to an extent- I am not going to say that the brain is constantly changing or that everything can change, but some of it at least does. At this point in time, there is a great deal of evidence that the brain is plastic (which just means that it can change with time/use). For instance, we know that people who play the violin, which requires a lot of finger dexterity, have much larger representations of the left fingers than people who do not play a stringed instrument. It is also generally acknowledged now that there are “critical periods” during which parts of the brain are plastic and can easily be changed. For instance, braille can be difficult to learn later in life, but it is much more easily learned when a person is young. If it is learned during this young age (during the critical period), there will be different representations of somatosensory (touch) stimuli in the brain to pick out small differences in the raised bumps of braille. In fact, there is also evidence that visual cortex in the blind can be recruited for somatosensation (touch) to allow them to better read braille and other things, if they learn at a young enough age (thought to be before 16 years old) so as to be done during a critical period for this change. This use of visual cortex for tactile discrimination will not happen in adults, but there will be smaller neuroplastic changes, such as within somatosensory cortex.
Anyway, those are my relatively quick thoughts about neuroplasticity. I am sure general scientific opinion will begin to change with time as more evidence and knowledge accumulates. (I mean, hey, we’ve totally moved away from phrenology, which was thought to be pretty accurate by a decent number of people a couple centuries ago).
