How can the Brain RECOVER from Trauma? | Brain Plasticity & Functional Recovery

at age three a young girl by the name of Jodie Miller was having terrible seizures sometimes every 3 minutes the left side of her body would just stop and she would collapse on that side the doctors could do nothing to stop the seizures and were left with the option of completely removing the right hemisphere of her brain and what it shows us is the fact that we removed her entire right hemisphere the right hemisphere that was there is now replaced by fluid amazingly not only did she survive the surgery but it also successfully stopped the seizures but could she live and function with just half a brain hey everyone welcome back to Bear it in mind in this video we're going to explore brain plasticity and functional recovery after trauma at the end of the video there'll be some practice questions of what we cover so that you can check your understanding and link below is a free resource that goes with this video in a previous video in the bio psychology series we explored how the body communicates with itself which included the structure and function of neurons as well as the process of Coptic transmission we're going to build on these ideas in this video so do go back and check that out first if you need to brain plasticity is the ability of the brain to modify its structure and function based on experience you probably have some awareness of this idea for example children tend to have a more plastic brain in the sense that it can change and adapt more easily in early development the brain experiences a rapid growth in the number of synaptic connections this makes it easier for young children to learn new things he's often said that it's easier to learn to speak more than one language as a child and this is because the brain is more plastic when you are younger it was once thought by researchers that the ability for the brain to change and adapt only happen during childhood however more recent research as we will later see has shown how the brain can can continue to change its structure and create new Pathways throughout our lifetime including older age crucial to the brain changing and adapting our life experiences when we experience something new nerve Pathways in the brain develop and as we experience these things again and again the connections become stronger in contrast the less we use those nerve Pathways the less we have those experiences the more likely they'll be pruned away so what are some of these experiences that can change the brain's physical structure let's consider four pieces of psychological research to demonstrate [Music] this firstly researched by ker manal in 1997 in this study they investigated how different environments would change the brains of rats 24 rats were divided into two groups in the control condition 12 rats were placed in laboratory cages four rats P cage they received food and water as much as they wanted in the experimental condition the other 12 were placed in what the researchers called a complex environment this larger space contained paper tubes materials for making nests plastic tubes a tunnel and of course a running wheel they received extra treats including cheese crackers apple and popcorn what they found was that compared to the rats housed in lab cages the rats who lived in the more complex environment showed an increase in the number of new neurons in their brains notably in the hippocampus this supports the view that the physical structure of the brain can change as a result of Life Experiences however you may be thinking that this research is rather limited because it's based on rats some have argue that there are substantial and significant differences between humans and rats in terms of the complexity of human behaviors and our experiences notably in terms of language social interaction and emotions therefore this means we might need to be cautious about drawing firm conclusions about brain plasticity solely from animal research so what about Research into human [Music] brains well secondly let's consider research with London taxi drivers every licensed taxi driver in London has completed what has become known as the knowledge this is a test about how well they can navigate around London for those of you not familiar with London here is a map of New York City it's very easy to navigate as the streets are in a grid pattern vertical streets are called Avenues horizontal streets are given numbers so if you get in a taxi in New York you simply say 43rd and Fifth Avenue however London looks a lot different it looks like this and the streets aren't numbered but all have unique names like Oxford Street or Baker Street most people take at least 2 years to train for and complete the knowledge part of the test requires being assessed by an examiner who gives you two random points in London and you have to provide the shortest route entirely from memory Elena Maguire and colleagues in 2000 conduct conducted research on the brains of 16 right-handed male London taxi drivers with an average of 14 years experience and compared them with 50 right-handed male non- taxi drivers to do this they scan the brains of each participant using an MRI machine which provided an image of the structure of the brain when they compared the images they found that the London taxi drivers showed a larger posterior hippocampus compared to the control group the word posterior meaning back so the back of the hippocampus They concluded quote it seems that there is a capacity for local plastic change in the structure of the healthy adult human brain in response to environmental demands in other words they suggested that this change in the structure of the hippocampus demonstrated brain plasticity the taxi driver's experience of navigating the Streets of London placed such a high demand on their spatial processing that the brain changed its structure in fact they found a positive correlation the more time a participant had been a London taxi driver the larger the size of the [Music] hippocampus thirdly Research into computer games in this study participants got to play Super Mario playing certain video games places demands on your cognitive and motor skills you have to do multiple things at once memorize the layout of maps and worlds correctly use the buttons and joystick on the controller in just the right way as well as think strategically about how to defeat the boss Kunal in 2014 compared a control group who played no video games with a video game group who were trained for 2 months on the game Super Mario playing for at least 30 minutes per day two months later when they scanned the brains of both groups in an MRI machine they found a significant increase in Gray matter in the prefrontal cortex hippocampus and cerebellum this increase was not seen in the control group who didn't play video games the researchers concluded that the experience of playing video games had resulted in new synaptic Connections in brain areas involved in spatial navigation strategic planning working memory and motti performance all the skills needed to play the game [Music] successfully fourthly and lastly learning to play golf Bol Ral in 2012 studied 11 participants aged 40 to 60 years old who were all novices at golf these novices then had 40 hours of golf practice and were compared with a control group matched in terms of age and sex who didn't have any golf training they scann the brains of the participants in both groups with an fmri machine in case you didn't know an fmri is different from an MRI because of the word functional an MRI just takes an image of the structure of the brain whereas an fmri scans the brain whilst participants carry out a function or an activity in this case a golf swing they scan their brains at the start of the study and then again after the experimental group had completed their 40 hours of practice the participants were instructed to imagine with their eyes closed their own golf swing from a firstperson perspective and in slow motion they found reduced activity in the motor cortex in the brain the area responsible for movement but hang on why would you have reduced activity after learning a new skill surely you'd have more right while reduced activity in the brain suggests that the experience of playing golf had changed the structure of the brain the repeated golf practice had refined the Pathways in the brain for the golf swing the brain had become more efficient in its neural Pathways the fact that the brain had changed its structure by becoming efficient is evidence of brain plasticity all of these studies not only demonstrate brain plasticity but ALS also how it's not limited to Children adult brains can still adapt and change based on life experiences and as the last study by Baza importantly demonstrates brain plasticity is even possible in Middle to older age [Music] people now that we've established the brain's ability to adapt and change due to experiences we can now develop our exploration of brain plasticity into the area of functional recovery after trauma function recovery is where the brain recovers abilities previously lost due to brain injury brain functions move from a damaged area to an undamaged area a lesion is an area of the brain which has suffered damage through injury or disease if someone has a lesion in the brain this will lead to a loss of function let's consider the example of someone who has suffered a stroke a stroke occurs when something blocks blood supply to part of the brain or when a blood vessel in the brain Burns bursts in either case parts of the brain become damaged and as a result they can lose some functions such as their speech and movement depending on where in the brain the stroke occurred however what researchers quickly discovered was that over time the brain rewires itself so that some of the Lost functions can be recovered but the question became how does the brain do this if the parts of the brain that carried out that function before are now damaged and can no longer be used there are several different processes involved but we're just going to consider three firstly axonal sprouting when you hear the word sprouting think of plants growing new choots you may remember that neurons contain axons that help transmit information but when an axon is damaged its connection with other neurons is lost axonal sprouting is when undamaged axons Sprout or grow new nerve endings to replace the old ones in order to reconnect to other neurons axonal sprouting can Bridge the connection and so enable the communication in the brain to continue secondly neuronal unmasking the brain contains dormant synapses dormant meaning it's alive but not active these are connections between neurons which have no function they are there but they're not currently being used when brain damage occurs these dormant Sy upses become activated so that they can take on the function that was lost because of the brain d damage the neurons were there but inactive but now they are unmasked so that they are used to help recover the lost function thirdly recruitment of homologous areas the word homologous means similar so this is where similar areas sometimes in the other hemosphere are used when an area of the brain is damaged for example if Brock's area was damaged on the left side of the brain the right sided equivalent would carry out its functions for amazing examples of brain plasticity and the Brain brain's ability to recover its function after trauma consider these two cases firstly there's the case of three-year-old Jolie Miller who we started the video with she was having extreme seizures that were so frequent that the doctors were left with the option of removing her right hemisphere so what happened to her well her brain started to rewire and reorganize itself the functions and abilities that she'd learned and would have used her right hemisphere for were gone but her left hemisphere took over these responsibilities she's now a fully grown adult married and despite having some limited movement in her left side if you met her you probably wouldn't know that she only has half a brain life now with half a brain is for me is no different than anybody else I've been married four years I live on my own with my husband I'm really glad my parents did what they did because I wouldn't be where I am now if I had had the surgery any later or had waited any longer secondly there is the case study reported by denel atal in 2013 they studied an Italian boy referred to as EB Who had most of his left hemisphere removed at Age 2 and 1/2 years because of a tumor you may remember from a previous video on hemispheric lateralization that the left hemisphere is thought to be dominant for language they studied EB up to the age of 14 and reported amazing results initially he unsurprisingly had problems with language however within 2 years following the surgery he had recovered most of his language skills over the years his language was assessed as near to normal When they scanned his brain with an fmri machine they found brain patterns for language tasks in the right hemisphere that you would typically find in the left hemisphere the case of EB shows the plasticity of the brain following trauma particularly the brain's ability to recruit homologous areas in the brain in this case the right hemisphere taking on the function of language which is normally the responsibility of the left [Music] hemisphere now it's important to note at this point that there are a number of factors that can affect how well the brain can recover its function after trauma we're going to briefly consider three let's talk about the most obvious one based on what we've covered in this video age what did you notice about the cases of jod Miller and EB they were both very young when they had their hemispheres removed two and a half years and three years respectively the younger you are the more plastic the brain and therefore the more likely you are to recover functions that you've lost following brain trauma secondly education did you know that the more advanced your education is the more likely your brain needs to recover from trauma that's right Schneider atal in 2014 found the brains of patients with a university education showed greater recovery compared to those who didn't finish High School one year after the brain injury they were more likely to be disability free and thirdly gender rli FAL in 2007 examin the relationship between gender and cognitive recovery one year after traumatic brain injury they studied 325 patients who were admitted to hospital within 24 hours of experienc a traumatic brain injury they assess the patients on a range of cognitive abilities including working memory language and problem solving what they found was that females perform significantly better than males on tests of attention and working memory after recovery whereas the males outperform females in visual analytical skills this would suggest that how well people can recover from brain injury can depend on the gender of the patient and what cognitive abilities have been affected by the troll [Music] now just before we get to the test yourself questions let me tell you about the next video in the bioc psychology topic we've talked about different studies that have looked at the brains of different patients but what are the different ways that psychologists can study the brain and are some ways better than others so in the next video we're going to explore ways of studying the brain which includes postmortem fmis eegs and erps to that content you can click the video link below but now it's time to check your understanding of what we've covered in this video I'll present one question at a time you can pause the video to answer it yourself first and then press play again to reveal the [Music] answer he [Music] [Music] [Music] m I hope you found this video helpful and we'll see you in the next one

Channel: Bear it in MIND

Views: 3,007

Keywords: aqa, psychology, biopsychology, brain plasticity, functional recovery psychology, functional recovery after trauma, axonal sprouting, neuronal unmasking, recruitment of homologous areas, maguire taxi drivers study, kuhn computer game study, Bezzola golf study, Kemperman rat study, biopsychology revision a level aqa, biopsychology psychboost, jody miller brain, hemispherectomy jody, Danelli et al., Left hemisphere removal, right hemisphere removal, brain damage

Id: z41kf3Um7KI

Length: 18min 50sec (1130 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 19 2024