BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM-NEUROPLASTICITY

 Brain And Nervous System-Dr. Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist & tenured professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is an expert in Neuroplasticity.

Nervous System can change in response to experience. So, this thing we call Neuroplasticity.

Brain's ability to modify itself in response to experience.

Birth to till about age 25, the brain is extremely malleable in a kind of almost passive way where kids are exposed to things, and the brain is just wiring up. The brain is designed to adjust itself in order to be in concert with its surroundings and to optimise just the way we describe it.

The brain is basically designed to be customised in the early part of life and then to implement those algorithms in that circuitry for the rest of your life. And the brain can change in adulthood and it can change provided that there's an emphasis on some perceptual event.

If you want to change your brain as an adult, let's say you wannabe less anxious, you want to learn a new language, you want to be more functional in some way, the key thing is to bring focus to some particular perception of something that's happening during the learning process and the reason for that there's a neurochemical system involving ACETYLCHOLINE & it comes from these two little nuclei down in the base of the brain called the Nucleus Basalis.

All day long you're doing things in a reflexive way but when you do something and you think about it very intensely, acetylcholine is released from Basalis at the precise neurons that were involved in that behaviour, it marks those for change during sleep or during deep rest later. So, people that winna change their brain, the power of focus is really the entry point and the ability to access deep rest and sleep. Because most people don't realize this, but Neuroplasticity is triggered by intense focus. Neuroplasticity occurs during deep sleep and rest.

What exactly is focus and what triggers Plasticity?

the brain loves to be able to just do things, pick up coffee cups and drink and walk and talk and do things and not put much energy into it. When we decide to focus what the brain really does is it switches on a set of circuits then all the frontal cortex and nucleus basalis and some others and it's trying to understand duration, how long something's gonna last, path, what's gonna happen and outcome, what ultimately is gonna happen, So duration, path and outcome.

Trying to learn a New Language or new motor skill or a new way of coneptualising something maybe somebody who's in a therapeutic process and they're trying to work through trauma, Duration, path and outcome is built into the networks of the brain. We can do that very easily, but it takes work. And it almost has a feeling of agitation and frustration and that's because of the circuits that turn on before acetylcholine area of the stress system.

So, when you or I decide we're gonna learn something and really dig in, norepinephrine which is adrenaline is secreted in the Brainstem and in the body. It brings about a state of alertness. Then our attention which is mostly a diffuse light is brought to a particular duration, path and outcome analysis. 

A hard passage of reading, set of math problems, a challenging physical work out when you do that these two systems have to work hard and the adult brain doesn't really want to change the algorithms they learned in childhood, you have alertness and focus, the acetylcholine and the norepinephrine converge to mark those synopsis for change. If one wants to change their brain is bring about the most intense concentration you can to something & then later bring about the least amount of concentration to that thing.

Plasticity in the adult brain any age, can be as robust as it is in childhood, as fast and as dramatic, provided the focus is there and it's all contingent on this acetycholinemolecule coming from nucleus basalis. The right approach is to bring as much focus to a behaviour or to a thought or to an action pattern and there has to be a sense of urgency.

If there's a serious contingency, like in order to get ration of food each day, you have to learn this thing. The degree of plasticity is remarkable. But if there isn't an incentive it isn't just gonna happen. So, the circuits in the brain the mother nature set up are designed to be anchored to a real need. The sense of urgency is just acetylcholine. It's norepinephrine, that's all it is. The brain doesn't have a recognition of whether or not something is pleasureful or not until later. Once you start accomplishing your goal the reward system like DOPAMINE start kicking in.