The Exercise Effect on Mental Health in Older Adults
Henning Budde, Mirko Wegner in The Exercise Effect on Mental Health, 2018
The described age-related changes in brain and cognition show remarkable individual differences (inter-individual variability) but also differences within a person between different functions and structures (intra-individual variability). Aging trajectories may be delayed or reveal changes in slope in both a positive and a negative direction and reveal the plasticity of the aging process. Plasticity denotes an individual’s potential for modifications in his or her developmental trajectory throughout the lifespan. Cognitive plasticity refers to the potential for the modifiability of the trajectory of cognitive development within one individual (Baltes, Lindenberger, & Staudinger 1998). Brain plasticity denotes the fact that the brain shows structural and/or functional changes when people are faced with new or altering demands (Lövdén, Bäckman, Lindenberger, Schaefer, & Schmiedek 2010; Staudinger 2012) or as a reaction to a loss of neural resources as a consequence of lesions, diseases, or even aging. The latter type of neural plasticity is strongly tight to compensational mechanisms in the aging brain. The degree of plasticity depends on the available individual (physiological, psychological) or contextual (social, cultural) developmental resources available (cf. Staudinger, Marsiske, & Baltes 1995). The high inter- and intra-individual variability of cognitive impairment during aging indicates that besides genetic predisposition individual lifestyle is a crucial factor. PA or exercise is an important and successful possibility to stimulate cognitive and neuronal plasticity.
Soul Medicine Crossing the Border
Len Wisneski in The Scientific Basis of Integrative Health, 2017
In addition to Newberg and D’Aquili's work, there is ongoing research out of the laboratory of Richard J. Davidson, in Wisconsin, that continues to provide insight into the processes that occur during meditation and, in particular, how meditation impacts the plasticity of the brain. Brain plasticity or neuroplasticity concerns the ability of the brain to reorganize and change based on new material that an individual learns, memorizes, or experiences. In Chapter 4, we discussed Jon Kabat-Zinn and the fact that he took a Buddhist mindfulness-based meditation practice (i.e., a keen moment-to-moment awareness, developed by observing thoughts and bodily sensations) and secularized it, providing meditation training for medical patients. In Buddhist meditation, the practitioner first learns to concentrate the mind, then mindfulness-based practice, and finally a “pure compassion” meditation (a meditation that focuses on loving kindness toward all people, not just on one's own family and friends). Davidson and colleagues have shown that meditation induces beneficial long-term changes, or neuroplasticity, in regard to attention, emotion, and empathy. Thus, it is now known that we can train our minds to have more compassion and to acquire helpful, positive qualities via mediation, just as we can train ourselves to learn any other skill.
Learning Engineering Applies the Learning Sciences
Jim Goodell, Janet Kolodner in Learning Engineering Toolkit, 2023
We previously discussed how the brain is wired and how learning, in a sense, rewires your brain. Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity or neural plasticity, is the ability of the brain to change throughout an individual’s life.30 At the single cell level, synaptic plasticity 31 refers to changes in the connections between neurons, whereas non-synaptic plasticity 32 refers to changes in their intrinsic excitability, for example, how responsive they are to the chemical signals they receive.33 The structure of the brain can change throughout life but may be more “plastic” during developmental periods from prenatal to early 20s. For more detailed explanations of what researchers have discovered about changes that occur with age and learning across the life span, see How People Learn II. 34
A preliminary study of atypical cortical change ability of dynamic whole-brain functional connectivity in autism spectrum disorder
Published in International Journal of Neuroscience, 2022
One worthwhile problem is that how dynamic does the inform interaction or interruption of cortical regions on account of the brain diseases. Therefore, the DFCs investigate the potential time-varying characteristics of FCs by introducing the sliding time window or frequency-bands division methods on the fMRI signals. Here describes the central motivating hypothesis in this paper. Focused on the properties of edge weight change, changeability surveys functional contacting and functional switching of different brain regions at transient responses perspective. What’s more, at the long-term perspective, changeability may also predict outcome of learning and rehabilitation under the framework of brain plasticity. Brain plasticity explains brain continues to create new neural pathways and alter existing ones to adapt to new experiences, learn new information, and create new memories. Hence, an important goal for changeability is to deliver a new quantitative analyses method of abnormal cortical activity in diseased brains, and further offers a new perspective in modern diagnoses of mental illnesses.
Harm in Hypnosis: Three Understandings From Psychoanalysis That Can Help
Published in American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 2018
Hope and Sugarman (2015) compare and equate trance to the biologically adaptive OR. They suggest the “autonomic, neural, and physiological features of the OR [is] a framework for understanding trance-opening” (p. 221; emphasis added). When speaking of “opening,” Hope and Sugarman are referring to the opening of mind in the face of novelty, which prepares the brain for responsively changing its configurations of neural connectivities. Responsively changing configurations of neural connectivities is another way to describe brain plasticity—brain-changing—in response to external input. According to Hope and Sugarman, trance’s OR stimulates a momentary pause on fixed, automatic responses, and, instead, activates an opening—a receptivity to—new responses (reconfigured neural connectivities) to what is taking place. Thus: Trance is heightened mental receptivity.
Task Oriented Training Activities Post Stroke Will Produce Measurable Alterations in Brain Plasticity Concurrent with Skill Improvement
Published in Topics in Stroke Rehabilitation, 2022
Somchanok Rungseethanakul, Jarugool Tretriluxana, Pagamas Piriyaprasarth, Narawut Pakaprot, Khanitha Jitaree, Suradej Tretriluxana, Jerome V. Danoff
Brain plasticity was indicated by alterations in CE. Peak-to-peak motor evoked potential (MEP) (µV) which represented the CE. The CE of the motor representation for extensor digitorum communis (EDC), wrist flexor, triceps brachii, and biceps brachii muscles of the paretic UE stimulation of the non-lesioned hemisphere and lesioned hemisphere were measured in a fixed order using a single-pulse TMS (Magstim 200, Magstim Co., Dyfed, UK) through a figure of eight coil. The coil was placed on the representational area of M1 and stimulated at 120% of the threshold intensity in the target muscle. Determining CE required electromyographic recording (Medelec Synergy EMG/EP, © VIASYS HealthCare Inc., 2005 UK). The researcher started by measuring the resting motor threshold (rMT) of the non-lesioned hemisphere. The rMT referred to the lowest intensity needed to induce MEPs of 50 μv peak-to-peak amplitude. The rMT was determined in the target muscle in 50% of the stimulation trials. The peak-to-peak MEP amplitude was determined ten times at 120% of rMT. The average amplitude was calculated for each site of stimulation.
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