Maximize Your Brain Plasticity For A Super Brain - Doctor Explains Neuroplasticity

What is neuroplasticity of the brain? And why should you care does it matter to

you? Stay tuned and I'll explain. I am doctor Ekberg with Wellness For Life and

if you'd like to truly master health by understanding how the body really works

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So plasticity refers to the ability to mold or shape or change

or reshape something and we used to believe that the brain was kind of set

that it developed over the growing years and then once we reached adulthood

then it pretty much stayed the same and that is not true in the last twenty

thirty years we have learned a lot about the brain and about brain plasticity the

neuroplasticity the ability for the brain to actually physically change so

think of the brain as an enormous circuitry and like an electronic circuit

except this circuit has a hundred billion transistors and in the brain the

brain cells are called neurons and imagine each of these brain cells

connect to other brain cells and each cell makes on average five to ten

thousand connections times a hundred billion and some of these cells like in

the cerebellum that makes coordinates thought and movement the cerebellum some

of those cells can make a quarter million to half a million connections

per cell so the complexity of this neural network is enormous and it

manages everything about you so the purpose of the brain is to coordinate

and regulate things so you have a hundred trillion cells and each of those

cells is like an independent little unit of life and the brains job is to make

those hundred trillion cells work together as a unit so the brain receives

about 1 billion bits of information every second and none

those bits are ignored or missed so every bit coming in has a consequence of

the brain receives it processes and it executes the sum total of that is called

regulation the better it works the healthier you are but here's the

interesting part a computer can also process a lot of different things but

the processing doesn't change the computer the brain however it changes

with that information so if information comes in and takes a certain path then

it's going to increase the likelihood of that path being executed or firing again

so the more that we use a path the more that we strengthen it so that's how

plasticity works that the more of a certain input that we give to the brain

the more resources and the more pathways and the more synapses the brain is going

to allocate to that particular function so the brain is actually being recreated

every single day but if you give it mostly the same information today as you

did yesterday then it's going to recreate the same brain however if you

start changing things up if you do this on purpose especially and you start

thinking different you start acting different you start doing different

things then you're going to recreate another type of brain you're going to

make the brain change so if you keep things the same you'll recreate the same

if you keep changing then it'll change with you some interesting areas where

this is good to understand is in the case of a stroke for example in the case

of a stroke there is an occlusion there is a problem where the blood supply to

the brain is actually blocked and a portion of the brain

small or large is deprived of oxygen long enough that those cells actually

die so that function isn't there those cells are never going to

operate again but if we understand neuroplasticity and we understand that

the more that we can change things up and make the brain help the brain become

flexible the more the brain can allocate reallocate those functions to other

areas one very interesting aspect of that is with blind people when they lose

their vision or they never developed it then the areas in the brain that

normally process this vision are not needed for that purpose so the brain can

use them for other things so even though they're supposed to be used for vision

we don't need them for that so with blind people they use their

fingertips a lot more they start to read with their fingertips and as a result

the area that normally processes touch starts expanding and being using up real

estate in the visual cortex the area of the brain normally used to process

vision so they can essentially see with their fingers if you will and the brain

is amazing that it will constantly reallocate its resources to the things

that you do most so you have to ask how do you want it to work one definition of

genius is that it's just a persistent attention to a particular topic

if you persistently focus on a particular topic then the brain will

start allocating more resources to that and you get really good at it or someone

might call you a genius or an expert so by understanding a

little bit more about plasticity by understanding that the brain is not set

it is not what it is you can actually change it and by understanding how

plasticity is strongly influenced by factors such as attitude when you feel

positive about something the brain works better doubt and negativity and anxiety

and negative feelings interfere with a flow of those creative processes

and also by understanding visualization that you can visualize something and

that the brain experiences it as if it actually happened and by understanding

the value of repetition now you can start making plasticity work for you to

create a brain and to create some pathways and some habits that work

better for you for what you'd like to accomplish and do so let me know if this

was interesting if it makes sense to you and if there's any part of this that you

have experienced in your life I'd love to see some comments if you want to

share what this has done for you or if there's some past events where you can

kind of see how this has been working if you're new to this channel make sure

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thanks for watching