Brain Plasticity Dr. Pascual-Leone was asked “How does plasticity work in the brain? How fast do changes occur? “There are different steps in neuroplasticity. One is a very rapid expansion of brain matter, which can be seen in about 1 week (for instance when someone is learning how to play a difficult finger sequence on a piano). This expansion results from the fact that the “wires” that connect the neurons responsible for that specific fingering […]
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Babies first attempt to “talk” at around 2 months when they begin cooing sounds, the least complicated speech sounds to produce. Some consonant sounds follow around 5 months, when babbling begins. Early babbling sounds the same in all babies regardless of their native language. Around the end of the first year, babbling starts to include language specific sounds
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A Healthy Brain Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School was asked – “Is there one main characteristic of a healthy brain?” His answer – “There are 100 billion neurons in the brain. Each neuron has about 10,000 connections (synapses) to other cells. We have 1 quintillion (10 to the 18th) synapses and there are 1 quintillion transactions per second between neurons. A healthy brain is thus a very complex, dynamic […]
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To superficial appearances, the adolescent brain appears to be nearly complete. In fact it is still undergoing considerable reorganization. Depression, bipolar disorder, drug addiction and schizophrenia become increasingly prevalent during adolescence.
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What is learning and how does it occur? Dr. James Zull (a noted neurologist and teacher at Case Western University) answered. What is learning? “Learning is physical. Learning means the modification, growth and pruning of our neural networks, through experience.” How does learning happen? “There are 4 stages in the “learning cycle”: […]
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