pupnik
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Dec 24, 2013
- Messages
- 3,153
neuroplasticity is a bit of a fake term, a catch all, panacea word that is seriously abused by researchers, reporters, and psychonauts.
when I try to direct people to study nature, I am trying to get them to dig into and beyond the veils that accumulate in popular culture like the term "neuroplasticity" which people use freely and never grasp the meaning of.
it is abused in marketing, law making, and in experimental science as well.
Instead of you coming up with an explanation for "neuroplasticity" that is an apology for all the people abusing the term, you can abandon the word.
Focus instead upon what is really detected in experiments, and, or what is really happening in the lives we live. you can see in yourself and others increases and decreases in vigor, clarity, flexibility, etc.
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Most people have the view that nerve tendrils like branching rootlets grow making new connections during neuroplastic activities, but this is only the case in developmental biology, i.e. for humans it happens in the first 3 months of foetal existence, after that hardly at all except in growth and healing from severe damage, or in experimentally growing brain organoids which more closely resemble tumors than functional brain tissue.
The changes in nerve tissue involving protein that happens every second of every minute of every day while awake or dreaming in adult humans, involves the microscopic formation of protein spines connecting branched axons and dendrites of cortical neurons - this interlinks neurons that fire together in the same fraction of a second - thus forming memory, enabling us to recognize what we encounter.
Even if you ask neuroscientists about "neuroplasticity", you will get more hand waving and confusion, because usually they cannot say what they mean other than - yes, protein was formed among nerve tissue, and we can see radio-labelled protein in this part of the tissue when the animal learned something.
when I try to direct people to study nature, I am trying to get them to dig into and beyond the veils that accumulate in popular culture like the term "neuroplasticity" which people use freely and never grasp the meaning of.
it is abused in marketing, law making, and in experimental science as well.
Instead of you coming up with an explanation for "neuroplasticity" that is an apology for all the people abusing the term, you can abandon the word.
Focus instead upon what is really detected in experiments, and, or what is really happening in the lives we live. you can see in yourself and others increases and decreases in vigor, clarity, flexibility, etc.
---
Most people have the view that nerve tendrils like branching rootlets grow making new connections during neuroplastic activities, but this is only the case in developmental biology, i.e. for humans it happens in the first 3 months of foetal existence, after that hardly at all except in growth and healing from severe damage, or in experimentally growing brain organoids which more closely resemble tumors than functional brain tissue.
The changes in nerve tissue involving protein that happens every second of every minute of every day while awake or dreaming in adult humans, involves the microscopic formation of protein spines connecting branched axons and dendrites of cortical neurons - this interlinks neurons that fire together in the same fraction of a second - thus forming memory, enabling us to recognize what we encounter.
Even if you ask neuroscientists about "neuroplasticity", you will get more hand waving and confusion, because usually they cannot say what they mean other than - yes, protein was formed among nerve tissue, and we can see radio-labelled protein in this part of the tissue when the animal learned something.
