Human changeable brain

what is the changeable brain

When you woke up today, you were a new person literally. Many of the cells in your body had replaced themselves with younger versions, and your brain has been busy as well. Scientists have discovered your brain is a work in process. Every day, it seems, your brain makes new neurons in at least some sections, and almost every second, your brain is changing its networking in response to what you experience, think, feel, and need. In fact, your brain can even direct changes to some of your genes, turning them off or on.

Then Your brain is hardwired and unchangeable, and you're born with all the brain cells you'll ever have. Good luck, because when they're gone, they're gone.

 NOW: Who knew? Your brain creates new neurons in some areas and new networks, even into old age, and it changes physically in response to your actions, thoughts, and emotions. Your genes are not your destiny—or at least not all of it.

 Tomorrow: Well be able to direct changes: stimulate new brain cells and networks where and when we need them; turn genes off and on at will to repair brain damage, restore function, and optimize performance; and rewire our brains to manipulate memory and even reverse dementia and mental retardation.

 The revolutionary findings about your brain's remarkable ability to change itself are barely a decade old. Biologists had long believed that the creation of brain cells was completed at or shortly after birth, and that the rest of your life was a slow slide into brain cell loss. In the 1990s, scientists rocked the field of neurobiology with the startling news that the mature mammalian brain is capable of sprouting new neurons in the hippocampus and the ole factory bulbs, and that it continues to do so even into old age. This process is called neurogenesis.

 Scientists also confirmed what was long suspected: your brain is not hardwired. It can reinvent itself, as it were, by creating new path-ways to reroute, readjust, and otherwise change the networking and connections, sometimes even substituting one area for another. When one part of your brain goes south—from a stroke or trauma, for exampleother sections can sometimes take over some of those functions. Your brain also changes to reflect what you learn, do, and think. In fact, your brain is physically rearranging its networks just about every minute of every day. That's neuroplasticity.

 Then they discovered that your actions, thoughts, feelings, or environment can change your genes—more specifically, whether certain genes are expressedaltering brain function; character traits; and risk of some diseases, from cancer to schizophrenia. That's epigenetics.