Here is an excerpt from an article written by Dr. Pascale Michelon and featured at the SharpBrains website. As seen in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and more, SharpBrains is an independent market research and think tank tracking health and productivity applications of neuroscience. AARP recently named The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness a “Best Book on the subject.” Dr. Michelon discusses plasticity, learning and memory.

To read the complete article and check out other resources, please click here.

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For a long time, it was believed that as we aged, the connections in the brain became fixed. Research has shown that in fact the brain never stops changing through learning. Plasticity IS the capacity of the brain to change with learning. Changes associated with learning occur mostly at the level of the connections between neurons. New connections can form and the internal struc­ture of the existing synapses can change.

Did you know that when you become an expert in a specific domain, the areas in your brain that deal with this type of skill will grow?

For instance, London taxi drivers have a larger hippocampus (in the posterior region) than Lon­don bus drivers (Maguire, Woollett, & Spiers, 2006). Why is that? It is because this region of the hippocampus is specialized in acquiring and using complex spa­tial information in order to navigate efficiently. Taxi drivers have to navigate around London whereas bus drivers follow a limited set of routes.

Plasticity can also be observed in the brains of bilinguals (Mechelli et al., 2004). It looks like learning a second language is possible through functional changes in the brain: the left inferior parietal cortex is larger in bilingual brains than in monolingual brains.

Plastic changes also occur in musicians brains compared to non-musicians. Gaser and Schlaug (2003) compared professional musicians (who practice at least one hour per day) to amateur musicians and non-musicians. They found that gray matter (cortex) volume was highest in professional musicians, intermediate in amateur musicians, and lowest in non-musicians in several brain areas involved in playing music: motor regions, anterior superior parietal areas and inferior temporal areas.

Finally, Draganski and colleagues (2006) recently showed that extensive learning of abstract information can also trigger some plastic changes in the brain. They imaged the brains of German medical students 3 months before their medical exam and right after the exam and compared them to brains of students who were not studying for exam at this time. Medical students’ brains showed learning-induced changes in regions of the parietal cortex as well as in the posterior hippocampus. These regions of the brains are known to be involved in memory retrieval and learning.

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Dr. Michelon received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Sciences in 1999 (Lyon, France). As a Research Scientist at Washington University in the Psychology Dept., she worked with both young and older adults to understand how the brain makes use of information and memorizes facts. She received several academic fellowships and awards. From 2004 to 2006, she was the recipient of a Washington University Center for Aging award for her work on spatial reasoning and aging. Dr. Michelon is an Adjunct Faculty member at Washington University in Saint Louis in the Psychology Department. She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed scientific articles. Her latest book is Max Your Memory (2012), by D.K., an illustrated memory workbook that offers techniques and tips to optimize memory at all ages.

To check out an excerpt in the Wall Street Journal, please click here. Dr. Michelon is on the Speaker’s Bureau for the Alzheimer’s Association and a member of several organizations such as Professionals in Retirement Community Living (PRCL), Social Workers in Long Term Care (SWLTC), the Breakthrough Coalition and Continuum of care Marketing Association (COCMA). She is also an Expert Contributor for SharpBrains.com where individuals, companies and institutions are provided with the best science-based information and guidance on Brain Health and Fitness.