Is it possible to rewire your brain to learn new tasks? Researchers at the University of California campus near your Santa Cruz home believe so. Until recent studies at UC Santa Cruz, it was thought that the brain was only resilient, malleable, and morphable in young children. This malleability, called neuroplasticity, has been shown to still exist in adult lab mice and should transfer over to the brains of adults who have had brain injuries, stroke, and other conditions. If this study is correct, patients should be able to recover some of the memory loss associated with these conditions.

The study done near your Santa Cruz home, showed that learning a new task causes the brain to create new nerve paths. The lab mice were painstakingly taught a new task. This caused the dendritic spines in their brains to form new synapses( neuro pathways). What the study found was that once a task was learned the new synapses became permanent. In addition, as new tasks were learned, the old synapses stayed intact. It was sort of like proving the old adage that ”once you learn to ride a bike, you never forget how”. The results of the study by neurobiologist Yi Zho were published in the online journal Nature.

What about the paralyzed stroke patients in hospitals near your Santa Cruz home? Many are able to recover far more function than with conventional physical therapy alone. This is thanks in part to new rehabilitation programs that utilize methods based on neuroplasticity. Other treatments have been or are being developed for learning disorders like dyslexia. Still others are researching senility, post-traumatic stress, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and other dysfunctions of the human mind. Some of the new techniques are so low-tech that they could classify as arcane. For more information about Santa Cruz homes please contact Gregg Camp, the author, or visit propertyinsantacruz.com and cacoastalhome.com.

Some of the researchers on the campus near your Santa Cruz home point to a much more ancient practice that has always relied on neuroplasticity: Tibetan Buddhism. The full-fledged scientific investigation of Buddhist meditation is the focus of a book titled The Brain That Changes Itself written by Sharon Begley. The book recounts the story of the collaboration of modern science and Buddhist monks, including the Dalai Lama. This study involved measurable, replicable effects of Buddhist meditation practices on the mind and brain. Brain scans reveal that the neural activity of highly trained monks is incredible when compared to meditation novices especially in the caudate, right insula, and the left prefrontal cortex. The marks of the meditation remain after meditation.

With the current and past research available to scientists, it is hard to tell what researchers near your Santa Cruz home will be able to develop in the way of new therapies. Having proved that neuroplasticity exists in adult brains is only the first step towards helping patients to recover full function of their brains and perhaps their bodies.