Unlocking Neuroplasticity: Enhancing Brain Function

Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change and adapt throughout life by creating new neural pathways and connections in response to new experiences, learning, or injury. This process occurs at various levels, from cellular changes to significant changes in cortical structures. Neuroplasticity plays a crucial role in health development, learning, memory, and recovery from brain damage. It is the foundation for overcoming genetic predisposition and allows individuals to modify their brain function throughout adulthood.

NEUROLOGY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Introduction
In the last few decades, neurology has shown promising results in terms of its immense potential
in understanding different behaviors in social psychology. It is also being utilized in addressing
psychological problems and a range of other mental illnesses. Experts believe that social work
education must integrate neuroscience for professional practice. The recent technological
advancements have also significantly affected the research in social and behavioral science.
Using extensive research, the studies have shown that the human brain and bio-sociological
processes are closely involved in our behavior. It has provided us a deep insight into etiology,
treatment and prevention of mental illness and other psychological conditions (Martin, 2002).
It was a positive attempt on the part of Library of Congress and National Institute of Mental
Health that have profoundly disseminated the public awareness in the field of brain research
benefits. It was the continuous efforts of medical researchers who conducted real-time clinical
research on the functioning of human brain. The researchers and scholars in the field of social
work as well are utilizing this new wave of knowledge and attempting to pull their social work
profession with this new trend of neurological science (Price, Adams, & Coyle, 2000). This
paper tries to look into different aspects of neuroscience that have positively affected the society
at large. It discusses the various concepts of neurological science that have so far successfully
provided solutions for certain psychological challenges as well.
The following topics underline some of the important social psychological or neurological
concepts in today’s scenario:
1) Neuroscience and the Development of Adolescent Brain
The recent Congressional Neuroscience Caucus has addressed the fundamental difference
between a growing and a developed brain. The speakers who conducted this research laid bare
their results in front of the scientific community. They told that the human brain start developing
during young adulthood till late 20s and early 30s for a lot of people. The researchers explained
as to how during early childhood, the development is more about establishing connections
between the cells than the change in the number of brain cells. While the new connections are
made regularly, but only the ones that are frequently used remain. The rest are forgotten so that
the brain can focus of the necessary connections and this process is continued throughout the
adulthood (Vijayakumar et al., 2016).
One of the researchers further elaborated that the neurons during adolescence have the ability to
build connections to other cells twice as fast as the neurons in an adult brain. This ability allows
the teens to ingest new information much more rapidly, which is why they are more vulnerable
to the negative influences. So, stress, alcohol and substance abuse all of these have significant
effects on the brain of an adolescent that makes them highly sensitive towards addiction.
Moreover, the part of the brain that is responsible for making sensible decisions is the one that
develops last. Therefore, they have a limited foresight and are prone to risky behavior. The

research also showed that the teen brains work harder in order to assess whether a scenario could
be dangerous, showing increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DAHL, 2004).
This important research can go a long a way to inform the legal system as to how to determine
the degree of culpability of teens who are always in a position of lacking maturity and impulse
control.
2) Effects of Surgery on Cognition
According to a study, in United States alone, the people of age 65 years and more undergo
around 20 million surgeries each year, which improve their health and most of the times save
their lives. But because of the complexities of the brain, a condition of delirium emerges, which
is the immediate post-operative period and because of that there is a subsequent risk of dementia.
The medical researchers and clinicians have closely observed for long that there is a clear
association between surgery and cognitive compromise. This alarming situation has really made
them pay attention to this issue. In a conference devoted to surgery and cognition, Howard Fillit,
Director of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation made his views clear that surgery and
cognition is the topic of profound importance. ("Predicting Effects of Surgery on Cognition -
BrainFacts.org", 2016) There is an increment of one-third in the number of surgeries in older
people from 2000 to 2010, where serious complications arise in 10 to 25 percent of the cases. Of
all these cases, delirium is the most frequent and deadly. Apart from that, there is a condition of
acute confusion that disrupts in attentions and other related cognitive functions. So, it is the
growing advancements in the field of neuroscience that is crucial to gain understanding and
prevent these complications from occurring again.
According to the research, the risk of decline in cognitive functions of the brain is very high after
the surgery. Post-surgery, the cognitive functions of the brain follow a clear pattern – a sudden
dip, then a gradual recovery. According to a recent study including 225 cardiac surgery patients,
the ones who did not develop delirium, showed an improvement above baseline function. While,
the patients whose delirium lasted for 3 days or longer, couldn’t recovered completely even a
year later and the ones who developed delirium for much shorter periods, the delirium fell in
between (Caza, Taha, Qi & Blaise, 2008).
So, the researchers stick their neck out and said that the condition of delirium may be associated
with increased inflammatory response towards the stress, and the patients even have higher
inflammation levels before their surgery, the ultimate purpose is clinical translation. They
believe that they can successfully integrate neuroscience and biomarkers to identify individuals
having risk of delirium and a long-term cognitive decline. It will be a collective neurological and
psychological approach to develop intervention strategies that would protect the brain.
3) Neurology and a measure of Consciousness
The neuroscience may still be struggling in accurately defining as to what consciousness is, but
the approach of thought process and ingenuity is creating a lot of stir in understanding its every
aspect whatsoever. It might look somewhat foolhardy to suggest that consciousness can be

weighed up in physical terms, but it is the thought, discussion and ingenuity on the part of
neuroscience to enter into the abyss of consciousness in order to define it.
However, in attempt to measure if one person is more conscious that the other, Steven Laureys, a
professor of University of Milan, tested a unique way as to how the brain responds to the
stimulation. He and his team conducted his experiment in 32 healthy people. Some of them were
awake, some were asleep and the rest were under anesthesia and applied an electromagnetic
pulse to all of their scalp and started observing the resulting brain activity (Ascoli, 2000). The
response to stimulation was seen and observed in individual subjects depending upon their state
of consciousness. This measure was called as Perturbational Complexity Index, obtained by
zapping the brain without any harm. The index was highest during wakefulness, half during
anesthesia and lower during sleep. So, this method is now considered as a reliable tool to show
as to what degree an individual is conscious.
4) Neurodegenerative Disorders and Palliative Care
Much as we have seen, social workers are also the ones who are most seen in the medical and
rehabilitating settings. We have seen that during the past few years, there is push towards social
work practice in geriatric and palliative care. It’s being felt that the neurological functioning of
brain regarding human behavior is particularly helpful when working with the patients having
Alzheimer’s disease and other ailments concerning age problems, brain injury and seizure
disorders. The advancements in the field of neuroscience have certainly our understanding
regarding sensorimotor and non-invasive and non-pharmacological treatments of traumatic brain
injuries (Kristjanson, Aoun, & Oldham, 2006). According to these principles, we now can grow
neurons, facilitate the functioning as well as enhance the overall mental and psychological health
of the patients.
Neuroscience sheds light into a fact that there is a biological process behind a situation when we
try to put ourselves into other person’s shoes and feel what he/she was feeling. Researchers say
that it is neuroscience that helped us in understanding in which way empathy is powerful and
equally dangerous. The reason behind the working of psychotherapy is the quality of therapeutic
relationship. The discovery of mirror neurons effectively made way for the researchers to deeply
understand the aspects of empathy and the energetic transaction that is clearly visible between
the clinician and client. The studies have proved that there is certain neurological process
regarding connecting with someone and at the same time providing witness to his or her struggle
as well as pain (Kumar & Jim, 2010).
The research have further suggested that it is neuroscience that helps us to understand some of
the otherwise unanswered problems regarding social work for years. The neurobiological
foundations of empathy have made us understood why compassion fatigue occurs and how
secondary traumatic stress affects people on a personal level. The neuroscience can provide
answers to these problems.

5) Neuroplasticity: How Brain Rewires and Adapts
In not very long in the past, neuroscience discovered a really amazing ability to change its
structure and reorganize itself. It was a revolutionary finding in a lot of ways that directly
contested the conventional view that when brain declines in its function, the damage happens
permanently. Our limited understanding behind the working of brain during the time of this
discovery was that its processes were fixed and unchangeable. So, according to the scientists,
neuroplasticity is the way with which we can improve the functioning of our brains.
According to neuroscience, neuroplasticity is that ability of the brain with which it rewires,
adapts, creates and establishes new neural circuits and makes new connections in the brain,
probably because the effects of injury and diseases could be compensated. So, scientists explain
that it is the brain’s ability to change and reshape itself by constant learning with the help of new
experiences and subsequently modify itself throughout the adulthood (Draganski et al., 2004).
These injuries stimulate the brain to create new neural pathways.
The process of Neuroplasticity occurs in different levels that may range from cellular changes
because of learning to significant changes in cortical changes in response to the injury. Certainly
the role of neuroplasticity has been recognized in the areas of health development, learning,
memory and recovery from brain damage. As per the experts, whenever, we learn something
new, our brain creates new synapses, which actually is the essence of neuroplasticity. So, it is the
brain’s ability of brain’s synaptic wiring. Without the process of neuroplasticity, there would be
the chances of genetic predisposition, that is, each generation would be the same. It is the
neuroplasticity that has the ability to overcome our ancestral genetic program.

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