| Guenter Kochendoerfer: Plasticity of the brain and brain jogging |
|
Contents BioModResearch- Lang-Acqu- Cortical Ling.- AphasiaMembers- G. Kochend.- D. Veit- Kochend. - 1997 - 1998 - 1998(2) - 1999 - 2000- Veit - 2002CommentsLinks |
It is not a simple task to say something relevant about the functional plasticity of the brain without entering unknown fields of brain research. The first idea that might come up is that contents or ways of thinking with positive effects become stronger during lifetime, which implies that alternative but less useful ways become weaker and on the long run risk to get wholly unuseable. If we accept this as a necessary and lifesaving gift of evolution we have to accept as a consequence that some mental processes show an increasing reliability of function with the cost of others beeing totally lost. Increasing reliability of important functions is thus related to a decreasing amount of creativity. It is certainly to be assumed that the outcome of evolutionary processes in principle has positive effects on human life. But it could be that nowadays we are growing older than nature has provided our organism for. Then after a certain point in life the positive effects may change into potentially negative: fatal loss of flexibility of thinking caused by the loss of competing neural resources. |
If we reach this point there is hardly any possibility for a significant improvement.
But what can we do to maintain a balanced relation between creativity and reliability of important functions?
One can hardly imagine, that lifelong augmentation of information by acquisition processes that are getting harder by time and age of people might affect the cognitive system in any positive respect.
Another possibility might then be the early use of a learning strategy which may be dubbed "learning for forgetting". This means that it is not intended to augment informations and skills in a person but exclusively to prevent the loss of plasticity and creative ressources of the brain.
In terms of neural functioning this would mean: As much as possible different informations must be fixed for a short time at the same location of the brain. The variety of materials garantees the maintenance of competing processing connections. Forgetting is an essential precondition to make this possible.
The brain should then remain flexible in the sense of keeping a variety of possible functions alife including the ability of lifelong learning ... as long as no pathological (and for cognitive training insensitive) processes are present.
This article was sent to the BioMod-Group on 25.01.2001 by
Guenter Kochendoerfer and being forwarded to the Mailinglist. Contact:
kochendo@uni-freiburg.de.
Comments and replies shall be sent to
biomod-editor@biomod.de.
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[BioMod]
[Research]
[- Lang-Acqu]
[- Cortical Ling.]
[- Aphasia]
[Members]
[- G. Kochend.]
[- D. Veit]
[- Kochend.]
[ - 1997]
[ - 1998]
[ - 1998(2)]
[ - 1999]
[ - 2000]
[- Veit]
[ - 2002]
[Comments]
[Links]
| Guenter Kochendoerfer: Plasticity of the brain and brain jogging |
|
© by BioMod research group 2000-2001.