Chapter 2 - Harnessing Adaptability 

Studies

• The more time that a person had spent as a taxi driver, the larger the posterior hippocampi (not the same for bus drivers), which is related to the navigational skills that the job require
• 3-fingered Braille readers saw the brain areas of the brain devoted to those fingers grow and eventually overlap so that they couldn't tell which of the 3 fingers had been touched
• By training their brain, older people with presbyopia could read letters that were 60% smaller than they could before due to changes in brain parts that interpret visual signals which de-blurred images
• The region of the brain controlling the left hand was larger in the musicians than in the nonmusicians and the brain regions controlling the fingers had taken over a section of the brain region that was normally devoted to the palm
• Retired London taxi drivers had less gray matter in their posterior hippocampi than did active taxi drivers

Key Terms

• Homeostasis: the tendency of a system to act in a way that maintains its own stability
• Bent-twig effect: training at early ages can actually shape the course of later development, leading to significant changes

General Information

• There is no easy way to observe the resulting changes in your brain as it adapts to the increasing demands being placed on it
• Both the function and the structure of the brain change in response to various sorts of mental training
• Species of birds that store food in different places and must be able to remember the location of these various caches have relatively larger hippocampi
• The brains of blind or deaf people rewire themselves to find new uses for the parts of the brain that are normally dedicated to processing sights or sounds
• Blind people’s visual cortex lights up when reading Braille, helping them interpret the fingertip sensations
• If you practice something enough, your brain will repurpose neurons to help with the task even if they already have another job to do
• The brain’s structure and function are not fixed since they change in response to use
• The human body has a preference for stability
• Cells require a stable environment if they are to function effectively
• When a body system is stressed to the point that homeostasis can no longer be maintained, the body responds with changes that are intended to reestablish homeostasis
• If you don’t keep pushing and pushing some more, the body will settle into homeostasis, and you will stop improving
• Learning a new skill is much more effective at triggering structural changes in the brain than simply continuing to practice a skill that one has already learned
• Pushing too hard for too long can lead to burnout and ineffective learning
• The cerebellum is larger in musicians than in nonmusicians
• Musicians have more gray matter than nonmusicians
• Long-term training results in changes in those parts of the brain that are relevant to the particular skill being developed
• The inferior parietal lobule (mathematical calculations + visualization of objects in space) has significantly more gray matter in mathematicians than in nonmathematicians
• Cortical thickness is greater in competitive divers than in nondivers in 3 brain regions that play a role in visualizing and controlling the movements of the body
• Younger brains are more adaptable than adult brains so training can have larger effects in younger people
• The earlier a child get started on the piano, the more white matter that pianist will have as an adult
• In many cases, people who have developed one skill or ability to an extraordinary degree seem to have regressed in another area
• The cognitive and physical changes caused by training require upkeep
• The traditional approach to learning is not designed to challenge homeostasis
• Using deliberate practice, you can challenge homeostasis