Neuroplasticity

Here is how neuroplasticity works in simple terms. Medications may impact brain’s emotional and cognitive function quickly due to fast chemical changes during treatment. That said, also, it is just how you think and experience milieu, not always medicine, that brings on chemical changes in all of us.

You can truly create new brain pathways as opposed to old ways of thinking through accurate metacognition. The structural changes and the functional brain networks take years to alter. We have examples of London taxi drivers with large Hippocampi, and Buddhist Monks with different baseline as well as post-meditative brain resting-state activity relative to normal controls. Like the 10,000 hours of desired training (metaphorically speaking on the count), things can change, and we can become neurally more dynamic and flexible!

So, medicine may facilitate functional improvement to begin in situations like anxiety, depression, or poor working memory, but how you alter the faulty thinking patterns will take time and need to be practiced over time, through consistent cognitive reframing. And of course, lowering stress helps to facilitate the neurochemistry congenial for brain health.

Keeping the brain ultra busy with meaningful, active cognitive and emotional learning, doing great stuff in the waking hours (I say, challenge yourself!), and sleeping like a log at night to clean the neurotoxins (brain activation-rest cycles) is the best combination to physiologically upkeep the brain to work fabulously! Basically, there is no shortcut to brain and wellness.