Can You Change the Shape of Your Brain Mass? Neuroplasticity 101

 by Jennifer Rae Vliet 

It has been all the buzz the last 4 years about how we can actually reshape our misshapen brain mass. They have seen people's brains who are alcoholics and marijuana users and a reshaping of them when they quit these habits. A deep dive into this did not stop there, study after study has been done on the brains of people who suffer with head injuries, depression, panic/anxiety disorders, as well as hypothyroidism. These are supposedly noggins that when they are reshaped, these conditions improve and claims that they even disappear. There are all sorts of different therapies in fact. One is using a hallucinogenic once or twice; for example, a controlled usage of magic mushrooms which are gaining in popularity...hypnosis, verbal and meditative therapies, exercises and of course so much more. 

What Is Neuroplasticity?

Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change and adapt due to experience. It is an umbrella term referring to the brain's ability to change, reorganize, or grow neural networks. This can involve functional changes due to brain damage or structural changes due to learning.

Plasticity refers to the brain's malleability or ability to change; it does not imply that the brain is plastic. Neuro refers to neurons, the nerve cells that are the building blocks of the brain and nervous system. Thus, neuroplasticity allows nerve cells to change or adjust.

Types of Neuroplasticity

The human brain is composed of approximately 100 billion neurons.1 Early researchers believed that neurogenesis, or the creation of new neurons, stopped shortly after birth.

Verywell / JR Bee

Today, it's understood that the brain's neuroplasticity allows it to reorganize pathways, create new connections, and, in some cases, even create new neurons.

There are two main types of neuroplasticity:

• Functional plasticity is the brain's ability to move functions from a damaged area of the brain to other undamaged areas.
• Structural plasticity is the brain's ability to actually change its physical structure as a result of learning.

And of course, Dr. Berg also will share some great information about regrowing our brain cells!

Dr. Josh Axe has a great piece on the Limbic System, how to support ours and in what ways

What Is the Limbic System? (Plus, How to Keep It Healthy & the Role of Essential Oils)

Although it’s only a small part of the brain in terms of volume, the limbic system has some of the most basic, life-sustaining and meaningful roles of all brain structure. The word limbic comes from the latin word limbus, meaning “border.” That’s because the limbic system forms a curved border around the subcortical parts of the brain called the cerebral cortex and the diencephalon.

Ever wonder what part of the brain controls emotions? While the entire central nervous system helps control our emotions, as you’ll learn, activities in the limbic system and autonomic nervous system are especially influential over our emotional health. The entire limbic system — including subparts like the hippocampus, hypothalamus and amygdala — helps control numerous emotional, voluntary, endocrine and visceral responses to our environments that we all experience daily. (1)

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What Is the Limbic System?

Of all the areas of the brain, from an evolutionary perspective the limbic system is said to be one of the oldest and most primitive, having formed many hundreds of thousands of years ago. In fact, similar systems are also found in most other animals, even reptiles. In the past, the limbic system was sometimes even referred to as the “paleomammalian brain.” (2)

Although the limbic system works with other areas of the brain in complex ways, and therefore has far more than just one role, the word that best describes what the limbic system controls would be “emotions.” Secondly, a part of the limbic system called the hippocampus helps us form and retain memories, which is very important for learning and development.

At all stages of our life, the limbic system and hippocampus also help govern emotional behaviors. While it’s an oversimplification to say that someone’s emotions are only determined by limbic functions, it’s clear that this system plays a huge part in helping us do things like remember past events that were both pleasant and traumatic, perceive threats from our surroundings, make choices based on our experiences, control movements based on past learning, form sensory preferences/likes/dislikes, and much more.

Limbic System and Hippocampus Function and Structure 

The limbic system sits atop the brain stem, which is believed to be one of the first parts of the brain to develop, react to stimuli and the most basic in terms of sustaining life. It’s located on both sides of the thalamus and underneath the cerebrum.

There’s not total consensus among neuroscientists about which structures of the brain are technically part of the limbic system, considering it’s very hard to to neatly classify cortical areas given how much neural overlap there is. That being said, most consider the limbic system to be made up of cortical regions (structures), including:

• Hippocampus: generally associated with memory and focus, but also helps with motor control (often learned through trial and error)
• Amygdala: tied to fear and anxious emotions
• Hypothalamus: primarily responsible for regulating hormones and maintaining “homeostasis” (more on this below)
• Septal Nuclei: tied to pleasure and learning through reward and/or reinforcement
• Cingulate Cortex: involved in many aspects of memory and emotion
• Parahippocampal Gyrus: also helps with memory
• Mammillary Bodies: connected to the amygdala and hippocampus
• Fornix: connects other parts of the brain, including hippocampus and mammillary bodies

The limbic system is one hard-working region of the brain, as you can tell. Some specific limbic system functions include:

• Controlling emotions like anger and fear
• Regulating eating, hunger and thirst
• Responding to pain and pleasure
• Controlling functioning of the autonomic nervous system, including things like pulse, blood pressure, breathing and arousal
• Sensing sexual satisfaction
• Controlling aggressive or violent behavior
• Responding to sensory information, especially sense of smell

The hippocampus is part of the entire limbic system, but it helps to understand how it contributes to memory to learning. Functions of the hippocampus include: (3)

• Forming short-term and long-term memories through consolidating information
• Learning new skills from reward, punishment, reinforcement and failure
• Recognition of what’s familiar versus new
• Navigation or sense of direction
• Spacial memory
• Involved in olfaction (smelling) and tying together smells with specific memories

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Limbic System Disorders

Because subparts of the limbic system ultimately regulate important aspects of our conscious and unconscious patterns — including our emotions, perceptions, relationships, behaviors and motor control — it’s easy to see why damage to this region can cause serious problems. Disorders or behaviors that are related to limbic system dysfunction, or sometimes limbic system damage due to things like traumatic injuries or aging, include: (4)

• Disinhibited behavior: This means someone doesn’t consider the risk of behaviors and ignores social conventions/rules.
• Increased anger and violence: This is commonly tied to amygdala damage.
• Hyperarousal: Amygdala damage, or damage to parts of the brain connected to the amygdala, can cause increased fear and anxiety. Anxiety disorders are sometimes treated with drugs that target areas of the amygdala to decrease fear-based emotions.
• Hypoarousal: This can cause low energy or lack of drive and motivation.
• Hyperorality/Kluver-Bucy Syndrome: This is characterized by amygdala damage that can lead to increased drive for pleasure, hypersexuality, disinhibited behavior and insertion of inappropriate objects in the mouth.
• Appetite dysregulation: Destructive behaviors tied to hyperorality or thalamus dysfunction can include overeating, binge eating or emotional eating.
• Trouble forming memories: Hippocampal damage can include short-term or long-term memory loss. Learning is often greatly impacted by hippocampal damage, since it depends on memory. Someone with the condition anterograde amnesia loses the ability to form and retain new memories. Interestingly, sometimes someone can hold on to older/long-term memories but lose the ability to form new short-term memories.
• Cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease: Research shows that people with Alzheimer’s and memory loss usually have experienced damage to the hippocampus. This causes not only memory loss, but also disorientation and changes in moods. Some of the ways that the hippocampus can become damaged include free radical damage/oxidative stress, oxygen starvation (hypoxia), strokes or seizures/epilepsy.
• READ MORE OF DR. JOSH AXE >>>>
• Bibliography 
• Astounding Facts about the Brain God Made | Preach It, Teach ItArticle Detail | Preach It, Teach It (preachitteachit.org)
• You Have the Power to Physically Reshape Your Brain (futurism.com)

 THE PLAIN TRUTH IS THAT GOD HAS CREATED FOR US AN AMAZING BODY THAT IS RIGHTED BY THE BRAIN! I had mentioned this before on the Retro-Walking post, that it is the brains job to fix the misfiring's and issues in the body so all the more reason to understand and learn about how to support our noggins.