Expand Your Wits and Horizon (with Neuroplasticity)

The explosion of research in recent years focusing on the effects of music training on the nervous system, including the studies in the review, have strong implications for education. “An active engagement with musical sounds not only enhances neuroplasticity,” said study author Dr. Nina Kraus, “but also enables the nervous system to provide the stable scaffolding of meaningful patterns so important to learning.”

This isn’t the first study to suggest such a thing. In fact, The Journal of Neuroscience carried research  by Drs. Christian Gaser and Gottfried Schlaug that compared professional musicians (who practiced at least one hour a day) to amateur musicians and nonmusicians, and found that the gray matter (cortex) volume was the highest in professional musicians, intermediate in amateur musicians, and lowest in nonmusicians in several of the brain areas that are involved in playing music: the motor regions, anterior superior parietal areas, and inferior temporal areas.

Take Up Meditation

A study in PLOS One found that people who were skilled at meditating effectively generated far more high-amplitude gamma wave activity in areas of the prefrontal cortex while meditating, or in other words, they exhibited very focused attention.

The good news is you can train your brain to have these targeted responses. The bad news is that it takes a bit of time and a lot of effort.

Research has shown that our stack of willpower is finite and that on a daily basis, once we use up our given quota on one thing, we don’t have much to spare. So if you’ve used up all your self-control to not yell at your kids in the morning before you send them to school, you might have a little less left over for that client who’s owed you money for six weeks.

However, here’s the part you’ve been waiting for — like a muscle, willpower can be grown. The more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes. It turns out the brain’s executive center, located just behind the forehead, is a key site for building willpower. One of the most effective ways to build that willpower, science shows, is by focused mindfulness. What the spiritual call meditation.

Dr. Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin’s Waisman Laboratory, funded by the Dalai Lama, has proof. Over the past decade, Davidson studied over a dozen Tibetan Buddhists with over 10,000 hours of meditation. His research indicates that meditation can, in fact, alter the structure and function of the brain and that the gamma activity in a Buddhist monk’s brain is more powerful than anything researchers have ever seen.

Tell Your Kids

Finally — and this is a shocker — if you tell kids about neuroplasticity, it’s more likely to have an impact on their brains, too. Researchers Dr. Lisa Blackwell of Columbia University along with Drs. Kali Trzesniewski and Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University found that students who understood and embraced the concept of neuroplasticity were much more likely to not only do better in school, but do so with a better sense of morale and dedication too. Effectively, when researchers actively taught the idea to a group of students, they performed significantly better than their peers in a control group.

Exercise Your Brain

Neuroplasticity is all about challenging your brain, making it experience new things and find itself dealing with new situations. In short, live life to the fullest and it will be there for the ride. But in the absence of daily language, learning, or mountain climbing, there are things you can do to keep your brain sharp and those new neurons active. Neuroplasticity exercises are increasingly becoming available. No matter your skill level, you can easily start practicing today.

On the intellectual front, consider taking a class in a subject you’re unfamiliar with, perhaps an online course, or maybe participating in a debate, playing a board game, reading a new book, or just taking a new route to work. There are physical activities, too, that specifically help with brain health, such as certain motor activities recommended for stroke patients.

Your brain is changing all the time. Understand what’s changing it and you can have more control over your mind — and your life — than you ever believed possible.

This article is updated from its initial publication in Brain World Magazine’s print edition.

More From Brain World

• Challenging Your Brain for Health and Wisdom
• Learning and Memory: How Do We Remember and Why Do We Often Forget?
• Intelligence Is Modifiable: A Q&A with Dr. Reuven Feuerstein
• Mind the Gap: Unlocking Your Own Creativity
• A Primer on Neuroplasticity: Experience and Your Brain
• Three Prescriptions For A Healthy Brain