Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change with experience. It is what enables us to learn new information and make new connections in our brains to reflect this. People previously thought that plasticity diminished with age; however, a study led by researchers at Brown University found that in a visual learning task, older people still showed brain plasticity, but in a different area.
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In the study, young participants (ages 19 to 32) and older participants (ages 65 to 80) were required to learn a visual task that involved examining a screen of lines pointing in a certain direction. They were then asked to indicate when they noticed a small patch of lines that would sometimes show up on the screen, in a different direction. The participants’ brains were scanned before and after the task so the researchers could look at changes in the visual cortex, the part of the brain associated with visual learning, and the underlying white matter, which contains axons (the part of a neuron that carries electrical signals). These axons are myelinated, which means they are covered in material that makes the signal travel faster.
They found that the older participants experienced plasticity and were able to learn the task just as well as the younger participants. However, while the younger participants exhibited plasticity in the visual cortex as expected, plasticity in older participants took place in the white matter.
These results show that brain plasticity doesn’t stop with age, it simply occurs in a different place.
Feature Image Source: Smiles caught while on a train to Amritsar by Nicolas Mirguet
