WATCH: Neuroplasticity

Today, I’d like to talk about Neuroplasticity. Which is a way of thinking about the brain as being able to continue to grow and learn, build new connections and even grow new brain cells according to the latest research.

Neuroplasticity

So, when we’re born as an infant we’ve got an immense amount of Neuroplasticity. We can pick up, and be a sponge to, all new things and make new connections and learn new things very rapidly. In fact, babies can, and have the capacity to be able to, speak any language on the planet. If they’re growing up in China, they’ll learn how to use their mouths to speak and give all the subtle tonality of Chinese on in England, they’ll be able to speak English. But it becomes more difficult as we get older.

Develop Plasticity

As we develop we also still have a lot of plasticity to continue to grow but some things become a little bit more fixed so that they can become more relied on and become habitual.

Adult Stable

Finally, with adults we get to a sort of 50/50 stage where we have a lot of fixed things to be able to help us cope, learn, grow with the environment that we’re in but also to be able to develop and continue to build new connections.

So some tips for enhancing connections are:

Sleep

It’s becoming increasingly important to be able to get seven to eight hours sleep – now the recommended amount but every human is different. However, they say that there are now studies showing that less than seven hours of sleep does affect your brain.

Memory Training

Like being able to memorize different things, for example, I’ve been able to learn how all the parts of the brain by putting different parts of brain in all the rooms of my house.

Learning

An instrument, a musical instrument, or learning a new language is particularly powerful for building new connections. And using your non-dominant hand. I’m right-handed so if I were to use and start exercising a lot with my non-dominant hand or build new connections and get new neural pathways.

Artwork

Painting, doing something making beautiful things in different media.

Dancing

Especially freestyle dancing, where there isn’t too much repetition and that builds new connections in your brain.

So as you can see there are a number of things that you can do to continue to look after your brain grow new connections and even generate new brain cells.

So that’s food for thought, Insights for busy leaders and managers, think about how can you do some of these things over the coming weeks and months to keep your brain healthy.

Thank you.

With best regards,

David Klaasen

Talent4Performance help business leaders clarify complexity. We inspire people and drive continuous performance improvement, so they can convert thinking into action and results.