I remember this famous expression that “nerve cells do not recover” from my student days. However, life and eternal stress were familiar to me from early childhood. There were worries and emotional turmoil all the time. And even now, my colleague always says: “Will there ever be a time of peace in your “kingdom?” It’s probably better not to wait for him! In the meantime, nerve cells die from restlessness and eternal stress, but you can build new neural connections in the brain... this is what the article is about!
What is a neuron, its structure
In the journal “Science and Life” No. 9 for 2021. An interesting article was published about the myth about the dying of nerve cells by Doctor of Medical Sciences V. Grinevich. And a refutation of this fact was given.
But let's first look at the structure of a neuron, a unit of a nerve cell.
Neuron structure
A nerve cell is a body with a nucleus, one long axon and branched short dendritic roots. Neurons transmit nerve impulses from one to another. There are a lot of neurons in the brain, approximately 100 billion.
Neurons differ from each other in size, dendrite branching, and axon length.
I really liked the expression in the article about the plasticity of nerve cells. But this is rather not plasticity, but the fact that the dendrite has such a property as “branching”, and thus with the help of this there is an increase or, as psychologists often say, “the construction of new neural connections in the brain.”
There is also another way to build new neural connections in the brain, this method was discovered by the science of neurobiology. Scientific evidence shows that nerve cells are regenerated using replacement systems, such as other neuronal stem cells, and even blood stem cells may be involved in this process.
This process is called neurogenesis. This is the future! Only scientists do all this with the help of complex operations and medications.
What is within our control, what can we do ourselves if it is necessary for new neural connections of the brain to appear in our body?
A world-class experiment proves this fact
The emergence of new neural connections in the brain is proven by the experiment of Canadian professor G. Huether. In his speech at the World Congress of Psychiatrists, he spoke about his experiment.
We invite you to the free webinar “The Brain is a Superpower We Don’t Use.” You will learn everything about the capabilities of the brain, how to develop memory and attention, get rid of the chaos in your head and make a quantum leap in your own life during a difficult period.
Many novices of the monastery in Canada lived to be 100 years old in complete health, both mentally and mentally. During a medical examination, no degenerative changes characteristic of old age were found in their brains. Professor G. Hünter suggested that only 7 factors are needed to maintain brain plasticity and the emergence of new neural connections in the brain.
7 factors for building new neural connections in the brain
- Friendly attitude with loved ones, careful attitude towards “family ties”.
- It is necessary to have good communication skills, to be able to “get around your own and other people’s sharp corners” that we and everyone have.
- It is necessary to have a stable worldview, and not “throw from one extreme to another”; I consider this to be a “conscious attitude towards life”. When you don’t shift your mistakes onto other people, but take responsibility for them.
- The ability to accept reality as it is. Probably many people wanted to fly into space or become great ballerinas. But reality now shows that this did not work out for many reasons. This means that this reality should be calmly accepted. And don’t reproach yourself every time that “if only I had money, a husband, or, for example, an inheritance, then I would have done everything differently”... that’s what it’s all about!
- You need to learn something new all your life, and also apply this knowledge in life. It is clear that you are unlikely to study ballet at the age of 60, but you can simply learn to move well in dance to music. Your health and spatial orientation will also improve. It’s worth finding that activity that for some reason you’ve been putting off all your life. For example, cook something interesting or bake bread. This will not only bring you fulfillment in life, but you can become in demand and benefit others.
- A balanced diet will significantly improve your well-being and prevent you from gaining excess weight. Review your diet, eat small portions and count calories. And to maintain health, it is worth taking periodically healthy dietary supplements with minerals and vitamins. They will improve your well-being and your vital activity.
- Get rid of stress from life, or don’t “take it to heart” any stressful situations. The expression that “all diseases come from nerves” has roots there. And nerve cells die from prolonged stress.
A book about neural connections of the brain from the famous neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki to help
I liked the advice in this book that you need to look for physical activity “to your liking.” Running, walking with friends or alone in a park or along the seashore doesn’t matter, the main thing is to have physical activity.
The author's method of aerobic exercise from Wendy Suzuki can change your life and way of thinking. I recommend reading her book “The Strange Girl Who Fell in Love with the Brain.”
Only you can make your life happier. Physical activity for at least 10 minutes a day, and preferably at least 30 minutes, every day, will give you a great boost of energy and positivity.
Wendy Suzuki studied with her students during classroom classes, and then through this research she proved that the release of neurotransmitters (pleasure hormones) enhances the brain's abilities and is involved in building new neural connections in the brain.
Five Ways Your Brain Self-Tunes
We mammals are able to create neural connections throughout our lives, unlike species with stable connections. These connections are created as the world around us affects our senses, which send corresponding electrical impulses to the brain. These impulses pave neural pathways along which other impulses will run faster and easier in the future. Each individual's brain is wired for an individual experience. Below are five ways that experience physically changes your brain.
Life experiences insulate young neurons
Over time, a constantly working neuron becomes covered with a sheath of a special substance called myelin. This substance significantly increases the efficiency of the neuron as a conductor of electrical impulses. This can be compared to the fact that insulated wires can withstand a significantly greater load than bare wires. Neurons coated with myelin work without the extra effort that slow, “open” neurons have. Neurons with a myelin sheath appear white rather than gray, which is why we divide our brain matter into “white” and “gray.”
Most of the covering of neurons with myelin is complete by the age of two years, as the child's body learns to move, see and hear. When a mammal is born, its brain must form a mental model of the world around it, which will provide it with opportunities for survival. Therefore, myelin production in a child is maximum at birth, and by the age of seven it decreases slightly. By this time you no longer need to relearn the truth that fire burns and gravity can make you fall.
If you think that myelin is “wasted” on strengthening neural connections in young people, then you should understand that nature designed it this way for sound evolutionary reasons. For most of human history, people had children as soon as they reached puberty. Our ancestors needed to have time to solve the most urgent tasks that ensured the survival of their descendants. As adults, they used new neural connections more than reconfigured old ones.
When a person reaches puberty, the formation of myelin in his body is activated again. This happens because the mammal has to re-tune its brain to find the best mate. Often during the mating season, animals migrate to new groups. Therefore, they have to get used to new places in search of food, as well as to new tribesmen. In search of a marriage partner, people are also often forced to move to new tribes or clans and learn new customs and culture. The increase in myelin production during puberty contributes to all this. Natural selection has designed the brain in such a way that it is during this period that it changes the mental model of the world around it.
Everything you do purposefully and consistently during your “myelin prime” years creates powerful and extensive neural pathways in your brain. This is why human genius so often manifests itself in childhood. That is why little skiers fly past you so dashingly on mountain slopes that you cannot master, no matter how hard you try. This is why learning foreign languages becomes so difficult once adolescence ends. As an adult, you can memorize foreign words, but most often you cannot quickly select them to express your thoughts. This happens because your verbal memory is concentrated in thin, unmyelinated neurons. Your powerful myelinated neural connections are busy with high mental activity, so new electrical impulses have difficulty finding free neurons. […]
Fluctuations in the body's activity in the myelination of neurons can help you understand why people have certain problems at different times in life. […] Remember that the human brain does not mature automatically. Therefore, it is often said that the brain of adolescents is not yet fully formed. The brain “myelinates” all our life experiences. So if there are episodes in a teenager’s life when he receives an undeserved reward, he will firmly remember that the reward can be received without effort. Some parents forgive their teens' bad behavior by saying that "their brains haven't fully matured yet." That is why it is very important to purposefully control the life experience that they absorb. Allowing a teenager to avoid responsibility for his actions can create a mind that will expect the possibility of avoiding such responsibility in the future. […]
Life experience increases synapse efficiency
A synapse is the point of contact (small gap) between two neurons. An electrical impulse in our brain can only travel if it reaches the end of a neuron with enough force to “jump” across the gap to the next neuron. These barriers help us filter truly important incoming information from irrelevant so-called “noise.” The passage of an electrical impulse through synaptic gaps is a very complex natural mechanism. It can be imagined in such a way that a whole flotilla of boats accumulates at the tip of one neuron, which transports the neural “spark” to special receiving docks available at a nearby neuron. Each time the boats cope better with transportation. This is why the experiences we have increase the chances of electrical signals being transmitted between neurons. The human brain has more than 100 trillion synaptic connections. And our life experience plays an important role in conducting nerve impulses through them in a way that is consistent with the interests of survival.
At a conscious level, you cannot decide which synaptic connections you want to develop. They are formed in two main ways:
1) Gradually, through repeated repetition.
2) Simultaneously, under the influence of strong emotions.
[…] Synaptic connections are built based on repetition or emotions you have experienced in the past. Your mind exists because your neurons have formed connections that reflect successful and unsuccessful experiences. Some episodes from this experience were “downloaded” into your brain thanks to “joy molecules” or “stress molecules”, others were fixed in it through constant repetition. When the model of the world around you corresponds to the information contained in your synaptic connections, electrical impulses run through them easily, and it seems to you that you are quite aware of the events happening around you.
Neural chains are formed only due to active neurons
Those neurons that are not actively used by the brain begin to gradually weaken as early as a two-year-old child. Oddly enough, this contributes to the development of his intelligence. Reducing the number of active neurons allows the baby not to glance distractedly at everything around him, which is typical for a newborn, but to rely on the neural pathways that have already been formed. A two-year-old child is already able to independently concentrate on what gave him pleasant sensations in the past, such as a familiar face or a bottle of his favorite food. He may be wary of things that have caused him negative emotions in the past, such as a pugnacious playmate or a closed door. The young brain relies on its limited life experience to meet needs and avoid potential threats.
No matter how the neural connections in the brain are built, you experience them as “truth”
From the age of two to seven years, the process of optimizing the child’s brain continues. This forces him to correlate new experiences with old ones, instead of accumulating new experiences in some separate block. Tightly intertwined neural connections and neural pathways form the basis of our intelligence. We create them by branching out old neural trunks instead of creating new ones. Thus, by the age of seven, we usually clearly see what we have already seen once, and hear what we have already heard once.
You might think this is bad. However, consider the value of it all. Imagine lying to a six-year-old child. He believes you because his brain eagerly absorbs everything that is offered to him. Now suppose you deceive an eight-year-old child. He is already questioning your words because he compares incoming information with what he already has, and does not simply “swallow” new information. At the age of eight, it is already more difficult for a child to form new neural connections, which pushes him to use existing ones. Relying on old neural circuits allows him to recognize lies. This was of great importance from a survival point of view at a time when parents died young and children had to learn to take care of themselves from an early age. During our young years, we form certain neural connections, allowing others to gradually fade away. Some of them disappear like the wind blows away autumn leaves. This helps make a person's thought process more efficient and focused. Of course, with age you gain more and more knowledge. However, this new information is concentrated in areas of the brain where active electrical pathways already exist. For example, if our ancestors were born into hunting tribes, they quickly gained hunter experience, and if they were born into farming tribes, they quickly gained agricultural experience. Thus, the brain was tuned to survival in the world in which they actually existed. […]
New synaptic connections are formed between the neurons you actively use
Each neuron can have many synapses because it has many processes or dendrites. New processes in neurons are formed when it is actively stimulated by electrical impulses. As dendrites grow toward points of electrical activity, they can get so close that an electrical impulse from other neurons can bridge the distance between them. In this way, new synaptic connections are born. When this happens, at the level of consciousness you get a connection between two ideas, for example.
You cannot feel your own synaptic connections, but you can easily see it in others. A person who loves dogs looks at the entire world around him through the prism of this affection. A person who is passionate about modern technologies associates everything in the world with them. A lover of politics evaluates the surrounding reality politically, and a religiously convinced person evaluates it from the standpoint of religion. One person sees the world positively, another - negatively. No matter how the neural connections in the brain are built, you do not feel them as numerous processes similar to the tentacles of an octopus. You experience these connections as “truth.”
Emotion receptors develop or atrophy
In order for an electrical impulse to cross the synaptic cleft, the dendrite on one side must eject chemical molecules that are picked up by special receptors on the other neuron. Each of the neurochemicals produced by our brain has a complex structure that is perceived by only one specific receptor. It fits the receptor like a key to a lock. When you are overwhelmed by emotions, more neurochemicals are produced than the receptor can catch and process. You feel dazed and disoriented until your brain creates more receptors. This is how you adapt to the fact that “something is happening around you.”
When a neuron's receptor is inactive for an extended period of time, it disappears, leaving room for other receptors that you may need to appear. Flexibility in nature means that receptors on neurons must either be used or they can be lost. “Happy hormones” are constantly present in the brain, searching for “their” receptors. This is how you “find out” the reason for your positive feelings. The neuron “fires” because the appropriate hormone molecules open the lock on its receptor. And then, based on this neuron, a whole neural circuit is created that tells you where to expect joy in the future.
Images: © iStock.
