[Music] anyway so yes neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change itself depending upon the experience and the way that we see that experience way we interpret that experience and we can reinterpret our experiences in a way that changes the brain to adopt new structure new form and therefore new experience right so it's quite circuitous so here we go I'm going to sh share another video um which talks about how neuroplasticity Works using an interesting metap here we got what's going on in the brain when you learn in order to learn anything whether it's math a foreign language guitar or how to dribble a basketball you need to create and strengthen Pathways in your brain think about shooting a free throw know that feeling when you've got it down and don't even have to think about it that's muscle memory here's the thing muscle memory lives in the brain not the muscles your brain controls everything your muscles do and it does this by activating specific neural Pathways for each and every movement these are functional Pathways neurons working together to achieve a goal say you're learning how to shoot a free throw if it's your first time doing it you don't yet have a pathway for that movement in your brain you need to create it let's use an analogy to look at what's happening in the brain during this time when you're first learning your brain is like a forest full of trees and dense foliage with no clear pathway between point a in point B as you learn the mechanics of shooting a free throw you create a trail through the forest now you can shoot the free throw because you've created that pathway in your brain but you probably don't make many shots because it's so new the pathway isn't very clear yet in order to improve your free throw you need to refine and strengthen the free throw throw pathway in your brain the way you do that is through practice practice gradually widens the trail through the trees turning it into a dirt road between A and B you're starting to get pretty good now you're making more free throws than not you don't have to think about the mechanics as much that's because the pathway gets stronger after each practice rep and you've done a lot of reps with even more practice the dirt road turns into a paved Road connecting A and B allowing information to be transmitted at a faster rate now you're a 70% free throw shooter and when you step up to the line you don't even have to think about it eventually with enough practice what started as a trail has become a full-blown highway now you're a master draining almost every free throw and the movement is completely second nature scientists call this plasticity and it's your brain's innate ability to create and strengthen connections between neurons these connections are the path through through the forest okay so that's the the kind of process in a in a small nutshell about how neuroplasticity actually works by creating new Pathways depending upon our experience or our practices strengthening them as we do more and more practice to the point that something happens and we're no longer having to hold anything in conscious attention we're not able to remember exact we're not say I need to put my hand like this or I have to um you know make sure that I focus carefully on pressing the clutch before I change the gear it all just happens and we're not and that's when we can have a conversation or even be on the phone at the same time as driving or probably even being on the phone at the same time is making a free Thro or whatever they call it and and we call that an embodied becomes an embodied skill anybody in HR in here Human Resources right so in HR you may have heard of the the phrase being unconsciously competent so unconscious competence is where you're competent with something even without knowing you actually no longer know how you became competent at it it's like most we're all unconsciously competent at walking we can walk and talk and eat most of us and have a conversation at the same time without even thinking about the process of walking because that pathway is so but when we were babies that wasn't so much the case we had to be conscious to learn how to do that so that's what it is and the way that Europe works it's just a little schematic is and this is you know just on this diagram here can you remember what this is this is ax these things here are what dendroid correct and so this is kind of like what happens over time as we practice we get the resistance of this channel the electrial impedence of this channel gets reduced because one way that that it gets reduced is because of the creation of more synaptic synapses across the same Junction between two neurons and it just reduces the impedence or resistance of that particular channel so the El the electricity flows more easily down that channel without leaking away and there are various other ways that that happens through practice so the reason why I'm showing you this is I just want you to know I want you to know in an embodied way that change is possible we just need to know the process of it and we often say well yeah but that's okay for learning how to play the piano or learning how to do a free throw but what about learning how to let go of limiting stories or how to pay attention to what we care about in the moment when emotions are arising well here's the secret it's the same thing it's the same kind of practice we need to learn how to tell ourselves different stories that might fit and to practice bringing those stories back into our mind in the moment of choice instead of the ones that are hijacking our attention again and again well it requires practice hands up if you've got a University degree stands up if that was hard work like four years of hard work yeah but you did it and but we don't want to put the same effort into just creating attentional practices that might help us to achieve our goals we just don't want to do that because we don't think we can and if we spend anything like as much time on that it would probably be even more useful than your degree so let's just have a quick look at how neuroplasticity actually works um in in just a little bit more detail um and what I what I really want to do here is is really just to help people to understand that um these days we know that change that fundamentally everything is up for grabs in the context of a person's ability to change even if you go back 40 years it was thought that much of our personality was kind of baked in at the age of um say 25 um and it was kind of done and nothing really much was going to happen after that in fact we used to have a saying in the UK which was something like if you show me the seven-year-old I will show you the man and we now know that that is patently not true that anything that a person would like to change about themselves is doable provided the individual has the will and the skill um in order that they can make it happen Okay so how do these physical changes work and and there's a few ideas there um the first way is myelination of an axon so you can see there that um I don't know if you can see where I'm putting my can you see my cursor moving on the screen or not as I do that yeah you can so you can see here that that there's this thing here which goes from the cell body of one neuron and it connects potentially to other neurons um and this thing is called an axon those axons can actually be they can be very very short indeed or they can be up to a couple of meter a meter or so in length um if they're going down into the um into the gut or other parts of the body um and what happens when when the um cell fires from the um nucleus of the cell um if that wiring pattern is not well defined if it hasn't been used very often then what will happen is the electrical current will leak um as it travels down the axon it will just leak out into the surrounding tissue um and neuroplasticity involves that every time that pattern fires um one of the things that happens is a layer of fat is put around the ax on it's called myelin and that acts as an insulator um and so therefore when it fires once um there it's very very weak um but if it fires again and again and again um it is more likely that that charge will actually reach the end of the axle and therefore get transmitted to the next neuron um and that is called myelination and this is one of the ways that um and by the way I'm trying to attend to uh people joining um in the in the waiting room um so every now and then I have to take my eye off of the wor I'll do it can you do that Sam are you able to do that I've been doing so please do attend to that um so insulation of the electrical channel is one way that it that we learn because as the insulation grows then it's more easy for us to bring back that memory or take that action or pay attention in a certain way or experience a particular emotion and uh there was a gentleman called Webb and he he I can't remember what his first name was but he first used the expression neurons that fire together wire together and what that really means is the more times a neuron neuronal firing pattern occurs the easier it is for that pattern to occur again okay so another thing that happens is synaptic density increases so down at the bottom here um there are these things called synapses which are the little gaps um uh across which the electrical impulses have to jump um in order to cause the next neuron to fire um and the more um there are the more synapses there are that are connecting two neurons together um the more likely it is that the electrical current can actually pass to the next next neuron and and cause that neuron to fire um axon nodes axon nodes are just amplifiers that that you get down axons they occur periodically on longer axons and they just amplify the the current um dendrite growth a dendrite is at the end at the receiving end of an of a neuron here are dendrites so the axons connect to dendrit in other neurons um and they also grow out and then you get new new neuronal growth which is where neurons are actually growing out and making connections at random to other neurons talk about that a bit later on so neur this neuroplasticity is Amplified by arousal um and that's why if we notice that when we're doing something if there's an emotional charge like we're either very much enjoying it or we're very much hating it um then it will cause that pattern to wire more tightly repetition obviously will cause the firing to create wiring um as well um a careful being carefully focused on the activity being really attentive to the activity um will help the um firing pattern to wire in more tightly so that we're more likely to be able to use it a little bit later [Music] on