Neuroplasticity & The Growth Mindset

Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to form new pathways and make new connections, especially in response to studying, experiencing something or injury. Have you ever thought of the phrase "people change over time"? Neuroplasticity is the key reason why. Neuroplasticity can cause people to become bitter and sour over time, if they continually go through struggles. Neuroplasticity can also cause people to become smarter, more sociable and better at physical tasks. By understanding the underlying principals of neuroplasticity, we can train our brains to work for us, rather than against us and achieve our goals.

According to the Centre For Neuro Skills, there are 10 key principals that can be helpful to keep in mind when thinking about neuroplasticity from a treatment perspective for people who have undergone brain injury.

  1. Use It or Lose It
  2. Use It and Improve It
  3. Specificity
  4. Repetition Matters
  5. Intensity Matters
  6. Time Matters
  7. Salience Matters
  8. Age Matters
  9. Transference or Generalization
  10. Interference

Taking the key points of "Use It or Lose It", "Use It and Improve It", "Repetition Matters" and "Intensity Matters" (full explanation, see source) we can construct our learning plan to incorporate these points. We want to be keeping our pathways that we have built active by making sure to use them. If we put the effort into learning something, we need to upkeep the skill by occassionally going back to it. We should know that by using a neural pathway, we can improve it. By trying new things and seeing what did and didn't work, our brains are capable of rewiring pathways to work better than before.

Induction of plasticity requires sufficient repition. If you're a rock climber, you will understand that well. Rock climbers see a challenge and attempt it, when they fail they try again. It's the repeated attempts of trying the climb again and again that train the brain to make the correct motor functions to allow the climber to traverse a route. It can take a lot of attempts to succeed on a route but after it's been climbed once, repeated attempts will continue to make it easier and easier.

Induction of plasticity requires sufficient intensity. For building new neuropathways, and improving others - it's important to be performing a task of sufficient intensity. If the brain is not being actively engaged in the task, it is difficult for it to form new pathways.

The Growth Mindset

People who have a growth mindset believe that they are capable of growing and improving upon themselves. People who believe that they are unable to change, that their abilities are set in stone have a fixed mindset. It's important to have a growth mindset when you're trying to learn something new. When you come across something that pushes you out of your comfort zone, you need to be able to push through that and understand that with practice and repetition, it will get easier.

This article goes over some misconceptions about the growth mindset. It makes an interesting point that the growth mindset is not just about "praising and rewarding effort". It's important to be able to differentiate between success and failure when trying to utilise the growth mindset, as although growth is possible - it's not guaranteed. You need to have a solid plan for growth that both makes sense, and is achievable.

Another interesting part of the aforementioned article is that companies themselves can have growth and fixed mindsets. When thinking back to personal relationships I have had with other companies and people, I find that I prefer the company of those with growth mindsets. I have also enjoyed working at companies with growth mindsets more so than companies with fixed mindsets. This is something that I want to monitor in my own life before I make any decisions about how I feel regarding entities with fixed mindsets.

My Learning Plan

After conducting this research, I want to add a reviewal process to me learning plan to incorporate the "Use It or Lose It" principal. For Bootcamp, we will be learning a lot of material very quickly. There won't be a lot of time for repetition so I will need a way to ensure that I retain as much information as possible. I will use my learning journal as a way of recording different topics that I have learnt about, then during weekly review I will go over my journal to see what topics were learnt across the whole course. If any start to feel particularly vague, I will need to schedule a time to go back over the concepts, or use the involved tools.

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