Construct an essay to define the concept of neuroplasticity and to discuss examples of neuroplasticity from multiple different stages of the lifespan.
The brain continually changes and reorganises itself to adapt to its environment. These changes take place across the entire lifespan, from conception to death, and are part of the process known as neuroplasticity. – You need to cover multiple stages of the lifespan. For example, the pre-natal, post-natal, infant, childhood, adolescent, young adult, adult or elderly stages of life. You do not need to discuss all of these stages, but you do need to discuss more than one. Your examples do not have to fit neatly into one of the stages mentioned above, but it should be clear which part of the lifespan each example relates to. – Examples of neuroplasticity include any instance in which the brain changes in response to the environment. For example, you could discuss how the brain is changed by learning, parenting, social interactions, traumatic experiences, danger, exposure to TV/smartphones/social media, stress, praise/criticism and many others. You could also look at how neuroplasticity helps the brain to recover from illness, injury or exposure to drugs. – You need to support your arguments with scientific research papers. You can find these papers in the lessons, and you will still get good marks for doing so, but you will be awarded extra marks for finding some of your papers through independent wider reading. Here is a video that will guide you through the process of finding your own research papers: https://youtu.be/4x58znfNUm0 – When discussing scientific research papers, it is worth mentioning the methods used by the researchers and their main findings. You do not have to relay all of the technical and statistical information here. Rather, you just need to clearly present ‘what they did’ and ‘what they found’. For example: What were the different conditions in the study? What kind of data were they recording (fMRI, EEG etc.)? Which areas of the brain were involved? discuss how neuroplasticity operates in different ways at different stages of the lifespan.