Plasticity & functional recovery

RTS plasticity: Maguire et al compared MRI scans of 16 right-handed, healthy male London taxi drivers to a control group of 50 non-taxi drivers. They found that taxi drivers had significantly more grey matter in their posterior hippocampus than in the matched control group. This part of the brain is associated with spatial & navigational skills, meaning that the taxi drivers had stronger neural connections as they were driving for longer compared to the control group. This shows that the brain can permanently change in response to frequent exposure to a particular task.

Negative plasticity: it may have negative behavioural consequences, evidence has shown that the brain's adaptation to prolonged drug use leads to poorer cognitive functioning in later life, as…