Skip to content

Plasticity: the secret to athletic mastery

The ability of the brain to learn and adapt is called plasticity.
23697mapleridgekinected

Have you ever marveled at someone who has the ability to effortlessly learn new movements or activities, or can use the left hand and right hand equally well in a sport?

How about the elite athlete who can improvise movement, instantaneously changing directions while maintaining hand-eye coordination at the same time?

Are these individuals gifted, do they have something that others don’t posses, or is it just a better developed capacity in the brain and nervous systems compared to the rest of us?

The ability of the brain to learn and adapt is called plasticity. People of all ages have this capacity, but it occurs more quickly and completely in growing children when the window of development is the widest.

The view of the brain changed in the 1930s, when it was discovered that the sensory and motor cortex of the brain behaved like topographical maps. Different parts of the brain appeared to be responsible for specific areas of the body or different processes.

In the 1960s, the view changed further when a number of researchers found that learning in these areas is not static and immutable, but is ‘plastic’ and can be changed.

When we move in space, whether its running, jumping, throwing or lifting a weight, there is a coordination and synchronization between the muscles and brain that occurs in order to produce precise movements. This is not a one-way street of sending electrical signals from the brain to the muscle, but requires feedback and fine-tuning while the movements are happening.

The sensors in the muscle-tendon complex send signals back to the brain, as well. This neuromuscular system is limited only by the strength, flexibility and endurance of the muscle itself, the brain’s maps and motor programs and the experiences and stimulation we provide for them.

One of the interesting features of this system is that when we produce a movement is that the brain stimulates and maps the movement for both limbs, even if only one limb is moving. One study for example showed that over a period of many weeks, if you strengthen and train the dominant arm, that arm can improve by as much as 40 per cent, but the unused arm will increase in strength by 15 per cent, even though it was rested.

What has happened is that the brain has created or ingrained a map with a more efficient and coordinated set of signals for both arms. This may be an evolutionary development to help us survive if we have an injured limb.

The implication for us is that if you have an injured body part, you can maintain some muscle balance by exercising the non-injured side. Not only is there a transfer of training from one arm to the other, but it can be seen from leg to leg and even arm to leg.

The reverse is also true. Plasticity seems to be competitive. If you don’t practice your new patterns of movement or thought, the part of the brain that has mapped these patterns will gradually be taken over by other patterns. This can apply to a motor skill like throwing or a cognitive skill like learning a new language. This is really the brains way of saying ‘use it or lose it.’.

Competitive plasticity is also why it is difficult to unlearn a bad habit, especially if the habit has been practiced for a long period of time. The bad habit has engrained and mapped itself more deeply and has taken up a larger area of the brain.

Learning a newer, better habit can be done – it just takes a little more hard work to compete with the bad habit.

Very interestingly, this is also why people who have old injuries that have healed but still experience pain have a hard time unlearning the pain pathway. The pain map in the brain has become larger, the pain signals have become deeper and more easily stimulated, even though there is no longer any damage in the tissues. It’s a message to the brain that does not contain useful information anymore and is essentially a bad habit.

But the plastic nature of the nervous system means that you can unlearn these painful sensations, given the right education and therapy.

The exciting thing about neuro-plasticity is that it is like a double-edge sword that, unfortunately, can cause learning of bad habits and faulty movement patterns, but fortunately can also solve them as well.

 

• Kerry Senchyna holds a bachelor of science degree in kinesiology and is owner of West Coast Kinesiology in Maple Ridge.