Talk:Environmental enrichment

Subjective Emphasis
Under Resilience and rehabilitation there is a parentheses (as least upon rats) that appears, without being a neurology expert, to be biased toward the idea that drawing human conclusions from rats is ineffective. I believe it was already stated that the tests were done on rats, so it is also redundant. Should this statement be removed? LittleBrother1 (talk) 14:52, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

The reason is that some readers--particularly those with a personal interest in the conditions listed--might not appreciate the big jump involved from work done upon rats to humans. Humans have very much larger brains than rats and also ones with a larger percentage of cerebral cortex and particularly prefrontal cortex. The parentheses is to stress that not only was the work done on rats but there is such a jump. Of course, the researchers doing this work do it in the hope that it might be relevant--it is potentially very important hence its mention--but it is still to be established upon humans.--LittleHow (talk) 18:04, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Students
Hi, We are a group of students at Middlebury College working on this page for a project in our Neuroscience class. We will be working on this page from mid-October until the first week of December. Thank you for your support. Toh.cameron (talk) 19:43, 11 October 2013 (UTC)C. Toh
 * Welcome!  Lova Falk     talk   13:26, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

As part of this project we will be dividing the "Rehabilitation and Resilience" section into two parts: "Neurological Rehabilitation" and "Neurological Enhancement," removing the "Rehabilitation and Resilience" heading completely. We hope that this will clarify the effects of environmental enrichment on neurological conditions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Toh.cameron (talk • contribs) 03:53, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

In addition, since there are so many sources on this page already we are going to use only one source per condition so we can give a brief overview of the effects of EE on a variety of conditions. We hope that this will make the page more navigable and reader-friendly. (21:18, 20 November 2013 (UTC)) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Toh.cameron (talk • contribs)

Comment 1
This article is very informative on how environmental enrichment physically changes dendrites, synapses and connections between neurons. In the section "Synapses" I think it would be beneficial to explain why the "complexity and length of dendrite arbors" are important and what they do to the organism's behavior and not just the physical changes that occur due to these changes. In the "Maternal Transmission" section maybe you could specify what an enriched environment for a mother might entail, also how does environmental enrichment differ between humans and animals. My last comment is that maybe you could find a specific experiment that shows some of these physiological changes that occur from environmental enrichment. I really liked this article and learned a lot about how environmental enrichment affects organisms and even their offspring. Great job! Jwardwell6 (talk) 02:28, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Response to Comment 1
Thanks for your comment. Your suggestions are not really relevant to what we actually fixed on this page as the professors and we decided to focus on the "Resilience and rehabilitation" section. As for finding a specific experiment, we do not feel as if that would add anything to what is already there. Our goal is to provide readers with a strong overview of this topic. In this case, it is more important for them to know the end result rather than the process. We thus turned our attention to what parts of the brain are affected by EE and how the subjects reacted. --Toh.cameron (talk) 00:00, 9 December 2013 (UTC)C.Toh

Comment 2
This article effectively touches on many important aspects of the topic at hand and shows good understanding of environmental enrichment. While the article shows a great understanding on your part, it may be a bit hard for people who are not neuroscientists or neuroscience students to understand. It would be helpful if you provided a little bit of basic information. Such as: what a synapse is and what it does in the brain, what a "dendrite arbor" is, and a general explanation for why increased synapses would be a good thing. I would also say that you should make sure that all of your sections are neccesary and perhaps try to consolidate or flesh out some of the areas. Don't include one or two sentences try to flesh out the sections more. For instance these two sections "Motor learning stimulation" and "Maternal transmission" could use a bit of fleshing out as well as the sections under "cognitive reserve." It would also help to explain what cognitive reserve is. Lastly, make sure you check for grammar and spelling there is an error in your first sentence! Overall though great job! You covered a lot under this topic. Riahnend (talk) 21:19, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Response to Comment 2
Thank you for the feedback. As we said in the previous comments, since we ran into some trouble with the logistics of editing this page the goal of our project was condensed to providing a good overview to the effects of EE to what we saw most relevant to humans, that is, EE's effect on neurological conditions. We'll take a look at the "cognitive reserve" section and expand on it as we see necessary. We also explain what cognitive reserve is in the introduction, but it probably would not hurt to repeat it again in the intro to the "Rehabilitation and resilience" section. --Toh.cameron (talk) 19:04, 9 December 2013 (UTC)C.Toh

Comment 3
This article is detailed and gives a thorough explanation of environmental enrichment and its applications. The first thing I noticed, however, was that the introduction has not been edited since new information has been added to the page. If it is revised, it will give the reader a much more accurate summary of the information that will be covered in the article. The Neurological Rehabilitation section was very well done and provided the reader with a detailed description of the effects of each disease and the effects of environmental enrichment on each disease. Many of the other sections, however, seem to be merely skeletons or outlines. To be truly effective I believe you need to go back and add more facts and studies to the shorter sections to flesh them out. In addition, make sure that the information you are adding is organized is the best way possible. The Cognitive Reserve section is currently a random assortment of syndromes, conditions, and experiences that can be affected by environmental enrichment. Maybe dividing them into sub-categories would make it easier for the reader to follow. Overall it is clear that a large amount of new information was added to this page for this project and I can tell a lot of hard work has gone into it. Great job! Dtomasi11 (talk) 22:00, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Response to Comment 3
Thank you very much for the feedback, for the introductory paragraph we felt no need to change the contents but we did however edit it. Due to out lack of time, we did not have time to focus on the entire page and then chose to just work with The Neurological Rehabilitations, making that the main focus of out project. We understand that the entire page need to be freshened up but due to lack of time, we were not able to do so. As for the sub heading, we see your idea with making sub heading and making it more "reader friendly", but we believe that it will just become messy with all too many different sub headings. Thank you Ahagman (talk) 00:08, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Comment 4
Hey guys! I think you've done an awesome job with your page thus far and think there are only a few minor suggestions I can make that might improve it. The last little paragraph of your introduction might be better placed closer to the top of your introduction because even though it's referring to research, it gives the reader a better idea of what environmental enrichment, or lack there of, can do. Also, you mention the role environmental enrichment plays in the synapses of the hippocampus many times, which is clearly very important, however I don't think you mention what the hippocampus does. It can be inferred based on the other information you've provided throughout your page but it might be nice to put it in fine print. Within the subsection of “Neurological Rehabilitation” you provide links to the wiki pages for each of the neurological illnesses. But, you do not provide a link to the wiki page for stroke. I think it might be beneficial to insert a link here. Overall, i think the article is great but there are some areas that may be easily understood by some with background knowledge of neuroscience. However, to those who know nothing about how the brain and nervous system work it might be confusing. I think if you add a little extra background information to the basic ideas (such as synapses and dendrites), the more in-depth information will be more clear. I think there's a ton of interesting and useful information within your article. Nice job! Mjthibault (talk) 15:37, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Response to Comment 4
Thank you for your feedback! We have taken your view in consideration and done some miner adjustment, although seeing that this is an encyclopedia we don's really find it necessary to add additional background information about what the different regions of the brain fulfills for purpose. We have tough added additional hyperlinks on the key phrases to other Wikipedia pages to be able to gain more in-depth information.Ahagman (talk) 23:49, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 16 November 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Moved Fuortu (talk) 09:55, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Environmental enrichment (neural) → Environmental enrichment – Until earlier today, Environmental enrichment was a disambiguation page that linked to both Environmental enrichment (neural) and behavioral enrichment. Because the behavioral enrichment article states in the very first sentence of the lead that it is a concept that is related to "environmental enrichment" (but is not referred to by that term), I redirected the "Environmental enrichment" page to "Environmental enrichment (neural)". Since the disambiguation page at environmental enrichment was unnecessary, the parenthetical disambiguation of "Environmental enrichment (neural)" should be removed. Hence, I propose that Environmental enrichment (neural) be moved to environmental enrichment.
 * Just to be safe, I added a template to environmental enrichment (neural) in the event that any readers find themselves at the wrong article while searching for information on behavioral enrichment.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢) 21:44, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Strongly agree with move Most people coming to the encyclopaedia will be looking for general effects of environmental enrichment - not just neural effects. Neural effects are important, but should be contained in a more general article. DrChrissy (talk) 00:00, 17 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Support per nomination and DrChrissy. &mdash;Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 01:53, 17 November 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Renaming the title of article
The title of the article may cause confusion for the public readers. The AZA defines enrichment as: “a process for improving or enhancing zoo animal environments and care within the context of their inhabitants' behavioral biology and natural history. This article is more about the effects of environmental enrichment on the brain and not what environmental enrichment is. Therefore I propose that the current wikipedia page on behavioral enrichment be renamed to "environmental enrichment". Then this page can be renamed to environmental enrichment on the brain or environmental enrichment (neural). Ki husky (talk) 22:24, 5 April 2018 (UTC)