Talk:Neuroplasticity/Archive 2

Brain training
There seems to be done overlap here with brain training. I've linked between thing and I'm moving things over. Amousey (talk) 21:19, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Lead
Neuroplasticity lead isn't sourced and isn't correct since it can also involve the spinal cord. Sources Ch3 and p57- - it's saying it's about "changes in the connectivity of the nervous system". Which is different to many people's idea of it involving only the begin. There's different concepts also when you look at "brain changes", "brain scans" eg some are looking entirely at anatomy, others are looking at current use at the point in time eg rCBT and fMRI. There's some further info on grey vs white matter differences. I think describing "plasticity" is also important. Suggestions on a lead?

Amousey (talk) 23:42, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Your wording had issues. What is "the ability of the nervous system including brain its connectivity through structural or physiological changes" supposed to mean? So regarding this, this and this, Seppi333 and/or Tryptofish, any thoughts? I don't have time right now to sort this. I'm catching up on my watchlist and am busy with things off Wikipedia as well. I know that Seppi333 often edits sporadically. So no rush, Seppi333. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 00:23, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm on a long-term break from content editing now. Sorry. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:35, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
 * How about -

Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity, or neural plasticity, is the ability of the nervous system including the brain and spinal cord to change its connectivity through structural or physiological changes. Neuroplasticity was once thought to only occur during childhood, and the nervous system was thought to be "rigidly wired" in adults, but some degree of changes may occur throughout an individual's life, e.g., as the result of altered use, disuse or damage. In a mature human brain, the white matter is largely preventing from changing, but gray matter has neuroplasticity which probably continues through the life span. Neuroplasticity occurs when brain activity associated with a given function can be transferred to a different location, the proportion of grey matter can change and synapses may strengthen or weaken over time.
 * Amousey (talk) 21:36, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

There's really only 2 types of neuroplasticity: structural and functional. Structural neuroplasticity entails changes to neural structure, e.g., axonal and dendritic arborization which tend to result in the formation of new synaptic connections; the opposite would be things like axonal/dendritic pruning. The development of new neurons also falls into this category, but the adult human brain is only capable of creating new neurons within a very limited number of brain structures. Structural neuroplasticity is more-or-less a form of plasticity that occurs at the cellular level.

Functional neuroplasticity entails changes in neural function, which involves changes on a much smaller scale (i.e., the molecular level, as opposed to the cellular level) and typically arises from altered gene/protein expression. Long-term potentiation and long-term depression are the most obvious/notable examples since they apply to a very broad range of neural cell types, but there's many other forms of functional plasticity than just those 2. Given that most forms of functional plasticity involve neural cell-type specific alteration, summarizing them all would be difficult.

The statement "brain activity associated with a given function can be transferred to a different location" almost surely entails the occurrence of both structural and functional neuroplasticity, since neural networks would have to reorganize and neural function would have to change to accommodate the regulation of one or more cognitive processes - i.e., the cognitive functions that are transferred to those neurons. Many forms of structural neuroplasticity lead to functional plasticity as well, so this isn't an unusual case.

Will take a look at this more within the next few days; been pretty busy. I might take a stab at rewording/citing the lead when I come back.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢) 10:19, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Will do some edits
I have studied neuroplasticity – so, I should be able to do some edits (incorporating new references) at least to the lead section. Will start sometime soon.

Sandyshore (talk) 00:51, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Just did some edits
I just did some edits to the lead section. If anyone has any comments or concerns, please let me know. I might take a look at the other sections sometime later.

Sandyshore (talk) 23:40, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Article needs improvement
This article needs to focus on being encyclopaedic, and needs to state the limits of neuroplasticity. It's pretty clear from Robert Plomin's huge twin and adoption studies that the shared environment (culture and parenting) has zero correlation with almost every psychological trait. So to push the pseudoscientific babble about the brain being a pound of clay to be moulded into shape by culture and experience is silly. Steven Pinker well discredited the claims of neuroplasticity in The Blank Slate and the silly fire-together-wire-together logic that is so often used by charlatans of all stripes. Of course the brain is plastic, we don't store information in the pancreas, but it's still informed largely by our underlying genome. Second, this article states that "scientists only thought the brain was plastic in childhood". This is flat out not true. In the 1900's it was the dominant view that the brain was a pound of clay and that the only thing that made us different was nurture. To suggest genes had any influence on the brain was sacrilege at the time. This view came to be discredited. This article talks about how the brain becomes 'less plastic' as we age, but that's largely the result of genetic heritability increasing with age. Human brains are resilient, they have a tendency to bounce back to their genetic trajectories. It is a shame so many neuroscientists haven't read a shred of evolutionary biology or Plomin's impactful twin studies. I would encourage editors to try and improve this article when they can. Sxologist (talk) 03:34, 29 August 2020 (UTC)
 * For recent matters that have happened with the article, especially the lead, you might want to review Talk:Neuroplasticity/Archive 1 (and what is stated below that) and Talk:Neuroplasticity/Archive 2 (especially what Seppi333 stated). I took the article off my watchlist sometime after the "Recent articles" discussion. Although I participated in the "Lead" discussion I just linked to, I just now watchlisted the article again. Before doing that, I would simply occasionally check in on the article. I did see that Sandyshore made this edit, but only just today saw that an IP made this edit, and that this IP added sources as a result. I see that you recently made this edit and that ChsDBs made this edit.


 * We really need to work out that lead sentence, and stick to high-quality sources -- those that are WP:MEDRS and WP:SCHOLARSHIP-compliant -- for this topic. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 07:53, 31 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Agree completely. It's quite messy, same with Nature versus nurture article (I left a similar message on the talk page earlier). I am not sure the introduction to that article is great either. Sxologist (talk) 08:07, 31 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Also Flyer, did you want me to revert the archive and change the bot to not automatically do it? Sxologist (talk) 08:12, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I disagree with this. Twin studies are known to have many methodological problems (I can provide references) – so, the studies you mention are not determinative. If someone wants to promote genetics, they should edit the genetics page/s and not the neuroplasticity page. Recent research have also found how 'epigenetic' mechanisms operate (i.e., how our experiences influence the genome to express: up regulate or down regulate particular genes) – again, I can provide references. 2604:3D09:747D:3D50:8C3A:4BEF:F55:BAED (talk) 21:49, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Regarding Sxologist's statement that "It is a shame so many neuroscientists haven't read a shred of evolutionary biology or Plomin's impactful twin studies", to be clear, since this is a neuroscience topic, we will want to give neuroscience sources the highest weight. That said, I don't see that many neuroscientists are prone to the 'blank slate' fallacy - the opposite if anything. Neuroplasticity does exist and this is not incompatible with genetic influences, and most neuroscientists do take into account scientific findings in evolution and genetics, and know well that neuroplasticity has limits. And the flip side of keeping that in mind is that we can also watch out for content cited to sources who may not be qualified in neuroscience (such as many social scientists or pop-sci writers) and who overstate neuroplasticity's power or vaguely gesture towards it to support a 'blank slate' argument.
 * To the IP, there's really no need to debate twin studies or epigenetics here, other than to say that most sources are clear that genetics do influence psychology and psychiatric disorders, that epigenetics' power is not unlimited because regular genetics plays a role, and that the criticisms of twin studies are themselves disputed. Per WP:NPOV we should have appropriate material about the limits of neuroplasticity here, even if they talk about genetics as part of that. Crossroads -talk- 02:49, 1 September 2020 (UTC)


 * To be clear, such statements do relate to neuroscience. Steven Pinkers entire book, The Blank Slate discusses the neural plasticity and environment, and discusses the clear lack of influence from the shared environment. Neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell also makes the point in his book Innate. (And Crossroads, I will say that a surprising amount of neuroscientists do believe in a blank slate concept, it's especially common in Scandinavia). To the IP, arguing on a talk page isn't really productive. I will say that the twin study method is agreed to be robust and important. It has also been supported by huge adoption studies. These are the most reliable finding in psychology, and the criticisms of them are laughable (why do you all the criticisms come from sociologists instead of evolutionary biologists who understand algebra?). I will briefly say that speculations about epigenetics and life experiences are largely bunk. Just because they get hype in the media and are pushed by some segments of education doesn't make them true. (Also, of course the brain has plasticity, it stores information there rather than in the stomach, that doesn't make it a piece of clay). Sxologist (talk) 03:45, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Sxologist, regarding my comment on the archiving when replying, I just meant that the archive bot archiving after 60 days is too fast for this talk page since this talk page is not active enough for that. So I changed it 90 days.


 * As for the other stuff? Talk pages are for discussion, including arguments, and arguments on talk pages have helped resolve matters. Arguments are only a problem when it's just bickering/violates WP:Talk in some way. Maybe it would help the IP and others to know what you mean by "shared environment." This 2005 "Encyclopedia of Statistics in Behavioral Science" source states, "The shared environment (also called common environment) refers to environmental influences that have the effect of making siblings more similar to one another. Shared environmental influences can include shared family experiences, shared peer groups, and sharing the same school and community." I mean, when you state "shared environment (culture and parenting)" and then "has zero correlation with almost every psychological trait", someone might get the impression that you are stating that parenting doesn't affect (or barely affects) people's psyche (whether those people are the only child their parents had or have siblings). I know you didn't mean that, but not everyone knows what shared environment means. And people who don't understand and see something like "culture and parenting" will think of the fact that child abuse while "parenting" has been shown to affect the psychology of children. They will point to cases like Aileen Wuornos, whose family environment is believed by researchers to have contributed to her psychological traits. I think that the shared environment research hasn't yet examined abusive environments (especially severe abusive environments), though, correct? I know that's the case for topics such as heritability of IQ.


 * To everyone else (well, to any doubters), Sxologist is correct that the shared environment simply hasn't shown to have as much of an effect on behavior as individual environment has. The "Encyclopedia of Statistics in Behavioral Science" source states, "In general, there has not been strong evidence for shared environmental effects on many behaviors, particularly those measured in adults. Possible reasons for this are discussed. Shared environmental effects are evident in children and adolescents, but these effects generally decrease across the life span. New developments in behavior genetic methods have made it possible to specify shared environments of importance and to tease apart familial and nonfamilial sources of shared environmental influence." This 2008 "The Person: An Introduction to the Science of Personality Psychology" source, from John Wiley & Sons, page 226, states, "In general, twin studies and adoption studies have shown that growing up in the same family seems to have little impact on personality traits." This has been consistently reported in the years since, which is why this 2014 "Invitation to the Life Span Canadian Edition" source, from Macmillan Higher Education, page 299, states, "Many studies have found that children are less affected by shared environment than by non-shared environment."


 * I agree with Crossroads that "since this is a neuroscience topic, we will want to give neuroscience sources the highest weight." Anything in the article that is questionable when compared to the WP:Due weight of the literature can be fixed. I've pinged Seppi333 above. Last time I pinged Tryptofish to this talk page, he was busy. Maybe still is. Someone else to ping from the "Recent articles" discussion is Snow Rise. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 07:19, 1 September 2020 (UTC)


 * That's correct Flyer, they don't focus specifically on abuse. And a lack of shared environmental influence is not to suggest that you can abuse your child and they'll turn out fine. However, while abuse is correlated with later adverse outcomes, it's not shown that maltreatment causes the later behavior, because there are numerous explanations which have convincing evidence (parents react to the behavior of their child, shared genetic effects and so forth). It would not be surprising if extreme maltreatment, physical abuse and narcisstic manipulation causes life long trauma and a neural correlate, but that's a guess, not something I can say with certainty. In the case of moderate abuse and maltreatment, it's convincingly demonstrated that it can leave us with bad memories (but no impact on traits). My point is that neuroplasticity has limits. People invoke it as though we can fix all world problems with it, that we can mould our children into who we want them to be (and that we must shelter their 'impressionable' minds) and so forth. I think Steven Pinker is probably right when he suggests that invoking neuroplasticity (in arguments) is the last-stand of the blank slate theory in the sciences. I think it would be useful for the article to put a damper on some of the exaggerations, since in every case, the altered cortex is not doing anything very different from what it usually does. In The Blank Slate Pinker writes: "What do these discoveries mean? Do they show that the brain is able to be shaped, molded, modeled, or sculpted, as the dictionary definition of plastic would suggest? In the rest of this chapter I will show you that the answer is no." That area of the book is well worth a read, and it's still as relevant today as it was in 2002. When I say "this article needs improvement" I mean it needs to be clear that neural plasticity does not mean our minds are just these impressionable pieces of playdough, which often has people concluding that "the [whole] brain is plastic" (which clearly isn't true given identical twins reared apart are as similar as those reared together). Sxologist (talk) 08:49, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

If I am blunt, I am having a hard time figuring out what to make of the foregoing discussion. Reviewing the article, I agree there are areas that could benefit from scrutiny and improvement, but, although I recognize the voluble opining above comes from a good-faith impulse to see the article improved, much of that commentary has been of such a simultaneously voluminous and yet vague nature that it is frankly verging on WP:NOTAFORUM territory at this point and needs to resolve itself to more specific recommendations about actual prose (as opposed to mere expression of general philosophical opposition in the broadest terms to the concept of the taula rasa) before this can become at all productive as an editorial matter.

Sxologist, let me assure you that you won't find many people more receptive than I to the general thrust of your assertions (as I perceive it anyway) that the interplay between nativism and plasticity is subject to a great deal of misunderstanding in lay discussion of psychological science, and particularly in folk philosophy of mind. But that preface of general alignment with that broad sentiment notwithstanding, I think there are some problems with how you are approaching this topic, in terms of advocating for change to this article: For starters, there's not much to be gained from trying to frame this discussion in terms of the specific outlook of Steven Pinker. Don't get me wrong, I value the man as a public intellectual (and yes, indeed, a populizer of some of the very science implicit to this article), but he is not primarily known as a researcher in the area of neuroplasticity as a discrete area--though obviously he is well informed on the subject even when compared against your average experimental psychologist whose work interfaces with neuroscience research. So while we may be able to leverage an attributed quote or two from one of his popular science works where such content summarizes a broad point of scientific consensus in this area, that's really about it. The situation is akin to leaning on Carl Sagan to discuss some theory of space-time curvature that he mentioned in Cosmos: maybe it would be marginally relevant enough for us to mention a factoid or two in his words, because he was such an effective communicator on such topics, but he is himself not exactly someone who has changed the contours of that debate within the scientific community so much as someone who brought the story to a wider audience.

Beyond this, there's also some degree of apparent conflation in some of what you say between 'neuroplasticity' as a general neurophysiological phenomena and the use of the term as a buzzword in folk psychology and neuroscience as discussed in popular media. One need not embrace the extremes of Lockean empiricism or Skinerian behaviourism in order to accept the pervasive role that neuroplasticity plays not just during development but indeed in fundamental processes of learning and memory throughout life--these before we even touch the topic of the question of brain development past adolescence and in regards to critical periods for particular modular functions, or re-routing of pathways after trauma. By and large, I think the article does succeed in framing discussion about the role of plasticity as a general feature of brain function rather than a blanket repudiation of biopsychological nativism. I'd certainly be happier with a bit of a more granular approach to the biochemistry and neuroanatomy, but this is, after-all, brain science we are talking about: finding the line between accessibility to the broadest number of readers while paying fidelity to the clinical depth of the topic and while covering the empirical debate of those many, many subtopics in this field that are still open to controversy is no easy task.

For a certainty, there are sections (mostly clustered towards the beginning of the article) where the relevance of recent developments in research with regard to plasticity are over-sold. The way in which those initial sections repeatedly beat the drum on the vague implication that "neuroscientists used to think neuroplasticity ended with adolescence, but this is now known not to be strictly true" (or something to that effect) creates two misrepresentations in the article: 1) an impression scientific consensus was ever settled on such a notion, and 2) the implication that there has been a tidal wave of research completely overturning the old paradigm and leading to a sea change wherein plasticity is now known to be vastly more influential in post-developmental contexts than we once thought. Neither is a particularly nuanced and accurate representation of the state of research either now or in recent decades.

All of which brings me full circle back to my original point: it's all well and good for us to break down the path of research in broad strokes here, but at the end of the day this is nothing but self-indulgent whinging (or at best, meandering debate) unless somebody has specific changes to the content to propose, duly supported by WP:RS. Snow let's rap 11:39, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

--- Twin studies are problematic – they would have sounded impressive 20 years ago, but not anymore with new evidence. Twin studies seem to have very problematic methodological issues and questionable assumptions – please see the following: Joseph, J., (2015), The Trouble with Twin Studies: A Reassessment of Twin Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, New York: Routledge, pp. 25-47.

Also, the influence of genetics is highly overrated and many researchers do not seem to be able to overcome their ‘confirmation bias’ (i.e., the tendency to search for and favour information in a way that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses). This is as explained by the following article published in JAMA:

Joyner, M. J., Paneth, N., & Ioannidis, J. P. (2016). What happens when underperforming big ideas in research become entrenched?. JAMA, 316(13), 1355-1356.

This push for attempting to find genes for everything is perhaps a push by profit-driven pharma. Regarding genetics, I also suggest checking out the following academic articles:

Leo, J., & Joseph, J. (2002). Schizophrenia: Medical students are taught it’s all in the genes: But are they hearing the whole story? Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, 4, 17–30.

Border, R., et al. (2019). No support for historical candidate gene or candidate gene-by-interaction hypotheses for major depression across multiple large samples. American Journal of Psychiatry, 176(5), 376-387.

Ross, C. A. (2013). Biology and Genetics in DSM-5. Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry: An International Journal of Critical Inquiry, 15(3), 195-198.

Crow, T. J. (2008). The emperors of the schizophrenia polygene have no clothes. Psychological Medicine, 38(12), 1681-1685.

Kendler, K. S., & O'donovan, M. C. (2014). A breakthrough in schizophrenia genetics. JAMA psychiatry, 71(12), 1319-1320.

2604:3D09:747D:3D50:586F:7E27:EA6B:C2E9 (talk) 23:55, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

I also wanted to add that many well-conducted studies including large-scale epidemiological investigations have demonstrated that early childhood experiences such as trauma bring about changes in the brain and also strongly predict a higher vulnerability to develop physical and mental health issues in life. See the following references:

Kessler, R.C., McLaughlin, K.A., Green, J.G., Gruber, M.J., Sampson, N.A., Zaslavsky, A.M., et al., 2010. Childhood adversities and adult psychopathology in the WHO world mental health surveys. Br. J. Psychiatr. 197 (5), 378–385.

Varese, F., Smeets, F., Drukker, M., Lieverse, R., Lataster, T., Viechtbauer, W., et al., 2012. Childhood adversities increase the risk of psychosis: a meta-analysis of patient-control, prospective-and cross-sectional cohort studies. Schizophr. Bull. 38 (4), 661–671.

Davidson, R.J., McEwen, B.S., 2012. Social influences on neuroplasticity: stress and interventions to promote well-being. Nat. Neurosci. 15 (5), 689.

-- Additionally, a recent study has demonstrated that psychological interventions are capable of reversing these changes in the brain - see:

Joss, D., et al. (2020). Effects of a mindfulness based behavioral intervention for young adults with childhood maltreatment history on hippocampal morphometry: a pilot MRI study with voxel-based morphometry. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 111087.

2604:3D09:747D:3D50:586F:7E27:EA6B:C2E9 (talk) 00:32, 2 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Snow, thanks for your response. IP, what a bunch of strawmen (this also isn't a debate forum, it's a comment on the misrepresentation and misuse of neuroplasticity). You misunderstood a lot of what I wrote. People recovering through interventions are both examples of neuroplasticity but also people returning to their genetic trajectory (and lets be clear, how people react to certain environmental insults is itself informed by genetics). Simply pointing out how some GWAS have not replicated is not evidence that genes amount to nothing, it is indicative of the fact that traits are informed by many thousands of genes together, rather than just a few. Sxologist (talk) 02:17, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes. And I'm going to emphasize that the IP suggested "This push for attempting to find genes for everything is perhaps a push by profit-driven pharma" - so, in other words, behavioral genetics could be a Big Pharma conspiracy. Make of that whatever you will. Flyer22 Frozen's excellent tertiary sources show that the mainstream position is that twin studies do shed light on the role of genetic influences in psychology. This cannot be rebutted by selected primary sources or authors who push a minority viewpoint, let alone by sources that don't even contradict that idea. And per WP:NOTFORUM, let's not discuss that further. Crossroads -talk- 03:09, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

I’m not going to read this entire thread, but I will just state the scienctific basis behind environmental influences on neuroplasticity: epigenetics (non-chemical-induced plasticity) and toxicogenomics (chemical-induced plasticity). The latter includes the former as a mode of inducing plasticity. FWIW: the “toxico” is a misnomer since toxicogenomic effects can promote health and survival/fitness of the organism.  Seppi  333  (Insert 2¢) 16:35, 3 September 2020 (UTC)