W
hat makes people
so clever, and,
sadly,
also
so
stupid is that their brains
keep changing depending
on what they are doing with
them! The technical term is
plasticity – neuroplasticity.
The brain continually changes
throughout a person’s life as
the neurons (see Figure 1 over)
reorganise themselves and form
new connections. This occurs
when you learn something
– whether that’s memorising
a new song, acquiring a new
skill (like driving or playing
the piano), or just falling into
a new routine or habit. It’s
also true that, in the event of
brain damage, non-damaged
areas can take on some of the
functionality of the damaged
part.
Throughout your life, your brain is
able to change with learning; and these
changes mostly occur at the level of the
connections between neurons. If you form lots of
new connections, the habit or learning seems more
‘ingrained’. The more of an expert you become on a
particular subject, the larger that area of your brain
becomes. It seems that 80 percent of signalling in
the brain uses two neurotransmitters – glutamate
and GABA (Gamma-AminoButyric Acid). When
glutamate passes a signal between two neurons that
haven’t ‘spoken’ before, it creates this connection:
Another type of chemical is BDNF (Brain-Derived
Neurotrophic Factor), which builds and maintains
the brain’s circuitry of cells. It can make more
dendrites (the little ?nger-like projections at the
end of nerve cells that are used to connect between
cells). It’s well known that London taxi drivers
who learn ‘the knowledge’ (a mental map of all the
streets in London) have a larger hippocampus than,
say, London bus drivers, and that’s because that part
24 Hypnotherapy Today
Plastic br
learnin
Identifying styles of learning can h
of their brain is used to acquire and use complex
spatial information (Maguire, Woollett, & Spiers,
2006). Similarly, professional musicians have larger
areas of the brain associated with music than other
people (Gaser and Schlaug 2003). According to Dr
John Ratey in his book Spark!, it’s perfectly normal
for neurogenesis (making new brain cells) to occur
in adults, and it’s more likely to occur if you exercise
regularly and work hard during the exercise.
So there’s plenty of evidence that the brain can
grow and change as learning occurs. Our role,
as hypnotherapists, is to help our clients to learn
new ways of looking at the world and themselves
– to help them to make positive changes in the
connections between the neurons in their brain. But
this begs a very important question: what’s the best
way for a client to learn? Should we be making them
learn by rote (a very popular method in Victorian
schools), or should we be making them read lots of