Research / Juggling and the cerebral cortex * After the research subjects were asked to stop juggling, it was reported that the parts of the cerebral cortex that had expanded shrank
Nicholas Wade, New York Times, Haaretz, Walla!
If you lift weights regularly, your arms may look more impressive. It turns out that with proper training, the same can be done to the brain.
A study conducted by Dr. Erna May and his colleagues at the University of Regensburg in Germany, revealed that in people who learned to juggle for three months, there was an expansion of certain areas of the cerebral cortex - a thin layer of nerve cells spread over the surface of the brain, where the thinking process is apparently carried out . Three months after the study subjects were asked to completely stop the juggling exercises, the same parts of the cerebral cortex that had expanded were reported to have shrunk. The expansion and contraction in the brain can only be seen with the help of a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) device.
The discovery, reported in the journal Nature, is similar to that revealed in a study conducted among taxi drivers in London four years ago. The study followed apprentice taxi drivers in London, who were required to memorize the street map of the city. During the apprenticeship, they are required to acquire "The Knowledge" - a two-year program in which they are supposed to memorize all the streets of the British capital. The study, published in 2000, was also done with the help of MRI scanners, and revealed in taxi drivers a change in the hippocampus (the part of the brain responsible for storing memories related to places).
Both studies prove how much the brain can be shaped with the help of training. This has already been proven before, in studies that dealt with the way in which the brain mapping of the various body organs is done. In monkeys that were trained to use their fingertips to perform certain tasks, the part of the brain responsible for finger mapping expanded. This implies that the various maps produced by the brain in relation to the organs of the body are "plastic", in the language of neurology, and not rigid.
The MRI scans of the jugglers and taxi drivers showed an expansion of the gray matter - an area of the brain rich in nerve cells, compared to the white matter - which consists mainly of biological wiring connecting these cells. However, the scanning devices do not reveal what is happening at the level of the individual nerve cell, and therefore it is not clear what causes the expansion of the cerebral cortex. The question of whether new nerve cells grow in the adult brain was a cause for debate in the past, and the majority opinion today is that new nerve cells are only formed in the hippocampus and the olfactory gland.
Dr. May said that the expansion of the cerebral cortex can be caused by the addition of new cells, created locally or arrived from other places, or due to mutual connections of the cells. May added that he supports the theory of interconnections. Pasco Rakic, a neurologist at Yale University, confirmed the notion that the brain is not structurally static. However, according to him, it is not possible to draw any conclusions from the studies about the activity at the cellular level.
The brain consists of about 100 million nerve cells, each of which has about a thousand connections to other cells and a total of about 100 trillion mutual connections. Learning to juggle or navigating the streets of London requires strenuous rewiring work between the cells; It is probably desirable to practice them.
