An Inquiry into the Neural Plasticity Underlying Everyday Actions

• Main Author: Garrett Tisdale
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Appalachian State University Honors College 2017-11-01
• Series: Impulse: The Premier Undergraduate Neuroscience Journal
• Subjects: Voxel-Based Morphometry; Music; Sleep; Video Game Play
• Online Access: https://impulse.appstate.edu/sites/impulse.appstate.edu/files/Tisdale.2017.pdf

How does the brain change with respect to how we live our daily lives? Modern studies on how specific actions affect the anatomy of the brain have shown that different actions shape the way the brain is oriented. While individual studies might point towards these effects occurring in daily actions, the concept that morphological changes occur throughout the numerous fields of neuroplasticity based on daily actions has yet to become a well established and discussed phenomena. It is the goal of this article to view a few fields of neuroplasticity to answer this overarching question and review brain imaging studies indicating such morphological changes associated with the fields of neuroplasticity and everyday actions. To achieve this goal, a systematic approach revolving around scholarly search engines was used to briefly explore each studied field of interest. In this article, the activities of music production, video game play, and sleep are analyzed indicating such morphological change. These activities show changes to the respective areas of the brain in which the tasks are processed with a trend arising from the amount of time spent performing each action. It is shown from these fields of study that this classification of relating everyday actions to morphological change through neural plasticity does hold validity with respect to experimental studies.