Neuroplasticity and “real” Brain Games: The opportunity at hand

– An MRI image of the brain show­ing the struc­ture of white mat­ter. Cred­it 3D Slicer/Wikimedia Commons.

In prepa­ra­tion for the new sea­son of Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s Brain Games, their pro­duc­ers asked me to par­tic­i­pate in a vir­tu­al round­table around this thought-pro­vok­ing question:

Do you think indi­vid­u­als can train their brain to respond in a par­tic­u­lar way to cer­tain sit­u­a­tions, or do you think our brain’s innate “star­tle response” is too hard­wired to alter?

My short answer: Yes, we can train our brains.

My long answer: Not only we can, but we SHOULD train our brains to respond in par­tic­u­lar ways to cer­tain sit­u­a­tions. That’s why we have a human brain to begin with…Keep read­ing arti­cle The Real Brain Game: Har­ness­ing Neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty to Upgrade Our Men­tal Equip­ment (The Cre­ativ­i­ty Post)