Creativity Vs Plasticity Essay

Critical period plasticity vs Plasticity throughout life In neuroscience they mention that there is two types of plasticity during our lifetime, critical period plasticity being the first during our postnatal development, then comes plasticity. Critical period plasticity is a particular time frame in which the brain development is sensitive to a certain experience such as vision, and once the critical period ends there is no more plasticity occurring (Kolb and Whishaw, 270). On the contrary plasticity is also important for us because it can fix and enhance neuronal connection, especially when an individual has damage such as paralysis, amblyopia and many more, through training they can regain their body function. So which is better critical …show more content…
The reason is because during postnatal development when the critical period is open you get a lot of plasticity that will form and shape the neurons, but once the critical period is closed there is no longer any plasticity and the connection that are formed do not change. That was seen in Gabriele’s research where even though critical period was open longer the neuronal connection did not change. But if plasticity was throughout our life time then any damage that occurs can be fixed, such in the research of Kathryn where they were able to reverse amblyopia in cats to having normal vision. For example if we were to imagine two individual with amblyopia, but individual A has no plasticity after the critical period closes, individual B has plasticity even if critical period closes. What will happen is that individual A will still have the same neuronal connections that were developed during the critical period leading to amblyopia condition. On the other hand since individual B has plasticity even after the closure of the critical period, this individual is able to train his lazy eye with certain task and eventually that lazy eye will function as a normal eye as if that individual did not even have