You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Tricks....Or Can You?

The difficulty of re-wiring your brain or why we'd all be better off if we were 6 years old!!

As a chiropractor who looks at a functional neurological approach to pain and poor function I was delighted to find this article and video on the phenomenon called neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity is the ability of the nervous system to adapt to changes in the environment. These changes in stimulus result in a re-wiring of the connections, so that you can effectively learn a new skill, recover from injury or adapt to a stimulus. If the stimulus is significant you can learn instantly. For example you generally won't keep touching a hot surface.

However, sometimes the complex associated tasks that we learn as part of our development are so ingrained that it takes an age for an adult to un-learn them and learn a different set of rules to achieve the same thing. Here it is brilliantly and entertainingly demonstrated by a backwards steering bicycle.

The interesting thing is how it demonstrates how easily a child can adapt. This is due to the plasticity of the developing brain. From a treatment perspective this demonstrates why it takes time to make lasting changes with respect to chronic pain. The same un-learning of pain and promotion of pain suppression takes time to learn and is only done through repetition of positive stimulation such as adjustments , exercises and focusing on movement. The bigger the stimulus the more wiring that occurs. This is why adjustments have a greater effect.

To put it simply "THE MORE YOU FIRE IT, THE MORE YOU WIRE IT"

Anyway here's the video, hope you enjoy it.

http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-the-mind-bending-science-behind-the-backwards-bicycle