Questões: Faculdade de Medicina de Barbacena - Minas Gerais (FAME) — com gabarito

INSTRUCTION: Read the following text to answer the question.

Neuroplasticity: How the brain changes with learning

You cannot learn something without storing it in some form of memory for future use. From neuroscience, we know that memories are encoded by physical changes in the brain. In other words, your brain changes physically whenever you learn anything, and your brain continues to be moulded by experience and learning throughout your life.

Executive summary

        • Your brain is never fixed but continues to change with learning and experience throughout your life.

        • Most learning in the brain involves rewiring or making and strengthening connections between neurons, the cells of your brain most crucial for learning.

        • In most regions of the brain, the only neurons you will have throughout all of your life are already present at birth. Your brain does continue to grow new neurons in at least one very small but potentially important area for learning, but this is very new research and the role of these new neurons for learning is not yet known.

        • Neuroplasticity is important for all learning – much of the neuroscience research on neuroplasticity is related to how the brain recovers from injury or damage – but some of the same principles apply to how the brain changes with learning throughout all of life.

Learning and memory and changes in the brain

Let us start with a simple logical argument, to dispel myths and show that logically, of course, your brain is changing with learning:

Learning and memory are necessarily closely linked. You cannot learn something without storing it in some form of memory for use in the future, either for recall as new knowledge or improvement in skills. From neuroscience, we know that memories are encoded by physical changes in the brain (although we still debate exactly what it is that changes and how). Your brain therefore changes physically whenever anything is learnt, and so your experiences and learning throughout all of life change and mould your brain. 

There is a common brain myth or popular perception that the brain becomes fully developed sometime in early childhood, implying that nothing further changes, and that further changes in the brain with development in childhood and adolescence are somehow biologically determined, leading to a fully developed state at adulthood.

In reality, the way your brain develops is determined both by your genetics and by your learning and experiences. Biological does not mean predetermined. Your brain is shaped by your experiences and is never fixed but continues to change along with learning across the lifespan. 

Available at: https://solportal.ibe-unesco.org/articles/neuroplasticityhow-the-brain-changes-with-learning/. Accessed on: March 1st, 2025.