A US-devised brain "workout" to help with learning difficulties may have benefits for Alzheimer's disease. Claire O'Connell reports
It might surprise you to learn that your brain is plastic, although not in the Barbie doll sense.
In neuroscience, the term plastic refers to how brain cells called neurons connect and communicate with each other.
By rewiring and strengthening these connections, we process new information and learn. And disruptions in connectivity may be at the root of many brain disorders including depression, Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia.
This is why brain plasticity is now a hot topic for researchers who want to encourage neurons to connect well and create a better brain environment for processing information. Neuroscientist Dr Bill Jenkins has been working in the field for more than 20 years and is senior vice-president for product development at the California-based company Scientific Learning.
He recently visited Trinity College Dublin to speak about a brain "workout" system that helps children with language learning and reading difficulties to harness their plasticity and retrain their neurons to process information about sounds.
"Language and reading are probably the most strenuous things for our brains in terms of working out our cognitive skills," says Jenkins.
He notes that when children who have difficulty learning language hear a sentence, they may be sampling sound patterns at long intervals and missing important elements of speech. This can be a problem particularly in a noisy classroom, he adds.
To help children decode rapid speech patterns, Jenkins's group has designed a computer-based training regime for brain cells. At first, the interactive programme plays slowed-down versions of spoken sentences that emphasise critical elements.
The speech sounds drawn out and staccato, allowing the listener to chunk the information more meaningfully.
Delivered through a series of puzzles and games for just under an hour each day, the sound files gradually speed up as the system targets and builds better language-processing connections in the listener's brain.
Over the course of a few months, says Jenkins, the computer programme also zones in on other cognitive skills important for language, like attention and memory, all the while monitoring the child's progress and pitching the puzzles at an appropriate level of difficulty to keep the learner motivated.
"So these kids feel like they are really successful," he says. "Finally they are doing well with academic material so it becomes self-motivating too."
And the idea of designing interactive computer systems to promote brain plasticity is not restricted to kids. Scientific Learning's sister company, Posit Science, currently offers a brain fitness programme for older participants who want to stave off normal, age-related cognitive decline.
However, Jenkins notes the jury is still out on the effectiveness of the approach in more clinical settings such as the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.
"I think the science hasn't spoken yet on whether you can impact those in more of a clinically defined deficit," he says.
"My personal belief is that in early stage Alzheimer's these kinds of tools would likely change the quality of life of those individuals. Do I think it will prevent Alzheimer's? No. It might give them better functioning for a period of time but I think we have to wait until the research results are in."
Overall, though, he believes that this is just the tip of the iceberg for interventions involving brain plasticity.
"There is reason to believe that many neurological conditions that develop in humans have a learning component," he says. "So you have learned something that you shouldn't have learned and it's contributing to the neurological problems. And I think the structured behavioural method could be really important in combination with other therapies."
However, he warns against a potential "Pandora's box" of drugs to enhance brain plasticity or memory, saying that they could lead to problems if a person took them and then had inappropriate sensory input.
"If you had a way of turning learning on, what are you exposed to when you turn that learning on through a chemical means? You would have to couple it with the right learning environment," he says.
Dr Keith Murphy, a neuroscientist at University College Dublin, agrees that a combination of approaches is the key. "A drug will enhance the plasticity in the system but then you have got to train the circuit, to instruct it as to what the correct configuration is," he says. "The sensory information that goes into your brain while it is in a heightened plastic state will dictate the effect."
Murphy is a principal investigator in the applied neurotherapeutics research group (ANRG), which looks at molecular events that underpin brain plasticity in memory and disease.
"People have now come around to the concept that most of the diseases of the brain, including depression and schizophrenia, are caused by problems in plasticity," he says.
Ultimately the ANRG, working with the pharmaceutical company Wyeth, wants to design drugs to intervene and help rewire the brain where needed.
But is there a danger that such chemical agents could be used to brainwash people or become designer "smart drugs" to give a cognitive edge to those who can afford them? Murphy admits these are possibilities, but says so far their research has found that drugs tend to be good at bringing plasticity back to normal when there is a deficit.