Brain plasticity and lifespan ontogeny
A defining feature of living organisms is their plasticity (flexibility in the range and spectrum of functioning) in adapting both to (i) endogenous changes in themselves that are due to neurobiological processes of maturation or senescence and to (ii) exogenous changes in environmental factors.
Plasticity has traditionally been considered primarily as a feature of young, maturing, as opposed to adult and aging, organisms. However, this widely held view has now been seriously challenged. Findings from cognitive training studies in lifespan psychology over the last 15 years have clearly demonstrated that behavioral and cognitive plasticity is not a privilege that is specific only to early periods of life. Old people still possess substantial reserved plasticity, albeit being more limited in extent.
In neuroscience, the old dogma of no addition of new neurons in adult brain has recently been renounced by the discovery of adult neurogenesis from animal studies. Furthermore, findings of aging-related changes in cortical functional circuitries subserving memory and cognitive control mechanisms (as well as training- and expertise-related structural and functional cortical changes in adults and older people also indicate substantial brain plasticity during the adult lifespan. The exploration of adult neurogenesis has sparked many interdisciplinary discussions because the relevance of new neurons in the adult brain cannot be appreciated from the perspective of cellular, network, or systems biology alone.
Given recent evidence on developmental plasticity at various levels of analysis extending into the adult life span we are working on explicating the mechanisms with which contextualized experiences and learning, on the one hand, and brain plasticity, on the other hand, operate conjointly to shape the development of adaptive neurocognitive functions across the lifespan. This general research area is subdivided into four specific reasearch projects: (i) Charting lifespan gradients of behavioral and brain plasticity in specific domains of functioning across major life periods; (ii) explicating reciprocal interactions between various levels of developmental plasticity; (iii) investigating the effects of environmental supports in the forms of training or assistive technology in optimizing plasticity during childhood and old age; (iv) exploring effects of individualized ontogenetic history yielding person-specific expertise on behavioral and brain plasticity.
Key publications on this topic:
Baltes P.B., Staudinger U.M., Lindenberger U. (1999)
Lifespan psychology: theory and application to intellectual functioning. Annual Review of Psychology 50:471-507
Li S.C., Lindenberger U., Sikstrom S. (2001)
Aging cognition: from neuromodulation to representation. Trends Cogn Sci. 5:479-486.
Lindenberger U., Baltes P.B. (1997)
Intellectual functioning in old and very old age: Cross-sectional results from the Berlin Aging Study. Psychology and Aging 12:410-432.
Marschner A., Mell T., Wartenburger I., Villringer A., Reischies F.M., Heekeren H.R. (2005)
Reward-based decision-making and aging. Brain Research Bulletin 67:382-390.
Nicoll R.A., Schmitz D. (2005)
Synaptic plasticity at hippocampal mossy fibre synapses. Nat Rev Neurosci. 6:863-76.
Taskin B., Jungehulsing G.J., Ruben J., Brunecker P., Krause T., Blankenburg F., Villringer A. (2006)
Preserved Responsiveness of Secondary Somatosensory Cortex in Patients with Thalamic Stroke. Cereb Cortex 16:1431-9.
