The Amazing Power of the Brain to Heal Itself

4 min readJul 16, 2019

by Cassandra McLean

This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.

Though only a few decades ago scientists believed the brain was “fixed” throughout adulthood, we now know that your brain is actually in a constant state of change.

Neuroplasticity is the name for this process of change, used to accomplish several functions:

Healing & Recovery
Learning & Memory
Habit Forming & Subconscious Processing

Neuroplasticity is one of the fundamental processes by which your brain learns, grows, and makes you, you.

In this article, we examine how neuroplasticity works in your brain’s healing and recovery processes.

Neuroplasticity Basics

Neurons that fire together, wire together

Inside of your brain are 100 billion neurons, forming approximately 100 trillion connections between them. These crazy numbers have earned the human brain its famous nickname, “the most complex object in the known universe.”

As connections form between individual neurons, they link together and create neural pathways. You can imagine these pathways like a great network of roads and highways, carrying information through the different regions of your brain.

The more often you take a certain road — by thinking in a certain way, practicing a particular task, or feeling a specific emotion — the stronger that pathway becomes.

In other words, consistent activity along the same pathway makes it easier (and therefore more likely) for the brain to use that pathway.

But neuroplasticity is what allows your brain to form new pathways: new neural traffic patterns. It’s what allows you to adapt and change.

Neuroplasticity Works Well. (Really Well.)

When brain injury occurs — such as from physical trauma like concussion or stroke, or psychological trauma like prolonged stress — neuroplasticity is the brain’s mechanism to compensate and recuperate.

The extent to which neuroplasticity works to keep you and your brain successfully adapting can be exemplified best in cases of “hemispherectomy.”

A hemispherectomy is a rare surgery in which an entire hemisphere of a person’s brain is removed. Amazingly, studies find that when done early in life, (generally to address severe epilepsy,) patients develop no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor, and minimal changes in cognitive function overall. Through the power of neuroplasticity, these brains are able to compensate for a 50% loss of brain matter!

While neuroplasticity is age-dependent, (children’s brains are more plastic,) there are many documented cases of adults recovering from severe brain injury and vegetative states due to the neuronal reorganization that is neuroplasticity. There is also technology available that can increase your plasticity at any age. (More on that below.)

You Are Constantly Under Construction

Neuroplasticity also helps us recover from less extreme cases of head injury, trauma or disease. Whenever the network of neural pathways is disrupted or damaged, neuroplasticity directs the brain to re-build new pathways to maintain functionality.

Think of it like detour routes built to accommodate trouble on a main highway. Except in the brain, over time, these detour routes become the new highway. Your brain inherently knows how to maintain a healthy flow of traffic, allowing information to get where it needs to go.

Neuroplasticity is your brain’s ability to re-structure neural pathways.

Harness the Power of Neuroplasticity Now

Neuroplasticity is an empowering reality. Shift happens. So how can you use this natural process to accelerate your own healing and recovery?

Neurons that fire together, wire together: If you maximize positive emotional states when they come, it will help increase their frequency and intensity.

Healing After Injury

Researchers have found that the ability for neuroplasticity to recover the brain after injury ultimately depends on postinjury behaviors.

For example, when relearning motor skills following stroke, practice is key. The repetition of tasks and exercises enables the cortical regions associated with motor function to expand into larger cortical territories — neuroplasticity at work.

Note: When it comes to concussion and traumatic brain injury, however, avoiding physical and mental stress is essential. If you have experienced head or brain injury, please consult with a doctor.

Peak Your Brain

To really harness the power of neuroplasticity, consider brain fitness training.

At brain fitness training centers like Peak Brain Institute, neurotechnologies are customized to the needs of your unique brain. With neurofeedback, you strengthen behavior-specific neural pathways at an accelerated rate.

After several months of this brain-training, people typically develop and maintain wholly new “traffic patterns.” On the subjective level, these are experienced as better sleep, more stable moods, sharper focus, enhanced creativity and better energy.

If you could re-wire your brain, what outcome would you want?