The Importance Of Neuroplasticity

Have you noticed that the world has been becoming a much different place recently? That things have been evolving socially, preconceptions disappearing, stereotypes dissipating or transforming? I am vehement about change and tolerance, and the past few years have shown me that real change can come to pass within a very short span of time. All it takes is a few new generations to cause new thoughts and ideals to circulate, creating social platforms that other individuals can join. Changing the existing intolerant behavior and instilling tolerant behavior is a result of the younger generation’s capacity for neuroplasticity. The past few generations of people have increasingly become more tolerant over the years, a result of an increased capacity
for neuroplasticity compared to the older generations of men and women. First, I need to explain exactly what neuroplasticity is in order for you to create a simple comprehension of the topics I going to introduce in later in this thesis.
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s latent ability to form new neural pathways or reorganize pre-existing ones. This ability allows for the brain to compensate for damaged brain tissue or adjust to changes in their owners environment. Neuroplasticity is also connected psychologically to habitual behavior, as it creates or reorganizes neural pathways in response to reoccurring behaviors or actions. The brain interprets these reoccurring behaviors or actions as normalcies, these normalcies as seen through our eyes would be recognized as habit. Malgorzata Wolska explains this phenomenon in much the same way in one of her articles pertaining to a similar issue,“People organize their knowledge about the world around them by sorting and simplifying received information. Therefore, they create cognitive schemes, which are certain representations of the reality displaying its most typical and fundamental elements and properties. These schemes are responsible for defining the essence of our worldview and have a significant influence on social cognition – understanding, anticipation, situation and emotion control.”(krytyka.org, Wolska) This is not unlike the act of normalcies, or the cognitive schemes to which Wolska refers, contributing to changes in neural pathways by way of habitual
behavior. The how and why neuroplasticity contributes to increasingly tolerant behavior in socially is rather simple matter of cause and effect.
In my previous work about how the media affect our understanding of gender, I posited, “The media affects our understanding of gender by using it’s widespread use/acceptance to introduce preconceptions and/or furtherance to our independent opinions formed from our plastic minds. This means that the ideas the media circulates are seen as trustworthy information and the brain reroutes neural pathways to prepare/change for what may become habitual based on experience gained from seeing said circulation.” (Stayton, 2016) This large scale medium for indoctrinating/influencing is simply a larger version of what can occur at the interpersonal level. At the interpersonal level between individuals of two different generations, I gather that the absence or near absence of the preconceptions of the older generation leads to the furtherance of the younger generations own perspective. Without the negative connotations of other preconceptions being introduced to distort the younger generation’s perspectives, they can formulate their own independent ideas that belay older ones from perpetuating and lessening the prevalence of proponents of intolerant behavior or stances dead in their
tracks.