Running head: RESILIENCE AND PLASICITY 1

Resilience and Plasticity Can Change Throughout Life

Dominique I. Wilson
Salt Lake Community College
















RESILIENCE AND PLASICITY 2
Resilience and Plasticity Can Change Throughout Life
The first article is on neuroplasticity and how it can change throughout a persons life.
What we learn when we are younger can change dramatically aw we transition to adulthood. The
second article is on resilience and if we can overcome things that have happened to us in the
past. Which we are capable of doing in order to move on from the past.
Defined Terms
Neuroplasticity is where the nervous system is able to make new neurologic connections
(neuroplasticity).
Resilience is where a person is able to overcome things such as depression or illness
(resilience).

Nelson Article
On the article by Nelson, it discusses how plasticity is able to change throughout a
persons life span. Plasticity & Change: a Lifelong Perspective, showcased extraordinary
research from various areas, all suggesting that the brain is almost infinitely adaptable from
earliest infancy throughout later adulthood (Nelson, 2006). This explains that the brain can
constantly change and adapt depending on the circumstances it is presented with. When we are
adults our brains are able to be resourceful and are able to use reasoning that has a purpose when
it is required to do so in certain situations. People are able to master certain type of skills when
they are needed for a particular task. The logic of imagination and how children change the
world (Nelson, 2006). When children are young, they are barely learning how their world is
working around them. Children are able to see these new things and examine them as a scientist
would examine a new subject, once the scientist figures out how or when these thing work. They
RESILIENCE AND PLASICITY 3
feel like they have accomplished something, and they want to use their imagination to learn
more. Delay gratification over Time: mechanisms and developmental implications (Nelson,
2006). In our thought process there are two type of gratification. The first one is considered to be
called hot, in that we want our reward immediately. The other one is considered to be cold
our abstract and aspects in which we wait patiently for the reward we are inquired to receive.
Long term effects of early institutional deprivation: findings from an adopt study and
implications of casual mechanisms (Nelson, 2006). Children who were brought up in
orphanages were deprived of the things they needed to learn because of their living
environments. Children that were not in these organizations that long were able to recover more
easily then the children that were in these institutions longer. These children suffered from lack
of comfort, cognitive learning and ability to adapt to the world around them.
Bazelon Article
In the article by Bazelon she uses the word resilience a reference to illustrate a point in
her article for the New York Times. (Bazelon, 2006) Resilience has a specific meaning in
psychology, it means to bounce back from either serious adversity, like abuse, war or natural
disasters. In the case of these girls that had endured childhood sexual abuse, they were able to
overcome it with little to no issues from this horrific trauma. A person is able to exhibit resilience
if they went through an unfortunate situation in life and are able to come out of it not fazed by it
and also a successful life. (Bazelon, 2006), When it comes to abuse in childhood, resilient
children have the benefit of ordinary magic. There is an estimate that children that were
affected by abuse at an early age children often show little to no signs of trauma or any signs of
mental illness, when they reach adulthood.

RESILIENCE AND PLASICITY 4
Genetic Based Resilience

According to (Bazelon, 2006) there was a break- through from a scientific husband and
wife team and a co-investigator found in 2003 that there was a relationship between the gene 5-
HTT and childhood maltreatment as it concerns depression. They figured out that if, someone is
short of one of these 5-HTT genes this will cause the person to become depressed. (Bazelon,
2006) If a person has 2 long 5-HTT alleles, then they will be able to bounce back from certain
situations that were traumatizing. This is not some gene that is linked to depression, it is just
activated when certain types of stressors happen in a persons life. They are hoping to one day
have an understanding of what other genes play a role like the 5-HTT gene did in this case.

Reflection
The impact that this assignment has had on my own life, is kind of similar on what these
two girls had gone through, expect that my dad was psychiatrically, mentally, and emotionally
abusive, and my cousin sexual abused me for years. I am getting through it with therapy and
working on so that my PTSD will not affect me and I can try and will continue to live a life as
normally as possible. I am going to continue to be successful in the things I am doing not only in
my education, but also in working and in my family life. I learn not what to do to my kids and
how to be a better parent by learning from the trauma that I had to endure in my youth. I am
working on loving myself, sometimes I have my down days, but my husband and children are a
wonderful support system. I can see the good from the negative and the positive that I had to
learn it to never give up and it is okay to say no and not to let people try to bring me down
because they no longer have any sort of power over me.
RESILIENCE AND PLASICITY 5

References

Bazelon, E. (2006, April 30). A question of resilience. New York Times Magazine, DOI:
www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/magazine/30abuse.html
Nelson, L. (2006). A learning machine: Plasticity and change throughout life. APS Observer,
19(8), retrieved from
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2006/august-06/a-
learning-machine-plasticity-and-change-throughout-life.html
Neuroplasticity. (n.d.). Dictionary.com 21st Century Lexicon. Retrieved March 27, 2014, from
Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/neuroplasticity
Resiliency. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved March 27, 2014, from Dictionary.com
website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Resiliency