Cognitive neural plasticity during learning and recovery from brain damage.

The process of neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change, either in response to experience or injury. It is a vital process both during normal development and for the recovery after brain injury. Recent research has emphasized that this takes place via both local restitution as well as reorganization and compensatory reassignment. The fact that the brain can undergo such plastic changes has provided evidence for what underlies developmental brain disorders, as well as the variable response to injury at different points in the lifespan. The factors affecting plasticity and its long-term consequences may have increasing importance in exposing the pattern of changes that occur in the normal brain with aging.