What is Neuroplasticity?

Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity or neural plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. Neuroplasticity was once thought by neuroscientists to only occur during childhood, but research in the later half of the 20th century has proven that many aspects of the brain can be altered through adulthood.

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What is Neuroplasticity?
This groundbreaking discovery has given rise to new hope for people struggling with certain conditions that stem from a limbic system impairment in the brain, including:
In this article, we’ll be covering everything you need to know about neuroplasticity, including how re-origin, a neuroplasticity-based treatment program, can help you eliminate the dysfunctional brain patterns perpetuating your chronic health conditions.

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Why is neuroplasticity important

Simply put, neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change, both structurally and functionally, throughout a person’s lifetime. There are many benefits to neuroplasticity. It allows the brain to adapt and change based on its experiences, which helps promote:
· The ability to learn new things · The ability to enhance existing cognitive capabilities · Recovery from strokes and traumatic brain injuries · Strengthening certain areas of the brain that have lost function · Recovery from limbic system impairments, commonly resulting in fibromyalgia, CFS/ME, and depression.

How does neuroplasticity work?

When we experience new things, whether it’s learning a new task at work or how to drive a car, our brain creates new connections between neurons, allowing us to remember how to do a certain task. The repetition of every action, emotion, or thought reinforces a particular neural pathway in our brain. The more the actions, emotions, and thoughts are repeated, the more deeply these neural pathways become ingrained in the circuitry of our brains. That’s why the more you practice something, be it playing the guitar or speaking Spanish, the better you get at it.
Neurons that are used frequently develop stronger connections, whereas those that are rarely or never used will eventually be eliminated. This process is known as synaptic pruning. By developing new connections and pruning away weak ones, the brain is able to continuously adapt to its changing environment.
This is really exciting information, as it means that we can actually train our brain to let go of unfavorable neural pathways, replacing them with beneficial neural pathways.

How does neuroplasticity relate limbic system impairments?

Neuroplasticity has both a positive and negative side. Limbic system impairments are an example of the negative side of neuroplasticity. Changes in the limbic system, the part of the brain that drives your primal fight/flight/freeze response, can lead to a wide variety of negative symptoms and conditions, such as depression, anxiety, OCD, sensitivities, chronic pain, and chronic fatigue syndrome, just to name a few.
It’s important to understand, however, that if you’re suffering from a limbic system impairment, it’s not your fault. Limbic system impairments occur unconsciously as the result of trauma and chronic stress. When we say trauma, we don’t mean physical trauma to the brain, but rather any experience that your brain deems life-threatening, such as a car accident, an intense emotional event, or contracting a serious virus.
In many cases, limbic system impairments arise when someone experiences a traumatic event while their chronic stress load is already high. For instance, someone who gets in a car accident or contracts a virus while going through a divorce has a higher risk of developing a limbic system impairment.
The combination of stressors essentially overwhelms the brain, causing it to go into an extreme survival mode in which it’s hypersensitive and hyper-reactive. When impaired in this way, the limbic system continuously sends out alarm signals that stimulate the nervous system and immune system as if a threat is present, even though there is no threat or it’s long gone.
These faulty neural pathways ultimately become conditioned, meaning they get stuck in an unconscious loop that perpetuates itself. This continuous stimulation of the nervous system and the immune system keeps the brain and body locked in an unconscious defense cycle, opening the door to ongoing inflammation in the body and a number of different symptoms and sensitivities.
As we mentioned earlier, neuroplasticity, thankfully, has a positive side as well. The positive side helps you learn new things and can even undo the faulty wiring in your brain that’s perpetuating your symptoms and conditions. Negative changes may have occurred in your brain, but remember, neuroplasticity goes two ways. This means these changes can be undone, allowing you to reclaim your peace, happiness, and health. Your brain is not stuck—it simply needs some retraining to teach it that threats are no longer present and it can let its guard down. That’s where re-origin comes in, a science-backed neuroplasticity-based treatment program that can teach you how to eliminate the dysfunctional neural pathways that are perpetuating your chronic health conditions. As you’ll learn through our program, there are certain factors that can increase neuroplasticity, including repetition, strong emotions, language, imagery, and other specific neurocognitive exercises.
While neuroplasticity is something that happens on a day-to-day basis beyond our conscious awareness, it is also something that we can actively influence and encourage. Through re-origin, you’ll learn to apply an easy-to-follow, five-step neurocognitive technique to directly retrain the unconscious nervous and immune system responses that are at the root of your symptoms. re-origin’s approach does not chase or mask symptoms, but rather works to rewire the part of the brain that’s causing the dysfunction (the limbic system), resulting in long-lasting recovery. The program is easy to follow, self-directed, cost-effective, and takes just minutes a day to implement. Plus, re-origin offers access to a community and coaching specifically geared towards helping people retrain their own brains and return to feeling like themselves. Our program is based on decades of research and development and aims to put an end to your suffering once and for all.

Frequently asked questions

Neuroplasticity is a real, scientific term that refers to the brain’s ability to change and adapt as a result of experience. It’s not conjecture—it’s fact!

The five principles of neuroplasticity, which are factors identified as especially important in facilitating neuroplastic changes in the brain, include:

  1. Use it or lose it. Failure to use specific neural pathways can lead to a loss of abilities. Conversely, training that consistently stimulates specific neural pathways can lead to improved abilities. That’s why it’s important to stay consistent and persistent in your brain retraining efforts.
    Specificity. The nature of the training experience dictates the nature of the changes in the brain. That’s why re-origin has created a simple five-step neurocognitive technique that is easy to learn and apply.
    Repetition matters. Changes in the brain require sufficient repetition. You’ll quickly learn that through re-origin!
    Time matters. Changes don’t occur overnight. Sufficient time must be allowed for changes to occur. In the re-origin program, we encourage you to give it at least six months.
    Salience matters. The training experience must be meaningful to the person in order to cause change. In other words, it’s important to really understand and feel what you’re saying and doing, rather than just going through the motions.

The short answer is, yes! Neurologically speaking, depression is the result of neuroplastic changes in the limbic system and structures related to the limbic system. These changes can occur when someone experiences chronic mental and/or physical stress over the course of weeks, months, or years. The constant stream of stress, worry, fear, and despair essentially overwhelms the brain, changing its circuitry and depleting levels of feel-good neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine.

The good news is that depression is temporary and can be reversed using the principles of neuroplasticity—and re-origin is here to show you the way.

By consistently applying the neuroplasticity-based exercises taught in re-origin, you’ll be correcting the dysfunctional part of the brain, thereby restoring normal limbic system function. While it may not seem like anything is happening at first, changes are occurring on a neurological level outside of your awareness. Over time, these changes will start to reflect outwardly in a reduction of your symptoms. They’ll keep lessening and lessening until one day you’ll realize you’re free from the conditions that have debilitated you for so long.

Imagine a car driving over a field. It drives the same way every day. As such, deep tire grooves appear in the grass and dirt that the car drives over each day. With neuroplasticity training, you choose to start driving down a new path, instead of the well-worn path you were driving on before. It may take some effort initially to carve out a new road in the field, but as you continue driving the same new path each day, the grooves will become deeper and deeper, allowing for an effortless ride.

The same thing happens when it comes to rewiring your brain using neuroplasticity. The original path the car took represents your current neural pathways that are creating your negative symptoms. To rid yourself of these symptoms, you need to start driving down a new path. With practice and repetition, your brain will naturally start driving down the new road. Soon enough, the old road will become overgrown and fade away into nothing, just like your faulty neural pathways.

A final word from re-origin

Believe it or not, you have these conditions and symptoms because your brain is trying to protect you. It’s triggering and re-triggering defense responses because it thinks that you’re constantly in danger. Your brain is actually trying to help you—it’s just overwhelmed and confused. You may be thinking, “How could my brain get so confused?” Limbic system impairments are largely disorders of modern living. Never before have humans been exposed to so many stressors. As such, our brains are much more vulnerable to becoming overwhelmed and, consequently, going a little haywire.
Thankfully, you can use the principles of neuroplasticity to interrupt the overactive threat detection and response mechanism in your limbic system that’s causing your suffering. With our proprietary neurocognitive exercises, you’ll essentially be communicating to your brain, “We’re safe. There’s no danger here. You can let go and relax now,” in a language it understands. With persistence, patience, dedication, and time, you can change your neural pathways and step into a life free from symptoms and full of happiness and well-being.

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