Paper Review #1: Experts bodies, experts minds: How physical and mental training shape the brain

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976342100261X

This paper discusses the brain’s structural changes that result from expertise in a given skill domain. Moreover, it touches on the impact of motor imagery on these structures, suggesting that sustained attention through meditation can alter cortico-cortical and cortical-subcortical coherence. The differences between structural and functional plasticity are discussed, with the former involving changes in gray and white matter and the latter shifts in activation patterns. The data suggest that there are both functional and structural changes in plasticity that occur as a result of expertise in a particular motor skill. The paper covers multimodal imaging capabilities, including DTI (diffusion tensor imaging) and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). In particular, the paper focuses on the M1 (Motor cortex), pre-motor cortex, basal ganglia, cingulate cortex, striatum, parietal lobe, pre-frontal cortex, frontal cortex, precuneus (imagery, perspective-taking), occipital areas (visual simulation), SMA / pre-SMA (automaticity vs conscious sequencing), parahippocampal gyrus (contextual memory), cerebellum (fine-tuning, error correction). The paper highlights the relationship between attention-driven motor-simulation and functional plasticity. The essay's conclusion concerns the structural changes that result from the brain’s sustained attention to activities, whether motor movements, motor imagery, or focused meditation. Moreover, the conclusion emphasizes the importance of a conjoint analysis, taking into account different imaging techniques to evaluate both structural and functional plasticity. The most important takeaway I have found from the paper concerns the ability of motor imagery (visualization of a behavior) to affect brain structure nearly as much as actual motor movement.

For future direction, it is of critical interest to further investigate the meaning of attention-induced structural and functional changes in brain physiology. To what extent is the brain able to modify itself in response to process-specific learning? In comparison to task-specific learning, which affects smaller parts of the brain responsible for engaging in whatever activity is at hand.