Neurobiology of Brain Plasticity and Pattern Recognition – Prof Gordon Parker

Professor Gordon Parker AO is Scientia Professor of Psychiatry, UNSW, was Founder of the Black Dog Institute and its initial Executive Director, Head of the School of Psychiatry at UNSW and Director of the Division of Psychiatry at Prince of Wales Hospital.

In 2018 he received the prestigious James Cook Medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales, and was recipient of the 2020 Australian Mental Health Prize.  His research has focussed on the mood disorders. He has published 23 books and over 1,000 scientific reports.

Even thoughts can change the structure and function of the brain.

–Doidge

Prof. Gordon Parker covers the neurobiological underpinnings of brain plasticity and talks about how our brain functions as a computer processing information allowing us to recognise patterns that we then use in clinical practice.

Key Messages

The London Taxi Driver Study is a wonderful example of the ‘neuroplastic brain’. Structural MRIs of the brains of licensed London taxi drivers, were analyzed and compared with those of control subjects who did not drive taxis. The study found that the posterior hippocampi of taxi drivers were significantly larger relative to those of control subjects.

How might our brains process patterns?

Our brains work like computers and have computational models approximating those of Bayesian probability.

Humans have a capacity store of 300 million pattern processors, each composed of 3 parts – input, pattern recognition, and output – all involving axons and dendrites.

How is it relevant for Clinical Reasoning?

• Clinical reasoning, therefore, consists of iteration between discipline-based information (‘the evidence’) plus observational analysis
• Pattern analysis is advanced and recalibrated by progressive clinical encounters and less by evidence
• It needs thousands of hours of practice and refinement to hone

What are the implications?