Environment and Brain Plasticity: Towards an Endogenous Pharmacotherapy

Systematic review documenting the cellular and molecular mechanisms through which the environment influences brain plasticity in adulthood. The central hypothesis is that environmental enrichment—understood as a combination of sensory, cognitive, motor, and social stimulation—can act as an "endogenous pharmacotherapy," inducing synaptic and functional changes comparable to pharmacological interventions.

Results

The work demonstrates that the adult brain retains considerable plastic capacity, driven by experience and repetition. Sensory enrichment promotes neurogenesis, synaptic plasticity, and functional reorganization of cortical maps, with clinical applications in post-lesion rehabilitation, neurodegenerative diseases, and visual deficits.

A key principle emerges with force: plasticity requires intensity, repetition, and, above all, active involvement of the patient. The brain does not change simply because it is stimulated: it changes because it is engaged.

It constitutes the second neuroscientific foundation on which the AvDesk method is based, which systematically integrates these principles into its personalized, repeated multisensory rehabilitation methodology, adapted daily to the patient's progress.