Abstract
The view that a person is born with specific biological potential determining his/her cognitive abilities that s/he can lose but cannot develop was challenged long time ago. Contemporary studies clearly and indisputably show that the brain changes and is formed throughout life; synaptic connections of neural networks are functionally and structurally reorganized until advanced old age, being determined both by genetic and environmental factors, which enables acquisition of new skills. The plasticity of the brain is universal, which means that even in cases of damage to the brain tissue, repair processes are activated naturally, involving all levels in the structure and function of the central nervous system (molecular, synaptic, metabolic, morphological, physiological, functional, and macrostructural), thereby affecting human cognitive abilities and behaviors. The formation of right circuits by means of axons, dendrites, synapses and chemical transmitters is an extremely complex process determined – like neurodegeneration – by information encoded in the DNA. Genetic matrices may, however, be characteristically modified in connection with a person’s individual activity.