The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity—A Transformative Guide to Understanding Childhood Trauma and Health

by Nadine Burke Harris

There are two types of neuroplasticity, cellular and synaptic. Synaptic plasticity is a change in the strength of the connection across the junction from one brain cell to the next (the synapse). It’s kind of like changing your voice from a whisper to a shout. Cellular plasticity, however, is a change in the number of brain cells that are talking to each other, the difference between one person shouting and a whole stadium shouting. While synaptic plasticity is lifelong (it’s how an old dog learns new tricks), cellular plasticity happens most rapidly in the first years of life. About 90 percent occurs by the time a child turns six, but the rest of it stretches out until about age twenty-five.