the.com/plasticity
The brain's refusal to be a finished product.
means The capacity of a material or system to be shaped by force or experience and then hold that new shape.
from Traces back to Greek 'plastikos' — 'fit for molding' — itself from 'plassein,' to mold or form, the same root that gives us 'plaster' and 'plastic.' The word lived for centuries describing clay, wax, and sculpture before 20th-century neuroscience borrowed it to describe something no one expected to be moldable at all: the adult brain itself.
- peak window
- highest in childhood, never fully closes
- london cabbies
- grew larger hippocampi memorizing streets
- double edge
- same trait that heals also hardens addiction
- use it or lose it
- unused neural paths literally get pruned