Neuroplasticity

Also known as: brain plasticity, synaptic plasticity, neural plasticity

In one sentenceNeuroplasticity is the brain's capacity to change synapses and connections with experience, the cellular basis of learning and memory.

Hebb’s rule

In 1949 Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb proposed that when one neuron repeatedly helps to fire another, the connection between them grows stronger. The idea is often summarized as “neurons that fire together wire together.”

Discovering long-term potentiation

Experiments in 1973 backed Hebb’s idea. Tim Bliss and Terje Lømo found that brief, strong stimulation of a pathway in the rabbit hippocampus left synaptic responses to the same stimulus enlarged for hours. This long-term potentiation (LTP) is widely studied as a cellular model of learning and memory.

Brain structure changes too

• In a 2000 study, London taxi drivers had a larger rear hippocampus than other people, and the difference grew with years on the job.
• In a 2004 study, people who practiced juggling for three months gained gray matter in areas that process motion, which shrank back after they stopped.

A common misconception

Neuroplasticity does not mean the brain can change in any direction at will. When researchers reviewed the evidence for brain-training programs in 2016, they found that people improved at the trained tasks but that evidence for broad gains in everyday thinking was lacking. Plasticity tends to follow closely what is practiced.