Tim, the medical dogma that the adult brain is a fixed, immutable object is one of the most damaging scientific failures of the last century. Neuroplasticity is not some abstract motivational concept; it is the literal, physical restructuring of neural tissue in response to targeted friction. Barbara didn't just adopt a new mindset; she forced her biology to lay down new architecture where the old pathways had failed. Distilling that raw biological reality down to a usable tool is vital work.
Tim, we have to stop selling neuroplasticity as magic and start explaining it as mechanics. People need to understand that rewiring the brain is exactly like building muscle - it requires heavy, targeted reps and actual biological friction, not just positive thinking. Once they see it as a structural blueprint rather than self-help rhetoric, they will finally put in the work.
This is at least closer to reality than calling neuroplasticity “magic,” but it’s still being oversold.
It’s not “exactly like building muscle,” and calling it a “structural blueprint” makes it sound like people have far more control than they actually do. Most neuroplastic change is incremental adjustment of existing circuits, not open-ended redesign.
Repetition matters, yes—but so do attention, feedback, and correct execution. You can just as easily reinforce the wrong patterns if those aren’t in place.
The recurring problem in this thread is the same: a real biological process gets stretched into something it isn’t. Neuroplasticity allows adaptation within limits. It does not turn the brain into a fully programmable system.
If people are going to “put in the work,” they should at least be given an accurate description of what that work actually does.
I believe this post from Tim captured exactly the point your comment / response is trying to convey.
Thanks Tim it was an amazing read an super easy to understand. I found myself realising this had already been done by me which I just spoke of recently.
I always struggled to read, remember what I read, and follow a story by reading it in a book.
I persisted and consistently tried to read regardless of how many times I shad to reread the last page I left off at etc.
now I can follow an entire book series and keep picking up in a story where I left off without having to re-read.
Coincidentally I tried to explain this the other day to my Partner who said they could not read books because of the same problem I faced.
I really liked reading your experience because it shows the idea in such a practical way. The fact that you kept reading even when you had to reread pages eventually made something that once felt difficult become much easier. It’s interesting how consistent effort can slowly change what feels natural to us.
Olivia, some recovery is possible, but the degree depends heavily on injury severity, location, and time since onset, since hypoxic injury tends to cause diffuse damage rather than a single lesion the brain can route around. Neuroplasticity responds best to consistent, graded, task specific practice rather than passive stimulation, and gains are typically slower and more partial than with focal stroke recovery. Anyone with persisting nerve function deficits should work with a neurologist experienced in hypoxic injury to set realistic targets and a structured rehabilitation plan.
I’m currently going through this process. I’ve been educating myself more on neuroplasticity. I spent years on medicine due to a faulty diagnosis in my early 20s. I decided ”no more” once I realized the new meds were not netting the right results. No more psych meds. From my experience, it feels like heavy lifting and true physical work. It is very tiring . However, 5 months later I’ve seen such a great improvement and so have family and friends and even my doctor. I don’t encourage it to people but I do educate them on my ongoing experience. I know going med free and taking this type of control is not for everyone. I view life completely different in such a more hopeful and positive way(grounded in reality) and the work is still ongoing in some areas with the assistance of therapy. It’s truly miraculous. I wish I could go into greater detail.
Rose, comparing that process to heavy physical lifting is the most accurate description possible. Psychiatric medications often just chemically blunt the baseline, whereas forcing your nervous system to lay down new pathways requires immense, exhausting metabolic friction. Reclaiming your own cognitive architecture after a decade of misdiagnosis takes a brutal amount of grit. Keep putting in the reps; the fact that others see the shift proves the new foundation is holding.
Having the support of meds to do the heavy lifting in therapy is invaluable, at least for a while. Without it the work is too taxing and mostly likely impossible for struggling individuals in crisis. Meds save lives, let’s not underplay that.
I would encourage active therapy along the way . DBT helped me tremendously get to where I am today . I am still la work in process but on. A much smaller scale. I feel like I can decipher easily between good stress & bad stress and make good judgements on how to proceed . I went from weekly therapy to every 2-3 weeks . I’m in a transitional period so my goal is once a month to one or twice every 3 months . I wish your son the very best . The human mind is very powerful and we just need to learn how to harness it much better
You’re right that the adult brain isn’t fixed and that experience can produce physical changes in neural connections. That part is well established.
Where I think this goes too far is in how those changes are characterized. Most neuroplasticity involves strengthening or weakening existing connections, not building entirely new “architecture” in the way your wording suggests. The distinction matters because it sets realistic expectations for what change looks like.
The Barbara Arrowsmith example is also interpreted very strongly. Improvement through intensive practice doesn’t necessarily demonstrate that someone created new brain systems where none existed—it can reflect compensation and gradual functional adaptation.
I agree that making complex science accessible is useful. But there’s a difference between simplifying and amplifying. When neuroplasticity is framed as a kind of open-ended biological rewrite mechanism, it risks overstating what the evidence actually supports.
A more precise version would still be powerful: the brain can change significantly through repeated, focused effort—but within real biological constraints.
Marvin, you are right to pull the reins on the hyperbole. Neuroplasticity operates within strict physiological limits, focusing on the remodeling of existing networks rather than growing entirely new architecture. But the muscle metaphor holds up precisely because of the constraints you mentioned - mindless reps simply reinforce bad form, and true adaptation requires specific, intense friction. It is not an open-ended rewrite, but it remains a biological lever most people don't realize they can actively pull.
Brain training can help a little, but not in the way people hope. It might improve memory or focus on the exercises you’re doing, but that doesn’t really carry over much to preventing dementia.
With multi-infarct dementia specifically, the issue is damage from small strokes and blood vessel problems in the brain. So the biggest factors aren’t mental exercises—they’re things like blood pressure, circulation, blood sugar, and overall heart health.
There is some limited evidence that certain types of brain training might help slow decline a bit, but it’s not strong enough to rely on, and most “brain games” don’t make a meaningful difference long-term.
Where it does help is keeping the mind active and engaged, which is still a good thing but it’s more of a support, not a solution.
If someone is really trying to delay that kind of dementia, the focus should be much more on physical health! Especially anything that reduces stroke risk.
This is about the best thing I’ve read on Substack, or anywhere else for that matter. I say that because I’ve had recent experience that its true.
I am 73 years old and Canadian. English is my first language, but Canada has two official languages so I had French classes in high school. Does that mean I speak and understand French? No, it does not (although I did learn some awesome swearing over the years, just not in class.)
When you get to be my age you have probably had close contact with dementia—first my mother, then my husband. Witnessing its progression terrified me. I read that “exercising” your brain helped to fend off the development of dementia, so I started to experiment with puzzles and games. One of my favourite games became Codewords—a game much like a crossword, but without clues. If you’ve never heard of it, it seems impossible. You get a crossword-type grid with numbered squares. Each number corresponds with a single letter, and you are given two or three number/letter pairs to start with, so you go through the grid and put those letters in place. After that, you’re on your own. If you do enough of these you learn things about English words you hadn’t consciously realized. For example, many people know that the most common letter in English is “e,” but did you know that it occurs as the penultimate (second-to-last) letter in many words? Scanning the grid, it becomes obvious that the same number appears second-to-last a ton of times. That gives you “e” and it fills in more squares than any other letter. Another hint is that “a” seems to occur most often as the second or third letter in a word; “s,” “d,” and “y” show up as last letters, and “s” is frequently doubled. Also “s” and “t” occur in tandem a lot, in either order. Rare, single-use letters? Q, z, k, f… you get the picture. Enough.
I also became fixated on logic puzzles and conundrums that required outside-the-box or lateral thinking. (Obssessed? Well, yeah. I spent more than a week on the most twisted conundrum ever. It’s so hard, and so good, that it’s almost impossible to get another person to understand the solution, even when you patiently explain it step-by-step. I call it, “Blue dot, white dot.”) I had access to these and other riddles through my smartphone. Of course, I unintentionally developed an addiction which led to the ubiquitous loss of focus that so many experience these days. Eventually I was spending the majority of my time playing games on my phone. Maybe it would keep dementia at bay, but I can’t say it’s preferable as a lifestyle choice.
What was I saying? Oh, yeah. French. I read that another road to brain health was learning a second language, but I had already failed at French, so I decided on Spanish, which, for some reason seemed easier. Over the years I bought textbooks and listened to recordings and repeated phrases, but it just didn’t stick. Then I read a great article (can’t remember where or who) on the best way to learn. Anything. The basis of it was just what Tim talks about, repetition, with the addition of specifically timing those repetitions for optimal retention. The author mentioned some examples and the one I latched onto was an app called Duolingo. It taught Spanish, among other things, so I gave it a try, and I loved it! I had no difficulty doing lessons every day, and the first month or so flew by. Tim mentions how automaticity begins in week four? That’s when I started answering in Spanish without translating words from English first. Winging it. I never got to that stage after years of French instruction.
I don’t need to understand the limits of neurobiology to know when something works, and this does. Thanks, Tim.
Ive been thinking about this since you posted.What strikes me most in your comment was the moment you described answering in Spanish without first translating from English. That is a very different cognitive process from memorizing vocabulary lists. It suggests your brain was beginning to recognize and predict patterns automatically rather than consciously decoding them step-by-step.
Interestingly, that lines up with what researchers call “cognitive reserve.” The idea is not necessarily that puzzles or languages prevent dementia outright, but that challenging and adaptive mental activity may help the brain build more flexible pathways and compensatory networks over time.
Your Codewords example was also fascinating because you independently discovered statistical structures in language like “e” appearing as the penultimate letter and “s” clustering at endings...without formally studying linguistics! That kind of pattern extraction is exactly the sort of active processing many neuroscientists think matters more than passive consumption.
One cautionary part of your comment was important too: mentally stimulating activities can slowly drift into compulsive phone use if they stop being deliberate and become constant dopamine loops. That distinction probably deserves more discussion than it gets.
Thank you for that. I’ve noticed a couple of times when I’ve spoken spontaneously in Spanish, and it has left me wondering how much Spanish I may have picked up unintentionally over the years. For example, I got stuck in a verbal exercise and said with no thought, “Lo siento. No entiendo,” which I think means I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I didn’t learn any of that in class, but the other speaker seemed to understand it. (Hah! The other possibility is that I’m reincarnated from a Spanish speaker!😆)
I should maybe mention that the other impetus for this was that I had a subarachnoid hemorrhage in 2002 and was convinced my intellect took a nose dive. Apparently not.
Now that I have discovered Substack I’m finding it much easier to stay away from mindlessly scrolling YouTube anyway.
Mixed blessing! Since I found Substack I have endless chores piling up, grass is a foot tall, and three hours less sleep a night lol. You just brought to mind something I mentioned to my wife several weeks ago. It seems as I age---this is happening more: Random memories popping up that I had not thought of in decades. Suddenly using certain words that I glancingly learned but have not used at all. Must be something to this--gad--another thing to study. Love your name, by the way.
Thank you for saying this. 4 years ago, my uncle suffered a major brain bleed + the doctors’ prognosis: “permanently vegetative at best”. It was a really epic journey, but we never gave up. After over a year of being bed ridden, we began physiotherapy and today, he can walk (with support) again.
Most of my caregiving lately has been in the night time, and there were so many times where i watched him “forget” how to breathe (he had a tracheostomy inserted) because the body has stopped doing it for himself, but I’ve also had times when he wakes up in the middle of the night and speaks normally, vocalising as if there was not a tube stuck in his throat.
Because of his stroke, i started researching into Neuroplasticity and while his doctors (neurologists included) say this is not “medically proven”, hope (possibly some delusions) kept us going, and here we are today.
Thank you for the article Tim, you’re right - more people need to understand this.
Does it really matter that neuroplasticity is a fact if most people cannot achieve the dramatic changes that are suggested in the clip though? The ability to become a billionaire is also a fact, but we don't expect everyone to achieve this. And further, we don't judge them and remove them from our lives if they fail to achieve that - unlike how we might treat someone with NPD who is unable to change their ways.
I think the important distinction is between “the brain can change” and “the brain can change without meaningful limits.” Those are not the same claim, and a lot of popular neuroplasticity discussions blur them together.
Neuroplasticity is absolutely real. The brain rewires constantly through learning, repetition, injury recovery, habit formation, therapy, environmental exposure, and reinforcement. That part is not controversial.
But the existence of plasticity does not mean every person can completely override temperament, developmental wiring, trauma history, cognitive limitations, psychiatric structure, genetics, or deeply reinforced behavioral patterns. Human brains are plastic, not infinitely plastic.
I think your billionaire analogy is actually useful here. The existence of a capacity within a species does not imply equal attainability across individuals. Humans can become Olympic athletes too, but most never will regardless of effort.
Where the conversation gets emotionally charged is with disorders like Narcissistic Personality Disorder. People sometimes hear “the brain can change” and convert that into a moral expectation that someone should be able to substantially transform themselves if they simply try hard enough. Reality is harsher than that.
Some individuals with entrenched personality structures can improve certain behaviors, coping strategies, insight, impulse control, or interpersonal functioning. But dramatic personality reconstruction is uncommon, especially if the person lacks sustained self-awareness, motivation, or long-term treatment engagement.
And there’s another truth underneath this: society often evaluates people less by their internal effort than by the external consequences of their behavior. If someone repeatedly harms others, many people will distance themselves regardless of whether change is theoretically possible. That’s not really a neuroscience claim—it’s a social survival mechanism.
So I’d say neuroplasticity matters enormously in medicine, rehabilitation, learning, therapy, and recovery. But treating it as proof that nearly anyone can become nearly anything creates unrealistic expectations and eventually turns into blame when reality doesn’t match the promise.
I think there are actually two different questions here that often get merged together.
One is whether neuroplasticity exists at all. It clearly does. The brain changes structurally and functionally through repetition, learning, injury, therapy, stress, habit, and experience.
The second question is whether that means everyone can achieve large-scale personality or behavioral transformation. That’s much less certain. Our capacity for change appears highly variable and constrained by genetics, development, trauma history, reinforcement patterns, psychiatric conditions, environment, and age.
I agree with the broader point that “plasticity exists” should not automatically become “everyone can change dramatically if they just try hard enough.” That step is probably where a lot of frustration and moral judgment enter the discussion.
The NPD point is probably the hardest part philosophically: if a person’s capacity for change is genuinely limited, how much blame should society assign to them versus how much responsibility should still be expected from them? Neuroscience doesn’t fully answer that yet. Taht alone is a new can of worms.
Stumbling upon this article and thread discussion late, but I'm curious how this concept has evolved and will continue to evolve within the context of social media and dwindling attention spans. How can we communicate neuroplasticity and the importance of "building reps" in an ever growing population that can only focus for 30-60 seconds at a time?
This is such an interesting question. I think the challenge is that we are constantly training our attention in very short bursts, so rebuilding the ability to stay with something longer probably also requires small, repeated practice. Even starting with a few minutes of focused reading or learning each day could be a step in the right direction.
I trained as a scientist but knowing the science didn't help me. Most of the time people know that some habits aren't good for them but they keep doing them. Feelings, limiting beliefs and trauma often get in the way. Interested in your thoughts on this?
I think this is such an important point. Knowing that a habit is bad for us doesn’t always make it easy to change, because feelings and emotional patterns can be much stronger than knowledge. Sometimes we understand what we should do but still need time and repeated small actions before our behaviour catches up with what we know.
“The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life”
Thanks Tim, but my question here is if I have trained my brain to give up or have a flight response at the sight of difficulty or conflict or how do I then correct this. As you said I will need to bear down the actions and keep doing them consistently to make the changes happen. But how do I solve for or win over the urge to give up or the tiny voice which ultimately says , all this doesn't matter at all…
I have been trying to succeed in a corporate setup post my MBA for 7 years now and every 2 years I undo all the efforts and quit and join another role another organisation .. But finally after realizing that maybe that isn't for me i have quit and now trying to take actions for a life I want… this really helped Tim, thank you
Your piece on neuroplasticity gets one important thing right: repeated behavior changes the brain. That’s well established.
Where it becomes misleading is the jump from that fact to claims like “you can achieve any goal” or that neuroplasticity is “the solution to every problem.” That’s not what the science supports.
Neuroplasticity is real, but it’s constrained by biology—genetics, existing brain structure, time, and environmental limits. It enables adaptation, not unlimited transformation.
The Barbara Arrowsmith example is also presented as if it proves people can “build missing parts of the brain,” which is a much stronger claim than the evidence supports. Improvement through intensive practice isn’t the same as creating new brain regions.
The article also dismisses goals entirely, which is an oversimplification. Goals influence attention and behavior; they’re not irrelevant, they’re just insufficient without action.
So the core message—repeat useful behaviors—is solid. But wrapping it in absolute claims risks giving people a distorted understanding of what’s actually possible.
If the argument were framed more precisely—neuroplasticity enables change within limits—it would be both accurate and just as useful, without overstating what the brain can do.
Now this is what I want to read on substack. Loved it. Really got me thinking wtf I'm doing distracting myself constantly with my phone. Time to rewire my damn brain.
The instinct you’re having...realizing how much your attention is getting pulled around is the part that actually matters.
I’d just refine the “rewire my brain” idea a bit. What you’re really doing isn’t a full reset. It’s training patterns. The brain changes, but based on what you repeatedly do, not just what you decide.
With phone use, the issue is constant stimulation. Your attention gets used to quick hits of novelty, so deeper focus starts to feel harder.
The fix is structural:
reduce how often you’re triggered (notifications, easy access)
replace the habit with something that still feels rewarding
give it enough repetition for the new pattern to stick
If you do that, your focus will improve. Not because you flipped a switch, but because you changed what your brain is being trained to do.
That’s still powerful....t’s just more grounded than the “become anything” version.
Hi Marvin, your reply means a ton. And I've taken your advice into consideration. You're right I need to give time into training a pattern that will eventually stick, since it is quite difficult to rid myself completely of this constant stimulation. My focus has been improving and I've found myself being less impulsed to use my phone. Haven't completely 'rewired my brain' of course lol, but I'm getting somewhere.
I really liked reading this because it shows how change can happen gradually rather than all at once. Noticing that you’re reaching for your phone less often is already a meaningful change. Sometimes we expect a dramatic transformation, when small improvements repeated over time are actually what make the difference.
The problem with this approach to understanding neuroplasticity is that as a society and as individuals, we don’t actually know what it is we want, what will make us happier. We have tried to figure it out, and we have brought our species to the brink of extinction.
I was one of the people who was very ‘successful’. I was self employed in what I believed was my dream career, wrote what became a popular blog about it, had a relationship that seemed perfect, went on a couple of amazing vacations every year, lived in a home with a view of the ocean, had a lot of friends, a lifelong hobby that required discipline, worked out seven days a week and ate a very healthy diet. And here was the kicker - I was living my dream and completely miserable, but now this identity that I worked so hard to rewire my brain for, it was a cage that I didn’t know how to get out of, because how do you admit that the life people are telling you they want, is actually not fun at all, not meaningful or impactful in the ways you expected and now the people you are surrounded by, they expect this level of perfection from you all the time? Severe chronic illness caused me to have to watch that life crash to the ground, but on the other side there was so much freedom.
If I did all that through force, what could I accomplish instead through ease and flow? Since following logic led me completely astray, could I follow my intuition instead? What did 12 year old me dream of doing?
So I no longer have an identity I cling to, I haven’t had a job in four years, yet I have explored and experimented and done some of the most amazing work of my life. Changed my entire way of being and showing up in the world and learned to share freely and receive openly (and experience for more abundance than I ever did as an entrepreneur). I am no longer useful, I am valued by amazing people who I have had the opportunity to co-create magic with on projects that light me up, for as long as they interest me, in ways that I want to contribute.
And what I realize is that the reason so many people are struggling to move forward is because as a society we have walked to the edge of a cliff by forcing ourselves to be more, do more, become ‘better’ even though it leads to our own demise.
We have power to change our brains, absolutely, but we also need to start asking why so many people are this stuck. This is purely a reflection of the fact that on a deep level many know that what we are doing isn’t working and to require ourselves to fit a false narrative does no one any favours.
I am very, very lucky that all my very serious symptoms have healed, but if I were to try to return to a full time job, to rigid discipline, to sticking to a path until I reach my goal instead of being flexible and pivoting, I would long be on disability by now.
I’ve personally witnessed mind over matter specifically in life threatening circumstances of cancer and I’ve seen how a strong belief can physically change your body.
I also see how as a society, there are multiple levels of influence that limit the human brain from accepting factual information and amygdala hijacking is just one of root causes for this. It dismisses the epigenics nature, social hierarchy and familiarity culture. Pull back the lens… and ask more questions. Sending love and kindness 💕✨
Personally, the strong belief in mind over matter ended up causing me many health issues - including autoimmune symptoms and early menopause symptoms that began at 31. It was actually doing the very opposite - listening to my body and my intuition that reversed every symptom and changed my life in ways that my brain never could have imagined. The life I have now, is nothing like I believed I wanted, but only because the life I’m living is largely believed to not be possible - I haven’t had a job in four years, yet I have done the most valuable and exciting work of my life while experiencing abundance I didn’t know existed while splitting my time between my two favourite places in the world where I have truly beautiful communities and get to explore all my passions.
The only problem with your „prescription“ is: Brute-forcing repetition (aka obsession, discipline, willpower) is precisely the reason why no one makes it happen. Behavior sits before conscious thought (automated patterns based on prediction the brain makes), so you force yourself the first one or two repetitions and then continue to be the lazy f*ck you are (to stay in Mark‘s lingo :). You need to take measures that reach the subconscious and overwrite these established programs. This stuff is simple in theory not easy to implement (conscious awareness, journaling, somatic experiencing, micro-contracting actions, …).
I love her and her quiet “F U.” I love that she didn’t argue with them, she just went home and got to work. That’s what it actually looks like when a person takes themselves back. No announcement or permission, just hours in front of a clock, rebuilding.
Nobody’s coming to do it for you. Barbara knew, I knew and anyone reading this who just felt something land — you know too.
The fatal flaw in this hyper-optimistic vision of neuroplasticity is a brutal cognitive paradox: to reprogram a faulty brain, you require an "auditor" capable of identifying the glitches in the code. You must first become exceptionally wise and possess a total awareness of every flaw within your neural pathways—acquired through years of experience—simply to realize that you need to change. However, the moment you reach this level of insight, the change has already occurred. Your cognitive structure has already evolved to grasp it. Therefore, the "reprogramming" becomes redundant; self-awareness was the breakthrough itself.
The fool does not know he is a fool, so he will never attempt to fix himself. The wise man already knows, so he has no need for instructions. Only rigorous science and profound self-awareness allow for the possibility of "open-brain surgery" through conscious intervention. Yet, this is a path reserved for systems that might one day—though it is fundamentally against their own interests—prioritize general education at an exceptionally high level from childhood. For politicians, however, this would be suicide. No system has an interest in fostering a society capable of deconstructing its own software. Neuroplasticity will remain nothing more than a trendy buzzword, while real power over the neural pathways of the masses stays in the hands of those who write the codes, rather than those forced to carry them.
I think this assumes that self-awareness must exist before change can occur. The evidence from neuroscience suggests the opposite: awareness itself often develops through repeated plastic changes. People don't suddenly become fully wise and then rewire their brains. Rather, small experiences, external feedback, therapy, education, meditation, and deliberate practice gradually reshape neural networks, which in turn produce greater insight. There is no requirement for a fully informed "auditor" at the outset. The auditor is often distributed across our interactions with the world, and it becomes more accurate as learning progresses.
Provided that we assume that everyone, literally everyone, has the same capacity for learning and data processing. That they are a blank slate. However, we know from life experience that people have varying abilities to adapt knowledge. You cannot base serious claims on a small social group. It is like recommending back exercises to all people, operating on the assumption that everyone is an office worker...
I don't think we're disagreeing. I wasn't arguing that everyone has the same capacity for learning or that people are blank slates. Plasticity clearly varies among individuals because of genetics, development, age, disease, and many other factors. My point was simply that the initial "auditor" doesn't need to be fully formed before change can begin. Even limited self-awareness, combined with external feedback and repeated experience, can gradually improve the brain's own capacity for insight. Differences in learning ability affect the rate and extent of that process, not its basic existence.
I am very sorry, but feedback is an internal process that is becoming better understood. I do not think that naming external factors based on sensory perception is accurate.
I also believe, following your line of reasoning, that neuroplasticity is possible for everyone. The article I commented on offered advice on how to become that one percent who have the most... that is nonsense.
When I look around at all of the things I've wanted to do or learn in my life of 55 years they all share one commonality: they are hard.
Learn guitar, writing, swimming, coding, etc. etc.
You article has opened my eyes wide. I've been aware of neuroplasticity for some time but keep drifting back into old patterns. Your article has given me the kick in the ass I've been looking for.
I met a woman who worked in intelligence and came from an extremely wealthy family. She told me her parents restricted her from listening to Top music charts. They raised her try to become as “ Elastic” Mentally as possible
The deepest point here, to my mind, is that neuroplasticity is not just a source of hope. It is also the mechanism by which repetition slowly hardens into identity.
From a clinical perspective, that distinction matters enormously. People often think of change as something that begins when motivation appears. But the nervous system is usually learning from repetition long before a person feels transformed by it. What gets practiced starts to feel normal, what feels normal starts to feel true, and over time that can look a lot like personality when it is really reinforced patterning.
That is what makes the piece useful. The real question is not only whether people can change, but whether they become conscious of what their daily repetitions are teaching the brain to accept as self.
Neuroplasticity is real. Barbara Arrowsmith-Young helped show the world that the brain can change through repeated experience.
But there’s a deeper question that rarely gets asked:
Why is neuroplasticity easier for some brains than others?
Modern neuroscience often treats plasticity as if it’s simply available on demand — repeat a behaviour and the brain rewires. Yet biology is more complicated than that.
A stressed, inflamed, sleep-deprived, hypervigilant brain does not learn in the same way as a regulated, flexible one.
This is where I believe the conversation becomes far more interesting.
My work explores the idea that neuroplasticity is not just driven by repetition, but gated by what I call the *interostate* — the body’s internal physiological condition. In other words, before the brain can change effectively, the body must first feel biologically safe enough to allow change.
This may explain why:
Some children flourish in one environment and shut down in another,
Some people can “reinvent themselves,”
while others remain trapped in rigid cognitive loops despite enormous effort.
Barbara Arrowsmith-Young showed that the adult brain is not fixed.
The next question is:
What determines when the brain is *open* to change in the first place?
That question sits at the centre of my TGTS and SIPS models exploring cognition, inflammation, autonomic flexibility, and neurodevelopment in the modern environment.
Tim, the medical dogma that the adult brain is a fixed, immutable object is one of the most damaging scientific failures of the last century. Neuroplasticity is not some abstract motivational concept; it is the literal, physical restructuring of neural tissue in response to targeted friction. Barbara didn't just adopt a new mindset; she forced her biology to lay down new architecture where the old pathways had failed. Distilling that raw biological reality down to a usable tool is vital work.
Dr Tom Kane
How do we get more people to understand this Tom?
Tim, we have to stop selling neuroplasticity as magic and start explaining it as mechanics. People need to understand that rewiring the brain is exactly like building muscle - it requires heavy, targeted reps and actual biological friction, not just positive thinking. Once they see it as a structural blueprint rather than self-help rhetoric, they will finally put in the work.
This is at least closer to reality than calling neuroplasticity “magic,” but it’s still being oversold.
It’s not “exactly like building muscle,” and calling it a “structural blueprint” makes it sound like people have far more control than they actually do. Most neuroplastic change is incremental adjustment of existing circuits, not open-ended redesign.
Repetition matters, yes—but so do attention, feedback, and correct execution. You can just as easily reinforce the wrong patterns if those aren’t in place.
The recurring problem in this thread is the same: a real biological process gets stretched into something it isn’t. Neuroplasticity allows adaptation within limits. It does not turn the brain into a fully programmable system.
If people are going to “put in the work,” they should at least be given an accurate description of what that work actually does.
I like your approach, it makes the brain more unique and specific
I believe this post from Tim captured exactly the point your comment / response is trying to convey.
Thanks Tim it was an amazing read an super easy to understand. I found myself realising this had already been done by me which I just spoke of recently.
I always struggled to read, remember what I read, and follow a story by reading it in a book.
I persisted and consistently tried to read regardless of how many times I shad to reread the last page I left off at etc.
now I can follow an entire book series and keep picking up in a story where I left off without having to re-read.
Coincidentally I tried to explain this the other day to my Partner who said they could not read books because of the same problem I faced.
I really liked reading your experience because it shows the idea in such a practical way. The fact that you kept reading even when you had to reread pages eventually made something that once felt difficult become much easier. It’s interesting how consistent effort can slowly change what feels natural to us.
Do you think it’s possible to rewire the brain after hypoxic brain injury that impacts nerve function?
Olivia, some recovery is possible, but the degree depends heavily on injury severity, location, and time since onset, since hypoxic injury tends to cause diffuse damage rather than a single lesion the brain can route around. Neuroplasticity responds best to consistent, graded, task specific practice rather than passive stimulation, and gains are typically slower and more partial than with focal stroke recovery. Anyone with persisting nerve function deficits should work with a neurologist experienced in hypoxic injury to set realistic targets and a structured rehabilitation plan.
Dr Tom Kane
Tim, you did a good job writing it like this would encourage people to execute it than thinking it’s an hard thing
I’m currently going through this process. I’ve been educating myself more on neuroplasticity. I spent years on medicine due to a faulty diagnosis in my early 20s. I decided ”no more” once I realized the new meds were not netting the right results. No more psych meds. From my experience, it feels like heavy lifting and true physical work. It is very tiring . However, 5 months later I’ve seen such a great improvement and so have family and friends and even my doctor. I don’t encourage it to people but I do educate them on my ongoing experience. I know going med free and taking this type of control is not for everyone. I view life completely different in such a more hopeful and positive way(grounded in reality) and the work is still ongoing in some areas with the assistance of therapy. It’s truly miraculous. I wish I could go into greater detail.
Rose, comparing that process to heavy physical lifting is the most accurate description possible. Psychiatric medications often just chemically blunt the baseline, whereas forcing your nervous system to lay down new pathways requires immense, exhausting metabolic friction. Reclaiming your own cognitive architecture after a decade of misdiagnosis takes a brutal amount of grit. Keep putting in the reps; the fact that others see the shift proves the new foundation is holding.
Having the support of meds to do the heavy lifting in therapy is invaluable, at least for a while. Without it the work is too taxing and mostly likely impossible for struggling individuals in crisis. Meds save lives, let’s not underplay that.
I have a son that’s bipolar one. Would this work for him?
I would encourage active therapy along the way . DBT helped me tremendously get to where I am today . I am still la work in process but on. A much smaller scale. I feel like I can decipher easily between good stress & bad stress and make good judgements on how to proceed . I went from weekly therapy to every 2-3 weeks . I’m in a transitional period so my goal is once a month to one or twice every 3 months . I wish your son the very best . The human mind is very powerful and we just need to learn how to harness it much better
You’re right that the adult brain isn’t fixed and that experience can produce physical changes in neural connections. That part is well established.
Where I think this goes too far is in how those changes are characterized. Most neuroplasticity involves strengthening or weakening existing connections, not building entirely new “architecture” in the way your wording suggests. The distinction matters because it sets realistic expectations for what change looks like.
The Barbara Arrowsmith example is also interpreted very strongly. Improvement through intensive practice doesn’t necessarily demonstrate that someone created new brain systems where none existed—it can reflect compensation and gradual functional adaptation.
I agree that making complex science accessible is useful. But there’s a difference between simplifying and amplifying. When neuroplasticity is framed as a kind of open-ended biological rewrite mechanism, it risks overstating what the evidence actually supports.
A more precise version would still be powerful: the brain can change significantly through repeated, focused effort—but within real biological constraints.
Marvin, you are right to pull the reins on the hyperbole. Neuroplasticity operates within strict physiological limits, focusing on the remodeling of existing networks rather than growing entirely new architecture. But the muscle metaphor holds up precisely because of the constraints you mentioned - mindless reps simply reinforce bad form, and true adaptation requires specific, intense friction. It is not an open-ended rewrite, but it remains a biological lever most people don't realize they can actively pull.
Thank you for your explanation. Do you know if brain training is helpful to postpone multi infarction dementia?
Brain training can help a little, but not in the way people hope. It might improve memory or focus on the exercises you’re doing, but that doesn’t really carry over much to preventing dementia.
With multi-infarct dementia specifically, the issue is damage from small strokes and blood vessel problems in the brain. So the biggest factors aren’t mental exercises—they’re things like blood pressure, circulation, blood sugar, and overall heart health.
There is some limited evidence that certain types of brain training might help slow decline a bit, but it’s not strong enough to rely on, and most “brain games” don’t make a meaningful difference long-term.
Where it does help is keeping the mind active and engaged, which is still a good thing but it’s more of a support, not a solution.
If someone is really trying to delay that kind of dementia, the focus should be much more on physical health! Especially anything that reduces stroke risk.
Thank you. 🙏
This is about the best thing I’ve read on Substack, or anywhere else for that matter. I say that because I’ve had recent experience that its true.
I am 73 years old and Canadian. English is my first language, but Canada has two official languages so I had French classes in high school. Does that mean I speak and understand French? No, it does not (although I did learn some awesome swearing over the years, just not in class.)
When you get to be my age you have probably had close contact with dementia—first my mother, then my husband. Witnessing its progression terrified me. I read that “exercising” your brain helped to fend off the development of dementia, so I started to experiment with puzzles and games. One of my favourite games became Codewords—a game much like a crossword, but without clues. If you’ve never heard of it, it seems impossible. You get a crossword-type grid with numbered squares. Each number corresponds with a single letter, and you are given two or three number/letter pairs to start with, so you go through the grid and put those letters in place. After that, you’re on your own. If you do enough of these you learn things about English words you hadn’t consciously realized. For example, many people know that the most common letter in English is “e,” but did you know that it occurs as the penultimate (second-to-last) letter in many words? Scanning the grid, it becomes obvious that the same number appears second-to-last a ton of times. That gives you “e” and it fills in more squares than any other letter. Another hint is that “a” seems to occur most often as the second or third letter in a word; “s,” “d,” and “y” show up as last letters, and “s” is frequently doubled. Also “s” and “t” occur in tandem a lot, in either order. Rare, single-use letters? Q, z, k, f… you get the picture. Enough.
I also became fixated on logic puzzles and conundrums that required outside-the-box or lateral thinking. (Obssessed? Well, yeah. I spent more than a week on the most twisted conundrum ever. It’s so hard, and so good, that it’s almost impossible to get another person to understand the solution, even when you patiently explain it step-by-step. I call it, “Blue dot, white dot.”) I had access to these and other riddles through my smartphone. Of course, I unintentionally developed an addiction which led to the ubiquitous loss of focus that so many experience these days. Eventually I was spending the majority of my time playing games on my phone. Maybe it would keep dementia at bay, but I can’t say it’s preferable as a lifestyle choice.
What was I saying? Oh, yeah. French. I read that another road to brain health was learning a second language, but I had already failed at French, so I decided on Spanish, which, for some reason seemed easier. Over the years I bought textbooks and listened to recordings and repeated phrases, but it just didn’t stick. Then I read a great article (can’t remember where or who) on the best way to learn. Anything. The basis of it was just what Tim talks about, repetition, with the addition of specifically timing those repetitions for optimal retention. The author mentioned some examples and the one I latched onto was an app called Duolingo. It taught Spanish, among other things, so I gave it a try, and I loved it! I had no difficulty doing lessons every day, and the first month or so flew by. Tim mentions how automaticity begins in week four? That’s when I started answering in Spanish without translating words from English first. Winging it. I never got to that stage after years of French instruction.
I don’t need to understand the limits of neurobiology to know when something works, and this does. Thanks, Tim.
E. A. Curran
Ive been thinking about this since you posted.What strikes me most in your comment was the moment you described answering in Spanish without first translating from English. That is a very different cognitive process from memorizing vocabulary lists. It suggests your brain was beginning to recognize and predict patterns automatically rather than consciously decoding them step-by-step.
Interestingly, that lines up with what researchers call “cognitive reserve.” The idea is not necessarily that puzzles or languages prevent dementia outright, but that challenging and adaptive mental activity may help the brain build more flexible pathways and compensatory networks over time.
Your Codewords example was also fascinating because you independently discovered statistical structures in language like “e” appearing as the penultimate letter and “s” clustering at endings...without formally studying linguistics! That kind of pattern extraction is exactly the sort of active processing many neuroscientists think matters more than passive consumption.
One cautionary part of your comment was important too: mentally stimulating activities can slowly drift into compulsive phone use if they stop being deliberate and become constant dopamine loops. That distinction probably deserves more discussion than it gets.
Really thoughtful post.
Thank you for that. I’ve noticed a couple of times when I’ve spoken spontaneously in Spanish, and it has left me wondering how much Spanish I may have picked up unintentionally over the years. For example, I got stuck in a verbal exercise and said with no thought, “Lo siento. No entiendo,” which I think means I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I didn’t learn any of that in class, but the other speaker seemed to understand it. (Hah! The other possibility is that I’m reincarnated from a Spanish speaker!😆)
I should maybe mention that the other impetus for this was that I had a subarachnoid hemorrhage in 2002 and was convinced my intellect took a nose dive. Apparently not.
Now that I have discovered Substack I’m finding it much easier to stay away from mindlessly scrolling YouTube anyway.
Mixed blessing! Since I found Substack I have endless chores piling up, grass is a foot tall, and three hours less sleep a night lol. You just brought to mind something I mentioned to my wife several weeks ago. It seems as I age---this is happening more: Random memories popping up that I had not thought of in decades. Suddenly using certain words that I glancingly learned but have not used at all. Must be something to this--gad--another thing to study. Love your name, by the way.
The moment you realize your mind is moldable clay rather than solid rock, you hold the chisel to your own potential.
Thank you for saying this. 4 years ago, my uncle suffered a major brain bleed + the doctors’ prognosis: “permanently vegetative at best”. It was a really epic journey, but we never gave up. After over a year of being bed ridden, we began physiotherapy and today, he can walk (with support) again.
Most of my caregiving lately has been in the night time, and there were so many times where i watched him “forget” how to breathe (he had a tracheostomy inserted) because the body has stopped doing it for himself, but I’ve also had times when he wakes up in the middle of the night and speaks normally, vocalising as if there was not a tube stuck in his throat.
Because of his stroke, i started researching into Neuroplasticity and while his doctors (neurologists included) say this is not “medically proven”, hope (possibly some delusions) kept us going, and here we are today.
Thank you for the article Tim, you’re right - more people need to understand this.
Does it really matter that neuroplasticity is a fact if most people cannot achieve the dramatic changes that are suggested in the clip though? The ability to become a billionaire is also a fact, but we don't expect everyone to achieve this. And further, we don't judge them and remove them from our lives if they fail to achieve that - unlike how we might treat someone with NPD who is unable to change their ways.
I think the important distinction is between “the brain can change” and “the brain can change without meaningful limits.” Those are not the same claim, and a lot of popular neuroplasticity discussions blur them together.
Neuroplasticity is absolutely real. The brain rewires constantly through learning, repetition, injury recovery, habit formation, therapy, environmental exposure, and reinforcement. That part is not controversial.
But the existence of plasticity does not mean every person can completely override temperament, developmental wiring, trauma history, cognitive limitations, psychiatric structure, genetics, or deeply reinforced behavioral patterns. Human brains are plastic, not infinitely plastic.
I think your billionaire analogy is actually useful here. The existence of a capacity within a species does not imply equal attainability across individuals. Humans can become Olympic athletes too, but most never will regardless of effort.
Where the conversation gets emotionally charged is with disorders like Narcissistic Personality Disorder. People sometimes hear “the brain can change” and convert that into a moral expectation that someone should be able to substantially transform themselves if they simply try hard enough. Reality is harsher than that.
Some individuals with entrenched personality structures can improve certain behaviors, coping strategies, insight, impulse control, or interpersonal functioning. But dramatic personality reconstruction is uncommon, especially if the person lacks sustained self-awareness, motivation, or long-term treatment engagement.
And there’s another truth underneath this: society often evaluates people less by their internal effort than by the external consequences of their behavior. If someone repeatedly harms others, many people will distance themselves regardless of whether change is theoretically possible. That’s not really a neuroscience claim—it’s a social survival mechanism.
So I’d say neuroplasticity matters enormously in medicine, rehabilitation, learning, therapy, and recovery. But treating it as proof that nearly anyone can become nearly anything creates unrealistic expectations and eventually turns into blame when reality doesn’t match the promise.
I think there are actually two different questions here that often get merged together.
One is whether neuroplasticity exists at all. It clearly does. The brain changes structurally and functionally through repetition, learning, injury, therapy, stress, habit, and experience.
The second question is whether that means everyone can achieve large-scale personality or behavioral transformation. That’s much less certain. Our capacity for change appears highly variable and constrained by genetics, development, trauma history, reinforcement patterns, psychiatric conditions, environment, and age.
I agree with the broader point that “plasticity exists” should not automatically become “everyone can change dramatically if they just try hard enough.” That step is probably where a lot of frustration and moral judgment enter the discussion.
The NPD point is probably the hardest part philosophically: if a person’s capacity for change is genuinely limited, how much blame should society assign to them versus how much responsibility should still be expected from them? Neuroscience doesn’t fully answer that yet. Taht alone is a new can of worms.
Same when I tell people about the training on Sadhu boards. Its all possible!
Stumbling upon this article and thread discussion late, but I'm curious how this concept has evolved and will continue to evolve within the context of social media and dwindling attention spans. How can we communicate neuroplasticity and the importance of "building reps" in an ever growing population that can only focus for 30-60 seconds at a time?
This is such an interesting question. I think the challenge is that we are constantly training our attention in very short bursts, so rebuilding the ability to stay with something longer probably also requires small, repeated practice. Even starting with a few minutes of focused reading or learning each day could be a step in the right direction.
I trained as a scientist but knowing the science didn't help me. Most of the time people know that some habits aren't good for them but they keep doing them. Feelings, limiting beliefs and trauma often get in the way. Interested in your thoughts on this?
I think this is such an important point. Knowing that a habit is bad for us doesn’t always make it easy to change, because feelings and emotional patterns can be much stronger than knowledge. Sometimes we understand what we should do but still need time and repeated small actions before our behaviour catches up with what we know.
Love it. Your brain just follows what you repeat, good or bad.
Sure does. Yet everyone has goals and aspirations which mean nothing. Right?
“The changes in our life must come from the impossibility to live otherwise than according to the demands of our conscience not from our mental resolution to try a new form of life”
-- Leo Tolstoy
Thanks Tim, but my question here is if I have trained my brain to give up or have a flight response at the sight of difficulty or conflict or how do I then correct this. As you said I will need to bear down the actions and keep doing them consistently to make the changes happen. But how do I solve for or win over the urge to give up or the tiny voice which ultimately says , all this doesn't matter at all…
I have been trying to succeed in a corporate setup post my MBA for 7 years now and every 2 years I undo all the efforts and quit and join another role another organisation .. But finally after realizing that maybe that isn't for me i have quit and now trying to take actions for a life I want… this really helped Tim, thank you
brain has a mirror that speaks. isn’t it ?
Your piece on neuroplasticity gets one important thing right: repeated behavior changes the brain. That’s well established.
Where it becomes misleading is the jump from that fact to claims like “you can achieve any goal” or that neuroplasticity is “the solution to every problem.” That’s not what the science supports.
Neuroplasticity is real, but it’s constrained by biology—genetics, existing brain structure, time, and environmental limits. It enables adaptation, not unlimited transformation.
The Barbara Arrowsmith example is also presented as if it proves people can “build missing parts of the brain,” which is a much stronger claim than the evidence supports. Improvement through intensive practice isn’t the same as creating new brain regions.
The article also dismisses goals entirely, which is an oversimplification. Goals influence attention and behavior; they’re not irrelevant, they’re just insufficient without action.
So the core message—repeat useful behaviors—is solid. But wrapping it in absolute claims risks giving people a distorted understanding of what’s actually possible.
If the argument were framed more precisely—neuroplasticity enables change within limits—it would be both accurate and just as useful, without overstating what the brain can do.
Completely agree. Much of this could be said without needing to oversimplify and over promise neuroplasticity
Now this is what I want to read on substack. Loved it. Really got me thinking wtf I'm doing distracting myself constantly with my phone. Time to rewire my damn brain.
Nadine, Ive come back to your comment many times.
The instinct you’re having...realizing how much your attention is getting pulled around is the part that actually matters.
I’d just refine the “rewire my brain” idea a bit. What you’re really doing isn’t a full reset. It’s training patterns. The brain changes, but based on what you repeatedly do, not just what you decide.
With phone use, the issue is constant stimulation. Your attention gets used to quick hits of novelty, so deeper focus starts to feel harder.
The fix is structural:
reduce how often you’re triggered (notifications, easy access)
replace the habit with something that still feels rewarding
give it enough repetition for the new pattern to stick
If you do that, your focus will improve. Not because you flipped a switch, but because you changed what your brain is being trained to do.
That’s still powerful....t’s just more grounded than the “become anything” version.
Hi Marvin, your reply means a ton. And I've taken your advice into consideration. You're right I need to give time into training a pattern that will eventually stick, since it is quite difficult to rid myself completely of this constant stimulation. My focus has been improving and I've found myself being less impulsed to use my phone. Haven't completely 'rewired my brain' of course lol, but I'm getting somewhere.
Anyways, wishing you all good things. Cheers.
I really liked reading this because it shows how change can happen gradually rather than all at once. Noticing that you’re reaching for your phone less often is already a meaningful change. Sometimes we expect a dramatic transformation, when small improvements repeated over time are actually what make the difference.
Me too!
exactly. the time is now.
The problem with this approach to understanding neuroplasticity is that as a society and as individuals, we don’t actually know what it is we want, what will make us happier. We have tried to figure it out, and we have brought our species to the brink of extinction.
I was one of the people who was very ‘successful’. I was self employed in what I believed was my dream career, wrote what became a popular blog about it, had a relationship that seemed perfect, went on a couple of amazing vacations every year, lived in a home with a view of the ocean, had a lot of friends, a lifelong hobby that required discipline, worked out seven days a week and ate a very healthy diet. And here was the kicker - I was living my dream and completely miserable, but now this identity that I worked so hard to rewire my brain for, it was a cage that I didn’t know how to get out of, because how do you admit that the life people are telling you they want, is actually not fun at all, not meaningful or impactful in the ways you expected and now the people you are surrounded by, they expect this level of perfection from you all the time? Severe chronic illness caused me to have to watch that life crash to the ground, but on the other side there was so much freedom.
If I did all that through force, what could I accomplish instead through ease and flow? Since following logic led me completely astray, could I follow my intuition instead? What did 12 year old me dream of doing?
So I no longer have an identity I cling to, I haven’t had a job in four years, yet I have explored and experimented and done some of the most amazing work of my life. Changed my entire way of being and showing up in the world and learned to share freely and receive openly (and experience for more abundance than I ever did as an entrepreneur). I am no longer useful, I am valued by amazing people who I have had the opportunity to co-create magic with on projects that light me up, for as long as they interest me, in ways that I want to contribute.
And what I realize is that the reason so many people are struggling to move forward is because as a society we have walked to the edge of a cliff by forcing ourselves to be more, do more, become ‘better’ even though it leads to our own demise.
We have power to change our brains, absolutely, but we also need to start asking why so many people are this stuck. This is purely a reflection of the fact that on a deep level many know that what we are doing isn’t working and to require ourselves to fit a false narrative does no one any favours.
I am very, very lucky that all my very serious symptoms have healed, but if I were to try to return to a full time job, to rigid discipline, to sticking to a path until I reach my goal instead of being flexible and pivoting, I would long be on disability by now.
I’ve personally witnessed mind over matter specifically in life threatening circumstances of cancer and I’ve seen how a strong belief can physically change your body.
I also see how as a society, there are multiple levels of influence that limit the human brain from accepting factual information and amygdala hijacking is just one of root causes for this. It dismisses the epigenics nature, social hierarchy and familiarity culture. Pull back the lens… and ask more questions. Sending love and kindness 💕✨
Personally, the strong belief in mind over matter ended up causing me many health issues - including autoimmune symptoms and early menopause symptoms that began at 31. It was actually doing the very opposite - listening to my body and my intuition that reversed every symptom and changed my life in ways that my brain never could have imagined. The life I have now, is nothing like I believed I wanted, but only because the life I’m living is largely believed to not be possible - I haven’t had a job in four years, yet I have done the most valuable and exciting work of my life while experiencing abundance I didn’t know existed while splitting my time between my two favourite places in the world where I have truly beautiful communities and get to explore all my passions.
The only problem with your „prescription“ is: Brute-forcing repetition (aka obsession, discipline, willpower) is precisely the reason why no one makes it happen. Behavior sits before conscious thought (automated patterns based on prediction the brain makes), so you force yourself the first one or two repetitions and then continue to be the lazy f*ck you are (to stay in Mark‘s lingo :). You need to take measures that reach the subconscious and overwrite these established programs. This stuff is simple in theory not easy to implement (conscious awareness, journaling, somatic experiencing, micro-contracting actions, …).
I love her and her quiet “F U.” I love that she didn’t argue with them, she just went home and got to work. That’s what it actually looks like when a person takes themselves back. No announcement or permission, just hours in front of a clock, rebuilding.
Nobody’s coming to do it for you. Barbara knew, I knew and anyone reading this who just felt something land — you know too.
the true peace is in how we respond and to whom.
The fatal flaw in this hyper-optimistic vision of neuroplasticity is a brutal cognitive paradox: to reprogram a faulty brain, you require an "auditor" capable of identifying the glitches in the code. You must first become exceptionally wise and possess a total awareness of every flaw within your neural pathways—acquired through years of experience—simply to realize that you need to change. However, the moment you reach this level of insight, the change has already occurred. Your cognitive structure has already evolved to grasp it. Therefore, the "reprogramming" becomes redundant; self-awareness was the breakthrough itself.
The fool does not know he is a fool, so he will never attempt to fix himself. The wise man already knows, so he has no need for instructions. Only rigorous science and profound self-awareness allow for the possibility of "open-brain surgery" through conscious intervention. Yet, this is a path reserved for systems that might one day—though it is fundamentally against their own interests—prioritize general education at an exceptionally high level from childhood. For politicians, however, this would be suicide. No system has an interest in fostering a society capable of deconstructing its own software. Neuroplasticity will remain nothing more than a trendy buzzword, while real power over the neural pathways of the masses stays in the hands of those who write the codes, rather than those forced to carry them.
I think this assumes that self-awareness must exist before change can occur. The evidence from neuroscience suggests the opposite: awareness itself often develops through repeated plastic changes. People don't suddenly become fully wise and then rewire their brains. Rather, small experiences, external feedback, therapy, education, meditation, and deliberate practice gradually reshape neural networks, which in turn produce greater insight. There is no requirement for a fully informed "auditor" at the outset. The auditor is often distributed across our interactions with the world, and it becomes more accurate as learning progresses.
Provided that we assume that everyone, literally everyone, has the same capacity for learning and data processing. That they are a blank slate. However, we know from life experience that people have varying abilities to adapt knowledge. You cannot base serious claims on a small social group. It is like recommending back exercises to all people, operating on the assumption that everyone is an office worker...
I don't think we're disagreeing. I wasn't arguing that everyone has the same capacity for learning or that people are blank slates. Plasticity clearly varies among individuals because of genetics, development, age, disease, and many other factors. My point was simply that the initial "auditor" doesn't need to be fully formed before change can begin. Even limited self-awareness, combined with external feedback and repeated experience, can gradually improve the brain's own capacity for insight. Differences in learning ability affect the rate and extent of that process, not its basic existence.
I am very sorry, but feedback is an internal process that is becoming better understood. I do not think that naming external factors based on sensory perception is accurate.
I also believe, following your line of reasoning, that neuroplasticity is possible for everyone. The article I commented on offered advice on how to become that one percent who have the most... that is nonsense.
There’s a useful bluntness here: neuroplasticity isn’t magic, it’s repetition.
The strongest point is that the brain responds to what we repeatedly do, not what we claim to want...
What I get is: you don't just think of all positive and assume, you actually have to act as if it already happen in a repeated consistent manner.
When I look around at all of the things I've wanted to do or learn in my life of 55 years they all share one commonality: they are hard.
Learn guitar, writing, swimming, coding, etc. etc.
You article has opened my eyes wide. I've been aware of neuroplasticity for some time but keep drifting back into old patterns. Your article has given me the kick in the ass I've been looking for.
Love from India . I am gonna write it down
Love from Australia Rohit.
Check my note!
Which note Bibi?
I met a woman who worked in intelligence and came from an extremely wealthy family. She told me her parents restricted her from listening to Top music charts. They raised her try to become as “ Elastic” Mentally as possible
Would love to hear more about this 🙏
The deepest point here, to my mind, is that neuroplasticity is not just a source of hope. It is also the mechanism by which repetition slowly hardens into identity.
From a clinical perspective, that distinction matters enormously. People often think of change as something that begins when motivation appears. But the nervous system is usually learning from repetition long before a person feels transformed by it. What gets practiced starts to feel normal, what feels normal starts to feel true, and over time that can look a lot like personality when it is really reinforced patterning.
That is what makes the piece useful. The real question is not only whether people can change, but whether they become conscious of what their daily repetitions are teaching the brain to accept as self.
Like you said…If it’s hard it’s working. (That’s what she said !)
Ah George Im becoming old! Ive read through this article and comments many time--its now June 17th and I just got your joke. lol
Neuroplasticity is real. Barbara Arrowsmith-Young helped show the world that the brain can change through repeated experience.
But there’s a deeper question that rarely gets asked:
Why is neuroplasticity easier for some brains than others?
Modern neuroscience often treats plasticity as if it’s simply available on demand — repeat a behaviour and the brain rewires. Yet biology is more complicated than that.
A stressed, inflamed, sleep-deprived, hypervigilant brain does not learn in the same way as a regulated, flexible one.
This is where I believe the conversation becomes far more interesting.
My work explores the idea that neuroplasticity is not just driven by repetition, but gated by what I call the *interostate* — the body’s internal physiological condition. In other words, before the brain can change effectively, the body must first feel biologically safe enough to allow change.
This may explain why:
Some children flourish in one environment and shut down in another,
Some people can “reinvent themselves,”
while others remain trapped in rigid cognitive loops despite enormous effort.
Barbara Arrowsmith-Young showed that the adult brain is not fixed.
The next question is:
What determines when the brain is *open* to change in the first place?
That question sits at the centre of my TGTS and SIPS models exploring cognition, inflammation, autonomic flexibility, and neurodevelopment in the modern environment.