When we had to survive on our wits, gather and kill our food from scratch and be more at the mercy of our environment than we are today, we probably had enough challenge to keep our brains healthy.
Philippa PerryPlasticity is an intrinsic property of the human brain and represents evolution's invention to enable the nervous system to escape the restrictions of its own genome and thus adapt to environmental pressures, physiologic changes, and experiences.
Philippa PerryIt used to be thought that you stopped making new neural connections in your youth and from then on your brain was fixed and it was downhill all the way. But in fact as we know from our own experience we can keep on learning and learning means changing our brain on a physical level.
Philippa PerryThe extreme of flexibility is chaos and the extreme of being structured is rigid and staying sane, or indeed using your creativity, is about being aware of these extremes and steering yourself to areas where you work best which usually tend to be more in the middle than at either extreme edge.
Philippa Perry