If we are not using our brains' capacity for challenge it feels to me as though it atrophies like an unused muscle.

Plasticity 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.

If we keep practicing mental skills it is likely we can strengthen neural connections and make new connections.

Beginning a new habit, or ending an old one can feel like letting go of a rope that swings a mile above the ground. So we feel reluctant to let go, after all, we've survived so far doing what we've done, why risk it.

We don't have to have suffered brain damage to take advantage of the plastic nature of our brains.

As we get older it is our short term memory that fades rather than our long term memory. Perhaps we have evolved like this so that we are able to tell the younger generation about the stories and experiences that have formed us which may be important to subsequent generations if they are to thrive.I worry though, about what might happen to our minds if most of the stories we hear are about greed, war, and atrocity

If we are not using our brains' capacity for challenge it feels to me as though it atrophies like an unused muscle.