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

Meditation is focused attention and the more we practise focusing our brains the more connections we build up.

It 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.

There are probably times where the creative process is not helped by collaboration.

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.

Meditators are shown to have thickening in parts of the brain structure that deal with attention, memory and sensory functions. This was found to be more noticeable in older, more practiced meditators than in younger adults which is interesting because this structure usually tends to get thinner as we age.

I am talking about being optimistic enough to sow some seeds in the hope that some of them will germinate and grow into flowers.