Andrew Huberman explains how adult brains can still rewire themselves, but it requires pairing specific experiences with activation of the nucleus basalis, a region that releases acetylcholine. This differs from childhood plasticity, which happens more easily.
Hey, it's Ben Greenfield.
I think that one of the more exciting, although lesser discussed aspects of the adult plasticity literature. So this is, you know, one thing, we don't have to get into this now because there's a whole world of this stuff. But the rules of plasticity during development are not necessarily the same as the rules that engage neuroplasticity in adulthood. This is something that most people don't appreciate. And in adulthood, the massive plasticity can be induced by triggering the cholinergic system, the basal forebrain cholinergic system. There are a lot of different acetylcholine promoting systems in the brain, but the one in the basal forebrain called nucleus basalis for the aficionados out there, has been shown by Merzenich and colleagues in animal models to unleash a massive degree of cortical plasticity. So in other words, if the animal got an experience but no stimulation of acetylcholine, that experience didn't modify its neural circuitry very much. And if it got the acetylcholine increase but no specific experience, then there wasn't much plasticity. But the combination of the two led to a remarkable degree of plasticity.
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