Dr. David Eagleman

You know, I once heard the expression that there's nothing as hard that the brain does than other people.

And so for these women living in convents, they were constantly dealing with – because you never know what somebody is going to say or how they're going to react or what they're going to do.

So this is great challenge opportunity for the brain.

Anyway, the point is we need to always find that with ourselves.

Oftentimes people will ask me, like an older person will say, hey, I do crossword puzzles.

Is that good?

Yeah, it's good until you get good at it and then stop and do something that you're not good at.

And constantly find the next thing that's a real challenge for you.

That's the key thing about plasticity.

Essentially, the backstory is this.

As you well know, your brain is locked in silence and darkness.

It's trying to make a model of the outside world.

And its whole goal is to make a successful model.

And...

When it succeeds at that and says, oh, okay, wait, I've got good predictions about what's going on, then it stops changing.

I mean, that's its goal is to stop changing.

And if you're constantly pushing and challenging it with things it doesn't understand, then it'll keep changing.

Okay, a few things on this.

As you well know, you know, all the neuromodulators exist in a dance with each other.

And fundamentally, I think we're going to come to understand this in 50 years as, you know, sort of combination locks of things.