Dr. Marc Breedlove

In elections, it's been shown that people whose candidate won

the presidential election, their testosterone levels went up a little bit and the people whose candidate lost went down a little.

And so you'll always have this cycle where the hormone alters the behavior and then the behavior alters the hormone.

And you always have to look for ways to try to pin down the order of effects.

And, you know, not always easy.

The only thing I know for sure is that the brain remains plastic all of our lives.

I think both your statements are true.

I think it's probably true that the neocortex is more plastic than the hypothalamus, but it's a matter of relativity.

And so as you say, the one thing we know is that there's plenty of plasticity there.

The other thing I noticed, so I've gone to Society for Neuroscience meetings.

pretty regularly every year since 1977.

And after a while, I noticed something.

Every year when I went to the neuroscience meeting, the brain was more plastic than it was the year before, right?

I mean, because there are more and more of these demonstrations.

And it's like, you know, I think synapses can come and go just about anywhere.

And so hardwired, let's say there might be less plasticity in the hypothalamus, surely so.

But that doesn't mean there's none.

No, I think...

For testosterone, I think the big ones have been competition between males.

And no, I don't, you know, I mean, there's a stress response, but that's a whole other thing.