Development & Plasticity
How a brain builds itself, prunes itself, rewires through life and changes as it ages.
9 articles
Development & Plasticity
Beginner
The Aging Brain
What normally changes as we age — slower processing, word-finding pauses, a shrinking brain — what doesn't, the difference between ageing and dementia, and the idea of cognitive reserve.
May 30, 2026 · 3 min read
Development & Plasticity
Intermediate
Critical Periods: Windows of Opportunity
Imprinting ducklings, kittens with one eye covered, children learning languages and orphans in Romania: the evidence for sensitive windows when experience shapes the brain most powerfully.
May 13, 2026 · 3 min read
Development & Plasticity
Advanced
Axon Guidance: How Neurons Find Their Partners
Growth cones, attractive and repulsive cues, Sperry's chemoaffinity hypothesis, and the molecules — netrins, slits, semaphorins, ephrins — that wire the developing brain.
April 7, 2026 · 2 min read
Development & Plasticity
Beginner
Neuroplasticity: The Changeable Brain
Your brain rewires itself with every experience. Synaptic plasticity, structural change, London taxi drivers, phantom limbs and recovery after stroke — the evidence that the adult brain keeps changing.
March 7, 2026 · 3 min read
Development & Plasticity
Beginner
How the Brain Builds Itself
From a flat sheet of cells to 86 billion neurons: the neural tube, the burst of neuron production before birth, migration, wiring, pruning and myelination — the timeline of brain development.
February 24, 2026 · 3 min read
Development & Plasticity
Beginner
The Teenage Brain
Adolescence is a major period of brain remodelling: pruning, myelination, a reward system that matures early and a prefrontal cortex that matures late. What that does — and doesn't — explain about teenage behaviour.
December 23, 2025 · 3 min read
Development & Plasticity
Advanced
Neurogenesis and Neural Migration
How progenitor cells in the developing brain divide to make neurons, how the cortex is built inside-out along radial glia, and what happens when migration goes wrong.
December 18, 2025 · 2 min read
Development & Plasticity
Advanced
Adult Neurogenesis: Do We Grow New Neurons?
For a century, textbooks said adults never make new brain cells. Then rodents, songbirds and radiocarbon from nuclear tests suggested otherwise — and the human question is still fiercely debated.
December 10, 2025 · 3 min read
Development & Plasticity
Intermediate
Synaptic Pruning
The developing brain makes far more connections than it needs, then removes the unused ones. How 'use it or lose it' sculpts circuits through childhood and adolescence.
November 4, 2025 · 3 min read