Adult Brains More Flexible Than Previously Thought

stemceller passed us a link to the official site for Johns Hopkins, which is reporting on some research into cognition. Generally, doctors have understood our best learning to be done at a young age, when the brain has a 'robust flexibility'. As we get older, our brain cells become 'hard-wired' along certain paths and don't move much - if at all. Or, at least, that was the understanding. Research headed by the hospital's Dr. Linden has taken advantage of 'two-photon microscopy', a new technique, to get a new picture inside a mouse's head. "They examined neurons that extend fibers (called axons) to send signals to a brain region called the cerebellum, which helps coordinate movements and sensory information. Like a growing tree, these axons have a primary trunk that runs upward and several smaller branches that sprout out to the sides. But while the main trunk was firmly connected to other target neurons in the cerebellum, stationary as adult axons are generally thought to be, 'the side branches swayed like kite tails in the wind,' says Linden. Over the course of a few hours, individual side branches would elongate, retract and morph in a highly dynamic fashion. These side branches also failed to make conventional connections, or synapses, with adjacent neurons. Furthermore, when a drug was given that produced strong electrical currents in the axons, the motion of the side branches stalled.'"

Not true

[SEWilco (27983)]

No, the science is settled. Adult nerve cells don't wriggle around, everyone knows that. There's no need to look. Nothing to see here, move along.

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[rustalot42684 (1055008)]

Damn kids! Get off my lawn!

Re:Not true

[nospam007 (722110)]

I's true. After reading the article I had my old dog learn new tricks.

Re:Not true

[Z00L00K (682162)]

Actual truth is that as an adult you become more habit-bound than as a kid, but that doesn't stop you from learning new things. As a kid you are all over testing boundaries but as an adult you skip that part and strive forward in the direction you found were the most ideal when you were a kid. What's ideal for one person may not be for another and depending on the environment and the stimulus received as a kid you get preferences.

And this is also one reason why it may be good for a person to change job now and then to not grow stale in one environment. It may be good to not change too often but if the job stops to develop a person it will result in that the person having the job will get bound to the job and unable to accept changes or the person will change job.

It's important for people to take on challenges now and then - even if failing it's a learning experience. If failing all the time - it's just meaning that this person is attempting things that always are too hard or that that particular person hasn't the ability to know his/her own limits.

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[The Spoonman (634311)]

Welcome to Slashdot, Gee Dubya!

Adults can learn...

[megabarf (1092261)]

They just normally prefer not to do so.

I had to fight them for a long time to use it, but now even my parents (in their 60s) suffer from internet withdrawal if they go without for a few days.

Re:Adults can learn...

[CrazedWalrus (901897)]

I think you're right. I think adults tend to be reluctant to learn new things for a few reasons:

• Fatigue. Most adults are overworked, and many tend to avoid taking on any extra effort beyond what's required to get to the next day. Gratuitous learning of a foreign subject matter tends to be difficult, so is about the last thing they want to do when they get home from a hard day at work.
• Divided attention, or excessive multitasking. Again, a matter of not enough cycles to go around. I find that it's a sheer joy to me if I can spend an hour or two and really concentrate on something. Usually I can't do so without interruption or another obligation getting in the way.
• Information layering. By the time people are adults, they've built a stack of information that suits them well. The last thing they want to do is start over from the bottom. To use an analogy: Each successive level of math builds on the principles established in previous levels. By the time you're a Physicist using Calculus, why in the hell would you want to go back and learn a new way to add numbers when the one you know works just fine?
• 
  
  Granted, most of this comes back to lack of effort, but in most cases, the decision to not put forth the effort is very understandable. It doesn't mean that adults can't learn. It just means they're too busy, have too many distractions and demands on their time, are happy with their current methods, or are simply too damn tired.

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[CrazedWalrus (901897)]

Woops. Speaking of "too damn tired", I meant to hit the preview button, not the submit button.

So... when are we getting the ability to edit posts?

Re:Adults can learn...

[LionKimbro (200000)]

Let me add: "reward systems."

If an adult speaks a second language poorly, people go, "Oh, what an idiot... Will you please just speak in your native tongue?!"

But if a child learning a language speak it poorly, people go, "Wow! You're learning so quickly! You're really doing a great job!" They'll smother the child with attention.

Kids also find other kids who are basically forced to learn to speak a language, and are learning at the same skill level, and so on.

Re:Adults can learn...

[CrazedWalrus (901897)]

Very true. I'll even add one more: coercion.

When my son comes home from a full day dedicated to the learning of new things and shows me a test result that isn't up to par, two things happen.

First, I make it very clear that I am not happy with the test result, and that I expect better of him. (He tends to be the fool-around-in-class type, but is very bright. Usually he doesn't learn because he wasn't paying attention. As for the fooling around, well, we're working on that.)

Second, we sit down at the dinner table and go over the subject matter until he knows and understands it. He knows at this point that he must learn the material, and that I won't be satisfied until I can randomly quiz him on it a day or two later and get a good result. In other words, he knows he has little choice but to learn. Even if it wasn't for me, his teacher would push him into it to some degree, there's peer pressure, there's the pride of seeing good test results...

Along those lines, adults are constantly learning new things as well. As I mentioned in my original post, though, it doesn't tend to be random, gratuitous learning; it's stuff that they need to do their jobs and excel in their careers. The most common field around the /. is IT. I think most of us would attest to the fact that if you stop learning, you starve. That sounds to me like coercion of the most dire sort. :-)

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[raddan (519638)]

I've always wondered if these factors are the same that make learning a new language difficult for an adult. People always talk about how children's brains are more receptive to new language-- and perhaps they are-- but it seems to me that one cannot discount the factors you mention. I don't know what adult groups researchers studied when they came to that conclusion. Working adults in a stable environment? Immigrant workers? Children are unique in that they are free from many pressures that adults are

Re:Adults can learn...

[CrazedWalrus (901897)]

It's funny you say that. I'm married to a Spanish-speaking girl from South America, who has learned English in the past 7 years and speaks it very well. She's taken a few classes, but mostly she learns just by living in an English-speaking environment.

On the other hand, you've got me trying to learn Spanish. I've never taken a class, but have had my family trying to teach me for four years. I was apologizing one day for my bad Spanish, and remarked on how much better the kids seem to understand it. We got into a discussion about why that would be, and she brought up the subject of how kids can learn faster than adults. My explanation was exactly what I wrote in the GP, plus the immersion aspect.

Learning a language is the same as learning any other complex topic. There are jargon to learn and rules to be followed, as well as obtaining that finesse that only comes through practice. If the world was such that adults could dedicate the same time and attention as kids can, I don't think this myth would ever have existed to begin with.

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[CrazedWalrus (901897)]

Very sound advice, and I usually do try that approach. I've gotten several comments about my distinctive lack of a gringo accent, and have even been told that I sometimes have the accent from my wife's town.

What tends to kill me are the vocabulary and idioms. I'll be going along and suddenly have no idea how to say what I want to say. Then I wind up sort-of talking around it, explaining what I'm trying to say. Other than that, I don't use enough articles, but I think that's forgivable. I took 5-1/2 years of

Re:Adults can learn...

[Alioth (221270)]

I've always thought this - of course, I didn't have any scientific evidence, but my personal experience is I find learning easier now as an adult than I did as a child - the easier learning now because I have a more disciplined approach to learning and I'm much better able to stay the course. But the actual mechanism of learning something new, at least for me, doesn't appear to have faded at all. (In fact I enjoy it - my best days at work are when I'm doing something completely new and having to discover new things, and my hobbies all include learning new things).

That and the anecdotes of retired people learning new things with all the time they now have - such as a friend's father, who's a retired air force officer - doing a computer science degree in his 60s, and doing it as well as any college kid.

Similar to neural net entropic topography.

[by Anonymous Coward]

There's a branch of neural net studies that focuses on a technique called entropic topography. Essentially, it involves random evolution of just the fringes of a digital neural net. That is, much as this John-Hopkins study has found, a rigid core is kept. It is only the neural subnets branching off that undergo synthesis and morphing.

While there are various deterministic algorithms that are used to evolve neural nets, it's only recently that we've begun seeing randomness used. This has an added benefit of bringing in unexpected mutations, which really don't happen with the deterministic algorithms.

Some advances from the study of Lei topographies have also lead to breakthroughs recently, where some of the more complex, yet deterministic, algorithms have had entropic terms introduced in order to bring in an element of randomness. These neural nets are probably the closest to the human brain, as they introduce the random mutation that is so prevalent within the human species, while also following the constraints of this new-found core neural path.

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[eclectro (227083)]

Some advances from the study of Lei topographies have also lead to breakthroughs recently, where some of the more complex, yet deterministic, algorithms have had entropic terms introduced in order to bring in an element of randomness.

I take it that you slept at a Holiday Inn last night?

Wow now I understand

[LM741N (258038)]

how Apple computer started using Intel chips. Neuronal flexibility!!

Scary combination

[MisterLawyer (770687)]

The bigger problem is that certain aspects of our modern technology allow young people these days do less to develop their minds than in past generations. It's like the Perfect Storm of humanity's brain evolution conflicting with our technology.

...neuroscientist Ian Robertson polled 3,000 people and found that the younger ones were less able than their elders to recall standard personal info. When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative's birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so. And when he asked them their own phone number, fully one-third of the youngsters drew a blank. They had to whip out their handsets to look it up.

Here's another article [wired.com] on the same topic.

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[rolfwind (528248)]

It could be that there is exponentially more to remember. Back a generation ago, you had to know your name, address, a single phone number, social security number, and perhaps a few odds and ends like bank account number and/or atm number -- and you're good to go.

A generation before that list gets reduced further.

Today, how many phone numbers, email addresses, irc addresses, computer and site logins and their accompanying passwords does one have to remember? For personal, work and/or school?

Personally I w

Re:Scary combination

[Belial6 (794905)]

I agree. The other thing that people forget is that children often have access to vastly superior resources. Take for example the classic example of children learning languages easier than adults. When people point that out, they generally fail to notice that children tend to learn their language via total immersion and virtually everyone around them is happy to be a 24/7 personal tutor on the language. While most children can get by in their first language by 2 or 3 years only, they tend not to be what we would call fluent until 5 or 6. Give me a couple of full time language tutors and 5 years of total immersion with no need to remember my native tongue, and I will learn the new language too.

Not really scary--it's smart.

[foreverdisillusioned (763799)]

Or maybe young people are smart enough not to clog up their brains with information that can be more easily and accurately recorded elsewhere. If all our fancy devices somehow stopped working, there would definitely be a period of confusion, but people would adapt. They'd go back to using their memories (or pen and paper.)

Technology isn't conflicting with our brain's evolution; it's extending and enhancing it. One less phone number to remember is who knows how many neurons that don't have to waste time storing and retrieving it. You might question whether young people are using this freed memory space to good use (for the love of all that's holy, I do NOT care about who won the latest reality show or what celebrities do in their spare time), but I think that it's a mistake to view this phenomenon as a fault.

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[khallow (566160)]

You know what? If our fancy devices stopped working tomorrow, I still wouldn't need to know my phone number. There's some information that doesn't need to be memorized. It's stored where it is used.

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[Overzeetop (214511)]

That's only true if _everyone's_ devices stopped working. If you accidentally lose your cell phone, it puts you at a quite a bit of a disadvantage.

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[khallow (566160)]

Yea, my post sounds silly in retrospect. After all, the only reason I remember it in the first place is because so many people and businesses ask for it on forms and things.

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[Bongo Bill (853669)]

How often do you call your own phone number?

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[BlueCollarCamel (884092)]

I like to leave myself motivational messages several times a day you insensitive clod!

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[ZonkerWilliam (953437)]

I agree, there's information overload by the n'th degree compared to even a couple of decades ago. Then again over 50's tend to be more "stuck in their ways" than younger people, due to neural pathways being reinforced over the longer time, that we just remember it after awhile.

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[grumling (94709)]

No, the older I get, the more I realize that the world is full of BS.

When you hear that the sky is falling over and over, but it still hasn't, it tends to make you a little less likely to change your ways. It really doesn't have much to do with neural pathways.

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[nbritton (823086)]

"When Robertson asked his subjects to tell them a relative's birth date, 87 percent of respondents over age 50 could recite it, while less than 40 percent of those under 30 could do so."

Or maybe it's the fact that the 50 year old had 20 extra years to remember when a persons birthday was!

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[ameoba (173803)]

It's nice that you remember.

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[lahvak (69490)]

so fucking what? all this proves is that younger generations don't have the requirement of remmebering phone numbers. it doesn't prove they aren't capable.

I did not read the article, but i believe the main idea was that with all the new technology that remembers things for us, young people will have less opportunity to exercise their memory. I don't thing it's true, and this is exactly the reason why:

i bet if you asked the under 30's to recite some website addresses they would do far better then the over 5

Defensive coding...

[RyanFenton (230700)]

This is kind of what I'd expect, actually. Even if an adult mind was completely plastic, as people learn of the type of experiences that will come to them, they're going to quickly learn to categorize them, and which kinds of categories tend to work with more and more experiences.

It's like as a programmer learns of which coding constructs work for which situations... they learn it becomes more important to worry about understandability rather than speed, and to code with clear structures they can pick up later if and when they need to clean up misunderstandings later. The default practice becomes a sort of robust defensive form, that requires the fewest changes over the widest plausible set of needs - while still doing the job of completely enumerating the problem set needed.

I'd expect that even with minds unhindered by age, the same sort of defensive practices programmers pick up would have analogues in most other realms of experience that mankind goes through. That would then, be easily confused with a mind unable to rapidly change, because such wide change is then rarely observed.

That said - there are more concrete bits of evidence that complicate things - such as rates of new language adoption between adults and children... but again, there's also evidence that some adults can still pick up new languages rapidly. Perhaps those same defensive practices act as a 'language censor' to 'wasting time with confusing sentence structure' - or perhaps there really is some factor of truth to the hardware limitations of an aging brain. Hard to know for sure until we get the computational nuerobiology tools in place to be able to strictly test such things... I'm really happy to see the progress so far though.

Ryan Fenton

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[markov_chain (202465)]

Not to mention that there is almost no way adults can devote the kind of time that kids can to learning something new.

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[RyanFenton (230700)]

Would you have any suggestions of what literature would be appropriate for someone specifically interested in computational neuroscience? What I'd love to see if discussions on the methods that can be used to ask one neural cell something about its neighbors' state, and it's neighbors' neighbors state, and so on. This is something like how the brain has to work, if I'm able to speak about something I remember, then any functional cells should be able to ask eachother about their states in one way or anthe

Just hand waiving

[tgv (254536)]

That kind of conclusion is totally unwarranted. To begin with, the mice were not 70 years old. No, don't laugh! Either mouse neurons age as fast as the mice themselves do, which implies that (the processes in) their neurons differ fundamentally from ours, or these neurons age the way we do, but then they were studying two year old neurons, which I thought used to be considered pretty young.

Second, the observation that learning and memorizing becomes more difficult with age is pretty solid. If our neurons maintain their plasticity, these people should explain how a plastic brain stops learning.

Concluding: the observations are probably true, the conclusions were just made to draw attention and get more funding (aging is a big topic for funds these days). Such is the sad state of science.

PS I hold a post-doc in neurocognition.

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[tgv (254536)]

For someone who criticizes spelling, the first word in your post contains a remarkable oversight. I guess it's the spelling nazi's doom.

Anyway, plasticity is there, but there is a "vaster" body of evidence that the older you get, the harder it is to learn. Of course, you still can remember things, but e.g. these memories have to compete with existing ones. Consequently, perhaps our brain's plasticity is not enough to accomodate a huge amount of memories. Then again, plasticity does not seem to apply equally

Tiresome

[fygment (444210)]

This isn't progress. It is simply quantification. If you have ever worked with the disabled and physically/psychically traumatized you might wonder why exactly scientists wouldn't believe the brain to be more flexible "than they previously thought". The brain is so poorly understood in terms of how it works expect a long and tedious continuation of these pronouncements in the coming decades.

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[4D6963 (933028)]

Where are the comments!!

OMG they stoled teh commants!!

Ron Paul???

[pixelfood (973282)]

Why is this article tagged with 'ronpaul' and 'ronpaulisanazi'? I thought this was slashdot, not digg. Why don't we just tag the article with 'omgiphonejailbreak' and '10waystoimproveyourwebsite' while we're at it?

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[4D6963 (933028)]

Why is this article tagged with 'ronpaul' and 'ronpaulisanazi'?

I've been wondering the same thing. And now I'm wondering why you said that as a reply to my comment..

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[4D6963 (933028)]

The RTFA...

Err crap, I mean "TFA" of course..

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[cynicsreport (1125235)]

This whole thing is about mice brains actually, how do we know how that applies to adult human brains? The RTFA doesn't seem to say much about that..

That is actually an important observation that often goes unexplained. The fact is, mice are genetically very close to humans, but they reproduce quickly, are cheap, and their genetics and physiology are very well understood. That makes them a great animal to experiment on.
At the cellular level, most mammals are very, very similar to each other. In fact, we

Re:

[4D6963 (933028)]

I know all of that, but thanks anyways. But do we know if in these very news we're talking about it applies to humans? Because both the summary and the article make it sound like it does apply to us, but it sounds more like misleading us in order to make it sound more interesting than anything else.

usage of brains

[SuperBanana (662181)]

I hate this view that some how results of tests on animals don't apply to humans at all. It's simply not true, almost every major medical advance has been tested or researched on animals like mice first. the simple fact is mammals bodies all work in very similar ways.

Having worked in a lab (disclaimer: not as a scientist) I learned that there are loads and loads of promising treatments for cancer and such that work great in mice, and never translate beyond. Even a casual glance at immunology from a layman's perspective reveals your statement to be utter bullshit; there are many, many diseases and afflictions that are species specific, sometimes highly so.

Anyway...it is entirely plausible that this ability to re-purpose brain cells is a plus for mice in survival/adaptation, where they have very little brain capacity at their disposal. We have loads at our disposal, and tend to build a lot of generally useful knowledge..ie, we build tools, literally or figuratively, and apply those 'real' tools or knowledge/skill 'tools'. Mice do not do either. We're more "general purpose", so maybe we don't *need* the ability to re-learn, since our learned skills are so broadly applicable in a survival sense.

bullshit?

[foreverdisillusioned (763799)]

Even a casual glance at immunology from a layman's perspective reveals your statement to be utter bullshit; there are many, many diseases and afflictions that are species specific, sometimes highly so.

He stated that it's "not true" that animal tests don't apply to humans at all (true), that almost every major medical advance has been tested or researched on animals like mice first (true, at least since the mid-twentieth century), and that mammal bodies work in very similar ways (true).

What you said is also true--that despite the huge similarities there are also significant differences--but that doesn't make his statement "bullshit"... perhaps merely "incomplete."

I support your point in general, especially because brains is obviously one of the organs in which humans differ the most, but I don't think that gives you the right to call a bunch of essentially truthful statements "bullshit."

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[foreverdisillusioned (763799)]

No, the objection isn't bullshit because research in mice IS relevant to humans. Period. The question is merely HOW relevant this particular piece of research is.

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[4D6963 (933028)]

I hate this view that some how results of tests on animals don't apply to humans at all.

Hey slow down, it's not as if I was claiming "hey this thing doesn't apply to humans!". I'm just asking, and I believe this is a legitimate question, does that very thing apply to us, as it hasn't been mentioned, and you're not even answering to that. It's not because something works one on on mice that it's automatically working the same way in humans, mostly that our human brains have quite different capabilities and

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[4D6963 (933028)]

Haha thanks for your comment. By the way I'm working on a rewrite of the program to make it much faster (and also a bit more ergonomic and polished), and I plan on releasing it within the next few weeks.

Re:Humans

[4D6963 (933028)]

I've got a knife, you've got a brain... let's study this on your brain. ;-)

Must I understand that you don't have a brain? ;-)

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[4D6963 (933028)]

No, but you must understand it would be hard for you to function if you were cutting into your own, unless you really _are_ a fucking idiot.

You've never watched Hannibal now, have you? ;-)