How brains build and rebuild themselves.
8 topics · 9 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
The Linguistic Genius of Babies
Patricia Kuhl · 2010
Argues infants use statistical learning to tune their perception to their native language's sounds within the first year, and that this window…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
Insights into the Ageing Mind: A View from Cognitive Neuroscience
Trey Hedden & John Gabrieli · 2004
Reviews neuroimaging evidence that cognitive ageing is selective rather than global, sparing some functions while frontal-lobe-dependent processes…
+1 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Single-Cell Responses in Striate Cortex of Kittens Deprived of Vision in One Eye
Torsten Wiesel & David Hubel · 1963
Shows that briefly closing one eye in early life permanently shifts cortical neurons' ocular dominance toward the open eye, demonstrating a critical…
+5 more at this level
9 works
Patricia Kuhl
Argues infants use statistical learning to tune their perception to their native language's sounds within the first year, and that this window narrows well before a child ever speaks.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Trey Hedden & John Gabrieli
Reviews neuroimaging evidence that cognitive ageing is selective rather than global, sparing some functions while frontal-lobe-dependent processes decline earliest.
Bryan Kolb and Robbin Gibb
Argues that the developing brain is changed by experience in ways the adult brain is not, so the same injury or enrichment produces different outcomes depending entirely on when it occurs.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Torsten Wiesel & David Hubel
Shows that briefly closing one eye in early life permanently shifts cortical neurons' ocular dominance toward the open eye, demonstrating a critical period beyond which the visual cortex can no longer be rewired by experience.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Samuel David & Albert Aguayo
Shows severed CNS axons will regrow for long distances if given a peripheral nerve graft to grow through, evidence that the failure of CNS regeneration is about the surrounding environment rather than an intrinsic incapacity of the neuron.
Kennedy et al.
Identifies netrin as a diffusible protein secreted by floor-plate cells that attracts growing commissural axons across the midline, establishing chemotropic axon guidance as a real mechanism rather than a hypothesis.
Eriksson et al.
Provides the first direct evidence, from labelled cells in the brains of cancer patients who had received a cell-marking agent, that the adult human hippocampus continues to generate new neurons throughout life.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Giedd et al.
Shows from repeated MRI scans of the same children that grey matter volume follows an inverted-U trajectory through adolescence while white matter increases steadily, overturning the assumption that brain structure is fixed after early childhood.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Jerry Silver & Jared Miller
Argues the glial scar after CNS injury is not simply a mechanical barrier but a chemical one, dense with molecules that actively inhibit axon regrowth, reframing regeneration failure as something to counteract rather than a wound to heal.