Neuroplasticity

Two sources in the wiki treat neuroplasticity from opposite ends of life. In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, Bruce Perry stresses the malleability of the young brain: “the developing brain is most malleable and most sensitive to experience—both good and bad—early in life,” which is why children “so easily and rapidly learn language, social nuance, motor skills.” He illustrates the wiring window with the classic kitten-eye experiment (an eye kept closed in the first weeks of life leaves the animal blind in that eye despite a normal eye, because the visual circuitry never wires itself) and the language analogue (a child not exposed to language early may never speak normally; second languages learned after puberty carry an accent). The same plasticity that lets young brains “quickly learn love and language” also makes them “highly susceptible to negative experiences” — which is why, per Perry, “resilient children are made, not born.”

The Science of Learning makes the complementary point about the adult brain: “Science has already dispensed with the notion that the adult brain is more or less fixed thing, that its neurons can’t grow and their connections can’t stay nimble. They can.” That note treats neuroplasticity as the reason learning is not bounded by a fixed childhood wiring, pairing it with the three ingredients of learning (motivation, opportunity, sustained attention). It links the argument to Neuroscience directly.

Context: Neuroplasticity is the brain’s capacity to reorganize its structure and connections in response to experience, learning, and injury — strongest during early “critical periods” of development but persisting, to a meaningful degree, throughout adult life.

Where this appears

• The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog — Perry frames the young brain’s plasticity (kitten-eye and language-acquisition examples) as both the engine of rapid childhood learning and the source of vulnerability to early trauma.
• The Science of Learning — argues the adult brain can still grow and re-wire, making neuroplasticity the basis for lifelong learning.