Is brain plasticity something to be concerned about or embraced when learning new things?

When I was writing my 2016 book, The Science of Discovery, I chose in one whole chapter to explore the nature of deafness and hearing. One of the sources I used was a brilliant book by the mother of a child who became deaf early in life. Her book, I Can Hear You Whisper (Lydia Denworth, 2014), is my favorite when it comes to the nature of brain plasticity.

A more controversial story, and one I rarely tell, comes from my therapy practice. A woman who worked as a physical therapist’s assistant, who had been coming to me for some time, came in one day and told a very strange story. She began with that she had questions for me as to how this thing could have happened. Ok. I was intrigued. She then began to tell me about a 70 year old man she’d been asked to try to help. He had lost his ability to walk up stairs and none of the other therapists had been able to help at all.

She told me she did something which has never stopped fascinating me. She asked him to stand at the bottom of a set of stairs. She then rubbed Vicks under his nose and told him to walk up the stairs.

He then did it. The man walked up the stairs. And yes, I wasn’t there. And yes, she could have lied. But I doubt it as who would have fabricated such an odd story.

My response to her?

Over the next year, she and I explored this event many times. Each time, I came to the same conclusion. When you learn how the brain allots space, you know there are seasons for brain development. Miss the season and you miss the boat. BUT, these are ways to reconfigure the brain, in effect, to provoke brain plasticity. In this case, my conclusion after hearing about many other similar events was that “the experience of walking up stairs” is so sufficiently different from “the experience of walking up the stairs with the strong smell of Vicks” that the brain saw this second experience as new learning.

I’m no neurologist. But I am a curious human. Perhaps someone else has heard a similar story? In any event, thanks for asking me this intriguing question. (posted to Quora December 4, 2024).