What Fires Together, Wires Together

How your brain changes while working, learning, and more

“Neurons that fire together, wire together.” — Donal Hebb

Perhaps you have heard this oft-quoted phrase and wondered what it means. More importantly, how do you benefit if you repeatedly take actions that help your neurons wire together?

Let’s answer that question by first understanding neuroplasticity.

Your Brain Can Change and that Process is Called Neuroplasticity

Stimuli cause a response and changes in your brain. The stimuli can be external, such as taking up a new hobby such as tango dancing, or internal such as a golfer imaging the perfect put just before actually stepping up and putting.

Every time your brain responds to stimuli an electrical impulse triggers either the formation of a new synaptic connection or the strengthening of an existing connection. This is what Hebb meant with his rhyme about firing and wiring together.

Conversely, if you stop doing an activity (e.g., I no longer play golf), the synaptic connection can atrophy or degrade through a lack of use.

There is a healthy and steady competition always going on inside your brain to maintain synaptic connections. This is healthy because the connections being used “win” and maintain their strength. Strong connections make a task easier.

Unused or underused neurons lose out in this competition and those neural connections begin to weaken and atrophy.

Your brain, which is an energy hog, requires less energy to perform a task that is enabled by strong synaptic connections. to you, that task simply comes easier.

This competition helps explain why 10,000 hours of practice is presented as a path to expertise. You will have repeated an action so often and for so long, for example practising your golf swing, that it simply becomes second nature and feels effortless. That’s the benefit of strong neural connections regardless of whether or not your performance becomes elite.

What you do over and over becomes reflected in the structure of your brain. — David Eagleman, Livewired

Conversely, trying a task for the first time, or picking up an old task after a long break (or traumatic injury), can feel challenging or energy-consuming at first. Why? Because the synaptic connections don’t exist or have atrophied. You have to work harder to perform that task.

Soldiers returning from a battlefield injury might need to learn to walk or talk again. Many do and that’s through hours of hard work and the brain’s power of neuroplasticity.

The good news is that anyone can start rewiring their brain.

And Example of Neuroplasticity Worth Watching

This wonderful video portrays the process elegantly.

Huge thanks to Dr. Tara Swart for pointing me toward this video

Why Should You Care About Strengthening Neural Connections?

Your healthy brain — at any age — can learn, grow, and adapt to the changing world around us. You can literally continue developing across your entire lifespan if you are in good health and know what to do.

This notion of any age applies to learning knowledge, practices, recovering from trauma and more. The rewiring is driven by your need to adapt to a changing world around you (e.g., new job, change in processes, new technologies, picking up a new language, changing or creating a habit, etc.)

Stated differently, the old idea that you peak by 40 or 45 and from that point onwards, inevitably, your mind and life go downhill…does not align with 30 years of neuroscientific research revealing a very different and amazing story about your brain’s continued growth and development across the lifespan.

Simply put, you can be more adaptive and resilient throughout your entire lifespan if you make the right choices and take constructive actions. This goes so far beyond the notion of crystalised knowledge into old age that, frankly, any reference to Cattell’s 1960s research should henceforth be disposed of. I will explain why in a future blog post. Modern science tells a very different story than what Cattell gave us and what modern scholars slavishly repeat.

Here’s the Takeaway

You can learn, improve, and grow — you can rewire your brain at any age. You now also know how that happens… via the power of neuroplasticity.

Stay tuned because at Extend My Runway we help you learn how to unlock the power of neuroplasticity and build a better brain for a longer life and career.