In your book, you talk about the mechanisms of neuroplasticity.

What are the mechanisms of neuroplasticity and the three factors that have the biggest impact on changes in the brain?

So the first one is myelination and anyone who does a lot of sport who repeats a certain, you know, weight training will understand that that's what's happening in their muscles.

You know when I said,

you know, you come here pretty much every day and you sit with someone and you interview them

and you're really great at asking questions, that's like something you're super good at that because

you repeat it, it becomes like a superpower. And that means that what's happening there is myelination.

So myelin is a fatty substance that coats

some neural pathways and those pathways become fast pathways. Now there's a reason from evolution

why we have some fast pathways and some slow pathways. And the reason is that if you put your

hand in the fire, your reflex to snatch your hand out is a fast pathway,

but your pain reflex is a slow pathway, because if you were incapacitated by pain,

the minute you put your hand in the fire, you wouldn't be able to get away from it.

One of the mechanisms of neuroplasticity is becoming even better at something that you're really good at,

and that happens through myelination.

The most common one, which is something that you're really good at, and that happens through myelination. The most common one, which is something that you're quite good at, but if you had loads of time,

you could become really good at it, but you maybe don't have loads of time, happens through

synaptic connection. So that's the one that can feel like quite hard work, but if you put in the effort, then you can change your brain.

So that means that neurons that already exist in the brain connect up with each other and start to form new pathways.

And the third mechanism, which doesn't happen a lot in the adult brain, but it does happen around the hippocampus because we do lay down new memories in life.

Happens a lot in children's brains.

It's called neurogenesis.

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