How to actually train your brain's neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity gets treated like a switch you either have or don't, but it's really the brain's ongoing response to input, the process of strengthening some connections and pruning others so you can keep learning, remembering, and adapting. A physician and neuroscience researcher who studies human performance breaks down what the evidence actually shows about keeping that process active as you age, and it has less to do with supplements or brain games than most people assume.

The adult brain doesn't need new neurons to keep changing

A common misconception is that plasticity requires growing new brain cells. In most regions, the adult brain makes very few new neurons. What it does constantly is rewire the connections between the neurons it already has, both building new ones and pruning ones that are no longer useful. That pruning is not a sign of decline, it's a normal part of refining a skill, whether that's motor coordination learned in childhood or a hobby picked up as an adult. One theory of cognitive aging holds that people lose function less because of some inevitable decline and more because they stop giving their brain new, demanding inputs to maintain.

Novel, challenging activities protect the aging brain

Across large trials in older adults, the pattern is consistent: cognitively demanding activities, not passive ones, are what maintain function. Large studies like the POINTER trial in the US and MAINTAIN YOUR BRAIN in Australia combined diet, exercise, cardiovascular risk management, and structured brain training and saw better maintenance of cognitive function. A striking finding from the older ACTIVE trial: participants who did processing-speed training, with booster sessions at one and three years, had a significantly lower risk of dementia measured 20 years later.

But activity type matters. Familiar puzzles like crosswords and sudoku function more like a relaxing, meditative habit than a true cognitive challenge once you're good at them. What seems to matter more is picking something that combines multiple systems at once, motor skill, social interaction, and unpredictability. Meta-analyses point to ballroom and line dancing as having some of the largest effects on cognitive function in older adults, likely because they stack physical activity, complex motor learning, timing and music processing, and social interaction into a single activity. Martial arts, team sports, and learning a new language show similar broad benefits, more so than narrower digital brain-training games, which tend to improve the specific trained task without transferring much to daily life.

Exercise itself is a distinct plasticity lever

Exercise doesn't just support general health, different types appear to drive different kinds of brain change. In one trial, older adults were randomized to low-intensity activity, zone 2 cardio, or a high-intensity interval protocol (four-minute intervals at 85 to 95 percent of max heart rate, three times a week for six months). All three groups improved fitness, but the high-intensity group showed distinctly better maintenance of hippocampal structure and function on MRI, a benefit that was still present five years after the six-month program ended. The takeaway isn't that steady-state cardio is worthless, it's that harder, structured intervals may do something specific for brain regions tied to memory that easier training doesn't replicate.

Stop waiting for flow, aim for the "clutch state" instead

Flow, the sense of effortless peak performance, gets treated as the state you need for both top performance and optimal learning. Neither is quite right. High performers spend plenty of time in what sports psychology calls a clutch state: still performing at their best, but it feels like real, effortful work the whole way through, right at the edge of ability. Real learning depends on that friction, the mistakes and errors that come from working past your current skill level, which is close to the opposite of effortless flow. If you're waiting to feel flow before you count a practice session as good, you're using the wrong measure.

That also means not every session should feel productive. A useful rule of thumb from athletic training: roughly a third of sessions will feel great, a third will feel average, and a third will feel like a grind where you just have to show up and get through it. That's normal variation, not a sign you're doing something wrong, and expecting otherwise is a common reason people quit right when the work is actually paying off.

The practical takeaway

If you want to keep your brain's plasticity active, look for activities that are genuinely outside your current skill level and, ideally, combine motor, cognitive, and social demands at once: a new dance style, a martial art, a team sport, or a new language. Pair that with harder, structured exercise sessions rather than relying only on easy steady-state cardio. And let go of the idea that it should feel easy or effortless. Feeling challenged, occasionally frustrated, and sometimes like you're grinding through a mediocre session is not a sign you're failing, it's what the process of building new capacity actually looks like.