Wired for Freedom

For most of the twentieth century, neuroscientists believed the adult brain was fixed — hardwired by early childhood, incapable of real change. If trauma carved a groove of anxiety into your mind, or addiction rewired your reward centers, you were told that was simply who you were now. Science said so. Then in the 1990s, researchers like Michael Merzenich at UC San Francisco began overturning that assumption with landmark studies on what they called neuroplasticity — the brain's measurable capacity to form entirely new neural pathways throughout life.…