"You can't teach old dogs new tricks" used to be more than a folk saying. For many years, the idea that mature adult brains could change significantly wasn't well accepted or even investigated. Old dogs were stuck with old tricks, and had to be happy with them.
Moshe Feldenkrais' work in movement education used the idea of the malleability of the nervous system in making some pretty impressive changes in people's functional patterns. As far as I know, the old guy was spouting a theory. In those days, it wasn't very practical to look inside people's heads to see what was going on.
But today, the adult nervous system's plasticity is getting some pretty impressive evidence to back up the ideas. And technologies like functional magnetic resonance lets us peek into functioning brains with open the heads containing those brains. How the Brain Rewires Itself in Time magazine is an accessible introduction to the subject, but also raises some questions, at least for me.
A starting piece of evidence supporting plasticity came from practicing piano players. The pianists practicing fluidly two hours a day to a metronome, then sitting under a fancy brain scanner showed motor cortex changes. Activity changed something in their brains. But it turns out that just thinking about playing the same music without actually doing so produces the same sort of motor cortex changes.
Activity can change brain patterns, but so can thinking about activity. And it doesn't even have to be what we traditionally think of as motor activity or movement. Investigators looking into obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression found thinking could change those patterns. They used a type of thinking known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, where patients learn to recognize, dispute and change negative thoughts.
All of this sounds pretty cool, but I began wondering about how long the changes would last, how hardy the new brain patterns were to the environmental and habitual patterns that are part of everyday life. There was no mention of follow up studies with the OCD or depressive patients.
My own idea from my Feldenkrais practice is that changes need to be reinforced frequently to have much of an effect. You can get some pretty dramatic results from a Feldenkrais lesson, but the weight of habit can erase them pretty quickly. But continuing the lessons and doing them mindfully over a long period does seem to make a difference for many. They don't call it a practice for nothing.
The Time article described a study that tackled the idea of change durability. This one involved experienced Buddhist monks and students who were taught the rudiments of meditation and practiced a bit. If I'm reading the article right, the students showed some small brain changes. But the monks showed really strong patterns, presumably from their many years of meditation practice.
So old dogs can learn new tricks, and now we've got the (scanner) pictures to back it up. And we've got some evidence that it takes lots of practice to make the new tricks stand up to old habits and environmental influences.