>>11182760>>11182783http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2811%2901267-X>Trainee taxi drivers in London spend 3–4 years learning the city's layout>We assessed the brain and memory of trainees before and after this long training>Those who qualified experienced increased gray matter in posterior hippocampus>Successful qualification was also associated with changes in memory profileThis was actually a repeat experiment with a larger sample size (n=88), i.e. the results are predictable and reproducible. Pilot study in the citations.
All subjects were fully-grown adults age 30+, so "normal" brain development had already run its course.
So, lifelong neuroplasticity is true.
This doesn't settle the nature vs nurture debate, as the authors note:
>Although our data show that environmental stimulation can drive structural brain changes, it may be that this hippocampal plasticity expresses itself only in certain individuals. The trainees that qualified may have had a genetic predisposition toward plasticity that the nonqualified individuals lacked.Also interesting: in a separate but related study, the authors gave a battery of cognitive tests to the same subjects. They observed an increase in spatial reasoning scores, but this was accompanied by a decrease in other scores! In other words, it's as if they "traded" one facet of intelligence for another...
