What is neuroplasticity?
When you learn a route, a word or a new way to grip a racket, something in your nervous system has to change to store it. Neuroplasticity, also called neural plasticity or brain plasticity, is the name for that capacity: the brain's structure and function change with experience, learning and use.
These changes happen at many scales, from the connections between individual nerve cells to the size of whole regions. Studies in people mostly see the largest scale, through MRI scans, which is one reason the evidence needs careful reading.
Plasticity is not something you switch on with a special exercise. It happens whenever you learn anything, useful or not.
Landmark studies
London taxi drivers
To get a licence, London taxi drivers must learn the complex layout of the city's streets, a test known as "the Knowledge". A 2000 study compared MRI scans of licensed London taxi drivers with those of people who did not drive taxis: the drivers' posterior hippocampi were larger, while a more anterior part of the hippocampus was larger in the comparison group; the longer someone had driven a taxi, the larger the posterior region and the smaller the anterior one [1]. The authors linked this to the idea that the posterior hippocampus stores a spatial representation, a kind of mental map, of the environment [1].
A one-off comparison like this cannot rule out that people with a larger posterior hippocampus are drawn to taxi driving. So the same research group later followed trainees over four years as they learned the Knowledge: those who qualified showed a selective increase in grey matter in their posterior hippocampi, along with changes in their memory test results; no structural changes appeared in trainees who failed to qualify or in a comparison group [2]. That study was not randomised, but it followed the same people before and after learning.
Exercise and the hippocampus
In a randomised trial with 120 older adults, aerobic exercise training increased the size of the anterior hippocampus by about 2%, along with improvements in spatial memory, while hippocampal volume declined in the control group [3].
Learning a memory technique
Plasticity is not only about size. In one study, people with no special memory skills practised a memory technique for six weeks [4]. Their functional connectivity (how activity in different brain regions rises and falls together) changed towards the pattern that distinguished 23 leading memory athletes from matched controls, and the closer the resemblance, the larger their memory improvements, measured up to four months after training [4].
The technique was the method of loci: you picture a route you know well, leave one vivid image at each stop, then walk the route in your mind to recall the items in order. The Memory Palace Builder guides you through it.
Try it on LaserMind
▶ Memory Palace BuilderBuild a route, place your items, and see how many you recall in order.
A brain change is not the same as a real-world benefit
Two different questions are often blurred together. Did the brain change? And did the person get better at something that matters to them? A scan can only answer the first.
The first question is harder to answer than headlines suggest. A critical review of MRI studies of training-related structural change in adults concluded that limits of study design, statistical methods and measurement artefacts may explain many reported effects [5]. The most robust evidence it found was the change in anterior hippocampal volume with exercise in older adults [5].
And a change is not always simply "more". In the taxi-driver comparison, a larger posterior region came with a smaller anterior one [1].
For exercise, the second question has been studied directly as well. An umbrella review of 133 systematic reviews of randomised trials found that exercise improved general cognition, memory and executive function on average, with standardised effects of about 0.2 to 0.4, small to moderate [6]. That evidence comes from tests of thinking, not from scans.
Plasticity does not mean "any exercise makes you smarter"
The step from "the brain can change" to "this game will sharpen your memory at work" is where the reasoning breaks. Plasticity tells you that practice changes something. It does not tell you what improves beyond the practised task.
A major review of the studies cited by brain-training companies found extensive evidence that training improves the trained tasks, less evidence for closely related tasks, and little evidence for distantly related tasks or everyday cognitive performance [7]. A set of meta-analyses across several kinds of cognitive training found minimal effects on general cognitive skills, with the differences between studies explained by design quality and statistical artefacts [8]. Science: brain games and IQ covers this in more detail.
"Learn a demanding new skill", a popular piece of plasticity advice, shows the same mixed pattern. Older adults who learned quilting, digital photography or both for about 16.5 hours a week over three months improved their episodic memory more than groups doing social activities or low-demand tasks [9]. But in a randomised trial with 160 adults aged 65 to 75, 11 weeks of learning Italian gave basic knowledge of the language and negligible gains in memory or intelligence compared with relaxation training [10]. The reliable gain is the skill itself.
How "neuroplasticity" gets misused
Because the basic idea is true, the word is easy to borrow. Watch for these patterns:
- A true premise with an unearned conclusion. "Your brain is plastic, so our programme will sharpen your focus." Plasticity applies to everything you do, scrolling included, so it cannot show that a particular product helps.
- Scans offered as proof. A coloured brain image or a change in grey matter is not evidence that you will think better in daily life.
- Promises of fast, general change. The studies above ran from six weeks to four years and found changes tied to specific experiences, not a general upgrade.
- Borrowed authority. In a 2008 experiment, non-experts, including students on a neuroscience course, rated explanations of psychological findings as more satisfying when logically irrelevant neuroscience information was added, and the effect was strongest for bad explanations [11]. Later experiments with 385 college students found the same bias, and adding brain-scan pictures made no further difference [12].
Useful questions to ask of any claim: What exactly improved, and was it the practised task or something else? Who was studied, for how long, and compared with what? Is a brain scan being offered instead of a measured result?
LaserMind follows the same rule: practice improves the practised task, so we show your results on each exercise against your own history, and we do not claim general benefits or brain changes.
What the research says
Try it on LaserMind
▶ Recall Cards (spaced repetition)Put plasticity to an honest test: learn something you actually want to know, and track what you can recall.
What research has not established
Much of the evidence on plasticity in adults comes from MRI, which measures brain structure only coarsely, and a critical review found that many reported training effects in adults may not be robust [5].
The taxi-driver studies involved one profession in one city, and the four-year study was not randomised: trainees who qualified may differ from those who did not in other ways. The exercise trial studied older adults only. The memory-technique study tracked memory performance; it is not evidence of wider benefits. The neuroscience-explanation experiments used short written explanations and mostly student participants.
LaserMind does not measure brains. Nothing in this article shows that LaserMind exercises change brain structure, and we do not claim that they do.
Frequently asked questions
Does plasticity stop in adulthood? The studies above found experience-related changes in adults, and in older adults in the exercise trial. How plasticity changes across the lifespan is a large research field that this article does not cover.
Do LaserMind exercises change my brain? Any skill you learn involves some change in the nervous system, but we do not measure brains and make no claims about brain changes. What we show is your result on each exercise compared with your own history.
What the research says
Last evidence check 2026-10-11In older adults, learning quilting and/or digital photography for about 16.5 hours a week over 3 months improved episodic memory more than social activities or low-demand tasks did. Other abilities [9]
In a randomised trial with 160 healthy adults aged 65–75, 11 weeks of learning Italian gave basic knowledge of the language but no meaningful gains in memory or intelligence compared with relaxation training. Other abilities [10]
An umbrella review of 133 systematic reviews found that exercise, including aerobic and resistance training, improved general cognition, memory and executive function; effects were small and varied between groups. Other abilities [6]
In a one-year trial with older adults, walking three times a week increased the size of the hippocampus by about 2%, and the increase went with better spatial memory. Health [3]
References
- Maguire, E. A., Gadian, D. G., Johnsrude, I. S., Good, C. D., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R. S. J., et al. (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(8), 4398–4403. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.070039597
- Woollett, K., & Maguire, E. A. (2011). Acquiring “the Knowledge” of London's Layout Drives Structural Brain Changes. Current Biology, 21(24), 2109–2114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.018
- Erickson, K. I., Voss, M. W., Prakash, R. S., et al. (2011). Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory. PNAS, 108(7), 3017–3022. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1015950108
- Dresler, M., Shirer, W. R., Konrad, B. N., et al. (2017). Mnemonic training reshapes brain networks to support superior memory. Neuron, 93(5), 1227–1235.e6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2017.02.003
- Thomas, C., & Baker, C. I. (2013). Teaching an adult brain new tricks: A critical review of evidence for training-dependent structural plasticity in humans. NeuroImage, 73, 225–236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.03.069
- Singh, B., et al. (2025). Effectiveness of exercise for improving cognition, memory and executive function: A systematic umbrella review and meta-meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2024-108589
- Simons, D. J., Boot, W. R., Charness, N., Gathercole, S. E., Chabris, C. F., Hambrick, D. Z., & Stine-Morrow, E. A. L. (2016). Do "brain-training" programs work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(3), 103–186. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100616661983
- Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2019). Cognitive training does not enhance general cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(1), 9–20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.10.004
- Park, D. C., Lodi-Smith, J., Drew, L., Haber, S., Hebrank, A., Bischof, G. N., & Aamodt, W. (2014). The impact of sustained engagement on cognitive function in older adults: The Synapse Project. Psychological Science, 25(1), 103–112. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613499592
- Berggren, R., Nilsson, J., Brehmer, Y., Schmiedek, F., & Lövdén, M. (2020). Foreign language learning in older age does not improve memory or intelligence: Evidence from a randomized controlled study. Psychology and Aging, 35(2), 212–219. https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000439
- Weisberg, D. S., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E., & Gray, J. R. (2008). The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(3), 470–477. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.20040
- Fernandez-Duque, D., Evans, J., Christian, C., & Hodges, S. D. (2015). Superfluous Neuroscience Information Makes Explanations of Psychological Phenomena More Appealing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27(5), 926–944. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00750