Tag: neuroplasticity

The Plastic Instinct

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How instinct and intuition shape us, and how the nervous system allows us to rewrite our oldest impulses

Daily writing prompt
Do you trust your instincts?
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We usually imagine instinct as something permanent, a force that precedes thought and resists revision, moves faster than reason, feels older than memory, and often arrives before we have a chance to interpret it.

A sudden flinch, a tightening in the chest, a hesitation in front of a crowd; these are signals from biology’s first draft of the self.

Intuition, by contrast, feels learned yet inexplicable. It is judgment from experience, from patterns we have absorbed but cannot fully articulate. The distinction seems clear: instinct is inherited, intuition is acquired. Yet according to neuroscience, they are closer than meets the eye.

I. Instinct as the First Draft

Neuroscience shows that instinctive circuits through the amygdala, periaqueductal gray, and other subcortical structures operate at speeds that bypass conscious thought (LeDoux, 1996) in order to guide us toward survival. Instinct carries ancient wisdom, but it is not absolute, and in modern life some consider it an outdated architecture.

Instinct can change. Neuroplasticity allows the nervous system to reshape itself in response to experience, so emotional memory can be updated each time it is recalled in a process called reconsolidation (Phelps et al., 2009). Fear responses once thought permanent can be weakened through repeated exposure. Prosocial impulses can be reinforced through practice.

II. Intuition as the Brain’s Ongoing Revision

Intuition is the mechanism through which these revisions emerge through pattern recognition: the brain compressing thousands of experiences into a single instant of guidance.

A seasoned firefighter senses a building is unsafe before assessing the evidence. A guitarist feels the right chord before theory explains it. These are instincts refined by experience and practice.

The distinction between instinct and intuition fades because both rely on the nervous system’s ability to encode and adapt information. What feels immediate is often the negotiation between our ancient foundations and modern experience.

III. Rewriting Instinct and the Responsibility of Freedom

The possibility of rewriting instinct raises ethical and philosophical questions. If our deepest reactions can be altered, we bear responsibility for which impulses we cultivate. If courage can be trained, empathy practiced, fear tempered, then nothing stops us from imagining “ideal” humans—creatures optimized for rationality, cooperation, or moral virtue. History brings up a cautionary lens. Communism and socialism were once heralded as systems that could perfect society, yet the unpredictability of human behavior and the complexity of the world made total control impossible. Even carefully designed utilitarian experiments struggle to account for the emergent consequences of individual choices and the infinite ways context shapes action.

Maladaptive environments, however, can carve unhealthy patterns into the nervous system just as easily. The plasticity of instinct is both liberating and fragile. It allows us to grow, but it is also inevitably shaped by forces outside conscious control. In this sense, instinct is less a fixed verdict than ongoing revision. Human potential will perhaps always remain uncertain. We cannot manufacture perfection, yet we can still strive. So, the work of shaping instinct cannot be absolute; rather it fluctuates between what can be trained and what must be lived.

IV. Living Between Draft and Revision

Instinct is the prewritten framework of the self, a set of impulses we inherit before we can interpret them. Intuition layers experience atop it, shaping quiet guidance we rarely notice. Conscious attention is the instrument of our change, refining and redirecting without ever fully controlling the story.

Reflex can become deliberate as reaction can become understanding. We are neither prisoners of our earliest wiring nor masters of its total rewriting.

Rewriting instinct carries ethical weight. If courage, empathy, or fear can be trained, shaping the impulses of others through education, culture, or biotechnology is imaginable. History reminds us that attempts to “perfect” humans or societies fail, as the world resists total control. Yet this imperfection also carries hope: the same plasticity that allows harm also allows care, reflection, and responsible guidance.

To trust instinct is to honor its voice while recognizing limits. To engage thoughtfully is to co-author the self. Living fully must mean navigating the tension between inherited and cultivated impulses, letting both guide us. But this responsibility extends beyond personal growth. How we train instinct shapes the ethical contours of who we become. Courage cultivated in adolescence can influence moral choices in adulthood. Empathy reinforced through social experience alters how we respond to strangers. Fear tempered through exposure can prevent harmful overreactions. Shaping instinct means editing our identity. The ethical dimension is unavoidable: the self is inseparable from the impulses we refine, and the values we choose to embed in them.

References

  • LeDoux, Joseph. The Emotional Brain. 1996
  • Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. 2011
  • Damasio, Antonio. Descartes’ Error. 1994
  • Phelps, Elizabeth et al. Nature, 2009
  • Sapolsky, Robert. Why Zebras Do Not Get Ulcers. 1994

Written by Mason Lai, a California high schooler.

Frames of Identity

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Daily writing prompt
What’s the first impression you want to give people?
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The first impression you give someone feels simple.

A glance, a phrase, the slight tilt of your voice as it tries to decide whether to sound confident or careful. But beneath that moment sits a truth most people never notice. It may be easy forget that others never gain awareness of the full architecture you are. Rather, a moment of awareness is simply one frame in a long sequence, and your brain rushes to stitch these frames together so you can believe there is a solid self living behind your eyes.

Identity is not what we think. I understand it as a continuity the brain desperately creates from separate moments to make sense of the movement of our lives. Neuroscientist Anil Seth calls this a controlled hallucination. The mind fills the gaps so you do not feel the gaps. It connects the flicker of one second to another until the whole thing seems unbroken, like a film reel running just fast enough to appear real.

We like to believe we are consistent people. Yet the research on memory says otherwise. We are creatures of reconstruction. Every remembered version of yourself is edited, packaged for memory, and rearranged. The brain rewrites the story so you can wake up each morning and believe today follows yesterday. This introduces a unique conundrum. Rather than storing identity, we regenerate it every day.

So when someone asks what first impression you want to give, the real question is much, much stranger, and it sounds something like this:

Which version of yourself do you choose to step into the next moment of your life? Which frame do you choose as the doorway?

This is where things shift from science to philosophy. Time feels like a flowing river, but psychologists who study chronostasis suggest that much of time is perception layered on top of uncertainty. The brain inserts its own continuity to prevent us from feeling the world as a collection of tiny, isolated pulses. If we experienced pure discontinuity, we would lose our sense of self within days.

Identity is the story your brain tells so you can stay afloat.

And yet there is something quite beautiful in that. If the self is an invention, it means you are not trapped by whatever story you once believed. You have a say in how the next frame develops. The first impression you offer someone is a creative act rather than a performance. It is the moment you decide which what stays, and what goes.

The poet Ocean Vuong once wrote that memory is a story we carry in order to survive. I think identity is similar. A living thing. An ongoing choice. A narrative held together not by perfect accuracy but by the desire to be understood.

So when someone meets you for the first time, they encounter a glimpse. A soft outline of a self that is always shifting. You might wish people could see the fuller version of you, the one that carries all your experiences and contradictions and small private joys. But this gentle incompleteness is part of what makes human connection meaningful. We meet one another through keyholes. We will never know the full interior, so we stay curious, listening. We keep evolving our impression of each other.

The mind protects us from the terror of a fractured reality by mashing together all the sense-datum we receive each day into something that seems continuous. Our task is just to participate in that creation with care and to let ourselves change while accepting that others will only ever see fragments.

Identity behaves a little like starlight. From a distance you see a single shimmer and assume it is the whole story. If you could travel closer, you would find a roaring furnace made of collisions, and pressure, and centuries of change. The light you see from afar, while seemingly false, is simply the only version that can cross the distance. It gives you a place to aim your attention.

A first impression works the same way. It is the part of you that travels. The part that reaches others first. The person you are is not the glow but the whole constellation of experiences that shaped it. And the self beneath all of that, the one even you struggle to map, is the vast system of forces and history that the mind is still learning to name.

The good thing about all this is that identity does not need to be solved. You do not have to know exactly who you are to live as someone real. You can be in motion, gathering pieces, setting others down, changing shape without warning. For you were never meant to be a statue.

Even scientists who study memory admit that the brain edits and revises and rearranges our story. If the mind keeps rewriting you, then you are allowed to participate in that creation. You are allowed to change your mind about yourself. You are allowed to hold uncertainty without feeling lost.

There is nothing weak about that. There is nothing broken about being unfinished.

Identity is a conversation between what made you and what you choose next. It is a bridge you are always building, even when the blueprint is unclear. The gaps are not failures. The gaps are invitations. They ask you to imagine, to choose, to become.

And maybe that is the real beauty. We are not defined by the parts we cannot explain. Instead, we are defined by the meaning we learn to create from them. Every time you step forward, you add a piece to your ever-growing puzzle. It does not matter if you don’t see the full picture yet, because, truth is, life wasn’t made to make sense from the inside.

So if you feel unfinished, good. It means there is space to grow toward a self that feels honest. It means you still have room for new light. It means the story is unfolding and you are awake inside it.

You are allowed to be a work in progress. You are allowed to be a constellation still forming. You are allowed to discover who you are by living, not by knowing.

And that is enough.

Written by Mason Lai, a California high schooler.

Why Forgetting Might Be the Most Human Thing We Do

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We like to think of memory as proof of who we are. The things we remember become the architecture of our identity, yet beneath that structure lies something quieter, more fragile, and perhaps more vital: the things we forget.

Forgetting has always been treated as the mind’s flaw. A smudge in the lens. But what if it’s the very process that keeps the lens clear?

The Brain’s Gentle Refusal

Neuroscience describes memory as a process of constant revision. The hippocampus stores and reshapes what we take in, then loosens its grip when something no longer serves the present (Squire, 2009).

Researchers in Toronto proposed that the brain forgets to survive. Without that ability, consciousness would collapse under its own weight (Bjork, 1975). We would be unable to tell what matters. The mind that never forgets cannot change its mind.

Every day, thousands of synaptic connections fade, but traces remain as pathways that strengthen when we return to them. The rest dissolve into the white noise of experience, making room for new learning, new meaning, and new selves (Kandel, 2006).

The Poetry of Impermanence

When we revisit a memory, we rewrite it. The scene shifts, colors dull or brighten, dialogue rearranges itself (Loftus, 2005). What we call memory is really imagination tethered to a few truths.

There is something sacred about this impermanence. It protects us from being trapped in yesterday’s version of ourselves. It allows pain to lose its sharpness, allows love to change shape without vanishing. Forgetting is not the opposite of remembering; it is how remembering stays bearable (Hardt, 2008).

A Mind that Learns to Release

To live fully may mean learning to let thoughts fade without resistance. We do not abandon what we forget; we carry the echo of it. The brain understands this long before we do. It edits with care, choosing what we are ready to carry forward (McGaugh, 2000).

Some cultures have long understood this rhythm. The Japanese concept of mono no aware—the bittersweet awareness of impermanence—captures the beauty of forgetting. The ancient Greeks linked memory to Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, yet they also revered Lethe, the river of forgetting, as the path to peace (Assmann, 2011).

The self that remembers everything would have no room to grow, and the one who forgets too easily would lose coherence. So we exist between the two in a delicate equilibrium of holding and release.

The Human Art of Letting Go

Forgetting is not a failure of intellect but a condition of grace. It gives us the courage to begin again, to rebuild understanding without the burden of total recall. The mind renews itself in the spaces it empties.

Perhaps this is what it means to be human: to remember just enough to love the world, and to forget just enough to forgive it.

References

Squire, L. R. (2009). Memory and Brain. Oxford University Press.

Assmann, J. (2011). Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination. Cambridge University Press.

Bjork, R. A. (1975). Retrieval as a memory modifier: An interpretation of negative recency and related phenomena. In J. Brown (Ed.), Recall and Recognition (pp. 123–144). London: Wiley.

Hardt, O., Nader, K., & Nadel, L. (2008). Decay happens: The role of reconsolidation in memory. Trends in Neurosciences, 31(8), 374–380.

Kandel, E. R. (2006). In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind. W. W. Norton & Company.

Loftus, E. F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning & Memory, 12(4), 361–366.

McGaugh, J. L. (2000). Memory–a century of consolidation. Science, 287(5451), 248–251.

Schacter, D. L. (2001). The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. Houghton Mifflin.

Written by Mason Lai, a California high schooler.

How to Rewire Your Brain in the Last 60 Days of 2025

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Sixty days left in 2025. That’s enough time to either coast through the end of the year or to reprogram how you think, focus, and act. The truth is, your brain remains remarkably adaptable.

This is not about resolutions. It is about neuroscience and the quiet biological fact that change is built on repetition and reflection.

1. The Myth of the Big Reset

We love the fantasy of transformation: new notebooks, gym sign-ups, the illusion that change begins on command. But real rewiring does not happen that way.

Neuroscience shows growth is not a switch but a slow layering of signals. Every day your brain listens to your behavior and adjusts. Patterns of thought and action, repeated often enough, become automatic pathways. You do not “flip” into a new self. You train your neurons into one.

Mindset shift: Stop thinking in resolutions. Start thinking in repetitions.

The 1% Rule

Improve by one percent each day – one percent more focus, one percent more rest, one percent more presence. After sixty days, that is not sixty percent improvement. Compounded, it is exponential. Neural networks strengthen with consistency, not drama.

2. The Science of Rhythm: Finding Your Neural Schedule

Your perfect day is already coded into your biology. The brain runs on circadian (daily) and ultradian (hourly) rhythms that govern alertness, creativity, and fatigue. Ignoring those rhythms is like rowing against a current: possible, but exhausting.

The Focus Framework

  • Track your natural peaks for three days. Note when your brain feels sharpest and when it fogs.
  • Protect your high-focus window for deep work – writing, studying, thinking.
  • Use low-focus hours for logistical tasks and errands.
  • Rest every 90 minutes to align with attention cycles and help neurotransmitters reset.

Once you align your schedule to your neural rhythm, productivity will come more easily, not just from sheer willpower.

3. The Novelty Principle: Reawakening Dormant Circuits

The brain thrives on surprise. Novelty (new experiences, ideas, or environments) activates dopamine pathways tied to curiosity and learning. When everything feels repetitive, the brain goes into predictive mode and attention fades.

Novelty is not merely entertainment. It is biological nutrition for attention.

Small Ways to Add Novelty

  • Change your study or commute route.
  • Read an author or genre you rarely choose.
  • Listen to a podcast outside your usual subjects.
  • Rearrange your workspace or swap your morning routine.

Each small disruption forces your sensory and motor cortices to re-coordinate, for more whimsy in life.

4. The Attention Economy and the Art of Recovery

Your attention is your most limited neural currency. Every task switch or phone check spends dopamine and glucose, the fuels of focus. Constant context switching leads to micro self-interruption that accumulates fatigue.

The Two-Window Method

  1. Deep Work Window: One 90-minute period daily for immersion. One task, zero notifications.
  2. Restorative Window: 20 minutes of real rest after deep work: walking, breathing, or silent reflection. No screens.

During rest, your brain consolidates learning.

5. Sleep: The Night Shift of the Brain

Sleep is not optional. During deep sleep, brain cleaning processes remove metabolic waste. During REM sleep, emotional and sensory memories get integrated into long-term patterns.

The Rewind Ritual

  • Thirty minutes before bed, dim lights and screens.
  • Write three lines about what you learned or noticed today.
  • Visualize your brain sorting and storing those experiences overnight.

After sixty days, this simple ritual strengthens hippocampal memory consolidation and emotional balance.

6. The Emotional Brain: Reframing Stress

Stress in small doses sharpens focus and motivation; chronic stress is what harms the brain. The trick is to reframe stress as signal, not threat.

The Stress Reframe

  • Name it: say to yourself, “My body is preparing me.”
  • Breathe in for four counts, out for six to activate the calm response.
  • Turn the task into curiosity: ask, “What is this trying to teach me?”

This practice trains the prefrontal cortex to interpret pressure as stimulation. Over time, that narrative becomes automatic and resilience grows at the circuit level.

7. Reflection: The Architecture of Identity

Your brain learns not only from action, but from what it notices about action.

The Nightly Check-In

  • What did I learn today about the world or about myself?
  • What felt meaningful?
  • What drained me, and why?
  • Who made me smile?

Five minutes of nightly journaling rewires self-awareness. You begin to see patterns in the quiet beginning of self-creation.

8. The 60-Day Framework for Lasting Change

Use this structure to make the final sixty days of 2025 transformative without theatrics or burnout.

SystemActionNeural Benefit
FocusOne 90-minute deep work block dailyStrengthens prefrontal control
Recovery20-minute restorative breakResets dopamine and consolidates learning
SleepConsistent bedtime and Rewind RitualEnhances memory and mood stability
NoveltyOne new experience weeklyActivates neuroplasticity
Reflection5-minute nightly journalingStrengthens self-awareness circuits

9. The Quiet Revolution

When the year ends, the world may look the same. But beneath the surface, your brain will have changed. You will return to focus faster. You will respond to stress with more equanimity. You will notice life more clearly.

That is the real miracle of the human brain: it is always becoming. And sixty days is enough time to begin again.

You got this. Now take the steps, no matter how small, and finish the year strong.

Written by Mason Lai, a California high schooler.