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Can you learn new things? Can you unlearn certain patterns? Can you overcome traumas at any age? The answer
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is absolutely categorically yes. How? Well, it's very clear that as a child until about age 25 more or less, just
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passive experience will shape the brain for better or worse. After about age 25,
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and again, these are not strict cut offs. We can change our brain but what's required is a marketked shift in the
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neurochemical environment under which something happens. So, one of the reasons why any traumatic event will
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forever be remembered, although by the way you can remove some of the emotional load of that trauma does not have to be
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traumatic forever, is because when we see or experience something very intense of a fearful nature, there is the
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release of certain what we call neurom modulators, things like epinephrine, adrenaline, and other neurom modulators
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that cause a state shift in our body and brain. And the nervous system recognizes
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this as unusual and as a consequence in the subsequent days there's reordering of the connections so that the brain can
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prepare for that event should it happen again. This is why we have what's called
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one trial learning. You go to a certain location something terrible happens there. You will forever associate that
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location with something terrible. But there are tools therapy and other tools that can allow the emotional load to be
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removed from that so that you could go to that location and feel calm. no fear whatsoever. The good news is you can
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also learn anything you want to learn provided there's a shift in this neurochemical environment. This is why
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when we are very interested and focused on something, two of the main requirements for neuroplasticity. We
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have to be alert and we have to be focused. We can't learn passively as adults. We can't just play a lecture
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about AI and large language models or neuroscience in the room and then it just the knowledge doesn't just sink in
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by osmosis. But if we pay attention and we're alert when we pay attention, there's a shift in the neurochemicals
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associated with that attention. What we call the catakolamines. It's three molecules, dopamine, epinephrine, and
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norepinephrine. All which cause an increase in alertness. All which cause an increase in focus. A tightening of
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our visual field and our auditory field. So like cones of attention is one way to
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think about it. And then it sets in motion a bunch of biological processes such that if we get adequate sleep that
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night, maybe the next night as well, there's reordering of neural connection so that that knowledge, that new
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experience is consolidated in your brain. You are forever changed as a consequence of that experience.