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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

For many years, the consensus was that the human brain couldn’t generate new cells once it reached adulthood. Once you were grown, you entered a state of neural decline. This was a view perhaps most famously expressed by the so-called founder of modern neuroscience, Santiago Ramón y Cajal. After an early interest in plasticity, he became sceptical, writing in 1928, “In adult centres the nerve paths are something fixed, ended, immutable. Everything may die, nothing may be regenerated. It is for the science of the future to change, if possible, this harsh decree.” Cajal’s gloomy prognosis was to rumble through the 20th century.
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This, then, is the truth about neuroplasticity: it does exist, and it does work [mosaicscience.com], but it’s not a miracle discovery that means that, with a little effort, you can turn yourself into a broccoli-loving, marathon-running, disease-immune, super-awesome genius. The “deep question”, says Chris McManus, Professor of Psychology and Medical Education at University College London, is, “Why do people, even scientists, want to believe all this?” Curious about the underlying causes of the neuroplasticity craze, he believes it is just the latest version of the personal-transformation myth that’s been haunting the culture of the West for generations.
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Even the people whose lives are being transformed by neuroplasticity are finding that brain change is anything but easy. Take recovery from a stroke. “If you’re going to recover the use of an arm, you may need to move that arm tens of thousands of times before it begins to learn new neural pathways to do that,” says Downey. “And, after that, there’s no guarantee it’s going to work.” Scott says something similar about speech and language therapy. “There were dark days, say, 50 years ago, where if you’d had a stroke you didn’t get that kind of treatment other than to stop you choking because they’d decided it doesn’t work. But now it’s becoming absolutely clear that it does, and that it’s a phenomenally good thing. But none of it comes for free.”

On the other hand, the new brain hackers are using electro-stimulation to make it easier to re-wire pathways.

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