Our brain is a learning network that uses plasticity to form circuits that become the automatic thoughts, behaviors, habits, skills, and actions that drive us.¹ Outside of hardwired circuits are those that take shape through experience. We have billions of activity-dependent neurons lying in position, waiting to fire and connect based on what we do. Everything we sense, feel, and think from birth will produce a corresponding wave of activity that we physically wire as a pattern into our brain.² 

When we repeat a thought or act, the associated pattern fires again. Every time we fire an existing pattern, the connections of the involved neurons adjust, and some of their output cables get myelinated to send signals faster, increasing the overall efficiency of signal flow through that circuit. Amazingly, repetition tunes patterns until they reach a tipping point and become automatic functions we can carry out without a second thought. Learning results from plasticity, forming patterns out of the 600 trillion possible connections in our brain based on what we do the most.³ We tune patterns through repetition, and they become automatic.⁴ 

To help understand how plasticity works, let’s examine what happens when we learn to ride a bike. If it is our first time, we cannot do it because the functional pattern to support riding the bike does not yet exist. It is not personal; we cannot do something without developing a pattern for that function. Anything we can do is a pattern that we tune with experience. Our thoughts, habits, actions, behaviors, and skills are tuned from the beginning until they are automatic.

When riding a bike for the first time, we pedal, moving the handlebars back and forth to stay balanced until we fall to the ground. During that initial experience, specific neurons fire and wire together, creating a pattern representing riding the bike. We fall because we have yet to sufficiently establish a pattern that allows us to perform that function successfully. 

When we ride the second time, a pattern similar to the first attempt will fire again. Any changes and corrections we make while riding activate different neurons, modifying the bike riding pattern. Activity recruits new neurons and excludes others as the pattern continually refines to transmit the signal more efficiently. Input connection points on those neurons also strengthen and wither from activity, constantly adjusting the overall pattern.⁵ 

At the same time, broadband installers are there, speeding up output cables in that pattern by adding myelin. When signals travel in a pattern at the right speed and time, it becomes an automatic function.⁶ Every time a pattern fires, broadband installers are there to place myelin strategically. Learning is the result of neurons and support cells continually refining the degree of connectivity for patterns in real-time for all we do.⁷ 

The tuning of neurons and support cells continues the third, fourth, and fifth time we ride the bike until we can finally do it without falling. At that point, all your effort has tuned the pattern to automaticity, allowing you to ride the bike anytime. When a signal flows in the pattern at the right speed and timing, we can perform it automatically. Once a function becomes automatic, the brain stores that pattern with all the other ones we automate, and it is available to execute at a moment’s notice. After learning to ride a bike, we can select and fire the pattern we created, enabling us to perform that function effortlessly. 

The brain is all about automating what we do most. Doing something for the first time takes full concentration, which uses much energy. Each time we do it, the pattern tunes a little more, sending signals faster using less energy.⁸ With enough repetition, it becomes an automatic function we can perform with minimal effort and energy.⁹ 

Automating what we do most has several advantages. Without automation, we would have to learn everything from scratch, as if encountering it for the first time.¹⁰ Imagine how frustrating it would be if, after the tenth time riding the bike, we weren’t any better than the first try. Another benefit of automating functions is that we can do it without thinking, freeing us to focus on more pressing matters. Automation allowed our ancestors to walk without thinking while focusing on potential prey when hunting.¹¹ Through experience, we unknowingly fill our brains with patterns of thought and movement that we  automatically perform with minimal awareness.¹² 

The other side of learning is unlearning. We learned to ride a bike because we took action, firing and wiring the pattern to support it. If we suddenly stop riding the bike forever, we will no longer be firing the neurons in that pattern. Since our neurons must fire or die, they will repurpose themselves and join another pattern to avoid death. This law of plasticity is: neurons that fire apart wire apart, or neurons that are out of sync fail to link, or if you don’t use it, you lose it.¹³ Depending on what we learn, some traces of the pattern may remain years after not doing it, but at the very least, you will not be as good as the last time you performed. At a cellular level, when we do something, the pattern forms, and we learn; if we stop, the pattern repurposes itself, and we unlearn. 

We spend our childhood to mid-twenties wiring our experiences into a network that, in adulthood, emerges as the automatic responses that drive us. Plasticity results in who we are and how we see the world, automating what we do the most. There is no good or bad for the brain; if we do something enough, it will become an automatic thought, behavior, habit, action, or skill. 

Fortunately, the brain remains plastic for our entire lives; who we are is not personal, and we can change it into anything we want anytime. Many people do not change because they continue to repeat the same patterns throughout their lives, only strengthening and automating them further. To change, we must repeat the thoughts and actions we want until they become automatic patterns. At the same time, we need to stop doing what we don’t like so that we can unwire those undesirable automated patterns. By deliberately taking the thoughts and actions we want and avoiding the ones we don’t, we can use plasticity to rewire our brains for whatever we desire.

Endnotes

1. Brewer, Judson. The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love—Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits. Yale University Press, 2017.
2. Shapiro, Francine. P.3. Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy. Rodale Books, 2013.
3. Bor, Daniel. P.106 The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning. Basic Books, 2012.
4. Hawkins, Jeff. p.54. A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence. Basic Books, 2021. Kindle file.
5. Bathla, Som. P.44. Think With Full Brain: Strengthen Logical Analysis, Invite Breakthrough Ideas, Level-up Interpersonal Intelligence, and Unleash Your Brain’s Full Potential (Power-Up Your Brain Book 5). 2019.
6. Coyle, Daniel. P.41.The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.. Bantam, 2009.
7. Bathla, Som. P.44. Think With Full Brain: Strengthen Logical Analysis, Invite Breakthrough Ideas, Level-up Interpersonal Intelligence, and Unleash Your Brain’s Full Potential (Power-Up Your Brain Book 5). 2019. Kindle file.
8. Amen, Daniel G., and Tana Amen.P.187 The Brain Warrior’s Way: Ignite Your Energy and Focus, Attack Illness and Aging, Transform Pain into Purpose. Berkley, 2016. Kindle file.
9. Wolynn, Mark. P.49. It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle. Penguin Life, 2016
10. B Bar, Moshe.P.89. Mindwandering: How Your Constant Mental Drift Can Improve Your Mood and Boost Your Creativity. Hachette Go, 2022. Kindle file.
11. Doidge, Norman.P.59. The Brain’s Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity. Penguin Life, 2015.
12. Doidge, Norman. P.59. The Brain’s Way of Healing
13. Doidge, Norman. P.64. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science (James H. Silberman Books). Penguin Life, 2007