What exactly are we trying to improve about our brains? It’s pretty obvious what leads to improved physical abilities. If you build more and larger muscle fibers, you get stronger. If you improve your muscles’ energy reserves, your lung capacity, your heart’s pumping capacity, and the capacity of your circulatory system, you build your endurance. But what changes are you making in your brain as you train to be a musician, a mathematician, a taxi driver, or a surgeon? Surprisingly, there is a common theme to the changes in all of these areas, and understanding that is the key to understanding
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