Neuroplasticity: Can You Rewire Your Brain? The Evidence

Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to rewire itself through experience. Here is what the evidence shows, from London cabbies to neurofeedback, and what it cannot do.

For most of the 20th century, scientists believed the adult brain was more or less fixed: you were born with your neurons, and after childhood the wiring set like concrete. That view turned out to be wrong. The brain keeps changing throughout life in response to what you practise and experience. The idea has since been stretched to sell everything from brain-training apps to miracle cures, so it is worth separating what the research supports from what it does not.

What is neuroplasticity?

Neuroplasticity is the brain’s capacity to change its structure and function in response to experience. It works at two broad levels:

Synaptic plasticity: the connections between neurons get stronger with use and weaker with disuse. The psychologist Donald Hebb summed this up in 1949, and it is often paraphrased as “neurons that fire together wire together”. This is the basis of learning and memory.
Structural plasticity: with sustained practice, the physical make-up of brain regions can change, including the volume of grey matter visible on an MRI scan.

Plasticity is not automatically good. The same mechanisms that let you learn a language also help bad habits and chronic pain take hold. The brain adapts to whatever it repeatedly does.

The evidence that adult brains change

London taxi drivers

The best-known example comes from University College London. Researchers scanned 16 licensed London taxi drivers, who must memorise the city’s streets to pass “The Knowledge”, and compared them with men who did not drive taxis. The back of the drivers’ hippocampus, a region involved in spatial memory, was significantly larger, and its size increased with the number of years spent driving (Maguire et al., PNAS, 2000). The authors concluded the healthy adult brain can change its structure in response to environmental demands.

Learning to juggle

A taxi study cannot prove cause and effect, so a German team scanned people before and after they learned to juggle. After three months of practice, grey matter had expanded in areas that process visual motion. When the volunteers stopped juggling, the extra grey matter shrank back, though not all the way to where it started (Draganski et al., Nature, 2004). It was some of the first direct evidence that learning a skill physically reshapes the adult brain, and that the change fades without use.

Can neurofeedback change the brain?

Neurofeedback uses EEG to show you your own brain activity in real time, usually as a sound or game, so you can learn to shift it. There is evidence that this kind of training can produce measurable plastic changes. In a study at Goldsmiths and the UCL Institute of Neurology, healthy volunteers spent about half an hour learning to suppress their alpha brainwaves. Afterwards, their motor cortex was measurably more excitable, and the effect lasted at least 20 minutes (Ros et al., European Journal of Neuroscience, 2010).

That shows the brain responds to neurofeedback. It does not show that home neurofeedback treats any condition. The most rigorous test so far, a 2025 meta-analysis of 38 randomised trials in ADHD, found no meaningful improvement in symptoms when the people rating them did not know who had received neurofeedback (Westwood et al., JAMA Psychiatry, 2025). For everyday goals such as relaxation and building a meditation habit, consumer devices are a reasonable tool. For a medical condition, speak to your GP.

Neuroplasticity myths

“A healthy brain follows one fixed pattern, and anxiety means your pattern is reversed”

You will still find claims that healthy brains have busier left sides than right, and that a reversed pattern causes anxiety or depression which brainwave training can “correct”. The evidence does not support using brainwave patterns this way. The best-known version, frontal alpha asymmetry, was tested in a meta-analysis of 16 studies covering nearly 4,000 people and showed essentially no ability to tell depressed people from healthy ones (van der Vinne et al., NeuroImage: Clinical, 2017).

“Brain games will make you smarter”

Practice reliably improves the task you practise, which is plasticity at work. Whether that improvement spreads to general intelligence or everyday memory is far less clear, and claims that a single app rewires your whole brain should be treated with caution.

“Plasticity stops in adulthood”

The juggling study has since been repeated in volunteers with an average age of 60, who also showed grey matter changes after learning the skill (Boyke et al., Journal of Neuroscience, 2008). Plasticity tends to be greater in childhood, but it does not switch off.

What supports a plastic, healthy brain?

There is no single trick. The research on brain change points to learning challenging new skills and practising them over weeks rather than hours. General brain health research also links good sleep and regular exercise with better outcomes, mostly as associations rather than proven cause and effect. Meditation is one structured way to practise attention, and it is where consumer EEG devices fit in.

Where home EEG devices fit

A consumer EEG headband such as Muse reads your brain activity while you meditate and turns it into sound, so you can hear when your mind wanders and practise bringing it back. That makes the training measurable, which helps many people stick with it. It is a feedback tool for practice, not a way to “fix” your brain. If you want to try it, our guide to the best home neurofeedback devices compares the options, and our Muse headband UK guide covers the most popular one in depth.

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Neuroplasticity FAQ

What is neuroplasticity in simple terms?

It is the brain’s ability to change its connections and structure in response to what you learn and experience, throughout your life.

Can you rewire your brain?

In a limited sense, yes. Sustained practice changes the brain regions involved, as studies of taxi drivers and jugglers show. But there is no quick method that rewires the whole brain or cures a condition on its own.

How long does it take to change the brain?

Structural changes have been detected after around three months of regular practice in learning studies. Smaller changes in how neurons respond can appear within a single session.

Does neurofeedback cause neuroplasticity?

Lab studies show that neurofeedback can produce short-term plastic changes in the brain. Whether home neurofeedback produces lasting benefits for health conditions is not established.

Can neuroplasticity help with anxiety or depression?

Plasticity is part of how talking therapies and other treatments work, but brainwave training is not a proven treatment for either. If you are struggling, speak to your GP. In England you can also refer yourself to NHS Talking Therapies.

Does neuroplasticity decline with age?

It tends to be strongest in childhood, but research shows older adults can still develop measurable brain changes when they learn new skills.

About this guide

eeg.org.uk has covered EEG and neurofeedback since 2021. This page summarises peer-reviewed research, linked below, rather than personal opinion. It is general information, not medical advice. We may earn a commission when you buy through some of our links, such as Muse and Amazon, at no extra cost to you. See our affiliate disclosure, or read more about eeg.org.uk.