Different write-up, same topic: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16541444" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16541444</a>
Somewhat related: I think this title should not be read as an hypothetical confirmation of the usual layman's asumption that 'kids learns better and faster that adults'.<p>Which is a misconception I'm often confronted with and irritates me quite a bit, especially when it comes in its extreme flavour of 'I just can't learn this new field/langage/tool/technique because I'm not a kid anymore'.<p>And I think you've already guessed what's the reaction when I try to explain in simple terms brain's plasticity and the fact that neural pathways can be made/upgraded threw sheer willforce. Something along 'well, don't try to teach me (about learning or whatever), I've already said that I can't learn anymore!'.
Marijuana promotes neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus [1].<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1253627/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1253627/</a>
I think that the number of neurons is not the single parameter to take in consideration. At birth the brain is a kind of "soup" made of disconnected neurons - except a small kernel structured during the pre-natal life for basic managementof organs. Then repeated external stimuli create connections between neurons, stronger and more complex, leading to a functional brain with memory, "computing" capacities, redundancy, associative capacity. An old brain loses neurons, more and more, but thanks to brain's plasticity and permanent stimuli, it can keep most of its capacities for a long time. The problem is that the small hippocampus is a bottleneck. When it begins to be buried below beta-amiloid and tau-protein, the rest of the brain is still functional but no more reachable. It's the end.<p>It's how I see those things. What do you think of that?
"cells whose functions aren't yet fully defined", so we have 'unprogrammed' neurons maybe, some spare capacity, created, defined but no value, good to know it's a static language in there :)