Telluride Times, May 14, 2026

“Neuroplasticity is better than mind over matter. It’s mind turning into matter as your thoughts create new neural growth.” — Rudolph E. Tanzi

Some months ago, I heard on a podcast by Andrew Huberman, the popular neuroscientist out of Stanford, that adult neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to rewire itself—can be driven by intense focus and effort, often experienced as mental strain. This could be illustrated as a “smoking brain,” a human head sparking, sputtering, and sending up puffs of smoke.

Smoking brain is the feeling of being at the edge of one’s ability, uncomfortable and slightly under pressure. Think of it as that extra credit math test question in high school or learning a foreign language as an adult. I had an extreme case some years ago, which I wrote about, while attempting to take a very popular free intro to computer science course at Harvard, CS50x.

I lasted two lessons, friends, which dovetailed right into the 10% completion rate of the estimated 100,000 to 300,000 per annum enrollment since its inception in 2012. Theoretically, the class is doable (70% to pass on assignments and the final project), but the fact is that, unwilling to persist, most enrollees drop out.

Though the course isn’t designed to eliminate the vast majority, what it potentially does do is push many of us, especially virtual students, right to that exact place on the mental map where neuroplasticity occurs. Huberman’s argument is that alertness drives focus, and focus—especially when paired with errors and struggle—drives neuroplastic change. Persistence is most definitely part of this equation.

This understanding of the neural activity in the brain is as recent as the early 20th century. Up until that time, neuroscientists believed the adult brain was fixed and unchangeable—rigid, static — and that neurons were never generated or regenerated. In less than a century, we have come to understand the brain as remarkably dynamic if the conditions required for change, like effort and recovery, are met.

This essay, by the way, is brought to you in part by a little online game called Connections, a daily word puzzle from The New York Times in which you’re given a grid of 16 words and asked to sort them into four groups of four based on a shared connection. The connections can be straightforward or abstract, and misdirection is the rule rather than the exception.

I like to think of this game as a mini version of what Huberman is talking about. Like many such brainteasers, it requires both focus and release. A player can easily veer into panic and rigidity, thereby losing the fertile and delicious ground of alertness. That player then must relax and regroup to  move back into alertness. Huberman emphasizes a similar rhythm for learning, with periods of intense concentration (ideally limited to about 90 minutes), followed by rest. Sleep, in particular, he says, is necessary for the neural change to occur.

Although, as a professor, he is often focused on high-performing students, I’m taking the liberty of applying the premise more broadly—to anyone facing something that does not come easily, whether intellectual or physical. Increased relevance, of course, comes with age, when the feeling of not “getting it” as quickly can be mistaken for decline rather than part of a malleable process. Wrapping my head around my simplified version Huberman’s idea was so freeing, I felt a weight had been taken off my shoulders.

That feeling in a moment of quitting is familiar to us all: the frustration or sense of incompetence, the narrowing of possibility. But within these very moments of struggle are the seeds of growth and change. Huberman notes that errors and frustration trigger the release of epinephrine (alertness) and acetylcholine (focus). Together, they mark the exact neural circuits that need to adapt.

It’s true that our modern environment, with the immediacy and quantity of answers AI brings, actively works against this process. Why even bother struggling when we don’t have to? What Huberman and others say is that without struggle and frustration, the brain does not change. In popular parlance: it rots. That’s the reason for bothering.

So here is the takeaway, and it is pretty simple. The things that will hold us back and stifle neuroplasticity are entrenched thinking, routine, and negativity. For neuro-boosting activities leading to a resilient and changeable brain and a better life, seek novelty, difficulty, feedback, and repetition over time.

Because even if you do not succeed at the silly game, the musical instrument, the language course, or the tai chi lessons, errors and frustration are not the sad end. Avoiding them, however, is another story.