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Throughout your life your brain is constantly changing, and your behaviours and experiences can help to shape it at any age.
Prof Ian Robertson explains how challenge, change and learning can have positive effects on brain chemistry and function.
Your brain started forming at a time when your mother might not even have realised that she was pregnant with you. And it has been growing and changing ever since.
By the time you were born most of the information-carrying neurons had already formed, and in your first year of life your brain doubled in size. As a child you made important connections between brain cells and regions when you experienced and learned about the world around you, and during your teens you refined and shaped those brain structures further.
As an adult, you can still grow neurons in some parts of your brain, and the existing cells form new connections all the time, literally changing your brain.
In fact, even when you reach the end of this sentence, your brain will have altered subtly because of the new information coming in. Everything you do across your lifespan, every time you think or feel, every book you read, every game of tennis you play and every conversation you have changes your brain, and that can help to keep it healthy.
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