There are two brain myths in Western culture that are false:

"we only use a small percentage of our brain" and

"you can’t teach an old dog new tricks".

 

We all use all of our non-damaged brain regions, focusing differing areas for differing tasks. We certainly each have our favored or go-to areas, whether emotional or rational or primal or communal or hierarchical or ?? And we certainly have well-practiced neural pathways, or ruts in our head that keep us arriving at the same thoughts or behaviors, regardless of their utility.  We couldn't walk or eat or do most things otherwise. So it's not so much that we don't use all of our brain, as we don't always use it to our best advantage. We can be handcuffed by yesterday.

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So how to learn new tricks today? "Plasticity” is the term neuroscience uses when our brain is re-organizing itself or learning new habits of behavior, thought, interpretation, and perception. Age itself places little to no physiological limitations on plasticity. We ourselves limit our own ability to learn by, among other things:

not wanting to learn, or

not knowing how to learn, or

not believing there is anything more we should learn, or

holding firmly to that which we're wrong about (everybody's wrong about something).

 

Play welcomes plasticity. In a play frame of mind, we are not threatened or stressed, and ideally not even invested in a particular outcome. We can be fully engaged and hyper-aware when we’re safe and having fun. This is the time to try new responses, experiment with new neural connections, instead of staying stuck in a rut that may no longer be the most advantageous.

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So play more!