Are some brain regions plastic and others fixed? · Grey Matter

Every region changes with experience; they differ in what changes and how fast.

Are some brain regions plastic and others fixed?

Every region changes with experience; they differ in what changes and how fast. The hippocampus and the neocortex are built to rewire quickly and constantly, storing new episodes and remapping after injury, while the amygdala also learns fast (fear conditioning is long-term potentiation in its lateral nucleus) but holds what it learns stubbornly. Brainstem and spinal reflexes are the most stable, yet still adjustable: the reflex that steadies the eyes during head movement recalibrates within days to new glasses, through the cerebellum and the brainstem's vestibular nuclei. A ranking of whole regions as plastic or rigid is therefore a simplification, useful only as a rough contrast between circuits designed to learn and circuits designed to be reliable.