If the adult brain cannot change, how did you learn anything after childhood? Neuroscientist Greg Recanzone revisits the revolution in adult cortical plasticity , from the landmark digit amputation experiments to his own work showing that perceptual training reshapes somatosensory maps through mechanisms fundamentally different from developmental critical periods. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Greg Recanzone joins Paul Verschure and Tony Prescott at the BCBT summer school to tell the story of how adult cortical plasticity went from heresy to established fact. Beginning with Mike Merzenich and Jon Kaas's digit amputation studies in monkeys, Recanzone describes how the somatosensory map in area 3b completely reorganized to look like a normal four-fingered monkey , not just filling in a gap, but rebuilding to ...