Learning is something everyone does daily—mastering new skills at work, remembering song lyrics, or following directions to new places. But behind these everyday tasks lies a complex biological ...

One example of this is young children’s ability to make distinctions between subtle differences of phonetics, such as "t" as in tower versus "r" as in river, which adults often cannot distinguish.

For much of modern history, the brain was seen as largely fixed by the end of childhood. Intelligence, personality, and ability were believed to follow a mostly predetermined biological path.