Question: Does maturity/learning and experiences change the physical characteristics of the brain when comparing children and adult brains?

Jen Machin answered on 12 Mar 2015:

Yes! 🙂 Actually, learning changes everyone’s brain, whether they’re a child or an adult. The cells in your brain are called neurons. Messages are sent as electrical signals along networks of neurons, like a pathway. One area of the brain, called the hippocampus, is where our memories are stored. For a memory to be stored, a really strong pathway has to be made in the neurons in the hippocampus. The stronger the pathway, the stronger the memory! So every time you learn and remember something new, it makes a brand new pathway, and so changes your brain’s characteristics (on a very small level). Pretty clever, right? 🙂

The structure of a child’s brain also changes as they grow into an adult. This means that they become able to do many more things than when they were first born.