Plasticity enables neurons to change difference and transform their program

Evidence

Long-term potentiation is therefore structurally tied to long-term depression, and this tie constitutes the differentiating or transdifferentiating force of neuronal plasticity. By analogy with the process of becoming that stem cells undergo, one could claim that neuronal connections, because of their own plasticity, are always capable of changing difference, receiving or losing an imprint, or transforming their program. — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 90

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: This is the crux distinction: plasticity as the capacity to change one’s own difference or program — not merely receive input. Directly opposes the docility/receptivity sense of flexibility the reader is hunting for.
• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘changing difference’ formulation is the philosophical core — plasticity as transdifferentiation rather than adaptation-to-input. Dense enough to sit with.

Related

• Neuronal plasticity’s tethering of potentiation to depression lets connections transform their program. (similarity 0.95)
• Plasticity means formative change through rupture, not smooth continuous adaptation (similarity 0.86)
• Plasticity spans a spectrum from fixed form to total malleability (similarity 0.85)
• Plasticity also means the ability to change one’s own determination (similarity 0.85)
• Brain plasticity operates across development, lifelong modulation, and repair (similarity 0.84)
• Plasticity here means sculpting a genetically determined form, not flexible change (similarity 0.83)
• Plasticity spans closed form and open malleability, making brains self-sculpting historical structures. (similarity 0.83)
• Thinking brain plasticity correctly is required to think freedom (similarity 0.83)
• Brain plasticity descriptions may either serve or resist neoliberal command. (similarity 0.83)
• Freedom depends on theorizing the plasticity of transition (similarity 0.82)
• Brain plasticity includes a capacity to destroy form, not only create it (similarity 0.82)
• Plasticity is the organizing paradigm of contemporary neuroscience (similarity 0.81)
• Brain plasticity is a third term beyond genetic chance and necessity (similarity 0.81)
• Plasticity spans from rigid determination of form to total freedom from form (similarity 0.81)
• The brain contradicts the machine metaphor through entangled plastic processes (similarity 0.81)