Rewiring the Brain: How Practice Really Makes Perfect

Researchers using new imaging technology found that repetitive practice stabilizes and solidifies working memory circuits in mice, significantly enhancing task mastery and automaticity.
“Practice makes perfect” is no mere cliché, according to a new study from researchers at Rockefeller University and UCLA. Instead, it’s the recipe for mastering a task, because repeating an activity over and over solidifies neural pathways in your brain.

As they describe in Nature, the scientists used a cutting-edge technology developed by Rockefeller’s Alipasha Vaziri to simultaneously observe 73,000 cortical neurons in mice as the animals learned and repeated a given task over two weeks. The study revealed that memory representations transform from unstable to solid in working memory circuits, giving insights into why performance becomes more accurate and automatic following repetitive practice.