Neuroplasticity is a term used to describe the nervous system’s ability to change in response to experience. So essentially the brain can direct its own changes. The roles of different parts of the cerebrum are not completely predetermined. In his book Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain, Eagleman (2020) succinctly says “It is the pattern of inputs which determine the fate of the cortex.” Eagleman goes on to explain how regions of the brain maintain their territory with continuous activity: if activity slows or stops (e.g., because of blindness), the territory tends to be taken over by its neighbours and that this is measurable within an hour. He also hypothesises that the circuitry underlying dreaming serves to amplify the visual system’s activity periodically throughout the night, allowing it to defend its territory against takeover from other senses. He has termed this the “defensive activation theory”.

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