easy · LSAT Reading Comprehension
Throughout the twentieth century, neuroscientists regarded the adult brain as 'fixed.' Their conviction rested chiefly on a practical observation: adults who suffered brain damage rarely regained the abilities they had lost. From this failure to recover, researchers concluded that the mature brain lacked any capacity to generate replacement neurons. Only later research, revealing hippocampal neurogenesis first in rodents, would unsettle that conclusion.
According to the passage, the primary reason twentieth-century scientists believed the adult brain was fixed was that:
- the persistent failure of adults to recover after brain damage led researchers to infer the brain could not make new neurons
- synaptic connections, it was firmly assumed, could only form during the earliest weeks of a human infant's first year of life
- rodents, when carefully observed, were shown to exhibit no measurable hippocampal activity at all once they reached maturity
- the natural rate of new-neuron formation in adult humans was believed to far exceed the comparable rate in other primates
- every single adult who had ever suffered any brain damage was found, without exception, to recover no lost function of any kind
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