medium · 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 were thought to form only during the first year of an infant's life
- rodents were shown to exhibit no hippocampal activity once they reached maturity
- the rate of neurogenesis in humans was believed to far exceed that of other primates
- every adult who suffered brain damage was found to recover no function of any kind
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