Mechanisms and Sequential Progression of Plasticity
Research Scientists
Eleftheria Papadaki
Sina A. Schwarze (Project Leaders)
Yana Fandakova (associate research scientist)
Maike Hille (LIFE)
Theodoros Koustakas (LIFE, as of 10/2024)
Ulman Lindenberger
Phuc Thu Uyen Nguyen (MPSCog, as of 09/2025)
Elisabeth Wenger (associate research scientist)
André Werner (composer)
Plasticity of Cognitive Skills
Plasticity of Musical Skills
Plasticity of Motor Skills
The project defines plasticity as the capacity of organisms to form lasting but reversible structural and related functional changes of neural connections in response to interactions with the environment. Informed by a theoretical model of experience-dependent plasticity, the project pursues three major goals. First, it seeks to test this model whenever the data allow. Second, it probes plasticity across a range of age groups and a wide array of skill types to explore both general and domain-specific features of plastic changes across the lifespan. Third, in order to arrive at a mechanistic account of plasticity, the project seeks to bridge the long-standing gap between animal models and research on human plasticity.
In 2020, Lövdén et al. proposed the expansion, exploration, selection, and refinement (EESR) theory of plastic change during skill acquisition (for an update, see Hille et al., 2024). Figure 1 presents a summary description of the current version of EESR theory. The starting point is a situation in which the available neural resources are insufficient to meet the demands of the to-be-learned task (Lövdén et al., 2010). Driven by this mismatch, new synapses are formed in task-relevant cortical areas, and the resulting greater connectivity space is subsequently explored for neural circuits that can execute the goal-relevant behavior. In this initial expansion-exploration phase variability of trial-to-trial behavior and of neural activity patterns is large and the excitatory-inhibitory (E/I) balance is shifted towards excitation. Eventually, the best-performing microcircuit is selected and neural and behavioral variability decreases. Synaptic remodeling within the selected neural circuit and myelination of selected connections continue in a final refinement phase of task execution.
The team hypothesizes that the EESR sequence is reflected at the macroscopic level by several indicators (Figure 1D). First, task-related brain activation in task-relevant regions is assumed to be high during early phases of skill acquisition, as different and partially inefficient task representations are being probed, and to decrease with increasing task proficiency. Second, it hypothesizes that three macroscopic indicators follow an inverted U-shape function: (i) E/I balance, tracking the opening and closing of the plastic episode; (ii) synaptic density, tracking synapse formation and elimination; and (iii) regional brain volume, tracking tissue expansion and renormalization. Third, as the skill approaches asymptotic levels, the neural ensemble executing the task is expected to stabilize, and self-similarity of task representations to increase.
Key References
Plasticity of Cognitive Skills
Research in this domain has focused on training-related changes in the cognitive processes associated with task switching in childhood. To this end, the team has been analyzing data from the FLEX study, an extensive training study of task-switching performance in children aged 8 to 11 years. The FLEX study was conducted by Yana Fandakova (now Trier University), in collaboration with Silvia Bunge (University of California at Berkeley) and Ulman Lindenberger.
Childhood is characterized by increased proficiency in a variety of skills and cognitive abilities supported by maturational changes in brain structure and function. During middle and late childhood, such changes are particularly pronounced for cognitive control processes, including the ability to flexibly switch between different tasks (Schwarze et al., 2024). Using the FLEX data set, the team members investigated how these maturational changes interact with training. Specifically, they examined task-related neural representations as captured by multivariate patterns of brain activation, showing that the distinctiveness of neural representations of task information did not differ between children and adults, suggesting a remarkable degree of maturity of neural representations of task-relevant information in late childhood (Schwarze, Bonati, et al., 2025).
A major goal of the FLEX study was to delineate patterns of neural and behavioral plasticity in the course of training. Children in the experimental group practiced switching between a large number of different task sets over the course of 9 weeks with a total of 27 training sessions. Children in the active control group trained the identical tasks but at a markedly lower switching frequency. Both groups showed initial decreases in the costs of performing tasks intermixed, suggesting faster processing of task demands when multiple task rules had to be maintained, monitored, and reconfigured. However, only children in the experimental group, who were exposed to higher switching demands, maintained these changes in the second half of training. These behavioral changes were accompanied by reduced activations in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the experimental group (Figure 2). Results suggest that task-switching training enhances the efficiency of regions that support task switching in children, rather than moving children’s task-related activation more rapidly towards an adult-like pattern (Schwarze, Laube, et al., 2025).
Key Reference
Plasticity of Musical Skills
This branch of the project investigates plastic changes in brain structure and associated functions that accompany the acquisition and mastery of musical skills. Numerous findings from studies of trained musicians and musical training interventions demonstrate that musical practice across skill levels induces changes in both gray and white matter, along with alterations in functional activation and connectivity patterns.
In earlier work, the project examined prospective professional musicians enrolled in an intensive preparatory training program for university entrance exams to study music, and skilled amateur musicians, tracking behavioral and neural changes over the course of one year. Analyses of resting-state connectivity revealed higher global efficiency of a network of brain regions supporting interval recognition in the prospective professional musicians compared to the skilled amateurs, even in the absence of a task, with global efficiency correlating with interval-recognition performance measured both inside and outside the scanner (Papadaki et al., 2023). Following these findings, the focus was extended to include processing of musical and acoustic features during music listening. Using whole brain dynamic functional connectivity analysis, the project showed that more segregated brain states occurred while listening to a baroque composition by Johann Sebastian Bach, whereas listening to an early-modern piece by Anton Webern was associated with more integrated states, particularly in listeners with greater musical expertise. In addition, Eleftheria Papadaki and colleagues (2025) found that segregation was negatively related to musical complexity, as indexed by permutation entropy, such that the music piece of higher complexity was associated with more integrated brain states. These findings provide evidence that musical structure and listener expertise jointly shape brain network organization.
The focus of our current music-related empirical work is on music learning and development in childhood, with particular attention to activities that combine listening, movement, and coordinated sound production. Musical engagement involves the interaction of auditory, motor, and sensory systems, and provides a rich context for studying how children acquire complex skills through practice and experience. Musical training is known to induce adaptive changes in neural circuits supporting auditory processing, motor control, and multisensory integration. While much is known about these effects in adult musicians, their developmental trajectories in children remain underexplored. This omission is notable, given that music-related experience-dependent plasticity tends to be more pronounced when training begins early in life.
The project has designed two studies, CHOROS I and CHOROS II, to track how music-related skills emerge and evolve, alongside accompanying structural and functional adaptations in the brain (Dissertation Theodoros Koustakas). By examining these processes in young learners, the team seeks to understand how the effects of musical training unfold in maturing brains. We expect completion of data collection in summer 2026 for CHOROS I, and in early 2027 for CHOROS II.
CHOROS I is a behavioral cross-sectional study investigating how music perception and music production contribute to a latent construct of musical ability while taking into account contributing factors such as musicality of the home environment, musical sophistication of primary caregivers, and individual differences in executive functions. CHOROS II is a 6-month longitudinal intervention study that includes a series of sessions before and after an intervention period, during which behavioral tasks as well as structural and functional brain imaging are administered. Approximately 120 girls aged 6–7 years are randomly and evenly assigned to one of three groups. Two groups take part in regularly scheduled, group-based activities involving music or dancing, while a third group only participates in pretest and posttest assessments. By combining behavioral measures with neuroimaging, CHOROS-II examines how experience-dependent processes unfold during middle childhood, and how different forms of enrichment may be associated with learning-related changes in the brain.
Key Reference
Plasticity of Motor Skills
The skills studied in the sensorimotor domain vary widely in complexity. To probe the EESR theory as directly as possible, the team has developed a grasping paradigm in humans that is meant to closely correspond to single-paw grasping behavior in rodents (Hille et al., 2024). The main goal of this work is to enhance the interpretability of macroscopic methods used in human research by complementing molecular and fine-structural measures with macroscopic methods in animals, with the goal to create macroscopic metrics common to both species. This strategy seems most promising when targeting the experience-dependent acquisition of analogous skills that are ethologically meaningful in either species, such as grasping food or encoding episodic memories. With these considerations in mind, a series of collaborative studies in which both mice and humans learn a fine motor skill are being conducted (Dissertation Maike Hille).
Specifically, the mice were trained over several days in the single-pellet reaching task, in which they learned to grasp a small food item through a narrow slit in an acrylic glass wall, using their preferred paw. In the corresponding human task, participants underwent a daily training regime with an adapted reaching task using chopsticks (see Figure 3). The choice of these two tasks is expected to result in analogous learning curves, inducing similar mechanisms promoting plasticity in the motor cortices of either species. Both humans and mice underwent multiple structural magnetic resonance imaging measurements to acquire macroscopic anatomical measures (e.g., gray-matter volume estimates) at different timepoints over the course of training. In mice, different cellular measures were additionally recorded and their motor cortices were examined histologically post mortem. Assessing plasticity-related changes at macroscopic and microscopic levels in the same animals allows one to directly relate these measures and their variation over time to each other. This line of research is carried out in close collaboration with Simone Kühn of the Center for Environmental Neuroscience, the MPI for Biological Intelligence in Martinsried (Tobias Bonhoeffer), the University of Gothenburg (Martin Lövdén), and the Technical University of Munich (Franz Schilling); see also ATLAS project.
To study plastic changes in more motor skills that require complex forms of action planning and action monitoring, the project has selected two sports, combat sports and downhill skiing in difficult terrain. Drawing on models of motor skill acquisition and EESR theory, the team is investigating how cognitive and behavioral adaptations evolve across learning stages, and how these changes are supported by neural plasticity (Dissertation Phuc Thu Uyen Nguyen; in collaboration with Klaus Gramann, Technische Universität Berlin, and Patrick Haggard, University College London). Here, the aim is to uncover expressions of fighting style by identifying combat behaviors and examining behavioral and perceptual-cognitive changes and differences across levels of expertise. With regard to downhill skiing, mogul skiing is used to capture critical components of action regulation, and plastic changes therein. This line of research combines eyetracking, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) drone-based terrain capture, and sensor suits (see Video). This work is being carried out in collaboration with Petr Janata, University of California at Davis, and Motion Metrics, London, UK.