Background: The extent and limits of adult brain plasticity remain a central unresolved question in 21st-century neuroscience. To date, no one has systematically documented spontaneous, whole-brain neural circuit remodeling driven purely by intrinsic motivation in healthy humans. Methods: This is a retrospective longitudinal self-case report. I hold graduate-level medical training from Nanjing University's Medical School. Over the years, I kept a detailed record of my own experience of spontaneous global neural remodeling at age 37, drawing on diary entries I wrote at the time, my own recollections, and what people who know me well—teachers, classmates, colleagues—observed and later confirmed. No drugs, surgery, trauma, or formal training were involved. Results: Over about two weeks, I went through a global neural remodeling episode that unfolded in four distinct stages: (1) a strange "electric current" sensation running through my body and head, (2) a flood of past social memories involuntarily replaying and being instantly reinterpreted, (3) a bout of depressive symptoms that came and went on their own, without any medication or therapy, and (4) a lasting leap in metacognition—I could suddenly see the flaws in my old thinking patterns—along with a clear, stable improvement in social judgment and executive function. My father, interestingly, had a similar cognitive baseline but never went through any such change. Conclusions: What I experienced suggests that intense intrinsic motivation can trigger global neural circuit activation in adulthood. Based on this, I put forward the Motivation-Driven Global Neural Remodeling (MGNR) Hypothesis, which proposes a top-down, threshold-lowering mechanism involving silent synapses and the LC-NE system. This self-case offers a unique human model for studying motivation-to-plasticity transduction and may inform non-pharmacological interventions for cognitive enhancement and mood disorders.
Zhongjun Yin (Thu,) studied this question.