The idea of brain plasticity has been discovered and forgotten many times over the centuries. The ancient Greeks accepted the idea, with Socrates believing that people could train their brains the way gymnasts train their bodies. However around the time of Galileo, it fell out of favour as scientists believed that for an explanation to be scientific it has to be mechanistic, or machine-like. For 400 years science has been using the wrong model for thinking about the brain, thinking of it as a machine. 

Thus the brain came to be seen as a complex machine with parts, each performing a single mental function - so much so that today the brain is described as a kind of computer. This doctrine of the unchanging brain meant that many born with mental limitations, learning disabilities or certain psychiatric problems, or those who suffered brain damage or strokes, were seen, almost by definition, as condemned to live with them.However discoveries in science contradicted this dogma. The brain can change itself, its very structure and function - with the use of thought. 

Watch the talk of Dr Norman Doidge, who coined “neuroplasticity” (via themonthly.com.au, part 1 and part 2)

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