Short-term plasticity refers to temporary, non-permanent shifts in the nervous system.

“Then there's medium-term plasticity which are changes, that you might wanna make. [...] It's medium-term. You wanna just program it in for sake of your time there and then you wanna discard it.”

“Short-term plasticity, is any kind of shift that you want to achieve, in the moment or in the day, but that you don't necessarily wanna hold on to forever.”

“there are several forms of plasticity the best way I think about it is in terms of short-term medium-term and long-term plasticity short-term plasticity is any kind of shift that you want to achieve in the moment or in the day but that you don't necessarily want to hold on to Forever might say what kinds of things are those well for instance short-term plasticity might be you wake up earlier than you would like to catch a flight you're not feeling particularly alert and you want to use a protocol or you decide to use a protocol which could be coffee or it could be a certain form of breathing it could be some other tool to become more alert at a time of day when normally you aren't that alert but your expectation is that when you return home you will disc scarred with that the need to do that at 5:30 a.m. because you'll be asleep at 5:30 a.m. so there short-term plasticity behavioral plasticity then there's medium term plasticity for instance if you go on vacation to Costa Rica and you don't know your way around Costa Rica you want to learn the different town and the routes there but you don't have any intention of going back it's just medium- term you want to just program it in for sake of your time there and then you want to discard it most of the time when we think about or talk about optimizing the brain we're talking about long-term plasticity we're talking about the kinds of changes that people want to make so that their brain reflexively works differently long-term plasticity is almost always the Big Goal it's I want to know how to speak that language I want to be able to do that skill I want to be able to feel this way”