Have you ever seen a neuron creating a new connection?
If there is one thing that lets me know, with absolute certainty, that I’m back home after a long journey, a long day, a long walk, or a long afternoon spent stuck in traffic dreaming of tossing some spaghetti garlic, oil and chilli pepper into a pan, it is catching a glimpse in the distance and then step by step, closer and closer, of that “V” shape where the buildings bow to the sun, sometimes to lift it up, other times to accompany it down. And just below, seeing that string holding on tightly to a streetlight, stretching out to the one opposite, dotted with countless tiny lights. And every single time under that string, in the circular square made of benches and cobblestones, there is someone reading, or laughing, or loving, or looking up.
There is always that feeling of home in seeing that “V” and that string. Because every time I get closer and my eyes narrow to focus today on a child learning to ride a bike, tomorrow on the hands of the old gentleman from the white building across, holding a freshly baked cake wrapped in a flour-patterned dish towel, every single time, they focus on a new line of lights that wasn’t there before. From streetlight to pine tree, from pine tree back to streetlight, from the first-floor balcony to the “Forno Ritorno” bakery sign, and so on.
Every time I arrive, whether from nearby or from very far away, I never know which new string will be there, but I know I am home.
So, as we were saying, have you ever seen a neuron creating a new connection?
Imagine a star that knows it isn’t alone and stretches further and further out, reaching as far as it can, searching for the one that will allow it to draw a line across the blue, never giving up until it finds, touches, and embraces the edge of the other. It cannot see the other star when it decides to venture into that infinite space, but it feels it is there and whether today or tomorrow, it will reach it.
I believe that is how constellations are made. The ones that guide sailors through the darkest nights, that tell stories of giants, and that mark whether it is autumn, winter, spring, or summer. Stars that had the strength to imagine being a light for someone else.
It is called brain plasticity (or neuroplasticity), that extraordinary ability of the brain to modify its structure and functions in response to experience, learning, and environmental stimuli. Whenever we learn something new, what happens inside our brain’s structure, can be seen as a new line of light switching on. Like looking at a starry sky, if you think about it.
The creation of new points of contact and communication: two cells that had never spoken before, that didn’t even know they shared the same building, realize that one has the salt and the other the oil to dress the very same salad. And if it works, they intertwine, building an ever-stronger bond, sparking further contacts, calling the cell downstairs or upstairs, off to invent cutting-edge culinary dishes. But if things don’t work out, if that salad doesn’t quite hold together, if they forget to toss it, they gradually find themselves alone again, each with their own salt and oil left in the pantry. Because while it is true that frequently used synapses and neural circuits consolidate and strengthen, the unused ones are pruned away to clear space, make room, and render the structure more functional, more alive.
And this movement of lights and electricity, what in technical terms is called synaptogenesis, lasts a lifetime. During childhood and adolescence, it happens massively, at a dizzying pace; then it slows down, yes, but it never stops.
And so one has to wonder what it really means: “in response to experience, learning, and environmental stimuli.” Infinite, as you can imagine, impossible to list them all. So infinite that it makes you think: what if “experience, learning, and environmental stimuli” were simply to name one, or perhaps all of them, human connections, the touching, the “lighting up” between human beings?
How does learning ever come to be, if not from the encounter with someone who, out of love, studied, understood, embraced, and then, out of love (for another), shared and gifted that little flame of their study, of their being and on the other side, someone else who, with genuine interest, makes that flame their own, transforms it, and merges it with the other little flames glowing inside them? How is an experience created, if not from the contagious explosion of an emotion on the skin, yours, his/hers, until you no longer know where it started or where it ends? What is an environment, if not a space intentionally chosen and designed to express oneself through a word, a gesture, a drawing, a song?
In these days of collective weariness, of young people struggling, getting angry, chaotically searching for constellations when darkness falls, I thought of those lights, the ones inside, the ones that turn on if the environment lets the current flow through. It occurred to me that if Stan Lee was right in his comic book when he wrote that “with great power comes great responsibility,” then if we have the power to turn on these small lights of ours and collaborate so that others’ lights turn on too, we have the responsibility to do so. If the environment is hostile, pulls the plug, and wants to bring on the dark, it is our duty to plug it back in.
Michele Rech, known as Zerocalcare, in his last interview published here, when asked “(…) what can we do to resist?” expressed himself by saying: “(…) nothing will ever be achievable if we don’t first have the imagination to picture it.”
So, let’s start from here.
Let’s start from the imagination of a starry sky, of a space built on shared ground for dialogue, where new connections and points of contact can be formed, a space intentionally chosen and designed for self-expression. A space where every time you go, you feel a new string of lights turn on. And let go of the strings that don’t work, that break, that cannot hold the electricity and let a line live on that is energy itself, serving to generate even more.
So that tonight we won’t know which new string will be there, whether from the pine tree or the streetlight, whether from me, from you, or from the gentleman in the white building across, but with the feeling, after a long day, of breathing in light.
Susanna Lucatello
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