Hyperneuroplasticity Across the Lifespan

By Dr. Patty Gently on September 15, 2025

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Bright Insight Support Network founder and president Dr. Patricia Gently supports gifted and twice-exceptional adults in their own autopsychotherapy through identity exploration, structured reflection, and alignment with inner values. A writer, educator, and 2e adult, Dr. Patty centers depth, integrity, and complexity in all aspects of her work.

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Hyperneuroplasticity (HNP) does not unfold in a single, uniform way. Like all systemic orientations, its expression shifts in relation to innate expressions and drives, developmental stages, environmental contexts, and biological transitions. To understand it as an innate framework, an orientation that simply is, requires tracing how it manifests across the lifespan. This article presents HNP in relation to infancy, adolescence, adulthood, midlife recalibration, and aging. Each life phase brings both heightened opportunity and distinctive forms of vulnerability, offering a dynamic view of HNP as lifelong responsiveness rather than as a state to be achieved or lost.

Infancy and Early Childhood as Critical Periods of Prolonged Sensitivity

Research shows that infancy is marked by critical periods of heightened plasticity, when the brain rapidly builds connections for sensing, moving, and regulating the body. These windows are shaped by three main influences: inhibitory circuitry, growth factors, and the extracellular matrix (Hensch & Bilimoria, 2012). Inhibitory circuitry refers to neurons that release GABA, a chemical that acts like a brake to balance activity and determine when sensitive periods open and close. Growth factors such as BDNF are proteins that act like food for neurons, helping them grow and connect. When BDNF levels are high, the brain rewires easily, and when low, change is more difficult. The extracellular matrix is the web of proteins surrounding brain cells. Early in life it is loose, letting circuits reshape freely. Over time it stiffens, much like concrete setting, locking in stability but limiting flexibility. The timing of these windows is carefully regulated and normally closes as inhibitory tone increases.

In an innately hyperneuroplastic system, however, these windows may not simply open and close in predictable ways. Instead, they may remain more fluid or sensitive, producing greater responsiveness to environmental input and variance in developmental timing. This could help explain why autistic and ADHD infants often show early sensory intensities and atypical attention orientation (Johnson et al., 2015). Dąbrowski (1967) described how individuals with greater developmental potential display heightened responsiveness and accelerated meaning-making from early life, which aligns with the gifted/galvanic type’s precocious search for coherence. At the same time, cPTSD research highlights how early adversity interacts with microglial activity that prunes and refines synapses, to leave enduring marks on circuit formation (Teicher et al., 2016). For a hyperneuroplastic system, this means both opportunity for accelerated integration and vulnerability to destabilization when early environments are chaotic or mismatched.

Adolescence: Pruning, Pubertal Hormones, and Identity Formation

We have come to broadly accept in science, psychology, and education that with adolescence comes large-scale synaptic pruning and network rebalancing, coinciding with dramatic hormonal changes. The prefrontal cortex and association cortices undergo delayed and intensive refinement during this period, with microglia and complement pathways shaping pruning (Sekar et al., 2016). Microglia are the brain’s immune cells that prune and refine synapses, while complement pathways are a system of proteins that tag connections for removal, helping shape neural circuits. Also, pubertal hormones influence structural and functional brain maturation, often exaggerating sex-specific and social-cognitive trajectories (Blakemore, 2012).

For HNP systems, these processes may surface as amplified swings in executive functioning, heightened emotional intensity, and intensified social salience. Adolescents with ADHD often experience variability in attentional control as pruning shifts the balance between prefrontal and striatal circuits (Shaw et al., 2013). Autistic youth may find puberty magnifies sensory flooding or social-emotional disjunction, while gifted/galvanic individuals often use this period to explore existential questions with unusual urgency. Dąbrowski (1964, 1970) described adolescence as a time of heightened disintegration, where dynamisms such as dissatisfaction with oneself and subject-object in oneself can serve as catalysts for inner transformation. Trauma exposure in adolescence, especially in hyperplastic systems, can engrain maladaptive reorganizations more deeply, elevating risk for cPTSD (Andersen & Teicher, 2008). Thus, adolescence may be the clearest “visibility window” for HNP, where both creative breakthroughs and destabilizing volatility appear in sharp relief.

It is because of this visibility and our keen awareness of strengths and struggles during adolescence that I specifically researched how twice-exceptional individuals might navigate adolescence such that they can later enjoy transitioning well into adulthood (with transitioning well being measured as having personal agency, integrated identity, and competency). This work was foundational to the development of Identity Development Theory, which integrates well with both Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration and the concept of hyperneuroplasticity when applied to what would be HNP types. 

Early and Mid-Adulthood: Metaplasticity and Environmental Fit

In adulthood, plasticity remains active, though it also tends to be more strongly mediated by life experiences, learning contexts, and relational environments. The principle of metaplasticity, or the concept that the history of synaptic activity alters future plastic responses, shows that experience continues to shape neural flexibility across this stage of life (Abraham & Bear, 1996). Non-invasive brain stimulation studies confirm that adults retain the capacity for structural and functional change, though responsiveness varies with context (Freitas et al., 2011).

For individuals with HNP, adulthood may be a time of amplified responsiveness to psychosocial triggers (boy am I familiar with this one). Trauma or betrayal can precipitate large-scale destabilizations, while novel opportunities or meaningful pursuits catalyze rapid restructuring. Adults with ADHD may display bursts of hyperfocus and abrupt cognitive crashes, reflecting rapid reconfiguration in attentional systems (Castellanos & Proal, 2012). Autistic adults often demonstrate profound adaptability in areas of focused interest, though at a high cost when environments mismatch their needs. Gifted/galvanic and other neurodivergent adults leverage systemic responsiveness for innovation, while simultaneously cycling through existential disintegration. In cPTSD, therapies such as EMDR draw on hyperplastic capacity for adaptive reorganization (van der Kolk, 2014). Rather than seeing this variability as fragility though, HNP frames it as both amplified and dynamic systemic response to the conditions at hand.

Midlife Transitions: Menopause, Andropause, and Systemic Recalibration

Midlife transitions, particularly menopause, are increasingly understood as neurological as well as endocrine events. Neuroimaging demonstrates alterations in connectivity, gray matter volume, and brain energy metabolism across the perimenopausal transition, with some networks showing hypometabolism followed by later stabilization (Mosconi et al., 2017). These changes reflect endocrine remodeling as much as chronological aging.

For hyperneuroplastic systems, such transitions act as recalibration events, where innate responsiveness reacts vividly to hormonal and metabolic shifts. Autistic and ADHD individuals often report changes in sensory, cognitive, and regulatory patterns during menopause (Moseley et al., 2022), and gifted/galvanic individuals may experience intensified existential questioning. Midlife transitions can also resurface unresolved trauma, destabilizing cPTSD systems as hormones interact with stress networks. There may also be heightened sensitivity to hormone replacement therapies in postmenopausal HNP individuals, as even small shifts in estrogen or progesterone levels could trigger amplified systemic responses (Maki & Henderson, 2012). Rather than pathologizing these changes, an ND-affirming frame views them as reconfiguration catalysts that are uncomfortable yet often generative, provided adequate scaffolding and contextual support are present.

Older Adulthood: Plasticity, Neuroinflammation, and Systemic Vulnerability

Aging is often associated with reduced average plasticity responsiveness, yet evidence shows wide individual heterogeneity. Non-invasive brain stimulation reveals that long-term potentiation (LTP)-like responses decline in some but not all older adults (Freitas et al., 2011). Concurrently, neuroinflammation, microglial dysregulation, and blood–brain barrier (BBB) permeability increase with age, altering how plasticity is expressed (Barrientos et al., 2015). Neuroinflammation refers to immune-related activation that heightens brain reactivity; microglial dysregulation occurs when immune cells become over- or under-active, disrupting pruning and regulation; and BBB permeability is the loosening of the protective filter between the brain and body, allowing more molecules and immune factors to cross. In hyperneuroplastic systems, these processes can both shape and be shaped by heightened responsiveness, amplifying swings in cognition and emotion while making HNP brains more reactive to stressors and systemic changes.

Though these processes that increase as we age may produce exaggerated swings in cognition and regulation in HNP systems, adaptive learning capacity may persist or even shine. However, vulnerability to destabilization grows when inflammation, infection, or stress accumulates. For autistic, ADHD, and gifted/galvanic older adults, this can mean preserved adaptability in valued domains with heightened costs under stress. Such HNP types may continue to demonstrate creativity and systemic insight, though often at greater physiological strain. For those with cPTSD, aging can bring either long-integrated healing or resurfacing of unresolved patterns. Rather than focusing on decline, however, HNP frames late life as a continuation of lifelong responsiveness, where risks and opportunities remain amplified.

A Synthesis

Looking across the lifespan, hyperneuroplasticity emerges as a systemic orientation that permeates every stage of development, rather than a temporary trait to be gained or lost. In infancy, it presents as prolonged sensitivity to input. In adolescence, it intensifies during pruning and hormonal surges. In adulthood, it shapes responsiveness to context and meaning-making. In midlife, it recalibrates under endocrine and metabolic transitions. In later years, it may persist in interaction with neuroinflammation and systemic vulnerability. Taken together, these trajectories show how the concept of hyperneuroplasticity can be a quality that simply is, as a lifelong mode of heightened responsiveness, offering amplified risks and amplified opportunities, and demanding environments that support expression rather than suppression.

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