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philh comments on Open thread, Dec. 22 - Dec. 28, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Most of the brain is not hippocampus. You could increase the volume of the hippocampus by taking volume away from the rest of the brain (e.g. making it more dense or taking neurons away from it).
To state the blatantly obvious, if there is a possibility that this drug works by taking neurons away from other parts of the brain, then its use is really dangerous.
BTW is this a guess, or do you have some reason to believe that this sort of neuroplacicity is possible?
Not even really a guess, just something that seemed vaguely plausible (I know almost nothing about neuroscience). "Making it more dense" seemed more likely to me, i.e. the hippocampus grows and puts pressure on the rest of the brain causing it to shrink without losing function. But it also seemed plausible to me that neurons regularly get repurposed between brain structures, so I mentioned that as well.
Fair enough. I know a little neuroscience, and while there is synaptic plasticity, AFAIK neurons cannot switch between entirely different regions of the brain. I agree that an increase in density is more plausible.