this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2026
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me_irl
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The brain never actually stops developing. We just have more fully realized hardware into our 30s, but we truly never stop maturing
That's a simplification, the brain keeps improving until it starts deteriorating. It isn't necessarily maturing, it's just getting better at what you're using it for, which could also be not-maturing.
Most people stop maturing around 14, at least that's what various attempts to find the average mental age have guessed at.
I doubt that it's a binary. Sure, there's a binary that could be used to describe the overall state of the brain, but my assumption is that it continues developing until death, just the maintenance load increases over time until it eventually overtakes the brain's ability to adapt and it looks like it's just declining, but consider what's actually going on for say a stroke victim to recover functionality. The brain is rewiring itself to make up for parts of it that ceased being functional brain matter.
I'd also consider forming new memories to be a kind of development, since they are encoded using neurons, connections, and whatever else goes into making our brains work.
Uniformly the body works in the same way; it keeps rejuvenating itself by replacing dead or dysfunctional material by building new.
When the entropic pressure becomes greater than its ability to rejuvenate, it slowly deteriorates and eventually dies.
And the brain functions the same.