Neuroplasticity is one of the discoveries of the modern age. The fact that our brain is not fixed but changes as we age and it is able to learn new things everyday is a concept that is not very old: this idea has its roots in the psychological research from the end of the 19th century. Among others, the psychologists of the Soviet age contributed to a solid foundation from which we can still draw new conclusions today. Together with Lev Vygotsky, one famous example of this group of scientists is Alexandr Lurija.

Alexandr Lurija spent most of his life studying not only the development of children and their early language development, but also ‘already developed’ brains that had encountered brain injuries and other accidents that took away part of their brain functions. Examining their recovery, he could make meaningful assumptions about how our brain works and how knowledge, especially language, is processed in the brain. In regarding the behaviour of people with abnormal and injured brains, he drew conclusions of how our brain re-organizes itself. These ideas formed a lasting impression on how we can define (and re-define) the term human today.