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You may be aware of a famous story which found that Taxi Drivers as well as Super Mario 64 (3D adventure game) players showed a an increase in grey matter located in their hippocampus.

https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2013120

This (and I'm sure other, older examples and research) demonstrates that the size and/or density of certain brain regions can change as a function of its use, roughly similar to muscles; from this observation stems the questions:

Can a brain, or regions of a brain grow so large as to start pushing up against the skull?

If a specific region of the brain grows or shrinks, will the skull eventually reshape to accommodate?

Is it possible that a brain can shift in weight distribution, caused by prolific development of specific regions, to such a degree that sensitive structures in the skull, head, or neck are affected?

user7778287
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  • IIRC "increase in grey matter" means relative to white matter or some such, not an increase in brain overall mass. Generally, few areas of the adult brain can grow neurons. – the gods from engineering Oct 21 '21 at 18:57
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    Frankly I find the claims in some such studies pretty dubious, e.g. that action games decrease something and platformers increase something else. It reminds me of the dead salmon fMRI experiment https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/ignobel-prize-in-neuroscience-the-dead-salmon-study/. – the gods from engineering Oct 21 '21 at 19:10
  • 2020 newsflash: the dead salmon wasn't alone https://www.improbable.com/2020/06/05/fmri-brain-research-the-dead-salmon-has-lots-of-company/ – the gods from engineering Oct 21 '21 at 19:19

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