About JERN
A dedicated home for the science of experience-related neuroplasticity.
The Journal of Experience-Related Neuroplasticity (JERN) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open-access journal dedicated to scholarship on how experience shapes the brain, cognition, behaviour, learning, health, and adaptation across the lifespan.
Research on experience-related neuroplasticity spans bilingualism, aging, education, music, exercise, cognitive training, occupational experience, rehabilitation, and many other domains. Yet this work often remains scattered across journals organized around particular populations, methods, or disciplines. JERN brings these literatures together to support cumulative theory, cross-domain comparison, and a more connected scientific community.
JERN welcomes research from neuroscience, psychology, education, language science, health, aging, technology, and the social sciences, with particular emphasis on mechanism, measurement, evidence, and real-world experience. The journal aims to connect research across disciplines while maintaining a strong emphasis on scientific rigor, transparent methods, meaningful measurement, and real-world relevance.
JERN is published by ERN Press as an open-access scholarly publication.
Why JERN?
The science of experience-related neuroplasticity already exists. What it lacks is a unified intellectual home.
Research on how experience shapes the brain has expanded rapidly across many areas of science. Bilingualism, musical training, education, exercise, occupational complexity, cognitive intervention, rehabilitation, environmental enrichment, adversity, and cultural experience are frequently studied as distinct topics.
At a mechanistic level, however, these literatures often ask closely related questions:
- How does repeated experience alter neural organization?
- When do experience-related adaptations generalize beyond the trained domain?
- Which changes reflect efficiency, compensation, reserve, specialization, or vulnerability?
- Why do similar experiences produce different outcomes across individuals?
- How do the timing, intensity, duration, and context of experience influence plasticity?
Because this work is distributed across journals organized around specific populations, methods, or disciplines, important connections are easily missed. Similar mechanisms may be described using different terminology. Findings from one field may take years to influence another. Competing explanations may develop independently without being directly compared.
JERN was created to address this fragmentation.
From Isolated Findings to Cumulative Theory
The long-term objective of JERN is not simply to publish more studies of neuroplasticity. It is to help build a more cumulative science of experience-related change.
This requires:
- Greater integration across research domains
- Clearer definitions of experience and plasticity
- Stronger mechanistic and theoretical models
- More attention to individual differences
- Better separation of causation, selection, and correlation
- Greater value placed on longitudinal evidence, replication, null results, and methodological refinement
By bringing these priorities together, JERN aims to support a scientific community capable of explaining not only whether experience is associated with brain change, but how that change occurs, when it matters, and why its consequences differ across people and contexts.
The brain cannot be fully understood apart from the experiences that shape it.
JERN exists to give this premise a dedicated scientific platform.
Aims and Scope
The Journal of Experience-Related Neuroplasticity is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to understanding how experience shapes neural, cognitive, and behavioural organization across the lifespan.
JERN publishes research examining the consequences of sustained, repeated, learned, environmental, social, cultural, occupational, or therapeutic experience. The journal particularly welcomes work that identifies mechanisms, develops theory, compares experience domains, examines individual differences, or integrates findings across traditionally separate literatures.
What JERN Publishes
JERN publishes theoretical, empirical, methodological, and integrative work examining how lived, learned, environmental, and behavioural experiences shape the brain and cognition.
The journal welcomes research involving:
- Language and bilingual experience
- Education and learning
- Music and artistic training
- Physical activity and exercise
- Cognitive and occupational experience
- Sensory and motor experience
- Culture and environmental exposure
- Stress, adversity, and enrichment
- Rehabilitation and cognitive intervention
- Aging, reserve, resilience, and compensation
Research may examine any stage of the lifespan and may use behavioural, cognitive, neuroimaging, electrophysiological, computational, longitudinal, or interdisciplinary approaches.
Experience Is Not Background
Experience is often treated as context surrounding the primary object of study. JERN begins from a different premise:
Experience is one of the principal forces through which the brain develops, adapts, and changes.
By placing experience at the centre of inquiry, JERN seeks to reveal common mechanisms across research areas that have traditionally been studied in isolation.
A Journal Built for Integration
Cross-Domain
JERN connects findings across populations, experiences, methods, and disciplines.
Mechanistically Focused
The journal prioritizes research that advances explanations of how, when, and why experience changes the brain.
Cumulative
JERN welcomes replication, null findings, methodological evaluation, theoretical synthesis, and research that helps distinguish robust effects from isolated observations.
Journal Policies
- Peer review: JERN uses single-blind peer review. Reviewers remain anonymous to authors, while reviewers may see the authors’ names and affiliations.
- Open access: Published articles are freely available online.
- Copyright: Authors retain copyright in their published articles.
- License: Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), unless otherwise stated.
- Publisher: JERN is published by ERN Press.
JERN is currently under development, and online submissions are not yet formally open.
Editorial Board
JERN is developing an interdisciplinary editorial team representing the diverse fields that contribute to the science of experience-related neuroplasticity.
The journal welcomes expressions of interest from prospective editors, editorial board members, and reviewers with expertise across neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, education, rehabilitation, aging, development, exercise science, music cognition, and related disciplines.
Our editorial approach emphasizes:
- Constructive and intellectually engaged peer review
- Evaluation by researchers who understand the relevant experience domain
- Strong theoretical and methodological standards
- Openness to replication, null findings, and methodological debate
- Communication across disciplinary boundaries
Editors and editorial board members will be listed here as the journal develops.
Join the JERN Community
JERN welcomes contributions from researchers working across neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, education, rehabilitation, aging, and related disciplines.
Researchers interested in contributing to JERN as an editor, reviewer, editorial board member, or author may contact the journal.
Contact JERN
For general inquiries, editorial questions, submission assistance, or expressions of interest in joining the editorial board, contact:
Journal of Experience-Related Neuroplasticity
Published by ERN Press
Email: admin@ernpress.com
For matters concerning ERN Press rather than a specific JERN manuscript, please visit the ERN Press website.
