When we learn something, it’s the hippocampus that packages it for storage. Think of it like a vault that accepts deposits of new information but off-loads items to off-site storage.
Interestingly, the architecture of your hippocampus is changing right now as you read this sentence. That’s no surprise: New neurons are born in your hippocampus every second. But only learning keeps these new neurons alive. Researchers showed this in 2007 when they stained rat neurons, trained the rats, and then counted these stained neurons. The rats that successfully learned from the training retained more of these stained neurons than rats that experienced the same training, but failed to learn.
So passive appreciation is not enough to keep your hippocampus kicking. To grow neurons, information needs to not only hit your hippocampus, but also be processed through it into learning.