I think you are taking the idea of hardened neural pathways as being absolutely unbend able. If that was the case, smart phones would have been the realm of people in the early 20's and below on release. But even the elderly figured these things out very quickly.

While anecdotal, I know of many folks in their teens that use VR a few times and then just move on. VR is a neat toy but for a lot of people it is something that they forget about very quickly.

Personally it was the same, the tech was brilliant but after you take the headset off - you just forget about it.