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LINKS: ....Bird Flu Info ....Your Memory Enhancer ....Neurotech ....Success Tips ....Free Biological basis of geniusHumans do differ in their brain power. Some get a biological head start, others get handicapped from early childhood. In cannot be stressed enough though that the optimum path towards maximum achievement is always through training. The starting point is not relevant for choosing hard-work learning trajectory. It is also important to know, that in majority of cases, mental limitations can be overcome. Some major disabilities, such as Down syndrome or brain injury can pose a formidable challenge. However, practice shows that a huge proportion of the population see a problem where it does not exist. Many people write to me about their memory problems just to discover (e.g. with SuperMemo analytical tools) that qualitatively their memory does not differ from their peers. What usually prevents people from reaching intellectual heights is personality and the environment (school, family, etc.). Many do not live up to their potential simply because of insufficient motivation or belief in their own powers. Others fail due to parental inattention. Those factors are statistically by far more important than inborn limitations. Scientists have studied Einstein's brain to look for the clues as to his genius. On cursory examination, they could hardly find any. Later it transpired that some areas of his brain were indeed better developed and nourished by a rich fabric of glial cells, i.e. brain cells that are, among others, responsible for the right environment for neurons to work in. Yet it is difficult to predicate as to whether all these differences were inborn or were rather a result of his training in abstract thinking. Anatomical studies show that various areas of the human brain may substantially differ in size between individuals. Yet it is not easy to find correlations between these difference and mental powers. In people with a normal range of IQ, the volume of cerebral cortex may vary twice between one person and the next. So may the extent of differences in metabolic rates in the same organ. Similar differences have been found between such critical brain structures as the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex, and the amygdala. Connections between the hemispheres can dramatically differ in volume (e.g. seven-fold difference for the anterior commissure). The left inferior-parietal lobule (located just above the level of the ears in the parietal cortex) is larger in men, and was also found to be larger in Einstein's brain as well as in the brains of mathematicians and physicists. On the other hand, the two language area of the cortex: Broca and Wernicke areas are larger in women, which may explain why women might be superior in language processing and verbal tasks. Bigger men have bigger brains but are not smarter. A racially sensitive subject of lower SAT test scores among blacks and Hispanics in the US has been a matter of debate for a number of years. The differences could not be explained by the material status of families or the neighborhood factor. Stanford psychology professor Claude Steele has conducted revealing experiments in which black students could do equally well on the test as long as they were not told they are being scored. Although we can point to differences based on sex or ethnicity, the ultimate difference in the creative potential is by far more dependent on the upbringing, education and student's personality. As explained in Genius in Chess, despite chess being a "male game", female chess player, Judit Polgar, developed skills that are superior to those of 99.99997% of the male population. When we tried to see if student IQ makes it easier to do well in learning and in exams, we found that some personality factors matter more. A small group of students learned with SuperMemo, and the main success factor was the perfectionism trait, not the actual IQ (Wozniak 1994, Gorzelanczyk et al. 1998). Most optimistically, SuperMemo and memory research show that our memory works in the same way at the very basic molecular and synaptic level. Our forgetting is described by the same forgetting curve whose steepness is mostly determined by knowledge representation. As the analysis of success stories with SuperMemo shows, main learning differences between individuals can be found in (1) personality (perseverance, delayed gratification, optimism, etc.) and (2) knowledge representation skills. A week-long course in mnemonic techniques immediately illustrates that knowledge representation skills can be learn very fast indeed. Those skills also develop in proportion to the amount of learning as demonstrated by differences between primary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate levels. All users of SuperMemo, unless primed beforehand, start with building clumsy collections of learning material that is quite difficult to retain in memory. Within months, most users develop reasonable strategies on how knowledge should be represented to minimize the effort of learning (see: 20 rules of formulating knowledge in learning). HOME...... Brain Food LINKS: ....Medical Dictionary ....Stress Management ....Allergy Info |