Accidental Genius

A savant is somebody that has a very special ability, but they are impaired in basic areas. There are three types of savant:

1.Talented/gifted savant: has a useful skill

2. Predigious Savant: a child prodigy fewer than 100 in the world, the one who knows things that he has never learned

3. General Savant: a person with a gift but that is not useful

      For example, there is a prodigious savant who is physically and mentally disabled, but has memorized 90,000 books, and is able to read 500 pages an hour. He reads two pages at the same time, one with one eye and the other page with the other eye.

     Another person that is a prodigious savant is George Widner, when he was brain scanned it showed that his brain uses different neurocircuits that we usually use for different tasks.

A savant can be born or created.

                 In the brain the Left hemisphere controls logic, and Right hemisphere controls creativity: the left hemisphere usually dominates, but in savants the right hemisphere dominates. This is probably because in the fetus the left hemisphere is probably damaged in formation because of the flood of testosterone.

Nadia is an autistic three year old she can draw beautifully, but when she learned language her ability was lost. These abilities may come back is there is brain damage, but they naturally will not come back.

Tommy Maccue had brain damage when two arteries in his brain collapsed and provoked hemorrhaged. This incident upset his frontal and temporal lobes which gave him creativity. He urges to paint all the time, and he writes poetry since the incident.

                 All of these are leading to new discoveries, for example an experiment was done that by using magnetic waves it slows down the left side of the brain which gives the person a chance to think without logic, so scientist can see that the person has a more aprochable abilities to the ones of the savants. 

Make me a Genius

Susan Polgar has challenged society’s views on women. When she was a young girl society though that only men could play chess, but Susan shoed them otherwise. Susan Polgar was born in 1969, and currently lives in New York. She has become the best chess player in the world, at 21 years of age she was the number one chess player between 600 male players. She developed her extraordinary brain when she was a young girl. Her father wanted her to excel in mathematics, but when she accidentally found chess she found, her father fomented her with everything he could. When she was young she practices 6 hours a day memorizing strategies and games, it became her obsession. Her constant practice made new connections in her brain. When Susan’s brain was scanned it showed that when she plays chess she uses the same area the brain responsible for face recognition, she recognizes chess as fast and accurate as she can remember a face. Susan beat an US world champion in 60 seconds. She uses intuition during the games; she trusts her experience and her learned abilities.   A person can become a genius with determination and lots of practice. 

Born Genius

Nature versus Nurture

You might find it hard to believe, but 8 year old Mark Yu is already playing the piano professionally. Mark could play the piano since he was 2 years of age!! This brings up the question: Does the brain shape musicians or do the musicians the brain?  When the brain of musicians was scanned they saw that there were areas of the brain that were larger than usual.  Mark is a gifted child who has the drive to practice piano 8 hours a day. Gifted kids drive themselves, and don’t need to be pushed by anyone else.

               In the other extreme, in 1970 they discovered Genie, she had been isolated in a room for 12 and a half years, his father was mentally unstable and had decided to hide her child from the rest of the world. She spent her childhood in total isolation; she gave scientist the opportunity to see how nature affects the brain. When you don’t have love or sociability in your childhood the nerves in your brain responsible for grammar will separate. If you don’t use it, you lose it. 

Homosexuality (NATURE OR NURTURE)

The question where does homosexuality originate is very controversial in a religious, political, scientific and moral way. This question may be answered as by nature or by nurture. Many testing demonstrates that the answer might probably be nature. There is a case of twin boys in which they have had the same nurture, and one of the twins plays with G.I Joes while the other twin plays with neo pets and Bratz dolls.  This is called “Child Gender Non Conformity” this is when a child whose behavior is more typical of the other sex. This condition is more culturally due to the fact that within different cultures you can see different aspects that are considered masculine or feminine.  It is not entirely environmental or entirely genetic. There are other scientists that believe that it may be hormonal because of tests done on rats. Because of the environment in the wound there are finding that prove that for every older brother a man has there is a 1/3 chance that he will be gay this is because the mother in the wound is making anti bodies for the Y chromosome in men but if the men is left handed there is no problem, he will not be affected by this, and this is not proved for lesbians, just gays. This factor is not proven to be true yet. There is much controversy with this subject of nature or nurture, but it is certain that homosexuality is usually not chosen. 

A brain on crutches

People with head injuries suffer:

·      -  Memory loss

·       - Ability loss

·       - Personality loss

·       - Loss of cognitive skills

·        -Paralysis

·       - Double vision

·        -Difficulty of moving

Traumatic brain injuries occur when too much force is applied to the skull. This could be due to the car accidents, fights, falls, etc. Almost a quarter of a million Americans are hospitalized every year with brain injuries.

There are three types of injuries:

1) contusion

2) Axonal injury

3) Bleeding in brain

The part of the brain that is usually injured and that suffers the most damage is the frontal lobe. This is the largest lobe in the brain, and it controls reasoning, planning, movement, some aspects of speech, connected with the emotions, and the lymphatic system. The temporal lobe is one of the parts of the brain that is usually damaged, and this damage may lead you to lack of ability to speak clearly. 

A look at Criminal Minds

Are Criminals Born or Made by their Environment?

Can criminal behavior be considered product of nature or made by their environment? This question has always been of much controversy. People have always wondered why these persons are so evil and what made them evil in the first place. Many people have always blamed it on the parents, if a person steels it’s because their parents never thought them not to steal, or if they kill it is because they were exposed to violence and they imitate what they saw as a child. Before there were any studies about a delinquents brain people thought that their brain was completely normal, that people just chose the wrong path. Various tests on criminal brains have demonstrated that a criminal’s brain is damaged! Delinquents are not healthy; they usually have brain damage and are affected by a traumatic situation that happened to them during their childhood. Only brain damage cannot make a person dangerous, but the combination of trauma and brain damage. Parents have always wanted to know what is it that makes a child become a serial killer. Mostly what triggers trauma is if in childhood the child is sexually abused, mistreated, witness of violence, if they have a tendency for violence, or if they engaged in an active sexual life from an extremely early age. Due to their brain damage a killer lacks the empathy feeling, and feels nothing to what they do. Most of them do not have what we call a conscience. A man can brutally kill a stripper and then sleep with her dead body for the night like if nothing had happened! The killers lack the ability to control their impulses. This is due to the damage to their frontal lobe which is the part of the brain that controls your emotions and logic. A criminal does not have the ability to make the right choices, and what there is little a person can do to correct the years of accumulation of trauma and damage.

Mind Reading

How many people have wished to know what your kids, parents, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands or wives are thinking? Mind reading is considered a myth, but with the advance in technology scientists have actually managed to look inside people's brain and understanding what they are thinking about. It is common to think that mind reading is only for people with super natural abilities, but in reality scientists have been working on exploring the brain and actually analyzing our thoughts. Now through functional MRI it makes it possible for scientists to do thought identification (mind reading). When people are put to the test they are made to think about an object for example hammer, then what the MRI does is detect the parts of the brain that you brain uses to detect hammer, and n people it is mostly the same parts. Scientists can also tell what people’s intentions are. For example they might show you two numbers and you think either of subtracting or adding, the MRI will detect what were your intentions in that specific situation. Other MRIs can tell if you are lying or not, others tell whether you had seen a place before or not. These technological advances will soon be used in criminal investigations to know if a person knows a certain place, or to know if a person is lying about what they are testifying to. It is an estimation to say that in about 5 years MRIs will read more complex thoughts.