Presentation using coding with Hopscotch made by my Grand-daughter at the age of 6.  Just wonderful.

https://prezi.com/view/1TFNTmXwRPKQDpWx6Qoz/?referral_token=ss7L2QlnB3FN

This book has many fascinating discoveries that explains how the brain works.  There was a problem with crime.  A large part of it was solved by the governmental policy of removal of lead in gasoline!  (Lead  coming from exhaust fumes interfered with children’s brain development.    Lead damages the area of the brain responsible for executive function, impulse control, and emotional regulation.  It lowered IQ.    Violence skyrocketed in the 60s and 70s after surge in leaded gasoline consumption and began a steep decline in the 1990s after the clean air act.  Environmental issues were the cause of it!)

Our brain changes according to what we do with it.  The book starts with a child who needed to have half of his brain removed in order to live.  The surgeons removed half the brain and the child recovered completely, with the exception of a limp on his leg.  The brain rewires itself so we can function well.  Blind people learn echolocation because they cannot see.  Sighted people can learn this too but they do not have the incentive to do so.  It does take some time.  The brain is not a fixed state.  It keeps remolding itself throughout our life.  It’s plasticity.  Stroke victims frequently recover partially.  Full recovery is possible with exertion.  The brain can retrain itself and that even when other parts of the brain were forever gone, other parts of the brain could take over their function.

The brain is always hungry for new sources of information.  Some scientists inserted infrared sensors in rats, as just another signal that can be made use of by the rat’s brain.  The added signal did not take over or interfere with the normal function of the somatosensory cortex.  The new sense integrated itself smoothly.  The rats were able to develop a supersense.

Interesting observation-  Smell good or bad:  the emotion simply reflects the meaning of the data to you in the context of your goals and evolutionary pressures.

There are other stunning examples.  The best archer in the world has no arms.  The brain can readily adapt its resources to solve problems in the outside world.  Some bulldogs can skateboard.  Another dog learned to surf.  Humans and monkeys can figure out how to move robotic arms with their thoughts.  It is the same process by which your brain learns to control your natural fleshy limbs.    The author thinks that in the not-too-distant future, it seems inevitable that we will mind control robots in factories or on the surface of the moon, all from the comfort of our couches.  That would change our strategy for space exploration.

Geniuses are made, not born.  How brains adjust themselves has everything to do with what you’re spending your time on.    What you do over and over becomes reflected in the structure of the brain.  The thousands of hours of practice on the instrument molds the brain of the musician.  Your brain adjusts itself according to what you spend your time on, as long as those tasks have alignment with rewards or goals.

There is a window for the acquisition of new abilities.  Acquiring vision, language and violin proficiency depends on normal input from the world, and if a child doesn’t receive these, she cannot later.  After a certain point, these abilities are lost.  The habits we form from childhood make all the difference.  Although the brain plasticity diminished over the years, it is still present.

There was also a discussion of nuns.  They had active mental lives.  Their brains were forced to constantly build new bridges, even as some of their neural road ways were physically falling apart.  One third of those studies had Alzheimer’s without the expected cognitive symptoms.  An active mental life, even in the very elderly, fosters new connections.

The book also discusses the working of the neurons and what he means by livewiring:  1. Reflect the world, 2. wrap around the inputs, 3. drive any machinery, 4. retain what matters, 5. lock down stable information, 6. compete or die, 7. move toward the data.

“She’s an independent thinker”– There is no “you” without the external.