Some People Just Never Learn

Iddo Genuth writes "German scientists recently showed what many of us suspected but could not prove — some people just don't learn. The German researchers have found a genetic factor that affects our ability to learn from our errors. The scientists demonstrated that men carrying the A1 mutation are less successful at learning to avoid mistakes than men who do not carry this genetic mutation. This finding has the potential to improve our understanding of the causes of addictive and compulsive behaviors."

Comments

I call them me

[selfdiscipline]

I was diagnosed with some sort of generic learning disability when I was a teen.

I tend to bang my brain against new concepts again and again, until I finally understand them in big chunks. I tend to overlook the obvious, and go for the bizarre interpretations of things.

So I often find myself in situations where I feel stupid for not grasping something that is readily apparent to most everyone else, but at the same time I've been successful with teaching myself certain concepts other people wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

For instance, I've taught myself how to program in Haskell, whereas most programmers run screaming from anything with more than a minimal functional paradigm component. It did take me quite a while to get some concepts in Haskell, though.

Re:I call them me

[grammar fascist]

That's what I find peculiar. As soon as they "discover" that the old adage "not everyone is wired the same way", they immediately declare these people "damaged" or "worthless". Such is the fate of those who entrust their families to the cookie cutter society... they get a cookie cutter family, and if it doesn't fit the mold, its declared "defective."

I'm reading a little anti-...oh, maybe anti-ADHD-diagnosis in this, among other things. Funny, this happened last time this story was reported here. Let me clear up a few things.

Lower output of dopamine (or some insufficiency of it in some way), which is what this article is about in the end, is implicated in ADHD. It's very well known that dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, is one of the few things responsible for your prefrontal cortex getting a jump-start when you need to reason about something. (Another is norepinephrine, the neurotransmitter associated with stress.) The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive function: integrating memories, learning, predicting outcomes - a whole slew of things. Presumably, the dopamine squirt is what gets babies to learn to eat. Chew food -> dopamine + good feeling -> brain kicks into gear to figure out how to get it again.

Most healthy adults can start up the prefrontal cortex on demand. People with low levels of dopamine can't. From a neurological perspective, low levels of dopamine is obviously a bad thing.

When I was diagnosed with ADHD, I did my own research, including reading relevant papers from neuroscience literature. ADHD generally shows up in brain scans as decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex. Taking medication brings dopamine levels up to normal - it's why they prescribe stimulants. For anyone else it's a bad idea, but for people with ADHD it's normalizing.

(I'd be very interested to know whether these researchers at Max Planck have discovered any ties between this mutation and ADHD.)

Nearly all of my grade-school teachers suspected that I had ADHD and told my parents, but they never let on to me. Instead of being labeled "ADHD" or "damaged" or "worthless" (as you say), I got labeled "hyperactive" and "annoying" and "arrogant" and "difficult". I was 25 by the time I understood that something must be objectively different. By the time I was 31 I was feeling "damaged" and "worthless" without anyone ever saying those words to me. I had started affixing those labels to myself because of repeatedly failing to do things I knew I was perfectly capable of that I actually wanted very badly to do.

Still want to withhold diagnosis and treatment based on your preconceived notions of normal variation?

I don't. My son, who is like me in so many ways it's scary, is getting all the relevant information as soon as he's old enough to understand it. He's entitled to the full knowledge he'll need to decide who he wants to be. I never got that option.

Learn1 Learn2 != Learn = 0

[WillAffleckUW]

Just because some people have a harder time learning does not mean they can't learn.

It's just harder.

Seriously, it doesn't mean they don't learn (the title of this /. post), it means they have a lower capability.

It's like saying that Americans can't speak more than two languages. Most have never tried, nor had the easy resources to do so, but they could probably learn additional languages, even if it might be harder here.

Re:Of all races..

[QuantumRiff]

For those that are going to call Goodwin's Law, look up eugenetics. Many US states practiced it up until around the time of WW2 (some states even did it later). Sterilizing prisoners, people they decided were mentally ill, etc. Some really, scary and depressing cases. Sure, it wasn't necessarily race based, but definitely the same idea that a certain European country had.. In fact, they claimed they got the idea from California.