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You Really Are What You Know
jd writes "There has been research for some time showing that London cab driver brains differ from other people's, with considerable enlargement of those areas dealing with spacial relationships and navigation. Follow-up work showed it wasn't simply a product of driving a lot (PDF). However, up until now it has been disputed as to whether the brain structure led people to become London cabbies or whether the brain structure changed as a result of their intensive training (which requires rote memorization of essentially the entire street map of one of the largest and least-organized cities in the world). Well, this latest study answers that. MRI scans before and after the training show that the regions of the brain substantially grow as a result of the training, and they're quite normal beforehand. The practical upshot of this research is that — even for adult brains, which aren't supposed to change much — what you learn structurally changes your brain. Significantly."
To navigate a city looks like it was planned by throwing spaghetti at a wall and calling it a map.
Okay. Now I *really* feel sorry for Windows programmers/admins :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Great... I wasted my space in my head on Star Trek...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
" Even for adult brains, which aren't supposed to change much"
How is it that this is still passed around as fact. This idea is incredibly outdated.
Really? I watched several Republican Primary Debates, and I have to disagree with you...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This is good news for you then, since it means that it's never too late to forget all that junk.
Anyone who meditates effectively for any length of time can attest to the fact that the brain can change quite dramatically as a result of what you do with it. Things that I did not even know were possible have happened to me as a result of it, and not in a subtle way, either.
Along the same lines, do some types of jobs lead to stable equilibrium configurations of some sort (which cannot be easily escaped)? For example, does learning to take orders and being a good employee reconfigure the brain in different ways than being an entrepreneur and making up your own decisions? Is it possible to become the latter if you've already spent 20 years being the former?
He still has a century on the people he's insulting, champ.
The question is: How is the Brain of the people that study the Brain?
Your vision center has shrunk. Careful or it will disappear all together.
Related with the title, not the content of the article, probably there is very little of what is "you" that wasnt what you know or what you lived. Someone else that looked essentially like me (to not have different experiences based on looks) living exactly what i lived would probably think like me.
Well, neural plasticity does slow down considerably after early adulthood. I imagine you're responding to the theory that plasticity simply halted after childhood, which has been disproven many times. Neuroscience is a complex field that ties Philosophy of Mind, Psychology, Neurology etc together. It's hard to make any lasting broad statements about the brain and how it works.
"Sir your visual cortex is extremely complex. At these percentages of activity and size, you should be able to spot perfect-10 curves from 5000 feet in the air. Of course someday you'll just magically go blind, with no medical explanation, so there's that."
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
Absolutely. There's a recent study, done at Mass Gen, that shows adults who practice mindfulness medication, such as tai chi, benefit from measurable physical changes to their brain in as little as 8 weeks of 20min/day meditation. Even older adults. And these changes occur to the regions of the brain that are associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and dealing with stress.
I teach Chinese martial arts, including tai chi chuan, and love to point this out to my students.
By the way, tai chi is really good for tech types like programmers. It's fun and the martial arts aspects are extremely cool. You also get to use swords (long swords (jian) and broadswords (dao)) as well as staffs and spears. Tai chi also puts lead in your pencil, if you catch my drift.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's actually a very good question. I'm not sure anyone has done that study, but I'd love to know the results.
If we go with current thinking (the Peter Principle, the idea that people generally will have their best ideas when young, the high failure rate of start-ups that appear to be by people moving out of regular industry, the apparent "strangeness" of inventors and innovators to those with a strong work ethic, etc) then the answer would be "almost certainly" for your first question, "quite likely" for your second and "yes but it's unimaginably rare" to your third.
However, you must bear in mind that until there's hard evidence of cause-and-effect, this is all supposition based on anecdotal evidence (which, if you remember your Dilbert videos, is only good for selling books) and apparent correlation. It seems very plausible, but without something a bit more solid I'm not confident anyone can give a real answer.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)