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Brain Scans Can Detect Who Has Better Skills, Research Says (wsj.com)
To gain new insight into how highly specialized workers learn skills or react to stressful situations, researchers are leveraging advanced scanning technologies to look at what's happening inside the brain. From a report: In the latest findings, a team of researchers studied surgeons as they performed surgical simulations and found they could identify novice from experienced surgeons by analyzing brain scans taken as the physicians worked [The story could be paywalled]. The researchers, who described their findings Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, said that the part of the brain involved in planning complex behaviors was more active in the novices. Skilled surgeons had more activity in the motor cortex, which is important for movement. The researchers, who developed a machine-learning system to analyze the scans, also showed that training resulted in a shift toward higher activity in the motor cortex. In total, the brains of roughly 30 surgeons and trainees were monitored while they performed pattern-cutting tasks that are part of professional tests for certifications. The brain-data metrics were more accurate than current professional tests used to assess the same manual skills, according to the study.
It can be both. For example, learning Windows support gives you muscle memory for Ctrl+Alt+Del
Table-ized A.I.
This is like deciding if someone was rich by looking at how many lights you saw in their entire country by looking at the planet at night from space. With no knowledge of nation borders.
You can certainly draw a correlation - but not really a good conclusion on any individual.
Brain scans aren't reading the content of neurons. They're not even really reading activations or activity for certain, given the lack of real certainty on the full mechanics of brain activity. All they're reading is the heat and relative traffic areas of an unlabelled part of the brain, and saying that this is what has happened in other cases. Again - like watching blobs of house lights from space.
There's other studies that show that experts in a field actually activate LESS than non-experts on a subject - especially genius-level studies, because they tend to find the same answers with less mental work and stress or second-thoughts.
Avoid trying to base how you want to live your life on studies like these ones in particular. Or at least focus more on the base ideas, and less on trying to imitate the particulars here.
Ryan Fenton
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
What about bo staff skills?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!