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How Much Give Can the Brain Take?
Your Mama writes "Just how malleable is the brain? How easily can a person overcome the forces -- genetic and environmental -- that shape a creature from birth? Over the last few weeks, evidence has emerged that throws these questions into a new light. The NY Times has the article" (The usual "free NYT registration required" notice would be here if we weren't so bored with it.)
An interesting field I've run across is that of accelerated learning. I've found Dr. Win Wenger's book, The Einstein Factor, an interesting read, covering many of the threads discussed on this news item. For example, in the book Wenger mentions a study of a group of Nuns (not sure where they are, I've lent my copy out to someone) who on live to age 90+. This group of people have had virtually no incidents of debilitating mental deterioration such as Alzheimer's disease. The premise of the book is that intelligence is not what you have, but what you make of it. The nuns don't get Alzheimer's because they use their brains constantly, keeping diaries and staying active well into their later years. Many interesting comments on how geniuses (Einstein & Tesla, among others) looked/thought about the world. Check out Win Wenger's Project Renaisance home page at http://www.winwenger.com/, or read about what Project Renainssance is.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Like most scientific folk wisdom ("You use only 10 percent of your brain power," "Right-brained people are more creative") the Mozart effect, as it is sometimes called, is extrapolated from research whose meaning is open to debate.
There is an interesting Skeptical Inquirer article debunking the 10-percent myth.
NPR Science Friday had a "Brain Update" show which examines various issues in detail, with Charles Gross on the program (the one who conducted the monkey expt.) Worth listening to, since so many are complaining about lack of info. Here's the link
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http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/cmnpd01fm.cfm?PrgD
Needs Real Audio, btw.
Wooly Mammoth.
-- I'm not a freak show, I'm a mammal. --
Although it's possible that a simple tweak will completely prevent the slow slide into senility, I doubt it. The brain is a complex beast, and there are just too damn many things that can go wrong with it. Granted, I've met people lucky enough to remain very sharp late in their lives, and the wisdom that comes from experience often more than makes up for reduced mental agility, but the fact remains that the brain does suffer from old age.
The body is like a lot like a microsoft os: when you first start it up, it's in a fairly simple, clean, state, but the longer it runs, the more random cruft and unanticipated mutations it accumulates, until it becomes incredibly unstable and finally crashes. After all, both are a collection of hacks generated by the same design process: tweak the code and ship if, say, the mean time between failures is twice the expected period of operation. for windows, the expected period of operation is 8 hours (by then, the average user has shut it down for the night), so it should run, on average, for 16 hours before crashing. for the human body, it's about 25-35 years (by then, like any good hunter-gatherer, you've had your kids, raised them to maturity and been eaten by a saber-toothed tiger), so MTBF should be 50-70 years. with medical technology, that's been pushed back a bit, but we're operating way out of spec, and our bodies come with no warrantee, express or implied, regarding fitness of use for any purpose, including, but not limited to, survival, reproduction, or the ability to operate a computer in the wee ours of the morning while retaining sufficient mental capacity to post a reply to /. that doesn't degenerate into a rambling jumble of twisted metaphors, all different.
any resemblance between the above post and the writings of a sane person are purely coincidental.