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Introduciton
The main reason I chose How Smart Can We Get would be it is our intelligence that sets us apart from any other being on this planet. Humans have a unique brain. It allows us to solve problems in ways that are still surprising us to this day. Every time that humanity has been faced with a problem supposed to be too great for us to conquer, a brain has concocted an answer to save us. There are several reasons the human brain is such a marvel. The ones the documentary touched on that I found particularly interesting are the brain’s ability to change itself, the differences in people with Savant Syndrome, and why we choke under pressure.
Summary
In the first part of the documentary it becomes apparent that Albert Einstein’s brain looks different. One of the more striking differences is there is a knob in his right primary motor cortex. This knob is a result of an enlarged gyrus that controls his left hand. It turns out that many musicians who have had lessons from childhood onward have this very same knot. People who play stringed instruments tend to have this knot on the left side, while people who play the piano tend to have the knot on the right side of their brains. This demonstrates the brain’s remarkable ability to change itself to fit the demands being placed upon it by the environment.
There also happens to be a man who can calculate what day of the week any given date will fall on. He has a condition called Savant Syndrome. People who have Savant syndrome have abilities that far exceed what would normally be considered average. Some are born with these abilities and some acquire them after sustaining neurological damage. One woman whose language centers began to deteriorate started to paint beautiful pictures, ...
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...ore my mom forced me to get in front of an audience and speak the easier it became for me to. I was able to breathe better and calm myself down. By the time I got in high school it wasn’t that big of a problem for me and I had always wondered why. After watching this documentary I realized I had probably learned how to turn down the crosstalk that was occurring between my pre-frontal cortex and my amygdala. I happen to find this quite interesting.
Conclusion
How Smart Can We Get? discussed how the human brain’s physical structure can change due to the demands that are placed on it, how Savants are able to do amazing things with little time or effort, and how our emotion can get the best of us when we need a clear head the most. It was undoubtedly fascinating to watch. I can only hope the information I gained from this exercise has made my brain a little smarter.
In “Can You Build a Better Brain”, the author, Sharon Begley discusses how the cognition processes better. He starts by presenting some experiments that prove nutrition did not support the brain smarter. According to the article, he believes that the “cognitive capacity” can be amended by concentration in people’s behavior. He further believes that people’s intelligence do not depend on own skills; however, as long as people peceive new things, their synapses and brain systems will
Carr mentions the affect that technology has on the neurological processes of the brain. Plasticity is described as the brains response through neurological pathways through experiences. The brain regions “change with experience, circumstance, and need” (29). Brain plasticity also responds to experiences that cause damage to the nervous system. Carr explains that injuries in accidents “reveal how extensively the brain can reorganize itself” (29).I have heard stories in which amputees are said to have a reaction to their amputated limb; it is known as a phantom limb. These types of studies are instrumental in supporting the claim that the brain can be restructured. Carr asserts that the internet is restructuring our brains while citing the brain plasticity experiments and studies done by other scientists. I have experienced this because I feel like by brain has become accustomed to activities that I do on a regular basis. For example, I rarely realize that I am driving when coming to school because I am used to driving on a specific route.
In times past and recent, a person may have expressed their gratefulness to another person with a statement such as, no one expected to lose their life when they woke up today. This case of Phineas Gage is still a modern mystery to some people, in as much, the fact that he survived this horrific incident was a true blessing and a wonder for all to see. At a period in history where the brain’s activities and functions was in high debated, scientist wanting to prove their theory and every situation that involved the brain an avenue in which they used to fuel their research, Phineas gave them an enormous amount of evidence. In making the point that the brain has different lobes that has control over their respective areas and motor skills of
"Can You Make Yourself Smarter? Written by Dan Hurley first published in 2011 in The New York Times newspaper described ways to increase fluid intelligence, which allows people to manipulate data and solve problems.
He quickly shows everyone a picture of an uppercase Hearn and tells them to try and reproduce it. He then has two women come to the front and sit down and look into a mirror and try to trace it. Neither of them are successful due to mixed messages between their hands and eyes. This activity shows how difficult it is for a child with a learning disability to write. The eighth activity is oral expression. He starts talking very fast, stuttering, and having trouble finding the right words to say to show how a child with a learning disability would respond when asked a question. Most children with learning disabilities have dysnomia, which is a word finding problem. They have problem with their storage and retrieval systems in the brain, which is what makes it difficult sometimes to retrieve or find the right words. For most people talking is associative, meaning they can do more than just talk at one time. But for children with learning disabilities, its cognitive meaning they can just do that at one time. He plays “popcorn” with the participants and asks them to say a sentence that tells a story and relates to the one in front of it. This was associative for everyone, so to make it cognitive and to show everyone what it’s like to be dysnomic, he tells them to do the same thing
Nowadays, it is widely known that the right and left hemisphere have different functions. The two hemispheres are equally important in a daily life basis. Nevertheless, in the 1960’s this was not common knowledge. Even though today the importance of the brain hemispheres is common knowledge, people don’t usually know to whom attribute this findings. One of the people who contributed to form a more defined picture about the brain hemispheres and their respective functions was Roger Wolcott Sperry, with the split brain research. Roger Sperry did more contributions than the split brain research, but this is his most important and revolutionary research in the psychological field. Thanks to the split brain research, Sperry proved that the two hemispheres of the brain are important, they work together and whatever side of the brain is more capable of doing the task is the hemisphere that takes the lead.
The only thing that the documentary did that was not in the original experiment is that they added another step. The added step consisted of another teacher, whom was an actor just like the learner, that at a certain point would quit and step aside and the other teacher would have to take over. This showed that people influence each others psychological aggression to other people (Roth).
According to Ben Michaelis, a person 's intelligence is not measured by how well they perform academically, but by how well they adapt to their situations and environment (Michaelis). The idea that students who attain outstanding grades in school are more intellectual than students who receive poor grades is unfair to all students. In 1983, Dr. Howard Gardner identified different types of intelligence, including interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, and musical intelligence (Fiero), so to assume that a person is unintelligent based on poor academic performance is unreasonable. In the article, “What Does it Mean To Be Smart?”, the author gives an example of a woman named Angie to demonstrate that academic intelligence is not the main indication of someone’s overall intelligence (Michaelis). Although she did not excel in an academic setting, she had the ability to adapt to her circumstances and capitalize on her talents and interests to create a successful career for herself (Michaelis). In order to start embracing the different forms of intelligence, society, as a whole, needs to eliminate its fixed mindset about what intelligence
In spite of the fact that intelligence quotient tests have been around for decades, many professionals are attempting to determine the factors and causes behind aptitude. Several options exist to explain or disprove the reasons why some attain above average intellect, while others manage varying degrees less. Some of these alternatives, along with arguments in the general and human intelligence topics, will be found inside the following pages of discussion.
The human brain is so interesting because of all of its functions. The brain is so unique every function is unique and the brain is capable of doing anything. In the video “Building Your Brain: Inside the Human Body” we can see how all of this function take place and see the wonderful things are brain can do. In the video “Into the Mind: Emotions” we can also see how important our brain is when it comes to our emotions. These two videos discuss really important things about our brain.
Human beings are clever creatures. This is proven in everyday life, but they also have a horrible side. People aren’t necessarily evil by choice, but rather are, whether they want to be or not. Certain traits can cause this change in other people. Without these traits, humans wouldn’t be as bad as they are now, but because these traits do exist, humans behave without truly thinking of the long-term effects, or of the affect they have on other people’s lives.
A number of aspects can influence one’s mind and its relationship with the world, and how it grows and flourishes. Both genetic and environmental traits have a contribution to the development of cognition and intelligence. Biologically, a person is born with the same number of brain cells they will ever possess, however, a person’s complete brain function capacity and strength will take years to solidify as neural networks grow more complex (Hank, 2014). Biological maturation will allow for such growth processes, and it enables orderly changes in behavior to take place. Cognitive development refers to how thought, intelligence, and language processes change as people mature (King, 2017). The development of thought processes, including memory, problem-solving, and decision-making, expand from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. Jean Piaget (1896-1980), proposed his theory on how children actively construct and seek to
Scientists used it as a model to study how a musician’s brain enables the advanced and complicated motor skills necessary to perform a musical work, how the brain processes verbal versus nonverbal communication, and how it processes complex time information.
At the beginning, the world was created and there were different species occupying it. There were plants, animals, and human beings. They were all creatures, but their constitutions were different at some points. Plants did not have the ability to think, nor a brain to accomplish cognitive actions while human beings and animals had. But, there were still a difference between humans and animals.They all had brain to complete cognitive actions but humans especially had the ability to think, to make decisions and to complete more sophisticated mental processes. They were intelligent beings, and possessed intelligence. From that time to now, humans have experimented several transformations of their intelligence. So, we now have the notion of intelligence
The brain is an astonishing product of evolution. This can be seen by our numerous technological developments and society structure. The brain has always been the most important organ for species that had developed past the cellular stage and has always performed the same functions that it does now but has developed constantly to where it is now through growth and a reorganization of its’ primary functions and gained the ability to learn has been something that the human brain does better than other brains. Our brains have not always been like this and many social and biological factors have led us to where they are now.