Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Knowledge: a natural "knack", or can it be acquired?

fckm · 01-03-2005, 07:15 PM

By the end of puberty, the human brain has probably made about 90% of the connections it will ever make. Prior to puberty, the human brain is said to be very "plastic" in that it has the ability to learn and adapt to an astounding degree. After the brain has matured, it still has the ability to learn and alter itself, but is nowhere as plastic as it used to be.
It's during those critical first 15-16 years of your life that you learn to become curious, to seek out knowledge, to learn to manipulate mathematics and think abstractly, to have a keen eye for detail. The degree to which are abilities in these areas develop are shaped primarily by our environment.
After puberty, it becomes very very difficult (although not necessarily impossible) to alter yourself in these areas to large degrees.

01-03-2005, 07:15 PM	#5 (permalink)
fckm Insane Location: Ithaca, New York	By the end of puberty, the human brain has probably made about 90% of the connections it will ever make. Prior to puberty, the human brain is said to be very "plastic" in that it has the ability to learn and adapt to an astounding degree. After the brain has matured, it still has the ability to learn and alter itself, but is nowhere as plastic as it used to be. It's during those critical first 15-16 years of your life that you learn to become curious, to seek out knowledge, to learn to manipulate mathematics and think abstractly, to have a keen eye for detail. The degree to which are abilities in these areas develop are shaped primarily by our environment. After puberty, it becomes very very difficult (although not necessarily impossible) to alter yourself in these areas to large degrees. __________________ And if you say to me tomorrow, oh what fun it all would be. Then what's to stop us, pretty baby. But What Is And What Should Never Be.