A Quote by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
In the fetus, or a really young child, all the different brain areas are connected to each other, diffusely. And as the brain develops, the excess connections are turned off, so you get very specialized areas. So most people have really specialized talents. What happens in creative people is this pooling doesn't take place.
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The brain is really hard to see. The whole thing is very large - the human brain is several pounds in weight - but the connections between brain cells, known as synapses, are really tiny. They're nanoscale in dimension. So if you want to see how the cells of the brain are connected in networks, you have to see those connections, those synapses.
The brain is a tissue. It is a complicated, intricately woven tissue, like nothing else we know of in the universe, but it is composed of cells, as any tissue is. They are, to be sure, highly specialized cells, but they function according to the laws that govern any other cells. Their electrical and chemical signals can be detected, recorded and interpreted and their chemicals can be identified; the connections that constitute the brain's woven feltwork can be mapped. In short, the brain can be studied, just as the kidney can.
We consciously use only a small portion of our brain, but we're constantly performing complex operations in other areas even though we're unaware of it. Savants gain access to unconscious areas when the brain's bossy left hemisphere is muted. The left is in charge of much of our organized thought and decision-making and tends to suppress the right side, which generally rules creative activities.
The brain is more than an assemblage of autonomous modules, each crucial for a specific mental function. Every one of these functionally specialized areas must interact with dozens or hundreds of others, their total integration creating something like a vastly complicated orchestra with thousands of instruments, an orchestra that conducts itself, with an ever-changing score and repertoire.
Where people are using phones in rural areas their risk of brain cancer is higher than in urban areas.
Essentially, there's a universe inside your brain. The number of connections possible inside your brain is limitless. And as people have learned to have more managerial and direct creative access to their brains, they have also developed matrices or networks of people that communicate electronically. There are direct brain/computer link-ups. You can just jack yourself in and pilot your brain around in cyberspace-electronic space.
You can expand your awareness in many ways, and as you do, your brain will evolve. It will grow physically by developing new neural pathways, synaptic connections, and even new brain cells. Perhaps more importantly, it will evolve to mirror the expansion of your mind into new, creative areas.
Of course, when a poem is being born, the reasoning part of the brain throbs away at full throttle, but all the other areas are overlapping and interacting as well, the emotional, intuitive, animal areas.
You can get really bored in this business [film], and I think that's one of the reasons why I've challenged myself so many times in different areas because you can get really bored and stagnated in one area. So, I do a lot of different things to keep myself occupied. In this business, it's a 'hurry up and wait' business and you have to really wait sometimes in some areas. I just keep myself busy. When one thing stops, the other one is rolling.
The areas of the brain that have to do with speech are very connected with the same parallel processors that have to do with the kind of ballistic calculations you need to hit small game with a rock.
I think we're vastly over-invested in universities. Universities should be relatively small and provide excellent education and research in a number of specialized areas. I think the vast majority of young people should be going through non-university, post-secondary training.
I don't think that you can dispose of the constructive and inventive things that America is doing - and say, "Oh we aren't doing anything anymore and we are living off of what the poor Chinese do." It is more complicated than that. There is the example of Detroit which was once a very prosperous and diverse city. And look what happened when it just specialized on automobiles. Look at Manchester when it specialized in those dark satanic mills, when it specialized in textiles. It was supposed to be the city of the future.
One thing I think is true is that is you have someone who's really good in one or a few areas they can pick up something new pretty quickly and that's kind of a hallmark of someone you really want to hire because they can be very useful in a whole bunch of different areas.
The Internet is really about highly specialized information, highly specialized targeting.
Neurobiological research has shown that in people with chronic PTSD, both stress hormone secretion and areas of the brain connected to memory function, such as the hippocampus, appear to be affected, although exactly how and why remains controversial.
The very act of creation requires such focused concentration that vast areas of knowledge may be completely overlooked. Well, so what? There is no evidence that generalized skills are in any way superior to specialized brilliance.
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