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Essay on The Neurobiology of Genius

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Genius: The Neurobiology of Giftedness

Toby Rosenberg, in all the five years of his life, has never been your typical toddler. At age 14 months, Toby could read aloud from posters his stroller passed by. A year later, he spoke both Polish and English fluently, and at the age of 4, he compiled a dictionary of hieroglyphics after visiting a museum shop and perusing through a book on ancient Egypt (1). From W.A. Mozart to Bobby Fisher to Toby Rosenberg, some children have since their birth amazed the world with their incredible intellect and abilities that can at times outdo even the brightest of adults. Why is this so, and, as many parents-to-be wonder, can a genius be created? It is evident that when a child's mental development is …show more content…

Although until recently scientists had believed that these are stages normal in adults, studies now indicate that many college freshmen and even adults have not yet reached this stage. Having such advanced cognitive abilities and early development, therefore, appears to be characteristics of the gifted. Why do such few children have these characteristics? The answer remains unsolved; however, neurological studies seem to hint towards several answers.

The study of the gifted brain has been utilized by scientists throughout much of history. The effort to reduce genius to bulges in the brain has its roots in 19-th century pseudoscience, where phrenologists pinned personality traits to swatches of the cortex and measured the size of bumps on people's heads. Vain Victorian intellectuals bequeathed their brains to craniometers, in order to measure up to the myth "bigger is better" (4). Today, various neuroimaging, more reliable technologies have been used to determine differences in brain structure between the gifted and those of average intelligence. The gifted brain is implicated in having more numerous, more complex, and more active neural connections (2). PET and EEG tests have revealed that the brain organization of exceptionally mathematically-inclined teenagers are atypical to some extent - several areas of the cortex are more differentiated in the gifted

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