TEDx Talks
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2017–2021
14:37 · 24M views · Oct 16, 2013
Psychiatrist Daniel Amen discusses lessons from 83,000 brain scans, arguing that brain activity patterns relate to psychological symptoms and that you can improve your brain.
HN cites it in depression and brain health threads for its message that the brain can be improved, and that brain injury is common and overlooked.
3 comments from Hacker News
I think this talk is relevant. It's not specifically about convicts but includes them. "The most important lesson from 83,000 brain scans | Daniel Amen | TEDxOrangeCoast" this video My summary of the thesis of the talk: Brain injury is far more common than is generally realised, contributes to many kinds of behavioural issues far more than is realised, is visible on scans, and is to some extent treatable, but it's usually not considered or examined.
You can show via SPECT brainscans that the over- or underactivity in certain parts of the brain correlates strongly with psychological symptoms. For example you can show that people suffering from ADD have a lowered activity in their prefrontal cortex. Or that people with an overactive deep limbic system suffer from depression. Check out Dr Daniel Amen's work. He did over 83000 brainscans. this video edit: added count and link to video
Most of the recent psychologists who study expert performers all tend to agree that "genius level" just like "innate talent" is a cognitive distortion and discredits the amount of actual effort, practice, and honing of their craft these individuals put into it. We are all born with the same brain* (edit: see the ted talk on the "After 83,000 brain scans"). Some of us just aren't born in the right environment to curate it and never learn the best ways to use it ("learning how to learn") given the current dominant socio-economic factors. It gets harder as you get older not because of age but because your anxieties, fears, and distortions become more reinforced, so breaking down those thought patterns becomes harder *: I mean this more or less, not literal. To clarify, I am speaking more specifically to neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Maybe some things come easier for other people out of the gate, but this wasn't because of some "innate" talent, but rather some factor of their development, both internal and external, provided the acuity and propensity towards excelling that specific thing, but if you molded another brain from scratch this same way, you would more or less get the same result. edit: With the TED video,I was again referring to the take away: "You are not stuck with the brain you have, you can make it better." So if you were "never born with the ability to be good at math" this is a distortion, just as much as "I am only mediocre at math and will never be great at