Our brilliant brain

Last year or last two years I can't recall, I watched National Geographic: My Brilliant Brain. A documentary about how geniuses are made. It consists of  3 parts. Born Genius, Make Me A Genius and Accidental Genius.

I wanted to share it here because I have few following topics I want to talk about. The documentary sums up that our brain played an integral role in connecting our surroundings, life experience and the resulting personalities.

Something that I remember, (correct me If I'm wrong) when you are a baby/young children, your brain cells is still not connected. These brain cells will connected as you grew up, as you learned things, experience new things. That is why you see some baby's milk advert in the TVs that claiming their products can help enhance your child brain cells to connects. At these stage if you learned/experienced something, the brain cells will connects and last forever in your brain but if you don't learn anything the unused cells will disappear. 

In Make Me A Genius, Susan Polgar a renown world chess player had been trained by his dad to play chess from the early age of 3 and became the world champion at the age of 15. Because what she learned at that age, and repeated hundreds of times, will remains forever on her memory.

Another reason why child abuse in younger age will destroy the child's personality completely. Another example in the documentary is an abuse girl, who had been locked up in a room for twelve years in a very dirty and unkept room. This resulted in her stunted growth and when the authorities discover her, she had a brain capacity of an 18month baby. Even though the doctors try and give her special care, her development is very slow due to she was badly treated throughout her entire childhood so the crucial part of her brain development has left stunted and unused. 

There’s another time when the brain cell is changing again is during puberty, where hormones plays it role and our brain development at this time will be similar to the time during our earlier childhood in a sense whatever we learned or experience it will be imprinted in our brain, good things and bad things both. 

So this also explained why when you learn stuffs during this time it will stick with you all your life and when you experienced a troublesome experience it will also shaped what kind of personality you’ll be as an adult.

I find this documentary very relatable and interesting.