Teenage Brain

               During adolescence and teenage years it is common that teenagers fight and argue with their parents. Aside from being common, it is normal also. This is because the brain is passing through several and important changes. For example, the Prefrontal cortex, which is in the frontal lobe, is the part of your brain responsible for planning behavior, solving problems, and controlling emotions. Teenagers do not have this part of the brain fully developed so they behave bad, and always want to do things their way instead of following parents instructions and hearing their advices. Most of the teenagers think that their parents hate them because they punish them, but they do that because they love them. 


               One great quote that I could relate to this topic is, "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years," from Mark Twain. Obviously his father did not learn so much in seven years, it's only that when he was fourteen he was immature and thought that he was ignorant. However when he grew up he found out that he was the one who was wrong.

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               On the other hand, I learned that teenagers need to sleep around 8 to 9 hours daily. Sleeping that time will help you develop correctly, it will help you in school also because you will go with more energy to work. Getting 8 to 9 hours of sleep will improve your memory. I liked looking at this video because I learned great things. 

Intelligence: Nature or Nurture?

        During a long time people use the term "Nature vs. Nurture" to compare if a personal trait or ability of a person comes from our genes, or does it form from our environment. Nature meaning genes, and nurture meaning environment. Today i will research intelligence. I think intelligence comes from our genes but if we are not in an environment in which we could use it, it could decrease. Therefore I would consider that intelligence comes partially from one side and partially from the other. 65 percent depends on nature, or our genes, and the other 35 percent depends on nurture, our environment, I would say without doing research.

       After doing a long and detailed research I found 6 important bullet points, which I think it is important to quote them; "1. Nature refers to your potential to achieve a certain level of intelligence, 2. Nurture refers to whether your potential intelligence will be developed or inhibited, 3. Feral children show that nurture important in developing intelligence at an early age, 4. Mental stimulation at an early age is needed to fully develop intelligence, 5. Nature and nurture are interactive variables, which results in more than the sum of their parts (intelligence), 6. Intelligence is the result of nature and nurture, and both are needed for intelligence to fully develop." So as we can see, I was very wrong about the fact that nature played a more important role on intelligence than nurture, but now we can say that nurture plays a fairly equal role in intelligence. An example of this is the example of the two brother. They both are raised by the same parents, in the same environment but they later in life choose two different careers. One is a doctor and the other one is a car salesman. Since they were raised in the same environment so the differences in intelligence should be blamed to nature. "However some would argue that these brothers did not have the same environment, as one child may have been given more love and attention than the other. This may then explain why one brother grew up to become more successful than the other." According to psychologist Alfred Adler, believed that the environment in which we are raised as children has a big influence on our intelligence and how we develop it later in life. Therefore, according to this man who proposed the "birth-order" argument, nurture is the most important factor in intelligence.

      As you can see, different people think differently and come up with their own conclusions. So this topic is a very expense and complex one. I think there is not, and there will never be a conclusive answer for this debate and all we are left to do is to continue doing researches and experiments that might, with great luck, lead us to a good answer.

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How Our Brains Work

1. It refers to the halves of the brains. Left hemispheres and right hemisphere.

2. Left side controls logic, and everything of the right side of the body, and right side controls creativity, and everything of the left side of the body.

3. It is what communicates the right side of the brain with the left.

4. Broca's area is in the left frontal lobe. He discovered that this area was responsible for pronunciation of words and that if someone had damage here, it will be difficult for him to form words.

5. "Split Brain" is the process in which your corpus collasum is cut, in a surgery.

6. Wernicke's area is in the posterior section of the superior temporal gyrus in the dominant cerebral hemisphere (which is the left hemisphere in about 90% of the people). If damaged, it could provoke aphasia. 


7. The occipital lobe


8. The temporal lobe


9. The frontal lobe


10. The frontal lobe

Phineas Gage



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     Phineas Gage was a man who lived in the mid 1800's. He was a railroad worker, and his job was seal the hole with sand with a tamping iron, where the dynamite was placed. One day, while he was working on this job, somehow the dynamite caught fire and exploded while he was tamping the sand. The tamping rod went directly from his left cheekbone, threw his eye socket and out on the frontal lobe. After his injurie it was obvious that his frontal lobe was severely damaged and that his left eye did not work. It is also said that after this event, his manner changed ahd he become more rude with people. Scientists and doctors determined that every part of the brain controls a specific thing of the body, and that you can live without pieces of your brain but you would loose a funciton of your body. 



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      Acording to Source 1, the idea of brain localization is "This means that different parts of the brain carry out different fucntions (e.g., vision, control of voluntary movement, understanding speech, etc.) and, conversely, that not all parts of the brain do the same thing.  This may seem obvious, but other organs, such as the liver, do not exhibit localization of function; one part of the liver does the same thing as another part six inches away."

Nature vs. Nurture?

         The term "Nature vs. Nurture" means that if one of your traits or characteristics comes from your genes (Nature) or comes from the environment that you live in(Nurture). This term was first used by Sir Francis Galton in 1874. Some topics used in this debate are intelligence, homosexuality, criminal mind, appearance, personality, and abilities on athletics. The general consensus about the topic (Nature vs. Nurture) is that everything comes from the genes, in other words most people think that every single trait that you have comes from nature instead of nurture.

          My opinio about this debate is not a biased one. I think that every single aspect that you analyze comes from a different place, nature or nurture. Also something can come partially from one and partially from another one. Everything in life needs to be balanced. 

Sources: http://www.adoptionblogs.com/media/FosterAdoption/nature_nurture.jpg

               http://www.proteomesoftware.com/images/nature_vs_nuture.jpg