Page 173 - A Mind For Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science

Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life

Santiago Ramón y Cajal was already in his early twenties when he began

climbing from bad-boy delinquency into the traditional study of medicine. Cajal
himself wondered if perhaps his head had simply “grown weary of frivolity and
irregular behavior and was beginning to settle down.” 4
There’s evidence that myelin sheaths, the fatty insulation that helps signals
move more quickly along a neuron, often don’t finish developing until people

are in their twenties. This may explain why teenagers often have trouble
controlling their impulsive behavior—the wiring between intention and control
areas isn’t completely formed. 5

“Deficiencies of innate ability may be compensated for through persistent hard work and
concentration. One might say that work substitutes for talent, or better yet that it creates
talent.” 6
—Santiago Ramón y Cajal

When you use neural circuits, however, it seems you help build the myelin
sheath over them—not to mention making many other microscopic changes. 7

Practice appears to strengthen and reinforce connections between different brain
regions, creating highways between the brain’s control centers and the centers
that store knowledge. In Cajal’s case, it seems his natural maturation processes,
coupled with his own efforts to develop his thinking, helped him to take control
of his overall behavior. 8

It seems people can enhance the development of their neuronal circuits by
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practicing thoughts that use those neurons. We’re still in the infancy of
understanding neural development, but one thing is becoming clear—we can
make significant changes in our brain by changing how we think.
What’s particularly interesting about Cajal is that he achieved his greatness
even though he wasn’t a genius—at least, not in the conventional sense of the
term. Cajal deeply regretted that he never had a “quickness, certainty, and
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clearness in the use of words.” What’s worse is that when Cajal got emotional,
he lost his way with words almost entirely. He couldn’t remember things by rote,
which made school, where parroting back information was prized, agony for
him. The best Cajal could do was to grasp and remember key ideas; he