Here I go with Terry Gross and Fresh Air again, but she has some of the most fascinating interviews. From a professional dominatrix to Karl Rove. You can listen to shows or dowload them from Itunes, or here (
http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=13). You can also read the transcripts on the website.
Today, she had an expert in the latest developments in brain science that point right at problems we have on Gor.
The frontal cortex is the part of the brain that is developing as we're teenagers and probably finishes developing at some level when we're 25. And this is the part of the brain that helps us plan ahead, that see the consequences of actions. And this is the part of the brain that solves problems, makes us most human, really. This is why we had so much trouble with the minors. And continue to have. While some of these minors are legal adults now, many of them are still below the age of 25, and not capable of fully understanding the consequences of their actions.
Something that one professor at Columbia who has studied adult learning through the years says what's good is even talking to people who disagree with us. Creating in your brain, what he calls a disorienting dilemma or kind of shaking up the cognitive egg. We have to present our brains with things that make it wake up, make it pay attention, make it work really, really hard. And it can have an impact in terms of just presenting your brain with, not just new information and not just retrieving information you know like with crossword puzzles, but actually getting out there and letting your brain confront things that are different.
GROSS: And make an argument to synthesize the thoughts you have and...
Ms. STRAUCH: Yeah.
GROSS: ...put it together in defense or an argument against an idea. That too?
Ms. STRAUCH: Yeah. I think it sharpens your brain. I find that, you know, if I listen to people who disagree with me or something, I find it sharpens my own thinking. You know, so it kind of makes sense. I think we all know this is kind of going on but we just never really paid attention to it and the scientists never really broke it apart to, you know, try to figure out what was actually going on. In short, arguing with people, makes you smarter.
