<p>could a lack of intellectual stimulation in the present environment make an otherwise gifted child dumber over time? how would it affect their mindset and mentality? please share your theories, hypotheses, and experiences.</p>
<p>Maybe a little. There were school vacations where I didn’t do anything much stimulating and I felt a little “dumb” when I’d first go to school.</p>
<p>So then, are some smart individuals inherently gifted and have the right conditions from birth to grow on that intellect? </p>
<p>This would mean some people are dumb when they grow older because of their enviornment.</p>
<p>Interesting discussion.</p>
<p>I think a lot of people are born with intellectual potential, but if they are not driven to fulfill that potential, they will be as if they were born average, but I don’t know if it would actively make you dumber.</p>
<p>Just another thought, when you get older, lack of intellectual stimulation may put you at risk for Alzheimer’s. That is not to say that people with Alzheimer’s are dumb though.</p>
<p>I did in my 10th grade English class.</p>
<p>I think so. A lot of people I know (including myself, to some extent) start out school very well, then by Senior year they are complete bums, they do the bare minimum for homework and only study right before tests. One guy asked me recently, “What are you doing in an AP class?” The fact that he was a moron didn’t do much for my confidence. I guess being busy with college apps has made me come across in class as an idiot.</p>
<p>^^^^I think that’s more laziness than being dumb though.</p>
<p>I think almost everyone has “intellectual potential.” Sure some may be higher than others, but I don’t believe that anyone is born dumb. Lack of “intellectual stimulation” early in life will make one lag behind others mentally and will, in general set thier mindset to accept lower standards.<br>
Everyone has the potential to learn and comprehend what they want, but the drive is what many people are missing and again this is -lessened- when they are not stimulated intellectually when they are young.
Still it is probably possible to overcome lack of drive and pessimistic mindset in a new environment and with hard work… even at an older age.</p>
<p>The brain is a muscle, much like any other in the body. If it is under-utilized, it will atrophy. Lack of physical excercise makes one physically weaker. Lack of intellectual excercise makes one intellectually dull (dumber).</p>
<p>this is completely so. I used to attend Stuyvesant High School in NYC, a specialized school where everyone around me was amazingly intelligent. I was looking back through my freshman notes and journals and the things that I wrote struck me as-- not to brag-- really incisive and bright. </p>
<p>The sad thing was, it all seemed smarter than anything I’d done after I moved to Long Island, to a different school. I’m definitely not stimulated as much as I was my freshman year, and I regret losing that.</p>
<p>"There are essentially two types of brain cells, neurons and glia. Until a short time ago, it was thought that glia were to neurons what bubble wrap is to pottery. “Mind glue,” is how German scientists described this lowly second banana, glia being derived from glue in in Greek. Then researchers started taking a second look, and slowly but surely “the other brain cell” began picking up a bit of respect.</p>
<p>The story begins in the early 1960s when scientists discovered that the cortices from rat pups living in enriched environments contained more glia per neuron than those from impoverished environments. Apparently, the more active cortical neurons required larger supporting casts. As a general rule, we are stuck with the neurons we are born with, but glia divide and reproduce. Humans have higher glia to neuron ratios (about nine to one) than lower animals. </p>
<p>Two decades following the rat pup investigation, four sugar cube-sized samples of Albert Einsteins brain arrived in the mail of one of the researchers, Marian Diamond PhD of the University of California at Berkeley. When Dr Diamond compared a slice of a cortical region associated with higher cognition with similar slices from 11 controls, she found Einstein fairly brimming with glia. </p>
<p>Sophisticated new imaging and listening technology ensured that the glia wouldnt be ignored during the decade of the brain. Our knowledge is far from complete, but what is beginning to emerge is a picture of the glia in continuous dialogue with the neuron."</p>
<p>Crayon, that’s interesting.</p>
<p>I guess that’s the argument for baby Mozart and the like.</p>
<p>“Early in the century-old study of intelligence, researchers discovered that all tests of mental ability ranked individuals in about the same way. Although mental tests are often designed to measure specific domains of cognition - verbal fluency, say, or mathematical skill, spatial visualization, or memory - people who do well on one kind of test tend to do well on the others, and people who do poorly generally do so across the board. This overlap, or intercorrelation, suggests that all such tests measure some global element of intellectual ability as well as specific cognitive skills. In recent decades, psychologists have devoted much effort to isolating that general factor, which is abreviated g, from the other aspects of cognitive ability gauged in mental tests.” (58-59) </p>
<p>Well, the excerpt relates more to the old IQ thread but I wanted to share.</p>