Shenk repeatedly states the notion that motivation must be present in order for success to occur, that "ultra-achievers" (120) do not have things come easily to them but rather are "irrepressible and resilient" (120) in working towards the things they want. If all humans are born supposedly able to "adopt a particular lifestyle of ambition" (120) given the right environmental factors and motivations, then how do these motivations become present in the minds of some, often children, or even adults, but not in the minds of others? For example, why do not all children of musicians become successful musicians themselves? Like the example of Mozart that Shenk repeatedly mentioned, these children too would have been exposed to the environment of music from a young age. So why do only some supposedly "prodigious" people develop this resilient quality? If someone is never presented with the correct environmental factors, does this mean that they will never able to gain this motivation to do something? Is it possible that there are certain genes that motivations so-to-speak "activate" and cause physiological changes in the brain in order to allow this person to develop this lifestyle and foster this motivation? Explain your answers in terms of evidence from the book and also in relation to the theme of structure and function.
(Michelle Kelrikh, mjkelrikh@gmail.com)
Africans were only brought to the Americas en masse a few hundred years ago, so it is more likely that any genetic differences between African Americans and Caucasian Americans are a result of African Americans' remaining African genetic heritage rather than evolutionary changes specifically in the African American population because evolution is a very slow, random process that would not produce major genetic differences between human populations in a few hundred years. Even significant evolutionary differences between African populations and Caucasian American populations are unlikely to exist because, as Shenk writes, “there is roughly ten times more genetic variation within large populations than there is between populations” (106).
ReplyDeleteEven though different ethnicities may not significantly vary genetically, cultural differences can lead to different phenotypes between populations through lifestyle differences. Many Americans think of Kenyans in general as very talented runners, but “ninety percent of the top performing Kenyans come from the Kalenjin tribe,” a tiny portion of the Kenyan population with an extremely strong cultural tradition of running (103). Cattle raising used to be the main occupation of men in the tribe, and the more cattle a man raised, the more wives he was likely to have, and the more he was able to reproduce. Because being a strong runner in the tribe was an evolutionary advantage, there may have been “a significant shift in [the] group's genetic makeup” toward a genotype that was likely to produce fast runners (103). However, from an epigenetic point of view, the fastest runner raises his children in the most running-intensive environment: “he passes on crucial external ingredients, such as the knowledge and means to attain maximal nutrition, inspiring stories, the most propitious attitude and habits, access to the best trainers, the most leisure time to pursue training, and so on” (108). Knowledge and capability to eat a healthy diet lead to optimal heart, brain, and muscle function because a heathy diet provides essential nutrients to maintain homeostasis and perform essential metabolic reactions, and provides sufficient sugars for cellular respiration. Physical changes caused by the environment also give runners in the tribe an advantage over other populations. For example, a man from the Kenyan tribe is able to practice running everyday for hours at an altitude of 6,000 ft. To provide enough oxygen to muscle cells so that cellular respiration can be performed to make enough energy for a running Kenyan, the genes coding for red blood cell proteins in the bone marrow are replicated more often into DNA to be translated into proteins like hemoglobin to make more red blood cells to carry more oxygen to the muscles. Because the seemingly superior running ability of Kenyans is really concentrated in one small tribe and is really a product of the intense culture and environmental conditions, I think that a Caucasian who grew up in the same cultural and physical environment as a Kenyan runner of the Kalenjin tribe would be just as likely to be successful as any other runner of the tribe because the high-altitude physical environment and the intense running cultural environment would create the same changes in his epigenome that Kenyans develop.
The gene variant ACTN3 is replicated and translated into the protein alpha-actinin-3, which is found in fast muscle fibers and stimulates quick muscle contractions, like is sprints. 18% more of the Jamaican population has the gene variant ACTN3 than the American population, which probably relates to the Jamaican descent from West Africa. Because humans developed and originated in Africa, 98% or 99% of the whole human population may originally have had the gene as hunter-gatherer societies, but as some populations dispersed to the Middle East and other continents and settled down into agricultural societies, the need for the gene variant may have decreased slightly, so more humans were (cont. next post)
Adele Padgett adele.padgett@gmail.com
able to survive without it and reproduce to make more offspring without the variant. The variation does not play a major role in Jamaicans' or Caucasians' lives today, and in the words of geneticist Daniel MacArther, “There's simply no clear relationship between the frequency of this variant in a population and its capacity to produce sprinting superstars” (101). In his article “The Gene for Jamaican Sprinting Success? No, Not Really,” MacArthur continues to explain that the proportion of the Kenyan population that has the ACTN3 variant is even higher than the Jamaican population (it's 99%), but very few Kenyans participate in sprinting events, even though the protein helps in sprinting, not in long distance events. Other sub-Saharan African populations also have high frequencies of the gene variant but do not have high participation in sprinting events. This, MacArthur argues, shows that the gene variant does not have any certain relationship with sprinting. His final argument is that the Jamaican's supposed genetic “secret weapon” was not unique to the Jamaicans in the Olympics. Every other sprinter in the Olympics had the same gene variant.
ReplyDeleteAdele Padgett adele.padgett@gmail.com
Shenk argues that there is no such thing as innate “talent”; all of us are born with the potential to become world-class in any field. You or I could have become the next Picasso or Mozart or Celine Dion, he says; nobody is limited by being born with a bad voice or a lack of a musical ear. Nothing just comes easily to somebody, no matter their level of genius later in life; for example, in the case of Beethoven, claiming that he just “saw” music would have him “rolling in the aisles” according to Shenk, because that ability only came after “years of intensive work- and…horrific abuse” (Shenk 116). In Shenk’s eyes, to claim that Beethoven had innate talent would not be to praise him but to diminish his years of discipline.
ReplyDeleteTalent, then, is not inborn but developed as a result of hours and hours of deliberate practice: “talent is not the cause but the result of something. It doesn’t create a process but is the end result of that process” (Shenk 60). In order for one to carry out the dedication necessary to attaining that talent, one must have motivation, a willingness to dedicate hours upon hours, to “sacrifice time, money, sleep, friendships, even your reputation” (Shenk 120). So talent is not the key to success, but motivation. Where does this motivation come from? This, too, is developmental, Shenk argues. Motivation can come from many sources- hatred, ambition, passion, religion. This means that motivation can appear at any age, depending on the experiences that have shaped an individual, and thus that individual can go on to extraordinary achievement at any age. For example, a child can become a prodigy by being exposed to music from the time they were still in the womb and being motivated by an environment full of music and being surrounded by the discipline around them. Most famously, take the case of Mozart, in which he grew up surrounded by the intense training of his sister Nannerl and was “bathed in music from well before his birth” (Shenk 61). After a few years, his training intensified even more, with Leopold, his father, “shrug[ging] off his official duties in order to build an even more promising career for his son” and “openly giving preferred attention to Wolfgang over his daughter” (63). Therein lies the reason that Wolfgang became a world-renowned composer and Nannerl faded into oblivion; as a child, Shenk says, she had just as much promise as Wolfgang, but Wolfgang was able to gain more motivation and thus more success because of the disproportionate amount of attention paid to him, allowing him the massive amounts of practice necessary to develop “talent”.
A similar phenomenon can be viewed in the case of Michael Jackson. He and his siblings were in the Jackson 5 but Michael was pushed relentlessly and especially hard by his father and manager, Joseph. His motivation thus came out of his fear of his father- he said that he became physically sick at the sight of him- and was such a powerful force that it propelled him to superstardom, above the levels of his siblings who did not have the same level of terror- and thus motivation (http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/31633663/ns/today-entertainment/t/jacksons-death-returns-his-father-spotlight/#.T4OgkPsS2Ag).
It is true that many children are exposed to high levels of creative thinking at a young age, such as children of musicians, but not all of them turn out as young Mozarts or Michael Jacksons. The difference is in their motivation, and it is entirely developmental. As previously stated, motivation comes out of strong emotion, and whether or not a child develops the knack for intense practice and a lifestyle of ambition depends on how hard they are pushed. Not all musicians push their children to the point of sacrificing their careers and neglecting their other children, as Leopold did, so not all children turn out as Mozart did.
By the same token, a 50-year-old can achieve extraordinary things as well, but they are limited by their environment. Usually by the time somebody has become an adult, they no longer have a parent willing to devote hours to making them a prodigy and they are also weighed down by other commitments: “it is obviously far more possible for an unmarried 20-year-old to practice deliberately…than a married 45-year-old with two young kids and a jumbo mortgage” (Shenk 124). But with the right motivation and time, there is no saying that they cannot change the world with their potential either. It is simply rarer.
ReplyDeleteIt is important, however, to recognize that overall, there is no gene that has been discovered so far that can “activate” motivation. Instead, motivation must be something that is caused by the environment and spurs intensive practice that can then change the brain. The brain doesn’t change to increase motivation but can change in response to motivation. Shenk gives the example of the plasticity of the human brain with the London cabbies to prove that intensive practice actually does physically change us. He cites Anders Ericsson, who said that “When individuals deliberately push themselves beyond the zone of relative comfort and engage in sustained strenuous physical activity…they induce an abnormal state for cells in some physiological systems…these biochemical states will trigger the activation of dormant genes within the cells’ DNA” (Shenk 69). This relates to the idea of epigenetics: certain conditions can activate gene expression that is present for many individuals but only expressed in some. “While the genome provides the possibilities, the environment determines which genes become activated” (http://www.school.eb.com/eb/article-288098?query=epigenetics&ct=). The stretching of the brain allows it to become “engraved”, so to speak, with new configurations that allow it to build up that intangible thing called talent. The structure of the brain allows for its plasticity: different types of brain cells, such as neurons, glia, and vascular cells , all of which rely on “a highly specialized cellular organization” to transfer information throughout the body (Campbell 1048), are involved in neuroplasticity: “the lifelong ability of the brain to reorganize neural pathways based on new experiences. In order to learn or memorize a fact or skill, there must be persistent functional changes in the brain that represent the new knowledge. Neuroplasticity does not consist of a single type of morphological change, but rather includes several different processes that occur throughout an individual’s lifetime.” (http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/plast.html). Were it not for our brain’s structure and its ability to adapt to its function of constantly allowing us to learn new skills, we would not be able to attain talent through practice, and our motivation would come to no fruition, but our brain’s plasticity does not contribute to us attaining more motivation; that is environmental.
Vivian Wang, vivian.wang9895@gmail.com
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