This machine, which we all have residing in our skulls, reminds me of an aphorism, of a comment of Woody Allen to ask about what is the very best thing to have within your skull. And it's this machine. And it's constructed for change. It's all about change. It confers on us the ability to do things tomorrow that we can't do today, things today that we couldn't do yesterday. And of course it's born stupid.
The last time you were in the presence of a baby -- this happens to be my granddaughter, Mitra. Isn't she fabulous? (Laughter) But nonetheless when she popped out despite the fact that her brain had actually been progressing in its development for several months before on the basis of her experiences in the womb -- nonetheless she had very limited abilities, as does every infant at the time of normal, natural full-term birth. If we were to assay her perceptual abilities, they would be crude. There is no real indication that there is any real thinking going on. In fact there is little evidence that there is any cognitive ability in a very young infant. Infants don't respond to much. There is not really much of an indication in fact that there is a person on board. (Laughter) And they can only in a very primitive way, and in a very limited way control their movements.
It would be several months before this infant could do something as simple as reach out and grasp under voluntary control an object and retrieve it, usually to the mouth. And it will be some months beforeward, and we see a long steady progression of the evolution from the first wiggles, to rolling over, and sitting up, and crawling, standing, walking, before we get to that magical point in which we can motate in the world. And yet, when we look forward in the brain we see really remarkable advance. By this age the brain can actually store. It has stored, recorded, can fastly retrieve the meanings of thousands, tens of thousands of objects, actions, and their relationships in the world. And those relationships can in fact be constructed in hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of ways. By this age the brain controls very refined perceptual abilities. And it actually has a growing repertoire of cognitive skills. This brain is very much a thinking machine. And by this age there is absolutely no question that this brain, it has a person on board. And in fact at this age it is substantially controlling its own self-development. And by this age we see a remarkable evolution in its capacity to control movement.
Now movement has advanced to the point where it can actually control movement simultaneously, in a complex sequence, in complex ways as would be required for example for playing a complicated game, like soccer. Now this boy can bounce a soccer ball on his head. And where this boy comes from, Sao Paulo, Brazil, about 40 percent of boys of his age have this ability. You could go out into the community in Monterey, and you'd have difficulty finding a boy that has this ability. And if you did he'd probably be from Sao Paulo. (Laughter)
That's all another way of saying that our individual skills and abilities are very much shaped by our environments. That environment extends into our contemporary culture, the thing our brain is challenged with. Because what we've done in our personal evolutions is build up a large repertoire of specific skills and abilities that are specific to our own individual histories. And in fact they result in a wonderful differentiation in humankind, in the way that, in fact, no two of us are quite alike. Every one of us has a different set of acquired skills and abilities that all derive out of the plasticity, the adaptability of this really remarkable adaptive machine. In an adult brain of course we've built up a large repertoire of mastered skills and abilities that we can perform more or less automatically from memory, and that define us as acting, moving, thinking creatures.
Now we study this, as the nerdy, laboratory, university-based scientists that we are, by engaging the brains of animals like rats, or monkeys, or of this particularly curious creature -- one of the more bizarre forms of life on earth -- to engage them in learning new skills and abilities. And we try to track the changes that occur as the new skill or ability is acquired. In fact we do this in individuals of any age, in these different species -- that is to say from infancies, infancy up to adulthood and old age. So we might engage a rat, for example, to acquire a new skill or ability that might involve the rat using its paw to master particular manual grasp behaviors just like we might examine a child and their ability to acquire the sub-skills, or the general overall skill of accomplishing something like mastering the ability to read. Or you might look in an older individual who has mastered a complex set of abilities that might relate to reading musical notation or performing the mechanical acts of performance that apply to musical performance.
From these studies we defined two great epochs of the plastic history of the brain. The first great epoch is commonly called the "Critical Period." And that is the period in which the brain is setting up in its initial form its basic processing machinery. This is actually a period of dramatic change in which it doesn't take learning, per se, to drive the initial differentiation of the machinery of the brain. All it takes for example in the sound domain, is exposure to sound. And the brain actually is at the mercy of the sound environment in which it is reared. So for example I can rear an animal in an environment in which there is meaningless dumb sound, a repertoire of sound that I make up, that I make, just by exposure, artificially important to the animal and its young brain. And what I see is that the animal's brain sets up its initial processing of that sound in a form that's idealized, within the limits of its processing achievements to represent it in an organized and orderly way. The sound doesn't have to be valuable to the animal: I could raise the animal in something that could be hypothetically valuable, like the sounds that simulate the sounds of a native language of a child. And I see the brain actually develop a processor that is specialized -- specialized for that complex array, a repertoire of sounds. It actually exaggerates their separateness of representation, in multi-dimensional neuronal representational terms.
Or I can expose the animal to a completely meaningless and destructive sound. I can raise an animal under conditions that would be equivalent to raising a baby under a moderately loud ceiling fan, in the presence of continuous noise. And when I do that I actually specialize the brain to be a master processor for that meaningless sound. And I frustrate its ability to represent any meaningful sound as a consequence. Such things in the early history of babies occur in real babies. And they account for, for example the beautiful evolution of a language-specific processor in every normally developing baby. And so they also account for development of defective processing in a substantial population of children who are more limited, as a consequence, in their language abilities at an older age.
Now in this early period of plasticity the brain actually changes outside of a learning context. I don't have to be paying attention to what I hear. The input doesn't really have to be meaningful. I don't have to be in a behavioral context. This is required so the brain sets up it's processing so that it can act differentially, so that it can act selectively, so that the creature that wears it, that carries it, can begin to operate on it in a selective way. In the next great epoch of life, which applies for most of life, the brain is actually refining its machinery as it masters a wide repertoire of skills and abilities. And in this epoch, which extends from late in the first year of life to death; it's actually doing this under behavioral control. And that's another way of saying the brain has strategies that define the significance of the input to the brain. And it's focusing on skill after skill, or ability after ability, under specific attentional control. It's a function of whether a goal in a behavior is achieved or whether the individual is rewarded in the behavior. This is actually very powerful. This lifelong capacity for plasticity, for brain change, is powerfully expressed. It is the basis of our real differentiation, one individual from another. You can look down in the brain of an animal that's engaged in a specific skill, and you can witness or document this change on a variety of levels.
So here is a very simple experiment. It was actually conducted about five years ago in collaboration with scientists from the University of Provence in Marseilles. It's a very simple experiment where a monkey has been trained in a task that involves it manipulating a tool that's equivalent in its difficulty to a child learning to manipulate or handle a spoon. The monkey actually mastered the task in about 700 practice tries. So in the beginning the monkey could not perform this task at all. It had a success rate of about one in eight tries. Those tries were elaborate. Each attempt was substantially different from the other. But the monkey gradually developed a strategy. And 700 or so tries later the monkey is performing it flawlessly -- never fails. He's successful in his retrieval of food with this tool every time. At this point the task is being performed in a beautifully stereotyped way: very beautifully regulated and highly repeated, trial to trial.
We can look down in the brain of the monkey. And we see that it's distorted. We can track these changes, and have tracked these changes in many such behaviors across time. And here we see the distortion reflected in the map of the skin surfaces of the hand of the monkey. Now this is a map, down in the surface of the brain, in which, in a very elaborate experiment we've reconstructed the responses, location by location, in a highly detailed response mapping of the responses of its neurons. We see here a reconstruction of how the hand is represented in the brain. We've actually distorted the map by the exercise. And that is indicated in the pink. We have a couple fingertip surfaces that are larger. These are the surfaces the monkey is using to manipulate the tool. If we look at the selectivity of responses in the cortex of the monkey, we see that the monkey has actually changed the filter characteristics which represents input from the skin of the fingertips that are engaged. In other words there is still a single, simple representation of the fingertips in this most organized of cortical areas of the surface of the skin of the body. Monkey has like you have. And yet now it's represented in substantially finer grain. The monkey is getting more detailed information from these surfaces. And that is an unknown -- unsuspected, maybe, by you -- part of acquiring the skill or ability.
Now actually we've looked in several different cortical areas in the monkey learning this task. And each one of them changes in ways that are specific to the skill or ability. So for example we can look to the cortical area that represents input that's controlling the posture of the monkey. We look in cortical areas that control specific movements, and the sequences of movements that are required in the behavior, and so forth. They are all remodeled. They all become specialized for the task at hand. There are 15 or 20 cortical areas that are changed specifically when you learn a simple skill like this. And that represents in your brain, really massive change. It represents the change in a reliable way of the responses of tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions of neurons in your brain. It represents changes of hundreds of millions, possibly billions of synaptic connections in your brain. This is constructed by physical change. And the level of construction that occurs is massive. Think about the changes that occur in the brain of a child through the course of acquiring their movement behavior abilities in general. Or acquiring their native language abilities. The changes are massive.
What it's all about is the selective representations of things that are important to the brain. Because in most of the life of the brain this is under control of behavioral context. It's what you pay attention to. It's what's rewarding to you. It's what the brain regards, itself, as positive and important to you. It's all about cortical processing and forebrain specialization. And that underlies your specialization. That is why you, in your many skills and abilities, are a unique specialist: a specialist that's vastly different in your physical brain in detail than the brain of an individual 100 years ago; enormously different in the details from the brain of the average individual 1,000 years ago. Now, one of the characteristics of this change process is that information is always related to other inputs or information that is occurring in immediate time, in context. And that's because the brain is constructing representations of things that are correlated in little moments of time and that relate to one another in little moments of successive time. The brain is recording all information and driving all change in temporal context. Now overwhelmingly the most powerful context that's occurred in your brain is you. Billions of events have occurred in your history that are related in time to yourself as the receiver, or yourself as the actor, yourself as the thinker, yourself as the mover. Billions of times little pieces of sensation have come in from the surface of your body that are always associated with you as the receiver, and that result in the embodiment of you. You are constructed, your self is constructed from these billions of events. It's constructed. It's created in your brain. And it's created in the brain via physical change. This is a marvelously constructed thing that results in individual form because each one of us has vastly different histories, and vastly different experiences, that drive in to us this marvelous differentiation of self, of personhood.
Now we've used this research to try to understand not just how a normal person develops, and elaborates their skills and abilities, but also try to understand the origins of impairment, and the origins of differences or variations that might limit the capacities of a child, or an adult. I'm going to talk about using these strategies to actually design brain plasticity-based approach to drive corrections in the machinery of a child that increases the competence of the child as a language receiver and user and, thereafter, as a reader. And I'm going to talk about experiments that involve actually using this brain science, first of all to understand how it contributes to the loss of function as we age. And then, by using it in a targeted approach we're going to try to differentiate the machinery to recover function in old age.
So the first example I'm going to talk about relates to children with learning impairments. We now have a large body of literature that demonstrates that the fundamental problem that occurs in the majority of children that have early language impairments, and that are going to struggle to learn to read, is that their language processor is created in a defective form. And the reason that it rises in a defective form is because early in the baby's brain's life the machine process is noisy. It's that simple. It's a signal-to-noise problem. Okay? And there are a lot of things that contribute to that. There are numerous inherited faults that could make the machine process noisier. Now I might say the noise problem could also occur on the basis of information provided in the world from the ears.
If any -- those of you who are older in the audience know that when I was a child we understood that a child born with a cleft palate was born with what we called mental retardation. We knew that they were going to be slow cognitively; we knew they were going to struggle to learn to develop normal language abilities; and we knew that they were going to struggle to learn to read. Most of them would be intellectual and academic failures. That's disappeared. That no longer applies. That inherited weakness, that inherited condition has evaporated. We don't hear about that anymore. Where did it go? Well, it was understood by a Dutch surgeon, about 35 years ago, that if you simply fix the problem early enough, when the brain is still in this initial plastic period so it can set up this machinery adequately, in this initial set up time in the critical period, none of that happens. What are you doing by operating on the cleft palate to correct it? You're basically opening up the tubes that drain fluid from the middle ears, which have had them reliably full. Every sound the child hears uncorrected is muffled. It's degraded. The child's native language is such a case is not English. It's not Japanese. It's muffled English. It's degraded Japanese. It's crap. And the brain specializes for it. It creates a representation of language crap. And then the child is stuck with it.
Now the crap doesn't just happen in the ear. It can also happen in the brain. The brain itself can be noisy. It's commonly noisy. There are many inherited faults that can make it noisier. And the native language for a child with such a brain is degraded. It's not English. It's noisy English. And that results in defective representations of sounds of words -- not normal -- a different strategy, by a machine that has different time constants and different space constants. And you can look in the brain of such a child and record those time constants. They are about an order of magnitude longer, about 11 times longer in duration on average, than in a normal child. Space constants are about three times greater. Such a child will have memory and cognitive deficits in this domain. Of course they will. Because as a receiver of language, they are receiving it and representing it, and in information it's representing crap. And they are going to have poor reading skills. Because reading is dependent upon the translation of word sounds into this orthographic or visual representational form. If you don't have a brain representation of word sounds that translation makes no sense. And you are going to have corresponding abnormal neurology.
Then these children increasingly in evaluation after evaluation, in their operations in language, and their operations in reading -- we document that abnormal neurology. The point is is that you can train the brain out of this. A way to think about this is you can actually re-refine the processing capacity of the machinery by changing it. Changing it in detail. It takes about 30 hours on the average. And we've accomplished that in about 430,000 kids today. Actually, probably about 15,000 children are being trained as we speak. And actually when you look at the impacts, the impacts are substantial.
So here we're looking at the normal distribution. What we're most interested in is these kids on the left side of the distribution. This is from about 3,000 children. You can see that most of the children on the left side of the distribution are moving into the middle or the right. This is in a broad assessment of their language abilities. This is like an IQ test for language. The impact in the distribution, if you trained every child in the United States, would be to shift the whole distribution to the right and narrow the distribution. This is a substantially large impact.
Think of a classroom of children in the language arts. Think of the children on the slow side of the class. We have the potential to move most of those children to the middle or to the right side. In addition to accurate language training it also fixes memory and cognition speech fluency and speech production. And an important language dependent skill is enabled by this training -- that is to say reading. And to a large extent it fixes the brain. You can look down in the brain of a child in a variety of tasks that scientists have at Stanford, and MIT, and UCSF, and UCLA, and a number of other institutions. And children operating in various language behaviors, or in various reading behaviors, you see for the most extent, for most children, their neuronal responses, complexly abnormal before you start, are normalized by the training.
Now you can also take the same approach to address problems in aging. Where again the machinery is deteriorating now from competent machinery, it's going south. Noise is increasing in the brain. And learning modulation and control is deteriorating. And you can actually look down on the brain of such an individual and witness a change in the time constants and space constants with which, for example, the brain is representing language again. Just as the brain came out of chaos at the beginning, it's going back into chaos in the end. This results in declines in memory in cognition, and in postural ability and agility. It turns out you can train the brain of such an individual -- this is a small population of such individuals -- train equally intensively for about 30 hours. These are 80- to 90-year-olds.
And what you see are substantial improvements of their immediate memory, of their ability to remember things after a delay, of their ability to control their attention, their language abilities and visual-spatial abilities. The overall neuropsychological index of these trained individuals in this population is about two standard deviations. That means that if you sit at the left side of the distribution, and I'm looking at your neuropyschological abilities, the average person has moved to the middle or the right side of the distribution. It means that most people who are at risk for senility, more or less immediately, are now in a protected position.
My issues are to try to get to rescuing older citizens more completely and in larger numbers, because I think this can be done in this arena on a vast scale -- and the same for kids. My main interest is how to elaborate this science to address other maladies. I'm specifically interested in things like autism, and cerebral palsy, these great childhood catastrophes. And in older age conditions like Parkinsonism, and in other acquired impairments like schizophrenia.
Your issues as it relates to this science, is how to maintain your own high-functioning learning machine. And of course, a well-ordered life in which learning is a continuous part of it, is key. But also in your future is brain aerobics. Get ready for it. It's going to be a part of every life not too far in the future, just like physical exercise is a part of every well organized life in the contemporary period. The other way that we will ultimately come to consider this literature and the science that is important to you is in a consideration of how to nurture yourself. Now that you know, now that science is telling us that you are in charge, that it's under your control, that your happiness, your well-being, your abilities, your capacities, are capable of continuous modification, continuous improvement, and you're the responsible agent and party. Of course a lot of people will ignore this advice. It will be a long time before they really understand it. (Laughter) Now that's another issue and not my fault. Okay. Thank you. (Applause)
几个月后，这个婴儿 才能在随意控制下做一些简单的动作 比如伸手抓握东西并拿回来， 通常送到嘴巴里。 还得再过几个月， 经过漫长稳定的发展， 才能一步步从晃动身体， 到翻身，到坐起，到爬行， 站立，走路， 然后我们才能到达到这个神奇的时刻， 可以在世界上自由行动。 然而，当我们研究大脑时， 我们发现非常显著的进化。 到这个年龄时大脑实际上能够储存东西了。 它已经可以储存，记录， 并且很快的检索出 成千上万个物体，行为， 以及它们在这个世界上 的各种关系的意义。 而且这些关系其实能够以成千上万 甚至上百万种方式来组建。 到这个年龄时，大脑拥有非常精细的知觉能力。 并且其认知技巧也在不断发展。 大脑基本上已经是一个思考的机器。 到这个年龄时，毫无疑问的是， 大脑里已经有一个“人”来掌控了。 事实上，在这个年龄，大脑在很大程度上控制着自身的发展。 在这个年龄，我们可以发现 它在控制动作的能力上有显著的进化。
我们作为大学实验室的科学家， 书呆子，正研究这方面的问题， 我们研究动物的大脑， 如老鼠，猴子的， 还有这个奇妙的生物的， 这个地球上很奇怪的生物形态， 我们研究这些大脑是如何学习新技能和能力的。 并且我们试图记录在获得新技能或能力的同时， 大脑发生了怎样的变化。 实际上我们在这些不同物种 的所有年龄阶段都做研究。 也就是说，从婴儿期， 幼儿期，一直到成年期和老年期。 举例来说，我们可能研究一只 老鼠是如何获得新技能或能力的， 这技能可能是用它的爪子 掌握一个特定的抓握行动， 与此类同的是，我们可能会研究一个孩子 研究他们如何获得 像掌握阅读的整体技能 或其中的次级技能。 或者我们可能研究一个更年长的个体 其所掌握的一套复杂的能力 跟其阅读音乐符号的能力之间的关联， 或其执行机械行为的能力 如何应用到演奏乐器方面。
通过这些研究，我们确定了大脑塑造期 的两个重要时期。 第一个重要时期是通常所谓的“关键时期”。 在这个时期，大脑形成其最初的形态， 其基本的运行设置。 这个时期大脑会发生巨大的变化， 但本质上而言，它并不需要通过学习 来启动大脑最初的不同设置。 举例来说，在声音方面， 只需要周围有声音即可。 而大脑其实完全受制于 其生长环境的声音。 举例来说，我可以在一个 充满无意义声音的环境里饲养一只动物。 这些声音是我制造出来的。 我通过将它置于该环境下，这些声音人为的 对这个动物及其幼小的大脑产生重要影响。 我所发现的是，这个动物的大脑 设置了针对这个声音的初始运行， 在其运行能力限制之下，大脑将声音 加工成一种有组织有秩序的理想形态。 这个声音不必对这个动物有价值。 我可以让这个动物生长在一个假设有价值的声音环境里， 比如把声音背景设置成模仿 一个小孩母语的声音。 我可以观察到大脑实际上也会发展出一个专门的处理器。 专门针对这一套复杂的序列的声音的。 它实际上在多维神经表征项上， 夸大了它们表征的差异性。
在大脑塑造的早期， 大脑的改变与学习无关。 我不必专注于我听到了什么。 输入的信息不一定非得有意义。 我不需要在一个行为环境中。 而大脑需要如此来设置运行， 以便于作出不同的行动， 以便于作出有选择的行动， 以便于这个特定的动物 可以用一种有选择的方式来运行大脑。 在下一个生命的重要时期，也就是生命的大部分时间， 大脑实际上在学习掌握广泛的技能和能力的同时， 使它的运行设置更加完善。 在这个阶段， 从生命第一年的晚些时候一直到死亡。 实际上大脑在这个过程中是处于行为控制的。 也就是说， 大脑有策略地定义 输入大脑信号的重要性。 它专注于一个又一个技能， 一个接一个的能力， 这些都需要特定的注意力控制才行。 这个功能在于行为是否完成， 或个体在这个行为中是否得到奖励。 这功能其实是非常强大的。 这个持续终生的大脑塑造能力，改变能力 非常强烈的表现出来。 这也是我们每个人 真正与众不同的基础。 我们可以检测一个学习特定技巧 的动物的大脑， 我们可以在不同的水平上观测或记录这个改变。
这是一个非常简单的实验。 这个实验其实是五年前 在马赛与普罗旺斯大学的科学家 合作完成的。 这是一个非常简单的实验，就是训练一只猴子 让它学习操作一个工具， 其难度等同于 让一个小孩学习使用一只勺子。 这个猴子实际上大约尝试了700次之后 完成了这个任务。 而起初的时候，这只猴子完全不能执行这个任务。 它的成功率大约在八分之一。 猴子的这些尝试是精心的。 每一次次尝试都与其他尝试有重要的不同。 但这个猴子渐渐地发展出一个策略。 大约经过700次尝试之后， 这只猴子可以把它执行地完美无缺。 他每次都可以成功地用这个工具取回食物。 到这一步的时候，这个任务 是以一种完美的模式化方式执行。 非常完美的控制，重复与尝试。
我们可以研究这只猴子的大脑内部。 我们可以观察到它的变形。 我们可以记录这些改变，并且随着时间变化，可以记录 许多的因类似行为变换引起的变化。 我们可以看到这个变形， 这个脑图映射的是猴子手掌的皮肤。 这是一个脑成像图，在大脑的表层上， 我们用一个很精巧的实验，在每个区域 都重建了大脑的反应， 这是对神经元反应所做的非常详细的测绘。 我们在这里看到的是， 大脑如何表征手掌的重建。 我们实际上通过这个实验使脑图变形。 就在这个粉红色表示的区域。我们可以看到其中两个指尖的表皮增大。 这些表皮是猴子用来控制工具的。 如果我们研究猴子大脑皮层 反应的选择性， 我们可以发现其实这只猴子已经改变了 对来自所使用的手指头皮肤 输入表征的过滤特征。 也就是说，在这个最具组织性的，对应身体皮肤表层的 大脑皮层区域，仍然有一个 单一的，简单的对手指头的表征。 猴子和我们一样都有。 然而现在其表征区域呈现为更细腻的质地。 这只猴子从这些表面获得更详细的信息。 而这些伴随获得技能或能力产生的改变， 你可能对此一无所知或无所察觉。
实际上，在研究猴子学习任务的过程中， 我们研究了其大脑皮层几个不同的区域。 每个区域都根据所学技能或能力 作出特定的改变。 举例来说，我们研究猴子大脑皮层中 表征输入控制姿势信号的区域。 我们研究了大脑皮层区域中 控制特定动作及动作序列 等部位，猴子的行为需要这些部位参与。 它们全部被重建了。它们全部特化于当前的任务。 当你学一个像这样的简单技巧时，有15或20个 皮层区域进行了特定的改变。 那代表在你大脑里会发生巨大的改变。 它代表着你大脑中上千万或上亿 的神经元反应 以一种稳定的方式发生了改变。 它代表你大脑中 上亿或上十亿的突触 发生改变。 这是以物理方式构建的。 构建发生的数量是巨大的。 想一下在儿童获得普通行为能力的过程中， 其大脑中所发生的变化吧。 或者是在习得其母语能力的过程中。 这些改变是巨量的。
决定对大脑而言什么是重要事物的 选择性表征决定了这一切的发生。 因为在大脑生命的绝大部分时间里， 其处于行为环境的控制下。 也就是你所注意的东西。 是对你而言有奖励的东西。 是大脑认为 对你有积极意义或很重要的东西。 这一切取决于大脑皮层运行 和前脑特化。 而这些造成了你个人的特化。 这也是为什么你是一个拥有 众多技能和能力的独一无二的特别之人。 一个大脑在物理细节上 与100年前的人相比 发生了很大变化的特别之人。 与1000年前的普通个体的大脑相比， 这些细节的变化更是巨大的。 那么，这改变过程中的一个特点是， 信息总是与其他 同步发生的，时间上前后紧密相连的 输入或信息相关。 这是因为大脑构建表征的各个事物， 是同时互相联系的 并且在极短的连续时间里也是相互关联的。 大脑记录下所有的信息 并在时间维度上 驱动所有改变。 那么，在你的大脑中产生的 最强大的压倒性的环境，就是你自己。 在你个人历史上发生了数十亿件事情， 它们都在时间上与你相关， 你作为一个接受者， 或执行者，或思考者， 或行动者。 作为一个接收者，你无时无刻不 从你的身体表面 接收数十亿的感觉的小片段信息， 而其结果是让你 感觉到身体的具体存在。 你自身是通过这数十亿次事件 而构建起来的。 你是被构建的，在大脑中构建的。 这是在大脑中通过物理变化而创建的。 这个宏大的被构建的东西 导致了个体形态的存在， 因为我们每个人都有非常不同的历史, 及非常不同的经历， 而这将推动我们自我，人格 上的巨大差异。
在座各位年长的朋友知道 当我们还小的时候，我们认为一个天生腭裂的孩子 是天生白痴。 我们知道他们的认知发展会很慢。 我们知道他们学习发展正常语言能力会有困难。 我们知道他们学习阅读会有困难。 他们当中绝大多数在智商与学业上不及格。 但现在这种看法消失了，不适用了。 那些有关遗传的缺点，遗传的状况 的观点消失了。 我们不再听到这样的观点了。这是如何发生的呢？ 嗯，在35年前，一个荷兰 外科医师发现， 如果你能够足够早的解决问题， 也就是当大脑还在最初塑造时， 那么它就可以在关键时期的起始设置期间， 把大脑设置的足够好， 那么那些问题就都不会发生。 那么我们如何通过手术矫正腭裂呢？ 基本上，我们打开 自中耳排出液体的管子， 它们充满了液体。 孩子听到的每一个未经矫正的声音都是模糊的， 削弱的。 在这种情况下，孩子的母语不是英语， 不是日语， 是杂乱的英语，模糊的日语。 就是垃圾。 而大脑却针对这些进行特化。 对语言垃圾建立表征。 然后孩子就无法摆脱它。
这些垃圾不只会发生在耳朵里， 也会发生在大脑里。 大脑本身可以是嘈杂的。正常的嘈杂。 但有些遗传的缺陷可以使它更加嘈杂。 而在这样的大脑里，这个孩子的母语 就会被削弱。 就会变成不是英语，而是杂乱的英语。 这个大脑机器因有异常的空间常数设置， 就会发展出不正常的，不同的策略， 导致产生对语音表征的缺陷。 我们可以检查孩子的大脑并记录那些时间常数。 它们的大小比普通孩子高一个等级， 大约平均而言比正常孩子 高11倍。 空间常数大约是正常孩子的3倍。 这样的孩子在这方面会有 记忆与认知的缺陷。 他们当然会有问题。因为作为语言的接受者， 他们会接受并表征语言。 而其表征的信息却是垃圾。 所以他们将会有贫乏的阅读技巧。 因为阅读依赖于将词语的声音转换成 这种拼写或视觉 表征形态。 如果你的大脑不能正确表征语音， 那么这种转换就毫无意义。 你就会有与此对应不正常的神经问题。
这个科学中与你相关的是， 如何保持你自己高效的学习机器。 当然，还有有秩序的生活， 而学习是其中持续的，关键的一环。 在你们的未来会有大脑体操。 准备好吧。它将成为日常生活的一部分， 在不太远的未来。 正如体育锻炼在当今已成为 每一个正常有条理的生命的一部分一样。 我们认为该文献和科学 对诸位产生重要影响的终极方式是， 考虑如何培养自己。 因为现在你知道，科学告诉我们 你是可以掌控自己的， 你是在自己的控制之下， 你的幸福，福利， 能力，潜力 是可以得到持续的改变， 持续的改善， 你是对自己负责的一方。 当然，许多人会忽视这个建议。 要他们真正理解时日尚远。 （笑声） 这就是另外一个问题了，不关我的事。 好吧。谢谢各位。 （掌声）
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