Brain Drain

Truman Stafford could calculate in his head in 60 seconds a multiplication

sum whose answer consisted of 36 figures, when only 10 years old. However,

when he went on to a professional career in mathematics, he lost this men-

tal gift. Similarly, Richard Whately, a nineteenth century Archbishop of

Dublin, although being a calculating genius in early childhood lost the abil-

ity after undertaking formal education. Why is this so? David Kaiser offers

a clue.

Kaiser noted that novel skills, such as music, which are processed ini-

tially in the right brain, migrate over (after extensive practice) to the left

brain. This has been noted in lesion and EEG studies 4 Over-practicing

skills enables an individual to learn how to model exterior rules (of the right

brain) in the more confidently controlled domain of interior rules (of the left

brain). However, when the skills do migrate to the left brain, the creativity

and the computational power diminishes, perhaps because direct access to

the universal mind (via the intuitive right brain) diminishes significantly.