But feeding a growing brain isn’t the only thing that influences its potential. There’s also the matter of how it learns. We know that brains assemble themselves as they grow: building crucial networks, learning social norms, paving shortcuts for language and math and problem solving of all sorts. When a growing human brain is neglected, it’s probably not going to reach its full intellectual potential. Over time, a brain can easily learn that it doesn’t need to be “smart”—or worse, that it isn’t “supposed” to be smart—and to some degree will build itself accordingly.
