We have been raised to think that the brain is hardwired and our intellectual potential is more or less set from birth. We now know otherwise. Average IQs have risen over the past century with changes in living conditions. When people suffer brain damage from strokes or accidents, scientists have seen the brain somehow reassign duties so that adjacent networks of neurons take over the work of damaged areas, enabling people to regain lost capacities. Competitions between “memory athletes” like James Paterson and Nelson Dellis have emerged as an international sport among people who have trained
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