The Praeger Handbook of Learning and the Brain

Attitudes towards the brain have changed considerably over the years. At one time it was regarded as a tabula rasa – a blank slate on which anything could be inscribed. There were plenty of philosophers and psychologists who were sure that any child could be turned into any sort of person if trained early enough and thoroughly enough. In more recent years some people have taken up the opposite, rather fatalistic, attitude of genetic determinism. You have the brain that you were born with, and its development is so pre‐determined that identical twins separated at birth are likely to grow...