Dr. David Berson

I mean, another great example is that, you know, the marshmallow test for the little kids, you know, they can get two marshmallows if they hold off, you know, just 30 seconds initially, you know.

They can have one right away, but if they can wait 30 seconds, they got two.

So that's the no-go because their cortex is saying, I would really like to have two more than having one, but they're not going to get the two unless they can not reach for the one.

So they've got to hold off the action.

And that has to result from a cognitive process.

So the cortex is involved in this in a major way.

I mean, I think it's really just another, it's a special case of a very general phenomenon, which is brains are complicated.

And the brains we have are the result of genetics and experience.

And my genes are different from your genes and my experiences are different from your experiences.

So the things that would be easy or hard for us won't necessarily be aligned.

They might just happen to be just because they are.

But the point is that you're dealt a certain set of cards, you have certain set of genes, you are handed a brain.

You don't choose your brain, it's handed to you.

But then there's all this stuff you can do with it.

You can learn to have new skills or to act differently or to show more restraint, which is kind of relevant to what we're talking about here.

Sure.

So the point is that you all, those of us who see, have representations of the visual world in our visual cortex.

What happens to somebody when they become blind because of problems in the eye, the retina perhaps, right?

you have a big chunk of the cortex is really valuable real estate for neural processing that has come to expect input from the visual system and there isn't any anymore.

So you might think about that as fallow land, right?