Dr. David Eagleman

then this area that we normally call the visual cortex gets taken over by the rest of the brain.

If you're born deaf, then this part that we call the auditory cortex gets taken over.

It gets devoted to other tasks.

And so this whole system is very, very fluid.

And this is what fascinates me about brain plasticity is the way that we can be the sculptors of our own brains because we can devote ourselves to particular things and have the brain's real estate get involved in that.

Yes.

But it's much more than simply resolve.

Because, I mean, just look at New Year's resolutions.

By February, most people have dropped most of them.

It's really a psychology problem about figuring out, okay, what are the things that motivate me?

Let's say you want to become a marathon runner.

You've got that distant dream.

You figure out what actually motivates me in the short term.

Who am I trying to impress?

What am I trying to accomplish in my life?

How can I structure things like this Ulysses contract that I talked about earlier, where I'm actually locking myself into a contract?

Like, you know, I call Bob and I say, I will meet you every morning at seven and we're going to run until we drop.

Like once I've committed to those sorts of things, that's how you set things up so that you do the right thing.

In this case, it's your body.

You're getting better.