Jonathan Haidt

So if you practice archery or if you practice running or pole vault or anything, and you do it over and over again, the neurons that are used over and over again are gonna form a much faster circuit.

And that's both connecting the dendrites and axons, we're gonna get better connections.

And over time, once it's clear, yep, this is a circuit we need,

Then you get, if anyone remembers their high school biology, in a nerve cell, in a neuron, you have the cell body, and then you have this long thing called the axon, which runs out to the dendrites of the next neuron.

And that sheath, it's not exactly an electrical signal, it's more of an electrochemical sort of run.

And it gets coated with a fatty material called myelin.

It's kind of like an insulating cable.

And so once you put down that insulation, now it's going to be faster, but now it's kind of locked in like, okay, this is what that neuron is going to do for the rest of your life.

Perfect.

That's right.

Grooves in a record or, you know, snow, like when you go down, you're sledding down a hill and if it's a virgin snow, it's kind of slow going, but then you got paths.

That's right.

Grooves in record is a good one.

Sure.

So let me just bring in first the concept of a sensitive period.

So if you are not exposed to language until you're 13, if you're kept in a closet, as a couple of people have been in human history, you'll never learn to speak because you've missed the critical period.

Just as the key idea is that different parts of the brain, it's like, okay, it's your turn to wire up now.

And when you're, you know, one, it's the walking and reaching.

When you're, you know, three to seven, it's a lot of language.

And social development is a little later, more like, you know, six or seven through puberty.