Do you find fractions a real challenge (many people do!) but draw like Picasso? Or are you a real math whiz who loves to show off while your friends stare in wonder, but you can only draw stick men? Or can you do it all, like Leonardo da Vinci? He was the great artist who painted the famous painting The Mona Lisa and engineered many machines like the helicopter, and even the calculator, hundreds of years before they were ever built! So here’s a good question… Why are we so different when it comes to smarts? Today on the JSP science blog, we’re going to solve that age-old science mystery… Why do our brains act so differently? Why are some people geniuses in one field, or even many, like da Vinci? 

Well, there may actually be two answers. Scientists are still trying to figure it all out. You may have already guessed the first answer. It has come up in a lot of past blog posts at JSP. Once again, the answer is genetic material. Genetic material is material in each cell that causes an organism to inherit certain traits or qualities. It is sometimes also referred to as our genes or DNA. Our genes determine how our brains develop, and sometimes certain parts (such as the parts that do math) are more developed than other parts (such as the parts that help us draw). But that isn’t the entire story. Scientists have also found that the brain can grow and change as a person develops. If part of the brain is damaged, as a child is developing in its mother, or even in later life, other parts of the brain may become more powerful. If such cases, people sometimes have amazing mental abilities. It’s almost as if they have bionic brainpower! There was even a movie made about one such person. It is called Rain Man. It is the true story of a man with a brain that didn’t form properly. In many ways, he was not considered as smart as everyone else, but in other ways, he was much smarter. He could read amazingly quickly and memorize tons of information; an ability a lot of people would love to have. He could even recall entire telephone books, every single name and number! Wow!