Limitless Mind

The team successfully made mind maps of the monkeys’ brains and then set the maps aside to continue on with other aspects of their work. When they returned to the mind maps, they realized the monkey’s brain networks, which they had sketched out in the mind maps, had changed. Merzenich himself reflected: “What we saw was absolutely astounding. I couldn’t understand it.”3 Eventually the scientists drew the only possible conclusion they could—the brains of the monkeys were changing and they were changing quickly. This was the birth of what came to be known as neuroplasticity.

When Merzenich published his findings, he received pushback from other scientists. Many simply would not accept an idea they had been so certain was wrong. Some scientists had believed that brains were fixed from birth, and others that brains became fixed by the time people became adults. The evidence that adult brains were changing every day seemed inconceivable. Now, two decades later, even those who were the most vehemently opposed to the evidence from neuroplasticity research have conceded.

Unfortunately our schools, colleges, businesses, and culture have, for hundreds of years, been built around the idea that some people can and some people can’t. This is why putting young students into different groups and teaching them differently made perfect sense. If individuals within a school or company weren’t reaching their potential, it was not due to teaching methods or environmental factors, but to their limited brains. But now, with decades of knowledge about brain plasticity, it is time that we eradicate this damaging myth about learning and potential.

Energized by the new evidence showing brain plasticity in animals, researchers began to look at the potential of human brains to change. One of the most compelling studies of the time came from London, the city where I had my first teaching and university job. London is one of the most vibrant cities in the world—and it is always filled with millions of residents and visitors. On any day in London you will see “black cabs” zipping around the thousands of major thruways, streets, and lanes. The drivers of these iconic taxicabs hold themselves to very high professional standards. Londoners know that if they get in a black cab and tell the driver a road to find, and the driver does not know it, the driver should be reported to black-cab authorities.

Knowing all the roads in London is quite a feat—and drivers go to huge lengths to learn them. In order to become a black-cab driver, you need to study for at least four years. The most recent cab driver I traveled with told me he had studied for seven years. During this time drivers must memorize every one of the twenty-five thousand streets and twenty thousand landmarks within a six-mile radius of the centrally located Charing Cross station—and every connection between them. This is not a task that can be accomplished through blind memorization—the drivers drive the roads, experiencing the streets, landmarks, and connections, so they can remember them. At the end of the training period, the drivers take a test that is aptly named “The Knowledge.” On average, people have to take the test twelve times in order to pass it.

The extent and focus of the deep training needed by black-cab drivers caught the attention of brain scientists, who decided to study the brains of the black-cab drivers before and after the training. Their research found that, after the intense spatial training, the hippocampus of the cab drivers’ brains had grown significantly.4 This study was significant for many reasons. First, the study was conducted with adults of a range of ages, all of whom showed significant brain growth and change. Second, the area of the brain that grew—the hippocampus—is important for all forms of spatial and mathematical thinking. Researchers also found that when black-cab drivers retired from cab driving, the hippocampus shrank back down again—not from age, but from lack of use.5 This degree of plasticity of the brain, the amount of change, shocked the scientific world. Brains were literally growing new connections and pathways as the adults studied and learned, and when the pathways were no longer needed, they faded away.

These discoveries began in the early 2000s. At around the same time, the medical world was stumbling upon its own revelations in the realm of neuroplasticity. A nine-year-old girl, Cameron Mott, was suffering from a rare condition that gave her life-threatening seizures. Doctors decided to perform a revolutionary operation, removing the entire left hemisphere of her brain. They expected Cameron to be paralyzed for many years or possibly life, as the brain controls physical movement. After the surgery, they were absolutely stunned when she started moving in unexpected ways. The only conclusion they could draw was that the right side of the brain was developing the new connections it needed to perform the functions of the left side of the brain,6 and the growth happened at a faster rate than doctors had ever thought possible.

Since then, other children have had half of their brains removed. Christina Santhouse was eight when she had the operation—performed by neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who later would run for president. Christina went on to make the honor roll at her high school, graduate from college, and go on to achieve a master’s degree. She is now a speech pathologist.

We have multiple forms of evidence, from neuroscience and from medicine, that brains are in a constant state of growth and change. Every single day when we wake up in the morning, our brains are different than they were the day before. In the next chapters you will learn ways to maximize brain growth and connectivity throughout your life.

A few years ago we invited eighty-three middle-school students to the Stanford campus for an eighteen-day math camp. They were typical students as far as their achievement levels and beliefs went. On the first day each of the eighty-three students told interviewers that he or she was “not a math person.” When asked, they all named the one student in their class whom they believed to be a “math person.” Unsurprisingly, it was usually the student who was quickest to answer questions.

We spent our time with the children working to change their damaging beliefs. All students had taken a math test in their district before coming to us. We gave them the same test eighteen days later at the end of our camp. The students had improved by an average of 50 percent per student, the equivalent of 2.8 years of school. These were incredible results and further evidence of the brain’s learning potential when given the right messages and forms of teaching.

When the teachers and I were working to dispel the negative beliefs the students held, we showed them images of Cameron’s brain, with only one hemisphere, and told them about the operation she underwent to have half of her brain removed. We also described her recovery and how the growth of the other hemisphere had shocked doctors. Hearing about Cameron inspired our middle-school students. As they worked over the next two weeks, I often heard them say to each other, “If that girl with half a brain can do it, I know I can do it!”

So many people harbor the damaging idea that their brain is not suited to math, science, art, English, or any other particular area. When they find a subject difficult, instead of strengthening brain areas to make study possible, they decide they were not born with the right brain. Nobody, however, is born with the brain they need for a particular subject. Everyone has to develop the neural pathways they need.

Researchers now know that when we learn something, we grow the brain in three ways. The first is that a new pathway is formed. Initially the pathway is delicate and fine, but the more deeply you learn an idea, the stronger the pathway becomes. The second is that a pathway that is already there is strengthened, and the third is that a connection is formed between two previously unconnected pathways.

These three forms of brain growth occur when we learn, and the processes by which the pathways are formed and strengthened allow us to succeed in our mathematical, historical, scientific, artistic, musical, and other endeavors. We are not born with these pathways; they develop as we learn—and the more we struggle, the better the learning and brain growth, as later chapters will show. In fact, our brain structure changes with every different activity we perform, perfecting circuits so they are better suited to tasks at hand.7

The Fixed-Brain Message

Let’s imagine how transformative this knowledge can be for the millions of children and adults who have decided they cannot learn something—and for the teachers and managers who see people struggle or fail, and decide they will never succeed. So many of us believe or were told by teachers that we were incapable of learning in a particular area. Teachers don’t impart this idea to be cruel; they see their role as providing guidance on what students should or shouldn’t pursue or study.

Others give this message to be comforting. “Don’t worry if math isn’t your thing” is, tragically, a common refrain heard by girls. Other students receive this message through faulty and outdated teaching measures, such as the separation of young children into ability groups or an emphasis on speed in learning. Whether it is through the educational system or in conversations directly with educators, far too many of us have been conditioned to believe that we don’t have the capacity to learn. Once people get this terrible idea in their heads, their learning and cognitive processes change.

Jennifer Brich is the mathematics lab director at California State University San Marcos. She lectures in mathematics as well as directing the center. Jennifer works hard to dispel the damaging beliefs that her students hold about mathematics and their brains, one of very few university-level mathematics teachers doing so. Jennifer used to think that “people were born with certain talents, and you were restricted to those talents.” But then she read the research on brain growth and change. Now Jennifer teaches the research on brain growth not only to her own students, but also to graduate students who teach other classes. Teaching the new science can be difficult, and Jennifer tells me that she gets a lot of pushback from people who want to believe that some people are born with math potential and others just don’t have it.

A few months ago, she was sitting in her office going through emails when she heard the sound of sobbing coming from the office next door. Jennifer describes paying attention to the sound and then hearing the professor say: “It’s okay. You’re a female. Females have different brains than men, so you may not get this right away, and it’s okay if you don’t get it at all.”

Jennifer was horrified and took the brave step of knocking on the door of the other professor’s office. She poked her head in and asked if she could talk to the male professor. She discussed the incorrect messages he was giving with him, which caused him to get upset and report Jennifer to the department chair. Fortunately, the department chair was a woman who also knew that his messages were incorrect and supported Jennifer.

Jennifer is taking on the myths about math and learning, and she is just the person for it. She recently told me about her own challenging experience of being discouraged by a professor when she was in grad school:

I was a grad student, finishing my first year. I had started some research for my thesis. I was doing great; I was working really hard and getting good grades. I was in this class, it was topology, and it was really challenging for me, but I was working really hard, and I had done really well on an exam. I was really proud of myself. We had gotten the exams back, and I had gotten like a 98 or something, really close to perfect. I was so happy. Then I flipped to the back of the exam, and there was a note from my professor that said to see him after class. And I was like, “Okay, well maybe he’s excited too.” I was so happy and proud of myself.

When I sat down in his office, we began this conversation about why I wasn’t cut out for math. He wanted to know if maybe I cheated or memorized, to do so well on the exam. He pretty much told me that he didn’t think that I was a mathematician, that it shouldn’t be my future, and encouraged me to consider my other options.

I told him I was starting my thesis that summer and what my grade point average was. So he pulled up my grades and saw that I did both undergrad and my master’s there. Then he pulled up my grade record and started looking at some of my grades. And he just kept asking me questions that all implied that I didn’t earn those grades myself. It tore me apart when he did that, because he was a man I respected, someone I thought was so smart, who was very well known in the math department, very respected. A lot of the male students loved him. After that I went to my car and cried, I was so upset. I just bawled my eyes out.

My mom’s a teacher, so I called my mom. When I reported the conversation, she of course got really defensive and angry. She told me to really just think about it and think about people who do well in math and why they do well. And she made me think about all these different things. I think that was the planting of the first seed that really helped me to start to understand what a growth mindset is. And following that, luckily the fierceness in me kicked in, and the feistiness, and I used that to motivate myself to do even better in that course and in my career. And I made sure to give that professor a big smile as I walked across the stage at graduation.

Jennifer’s encounter tells us of a person, a professor responsible for students’ lives, who believes that only some people belong in mathematics. Sadly, this professor is not alone in his incorrect thinking. The Western world, in particular, is filled with the deeply ingrained cultural belief, pervasive in all subject areas and professions, that only some people can be high-achievers. Many of us have been told this, and we have been conditioned to believe it. Once people believe that only some can reach high levels, it affects all areas of their lives and stops them from choosing fulfilling pathways. The belief that only some people can be high-achievers is insidious and damaging and prevents all of us from reaching our potential.

When teachers and others give people the idea that they don’t have the brain to learn something, it is because they do not know or they refuse to accept the new scientific evidence. More often than not these are STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) teachers and professors, an issue I will return to. I think of these people as stuck inside the “fixed-brain regime.” It is not surprising that so many people are stuck inside this negative place. The neuroscience showing brain growth did not become established until about twenty years ago; before that everyone believed that people were born with certain brains and those brains never changed. Many of the teachers and professors inside the fixed-brain regime have not seen the scientific evidence. University systems of reward mean that professors are most valued for publishing in scientific journals, not writing books (such as this one) for the public or sharing evidence widely. That means the most important evidence is “locked” up in journals, which are often behind paywalls, and does not get to the people who need it—in this case, educators, managers, and parents.

Changing Perceptions and Brains

It is the lack of opportunities for important knowledge to get to the people who need it that prompted Cathy Williams and me to start youcubed. This is a Stanford center and website (youcubed.org) dedicated to getting research evidence on learning to the people who need it—especially teachers and parents. We are now in a new era, and many neuroscientists and doctors are writing books and giving TED Talks in order to bring people new information. Norman Doidge is one of the people who has done a great deal to change perceptions and share the new and important brain science.

Doidge is a medical doctor who has written an incredible book with the title The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. The book is exactly what the title describes; it is filled with inspiring examples of people with severe learning disabilities or medical conditions (such as a stroke) who, although written off by educators and doctors, have undergone brain training and recovered completely. Doidge works to shatter a number of myths in the book, such as the idea that separate brain areas are compartmentalized and don’t communicate or work together and, most important, the idea that brains don’t change. Doidge describes the “dark ages” when people believed that brains were fixed, says that he is unsurprised that people are slow to understand the plasticity of the brain, and suggests that it will take an intellectual “revolution” for them to do so.8 I agree, because over the last few years in my teaching about the new brain science I have met many people who seem unwilling to make the shift in their understanding of the brain and human potential.

The vast majority of schools are still inside the fixed-brain regime. Schooling practices have been set over many years and are very difficult to change. One of the most popular is tracking, a system in which students are placed in groups based on their supposed ability and then taught together in those groups. A study in Britain showed that 88 percent of students placed into tracks at the age of four remained in the same track for the rest of their school lives.9 This horrific result does not surprise me. Once we tell young students they are in a lower-track group, their achievement becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The same is true when teachers are told which tracks students are in; they treat students differently whether they intend to or not. Similar results were found in a study of nearly twelve thousand students from kindergarten to third grade in more than twenty-one hundred schools in the US.10 None of the students who started out in the lowest reading group ever caught up to their peers in the highest group. Such policies of placing students in groups based on their supposed level of ability may be defensible if it resulted in higher achievement for the low-, middle-, or high-achieving students, but it does not.

Studies of schools’ tracking policies in reading show that those schools that use tracked reading groups almost always score lower on average than schools that do not.11 These results are echoed in mathematics. I have compared students learning mathematics in middle and high schools in England and the US, and in both school levels and countries the schools that taught students in mixed achievement groups outperformed those that used ability groups.12

San Francisco Unified is a large and diverse urban school district whose school board voted, unanimously, to remove advanced classes until eleventh grade. This prompted a lot of controversy and opposition from parents, but within two years, during which all students took the same mathematics classes until tenth grade, algebra failure rates fell from 40 to 8 percent of students in the district and the number of students taking advanced classes after tenth grade went up by one-third.13

It is hard to imagine that the teaching practices of the district teachers changed dramatically in two years, but what did change were the opportunities students received to learn and the ideas students believed about themselves. All students, instead of some students, were taught high-level content—and the students responded with high achievement. International studies of achievement in different countries across the world show that countries that use tracking the latest and the least are the most successful. The US and the UK, two countries in which I have lived and worked, have two of the most highly tracked systems in the world.

Nobody knows what children are capable of learning, and the schooling practices that place limits on students’ learning need to be radically rethought. Someone whose story illustrates most clearly for me the need to change our expectations of young children is Nicholas Letchford. Nicholas grew up in Australia, and in his first year of school his parents were told that he was “learning disabled” and had a “very low IQ.” In one of his mother’s first meetings with teachers, they reported that he was the worst child they had seen in twenty years of teaching. Nicholas found it difficult to focus, make connections, read, or write. But over the next few years Nicholas’s mother, Lois, refused to believe that her son could not learn, and she worked with Nicholas, teaching him how to focus, connect, read, and write. The year 2018 was an important one for Lois Letchford. It was the year that she published a book describing her work with Nicholas, called Reversed,14 and it was also the year Nicholas graduated from Oxford University with a doctoral degree in applied mathematics.

Research and science have moved beyond the fixed-brain era, but fixed-brain schooling models and limited-learning beliefs persist. As long as schools, universities, and parents continue to give fixed-brain messages, students of all ages will continue to give up on learning in areas that could have brought them great joy and accomplishment.

The new brain science showing that we have unlimited potential is transformative for many—and that includes those diagnosed with learning disabilities. These are individuals who are born with or develop, through injury or accident, physical brain differences that make learning more difficult. For many years, schools have traditionally put such students into lower-level classes and worked around their weaknesses.

Barbara Arrowsmith-Young takes an entirely different approach. I was fortunate to meet Barbara on a recent visit to Toronto, during which I toured one of the incredible “Arrowsmith” schools she has set up. It is impossible to spend time with Barbara and not realize that she is a force to be reckoned with; she is passionate not only about sharing her knowledge of the brain and how we develop it, but in using her knowledge to change the neural pathways of those diagnosed with special educational needs through targeted brain training.

Barbara is someone who was herself diagnosed with severe learning disabilities. As she was growing up in Toronto in the 1950s and 1960s, she and her family knew she was brilliant in some areas, but they were told she was “retarded” in others. She had trouble pronouncing words and could not engage in spatial reasoning. She could not follow cause-and-effect statements, and she reversed letters. She was able to understand the words “mother” and “daughter,” but not the expression “mother’s daughter.”15 Fortunately for Barbara, she had an amazing memory and was able to memorize her way through school and hide what she knew was wrong.

As an adult her own disabilities prompted her to study child development, and eventually she came across the work of Alexander Luria, a Russian neuropsychologist who had written about stroke victims who had trouble with grammar, logic, and reading clocks. Luria worked with many people with brain injuries, produced an in-depth analysis of the functioning of various brain regions, and developed an extensive battery of neuropsychological tests. When Barbara read Luria’s work, she realized she herself had brain injuries, became quite depressed, and started to consider suicide. But then she came across the first work on neuroplasticity and realized that particular activities could produce brain growth. She began months of detailed work on the areas she knew she was weakest in. She made herself hundreds of cards with clock faces and practiced so much she was reading them faster than “regular” people. She started to see improvements in her symbolic understanding and for the first time began grasping grammar, math, and logic.

Now Barbara runs schools and programs that give brain training to students diagnosed with learning differences. Chatting with Barbara on my visit, I found it hard to imagine that this woman herself had had such severe disabilities in the past, as she is an impressive communicator and thinker. Barbara has developed over forty hours of tests that diagnose students’ brain strengths and weaknesses and a range of targeted cognitive exercises that enable students to develop brain pathways. Students come to her Arrowsmith schools with severe disabilities and leave without them.