Nature Vs Nurture Research Paper

Who are you? It’s a difficult and complicated question. The first thing that usually comes to mind is personality, then maybe ethnicity and culture, and then family, etc. What we often forget is our genes, segments of chromosomes that decide what we look like, how our bodies functions, and even traits like intelligence, aggression, and addictive behavior. However, there is a lot of debate about whether genes can really give us traits like intelligence, aggression, and others when our environment has so much to do with who we are. Our genes can’t change significantly throughout our lives, but humans constantly are depending on the environment they are in, which is why people become who they are mostly because of their environment. First …show more content…
Neural plasticity is the ability of the brain to change based on new experiences and the environment. In the video provided this week with Dr. Ione Fine, there were many examples of environmental factors changing who someone is. Dr. Fine mentioned that adults can actually make new neurons depending on the amount of exercise they get. Another example is that a boy was trying to get into the military and he passed all of the required tests except the one for dual-attention, so they made him play video games to help develop this skill. The boy didn’t have a gene for dual-attention, but he could develop that skill. Lastly, Dr. Fine used blind and deaf people as an example. She said that although they either cannot see or hear, their brain develops new skills, such as having a better idea of where a sound is coming from if they are blind. Throughout the video, Dr. Ione Fine used a sock drawer as an analogy for neural plasticity, in which she said your brain can have empty drawers that are filled with other items than what were originally intended to go that drawer or some drawers may be more filled than others. This represents that we can change and decide who we are as we develop through our