ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY HUMANIST GALAXY OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS DANIEL LEVITIN March 30, 2022 SUCCESSFUL AGING: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of our Lives by Daniel J. Levitin Dutton, 2020 (528 pages) Quote = "Levitin believes the most important factors in predicting how well we might age are conscientiousness, our childhood experiences, exercise (especially outdoors), and social interactions. His most sage suggestion, nestled at the end of the book, is timeless: 'Practice gratitude for what you have'." (From the Booklist review) Quote = "Your genes... give you a kind of life script with only the most general things sketched out. And from there, you can improvise. Culture affects the ways you interpret that script, as do opportunity and circumstance. And then, once you interpret the script, it influences the way others respond to you. Those responses in your social world can change your brain's wiring and chemistry, in turn affecting how you will respond to future events and which genes turn on and off-over and over again, cascading in complexity... Your genes do not dictate how you will be, but they do provide a set of constraints, limits on how your personality will be shaped. Genetics is not an edict. The traits that our genes facilitate still need to navigate the twisty and unpredictable roads of culture and opportunity." (From the Excerpt by author, Daniel Levitin) Quote = "Complex traits are best described as emergent properties that you cannot read in any one gene, nor even in a large set of genes, because how the genes express themselves over time is critical to the development of the trait as a social reality. Genes can be present in your body but in a dormant state, waiting for the right environmental trigger to activate them --- what is called gene expression." (From the Excerpt by author, Daniel Levitin) Quote = "A traumatic experience, a good or bad diet, how and when you sleep, or contact with an inspiring role model can cause chemical modifications to your genes that in turn cause them to wake up and become activated, or to go to sleep and turn off... The way the brain wires itself up, both in the womb and throughout the life span, is a complex tango between genetic possibilities and environmental (including social and cultural) factors. Neurons become connected whenever you learn something. But the learning is subject to genetic constraints." (From the Excerpt by author, Daniel Levitin, with a slight paraphrasing by webmaster) Quote = "It takes effort and, for some, a lot of false starts, failures, and even therapy to achieve the success of self-actualization and self-transcendence in the cultural context of secular humanism." (From the last sentence in the Excerpt, by Daniel Levitin, with a slight paraphrasing by webmaster) BOOK OUTLINE note = Numbers in parentheses refer to pages INTRODUCTION (xi-xxv) PART 1 = THE CONTINUALLY DEVELOPING BRAIN (1-231) 1) INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND PERSONALITY --- The search for the magic number (3-30) 2) MEMORY AND YOUR SENSE OF "YOU" --- The myth of failing memory (30-61) 2.5) INTERLUDE --- A brief biography of the brain (62-87) 3) PERCEPTION --- What our bodies tell us about the world (88-114) 4) INTELLIGENCE --- The problem-solving brain (115-145) 5) FROM EMOTIONS TO MOTIVATION --- Snakes, rickety bridges, mad men, and stress (146-178) note = Happiness (176-178) 6) SOCIAL FACTORS --- Life with people (179-204) note = "One of the keys to a long health span and life is social connectedness." (179) 7) PAIN --- It hurts when I do this (205-231) PART 2 = THE CHOICES WE MAKE (233-310) Introduction: "Part 2 looks at specific behaviors that you can modify so that aging is as enjoyable as it can be --- with the possibility that it will become the best part of your life! Ultimately, we all die. The question is: What do we want our final years to look like?" (Paraphrased by webmaster, page 233) "Your body is going to go at some point. It will fail and the big light will go out. The question is: Will your mind be intact at that moment, or will you be consigned to a dreary disease span of mental life like most unenlightened seniors?" (Paraphrased by webmaster, page 233) "One factor that has received relatively little attention in the popular press is the chronobiology of health, the set of "internal clocks" that regulate the various cycles of attention, energy, restoration, and repair that our brains and bodies go through." (Paraphrased by webmaster, page 234) "When the internal clocks are not functioning properly, neurons degenerate; cell metabolism is compromised; the body’s normal systems of cellular repair and the daily repair of DNA damage are disrupted. Faulty or misaligned internal clocks are significant contributing factors in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington’s disease, and in depression, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. With that as a foundation, we will visit important practical things you can do to make the most out of basic biological processes: diet, movement, and sleep." (Paraphrased by webmaster, page 234) 8) THE INTERNAL CLOCK --- It's two a.m. why am I hungry? (235-250) 9) DIET --- Brain food, probiotics, and free radicals (251-279) 10) EXERCISE --- Movement matters (280-294) 11) SLEEP --- Memory consolidation, DNA repair, and sleepy hormones (295-310) PART 3 = THE NEW LONGEVITY (311-400) Introduction: Part 3 neuroscience guidelines are more complex topics of this book. They include the fact that much of what we hear about longevity, quality of life, and cognitive enhancement should be confronted with skepticism. However, there are many bright spots including ways to make valuable contributions to our world... Nobody can live forever, but we can live longer than ever before. We can stay active well into our nineties and beyond." (Paraphrased by webmaster, page 311) 12) LIVING LONGER --- Telomeres, tardigrades, insulin, and zombie cells (313-343) 13) LIVING SMARTER --- Cognitive enhancement (344-366) 14) LIVING BETTER --- The greatest days of our lives (367-400) APPENDIX --- Rejuvenating your brain (401) 1. Do not retire. Do not stop being engaged with meaningful work. 2. Look forward. Do not look back. (Reminiscing does not promote health). 3. Exercise. Get your heart rate going. Preferably in nature. 4. Embrace a moderated lifestyle with healthy practices. 5. Keep your social circle exciting and new. 6. Spend time with people younger than you. 7. See your doctor regularly, but not obsessively. 8. Do not think of yourself as old (other than taking prudent precautions). 9. Appreciate your cognitive strengths: pattern recognition, crystallized intelligence, wisdom, accumulated knowledge. 10. Promote cognitive health through experiential learning: traveling, spending time with grandchildren, and immersing yourself in new activities and situations. Do new things. NOTES (403-474) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (475-476) ART CREDITS (477) INDEX (479-498) Abstract thinking Activity and exercise Alcohol consumption Alzheimer's disease Amphetamines Babies and infancy Biological clocks Brains Cancer Children and childhood Cognitive Behavioral Therapy [CBT] Conscientiousness Cortisol Curiosity Death Dementia Depression Diet and nutrition Distractions Dopamine Emotional stability Emotions Empathy Episodic memory Families Free radicals Fruits and vegetables Genes and genetics Happiness Hearing Hippocampus Immune systems Inflamation Intelligence Internet Learning Life spans of humans Lifestyle choices Loneliness and social isolation Longevity Long-term care facilities Medications Melatonin Memory/memories Microbiome Mild cognitive impairment Moods Motivation Music and musicians Myelin Naturalistic intelligence Neuroplasticity Obesity Openness to experience Outdoors, spending time Oxidative stress Oxytocin Pain Parents Perceptual completion Personal affirmations Personalities Prefrontal cortex Problem solving Quality of life Relationships Retirement SupraChiasmatic Nucleus [SCN] Semantic memory Sensory perception Sleep Sleep deprivation Sociability Social engagement Stress and stress response Strokes Supplements "thinking outside the box" Transhumanist movement Vision and visual system Volunteerism Wisdom Work AUTHOR NOTES, SUMMARY AND BOOK DESCRIPTION AUTHOR NOTES = Daniel J. Levitin studied electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and music at the Berkley College of Music before dropping out of college to become a record producer and professional musician. He returned to school in his thirties, where he studied cognitive psychology/cognitive science, receiving a B.A. from Stanford University in 1992 and a M.S. in 1993 and Ph.D. in 1996 from the University of Oregon. Levitin is a cognitive psychologist, and bestselling author. He is Founding Dean of Arts & Humanities at the Minerva Schools at KGI in San Francisco, and a neuroscientist at U C Berkeley. He was Emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at McGill University and he directed the Levitin Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at McGill University. He has published extensively in scientific journals and music trade magazines such as Grammy and Billboard. He is the author of the iconic bestsellers: This Is Your Brain on Music; The World in Six Songs; The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload; and A Field Guide to Lies, which has been published as a paperback with the new title, Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era. Levitin divides his time between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. -- Bowker Author Biography. SUMMARY = Daniel Levitin turns his keen insights to what happens in our brains as we age. Why should we think about health span, not life span? Based on a rigorous analysis of neuroscientific evidence, this advice can help you make the most of your seventies, eighties, and nineties today no matter how old you are now. BOOK DESCRIPTION = The book uses research from developmental neuroscience and the psychology of individual differences to show that sixty-plus years is a unique developmental stage that, like infancy or adolescence, has its own demands and distinct advantages. Levitin looks at the science behind what we all can learn from those who age joyously, as well as how to adapt our culture to take full advantage of older people's wisdom and experience. Throughout his exploration of what aging really means, Levitin reveals resilience strategies and practical, cognitive enhancing tricks everyone should do as they age. Levitin looks at the science behind what we all can learn from those who age joyously, as well as how to adapt our culture to take full advantage of older people's wisdom and experience. Throughout his exploration of what aging really means, using research from developmental neuroscience and the psychology of individual differences. The book is packed with accessible takeaways for further discussion. It provides great material for reading groups and media coverage. It inspires a powerful new approach to how readers can get the most of their final decades. It could revolutionize the way people plan for old age as individuals, family members, and citizens within a society where the average life expectancy continues to rise. It delivers powerful insights and it inspires a powerful new approach to how people can think about their final decades. And it can revolutionize the way people plan for old age as individuals, family members, and citizens within our society because it: [1] Debunks the myth that memory always declines with age; [2] Confirms that "health span" --- not "life span" --- is what matters; [3] Proves that sixty-plus years is a unique and newly recognized developmental stage; and [4] Recommends that people look forward to joy, since reminiscing does not promote health. EDITORIAL BOOK REVIEW LIBRARY JOURNAL REVIEW = As you might expect, the author of the New York Times best sellers This Is Your Brain on Music and The Organized Mind has a lot to say about what happens when our brains age. He cites the years after 60 as a unique developmental stage with its own distinctive advantages and challenges and shows us how to make the best of them. Almost like neuroscientific self-help. KIRKUS REVIEWS = This book's breadth is impressive. Excellent popular science in the service of fending off aging. BOOKLIST = Levitin believes the most important factors in predicting how well we might age are conscientiousness, our childhood experiences, exercise (especially outdoors), and social interactions. His most sage suggestion, nestled at the end of the book, is timeless: "Practice gratitude for what you have." BOOK PAGE = With more and more of the population living longer, the book is a timely and relevant guide that will appeal to all age groups, giving us the motivation to keep our minds active and engaged. PROFESSIONAL B0OOK REVIEWS [1] Predictions are perilous, but here's one I can make with certainty: Tomorrow you and I will be older than we are today. That is why you, I, and everyone we know needs this remarkable book. With a scientist's rigor and a storyteller's flair, Daniel Levitin offers a fresh approach to growing older. He debunks the idea that aging inevitably brings infirmity and unhappiness and instead offers a trove of practical, evidence-based guidance for living longer and better. The book is an essential book for the rest of your life. -- Daniel H. Pink, author of the books, When and Drive. [2] Daniel Levitin explores a wealth of information on the complex biology of aging and presents it in an engaging and accessible manner. Writing with insight, compassion and gentle humor he shows us the positive side of the aging process and how to make the most of the future that awaits us. Essential reading for baby boomers and those who love them. -- Drs. Pamela Harzband & Jerome Groopman, Professors, Harvard Medical School, authors of Your Medical Mind. [3] A superb user's manual for aging bodies and minds, providing an evidence-based discussion of issues including personality, memory, intelligence, and emotions. -- PsychologyToday.com. [4] A clear-eyed, insightful overview of the neurophysiological healthspan." -- Nature. [5] This is the book I need now. This is probably the book YOU need now. Levitin beautifully weaves hard science with more subtle, subjective agents of change, such as compassion, friendship, the redemptive power of work, into a refreshing guide for those of us navigating the penultimate stage of life. -- Rosanne Cash, Four-time Grammy winning singer and songwriter, author of the book, Composed. [6] A wise, insightful, and beautifully written book on how we can navigate the waters of time. Helpful for readers at any age. -- Daniel Gilbert, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of Stumbling on Happiness. [7] If you are planning to age, read this book. Wise, sensitive, and insightful, Levitin shares the tools that allow you to optimize the process. -- David Eagleman, Stanford University neuroscientist, New York Times bestselling author of The Brain and Incognito. [8] Growing old may be the only event in life that is both desired and feared. Daniel Levitin alleviates the fear with sound advice that can tilt the balance so that we have more healthy years and fewer sick ones. The brilliance of this book is that Levitin not only tells us what to do and what not to do --- he gracefully and eloquently shares the science behind how we can change our minds and brains, and how even small changes can reap large benefits. Share this book—especially with anyone you hope to grow old with. -- Diane Halpern, past-president of the American Psychological Association, professor, Claremont-McKenna College. [9] Levitin's narrative ease is once again on display as he masterfully lays out the evidence that what we thought of as old age is in fact a unique developmental stage in which extraordinary contributions become possible. These years can include challenges, but they can also reach altogether new heights that neuroscientists are just beginning to see. The book is key to a new era of opportunity and joy. -- Stanley Prusiner, M.D. Nobel Laureate, Director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, University of California, San Francisco. [10] As always, Dan shows his great facility for pulling together different parts of our field and explaining them in a way that makes them accessible to all. -- Brenda Milner, at age 101, professor of neurology, McGill University, professor of psychology, Montreal Neurological Institute, winner of the Kavli Prize in neuroscience, Founder of the field of neuropsychology. [11] We are living longer than past humans, and with this comes undeniable challenges to our physical and mental well-being. Building on the psychology of personality types and developmental neuroscience, Daniel Levitin will enthrall you with this fascinating story of how the human brain ages, as he reveals just how rewarding our later years can be. -- Joseph LeDoux, professor of Neural Science at NYU and director of the Emotional Brain Institute at the Nathan Kline Institute, author of the books, Anxious, and The Deep History of Ourselves. [12] A tour through a huge scientific literature, full of potentially life-changing nuggets, and laced with compelling personal experiences. The good news is that aging need not be dreaded but can be a time of health and creativity in the decades beyond 70. Levitin has got the science to back it up. Read this book. At any age. -- Michael S. Gazzaniga, director of the Sage Center at UC Santa Barbara, author of the book, The Consciousness Instinct. [13] An eloquent spokesperson for our field. Levitin writes about the brain with an ease and familiarity that is captivating. -- the late David Hubel, Nobel Laureate for work in neuroplasticity. [14] Levitin’s book is quite extraordinary, literally. I rarely, if ever, have seen such a rigorous treatment of a health subject. -- David B. Teplow, Professor of Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and Editor, Progress in Molecular Biology and Translational Science. [15] An excellent perspective on aging and aging well. Dan’s ability to combine science with personal insights, and reflections on various experiences of aging, captures the complexity of the subject, while still being easy to read. This fascinating book is especially important for young adults to understand all the aspects that go into healthy aging and to know that they can influence the outcome, starting at any time. -- Concetta Tomaino, Executive director of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function, and Associate, Albert Einstein College of Medicine. [16] Dan is a long-time collaborator with us here at Salk, and in Successful Aging, he offers a compelling new look at the promise and effects of neuroplasticity. He's at his best here, communicating difficult scientific concepts in a way that anyone can understand. This is why his research talks at the Salk Institute are enormously popular, and everyone is abuzz about them for many months afterwards. -- Ursula Bellugi, Ph.D., Director, Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies. [17] Successful Aging is an ambitious and much-needed call for a “new truth” about aging in the 21st century. Daniel Levitin uses what we now about brain science to make a powerful case for positively transforming how we think about aging. This is a fascinating and vital contribution to doing just that. -- George Vradenburg, Chairman & Co-Founder, Us Against Alzheimer’s. [18] Here is a "how to" book for everyone's favorite alternative to death and aging. It brings together the fields of developmental psychology and personality theory, Dr. Levitin shows us how to reach old age as the best version of ourselves: engaged, wise, and creative, emotionally resilient, cognitively flexible, and happy. The book is the fountain of youth, although you do not have to drink it; you read it. -- Eric Kaplan, Emmy-winning comedy writer, The Simpsons, David Letterman, The Big Bang Theory, and Young Sheldon. [19] Dan Levitin’s latest is an inspiring, hopeful, and useful message—expounding on the best lessons science and art can teach us about how to expand your potential as you age. -- Ben Folds, recording artist and New York Times Best Seller author of the book, A Dream About Lightning Bugs. [20] In my line of work, good maps are the difference between life and death. Dan’s book is an extraordinary “map” to a place each of us eventually journeys to. In it, he explains and demystifies the aging process in layman’s terms. Don’t grow old without it. -- General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Army (Retired). [21] Society for too long has underestimated the value of people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. Working in tandem with younger colleagues, the political, economic, and creative power we can contribute together could well trigger solutions to our biggest global problems. Daniel Levitin superbly defines the new longevity in a book that will change the way you think about aging. -- Vicente Fox, 55th President of Mexico. [22] This evolving narrative builds as new topics are introduced in reaction to the previous topic, like chord changes in a great piece of music. Levitin's not just offering a compelling narrative, but guiding the reader’s imagination to a larger view of things—and that feels masterful. -- Mike Lankford, author of the book, Becoming Leonardo. EXCERPT - CHAPTER 1 INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES AND PERSONALITY THE SEARCH FOR THE MAGIC NUMBER = I visited a day care center for preschoolers recently and was struck by how early the differences in children's traits and individual dispositions show up. Some children are more outgoing, while others are shy; some like to explore the environment and take risks, while others are more fearful; some get along well with others and some are bullies-even by age four. Young parents who have more than one child see immediate differences in the dispositions of siblings, as well as differences between their offspring and themselves. At the other end of life, there are clear differences in how people age-some people simply seem to fare better than others. Even setting aside differences in physical health, and the various diseases that might overcome us late in life, some older adults live more dynamic, engaged, active, and fulfilling lives than others. Can you look at a five-year-old and tell whether they will be a successful eighty-five-year-old? Yes, you can. The discovery that aging and health are related to personality was the result of a lot of work. First, scientists had to figure out how to measure and define personality. What is it? How do you observe it accurately and quantitatively? Here, they may have taken inspiration from Galileo, who said, "The job of the scientist is to measure what is measurable and to render measurable that which is not." And so they did. Among the most solid findings is that a child's personality affects adult health outcomes later in life. Take, for example, a child who was always getting into trouble in elementary school and continued to do so as a preteen. As a teenager, they might have smoked cigarettes, drunk alcohol, and used marijuana. In personality terms, we might say that this teenager was sensation- and adventure-seeking, high on the quality of extraversion, low on conscientiousness and emotional stability. The kid would have been at increased risk for hard drug use, or being killed in a motor vehicle accident while driving drunk. If they survived these increased risks in young adulthood but didn't change their habits, they'd enter middle age with a highly inflated risk of lung cancer from smoking or liver damage from drinking. Even more subtle behaviors can influence outcomes many decades later: Early and compulsive exposure to the sun and sun tanning; poor dental hygiene; poor exercise habits; and obesity all take their toll. One of the pioneers in the relationship between personality and aging is Sarah Hampson, a research scientist at the Oregon Research Institute. As Hampson notes, "Lack of self-control may result in behaviors that increase the probability of exposure to dangerous or traumatic situations and adversely affect health through long-lasting biological consequences of stress." She has found that childhood is a critical period for laying down patterns of behavior with biological effects that endure into adulthood. If you want to live a long and healthy life, it helps to have had the right upbringing. Childhood personality traits, assessed in elementary school, predict a person's lipid levels, blood glucose, and waist size forty years later. These three markers, in turn, predict risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. THE SAME CHILDHOOD TRAITS EVEN PREDICT LIFE SPAN = Although these correlations between early childhood and late adulthood personality are robust, they tell only a part of the story. People age differently, and part of that story has to do with the interaction of genetics, environment, and opportunity (or luck). Scientists developed a mathematical way of tracking personality, comparing traits as they differ across individuals or change within a person over time. With it, we can talk about age-related, culture-related, and medically induced changes in personality, such as occur with Alzheimer's disease. Often one of the first indications of a problem with your brain is a change in personality. And in the past few years, developmental science has shown that people, even older adults, can meaningfully change --- we do not have to live out a life that was paved for us by genetics, environment, and opportunity. The great psychologist William James wrote that personality was "set in plaster" by early adulthood, but fortunately he was wrong. The idea that people retain the capacity to change throughout their life span didn't take hold until the mid-seventies, when an idea first put forward by psychologist Nancy Bayley was popularized by the German developmental psychologist Paul Baltes: Most developmental researchers do accept the notion that developmental change is not restricted to any specific stage of the life-span and that, depending upon the function and the environmental context, behavior change can be pervasive and rapid at all ages. In fact... the rate of change is greatest in infancy and old age. Not everyone takes advantage of this capacity, but it is there, like the ability to adjust your diet or your wardrobe. The events of your childhood can be overcome and transformed based on experiences you have later in life. The big idea of Bayley and Baltes' was that no single period of life holds supremacy over another. Of course, the idea that people can change is the entire basis of modern psychotherapy. People seek psychiatrists and psychologists because they want to change, and modern psychiatry and psychology are largely effective in treating or curing a great number of mental disorders and stressors, especially phobias, anxiety, stress disorders, relationship problems, and mild to moderate depression. Some of these volitional changes revolve around improved lifestyle choices, while others entail changing our personalities, sometimes only slightly, to give us the best chance of aging well. To implement the changes that will be most effective, each of us might think about the fundamental components of how we are now, how we used to be, and how we would like to be. The collection of dispositions and traits that we have in any given period comprise our personalities. All cultures tend to describe people using trait-based labels, such as generous, interesting, and reliable (on the positive side) or stingy, boring, and erratic (on the negative side), along with more or less neutral or context-dependent terms such as boyish and breezy. This "trait" approach, however, can obscure two important facts: (1) we often display different traits as situations change, and (2) we can change our traits. Few people are generous, interesting, or reliable all the time since opportunity and the fluidly of evolving situations in which we find ourselves can exert a strong pull on the behavior we may have genetic predispositions toward. Thus our behaviors and habitual ways of presenting ourselves to the world are influenced by our unique experiences. Traits are probabilistic descriptions of our behaviors. Someone who is described as high on one trait (having a lot of it) will display that trait more often and more intensely than someone low on that trait. Someone who is agreeable has a greater probability of displaying agreeableness than someone who is disagreeable, but disagreeable people are still agreeable some of the time, just as introverts are extraverted some of the time. Culture plays a role as well, both macro-culture and micro-culture. What is considered shy, reserved behavior in the United States (macro-level culture) might be regarded as perfectly normal in Japan. And staying within the United States for the moment (micro-level culture), behavior that is considered acceptable in a hockey game might not be acceptable in the boardroom. Booker T. Washington wrote that "character, not circumstance," makes the person. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character." While character makes for a good story or poem, in reality we are less shaped by character traits than we think, and more than we realize by the circumstances that life deals us --- and our responses to those circumstances. It would be nice to be able to grade these circumstances from severely deleterious to benign, but what makes that impossible to do is individual differences in the way we respond to things. Some children who were (or felt) abandoned by their parents grow up to be well-adjusted, do-gooding members of society; others become axe murderers. Resilience, grit, and gratitude for the small things in life ("at least I still have food to eat") are personality traits that are unevenly distributed in the population. We think of our genes as influencing physical traits, like hair color, skin color, and height. But genes also influence mental and personality traits, such as self-assuredness, a tendency toward compassion, and how emotionally variable we are. Look at a room full of one-year-olds and it is apparent that some are more calm than others, some more independent, some loud, some quiet. Parents with more than one child marvel at how different their personalities were from the start. I carefully referred to genes influencing traits because the effect of genes is not chiseled in stone. Your genes do not dictate how you will be, but they do provide a set of constraints, limits on how your personality will be shaped. Genetics is not an edict. The traits that our genes facilitate still need to navigate the twisty and unpredictable roads of culture and opportunity. Complex traits are best described as emergent properties that you cannot read in any one gene, nor even in a large set of genes, because how the genes express themselves over time is critical to the development of the trait as a social reality. Genes can be present in your body but in a dormant state, waiting for the right environmental trigger to activate them: what is called gene expression. A traumatic experience, a good or bad diet, how and when you sleep, or contact with an inspiring role model can cause chemical modifications to your genes that in turn cause them to wake up and become activated, or to go to sleep and turn off. The way the brain wires itself up, both in the womb and throughout the life span, is a complex tango between genetic possibilities and environmental factors. Neurons become connected whenever you learn something, but this is subject to genetic constraints. If you have inherited genes that contribute to making you five feet tall, no amount of learning is likely to get you into the NBA (although Spud Webb is five foot seven and Muggsy Bogues is five foot three). More subtly, if your genes constrain the auditory memory circuits in your brain --- perhaps because they favor visual-spatial cognition --- you are unlikely to become a superstar musician no matter how many lessons you take, because musicianship relies on auditory memory. One way to think about gene expression is to think of your life as a film or multi-year TV series. Think of your DNA as the script: the set of instructions, dialogue, and stage directions for all the participants in the film. Your cells are the actors. Gene expression [RNA] is the way that the actors decide to express that script. The actors may bring a certain interpretation to those words, based on their experience, and might surprise even the writers. And, of course, the actors interact with and play off one another, for better or for worse. Jason Alexander, the actor who played George Costanza on Seinfeld, complained about how difficult it was to work with Heidi Swedberg (who played George's fiance, Susan). "I could not figure out how to play off of her... Her instincts for doing a scene, where the comedy was, and mine were always misfiring." Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jerry Seinfeld had similar complaints and reportedly said that doing scenes with her was "impossible." But the chemistry between Alexander, Louis-Dreyfus, Seinfeld, and Michael Richards (Cosmo Kramer) was palpable, making Seinfeld the most successful comedy series in history. Your genes, then, give you a kind of life script with only the most general things sketched out. And from there, you can improvise. Culture affects the ways you interpret that script, as do opportunity and circumstance. And then, once you interpret the script, it influences the way others respond to you. Those responses in your social world can change your brain's wiring and chemistry, in turn affecting how you will respond to future events and which genes turn on and off-over and over again, cascading in complexity. The second feature in the triad, culture, plays an important role in our understanding of traits. Humility is more valued in Mexico than in the United States, and more valued in rural Wisconsin than on Wall Street. Polite in Tel Aviv might be thought of as rude in Ottawa. The terms we use to describe others are not absolutes; they are culturally relative --- when we describe differences in personality traits, we are necessarily talking about how an individual compares to their society and to their societal norms. Family is a micro-culture, and traditions, outlook, political and social views differ widely, especially within large industrialized countries. Go door to door in any town or city and you will find a wide range of attitudes about things as mundane as whether friends can just drop by or need to schedule in advance; how often teeth should be flossed (if at all); or whether TV and device time are regulated. And these unique family cultural values map onto particular personality traits: spontaneity, conscientiousness, and willingness (or at least ability) to follow rules. Culture is a potent factor in who we become. The third part of the developmental triad is opportunity. Opportunity and circumstance play a larger part in behavior than most of us appreciate, and they do this in two different ways: how the world treats us, and the situations we find (or put) ourselves in. Fair-skinned children burn more quickly in the sun than dark-skinned children and so may spend less time outdoors; skinny children can explore the insides of drainage pipes and the tops of trees more easily than heavy children. You may start out with an adventure-seeking personality, but if your body will not let you realize it, you may seek other experiences, or adventure in less physical ways (like video games-or math). Apart from these physical features, we all play roles, in our families and in society. The eldest child in a multi-child household tends to take on some of the parenting and instruction of the younger ones; the youngest child may be relatively coddled or ignored, depending on the parents; the middle child may find herself thrust into the role of peacemaker. These factors influence our development, but again, as with genes, they are not deterministic. We can break free of them to improvise and create our own futures. But it takes effort and, for some, a lot of false starts, failures, and even therapy to achieve the success of self-actualization and self-transcendence in the cultural context of secular humanism. [A few words in the last sentence were paraphrased by the webmaster who has discussed philosophy with the author.] REMEMBER ALWAYS: You Are Your Adaptable Memory! RETURN TO THE HUMANIST HUB OF SECULAR SCIENCE STARS ALPHABETICAL BRAIN™ VOCABULARY produced by Infinite Interactive Ideas©