Damaris Fish on genealogy

Your Aging Brain Will Be in Better Shape If You've Taken Music Lessons

Your Aging Brain Will Be in Better Shape If You've Taken Music Lessons

Nature or nurture? Everyone is concerned about Brain Health these days. This is a National Geographic article about the impact of music, and learning to play an instrument, on future brain health. (BTW, it helps a lot.)

Is musical ability inherited, or does encouragement of musical training run in families/cultures enough to make it look like talent runs in families? We all probably have stories about how "You take after your .... They had a great aptitude for ..., too!" And so the story goes because even the placebo effect can produce good results. We put out effort into something we believe we have hope of doing well.

How have family stories encouraged you to pursue something to a good end - that if you had not heard that a(n extended) family member had done, your might not have explored? Is it inborn for humans to be competitive, even if it's to do something better than the generation before?

What are you going to encourage your kids, your grandchildren, your nieces and nephews to do better - than even you? Is there a legitimate expectation that talents can be inherited?

My grandmother (father's mother), after she confronted her grandmother that she'd made a mistake in the family bible  - recording two children with the same birthdates! Her grandmother giggled - They were twins! Then Nana said - If I had know there were twins in our family, I would have prayed to have twins! (Her children were grown by then.)     Not exactly the same thing - twins may "run in families" - but how many times, researching family history have we turned up stories that would seem to bear it out? Nature, or nurture?

Hair color, eye color, birthmarks, career paths, etc....?

posted by Damaris Fish @ 1:06 PM