Smarts: Are We Hardwired for Success?

Chapter . Introduction

YOU MAY CONSIDER YOURSELF to be an organized person, or a procrastinator, or sometimes forgetful. Maybe you see yourself as someone who can get things done, or is highly flexible, cool under pressure, or good at managing your time. Although you might be accurate in some of your self-assessment, there has been no way to precisely define each of these attributes, or to show their relationship to each other.

These are actually brain functions or cognitive skills that neuroscientists have located in specific regions of the brain—primarily the frontal lobes. These functions develop starting at birth and they are hardwired into every individual. Brain researchers have found that these skills are fully developed by the time you ...