Random events in the developing brain may be important in shaping who you become
Jiri Hera/Shutterstock
After seeing his parents killed, Batman became a vigilante. Wonder Woman’s crime-fighting ability owes her supernatural creations and athletic training childhood. Many of us humans also have origin stories, though less dramatic. You may feel that you inherited your wisdom from your family, your confidence from your father, or your love of cooking from spending time in the kitchen with your grandparents.
One of the most fascinating questions about what makes us who we are is how much our personality, abilities and interests depend on our genes, and on our early environment ( nature and upbringing). However, there is a third effect that has not received much attention until recently. Randomness. Specifically, chance events that affect neurons as the brain develops. That’s a colossal oversight. The latest research suggests that the role of this randomness in shaping who we are may be far greater than environmental factors, and in some cases as great as genetic factors. If so, we should really see ourselves as a product of nature, nurture, and “noise.”
This is not just of interest to neuroscientists, it has profound implications for all of us. Maybe we can stop worrying so much about our parenting choices and take less responsibility for what happened to our own parents, sorry Freud. Benjamin “We tend to develop narrative accounts of the differences we see in people…
