How do "gifts" and "skills" work?

Some people are born with the ability to draw very well while others can only draw stick people. Also some never study for tests and others spend all day studying. My question is how does this work and what part of the brain are these types of things coming from or basically how do gifts work?

How do "gifts" and "skills" work?
i can only speak of music and math as a gift. The brain must have a special open gate to conceive these concepts readily and let the subconcious work on an answer, These answers then come correctly to the conscious mind and all the other options which were considered to be not as good were tossed out in favor of the best answer.


I am not sure if they have done brain scans and how this works, but I am certain that genetics play a role, thus mathematics and music are often gifts passed on to offspring.


Early exposure to these gifted ideas has to be available or the gift may be lost.


I was mathematically gifted, as was my mother. On the other hand music is something I could never grasp, I could hardly learn to play the piano.


Somehow these gifts are connected to what is called the "flow" where a person is so finely tuned and connected to the topic that they block out all other distractions including time, space, and many discribe it as an out of body type of experience: you are tuned into this "channel" if you may and that is all that your brain is processing at the peak performance in the gifted field. I could read a calculus book over time in two weeks in college and take the final exam with the class and get a perfect score. But if you ask me how I did it I have no explanation for it, I coud not teach someone how to do math because I most of the time had no conscious ideas in my head when I was solving a problem. Of course I had to remember all the rules and formulas of math but if I forgot I could easily derive most of them for more elementary concepts


It must be similar to idiot savants where their brain is able to process some aspect of input at a very high rate while failing completely at others. A gifted person is finely tuned to a specifc subject while remaining within normal range in their ability to deal with other topics.





Memory has to do this studying for a test - some people can memorize much better than others and that is usually the reason why some poeple get a way with less studying. The level of interest in a subject greatly influences how well you do in it. If you fear a topic and don't like to study it, it will make it more difficult for you.





That is not the answer to how the brain actually processes these thing, just what I have been able to read and understand about it - I'm not gifted to read and understand neuroscience.





A skill is something that is learned by practice. Even a gifted person has to usually have some practice but for them it is more or less effortless. Some skill like basket ball playing requires a lot of practice even by those who are very gifted to play it. The more motor skill are needed the more it rquires practive. Mathematics or a gift to learn new languages are mainly brain activities so the "practice" happens in the brain and most of it at a subconscious or abstract level where you really cannot state in words what you are thinking . I am sure basket bal players also go into a "flow" when they practice shooting baskets... that way it becames part of you subconcious snf becomes part of you rather than something you learned to do and have to think how to do it. You just do it with deep concentration, letting everything else go unnoticed





I am sure it has to do with the amount of concentration needed to hunt a prey or to escape an enemy 0 lie and death situations where the brain goes into a hispeed evauationof everything that is going on to be succesfull. And that ability of the brain may have lead into its use in other aspects of life,.
Reply:A gift is something you're born with. I'm not sure what part of the brain gifts come from if they come from the brain at all, but if you're gifted, you're just naturally good at doing something. A skill is acquired over time.





Let's say you're gifted in art so you are naturally good at drawing or painting stuff, it comes easily to you. But someone who's not gifted in art can take classes and lessons to become good at drawing or painting (skill).