From "gift" to high capacity,

it is the path of knowledge.

Since when do we know the existence of the potential?

Since the dawn of time, man has always evolved thanks to his intelligence. It has known how to adapt to its environment, which has allowed it to be at the peak of evolution. Its potential has not stopped growing. But one wonders:
His intelligence grew naturally because it was anchored in his genes, or the environment made him intelligent.
Many seekers ... are searching!

But also a new question appears thanks to the investigations of this century: the high intellectual capacities.

Is it this minority that has made man advance? Or is it the group effect?
It is true that the spark of the original fire has been saved and enhanced by some of our ancestors. The ones that had observation, creativity, and fearlessness in them. It is possible that this handful of humans gradually pass on this capicity in inheritance.

History saves the tests in memory.

All the pages of the history books, of each civilization, of each country, tell us the brilliant moments of characters who have become illustrious.
What have they done so that their feats or reflections reach us. They have simply distinguished themselves by their mind, this crucial difference of reasoning in strategy, business, art, or science.
Not all of them can be cited because many are unknown and nevertheless inseparable from the evolution of man (Aztec civilization, Egyptienne, gecque, etc.), since they are provided with the potential of high intellectual capacities.
But human nature, in its ignorance, believed that this ability was reserved for an elite. The scarcity made the "wise" unique because this knowledge was protected, secret. This aberration has surely been a brake on our evolution, maintaining obscurantism for several centuries. Great minds have appeared more with the democratization of education, slowly and then faster and faster.

The explosion of research on the human brain

The 21st century will be that of the brain. Research progress is recent, prodigious, and cumulative. The promises are dizzying and the best is yet to come.

The turn of the century has seen, for the first time, biology have the concepts, tools and instruments necessary to observe the living thing in operation thanks to a prodigious development of scientific instrumentation, and, in particular, brain images. Although it has become a common practice to "pass a scan", it is sometimes forgotten that the principle of these instruments was not known until the 1940-1970s and that the first images of living brain did not date more than the end of the century. XX. It was the conjunction of research in biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, supported by the exponential power of computing, which allowed these instruments to become commonplace. As a result, not only did brain imaging become popular, but scientists dared to link the activation of certain brain areas with states of consciousness, which seemed utopian 20 years ago.

At the intersection of brain research and learning sciences, the neurosciences of education are invited into the classroom today. Are they capable of making teaching practices more effective and helping students to learn better?

The debate arouses passions around the immense potentialities evoked in numerous research projects dedicated to the improvement of learning methods, for which the focus would be on the functioning of the brain. Neurosciences of education, mind, brain and education or even neuro-education, the vocabulary is not lacking to designate this "young science", whose objective is to better understand the brain and the cognitive processes that are linked to it.

Temporary conclusion

Studies on the brain provide elements of response to the mechanisms of construction of knowledge by students, research clues on the origin of certain learning problems and allow to consider the problems related to early childhood from a new perspective.
The repercussions of the fascination and 'scientific' power that neuroimaging has on the public, teachers and policy makers, for example, the willingness of some neuroscientists to transfer the results of their research to the classroom and to train teachers in the most effective pedagogical methods. This "neurophilia" may also be the source of misinterpretations of research results, called here neuromyths .