Elijah. Go. Elijah. Rise.

Practice Makes Perfect:

Wilcox, Sullivan, Nguyen, Brown, Glover, Bleacher, Jackson, Wilcox, Walker.

PMID: 7.15.1.20

Abstract:
Often resiliency and discipline are considered the holy grails of personal success- especially in the scientific field where more fluid measures of ability such as talent and inner-nature are difficult to measure. Over the last decade, neuroscientists have researched dopaminergic patterns within high-achieving persons in an attempt to discern a correlation between high dopamine releases in the brain and objective measures of success. Famously, the 2004 study, Dopamine transmission in the human striatum during monetary reward tasks, (Zald, Boileau et al.,) discovered that the effects of dopamine in the striatum caused high effort and dedication in the completion of tasks, whereas dopamine in the bilateral insula caused low-effort and laziness within the completion of tasks. We sought to find what may cause these different dopaminergic patterns by measuring several test subjects as they attempted a fine motor skill with the reward of possible social validation upon success. Contrary to what has often been assumed about the brain, test subjects that initially scored low at fine motor skills often received the greatest dopaminergic rewards, even in small bouts of progress due to the noticeable effects of deliberate and meaningful practice. On the other hand, subjects that initially scored high, who had effortless paths toward the completion of the task, generally gave up or released their focus and found themselves plateauing. In this instance, natural talent became a burden to the brain as the minds of those that were naturally gifted became understimulated and unrewarded. Near the end of the trial, those who had begun as top scorers found themselves left behind due to self-sabotage and lack of motivation, whereas those who had begun at the bottom became front runners in speed, internal focus, resilience, and thoroughness. Our findings hypothesize that adversity, even internally, is one of the greatest tools towards forming successful habits and gives credence to the old adage: “Practice makes perfect.”