May talent be described predominantly as a function of exposure to a topic, or as a genetic predisposition towards one particular field of interest? Would such a genetic predisposition, if it exists, lead people towards a topic, allowing them to gain expansive knowledge about it, or does the predisposition actually prepare them for the topic with an innate set of well-established abilities? Of course, due to the complexity of the topic at hand, the best answer we are left with is an ambivalent "kind of both." The evidence that exists supports a multitude of conclusions, but nonetheless suggests that we are born with some sort of potential, however multifaceted, to accommodate new experiences, and that through any emphasis on a specific type of experience, knowledge and skill pertaining to that experience is amassed, and thus 'talent' develops.

Neuroplasticity – does this word mean that your brain is made of plastic? No. Jesus. Not even remotely. As one progresses through their life and gains expertise on a specific subject, they gain the ability to read sentences about that subject and quickly come to a conclusion as to how much truth is contained in the sentence, as well as inferring information about its speaker, from prior experiences. As soon as the brain interprets the statement, responses are quick to come, but specific responses, naturally, are only formed within the context of the individual. "No, the brain is composed of tissue, and neuroplasticity refers only to the ability of the brain to adapt over the course of its life," a neurobiologist might assert (Rakic, 2002), but only by virtue of the knowledge and experience he's amassed pertaining to the functions of the brain. A child, on the other hand, who's likely developed no concept of the brain at all, will simply answer "I don't know," or possibly even "yes," if we're to believe the implications of the Milgram experiment and if the questioner looks very authoritative (Milgram, 1963).

This Skinnerian mechanism of learning to respect authority through retribution works on the same principles, as incoming stimuli, pleasant or not, are accommodated through the subject's exercise of discretion or, more accurately, his increased understanding of the role that an authority is capable of entering into. More abstract experiences are accommodated in a less intuitive manner: one might compare the attempts of the brain to make sense of unfamiliar stimuli to that of a so-called 'dictionary attack' on an authentication algorithm, a series of guesses at the possible key based on the most probable solutions already discovered to similar algorithms. There is, however, one crucial difference: there is no source for the guesses: rather, the brain must simultaneously make guesses and identify trends in their success.

An interesting experiment to this effect was conducted on a more hard-coded level, so to speak, where cats were only capable of seeing either horizontal or vertical lines, and the subsequent development of their ocular cortex was analyzed by means of their behavior after the blinds were removed (Fregnac, Y. & Imbert, M, 1978). Quite predictably, the cats were only capable of perceiving or interpreting stimuli that they had previously experienced. This demonstrates one fundamental principle of the brain, albeit in somewhat of a tangential sense: the brain is only capable of making sense of what is presented to it beforehand, and develops systems in order to account for new stimuli. It should be noted, of course, that the ocular cortex is much more rigid in its structure following its initial formation when compared to the rest of the brain (Hubel and Wiesel, 1970), and thus exhibits comparatively less versatility. There's another anecdote to be told here about a woman who wore a machine that inverted her vision for a week – suffice it to say that such experiments have been associated with later motor/perceptual dysfunction.

What are the implications of brain plasticity for talent? Since we develop systems in our brains only to accommodate stimuli as it arrives, it's completely understandable that a baby who's repeatedly exposed to one specific stimuli will, after an initial struggle, finally form an understanding of its nature. There is, unfortunately, a fundamental problem in differentiating this from a genetic predisposition towards a specific ability – if such a predisposition is already present in the parents (as it must be if we're to assert a genetic basis for any perception), how are we to know that they're not simply expecting the same of their children, and nurturing the ability as much as possible from birth?

There are two ways to overcome this problem. The first is to analyze the children of parents who are widely agreed to excel at something when the children are placed into adoption, where its caregivers don't understand any abilities that the children might have. For both ethical and legal reasons, this is often impractical. Rather, we can look to the extreme successes of some with regards to nourishing an ability in their children, and compare them to relatively large failures in others who've attempted similar tasks.

Bach will be my next example here. Bach's father, as you'll find, was an organist himself, and likewise, the young Johannes was subjected to what must have been a nearly endless amount of music composed in European traditions, receiving instruction on it throughout nearly his entire childhood – but was this the sole basis for his abilities? As you'll find, Bach's musical techniques advanced far beyond his initial training throughout his life – his use of contrapuntal melodic arrangement, for instance, was nearly unprecedented, and certainly unheard of within the context of his family's earlier work. Rather, it was through Bach's own exploration of music, the endless interpretation and systematic implementation of new stimuli, that crafted his musical ability to what we still hear. Perhaps his genetic makeup was responsible for hurling a piece of clay onto the worktable, but the sculptor of experience is what created the result.

The sheer influence of the brain's plasticity is already being harnessed in order to treat a wide variety of neurological disorders. A Dr. Merzenich, for instance, is attempting to treat patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and autism by the introduction of new stimuli in order to restructure parts of the brain that the 'disorder' has been shown to minimize (Miller, 2004). Regardless of this, a useful understanding of the exact mechanism behind brain plasticity and the brain's ability to create entirely new systems to accomodate incoming stimuli would be absolutely invaluable to modern psychology.