How Doth the Little Crocodile

How doth the little crocodile,
Improve his shinning tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile,
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

-Lewis Caroll


This poem is my favorite because Alice in Wonderland was always my most cherished Disney movie growing up. Everything about it excited my imagination and inspired me to dream. I would run outside and try talking to flowers for hours, searched for caterpillars and stayed on the look out for a white rabbit. I wanted to shrink down and explore the world from a whole new perspective and find lands unknown and uncharted. This little poem takes me back to a time when my imagination ran rampant and neither being asleep nor awake could keep me from adventures real or imagined.

Big Question Abstract

     I started reading the studies of Allan Snyder a professor at the Australian National University, he has recently been looking into autism and its connection to creative/ artistic genius. He believes that in shutting off a certain part of the brain we can in fact tap into our creative genius. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation (most commonly used in treating depression) he switches off the frontal temporal lobe and in doing this, has increased the creativity of test subjects. He hopes that in time anyone will be able to tap into their creative genius. Autism, considered a "mental malfunction" can in some cases direct the mind down the paths of artistic genius while not being able to access basic thought processes. I plan on following his research in order to better answer my question about unlocking the brain's potential. Allan Snyder believes that shutting off one part of the brain will unlock the other, however, what if his is accomplished and we can gain access to creative genius without being able to also use our brain's frontal lobe. This would be like growing wings at the cost of your eyesight, where would you direct your flight, avoid obstacles or appreciate your ability? If we can discover a way to unlock that unused creativity and maintain basic logic and comprehension than this would definitely be an amazing key to accessing the brain's full potential.