Curant esays and thoughts.  From an unpublished project,                                             "Following"

Behavior is a curious matter. A question always looms, nature or nurture. Do we behave the way we do simply because we are born that way, and with some influence from our circumstances change very little? Or, are we predominantly formed by our environment and the circumstances of our particular and personal history? But what constitutes even the terms Nature and Nurture can be contentious. What about the internal environment, the brain, neurotransmitters, and hormones that are effected by stimuli such as stress and trauma? Aren’t these things present as we make the decisions we do, and the behaviors that unfold.

“Occam’s Razor “states, among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.” To me this means, what gets the job done with the least working parts is best, most efficient.  What I would add, is this intern does not mean that you should use simple thinking to produce an elegant answer.  It may seem counterintuitive, but keeping your life simple often includes grasping the full complexity of the questions of that life.  Most of the brain is fully developed by adolescence except the frontal lobes of the cortical cortex. This is the region most important too critical and what is commonly call executive thinking. It is known that this region is also the inhibitor to more impulsive, snap decisions. The frontal lobes of the cortex are the last portion of the brain to fully develop, usually at around 25 years old or so. One therapy on this is that more time is needed to assimilate enough experiences of everyday life to fine tune this decision making apparatus. In regards to nature or nurture, much of the other parts of the brain can be said to be influenced more by genetics. But the frontal lobes as well as its relationship to the amygdala are most influenced by environment, as it develops in a particularly sensitive time of life 14 to 25 years of age.