BBC: Are artistic brains different? -2

The second expert to answer our question about the artistic brain is Mike, a BBC World Service listener from Malawi. Mike is a self-taught painter who creates large, colorful pictures in his studio. According to him, artistic ability isn't something you're born with- it can be learned, as he explained to BBC World Service's CrowdScience. 

I had this other student...he was really at the zero, like, he could not draw- at all. So, I gave him some tips, and in a month, he was really good- he was like really surprised, blown away, he never expexted it. So, there are some things that are trainable, it's like a bike. In my case, I learned how to do those things without anyone telling me, you know like, if you are drawing the face, the human face, the distance between your eyes is the same as one of your eyes. 

Mike gives tips to his students- helpful pieces of advice about how to do something, in this case, to paint. After getting Mike's tips, one of his students really improved and started painting much better. Mike was blown away- an informal way to say very impressed or surprised. 

Like learning to ride a bike, Mike thinks that painting is trainable- a word from American English meaning that it can be taught or trained. For him, this is proof that artists' brains are not so different after all. 

So, there we have it- two different options, but no final answer to our question. Still, some scientists think there may be third possibility: everyone's brain works by focussing on some areas and ignoring others, making a kind of jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces. Maybe all of us-you, me, Mozart and Jimi Hendrix- are just filling in the missing pieces our own way. 

Speaking of Mozart, Neil, it's time to reveal the answer to your question. 

Right. I asked how old child prodigy Mozart was when he first composed music. 

I said he was five years old...so, was I right?

Your answer was correct! Mozart was five when fist wrote music, and by the age of six he had performed in front of the Emperor of Austria- twice! Now there's an artistic brain!

OK, Neil, let's recap the vocabulary from this programme, starting with child prodigy- a young child, like Mozart, with a great talent in something. 

Processing describes how your brain makes sense of the information it receives. 

The gist of something is a general understanding of it, without the details. 

Tips are useful pieces of advice about how to do somethign better. 

If you are blown away, you are very impressed or surprised by something. 

And finally, trainable means able to trained or taught, in American English.