If you looked at two people's brains, you couldn't necessarily tell which one would have a higher intellectual capacity

"Imagine someone who would be a really capable mathematician, but they were never exposed to math," Mercado said. "They may have more diverse modules than someone who's a professional mathematician who has less potential, but has been training their whole lives. So [the mathematician's] capacity would still be greater, even though they had less [module] diversity [initially]," he said.

Mercado notes that cognitive plasticity is not the same thing as intelligence. "One's about learning and one's about performance. Intelligence is a measure of what you can do, and cognitive plasticity is a measure of what your potential is," he said.

Interesting article (read in full). Liked the term "cognitive plasticity" and contrast to intelligence. I wonder what child abuse does to these "cortical modules" and how the abuse might limit one's ability to learn from observation and experience.