Morgan Freeman says, "The Kodály method teaches children to think of music as a three-dimensional space."
Philo Farnsworth invented television.
Richard T. James invented the Slinky.
Stochastic resonance can boost weak signals. Freeman says that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DL-PFC) "plays a key role in problem solving." Freeman says that PDE4B has a detrimental effect on memory formation.
Thanks for watching. Follow for more videos.
#cosmosspacescience
#throughthewormhole
#season7
#episode4
#cosmology
#astronomy
#spacetime
#spacescience
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#geniuses
Philo Farnsworth invented television.
Richard T. James invented the Slinky.
Stochastic resonance can boost weak signals. Freeman says that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DL-PFC) "plays a key role in problem solving." Freeman says that PDE4B has a detrimental effect on memory formation.
Thanks for watching. Follow for more videos.
#cosmosspacescience
#throughthewormhole
#season7
#episode4
#cosmology
#astronomy
#spacetime
#spacescience
#space
#nasa
#morganfreeman
#spacedocumentary
#geniuses
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:01It lies somewhere in the human mind.
00:05It brings mathematical insight.
00:08Sparks artistic inspiration.
00:11It's the gift to see what others can't.
00:15But is genius only for a rare few?
00:19Or do we all have untapped potential?
00:23Now neuroscience is beginning to unleash our mind's hidden powers.
00:27Engineering eureka moments.
00:31And augmenting biology with technology.
00:35To unlock the genius inside us all.
00:43Space.
00:45Time.
00:46Life itself.
00:50The secrets of the cosmos lie through the wormhole.
00:57Genius.
00:59Music has Stevie Wonder.
01:01Physics, Einstein.
01:03Literature, Emily Dickinson.
01:06Every generation is blessed with men and women who have exceptional minds.
01:11Genius has many facets.
01:12From remarkable memory to inspiration to invention.
01:13But what about you?
01:14As neuroscientists uncover the secrets of our brains, they are beginning to unlock the hidden talents
01:15in every one of us.
01:16We may not all stop us.
01:18But, as neuroscientists uncover the secrets of our brains, they are beginning to unlock the hidden talents in every one of us.
01:29inspiration to invention, but what about you?
01:34As neuroscientists uncover the secrets of our brains, they are beginning to unlock the
01:40hidden talents in every one of us.
01:43We may not all start with Einstein's mind, but why can't we all become geniuses?
01:58Jason Padgett is a mathematical phenomenon, but he wasn't born this way.
02:05One night in his early 30s, Jason's life and mind were completely changed.
02:13I heard almost more than felt this deep thud and saw what was just like a bright puff of
02:20white light.
02:21And the next thing I knew, I was on my knees, just getting punched and kicked from every
02:26direction.
02:27Before the mugging, Jason was a furniture salesman, a college dropout.
02:33He had no interest in math.
02:34I absolutely hated math.
02:36I really believed it didn't apply to anything, and there was no use for it.
02:42But the injuries to Jason's brain somehow unlocked a new and exceptional way of looking
02:48at the world.
02:52Everything that was curved before looks like it has little edges.
02:58So all the smoothness of everything is gone.
03:01No matter what shape I looked at, I could cut it into a certain number of triangles to
03:06make that shape.
03:07make that shape.
03:08But I never had noticed it before.
03:11It just made me realize that this connection with triangles and shapes was everywhere, which
03:16then just seemed obvious that it was mathematical.
03:20Now, whenever Jason looks at mathematical equations, his mind immediately transforms them into complex geometric
03:29shapes.
03:30His mind imposes the same geometry on the natural world wherever he sees patterns.
03:36Sometimes it almost feels like a little superpower.
03:43I see the world as pure geometry.
03:45One-time underachiever now studies advanced number theory and makes award-winning drawings
03:52of complex mathematical concepts.
03:59But what exactly changed in his brain to turn Jason into a mathematical genius?
04:06And could we engineer the same changes in our own brains?
04:10That's what University of Miami neuroscientist Britt Brogard wanted to find out.
04:20Britt scanned Jason's brain while he reviewed a sequence of equations.
04:28She found that his brain had rewired itself after his injury.
04:34Most people use both hemispheres to process mathematics.
04:38But Jason's brain relies on newly formed neural circuits exclusively in his left hemisphere.
04:45These areas of his brain were so damaged that they triggered extra connectivity in other areas
04:51of his brain and allowing those areas to communicate in ways that were not possible before.
04:57Britt believes these unusual patterns of brain activity trigger Jason's geometrical vision.
05:03It's a form of a condition called synesthesia.
05:10There are different forms of synesthesia.
05:15Someone with color synesthesia might sense numbers as patches of vivid colors.
05:20A person with smell synesthesia might hear music and smell the scent of fresh-brewed coffee.
05:26Jason's synesthesia combines mathematics with his sense of sight.
05:35So when he sees anything, he instantly sees its underlying geometry.
05:41It's as if he has x-ray vision revealing the mathematics that underpins the entire world.
05:50Synesthesia often enhances your cognitive abilities.
05:56Synesthesia is sort of a key to unlock unconscious or dormant areas of the brain.
06:02Brit thinks we all have the potential to unlock these abilities without a blow to the head.
06:09She's finding promising results in a psychedelic drug called psilocybin.
06:15It's the ingredient in magic mushrooms that makes them magical.
06:21When we use it in experiments, we use it in a pure form where it's isolated,
06:28so we can control the amount that we give to subjects.
06:33Psilocybin supercharges the brain to handle more sensory information.
06:38The result is a synesthesia-like experience,
06:43where test subjects perceive an explosion of patterns and colors
06:48triggered by senses other than sight.
06:52Synesthesia that is typically induced is sound to color synesthesia,
06:58so people hear colors in some sense.
07:02But the mechanism underlying that may be similar to the mechanism underlying Jason's synesthesia.
07:09If researchers like Brit can develop legal versions of drugs like psilocybin,
07:15many more of us might soon discover we have exceptional mental abilities.
07:20In principle, we could all become geniuses by rewiring our brains.
07:26Of course, the trick is how to do that.
07:28You should definitely not go out and hit yourself in the head.
07:32A blow to the head or a drug can transform your mind.
07:37But is there a way to nurture synesthesia and the inspiration it can bring?
07:43Albert Einstein had a passion for music.
07:46He describes his biggest stroke of genius, the theory of relativity, as a musical perception.
08:02Neuroscientist and music teacher Dr. Martin Gardner thinks music is the key to getting kids on the path towards genius.
08:08Music provides a fantastic opportunity to strengthen your mind.
08:14It's one of the most marvelous inventions of humanity.
08:18Are you ready? Here we go.
08:23In decades of research, Martin followed children's academic achievements as they grew from age 7 to 35.
08:30He found that the strongest predictor of academic success is whether a student receives musical training at an early age.
08:46All right, I have a new song for you boys and girls. Are you ready?
08:52Listening ears, it goes like this.
08:54Martin believes one specific musical teaching system hits all the right neurological notes.
09:00It's called the Kodai Method.
09:10It teaches children to think of music as a three-dimensional space, one they can physically explore.
09:17You could call this an artificial form of synesthesia, transforming sound into geometry.
09:23All right, so when you get your bag, you're to lay out your hearts in your workspace.
09:32In another exercise, students spell out the rhythm of a song exercising parts of the brain normally used in language.
09:40So I'm going to clap the pattern for you. You're going to clap it back.
09:45Kids taught with the Kodai Method usually outperform their peers in math and reading skills later in life.
09:52There's a lot of integration going on, and I think that's the most central thing that music helps us develop,
10:00is how to apply this kind of integration.
10:09When you play music, your brain is doing many things at once.
10:13You read notes on the page, use your muscles to play them,
10:17listen to their sounds reverberating, and keep a perfect sense of timing.
10:23To perform all these functions at once, your brain needs a good conductor.
10:28The prefrontal cortex stops various parts of the brain from stepping on one another,
10:34turning discord into a harmonious symphony.
10:39The more these children learn to blend music, geometry, and language,
10:44the stronger their prefrontal cortexes grow.
10:47As we walk together...
10:50And the closer they get to genius.
10:53Music helps build some kind of a bridge that allows you to begin to use these kinds of highest areas.
11:00Music helps many areas of our brain work together in a symphony of creativity.
11:14But you can't write a symphony unless you have the inspiration for that first musical phrase.
11:20Where do Eureka moments come from?
11:23Do we have to sit around and wait for them?
11:26Or can we make them happen on cue?
11:33Eureka!
11:34It's an ancient Greek word meaning,
11:37I've found it.
11:39Its connection to genius started with the inventor Archimedes,
11:43who supposedly shouted it after finding the solution to a problem while sitting in a bathtub.
11:52Inspiration often strikes at odd moments.
11:55Philo T. Farnsworth dreamed up the idea of TV while plowing a potato field.
12:03Einstein dreamed up relativity riding on a train.
12:08Do certain environments help trigger breakthrough ideas?
12:12And if we knew the answer to that,
12:15could we create places where genius could strike any of us?
12:29Cognitive research scientist John Cuneos wants each and every one of us to have a Eureka moment.
12:35In 1943, Richard James was an engineer aboard a U.S. Navy ship.
12:40He was installing some instruments with springs.
12:45One of those springs got loose and started bouncing around as if it had a life of its own.
12:51In that instant, James had an aha moment.
12:55He realized that that spring could be the basis of a toy.
12:59People in all walks of life have aha moments.
13:03They're sudden insights that confer a new perspective, a new way of looking at things.
13:08For 15 years, John and his colleagues have been studying these sudden genius insights,
13:17trying to find exactly what triggers them.
13:20But how do you study aha moments?
13:24Especially because they can happen anytime, anywhere.
13:29Getting coffee, taking a walk, even eating lunch.
13:36We started at the very moment of insight, when an idea pops into awareness.
13:44And we traced it backwards in time.
13:49To reveal all of the brain processes that led up to that very moment.
13:53And have a seat here.
13:58Before he can rewind a mind, John captures moments of insight by using a challenging word association game.
14:06While tracking brain activity with an EEG, he shows subjects three words and gives them 15 seconds to say another word they have in common.
14:16Give it a try.
14:19Can you find the common word?
14:22Sun.
14:24How about this one?
14:26Fire.
14:28After each answer, the subject presses a button to indicate whether they got their answer from methodical analysis,
14:35or from a sudden moment of insight.
14:38Sign.
14:41The results show that answers based on a eureka moment are about 15% more accurate than those from methodical analysis.
14:53And the brain scans allow John to pinpoint where these aha moments originated.
15:02While analysis lights up the left side of the brain in the visual cortex, eurekas come from the right side in the right temporal lobe.
15:10At the moment of insight, there's a burst of what are called gamma waves.
15:17These are fast brain waves, about 40 per second.
15:20And that reflects the new idea or the solution popping into awareness.
15:30Now that John has mapped what a mental breakthrough looks like, he wants to find out if certain environments can foster them.
15:37And then Ted Cruz is just next to him.
15:40So before he starts the word game, some subjects watch a comedy show.
15:44He makes the other crazy people look not crazy.
15:50While others watched a scary movie.
15:57It does not work out why someone who is all superficial gets more popular when you make...
16:03The comedic subjects not only got more right answers, but they also had a moment of insight more often than the people who were scared.
16:12Mood plays a very large role in whether you're open to aha moments or you're thinking in an analytical fashion.
16:22When you have a sense of threat, the scope of your attention narrows to what that threat is.
16:28When you're feeling happy, that means you're feeling safe, that there's no threat.
16:37And that gives the person a sense of freedom to explore long shot ideas, which is the stuff of creativity.
16:44He's like the school kid who claims he knows karate but won't show you any moves.
16:48Inspiration needs the right state of mind.
16:51You can't force aha moments. They're like cats. You can coax them, but you can't command them.
16:58But you can create conditions that make aha moments possible or more likely.
17:04In fact, John's research has discovered several other eureka do's and don'ts.
17:11A room painted blue or green is inspirational.
17:16But the brain sees a red room as a threat and narrows its thinking.
17:22A Russian river and puppies are good for eurekas.
17:27But loud sounds being nagged and deadlines are inspiration killers.
17:34Anyone can have an aha moment.
17:36It's part of what distinguishes human beings as creative thinkers.
17:41The trick is to create the right circumstances, the right environment to maximize them.
17:50It's too bad we live in a noisy, distraction-filled world.
17:56But one scientist has found a way to turn noise to our advantage.
18:00Not to distract us.
18:02Are you ready?
18:03But to move our brains closer to genius.
18:11The great piano virtuoso Glenn Gould had many strange habits.
18:17For one, he always hummed when he played.
18:20And when he studied music, he did so to the accompaniment of several TVs and radios, all blaring at full volume.
18:30It was an eccentric technique.
18:33But Gould may have been onto something.
18:37There is new evidence that noise, instead of overwhelming or distracting us, might actually take us a step closer to genius.
18:47To most of us, noise is a nuisance.
18:57Something we tried to escape.
18:59But not neuroscientist Rory Cohen Karush.
19:02On our everyday life, there is sometimes a lot of noise, like here in the construction site.
19:09But the noise that I'm using is quite different than the noise that you hear here.
19:14So, why won't we go to somewhere quieter, where I can explain you?
19:22At his lab at the University of Oxford, Roy is injecting noise directly into human brains to try to make people smarter.
19:30Noise can be distracting.
19:33But when we use a certain level of white noise, it can actually really improve cognitive and learning capacities.
19:46White noise.
19:49Rivers naturally produce it.
19:53It helps people sleep.
19:56We even have apps for it.
19:57Roy theorizes that a very specific kind of white noise can actually supercharge our cognitive abilities.
20:07It's based on very complicated ideas that is called stochastic resonance.
20:12When you add just the right amount of white noise to a very weak signal, some of the frequencies in the white noise match those in the signal and resonate with them, boosting the signal.
20:22This stochastic resonance can work with any type of noise in sound or vision.
20:30So you have a picture here, but you really cannot detect reliably what is it in this picture.
20:37Can you make out what this is?
20:39If you're going to add white noise at a certain level, you're going to see that it is the Big Ben.
20:48Now if you're going to add too much noise to that, it's not going to be any more beneficial.
20:53So the noise needs to be at a certain level.
20:58Too much noise or too little noise is not going to improve your ability.
21:03Neuroscientists have shown that individual neurons use stochastic resonance to boost weak signals.
21:09So Roy decided to try it out on a whole mind by adding electrical noise to his subject's brains.
21:18Hello, Michael. Please take a seat.
21:21Roy designed a test that delivers a targeted burst of electrical noise to a specific area of a subject's brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
21:33This region plays a key role in problem solving and is also heavily connected to other parts of the brain.
21:41The idea behind it is that adding noise will increase firing of brain cells and therefore will lead to changes in their brain cells.
21:56Are you ready?
21:57I'm ready, yeah.
21:58Okay, great.
21:59For 30 minutes, the subject plays a specially designed video game where the player solves a series of cognitive challenges in a robot factory.
22:11While this is happening, through two electrodes on the scalp, the device floods the brain painlessly with electrical white noise.
22:21A separate control group also plays the same game, wearing the same cap but with no stimulation.
22:27Once it's finished, we repeat this procedure multiple days and eventually we assess how much did they change in their abilities.
22:38We found that they learn faster and better compared to those who receive placebo stimulation.
22:45Roy believes the white noise stimulates all the electrical systems across the brain and wakes them up.
22:55The supercharged brains improved in both the short and long term.
23:06Half a year later, when Roy tested the subjects again, he discovered the mental improvements were still there.
23:12This breakthrough technique could also push us one step closer to genius.
23:19Imagine one day being able to supercharge any part of your brain and become a genius at any task.
23:29The idea in the past was that we are born and we are going to be genius or not.
23:38But now we know that our brain is more plastic. We can change it.
23:44Where can it go? It's a $1 million question.
23:47We're already beginning to use technology to supercharge our neural pathways.
23:57But there's another way we might unleash the hidden genius in our minds.
24:02If we dare.
24:04We could tinker with our brain's basic biology.
24:07To solve any problem, you have to get from A to B.
24:18The trouble is, in real life, there are so many paths to choose from.
24:25And most of them lead to dead ends.
24:29Only a genius can remember every single turn that led to a blind alley.
24:34And which moved them toward their goal.
24:38But what if we could engineer our brains to remember far more?
24:43We'd have perspective to see the bigger picture and see the path to genius.
24:55John Giorgio, a neuroscience researcher in Toronto, believes memory is vital to everything we do.
25:02Without memories, we can't do many of the basic functions, such as finding our way to work, recognizing familiar people, learning to do tasks.
25:16Without memories and learning, we're essentially unable to function in daily life.
25:21But John also believes we have the power to make our memories better through genetic engineering.
25:31We have systematically tried to manipulate the genes that we feel are important in learning and memory.
25:39In theory, we can all become genius if we were to make modifications in the way our brain works.
25:53To understand and improve human memory, John starts small, with mice.
26:00What we're trying to do here is to measure the learning and memory performance of the mice.
26:06So what we do is we take a mouse and we place it in a round cylindrical pool of water.
26:11And the mouse has to find its way to a submerged, hidden platform.
26:19The mouse and John's test cannot see the platform because a non-toxic paint has been added to the water.
26:26The mouse's only means of orienting itself are visual cues hung on the walls.
26:31Overhead, a camera tracks the path the mouse takes, recording time, distance, and the path traveled.
26:42On the first trial, the mouse will take anywhere from 60 to 90 seconds to find the location of the escape platform because it's essentially a random process.
26:54But then, with each repeated trial, they get better at it.
26:58The more times the mice swim the maze, the better they remember the location of the hidden platform.
27:06But John wanted to speed up their learning process.
27:10He wanted to enhance the mice's memory so they would remember after only one try.
27:20The key for John was targeting the hippocampus, a part of the brain crucial to memory formation.
27:25As memories form, neurons send electrical and chemical signals back and forth until an enzyme called PDE4B shuts down the signal between the neurons.
27:40No more communication means the window closes for building bigger, richer memories.
27:44And the mouse can only focus on the water in front of its nose.
27:51So John created a mutation in the gene for PDE4B.
27:57The PDE4B mutant mice that we created have a mutation that impairs the function of the enzyme,
28:03which results in neurons being able to communicate with each other for an extended period of time.
28:10And presumably, this is what allows the mice to be better at encoding memories and recalling memories.
28:17The result was exactly what he expected.
28:24Where the non-mutant mice take up to 90 seconds to solve the maze, the mutant mice completed in less than 30.
28:31The mutant mice were able to perform this task a lot better.
28:39They were faster and remembered the location of the escape platform much better.
28:45The mutant's PDE4B enzyme allows more time for the mice to build stronger memories.
28:51The mice get smarter.
28:53But mice aren't the only ones that can have their brains pushed past normal levels.
29:00Human brains also use the PDE4B enzyme.
29:04But if we were to mutate the PDE4B gene in humans, it's possible that the same effect could be recreated.
29:14We believe that, yes, we can potentially improve cognitive function in humans.
29:23A stronger memory wouldn't just help us remember details like directions.
29:29It could give us a larger window of experience, leading to the kind of visionary genius that people like Steve Jobs or Jackson Pollock had.
29:38The ability to step back from the small details and see the big picture.
29:45The road to this type of visionary genius may come from directly tinkering with the biology of our brain.
29:53We are indeed getting closer to unlocking the key to genius inside of us.
29:59Will it be possible to take a pill and become genius?
30:03Theoretically, it is possible.
30:06Human brains have evolved over millions of years.
30:10We may soon be able to leap far beyond our evolutionary limits.
30:14But should we make that leap?
30:17Or is there a reason we're not all geniuses?
30:19Bigger, faster, smarter.
30:20Almost daily, science seems to promise a new kind of supercharged mind.
30:33Diets promise a burst of intelligence.
30:36Drugs promise to boost attention or memory.
30:39But if we do bop that pill, what might the consequences be?
30:48Instead of being a blessing, could genius be a curse?
30:54In Warwick, England, psychology professor Thomas Hills has come to the conclusion that genius is overrated.
31:05His local pub is the perfect place to demonstrate this.
31:14It's a complicated context, an environment that requires you to be able to choose beers, to be able to talk with different people.
31:22It's a challenging situation, and minds like ours are adapted for this kind of thing.
31:27We tend to think supercharged brains could only make us better.
31:32They'll help us deal with life's complex problems.
31:35But Thomas disagrees.
31:37His reason?
31:39Evolution.
31:41So there's this idea that more is better, right?
31:43More memory, more focus, more self-control, more willpower.
31:46But you have to realize that evolution's been sort of selecting for our minds for millions of years.
31:54And if those things were just good, why wouldn't we have minds like that already?
32:01Looking at the human mind through the lens of evolution explains why most of us aren't geniuses.
32:06In a complex and ever-changing environment, our minds don't need to be exceptional.
32:13They need to find the right balance between accuracy and speed.
32:18So evolution has to pay attention to both how quickly we want to be able to do things, as well as how accurately we want to be able to do things.
32:26And a dart game is a good analogy for this kind of problem.
32:28You can see first I'm trying to be fairly accurate, but as I increase my speed, I start to lose that accuracy.
32:39So this represents that balance between being focused and taking your time and being too fast and throwing too many things, maybe in the wrong directions.
32:48Our brains have been guided by evolution to be pretty good at many things.
32:59Not geniuses at one thing.
33:02Our mental limits in any one area are all too apparent.
33:06Take our memories.
33:07Hey everybody.
33:08Hi.
33:10Wanna play a pub game?
33:11Yeah.
33:13Alright, so in this game, I'm gonna give you a category.
33:16And you say all the items from that category you can think of.
33:20Thomas is giving what's called a semantic fluency test to some of his students.
33:25It measures verbal memory.
33:28Jay, your category is occupations. Go.
33:31Doctor, lawyer, barman, cleaner, plumber, electrician.
33:37Clinicians use this test to measure brain health.
33:41Extra, actor.
33:43Everyone has 60 seconds.
33:44Window cleaner.
33:45Window cleaner.
33:46But most start to stumble a lot earlier.
33:48Jar, filler.
33:53We may know hundreds of professions, but most people can only recall about 10 to 20 in a minute.
34:00Not all of our memory is instantly available.
34:04I smell the jars!
34:05But what if it was?
34:08Polar bear.
34:09Mouse.
34:10Lion.
34:11What if every animal you ever learned was right there at the tip of your tongue?
34:16Tiger.
34:17Horse.
34:18Snake.
34:19Alligator.
34:20Dog.
34:21Squirrel.
34:22Let's suppose you had a perfect memory.
34:23Do you wanna remember every blade of grass you've ever seen?
34:26Do you wanna remember every sleight you've ever experienced in your life?
34:29Every breakup?
34:30Every time you've ever stubbed your toe?
34:32How well do you wanna remember those things?
34:35What may seem at first like a superpower might quickly become a curse.
34:41You could remember everything you've ever experienced, and that might make it more difficult to learn new things.
34:47Right?
34:48Forgetting helps you learn new contexts and learn new ways to deal with new problems.
34:53Dog.
34:54Cat.
34:55Horse.
34:56Spider.
34:57In other words, forgetting is just as important a mental skill as remembering.
35:07Thomas says it's critical to understand that our evolved brain is a system-seeking balance operating within limits in order to survive a complex world.
35:18Improving on what nature gave us may seem tempting, but the brain has taken millions of years to evolve.
35:26Supercharge one area, and you could upset the balance.
35:30Geniuses like Van Gogh, Tesla, or mathematician John Nash had incredible minds, but also struggled to connect to other people, understand society, or even experience deep emotions.
35:44So there's sort of a mythology around genius, right, that it's kind of potentially a curse.
35:51We see this in different types of individuals who've gained fame because they knew a lot of different kinds of things, but at the same time they seem somehow trapped in their own world, which presents problems for social activities like hanging out in the pub.
36:05Thomas believes we should celebrate our limitations.
36:09What we call genius might be a mind that's overdeveloped in one area and deficient in another.
36:16So having a super mind is an interesting kind of question.
36:19As soon as you just start to unpack what super mind means, you start to realize maybe it's not just a good idea after all.
36:27But there might be a way to break through our mental limitations without paying the social and emotional price.
36:34Technology may soon artificially expand the brain, link all of our minds together, and show us the path to true genius.
36:44One of my favorite memories is the taste of my grandmother's iced tea.
36:53But how many memories are now beyond retrieval?
36:57My classmates' names, books I read, movies I saw decades ago.
37:02The human brain can't, shouldn't fit all of life's experiences.
37:07But perhaps there's a way to beat our evolutionary limits.
37:13Imagine offloading most of our memories, accessing them only when needed.
37:21And why stop there?
37:23You could have all of mankind's knowledge on tap.
37:27Our collective minds could make us all geniuses.
37:32Dr. Ted Berger is a biomedical engineer who is trying to push the brain past its limits.
37:45We very often in science pay attention to how brains break down.
37:50But we don't often pay attention to how we can accelerate brain function, how we can make brain function above normal.
37:56His lab at the University of Southern California is developing a way to load digital memories into our biological brains.
38:06His first hope is to help repair brains that have trouble retaining memories.
38:11But his research may give us all a way to become digitally enhanced geniuses.
38:16Ted's first step was to understand how the brain stores memories.
38:28This storage facility could represent the process by which short-term memories become long-term memories.
38:37When the brain receives new information, it comes first to short-term memory.
38:41Like when a building receives a package on its loading dock.
38:47A part of the brain called the hippocampus then scans and categorizes the item.
38:53Like this memory of Ted and his daughter.
38:56So it can be sent to long-term storage.
39:01What the hippocampus does is to pick up these short-term memories and move them from the loading dock to the right floor.
39:11To the right location.
39:17But if the hippocampus doesn't do its job right, this memory storage system can go haywire.
39:23Memories can be misfiled or not created at all.
39:28If the hippocampus were malfunctioning, then the new information that's on the loading dock may not get delivered to the right location.
39:38It might even go in the right door.
39:41But not all of the memory made it to the door.
39:48Ted is trying to work out how the hippocampus actually stores memories.
39:54So he can hack into the system electronically.
39:58When there's a memory that's generated by the brain, it involves literally hundreds if not thousands of cells.
40:03And each cell generates a series of pulses.
40:08So we're actually seeing the memory codes that are generated by this part of the brain.
40:14With a set of electrodes implanted in the hippocampus to volunteer patients, Ted is beginning to decipher how our brains turn short-term memories into coded form.
40:25So that they can be stored as long-term memories.
40:29We ask the patients to look at a picture of it and we can read the code for the picture of it and that means that we could generate ourselves the code and put it back into the brain.
40:42Having cracked the long-term memory code, Ted can now use a microchip to send memories directly into our brain's permanent storage.
40:55Human trials have already begun in patients suffering from memory loss due to epilepsy and for soldiers dealing with brain trauma.
41:03But the implications of Ted's breakthrough could be far greater for humanity and our quest for genius.
41:13If we can hack into our brain's memory coding system, there's no limit to which memories or whose memories we could access.
41:22It may be possible to take memories from one organism and put them into the brain of another organism.
41:33And to a certain extent that's been shown already.
41:37We can imagine sharing those memories in such a way that genius evolves not from an individual but from a collective set of memories.
41:46Our individual biologically limited brains could have instant access to the collective wisdom of all of humanity.
41:56Thanks to this technology, the whole world can work together and think together to solve our biggest problems.
42:05Genius means more than just memory.
42:08Together, as a group, we might have a greater genius, a greater capability than we would have as individuals.
42:16We could really grow the capability for genius by collectively using our memories and our creativities.
42:28One day, we might no longer be prisoners to the inherited genetics and acts of happenstance that created our brains.
42:37Instead, technology and medicine will make us masters of all that we want to know.
42:43But even the smartest minds among us can't know everything that is to come.
42:49We always need to be able to change, to adapt.
42:54True genius is to never stop learning.
42:57True genius is to never stop learning.
42:58True-
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