Shortly after noon, local time. Doug
sent you a note about a film he saw on the science channel and here is the crux
of it (sent to you from Doug) from singularityhub dot com back in 2010. – Amorella
** **
UNLEASHING THE POWER OF THE SAVANT
BRAIN IN ALL OF US
Written By: Aaron Saenz
Posted: 08/4/10 10:02 PM
What if you had perfect pitch, a photographic memory, and astounding artistic
ability? Allen Snyder thinks you already do. Snyder is
the director of the Centre of the Mind at the University of Sydney and for years he’s been studying how the mind processes information. Certain
individuals, often called savants savants, demonstrate amazing abilities: near
total recall of memories, the ability to count a large number of items simply by
glancing at them (numerosity), incredible musical talent, etc. Savants display
these cognitive feats while often suffering from a neural disorder like Autism.
As described in his publication in The Royal Society,
Snyder believes that these abilities arise as Autism (or other phenomenon)
grants the individual ‘privileged access’ to data that would normally be
overridden in the brain. With magnetic pulses, Snyder has even been able to
temporarily ‘unlock’ savant-like abilities in average people! Check out the
infographic from Smarter.org below that introduced me to Snyder’s work and got
me thinking: There’s a chance that everyone could one day have access to this
kind of hidden potential in their minds.
When it comes to “releasing
the hidden potential of your mind” I’m a big skeptic. Everyone from Uri Geller
to Timothy Leary has pitched that line and most of the time it’s complete bunk.
So when I first saw the following infographic about Snyder’s work, I was rather
dismissive. Magnets on our head could make us better artists, give us perfect
pitch, and let us remember anything like Rain
Man? Sure. And magic crystals will heal my damaged chakras. But then
I started to look deeper into Snyder’s work and I started seeing some real
science on some really interestiNot all savants have Autism, and not all people
with Autism develop savant talents. But there’s a big correlation between the
two syndromes. Other people who develop savant-like skills suffer from brain
trauma, or neurologically damaging diseases. While some may dispute whether
savant talents even really exist, it seems clear that there are numerous cases
of people with astounding mental talents. And these talents are clustered
around abnormal brain activity.
Snyder has published numerous
papers on cognitive processing and brain performance. His paper in The
Philisophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (biological sciences)
summarizes his work (and related work from others) and you can read it in full here. To grossly paraphrase
his findings: the right hemisphere of the brain seems to accumulate detailed
quantified data from the sensory organs unconsciously. This data is effectively
overwritten or forgotten as the left brain imposes labels and organization upon
it. When the left-right communication is disturbed or somehow faulty, the
detailed data can sometimes be accessed by the conscious mind.
Imagine you’re a business
executive. An accountant in the office is responsible for gathering lots of
data. She has records of everything – lots of numbers about the money spent on
pencils, the exact costs of stamps used in January, the last names of all
employees in Spain, etc. The middle manager below you takes her reports and
summarizes them so you can read them quickly. Less money was spent on pencils,
stamp costs are stable, employees in Spain still have last names. Easy to deal
with, but not very exact. What if the middle manager got sick? Well then you,
the business executive would have to read those accountant’s reports yourself.
You wouldn’t read that stamp costs were stable, you’d read that they were
exactly $128,092.61
This is a poor analogy of what
may be happening in the brain. The left hemisphere is packaging information so
that you can make conscious decisions. This is generally a good thing. When you
see a tiger is trying to eat you, you don’t need to worry about how many
stripes it has you need to recognize it’s a tiger and run.
Occasionally though, people’s brains
function differently. Snyder thinks they are granted ‘privileged access’ to the
unpackaged data and gain savant-like talents. This can cause problems, such as
all the negative symptoms associated with Autism, but it opens the curious
possibility that this data is potentially available to everyone. Our conscious
mind seems to work in a very top-down sort of way, with hierarchical thinking
giving rise to the problem solving skills that make our species a success. But
what if we could temporarily disturb that arrangement to regain what that
structure has cost us: exact recall of detailed data and calculations.ng
phenomena.
Snyder tried to see if he could unleash
that potential. Over several years, he and other researchers have used
repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to
interfere with the neurons in the left anterior temporal lobe. The bundled the
rTMS device into a hat that could be worn while patients performed different
tasks. Dubbed the ‘thinking cap’ by some, it
effectively shut down the left hemisphere of the brain with magnetic fields.
The results are interesting. Snyder has been able to induce the ability to draw
as the eye sees (even without artistic training). He’s seen improved memory,
better ability to notice typos/grammar mistakes, and improved numerosity. The
latter has some of the clearest results (as published in Perception, 2006). Patients
shown a random number of dots on a computer screen for a brief period of time
are asked to give the number of dots shown. Immediately after rTMS treatment,
10 out of 12 patients saw improvements. 8 out of these 12 saw that improvement
disappear an hour after rTMS stopped. In other words, savant skills seem to
appear and then slowly fade away after rTMS. A placebo treatment did not induce
the same results – something is clearly going on here.
The “Thinking Cap”
Of course, my skepticism
doesn’t fade just because of some good data. These are still small data sets,
and positive results weren’t universal. Larger tests are needed before we can
say with certainty that rTMS is creating these skills, and that is does so by
unlocking access to inherent data from the senses processed in the brain. To
Snyder’s great credit, he acknowledges the limitations of his exploration of
savantism: “Finally, it should be said that our ‘privileged access’ hypothesis
remains to be proven. The empirical evidence so far, while consistent with the
hypothesis, is preliminary and requires independent researchers to replicate
the findings.” (Royal Society Biological Sciences 2009) I agree.
Yet rTMS and neuron
interference is already finding other uses. In 2008, the FDA approved NeuroStar
from Neuronetics, a TMS treatment device for depression. Put on an
electromagnet, mess with your brain for a while and you might see improvements
in your mood. Sounds crazy, but it seems to work in some cases.
Looking at all of this I get
the feeling that we’re nearing some really interesting discoveries in this
field. The work of Snyder and his colleagues is many years old and still in
development, but we may eventually see these experiments lead to a an
incredible understanding of how the brain works…and how we might augment it.
What other conditions (positive or negative) might we induce simply by
temporarily shutting down different centers of the brain? We might learn
languages faster, or have insights into our most difficult problems, or even
just think of jokes more easily. There’s so much to explore here. One day we
may have electromagnetic implants that restrict different parts of our brain to
grant us conscious control over the rest. It’s all very theoretical at this
point. Yet we may find that the core of the advanced computer of the future has
already been built and has been resting in our skulls all this time.
[image credits: Smarter.org,
DailyMail, Snyder et al]
[source: Smarter.org,
Center
for the Mind, Snyder et al Royal Society 2009]
From: SingularityHub
** **
1220
hours. What is interesting is that I did not consciously know about this;
however, I read lots of science and some of this could have been kept
unconsciously. In some ways I can weave this into my ‘wild theory’ (conjecture
really) in an early post this week. I don't like the use of the word 'power' in connection with the brain because I think the concept dilutes what the human brain may be capable of.
Within the hour you will be on your way to
your doctor’s appointment. You spoke to Carol about going to Outback for supper
for her birthday. Post. Later, dude. - Amorella
You had dinner both ending it was a
piece of carrot cake, no sharing tonight. You watched ABC and NBC News and then
last night’s CSI.
2055 hours. The article above would
have you as a burst of creative talent without the thinking cap. This is not
exactly kosher, but there are ‘fallen strings’ of reason that settle over what
is written in the article. My point here is that perhaps someday science will
discover more about the human brain that meets any of our eyes. I don’t feel
though that it is a use of power. Not in my own personal experience with you,
Amorella.
I
have mentioned experiences in this blog of being uncomfortable when I feel too
close to my sense of your ‘existence’ in my head. Well, here I am on a subject
not intended. And, I have this lack of adequate vocabulary to explain an
‘experience’ in my head. Will you help me here, Amorella. Please. I do not
associate you with power but I hold you with great respect and keeping my
distance is an example of that. I am being quite inadequate here. (2110)
In your mind I (that is my ‘existence’ in
your head) is Nothing (capitalized). You see me as a doorway without a physical
framework and as a ‘condition’ or as an occurrence-in-being not a noun. You
feel that if you could emulate this ‘Nothing’ (without having, wanting, needing
power) you would be ‘free’ and ‘open’ to a greater sense of consciousness, not
of self, but a form of mystical-like consciousness from which you or anyone
else might gain a sense of greater understanding of what humanity entails and
that with this one could grow to become more humane and less self absorbed. –
Amorella
That is much better than what I could
come up with. Though in reading it I’m not sure what it means other than it is
a concept of-what-I-see-you-are-about-in-my-mind. (2126)
Post. – Amorella
2127 hours. It appears I am in a
working relationship with a doorway. How odd.
Those are your words not mine, boy. - Amorella
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