Horizon (1964–…): Season 46, Episode 13 - What Makes a Genius? - full transcript
How can you explain the talent
of someone like William Shakespeare,
who, every time he put pen to paper,
created a masterpiece?
Can science account for genius?
For somebody like Isaac Newton,
whose brain power alone allowed
him to understand the force...
..of gravity?
Or Christopher Wren - why was he
the one who saw that mathematics was
the key to creating such stunning
structures as St Paul's Cathedral?
Was the jet engine the result of
Frank Whittle's brilliance,
or just a historical inevitability?
Were Lennon and McCartney
born with a talent for writing
such memorable songs, or was it
just the result of hard graft?
What about Handel?
Was his skill a result of his genes?
And Hendrix - was he just lucky, in
the right place at the right time?
Could anyone -
anyone - have a Eureka moment?
I am a mathematician.
I am NOT a genius - a fact my wife
and kids would be happy to confirm.
But who is a genius, and why?
Since I haven't had a chance to work
with these calculators, I want to
make sure they are all working.
Would somebody start by giving us
a two-digit number, please? 53.
53. And another two-digit number...
24. Multiply 53 by 24,
make sure you get 1,272
or the calculators aren't working.
Are all of your calculators
working - 1,272? Yes.
What I am going to try to do
is square some numbers
in my head faster than you can
do on your calculators,
even using the shortcut.
So give us a two-digit number.
23. 23 is 529.
39. 39 is 1,521. 88. 88 is 7,744.
Did I get 'em right? You did!
Professor Arthur Benjamin is someone
many would consider to be a genius.
333. 333 is 110,889.
251.
251 is 63,001.
That's amazing! 783.
Oh, that's 613,089.
That was very fast.
Let me try a four-digit number.
'He can do in seconds what many
of us would find impossible.'
2,373.
Five million...
'But is he a genius?'
Uh-oh! 631,129?
That is amazing. Wow!
And I could see the steam coming off
your head there!
So that was pretty impressive, but
could you go to a five-digit number?
I could. I'm going
to set you on fire!
It would be easier for
me to explain it if I could write
it down, so I could show you.
Can you actually
do it out aloud, what's happening
in your head, so we could hear
it's not just some memory recall?
Sure. Give us a five-digit number.
OK, 24,501.
OK. 24,501 squared.
Let me explain to you how I'm
going to attempt this problem.
I'll break it into three parts.
I'll do 24,000 squared,
plus 501 squared,
plus 24,000 times 501
times 2.
OK... Distributive law.
I add those numbers together and
with any luck arrive at the answer.
So, here we go, no more stalling.
24 times 501, 24 is 6 times 4.
501 times 6 is 3,006, times 4 is
12,024, double that to get 24,048.
24,048. 48 becomes the word serve,
serve, serve...
Next I do 24,000, add that to...
24 neuroserve.
24 squared, which is 576.
Add that to 24
to get an even 600 million.
Serve, serve, serve.
Next I do 501 squared,
that's 500 times 502 plus
1 squared, is 251,001.
Take the 251,
add that to serve to get 299,001.
Wow! That is impressive!
That is amazing!
I don't know how
he managed to do that! Wow!
I wouldn't call myself a genius
and I'm not just being modest.
I think genius is something
that is a very creative process.
Whereas what I am doing is
somewhat mechanical.
It's almost like...
Genius is Mozart who can
compose brilliant compositions.
I'm merely someone
playing the piano well.
And there is a big difference
between a skill and something
that is immensely creative.
So if Arthur Benjamin
isn't a genius, who is?
It's a question science struggles
with as much as anyone else.
So in this programme I want to
find out how science is trying
to understand extreme talent,
and to get to grips with why some
people are smarter than others.
I'll ask whether
geniuses are born or made.
Is this man a Grandmaster
because he has the right genes?
Can this baby really achieve
anything she sets her mind to,
or is her destiny already determined
by the wiring of her brain?
I'll find out whether what happens
to our adolescent brain is key
to understanding our intelligence.
And why these blue and yellow spots
can help us detect innate abilities.
And I'll discover why
this man's brain sheds light
on one of the most intriguing
characteristics of genius.
The question of why we all have
different intellectual abilities
has always engaged
the minds of scientists.
And not so long ago,
many of them thought
the answer to be quite simple.
All it took was a decent anatomist
to open up a skull and measure
the brain's vital statistics.
I guess the idea of cutting up
someone's brain
to see what makes them intelligent
or not, does make me a bit uneasy.
The search for intelligence via
brain dissection doesn't really
have an illustrious history.
At the start of the 20th century,
donating one's brain to
science was all the rage.
The popular assumption was that
a heavy brain was a better brain.
Dozens of high-profile citizens
had the contents of their
skulls weighed and splayed.
Napoleon II's brain weighed
1,500 grams.
The novelist Thackeray's brain
weighed in at a mighty 1,636 grams.
And yet Charles Babbage,
the father of computing,
and to many, a genius if ever
there was one, his brain
was a paltry 1,403.
It was this crude approach that
brought the search for genius via
brain dissection into disrepute.
But if you believe, as I do,
that your thoughts
are physically encoded in the brain,
then you do have to conclude that
the architecture of the brain
must reflect in some way
the way that you think.
In the bowels of the University of
Louisville's anatomy department,
they are dissecting brains
of deceased scientists,
or supernormals as they are known.
Dr Manuel Casanova says he has
detected structural differences
that might help explain cleverness.
His focus is on the minute
arrangement of neurons in the cortex
called the minicolumn.
This is the cortex here, is it?
I can see these lines
through the cortex -
that's these
things you call minicolumns?
Ah, yes, you can think about
the minicolumns as being like
microprocessor of a computer.
You can accommodate only a certain
number of them within the cortex.
And what we found was the
brains of the supernormals,
or these individuals
with special skills,
they had more of them because
the columns were actually smaller.
But an overabundance of minicolumns
is not the only difference
that Manuel has detected.
The way regions of the brain were
connected also appeared to be
different in his supernormals.
In terms of connectivity,
what we have found
is that they had an overabundance
of the shorter connections
as compared to
the longer connections.
Manuel believes that an excess
of short, local connections
within brain regions, is associated
with narrow modes of thinking and
doing single tasks extremely well.
Like concentrating on a single
area of scientific research.
It's not evidence of genius,
but it does suggest
that the anatomy of our brain has
a direct bearing on how we use it.
If anybody's brain
was connected together
to make them exceptionally clever,
it has to be one of my heroes,
Karl Friedrich Gauss,
arguably one of
the greatest mathematicians,
if not geniuses, of all time.
In 1801, astronomers lost
a newly discovered planet,
Ceres, obscured by the sun.
They tried for months
in vain to find the planet.
When Gauss heard about their
problems, he took the data they'd
recorded up to that point,
created a whole new piece of
mathematics, found a pattern
and rediscovered Ceres.
It's one of the many great
contributions Gauss made
both to mathematics and science.
But how well would Gauss
perform at this test?
Could he intuitively tell
whether there are more blue
or yellow dots on this screen?
What about here?
Or here?
Or this one?
It's a test that could help answer
an age-old question -
was a maths genius
like Gauss born or made?
I'm here at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore to find out.
Professor Justin Halberda
came up with the test
as a means of measuring
one's gut sense of number.
Volunteers, in this case
six-year-old Sammy,
are given moments
to make their mind up.
This is far to quick for him to
be counting how many there are.
Yeah, absolutely.
You can get a sense, a gut sense
of about how many,
but you can't count
precisely how many.
But you get this sense of...
there's more yellow on that one.
By looking at how well Sammy does
as a function of the ratio
between the blues and the yellows,
we're going to be able to say how
precise is his personal number sense.
And what did you find? Did you find
that people had the same problems
with assessing the difference?
Everyone has a point at which they
begin to have trouble, but when that
point happens is different for every
individual. Was that a surprise?
Were you expecting to find
people reasonably similar? Yeah.
For me it was a massive surprise,
because this system, this
gut sense of number, is something
evolutionarily very old.
I mean, rats have it, pigeons
have it. We can measure it
in a three month-old baby.
So what about this
connection between
having good approximate number sense
and your later
mathematical ability?
The connection appears to be
way more powerful than I ever
would have thought it was.
In the study we most recently ran,
it was the number one most powerful
cognitive predictor of success
or failure in school mathematics.
I press the red one to get it going?
That's right.
So, if this is the best predictor of
success in mathematics, what will
it say about my gut sense of number?
Every now and again my analytic
brain is trying to override what my
subconscious brain is telling me.
Then I get it wrong. You see there?
That's absolutely true. You feel
it with your gut very quickly.
And then if you start to think,
you can mess it up.
I've always had this sense that
people aren't born to be
a mathematician,
that anyone
could be a mathematician.
But does your research perhaps
question that, that some people
are perhaps born
with better equipment
that gives them a head start?
It does question whether or not
everybody could be a maths genius.
There seems to be a portion
of the population that
has a specific impairment
of the number sense,
and that impairment
greatly hinders their ability
to learn later mathematics.
They will have a significantly
more difficult time.
But for the upper range,
for the average person
or the exceptional person
with number sense,
we don't see much prediction there.
That is consistent with
your suggestion that almost everybody
could become a maths professor.
BEEPING
Finished it with a bong!
OK, Marcus,
so here's the performance
of you and Sammy.
You are in red, Sammy is in blue.
Is high good? High is good. Yo!
High is better,
so you did better than Sammy.
OK. But crucially, look here.
You and Sammy are the same
on the easy ones -
ten dots versus five dots.
Ten blue, five yellow.
You guys both always know
the right answer. It's very easy.
Now, where does it start to get hard?
For Sammy, it's getting hard
when there are around
five blue dots and six yellow dots.
That would be tough for Sammy.
For you, you are fine with five
blue and six yellow.
You start to have trouble when
there are eight blue and nine yellow.
Much closer in number there.
It turns out that my number sense
was pretty average, whereas, for his
age, Sammy did exceptionally well.
It seems that he's been
born with a gift for maths.
But does that make him
likely to be a future genius?
Well, Justin's research seems to
indicate that some people's brains
may not be hard-wired
to do mathematics.
But for me, it doesn't
really tease out...
what is it about somebody's brain
that makes them able to do, not only
mathematics, but other things?
What makes somebody not just good,
but great?
I want to know what explains the
extra degree of intelligence that
some people appear to be born with.
It raises the question of
the role of genes in
shaping our intelligence.
In 1820, the young genius
Janos Bolyai received a letter.
It was beseeching him to turn his
back on the exceedingly complex
mathematical research
he was engaged in.
Thankfully for us, he ignored the
letter and went on to produce
amazing new theories of geometry.
Now, here's the rub.
The letter actually came from his
father, also a mathematician,
also a great thinker.
Now what makes these
kind of families?
Families like the Brontes,
who produced three siblings,
all literary geniuses.
It makes me wonder how much
intelligence is passed on
from parents to child.
How much can the Bolyai family and
the Bronte family tell us about
the genetics of genius?
I've come to the Massachusetts
Institute Of Technology,
where they think they have found
the holy grail of intelligence.
A specific gene
associated with learning.
We went back to a very basic
feature of learning, which is,
you know, that the more you study,
the more you practise,
the more you do something,
the better you get at it.
So our insightful starting
point was that genes that get
turned on by activity in the brain,
would be the ones that
would be important for learning.
To test the mice, a simple
conditioning process is used.
Though I should warn you,
it is painful for the mouse.
It hears white noise, and then
experiences a mild electric shock.
Ordinary mice should quickly learn
to associate one with the other.
And now here we get the shock.
Oh! That was not nice for it.
So they jump around.
Yeah. Next time, when it's put in
a bit later, like the Pavlov dog,
it's going to hear that white noise.
And even if there isn't
an electric shock...
It's going to freeze probably
when it hears the noise.
It really freezes? OK. Yes.
Ivan Pavlov pioneered conditioning
as a means of testing how well
animals learn, by training dogs.
By ringing a bell or flashing
a light before he fed his dogs,
Pavlov conditioned them to
associate one with the other.
So eventually when he turned the
light on, but there was no food,
the dogs nevertheless anticipated
a meal and began salivating.
Elly has conditioned
two types of mice - ordinary
and genetically modified.
First, she tests an ordinary mouse,
that should have learnt to associate
the white noise with the shock.
Here, now the tone starts.
And you can see that it basically
freezes. Yeah, it shot back!
There is no shock here, all it's
doing is listening to this tone.
But because it remembers that
this tone is a bad thing,
it is not moving.
Next, Elly tests a mouse
that has had a single,
specific gene switched off.
So current is this research
we are not allowed to reveal
the actual name of the gene, but its
absence should mean that the mouse
has become incapable of learning.
What we are expecting here
is that it is going to hear the tone,
but it is going to be oblivious.
Sure enough, the mouse had not
learned to associate the white noise
with an unpleasant
experience at all.
In fact,
it is totally oblivious to it.
The thing that's surprising
is not that a gene is involved,
but that with just deleting one gene
you can see such a
robust effect on behaviour.
Elly has created a mouse that,
though seemingly healthy
in every other way,
is simply unable to learn.
Identifying this gene represents
a profound breakthrough in our
understanding of the relationship
between genetics and intelligence.
What implications
does this have for humans?
I mean, you've found something in
mice, but is it the same for humans?
Do we have a gene that is
associated with learning?
So this particular gene,
it's very interesting,
is very highly conserved.
So the protein made by this
gene is in humans is 100%
the same as in mice.
And usually when we see something
that is so highly conserved
between species,
it's usually a sign that it's
something very critical,
because, you know,
evolution hasn't fiddled with it.
In other words,
we humans have the very same gene as
the one Elly has identified.
By knocking this gene out,
developed cells become deficient
in their ability to grow dendrites -
the branch-like part of the neuron
that connects one cell to another.
If these connections aren't made,
the brain is less able to transform
experiences into memories,
and therefore to learn.
The implications of
this are exciting,
and have far-reaching consequences
on how we might learn in the future.
It's not whether you have the gene
or not, everybody has the gene.
But you can dial it up
or dial it down as far as how well
this gene might be functioning.
So of course it would have relevance
in a clinical situation where there
really was a deficit in learning
because of a neurological disorder,
but you might imagine that
also in the normal population
there might be times
when you might be
tempted to dial things up
a little, you know, you feel like,
"I really need to be sharp today".
Tweaking our genetics to
crank up our intelligence
is still just a pipe-dream.
But Elly's work does represent
a real breakthrough in our
understanding of how we learn.
Elly's research is starting to
give a more exact explanation
of how genetics might affect
your intelligence,
in a sense how nature will influence
your ability to learn and absorb
things from your environment.
But even if you have
a kind of super-charged gene,
that doesn't necessarily
mean you're going to be a rocket
scientist or even a mathematician.
But it probably does mean that
you might be better at absorbing
information and learning things.
If our genes do, to some degree,
govern our ability to learn, does
this mean we can predict potential?
For some the answer
is an emphatic yes.
Dr Ognjen Amidzic has studied
the patterns of brain activity
in lifelong chess players, some of
whom have made it to Grandmaster
status, others who failed.
His research has allowed him to
develop something akin to a
genius spotting machine.
I've agreed to let Ognjen
measure my brain activity
as I play a game of chess.
Now, I do know the rules,
but I'm not very good and haven't
played for about 20 years.
Best of luck. I do feel a bit
like I'm about to run 100m...
For comparison, my brain
will be pitted against that of
internationally respected chess
Grandmaster Stuart Conquest.
When he was a child,
Ognjen wanted to be a Grandmaster.
He spent 20 years training,
even moving to the USSR to practise
in the leading chess academies.
But despite his extensive efforts,
Ognjen never broke through
into the elite.
He wanted to find out
why he failed to make it.
So he became a neuroscientist.
I'm sorry, I couldn't keep it
going for much longer!
The data shows that Stuart's
brain is active
in different areas to mine.
His brain revealed a typical
"Grandmaster" pattern,
active in the frontal areas
associated with long-term memory
and planning,
but quieter in the middle,
temporal lobes.
Whereas mine was less active
at the front, but getting
quite hot in the middle -
an area associated
with encoding new experiences.
Ognjen's research suggests that even
if I were to train for 20 years and
memorise chess strategies,
my brain would never display a
Grandmaster style pattern of
activity like Stuart's.
His brain however, would always have
shown this pattern,
even before
he started playing chess.
As much activity as you have
in this temporal areas
is a disadvantage for you.
Really? In terms of talent,
more activity in temporal areas
is less talent. All right, OK.
It means that it's
probably genetical.
That's kind of a bit depressing,
that you can't change it.
So you really think that some
people really are coming hard-wired
to do chess, do mathematics
or whatever talent it is?
Everyone wants to think that you
can achieve everything, they
can be what they want to be.
And if they
are not able to achieve it in life
then you have someone responsible
for this, their mother or the
government or father's support,
lack of money or whatsoever.
So they have some explanations...
But you think it might be something
to do with the mother and father,
the genetics?
I think yes. You are
born a Grandmaster or you are born
average chess player,
like you are born
a great mathematician or musician
or soccer player, whatsoever.
People are born, not created.
I just don't believe and I don't
see evidence whatsoever
that you can make,
create a genius.
So can you use this for young kids
who haven't played much chess
to pick out those who will be
or could be Grandmasters?
Yes, definitely.
You can measure a boy or girl who is
six years and above and you can see
the activity there and you can make
a prediction of the results in the
future, and this is what I think is
amazing in this technology.
I am not entirely
convinced by Ognjen's work.
He has shown that Grandmasters
have a different pattern
of activity in their brains,
compared to chess players who have
practised as much
but enjoyed less success.
The evidence there
seems reasonable enough.
But claims that one can measure
intelligence and spot genius
have a poor track record,
but plenty of advocates.
One of the most fervent was Lewis
Terman, a pioneer of the IQ test.
In 1922, Terman began
one of the longest running
tests of IQ in history.
He tested hundreds of children,
and followed the lives and careers
of those with the highest scores,
whom he christened his "Termites".
But it's the story of those
who never made Termite status
that is really interesting.
One of the rejects
was William Shockley,
who went on to share the Nobel
prize for physics for the invention
of the transistor in 1948 -
a breakthrough that has ultimately
to led to the microchip and usher
in the information revolution.
Ognjen believes
that we are born hard-wired with a
predisposition to certain skills.
I've seen that there are indeed
genes associated with learning.
And I've learned that
some of us appear to have
innate advantages that might
allow us to excel in certain areas.
Could it be that our fate
is determined at birth?
Or are we born blank slates,
our brains able
to rise to any challenge?
At the Birkbeck Babylab,
they conduct experiments
they hope will help us understand
the potential of the baby brain.
Today it's the turn
of six-month-old Esther.
Esther is wearing a cap that will
measure her brain activity as she
takes a simple test.
It'll measure any difference in
the response she has to these faces.
Can you tell the difference
between these two human faces?
And what about these two
different monkey faces?
Most adults find this task almost
impossible, but it seems that
Esther can do it with ease.
What are you expecting to see?
Because she is about six months old,
we're expecting her to
process monkey faces as well
as she does human faces.
And will she have been born
with that ability to distinguish?
One thing we know is that babies
are very attracted to faces
immediately when they are born.
But the baby brain is very plastic,
so over time it will learn to
process faces and then process
monkey faces, because it is
open to all sorts of stimuli.
What happens is that connections
that are very useful -
seeing human faces upright -
will become strengthened
over those early months of life.
And connections that are less useful
because she is not seeing them, like
monkey faces, will become weakened.
It seems Esther, like all of us, is
born with abilities she will quickly
lose if she does not use them.
Far from being set in stone,
the human brain is ready
and waiting to be shaped.
When will Esther not be able to pick
out the faces of monkeys because she
finds she doesn't really need
to do that? Around 10-12 months.
So really early. I mean
the brain full-face processing
continues development
through to adolescence,
but very early on,
her brain is going to specialise
for human faces.
So if Esther was brought up
by chimps
and seeing lots of different
chimp faces, there would be a
different structuring of her brain?
Well, yes. Her brain would specialise
for chimp faces and she would think
that all humans looked alike.
So how important are
the genes in all of this?
I think people tend to think of genes
as sort of determining outcomes.
So building things... Yes, that is
just not the case except for the sort
of broad structures for the brain.
Genes are just as dynamic as
other aspects of our development,
and genes get expressed in different
ways as a function of the environment
that we are experiencing.
This research shows just how
flexible the brain is.
It can be nurtured by its
environment to assume almost any set
of skills, even become an expert
in monkey facial recognition...
or perhaps a Chess Grandmaster.
But can our environment really
explain the idea of genius?
This was a question doing the
rounds over 200 years ago,
here at the Royal Society.
The place was abuzz with rumours
of a remarkable recital
played by a pianist
to Daines Barrington, who was a
fellow here at the Royal Society.
Barrington told of how the pianist
played in a masterly fashion, was
"incredible", "amazing".
The pianist's name was
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
He was 8 years old. It's stories
like this, of the child prodigy,
which really challenged the idea
that it's just environment that
makes a genius.
Derek Paravicini is autistic
and has been blind since he
was just a few weeks old.
'Now 30, his exceptional musical
talent continues to develop.'
Yeah! Fantastic!
Professor Adam Ockelford has
worked with Derek since he was four.
He witnessed first-hand how
Derek's brain sought to make
sense of the world around him.
So, Adam, if the brain is deprived
of visual input,
it will look for something else
to make sense of the world?
Yeah, I think we're
not hot-wired for music, but we are
hot-wired to make sense of the world,
we have to make sense of the world.
I think your young brain, Derek,
was...
trying to latch onto something that
did make sense. Music is all around.
It's just like a toy, a glorious
plaything, isn't it, sound?
Lots of pattern, lots of repetition,
lots of predictability, which is just
what you needed at that time,
Derek, to make sense of the world.
I work a lot with young children with
autism, and blindness actually,
and I think that's
quite an extreme environment for
the developing brain to grow into.
Because very often language doesn't
mean a lot. Clearly if you can't see,
you haven't got the visual stimulus,
and that's extreme.
And yet the human brain
miraculously will try
to make sense of the world, try
and reach out and control the world.
And what these children seem to
latch onto is this super-patterned
auditory environment that is music.
People think, when they hear you,
Derek, "wow, it's just a gift,"
because it is so spontaneous.
But the truth is, behind that
cleverness, behind that spontaneity,
behind that creativity,
lies thousands of hours
of really hard work.
Actually making the connections in
the brain and, of course, getting
the fingers to do what they are
supposed to at the right time.
Derek, how do you actually
learn a piece of music?
You can't see, so you can't
read the music.
How do you learn a piece
like The Entertainer
or The Flight Of The Bumblebee?
Is it learning by listening?
So you listen to a piece of music
and then you can pick it up?
Play it, yeah.
'But such is Derek's talent,
he only has to hear a piece
'of music once or twice before he
is able to memorise it, play it
and even improvise around it.'
It's really interesting. In Adam's
view, Derek's extreme talent is
born of an extreme environment.
I guess, before I came here, I
had this idea that savants could
just instantly do what they do,
but talking to Adam, Derek had to
really work hard at this talent.
It was developed over many years
before it came to full fruition.
While most of us don't develop
an extreme talent like Derek's,
almost everyone reveals
an extraordinary ability
to learn throughout childhood.
What is it about the brain that can
set this supercharged period
of rapid development?
And could it
hold a clue to genius?
Over the past 15 years at the
National Institute of Health
in Washington,
they've been conducting
the largest-ever survey of brains
as they mature into adulthood.
How many brains have you scanned
for this particular study?
It's been about 400 or 500 children,
and they are
scanned repeatedly as they grow up.
So we start as young as three
or four years
and then scan right up
to the early twenties.
And you are hoping to see
how the brain is changing
during that period?
Exactly, and by using brain scans
from the same child taken repeatedly,
you get a particularly rich
picture of how the brain grows. It's
like the difference between looking
at a painting and looking at a movie.
The scans reveal that the cortex,
the outer layer of the brain
responsible for thinking,
gets progressively thinner
as children hit adolescence.
Graphics made by Philip's colleagues
show this pruning process.
The bluer the brain,
the thinner the cortex.
The areas most closely associated
with sophisticated, abstract
thinking are the last to be pruned.
Philip and his team discovered
that it's not just the pattern
of brain maturation, but WHEN
the brain starts to mature,
that is important.
What differed according to
intelligence was the extent and rate
at which all these changes happened.
So the most intelligent children,
actually they showed this process
of the cortex getting a bit thinner
somewhat later, around the age
of 10 or 11 in the frontal parts
of the brain, sort of around here.
And then the phase of getting
thinner in the cortex
was particularly vigorous
in these kids as well.
In a way, the kids who have the most
agile and active minds also have
the most agile and active cortex.
Philip's work begins to answer the
question of why some brains are more
intelligent than others,
by focusing attention on different
rates at which they mature.
In this regard,
it's an important step towards
understanding our intelligence.
These kids' brains are
constantly changing and developing.
Probably these parents here hope
they'll be the first to read,
the first to do arithmetic.
But it seems that when
it comes to the maturing of the
brain, a later development leads
to a higher IQ, so actually you want
your brain at a later age to be
maturing.
It seems a little counter-intuitive.
So far I've seen how we are born
with a predisposition
for certain abilities.
But that's countered by the
remarkable flexibility
of the baby brain,
which allows it to develop
in concert with its environment.
And I've learnt that my brain pretty
much settled down
about two decades ago
as I left adolescence behind.
So where does that leave me?
Is my brain no longer capable
of a moment of genius?
Was it all over
by the time I turned 21?
Well, maybe not.
The race is on to see
whether we can enhance our
intelligence artificially.
At the University of Gottingen
in Germany, they are pioneering
technology that could greatly extend
our control over our own brains.
They're developing a means
to turbo-charge our grey matter.
The aim is to improve
the volunteer's ability
to subconsciously learn.
The test itself is simple.
When Leila sees a dot appear
on the screen she has to tap a
corresponding key on the keyboard.
There is a pattern
to when the dots appear,
but it's impossible to detect,
at least before the artificial
stimulation of her brain begins.
What we want to do is
facilitate the excitability
of her motor cortex.
In order to be able to do that,
we have to fit an electrode...
I presume this is perfectly safe.
I'd be a bit nervous about having
electricity shot through my brain!
They are very weak currents. They are
so weak that she doesn't notice
anything.
They are so weak they just manipulate
the membrane potential
of nerve cells, a little bit.
So we have to assure that the
electrode has a good contact, so...
So...this is just water?
Water...salt solution.
Usually electricity and water
shouldn't go together,
but in this case...
No, this is an interesting point.
Because the brain is swimming
in water,
and the water has a much better
conductivity that the brain itself,
so this is one of the reasons
this method works so elegantly.
It can travel a little bit
around the corner through
the water and stimulate this complex
brain just by making use of the
better conductivity of the water.
So now we will stimulate
the motor cortex here
by anodal...
positive electricity for ten minutes.
So now stimulation starts.
So there is now electricity
passing through Leila's brain?
Can you feel anything? No.
There's no smoke,
I can't see anything!
During this stimulation,
Leila will move her fingers and
do the implicit learning paradigm.
We will measure simultaneously
how quick she can respond to the
visual target during this time.
What we expect to see is,
with motor cortex depolarisation,
it gets more excitable, and then
her reaction time will improve.
And then we will see
an increase in speed,
that...she is not consciously
of picking up a pattern,
but subconsciously
she's getting better at learning.
'The longer the stimulation lasts,
the greater its effects will be.
'In previous experiments lasting
24 hours, permanent improvements
to the brain were forged.'
We know from other,
basic animal research
that new connections between
individual nerve cells will be
built after around 30 minutes,
and after about a day
they start to become functional.
So it's really changing
the structure of the brain
by doing this?
It is not just a temporary effect?
Yes, we have structural alterations
which allowed you to move your
fingers quicker, in this case.
Through measuring the reaction times,
we will see that you will probably
speed up in the range of 10% or so.
10%, and that's significant, is it?
You would not expect that?
Not without stimulation.
I suppose there is an element
of Frankenstein
about what Dr Paulus is doing.
I must say that
I find the idea of dialling my
brain up to 11 quite exciting.
But perhaps we don't have
to take such dramatic steps.
What if the brain is actually
very flexible and adaptable,
and can change the way
it works all on its own?
Until recently, it was thought
that in the adult brain,
information flowed
along well-established routes,
laid down by years of experience.
Oh, that is weird...
Clare Cheskin is blind.
A curve...a curved thing...
with little dots on it...
You can get that detail?
That's extraordinary!
But I don't know what it was.
The curved thing with dots
was the London Eye.
Was it really?! You've just
picked up the London Eye. Oh.
'She lost her sight 20 years ago.
But now she can see - with sound.'
A series of...
going across like that.
Horizontal lines!
That's the word!
Well, you were certainly seeing...
There's a curve going downwards...
Yes, more horizontal lines. OK, yeah.
'She sees using software
that turns photos taken by her
phone's camera into sounds.
'The software was downloaded
for free from the internet,
after it was made
'available by its developer,
Dr Peter Meijer.'
More railings...people.
Oh, yes.
'With just a few months' practice,
Clare was able to "see" horizontal
'and vertical lines, curves,
patterns, foliage, even people.'
There's a big, vertical column.
'The software also runs
on her laptop.'
That was vegetation.
It was - we just went past a bush!
Yes, that was... I can tell trees.
'Clare really does "see"
these sounds as images
in her visual cortex.
'But how?'
Research has shown that users learn
to see quicker than new neurons
could possibly grow connecting
the visual cortex to the ear.
So scientists have concluded
that the brain's flexibility is such
that dormant neural pathways are
being reactivated and strengthened,
thus allowing her to see with sound.
'Clare's brain is not
unusual in this regard.'
We all have these under-exploited
neural pathways - they have been
there since we were babies.
However, users still have to learn
to make sense of what they see
in their mind's eye.
When I first started using it,
I emailed...Dr Meijer, who devised
the programme, and I said,
"There looks like a car driving
right up the side of a building.
"I know things are happening which
are impossible, I'm going
into the Twilight Zone -
"what's happening?
"What is this really?"
And he said it's perspective.
Because I hadn't learn to see in
perspective that things get smaller
and lines can appear to be
diagonal when they're not.
I had to learn all that.
I had to learn, in a way, how to see.
The plasticity of the adult brain
should, I think, give us all hope.
There's still the potential
for new ideas, for new thoughts.
Of course, breaking new ground
is what being a genius is all about.
For me, what distinguishes
a really great mind
is one that combines knowledge
with creativity.
In order to grapple with ideas of
space, time and relativity,
Einstein used to imagine himself
travelling across the universe
on a beam of light.
It's this, as much as anything else,
that I think explains Einstein's
genius.
It's not so much that had more
knowledge than his contemporaries,
although he knew a lot of physics -
it's more that
he combined that knowledge
with an incredibly imaginative,
creative approach to the subject.
Einstein knew this, because he
once said, "imagination is more
important than knowledge".
It might be that creativity
is the crucial, final part
of understanding genius.
But how on earth does science
get to grips with something as
ill-defined as the urge to create?
Well, I'm on my way to Birkenhead
to meet a man who just might offer
scientists a chance to pinpoint
the biological source
of our creative sparks.
His name is Tommy McHugh.
Tommy's life changed dramatically
in 2001, when a brain haemorrhage
altered the way his brain works
and left him
with an insatiable urge to paint.
Tommy. Hiya, Marcus. Hi.
Nice to meet you. And you.
This is quite extraordinary.
It's all over the place.
It's up here on the ceiling.
All over the walls and things.
It's absolutely everywhere.
Is it upstairs as well?
Yes, it's all up the walls,
the stairs.
There's even layers upon layers...
It's kind of like a little
Sistine Chapel - in Birkenhead.
This is what's going on
inside your brain?
This is my brain, what I'm seeing.
I'm inside your brain? Yeah.
While you're seeing,
I'm trying to bring all that...
Tommy has his own explanation for
what is happening inside his brain
when he feels this urge to create.
Imagine a honeycomb hive,
cut in half.
Inside each hive are cells, like 50
pence pieces, with clingfilm over it.
I kept on visualising
a lightning flash
shooting over to this side of
the brain and hitting this one cell.
But when this lightning flash
opened that 50 pence cell,
it unlocked a Mount Etna of bubbles.
Each little Fairy Liquid bubble
in my imagination
contained billions of other bubbles.
And then they popped.
All this has exploded.
Every little thing in this room
wants to explode into something more.
And does it change? Are you
not satisfied with the things...
I mean, how many paintings
have been under here?
Five times I've painted
the whole house.
Floor, ceilings, carpets.
So it's constantly changing.
Does it ever stop?
Do you ever not feel the urge?
No, I can't stop.
I only sleep through exhaustion.
If I was allowed, the outside
of this house would be painted
and so would the trees
and the pavement.
I must admit, it must be
pretty difficult to be Tommy.
He seems to be hostage to this
creative urge, this need to paint.
It's not so much what he paints but
WHY he paints that's so interesting.
Something's happened
inside his brain.
That gives us a chance to actually
explore what the brain does.
It seems to me, this creative urge
is related to something
to do with his biology.
So science can have something to say
about this creative process.
I have been told
that this quiet, secluded park
contains a clue to understanding
the nature of creativity.
Away from the distractions
of city life,
I do find myself be able to gather
my thoughts and focus my mind.
I'm here to meet Mark Lythgoe,
whose work with Tommy
is part of his broader study of
the science of the "A-ha!" moment.
If I can use this
metaphor that I like to use.
If you imagine you have got
two types of brain cells,
two types or processes going on.
There's always one process
that's trying to hold down another.
There's an excitatory process but
an inhibitory process as well. Right.
With Tommy, it could be that the
inhibitory process has been damaged.
Those parts of the brain,
or those brain cells,
aren't working in a way as they did.
Therefore - and as he described it -
he's got this bubbling to the
surface, those excitatory processes
that are normally suppressed,
have suddenly been unleashed.
And that's what provides his
creative energies.
So, in some sense, all of us might
have this bubbling, but we also have
something which is, sort of,
making sure it doesn't...take over.
And with Tommy,
that's kind of stopped
and so this bubbling
just keeps on going.
Yeah, it's as though the walls
have come crumbling down.
The walls that allow us to
focus, to shield things out,
with Tommy,
these walls have collapsed.
And this information's just
pouring into his world
that he's never had before.
Suddenly he's going,
"My goodness, I've got to do
something with all this information."
And what he does, he creates.
I wanted to know how Tommy helps us
to understand the creative process.
We all have this capacity
to filter out irrelevant information.
It's called latent inhibition.
It crosses all species.
So that when you're sitting
on the Tube reading that book,
you're able to focus down,
to build these walls up.
You're able to ignore
the irrelevant stimuli around you
and just focus on that book.
It's a remarkable capacity
that we have.
People that have lower levels
of latent inhibition -
people that are able to
bring the walls down,
let the irrelevant information
come into their world,
do better on creativity scores.
So, do you think everybody
could actually develop
a more creative side like Tommy,
or is it something special
that Tommy's got?
I think the wonderful thing
about Tommy
is that he can do
two things at the same time.
He's able to bring the walls down,
let this irrelevant information
come into his world,
create all these wonderful new
associations and creative ideas,
but he's also incredibly thematic.
Once he gets stuck on an idea,
he sticks with it doggedly.
And I think this is
the paradox of creativity.
You've got to be able to hold these
two states at the same time.
You've got to be open,
yet also incredibly focused.
And I think this is, perhaps,
where true creative genius lies -
the people that can hold these
two states at the same time.
What interests me about
this paradoxical idea -
that one side of the brain can be
incredibly open to new,
creative ideas,
and on the other be incredibly
focused on detail -
is that it seems to be a product
of the connectivity of the brain.
And that's what Mark is looking at -
the connectivity of the brain
in somebody like Tommy.
Mark's work has helped move
the study of intelligence on.
It used to be that genius
was understood in terms
of nature or nurture.
Talent was either God-given -
bestowed on a lucky few
from birth...
..or it was the product of a fertile
environment and a lot of hard graft.
But the true picture
isn't quite so clear-cut.
Yes, we've seen that we are
all born with a predisposition
to excel in different areas.
I could hear...
SHE HUMS DESCENDING NOTE
Then I could hear...
SHE HUMS ASCENDING NOTE
But we've also learnt that
the adaptability of our brains
plays the major role in allowing
us to reach our full potential.
I think we probably
over-use the word "genius"
to describe some
half-decent footballer
or your average Nobel Prize winner.
But use the word carefully
and you can describe an event
which probably only happens
once or twice a century.
The improbable result of a lifelong,
yet perfectly pitched, relationship
between genes and the environment.
A brain born of this relationship
is one that can have
incredible focus,
yet thoughts beyond
the scope of the universe.
Geniuses show us how
just remarkable the brain is,
what a wonderful piece of work
man is -
how noble in reason,
yet infinite in faculty.
of someone like William Shakespeare,
who, every time he put pen to paper,
created a masterpiece?
Can science account for genius?
For somebody like Isaac Newton,
whose brain power alone allowed
him to understand the force...
..of gravity?
Or Christopher Wren - why was he
the one who saw that mathematics was
the key to creating such stunning
structures as St Paul's Cathedral?
Was the jet engine the result of
Frank Whittle's brilliance,
or just a historical inevitability?
Were Lennon and McCartney
born with a talent for writing
such memorable songs, or was it
just the result of hard graft?
What about Handel?
Was his skill a result of his genes?
And Hendrix - was he just lucky, in
the right place at the right time?
Could anyone -
anyone - have a Eureka moment?
I am a mathematician.
I am NOT a genius - a fact my wife
and kids would be happy to confirm.
But who is a genius, and why?
Since I haven't had a chance to work
with these calculators, I want to
make sure they are all working.
Would somebody start by giving us
a two-digit number, please? 53.
53. And another two-digit number...
24. Multiply 53 by 24,
make sure you get 1,272
or the calculators aren't working.
Are all of your calculators
working - 1,272? Yes.
What I am going to try to do
is square some numbers
in my head faster than you can
do on your calculators,
even using the shortcut.
So give us a two-digit number.
23. 23 is 529.
39. 39 is 1,521. 88. 88 is 7,744.
Did I get 'em right? You did!
Professor Arthur Benjamin is someone
many would consider to be a genius.
333. 333 is 110,889.
251.
251 is 63,001.
That's amazing! 783.
Oh, that's 613,089.
That was very fast.
Let me try a four-digit number.
'He can do in seconds what many
of us would find impossible.'
2,373.
Five million...
'But is he a genius?'
Uh-oh! 631,129?
That is amazing. Wow!
And I could see the steam coming off
your head there!
So that was pretty impressive, but
could you go to a five-digit number?
I could. I'm going
to set you on fire!
It would be easier for
me to explain it if I could write
it down, so I could show you.
Can you actually
do it out aloud, what's happening
in your head, so we could hear
it's not just some memory recall?
Sure. Give us a five-digit number.
OK, 24,501.
OK. 24,501 squared.
Let me explain to you how I'm
going to attempt this problem.
I'll break it into three parts.
I'll do 24,000 squared,
plus 501 squared,
plus 24,000 times 501
times 2.
OK... Distributive law.
I add those numbers together and
with any luck arrive at the answer.
So, here we go, no more stalling.
24 times 501, 24 is 6 times 4.
501 times 6 is 3,006, times 4 is
12,024, double that to get 24,048.
24,048. 48 becomes the word serve,
serve, serve...
Next I do 24,000, add that to...
24 neuroserve.
24 squared, which is 576.
Add that to 24
to get an even 600 million.
Serve, serve, serve.
Next I do 501 squared,
that's 500 times 502 plus
1 squared, is 251,001.
Take the 251,
add that to serve to get 299,001.
Wow! That is impressive!
That is amazing!
I don't know how
he managed to do that! Wow!
I wouldn't call myself a genius
and I'm not just being modest.
I think genius is something
that is a very creative process.
Whereas what I am doing is
somewhat mechanical.
It's almost like...
Genius is Mozart who can
compose brilliant compositions.
I'm merely someone
playing the piano well.
And there is a big difference
between a skill and something
that is immensely creative.
So if Arthur Benjamin
isn't a genius, who is?
It's a question science struggles
with as much as anyone else.
So in this programme I want to
find out how science is trying
to understand extreme talent,
and to get to grips with why some
people are smarter than others.
I'll ask whether
geniuses are born or made.
Is this man a Grandmaster
because he has the right genes?
Can this baby really achieve
anything she sets her mind to,
or is her destiny already determined
by the wiring of her brain?
I'll find out whether what happens
to our adolescent brain is key
to understanding our intelligence.
And why these blue and yellow spots
can help us detect innate abilities.
And I'll discover why
this man's brain sheds light
on one of the most intriguing
characteristics of genius.
The question of why we all have
different intellectual abilities
has always engaged
the minds of scientists.
And not so long ago,
many of them thought
the answer to be quite simple.
All it took was a decent anatomist
to open up a skull and measure
the brain's vital statistics.
I guess the idea of cutting up
someone's brain
to see what makes them intelligent
or not, does make me a bit uneasy.
The search for intelligence via
brain dissection doesn't really
have an illustrious history.
At the start of the 20th century,
donating one's brain to
science was all the rage.
The popular assumption was that
a heavy brain was a better brain.
Dozens of high-profile citizens
had the contents of their
skulls weighed and splayed.
Napoleon II's brain weighed
1,500 grams.
The novelist Thackeray's brain
weighed in at a mighty 1,636 grams.
And yet Charles Babbage,
the father of computing,
and to many, a genius if ever
there was one, his brain
was a paltry 1,403.
It was this crude approach that
brought the search for genius via
brain dissection into disrepute.
But if you believe, as I do,
that your thoughts
are physically encoded in the brain,
then you do have to conclude that
the architecture of the brain
must reflect in some way
the way that you think.
In the bowels of the University of
Louisville's anatomy department,
they are dissecting brains
of deceased scientists,
or supernormals as they are known.
Dr Manuel Casanova says he has
detected structural differences
that might help explain cleverness.
His focus is on the minute
arrangement of neurons in the cortex
called the minicolumn.
This is the cortex here, is it?
I can see these lines
through the cortex -
that's these
things you call minicolumns?
Ah, yes, you can think about
the minicolumns as being like
microprocessor of a computer.
You can accommodate only a certain
number of them within the cortex.
And what we found was the
brains of the supernormals,
or these individuals
with special skills,
they had more of them because
the columns were actually smaller.
But an overabundance of minicolumns
is not the only difference
that Manuel has detected.
The way regions of the brain were
connected also appeared to be
different in his supernormals.
In terms of connectivity,
what we have found
is that they had an overabundance
of the shorter connections
as compared to
the longer connections.
Manuel believes that an excess
of short, local connections
within brain regions, is associated
with narrow modes of thinking and
doing single tasks extremely well.
Like concentrating on a single
area of scientific research.
It's not evidence of genius,
but it does suggest
that the anatomy of our brain has
a direct bearing on how we use it.
If anybody's brain
was connected together
to make them exceptionally clever,
it has to be one of my heroes,
Karl Friedrich Gauss,
arguably one of
the greatest mathematicians,
if not geniuses, of all time.
In 1801, astronomers lost
a newly discovered planet,
Ceres, obscured by the sun.
They tried for months
in vain to find the planet.
When Gauss heard about their
problems, he took the data they'd
recorded up to that point,
created a whole new piece of
mathematics, found a pattern
and rediscovered Ceres.
It's one of the many great
contributions Gauss made
both to mathematics and science.
But how well would Gauss
perform at this test?
Could he intuitively tell
whether there are more blue
or yellow dots on this screen?
What about here?
Or here?
Or this one?
It's a test that could help answer
an age-old question -
was a maths genius
like Gauss born or made?
I'm here at Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore to find out.
Professor Justin Halberda
came up with the test
as a means of measuring
one's gut sense of number.
Volunteers, in this case
six-year-old Sammy,
are given moments
to make their mind up.
This is far to quick for him to
be counting how many there are.
Yeah, absolutely.
You can get a sense, a gut sense
of about how many,
but you can't count
precisely how many.
But you get this sense of...
there's more yellow on that one.
By looking at how well Sammy does
as a function of the ratio
between the blues and the yellows,
we're going to be able to say how
precise is his personal number sense.
And what did you find? Did you find
that people had the same problems
with assessing the difference?
Everyone has a point at which they
begin to have trouble, but when that
point happens is different for every
individual. Was that a surprise?
Were you expecting to find
people reasonably similar? Yeah.
For me it was a massive surprise,
because this system, this
gut sense of number, is something
evolutionarily very old.
I mean, rats have it, pigeons
have it. We can measure it
in a three month-old baby.
So what about this
connection between
having good approximate number sense
and your later
mathematical ability?
The connection appears to be
way more powerful than I ever
would have thought it was.
In the study we most recently ran,
it was the number one most powerful
cognitive predictor of success
or failure in school mathematics.
I press the red one to get it going?
That's right.
So, if this is the best predictor of
success in mathematics, what will
it say about my gut sense of number?
Every now and again my analytic
brain is trying to override what my
subconscious brain is telling me.
Then I get it wrong. You see there?
That's absolutely true. You feel
it with your gut very quickly.
And then if you start to think,
you can mess it up.
I've always had this sense that
people aren't born to be
a mathematician,
that anyone
could be a mathematician.
But does your research perhaps
question that, that some people
are perhaps born
with better equipment
that gives them a head start?
It does question whether or not
everybody could be a maths genius.
There seems to be a portion
of the population that
has a specific impairment
of the number sense,
and that impairment
greatly hinders their ability
to learn later mathematics.
They will have a significantly
more difficult time.
But for the upper range,
for the average person
or the exceptional person
with number sense,
we don't see much prediction there.
That is consistent with
your suggestion that almost everybody
could become a maths professor.
BEEPING
Finished it with a bong!
OK, Marcus,
so here's the performance
of you and Sammy.
You are in red, Sammy is in blue.
Is high good? High is good. Yo!
High is better,
so you did better than Sammy.
OK. But crucially, look here.
You and Sammy are the same
on the easy ones -
ten dots versus five dots.
Ten blue, five yellow.
You guys both always know
the right answer. It's very easy.
Now, where does it start to get hard?
For Sammy, it's getting hard
when there are around
five blue dots and six yellow dots.
That would be tough for Sammy.
For you, you are fine with five
blue and six yellow.
You start to have trouble when
there are eight blue and nine yellow.
Much closer in number there.
It turns out that my number sense
was pretty average, whereas, for his
age, Sammy did exceptionally well.
It seems that he's been
born with a gift for maths.
But does that make him
likely to be a future genius?
Well, Justin's research seems to
indicate that some people's brains
may not be hard-wired
to do mathematics.
But for me, it doesn't
really tease out...
what is it about somebody's brain
that makes them able to do, not only
mathematics, but other things?
What makes somebody not just good,
but great?
I want to know what explains the
extra degree of intelligence that
some people appear to be born with.
It raises the question of
the role of genes in
shaping our intelligence.
In 1820, the young genius
Janos Bolyai received a letter.
It was beseeching him to turn his
back on the exceedingly complex
mathematical research
he was engaged in.
Thankfully for us, he ignored the
letter and went on to produce
amazing new theories of geometry.
Now, here's the rub.
The letter actually came from his
father, also a mathematician,
also a great thinker.
Now what makes these
kind of families?
Families like the Brontes,
who produced three siblings,
all literary geniuses.
It makes me wonder how much
intelligence is passed on
from parents to child.
How much can the Bolyai family and
the Bronte family tell us about
the genetics of genius?
I've come to the Massachusetts
Institute Of Technology,
where they think they have found
the holy grail of intelligence.
A specific gene
associated with learning.
We went back to a very basic
feature of learning, which is,
you know, that the more you study,
the more you practise,
the more you do something,
the better you get at it.
So our insightful starting
point was that genes that get
turned on by activity in the brain,
would be the ones that
would be important for learning.
To test the mice, a simple
conditioning process is used.
Though I should warn you,
it is painful for the mouse.
It hears white noise, and then
experiences a mild electric shock.
Ordinary mice should quickly learn
to associate one with the other.
And now here we get the shock.
Oh! That was not nice for it.
So they jump around.
Yeah. Next time, when it's put in
a bit later, like the Pavlov dog,
it's going to hear that white noise.
And even if there isn't
an electric shock...
It's going to freeze probably
when it hears the noise.
It really freezes? OK. Yes.
Ivan Pavlov pioneered conditioning
as a means of testing how well
animals learn, by training dogs.
By ringing a bell or flashing
a light before he fed his dogs,
Pavlov conditioned them to
associate one with the other.
So eventually when he turned the
light on, but there was no food,
the dogs nevertheless anticipated
a meal and began salivating.
Elly has conditioned
two types of mice - ordinary
and genetically modified.
First, she tests an ordinary mouse,
that should have learnt to associate
the white noise with the shock.
Here, now the tone starts.
And you can see that it basically
freezes. Yeah, it shot back!
There is no shock here, all it's
doing is listening to this tone.
But because it remembers that
this tone is a bad thing,
it is not moving.
Next, Elly tests a mouse
that has had a single,
specific gene switched off.
So current is this research
we are not allowed to reveal
the actual name of the gene, but its
absence should mean that the mouse
has become incapable of learning.
What we are expecting here
is that it is going to hear the tone,
but it is going to be oblivious.
Sure enough, the mouse had not
learned to associate the white noise
with an unpleasant
experience at all.
In fact,
it is totally oblivious to it.
The thing that's surprising
is not that a gene is involved,
but that with just deleting one gene
you can see such a
robust effect on behaviour.
Elly has created a mouse that,
though seemingly healthy
in every other way,
is simply unable to learn.
Identifying this gene represents
a profound breakthrough in our
understanding of the relationship
between genetics and intelligence.
What implications
does this have for humans?
I mean, you've found something in
mice, but is it the same for humans?
Do we have a gene that is
associated with learning?
So this particular gene,
it's very interesting,
is very highly conserved.
So the protein made by this
gene is in humans is 100%
the same as in mice.
And usually when we see something
that is so highly conserved
between species,
it's usually a sign that it's
something very critical,
because, you know,
evolution hasn't fiddled with it.
In other words,
we humans have the very same gene as
the one Elly has identified.
By knocking this gene out,
developed cells become deficient
in their ability to grow dendrites -
the branch-like part of the neuron
that connects one cell to another.
If these connections aren't made,
the brain is less able to transform
experiences into memories,
and therefore to learn.
The implications of
this are exciting,
and have far-reaching consequences
on how we might learn in the future.
It's not whether you have the gene
or not, everybody has the gene.
But you can dial it up
or dial it down as far as how well
this gene might be functioning.
So of course it would have relevance
in a clinical situation where there
really was a deficit in learning
because of a neurological disorder,
but you might imagine that
also in the normal population
there might be times
when you might be
tempted to dial things up
a little, you know, you feel like,
"I really need to be sharp today".
Tweaking our genetics to
crank up our intelligence
is still just a pipe-dream.
But Elly's work does represent
a real breakthrough in our
understanding of how we learn.
Elly's research is starting to
give a more exact explanation
of how genetics might affect
your intelligence,
in a sense how nature will influence
your ability to learn and absorb
things from your environment.
But even if you have
a kind of super-charged gene,
that doesn't necessarily
mean you're going to be a rocket
scientist or even a mathematician.
But it probably does mean that
you might be better at absorbing
information and learning things.
If our genes do, to some degree,
govern our ability to learn, does
this mean we can predict potential?
For some the answer
is an emphatic yes.
Dr Ognjen Amidzic has studied
the patterns of brain activity
in lifelong chess players, some of
whom have made it to Grandmaster
status, others who failed.
His research has allowed him to
develop something akin to a
genius spotting machine.
I've agreed to let Ognjen
measure my brain activity
as I play a game of chess.
Now, I do know the rules,
but I'm not very good and haven't
played for about 20 years.
Best of luck. I do feel a bit
like I'm about to run 100m...
For comparison, my brain
will be pitted against that of
internationally respected chess
Grandmaster Stuart Conquest.
When he was a child,
Ognjen wanted to be a Grandmaster.
He spent 20 years training,
even moving to the USSR to practise
in the leading chess academies.
But despite his extensive efforts,
Ognjen never broke through
into the elite.
He wanted to find out
why he failed to make it.
So he became a neuroscientist.
I'm sorry, I couldn't keep it
going for much longer!
The data shows that Stuart's
brain is active
in different areas to mine.
His brain revealed a typical
"Grandmaster" pattern,
active in the frontal areas
associated with long-term memory
and planning,
but quieter in the middle,
temporal lobes.
Whereas mine was less active
at the front, but getting
quite hot in the middle -
an area associated
with encoding new experiences.
Ognjen's research suggests that even
if I were to train for 20 years and
memorise chess strategies,
my brain would never display a
Grandmaster style pattern of
activity like Stuart's.
His brain however, would always have
shown this pattern,
even before
he started playing chess.
As much activity as you have
in this temporal areas
is a disadvantage for you.
Really? In terms of talent,
more activity in temporal areas
is less talent. All right, OK.
It means that it's
probably genetical.
That's kind of a bit depressing,
that you can't change it.
So you really think that some
people really are coming hard-wired
to do chess, do mathematics
or whatever talent it is?
Everyone wants to think that you
can achieve everything, they
can be what they want to be.
And if they
are not able to achieve it in life
then you have someone responsible
for this, their mother or the
government or father's support,
lack of money or whatsoever.
So they have some explanations...
But you think it might be something
to do with the mother and father,
the genetics?
I think yes. You are
born a Grandmaster or you are born
average chess player,
like you are born
a great mathematician or musician
or soccer player, whatsoever.
People are born, not created.
I just don't believe and I don't
see evidence whatsoever
that you can make,
create a genius.
So can you use this for young kids
who haven't played much chess
to pick out those who will be
or could be Grandmasters?
Yes, definitely.
You can measure a boy or girl who is
six years and above and you can see
the activity there and you can make
a prediction of the results in the
future, and this is what I think is
amazing in this technology.
I am not entirely
convinced by Ognjen's work.
He has shown that Grandmasters
have a different pattern
of activity in their brains,
compared to chess players who have
practised as much
but enjoyed less success.
The evidence there
seems reasonable enough.
But claims that one can measure
intelligence and spot genius
have a poor track record,
but plenty of advocates.
One of the most fervent was Lewis
Terman, a pioneer of the IQ test.
In 1922, Terman began
one of the longest running
tests of IQ in history.
He tested hundreds of children,
and followed the lives and careers
of those with the highest scores,
whom he christened his "Termites".
But it's the story of those
who never made Termite status
that is really interesting.
One of the rejects
was William Shockley,
who went on to share the Nobel
prize for physics for the invention
of the transistor in 1948 -
a breakthrough that has ultimately
to led to the microchip and usher
in the information revolution.
Ognjen believes
that we are born hard-wired with a
predisposition to certain skills.
I've seen that there are indeed
genes associated with learning.
And I've learned that
some of us appear to have
innate advantages that might
allow us to excel in certain areas.
Could it be that our fate
is determined at birth?
Or are we born blank slates,
our brains able
to rise to any challenge?
At the Birkbeck Babylab,
they conduct experiments
they hope will help us understand
the potential of the baby brain.
Today it's the turn
of six-month-old Esther.
Esther is wearing a cap that will
measure her brain activity as she
takes a simple test.
It'll measure any difference in
the response she has to these faces.
Can you tell the difference
between these two human faces?
And what about these two
different monkey faces?
Most adults find this task almost
impossible, but it seems that
Esther can do it with ease.
What are you expecting to see?
Because she is about six months old,
we're expecting her to
process monkey faces as well
as she does human faces.
And will she have been born
with that ability to distinguish?
One thing we know is that babies
are very attracted to faces
immediately when they are born.
But the baby brain is very plastic,
so over time it will learn to
process faces and then process
monkey faces, because it is
open to all sorts of stimuli.
What happens is that connections
that are very useful -
seeing human faces upright -
will become strengthened
over those early months of life.
And connections that are less useful
because she is not seeing them, like
monkey faces, will become weakened.
It seems Esther, like all of us, is
born with abilities she will quickly
lose if she does not use them.
Far from being set in stone,
the human brain is ready
and waiting to be shaped.
When will Esther not be able to pick
out the faces of monkeys because she
finds she doesn't really need
to do that? Around 10-12 months.
So really early. I mean
the brain full-face processing
continues development
through to adolescence,
but very early on,
her brain is going to specialise
for human faces.
So if Esther was brought up
by chimps
and seeing lots of different
chimp faces, there would be a
different structuring of her brain?
Well, yes. Her brain would specialise
for chimp faces and she would think
that all humans looked alike.
So how important are
the genes in all of this?
I think people tend to think of genes
as sort of determining outcomes.
So building things... Yes, that is
just not the case except for the sort
of broad structures for the brain.
Genes are just as dynamic as
other aspects of our development,
and genes get expressed in different
ways as a function of the environment
that we are experiencing.
This research shows just how
flexible the brain is.
It can be nurtured by its
environment to assume almost any set
of skills, even become an expert
in monkey facial recognition...
or perhaps a Chess Grandmaster.
But can our environment really
explain the idea of genius?
This was a question doing the
rounds over 200 years ago,
here at the Royal Society.
The place was abuzz with rumours
of a remarkable recital
played by a pianist
to Daines Barrington, who was a
fellow here at the Royal Society.
Barrington told of how the pianist
played in a masterly fashion, was
"incredible", "amazing".
The pianist's name was
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
He was 8 years old. It's stories
like this, of the child prodigy,
which really challenged the idea
that it's just environment that
makes a genius.
Derek Paravicini is autistic
and has been blind since he
was just a few weeks old.
'Now 30, his exceptional musical
talent continues to develop.'
Yeah! Fantastic!
Professor Adam Ockelford has
worked with Derek since he was four.
He witnessed first-hand how
Derek's brain sought to make
sense of the world around him.
So, Adam, if the brain is deprived
of visual input,
it will look for something else
to make sense of the world?
Yeah, I think we're
not hot-wired for music, but we are
hot-wired to make sense of the world,
we have to make sense of the world.
I think your young brain, Derek,
was...
trying to latch onto something that
did make sense. Music is all around.
It's just like a toy, a glorious
plaything, isn't it, sound?
Lots of pattern, lots of repetition,
lots of predictability, which is just
what you needed at that time,
Derek, to make sense of the world.
I work a lot with young children with
autism, and blindness actually,
and I think that's
quite an extreme environment for
the developing brain to grow into.
Because very often language doesn't
mean a lot. Clearly if you can't see,
you haven't got the visual stimulus,
and that's extreme.
And yet the human brain
miraculously will try
to make sense of the world, try
and reach out and control the world.
And what these children seem to
latch onto is this super-patterned
auditory environment that is music.
People think, when they hear you,
Derek, "wow, it's just a gift,"
because it is so spontaneous.
But the truth is, behind that
cleverness, behind that spontaneity,
behind that creativity,
lies thousands of hours
of really hard work.
Actually making the connections in
the brain and, of course, getting
the fingers to do what they are
supposed to at the right time.
Derek, how do you actually
learn a piece of music?
You can't see, so you can't
read the music.
How do you learn a piece
like The Entertainer
or The Flight Of The Bumblebee?
Is it learning by listening?
So you listen to a piece of music
and then you can pick it up?
Play it, yeah.
'But such is Derek's talent,
he only has to hear a piece
'of music once or twice before he
is able to memorise it, play it
and even improvise around it.'
It's really interesting. In Adam's
view, Derek's extreme talent is
born of an extreme environment.
I guess, before I came here, I
had this idea that savants could
just instantly do what they do,
but talking to Adam, Derek had to
really work hard at this talent.
It was developed over many years
before it came to full fruition.
While most of us don't develop
an extreme talent like Derek's,
almost everyone reveals
an extraordinary ability
to learn throughout childhood.
What is it about the brain that can
set this supercharged period
of rapid development?
And could it
hold a clue to genius?
Over the past 15 years at the
National Institute of Health
in Washington,
they've been conducting
the largest-ever survey of brains
as they mature into adulthood.
How many brains have you scanned
for this particular study?
It's been about 400 or 500 children,
and they are
scanned repeatedly as they grow up.
So we start as young as three
or four years
and then scan right up
to the early twenties.
And you are hoping to see
how the brain is changing
during that period?
Exactly, and by using brain scans
from the same child taken repeatedly,
you get a particularly rich
picture of how the brain grows. It's
like the difference between looking
at a painting and looking at a movie.
The scans reveal that the cortex,
the outer layer of the brain
responsible for thinking,
gets progressively thinner
as children hit adolescence.
Graphics made by Philip's colleagues
show this pruning process.
The bluer the brain,
the thinner the cortex.
The areas most closely associated
with sophisticated, abstract
thinking are the last to be pruned.
Philip and his team discovered
that it's not just the pattern
of brain maturation, but WHEN
the brain starts to mature,
that is important.
What differed according to
intelligence was the extent and rate
at which all these changes happened.
So the most intelligent children,
actually they showed this process
of the cortex getting a bit thinner
somewhat later, around the age
of 10 or 11 in the frontal parts
of the brain, sort of around here.
And then the phase of getting
thinner in the cortex
was particularly vigorous
in these kids as well.
In a way, the kids who have the most
agile and active minds also have
the most agile and active cortex.
Philip's work begins to answer the
question of why some brains are more
intelligent than others,
by focusing attention on different
rates at which they mature.
In this regard,
it's an important step towards
understanding our intelligence.
These kids' brains are
constantly changing and developing.
Probably these parents here hope
they'll be the first to read,
the first to do arithmetic.
But it seems that when
it comes to the maturing of the
brain, a later development leads
to a higher IQ, so actually you want
your brain at a later age to be
maturing.
It seems a little counter-intuitive.
So far I've seen how we are born
with a predisposition
for certain abilities.
But that's countered by the
remarkable flexibility
of the baby brain,
which allows it to develop
in concert with its environment.
And I've learnt that my brain pretty
much settled down
about two decades ago
as I left adolescence behind.
So where does that leave me?
Is my brain no longer capable
of a moment of genius?
Was it all over
by the time I turned 21?
Well, maybe not.
The race is on to see
whether we can enhance our
intelligence artificially.
At the University of Gottingen
in Germany, they are pioneering
technology that could greatly extend
our control over our own brains.
They're developing a means
to turbo-charge our grey matter.
The aim is to improve
the volunteer's ability
to subconsciously learn.
The test itself is simple.
When Leila sees a dot appear
on the screen she has to tap a
corresponding key on the keyboard.
There is a pattern
to when the dots appear,
but it's impossible to detect,
at least before the artificial
stimulation of her brain begins.
What we want to do is
facilitate the excitability
of her motor cortex.
In order to be able to do that,
we have to fit an electrode...
I presume this is perfectly safe.
I'd be a bit nervous about having
electricity shot through my brain!
They are very weak currents. They are
so weak that she doesn't notice
anything.
They are so weak they just manipulate
the membrane potential
of nerve cells, a little bit.
So we have to assure that the
electrode has a good contact, so...
So...this is just water?
Water...salt solution.
Usually electricity and water
shouldn't go together,
but in this case...
No, this is an interesting point.
Because the brain is swimming
in water,
and the water has a much better
conductivity that the brain itself,
so this is one of the reasons
this method works so elegantly.
It can travel a little bit
around the corner through
the water and stimulate this complex
brain just by making use of the
better conductivity of the water.
So now we will stimulate
the motor cortex here
by anodal...
positive electricity for ten minutes.
So now stimulation starts.
So there is now electricity
passing through Leila's brain?
Can you feel anything? No.
There's no smoke,
I can't see anything!
During this stimulation,
Leila will move her fingers and
do the implicit learning paradigm.
We will measure simultaneously
how quick she can respond to the
visual target during this time.
What we expect to see is,
with motor cortex depolarisation,
it gets more excitable, and then
her reaction time will improve.
And then we will see
an increase in speed,
that...she is not consciously
of picking up a pattern,
but subconsciously
she's getting better at learning.
'The longer the stimulation lasts,
the greater its effects will be.
'In previous experiments lasting
24 hours, permanent improvements
to the brain were forged.'
We know from other,
basic animal research
that new connections between
individual nerve cells will be
built after around 30 minutes,
and after about a day
they start to become functional.
So it's really changing
the structure of the brain
by doing this?
It is not just a temporary effect?
Yes, we have structural alterations
which allowed you to move your
fingers quicker, in this case.
Through measuring the reaction times,
we will see that you will probably
speed up in the range of 10% or so.
10%, and that's significant, is it?
You would not expect that?
Not without stimulation.
I suppose there is an element
of Frankenstein
about what Dr Paulus is doing.
I must say that
I find the idea of dialling my
brain up to 11 quite exciting.
But perhaps we don't have
to take such dramatic steps.
What if the brain is actually
very flexible and adaptable,
and can change the way
it works all on its own?
Until recently, it was thought
that in the adult brain,
information flowed
along well-established routes,
laid down by years of experience.
Oh, that is weird...
Clare Cheskin is blind.
A curve...a curved thing...
with little dots on it...
You can get that detail?
That's extraordinary!
But I don't know what it was.
The curved thing with dots
was the London Eye.
Was it really?! You've just
picked up the London Eye. Oh.
'She lost her sight 20 years ago.
But now she can see - with sound.'
A series of...
going across like that.
Horizontal lines!
That's the word!
Well, you were certainly seeing...
There's a curve going downwards...
Yes, more horizontal lines. OK, yeah.
'She sees using software
that turns photos taken by her
phone's camera into sounds.
'The software was downloaded
for free from the internet,
after it was made
'available by its developer,
Dr Peter Meijer.'
More railings...people.
Oh, yes.
'With just a few months' practice,
Clare was able to "see" horizontal
'and vertical lines, curves,
patterns, foliage, even people.'
There's a big, vertical column.
'The software also runs
on her laptop.'
That was vegetation.
It was - we just went past a bush!
Yes, that was... I can tell trees.
'Clare really does "see"
these sounds as images
in her visual cortex.
'But how?'
Research has shown that users learn
to see quicker than new neurons
could possibly grow connecting
the visual cortex to the ear.
So scientists have concluded
that the brain's flexibility is such
that dormant neural pathways are
being reactivated and strengthened,
thus allowing her to see with sound.
'Clare's brain is not
unusual in this regard.'
We all have these under-exploited
neural pathways - they have been
there since we were babies.
However, users still have to learn
to make sense of what they see
in their mind's eye.
When I first started using it,
I emailed...Dr Meijer, who devised
the programme, and I said,
"There looks like a car driving
right up the side of a building.
"I know things are happening which
are impossible, I'm going
into the Twilight Zone -
"what's happening?
"What is this really?"
And he said it's perspective.
Because I hadn't learn to see in
perspective that things get smaller
and lines can appear to be
diagonal when they're not.
I had to learn all that.
I had to learn, in a way, how to see.
The plasticity of the adult brain
should, I think, give us all hope.
There's still the potential
for new ideas, for new thoughts.
Of course, breaking new ground
is what being a genius is all about.
For me, what distinguishes
a really great mind
is one that combines knowledge
with creativity.
In order to grapple with ideas of
space, time and relativity,
Einstein used to imagine himself
travelling across the universe
on a beam of light.
It's this, as much as anything else,
that I think explains Einstein's
genius.
It's not so much that had more
knowledge than his contemporaries,
although he knew a lot of physics -
it's more that
he combined that knowledge
with an incredibly imaginative,
creative approach to the subject.
Einstein knew this, because he
once said, "imagination is more
important than knowledge".
It might be that creativity
is the crucial, final part
of understanding genius.
But how on earth does science
get to grips with something as
ill-defined as the urge to create?
Well, I'm on my way to Birkenhead
to meet a man who just might offer
scientists a chance to pinpoint
the biological source
of our creative sparks.
His name is Tommy McHugh.
Tommy's life changed dramatically
in 2001, when a brain haemorrhage
altered the way his brain works
and left him
with an insatiable urge to paint.
Tommy. Hiya, Marcus. Hi.
Nice to meet you. And you.
This is quite extraordinary.
It's all over the place.
It's up here on the ceiling.
All over the walls and things.
It's absolutely everywhere.
Is it upstairs as well?
Yes, it's all up the walls,
the stairs.
There's even layers upon layers...
It's kind of like a little
Sistine Chapel - in Birkenhead.
This is what's going on
inside your brain?
This is my brain, what I'm seeing.
I'm inside your brain? Yeah.
While you're seeing,
I'm trying to bring all that...
Tommy has his own explanation for
what is happening inside his brain
when he feels this urge to create.
Imagine a honeycomb hive,
cut in half.
Inside each hive are cells, like 50
pence pieces, with clingfilm over it.
I kept on visualising
a lightning flash
shooting over to this side of
the brain and hitting this one cell.
But when this lightning flash
opened that 50 pence cell,
it unlocked a Mount Etna of bubbles.
Each little Fairy Liquid bubble
in my imagination
contained billions of other bubbles.
And then they popped.
All this has exploded.
Every little thing in this room
wants to explode into something more.
And does it change? Are you
not satisfied with the things...
I mean, how many paintings
have been under here?
Five times I've painted
the whole house.
Floor, ceilings, carpets.
So it's constantly changing.
Does it ever stop?
Do you ever not feel the urge?
No, I can't stop.
I only sleep through exhaustion.
If I was allowed, the outside
of this house would be painted
and so would the trees
and the pavement.
I must admit, it must be
pretty difficult to be Tommy.
He seems to be hostage to this
creative urge, this need to paint.
It's not so much what he paints but
WHY he paints that's so interesting.
Something's happened
inside his brain.
That gives us a chance to actually
explore what the brain does.
It seems to me, this creative urge
is related to something
to do with his biology.
So science can have something to say
about this creative process.
I have been told
that this quiet, secluded park
contains a clue to understanding
the nature of creativity.
Away from the distractions
of city life,
I do find myself be able to gather
my thoughts and focus my mind.
I'm here to meet Mark Lythgoe,
whose work with Tommy
is part of his broader study of
the science of the "A-ha!" moment.
If I can use this
metaphor that I like to use.
If you imagine you have got
two types of brain cells,
two types or processes going on.
There's always one process
that's trying to hold down another.
There's an excitatory process but
an inhibitory process as well. Right.
With Tommy, it could be that the
inhibitory process has been damaged.
Those parts of the brain,
or those brain cells,
aren't working in a way as they did.
Therefore - and as he described it -
he's got this bubbling to the
surface, those excitatory processes
that are normally suppressed,
have suddenly been unleashed.
And that's what provides his
creative energies.
So, in some sense, all of us might
have this bubbling, but we also have
something which is, sort of,
making sure it doesn't...take over.
And with Tommy,
that's kind of stopped
and so this bubbling
just keeps on going.
Yeah, it's as though the walls
have come crumbling down.
The walls that allow us to
focus, to shield things out,
with Tommy,
these walls have collapsed.
And this information's just
pouring into his world
that he's never had before.
Suddenly he's going,
"My goodness, I've got to do
something with all this information."
And what he does, he creates.
I wanted to know how Tommy helps us
to understand the creative process.
We all have this capacity
to filter out irrelevant information.
It's called latent inhibition.
It crosses all species.
So that when you're sitting
on the Tube reading that book,
you're able to focus down,
to build these walls up.
You're able to ignore
the irrelevant stimuli around you
and just focus on that book.
It's a remarkable capacity
that we have.
People that have lower levels
of latent inhibition -
people that are able to
bring the walls down,
let the irrelevant information
come into their world,
do better on creativity scores.
So, do you think everybody
could actually develop
a more creative side like Tommy,
or is it something special
that Tommy's got?
I think the wonderful thing
about Tommy
is that he can do
two things at the same time.
He's able to bring the walls down,
let this irrelevant information
come into his world,
create all these wonderful new
associations and creative ideas,
but he's also incredibly thematic.
Once he gets stuck on an idea,
he sticks with it doggedly.
And I think this is
the paradox of creativity.
You've got to be able to hold these
two states at the same time.
You've got to be open,
yet also incredibly focused.
And I think this is, perhaps,
where true creative genius lies -
the people that can hold these
two states at the same time.
What interests me about
this paradoxical idea -
that one side of the brain can be
incredibly open to new,
creative ideas,
and on the other be incredibly
focused on detail -
is that it seems to be a product
of the connectivity of the brain.
And that's what Mark is looking at -
the connectivity of the brain
in somebody like Tommy.
Mark's work has helped move
the study of intelligence on.
It used to be that genius
was understood in terms
of nature or nurture.
Talent was either God-given -
bestowed on a lucky few
from birth...
..or it was the product of a fertile
environment and a lot of hard graft.
But the true picture
isn't quite so clear-cut.
Yes, we've seen that we are
all born with a predisposition
to excel in different areas.
I could hear...
SHE HUMS DESCENDING NOTE
Then I could hear...
SHE HUMS ASCENDING NOTE
But we've also learnt that
the adaptability of our brains
plays the major role in allowing
us to reach our full potential.
I think we probably
over-use the word "genius"
to describe some
half-decent footballer
or your average Nobel Prize winner.
But use the word carefully
and you can describe an event
which probably only happens
once or twice a century.
The improbable result of a lifelong,
yet perfectly pitched, relationship
between genes and the environment.
A brain born of this relationship
is one that can have
incredible focus,
yet thoughts beyond
the scope of the universe.
Geniuses show us how
just remarkable the brain is,
what a wonderful piece of work
man is -
how noble in reason,
yet infinite in faculty.