Slashdot Mirror
Your Brain May Have Amazing Powers
I've never given much credence to the "only use 10% of our brains" urban legend, but this article,
Savant for a Day,
is making me reconsider. I'd like to see controlled, double-blind studies, but Snyder's machine already sounds very interesting -- hey, anyone can
learn to draw,
but I want to flip a switch to put my brain into calculator mode. EM-brain experimentation has taken off since
Michael Persinger's work and
other recent research.
No. They are (were) having auth server problems. Was getting that error before the story went live.
SPAM
By LAWRENCE OSBORNE
In a concrete basement at the University of Sydney, I sat in a chair waiting to have my brain altered by an electromagnetic pulse. My forehead was connected, by a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked something like an old-fashioned beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described to me as a ''Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator.'' This was not just any old Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this was the Medtronic Mag Pro, and it was being operated by Allan Snyder, one of the world's most remarkable scientists of human cognition.
Nonetheless, the anticipation of electricity being beamed into my frontal lobes (and the consent form I had just signed) made me a bit nervous. Snyder found that amusing. ''Oh, relax now!'' he said in the thick local accent he has acquired since moving here from America. ''I've done it on myself a hundred times. This is Australia. Legally, it's far more difficult to damage people in Australia than it is in the United States.''
''Damage?'' I groaned.
''You're not going to be damaged,'' he said. ''You're going to be enhanced.''
The Medtronic was originally developed as a tool for brain surgery: by stimulating or slowing down specific regions of the brain, it allowed doctors to monitor the effects of surgery in real time. But it also produced, they noted, strange and unexpected effects on patients' mental functions: one minute they would lose the ability to speak, another minute they would speak easily but would make odd linguistic errors and so on. A number of researchers started to look into the possibilities, but one in particular intrigued Snyder: that people undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, could suddenly exhibit savant intelligence -- those isolated pockets of geniuslike mental ability that most often appear in autistic people.
Snyder is an impish presence, the very opposite of a venerable professor, let alone an internationally acclaimed scientist. There is a whiff of Woody Allen about him. Did I really want him, I couldn't help thinking, rewiring my hard drive? ''We're not changing your brain physically,'' he assured me. ''You'll only experience differences in your thought processes while you're actually on the machine.'' His assistant made a few final adjustments to the electrodes, and then, as everyone stood back, Snyder flicked the switch.
A series of electromagnetic pulses were being directed into my frontal lobes, but I felt nothing. Snyder instructed me to draw something. ''What would you like to draw?'' he said merrily. ''A cat? You like drawing cats? Cats it is.''
I've seen a million cats in my life, so when I close my eyes, I have no trouble picturing them. But what does a cat really look like, and how do you put it down on paper? I gave it a try but came up with some sort of stick figure, perhaps an insect.
While I drew, Snyder continued his lecture. ''You could call this a creativity-amplifying machine. It's a way of altering our states of mind without taking drugs like mescaline. You can make people see the raw data of the world as it is. As it is actually represented in the unconscious mind of all of us.''
Two minutes after I started the first drawing, I was instructed to try again. After another two minutes, I tried a third cat, and then in due course a fourth. Then the experiment was over, and the electrodes were removed. I looked down at my work. The first felines were boxy and stiffly unconvincing. But after I had been subjected to about 10 minutes of transcranial magnetic stimulation, their tails had grown more vibrant, more nervous; their faces were personable and convincing. They were even beginning to wear clever expressions.
I could hardly recognize them as my own drawings, though I had watched myself render each one, in all its loving detail. Somehow over the course of a very few minutes, and with no additional instruction, I had gone from an incompetent draftsman to a very impressive artist of the feli
Repeat after me: the idea that you only use 10% of your brain is a myth. That's right, it's complete bullshit, utter crap. It makes me angry to hear it so often. It's odd really, this is not a case where there is a small group on the fringe claiming this is the fact, no one in the field (mine is computational/integrative neuroscience, which as you can see from just its name is full of buzz-words :P) has held this theory for as long as I've been in it (maye even ever but I don't know that). It's quite non-sensical really, 10% of what? Of the brain's potential? Do you really think we have a quantitative way of measuring that, or of "how much of it you're using even? Do you only count cognition or subconscious functions as well? Which method do you use to measure these and how do you differentiate between the cognitive and the non-cognitive? This pissed Stephen Gould (rest his soul) off enough that he penned an entire article about myths concerning evolution that opened by bitching about this stupid idea. Please, for the love of all that is scientific and good, STOP PROPAGATING THIS STUPID MYTH! At very least on slashdot, you're supposed to be a geek damn it, you ought to know better. *grumbles* 10%, I gotcher 10% right here bub.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
n a concrete basement at the University of Sydney, I sat in a chair waiting to have my brain altered by an electromagnetic pulse. My forehead was connected, by a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked something like an old-fashioned beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described to me as a ''Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator.'' This was not just any old Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this was the Medtronic Mag Pro, and it was being operated by Allan Snyder, one of the world's most remarkable scientists of human cognition.
Nonetheless, the anticipation of electricity being beamed into my frontal lobes (and the consent form I had just signed) made me a bit nervous. Snyder found that amusing. ''Oh, relax now!'' he said in the thick local accent he has acquired since moving here from America. ''I've done it on myself a hundred times. This is Australia. Legally, it's far more difficult to damage people in Australia than it is in the United States.''
''Damage?'' I groaned.
''You're not going to be damaged,'' he said. ''You're going to be enhanced.''
The Medtronic was originally developed as a tool for brain surgery: by stimulating or slowing down specific regions of the brain, it allowed doctors to monitor the effects of surgery in real time. But it also produced, they noted, strange and unexpected effects on patients' mental functions: one minute they would lose the ability to speak, another minute they would speak easily but would make odd linguistic errors and so on. A number of researchers started to look into the possibilities, but one in particular intrigued Snyder: that people undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, could suddenly exhibit savant intelligence -- those isolated pockets of geniuslike mental ability that most often appear in autistic people.
Snyder is an impish presence, the very opposite of a venerable professor, let alone an internationally acclaimed scientist. There is a whiff of Woody Allen about him. Did I really want him, I couldn't help thinking, rewiring my hard drive? ''We're not changing your brain physically,'' he assured me. ''You'll only experience differences in your thought processes while you're actually on the machine.'' His assistant made a few final adjustments to the electrodes, and then, as everyone stood back, Snyder flicked the switch.
A series of electromagnetic pulses were being directed into my frontal lobes, but I felt nothing. Snyder instructed me to draw something. ''What would you like to draw?'' he said merrily. ''A cat? You like drawing cats? Cats it is.''
I've seen a million cats in my life, so when I close my eyes, I have no trouble picturing them. But what does a cat really look like, and how do you put it down on paper? I gave it a try but came up with some sort of stick figure, perhaps an insect.
While I drew, Snyder continued his lecture. ''You could call this a creativity-amplifying machine. It's a way of altering our states of mind without taking drugs like mescaline. You can make people see the raw data of the world as it is. As it is actually represented in the unconscious mind of all of us.''
Two minutes after I started the first drawing, I was instructed to try again. After another two minutes, I tried a third cat, and then in due course a fourth. Then the experiment was over, and the electrodes were removed. I looked down at my work. The first felines were boxy and stiffly unconvincing. But after I had been subjected to about 10 minutes of transcranial magnetic stimulation, their tails had grown more vibrant, more nervous; their faces were personable and convincing. They were even beginning to wear clever expressions.
I could hardly recognize them as my own drawings, though I had watched myself render each one, in all its loving detail. Somehow over the course of a very few minutes, and with no additional instruction, I had gone from an incompetent draftsman to a very imp
This is almost certainly garbage. I'm working in a transcranial magnetic stimulation lab right now, and I've never even heard of the guy doing this stuff. However, the people who criticize his work are basically the most respected people doing TMS right now. I get the sense that he's trying to infer a meaningful pattern from a small number of poorly designed tests.
The usual effect of TMS is just to slow you down by a couple seconds at whatever you're doing. For example, right now we're doing this experiment where we flash words on a screen and have the subject read them out loud. Then eventually we just put a * up on the screen, and they have to recall the last word they saw. By changing the device to send pulses into different parts of the brain, you can find out what is responsible for what. The subjects slow down a bit when you're hitting the right part of the brain.
I mean, this guy could be insanely revolutionary and in five years we'll all be using his machines on our heads to make us geniuses... but I don't think so.
btm
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
They wrote a book about it. It's called "Bringing Down the House."
Kevin Spacey has optioned the movie rights, I think.
Additionally, the Discover article also talked about the various instances of sudden onset autism. One of the examples presented was the case of a 3 year old girl named Nadia, who was capable of drawing a picture of a horse and rider in such detail that it would've taken a experienced artist to do. The article shows one of Nadia's drawings, which IMHO is very beautifully rendered.
Now, if only to find that machine so I can calculate the Mayan calendar past 2012...
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
It's a calculator joke. There once was a girl whose boobs weighed 69 pounds, which was 222 much. She wanted them to weigh 51 pounds. So she went on a diet for eight weeks, and ended up boobless. (6922251 * 8 = 55378008 (read upside-down)) Someone must have had a lot of time on their hands to figure that one out.
In other news, exposure to electromagnetic radiation has been linked to brain cancer. There's some sort of diminshing returns argument to be made here, but I spent too long frying my brain with the Savant-o-Matic(TM), and now it just won't come to me.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Incorrect due to basic physiology. Children can lose a large part of their brains due to a phenomenon called plasticity whereby their brain can remap brain functionality in the event of trauma. Adults outgrow this phenomenon.
In fact, procedures have been developed in pediatric neurosurgery that involve removing large parts of the brain to correct problems, such as destructive grand mal seizures. These procedures can't be used on adults because plasticity is the only reason the patient isn't left a vegetable. Fascinating and risky stuff.