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When a Blow to the Head Creates a Sudden Genius
- amirmc 14y agoFrom the comments section: "Precisely how Doctor Emmett Brown created the Flux Capacitor, had he not bumped his head on the edge of the sink we would've never had time travel via DeLorean."
- drumdance 14y agoThis reminds me of the movie Limitless, in which a drug is invented that gives people who take it access to the 80% of their brain that they don't normally use.
- batista 14y agoOnly the "we only use 10%, 20% of our brain" thing is false, basically an urban legend.
- gnaritas 14y agoThere are people who use 100% of their brains, they're generally flopping around on the floor.
- glogla 14y agoThat's not true, for reasonable definition of "use". There is grain of truth on the "we only use 10 % of our brains" saying, that we don't usually use our whole brain at once. It is possible, but not very comfortable, the closest you can get would be something like solving differential equations in you head and driving a car at the same time, while singing and thinking about you wife.
- ajross 14y agoNor is the original. The whole fallacy stems from a misunderstanding of "use". Only 10% of brain regions are active at any given time, so they're "unused". Of course, activating ("using?") them all at once is something medically known as a seizure. The same is true of circuits. If you're a pipeline stage in a multiplier inside an ALU, you're only "used" when a multiply instruction passes by. If only 10% of instructions in a given program are multiplies, you're 90% idle. That doesn't mean that the multiplier is a useless circuit.
- noonespecial 14y agoI always tell people "its like saying you only use 20% of the boat to float".
- Drbble 14y agoLimitless was also a work of fiction, so it's OK.
- drumdance 14y agoSorry, I should've been clear that I don't actually believe the myth. Only that the movie Limitless is about it.
- theorique 14y agoScientists claim that we only use 10% of our brains ... but I think that we only use 10% of our hearts.
- gnaritas 14y agoScientists do not make that claim.
- thesis 14y agoDr. Wedding Crasher once said that.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- masklinn 14y ago> Scientists claim that we only use 10% of our brains ... I've never seen a scientist make that actual claim. New-agers yes, eastern philosophers yes, comic books yes, scientists? Can't say I can remember any such instance. > but I think that we only use 10% of our hearts. The only way to only use 10% of your heart is to suffer from massive ischaemia, and that leads to death on pretty damn short order.
- liber8 14y ago(It's a quote from Wedding Crashers)
- jsprinkles 14y ago(Which is why it's being downvoted.)
- theorique 14y agoSigh, yep, I figured (1) that would happen and (2) there would be a few lulz worth the karma.
- ThomPete 14y agoThe only people who use 20% of their brain are people claiming we do. Humans use 100% of their brains. Evolution doesn't leave large buffers like that.
- jorleif 14y agoI agree with your claim, but attributing that to evolution as an efficient optimizer is a bit strange. If you are building a brain with trial and error, there is bound to be lots of bits and pieces of it that are not operating optimally for the current organism, but are there because of the evolutionary path that was taken.
- ThomPete 14y agoWhat parts should that be? The brain has evolved over time. It has an amazing amount of elasticity with and a bunch of hardwired features. But other than that it's not filled with secret potential.
- jacquesm 14y agoThe brain not 'using' all of it all the time is a measure of power conservation, not of what could be if you lit it up all at once.
- lambda 14y ago> "Some savants are very disabled," said Treffert, "yet they know the rules of math, they know the rules of music, they know the rules of art. But they've never been taught that. Well, how can that get there? The only way it can get there is genetically." Really? This is the only explanation that he can think of? Genetics? Not, say, that people have been exposed to this stuff for years, but haven't been able to do anything with that knowledge until something traumatic happened to their brain that allowed them to connect it together? I'm not musical genius. I can barely hold a tune, and while I try noodling around with instruments every once in a while, I'm not that great. But there's a large body of music that I know through exposure. I've just never been able to do much with it. That's not genetic; that's learned through experience. Why would he think that the traumatic injury would be unlocking something genetic, rather than just allowing people to connect things they've learned through experience in more creative ways?
- Baba_Chaghaloo 14y agoThat piano player in the video is hardly what I'd call a savant, more like he hit his head and woke up as a douchebag but music is one of those things that gets stored way back in your brain somewhere, I think. I have songs stuck in my head all the time and I'll sleep for 12 hours and the damn thing will still be there. Maybe after a head injury some people can recall tunes they've heard throughout their lives more clearly which would make them easier to play.
- mgkimsal 14y agoUmmm.... I can 'recall' music in incredible detail - piano, guitar, horns, the works, and I've been playing a variety of instruments for 30 years. 'recall' doesn't make the stuff any easier to play at all. To go from no musical ability to what that guy was able to do in a day, assuming it's true, is pretty amazing. You can 'recall' tunes hours after sleeping - does that make it easier to play them fluently on instruments you'd never had training on?
- drumdance 14y agoAs a once-professional musician who later learned a different instrument from the one I grew up learning, I can say that his learning to play the piano, with all it's fine motor control, is nothing short of miraculous.
- biot 14y ago> Thanks to a piece of equipment called the Medtronic Mag Pro... The title should be changed to "When a PR Piece Creates a Sudden Article".
- f45s8g2 14y agoI rememember reading about Treffert and his "thinking cap" over ten years ago. I think it may have actually been in Wired. This article was too short. I was hoping for a more "NewYorker-length" piece.
- f45s8g2 14y agoOops. I think I meant remembering reading the NYTimes piece in 2003. 9 years later and I'm still waiting for my thinking cap. Maybe Snyder needs VC funding?
- bewareofdog 14y agoIs this why people sometimes will say they are "banging their head against the wall" trying to come up with a solution?
- losethos 14y agoIn 9th grade I took an IQ test. 165 I had a 1440 SAT. If I'm stupid, now, my doctors did it.
- ktizo 14y agoReminds me of Terry Pratchett's concept of retro-phrenology... You can go into a shop in Ankh-Morpork and order an artistic temperament with a tendency to introspection. What you actually get is hit on the head with a large hammer, but it keeps the money in circulation and gives people something to do.
- bsimpson 14y ago> Is there any risk of brain damage? > Well, technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but it's on a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you'll miss.