HOW DO YOU MEASURE INTELLIGENCE?
But how do you measure intelligence? For centuries, any discussion of intelligence relied on hearsay and anecdote. But now MRI studies have shown that the principal activity of the brain while performing these mathematical puzzles involves the pathway connecting the prefrontal cortex (which engages in rational thought) with the parietal lobes (which processes numbers). This correlates with the anatomical studies of Einstein’s brain, which showed that his inferior parietal lobes were larger than normal. So it is conceivable that mathematical ability correlates with increased information flows between the prefrontal cortex and the parietal lobes. But did the brain increase in size in this area because of hard work and study, or was Einstein born that way? The answer is still not clear.
The key problem is that there is no uniformly accepted definition of intelligence, let alone a consensus among scientists as to its origin. But the answer may prove critical if we wish to enhance it.
IQ EXAMS AND DR. TERMAN
By default, the most widely used measure of intelligence is the IQ exam, pioneered by Dr. Lewis Terman of Stanford University, who in 1916 revised an earlier test devised by Alfred Binet for the French government. For the next several decades, it became the gold standard by which to measure intelligence. Terman, in fact, dedicated his life to the proposition that intelligence could be measured and inherited, and was the strongest predictor of success in life.
Five years later, Terman started a landmark study on schoolchildren, The Genetic Studies of Genius. It was an ambitious project, whose scope and duration were unprecedented back in the 1920s. It set the tone for research in this field for an entire generation. He methodically chronicled the successes and failures of these individuals throughout their lives, compiling thick files of their achievements. These high-IQ students were dubbed the “Termites.”
At first, Dr. Terman’s idea seemed to be a resounding success. It became the standard by which both children and other tests were measured. During World War I, 1.7 million soldiers were given this test. But over the years, a different profile began to slowly emerge. Decades later, children who scored high on the IQ exam were only moderately more successful than those who did not. Terman could proudly point to some of his students who went on to win awards and secure well-paying jobs. But he became increasingly disturbed by the large number of his brightest students whom society would consider to be failures, taking menial, dead-end jobs, engaging in crime, or leading lives on the margins of society. These results were quite upsetting to Dr. Terman, who had dedicated his life to proving that high IQ meant success in life.
SUCCESS IN LIFE AND DELAYED GRATIFICATION
A different approach was taken in 1972 by Dr. Walter Mischel, also of Stanford, who analyzed yet another characteristic among children: the ability to delay gratification. He pioneered the use of the “marshmallow test,” that is, would children prefer one marshmallow now, or the prospect of two marsh-mallows twenty minutes later? Six hundred children, aged four to six, participated in this experiment. When Mischel revisited the participants in 1988, he found that those who could delay gratification were more competent than those who could not.
In 1990, another study showed a direct correlation between those who could delay gratification and SAT scores. And a study done in 2011 indicated that this characteristic continued throughout a person’s life. The results of these and other studies were eye-opening. The children who exhibited delayed gratification scored higher on almost every measure of success in life: higher-paying jobs, lower rates of drug addiction, higher test scores, higher educational attainment, better social integration, etc.
But what was most intriguing was that brain scans of these individuals revealed a definite pattern. They showed a distinct difference in the way the prefrontal cortex interacted with the ventral striatum, a region involved in addiction. (This is not surprising, since the ventral striatum contains the nucleus accumbens, known as the “pleasure center.” So there seems to be a struggle here between the pleasure-seeking part of the brain and the rational part to control temptation, as we saw in Chapter 2.)
This difference was no fluke. The result has been tested by many independent groups over the years, with nearly identical results. Other studies have also verified the difference in the frontal-striatal circuitry of the brain, which appears to govern delayed gratification. It seems that the one characteristic most closely correlated with success in life, which has persisted over the decades, is the ability to delay gratification.
Although this is a gross simplification, what these brain scans show is that the connection between the prefrontal and parietal lobes seems to be important for mathematical and abstract thought, while the connection between the prefrontal and limbic system (involving the conscious control of our emotions and pleasure center) seems to be essential for success in life.
Dr. Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, concludes, “Your grades in school, your scores on the SAT, mean less for life success than your capacity to co-operate, your ability to regulate your emotions, your capacity to delay your gratification, and your capacity to focus your attention. Those skills are far more important—all the data indicate—for life success than your IQ or your grades.”
NEW MEASURES OF INTELLIGENCE
Clearly there have to be new ways to measure intelligence and success in life. IQ exams are not useless, but they measure only one limited form of intelligence. Dr. Michael Sweeney, author of Brain: The Complete Mind, notes, “Tests don’t measure motivation, persistence, social skills, and a host of other attributes of a life that’s well lived.”
The problem with many of these standardized tests is that there may also be a subconscious bias due to cultural influences. In addition, these tests are evaluating only one particular form of intelligence, which some psychologists call “convergent” intelligence. Convergent intelligence focuses on one line of thought, ignoring the more complex “divergent” form of intelligence, which involves measuring differing factors. For example, during World War II, the U.S. Army Air Forces asked scientists to devise a psychological exam that would measure a pilot’s intelligence and ability to handle difficult, unexpected situations. One question was: If you are shot down deep in enemy territory and must somehow make it back to friendly lines, what do you do? The results contradicted conventional thinking.
Most psychologists expected that the air force study would show that pilots with high IQs would score highly on this test as well. Actually, the reverse was true. The pilots who scored highest were the ones with higher levels of divergent thinking, who could see through many different lines of thought. Pilots who excelled at this, for example, were able to think up a variety of unorthodox and imaginative methods to escape after they were captured behind enemy lines.
The difference between convergent and divergent thinking is also reflected in studies on split-brain patients, which clearly show that each hemisphere of the brain is principally hardwired for one or the other. Dr. Ulrich Kraft of Fulda, Germany, writes, “The left hemisphere is responsible for convergent thinking and the right hemisphere for divergent thinking. The left side examines details and processes them logically and analytically but lacks a sense of overriding, abstract connections. The right side is more imaginative and intuitive and tends to work holistically, integrating pieces of an informational puzzle into a whole.”
In this book, I take the position that human consciousness involves the ability to create a model of the world and then simulate the model into the future, in order to attain a goal. Pilots who demonstrated divergent thinking were able to simulate many possible future events accurately and with more complexity. Similarly, the children who mastered delayed gratification in the famous marshmallow test appear to be the ones who had the most ability to simulate the future, to see the long-term rewards and not just the short-term, get-rich-quick schemes.
A more sophisticated intelligence exam that directly quantifi
es a person’s ability to simulate the future would be difficult but not impossible to create. A person could be asked to create as many realistic scenarios for the future as possible to win a game, with a score assigned depending on the number of simulations the person can imagine and the number of causal links involved with each one. Instead of measuring a person’s ability to simply assimilate information, this new method would measure a person’s ability to manipulate and mold this information to achieve a higher goal. For example, a person might be asked to figure out how to escape from a deserted island full of hungry wild animals and poisonous snakes. He would have to list all the various ways to survive, fend off the dangerous animals, and leave the island, creating an elaborate causal tree of possible outcomes and futures.
So we see that there is a common thread running through all this discussion, and that is that intelligence seems to be correlated with the complexity with which we can simulate future events, which correlates with our earlier discussion of consciousness.
But given the rapid advances taking place in the world’s laboratories concerning electromagnetic fields, genetics, and drug therapies, is it possible not just to measure our intelligence, but to enhance it as well—to become another Einstein?
BOOSTING OUR INTELLIGENCE
This possibility was explored in the novel Flowers for Algernon (1958), later made into the Academy Award–winning movie Charly (1968). In it, we follow the sad life of Charly Gordon, who has an IQ of 68 and a menial job in a bakery. He lives a simple life, fails to understand that his fellow workers are constantly making fun of him, and does not even know how to spell his own name.
His only friend is Alice, a teacher who takes pity on him and tries to teach him to read. But one day, scientists discover a new procedure that can suddenly make ordinary mice intelligent. Alice hears about this and decides to introduce Charly to these scientists, who agree to perform the procedure on their first human subject. Within weeks, Charly has noticeably changed. His vocabulary increases, he devours books from the library, he becomes something of a ladies’ man, and his room explodes with modern art. Soon he begins to read about relativity and the quantum theory, pushing the boundaries of advanced physics. He and Alice even become lovers.
But then the doctors notice that the mice have slowly lost their ability and died. Realizing that he, too, might lose everything, Charly furiously tries to use his superior intellect to find a cure, but instead he’s forced to witness his own inexorable decline. His vocabulary shrinks, he forgets mathematics and physics, and he slowly reverts back to his old self. In the final scene, a heartbroken Alice watches as Charly plays with children.
The novel and movie, although poignant and critically acclaimed, were dismissed as sheer science fiction. The plot was moving and original, but the idea of boosting one’s intelligence was considered preposterous. Brain cells cannot regenerate, scientists said, so this movie’s plot was obviously impossible.
But not anymore.
Although it is still impossible to boost your intelligence, rapid advances are being made in electromagnetic sensors, genetics, and stem cells that may one day make this a real possibility. In particular, scientific interest has focused on “autistic savants,” who possess phenomenal, superhuman abilities that stagger the imagination. More important, due to specific injuries to the brain, normal people can rapidly acquire such near-miraculous powers. Some scientists even believe that these uncanny abilities might be induced using electromagnetic fields.
SAVANTS: SUPER GENIUSES?
A bullet went crashing through the skull of Mr. Z when he was nine years old. It did not kill him, as his doctors feared, but wreaked extensive damage to the left side of his brain, causing paralysis of the right side of his body and leaving him permanently deaf and mute.
However, the bullet also had a bizarre side effect. Mr. Z developed supernormal mechanical abilities and a prodigious memory, typical of “savants.”
Mr. Z is not alone. In 1979, a ten-year-old boy named Orlando Serrell was knocked unconscious by a baseball that hit the left side of his head. At first, he complained of severe headaches. But after the pain subsided, he was able to do remarkable mathematical calculations and had a near-photographic memory of certain events happening in his life. He could calculate dates thousands of years into the future.
In the entire world of roughly seven billion people, there are only about one hundred documented cases of these astounding savants. (The number is much larger if we include those whose mental skills are still extraordinary but not superhuman. It is believed that about 10 percent of autistic individuals show some savant capabilities.) These extraordinary savants possess abilities far beyond our current scientific understanding.
There are several types of savants that have recently elicited the curiosity of scientists. About half of savants have some form of autism (the other half display other forms of mental illness or psychological disorder). They often have profound problems interacting socially, leading to deep isolation.
Then there is the “acquired savant syndrome,” in which people who appear perfectly normal suffer from some extreme trauma later in life (e.g., hitting their head on the bottom of a swimming pool or being struck by a baseball or a bullet), almost always on the left side of their brain. Some scientists, however, suggest that this distinction is misleading, that perhaps all savant skills are acquired. Since autistic savants begin to show their abilities around age three or four, perhaps their autism (like a blow to their head) is the origin of their abilities.
There is scientific disagreement about the origin of these extraordinary abilities. Some believe that these individuals are simply born this way and hence are unique, one-of-a-kind anomalies. Their skills, even if awakened by a bullet, are hardwired into their brains from birth. If so, then perhaps this skill can never be learned or transferred.
Others claim that such hardwiring violates the theory of evolution, which takes place incrementally over long periods of time. If savant geniuses exist, then the rest of us must also possess similar abilities, although they are latent. Does this mean, then, that one day we might be able to turn on these miraculous powers at will? Some believe so, and there are even published papers claiming that some savant skills are latent in all of us and can be brought to light using the magnetic fields generated by an electromagnetic scanner (TES). Or perhaps there is a genetic basis to this skill, in which case gene therapy might re-create these astonishing abilities. It might also be possible to cultivate stem cells that would allow neurons to grow in the prefrontal cortex and other key centers of the brain. Then we might be able to increase our mental abilities.
All these avenues are the source of much speculation and research. Not only might they allow doctors to reverse the ravages of diseases like Alzheimer’s, but they could also enable us to enhance our own intelligence. The possibilities are intriguing.
The first documented case of a savant was recorded in 1789 by Dr. Benjamin Rush, who studied an individual who seemed to be mentally handicapped. Yet when he was asked how many seconds a man had lived (who was seventy years, seventeen days, and twelve hours old), it took him only ninety seconds to give the correct answer of 2,210,500,800.
Dr. Darold Treffert, a Wisconsin physician, has studied these savants at length. He recites one story of a blind savant who was asked a simple question. If you put one corn kernel in the first square of a chess board, two kernels in the second, four in the next, and keep doubling after that, how many kernels would you have on the sixty-fourth square? It took him just forty-five seconds to correctly reply: 18,446,744,073,709,551,616.
Perhaps the best-known example of a savant was the late Kim Peek, who was the inspiration for the movie Rain Man, starring Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Although Kim Peek was severely mentally handicapped (he was incapable of living by himself and could barely tie his shoelaces or button his shirt), he memorized about twelve thousand books and could recite lines from them, word for word, on any particular page. It
took him about eight seconds to read a page. (He could memorize a book in about half an hour, but he read them in an unusual way. He could read both pages simultaneously, using each eye to read a different page at the same time.) Although incredibly shy, he eventually began to enjoy performing dazzling feats of mathematics before curious onlookers, who would try to challenge him with tricky questions.
Scientists, of course, have to be careful in distinguishing true savant skills from simple memorization tricks. Their skills are not just mathematical—they also extend to incredible musical, artistic, and mechanical capabilities. Since autistic savants have great difficulty verbally expressing their mental processes, another avenue is to investigate individuals who have Asperger’s syndrome, which is a milder form of autism. Only in 1994 was Asperger’s syndrome recognized as a distinct psychological condition, so there is very little solid research in this area. Like autistic individuals, people with Asperger’s have a difficult time interacting socially with others. However, with proper training, they can learn enough social skills to hold down a job and articulate their mental processes. And a fraction of them have remarkable savant skills. Some scientists believe that many great scientists had Asperger’s syndrome. This might explain the strange, reclusive nature of physicists like Isaac Newton and Paul Dirac (one of the founders of the quantum theory). Newton, in particular, was pathologically incapable of small talk.