The Future of the Mind
I had the pleasure of interviewing one such individual, Daniel Tammet, who has written a best seller, Born on a Blue Day. Almost alone among these remarkable savants, he is able to articulate his thoughts in books, on the radio, and in TV interviews. For someone who had such difficulty relating to others as a child, he now has a superb grasp of communication skills.
Daniel has the distinction of setting a world record for memorizing pi, a fundamental number in geometry. He was able to memorize it to 22,514 decimal places. I asked him how he prepared for such a herculean feat. Daniel told me that he associates a color or texture with every number. Then I asked him the key question: If every digit has a color or texture, then how does he remember tens of thousands of them? Sadly, at that point he said he doesn’t know. It just comes to him. Numbers have been his life ever since he was a child, and hence they simply appear in his mind. His mind is a constant mixture of numbers and colors.
ASPERGER’S AND SILICON VALLEY
So far, this discussion may seem abstract, without any direct bearing on our daily lives. But the impact of people with mild autism and Asperger’s may be more widespread than previously thought, especially in certain high-tech fields.
In the hit television series The Big Bang Theory, we follow the antics of several young scientists, mainly nerdy physicists, in their awkward quest for female companionship. In every episode, there is a hilarious incident that reveals how clueless and pathetic they are in this endeavor.
There is a tacit assumption running through the series that their intellectual brilliance is matched only by their geekiness. And anecdotally, people have noticed that among the high-tech gurus in Silicon Valley, a higher percentage than normal seem to lack some social skills. (There is a saying among women scientists who attend highly specialized engineering universities, where the girl-to-guy ratio is decidedly in their favor: “The odds are good, but the goods are odd.”)
Scientists set out to investigate this suspicion. The hypothesis is that people with Asperger’s and other mild forms of autism have mental skills ideally suited for certain fields, like the information technology industry. Scientists at University College London examined sixteen people who were diagnosed with a mild form of autism and compared them with sixteen normal individuals. Both groups were shown slides containing random numbers and letters arranged in increasingly complex patterns.
Their results showed that people with autism had a superior ability to focus on the task. In fact, as the tasks became harder, the gap between the intellectual skills of both groups began to widen, with the autistic individuals performing significantly better than the control group. (The test, however, also showed that these individuals were more easily distracted by outside noises and blinking lights than the control group.)
Dr. Nilli Lavie says, “Our study confirms our hypothesis that people with autism have higher perceptual capacity compared to the typical population.… People with autism are able to perceive significantly more information than the typical adult.”
This certainly does not prove that all people who are intellectually brilliant have some form of Asperger’s. But it does indicate that fields requiring the ability to focus intellectually might have a higher proportion of people with Asperger’s.
BRAIN SCANS OF SAVANTS
The subject of savants has always been shrouded in hearsay and amazing anecdotal stories. But recently, the entire field has been turned upside down with the development of MRI and other brain scans.
Kim Peek’s brain, for example, was unusual. MRI scans show that it lacked the corpus callosum connecting the left and right brain, which is probably why he could read two pages at the same time. His poor motor skills were reflected in a deformed cerebellum, the area that controls balance. Unfortunately, MRI scans could not reveal the exact origin of his extraordinary abilities and photographic memory. But in general, brain scans have shown that many suffering from acquired savant syndrome have experienced damage to their left brain.
In particular, interest has focused on the left anterior temporal and orbitofrontal cortices. Some believe that perhaps all savant skills (autistic, acquired, and Asperger’s) arise from damage to this very specific spot in the left temporal lobe. This area can act like a “censor” that periodically flushes out irrelevant memories. But after damage occurs to the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere starts to take over. The right brain is much more precise than the left brain, which often distorts reality and confabulates. In fact, it is believed that the right brain must work extra hard because of damage to the left brain, and hence savant skills develop as a consequence. For example, the right brain is much more artistic than the left brain. Normally, the left brain restricts this talent and holds it in check. But if the left brain is injured in a certain way, it may unleash the artistic abilities latent in the right brain, causing an explosion of artistic talent. So the key to unleashing savant capabilities might be to dampen the left brain so that it can no longer restrain the natural talents of the right brain. This is sometimes referred to as “left brain injury, right brain compensation.”
In 1998, Dr. Bruce Miller of the University of California at San Francisco performed a series of studies that seem to back this idea up. He and coworkers studied five normal individuals who began to show signs of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). As their dementia started to progress, savant abilities gradually began to emerge. As their dementia got worse, several of these individuals began to exhibit even more extraordinary artistic ability, although none had shown gifts in this area before. Moreover, the abilities they exhibited were typical of savant behavior. Their abilities were visual, not auditory, and their artworks, remarkable as they were, were just copies lacking any original, abstract, or symbolic qualities. (One patient actually got better during the study. But her emerging savant skills were also reduced as a consequence. This suggests a close relationship between emerging disorders of the left temporal lobe and emerging savant skills.)
Dr. Miller’s analysis seemed to show that degeneration of the left anterior temporal and orbitofrontal cortices probably decreased inhibition of the visual systems in the right hemisphere, thereby increasing artistic abilities. Again, damaging the left hemisphere in a particular location forced the right hemisphere to take over and develop.
In addition to the savants, MRI scans have also been done on people with hyperthymestic syndrome, who also have photographic memories. These people do not suffer from autism and mental disorders, but they share some of their skills. In the entire United States, there are only four documented cases of true photographic memory. One of them is Jill Price, a school administrator in Los Angeles. She can recall precisely what she was doing on any particular day going back decades. But she complains that she finds it difficult to erase certain thoughts. Indeed, her brain seems to be “stuck on autopilot.” She compares her memory to watching the world through a split screen, in which the past and present are constantly competing for her attention.
Since 2000, scientists at the University of California at Irvine have scanned her brain, and they’ve found it to be unusual. Several regions were larger than normal, such as the caudate nuclei (which is involved with forming habits) and the temporal lobe (which stores facts and figures). It is theorized that these two areas work in tandem to create her photographic memory. Her brain is therefore different from the brains of savants who suffer an injury or damage to their left temporal lobe. The reason is unknown, but it points to another path by which one may obtain these fantastic mental abilities.
CAN WE BECOME SAVANTS?
All this raises the intriguing possibility that one might be able to deliberately deactivate parts of the left brain and thereby increase the activity of the right brain, forcing it to acquire savant capabilities.
We recall that transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, allows one to effectively silence parts of the brain. If so, then why can’t we silence this part of the left anterior temporal and orbitofrontal cortices using the TMS and turn o
n a savantlike genius at will?
This idea has actually been tried. Dr. Allan Snyder of the University of Sydney, Australia, made headlines a few years ago when he claimed that, by applying the TMS to a certain part of the left brain, his subjects could suddenly perform savantlike feats. By directing low-frequency magnetic waves into the left hemisphere, one can in principle turn off this dominant region of the brain so that the right hemisphere takes over. Dr. Synder and his colleagues did an experiment with eleven male volunteers. They applied the TMS to the subjects’ left frontotemporal region while the subjects were performing tests involving reading and drawing. This did not produce savant skills among the subjects, but two of them had significant improvements in their ability to proofread words and recognize duplicated words. In another experiment, Dr. R. L. Young and his colleagues gave a battery of psychological tests to seventeen individuals. The tests were specifically designed to test for savant skills. (Tests of this sort analyze a person’s ability to memorize facts, manipulate numbers and dates, create artwork, or perform music.) Five of the subjects reported improvement in savantlike skills after treatment with TMS.
Dr. Michael Sweeney has observed, “When applied to the prefrontal lobes, TMS has been shown to enhance the speed and agility of cognitive processing. The TMS bursts are like a localized jolt of caffeine, but nobody knows for sure how the magnets actually do their work.” These experiments hint, but by no means prove, that silencing a part of the left frontotemporal region could initiate some enhanced skills. These skills are a far cry from savant abilities, and we should also be careful to point out that other groups have looked into these experiments, and the results have been inconclusive. More experimental work must be done, so it is still too early to render a final judgment one way or the other.
TMS probes are the easiest and most convenient instrument to use for this purpose, since they can selectively silence various parts of the brain at will without relying on brain damage and traumatic accidents. But it should also be noted that TMS probes are still crude, silencing millions of neurons at a time. Magnetic fields, unlike electrical probes, are not precise but spread out over several centimeters. We know that the left anterior temporal and orbitofrontal cortices are damaged in savants and likely responsible, at least in some part, for their unique abilities, but perhaps the specific area that must be dampened is an even smaller subregion. So each jolt of TMS might inadvertently deactivate some of the areas that need to remain intact in order to produce savantlike skills.
In the future, with TMS probes we might be able to narrow down the region of the brain involved with eliciting savant skills. Once this region is identified, the next step would be to use highly accurate electrical probes, like those used in deep brain stimulation, to dampen these areas even more precisely. Then, with the push of a button, it might be possible to use these probes to silence this tiny portion of the brain in order to bring out savantlike skills.
FORGETTING TO FORGET AND PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY
Although savant skills may be initiated by some sort of injury to the left brain (leading to right brain compensation), this still does not explain precisely how the right brain can perform these miraculous feats of memory. By what neural mechanism does photographic memory emerge? The answer to this question may determine whether we can become savants.
Until recently, it was thought that photographic memory was due to the special ability of certain brains to remember. If so, then it might be difficult for the average person to learn these memory skills, since only exceptional brains are capable of them. But in 2012, a new study showed that precisely the opposite may be true.
The key to photographic memory may not be the ability of remarkable brains to learn; on the contrary, it may be their inability to forget. If this is true, then perhaps photographic memory is not such a mysterious thing after all.
The new study was done by scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida who were working with fruit flies. They found an interesting way in which these fruit flies learn, which may overturn a cherished idea of how memories are formed and forgotten. The fruit flies were exposed to different smells and were given positive reinforcement (with food) or negative reinforcement (with electric shocks).
The scientists knew that the neurotransmitter dopamine was important to forming memories. To their surprise, they found that dopamine actively regulates both the formation and the forgetting of new memories. In the process of creating new memories, the dCA1 receptor was activated. By contrast, forgetting was initiated by the activation of the DAMB receptor.
Previously, it was thought that forgetting might be simply the degradation of memories with time, which happens passively by itself. This new study shows that forgetting is an active process, requiring intervention by dopamine.
To prove their point, they showed that by interfering with the action of the dCA1 and DAMB receptors, they could, at will, increase or decrease the ability of fruit flies to remember and forget. A mutation in the dCA1 receptor, for example, impaired the ability of the fruit flies to remember. A mutation in the DAMB receptor decreased their ability to forget.
The researchers speculate that this effect, in turn, may be partially responsible for savants’ skills. Perhaps there is a deficiency in their ability to forget. One of the graduate students involved in the study, Jacob Berry, says, “Savants have a high capacity for memory. But maybe it isn’t memory that gives them this capacity; maybe they have a bad forgetting mechanism. This might also be the strategy for developing drugs to promote cognition and memory—what about drugs that inhibit forgetting as a cognitive enhancers?”
Assuming that this result holds up in human experiments as well, it could encourage scientists to develop new drugs and neurotransmitters that are able to dampen the forgetting process. One might thus be able to selectively turn on photographic memories when needed by neutralizing the forgetting process. In this way, we wouldn’t have the continuous overflow of extraneous, useless information, which hinders the thinking of people with savant syndrome.
What is also exciting is the possibility that the BRAIN project, which is being championed by the Obama administration, might be able to identify the specific pathways involved with acquired savant syndrome. Transcranial magnetic fields are still too crude to pin down the handful of neurons that may be involved. But using nanoprobes and the latest in scanning technologies, the BRAIN project might be able to isolate the precise neural pathways that make possible photographic memory and incredible computational, artistic, and musical skills. Billions of research dollars will be channeled into identifying the specific neural pathways involved with mental disease and other afflictions of the brain, and the secret of savant skills may be revealed in the process. Then it might be possible to take normal individuals and make savants out of them. This has happened many times in the past because of random accidents. In the future, this may become a precise medical process. Time will tell.
So far, the methods analyzed here do not alter the nature of the brain or the body. The hope is that through the use of magnetic fields, we will be able to unleash the potential that already exists in our brains but is latent. The philosophy underlying this idea is that we are all savants waiting to happen, and it will just take some slight alteration of our neural circuits to unleash this hidden talent.
Yet another tactic is to directly alter the brain and the genes, using the latest in brain science and also genetics. One promising method is to use stem cells.
STEM CELLS FOR THE BRAIN
It was dogma for many decades that brain cells do not regenerate. It seemed impossible that you could repair old, dying brain cells, or grow new ones to boost your abilities, but all this changed in 1998. That year, it was discovered that adult stem cells could be found in the hippocampus, the olfactory bulb, and the caudate nucleus. In brief, stem cells are the “mother of all cells.” Embryonic stem cells, for instance, can readily develop into any other cell. Although each of our cells contains all the
genetic material necessary to construct a human being, only embryonic stem cells have the ability to actually differentiate into any type of cell in the body.
Adult stem cells have lost that chameleon-like ability, but they can still reproduce and replace old, dying cells. As far as memory enhancement goes, interest has focused on adult stem cells in the hippocampus. It turns out that thousands of new hippocampus cells are born naturally each day, but most die soon afterward. However, it was shown that rats that learned new skills retained more of their new cells. A combination of exercise and mood-elevating chemicals can also boost the survival rate of new hippocampus cells. It turns out that stress, on the contrary, accelerates the death of new neurons.
In 2007, a breakthrough occurred when scientists in Wisconsin and Japan were able to take ordinary human skin cells, reprogram their genes, and turn them into stem cells. The hope is that these stem cells, either found naturally or converted using genetic engineering, can one day be injected into the brains of Alzheimer’s patients to replace dying cells. (These new brain cells, because they do not yet have the proper connections, would not be integrated into the brain’s neural architecture. This means that a person would have to relearn certain skills to incorporate these fresh new neurons.)
Stem cell research is naturally one of the most active areas in brain research. “Stem cell research and regenerative medicine are in an extremely exciting phase right now. We are gaining knowledge very fast and many companies are being formed and are starting clinical trials in different areas,” says Sweden’s Jonas Frisén of the Karolinska Institute.