Category: Neuroscience

10% of Our Brains? Oh, Come on Lucy!

By Anupum Pant

Have you ever heard people say that we use just 10% of our brains and 90% of it is lying dormant waiting to get awakened? I’ve heard this all the time, from parents, teachers and “self-help” gurus. And that what I believed  too, until a couple of years back when I read it on the internet that it was so not true! Later, I came across an informative science video (shared below) which explained otherwise. Of course it came from someone whose authority we can trust in – TED education.

The 10% thing is a myth has already hit most well-informed people, and yet I’ve heard it once again now. This is coming from an upcoming Hollywood movie trailer. I just watched it and it made me uneasy that people are still propagating it. This was the reason I wanted to make it clear to every one who reads my blog that “we use just 10% of our brains” is a pure myth.

Well, if you haven’t heard people say that, you will, in a couple of days, when the sci-fi movie Lucy will hit the theatres. Or you probably have already seen its trailer. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it below. I was totally flabbergasted by the concept, I think this movie is based on. Pay attention at the 1:11 mark.

But, then it’s only a movie. When other sci-fi movies can show reverberating explosions in space making huge sounds, and people talking in space, it is only normal for Morgan Freeman, a neuroscientist in the movie, to say:

It is estimated most human beings only use 10 percent of the brain’s capacity. Imagine if we could access 100 percent. Interesting things begin to happen.

No!

The myth that humans are only capable of using around 10% of their brain capacity has floated around for a very long time. So much that more than 65% of the people believe that it’s true! There are a number of levels on how this statement is wrong, I cannot even begin to explain. TED makes it easier for me to put across the argument…

Some time ago, a MythBuster Tory Belleci, hooked himself up to a neuroimaging device (magnetoencephalogram) which is able to measure the feeble magnetic fields generated by the brain’s electrical activity. During this time, he involved himself in some memory drills, math calculations, word associations and image comparisons. 35% of his brain showed activity. But again, in order to prove the 10% myth wrong (which they did), it meant that only a certain percentage of the brain was lighting up.

35% might mean to someone that removing 65% of the unused brain shouldn’t make a difference in our cognition. But we know how even tiny lesions can impair normal function. So, myth busters didn’t mean that.

35% in only what we can measure. There’s a lot that happens in there without us having figured it out (yet). Or like the video puts forward a solid argument – “by now evolution would have gotten rid of 90% of the parts which the myth says we don’t use.”

However, not completely relying on what the myth busters “proved”, you might want to have a look at this insightful answer by a computational neuroscientist, Paul King. Turns out myth busters were not totally right. Again, that doesn’t make the 10% myth true.

We do not use all of the different areas of the brain at the same time because they have different functions.  The closest the brain gets to being completely active is during a seizure. At any time there is only a percentage of the brain active. – [Source]

Bad news for people looking to unlock the full potential of their brain by some mystical methods, one thing is for sure, the following is definitely not true.
we use only a certain percentage of our brain at one time, meaning we are not using it to its full potential. No!

The Best Illusion of the Year 2014 Award

By Anupum Pant

You probably know the static Ebbinghaus illusion – where a circle appears bigger around smaller circles even when it is of the same size. It’s static because it works without moving. Well, if you don’t know, you should because it helps you lose weight in a very subtle manner.

A slight variation involving movement of the Ebbinghaus illusion won the best illusion award for the year 2014. Yes, there are annual awards for the best illusions (I never knew that!). This one which won the award was submitted by researchers from the University of Nevada Reno.

The new variation is called the Dynamic Ebbinghaus effect. This is what happens in it…

best illusion animation

There’s an arrangement of circles, exactly like the Ebbinghaus illusion, but there’s just one of the sets from the static illusion discussed above. While this arrangement of circles move, the central circle remains of the same size and the surrounding circles change in size.

Now, if you look into the central circle, you’ll see that it changes size too. In reality, it doesn’t. This effect is weaker when you look directly into the central circle. To make it more pronounced, you can shift your focus to the side and look at it through your peripheral vision. It’s totally mesmerizing. No wonder it won.

It works even when you  know about it.

This 50-Second Clip Proves Your Brain is Amazing

By Anupum Pant

There was a post I made in the past, about a popular email forward which mentioned a paragraph and it seemed like gibberish at first. But when you actually tried to read it, you were able to read is at a very normal pace. It was as if the totally mixed up spellings did not matter. Now, that wasn’t a very scientific way of going about claiming something – through an email forward. No one really knows where it came from. Certainly not from Cambridge. And right at the end of that article, the claims of that email were convincingly challenged.

What we see today is something similar, just that, it about listening, not about reading. Plus, this one, unlike the “spelling does not matter” claim, comes directly from a very reliable source – Jayatri Das, Chief bioscientist at Franklin Institute.

In an audio broadcast uploaded on soundcould, she demonstrates a very strong and fundamental trait of the human brain.

In the 50 second sound clip, she first plays a sound that is heavily distorted by a computer. You aren’t able to make any sense out of that sound. What happens next is amazing.

The sound plays again – the distorted R2D2-ish sound. Next, she plays the actual sentence which was distorted to make it sound like gibberish. The real sentence (which I won’t reveal in the text because it would ruin it for you if you read this first) is totally clear. Now, when she plays the gibberish again, somehow you are easily able to understand it!

It’s right here and you can experience it for yourself by listening (and participating) in the 50-second clip. It is a sound you literally “cannot un-hear”.

However, I had forgotten the real sentence after a couple of days, so the clip seemed to me like what it would to a fresh test subject when I listened to it again after a week. That means technically, you are able to un-hear it.

As this article from the Atlantic – where I first read about it – puts it. It is a lot like this visual experiment.

Did you happen to notice the following image that made fun of the FIFA Worldcup 2014’s logo? I’ve attached it below, if you haven’t seen it.

The image makes the logo look like a facepalm. Before this, you must have never thought of the logo to be a facepalm. But, after you see this, every time you see the actual logo, you’ll see a facepalm.

It’s amazing what the brain can do. world cup 2014 facepalm meme

Video: Change Blindness

By Anupum Pant

There’s so much happening around you that if your brain doesn’t have this ability to see and skip processing most of the useless information the eyes send it, you’d probably go mad in a day. That is change blindness. In that way, It is good for you. But you must not have realized how narrow your attention of focus can be. This video demonstrates it better than anything else.

By the way, when you watch the first clip where the camera pans with the Pacman, try focussing on the Pacman only. Or you won’t be able to appreciate the effect as much.

Stop Trusting Everything You See

By Anupum Pant

Background

Everyone who comes on this blog often knows that I’m a huge fan of Prof. Rischard Wiseman. If you don’t know that, well, I urge you to check out every other post where I’ve mentioned him (Yes, he’s the same man who makes videos for the YouTube channel 59 seconds). The man certainly knows how to play with your brain. And once again he has blown my mind with this amazing optical illusion that he shared on his blog.

This is probably the best optical illusion I have ever seen. That is because, it’s somewhat like the Mc Gurk effect (do check it out too) – in a way that, it is one of those illusion where even after you learn about it, you still can’t see through it. I mean, it will continue to fool your brains, even when you know the trick. It’s an eternal magic trick. Enough of the build up. Now, let’s see what this illusion really is…

Wash your eyes if you have to

In the image below, you’ll see a pinkish swirling image and inside it you’ll see that there are green swirls and blue swirls embedded. What if I tell you the green and the blue you see are the same colors? Just because I’ve written something that’s completely opposite to what you see with your own eyes, you’ll probably laugh on my face and call me mad. I did that. I trusted my eyes more than any one else’s word. So I had to verify it…

most amazing optical illusion

The Proof


greenblue2Ok, if you take my word for it, fine. If you don’t believe me, you could use a simple image editor, pick colours and check. Both the colours you see here, green and blue, have the same hexadecimal value: #00ff96.

Another thing you could do is, download the image, zoom it to a great extent, such that both the colours that you see are in the same frame and you’ll see that the colours are actually same. Here’s a picture of that zoomed part…
 bluegreenzoom

optical illusion proofHere’s an image I created where we have the #00ff96 coloured square overlapping the seemingly blue and green parts. If you, cover everything except the topmost corner first, look at it carefully, and compare it with the bottom-most corner, you’ll see that the colour of the square block perfectly matches that of both the “blue” colour and the “green” colour in both areas. And it is the same block.

The several other blocks in the middle are for you to remain sure that the colour of the block doesn’t change in between.

There’s another image in which it works…
Even here the blue and green colours are actually the same colours…

color_illusion

 

Dozens Died During The Dance Epidemic of France

By Anupum Pant

Background

In the year 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea suffered with a very mysterious, contagious and a scary disease. Till date, doctors or science has no explanation on what really was going on in her body and the disease is still named among one of the most bizarre and the most unexplainable diseases ever – The Dance plague of 1518.

In the month of  July Frau Troffea came down to a quiet street in the city of Strasbourg, France and started dancing fervently on the street.  Even 6 days later, the woman was still dancing. On the 6th day, she probably died out of exhaustion.

But by the time she had stopped, the dancing disease had spread to 34 more people. And by the end of that month there were 400 others who were experiencing this irresistible urge to dance. Dozens died out of exhaustion.

Ironically, doctors and physicians suggested that the cure to this dancing plague would be to dance more. It was literally dance till you drop. Musicians were hired, stages were made for these hoards of dancers.

Similar contagious of these dancing epidemics in other European cities have been recorded in the history at least 10 other times before this. There was one in the year 1374, which the records say, spread to several towns!

Agreed the story is too old and seems to have become hyped due to repeated story telling, but clearly that isn’t the case because the certainty of the event, is established through a number of independent records.

Why was this happening?

Well, no one knows for sure. The mysterious disease has baffled scientists for years. However, there are of course some weak theories that explain the behaviour of these dancing people.

One theory says that the dancers got high on ergot – A psychotropic fungus that grows on rye and must have reached these people through bread. Since the symptoms associated with ergot poisoning are very similar to what these people were experiencing, it seems like a valid explanation. But there’s almost no chance that ergot poisoning happened…

That is because when a person gets poisoned by this fungus, they start having hallucinations and involuntary muscle contractions. However, the people who were affected by the dancing plague, according the people who had seen this happening, were clearly not willing to dance – which doesn’t happen when you are poisoned by ergot.

Also, these “muscle contractions” they were experiencing weren’t just involuntary contractions that are associated with ergot poisoning. They were moving in a very coordinated manner, actually dancing. Clearly, it wasn’t ergot.

Another possible explanation says that it was out of fear, anxiety and desperation among the people because of the widespread famine and disease in that area during this period. This is presently a widely accepted explanation.

Still, what exactly was happening their brains and what exactly caused it, no one knows.

[Source] [Read more here]

Shepard Tone – An Incredible Auditory Illusion

By Anupum Pant

Here’s the thing. Go to ToneDeafTest.com and take that little test they have on their homepage. That is what you need to do first. Stop reading further if you haven’t done it yet.

Assuming you did what I asked you to do…
If you did well in the test (with a few silly mistakes which can be ignored), you’ll probably understand better what I’m talking about in the following article. Otherwise, you might miss the point.

Nevertheless, there is still a chance that you’d understand even if you are tone deaf. I’m not sure because I’m certain not tone deaf and it’s impossible for me to understand the subjective experiences of tone deaf people (I can boast that the first time I took it, I got a perfect score in that test). Anyway, that test is a fun thing to do. You’ll at least learn something about yourself.

The endless stairs and the endless tone

Everyone knows the endless stairs (in the picture below). Now, you’d think why is the author talking about a visual illusion just after he told us to take an auditory test. That is because the popular visual illusion helps you to relate better to a relatively lesser known auditory illusion.

endless stairs illusion

If you start going up on the endless stairs, you always keep moving up. Even after you come back to the same place, you still keep going up. An impossibility. But it’s something that fools your eyes. The same thing happens if you start going down the stairs.

A similar thing can happen with tones. Listen to the following (continuous?) note sweep.

It sounds like a tone that is continuously going down, endlessly. Only, it isn’t. It’s actually a much smaller looped sound that starts from a high point and then goes down. These little loops have been placed one after the other. If you do not carefully listen to it, you’ll never find the exact point at which one loop ends and the next loop starts. You’ll always interpret it as a continuously going down sound. Just like the continuously going down stairs. This is called the Shepard tone.

This works for discreet notes also. Listen to this endless mario stairs video to get an idea how it works for individual notes (not sweeps).

Why?

Notes are not simple frequencies. A single note is usually composed of several other frequencies. To not overwhelm us with data, the brain puts all these frequencies together and we hear a single sound (note).

Also, our brains like continuity. So, it cherry picks the frequencies from the loop’s notes that makes us hear a continuous sweep. This is the reason we hear no individual loops. Bah! I’m not very good at explaining this. So, here goes the Vsauce video which explains it better. Note that the arrows in the video are the frequencies I was talking about…

World’s Most Relaxing Music and a Trick to Waking Up Happy

By Anupum Pant

Warning: I like to boast in public because it helps me stick to my resolutions better. Following is a paragraph that brags a bit, so please understand…

Phew! It’s been 179 days since I started this website and there isn’t a single day I’ve missed writing something here. Some days the articles were good, other days they were awful. Good or not, at least I slept a little smarter everyday. As a result, I have documented 179 good pieces. You can check them in the archives right now. Be my guest and since it is sunday, take some time to read through some of them, find mistakes, comment etc.This, thankfully, is the 180th article that is being written on the 180th day. That’s pretty huge for me. I’ve never done something this big ever in my life before. Trust me, it is a very tough commitment. If you wish to, acknowledge it in the comments. It will mean a lot to me.

However, today due to some other important work, my article writing ritual got delayed (happens a lot), and now it’s more than an hour past midnight. Thanks to my public boasting, I will still have to keep up. No sleeping before I write something. Or, I will simply have to get shamed in public (if someone even keeps a track of my progress). Probably my sleep will have to suffer today. So I thought, to sleep efficiently, let me learn a bit about sleep!

59 Seconds again!

And as always, the YouTube channel 59 seconds came to my rescue. I love the channel so much, I’ve mentioned it in at least 5 different posts before.

Anyway, the host, Richard Wiseman has a new book in the market – Night School: Wake up to the power of sleep. It talks about the science of sleep. Whenever he has a new book, there are a few interesting videos that come up on his channel that share a very cool tidbit from the book. The book is definitely on my read list, but will have to do with a related video for now.

World’s Most Relaxing Music

One of the videos this time is one hour-long and plays a scientifically constructed music that according to the professor is the world’s most relaxing piece of music. If you keep playing it in the background while sleeping, it will help you sleep better. I’ve tried this one when I took a nap in the afternoon one day. I can vouch for it. I actually had a very relaxing nap that time.

The tune is especially relaxing because, with a 90 BPM tempo and notes moving from low to high, it is scientifically designed to help you fall asleep. Here is the piece. Play it and have a good sleep.

While this would help me fall asleep, tonight I won’t have a problem with falling asleep. As I’m tired, I’d fall asleep easily. What I’m worried about is that I might get less sleep (it really doesn’t matter, I can just wake up late tomorrow). So, here is something from the same channel that, even with a shorter sleep span, would probably help me wake up happier tomorrow.

The 90-Minute rule

During our sleep, we have these cycles where our brain takes us from light sleep to deep sleep and then to a dream state. These three states make one cycle and it takes about 90 minutes to complete a cycle. If you happen to wake in the middle of a cycle, you’d wake up cranky. The trick to waking up happier is to wake up when one of this cycles is complete. There are of course apps on the Play store that help you achieve that, but I don’t have an android phone. So here is what I can do.

I can plan an alarm in a way that I complete several 90 minute cycles and wake up at the end of the last cycle. For that, if I plan to fall asleep at 2:30 AM, to complete a fair 6 hour sleep, I’d have to put an alarm for 8:30 AM. At 8:30, I’d have completed 4 cycles.

Except that these cycles don’t last for exactly 90 minutes. Some times they are more than that, other times they last for a lesser time. Still, by measuring my sleep period in 90 minute chunks, I can increase the probability of me waking up happier. Here is the video where Richard explains this…

Hit like if you learnt something today.

Intelligent Men Look Different – Says Science

By Anupum Pant

Background

I know, I’m not a very big fan of intelligence scores or IQ points measured using the standard IQ tests available today. And even if this study does rely on those scores, I still find it pretty interesting. You will too…

Judging a book by its cover isn’t unwise after all. A recent study published by researchers from the Czech Republic proves that all of us humans have a natural ability to estimate how intelligent a man really is, by just looking at his facial features. That said, the study also mentions that you can’t judge a woman’s intelligence by observing her facial features. It works for only men. However, both men and women have this ability to estimate the intelligence of a man by looking at his face.

The study finds no solid correlation between the features of a woman’s face and their intelligence. That means, to find out about how intelligent a woman is, you’ll have to dig deeper than just the facial features.

People can accurately judge intelligence by looking at faces of men, but not women.

The study did not use a very huge sample – Still pictures of 40 men and 40 women were used. Nevertheless even 80 pictures contribute a significant amount to science. No experiment is a bad one. We’ll probably see more such studies and know more about the phenomenon in the near future.

They also measured the intelligence of these 80 people using standard IQ tests and asked people to rate their intelligence. It was found that people were able to almost accurately tell the IQ of a man by looking at his picture!

How do we do it?

We have an inbuilt ability to spot the shape and features of intelligent men. This could be a pretty logical evolutionary trait.

Faces of intelligent men: According to the researchers, longer faces with greater distance between the eyes, pointy chins, larger noses, slightly smiley lips are the features of highly intelligent men.

Faces of not so intelligent men: Whereas broader and rounded faces with eyes closer to each other, shorter faces, sad lips and bigger chins are the signs which tell us that a man is not so intelligent.

Here see the difference yourself. What do you think? Could you spot it? Which one of these faces is the closest to your face? Tell me in the comments below. Tell me about mine too.

intelligent face

Did you like this article?

Every day I send out a newsletter with an un-cut new article and exclusive content for readers. It’s basically my way of keeping in touch with you and letting you know what’s going on. Your information is protected and I never spam.

Subscribe from the sidebar to stay connected. Feel free to reply to these newsletters too…

Suicide Attempt Turns into a Successful Surgery

By Anupum Pant

Background

I don’t mean to sound wry with the heading, but it’s a real story, and is a real fact. I can’t be held responsible, if you are stupid enough to try this “surgery” at home. Still, let me say it – Please don’t try this, even if you are stupid. There is no chance you’d survive this. The whole purpose of this article is to keep you informed.

In short, it is about a man (you could even call him a boy) who suffered from an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, shot himself in the head to commit suicide. The very act, ironically ended up curing himself of the OCD.

Crash Course in OCD

To tell you a little about OCD, it is a disorder which creates a serious problem in someone’s life if they suffer from it. They get obsessed with doing some things repetitively. For example, people often have an OCD where they feel compelled to arrange things in stacks. Or others who can’t sit in ease if their clothes are not in a perfect order. Or some, who have an obsessive fear of germs and end up washing hands several times a day….etc.

These disorders usually can make a person lonely as others start staying away from the seemingly paranoid person. Otherwise, they also create a problem in the sufferer’s life by consuming excess time, money, energy, etc of their’s. Most times, the person suffering from an OCD starts experiencing serious emotional distress or depression.

In very rare and extreme cases, where anti-depressant and behaviour therapy doesn’t work, doctors resort to performing a surgery, where they remove a part of the brain from which the problem seems to come from. Even under controlled circumstances, this surgery is considered as a very serious one.

The story

About 30 years from now, a 19-year-old boy George, from Vancouver, British Columbia suffered from a serious problem that used to interfere with his normal life. He had an obsessive fear of germs and used to wash, and used to shower hundreds of times in a single day. Yes, really hundreds, not less. Doing this took away all of his strength and he found it hard to do anything else. This made his education and general life suffer as he could not attend school or work at any place.

He was a top class student and had a pretty good IQ. But the boy was seriously depressed and often complained to his mother that he wanted to die. On unfortunate day, when the boy felt really troubled, he went down to his mother and complained that he wanted to die. This seemed like a final blow to the mother’s exasperation and she  told him to go shoot himself. Not realizing the metaphoric nature of his mom’s statement, the boy decided to go and do just that.

He went to the basement and shot himself in the head using a .22 long rifle. The bullet got lodged in the brain. Naturally, after this, he had to be rushed to the hospital. After a very long surgery, surgeons were able to remove the bullet, but couldn’t successfully remove all the fragments of the bullet that were lodged in the brain.

Fact: There was a similar accident that happened at a particle accelerator, where a proton beam travelling at almost the speed of light, destroyed a part of a man’s brain and yet it left him with almost no serious complications. He went on to complete his PhD after that!

When three weeks later he was admitted at the hospital again, for a check-up, there was no obsessive behaviour observed in him. He was left only with a few minor quirks that did not interfere much with his life. He had apparently cured himself by shooting himself in the brain and destroying the part where the problem originated from. At the same time, his IQ did not drop and and he passed other brain damage tests too! Such a miraculous surgery had never ever been recorded in the history.

[Original article]

Did you like this article?

Every day I send out a newsletter with an un-cut new article and exclusive content for readers. It’s basically my way of keeping in touch with you and letting you know what’s going on. Your information is protected and I never spam.

Subscribe from the sidebar to stay connected. Feel free to reply to these newsletters too…

Soviet Man Who Survived a Particle Accelerator Beam

By Anupum Pant

Not even the world’s greatest researchers are too sure about what really happens when you put your hand in front of a particle accelerator beam.  And yet, we know what happens (not always) when you stick your head into a particle accelerator.

The Accident

That is because a Russian scientist named Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, in the year 1978, working at U-70 synchrotron at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, accidentally put his head into a particle accelerator while checking for a dysfunctional part in the equipment. His head came in the path of a high-energy proton beam moving at a speed that was just slightly less than the speed of light. The beam entered his head from the back and came out from somewhere around the nose. Only he knows what he exactly saw when that happened. Apparently, he saw a very bright light, a light brighter than thousand suns and felt no pain.

Post Accident

The left part of his face, where the beam had passed, started swelling beyond recognition and people were certain that the man would soon die due to radiation poisoning. The proton beam had travelled through his head, burning all the living tissue in between and caused the skin at entry and exit points to peel off. The beam had passed a part of his brain and had burnt a considerable amount of brain tissue too. The picture below shows the path where the beam travelled and burnt all the living tissue.

particle accelerator beam head picture

Miraculously, he survived after being exposed to about 200,000 rads of radiation dose (enough to nearly kill the toughest bacterium)! Hell, even 500-600 rads are lethal for human beings. That was mostly because the beam was very thin and only a fraction of tissues out of the whole body that  got exposed to the beam were severely damaged, it left most of the remainder of the body exposed at pretty low levels of radiation.

Not just that, his mental performance showed no signs of degeneration. He even went on to complete his Ph.D after this accident and still lives a fairly healthy life. However, the accident did leave him with a dysfunctional left ear and a permanently paralysed left side of his face. Notably, the left side of his face became frozen and also never aged. At the same time, the right side of his face ages normally.

At that time this accident was buried by the Soviet Union and was branded as top-secret. It was only a couple of years later the whole world came to know about this.

Anatoli remains to be the only person to have ever done this. Most shockingly, he also survived it and still lives a fairly healthy life today.

Did you like this article?

Every day I send out a newsletter with an un-cut new article and exclusive content for readers. It’s basically my way of keeping in touch with you and letting you know what’s going on. Your information is protected and I never spam.

Subscribe from the sidebar to stay connected. Feel free to reply to these newsletters too…

Flynn Effect – IQ Test Scores say We Are Getting Smarter Every Year

By Anupum Pant

My Opinion of the IQ tests

I don’t like IQ tests (WAIS, WISC, etc). Why?

Well, IQ tests are designed with an assumed definition of the word “intelligence”. They assume that “intelligence” can be estimated by measuring how closely a person thinks like the other “intelligent” people (probably the ones who design the test). IQ tests measure general Intelligence, not “intelligence”. However, today general intelligence and intelligence are used interchangeably by most of us.

IQ tests are standardised tests that give you standardized test scores which merely indicate how well you would perform at other standardized tests (academic performance). Also, these tests are not an indicator of how well a person would do in his/her life.

IQ tests assume that General intelligence and Intelligence are the same things, or this is what the society has come to believe. To them, the other sub-intelligence types like interpersonal intelligence, intra-personal intelligence, musical intelligence, creativity, memory etc. mean nothing.

I think, intelligence is a much more complex quality than what IQ tests assume it to be. Quantifying intelligence is hard and presently no test does it properly; probably no test ever will…

For instance, the Megasavant, Kim Peek (Rainman) scored a below average (87 points) on general IQ tests. Agreed, he couldn’t button up his shirt, but he could speed read a book in about an hour and remember almost everything he had read. Besides, he could accurately recall the contents of at least 12,000 books which he had read in his life. And yet, this incredible ability meant nothing to the IQ tests. IQ tests looked at him as a guy with just a below-average IQ.

However, I’m not here to debate on IQ tests today. Let’s take it to the comments section. Tell me what do you think about these tests.

I like it or not, I can’t deny the fact that it is a world standard. And there is definitely a solid reason for that. So let’s just learn something about these tests…

The Flynn effect

Did you know, the IQ test scores are not absolute. The score you get is adjusted in a way that keeps the average IQ at 100 and also ensures that 2/3 people lie in an IQ band of 85-115 points.

But that is what IQ tests and scores are based on, so many people probably know that. There is one other thing you almost certainly did not know…

The WISC test: One of the widely used IQ test is called WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children). It started in the year 1947, and to ensure that the average IQ remains 100, it has been recalibrated 3 times in the 70s, 80s and the 2000s decade. Today WISC IV is used.

Had our grandparents taken the present WISC IV test about a century back, they would have probably scored 70 points on an average. That would have classified them as mentally retarded! Clearly, we have become smarter. Or what?

Yes, in fact the constant increase in this average IQ test scores has been observed for a long time by scientists. They have measured a gradual rise of 3 points every decade and this effect is called Flynn effect. And that is the reason the test has to be recalibrated regularly – to keep the average at 100 points. Is this evolution doing its work?

Why does it happen

Frankly, no one knows for sure. Like the theories that offer explanation on what sleep exactly does to our brains, even Flynn effect has a couple of possible explanations. Three of the most plausible ones are these:

  1. “Better” schooling or in other words better training  at schools which makes students get familiar with the IQ test pattern, is one explanation. Our schools have evolved to impart education in a form that helps a kid do better at IQ tests. This is pretty clear from the way our present education system doesn’t give much importance to creativity, just like IQ tests don’t…although it beats me, why memory is given a substantial weight-age at schools.
  2. Improved nutrition is another explanation. Most certainly, excluding fast foods and other such foods, we eat better things than what our grand-parents used to. The inclusion of iodine in common salt is one such example. Also, parents these days ensure that the children in their formative years get the best nutrition – exactly at the time when the brain forms most connections. That could have clearly helped us get smarter.
  3. Some researchers have a different take on how better education and nutrition has helped us get smarter. They suggest that the better lifestyle, education and nutrition has had an effect on our IQs by reducing the intensity of infectious diseases.

What do you think? Do you agree with the IQ test system. Do you think it isn’t just a social phenomena? What else could be the reason that we are getting smarter? Tell me in the comments.

Did you like this article?

Every day I send out a newsletter with an un-cut new article and exclusive content for readers. It’s basically my way of keeping in touch with you and letting you know what’s going on. Your information is protected and I never spam.

Subscribe from the sidebar to stay connected. Feel free to reply to these newsletters too…

Drink it Right and Coffee Can Help You Remember Well

By Anupum Pant

With our ever-increasing hours at work, coffee is what keeps most of us running at office. While some revel in the ability to stay hyper active by taking in no dose of caffeine whatsoever, others just can’t live without it. A few days without coffee can turn them into irritated, stressed out and cranky colleagues.

Caffeine in coffee, coke and other energy drinks basically works by tricking your brain into thinking it isn’t tired, even when it badly needs rest. In short, it messes with your brain by creating an artificial brain chemistry to keep you alert. So can it really be good in any way?

Obviously, at such a stage, still keeping up with the intake can harm your brain (up to some extent) without it showing any clear signs. Lack of sleep (at the time when it is needed) can mean, starving brain of the time to perform several essential processes – Memory consolidation being one of them. As a result, lack of sleep means, you are not forming strong memories.

So, how does it help you remember well when it doesn’t let you form strong memories?

According to Michael Yassa, assistant professor of psychological and brain science at John Hopkins University, and his team, caffeine can indeed have positive effects on your memory. The trick lies in limiting your intake of coffee. In a study, they have been able to show that caffeine intake can enhance certain kinds of memories even when tested after a day.

Study in short: In a double-blind trial where subjects were given caffeine tablets or placebos and were shown images of a few objects. It was found that people who were given caffeine doses showed a deeper lever of memory retention on the other day than people who were given placebos.

Since caffeine isn’t very effective after about 6 hours, people feel a need to replenish their bodies with more of it. It seems as if it is addictive, but as Hank says, technically, it isn’t. You can positively keep on drinking red bulls for the whole day and not get addicted to it. It will make you cranky for a day or two, but you won’t experience any long-lasting effects. The thing is, if you drink a lot of it, you’ll not sleep well and give your brain enough time to consolidate memories. So, since it isn’t really addictive, a good idea would be to limit the intake.

Solution: The crux of it comes down to keeping your intake of coffee to about 200 mg a day. That means, a cup of strong coffee or 2 small cups of normal coffee every day, is actually good for your brain.  As the recent research shows, it helps you remember well. That much, will help you consolidate memories during sleep (at the same time, it won’t mess with your sleep). Anything more than that will probably mess with your activities and anything less than that will have no effect on your memory. [Video]

Valporate – Performance Enhancing Drug for Perfect Pitch

By Anupum Pant

Today we find out if it would be a good idea to impress your friends during the next gathering by hacking your brain with pills to learn a rare ability fairly quickly. But first, pay attention to the following jargon.

Perfect pitch

Perfect pitch is an exceptional ability among few gifted humans that enables them to recognize and re-create the pitch of a musical note instantly without the help of any external reference. There have been no cases of adults learning this ability by practice. However, pseudo absolute pitch can be learnt with great practice and only retained through regular use.

Brain plasticity

Learning to recognize musical notes, or any other ability for that matter can be reasonably easy at an early age due to a brain’s plastic state. The brain’s ability to change and adapt as a result of experience is far better at younger ages. As people age, they lose the ability to learn like kids.

For instance, picture the rate at which infants learn language. By the time they turn 2 – 4 years old, they start using thousands of words. Try learning a new language at the age of 35. It is tough.

However, a new research suggests that this state of brain can be recovered by using drugs. One such drug, according to Dr. Takao Hensch is Valporate.

Is Valporate a Performance Enhancing Drug?

No! it is not a performance enhancing drug. Valporate or Valporic acid is a drug sold under the common names – Depakote, Depacon and Stavzor. For several years it has been used to treat various disorders from migraines to bipolar disorder. It is a chemical substance that can cross the blood–brain barrier. As a result, it has the power to affect an individual’s perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior.

Dr. Takao Hensch, a Harvard University professor, recently published a study which tested the effects of Valporate on 23 healthy male subjects for two weeks. None of them had a musical experience. During this period they were trained in music. At the end of this study, researchers found that these 23 men did remarkably better than an average adult would do, at perfect pitch tests.

In the future

He thinks, may be 10 years down the line, this drug could be used to enhance other learning abilities like language learning among adults, by changing the state of their brains.

Presently, studies on how the brain changes at cellular level when this drug is taken are underway. Also, Dr. Hensch thinks that humans have evolved to experience these learning stages for a reason. If it is okay to mess around with it, is still being studied. At this stage, trying this out at home can be extremely risky. It would be wise for us to wait for scientists to come out with a comprehensive study on the effects of this drug.

Related articles

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Working Memory – Chimpanzees vs. Humans

By Anupum Pant

At least in one known cognitive area, chimpanzees prove to be far smarter than human beings. While it is possible for humans to train themselves up to some extent at it, they lack the capacity for an excellent working memory. On the other hand, chimps naturally display a remarkable working memory.

So, naturally the next question we’d ask – what exactly is working memory and how can I beat chimps at it?

But before that is answered, let us have a look at this study conducted by Japanese scientists.
In the study, scientists use a test where numbers from 1 to 9 are arranged on a screen randomly. The test taker is given a chance to remember all the nine positions. When the subject is ready, the areas go blank and the user is required to recall all the nine numbers in sequence. One mistake and the subject has to start over. In the test, we see this chimpanzee named Ayumu showing remarkable ability in terms of working memory. The opponent human loses badly.

BTW at this test, the chimp Ayumu, can now recall 19 numbers in sequence without making a single mistake. Not just Ayumu, this knack is observed in all chimps.

Why?

As the researcher mentions, chimps are not the same as humans. Both humans and chimps had a common ancestor several millions of years ago. Now, both of these species have evolved in their own ways for all these years. While they’ve gotten good at something, we’ve picked up different abilities. You don’t have to feel bad about it.

This ability to actively hold multiple pieces of information in the mind and play with them has helped these chimps to survive in the wild by helping them to make quick decisions. As a result, they have evolved to master it.

Training + Caveat

Although you can train yourself to have an amazing working memory, you’ll probably never be able to beat chimps. Also, you should know that very few humans have a nearly equal level of working memory as compared to chimps, and these are the people who are affected by a mental disability called the Savant syndrome. It is beyond common humans to train themselves to chimp-level-working memory.

A game known as n-back, used as a test and an exercise tool can help you to master your working memory. The game starts easy. Then you move on to the second level where things straight away move from easy to difficult. The next levels seem impossible at first. But it has been proved that this game can help you to improve your working memory. The harder you train, the better you get at it; of course, never as good as Ayumu.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta