The Future of the Mind (23 page)

This lesson applies not only to London taxicab drivers, but also to accomplished concert musicians as well. According to psychologist Dr. K. Anders Ericsson and colleagues, who studied master violinists at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music, top concert violinists could easily rack up ten thousand hours
of grueling practice by the time they were twenty years old, practicing more than thirty hours per week. By contrast, he found that students who were merely exceptional studied only eight thousand hours or fewer, and future music teachers practiced only a total of four thousand hours. Neurologist Daniel Levitin says, “
The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything.… In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again.” Malcolm Gladwell, writing in the book
Outliers
, calls this the “10,000-hour rule.”

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 quantifies 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.