I happened to catch a program on National Geographic Channel today entitled "Accidental Genius." It was quite interesting from an AGI standpoint.
One of the researchers profiled has invented a device that, by sending electromagnetic pulses through a person's skull to the appropriate spot in the left hemisphere of that person's brain, can achieve behavior similar to that of an idiot savant in a non-brain-damaged person (in the session shown, this was a volunteer college student). Before being "zapped" by the device, the student is taken through a series of exercises. One is to draw a horse from memory. The other is to read aloud a very familiar "saying" with a slight grammatical mistake in it (the word "the" is duplicated, i.e., "the the," in the saying -- sorry I can't recall the saying used). Then the student is shown a computer screen full of "dots" for about 1 second and asked to record his best guess at how many dots there were. This exercise is repeated several times (with different numbers of dots each time). The student is then zapped by the electromagnetic pulse device for 15 minutes. It's kind of scary to watch the guy's face flinch uncontrollably as each pulse is delivered. But, while he reported feeling something, he claimed there was no pain or disorientation. His language facilities were unimpaired (they zap a very particular spot in the left hemisphere based on brain scans taken of idiot savants). After being zapped, the exercises are repeated. The results were impressive. The horse drawn after the zapping contained much more detail and was much better rendered than the horse drawn before the zapping. Before the zapping, the subject read the familiar saying correctly (despite the duplicate "the"). After zapping, the duplicate "the" stopped him dead in his tracks. He definitely noticed it. The dots were really impressive though. Before being zapped, he got the count right in only two cases. After being zapped, he got it right in four cases. The effects of the electromagnetic zapping on the left hemisphere fade within a few hours. Don't know about you, but I'd want that in writing. You can watch the episode on-line here: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/tv-schedule. It's not scheduled for repeat showing anytime soon. That's not a direct link (I couldn't find one). When you get to that Web page, navigate to Wed, May 7 at 3PM and click the "More" button under the picture. Unfortunately, the "full-motion" video is the size of a large postage stamp. The "full screen" view uses "stop motion" (at least i did on my laptop using a DSL-based WiFi hotspot). The audio is the same in both versions. Cheers, Brad ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
