Unlocking the brain's potential
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1211000/1211299.stm
Scientists think they have identified the part of the brain, which if
switched off, can stimulate artistic genius, a BBC documentary shows.
The discovery was made after studying people with autism and dementia, but
an Australian scientist believes ordinary people may one day be able to
"tap in" and allow them at least a moment of genius.
And in recent tests, five volunteers found their abilities were improved
after the particular area of the brain was temporarily "switched off".
Fragments of Genius explores the amazing talents of people like Stephen
Wiltshire, an autistic man who has an incredible ability to draw buildings
in specific and accurate detail after seeing them just once
In the 1988 film Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman portrayed Raymond, an autistic
savant with brilliant math skills.
Both Stephen and Derek Paravicini, an autistic man who is a superb jazz
pianist, are savants - people with profound intellectual disabilities who
have a "fragment of genius" - of whom there are thought to be no more than
25 in the world.
Experts have been unable to explain why people have these talents.
But now two scientists have identified an area of the brain which they
think may hold the key.
Dr Bruce Miller, a dementia specialist at the University of California in
San Francisco, found some of his patients were developing artistic
talents.
After scanning them, he found they had all had problems in the same part
of the brain - the left arterial temporal lobe.
He found the same part of the brain was damaged in an American savant,
Dane Bottino, an 11-year-old with artistic talents.
Allan Snyder, professor of science at the Australian National University,
University of Sydney and director of Centre for the Mind, has also been
looking at why savants have such amazing talents, when they are so
severely disabled in other ways.
He says that everyone may be able to tap into the area of the brain that
gives savants these abilities.
His theory is that because a specific part of the brain does not work
properly, abilities in another area may be unlocked.
Brain malfunction
And he says the savants have their gifts, because of this "malfunction" of
the brain, not in spite of it.
He said savants were able to access certain parts of the brain most
people could not.
"They are exceptional in that they can tap in and somehow we can't. They
have privileged access."
And he said if ordinary people could also find a way to get access: "Each
of us could draw like a professional, do lightning fast arithmetic."
This malfunctioning may, he believes, enable them to access certain
"primitive" parts of the brain which process sound, vision and numbers.
In the BBC programme, Stephen Wiltshire is taken up in a helicopter over
London. Hours later, he produces a detailed and accurate drawing of a
four-square mile area of the city.
The scientists believe this is possible because instead of his brain
processing details of information, such as identifying a building or
recognising it, he can tune in to all the complex mental processes that
lie behind that recognition, and copy them.
A team from Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, recently used the
findings of Miller and Snyder to run their own tests which found "savant
skills" - memory, math and art - improved in five out of 17 volunteers,
supporting Professor Snyder's theory.
The scientists used transcranial magnetic stimulation, a technique used in
the treatment of depression.
It was used to switch off the frontal temporal lobe. The volunteers were
tested before, during and after the treatment.
The five showed improvements in calendar calculating - naming what day of
the week any date in recent history was on - and drawing abilities.
Fragments of Genius, BBC1, 11 March at 1940 GMT