NOVA scienceNOW

DAVID POGUE

How smart are you?

GAME HOST

Mental athletes, begin. Would you like to be smarter? I feel like increasing my cortical tissue. I'm David Pogue, and on this episode of NOVA scienceNOW... This is a real brain, human brain. I'm going to extremes... Talk about a splitting headache. To unlock the secrets behind some of the most impressive brains around, from perhaps the greatest mind of the modern age... There's not one brain that has the same anatomy as Einstein. To a guy who can remember impossibly long lists of numbers... 4-1-8-5-9-2-5-9-7. Okay, that's highly freaky. To one with an amazing head for dates.

POGUE

What day will Christmas fall on in the year 2366? Sunday. Come on! That's nuts! What makes their brains so special? Are you saying that you can tell stuff about a person's brain by the outside? Yes, and in the case of Einstein, one's definitely able to do that. Is genius born or made? This is like an outtake from the Star Wars prop department. We are diving under the hood... This slice here comes right across the top of his ears. And revealing new evidence of what it means to be smart. We can now evolve the definition of intelligence. And what you can do to improve your brain power. What does this mean? I'm going to find out, "How Smart Can We Get?" Up next on NOVA scienceNOW. Funding for NOVA scienceNOW is provided Have you eve brains are smarter than others? Or if there's a way to get smarter yourself? I'm David Pogue, and I'm on a quest to explore the upper limits of brainpower. To start, I want to check out one of the smartest brains that ever existed, Albert Einstein's. There's no doubt the guy was a genius. By his 20s, he had revolutionized our fundamental notions of space, time and matter with his theory of relativity. A few years later, he figured out how gravity works. As if that weren't mind-blowing enough, he came up with E = mc-squared. Eventually, the great scientist moved here, to Princeton, New Jersey. Can you take my picture? And in his honor, he's memorialized with this statue. Not only that, there's a shrine dedicated to him in the back of a local clothing store. Next you're going to tell me there's a Kennedy memorial behind the deli. But what most residents don't know is that hidden inside this hospital is one of the best-kept secrets in America... Over there. Albert Einstein's brain. Einstein's brain, the brain of the most famous scientist in the world, is in there, and they won't let you in to see it? It's been there for a dozen years. I'm unable to get access to it. It is a very bizarre story. Neurologist Fred Lepore would love to get his hands on it. He hopes it will reveal what made Einstein so smart. Was there something different about his brain? Believe it or not, we still have a chance to find out. Okay, rewind a bit. Einstein dies... Einstein died on April 18, 1955. Thomas Harvey, the pathologist at the time, is expected to do a routine autopsy. Routine autopsy. But instead, what Thomas Harvey, the doctor performing the autopsy, decides to do is anything but routine. Without consent from Einstein's family, he decides to remove the brain. So the doctor on duty, not his partner, not his brother, took the brain and basically kept it? Yes. And started to study it? Yes. Harvey takes dozens, possibly hundreds of photographs, knowing what's coming up next. Because he's about to take the step you can't turn back from.

LEPORE

He begins to dissect it over the next few days into 240 blocks. When you say a block, you mean a little cube of Albert Einstein's brain? Yeah. I can show you some if you care to see. You can get in there? I have pictures. (Pogue chuckles) These are the two glass cookie jars. We believe they hold about 180 blocks, although they weren't counted. You're talking about blocks of brain. Blocks of brain. Those things that are sort of that yellowish putty color are sections of brain, and each section of brain is surrounded by gauze. If you had all the access you wanted, you would find out what, that he was a genius? You might find out he has some circuits that are different. Is it standard issue or did Einstein really have a freakishly different brain?

POGUE

It becomes Thomas Harvey's life mission to find out. When he loses his job at Princeton Hospital, Harvey quietly slips away, taking the brain with him. Can you imagine what the TSA would have said about his carry-on? Uh, sir, can you step over here? He travels to the Midwest. Wherever he moves, so goes the brain. From time to time, he sends chunks of it to researchers he deems worthy. Then in the 1990s, he sends several chunks and some of his photographs to Canadian neurologist Sandra Witelson. Witelson has one of the largest collections of brains in the world, kept in this walk-in refrigerator.

WITELSON

Thomas Harvey realized that because I had a large brain collection, it would be a good comparison for a case study of Einstein's brain.

POGUE

Harvey gives Witelson a few select chunks. But it's in a handful of photographs that she finds the most valuable clues. She makes a startling discovery in an area of the brain called the parietal lobe, on the top of the head towards the back.

WITELSON

We have 125 brains in our collection, which means 250 hemispheres. There's not one hemisphere that has the same parietal lobe as Einstein.

POGUE

Witelson believes that a part of Einstein's parietal lobe was 15% larger than any other brain in her collection. To find out what makes this discovery so important, I'm going where no host has gone before. With the help of pathologist David Zagzag and neurosurgeon John Golfinos, I'm taking a little brain tour. So gentlemen, can you certify this is no plastic model? This is a real brain, a human brain. May I touch the brain? Very gently. Oh, wow. It's cold, rubbery and it's clammy and it's got a weird consistency. How would you describe this to someone at home? Like hard Jell-O. Yeah, very hard Jell-O, that's good. Here, catch. Put it down. The first thing you notice when you look at it is that there are these raised parts, these ridges. These tiny ridges or bumps are called gyri. They contain billions of nerve cells. The crevices are called sulci. The reason we have all these folds is that as the brain developed and as we got smarter, our brain got bigger, and to fit inside the skull it had to fold in on itself. Does that mean that ancient man would not have as many folds? Correct. More folds mean more nerve cells, and that means more brainpower. All these folds are divided into four major areas, or lobes, which are found in both hemispheres. The area Witelson found unique in Einstein, the parietal lobe, is a fascinating part of the brain.

GOLFINOS

It's involved in how we develop a picture of the world around us. 3-D rotations, spatial imaging, that's what the parietal lobe does. Wow, so it kind of makes sense that Einstein, who processed the universe and the laws of physics should have a super-developed parietal lobe.

POGUE

A unique parietal lobe could have helped Einstein think about space, time and gravity in a way nobody ever had before. That anatomy conferred some kind of an advantage to Einstein in that particular area of intelligence. But is that what made him a genius? Were his unique parietal lobes the key to his revolutionary mathematical concepts? Wow, that's like a perfect score. At Texas Tech University, Michael O'Boyle is doing research that could help answer this question. He has been studying the brains of math geniuses like 13-year-old Shyam. Einstein was a great scientist. So many others, like Stephen Hawking, Newton, they were all really great scientists. I do want to be a great scientist like them. Shyam has won dozens of math competitions. Twelve square root of three.

ANNOUNCER

Twelve root three is the correct answer!

POGUE

In fact, he's become a bit of a celebrity on the math circuit. Today, Michael is scanning Shyam's brain to see what areas he uses to do complex math. This scan is called an fMRI. The "f" stands for "functional." While Shyam presses buttons to answer math questions displayed on the screen, the scanner detects increased blood flow in the parts of his brain that are hard at work. These areas are depicted as red. How much is Shyam making use of his parietal lobes? It turns out, a lot. He is relying on parietal areas to determine these mathematical relationships. That's characteristic of lots of math-gifted types. In fact, in a recent study, O'Boyle found that while solving math problems, math gifted kids have five to six times more neuron activation in these brain regions than the average kid-- especially here in their parietal lobes. But is there more? My quest to find out takes me to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to learn what anthropologist Dean Falk has discovered in Einstein's brain. Dean is a leading expert in the study of primate brains.

Her specialty

analyzing the meaning of those bumps and folds on the surface. Wait, are you saying that you can tell stuff about a person's brain by the patterns of the folds on the outside? Yes, and in the case of Einstein, one's definitely able to do that to some extent.

POGUE

While looking at Witelson's photographs, Dean makes a surprising discovery in another area of Einstein's brain, the frontal lobes. Doctors, talk to me about frontal.

GOLFINOS

So these frontal lobes are really involved in almost everything we do,

making us who we are

behaviors, planning, understanding what we're going to do next, staying organized. They're really what make us human.

POGUE

They're very important, so I was curious to find out exactly what Dean discovered in Einstein's brain.

FALK

So in looking at these photographs, something jumped out at me. I noticed a particular feature in the frontal lobe on the right. I've got a K on it here; that stands for "knob." And would you like to know what part of the brain that controls? Why, yes, I would. Well, it's right in front of... Give me your hand; it's this. If you wiggle... wiggle your fingers, you are using this general area. It's the motor cortex for the left hand. So this area here on the back of my right frontal lobe is controlling my left hand. Yes, and in the case of Einstein, it was greatly expanded and formed this knob here-- it's the shaded area-- and if you'd like to see on the brain, I'll show you where it would be if it were expanded in a human brain. It would be right about here, but notice this human doesn't have this knob. And it turned out that I've just read this study that talks about that knob and what it means.

POGUE

This study reported that musicians who learn how to play a stringed instrument in childhood develop the same shape in exactly the same place. In fact, when they scanned kids with an MRI before they learned to play a musical instrument and then again after 15 months of training, they discovered the brain had already changed. So I was surprised to see this in Einstein and it fit, because in fact he took violin lessons as a child for years and years and years. Dean does some digging and discovers this.

FALK

When he was stuck on a physics problem, he would go into his kitchen and pick up the fiddle and play it to relax, and he would suddenly get an answer to a physics problem that he'd been working on. Wow!

POGUE

Einstein is reported to have said... Einstein may have been born with extraordinary parietal lobes, but without his love of the violin, would Einstein have become Einstein?

FALK

Einstein had the experiences in his life which allowed him to put to use a great brain. So both nature and nurture were really important for Einstein.

POGUE

With all this talk about brains, I was dying to find out more about my own. So I had some scans taken that show the surface of my brain and brought them to Dean to analyze. I don't suppose it's too much to ask if I have anything in common with Einstein? Well, um, very interesting question. Lo and behold, the same studies that show violinists develop a knob on the right side of their brains show that pianists develop something similar on the left. I've been told that you do play piano. Yes. And I want to ask you, have you done this a long time? Yeah, since I was a kid. I started when I was nine. In fact, the piano is a big part of my life. I played through college, on Broadway, and I still play today. Well, I'm not surprised, because this configuration fits with the findings of the study. I've developed an enlargement, right here, in my motor cortex on the left side of my brain, just as many other pianists do. So I have reshaped my brain through piano lessons. That is a reasonable hypothesis. But enough about me. Let's get back to Albert. What the heck happened to his brain? Before Thomas Harvey died, he returned those two cookie jars containing Einstein's brain here to Princeton Hospital, a stone's throw from Fred Lepore's reach. So far, the hospital has declined Fred's requests for access, but he's determined to keep trying. There's got to be a way. Midnight heist? I'm open to any suggestions. Ocean's 14? Being smart involves many skills. Among them, how important is memory? To find out, I'm here at the U.S. Memory Championships. We have five minutes. Mental athletes... begin.

First round

memorize 500 numbers in order in just five minutes. Trying to remember more than 20 makes my head spin. Nelson Dellis, a previous champion, memorizes 303 of them, making him the winner of this round.

POGUE

Oh, come on! It's rigged. It's stacked against people with bad memories. Next, I have five minutes to memorize the exact order of an entire deck of cards. Maybe I'll get extra points for creativity. Or not. Of course, Nelson beats everyone, recalling the order of the entire deck in 87 seconds. (applause) Unbelievable... Unbelievable. How smart is this guy? And how does he do it? I pictured Olivia Newton dunking a helmet. Huh? Olivia Newton? Dunking a helmet? Believe it or not, he's using an ancient technique that goes all the way back to 500 B.C. So if I were to take this list... I decide to put this memory technique to the test, so I invite Chester Santos, the 2008 U.S. memory champion, to use it to memorize a list of 60 numbers. This would take me the rest of my life. I could definitely do this in five minutes or less. Go. (simple music playing) Okay, I'm done, I got it. You're done? I got it, yeah. Just let me know if I make any mistakes. Oh, you can count on it. Okay, 4, 1, 8, 1, 1, 2, 0, 9, 7, 5, 8, 0, 8, 7, 1, 5, 9, 2, 5, 9, 7. You got them all exactly right. Okay, that's highly freaky. Now it's my turn to learn this ancient memory technique. All right, bring on the list. Chester takes out a list of 40 random words for me to memorize in order. Monkey, iron, rope, kite, house, paper... That's right, I said 40.

SANTOS

Bicycle, elephant, computer, sword, necklace and pizza. That would take me several hours. You will have this perfectly memorized in ten or less minutes. All right, I just want to be clear for the record, if I don't, it's his fault.

POGUE

Step one. My lesson begins by walking around my living room, making note of objects I see every day, like my beloved grand piano, my favorite chair and my kid's guitar. Toys-- really meant to have these cleaned up. Chester tells me to study these objects, because we're about to use them to help me remember those 40 words. The globe... and the pillars. Now it's on to Step Two.

SANTOS

Imagine that on top of this piano there is a monkey dancing on that piano. But you don't just see the monkey dancing around. Maybe you even hear the monkey making monkey noises as it's dancing. Because that's the first word, monkey. So picture that, really imagine that happening. Okay. And this monkey picks up a giant iron.

POGUE

How does this strange technique work? We asked a memory expert to explain. We are visual, we are auditory, we have all these different senses. And the more a single piece of information is locked in through the various senses, the better chance it's retained. So the crazier and more vivid the story, the better.

SANTOS

Now, at that chair, see a rope attached to a kite. And the kite is flying around in the air. Just picture that. The guitar is smashing into a house and you discover that the house is made of paper. Now, all your visuals are very active and there's a lot of motion to them. Is that part of it? Exactly. We tend to remember things more if there is something interesting actually happening rather than just a stagnant object just sitting there. So a dancing monkey, a shooting rope, a smashing guitar. Perfect.

POGUE

Further down the list, my tissues are having quite a memorable experience as they get run over by a bicycle with an elephant perched on top. (elephant trumpeting)

SANTOS

Can you see that? I can. Something's wrong with me. But you will remember this stuff. Yes, I will remember that.

POGUE

The time has finally come. I don't have any particular confidence this will work. I have a lot of confidence. Beyond the monkey; I know I got the monkey. So on the piano we have monkey and iron. And then next to it was a chair and that had a rope and kite, and then guitar smashing a house, paper... Lo and behold, as I mentally traverse the room, the words come pouring out. River... rock... That's correct. tree, cheese. That's right. Correct. But then... There's something about the tissues. Uh... I'm sure it had something to do with smashing. (laughing) Assume violent... Uh, let's see, the tissues... Uh-oh. The tissues were getting run over by... Oh, a bicycle ridden by an elephant. You got it. After a close call, I miraculously wiz through the rest of the list. The necklace and the pizza! (clapping) Awesome. Great job. That was great. Next year's memory champion-- David Pogue. Thank you, thank you. I want to know what parts of my brain accomplished this Herculean task. I ask Drs. Zagzag and Golfinos to show me. So why don't you... (laughing) Are you kidding me? This is what I call a brain knife, so... So, please? This one's going on the rsum. Okay, ready? Right there. Oh, man! Oh... Wow! I am very happy to inform you that you have made a most symmetrical cut. And the two hippocampi are right here in front of you. Just below the pointer. The hippocampi are toward the middle of the head, just a few inches in from the ears. These tiny structures help store our short-term memories. So that little thing is our memory? Short-term memory, yes. Wow. So what about these people from memory championships? They translate everything into visual metaphors. So if you think about it, they are attaching extra information and using other parts of the brain-- the part that processes language, the part that processes images-- and that's how they attach them on to the memory and make it a stronger memory, by recruiting other parts of the brain to help. Having a good memory is important, but for a brain to be really smart, it has to do even more. Tell me which of these pieces should go here. It has to have the ability to problem-solve. Number 4. For over 100 years, we've measured the brain's ability to solve problems with IQ tests like this. Number 3. Could there be a better way? My quest to find out how a smart brain works takes me to a research center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where state-of-the-art technology could give us a whole new way to assess intelligence.

RICHARD HAIER

We now have the opportunity to evolve the definition of intelligence away from just relying on test performance and toward a definition that includes brain physiology that we can measure.

POGUE

How will they do it? Using this strange-looking device, called an MEG scanner, Richard Haier and Rex Jung are trying to reveal what parts of the brain we use when we're problem-solving. This is like an outtake from the Star Wars prop department.

TECHNICIAN (laughing)

Yes.

POGUE

But instead of impersonating Darth Vader, I'm taking a pop quiz. Questions like the kind you find on an IQ test will appear on this screen. I'm supposed to solve brainteasers like this. As I do, my high-tech helmet picks up what's happening in my brain. The brain is made of billions of nerve cells, and every time one communicates with another, it generates an electrical signal. Those signals give off a magnetic field, which is picked up by my helmet. The result is an animated image of my brain. All these blue and red flashes show, millisecond by millisecond, the areas hard at work.

JUNG

Around 400 milliseconds in is when you see the hippocampus fire up.

POGUE

I'm making good use of the areas I used to memorize those 40 words. But Haier and Jung's research shows I'm also relying heavily on that area so unique in Einstein's brain, the parietal lobe. And I'm also making good use of my frontal lobe, which helps me with planning and decision-making.

HAIER

Both of those areas have been linked to visual spatial ability, numerical ability, abstract reasoning, but our research suggests that it's the communication among those areas that really is the key.

POGUE

How do different parts of the brain communicate?

GOLFINOS

Look at the structure of the brain. You can see what they call the white matter. These are the connecting fibers. We call it white matter because they're really white compared to the darker areas... Oh, wow! Which are the gray matter.

POGUE

Gray matter is mostly on the outside of the brain. It's filled with billions of nerve cells. Beneath that is "white matter." The white matter is made up of long nerve fibers that crisscross the brain, connecting different areas of gray matter to each other. The amount of gray matter you have is really important, but intelligence researchers are discovering that that spaghetti-like network of connections is just as crucial. That's the next great frontier of the brain is figuring out every single connection. And how those connections work together.

HAIER

We want to understand not just the areas that light up during intelligence, but also how those areas communicate with each other. Is it the same in every person? We think not. We think there'll be differences, and we think those differences will be related to intelligence.

POGUE

Richard Haier and Rex Jung are just beginning to unravel the secrets to how an intelligent brain works. But until they can solve this mystery, I'd like to know if there's a way you can make your brain smarter. A lot of times we read about ways that you are supposed to help your brain. There's brain food, and they say you should do crossword puzzles as you age to keep your brain fresh. Is there anything that we can do to make ourselves smarter? There could be, and if you come outside with us, we'll show you one thing that we can try. You might be surprised at what the good doctors order. When you guys said that you'd be able to do some experiment demonstrating that you can actually grow your brain, I thought the equipment involved would be a little more expensive than juggling balls. What is this about?

JUNG

Well, there's this very famous study that showed if you juggle over a long period of time, it actually increases the gray matter in a certain region of your brain that subserves juggling.

POGUE

Not only can you increase your gray matter, recent studies show you can increase your white matter, too. Well, I don't know about you gentlemen, but I feel like increasing my cortical tissue. Let's juggle. Let's give it a try. I don't actually know how to juggle. I can do two pretty well. Does that count? Ladies and gentlemen, you are witnessing for the first time on television the growing of my brain. I can feel it growing. I'm going to look like an alien in 20 minutes. Oh, wow.

HAIER

If you want to know how can you make your brain work better, use it or lose it. And use it to learn new things, like juggling.

POGUE

So remember, learn something new and you, too, can grow your brainpower. Every brain is unique, but few are as extraordinary as George Widener's. What I experience walking down a city street is completely different from what George experiences. 24-hour active driveway? I don't like that one. George is on the hunt for numbers. When he finds ones he likes, he plays the most amazing game.

WIDENER

The 515-527, if you took out May 1, the year 5527...

POGUE

George has transformed this random number into a calendar date. Wait, wait-- 5527, like the super future? Yes, yes, long time from now. What he does next is absolutely amazing. And that is a... that's a Sunday. Come on! You can actually find a calendar from the year 5527 on the Internet, and you'll see that he's right. George is what's known as a calendar calculator. Give him a date and he'll tell you what day of the week it falls on. All right, so March 9, 1871, what day of the week is that? Looks like a Thursday. Holy cow, it was indeed a Thursday. What day will Christmas fall on in the year 2366? 2366, December 25, that's a Sunday. Come on, that's nuts! You're right. How does he do it? How does the brain accomplish such extraordinary feats? When I try to calendar- calculate, here's what happens.

George gives me a date

Feb 20, 2002. So you do your thing and I'll do mine and we'll see who gets there first. On your mark, get set, go. All right, so...

POGUE

I try to figure it out based on instructions I found on the Internet. Is this year a leap year? (mouthing silently) First I calculate the total number of days between now and the date. I'm getting 3,741 days between... Divide that by seven. If the remainder is zero, it will be the same day of the week as today. If the remainder is one, it will be one day earlier. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So I'm going to say Feb. 20, 2002, was a Thursday. Hmm, that's interesting how it shifts. It's a Wednesday actually. Oops. It shifted because I forgot to account for a leap year. Hold on... Wednesday. Wednesday. Now I'm getting Wednesday just like you. Could you tell me how you did that again? Uh, no. Okay. How does George do it? He says he's not doing any math. Instead, he sees numbers line up to form a calendar. He finds the date and sees the day of the week. Today, George uses his calendar calculating to create fascinating paintings. Each one is filled with numbers and calendar dates. He's an accomplished artist, but that wasn't always the case. When he was a child, teachers couldn't figure out what was wrong with him.

WIDENER

I was labeled both gifted and learning disabled.

POGUE

So he withdrew into himself, finding comfort in calendar dates. And they became an obsession that disconnected him from the world. It took years for George to find out why. Finally, he was diagnosed with a rare condition called savant syndrome. I am a calendar savant, a high-functioning calendar savant. Psychiatrist Darold Treffert, a prominent expert on savant syndrome, has documented about 300 cases of people like George who were born with extraordinary skills. In the process he's also found around 30 truly bizarre cases where people were transformed into savants, seemingly overnight. These are people who have an injury or a disease and all of a sudden some ability cascades forth which was never there before. He calls them "acquired savants" and they represent some of the most mysterious cases in the field of brain science. One of them is Derek Amato. He became a pianist after a severe head injury. So let me get this straight. You dived into a swimming pool and hit your head on the bottom. You came to a week later, and what? Derek started to suffer from headaches and memory loss that still plague him today. But then, something unexpected happened... Barely a week after the accident, he was hit with an uncontrollable need to play the piano. He sat for hours playing this melody over and over again. (playing lush classical-type piece) And that's what it was. And you weren't a piano player? No. So what I'd love to know is how you picture and think about music because when I learn a piece of music, I generally look at the sheet music and each note is on a line or a space and represents one of the keys on the piano and I... (plays a few notes) I learn it that way so I can... (playing "Maple Leaf Rag") So that's all written out by the composer specifically. That would take me a year to learn, maybe five. Wow, so do you read sheet music? No, I see blocks. I see these black and white squares nonstop. These blocks tell his fingers how to play that melody. Something kind of miraculous happened to your brain when it hit the bottom of the pool. Right. But what? Why do people like Derek develop savant-like abilities after a head injury? And why are some people, like George Widener, the calendar calculator, born with them? So if you can just follow me into the room. Clues to solving this mystery may be hidden in George's brain. For the last few years, neuro-radiologist Joy Hirsch has been studying it with an MRI scanner.

HIRSCH

What we're seeing is the structural pictures of his brain. It looks to a layman just like a normal brain. Well, it looks to a scientist and a neuro-radiologist like a normal brain as well.

POGUE

Today, Hirsch is probing further. She is taking fMRI scans of George's brain. This scan detects increased blood flow in the areas of his brain that are at work. And this is George's brain when he's calendar-calculating. What we're seeing here are two slices of George's brain. So here on George, we... this slice here... Stand still, George. So this slice here comes right across just about the top of his ears, and this slice here comes right across the top of his head. Gotcha. And what's really interesting about this is that most of the activity, as you can see by the concentration of the yellow blobs, is on one side of the brain. And that's actually the left side of the brain. What does that tell you? What reaction do you have? Are you like, "Oh, my gosh!" Or are you like, "Aha, just as I theorized." I mean what... Well, this was a complete surprise because typical brains in any task are much more symmetrical. This is the fMRI of a typical brain at work. Both the left and right hemispheres show activation. But when George is calendar-calculating, that doesn't happen.

HIRSCH

The activity pattern on the right side of the brain is very sparse in a way that might suggest some kind of shutting down of one side of the brain. So this is quite extraordinary. It's as if the tools of the brain that he needs to do that task become highly focused. That is, he uses very specific areas of the brain and doesn't use others.

GOLFINOS

For a savant to have only one side working, well, to me, I would interpret that as saying the other side is shut off or isolated and this side is using all of the available processing power of the brain, but only on one or two tasks instead of the hundred or thousands of tasks that the whole brain normally handles at one time.

All that processing power is going into one little thing

calendar-calculating.

POGUE

But how about people who suddenly develop savant-like abilities later in life, like Anne Adams, an extraordinary case of a scientist turned painter. Over several years, while Anne was stricken with a rare brain disorder that slowly diminished her ability to speak, she simultaneously developed an obsessive need to paint, a need to make art that took over her life. She produced hundreds of paintings. Brain scans, taken over several years, give us a rare glimpse at what was happening in Anne's brain. In areas associated with speech, nerve cells were dying off. These areas are highlighted in blue. But in the areas highlighted in orange, something very different appears to be happening.

MILLER

The right posterior part of the brain-- the part that's involved, we think, with production of art-- is starting to remodel and rebuild. This loss of function in her language circuit accelerated the growth in her visual circuitry. I think the brain compensates for the loss. This is exactly what happens. As you lose one circuit, another circuit is turned on more of the time. It compensates and it develops new skills that allow us to cope.

POGUE

I showed Joy Hirsch Anne Adams's scans to see what she had to say. So it's a very interesting case where the balance of the brain was altered, and during the course of this alteration, the other side of the brain appears to have compensated with the emergence of new talents, almost savant-like. Wow. These functional brain scans are helping us decode the mystery of savants like George, and may help us understand how people like Anne Adams and Derek Amato can suddenly acquire remarkable talents. (playing final phrase) (music ends) Thank you, man, beautifully done. These kids are about to take an exam, just one of many in their lifetimes. And they're feeling the pressure. It is one of the worst feelings in the world. American students take more than 100 million standardized tests a year.

YOUNG WOMAN

You start to panic. You start doubting yourself.

POGUE

But no matter how smart you are, sometimes even the brightest brains don't perform as they should.

YOUNG MAN

My stomach flips and then I feel really sad.

POGUE

They choke under pressure. I usually freak out. Yeah. And it's not just in the classroom. I think anyone can choke under pressure. We've all seen it happen, from American Idol... Remember everything that I told you... That's ironic. To a spelling bee. I-N-S-I...

All the great chokes have something in common

they've all failed to perform up to their best when the pressure is high. Rick Perry in the Republican debates of 2011. And the, uh, what's the third one there, let's see...

POGUE

And of course the sports choke, like going for a crucial field goal that should be easy... and missing.

ANNOUNCER

It's no good!

POGUE

Whether you're an athlete or just a kid sitting for the SAT, choking can be devastating.

BEILOCK

It's one thing to have skill or the knowledge to perform well, but it doesn't matter how much math you know if you can never show it on the quantitative section of the SAT.

POGUE

But what if you could teach your brain not to choke? That's the goal of cognitive scientist Sian Beilock. Sian is figuring out how to train your brain to perform at its best, even when the heat is on. Sian learned about choking the hard way.

BEILOCK

Soccer, I think, was my one really true passion. My name is Sian Beilock and I'm a soccer goalkeeper.

POGUE

At 16, she was a star goalie in the Olympic Development Program. Then, one day, a national coach came to see her play.

BEILOCK

I knew he was there, and I knew that this might be my one shot. An offensive player came down the right side of the field and took a shot at the near post, which is the post you're supposed to be able to save the ball from, and it went right under my arm and in the goal. It went all downhill from there. And that was it. I was out of consideration for the national team that year. You know, I had that one shot and I failed.

POGUE

It was a crushing blow.

BEILOCK

I just felt totally defeated. All the hard work I'd put into getting to the place that I was getting had just vanished in the blink of an eye. It was the middle of the game and I wanted to walk off the field. So yeah, I choked.

POGUE

Soon after, Sian walked away from soccer. But when she went to college, she was determined to find out what had happened inside her brain on that fateful day, so she majored in cognitive science.

BEILOCK

One of the reasons I was really interested in cognitive science is that it seemed like it might be a window into trying to understand a little bit about how I performed. So people always ask me if I do me-search, and I think there's definitely a little bit of me-search to what I do.

POGUE

Sian wants to know what happens to our brain under pressure. And her research team has figured out the perfect recipe for high anxiety.

GERARDO RAMIREZ

We have these students come in, and they do a block of math problems.

POGUE

They even make the math problems look strange to throw the students off.

RAMIREZ

And then we give them a series of instructions that are really designed to create a very stressful environment for them.

POGUE

They put money on the line and tell the students that a partner is depending on them to improve their score. But if you can't improve, then you won't get this additional money and neither will your partner. At this point, the students are really freaking out, and then, to really make it a very, very stressful environment, we bring out a video camera and put it right next to them. Do you see a red light? Then the students do a second block of problems.

BEILOCK

And it works. Most people, when they're in our stressful situations, really do feel pressure to perform at a high level. And as it happens, lots of people choke under that pressure.

RAMIREZ

Usually they choke about 11% to 12% below their initial block of problems.

POGUE

So what's happening when they choke? Only the scanner can tell.

BEILOCK

We put people in this MRI machine. They're lying on their back, but they can see this computer screen and they're actually performing problems.

POGUE

They use a controller to give their answers. Then Sian's team makes them sweat. Finally, during this next set of problems, we're going to be videotaping your performance. Sian's theory was that these stressors were messing with the patients' working memory. It's a little different from short-term memory, which comes from the hippocampus.

BEILOCK

Working memory is your mental scratchpad that essentially allows you to work with whatever information is held in consciousness.

POGUE

And it involves the prefrontal cortex, which is part of the frontal lobe, just above our eyes.

BEILOCK

Our prefrontal cortex essentially allows us to do all those special things we can do as humans, whether it's hitting a tiny ball into a tiny hole or juggling lots of math problems in our head.

POGUE

Based on activity she saw in the scans of her stressed-out subjects, Sian can infer communication between the prefrontal cortex and the emotional centers of the brain, like the amygdala. And when the emotional centers are overactive, they can prevent clear thinking.

BEILOCK

In these situations when people fail, these worries tend to come online and co-opt those prefrontal resources that people would otherwise use to perform well.

POGUE

Sian's preliminary data suggests that in a choker's brain, the emotions cause a racket big enough to interrupt working memory. But what about those lucky people who don't choke, who perform well under pressure? What's different about a non-choker's brain?

BEILOCK

It's almost as if the prefrontal cortex and those emotion centers of the brain uncouple or stop talking for a moment.

POGUE

For non-chokers, it's almost as though they temporarily put the conversation between these two parts of the brain on hold. People who are less likely to choke essentially show less crosstalk. There's less of an opportunity for these worries to seep in and impact performance, and we think that these are skills that can be taught. Sian had a theory she thought could have a huge impact, and she set out to prove it.

She went where the stress was boiling over

a high school biology exam. Just before the test started, Sian's team gave the kids an extra assignment.

RAMIREZ

We came into the classrooms and asked all of the students to either write about their deepest thoughts and feelings or sit there for ten minutes.

POGUE

Sian knew from other studies that depressed patients who wrote down their emotions in a journal could break the cycle of negative thinking. But would it work for anxious test-takers?

BEILOCK

The idea is that if we have people journal before this important test, we might be able to help them succeed.

POGUE

The students poured out their deepest worries onto paper. Then it was test time. So how'd they do? Students who just sat without writing anything on average got a B-, but the ones who wrote got, on average, a B+.

BEILOCK

We boosted these students' scores over half a grade point by just having them sit and write for ten minutes about their thoughts and feelings about the upcoming high-stakes test.

POGUE

So what did the students write?

BEILOCK

"There's millions of butterflies in my stomach. Breathe, breathe, I'm telling myself." So he starts out talking about how worried he is, and then towards the middle he says, "as I continue to think about this final, I relax significantly."

POGUE

For those students with high test anxiety, journaling was a silver bullet. But why does it work?

BEILOCK

When people are worrying up under stress, it's almost like a computer with too many programs open at once. Sometimes everything crashes. And by writing down some of those worries, you're able to offload some of those programs so you free up resources to perform at your best.

POGUE

Journaling may help kids show how smart they are when it matters most.

BEILOCK

You don't have to be an Olympic athlete or sitting for the SAT to have these choking experiences. Whether you're interviewing for a job or just, one of my favorite places where I often choke, parallel parking in front of your spouse, some of the same processes can drive that underperformance. What my work shows is that it doesn't have to be an inevitable phenomenon and that we can learn from those poor performances.

POGUE

And what if she'd never choked?

BEILOCK

I've thought about this idea. Maybe if I hadn't choked in front of the national coach I would have gone on to play in the Olympics, but I'm happy with all the lessons I learned from that experience and I think I've been able to take some of them and use them in my new life pursuits. I want my work to really push the bounds of what we're able to do so that everyone can perform up to their potential.

POGUE

And Sian practices what she preaches. She journaled before this interview. So what did she write? So I wrote, "What a day. "I'm exhausted, "and I hope that doesn't make me sound incoherent. "I need to just focus on the present, on today. "Have fun with it, and not let my thoughts or worries about tomorrow or the next day seep in." And did it help? Sure. Did I ace my interview? Then yes. This NOVA scienceNOW program is available oThis NOVA pm is available on DVD To order, visit shopPBS.org, or call 1-800-play-PBS. NOVA is also available for download on iTunes.