Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and guess who's with me?
Speaker 1: That would be Mr Charles W. Chuck Bryant, who, based
Speaker 1: on his headwear Today has Headwear Choice Today, apparently has
Speaker 1: joined the Cuban Revolution, Right, is that correct? US Friday
Speaker 1: Hat Day? So I'm doing my best Fidel Castro. Yeah,
Speaker 1: va shay. It's called a combat cat. Feel like that.
Speaker 1: It is. It's very cool. It's very cool, Chuck. You
Speaker 1: want to know something cooler? Yes, Okay, So actually I
Speaker 1: don't know if cools your right word. Maybe horrific is
Speaker 1: a better word. Okay. Uh. There's a study conducted here
Speaker 1: in the States. And of course you know that the
Speaker 1: United States, like most other countries, have a long history
Speaker 1: of you know, um, well meaning but really misplaced medical
Speaker 1: experiments or psychological experiments by giving LSD to unsuspecting a
Speaker 1: mayor ends, which we've talked about right exactly. This one
Speaker 1: was a little different, um. This one involved separating twins
Speaker 1: who were up for adoption at birth in the state
Speaker 1: of New York. And uh, there were I think thirteen
Speaker 1: sets of twins in one set of triplets, and they
Speaker 1: were all separated through this one adoption agency as part
Speaker 1: of a study of nature versus nurture. So like, the
Speaker 1: only thing the adopting parents knew was that their kid
Speaker 1: was part of an ongoing um child psychology study. And
Speaker 1: so these researchers were allowed access to these kids over
Speaker 1: their their lifetimes. And then it went from the sixties
Speaker 1: to I think night and um, the guy who was
Speaker 1: running the show, his name was Peter Newbauer, right, he
Speaker 1: was a child psychologist. He um apparently realized that if
Speaker 1: he were to publish this study. Uh, basically he'd beat
Speaker 1: lynched right right that by the time rolled around, people
Speaker 1: didn't think too highly of separating twins, Like the the
Speaker 1: ethics of experimentation had changed enough, not based on the results,
Speaker 1: just space on the fact that he did this to
Speaker 1: because he under yeah right, so Um, basically what he
Speaker 1: did was take all of the research. He had the
Speaker 1: study it was ready to be published, and he sealed
Speaker 1: it and um it cannot be open until twenty six
Speaker 1: and it's sitting in the archives at Yale university. I
Speaker 1: imagine twenty six. He imagined he'd be long dead by then, Right,
Speaker 1: so in six we're gonna find out a lot about
Speaker 1: nature versus nurture. I will be long dead, but you might.
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to make it, as you know. That's what
Speaker 1: your death clock. Death clock says. So I don't think
Speaker 1: so I'll be. I've got my vagas. Odds are against that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so um okay, So Chuck, that's a that's an example
Speaker 1: of a really terrible experiment. Yeah. Right, have you heard
Speaker 1: of savants, autistic savants? I have, Indeed you have. Okay,
Speaker 1: they actually provide a much less horrible, uh natural experiment,
Speaker 1: perfect natural experiment to study the brain. Right, Okay, you
Speaker 1: want to talk about savants for a second, because I'm
Speaker 1: going to explain later how they make this perfect experiment. Sure, Josh,
Speaker 1: you know, autistic savants are people who are mentally deficient
Speaker 1: in some areas but excel and others, like a lot
Speaker 1: of times and others. That kid that plays the piano,
Speaker 1: you've seen him in the jazz trio, I have not.
Speaker 1: He's fifteen or so now, and when he first started playing,
Speaker 1: he was really young and very advanced musically. So and
Speaker 1: he's autistic savant. So that's one good example. Yeah, music
Speaker 1: comes out a lot in savants. Um. Um. There's a
Speaker 1: guy named Blind Tom. He was this African American guy
Speaker 1: at the turn of the last century, not hippie rob
Speaker 1: or not Blind Tom, and he was severely um autistic,
Speaker 1: and he he could play pretty much any piece of
Speaker 1: music that he heard once on the piano. Um. Interesting, Well,
Speaker 1: it's autistic. Savant is different than autism though, aren't those two? Sure?
Speaker 1: Not every buddy who is a savant is autistic and
Speaker 1: not everybody who's autistic is a savant, so there is like, yes,
Speaker 1: that's a good point there. There is a very I
Speaker 1: guess a subgroup called autistic savants, and perhaps the most
Speaker 1: famous savant um is a guy named Kim Peak Rainman. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's the real Rainman, is what they call him. I
Speaker 1: thought they just made that up. No, now you were
Speaker 1: dead on, Chuck. You have an amazing intuition savant. Yeah
Speaker 1: maybe I don't think so, but maybe I'm terrible at math.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that comes into play too as well. Um.
Speaker 1: But Kim Peak is this guy who the guy who
Speaker 1: wrote Rainman, Barrymorrow met uh in four and in Night
Speaker 1: the movie came out. So he was very much based
Speaker 1: on Kim Peak. Yeah, the guy can if you tell
Speaker 1: him your birthday, your birthdate, I'll tell you what day
Speaker 1: of the week you were born on. Um. He apparently
Speaker 1: Um has read twelve thousand books around that, around that
Speaker 1: he started reading and memorizing things at fourteen months. Wow. Um.
Speaker 1: But he has severe brain damage, developmental brain damage. So
Speaker 1: he can't like, button his own shirt. He can't care
Speaker 1: for himself. Luckily, he's got a really good dad who
Speaker 1: cares for him. Sure. But the cool thing about this
Speaker 1: story is after Barrymorrow won an oscar, he gave it
Speaker 1: to Kim Peake, did he write the screenplay? And so
Speaker 1: Kim Peak carries it around everywhere he goes. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that cool. Yeah, that's awesome. Alright. So the reason why
Speaker 1: savants and there have been some really spectacular ones throughout
Speaker 1: the ages, UH provides such a great natural experiment for
Speaker 1: us to investigate the brain is because they, most of them,
Speaker 1: they almost exclusively have left UH damage to the left
Speaker 1: hemisphere of the brain. And you know, just the very
Speaker 1: fact that they can excel in math but can't button
Speaker 1: their own shirts. It provides this kind of um, certain
Speaker 1: framework to compare the rest of our brains to right.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's a it's an excellent comparison, right right,
Speaker 1: And the left side is more about detail, correct, and
Speaker 1: the right side is more about the big picture. Do
Speaker 1: you love the lateralization of brain functions? Do? Well? I
Speaker 1: like the brain period because it's still so mysterious. You know,
Speaker 1: it's amazing how little we know still about the brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing and disconcerting. Yes, at the same time, I
Speaker 1: predict the next fifty years are going to see tremendous
Speaker 1: advances in our understanding of the brain, in part because
Speaker 1: of the study of savants, right right. So yeah, you
Speaker 1: were talking about the lateralization of brain function. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: Left is the detail oriented side and right sees the
Speaker 1: big picture. Right. Um. And so there's some people who
Speaker 1: are studying savants, um. And you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why they are interesting is because
Speaker 1: almost all of them have damage in one form or
Speaker 1: another to the left side of the brain. Uh. And
Speaker 1: even more suspicious is is you can you can, um,
Speaker 1: maybe get in a car wreck or have a stroke,
Speaker 1: and if if you the left side is impaired people
Speaker 1: have been known to basically come out of a savant
Speaker 1: and sometimes autistic savant. Interesting, right, Um. So one of
Speaker 1: the people that I'd like to talk about today who's
Speaker 1: studying savants is Dr Allen Snyder, yes Schneider, as I
Speaker 1: like to call him. He is an ex pad American
Speaker 1: who runs the Center for the Mind that's the British
Speaker 1: spelling of Center in Sydney, Australia. And he is he's
Speaker 1: a very eccentric person. It sounds like it, he really is.
Speaker 1: But he's been studying savants for years and um he
Speaker 1: has come up with a theory about mindsets and it's
Speaker 1: based on the lateralization of brain function. I love that. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: the mindset. Basically, his theory is that mindsets are created
Speaker 1: their personal um basically definitions on your experience. Right. So
Speaker 1: if you see, uh, you know, a bear in the woods,
Speaker 1: well let's a little let's come. Let's say a dog
Speaker 1: in your driveway. You'll note things about the dog, that
Speaker 1: he's furry, that he has a tail, he walks on
Speaker 1: four legs, that kind of thing, and your brain kind
Speaker 1: of store us that away. So next time you don't
Speaker 1: see a dog, you think Oh my gosh, what's that.
Speaker 1: I've never seen one of those. Yeah, he calls the mindsets, right,
Speaker 1: so chuck. Uh, when we when we're basically assaulted with
Speaker 1: stimuli all times, all the time, raw data basically UM
Speaker 1: from like the humming of a fluorescent light, UM to
Speaker 1: you know, UM, conversations that we overhear in restaurants, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, colors, actions, taste, smells. Yeah, We're we're
Speaker 1: constantly assaulted with the reinput. Right. We have this thing
Speaker 1: called latent inhibition, which is a brain process. They're still
Speaker 1: again trying to get a handle on, UM, but latent
Speaker 1: inhibition is basically the process by which we filter out
Speaker 1: stuff we already know, so if we can identify, So
Speaker 1: we're not constantly focused on the buzzing of a fluorescent
Speaker 1: lights exactly, we're hearing all the voices in a restaurant.
Speaker 1: Obviously that'd be maddening, right And actually, as a side note, UM,
Speaker 1: schizophrenics uh have very low latent inhibition indeed, so they're
Speaker 1: constantly assault to with all of this stuff. But they
Speaker 1: also have the added, UM horrible side effect of UM
Speaker 1: attaching meaning to to these snippets of conversation. Right, So
Speaker 1: saying specifically, you're hearing voices, um, and you're not able
Speaker 1: to externalize or internalize, meaning you can't tell the voices
Speaker 1: are coming from your head and you're attaching meaning to them.
Speaker 1: That's schizophrenia, right, That's horrible. So it's Snyder's belief and
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure the medical establishment at large is that, Um,
Speaker 1: we're we're getting all of this raw data. It's being
Speaker 1: accepted into our right hemisphere, right, which sees the big picture,
Speaker 1: and uh, it sends it over to the left hemisphere,
Speaker 1: which processes it into details which we hang on to.
Speaker 1: This this interplay between the left hemisphere and the right
Speaker 1: hemisphere creates those mindsets you were talking about, right, which,
Speaker 1: like you said, is how we can see a dog
Speaker 1: and come to understand what a dog is, and then
Speaker 1: later on when we see another agus just say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a dog. Like we kind of categorize things in packets, right. Sure. So, UM,
Speaker 1: we say all that to say this, if supposedly we
Speaker 1: have damage to the left side of the brain, the
Speaker 1: detail oriented brain, all we're doing is getting raw data
Speaker 1: and we're not able to create these mindsets. There's this
Speaker 1: wonderful article by a guy named Lawrence Osburne UM, And
Speaker 1: it was in the New York Times in two thousand
Speaker 1: three called Savant for a Day and he spent the
Speaker 1: day with Alan Snyder, and the whole article is very long,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely worth reading. Um. He chronicles, you know,
Speaker 1: his day with Alan Snyder. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that Snyder mentions is that some of the savants that
Speaker 1: he studies when they come to see him at the
Speaker 1: Center for the Mind, they may have been there dozens
Speaker 1: of times, but they can get lost every single time
Speaker 1: just because of the change of shadows. It looks different.
Speaker 1: They're getting different input, so they'll get lost because it
Speaker 1: doesn't look the same way it did that last time,
Speaker 1: and they can't form mindsets saying this is the direction
Speaker 1: I'm going right. Right, So since people with left left
Speaker 1: hemisphere brain damage uh tend to be savants, right or
Speaker 1: people who are savants have that condition. Um. Snyder has
Speaker 1: actually come up with a a theory that all of
Speaker 1: us are savants. If you get struck on the head
Speaker 1: and your left hemisphere is damaged, you you could become
Speaker 1: a savant. So we're all potential savants, right, And basically
Speaker 1: the left side that that helps create these mindsets that
Speaker 1: pays attention to these details and hangs onto him are
Speaker 1: keeping us from being savants. Right, So how do you
Speaker 1: investigate something like this? Well, he uses a process called
Speaker 1: transcranial magnetic stimulation. We're gonna call it TMS. Yes, much
Speaker 1: easier for our purposes. Uh. TMS was originally designed Josh
Speaker 1: to examine brain functions during cranial surgery. And what it
Speaker 1: does is it focuses magnetic pulses to either suppress or
Speaker 1: enhance the electrical functions of the brain. Yeah, it's depends
Speaker 1: on the frequency of the pulses, right, absolutely. And we
Speaker 1: were talking, you know, privately, and I thought it sounded
Speaker 1: very relaxing as your brain was being massaged and disappointed.
Speaker 1: I was disappointed because you said that you don't feel anything.
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to feel anything. It sounds very nice
Speaker 1: to me. It does kind of, but I think that
Speaker 1: you could probably get something like what you're describing it,
Speaker 1: like Brookstone maybe, So don't don't fear. Yeah, that's where
Speaker 1: you're just sure sharper image. Perhaps they're under are they anyway?
Speaker 1: Alan Snyder started using t MS because he found this
Speaker 1: curious little side effect of people that were getting tested
Speaker 1: with tms UM had some cognitive malthfunctions, so like speech
Speaker 1: impediments exactly while while this thing was trained on their brain, right, right,
Speaker 1: But it also had some uh if you did, if
Speaker 1: you put this on an average person at some pretty
Speaker 1: cool results. Yeah, this is what Snyder has been doing.
Speaker 1: This is his new experiment, right, and it's very cool. Um.
Speaker 1: Of the people, the normal folks, let's call him, that
Speaker 1: he exposed to t M s UM, they displayed artistic
Speaker 1: and quantitative abilities that they didn't seem to have before.
Speaker 1: So right on the money, it seems like it's actually
Speaker 1: tapping into a part of our brain that we have
Speaker 1: and we don't use, which sort of backs up his theory. Right,
Speaker 1: and some of the some of the things he puts
Speaker 1: people through, well, uh, he he uses TMS on them,
Speaker 1: which apparently we're kind of It looks a lot like
Speaker 1: a shower cap has a bundle of magnetic wires in it,
Speaker 1: a thinking cap, if you will, Yeah, which is kind
Speaker 1: of an inaccurate moniker, but an unfortunate one. The press
Speaker 1: is kind of put on it, right. They had to
Speaker 1: label it, right, you got to you gotta get people
Speaker 1: to read, right, which is why we used it in
Speaker 1: the title of the arti um. So depending on where
Speaker 1: you put it on the skull, um, it's going to
Speaker 1: affect that that very localized region of the brain. So
Speaker 1: of course Snyder is interested in training this on the
Speaker 1: left hemisphere of the brain. Sure um. And he's actually
Speaker 1: using a low freak and see, so he's depressing the
Speaker 1: left brains function and reportedly, like you said, people are
Speaker 1: showing results. One of the things he likes to get
Speaker 1: people to do is draw animals. And apparently with those
Speaker 1: who show a reaction to t MS, they they their
Speaker 1: drawings tend to get better or more realistic, more lifelike.
Speaker 1: And Snyder's theory is that this, this drawing from memory
Speaker 1: is not based on the preconceived notions that you already
Speaker 1: have that would come from the left hemisphere of the brain. Curiously,
Speaker 1: he also has found that people can, um, you know,
Speaker 1: ordinary people were talking about can identify prime numbers from sight.
Speaker 1: I love that field and words, I believe proof reading,
Speaker 1: grammatical errors all of a sudden out of nowhere. So
Speaker 1: over the course of this TMS therapy or whatever, um,
Speaker 1: they're getting progressively better at these tasks. Right, but only
Speaker 1: last about an hour though, correct, Yes, and it may
Speaker 1: not happen at all. There's an argue went out there
Speaker 1: that like, if you draw fourteen cats in a row,
Speaker 1: they're going to get better. That that may or may
Speaker 1: not be true, but it is pretty interesting data that
Speaker 1: he's coming up with. And I don't think arguments like
Speaker 1: that are are really putting the kai bosh on his
Speaker 1: investigations using t MS, right, I don't think so. Now, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, also I understand you said has has
Speaker 1: just been approved by the FDA for use in treating depression,
Speaker 1: so g Yeah, Josh. They studied uh, three hundred people
Speaker 1: that had clinical depression in Philadelphia, and they found out
Speaker 1: that people that underwent the t MS therapy were twice
Speaker 1: as likely to go into remissions. And they're also now
Speaker 1: this is just as of last week, I think, are
Speaker 1: studying asking for stroke victims to volunteer for studies with teams. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Apparently with with depression. UM, if you train it on
Speaker 1: the frontal lobe, I believe, uh, they and you put
Speaker 1: it on a high frequency, they've actually shown that it
Speaker 1: restructures the brain like your neurons are are structured. UM.
Speaker 1: And of course in the frontal lobe. That's where your
Speaker 1: your ability to regulate mood is, right, So that's just weird,
Speaker 1: but very hopeful it is. It makes you wonder if
Speaker 1: this thing could be the key to making people smarter,
Speaker 1: curing brain disease. Yeah. Interesting, so I guess. I guess
Speaker 1: the takeaway from this one is the next time you
Speaker 1: meet a savant of any kind and uh, here she
Speaker 1: tries to impress you with their you know, mathematical or
Speaker 1: musical skills, you can think to yourself, I could do
Speaker 1: that too if I had, let's break damage. Sure, you're
Speaker 1: not so special exactly, so Chuck, that would be uh,
Speaker 1: what's the thinking cap? And couldn't make me a genius?
Speaker 1: The answer is no, not really, But that's what you
Speaker 1: would type in if you wanted to go to how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com? Righted um, and I think you
Speaker 1: had something you wanted to say to everybody? Well, yeah, Josh,
Speaker 1: is pretty exciting. Before we get to a listener mail,
Speaker 1: we are launching a blog. Not just you and I,
Speaker 1: but I believe six or seven blogs on the website,
Speaker 1: a whole mess of them, whole mess of them, and
Speaker 1: they gave you and I, as you know, our own
Speaker 1: little blog called stuff you Should Know, although the whole
Speaker 1: entire blog section is called stuff you Should Know. Don't
Speaker 1: get confused. Yes it is. I hadn't noticed that they
Speaker 1: named it after. So we would like our listeners to
Speaker 1: get active. This is a call out to our listeners
Speaker 1: to get on the blogs. We're going to be discussing
Speaker 1: all kinds of cool stuff that isn't long enough to
Speaker 1: make into a full episode, so like shorter topics on there.
Speaker 1: And we'll also be talking about the shows that we do,
Speaker 1: uh every Tuesday and Thursday or release. So yeah, and
Speaker 1: actually we've picked up on a couple of listeners listener
Speaker 1: male suggestions. Sure we've written on so keep those ideas
Speaker 1: coming too, because you know, Chuck and I can only
Speaker 1: do so much, right, So go to go to the
Speaker 1: website and look for blogs. It should be pretty easy
Speaker 1: to find. We'll have a you are all for you
Speaker 1: very shortly and uh enjoy talk to each other, connect
Speaker 1: what nicely? Don't show thanks? Okay, So you know what
Speaker 1: this is, right it listener mail time? Yes it is, yes,
Speaker 1: it is uh so Josh, this week we heard from
Speaker 1: a man named Jason divin Ere. You pronounced it? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't. I've never met him or email palace. He
Speaker 1: works for how Stuff Works up in Chicago. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this is an insider deal, but that's fine because Jason
Speaker 1: did right. This is about the moon landing episode and
Speaker 1: whether or not it was faked. Jason is a three
Speaker 1: time space camper, which is kind of cool. I hope
Speaker 1: you ribbed them for that. And full time nerd self
Speaker 1: professed and he said he was excited to see a
Speaker 1: podcast about the moon landing. When you were talking about
Speaker 1: dust on the Moon, he said in the photos video,
Speaker 1: dust appears to be clouding or kicked up more than
Speaker 1: dust would be on Earth. This would occur because the
Speaker 1: particles are airborne longer due to lack of gravity. One
Speaker 1: six to gravity. By the way, yeah, it's not no growing.
Speaker 1: What didn't fit was when you insinuated that to recreate
Speaker 1: this effect on Earth that would require a vacuumized sound stage. Josh,
Speaker 1: Apparently the air has nothing to do with it. On Earth,
Speaker 1: the dust particles will rise and fall at the same
Speaker 1: rate regardless of the presence of air in the room.
Speaker 1: The only effect air would have on a falling object
Speaker 1: to provide resistance when you're dealing with something as small
Speaker 1: as tiny rocks that make up this dust. Air resistance
Speaker 1: would be such a small factor it would not be
Speaker 1: perceptible to the naked eye. So Jason fully geeked out
Speaker 1: setis straight. That's awesome. And on that note, with the
Speaker 1: moon landing, we had a bunch of a bunch of
Speaker 1: people right in about the MythBusters episode where they tested
Speaker 1: out some of these theories and they actually shot uh
Speaker 1: beam of light a laser which guess is a beam
Speaker 1: of light, uh, and it there are these reflectors that
Speaker 1: they left on the moon and it bounced back and
Speaker 1: they saw this, so they pretty much proved absolutely that
Speaker 1: we did land on the Moon. And I don't have
Speaker 1: a list of everyone that wrote in telling us about
Speaker 1: that show, but it was a lot of folks. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you haven't marked lots of listeners, yes, thank you. Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to become Chucks or my email buddy, uh,
Speaker 1: you can send us an email about anything you like
Speaker 1: uh at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
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