>> The human brain, one of the last great frontiers.
>> The brain is the most complicated device we've
found in the universe.
>> We've learned more about it in the last five years
than in the last five thousand years.
>> In the last few years we've come out of the
Stone Age.
>> For the first time, we're actually seeing what
goes on in the brain during sex.
>> Everybody knows sex is between the ears
so there must be something very strong happening
in the brain.
>> What makes some brains evil.
>> I wrote a list of things to do: Clean room,
stop seeing girls, stop killing.
>> And is there really such a thing as ESP?
Technology is finally unlocking
the secrets of the brain.
It's explaining why we behave the way we do.
It's helping experts develop new methods
and machines to boost our brain power.
And it's revealing the untapped abilities we all have
inside our heads.
The brain controls every aspect of our lives.
As humans have evolved, it's doubled in size.
It weighs only three pounds but it consumes
20 percent of all the fuel our bodies take in.
Generating enough energy
to keep a light bulb burning.
>> You have to consider the brain having evolved
like an old house.
Where we've just added different rooms
so there's all these stairways and connections.
>> In the basement is the oldest part called
the brain stem.
It is something we share with reptiles
and other mammals.
It's what keeps us alive.
Governing vital functions like
heart rate, respiration, digestion
and blood pressure.
Things that happen without having to
think about them.
The next level up, the first floor,
more evolved.
Hundreds of thousands of years later
it is called the Limbic System.
This is very important in the processing
of emotions.
>> Within the Limbic System are the amygdala -
two nuggets of tissue, one in each half of the brain.
They are no bigger than a fingernail yet they are
the brain's central command center for our
emotional reactions.
One of the simplest and strongest of these is fear,
a primal emotion we all share.
>> If you had to pick one brain region that was
most important in fear, it would be the amygdala.
>> There's no better place to explore how fear
affects the brain than here at the
Navy Seals Special Warfare Command
in San Diego, California.
Recruits are put through specialized training
to change the way their brains react to fear.
>> We introduce our students almost from day one
to absolute chaos.
And they will struggle.
When you look at historic mistakes on the battlefield,
they're almost always associated with fear
or with panic.
So, the capacity to control these impulses
is extremely important.
>> Out of 140 candidates who start each class,
on average only 36 make the final cut.
Successful recruits seem better able to adapt
their brains to the demands of the job.
>> It's not really necessarily the physical people
who get through there.
There have been Olympic athletes
who have drop out of training
and there's this 140 pound farm kid from Nebraska
who had never seen the ocean before
and he graduated.
Why is that?
>> To answer that question,
the Navy turned to neuroscience.
When confronted with fear,
it's the amygdala that responds to information
from our senses and instinctively presses the
body's panic button.
>> The amygdala is actually one of the most
interconnected regions of the brain.
So it actually will both send signals to
parts of the brain stem that now illicit a range
of bodily responses as you start to sweat,
your heart races, you might freeze for a while,
you might run away.
>> This exercise known as the Hooded Box Drill
is part of the Close Quarters Defense System
and is one of the ways the U.S. Navy conditions
its recruits to control these amygdala signals.
>> Our students are deaf and blind.
Our instructors will set up a scenario.
And then the hood comes off and the student
has to respond.
>> Well, when you're under that hood you have just
a moment to gather your thoughts and think of
scenarios that could come your way.
>> Sometimes the correct response is swift and lethal.
Sometimes it's nonviolent.
>> It's supposed to simulate those quick snapshot
situations, those high risk situations that just
happen in an instant.
>> They're trying to introduce you to the fact
that panic is going to be less and less an option
throughout your career.
>> So, the right way to do training is to
expose people to scary situations where they can
get used to them and know how to react
when they're confronted with it.
>> Through constant exposure to fearful situations,
recruits learn to suppress fear
that could otherwise make them react the wrong way
and get them killed.
But how do their brains do that?
What scientists discovered is that as humans
evolved, another part of the brain called
the Cortex, also become involved in processing fear.
>> The part that makes us most human
about the brain is our frontal cortex.
>> If the amygdala is the first floor,
the cortex is the second floor of the brain.
It's the brain's thin, wrinkly outer layer that's
divided into four sets of lobes.
>> If you unfolded the cortex of a monkey,
it would be about the size of the piece of paper.
If you unfolded our cortex, it is about four sheets
of paper - large - and the reason it is wrinkly is
because you have to squish that all inside
of the skull.
>> The Frontal Lobes comprise the area just above
our eyes and these are the newest rooms
of the brain.
As humans evolved, the frontal lobes became the
place where conscious rational thought
is processed.
It's where we do our problem solving.
>> The frontal lobes are so interesting
because they're really the conductor of the brain.
They synchronize all activity.
>> Scientists made a major breakthrough
in fear research when they found that information
from our senses reaches the amygdala almost
twice as fast as it takes to get to our frontal lobes.
The speed of the different brain signals means
unless we instinctively know how to react
to a potential threat, we may freeze in fear
waiting for the frontal lobes to catch up
to figure out the right response.
>> Part of what happens with fear and panic is
the unknown, is the not knowing what to do next
and so your brain essentially freezes
the way a deer freezes in a headlight.
>> So, the amygdala may get very fast signals
about fear but sometimes they're wrong
and quickly the situation may say to you,
no it's not a fear situation and you're not afraid.
So, these very quick amygdala signals that you get
can be controlled in sort of a top down way.
>> This is where the Navy's training comes in.
It teaches recruits to minimize that delay by
generating fast, accurate reactions to situations.
With demand for special forces increasing,
the Navy continues to develop
brain training techniques to see if they can
improve the pass rate.
But there are some fears that scientists
believe are pre-programmed into our brains,
primal fears or super fears that few
people can overcome.
The Navy makes its trainees tackle these
head on.
It's why their most dreaded exercise happens
under water.
As recruits face the fear of drowning.
>> There's almost nothing more scary
than not being able to breathe.
>> We are learning more now about the brain
than at any other time in history.
How it's put together and how it operates.
Breakthroughs in brain science are helping
the Navy to rethink how they train Seal recruits.
Specialized exercises can improve their brains'
reactions in fearful combat situations.
But the candidates need something more to cope
with a super fear like drowning.
Experts believe evolution has hard-wired
our brains to dread being trapped under water.
As a result, it's almost impossible to control
the brain's overwhelming impulse to surface for air.
And it is why recruits struggle so much to pass
the Underwater Pool Competency Test.
>> Pool Comp is a very important milestone
in their career here.
They're being tested how they can deal with
fear under water.
And there is controlled harassment,
planned harassment projected at them
under water and we see how they can cope with that.
>> Students must spend up to 20 minutes under water
enduring repeated attacks on their breathing
equipment by an instructor.
Half of the time they are without air.
>> Their air is shut off,
their breathing hoses are wrapped around in
difficult positions and they need to respond
to those problems with a series
of emergency procedures.
>> Step by step instructions for untangling their gear
are drilled into the recruits' heads beforehand.
They must follow these to the letter.
But putting theory into practice isn't easy.
>> You go down to the bottom and the instructors
they come down and will start attacking you,
taking your mask off,
just creating all this stress
and the more the stress builds up,
they want to see how you'll handle it.
>> As the trainee begins running out of air,
his brain's amygdala pushes the panic button
that urges him to surface.
His frontal lobes must win this battle in the brain
if he is to stay in control.
>> Physically it is very challenging.
You have to hold your breath for longer than
you normally would.
The instructors just take you kind of to that
breaking point to see how you'll respond.
>> No sooner has the candidate untied one set of
knots then his instructor is back attacking
him again and again.
>> The more the stress builds up they want to see
how you'll handle it.
Will you want to go to the surface and get air,
which you want to do,
or will you take the little air you have
and all the problems and solve them and do
what's necessary to pass the test?
>> More Seals fail Pool Comp
at this stage in their training than anything else.
The Navy wanted to know what was going on
inside their recruits' heads to cause this.
>> And there's almost nothing more scary
than not being able to breathe.
That creates a tremendous stress response.
You have this huge release of stress hormones
that make controlling things with thought
more difficult.
>> Under normal conditions, the brain communicates
with the body using minute electrical signals.
The brain sends out electrical impulses
from its nerve cells to others that travel at over
270 miles per hour.
This is one way your brain can tell your body
to do something.
But under extreme duress,
the brain releases chemical hormones.
The part of the brain that senses fear,
the amygdala,
triggers a chain reaction that sends
adrenaline and cortisol hormones
into the body's blood stream.
These stress hormones act as a SWAT team,
quickly preparing the body for action.
They increase breathing, heart rate,
and blood pressure.
Senses become keener,
memory sharper,
and the body becomes less sensitive to pain.
But even in this heightened state of alertness,
Pool Comp is still too challenging for many trainees.
>> Your mind is going everywhere and you're seeing
your friends swim up from up the water -
they've passed or they've failed.
And you're kind of sizing yourself up
saying, well he failed can I pass?
And vice versa.
So, your mind goes everywhere and it is key
just to stay focused on what you have to do.
>> Eventually, the student completes the series of tasks
and can touch the bottom and then surface
to learn from the instructor
whether he's passed the test.
>> I feel fine!
>> Few Seal candidates succeed at Pool Comp
the first time.
They get four attempts and there's more
at stake with each try.
>> The most common reason for failing Pool Comp
is panic, losing composure under water.
Some of our students, that's it,
we will performance drop them from training.
>> The Navy wanted to help borderline
candidates who had the potential to pass
these crucial phases in training.
After consulting with experts,
they came up with a ground-breaking
mental toughness program.
A set of techniques to boost the trainees'
ability to control fear.
Even in the most extreme situations.
>> You guys need to stay fired up while
you're out there.
The pain, the cold, and all that stuff
it's going to eat away at you
but you got to keep going.
>> The techniques that we're most interested in
are what I call the Big Four:
Goal Setting,
Mental Rehearsal,
Self Talk,
and Arousal Control.
>> Scientists think goal setting works by
assisting the frontal lobes.
As the brain's supervisor, the frontal lobes
are responsible for reasoning and planning.
Concentrating on specific goals,
let's the brain bring structure to chaos
and keeps the amygdala, the emotional center
of the brain, in check.
>> I got up every morning and I said,
I'm going to make it to breakfast.
And then at breakfast I said,
OK, I'm going to make it to lunch.
And then I'm going to make it through
the run this afternoon.
And then you take it in these little sort of chunks.
>> The second technique, Mental Rehearsal,
or Visualization,
is continually running through
an activity in your mind.
So when you try it for real, it comes more naturally.
>> If you practice in your mind first
and imagine and rehearse how you might do
in these stressful situations,
the next time in reality you're faced with
these situations is actually in effect,
the second time you've faced it so you'll have
less of a stressful reaction.
>> The third technique, Self Talk,
helps focus the trainees' thoughts.
The average person speaks to themselves at a
rate of 300 to 1000 words a minute.
If these words are positive instead of negative,
'can do' instead of 'can't',
they help override the fear signal
coming from the amygdala.
>> The frontal lobes are always on so it is very easy
to think about something difficult, something bad,
like I'm going to fail, what am I doing here?
I didn't practice enough.
What you're trying to do is you're trying to replace
those bad thoughts with good thoughts.
>> The final technique, Arousal Control,
is centered on breathing.
Deliberate slow breathing helps combat some of the
effects of panic.
Long exhales in particular, mimic the body's
relaxation process and get more oxygen to the
brain so it can perform better.
>> Breathing is a great focusing strategy
but you can only do it so much because
in a response to fear,
your brain will get jacked up.
>> On it's own, arousal control wouldn't work.
The amygdala sends out such a powerful signal
it's tough to suppress if we're still feeling fearful
but combing the four techniques
made a big difference to the trainee Seals
pass rate, increasing it from a quarter
to a third.
The idea of pushing boundaries may not be new
but here is positive proof that you can train
your brain and now science knows how.
>> It goes back to a lot of much earlier sort of
warrior traditions where you're sort of transcending
whatever it is you thought your limitations were.
>> I am a different person, actually.
Your confidence goes through the roof.
You see things and do things that you wouldn't
have imagined before.
>> But it's not just the battlefield where brain science
is having a big impact.
It's also unlocking some tantalizing secrets about
what happens in the bedroom.
>> Everybody knows sex is between the ears
and we wanted to find out what is really going on.
>> While the brain has evolved a fear response
to keep us out of danger,
it is also equipped with a strong sexual impulse
to ensure the survival of the species.
>> Having an orgasm is one of the most powerful
human experiences so begin to creep into the mind
and find out exactly how the brain is producing
this overwhelming ecstasy is exciting.
>> In the Netherlands neuroscientist,
Dr. Gert Holstege,
is blazing a trail in sex research by revealing
for the first time what happens in the brains
of men and women during orgasm.
>> 15 years ago it was not possible
but now with newer imaging techniques,
it is very well possible to see what's happening.
>> To find out, he needs volunteer couples.
The man or woman agrees to be injected
with a radioactive oxygen tracer and then stimulated
to orgasm by their partner.
While this happens, they lie with their head
in a 3D imaging machine called a PET scanner.
>> The PET scanner is measured in only blood flow.
It is measuring the amount blood going to different
parts of the brain.
>> The brain has many miles of blood vessels.
When nerve cells are busy firing,
they need lots of energy-laden
and oxygen-rich blood.
When they're not, they need very little.
>> So you see what brain regions take part
in this whole thing of ejaculation or orgasm.
>> Aside from the obvious challenge
facing the volunteers to reach orgasm in a laboratory
setting, there is a time constraint, too.
The oxygen tracer has a half-life of just two minutes.
>> I think would be tough to have an orgasm
under these circumstances,
under any of these circumstances.
Everywhere in the world we have the vast majority
of our sex in private unlike almost all other animals.
>> Fortunately, 11 men and 13 women did manage
to get the timing just right.
And what this ground-breaking experiment
revealed was a startling difference between
male and female brain activity during sex.
>> The outcome was very surprising.
When you look at the male brain during ejaculation
or orgasm then you see several parts activate.
>> During male orgasm, blood gushes to the top
of the brain stem.
As well as being one of the oldest parts
of the human brain, it's the area that controls
the release of dopamine across the brain.
Dopamine is a type of hormone
called a neurotransmitter.
Scientists know dopamine generates very strong
feelings we associate with pleasure.
>> What became clear is that the dopamine
is released a little bit in advance of these things
like food and sex and drugs.
So it's not strictly speaking of a chemical
of pleasure, it's a chemical of anticipation.
>> So, you're getting a flood of dopamine.
Dopamine is the same chemical that becomes
active when you feel the rush of cocaine
and the other stimulant drugs so it is an
overwhelming experience of ecstasy and energy.
>> The experiment showed that in men,
blood was flowing away from areas of the brain
that had to do with anxiety but other areas
remained alert.
>> In men, you will find deactivation of the amygdala
and the region that has to do with anxiety
or fear.
>> It is not surprising that other parts of the brain
become deactivated so that you don't feel
anxious, you don't feel scared,
you're not thinking about anything
except the orgasm.
>> Dr. Holstege found that women enjoy a similar
dopamine experience to men but what surprises
him the most is how much a woman's brain shuts
down during orgasm.
>> The deactivation was the most important finding.
In women there was an enormous deactivation
of all the centers of the brain that had to do with
anxiety and fear, alertness.
Apparently, women let it go.
>> Women can even go unconscious during orgasm
whereas men don't.
Experts believe the difference between men and
women may date back to prehistoric times
when we were hunter-gatherers.
>> This may have an evolutionary purpose.
For millions of years we had our sex
on the grasslands of Africa where there were
dangerous animals roaming around.
Somebody had to be alert enough to jump up
and run or defend the group and it's logical that
that would be men.
So the female brain tends to shut down
more than the male brain does.
>> In a future set of tests,
Dr. Holstege hopes to increase the time he can
monitor what happens in our brains during sex.
He's intrigued to see how rapidly the
dopamine-induced feeling of euphoria drops away
after orgasm.
>> I still think that there will be big differences
between men and women just before, during,
and after orgasm.
What exactly then is the difference in the brain?
And that is what I want to know.
>> Aside from sex, dopamine plays a major role
in motivating our brains to do all kinds of things.
Even something that seems the opposite of sex,
not furthering life,
but risking it.
What is it about the pursuit of pleasure that would
make these base jumpers in Moab, Utah
want to throw themselves off of a cliff?
>> Pretty much all the cliffs out here have a pretty
high danger scale.
On a one to ten, they're all about an eight.
>> Mistakes can be fatal.
>> When you run off a 500 foot rock,
you've got about six seconds to live
and is that extreme?
Yeah, you're darned right that's extreme.
>> And if this is the ultimate thrill for some
people's brains, why not for everyone's?
>> This thrill is just basically essential
for us to be happy.
To have that feeling alive inside of you
so then life is worth it.
>> Science tells us that as a base jumper is thinking
about the jump their brain begins releasing
dopamine.
As with sex, dopamine plays the role of building
anticipation.
But unlike sex,
the amygdala doesn't shut down.
Instead, it is sending out fear signals.
>> Before a jump I'll get the jitters and I will get
nervous and palms might get sweaty,
and a million thoughts race into my mind.
>> Most of your mental preparation is,
OK, what if my parachute opens backwards?
What if I have a problem with one of my toggles?
>> Even though the jumpers are focused on the jump
itself, you know, what they might not realize
is that the dopamine kick is happening all along
during this process.
>> Kresta Christensen is a newcomer to base jumping.
>> I'm feeling excited.
My heart is going a little bit faster
because I know that the gear check means
that it's getting a little bit closer.
Three.
Two.
One.
See ya.
Ohh, I get so nervous!
(laughing)
It is unlike anything else that I've ever done.
Especially for someone that's scared of heights.
>> Kresta is nervous because her amygdala,
where she harbors her fear of heights,
is pressing the panic button at the site of a
400 foot drop.
>> Ahh! OK!
>> It's about as physiologically aroused as a person
can be.
You've got the stress system going so you've got
adrenaline being released, that gets the heart going.
You've got hormones being released.
You've got stress hormones like cortisol going.
You've got neurotransmitters like dopamine
being released in anticipation of the euphoria.
But at the same time, Kresta's frontal lobes
weigh in.
Making her question if she is doing the right thing.
The fear, the pleasure, the potential risks -
all these competing signals get processed
into action, experts believe, in the striatum,
in the middle of the brain.
>> And the striatum is kind of like a switching center.
It is also the part of the brain that has the densest
concentration of dopamine receptors.
>> As Kresta's dopamine rush bombards her
striatum, her motivation for pleasure
battles the other impulses but will it be enough
to make her jump?
Inside the brain of a novice base jumper,
there's a battle waging as she makes
a life-threatening decision.
Will Kresta risk everything for pleasure?
>> And just launch? OK.
(laughing)
OK.
OK.
>> Clearly the decision to jump means that the
anticipated reward has won the battle between
the good outcome and the potentially bad outcome.
If it was the other way around,
they would back away from the cliff
and call it a day.
>> Ah, it was awesome!
It was great!
I'm ready to go up and do it again!
Gotta back first, thought!
(Laughing)
>> No sooner have these jumpers survived
one death wish then their getting ready for the next.
They seem addicted to finding new locations
with fresh dangers and more challenging conditions.
Scientists say there's a reason for this.
>> When we look at what happens in the brain,
we see that on repeated exposures to pleasures
whether it's food or drink, whatever, or sex even,
that we see the dopamine response gets a little bit
less each time.
You get a little less bang for the buck.
>> Which for thrill seekers means
either doing an entirely new activity
or taking bigger and bigger risks
with the familiar one.
>> Novelty is really big jolt for the dopamine system
and so when we look at base jumping,
it kind of mixes both of these things
and really maximizes the pleasure response
and that's what keeps it addictive.
>> The base jumpers would appear to agree.
>> By keeping things new and different,
it keeps the excitement there.
>> There's people who do it one time and decide
that it's too risky to do it so they stop.
Most people continue to do it and they'll
do it at least once a week if not more than that.
There's very few people who dabble in base jumping.
Three, two, one!
See ya!
>> Scientists think we find danger seeking
pleasurable because it's been necessary
to our evolution.
If humans didn't take risks, they say,
we'd still be living in caves.
But they're fascinated to know why some people
will risk more than others.
Even in an every day situation like a restaurant,
there are some people who will always order
the same thing.
And others who will try a new dish each time
and gamble on it tasting good.
Experts at Emory University in Georgia
wonder if some people's brains are preprogrammed
to gamble or take bigger risks than others.
They asked volunteers to play a gambling game.
The object is to avoid receiving a shock to the foot.
>> Oh, that one hurt.
>> Each time they play, the volunteer must choose
between two options.
>> So, I'm gonna try the first option because
I really don't want to get a shock.
Ah!
Got shocked that time.
>> When this test is carried out in a scanner,
Dr. Greg Burns can monitor brain activity
to see how much dopamine is released before
each decision.
>> What we're seeing are traits that are probably
genetically coded and people just have a biological
tendency to release more or less dopamine
in response to risk.
>> And his experiment suggests people's brains
are consistent in their decision making.
He's even perfected a computer program
to the point that it can predict which option
people will choose before they make it.
>> We can take a template of their brain response
to these different gambles,
we call it neural fingerprint,
and put it into a computer algorithm
and then predict with a high degree of accuracy
what they'll choose.
Although people are different,
it seems like people do have a fingerprint
for decision making.
>> But Dr. Burns says we're a long way from
predicting anything complicated.
>> The great thing about neuroscience is that
the deeper that we dig in terms of decision making,
the more questions that come up.
>> One of the being questions that scientists are
studying is how particular personality types
make moral decisions.
New discoveries are offering clues
to understanding why psychopathic brains
let them do evil things.
>> We all do something wrong once in a while.
Most of the times when we do something wrong
we not just know it but we feel it.
We feel bad, we feel guilty,
we feel remorse and it is the feeling of what's wrong
that stops most of us from misbehaving in the future.
>> But what happens when someone doesn't feel
any guilt or remorse?
And there's no battle happening in their brains
to prevent them from committing, repeating,
and even enjoying what are unspeakable
acts of horror for the rest of us.
Men like Ted Bundy who murdered at least
35 women.
Jeffrey Dahmer who tortured 17 men and boys
to death.
And Joel Rifkin who beat and strangled 17 women.
Scientists are fascinated by these real life
archetypes of evil.
>> Ted Bundy was, if you will, the motivation that
got me interested in this career.
Ted Bundy actually grew up down the street.
So when I was growing up I was hearing
these stories of how he ended up like this,
it just mystified everybody.
>> Surprised? I don't know, I didn't know what to expect.
I've never been in a jail before.
I've never been arrested before.
>> I just combined the two things I wanted to
understand the most
and one was how the brain works
and how does it work in the people
who do these bad things, in psychopaths?
>> Research suggests as many as
one person in 100 is a psychopath.
Most are not the violent kind.
Rarer still are those who turn into serial killers.
But they all share common traits.
>> Ted Bundy actually exemplified almost all of the
characteristics of the psychopath.
He was very glib and superficial.
He was very charming.
He convinced many people.
He even got married in prison when he was older.
>> No one imagined he was capable of being
a cold-blooded killer.
According to Dr. Kent Kiehl,
the overriding characteristic of a psychopath
is that they lack conscience.
>> They often say, I just don't understand
why there's such a big fuss about all of this.
>> Bundy and Dahmer are dead but Joel Rifkin
is still alive and behind bars in upstate New York.
>> Did you feel guilty after any of these homicides?
>> No, not really.
Um.
There were one or two maybe I felt bad about
but, no not really guilty, guilty about it.
I would have had to care.
(Laughing)
I didn't care then, that's the sad thing.
>> What we really want to understand is why
they don't ever appreciate why
they're doing these bad things
and how these things impact other people.
>> Scientists hope that by looking inside the brains
of psychopaths they might finally identify the
reason for their twisted thoughts.
>> Once upon a time Joel Rifkin was this innocent
little baby with this beautiful smile on his face.
He didn't have one sense of evil in him.
Or did he?
>> What makes some brains evil?
The answer may lie in ground breaking
experiments being carried out at
New Mexico prisons.
Scientists estimate one in 20 inmates
has a personality disorder that could be
psychopathic.
So, there's no shortage of potential test subjects
where Dr. Kiehl carries out his research.
His aim is to develop new treatments
but to do that he needs to find out what's
different about their brains.
>> The ideal goal is to be able to help us reduce
the impact the disorder has not only on the individual
but also on society.
>> First he interviews the prisoners to identify
those that exhibit psychopathic tendencies.
>> So this is going to be an interview that we kind of
cover different aspects of your life.
So, we're going to start out with like school history,
we'll talk about employment history,
we talk about your family,
we'll talk about criminal activity,
things that you've done, things like that.
>> Psychopaths have remarkably similar patterns
of behavior.
>> Did you ever get in trouble when you were a kid?
>> All the time.
>> They have an impulsive nomadic lifestyle.
They move from place to place.
Relationship to relationship.
They're very sexually promiscuous.
They tend to get themselves in trouble.
>> Dr. Kiehl sends the prisoners he's diagnosed
as psychopathic for brain scans.
In the first test he wants to see how they react
to making mistakes.
>> I've scanned over 300 inmates so we've actually
collected one of the largest brain imaging data
sets in the world and by far and away the largest
brain imaging data set that's ever been
collected in psychopaths.
>> All right, this is obviously the magnet.
It doesn't sound like much now but it will get
very, very loud.
>> The scanner uses magnetic fields and radio
energy to monitor blood flow in the brain while
the inmate is thinking and reacting.
>> During this test you are going to see a series of
X's and K's on the screen.
What I want you to do is press the first button
with your first index finger whenever an X appears
on the screen but do not press
when a K appears on the screen.
>> All right.
>> The two letters flash by so quickly
that the challenge is near impossible for anyone
to get right.
>> It is very difficult, people tend to make a lot
of mistakes.
They tend to press buttons when they're not
supposed to and what we want to know is how does
their brain learn to appreciate a mistake
and does it recover from that mistake?
>> By observing brain activity during this test,
Dr. Kiehl can see that psychopaths don't care
as much as normal individuals when they
make a mistake.
But that doesn't mean they're unintelligent.
Serial killer, Joel Rifkin for example,
has an IQ of 128 which places him in the
top three percent of the population.
>> What's really kind of dumbfounding is that
they're above average intelligence compared
to the rest of the inmate population.
They're very hot headed and impulsive
but they are very manipulative and conning.
>> There were times I got pulled over with bodies
in the vehicle and I would lie
my way out of the situation.
I was basically looking for a place to dump
my little package and he's -
why are you wandering around suburbia?
And I'm like, well I'm lost how do I get on this road?
I had no idea what road I was pointing to but
I had the map and I was very convincing.
>> In a second test, the New Mexico inmates
are asked to rate photos on whether they are
morally objectionable.
>> A moral volition is an action or an attitude
that is considered to be wrong.
You should make your decision based on your own
system of moral values not what you think
others or society would consider to be wrong.
Does that make sense so far?
>> Yeah.
>> OK.
>> We're trying to understand how inmates
process information that has a moral value.
And there are different brain systems that we
believe are deciding whether or not something
is a moral violation or not and whether or not
those systems have not developed normally
in a psychopathic inmate.
>> This pioneering research is proving what
scientists have wondered for years.
Whether psychopaths have an impaired ability
to reason.
What they found is that their frontal lobes,
the brain's most recent addition,
and the amygdala,
one of the more primal parts of the brain,
are not communicating properly.
What's more, in a recent study,
Dr. Adrain Raine found that the brains
of psychopaths are physically different.
He was able to show for the first time that they have
a shrunken amygdala.
On average, 17 percent smaller than most people's.
And this is another crucial piece of the puzzle
in understanding why psychopaths are not
afraid to commit evil acts.
>> Psychopaths know it's wrong to kill someone
but why do they do it?
They don't have the feeling of what's moral.
I'm not going to stick a knife in you
because I'll feel the pain myself.
I'll experience the pain.
I've got empathy.
I can put myself into your shoes.
Murderers like Joel Rifkin can't do that.
He killed those prostitutes because he didn't
care about what it might feel like to be strangled.
>> How did you feel while you were strangling them?
>> Uh, just intensely focused on that.
And, uh, not thinking about much or much else.
>> Rifkin committed so many murders he was bound
to get caught eventually.
But what about all those other psychopaths,
that one in one hundred,
why don't they end up in jail?
Dr. Raine's research has pinpointed the difference
in the brains of white collar psychopaths.
The kind who think nothing of swindling people
out of their life's savings.
Yes, they have the smaller amygdala but it
appears to communicate with their frontal lobes
normally.
They have less capacity for empathy but
have the brainpower to be a good liar and a cheat.
Successful psychopaths showed very good
executive functions.
Very good planning ability.
Very good ability to regulate and control.
They have good awareness of themselves.
They have very good stress reactivity.
And frankly, you need these executive functions
to successfully con and manipulate individuals.
With scientists now sure that psychopaths
have impaired brains, it begs the question of
when they go wrong?
>> We believe that in large part the feeling
of what's right and wrong is wired into the brain.
The brain is set to be somewhat less moral
or more moral depending on your genetic
and your biological background.
>> In other words, it's in our genes.
And it's how our brain grows in the womb.
But according to Dr. Raine,
that's still only half the story.
>> Of course you can't rule out the environment,
that's 50 percent of the equation.
It's like two sides of a coin,
it's both genetic and environmental.
>> If finding the location of good and evil
in the brain has been a challenge for scientists,
there is an even bigger mystery waiting
to be unlocked - memory.
Thanks to memory,
the brain is constantly traveling through
time, pulling fragments of the past
into the present.
This ability is key to a human's existence.
>> The reason we have memory is so that you can
make better decisions the next time around.
So, all of your thinking and your future planning
is dictated by your memory.
>> While the workings of an organ like the heart
are well understood, scientists are still figuring out
memory in the brain.
The big breakthrough came 80 years ago.
>> So in the 1920's,
a neuroscientist named Karl Lashley,
taught rats to run a maze.
And then he damaged parts of their brains
selectively to see where the memory of how to
run the maze was stored.
Now what he found is that it is not stored
in any particular place.
And you have an extremely complicated,
very networked system.
>> The system is so complex in fact,
the most advanced super computers don't
even come close to the storage capacity of the brain.
10 trillion bytes of memory.
>> The brain is the most complicated device
we've found in the universe.
It has 10 billion cells just in the cortex
which is the outer part and in a single tiny
piece of cortex, a cubic millimeter,
you have more connections than you have stars
in the Milky Way Galaxy.
>> All those connections make the brain capable
of storing and retrieving massive amounts
of data in some amazing ways.
Perhaps none more incredible and extreme
than what's called photographic memory or
mnemonism.
>> As we try to understand vision and memory
in neuroscience, we're really fascinated by people
who are mnemonists.
They have a untaxable memory that can remember
everything going in.
>> British artist Stephen Wiltshire,
has this extraordinary ability.
He can remember complicated cityscapes
and reproduce them in staggering detail.
For his latest sketch, he's climbing to the top
of Tower Bridge for a bird's eye view of London.
He need only stay a few minutes since he claims
his visual memory of the scene will never fade.
>> I'm just looking at the buildings and skyscrapers.
Usually I like to take about 20 minutes
and then do it from memory.
>> To appreciate how incredible Stephen's skill is,
it helps to understand how vision works.
Sight is processed at the back of the brain
in the occipital lobes or visual cortex.
Two eyes give a field of vision of about 200 degrees.
They can detect 2.3 million different shades
of color.
And experts estimate they send 72 gigabytes
of information to the brain every second.
That's like 18,000 songs on an IPod.
Back at his gallery, Stephen begins to draw
what he saw.
He's using several areas of his brain.
His parietal lobes in particular are working to
control his spacial manipulation
and hand-eye coordination.
Cross-checking his sketch with the view
reveals just how uncannily accurate it is.
In little more than an hour he's recreated
the panorama.
This picture will sell for $4,000.
Stephen's talent is almost super human.
But his skill comes at a cost.
He is an autistic savant
which means his brain has developed differently.
>> Most of us don't have the capacities he does
because our brains are doing 57 other things.
We're thinking about our careers, our mortgages,
our futures, and what we're doing at the
grocery store later on, and so on,
and as a result, the neural real estate
is divided up among lots of different tasks.
In a savant's brain, essentially all of that
real estate is devoted towards one thing like
solving that Rubik's Cube or playing the piano
and as a result they have they deficits in
other aspects of their life.
For example, in their capacity to socialize.
>> Geniuses like Leonardo Da Vinci,
Mozart, and Monet all had incredible memories
and there is speculation they may have been
autistic, too.
While some brains can remember nearly everything
they see, other brains can barely remember
anything at all.
Welcome to the life of Clive Wearing,
a man with the worst case of amnesia
in the world.
>> What were we doing before we sat on the bench?
>> No idea.
>> Well! Yay!
Even though Clive Wearing has seen his wife,
Deborah, numerous times today,
every time he meets her, it's like he's seeing her
for the first time.
Clive has the worst case of amnesia in the world.
His memory span is at most 30 seconds long.
>> What were we doing before we sat on the bench?
>> No idea.
>> Do you know what this building is?
>> No.
>> Have you seen it before?
>> No.
>> He said to me it's like between before waking up
and waking up.
It's like the in-between stage,
you haven't yet grasped where you are.
What do you know?
>> Nothing at all.
>> Nothing?
>> Never had a thought or a dream.
Day and night the same.
>> Day and night the same?
>> Yeah, blank all the time.
>> Clive was an acclaimed British conductor
and musicologist until a viral infection
developed into encephalitis in his brain.
When the acute inflammation subsided,
his brain had been severely damaged.
It's left him with only a very limited
short-term memory.
>> Clive has absolutely no memory of anything
that's happened in his life since the ambulance
took him away in March 1985.
And his autobiographical memory is so vague
it's to be almost not there.
Who's that?
>> I can't remember.
>> That's him.
>> My son.
>> Your son, that's right.
That's Antony and that's his children.
>> His children?
>> Yeah.
>> I see.
>> Only they're much bigger now.
Although memories are spread across the entire
brain, there is one part that acts like a key
to the storage and retrieval process,
the hippocampus within the limbic system.
We know this because without the hippocampus,
new memories do not form.
There are at least two types of memory
in the brain and most generally we divide that
into short and long-term memory.
So, short-term memory is if I tell you my
phone number and you have to remember that
for a few seconds while you go over to dial it.
Long-term memory involves things like
where you grew up and where you went to school
and what you did today.
That's all stored in long-term memory.
What's happening with Clive is that he has a very
short-term window of memory.
He is not able to translate the short-term
into long-term.
He's not able to cement down the activity in
the short-term into something in the physical
structure in his brain.
>> Neurologists who have examined Clive
have found severe damage in his hippocampus
and they think that's what preventing his brain
from storing memories.
>> Clive Wearing suffers from both
anterograde and retrograde amnesia.
That is he can't learn new things but he also
has a hard time recollecting old things.
And it primarily seems to be affecting his ability
to recollect information at will.
>> Watch what happens when Clive's wife asks
him what his son does for a living.
>> Do you know what Antony's profession is?
>> He's an electrical engineer.
>> Oh, is he?
>> Yes. And do you know what he designs?
>> No.
>> Have a guess.
>> No idea. Not the faintest idea.
>> Car motors.
>> Oh, car motors!
>> Yes, electrical car motors.
>> What a good idea that is.
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> Stop the poisonous gas coming out
the petrol engine.
>> That's right. It does, doesn't it?
>> Yeah, that was a very disastrous idea -
>> That's right.
Do you know anyone who designs
electrical car motors?
>> No, I don't.
>> Do you know anyone who does that?
>> No.
>> Your son does.
>> Oh, I see!
>> Antony does.
He's actually got his own business.
>> Oh, well done!
>> Yeah.
>> Oh.
>> Do you remember what Antony's doing
these days?
>> No idea. Still at school last time I was conscious.
>> What makes Clive such a unique case is that while
he can't remember details about his family,
he can recall other things.
>> The fact that his language is preserved so well
and he is articulate illustrates the procedural
memory for how to speak and how to construct
words is stored separately than the issues
about episodic memory, what you did, the facts
about your life.
>> Different types of memories are stored very
differently in the brain.
Experts believe language memory could live
in one of the temporal lobes,
the one responsible for sound and speech
on the left side of the brain.
What's even more amazing is that Clive can still
play the piano.
His procedural memory for playing the piano,
on the right side of his brain,
is undamaged.
>> When he is performing music,
that is where Clive finds a continuum.
He has a momentum that kind of carries him
through time.
>> It's a great illustration of the way that these
different types of memory can be separated out.
>> Do you know what month this is?
>> No.
>> It's April.
>> April?
>> Mm-hmm.
It's your birthday next month.
>> Yes.
>> Clive today appears upbeat but that was not
always the case.
This was Clive in 1988, three years into his
amnesia when he was frustrated and angry.
>> For the first ten years, Clive lived in a world
where he said the same few things over and
over again because of the anxiety,
the fear,
the terror,
the horror of his situation.
>> Each new moment he felt he was awake
he wanted to write it down.
>> Well, it was such a compulsion that he would
have written it on the table,
on the wall,
on any available surface.
>> So how do you think you got there?
>> I don't know.
I presume the doctors don't know.
>> But you must have -
>> No! I haven't!
You listen to me please for Heaven's sake!
>> Sorry.
When I say no, I mean exactly that!
>> The pages of his diary are filled with
exclamations and words crossed out.
Eventually though, his anger subsided.
>> He started to change
after about the first 14 to 15 years.
He began to remember things for longer.
His mood changed.
>> Deborah attributes this change to her faith
and her prayers.
Scientists have their own explanation.
>> We do know that your brain physically changes
and that's what we mean by plasticity.
It's always rewriting it's own circuitry.
With children the brains are extremely plastic.
That's why children can learn language
so much more easily or learn how to play
a new instrument.
What we are now discovering is that the
adult human brain is much more plastic than
we previously thought so when people get
brain damage, other parts of their brain can
shift around and take over the missing functions.
>> This year, Deborah wondered whether Clive
still needed his diary.
>> When he looks through the previous
days and weeks and months and saw that he'd
just written the same thing over and over again,
it tended to upset him and we thought,
well, let's just take it away and see whether
he misses it.
>> To everyone's surprise, after writing in his
diary every single day for 23 years,
Clive didn't ask for it back.
That compulsive need to record each moment
of awakening must have passed.
Scientists have learned a lot about memory by
studying Clive.
But they've also gained valuable insight on
other brain functions that contribute
to a person's identity.
>> A lot of people say memory makes us who we are
and boy did I find out how wrong that was.
Clive's personality, thank God,
is intact.
>> Fancy a cup of coffee?
>> Oh, I'd love it! That would be marvelous!
>> I thought you'd be pleased.
He's funny.
He's also very compassionate.
>> Lead the way to Heaven on earth.
He has no knowledge about himself.
But he is who he is.
Unchanged.
Pure Clive.
>> Memory plays a pivotal role in everything we do
including sports.
It's finally dawning on athletes that it's not only
brawn but also brain that makes a champion.
>> Well, in the 80's we developed a lot of muscle
training methods to increase sports performance.
And now, in the 21st Century,
we're taking the brain to the weight room.
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>> The more we learn about the brain,
the more it informs every aspect of our lives
including professional sports.
>> Sports performance is all about the brain
but it wasn't like that all that time.
For a long part of history of sports,
people didn't care about the brain.
They would consider an athlete a good player
if they had good muscle definition and they were
very coordinated.
Just within the last ten years,
we think that about 50% of all sports performance,
and sometimes the most important part,
that elite performance,
is related to brain functioning.
>> Now, athletes have caught on to how important
the brain is to their performance on the field.
>> 90% is mental, it's a tough game, ya know?
You really have to have control of your mind
to play this game.
>> So, how does the brain improve the game?
>> Almost all of sports is dynamic and requires
millisecond to millisecond decision making
and if you miss it by a small percentage,
you miss the put.
You're a tenth of a second too slow.
Your shot falls off the rim.
That's that little differentiation between
super world class and good.
>> At a basic level, it's about hand-eye coordination
and practice, practice, practice.
And there's no better place to see this than at the
Cirque du Soleil where performers
must practice constantly.
We use our frontal lobes to learn how to carry
out an activity but the area of the brain that
benefits most from practice is the cerebellum,
at the back of the brain.
It helps to think of the brain as an old house
with new rooms slowly added over time.
The brain stem is the basement because
it evolved first.
The cerebellum came next.
>> It's an old part of the brain,
it's sort of set off, off the first floor
in the basement.
It's almost entirely responsible for movement,
complicated sequencing of movements.
>> The cerebellum sends out signals to the
100 billion nerve cells in our bodies
which in turn tell the muscles what we want
them to do.
>> The frontal lobe is monitoring the activity
but most of the time gets out of the way
and allows the cerebellum and the rest of brain
to engage in this behavior that's been practiced
over and over and over again.
>> Scientists think that the frontal lobe
simply cannot keep up with the speed
of information processing necessary to perform a
high level skill.
Which is why the cerebellum takes over.
Its procedural memory, the same kind
Clive Wearing uses to play the piano.
>> It's the idea that you can go into a filing cabinet
and pick out a motor memory that you've
already practiced.
>> And experts now know why practice makes perfect.
The more you practice, the better the cerebellum
becomes at knowing exactly which nerves
and muscles to trigger each time.
>> In sports psychology there's suggestions that it
takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice
in order to achieve the level of expertise.
>> Such extreme levels of ability may actually
lead to memory within the muscle itself
guiding a sequence of contractions and relaxations
but the brain is still essential.
>> You damage your brain, there is very little activity.
Of course you need an intact body.
You need physiology that works.
In basketball it helps to be tall.
In racing horses it helps to be small.
But every of those athletes has a brain
that has to be synchronized
with their athletic activity.
>> But beyond practice and having the right body
type, the brain plays another vital role in sports.
Just imagine a weight lifter who's trying to lift
an amazing amount of weights.
They have to be extremely pumped up.
>> The navy seals use a breathing technique
to calm down whereas athletes need to vary
their level of excitement.
Sports scientists call this process
arousal modulation.
>> We think of arousal modulation as the volume button
of the brain.
>> Once again, it's the amygdala in the limbic system
that controls our emotional response.
In this instance, it gets us psyched up to compete.
Back when the brain was evolving,
it's how early man would get ready for the hunt.
But the amygdala needs to be triggered.
One simple way is by using sensory stimulation
such as cheering and clapping.
>> You can control it externally through loud noises,
by slapping a person.
Why?
Because those sensory mechanisms go into the
first floor of the brain.
So, you'll see in sports a lot of times people using
this intuitively, a lot of noise -
C'mon! C'mon! C'mon! Go! Go! Go!
Athletes need to get themselves into a position
where when the game starts,
they're at the right level of arousal because
basketball is a contact sport.
You gotta push out.
You have to fight for the rebounds.
And it's almost this simulated war.
Once you're in a higher arousal level and you
gotta come down, it's just as difficult as it is
to go up.
It might even be more difficult.
All of a sudden the game stops and they have to
shoot a free throw.
>> The player needs to turn from pumped
to quietly focused in seconds.
Inside the player's brain the frontal lobes
must quickly muffle the amygdala response
to calm emotions, relax the body, breathe slower,
and lower heart rate so that he stands a better
chance at making the shot.
This is tough because the player's body
might be too pumped.
Or the frontal lobes might be distracted by
other nervous thoughts like the fear of failure.
If these thoughts are strong enough,
they could feed back to the limbic system
and trigger the fear response.
This would then make it extremely difficult to
focus on performing a complicated action well.
It's a situation experts call performance anxiety.
>> Performance anxiety is the largest culprit
of poor athletic performance and the successful
athlete has complete control over that.
>> It is tough to get your heart rate down
and get focused
and get concentrated on what you have to do
because everything is so chaotic
that all you want to do is go as fast as you can
and you just need to relax and just try to stay cool.
>> Stay away from that white line, Graham.
Stay way from that white line.
>> Get it wrong and the consequences can be fatal.
>> If you're concentration slips
for any moment of time
most often it would result in a crash.
Top speeds can be up around 230 miles an hour
and at those speeds anything can happen
and when you hit the wall, you hit it hard.
>> Few sports demonstrate performance anxiety
better than golf.
>> People love golf because you'll see a
world class athlete miss a two foot put to win a
major tournament and lose hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
Putting requires a very low volume of activity.
It's a small motor movement and the frontal lobes
should probably be turned off.
We know that Tiger Woods can do this because
he's done it many times but what is it about his
brain that he's able to put the ball into the hole?
What we found is that the brain can either
help you succeed in this athletic activity
or it can help you fail.
And we think Tiger Woods has found a way to
succeed most of the time because of his ability
to modulate his own brain functioning.
>> Scientists can't scan Tiger Woods' brain
in action.
He would need to lie motionless which would
make playing golf impossible.
So instead, they must make an educated guess.
>> Because he's blinking so little during a putt,
we think that his anxiety is very low
because eye blinking is usually related to anxiety.
So he's very relaxed.
Like a drowsy state, a drowsy sleepy level
but yet enough concentration that you can
focus on the task.
>> Athletes call this special feeling
being in the zone
when their movements seem to flow without
conscious effort.
It is the supreme combination of practice
involving the cerebellum,
concentration in the frontal lobes,
and low anxiety of the amygdala
within the limbic system.
>> Zone, it's very hard to get into.
I really feel like if I can control my breath
and I can get it as slow as possible,
that will slow down my heart.
As soon as that happens, I feel like I get total
consciousness of everything.
All five senses are working the best they can
possibly work.
>> Experts think the brain gets so focused
it's somehow able to block or ignore
any irrelevant input.
Brain and body begin working in perfect sync.
>> Athletes and everybody else for that matter
all want to be in that zone and there's something
special about it.
Everything gets aimed at the one task at hand
and when you do that, incredible things can happen.
You have real clarity of thought and decision making.
>> When I'm in that moment, everything around
me is slow and I can control what I'm thinking,
I can control what I look at,
I can control what thoughts enter my mind,
and in turn that gives me the greatest chance
for success.
>> Being in the zone could be the brain's
ultimate control over the body.
But there are some people who claim its
ability extends even beyond that.
>> I am being pulled here.
>> The notion that the brain has a sixth sense.
>> He's also telling me to talk about -
either Staten Island or -
>> That's where we live.
>> Okay, let me tell you exactly what he's showing
me then so you know where.
If you were to go over the bridge and through the
toll and then take that first long road down the left -
>> That's where I live.
>> OK.
>> Our five senses are the gateways between our
brains and the outside world.
We receive signals from our skin, eyes, nose,
tongue, and ears.
The different areas of the brain interpret
this sensory information as touch, sight, smell,
taste and hearing.
But what if there were a sixth sense that enabled
our brains to see into other people's minds,
anticipate events
or pass on messages from the dead?
Although one in four Americans say they believe
in extrasensory perception,
only a handful of scientists entertain this possibility.
Dr. Dean Radin, researches psychic phenomena
at the Institute of Noetic Sciences
in northern California.
His working theory is our brains might all have
some extrasensory ability though we may call
it something different.
>> One thing that people commonly talk about is
a gut feeling and a way it expresses itself
often is while driving.
They get a sense there's something wrong about
this corner and more often than not,
a car is coming from the other direction.
So, I've learned to pay attention to my gut feelings.
It's like pushing your attention a few seconds
into the future.
Other things are the feeling of being stared at
which is very commonly reported effect
typically by women feeling that a man somewhere
is staring at them.
There's also telephone telepathy without looking at
your caller ID, sometimes people will hear the
phone ring and immediately know who it is.
And these are not cases where only one person
ever calls but somebody unusual is calling.
So, these are ways that these kinds of events
appear in the every day world.
>> Move your hand a little bit.
Yes. Ooh, that's a very good signal.
OK, I think we're ready to go!
>> Dr. Radin has tested more than 300 volunteers
in electromagnetically shielded rooms.
He shows them a series of images and
measures their reactions.
We were sent in a random sequence,
pictures which are calm or emotional.
And also pictures in between.
The more emotional pictures
evoke a stronger response.
What Dr. Radin found is that
while his pool of subjects is randomly chosen,
he always finds people who respond
accurately before they see the image.
They seem to know ahead of time the kind of picture
they'll see.
Though their degree of psychic ability appears
to vary.
>> Not everybody is going to be able to play golf
as good as Tiger Woods
but everybody can play golf a little bit.
So, what we tend to see in the laboratory
is everybody playing golf a little bit.
And occasionally we are lucky and we get
the equivalent of Tiger Woods.
>> Somebody is claiming they were buried with gum.
Somebody was buried with gum.
You buried somebody with chewing gum?
Take the mic, please.
>> John Edwards' success as a TV medium
would suggest he's in the Tiger Woods category.
>> In the history of science, we've often been wrong.
We used to think the earth was flat.
We were wrong.
We used to think the sun revolved around the earth.
We were wrong.
We used to think physical objects were solid
and static.
We now know that was wrong.
So, I start from a point of view when anybody
makes a claim whether it's a medium or a healer
I approach it as I don't know.
Could be yes.
Could be no.
Show me the data.
I'm open.
>> You only put a couple of sticks in?
>> His old secretary, they used to chew
the same gum and we put it in the casket with him.
>> A couple of sticks?
>> It was, I think they're like individual packet,
like um, like the Bazooka,
the one with the comics.
>> OK, so that's why I'm feeling.
>> They're individual.
>> Right. Would this be like a father figure to you?
>> It's my dad.
>> OK.
And do you still see his assistant?
>> Yes.
>> He wants you to tease her, like what she
couldn't spare a few more slices or what?
Like I couldn't have the whole pack?
[Audience laughing]
>> The way the process of mediumship typically
operates is that the mediums get little pieces
of information.
>> Because he's making me feel like,
wasn't he already kind of gone?
>> Yes, he was.
>> Not because the other side is fragmented
but because they're just able to pick up little
snippets.
It's like you've got a semi-good connection
on your cellphone and get a piece of information
here and a piece of information there.
>> People say well, where are they and how do you
do this?
It's like, well where's the Internet?
It's a place that exists but you can't go there
with a physical body.
You have to have a conduit of some sort,
some sort of connection to get to it.
You've got to be plugged in somehow.
>> Anybody have a plastic frog with them?
I'm being pulled here.
So like from here over, you guys are safe.
Over here - no.
When I've doing an event I will get a pull
to the section of the room or specific area
of the people.
>> My nephew asked for Christmas a toy frog
and it was his dad who passed away.
>> And his dad passed before Christmas?
>> Yes.
>> When I'm hearing something I don't hear it in my ear.
I fell like I'm hearing it outside of me but
it's a thought that I'm hearing.
>> John is one of several psychic mediums who
agreed to undergo scientific testing
at the University of Arizona.
>> We're going to put a cap on you
that has 19 electrodes.
>> I did three experiments with John Edwards.
Each one more controlled than the next.
The most controlled of them involved fitting
the mediums and the volunteers with EEGs
on their heads and EKGs on their chests.
One of the ways to address the question,
is the medium reading the mind of the sitter
versus reading the mind of the deceased
is to record the brainwave activity and the
cardiac activity, the heart and brain,
of the medium and simultaneously record
the brain and the heart of the sitter.
>> The medium never meets the subject
and they sit separated by a screen.
John and the other mediums have to get
whatever information they can
about the subject's deceased loved ones.
>> I'm going to tell you what I'm seeing, hearing,
and feeling and basically ask you to confirm
and verify simply by yes's and no's.
>> OK.
>> OK, the first thing that's coming through is
they're telling me to talk to you about a male
figure to your side.
A male figure to your side would be
a husband or a brother who has crossed over.
Do you understand that?
>> Yes.
>> OK, actually there's two.
There's three.
There were a couple occasions that I sat
with people and got nothing.
You know, and like I got absolutely nothing.
So, and they'd be like why is that happening?
I'm like, I don't know.
I'm like maybe it's me.
I don't know.
So I got zeroes for that.
>> But sometimes John will get accurate information,
the sitter will either think he's wrong and later
discover he's correct, or the sitter won't know the
answer and they'll have to then contact some
of the family members and friends
and low and behold discover that it was correct.
And we found that in that experiment as well.
>> John's accuracy rate typically averaged
80-90%.
And the monitoring machinery showed his
brainwaves and heart rate were not mimicking
the subject's.
>> We discovered that John's heart actually went out
of sync with the sitter which implied, of course
that his attention was somewhere else.
>> They're also telling me to talk about the dog
that's named after a drink.
So, I don't know if there's like a -
>> My dog Jager.
>> Jager?
>> Yes!
>> By the way, apparently he needs a bath.
>> Yes, he smells right now, he does.
>> Based on the laboratory experiments
that I've done with John,
I am clearly led to the conclusion
that John is a real medium.
>> The so-called Afterlife Experiments
remain highly controversial within
the scientific community
in part, because they raise more questions
than they answer.
>> At the present time, scientifically, we don't
know how real mediums like John Edwards
do what they do.
The working hypothesis that we entertain
in our laboratory is that we all have energy.
This energy continues like the light from
distant stars.
And what John does and others do
is that their brains and consciousness
serve as an antenna and receiver
and what they do is they learn how to tune
into the signals that are present and keep
their noise low and then receive these subtle signals.
>> The concept of a connected fabric of reality
of which we are part of that,
by virtue of being here,
is similar to something like The Force from Star Wars.
Obi-Wan at some point suddenly feels a disturbance
in The Force when a planet is blown up.
And in a sense he's feeling ripples through this
space time medium that he's able to sense directly.
The phenomena that we call ESP,
probably operate on something like that.
>> Physics has a name for this
distant connectedness,
it's called the quantum entanglement.
At the moment it's just a theory being applied
to electrons and molecules.
Scientists don't know yet if it could apply to the brain.
But the breakthrough that confirms
extra sensory perception could come sooner
than we think.
>> It's always very difficult predict.
when such things happen.
I would guess maybe 20 years.
Sometime between tomorrow and 20 years.
>> The next two decades promise to unlock many
mysteries about the brain.
Neuroscientists are already working on smart
technologies that could change our lives
in ways we'd never imagine.
>> We will get to a point, I believe,
when there will be instantaneous communication
from the web to our brains.
That I'm sure.
>> What if we could supercharge our brains using
machines and take the next leap of evolution
within a single lifetime
instead of over many lifetimes?
Radical innovation is the goal of programs
being funded by the semi-secret DARPA,
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Their mission is to be kind of the blue sky thinkers
of science for the National Security Establishment.
And they've produced some amazing technologies
that we take for granted.
Besides the Internet, the computer mouse,
and of course the Stealth Bomber.
They take some of the smartest scientists
in the country and they ask them to push
current science 30, 40 years into the future.
To take big leaps.
>> DARPA is funding one such leap
at Columbia University in New York.
Scientists there are developing a computer program
that helps the brain process visual information
at lightning speed.
>> In our modern society
we are bombarded with information.
Whether it's images from television,
images on the web,
from one's job and it's starting to be overwhelming.
And we need to figure which images we really
need to spend time looking at
and which we can ignore.
The idea behind Cortically-Coupled Computer Vision
is to create the best of both worlds.
The versatility of the human brain
enhanced by the speed of computer.
>> It's very hard to tell a computer vision system,
find something that's funny or out of the ordinary
or suspicious.
It's much easier to have a person do that.
Of course, computer vision systems are very fast
so the question is, how can we actually make the
human visual processor faster?
>> In this example, the images are aerial shots
of Seoul in South Korea.
The analyst is looking for helipads.
The old slow method would require a methodical
search of thousands of individual photos
before marking each helipad.
The new method involves the analyst wearing
an EEG cap.
Dozens of electrodes can now detect electrical
brain activity just below the surface of the skull.
In normal brain processing, the visual cortex
extracts detail from a scene.
Information is sent forward to the frontal lobes
for decision making.
Then the motor cortex generates a response;
the click of a mouse or the movement of the eyes.
The prototype program intercepts the signals,
filters out irrelevant brain activity,
and focuses on the subliminal "aha" moment
when the eyes spot a helipad.
In just a few seconds, the analyst can sift through
the thousands of images.
Although he may not be consciously aware of it,
his brain is remarkably accurate at identifying
the few shots that have helipads in them
so they can be marked up later.
So essentially we're going to tap into the signals
that are involved in deciding whether there is
something interesting and without having the subject
having to make a response, use that to now reorder
or resort image databases to improve search.
>> This boosted vision technology helps the
image analyst work up to four times faster.
It could be adapted to help fighter pilots
make better split second decisions
or to improve the sifting of surveillance footage
by police or security personnel.
And then there are possibilities beyond
defense and intelligence.
>> One potential application that is of interest
in which there's high-throughput of information
might been in the stock market or in trading.
Many times traders are assimilating this information
across different screens,
something might catch their eye but they can't
actually act on that at that moment.
So that information can be tagged that it grabbed
the interest of the trader and processed by
some other person down the line.
>> Medical research might be interested in these
devices, too.
And marketing teams could use them to record
people's first reaction to a product
or advertising campaign.
A video game company in California
is already ditching the joy stick in favor of
brain power.
A headset similar to an EEG picks up
electrical activity from the brain as well as
twitches from facial muscles.
The signals get translated into onscreen
commands.
Players raise rocks and vanquish villains
not with a click but with a thought.
The future potential for implanted
Personal Data Assistance or PDAs
is almost mind-boggling.
>> As we get older, we all worry about our
inability to remember names and faces.
We're going to find ways to compensate for that
loss of natural evolved memory revolving in the
direction where we will have devices
that will do that for us.
And I think ultimately we will have a Facebook
in our heads.
At that point, it's going to be pretty hard
to see where we end and the technology begins.
At Duke University in North Carolina,
neuroscientists are taking that next step already.
They've implanted electrodes into a monkey's brain
and isolated the brain signals for walking.
During one recent experiment,
a monkey paced on a treadmill while her brain
activity was sent via the Internet to Japan
to instantly control the walking of a five foot
humanoid robot.
The monkey got raisin treats for making
the robot walk.
Then her treadmill was switched off.
In her desire for more treats,
the monkey kept the robot walking
using only her thoughts.
And there's been a similar breakthrough
at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.
Monkeys fitted with tiny sensors in their brains
have learned to control a mechanical arm
and use it to reach for snacks.
It will have tremendous applications for medicine,
for people who are amputees,
for people who are quadriplegic;
giving them the ability to move a robot
prosthetic arms and legs in ways that will allow
them to interact with their environments
which they have not been able to do before.
>> Could there be hope in the future for someone
like Clive Waring whose brain damage means
he can't process new memories?
>> I don't remember sitting down on this seat.
That was unknown to me.
>> There's work being done currently with rats
that might one day create a synthetic
hippocampus for humans.
>> If you could do that in theory,
you could actually introduce instantaneously
new memories as we do in computer chips
every day these days.
But what if instead of taking months and months
to learn a language we could download
a basic dictionary of a language?
Or what if having never been somewhere
instead of having to carry that tour guide
or book around, that clumsy book,
and stopping in the middle of the sidewalk
every few minutes to see where we were going,
we actually had a rudimentary map that had been
downloaded into our brains of that new city
that we're visiting or those monuments
that we're looking at?
>> Drugs are being developed for combat troops
that would allow them to stay awake
for two or three days with no ill effects.
A new class of chemicals called ampakines,
are thought to help the neurotransmitter glutamate
work better in a tired brain
and so improve memory, learning, and cognition.
These could eventually find their way into
everyday use.
>> Lack of sleep historically has meant that you are
inclined to make mistakes.
I think we're going to be able to resolve
that problem.
Shift workers, people that have to work all night
might be able to do without sleep and function
very well.
Students who are studying for exams,
people who have to travel across time zones
as part of their work.
>> In the near future, scientists expect to perfect
portable brain scanners.
Light-emitting diodes fitted in a headband
would bounce light into the frontal lobes
to detect brain activity.
That information would be fed into a unit
no bigger than a pack of playing cards.
Instead of lying motionless in a giant MRI machine,
wearers could discover what's going on in their
brains while, for example, playing sports.
>> We will be able to look into a super athlete's
brain like Federeror or Agasi or Tiger Woods
and see not that they're different anatomically
necessarily, but functionally they are different
in terms of how they process information.
The second application is that you can use this
new technology to help athletes perform better
or perform up to their capacity.
>> Imaging technology is still in its infancy.
In widespread use for less than 20 years,
compared with over 100 years for X-rays,
it's limited only by our imagination.
>> The pictures that we get of the brain right now
though there are several amazing technologies
are pretty gross, they're at a large level.
Now people are saying, wow it would be really
good if we could get a more granular,
more fine grained deeper images of the brain,
at the molecular level and I think that's the
next frontier for brain imaging.
>> For all that we have learned about the brain,
we still have so much to discover.
>> There are many unsolved questions that remain
about the brain and they're surprisingly
simple; how is memory actually stored and
how does it get reconstructed?
Why do brains sleep and dream?
What is intelligence?
Why do people have a variety of skills
and talents?
How do we perceive the world?
How does the brain represent time?
What is consciousness?
>> If we do manage to answer these questions,
over the course of perhaps one more lifetime,
what will this mean for the brain?
An organ that is so complicated and so often
driven by primitive instincts.
>> We evolved in a world very different than the
world we live in today so we have to adapt - now.
And this to me is the greatest mystery
of neuroscience right now-
