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information, that can contribute to a reasoned decision by our brains.
Is the fact that we do not have to remember, but rather have the world's information at our fingertips, a liability to our intelligence?
Merzenich: Intelligence arises from three basic assets. First, we have a genetic endowment that enables and limits our cognition. Second, we learn a wide variety of basic skills and abilities that solidify, elaborate and crucially support our cognitive abilities, and that can impact the efficiency (accuracy, at speed) of our cognitive operations.
Third, we each load our brains with hundreds of thousands of words and little episodes that we associate with one another in millions or tens of millions of ways.
Developing the skills and abilities that crucially support our refined cognitive abilities, and filling our brain dictionaries and constructing this myriad of probabilistic associations in (various) categories, are products of massive brain change. We are greatly facilitated in increasing this stored repertoire and in being guided in constructing our associative references by books, the media and in a particularly powerful and efficient way, by the Internet.
You cannot make associations about things that you have not recorded. In this respect, the Internet is one of a series of aids developed over the last millennium or so that has increased the operational capacities of the average world citizen.
In my use of the Internet or any other reference source, I do not turn my brain off. I'm gathering information and associating it in my very own computer, right along with my desktop computer and the Internet. If anything, these aids are helping my brain gather more information to get more answers right, and to see more possible associations than would otherwise be the case.
Will we be smarter with computers that can do abstract thinking for us? Or will that exacerbate a potential problem?
Merzenich: This is a difficult question to answer because it is difficult to see just how this will evolve. Personally, I see this triumph of technology, if it occurs on a broad scale, as a rather astounding defeat of its inventors, don't you? I suppose our abstract thinking abilities will be substantially superseded by machines.
One can imagine a future when the machine is consistently relied on for the answer, and in which, outside of setting up the question, the human is relatively redundant in this process. Of course, one can also imagine quite a few other scenarios.
In general, the brain needs to learn, to reason, to act. Without it, it deteriorates. I assume that we brain scientists understand this with increasing clarity, and whatever else the information explosion contributes to humankind, we'll understand, with increasing clarity, what the average individual has to do to maintain lifelong "brain fitness."
How does your research on brain plasticity affect intelligence?
Merzenich: One can measure intelligence before and after intensive training in a variety of different forms (e.g., with the tools that we've developed for school-age children and mature adults in their language, reading and cognitive abilities) and record very significant advances in those measures. We have been training 70- to 90-plus-year-olds to be more accurate aural-language receivers and language users. After 40 hours or so of training, the average trainee's cognitive abilities are rejuvenated by about 10 years, i.e., their performance on a cognitive assessment battery is like those of an average person who is 10 years younger.
Many individuals improve by 20 or 30 or more years in ability. Similar before-vs.-after effects have been recorded using basic cognitive measures in kids.
Is our brain still evolving, and can we do anything proactively to stay smart?
Merzenich: Culture is evolving, and that means that the challenges faced by brains are continuously changing and elaborating. Our brains are different. Different doesn't always mean "better." Different can be "worse."
Sure, we can and must do things to stay proactively "smart." We must exercise our brains as the learning machines that they are, and we must do this continuously through life. We must work hard to maintain our skills and abilities as accurate receivers and users of information from aural language, vision, body senses, movement control, etc.
With the help of many world neuroscientists, Posit Science is working as hard as possible to develop and apply brain fitness tools that can provide this crucial exercise. Brain fitness will be an important part of every future, well-organized life.
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Affect means to alter due to proximity... "I will be affected by change".
affect = verb, to have an effect upon
When you affect something, you produce an effect on it.
example: "Will the new rules have an effect on me?"
example: "Will the new rules affect me?"
Merzenich seems to suggest our accelerating facility with information tools (manifest by 1000 examples) is in some way genetically passed on. Without connecting this sort of intelligence to Darwinian reproductive fitness (a long shot at best, at least over the last 20 years) we have a problem.
I, however, would not reject Merzenich's Lamarckian proposition out of hand however. Experiments have been done showing memory (encoded in RNA) CAN be passed thru the generations.
Merzenich seems to suggest our accelerating facility with information tools (manifest by 1000 examples) is in some way genetically passed on. Without connecting this sort of intelligence to Darwinian reproductive fitness (a long shot at best, at least over the last 20 years) we have a problem.
I, however, would not reject Merzenich's Lamarckian proposition out of hand however. Experiments have been done showing memory (encoded in RNA) CAN be passed thru the generations.
The real question is: Can you reason things out? Have you the ability to see the differences between things or understand the repercussions? This is what we should emphasize as a people not memory games. It's not "what temperature does water boil at" but knowing that if you stick your body in it, you will burn. That's the important concept. Why not ask: "How many steps to the moon?" Or "do you know the difference between baking powder and baking soda?" Probably not and it does not matter. That's it.