Brave New Baby: Genius Training for Infants

Image Source
We have heard of the "better baby" and even the "superbaby." But those approaches to creating the "brave new baby" have been around for a while, and yet, here we are. Still looking for workable ways of training smarter, more cognitively capable children.

University of London researchers have come up with a new approach, beginning with 11 month old infants:

The researchers trained 11-month-old infants to direct their gaze toward images they observed on a computer screen. For example, in one task, a butterfly flew only as long as the babies kept their eyes on it while other distracting elements appeared on screen. Infants visited the lab five times over the course of 15 days. Half of the 42 babies took part in training, while the other half watched TV. Each child was tested for cognitive abilities at the beginning and end of the study.

Trained infants rapidly improved their ability to focus their attention for longer periods and to shift their attention from one point to another. They also showed improvements in their ability to spot patterns and small but significant changes in their spontaneous looking behavior while playing with toys.

"Our results appeared to show an improved ability to alter the frequency of eye movements in response to context," Wass said. "In the real world, sometimes we want to be able to focus on one object of interest and ignore distractions, and sometimes we want to be able to shift the focus of our attention rapidly around a room -- for example, for language learning in social situations. This flexibility in the allocation of attention appeared to improve after training."

The fact that the babies' improvements in concentration transferred to a range of tasks supports the notion that there is greater plasticity in the unspecialized infant brain.

...The findings reported online on Sept. 1 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, are in contrast to reports in adults showing that training at one task generally doesn't translate into improved performance on other, substantially different tasks. _ScienceDaily

Study abstract from Science Direct

This type of research is likely to continue and intensify -- particularly in parts of the world with more authoritarian government control. It is likely to continue because it is quite probable that infant brains can eventually be functionally shaped to approximate a preconceived "ideal." Infant brains are highly plastic, and experience incredibly rapid shaping and re-shaping of local neuronal assemblies and white matter pathways.

Of course there are ethical approaches to this type of research, which should be freely carried out in more open societies. And of course individual parents are free to incorporate elements of such research into their child's overall, well-rounded upbringing. It is likely that there are easily devised "games" which the baby would enjoy playing, which could lead to a faster-thinking, more imaginative child. Perhaps even a child capable of multi-tasking in many ways.

But experimenting parents should beware. The super-baby which you raise may rapidly grow beyond your ability to comprehend and control. Children are essentially amoral creatures who are capable of incredible destruction if given too much power too soon, without superb training in executive function.

It is not wise to train a child in particular areas of genius without incorporating safeguards, executive function training, and ethical training into the overall program. This training should resemble an assortment of games and engaging interactional narratives to the very young child.

At the Al Fin Institute for the Brave New Baby, we are concerned about current trends toward a dumbed-down future. We will share the results of our research into brave new babies as it becomes available.

Taken from a recent posting on Al Fin the Next Level

When Is a Child's Brain Ready for Maths?

The newest study examined 90 children recruited from a variety of schools. Half had just completed second grade; the other half had just completed third grade. All children had normal intelligence and had math reasoning scores between the 25th and 98th percentile. On average, the third-graders were one year older than the second-graders and had significantly better math-reasoning skills.

...The scientists found that children in third grade showed much more differentiated brain responses between complex and simple problems. They found significant change in the responses of two key regions of the brain to the different types of addition problems.Greater responses to complex addition problems were seen in third-graders’ brains in both the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain area responsible for manipulating information in working memory, and in the intraparietal sulcus, a posterior brain region essential for representing numerical quantity. _Vinod Menon et al described in Physorg

MyNextBrain_Taken from Brain Age PDF
It appears that significant changes in brain function occur in children sometime between grades 2 and 3, measured by fMRI. At least some of these changes in brain activity appear to allow more sophisticated maths reasoning in children.

Compared to 2nd graders, 3rd graders showed greater activity in dorsal stream parietal areas right SPL, IPS and angular gyrus (AG) as well as ventral visual stream areas bilateral lingual gyrus (LG), right lateral occipital cortex (LOC) and right parahippocampal gyrus (PHG). Significant differences were also observed in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), with 3rd graders showing greater activation in left dorsal lateral PFC (dlPFC) and greater deactivation in the ventral medial PFC (vmPFC). Third graders also showed greater functional connectivity between the left dlPFC and multiple posterior brain areas, with larger differences in dorsal stream parietal areas SPL and AG, compared to ventral stream visual areas LG, LOC and PHG. No such between-grade differences were observed in functional connectivity between the vmPFC and posterior brain regions. These results suggest that even the narrow one-year interval spanning grades 2 and 3 is characterized by significant arithmetic task-related changes in brain response and connectivity, and argue that pooling data across wide age ranges and grades can miss important neurodevelopmental changes. _Abstract Menon et al via ScienceDirect

It is likely that another similar maths-facilitating change occurs during puberty, at least partially triggered by testosterone surge. Understanding these age specific developmental brain changes is critical to the study of group differences and the efficacy of interventions in maths learning.

Abstract from an earlier collaboration between David Geary and Vinod Menon dealing with counting and retrieval strategies in early maths learning.

Modern high tech societies are based upon technologies which require sophisticated maths skills. Various commercial methods from maths learning have been developed in an attempt to assure a plentiful supply of talent for engineering and science training programs of the future. Most of these programs fail to compensate for the huge weaknesses of the government educational system as a whole, which limits their usefulness.

Music learning is another activity which displays a developmental learning window in childhood, at least for highly proficient musical skills and abilities. Not coincidentally, musical skills and math skills overlap significantly. This interesting study looks at brain networks in music, and how they come into play during everyday "segmentation of the neural stream." In other words, good and timely early childhood training in language, maths, music -- and probably many other skills not properly delineated -- can make a crucial difference in the skillful execution of ordinary moment to moment thinking processes.

This page links to a sophisticated analysis (PDF Thesis Download 6MB) of fMRI analysis of mental patterns from a whole-brain spatio-temporal perspective. Only for those most curious.

Modern educators and neuroscientists do not actually understand how children learn, nor do they know the best ways of assisting children in the crucial learning processes. In fact, modern educational practises are so infused with politicised dogma and indoctrination, that a mainstream education is apt to do as much harm as good in the average student.

If you are the parent of a young or adolescent child, DO NOT LEAVE your child's education up to the system. To you, your child is your life. To the system, your child is a statistic, prone to currents of political favouritism and neglect.

Online Puzzles and Brain Boosters: Saving Your Brain

Norman Doidge: Neuro-plasticians show that the brain is plastic not only in early childhood but from cradle-to-grave. This means we have to revisit the whole notion of adult development as a very, very serious undertaking. The adult brain can be maintained, developed and improved in many areas. But not by taking the occasional course after the age of 45.

VB: That message is going to become increasingly important with an aging population.

Norman Doidge: Yes, the longer we live the more relevant it becomes. And it is relevant not just for developing and improving but also for preserving. The secret to old age is a very simple one from the medical point of view. What you want is to have all your organ systems last as long as they can and then cease to function all at once!

VB: Exactly.

Norman Doidge: We’re in a situation now where, because of extended lifespan, a very high proportion of people—close to half—will find that their brains crap out before their hearts, livers and kidneys. So extending mental life span to equal that of other organs is a kind of imperative, otherwise we’ll have aged humans that are like infants who can’t function and care for themselves. _IdeaConnection

We make choices from moment to moment, unconsciously, as to how we will train our brains. Children and young adults need mentors and guides to help them make best use of early life mental plasticity. But the brains of adults and seniors are still plastic to a significant degree. Grownups have to be their own mentors and guides, more times than not, in the continuing task of brain development and preservation. Fortunately, there is a wide range of tools available online to assist in this task. Here is a report on one of these tools, n-back mental training exercises:

In an award address on May 28 at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Washington, D.C., University of Michigan psychologist John Jonides presented new findings showing that practicing this kind of task for about 20 minutes each day for 20 days significantly improves performance on a standard test of fluid intelligence—the ability to reason and solve new problems, which is a crucial element of general intelligence. And this improvement lasted for up to three months.

Jonides, who is the Daniel J. Weintraub Collegiate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, collaborated with colleagues at U-M, the University of Bern and the University of Tapei on a series of studies with more than 200 young adults and children, demonstrating the effects of various kinds of n-back mental training exercises. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and by the Office of Naval Research.

According to Jonides, the n-back task taps into a crucial brain function known as working memory—the ability to maintain information in an active, easily retrieved state, especially under conditions of distraction or interference. Working memory goes beyond mere storage to include processing information _MedXPress

Online brain games from Online Brain Games Blog:

Memory Games:

Dual N-Back — Documented I.Q. booster!

Simon Says

Concentration

Cogolog — Memory game site with 14 different memory games
Board Games:
Go – (Go Rules and tips) — 3000yr old board game!

Checkers — (Checkers Rules and tips)

Chinese Checkers – (Chinese Checkers Rules and tips)

Chess — (Chess Rules and tips)

Reversi — (Reversi Rules and tips)

Words:

Crosswords — (Crosswords Rules and tips)

Wordcrunch

Numbers:

Online Math Games – Highlight post with many links

Other:

Click The Color – Based on the Stroop Effect
Connect4 — (Connect4 Rules and tips)
Phit
Tetris
Other Websites with Free Brain Games
brainbashers.com
braingle.com
brainwaves.com
fitbrains.com
freebrainagegames.com
funbrain.com – elementary school
fun4thebrain - elementary school
gamesforthebrain
interjeux.net
mathplayground – elementary/middle school
matica.com
neuroscience for kids - elementary/high school
nursingdegree.net
online-college-blog
playwithyourmind.com
proprofs
samgine.com – online flash game puzzles

100 Online Puzzles, Brain Games, and Brain Tests from Nursingdegree.net (excerpt):

79. Sharp Brains: This site is "the brain fitness authority," and you’ll find all kinds of tricky brain teasers.
80. Smart Kit: This "brain gym and puzzle playground" has picture puzzles, Flash puzzle games, brain games, cryptograms, logic puzzles and more.

Evaluation Tools and Articles
Test your brain fitness with these tricks and games.

81. Brain Teasers and IQ Tests: Visit this site to take all kinds of tests and quizzes and to solve brain teasers.
82. Test Your Brain: Test your brain on its processing speed, ability to process information in a noisy room and more.
83. Lumosity: The initial trial for Lumosity’s brain fitness program is free.
84. IQ and intelligence tests: Take these IQ tests, subliminal messages test, organizational web design tests, memory tests and more to see how well your brain is functioning.
85. 50 Fun Ways to Maximize Your Brain Fitness: This website has lots of great ways to keep your brain in shape, from drinking pomegranate juice to changing up your regular route.
86. Steps to Brain Fitness: The Alliance for Aging Research lists 10 different ways to have a well-exercised brain.
87. Train the Brain: Take reflex tests, play with a Rubik’s cube and more on this site.
88. Mensa Fun Test: Find out if you’re one of the smartest people in the world when you take this test.
89. Surveys and Psychology Tests: Tests offered on this BBC website include an art and personality test, memory and more.
90. Test Cafe: Take all kinds of quizzes to test your brain, IQ, personality type and more.

Is Mental Illness Preventable?

Of the 10 leading causes of disability in the world in 1990, five were mental disorders; specifically unipolar depression, alcohol use, manic depression, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder (Murray and Lopez, 1996). It is clear that both the extent of mental health problems and the enormous associated personal, social and financial cost can not be addressed by treatment services alone. _Robinson et Pennebaker

Schizophrenia.com
Schizophrenia is one of the most debilitating and disabling of the mental illnesses. So if we could find a way to prevent schizophrenia -- even a substantial proportion of the disease -- we would be making impressive progress toward the goal of preventing mental illness.

Recent research findings from Duke and Johns Hopkins suggest that a proportion of schizophrenia with genetic causes could be prevented by early detection of susceptible persons in early childhood, with appropriate intervention before symptoms manifest themselves in late adolescence or early adulthood. Scientists have known for decades that brain structure in schizophrenia was not normal -- and even pointed toward an early developmental "lesion" as the cause of the structural abnormalities.

The critical network of signals which control early brain development is becoming better understood -- both in terms of general development and in terms of specific brain diseases when the signaling network goes awry. Here is more about the recent Duke et Johns Hopkins research:

Katsanis, who directs the Duke Center for Human Disease Modeling, and Akira Sawa, M.D., Ph.D., a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, were introduced to each other by a clinical colleague who thought that Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS) proteins that are involved in transport duties within cells might have a role in schizophrenia. Katsanis is an expert in using BBS genetic mutations and proteins to learn more about other diseases. BBS is a complex genetic disease with autism-like symptoms, cognitive defects and depression. Sawa is an expert on DISC1, the protein named Disrupted in Schizophrenia 1, known to be a major susceptibility factor for schizophrenia and related disorders.

Together, they discovered that these proteins are involved in a key switch for neurons that is necessary for brain development. When DISC1 gains a phosphate group at a specific site, it recruits BBS1. When BBS1 is missing in this system, the team could observe defective neuron migration, while a model with no DISC1 at all leads to defects in both cell proliferation and migration.

...Katsanis predicts that, for perhaps 10 percent of psychiatric illness, the illness is primarily driven by defects in this switch system. "So we now have ways to interpret variation in humans, in a context that is relevant to their particular cases, to their physiology -- that is where medicine will move next," Katsanis said.

...The study was published by Nature journal on April 6 in its advance online publication. _SD

The researchers were looking at brain signaling which controls early brain development -- the multiplying of brain neurons and subsequent placement in proper locations, orientiation, and connectivity to other parts of the brain. But there is another "brain growth spurt" which occurs just before adolescence, which could be just as critical to the subsequent development of schizophrenia and other types of mental illness which first manifest in adolescence or early adulthood. This neuronal growth spurt is no doubt also under the control of brain signaling proteins.

Prevention comes into the picture when scientists learn to correct abnormal signaling in early stages of development, or to compensate for abnormal brain development, later in childhood. Some genetic abnormalities can be treated now, and the opportunities to treat more genetic problems are growing rapidly.

That means that besides mental illness, many disadvantages which are widespread in the third world and in disadvantaged ethnic groups -- and which are at least partially genetically mediated (such as low intelligence and poor executive function) -- should be amenable to treatment in the not so distant future.

It is the denial of such genetically mediated disadvantages and disabilities which dooms sufferers to lifetimes of misery and underachievement. Such HBD deniers likewise doom entire societies and regions to generations of misery, poverty, widespread disease, and hopelessness.

Automatic Expertise Grows with Time and Training

Wikipedia
The human brain learns a lot, over time. Experience shapes the brain, determining how it will work, and which parts of the brain will be active in different circumstances. With training, many parts of the brain learn to function more quickly and efficiently to perform particular tasks in a more expert manner. But this training must be intense enough, and take place early enough in life -- before the developmental windows close -- for the skills to become automatic at expert levels.

Recent Japanese brain research has determined that expert players in the Japanese chess game "Shogi" use different parts of their brain (the caudate nucleus among others) to play, than do amateurs of the game. The caudate nucleus is the curved purple structure in the image above.

Neuroscientists at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Wako, Japan, studied a group of professional and amateur shogi players. Shogi is the Japanese version of chess. With the use of real-time brain scans, the researchers discovered that the pros activated different parts of their brains than the amateurs did while studying game patterns and contemplating their next moves.

The findings were published in the Jan. 21 issue of Science.

Senior study author Keiji Tanaka, deputy director of the institute and head of the Cognitive Brain Mapping Laboratory, said the experts' unique brain circuitry enabled them to have "superior intuitive problem-solving capabilities."

Professional shogi players, who have practiced three or four hours a day for several years, "repeatedly note that the best next move comes to their mind 'intuitively,'" the authors wrote. "Being 'intuitive' indicates that the idea for a move is generated quickly and automatically without conscious search, and the process is mostly implicit."

... brain difference occurred when the players were forced to quickly pick their next best move. The professionals' brain scans revealed activity in a portion of the basal ganglion known as the caudate nucleus, while the amateurs' scans did not.

The researchers suggest that a unique circuit between these two regions of the brain is what enables professional players to expertly recognize board game patterns and quickly choose their optimal next move.

"There was no volume difference of the caudate nucleus between professional and amateur players," said Tanaka. This suggests that "the caudate nucleus is used for other purposes in ordinary people [but] the experts have developed a unique way to use the system." _BW_via_ImpactLab

The caudate nucleus has been implicated in the development of automaticity of several types -- which places the caudate in a central, pivotal position for humans living in modern societies.

First, the caudate appears to be involved in the acquired automaticity of motor skills. This is not such a big surprise to brain researchers. But the caudate also seems to be involved in the automaticity of emotional processing, the automaticity of perceptual categorisation (PDF), automaticity of rule-based categorisation, and in switching between two languages in bilingual individuals. There are almost certainly more caudate functions to come.

Sure, there is overlap between the different caudate functions, but the brain -- and its many modular parts -- is nothing if not multi-functional. A Swiss Army knife of cognitive and emotional tools that modifies itself over a person's lifetime, adapting to the individual's experience.

That is why it is so important to the individual that the brain's many potential functions be developed before their developmental windows close. And why it is so important to society that the brains of its members are well developed and long-lived.

We cannot afford to waste all of that hard-earned knowledge, experience, and savvy by dying too young. 500 year lifespans should be seen as a minimum timespan for skills acquisition and for passing these skills along to future generations.

Taken from an article on Al Fin Longevity

Micro-Electronic Brain Implant Supervises Brain Re-Wiring

When the human brain is damaged from trauma, stroke, infection, or tumour etc., the damaged tissue does not re-grow itself spontaneously. Instead, the person must learn to compensate for the loss of function. Some brain plasticity may occur, as undamaged parts of the brain take responsibility for some of the functions which the destroyed parts previously carried out. But damaged brain does not heal.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University intend to change that, by using implanted electronics devices which can help teach the brain how to re-wire itself to allow disconnected parts of the brain to become connected -- and functional -- again.

Pedram Mohseni, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Case Western Reserve University, and Randolph J. Nudo, a professor of molecular and integrative physiology at Kansas University Medical Center, believe repeated communications between distant neurons in the weeks after injury may spark long-reaching axons to form and connect.

Their work is inspired by the traumatic brain injuries suffered by ground troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.

...Mohseni has been building a multichannel microelectronic device to bypass the gap left by injury. The device, which he calls a brain-machine-brain interface, includes a microchip on a circuit board smaller than a quarter. The microchip amplifies signals, called neural action potentials, produced by the neurons in one part of the brain and uses an algorithm to separate these signals – brain spike activity - from noise and other artifacts. Upon spike discrimination, the microchip sends a current pulse to stimulate neurons in another part of the brain, artificially connecting the two brain regions.

...During the next four years, they expect to understand the ability to rewire the brain in a rat model and to determine whether the technology is safe enough to test in non-human primates. If tests show the treatment is successful in helping recovery from traumatic brain injury, the researchers foresee the possibility of using the approach in patients 10 years from now. _Eurekalert

Here is an abstract of a paper published by Mohseni in an IEEE publication from 2008:

This paper reports on the design, implementation, and performance characterization of a high-output-impedance current microstimulator fabricated using the TSMC 0.35 mum 2P/4M n-well CMOS process as part of a fully integrated neural implant for reshaping long-range intracortical connectivity patterns in an injured brain. It can deliver a maximum current of 94.5 muA to the target cortical tissue with current efficiency of 86% and voltage compliance of 4.7 V with a 5-V power supply. The stimulus current can be programmed via a 6-bit DAC with an accuracy better than 0.47 LSB. Stimulator functionality is also verified with in vitro experiments in saline using a silicon microelectrode with iridium oxide (IrO) stimulation sites. _IEEEXplore

The technology for such interventions is in the early stages. The researchers are also working on devices which can be used for a broad range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, and in conjunction with neurosurgery and standard post-surgical rehabilitation.

Eventually such devices will probably be implanted into a damaged area of brain, along with an artificial matrix seeded with a person's own stem cells and growth factors. The devices will be wired to "bridge" from healthy brain on one side of the lesion to healthy brain on other sides of the lesion (corresponding to interrupted pathways). The electronic signals will not only help guide a re-wiring of the brain, but they should also guide the re-growth of new replacement brain tissue of specific replacement types.

Anyone who has read the science fiction novel "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi, should recognise some of the intent behind the early stage, rudimentary devices being developed at Case Western -- and to see where the technology may be heading.

More on a related topic from Brian Wang