Michio Kaku on Alien Brains | Big Think

Michio Kaku on Alien Brains
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Michio Kaku on what makes a supergenius.
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MICHIO KAKU:

Dr. Michio Kaku is the co-founder of string field theory, and is one of the most widely recognized scientists in the world today. He has written 4 New York Times Best Sellers, is the science correspondent for CBS This Morning and has hosted numerous science specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery/Science Channel. His radio show broadcasts to 100 radio stations every week. Dr. Kaku holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York (CUNY), where he has taught for over 25 years. He has also been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, as well as New York University (NYU).
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TRANSCRIPT:

Michio Kaku: If you watch the "Big Bang Theory" on CBS television you see these clueless nerds who are doormats when it comes to the opposite sex, right. And you realize is there any basis in reality? First of all none of my friends are like that and all my friends are physicists, right.

Well there is a kernel of truth and that is some of these individuals may suffer from something called Asperger’s Syndrome which is a mild form of autism. These people are clueless when it comes to social interactions. They don’t look you in the eye, for example. And yet they have fantastic mental and mathematical capabilities. We think, for example, that Isaac Newton had Asperger’s. The greatest scientist of all time was very strange. He had no friends to speak of. He could not carry a decent conversation and yet here he was spitting out some of the greatest theories in the history of science. Calculus. The Universal Law of Gravitation. The Theory of Optics. And we think he had Asperger’s Syndrome.

Now Asperger’s Syndrome is a mild form of autism and in autism we have what are called savants. That is people that have an IQ of maybe 80 but have incredible mathematical and musical abilities. In fact, some of these individuals can hear one symphony and just play it by memory on a piano. Other people could be in a helicopter, have a helicopter ride over Manhattan, see the entire New York harbor and then from memory sketch the entire harbor. In fact, if you want to see it go to JFK Airport in New York City and you will see it as you enter the international terminal. So what is it about these people? Well, first of all a lot of them had injuries to the left temporal lobe. One individual had a bullet as a child go right through the left temporal lobe. Another person dove into a swimming pool and injured very badly the left temporal lobe. And these people wound up with incredible mathematical abilities as a consequence. And so what is it about their brains?

Well Einstein’s brain has actually been preserved. Einstein when he died had an autopsy in which case the pathologist stole the brain without permission of the family. He just realized that he was sitting next to something historic, took the brain, took it home with him, and it was sitting in a jar in his home for decades. He even drove across the country with the jar inside his trunk. And there’s even a TV special where you can actually see the cut up brain of Albert Einstein. And you realize first of all the brain is a little bit different. You can’t tell by looking at it that it’s so remarkably different but you realize that the connections between the prefontal cortex and the parietal lobe – a connection that is accentuated in people that do abstract reasoning is thickened. So there definitely is a difference in the brain of Einstein. But the question is did it make Einstein or did Einstein make this change of the brain?

Are champions born or are they made? That still is not known because people who exercise mental abilities, mathematical abilities, they can thicken that part of the brain themselves. So we know that people who do well in mathematics, brain scans clearly show that their brains are slightly different from the average brain. So in conclusion, we’re still children with regards to understanding how this process takes place. Tonight don’t go home and bang yourself on the left temporal lobe. We don’t know how it works. We just know that in a tiny fraction of these cases people with injury to the left temporal lobe, some of the become super geniuses.

Directed/Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Dillon Fitton

[DCFanatic]

This dude blows my mind every time, he's like a philosophical genius. Everything he says is so simplistic if you actually think about, but so intricate and deep.

[bassinblue]

We depict aliens as conquerors because it's what we would do, if we were them.

[MihajloKarlicic]

Big Think videos always make me realise how filthy my computer screen really is.

[SpaceAce]

best explanation about cats i've ever heard!

[buzzbang]

Charismatic, Influential,  are just a couple of words to describe Dr. Michio Kakus oratorical skills.
I like listening to him talk, no matter the subject. He seems to have that natural ability to communicate well with others, in laymen terms, at all levels when necessary.

[jerryg]

This scientist is terrific.  I have a strong physics and engineering education. He makes total sense in everything he says.

[TheMortal]

One of the most intelligent man alive talking about serious things and you people commenting about cats .... so sad

[Truthseeker]

The size of the frontal cortex is one of the only differences between us and all life on earth. The ability to plan is crucial to long term survival of any species. I would love to talk neuroscience and quantum physics with you one day, Dr. Kaku. It would be a true honor.

[ThePeterH]

It's also funny that people who report being abducted by aliens describe them so similar to human

[BakedPhoria]

I wish I was this aware of how awesome science is back in elementary. Could totally see myself as a theoretical physicist. Speed of light, black holes, double-slit experiment, even time itself is so interesting.

[esdev]

3 Michio Kaku videos in a week? Big Think is on a roll.

[bsirius]

The translation of an alien language would be  extremely difficult...We have never encountered another advanced species with its own language. It would be a language with a completely different ontology at its root. The translation would not just be of one word for another, but of one way of existing into another way of existing. It would be an even more extreme version of the Wittgenstein quote, " If a lion could speak, we could not understand him." (PI, p.223)

[Lumpyrox]

Wow for the first time my mind actually feels blown.
I never thought of it like that. Thats actually super interesting to think about, alien races feeling things we cannot, them being driven by 'emotions' that we cannot feel..its really scary yet just as exciting if not more so. We could learn so much.

[RogerHoyt]

If this does not push people to gain more intelligence and actually learn something, then I don't know what will.

[stevebrizzle]

Kurt Vonnegut did a really good job of creating a fictional alien race in the form of his Tralfamadorians in Slaughterhouse-Five. They are non-anthropomorphic, don't share the same moral code or sense of good and evil as humans, and most pertinent to what Kaku is saying, the Tralfamadorians know the future. However, this is isn't because they are adept at predicting the future; they actually know what is going to happen in the future because, unlike us, they operate in four dimensions and so exist in all times simultaneously. If you haven't read it, do so - it's a cracking read.

[PaulXPZ]

That's why I like Mass Effect's aliens so much. The diversity. Elcor are slow but steady because they evolved on a high gravity world and their society is really stable while the volus like to switch things up frequently and treat each other like trading cards, their society is always changing. Also I don't really see the problem with aliens speaking english. It's a movie/game made for earth people by earth people who happen to speak english natively, well not all of them but you get my point. For the sake of immersion you can say they use automatic translators or something

[nowherebrain]

I'm actually interested in what extraterrestrial beings biological minds may be like...could they have more than one? running multiple thoughts all controlled by one major brain much like a multicore computer? Do they think linearly/parallel or collectively?... what kind of memory recall could they have....much of this is also based on their perceptions...what visual(if vision is based on light like ours)spectrums could they perceive...same with audio, telepathy, scent, taste...hell maybe they can "feel" color etc etc...there are no limits aside what we, as humans, can fathom...and even that is not a limit...just a limit of what we can foresee and or imagine....interesting stuff.

[Daffy]

I love Michio Kaku... I wish I knew someone like that in my life, that every time I had a conversation with, I would learn something new, or just have a really entertaining conversation with... :)

[jaybay]

Michio Kaku is such a breath of fresh air in my world, thank you.

[jackpullen]

My experience, they didn't talk, they were telepathic. They are using the quantum entanglement abilities in their brains at a level far ahead of what we are just now discovering. Thanks Dr. Kaku !