Eureka!

The part of the brain where insight occurs is the anterior superior temporal gyrus. During a flash of insight the left side doesn't really react, but the right side does. High-energy brain waves called gamma-waves erupt from this one spot.

Intelligence and creativity are not isomorphic. There is overlap between the two, but they are very different. It's wrong to think that brain structure alone makes you creative, but there is a neurological basis to divergent thinking - to creativity itself.

 

The Divergent thinking test, as in diverging from known ideas to come up with something novel, is one of the most commonly used creativity tests. An example would be to give someone a common object, such as a brick, and then ask them to think of as many creative ways to use the item. It gets people thinking outside the box.

Mind wandering seems to facilitate the creativity process. If you want to come up with a solution to a problem - don't do anything, but instead do something undemanding. If your stumped, take a break and let the mind wander.

Alpha waves help cut off distractions, helping you to summon the idea. A transient dip in frontal lobe activity aids the creativity and insight process. So, insight (the Aha! moment) essentially comes from cutting yourself off from the distractions of the outside world.

With a dissertation in the offing (and not an iota of what to do it on) it's beginning to look as though I'll have to lock myself in a room until I retrieve this moment of clarity.                         

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If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original

~ BBC Horizons: How insight works

The Mozart Effect

Named after the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791), this finding, first reported in the journal Nature in 1993 (pdf here) , said that listening to compositions by Mozart increases scores on tests of spatial ability for a short while.



In the original experiment, college students were given various tests after experiencing each of the following for ten minutes; listening to Mozart's sonata for two pianos in D major K488, listening to a relaxation tape, or silence. Performance on the paper-folding subtest of the Stanford-Binet intelligence scale was significantly better after listening to Mozart than after the other two treatments, but the effect dissipated after about 15 minutes, and other non-spatial tasks were unaffected.

 

The finding has been contested by other researchers and has been widely misinterpreted to imply that listening to Mozart, or just classical music in general, increases one's intelligence.

 

Several independent research studies have shown that children who receive extensive training in musical performance achieve significantly higher average scores on tests of spatial ability, but that long-term consequence is not the Mozart effect.

Chinese Room Argument

The Chinese room argument is a thought experiment. It was first proposed by the US philosopher John Searle (pictured) in the journal Behavioural and Brain Sciences in 1980 , in which many people feel he thoroughly disproved the notion that any computer program could acquire true intelligence. It is one of the best known and widely credited counters to claims of artificial intelligence (AI) - that is, to claims that computers do or at least can (someday might) think.

It was written to demonstrate a simple point - intelligent behaviour does not equate to intelligence. This doesn't mean AI design is impossible, but that a behavioural-based model for intelligence is flawed.

Imagine yourself a monolingual English speaker, ''locked in a room, and given a large batch of Chinese writing'' plus ''a second batch of Chinese script” and ''a set of rules'' in English ''for correlating the second batch with the first batch.'' As Searle explains how it works: ''Suppose that unknown to you the symbols passed into the room are called 'questions' by the people outside the room, and the symbols you pass back out of the room are called 'answers to the questions' ''. Just by looking at your answers, nobody can tell you ''don't speak a word of Chinese.''

The point he makes is that you may hand out the appropriate and even accurate answers and that those responses may serve to connect with the expectations of those asking the questions.  However, it does not indicate that any real understanding has taken place or that any sort of meaning is actually attached to the question and answer process that is taking place.

 

It should be conceded that Searle's argument is effective in showing that certain kinds of machines - even machines that pass the Turing Test - are not necessarily intelligent and do not necessarily "understand" the words that they speak. This is because a computer sitting on a desk with no sensory apparatus and no means of causally interacting with objects in the world will be incapable of understanding a language. Such a machine might be capable of manipulating linguistic symbols, even to the point of producing output that will fool human speakers and thus pass the Turing Test. However, the words produced by such a machine would lack one crucial ingredient: The words would fail to express any meaningful content and thus would fail to be "about" anything.

What's the point?

It doesn't matter how perfectly a computer is designed to simulate the intelligence of a human being - because its behaviour is a result of aimlessly executing instructions, not understanding. In this case, the means defines the end. You're reading this sentence, and understanding it without demonstrating behaviour of any kind. A system's behaviour doesn’t indicate intelligence or understanding, and a system that behaves intelligently is not necessarily ''intelligent.''
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Before we work on artificial intelligence why don't we do something about natural stupidity

Hunger - The sauce for sharpness.

Research at the National Institute of Ageing in Baltimore, Maryland has examined the idea that sporadic bouts of hunger actually cause new neurons to grow.

 

In a 2003 mouse study overseen by Mark Mattson, head of the National Institute on Aging's neuroscience laboratory, mice that fasted regularly were healthier than mice subjected to continuous calorie restriction; they had lower levels of insulin and glucose in their blood, for example, which signified increased sensitivity to insulin and a reduced risk of diabetes.

 

Sunday was 'treat' day

Recently Mattson and other researchers have championed the idea that intermittent fasting probably lowers the risks of degenerative brain diseases in later life. Mattson and his colleagues have shown that periodic fasting protects neurons against various kinds of damaging stress, at least in rodents. One of his earliest studies revealed that alternate-day feeding made the rats' brains resistant to toxins that induce cellular damage akin to the kind cells endure as they age.

In follow-up rodent studies, he found that intermittent fasting protects against stroke damage, suppresses motor deficits in a mouse model of Parkinson's disease and slows cognitive decline in mice genetically engineered to mimic the symptoms of Alzheimer's.

A decidedly slender man, Mattson has long skipped breakfast and lunch except on weekends. ''It makes me more productive,'' he says. The 55-year-old researcher, who has a Ph.D. in biology but not a medical degree, has written or co-authored more than 700 articles.

 

If you think about this in evolutionary terms, if your hungry, you will better increase your cognitive ability because that will give you a survival advantage - if you can remember the locations of where the food is.

 

It seems fasting stresses your brain matter the way exercising stresses your muscles, thus ''hunger actually makes you sharper'' (Mosley, 2012). However, while this may be true in mice, human trials would need to be done to see if it is true in us.

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''An empty stomach is not a good political adviser'' ~ Albert Einstein

Is intelligence best understood in terms of 'g' (or as a multidimensional construct)?

Even after more than a century of research and theory development, there is still sharp disagreements about what intelligence is. Psychologists have not reached a consensus about how to define intelligence. Some common themes often include; adaption to the environment, the potential for individuals to understand the world around them, basic mental processes, higher-order thinking (e.g. reasoning), problem solving, and decision making.

 

Much of the debate around intelligence is whether it is a general ability or several distinct abilities.

The following is the APA task force definition: ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought, - a fairly comprehensive definition to say the least!

 

The argument for intelligence as a general ability was first advanced by a British psychologist named Charles Spearman (1863 - 1945), the first major theory of intelligence. General intelligence, also known as g factor, refers to the existence of a general intelligence that influences performance on mental ability measures - a single, unitary quality within the human mind. He interpreted it as the core of human intelligence.

 

According to Spearman, this g factor was responsible for overall performance on mental ability tests. Thus Spearman would argue that your performance in a maths test would depend mainly on your general intelligence but also on your specific ability to learn mathematics. Those who hold this view believe that intelligence can be measured and expressed by a single number, such as an IQ score. The idea is that this underlying general intelligence influences performance on all cognitive tasks.

 

Further, it captures the kinds of general mental flexibility needed to cope with novelty, read the environment, draw conclusions and choose how and when to act (Lubinski, 2004).

 

However, an important question to be asked about intelligence is how much of our intelligence is shaped by genetic factors and how much by the environment we live in? It has long been recognised that genes and the environment are not additive, in the sense that x percent of intelligence is caused by genes and y percent by the environment. Rather, they interact with each other in causing the development of all human characteristics, including intelligence.

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''Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven''

                             ~ Edward De Bono

Did Jesus have the IQ of a Cornflake?

The Flynn Effect, this 'rising-curve' phenomenon is James Flynn's explanation of the rise in mean IQ scores during the 20th century (Rowe & Rodgers, 2002). He and his colleagues were the first to notice this rise and it is now fairly accepted that there is one. The phenomenon was first observed in New Zealand in the 1980’s, that different generations of people seemed to be scoring increasingly higher results in standard intelligence tests. It has been shown and is universally accepted that word knowledge has risen significantly in the last 20 years by about 5 verbal IQ points (Nettelbeck & Wilson, 2004).

''Ah, I see! So the line going up means more smarteredness''

''If the present generation is put at 100, their grandparents had a mean IQ of 82.36.  Either today's children are so bright that they should run circles around us, or their grandparents were so dull that it is surprising that they could keep a modern society ticking over'' (Flynn).

 

One could argue that the Flynn Effect is not down to biological factors but more so environmental factors (Nijenhuis, 2011), such as the advances in technology and education, e.g. that technology aids the transmission of information to all corners of the globe. Better nutrition and more education possibilities may have resulted in IQ improvements for each generation (APA).

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We're living in an era of smart phones and stupid people