How Brain Damage (Or The Work?) Might Unlock Our Genius Within

[JGeropoulas]

Chapter 39 of "Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection" discusses the fascinating idea that our brain is tuner capable of accessing a some kind of Cosmic-Information Field:

[This] would explain why one tiny association often triggers a riot of sights, sounds and smells. It would also explain why, with long-term memory in particular, recall is instantaneous and doesn't require any scanning mechanism to sift through years and years of memory.

Thus, the brain may not be an information storage device like a hard drive, but rather an interface connecting what an individual learns, experiences, or perceives with a 'delocalized' database. a part of the Cosmic Information Field. Therefore, removing this or that part of the brain doesn't hinder memory since it is not stored 'within' brain cells per se. Thus the brain would act more like an emitter/receiver device, or an antenna. Even if an antenna is shortened (via removal of most of the brain, for example), it can still emit and receive information (thinking and memorizing processes).

With that in mind, I found this article about “acquired savant symdrome” intriguing. Those researchers cited have pressed further into speculative territory than most neuroscientists feel comfortable to propose some interesting theories, which have been supported by preliminary research.

But they’re all theorizing about local changes in the brain as if that were the total explanation of acquiring amazing new abilities. It seems to me that brain trauma could possibly explain the enhancement of skills already wired in the brain (e.g. to do math calculations extremely fast). But this wouldn’t seem to explain acquiring completely new physical abilities which would require not only knowledge not contained in the brain, but also neuro-circuits related to repeated practice (e.g. instant ability to play a piano like a virtuoso).

So I think their ideas have value, but only in explaining how brain “damage” might enhance the brain’s ability to tune into the Cosmic-Information Field. (Don't miss the list at the end of various skills and abilities people have acquired from brain injuries--I want Kim Peek's!).

When Brain Damage Unlocks The Genius Within

By Adam Piore
Popular Science, March 2013

Derek Amato stood above the shallow end of the swimming pool and called for his buddy in the Jacuzzi to toss him the football. Then he launched himself through the air, head first, arms outstretched. The tips of Amato's fingers brushed the pigskin—then his head slammed into the pool's concrete floor with such bone-jarring force that it felt like an explosion.

He pushed to the surface, clapping his hands to his head, convinced that the water streaming down his cheeks was blood gushing from his ears. Amato's mother rushed him to the emergency room, where doctors diagnosed Amato with a severe concussion. They sent him home with instructions to be woken every few hours.

The most dramatic consequences appeared just four days after his accident. Amato awoke hazy after near-continuous sleep and headed over to Sturm's house. As the two pals sat chatting in Sturm's makeshift music studio, Amato spotted a cheap electric keyboard.

Without thinking, he rose from his chair and sat in front of it. He had never played the piano—never had the slightest inclination to. Now his fingers seemed to find the keys by instinct and, to his astonishment, ripple across them. His right hand started low, climbing in lyrical chains of triads, skipping across melodic intervals and arpeggios, landing on the high notes, then starting low again and building back up. His left hand followed close behind, laying down bass, picking out harmony. Amato sped up, slowed down, let pensive tones hang in the air, then resolved them into rich chords as if he had been playing for years.

Amato played for six hours, leaving Sturm's house early the next morning with an unshakable feeling of wonder.

Amato then began searching the Internet to understand what had happened to him. He started by typing in words like gifted and head trauma. The results astonished him.

Finally Amato found the name Darold Treffert, a world-recognized expert on savant syndrome—a condition in which individuals who are typically mentally impaired demonstrate remarkable skills.

Treffert, now retired from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, diagnosed Amato with "acquired savant syndrome." In the 30 or so known cases, ordinary people who suffer brain trauma suddenly develop almost-superhuman new abilities: artistic brilliance, mathematical mastery, photographic memory.

Bruce Miller directs the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in San Francisco. In most cases, scientists attribute enhanced brain activity to neuroplasticity, the organ's ability to devote more cortical real estate to developing skills as they improve with practice. But Miller offered a wholly different hypothesis for the mechanisms at work in congenital and acquired savants.

Savant skills, Miller argues, emerge because the areas ravaged by disease—those associated with logic, verbal communication, and comprehension—have actually been inhibiting latent artistic abilities present in those people all along. As the left brain goes dark, the circuits keeping the right brain in check disappear. The skills do not emerge as a result of newly acquired brain power; they emerge because for the first time, the areas of the right brain associated with creativity can operate unchecked.

Few people have followed the emergence of acquired savants with more interest than Allan Snyder, a neuroscientist at the University of Sydney in Australia. The crucial role of the left temporal lobe, he believes, is to filter what would otherwise be a dizzying flood of sensory stimuli, sorting them into previously learned concepts.

These concepts, or what Snyder calls mind-sets, allow humans to see a tree instead of all its individual leaves and to recognize words instead of just the letters. "How could we possibly deal with the world if we had to analyze, to completely fathom, every new snapshot?" he says. Savants can access raw [pure? true?] sensory information, normally off-limits to the conscious mind, because the brain's perceptual region isn't functioning.

Berit Brogaard, a neuroscientist and philosophy professor at the Center for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri–St. Louis believes the left-brain, right-brain idea is an oversimplification. She has another theory: When brain cells die, they release a barrage of neurotransmitters, and this deluge of potent chemicals may actually rewire parts of the brain, opening up new neural pathways into areas previously unavailable.

"Our hypothesis is that we have abilities that we cannot access," Brogaard says. "Because they are not conscious to us, we cannot manipulate them. Some reorganization takes place that makes it possible to consciously access information that was there, lying dormant."[i.e. "remember ourselves"?]

Below are some of the amazing abilities of others with “acquired savant syndrome” (which sure inspire me to keep working on "cleaning my machine" !)

KIM PEEK
Peek could read two pages of a book simultaneously (one with each eye) and instantly commit them to memory. His recall of more than 12,000 books made him a walking encyclopedia. Peek, who died in 2009, could also sum columns of numbers in the telephone book.

STEPHEN WILTSHIRE
Wiltshire, who is autistic, was drawing buildings by age 8. As an adult, he has created stunningly accurate portraits of cities from memory. In 2007, he flew over the Thames for 15 minutes, then sketched seven square miles of London's streets, rivers, and buildings, precise down to the windows.

DANIEL TAMMET
Tammet can recite pi to 22,514 decimals, master a new language in one week's time, and perform lightning-quick calculations. Asked by one researcher to compute 37 to the power of 4 (answer: 1,874,161), he did so instantly. He perceives numbers and days as having distinct colors and emotional tones.

LESLIE LEMKE
Blind since birth, Lemke has a verbal IQ of 58 [100 is Average]. When he was 14, his family watched a movie featuring a Tchaikovsky piano concerto. Hours later, his mother awoke to the music and discovered Lemke playing it. He has performed around the globe and can reproduce thousands of songs from memory.

JIM CAROLLO
An acquired savant, Carollo gained exceptional mathematic ability after recovering from a severe auto accident at age 14. Just months later, he achieved a perfect score on a geometry mastery test without having studied. He later passed calculus exams, though he'd never taken trigonometry.

ALONZO CLEMMONS
A bad fall at age three left Clemmons with permanent cognitive impairment and a talent for sculpting animals with exceptional intricacy and accuracy.

JASON PADGETT
Furniture salesman, Jason Padgett was savagely beaten by two men and suffered a severe concussion. After recovering, this non-academic saw everything around him in terms of its mathematical structure and began to precisely draw intricate fractal designs "I see shapes and angles everywhere in real life—from the geometry of a rainbow, to the fractals in water spiraling down a drain. It's just really beautiful." Padgett dislikes the concept of infinity, because he sees every shape as a finite construction of smaller and smaller units that approach what physicists refer to as the Planck length, thought to be the shortest measurable length.

Full article here: _http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-02/when-brain-damage-unlocks-genius-within[/quote]

 

[SeekinTruth]

Really fascinating! Thanks for sharing.

 

[lainey]

Really fascinating! Thanks for sharing.

Agreed! It reminds me of the Matrix movie when they would just download a skill that they wanted. Instant mental kung fu! Thanks for sharing.

 

[know_yourself_1234]

Chapter 39 of "Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection" discusses the fascinating idea that our brain is tuner capable of accessing a some kind of Cosmic-Information Field

That's maybe the crstofindthem, high cosmic concept whose presence was revealed by the C's :D

A: They should include their birth date and current location for the CRS to find them.

Q: (L) For the what?

(Scottie) "for the crstofindthem"...

A: Cosmic Retrieval System

Q: (Pierre) They're using acronyms now! [laughter]

(L) Don't you know what the Cosmic Retrieval System is?! [laughter]

A: We use it all the time. It's like RAM in a computer.

There is some more about the crstofindthem

A: Divine intervention cannot be arranged by 3rd level beings.

Q: (L) What level beings arrange divine intervention?

A: 4th through 7th.

Q: (T) So, we are just shy of a level to do that! We can do some quasi-divine intervention!

A: You cannot do this divine intervention. You can do 3rd level intervention.

Q: (Laura, Jan) What is third level intervention? {Pause} (T) They're accessing the cosmic retrieval system.

A: Discover.

This is a very interesting information; here is another reference :

A: Okay, Laura. Cosmic retrieval system.

Q: (L) What does the cosmic retrieval system retrieve?

A: Remember computer was inspired by cosmic forces and reflects universal intelligence system of retrieval of reality.

Q: (T) This is a computer network, yes or no?

A: Strange thought pattern.

Q: (T) What you have described, on a very large scale, sophisticated...

A: Grand scale, close.

Q: (T) Can I access it through our earthly computer system?

A: In a sense, but not directly as of yet. But just wait. [Break]

What if 'world geniuses' went through personal events in their lifes who allowed such an income of information?

 

[JGeropoulas]

Another related concept is that of "receivership capacity". This all makes me wonder if the process that occurs from "brain damage" parallels that which occurs from Gurdjieff's "shocks". Wouldn't it be fascinating to use MRI's and EEG's to observe changes over time in brains of those doing the work.

 

[theos]

Thanks for sharing, JGeropoulas. That was fascinating. I'll try to refrain from going out and knocking my head against a brick wall.

 

[JGeropoulas]

Thanks for sharing, JGeropoulas. That was fascinating. I'll try to refrain from going out and knocking my head against a brick wall.

Funny! Yeah, this phenomenon may well explain a few things: why "head bangers" have been maligned in culture, the real motive behind imposition of laws requiring use of seat belts and motorcycle helmets, and probably even the impetus for creating OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration)--just kidding of course (maybe)! :/

 

[3DStudent]

Interesting, thanks for sharing! It kind of sounds like they are tapping into 4D abilities and perception. I recall synesthesia and learning a language in about two weeks were a reality in 4D. So these two got my attention:

He perceives numbers and days as having distinct colors and emotional tones.

Tammet can recite pi to 22,514 decimals, master a new language in one week's time

 

[JGeropoulas]

Interesting, thanks for sharing! It kind of sounds like they are tapping into 4D abilities and perception. I recall synesthesia and learning a language in about two weeks were a reality in 4D. So these two got my attention:

He perceives numbers and days as having distinct colors and emotional tones.

Tammet can recite pi to 22,514 decimals, master a new language in one week's time

Very interesting--I hadn't thought of that possibility.