Bioinformatics/Bioengineering Project for more Prodigies

[Better_Education_Please]

Hey SciBuddies,

Please do not be alarmed by the title before reading I am designing a genuine computer program or ANN to be more specific, that is going to be biologically based to answer the following questions.

What is the overall or genetic neural plasticity of a prodigy?
Can I use MatLab techniques or certain bioinformatics to create a machine that thinks like a prodigy, or can answer or create almost anything? Possibly by scanning MRI brain activity of certain prodigies, or the brain of a prodigy. Similar to a computer-aided diagnosis. Or maybe use EEG instead?

Like this lady's Google Sci project right here: https://www.googlesciencefair.com/proje ... 31a4c97d99,

Could I use Bayesian Regulation Back propagation in any way?

Or maybe a machine that identifies a prodigy?

Then here comes the big guns: I want to do this to improve education. The original idea was to use it to be able to educate others and turn them into prodigies.

Is it possible to use laws of psycho-physics or study neural plasticity or a brain like Einstein's, and maybe model an education system in a way in which I could educate to make the person into a prodigy.

Maybe I can study the brain waves of a prodigy, and the brain waves of a non-prodigy and see if I can find the differences, and find out how to correct that. Or combine several techniques for excellent memory into one algorithm.

You can see my work is albeit abstract, but there is an idea coming. Could you help me out on the bio-side of things, and then the computer things I can do on my own.

I want to end up using deep learning methods. Like this guy as well:
https://www.googlesciencefair.com/proje ... c14ed57ba9

Thank you!

ED-ADVOCATE

[SciB]

Wow! You have a lot of great ideas. I remember a TV show about Einstein's brain that revealed he had some structural differences compared to the average brain; but whether they accounted for his brilliance is questionable and can't be proven with the information we have now.

If you want to compare prodigies' brain wave patterns to those of non-prodigies that should be doable except how would you get the brain data? There are headsets you can buy that don't cost that much and that are supposed to be able to 'read' and display some brain waves. you could buy a couple of those and get some volunteers to be monitored while they were working math problems or solving word puzzles and then look at the patterns to see if there's a difference between those of people who have exceptional skills compared to those with average skills.

Lumosity claims they can make your brain 'better' and I did it every day for a couple of years, but all I found was that I got really good at the games--and that is true of any video game--the more you play it the better you get. But whether you are better at school or at your job or in some sport or math or physics--I don't know.

I really believe artificial intelligence, AI, is going to provide one means for rapid technological advance but I am not that good a programmer to know how to set up the proper algorithms and learning modules. You should go to Elon Musk's AI workshop in California for a summer internship. You could learn a lot there.

I don't know if I have answered your questions so please post again if you want to continue the thread.

Sybee

[Better_Education_Please]

Hi Sybee! Thank you so much for your reply. Let me tell you what is going around in my brain right now. I feel this project could really amount to something. Consider this a mix between life and psych-science, as well as a bit of AI.

I did my project a bit of thinking and here is what I was thinking. I need to mimic or induce certain neural patterns in individuals, maybe through using a bit of psychiatric science or psycho-physics. I am afraid to use the word hypnotism as this might turn it into pseudoscience, but I think you get what I mean. The neural patterns of people with eidetic memory, prodigies in several disciplines..etc. I would collect data from neuroscience databases to train the network, and the final product could be in the form of a game or so. Primarily I will need to do some research on luminosity to see their flaws and what I can do better in. See the final product has to be able to integrate any form of information into the young human mind, accelerating education. Almost like an information down-loader. I am really interested in hypnotism and psychiatry, and I want to see if I can trick the brain into mimicking certain neural patterns that can accelerate learning. I'll outline a basic experiment concept below.

I could use the concept of CBT, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive ... al_therapy, or the techniques they employ to try and make one forget about something, and simply create the opposite, and so I would employ actual proven psychology to try and fix the brain onto a certain neural pattern.

Or, http://www.iflscience.com/brain/scienti ... e-memories, scientists have found ways to erase painful memories, and I could use a form of context that they can associate the information with, based on something they enjoy or like doing. Then the specific neural pattern would be induced over and over again and they would learn it. For example, associating a calculus question with lets say football. It seems awkward but it could work. I can also train the machine using MRI or EEG from neuroscience databases (maybe you know some). I am not too confident in MATLAB but I can train myself, although I can really make this psychologically based.

If there is data on Einstein's brain maybe I can analyse his neural patterns back then and compare it to a normal human mind, instead of the actual biology of the brain, keeping it computational based.

And BAM - you have more academic prodigies. More information gets resonated in their minds and stored in a much shorter period.

In terms of Art/Sport prodigies I am not too certain on that. But academic wise it will channel them to create outstanding things with their lives.

Thank you for your reply Sybee, hope you can work with me to bring this idea into reality!

Sincerely,

ED_ADVOCATE

[Better_Education_Please]

Hi Sybee,

So basically...
If you can help me out on the psychology side/neuroscience side of things or at least approve of my idea, then I can build on my computer science knowledge and teach myself to enhance it.

Merci!

ED_Advocate

[SciB]

Hi,

I know a little bit about a lotta stuff but I'm not an expert in neural networks in humans. I get the gist of what you are proposing and I believe it could work as a sort of specialized conditioning, maybe combined with brain activity feedback--kind of a wearable psycho-fitbit.

I really think different kinds of game-playing can improve cognitive skills in other areas, but the difficulty is in mapping an individual's responses because everyone's different. Someday there will be a neuro-analyzer that scans a person's brain activity and generates an individual learning algorithm for that individual.

This project seems to be out of the range for the usual high school sci project. I know a lot of people are working on AI, but I don't know anyone working on what you envision to modify human intelligence. Right now I would bet on virtual reality training as a way to teach people new skills, but there again how do you write the software to do that?

I think your ideas are exciting but I don't exactly know how we can help you. Have you tried posting your plans on the physical science forum? There's a lot more techno-geeks on that forum and they may know about AI, VR and neural networks.

Good luck!

Sybee

[Better_Education_Please]

Hi SciB,

I understand your expertise is in the life sciences. This is why I came to you first to ask you certain ideas. The only two questions I want answered are as follows. The programming, MATLAB...etc I can handle on my own All the techno mumbo jumbo I can handle

1) Could we possibly use association of something a person likes to the information to affix a certain neural pattern in each human being based on something of interest? That neural pattern being how they learn things? The opposite of memory erasing. Basically the information is instantly stored in because the mind is being tricked to be doing something it actually enjoys. So more information goes in.

Take a football loving child who hates math for an example. I will make him enjoy math, by videos or pictures of football. I will cause the neural patterns for both to be similar basically.

I think when I say neural pattern I mean brain wave.

2) Could we use techniques of CBT to do the same as I mentioned above?

3) What are the top public neuroscience databases on the internet?

Thank you so much. It is all I need from you. I know my ideas are quite wild for high school, but I envision this will work. All I need is some help in the psycho side of things from you

Thank you so much again and again,

Ed_Advocate

[SciB]

In theory, reproducing the neural patterns associated with a pleasurable activity and connecting them with something unpleasant to change one's attitude to positive is possible, but the person still lacks the mental skills to perform math as well as football. There was an experiment done years ago with rats whose brain pleasure centers were connected to an electrical stimulation device that was activated each time the rat pressed a switch with its paw. The animals quickly learned to associate pushing the switch with pleasure and kept doing it till they were exhausted. My point is that I can't say whether brain imprinting as you envision it will work because I have no idea how a person's brain wave patterns could be manipulated in a specific way. This sounds like something very dangerous and with lots of potential for abuse.

There are examples of normal brain wave tracings for waking, dreaming sleep, deep sleep, meditative state, etc., but I don't know of a database for neural patterns of math wizards, super coders, language experts, or the like. There are scientists studying which neurons are firing in which part of the brain in relation to various mental activities, but most of the time they don't publish the raw data. I would suggest that you get a couple of brain-wave headsets and do your own experiments first on some volunteers who have great talents in some area. You might be able to find a general pattern that works for all of them and is associated with peak performance.

Trans-cranial magnetic or EMF pulses of various amplitudes or frequencies might work to stimulate areas of the brain that promote learning a new skill. These areas are probably different because different parts of the brain handle math concepts compared to those that do language or music.

I don't know much about CBT. I think you would need to talk to a professional about the technique to know if it is possible and how to do it. Back in the 1980s there was a lot of pop psy talk about achieving one's full potential, working at peak performance, and using self-awareness to target goals. Maybe some of that works with some people--but for how long? A prodigy is a human who happens to have a particular type of brain that works marvelously well in one activity but may be dismally inept in other areas. Most people I know would not want to be prodigies. People want to be good at what they do but they also want to have fun with others, enjoy music, sports or reading--lots of things. Computer-assisted learning or eventually neural programming could help them get their job skills quickly so they could then have more time to do other things that give them pleasure. Creativity is so far a uniquely human skill and if you could combine that with practical knowledge and opportunity, maybe people could become more happy and productive.

Where will you begin? This is not just a one-shot project but a lifetime career.

Good luck,

Sybee

[Better_Education_Please]

Dear Sybee!

Thank you immensely for your reply!

I think maybe instead of focusing on the word prodigy, my plan is to get elementary education, and highschool education done in a much more smaller period. Due to the fact many students are complaining that the education system is not really helping them much in the modern world, that they are not learning to question what they are being learnt but just spoonfed random facts that they are merely not interested in. This project may lead to highschool being used for much more important things, or people to go to university at a younger age.

To engage ones neuroplasticity, one must remain training their brain constantly if I am correct. So I did some research on the following brain waves.

Gamma -> Hyper. Perfect for learning.
Beta -> Regular Activity
Theta -> Meditation

https://www.diygenius.com/neuroplastici ... -learning/

Because according to my research, rewiring needs you to be able to set goals correctly whilst maintaining a healthy pursuit of reward.

I will test what brain waves occur when people are doing something they like. Then I will test what happens when they are studying, then calculate certain differences between them, and see if I can create an optimum brain wave that blends the two together, which in turn I might be able to induce. Like you said in your previous post, "General wave pattern"

Forget about the computing for now. Maybe I can find out this optimum brain wave pattern for optimal neuroplasticity. Then I can focus on the product design.

What do you think? I am trying to make it as simple as possible. I am known for my wordy ways at school.

Thank you again for your help. I know this may seem hard to envision but it might work. Please keep this thread going. I am also open to all kinds of suggestions.

So the optimum brain wave idea, how about that?

Thank you again and again

ED_Advocate

[SciB]

Don't apologize for 'wordiness'. I much rather have a person take the time to explain as clearly as they can what they are proposing. Communication and understanding do not always go together unfortunately so the better you describe your ideas the better your chances that the light bulb will go on in the mind of your hearer.

Think about your ideas as the basis of a kickstarter campaign. You have outlined a lot of possibilities. What you need now are some concrete facts to demonstrate to your audience that this brain-wave optimization could work the way you envision it. A researcher would present data from their own studies, but since you don't have a lab yet you need to do some Google Scholar and PubMed searching for results that are related to your project.

We can help you devise a project but first you need to be clear on how you want to proceed step-wise and what your goals are now and in the future. Get familiar with what brain researchers are doing. Talk to them if you can. Read their published papers so you know how they approach problems. You have to know a field thoroughly before you can work effectively in it. Ask specific questions and we can try and help you get answers.

Good luck!

Sybee

[Better_Education_Please]

Dear Sybee,

Thank you for your kind wishes and reply. I will post again in this forum when I am ready with a much more clearer idea and approach.

Kind Regards

Ed_Advocate

[SciB]

You are most welcome!

Good luck in your project and if you have a question along the way, don't hesitate to ask. We learn by helping others learn.

Sybee