Human intelligence is not equal?Brain scientists say that

AI, deep learning, autonomous driving, brain interface ... we are entering a future led by brain science.

In April of this year, the book "Brain Biography" of Axin's family was published.

The author of this epic of brain science is Matthew Cob, a professor and neuroscience at the University of Manchester, the University of Manchester.

Academician of the Five Institutes of the United States, President Rongxiu of the University of California, former chairman of the American Science Promotion Association, and former Chairman of the National Science Foundation, Richard C. Atkinson said so after watching it:

This is the best book in the publishing industry in the publishing industry in my life.

However, many readers said in a message that the book is a good book, that is, in some places, for Xiaobai, it is a bit deep and not easy to read.

Seeing such confusion, of course, Axin would not sit at the sight. At 7 pm on July 14, Axin invited Matthew Cob and the senior researcher Qiu Zilong, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Talk, share the interesting research and views of the two brain scientists in China and Britain.

The following is the essence of the dialogue.

Can you judge how smart a person is?

During the live broadcast, Qiu Zilong and Matthew Cubu shared an interesting thing: when he was invited by CITIC Publishing House to write preface, he found that there were two prefaces in the Chinese version, one was written by his brain scientist, and the other. The article was written by a philosopher (Chen Jiaying, a senior professor at the Department of Philosophy of the Capital Normal University).

Qiu Zilong appreciated Chen Jiaying, so he carefully read the part of the philosopher's perspective. Professor Chen Jiaying's recommendation is: I want to know how the brain is working. If you can only choose to read a book and read this book.

The common feature of Qiu Zilong in their preface is about the interesting history of Napoleon and craniology. About 200 years ago, at that time, the attempt to study how the brain was working was to judge how smart a person was.

Napoleon was disapproved of this. He did not believe that the craniology was because he started from the bottom of society and climbed up step by step.

This actually leads to another problem, is it -can it be judged from a specific aspect how smart a person is?

Qiu Zilong mentioned a study. There are 500,000 genomes in the British biological sample library, which associates people's DNA sequences with their medical records and their lives, so researchers can now find the correlation between various situations and gene sequences.

In 2018, researchers tried to find out whether the genetic characteristics could get a bachelor's degree and graduate from college.

They found that about 2,000 genetic signs can be used to make some predictions. For example, someone seems very smart from a gene score, and it is more likely to graduate from university, while another person is much less likely. From the genetic score they discovered, the individual differences that can be predicted 5 times.

If you understand more genes, you may predict something in some parts of the genetic symbol.

But this leads to a paradox. On the one hand, we want to figure out how the brain work, and on the other hand, we do not want to create social inequality.

Some children are likely to be admitted to college, while others have little hope, but they should also be encouraged to become better themselves.

Qiu Zilong asked Professor Cob's view of this.

Professor Cob believes that the key point that everyone must remember about gene sequences is that many, many genes actually have a very small impact. Humans have about 20,000 protein encoding genes, and many other genes can regulate these gene activities.

You may be able to predict something, but this is probably probably, not a decision prediction.

Even with very simple features, it is actually very complicated.

We have all learned in school. If the parents' eyes are blue, their children are also blue eyes. Because parents are blue eyes, this means that the child has two blue -eyed genes, so the child can only be blue eyes. But this is not actually the case.

The latest research on the color of the eyes shows that more than 60 genes participate in determining our eyes color, so basically it can be said that the eyes of his child may be any color, depending on the more than 60 Change of genes.

Therefore, Professor Cob believes that there is indeed moral problems, and he agrees with Qiu Zilong's point of view. All this information is very powerful, but it is obvious that some aspects are disturbing, such as causing potential unequal, labeling to individuals with specific potential.

In fact, this can only be confirmed by hard work in their lives. The inheritance of our parents and our own situation have made us become us. Sometimes, if we can't help people, we cannot exert our own potential.

How far is human distance understanding the brain?

As a Chinese reader, Qiu Zilong said that he and other brain science researchers started to laugh at each other when they read the "future" in "Brain Biography": "Oh, in fact, neuroscience has not improved much."

Although there are many cool tools now, such as optical genetics, using these tools to manipulate neurons' activities, but still do not know how far away the human distance understands the whole brain is, how can we go faster?

Professor Kobe answered this way: I'm not sure if we can speed up. I mean this is very difficult. This is something that needs to be balanced back and forth. It should be calm from the inspiration of these fresh things, and at the same time, we must also acknowledge that colleagues from all over the world have done outstanding work. This is my starting point.

Human beings have obtained a lot of knowledge about the brain, especially the dissection of human brain, and know some simple things, such as how to perform surgery if there is a brain tumor, what will happen if you cut off a certain nerve, etc. The most fundamental question is how to understand how any behavior is produced from these complex networks.

The example given by Professor Cob in the book is the study of lobster stomach. Lobster and crabs have a muscle and stomach bag, and these muscles grind the food by contraction. There are about 30 neurons in this stomach bag, which can produce two rhythms, so their activities have two states.

So researchers should understand this thing, right? There are only 30 neurons. Over the past three or forty years, researchers have understood the genes they express, understand the neurosroofs of their surrounding secretions, and understand the neurotransmitters they use. They can model all these neurons.

But do not understand how they produce these two rhythms. Therefore, it is the easiest nervous system to really understand how the nervous system works.

To some extent, the story of lobster stomach marks that people cannot understand the nervous system. This is not because people have not studied well or they are stupid. On the contrary, researchers are very smart.

Professor Cob believes that it is important to let the public know how difficult it is.

Professor Kobe believes that it is necessary to fundamentally understand what the nervous system is. The answer will come from a very simple nervous system. This will be the foundation of everything and the basic element of building understanding.

In the next few centuries, we will eventually have a richer understanding of the human brain. Keep in mind that even the simple creature's brain is incredible.

There are 10,000 neurons in the brain of fruit flies larvae. In the past ten years, researchers are about to draw a connection group of larvae brain. It is just one, because neurons are different in different individuals, as are the larvae of fruit flies.

Even in a thing with a fixed nerve connection, such as a beautiful hidden rod nematode, we already know how each nerve connection is. Different nematode behaviors are also different, they have their own personality. They are very simple, but they respond in different ways, and they are not robots.

In the final analysis, all of this is the role of neurons, but we still cannot understand the characteristics of these emergence.

In physics, there is something called three -body problems. "Three Body" is also the name of a very famous Chinese science fiction novel. Physicists cannot predict one system containing three objects, as well as the system of three cells, and its behavior will become particularly complicated.

Maybe this is where artificial intelligence can help us. Because artificial intelligence can find a mode in a large number of data sets, it can extract potential features, so it may help us understand how these nervous systems are connected, and how simple behaviors emerge from the simple nervous system.

How to keep the brain young?

In recent years, everyone has paid more and more attention to the problem of brain health, such as Alzheimer's disease, and how to maintain a young state of the brain has also become a hot spot for everyone to discuss.

During the live broadcast, Professor Matthew Cob and Qiu Zilong combined their own areas, and explained this issue.

Professor Matthew believes that the brain is not muscle, so it cannot exercise like muscles.

But all research shows that you need to keep the brain active, solve puzzles, read, learn new skills, or accept new things when you are increasing.

He took himself as an example: "I am 65 years old, so I need to consider these, these will be helpful, which may not be able to ensure that the brain is kept young."

To keep your brain active, don't just sit and watch TV, or even worse, keep Weibo, just brush it occasionally. Then you can learn new languages, learn to play a musical instrument, and keep reading.

Qiu Zilong, a senior researcher at the Outstanding Innovation Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, agrees with Professor Ma Xiu's statement, and believes that if you do this, keep your brain in an active state and keep you young.

Regarding the development and maturity of the brain, the two brain scientists have something to say about Chinese parents

For Chinese parents, educating the next generation is always a core work in the family.

So how to scientifically promote the growth and development of children's brains?

Professor Ma Xiu thinks so: in human beings, in terms of definition, the brain has always been changing. So we are still us, but we are different.

Although thought is based on neurons, it also has its own dynamics.

Although major changes are at a larger level and at a larger level, humans do not understand at present, but we can see through language learning.

If you learn a language when you are young, it is very easy. But after the age of fourteen or five, learning new languages ​​became difficult.

For parents with young children, one thing is important to try to find ways to encourage children to learn another language. It is not necessarily learning English, other languages ​​are also available, Spanish or other languages, Japanese, and many other languages.

Professor Matthew believes that plasticity is the largest before adolescence. Fascinating is that there is a mysterious connection between language, mathematics and music.

These examples have abound in the education of Chinese families.

Professor Matthew said he has seen many wizards in China. They are mathematical genius or music genius. However, these are the same set of capabilities. People who are good at mathematics are usually good at language and music, and so on.

So you can train yourself, just like some Chinese parents encourage their children to learn in these aspects, but this is only feasible in a certain period of time.

But you can see genius children become musicians, but you do n’t often see genius children become poets, novelists or painters. So in a sense, the art of music is a special existence, and it is related to some deep development processes in the brain.

In addition, Professor Matthew and Qiu Zilong remind everyone to pay special attention to another factors that everyone often ignores, but at the same time, it has a great impact on the health of the brain -negative emotions.

Negative emotions, such as feeling angry or unhappy, even if there is no other impact, it will obviously change your interaction with others.

Professor Ma Xiu said that I don't know what medicine can solve this problem, but I think we should treat each other politely and friendly. My answer is a bit bland, but I think this is also the most basic thing.

In the West, people have long been very personalist ideology. Students think that competition is everything. This is why there is a society, because people want to compete with each other.

but it is not the truth. It is necessary to know that cooperation is the way of operation of society.

Professor Matthew said that when he was closed for the first time, he saw that China built a hospital in ten days on TV. Westerners saw: What? This is too good! This is too good!

It is because of cooperation and coordination that this can be achieved. Humans are doing this, we can cooperate, we can do things with each other. What we think in our minds is cooperation, and in the final analysis, cooperation is written in our genes.

Since hundreds of thousands of years ago, it has still played a role in cooperation.

If someone looks sad, the first reaction of normal people is to comfort others. This behavior can also be seen in some chimpanzees. If a chimpanzee is beaten by the leader, then other chimpanzees will comfort it, hug it, and treat it better.

Finally, Matthew Cob said:

Everyone should be friendly. I think from our biology, our success is generally because of the cooperation in social organizations. This is related to language and theory of mental theory. These are the whole of interrelated.

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