Original subtitles

WILLIAM SHATNER: Mental abilities

faster than those of any computer.

Senses that can extend far beyond the human body.

And a person who can play the piano like a Mozart

without ever taking a lesson.

There are those who believe the human brain has more potential

than even the brain itself can imagine,

and that its true capabilities might be limitless.

In some ways, we know more about the far reaches of the galaxy

than we do about the human mind.

How does the brain work, for example?

Where does genius come from?

And can a person actually see something

halfway around the world

using only the power of their thoughts, for instance?

Well...

that is what we'll try and find out.

Seattle, Washington.

November 2004.

Researchers working at the University of Washington's

Institute for Learning and Brain Science

publish the results of a study about the remarkable ability

that babies have to learn any language.

Their conclusion:

The smartest you'll ever be in your life...

-...is the day you are born.

JOANNE RUTHSATZ: The research shows that newborn babies are amazing.

They come into this world really able to adjust

to the stimuli that they receive.

JUDY HO: All of the world's languages

compose of about 800 different types of language sounds.

And as adults, we pretty much only utilize about 40 sounds.

However, when you're a baby,

you can actually hear and distinguish the difference

between all 800 sounds.

MICHIO KAKU: It turns out that babies

are hardwired from birth

to have certain forms of awareness.

When children babble, it's just not ordinary babble.

You put a tape recorder in the crib

and you listen to the babbling and you realize that the baby

is saying the same word over and over and over again,

that it hears random sounds

that it repeats until it perfects it,

-until it gets it right. -: Mama.

Looking at the infant brain,

it's like you're looking at the world's most complicated sponge,

and then you're seeing how much information

can it actually soak up

and how much of it gets drained out over time

as the brain begins to develop into the brains of adults.

HO: Newborn babies have over 100 thousand billion neurons,

which is twice as much as an adult brain,

even though their brain is so teeny tiny.

Later on, the neurons do prune away,

but in the beginning, basically,

the entire world is possible for babies.

But we don't know why certain parts of the brain

are just not accessible to you as an adult.

SHATNER: The brain: nature's computer.

After millions of years of evolution,

thousands of years of recorded history,

and hundreds of years of scientific research,

you might think we already know everything there is to know

about one of the body's most critically important organs.

But, the truth is,

we don't.

I'm a scientist, and therefore

I'm attracted to things that are mysterious,

and what are the two greatest, most mysterious questions

in all of science?

One is the creation of the universe.

Why are we here?

The second great mystery is

when you look in the mirror, you say to yourself,

"What lurks behind those eyes?

Why am I conscious?"

And then you begin to realize that the brain

is the most complex object in the known universe.

RAMIREZ: I think one of the most unexplained

phenomenon that exists in the brain is how

it stores, processes and retrieves information.

Every breath, every experience, every interaction,

every night of sleep, every cup of coffee,

all of that changes your brain,

and yet your sense of self remains pretty intact.

So how the brain holds on to that information,

how it uses that information to actually engage in the world,

is a wonderfully complicated problem.

We know a lot about the anatomy

of different parts of the brain in great detail.

What the functions are is another thing.

For example, there's an area called "area 25,"

and this area is turned on in people all the time

who are chronically depressed.

And it's just a small area,

but that small area's connected to a lot of other areas.

It's like Grand Central Station.

So it's not just the area but everything passing through

and by there in this whole circuit, and so,

it's more than just complicated or complex,

it's-it's still kind of mysterious that way.

SUSAN SCHNEIDER: Consciousness, in particular,

is tremendously mysterious.

Neuroscientists still don't understand

the neural basis of consciousness.

And philosophers have pointed out

that, even given the fact that the brain

is an information processing unit

of great sophistication, it doesn't make sense why

it needs to feel like anything to be us.

And, ironically, when we're studying it,

we're studying it from within the confines

of the brain itself.

SHATNER: Perhaps the best illustration of how little we know

about the human brain's inner workings

involves an incident that happened almost 200 years ago.

It was a case in which a man lost a large portion

of his brain in a horrific accident

and, inexplicably, survived.

In 1848,

there was a railroad crew led by a man name Phineas Gage.

e day, an explosive went off accidentally,

and a metal rod three feet long

hurled right into his face,

coming out of his skull,

landing 80 feet into the distance.

Everybody thought that he was an immediate goner,

but he remained incredibly calm.

He was even talking normally,

even though, apparently, parts of his brain

were even coming out the top of his head.

Phineas Gage was just sitting up talking,

right after this thing blew through the top of his skull,

which seems impossible.

MICHAEL DENNIN: He had a pole basically shoot in one side up through his jaw

and out of his brain.

Made a significantly large hole in his brain,

caused a lot of damage,

particularly to the frontal part of his brain.

And yet, he both survived and remained functioning.

So I would argue it's evidence for how complex the brain is.

SHATNER: After his accident,

Phineas Gage lived for another 12 years.

By all accounts, he was able to lead a relatively normal life,

despite his devastating brain injury.

But how?

How was his brain able to compensate and function

when parts of it had been severely damaged

and even destroyed?

It's a question that,

despite everything we continue to learn about the brain

and its capabilities,

we currently don't have the answer.

KAKU: The brain is a learning machine

that rewires itself after learning every task.

So you were slightly different than you were a few seconds ago

before you learned something

'cause the brain has incorporated that learning

into its network.

And that's why I think that we'll never really learn

everything about the brain,

because the brain changes with time.

HO: If we look back 100 years from now,

I'm sure there's still more to find out,

and we might feel like some of the things that we're doing now

are prehistoric and perhaps somewhat misinformed.

SCHNEIDER: The brain is so complicated and its functions

are so intricate that, at this stage of the study of the brain,

we wonder if we even know the right questions to ask.

SHATNER: Is the human brain simply too complicated

for us to fully understand?

Or can we learn more about the brain's amazing capabilities

by examining people

not with abnormal brains but with exceptional ones,

individuals with almost superhuman mental abilities

who are also known as geniuses?

SHATNER: The University of California, Davis.

June 2018.

Tanishq Abraham receives his bachelor's degree

with highest honors.

But unlike the other graduates picking up their diplomas,

Tanishq is only 15 years old.

And then from there on, we kind of figured, yeah,

he-he's getting the hang of this,

and so we start introducing new concepts to him.

BIJOU ABRAHAM: When Tanishq was four years old, we took his IQ test.

He had such a high IQ score, I-I don't think I knew anybody

who-who had that-that high of an IQ score personally,

so that's when I realized

there's something unusual about this kid.

TANISHQ ABRAHAM: I actually want to go to medical school

and become a doctor,

and I want to become a physician scientist.

I know that I have a talent, and I want to put it to good use.

SHATNER: What makes Tanishq Abraham's mind different

from everyone else's?

Although scientists have been studying child prodigies

like Tanishq for years,

they still don't really have an explanation.

And in his case,

an explanation is further complicated

by the fact that Tanishq isn't the only genius in his family.

BIJOU ABRAHAM: Tiara started singing at a really young age.

She started out singing, like, simple songs,

like "Happy Birthday" and-and things like that,

but she sang in an opera style,

and so we'd go and ask musicians, "Is that normal?"

And they were like, "That's not normal." So...

That's when we felt, okay, we have a different type

of prodigy on our hands,

not the highly scientific intellect type,

but Tiara has her prodigy more in the arts,

and she has a really amazing memory.

TIARA ABRAHAM: I've learned six languages,

including Spanish, French, Italian and German.

And just for fun, I memorized around 550 digits of pi.

It's amazing that, in a short amount of time,

she was able to memorize those numbers.

She kind of described it like dance programs,

where the notes start scrolling down.

And that's how she feels, she said.

The numbers, they're just scrolling by,

and she just starts reciting them.

3.141592653589

793238462643383

2795028841971

6939927510582

097494459.

HO: People don't even agree on the definition of what a genius is.

We know that it's not hereditary,

like the way your eye color is.

And so, really, many times, people who are defined

or talked about as geniuses, they do come from famies

with parents with normal I.Q.

And so, I don't think we know very much

about exactly why genius occurs.

TRAVIS TAYLOR: What's so special about these kids?

Why is it that their brain developed in such a way

that they can solve problems or understand things

that adults take years to do?

We need to understand why and how this is happening,

and then maybe we can all tap into that type of power.

SHATNER: Is it possible that the potential for genius

lies within each and every one of us,

somewhere deep within each of our brains?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining

the case of a man who wasn't born a genius,

but became one... at the age of 39.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

October 27, 2006.

While in town visiting his mother,

corporate sales trainer Derek Amato reconnects

with some old friends at a pool party.

AMATO: We got together at the pool for a little barbecue,

and we were challenging one another

to do all these goofy stunts.

And I told one of the guys to throw a football,

and I would run and dive over the water and catch it.

And I hit my head on the bottom of

the shallow end of the swimming pool.

I knew I had hurt myself,

but I didn't know to what extent.

After they took me to my mom's house,

she rushed me right to the hospital.

They had done a bunch of scans, and I didn't have any bleeding.

So they kept me to monitor what was going on,

and the next morning they sent me home.

SHATNER: Despite a serious head injury

that could have left him paralyzed, or worse,

Derek appeared to make a full recovery.

Other than a bump on his head,

there didn't seem to be anything different about him.

Or so everyone thought.

I did go home with my mother and stay with her

for the next five days, and I slept.

I remember little moments periodically looking up

and seeing these blocks, these black and white squares.

And I just thought they were little marks,

just from my head injury that I was seeing

these little, uh, shapes.

After five days, a gentleman that was with me

when I hit my head came over to pick me up.

And we went over to his apartment,

and there was a small keyboard in the corner.

And as we were talking, I just kind of felt drawn

to walk over to it.

And I sat down, and that's when my hands

just started to absolutely go

like I'd been playing for years.

And it was a pretty profound moment

because I had never touched a piano.

I did not see those black and white squares

prior to my head injury.

And then after some time working with some doctors,

we kind of put these pieces together

to understand that those little boxes are the notes

that are telling my hands what to do and where to go.

SHATNER: In the years after his accident,

Derek has become a virtuoso pianist,

and has played on stages across the United States.

And even though thousands of people

have now seen him perform, the question still remains:

How did Derek develop his incredible ability,

seemingly overnight, and without ever taking

a single piano lesson?

AMATO: My reaction at the moment I discovered my hands

were playing the piano was,

"How am I going to explain this to someone?"

I became so curious that I started looking on the Internet

for any information I could find on it.

And they even had a title for it

as "acquired savant syndrome."

And that was all new words for me because

I thought a savant was a French pastry.

HO: Acquired savant syndrome means that after

some kind of brain injury or damage,

all of a sudden this person becomes

really specialized in some area

that they previously had no skill in.

SCHNEIDER: Scientists have identified damage to

a particular area of the brain,

the left anterior temporal lobe, as being essential

to the creation of acquired savant syndrome.

The theory is that perhaps,

because the left hemisphere started to go dark

after this injury, now the right side could feel free

to express themselves fully,

and they develop these artistic abilities.

SHATNER: The remarkable abilities of people like Derek Amato

suggest that even if we aren't born a genius,

there is something in our brains

that could be rewired to make us one.

It's an exciting notion,

especially if we could find some way to unlock

our brain's potential not by accident...

...but whenever and however we want to.

Suppose we walk into a mind design center,

and we see a menu before us,

and one item is called "Human Calculator,"

and another item is called "Immediate Mozart,"

another "Immediate Picasso."

How many would you choose?

Will there be trade-offs if we try to induce

savant behavior in ordinary people?

We just don't know.

AMATO: I believe we all have these.

And it may not be musical gifts in all of us,

but I think we're designed gifted.

And I think it's just a matter of discovery

from there on out.

What began as a horrible swimming pool accident

somehow transformed Derek Amato's brain

into that of a musical genius,

and his life into one of great opportunity.

But what if someone finds out that the brain they have

is not that of a genius but of a criminal?

And not only a criminal...

but a brain that matches that of a serial killer.

SHATNER: Florida State Prison.

January 21, 1989.

SHATNER: Days before his execution,

convicted serial killer Ted Bundy

confesses to the murder of at least 30 people,

ending a crime spree that lasted for more than a decade.

HICKEY: We often use Ted Bundy as the perfect example of a psychopath

because he had all the attributes.

He was charming. He was likable.

He was k-kind of handsome guy. He was very articulate.

He knew how to ingratiate himself into people's lives,

and he did all the things

that you expect a normal person to do,

and yet, every step of the way, everything he did was about him.

He was a predator. He never stopped being a predator.

SHATNER: But how could an otherwise

clean-cut and successful young man like Ted Bundy

become a cold-blooded, psychopathic killer?

Did the circumstances of his life turn him into one,

or was he literally born to kill?

HO: There's been a lot of studies lately

on the brains of psychopaths.

And some of the most important findings is that we see that

they have a connectivity problem

with different parts of their brain.

FALLON: From the scans that I had seen,

scans of all these different murderers,

including psychopathic murderers,

there was the same pattern, and that same pattern

was a loss of activity in this area of the brain,

above the eyes, above the orbits,

so it's called orbital cortex.

This is the limbic system, the cortical limbic system,

and this is what's turned off.

When we look at someone who is a true psychopath,

it's most likely you'll not find much brain activity

in the limbic system.

And those parts contain areas of empathy and understanding,

care and concern, conscience.

This seems to line up with the reports of psychopaths,

you know, doing some horrific things,

you know, killing multiple people

and then just getting back up, going to a movie,

eating McDonald's within the hour.

They just don't seem to have their emotions

stimulated the way that a normal person's brain would.

There have already been studies about trying to rewire the brain

of psychopaths, in that we're trying to improve

some of their connectivity problems.

Because if we see that there's an issue

with two parts of the brain not communicating well

with each other, maybe we can send some electrical impulses

through it and see if we can stimulate them

into more action.

TAYLOR: If we do a brain scan on every baby that's born,

and we decide that this one has the type of brain

that's going to be a criminal mind,

what do we do with that?

Is that, uh, something that we have to retrain this child?

Do we keep this child under protection as they grow up?

How do we respond to that type of information?

FALLON: Are we more determined by genetics or environment?

We had an ongoing Alzheimer's study

that we were doing a clinical trial on,

but we didn't have enough controls.

And so I said, "Look-it, I'll ask my family."

We'll get them all in, do PET scans,

and they'll be controls because in our family,

there is no Alzheimer's.

And so I went through this pile of these Alzheimer's scans,

and we cover up the names, 'cause I don't like to know

who I'm looking at, what I'm looking at.

You got to stay double blind, right?

And each one was normal, normal, normal.

But I got to the last scan,

and I saw this very obviously completely psychopathic pattern.

It looked like all these psychopathic murderers

I'd looked at.

I said to the technician, "This is very funny.

"You-You've slipped in one of these psychopathic murderers.

"This is like the worst one I've seen,

and whoever this is, we got to notify the police."

And he goes, "This is somebody who's very dangerous."

So when I pulled off the name tag on the PET scan,

I looked at it and laughed. I said, "Guys, look-it,

this can't be right." It was my name on there.

So it was me that had the full-blown

psychopathic pattern in my scans.

Jim Fallon found that he actually has

sort of this classic psychopathic brain

from an imaging perspective,

but he's in a long-term relationship, he has a wife,

and sometimes she has to remind him to be

more empathetic, but he's a good citizen.

HICKEY: I would say that 30% is about biology and genetics,

and 70% is about nurturing or the lack of nurturing.

It's like nature loads the gun and nurturing pulls the trigger.

FALLON: Charisma is really a psychopathic trait.

And so growing up, all through my teens,

high school, I was very popular.

You know, popular and class clown,

and a ton of friends, and a ton of female friends,

and really got along with everybody.

I never thought anything was wrong,

even though from the time I was 11, 12 years old onward,

all the time, some adults would say to me,

"There's something quite evil about you,"

even though they couldn't put their finger on it.

SHATNER: Although, according to his own research,

James Fallon's brain is similar to those

possessed by people with psychopathic tendencies,

he hasn't gone on to commit murder.

But why not?

Could it be that the urge to kill requires something more,

something harder to identify within the human brain?

Perhaps the answer lies not in studying

the brain's physical attributes

but those of a less tangible nature.

Maybe it has something to do with not the biology

of the brain but with the brain's ability

to send and receive signals from far outside the human body.

SHATNER: May 2006.

Steven B. Williams, a successful radio host

and deejay from Colorado, has gone missing.

For the next two weeks, police engage in a massive search.

But despite their efforts, there's still no trace of him.

Desperate for answers, a close friend of Williams

decides to enlist the help of Angela Smith,

a woman with a unique talent:

remote viewing.

He didn't want to give me any up-front information,

because in remote viewing, often that can contaminate

the viewing and lead to imagination, et cetera.

The process I use consists of sitting with

a pack of white paper and a pen,

uh, a couple of letters and numbers,

and often nothing more.

You go through accessing colors and shapes

and smells and tastes, and going in your mind

to the location and perceiving

and bringing back the information.

I did a session and found water, brackish water,

a land mass, an event that happened.

And it seemed that the individual in question

had been killed, was in the water,

and a lot of other surrounding information.

In 2006, I was a commander

for the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department,

and I'd been in law enforcement about 31 years.

It was quite unusual, to say the least,

that Angela Smith would pick up a particular homicide

and provide detailed information and then try to help solve it.

I called the homicide investigator and just said,

is he working on a case with an anonymous body

found floating in the ocean?

By the fact that I had that much information,

I immediately had his interest.

So I says, "I've got some information on this."

And I said, "I've got to tell you

that it's gonna sound bizarre."

SHATNER: Using the information provided by Angela Smith,

the police were able to identify a nameless body

that had been found off the coast of Catalina Island.

It was that of Steven B. Williams.

But it didn't end there.

Angela provided information

not only about the victim but also about his killer.

After the body had been identified,

I did a profile, like an FBI profiler would do.

And that matched a profile of an individual

that Williams had been in contact with

and who had actually swindled Williams out of some money.

HEAL: The homicide investigator called me back

three or four days later and said,

"Hey, just so you know, this stuff's legit."

They had a possible suspect, and they even had a motive,

none of which they were getting

through the conventional methods.

I thought, "Wow, maybe there really is something to this."

SHATNER: Steven B. Williams' killer was eventually apprehended,

thanks, it seems, to the incredible abilities

of Angela Smith.

The idea of remote viewing has been around for a long time.

It-It's been around for actually thousands of years.

And it's the idea that you can transmit yourself

out of your body and go view other places

and-and get information, and then figure out

what was going on without ever having to go there.

SMITH: What science has found so far, they attach electrodes

to the brain while somebody's doing remote viewing.

Sometimes you're accessing information

with the right brain, reporting it and writing it down

with the left brain, so there's a dance going on.

It's very much a whole-brain activity.

SHATNER: Can remote viewing really provide visions

of people, places, things,

no matter where they are on Earth?

The very notion seems absurd.

And yet, there was a time when some thought

this practice could be used to win the Cold War.

WHITEHEAD: The Russians, during the Cold War,

were investing millions of dollars in parapsychology,

psychic phenomena, remote viewing.

And the Americans felt that they had to keep up

with the Russians, and so they developed

their own classified program, and were basically trying

to train psychic spies.

JOE McMONEAGLE: I was one of the first people that was recruited

for the remote viewing program,

what's now being referred to as the Stargate program.

I was recruited in October of 1978.

WHITEHEAD: In the late '70s, there had just been

a revolution in Iran,

and in November of 1979, a group of students

who were revolutionaries took over the U.S. embassy

and took dozens of American hostages.

So, when this hostage situation unfolded,

U.S. intelligence had very little information

about how many hostages they were,

where they were being held, et cetera.

It was reported later that there was a team

of remote viewers that were actually working

out of a secret location in Maryland just outside of D.C.,

and that they were trying to find out

what was going on inside the embassy.

McMONEAGLE: They said we need to know who's a hostage in this place

where an embassy was taken over.

Some of the other things we were asked to do

was describe how they were being treated,

what they were being fed, how they were being guarded,

other things like that.

In this case, we were able to identify

pretty much most of the hostages.

WHITEHEAD: They actually based legitimate intelligence efforts

on the information that they got

from many of these psychic remote viewers,

and so we know it works,

but we're still trying to figure out exactly how it works.

SHATNER: Espionage typically relies on high-tech equipment

like satellites, radio receivers and computers.

But according to those who practice remote viewing,

this technology is no match for the greatest computer

in the world: the human brain.

McMONEAGLE: I've been remote viewing now for 42, 43 years, constantly.

People ask me, "Well, how do you get information to come down?"

I go to a place in my mind where it's very quiet,

and I just open to whatever information's gonna come.

SMITH: I believe that everybody has a natural intuitive ability.

So, remote viewing training

focuses on that natural ability and enhances it.

What it says about the brain is that our brains are plastic.

They're able to adapt and able to learn.

Did Angela Smith's remarkable mental abilities

really help the police solve a baffling crime?

There are many associated with the case

who believe the answer is a firm yes,

just as there are those who believe that the contents

of an entire human brain can actually be uploaded

like data into a computer,

and that, once transferred, it can not only be stored

but used over and over again...

forever.

SHATNER: Boston, Massachusetts.

March 2018.

Nectome, a biotechnology startup company,

announces an audacious and controversial plan.

-Their vision?

A groundbreaking technique

that can take the data stored inside a human brain

and transfer it into a computer.

There are companies like Nectome that are attempting

to preserve the brain and the mind.

Our methods of analyzing the connections

between neurons in the brain are getting really good.

And so, eventually we'll be able to model the connections

between all the neurons, and at that point,

we'll have a better idea as to whether or not its possible

to upload a brain into the cloud,

but we'll have to wait and see what happens.

SCHNEIDER: Uploading is the process of basically copying and encoding

someone's mental life onto a computer.

Advocates of uploading believe that that would really be a way

for you to survive the death of your brain.

KAKU: And now people say, "Well, if I'm immortal,

"and I'm living my life inside a computer,

isn't that rather boring?"

No. Because this mainframe computer will connect

to a mechanical avatar that is superhuman i iery way.

And you will see through its eyes.

You'll feel through its sense organs.

So, in other words, we will have a form of digital immortality.

SHATNER: Digital immortality.

The incredible notion that we might someday

be able to live forever.

But if the information inside our brains

can be copied and transferred,

like information onto a computer hard drive,

-does that mean it can keep and store everything?

Like our personalities, perhaps?

Or would something be lost in translation?

There are two issues to consider here.

First of all, why believe that a digital copy of you

is capable of being conscious?

The second issue is that it doesn't at all follow

that that being would really be you,

that you are the survivor rather than a digital copy.

Consciousness is one of the most hard-to-define phenomena

about the human brain,

and it's also what separates us from all other species.

It's this idea that we have internal reflection.

Can we actually live on forever in a computer and still be able

to preserve all our memories, all our friendships,

all of the different things that we love?

And I think that that's a very romantic notion

for a lot of people,

that they want to feel like there's a way to go on forever.

But you can't separate the brain from the rest of your body.

TAYLOR: Consciousness requires a thing

called non-computability.

Non-computability is why this person likes chocolate

and that person doesn't.

There isn't a mathematical algorithm that can create that.

DENNIN: We probably aren't at the point where we understand well enough

what makes it human and conscious

to really recreate that in the computer.

My guess is your consciousness in you

is more than just the composition of your brain.

I think there is a special combination that makes us human

that at the moment is a secret.

I'm not convinced science won't be able

to figure it out at some point.

SHATNER: In this day and age, we tend to believe

that anything can be accomplished through

the power of technology.

But in the case of digitizing the human consciousness,

there seems to be a unique combination of factors

that can't simply be reduced

-to a series of ones and zeroes.

And according to many neuroscientists,

the reason we can't transfer a person's personality

-from inside their head to a computer

is because our minds are already networked to something else,

something outside our bodies.

There's a sense that you even have as a child

that there's something beyond us, outside of us.

There's this otherness involved and this,

perhaps, connection with the universe.

TAYLOR: You yourself are a part of the universe.

I don't mean you're inthe universe.

I mean, you are literally a piece of this universe,

so you are connected to everything else,

everywhere else.

When you have thoughts in your mind,

they are reaching out and connecting with other things

that are similar to those thoughts in the universe.

So it's possible that our brains

could be acting like transceivers to receive that.

WHITEHEAD: If you think of the way your smartphone connects

to the Internet or to a Wi-Fi network,

the human mind is actually connecting

to a field of information.

There seems to be this ability that humans have,

somewhere deep down in the darkest corners of our mind,

to be able to tap into information fields

that are not readily known by us.

STUART HAMEROFF: This means that consciousness can extend outside the brain.

So when people say, "Is the brain a generating consciousness

"or is it a receiver for consciousness

that's present in the universe?" I think it's a bit of both.

SHATNER: If our minds can tap into the very fabric of the universe,

could that help to explain why the human brain

is still such a mystery?

Is it ultimately too vast and complex

to figure out by means of simple biology?

There are those who believe the answer is yes.

And, if that's the case,

how can we even be sure that everything we know,

our thoughts, our very memories, for example,

are safe from being stolen by outside forces?

The fact is they're not.

SHATNER: Boston, Massachusetts.

July 2013.

Scientists at Boston University

publish the results of an extraordinary experiment,

results that call into question literally everything we know.

RAMIREZ: A few years ago, we had a series of experiments

where we were able to create a false memory

in the rodent brain.

We put our rodents in a safe environment

where they were free to roam around, and we developed

a set of genetic tricks where the brain cells

that held onto the memory of that safe environment

now became responsive to pulses of light.

So the next day, what we did was we put the animals

in a completely different environment

and we gave them a couple of mild foot shocks

in that environment, in an attempt to startle them.

But they key thing is that

we could shoot light into the brain

and reactivate the cells that held onto that safe memory.

So, one of the ways that we've known

that we've switched the memories is that the animal

no longer behaviorally looks like its scared.

And then that at least opened up the floodgates to this idea

that we can artificially manipulate memories in general.

We might be able to one day perform some kind of surgery

or some kind of intervention in the brain to enhance memories

that we don't want to be lost as a result of Alzheimer's.

Or suppress memories,

let's say, that we don't want to be there in cases of PTSD.

Or suppress emotions, for instance,

in certain cases of anxiety.

Memories are stored, just like you can put memories on a card

in a video camera or your cell phone.

And it's possible that you could manipulate the chemical,

the organic wiring, so to speak,

just like you could manipulate a memory card

in an electronic device.

You can take one file out and put another file in.

KAKU: In the future, we'll be able to record memories,

play them back and alter these memories.

And I wouldn't be surprised that, in the future,

you'll be able to go to a library

and have that vacation that you never had.

TAYLOR: But once we learn

how to add and remove files from our brains,

if we do not have some kind of safeguard system,

some kind of firewall to prevent other people

from doing it without us letting them,

then trusting our memories might be a problem.

Implanting new thoughts into people's minds?

Artificial memories?

The implications are as profound as they are frightening.

For example, how do you know if you actually watched this show?

Perhaps someone simply created a memory

and put it inside your head.

Preposterous?

How would you be able to tell the difference?

Let's face it, just when we think we've figured out

everything there is to learn about the human mind,

we realize how little we really understand

and how much more we need to know

before there is nothing left that is unexplained.

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