This is an ARTICLE about a young phenom who threatens to out-perform the most popular internet search engine, Google.
Los Angeles, CA: Can it be so that the mind of a 15 year-old boy can categorize and access volumes of data more efficiently and quickly than Google? Researchers have found one young man who can do just that. Rene ‘Digital’ Murray was first discovered to have a photographic memory at the age of three. By five he was able to record entire children’s books, page by page, in his head. By ten he had half of encyclopedia Britannica committed to memory. And yet he uses only 22 percent of his brain (the rest of us use between 2-7 percent).
When asked how he could retain such voluminous information, he said it was simply a matter of looking at something the right way.
Since then, scientist have been scratching their heads, theorizing how this young man, or any human being for that matter, could store and recall so much data. Recent studies led by Cornell neuropsychologist Mina Norvlavsky suggest that what young Rene said about “seeing something the right way” was not too far off the mark. In studying the boy’s eye movements, she noticed a finite pattern occurring while the boy’s eyes scanned an article or visual image. So quick and minute were the movements, it required a special video camera to capture it.
“Have you ever seen those videos of a hummingbird flying where you can see the wings flapping slowly? Well, we basically got one of those and made it move double-time,” says professor Norlovsky.
This spiral pattern is caused by what Norlovsky has dubbed the facsimile bundle, a collection of nerves and muscles that allow Rene’s eyes to move so quickly. It seems that the order in which the information is collected also helps to make the information extremely recollectable, as if his mind simply has to reverse the process his eyes used to absorb the information.
“I remember one random word, like a keyword, and all the information is in there. Then I just use other keywords to minimize the search, but I’m not actually thinking when I do that part. I just sort of happens that way.”
Norlovsky is still scratching her head over how exactly data is retrieved.
However, if Norlovsky’s speculations about how data are absorbed are true, the days of needing a computer to navigate through a world of information might be soon coming to a close. Her laboratory is already working with a nano-device laboratory, also at Cornell, that will create a chip one can attach to his or her temple to create the same impulse patterns recorded in young Rene’s eyes.
The old days of using less than 10 percent of our brains might just be coming to a close.
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