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Category: neuroscience – Page 1,000

My answer probably won’t be popular, but it will be verifiable with licensed psychometricians. There is currently no job known that can’t be done by someone with an IQ of at least 135. That is the Wonderlic occupational cutoff for theoretical physics and philosophy, the two occupations with the highest IQ minimum at this stage. Secondly, when Nobel Prize winning scientists (literary and peace laureates were ignored) at my alma mater U.C. Berkeley were tested for IQ (it had something to do with a eugenics sperm donation program that ultimately floundered), it was discovered they didn’t necessarily have “genius IQs” (IQs at or beyond 140). For instance, Nobel Prize winning biologist James Watson only scored 130-ish (and that was a childhood score, so his adulthood score was likely lower). Yet, some of their peers without Nobel Prizes did have astronomical scores. Thirdly—and I’ll go into more detail below—IQ scores above 135 aren’t particularly reliable. So it very well could be one person scoring 135, 157, and 162 on different tests.

Consequently I would say the answer to all your example questions is: “It’s a crap shoot”

Some additional trivia that may be useful later on for you: Because of the way intelligence tests are normed, test scores beyond a certain range (some psychometricians say it is anything beyond 136 to anything beyond 145, depending on who you ask) aren’t particularly reliable. An adult with a score of +135 on legitimate IQ tests will likely routinely score that high on other legitimate IQ tests they take. But it may be 140 on one test, 165 on another, and so on. However, I can all but guarantee such a person will only mention their highest score from all the IQ tests they’ve taken (legitimate or not). When I hear someone go on and on about their 180 IQ or whatever, almost invariably it’s someone talking about their personal best, not their average, and probably not their average exclusive to IQ tests recognized by the APA as legitimate.

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Scientists may have made a significant breakthrough in restoring human sight, as a woman who had been blind for seven years has regained the ability to see shapes and colours with a bionic eye implant.

The 30-year-old woman had a wireless visual stimulator chip inserted into her brain by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) surgeons in the first human test of the product. As a result, she could see colored flashes, lines, and spots when signals were sent to her brain from a computer.

The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, suffered no significant adverse side effects in the process, according to a statement.

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However, researchers halted the study when 20 men dropped out complaining of adverse side effects including depression, mood disorders, pain at injection site, muscle pain, increased libido and acne. Despite these issues, more than 75 per cent of participants said they would be willing to use this form of birth control.

The male birth control method had showed a stunning 96 per cent success rate.

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In Brief:

  • A new visual implant from SecondSight may help restore useful sight in more than 6 million additional people who aren’t candidates for the company’s previous implant model.
  • Recently, there are more options being developed to restore both hearing and sight in affected patients, such technology has the potential to improve the quality of life of countless people.

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Who would have thought that roaches, that’s right, C-O-C-K-R-O-A-C-H-E–S, could actually do something good for humanity? Well, it seems that they are helping out quite a lot.

Bar-Ilan University scientists, together with the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, designed injectable nanobots, and they are testing them on these little critters. Remarkably, the technology controls the release of drugs that are needed for the brain using the brain itself. That’s right, using only brain power!

And down the road, this extra mind boost could be a lifesaver for many. The work was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

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Biologists at Caltech have developed a new system for visualizing connections between individual cells in fly brains. The finding may ultimately lead to “wiring diagrams” of fly and other animal brains, which would help researchers understand how neurons are connected.

“To understand how the brain works we need to know how neurons are wired to each other,” says Carlos Lois, research professor in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech and principal investigator of the new research, which appears in the November issue of the journal Development. “This is similar to understanding how a computer works by looking at how transistors are connected.”

Animals are made up of different types of specialized cells. In order for an animal to function, the cells have to be able to communicate with each other. For example, neurons directly communicate with so that an animal can move. In diseases such as cancer, this communication process can go awry: when tumors metastasize, they no longer “listen” to neighboring cells that tell them not to grow. Instead, the grow uncontrollably and migrate to other parts of the body.

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