Beautiful Minds - Voyage into the Brain - Season 1

First aired: 2/20/2006 3 episodes

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Episodes

1. Memory Masters

Aired: 2/20/2006

Memory Masters: How Savants Store Information Where does memory come from? What causes us to remember some things and immediately forget some things? What “filter systems” ensure that we store some things and not others? Do we simply store all sensory impressions, as Prof. Gerhard Roth from the University of Bremen says? And if we save everything, how could we manage to open the secret chambers like a savant?

2. The Einstein Effect

Aired: 2/21/2006

The Einstein Effect: Savants and Creativity The Dublin brain researcher Prof. Michael Fitzgerald supports the theory that outstanding creativity is very often linked to the malfunctions of autistic people. Einstein, Newton, Mozart and Beethoven, Fitzgerald says, were extremely gifted because their brains were wired incorrectly.

3. The Big Difference

Aired: 2/22/2006

A Little Matter of Gender: Developmental Differences among Savants Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen, considered one of the world's most competent autism experts, is not afraid of making himself unpopular. Baron-Cohen's findings break with the dogma that men's and women's brains differ only slightly. In his opinion, the operating principle of the extremely male brain can produce geniuses and monsters - and savants.