(upbeat music)
I'm Todd Sampson,
a Canadian born Australian from Sydney.
I run a leading communications firm
and I'm on a quest for a better brain.
In this series I embark on a three-month training program
to prove that modern science can turn any brain
into a super brain.
That's the way.
I'll be tested, probed and pushed to my limits.
Well and then you add these locks.
And ultimately I'll attempt an extreme challenge.
In this episode I'll train to expand my mind power
and compete in the brainiest competition on the planet.
Neurons on the ready, go.
But this journey is not just about me.
We can all improve on the brain we were born with.
So strap yourself in and take the challenge with me.
Oh wow.
(intense music)
(soft music)
I'm here in Germany to witness an incredible mental feat
that has never been attempted before.
Mark Lang will try and set a new world record
by playing 12 opponents in chess simultaneously
at speed without actually being able
to see their chess boards.
This should be great.
(suspenseful music)
It's called blind rapid chess.
Mark Lang never gets to see the chess pieces.
For each opponent he's only told their latest move.
Everything else he has to remember
on 12 chess boards at once.
With just 50 minutes per game to win or draw.
This is extraordinary to watch
considering the average person can only hold
about seven things in their working memory at one time.
Mark is holding hundreds of moves in his mind.
It seems impossible.
I'd love to know what's going on in Mark's head.
There is kind of a new room opening up in my mind
and inside of this room there are all the boards.
There is all dark and I can say "Okay show me board 11,"
and board 11 is coming out of the dark
and I can see it.
(beeping)
Now with nine wins and two draws in the bag
Mark has just one game left to win
from his allotted three hours to set a new world record.
So now you're about to be finished.
(laughing) Yeah.
(speaking in foreign language)
(applauding)
Congratulations.
That was amazing Mark.
How do you do it?
Well I don't know actually.
Just the games all stick to my mind
without me doing anything in particular.
So try it.
And do you consider yourself just an ordinary guy?
Yes of course, ask my wife.
What does your wife think of this?
She always says "You can only play blindfold chess
"because your brain is running on low energy
"the rest of the time."
(laughing) Yeah.
What a remarkable achievement.
Marc is proof that ordinary people
can do extraordinary things with their mind.
But now it's my turn to put that to the test.
Over the next three months using the latest
in brain training techniques
I will attempt to radically transform my brain
and prove that anyone can make their brain better.
For the first time ever on television
this series will put brain plasticity to the test
using my brain as the experiment.
(upbeat music)
My coach and mentor for this episode
is world renowned American neuroscientist
Dr. Michael Merzenich.
Hi Michael.
Hey, you must be Todd.
Yes, welcome.
It's really nice to meet you.
Thanks for coming this way.
A pioneer of the brain plasticity revolution,
Michael believes that in just one month
he can turbocharge my thinking speed,
attention, and memory.
So Michael you've flown halfway around the world
to try and improve my brain.
Yes, that's exactly what we're up to
and we're gonna do it.
So I know I'm in good hands, what are we going to do next?
I'm eager to get going so what do I actually need to do?
Well the first thing we have to do Todd
is to figure out what your present capabilities are,
you know what can Todd do.
Then we're gonna look inside your skull
and we're gonna examine your brain.
We're gonna image it, we're gonna record from it
and we're gonna sort out how it's actually functioning
because our whole goal is to see if we can drive it
into a better position.
I hope you can find it.
Oh we'll find it.
We'll find it and we'll probe it
and we'll record from it and we'll see its wonders.
(upbeat music)
Wow, that's a snug fit.
It's said that brain tissue has more connections
in one cubic centimeter than there are stars in our galaxy
and I'm about to see how my neurons and synapses measure up.
So this is your head produced into
a point cloud.
Wow, that's pretty cool, look at that.
Just take a seat on the edge.
I've never had a brain scan before.
[Medical Technician] Just take a seat, yeah.
It's amazing that this MEG scanner
is able to record my brain in action.
We have around 70000 thoughts a day.
And this giant magnet is so sensitive,
it could zero in on a single one.
Okay, are you comfortable there, Todd?
As comfortable as you can be
if you had your head in a pizza oven.
[Medical Technician] Okay, wonderful.
With the testing, we're gonna use MEG recording,
which is a magnetic recording method
which allows us to look at
actions in Todd's brain as they occur.
So you could say it's Todd in action.
The tests are all specifically targeted
to reveal important things that we'd like to know
about Todd's starting point, about Todd's brain as it is.
We're going to look at his action
in all kinds of ways that calibrate his brain speed.
Mipo.
Hovi.
Mara.
Also, we're gonna assess
the state of alertness of his brain, how on the ball he is,
how effectively he's monitoring things with his attention.
By far, the most difficult was the Stroop test.
Right.
Two hours with your head stuck in that machine.
Yeah, well actually, this is quite a bit more pleasant
than the next machine.
Oh, brilliant, that's good to know, great.
I look forward to the next machine.
(laughing) You'll like it.
I love how you take so much enjoyment
in me going through all of these.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so no one told me
about another hour of MRI scans.
But secretly, I've always wanted to try this machine.
It takes hundreds of photos of my working brain
which get animated into a movie.
That's the right side of your head.
Look at that, wow, it's like brain art.
So, is everything okay in my brain?
It's a beautiful brain.
By every indication, things are alive and well in there.
You found something.
No, we have a, we made a pretty complete documentation
of the status of your neurology.
Everything looks healthy, vital, and active,
but it's still improvable, and that's the point.
So now, we have accurate baseline measurements
of my brain function, but at the end of my training,
I'll be scanned again to measure any changes.
But first, it's down to work.
The brain is designed to improve with use.
So brain training is like fitness for the mind.
If I'm going to make mine better, stronger, faster,
it's gonna take some dedication.
So we've created a special gym for the brain.
And the first skill we're going to target
is my thinking speed.
So Todd, the first task is to determine how fast
you can operate to, when you see something,
to identify what it is.
We call this recognition speed.
So it's like a visual game.
It is a lot like a game.
And remember, we're measuring two things.
We're measuring the speed with which
you can make these decisions
and we're measuring your accuracy.
Great, let's do it.
Okay, let's go, you're on your own.
Okay, here we go.
It's called the What's This? Test,
and it measures thinking speed
by recording my recognition and reaction times
when I try to categorize an object.
If it's a tool, I press the left arrow.
For a writing utensil, the right arrow, as fast as I can.
(beeping)
You give it a go.
(beeping)
Wow, that was full on.
Yes.
There were so many things coming at me at the same time.
It is hard, I mean we're defining what,
how you operate at your limits.
How'd I do?
You did okay, you got actually
62% of the things that you saw.
You took about nine-tenths of a second to make a decision.
That's a little longer than I would've expected
given your other abilities.
That's something we can definitely improve.
(beeping)
Okay, so I've got some work to do
on my thinking speed, but Michael's devised
some training exercises to drive it to faster, higher rates.
So Todd, this next task is really pretty simple,
and it's all about improving your speed.
And what you're gonna see is
a series of letters or numbers or whatever,
so you might see something like this.
And there will be simultaneously a voice.
And let's say it gave you the number eight,
would that be correct or incorrect?
That would be incorrect.
That's exactly right because they're obviously seven.
It seems simple, but,
Seeing the eight, hearing an eight, and thinking seven.
Exactly.
Is a bit more complex.
It is.
Thinking speed gradually declines with age
as we move our eyes less and less.
A teenager can sample information seven times a second
while an 80-year-old, only twice a second.
But at any age, we can all give
our thinking speed a turbo boost.
Okay, here we go.
Two.
Five.
Four.
In this Mixed Signals Task,
I hit the space bar only when there's a match.
One
Three.
It takes around half a second
for the brain to turn a thought into an action.
Two.
But this simple training tool
is designed to speed this up
by increasing my visual sampling rate.
One.
Two.
Five.
And it's like any exercise.
The more I get those neurons firing, the better I'll get.
Three, four, three, five.
So that game seemed, it was fun but it was hard.
How many times do I have to do a game like that?
Well, you're gonna have to come back to a task
that's of this general form about 10 times.
The better you get, the harder it will get.
So day-by-day, we're gonna ratch it up your brain
until you reach a relatively high performance level.
So Michael has given me a battery
of computer-based brain exercises
and wants me to train for 30 minutes a day
for the next four weeks.
It'll keep me pretty busy,
but he's also advised me to learn to juggle.
Believe it or not, this is one of the best activities
for increasing thinking speed.
(lively music)
Nick Price is one of Australia's best jugglers.
And I kid you not, his day job is a brain scientist.
So Nick, I've been told by the other scientists
that one of the best ways of increasing
my brain speed is through juggling.
Yeah, I definitely agree.
Juggling improves your ability to think quickly.
It improves your attention and focus.
It's really a good thing for the brain.
Alright, Nick, let's see what you got.
Let's see some juggling.
Okay, so,
I feel like I'm in the line of fire here.
So Nick, you, it's amazing.
You weren't even looking at them.
Well, it's too fast to be able to look and think
about everything that you're doing.
You really have to just do it with your peripheral vision,
making sure that you control the spin,
making sure you know the positions of the knives,
even though you can't actually be
looking at all of them directly.
I was looking at them all.
Well, maybe your brain is already processing pretty fast.
Yeah, it was processing,
"Get away from the guy with the knives."
Yeah.
Okay, it's pretty obvious
that Nick can juggle just about anything.
I'm gonna pass on the fire sticks and knives for now.
But balls, well they look more achievable.
Watching Nick, I noticed his stare remains fixed
on an area around two feet in front of him.
His attention is focused.
He never blinks or looks directly at any of the five balls.
Yet his hands are always
in the right place at the right time.
His balance is perfect and his throwing action,
smooth and consistent.
That's some pretty impressive brain power going on there.
Okay, what I'm gonna show you how to do
is what's called a three-ball cascade.
So three balls, two hands, one brain.
Okay.
So the way we're gonna start is with two balls,
right, left, catch, catch.
And it helps to say it, if you say it,
then you're more likely to do it.
Okay.
Right, left (laughing).
Saying didn't help.
The ball flying over there, okay so,
So,
So right, left.
Think about keeping your elbows relatively stationary.
Oh, okay, that's good information.
So the tough thing now is to get that third ball
out of your hand as the second ball is coming in.
So that's the new movement that you're learning.
So you're gonna go right, left, right, left.
Maybe a little lower than that.
That looks like it's starting to get dangerous.
We need to get you to six throws and six catches,
which is a qualify.
So I'm not juggling until I can catch six.
That's right.
Okay.
Two, three, four, five, six, aw so close!
I seem to be getting the hang of this.
It's amazing what a little bit of practice can do.
Half an hour ago, I would've thought that to be impossible.
It felt so unnatural and so uncomfortable.
And with a little bit of practice,
I reckon I could become quite good at this.
Todd's technique improved actually quite quickly,
and I think that's because he was quite patient.
So he was quite happy to practice just two balls
and then three balls and get that technique smooth
before moving on to the next step.
If he trains even five minutes a day for a few weeks,
he'll get much more smooth,
and then he can start learning tricks.
He can start maybe trying to juggle four balls.
Practice is the key.
Next on my training hit list, sharpen attention.
Aiming your eyes at something is no guarantee of seeing it.
Have you spotted what's wrong with this picture yet?
Studies show that more than half of us don't.
We're all pretty bad at paying attention,
but we can improve it.
Now we're gonna do a relatively direct test
of the baseline level of your attention.
You can think of it as an evaluation of your alertness.
And we're gonna measure
something that's called attentional blink.
So you're gonna see a series of letters flash by.
And in the middle of those letters are gonna numbers.
And your simple task is to remember those numbers
and report back what you saw.
So what does blinking have to do with it?
Well because your mind is blinking.
Once you see something that captures your attention,
there will be a period of time in which you see nothing.
You're making me nervous about driving home.
(laughing)
So let's go, let's see how you do in this.
Alright, let's do it.
Five.
You saw one, what was the other?
Well, didn't see it?
Didn't see it.
Okay, that means it was in the window of your blink.
Five and, I think that was four.
Two and five.
Okay, your turn.
Okay, when things occurred relatively slowly
or deliberately, you got about 71%.
I would say that that's about average,
a little above average.
When things came fast, you got almost 60%,
and that's really good.
But still, there's room for improvement there,
significant room for improvement.
So it's clear I've got some work to do
on my attention, no surprises there.
But I want to explore the science more deeply.
So with Michael heading home to San Francisco,
I've decided to hit the US as well.
(guitar music)
I've come to Phoenix, Arizona, to meet three people
who specialize in the field of attention.
Two of them are scientists, the other a magician.
No prizes for guessing which one he is.
Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik
are visual neuroscientists at the Barrow Institute.
And Magic Tony, well, he does magic.
So we have actually been working with Tony
to figure out what magic can bring to neuroscience
and how we can go to the lab and see
how magicians manipulate your attentional processes,
your cognitive processes, your emotions even.
Magicians manipulate attention and awareness
better than anybody else in the world,
including cognitive scientists.
So we realize, we needed to study
what magicians are doing to your brain
that if we could learn their tricks, we could discover
how those mechanisms work in the brain better.
So scientists are learning from magicians.
Absolutely.
That looks interesting.
It's been years since we lost anybody.
Stephen and Susana are fitting me
with an eye-tracking device, which will record
precisely what I'm watching during the magic trick.
So what we're doing here is we're going to position these
infrared video cameras pointing at your eyes.
As you look at this video,
the eye-tracker is finding your pupil,
which we can see there in blue in the other screen,
and that's how we can tell what you're looking at.
And your only task is to watch the trick and to enjoy it.
Okay, I can do that.
Hi Susana, we're going to try a little mind reading today.
Would you shuffle up that deck for me?
Some people think crystals hold a lot of power
for transmitting thoughts.
So I thought we could really amp that up
by getting 10000 crystals, I spared no expense.
There we have it, 10000 crystals of salt.
So, I'm gonna spread out the cards on the table here.
I want you to remove any card you like.
Great, memorize that card, show it to the camera.
I don't wanna see what it is.
And please, stick it into the center of the deck
anywhere you like, shove it on in there, alright.
So what I'd like you to do
is begin concentrating on your card.
Send the thought of the card to the base of the salt shaker.
It'll shoot up through those crystals.
It'll be magnified, it'll shoot out the holes
and hit my right in the brain.
We could wish for a bigger target, sure.
Alright, begin sending the card.
It's a 10, is that correct?
Yes.
In fact, your card is the 10 of clubs, is that correct?
Ah, that's amazing.
But what's even more amazing is that
you selected a card from this deck,
you shuffled up that deck.
And in fact, there is no 10 of clubs in the deck.
Have a look, not a single 10 of clubs
because the 10 of clubs is the card that I keep
underneath my salt shaker.
Taking data from the tracking device,
my every eye movement has now been
superimposed over the video.
So now, we can see where you're looking when
during the magic trick and understand
how you perceive things.
So let's go ahead and start.
Hi Susana, we're going to try a little mind reading,
Wow, my eyes are moving around a lot, aren't they?
Sure, magicians are experts
at creating a set of cues that can choreograph
how you deploy your attention.
And in fact, if you remember,
there were two magic tricks in this video.
The first was me divining the card
that Susana selected from that deck of playing cards.
And she freely selected a playing card.
I had no idea what the card was initially.
And I have to peek at that card,
which I have controlled to the top of the deck.
And so I find a time to do that
that is accompanied by the perception of humor.
I make a silly little joke there saying,
it'll be magnified, it'll shoot out the holes,
and hit me right in the brain.
We could wish for a bigger target, sure.
And it's at that precise moment,
the moment that you're perceiving humor,
"We could wish for a bigger target, sure,"
that I overtly peeked at the top card of the deck,
but you probably didn't notice.
That's amazing that you did that.
I still can't see you having that peek.
We could wish for a bigger target, sure.
What's happening with humor is that
your attention is suppressed.
Magicians put in jokes very specifically
so that the audience is feeling mirth at very specific times
and it's another way that they control
what you're paying attention to and what you aren't.
Some of the magicians that we've worked with,
they've put it this way,
when the public laughs, time stops,
and then the magician can do anything.
They can get away with magic and murder.
And the second part of the trick
was when the card vanished from the deck
and reappeared underneath the salt shaker.
So the moment that I divine
Susana's thought of playing card,
In fact your card is the 10 of clubs, is that correct?
is the same moment that I'm palming that card
so that I place it beneath the salt shaker.
There's a type of eye moment
called smooth pursuit where the eye follows motion.
And Tony uses it to divert my eyes
away from the salt shaker.
So notice how he spreads the cards,
and your gaze is going to follow the motion of the hand
dragged along this trajectory while at the same time,
he's inserting the card under the salt shaker.
Now that is visual information that is
completely available to you,
but it never reaches your awareness.
So you mean, I actually saw the trick,
but I didn't know that I saw it.
Your vision here saw it, you were not aware of it.
So really, what our research is showing
is that attention is far more about
suppressing distractions than it is about
enhancing what you're paying attention to.
And what that means is that magicians
are really kinda using a mental jujitsu against you.
They're getting you to use your own
attentional system against yourself.
Sneaky magicians.
(laughing)
(lively music)
So it's clear the brain needs
dedicated focus to be attentive.
And multi-tasking is a fallacy.
So using a phone behind the wheel
reduces your driving ability by a third.
But there's another reason why we fail to notice
what's happening around us.
And that's why I've come to San Francisco
to catch up with Michael Merzenich.
He wants to work on my peripheral vision,
an important part of alertness.
(upbeat music)
Hi, Michael.
How're you doing, Todd?
Nice to see you, man.
Nice to see you, is this your car?
Oh, man, yeah, we're gonna go for a ride in this car
because it's probably one of the easiest ways
to show you about peripheral vision,
is to take your for a drive because
there you use it in rich abundance.
So you get to drive.
I'm driving.
You're driving.
Remember, we drive in the,
what is it, the left of the right here?
Ah, we'll find out.
He needs memory training.
Okay, two middle-aged man in a red Mustang.
This is not gonna seem tragic at all.
Easy tiger.
You don't realize how complicated
and challenging driving is
until you think about it a little bit.
You have to divide your attention between
the things that are in the immediate center of
where you're looking but also
you have to be drinking all these things from side to side.
So peripheral vision is a pretty important asset
and something we often take for granted.
But the scary part is, as we age,
it starts to degrade at an alarming rate,
and we're not even aware of it.
We're really good at taking an information
all across the horizon when we're young.
And we probably reach a peak,
maybe around our 30th birthday.
On your 60th birthday, you've lost about
a quarter of the world in front of you.
By the time you reach your 80th birthday,
you've lost half of it.
Just like you have a TV screen
that shrunk in size in front of you by about 50%.
That's a tremendous loss.
You're walking through the world with blinders on.
Oh, check that guy out.
Right?
Right, he needs peripheral vision testing.
Yeah.
You're making me paranoid now.
Well, you know,
You're pointing everything out to me.
You know, you don't think of it.
It's really about opening up your eyes and your brain
so that you see the whole world.
I know, you're interesting,
but you're not very encouraging in the driving.
You're like, "Things are jumping up!
"They're on your left, they're on your right."
Backseat driving aside,
Michael's point is that we don't just see with our eyes.
We see with our brains.
And that's good news because it means
peripheral vision can be radically improved.
So this is a task, basically, that's designed
to improve your peripheral vision.
It turns out that this is
a remarkably recoverable ability.
At any age, everybody's improvable.
And you're improvable not just in the fact
that you'll see more and respond to it
more effectively with your eyes,
but you'll also become better and better
at interpreting what it is you see.
So in this training exercise called Double Decision,
a car and a series of signs are shown for just two seconds.
You have to identify which of the two cars you just saw
and where the Route 66 sign was.
Because your central vision has to stay focused on the cars,
there's not enough time to scan the signs.
So you're forced to spot the Route 66 sign
with your peripheral vision.
Oh, it's getting much, much harder now.
You try it.
The most exciting thing about this training
is how fast it actually gets results.
We see very strong effects in retraining
peripheral visual ability, occurring within
an hour of two of training and in six or seven hours.
It's as if you're back in your ability 20 years in life.
To gain back 20 years ability in less than a day
is a real testament to brain plasticity
and just how fast changes can take place.
You're good, but you can be better.
You'd think Michael
has given me enough training to do,
but as well as thinking speed and attention,
he wants to improve another mental skill.
He's asked to meet me at a restaurant across town.
But this ain't no for lunch.
So Todd, we're here in this nice restaurant
because we've set up a memory test for you.
And you're gonna go upstairs,
and you're gonna meet a really nice group of people.
They're gonna be seven people.
Each one of them will be wearing
a name tag and a colored scarf.
And then each one will also have
a signature dish sitting in front of them.
And your task is really simple.
You have 21 things to remember.
And how long do I have to do that?
Oh, you have 42 seconds.
So this is another form of torture.
Oh, Todd, you can do it.
Okay, you can open your eyes now.
Your job is to remember names,
remember the color of the scarf they wear,
and remember the food in front of them.
Are you ready?
I'm ready.
Starting now.
Okay, here's your chance to test your memory.
Time's up, Todd.
That was 42 seconds, you're kidding me.
No, no, no, that was 42 seconds, Todd.
And you drank it all in, so you're in good shape.
I drank, that's impossible!
Be optimistic.
Okay, Todd, we're back for the second part of this test.
I don't even recognize these people.
I don't even know that look.
So, you remember who this is?
It's Felicity, and she was wearing, uh,
yellow scarf.
Yup.
Yes.
And she was eating a pie.
See, I just thought that was so unlike you
to be carrying that, it stuck in my mind.
Thank you.
Uh, Gabriel?
And you were wearing,
orange?
And, spaghetti.
Anastasia,
okay.
I remember yellow, but it's not yellow, is it?
Okay, you were eating a salad.
Ben.
What kinda name is that?
But I do seem to recall you wearing blue-ish, blue?
That's close, uh, I do remember a burger.
Okay.
This is awkward, isn't it?
Marina?
Oh, okay.
Red.
Another salad?
No.
It's kind of a salad.
I got no idea who this bloke is.
Have you been here the whole time?
Yup.
I remember blue with you.
Copper, Cooper.
Very good.
I have no idea what you were eating, fish.
It's a fish pizza.
(laughing)
Okay.
Lucinda.
Yeah.
Sushi.
Yeah.
And the color,
is that kinda pink, red thing?
Yeah.
Yeah, I can't believe I remembered that much.
I still think you're Ben.
Well, the brain training must be kicking in
because my working memory could handle 16 items.
A typical score is more like seven.
Michael's got some more computer training for me.
But he also wants me to learn
some pneumonic techniques for memory retention.
And for that, I'm headed back home to Sydney.
To help train my memory, I've called in the cavalry.
Tansel Ali is not only a memory coach.
He's also a two-time Australian Memory Champion.
Hello.
Hi, Tansel.
Todd.
Welcome to my home.
Thank you.
Tansel has asked to meet me at home
because he says the training is going to involve
the rooms in my house.
Say hello to Tansel.
Hello.
Hello, Tansel.
Hello.
I'm pretty curious to know
what he's got in store, and so are my kids.
My name's Coco. My name's Jet.
Ah, Coco and Jet, lovely names.
So today, what we're gonna do
is memorize a deck of cards.
And I'll show you how to do that.
And the reason why we're doing it
is so I can help you improve your memory
and use both sides of your brain.
And we'll look at the location method.
We'll look at coming up with images for the cards.
And finally, we'll recall those cards as well.
Now, rumor has it that you actually memorized
two complete Yellow Pages.
Yeah, that says I have, yup.
Do you mind if I put you through the test?
No, not at all, go for it.
Okay, Tansel, I'm gonna give you the name,
and you're gonna give me the phone number.
Okay.
GF James Plumbing Services.
Okay, that is 964, uh, 910, 99.
That's amazing, that's the number.
Am I right?
Yes. Okay.
Coco, do you wanna test Tansel?
Okay, you pick one, just point to one.
Alright, Play Space.
Okay, 1-800-287-634.
That's amazing!
Daddy.
Do you think dada could do that?
No, you can't do it.
Thanks.
Yep, Jet's probably right.
But a full deck of playing cards, just let me at it.
So it's a technique called Person, Action, Object System.
So how that works is that each card has an image,
and the first image here is a person.
So for example, the six kinda looks like a B here.
And diamond starts with a D.
So I'm using the initials B and D.
So the first thing that comes to my mind,
if I think of B and D is Bob Dylan.
So I create a person from that.
And Bob Dylan is, I can picture him performing on stage,
playing the harmonica.
Because they're familiar in your mind,
it's easier to use that.
Nearly one-third of our brain
is dedicated to vision, so it's much easier to recall
a strong visual scene than numbers and suits.
So, let's look at this card as well.
I've got ace of spades, so I can have A for Adam,
S, spades, for Sandler.
Adam Sandler is a person and one of my favorite movie's
Happy Gilmore, so he's Adam Sandler swinging a golf club.
So swinging is his action and golf club is the object.
And finally, we've got jack of hearts.
Now, I use a lot of my family members as hearts
because I love them, so what family member
would you have for jack of hearts?
My sister, Dionne.
So what could your sister's action be?
Soccer, she likes playing soccer.
Nice, so,
The reason you have to assign
person, action, and object for every card
is to do with keeping the right order.
So you make up a story that links them together,
taking only one attribute from each card image.
So in this case, card one takes the person.
So Bob Dylan doesn't change.
Card two takes the action which is
Adam Sandler swinging a golf club.
And card three takes the object,
which is my sister's soccer ball.
So the imaginary story that I make up is
Bob Dylan swinging a golf club at a soccer ball.
So what we've done is we've memorized three cards,
but there are still all these cards to remember.
So how do we do it, how do we memorize all these?
Before you brain explodes,
the answer is simpler than you think.
Let's go.
The trick is to memorize the cards
in groups of three, and then starting at the front,
place them in a sequence of locations throughout your home
to give you the full deck order.
Okay, this looks like a great place to start.
Okay, so let your mind go wild now.
So I started coming up
with characters for my cards.
In this case, Britney Spears, Santa Clause,
and Donald Duck to create my story.
I would have Britney spears being pulled by a red sleigh
by a big yellow duck on top of my piano.
So they're a queen of hearts,
And so it goes over another 16 locations.
So it's my mother fighting off aliens
that are coming out of the sink.
And it's not just about the cards.
This location or journey method
can be used to memorize anything.
Now because we did 17 locations, that's 51 cards.
There's one card left over.
So we're done, leave it there.
So the technique is all well and good in theory.
But now, it's time for the asset test.
I have to try and drag all 52 cards
back out of my memory in the right order.
So first room, the location is my piano.
It's Britney Spears riding Santa's sled
hold by a big yellow duck.
So it's eight of spades, two of clubs,
and so it's the four, D is diamond, so four of diamonds.
The next room is Coco's room, and the location,
Tom Hanks, the eight of diamonds, Paul Daley,
wrestling a crocodile on top of the crib.
My mother fighting off green aliens
that are coming out of the sink.
and Churchill is the C so it's a club.
This is really doing my head in.
Okay, Todd, what you're left to do now
is you have to speed that up
obviously for the World Memory Championships,
which is not too far away.
So, you just have to practice, practice, and practice
as fast as you can.
Yup, you heard right.
Tansel wants me to compete
in the World Memory Championships in London
in just three weeks' time.
He wants to prove that the technique works
and that my memory can radically improve
in a short space of time.
Now I better get moving and step up all my training
because I'm going to be representing Australia, no pressure.
But the good news is at least
my juggling is coming along nicely.
There's been a real improvement
in my hand-eye coordination, balance, and peripheral vision.
Well, that's a lot.
But as for my hand-fire coordination,
Hey, that's hot.
Well, not so much.
But it's time for the official, scientific reassessment.
Michael Merzenich wants me to take
the What's This? Test again to see if my thinking speed
has changed over the four weeks.
Wow, that was completely different
than the first time I did it.
The first time around, it was frustrating.
I was making so many mistakes.
But this time around, I didn't even make an error.
In fact, my initial thinking speed
was nine-tenths of a second with an accuracy of 62%.
Now, my thinking speed is twice as fast,
less than half a second, scoring me 98.3%.
To be honest, I'm slightly stunned.
But I have one more assessment to do,
The Attentional Blink Test.
Last time, I failed to see half the numbers.
This is the test I hated the most.
It was incredibly difficult the first time around.
But this time, I felt like I was processing it so fast,
I made very, very few errors.
I'm completely shocked, I never expected
to be able to do that test that well.
Once again, I blitzed my original results,
upping my overall accuracy from 64.4 to 95.6%,
achieving near perfect scores for attention.
I mean it's terrific, your brain is operating now
at a state of high alert continuously.
You're responding about as fast as
it is humanly possible to respond.
I mean this is a really beautiful,
almost an incredible positive change.
The thing I'm most amazed about
is how quickly this all happened.
Like my scores have almost doubled
in only a four-week period.
Now, I must say, I was skeptical
when you said that was possible the first time.
But I mean, they are what they are.
Yeah, and you worked really hard at this
to get as far as you've gotten, to make these advances.
But you've made really nice gains.
And you'll be better for it for many years to come.
I'm really optimistic about how well you're gonna do
at the Memory Championships.
(lively music)
The Annual World Memory Championships
is a decathlon of mental sports
where they memorize not just playing cards
but abstract images, binary digits, names and faces,
historic dates, random words.
You name it, this bunch will memorize it.
It's a three-day event, drawing over 70 mental athletes
from all walks of life in more than 20 countries.
Tansel. Hey, Todd!
How are you?
Good, how are you, man?
I'm feeling so anxious, but look at this place.
We're gonna compete against all of these people.
We haven't got the Australia jacket, so,
I know, I got my tag, and it says,
"Todd Sampson, representing Australia."
Australia is in trouble if I'm representing them.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
This is the 21s anniversary
of the World Memory Championships.
So once again, warriors of the mind,
you are important for the future
of the human brain and the human mind.
(upbeat music)
This is a collection of some of the most
interesting people I've ever seen in my life.
"I am from space," that's fantastic!
I think there are probably a few people from space here.
Why do you wear this, how does it help?
Well, it takes away all the,
keep me focused on what I'm doing.
It's worth looking like that.
I think you look great.
So you memorized 3000 numbers in one hour.
Almost 3000 in half an hour.
How many decks of cards can you memorize?
I can memorize about 25 decks in an hour.
Is that illegal in the casinos?
I didn't ask them so I just do it.
But of all the brainiacs here,
the most famous and my personal favorite
is the man in the cool T-shirt, Ben Pridmore.
The thing about memory competitions
is the standard keeps getting higher and higher every year.
The skills get much higher with every competition.
So, the skills that won within 2004,
I doubt at finishing the top 10 this year.
It's that big a change.
But do you think the people
that are doing these memory competitions are smart?
I don't think I'm particularly clever.
But people always tend to think of me as a sort
world expert in anything related to intelligence.
I had someone, the other day, calling me
and started talking to me about string theory.
And all I could think was, "I must find out
"what that is one of these days."
You can memorize it.
You think I could, but you know,
Why would you?
Exactly.
It's day two of the competition.
And having witnessed the mental toll
this seems to take on everyone else,
I hope I'm up to the task,
because the moment has finally arrived
to put my newly minted memory skills to the test.
It's time to smash the back out of it.
10 seconds.
So with just three weeks practice
and armed with my single deck of cards, here goes.
Neurons on the ready, go.
The ace of clubs is Alice Cooper.
His action is biting a head off a parrot.
Nine of clubs, nine for wine, W, C, Winston Churchill.
James Packer sitting on a Harley Davidson.
Gina Rinehart is the queen of diamonds.
(random words being spoken)
You have one minute remaining.
Stop memorization, gather your cards up,
taking great care to preserve the order.
Whoo, that's stage one accomplished.
But I'm not off the hook yet.
Now I have to recall them on this page.
This page is more complicated than memorizing the cards.
I hope I get it right.
Neurons on the ready, go.
So Gina Rinehart reading a newspaper
with a big bell on top of my car.
James Packer, he is the jack of,
sitting on a Harley Davidson, which is the five of diamonds.
Playing the harmonica, Bob Dylan, the six of diamonds.
Barack Obama, Bob Hubbard,
so that would be the,
(random words being spoken)
Adam Sandler which is the ace of spades.
Stop recalling, it is vitally important
that you make sure that your name
and competitor ID number are on your sheets.
And here they are, the arbiters,
the number crunchers charged with
deciding my fate, or so I thought.
It's been two hours since you wrote it out on the sheet.
So we do have a result as well.
Okay.
So this is sort of a second level test for you.
So you've written them down, now we'll see
if you can just say them out loud one at a time.
You're kidding me, right?
No, you can do it.
Okay, I'll give it a try.
Okay.
Queen of diamonds
Uh-huh.
King of diamonds.
Eight of diamonds, jack of diamonds.
Yes.
Seven of clubs.
Yes.
10 of spades.
Yes.
Six of clubs.
Uh-huh.
And ace of clubs.
Absolutely.
10 of hearts.
Uh-huh.
Nine of hearts.
Yes.
Two of diamonds.
Yes.
(laughing)
Okay, [00:54:24]I thought I'm,
I'm mean.
Don't do that again,
my mind is panicking.
Okay, three of diamonds.
Yes.
Four of diamonds.
Well, despite the occasional heart palpitation,
it was surprising how quickly I could recall
and translate my stories back into cards.
And the queen of spades.
But with an expecting crowd,
one hell of a headache and eight cards still to go,
I'm not out of the woods yet.
10 of clubs.
Yes.
And queen of clubs.
Yes.
Four of spades.
Uh-huh.
Five of spades.
Yes.
Ace of spades.
Yes.
Jack of clubs.
Yes.
And,
Two to go.
Okay, nine of club.
Yes.
And three of spades.
Yay! Woohoo!
(clapping)
That's my student.
Yeah.
Wow, look at that, I'm not changing
the order of this deck ever.
I'm keeping the order of this deck.
And Dominic O'Brien, the eight-times
World Memory Champion actually checked your sheet for you.
I have now double checked it.
So you are officially have memorized
a full deck of playing cards, well done.
I never thought that was possible.
I'm absolutely thrilled to be able to do it.
It's been amazing to be in this environment
with all of these very clever, smart people working on this.
And this is now my favorite deck of cards.
And guess what?
Out of seven billion people,
I'm now ranked 57th in the world for card memorization.
I've now experienced, first-hand,
how quickly and powerfully the brain can change.
After only one month of training,
my speed of thinking has nearly doubled.
My attention is much more focused.
And my memory has radically improved.
I feel smarter, sharper, and more alive than ever before.
I'm really surprised that I feel this way.
So energetic, my mind feels so much clear.
Even my sleep has gotten better.
And I've only been training for less than hour a day.
I'm really looking forward to the next phase
of my mental journey.
In the next episode of Redesign My Brain,
I explored the science that can make us more creative.
Now what do we do?
I discovered the secret
of what makes something innovative.
He's just insulting me for the last 10 minutes.
And how to get your brain thinking laterally.
And my mind expanding adventure intensifies
with a creative art challenge.