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EPISODE GUIDE |
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MY BRILLIANT BRAIN: BORN GENIUS
Monday, 26 November @ 9:00pm HK/SIN
At two years old, Marc Yu taught himself how to play Mary Had a Little
Lamb on the piano. One year later, he was tackling Beethoven. Marc
also has perfect pitch the ability to identify musical notes as easily
as identifying colours a skill that only one in 10,000 people can
claim. How did Marc develop his amazing music ability? His mother
exposed him to music at a very early age, did that shape his penchant
for music or was he born brilliant? Born Genius investigates whether
nature gifts some children with a genius gene while also examining
the role nurture plays in shaping intelligence. Do children who are
nurtured to learn at a very young age excel more easily than their
peers? And, more importantly, what happens if a child misses out on
crucial brain stimulation early in life? This is the case for one
little girl forced to spend her childhood isolated in a small room
deprived of any interaction with people, even her parents. The result:
at age 13, she had the mental age of an 18-month old infant. Missing
out on critical stages of development throughout her youth, can she
possibly catch up to her peers? |
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MY BRILLIANT BRAIN: MAKE ME A GENIUS
Monday, 3 December @ 9:00pm HK/SIN
Can you turn an ordinary child into a prodigy? For Susan Polger, this
hypothetical becomes reality as she is transformed into the worlds
first female chess grand master. Susan was not born with her brilliant
brain; it was created by a unique educational experience that dominated
her childhood. With no history of brilliant chess players in her family,
Susan spent her childhood diligently studying more than 100,000 chess
patterns. Once considered a mans game, Susan is winning chess matches
against men more than three times her age at 10 years old. As an adult,
she can now play as many as five games simultaneously, competing against
opponents over the phone and without being able to view the board.
She seems to recognize an opponents chess pattern almost as fast as
she can recognize an old friend. How are people like Susan able to
train their brains to remember staggering amounts of data? |
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MY BRILLIANT BRAIN: ACCIDENTAL GENIUS
Monday, 10 December @ 9:00pm HK/SIN
George Widener patiently writes down the dates for every Monday in
the next 500 years - all 26,000 of them. An autistic savant, George
possesses an island of genius that enables him to do things an ordinary
person would find impossible. To help unlock this enigma, George volunteers
to undergo a brain scan something most savants are too disabled to
endure. Incredibly, while Georges brain is structurally normal, it
is mysteriously ablaze with activity in unexpected areas when he calculates
dates. Why is Georges brain activity so different from the ordinary?
While George was born with his genius, Tommy McHugh is mysteriously
awakened in middle life to a talent he never knew he had. After suffering
a near fatal brain aneurysm, Tommy finds himself barely able to contain
the emotions and words running around in his head. He begins writing
poetry and painting manically, unable to stop himself. His artistic
mania now overtakes his surroundings, with the walls in his home painted
over and over again with his designs. Studying people like George
and Tommy, some scientists hope to unearth how to turn on the hidden
genius potential in each of us. |
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SEE MARC YU'S LIVE PERFORMANCE |
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 Sign
up to the exclusive repertoire performance by MARC
YU in Singapore (20 Nov 2007), Taiwan
(22 Nov 2007) and Hong Kong (24 Nov 2007). Find out from
leading experts on what it takes to nurture geniuses.
More info and
Sign up
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ASK THE EXPERT |
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What makes a genius? Nature
or nurture? Which one is the dominant force ? Or interested
to boost the capability of your child and raise a genius?
Sign in to ask our expert everything
you wanted to know about your brilliant brains! |
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skilled pianist can play up to 30 notes per second. |
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