Expedition into the brain
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Expedition into the brain |
| Country of production |
Germany Sweden Italy Ireland |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2006 |
| length | 135 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Petra Höfer , Freddie Röckenhaus |
| script | Petra Höfer, Freddie Röckenhaus |
| production |
Francesca D'Amicis , Ralf Hoppe , Svenja Mandel , Friederike Schmidt-Vogt |
| camera | Axel Petrovan |
| cut | Jörg Wegner |
Expedition into the Brain is a three-part scientific documentary from 2005, which was first broadcast on ARTE on February 20, 2006 . The documentation deals with the phenomenon of savants (also known as islanders), people with extremely high cognitive performance in a narrowly defined area ("island"), which is often associated with a cognitive disability , which requires permanent care in everyday life. Most of the savants shown have great skills in declarative memory . Other areas include mental arithmetic , photographic memory , music , drawing and communication with animals.
The three parts
To build
Each of the three parts is about 45 minutes long and structured according to the same scheme: The life stories of a total of eleven savants are described, with relatives and experts from the cognitive and neurosciences as well as the affected persons themselves (if possible) having their say. This includes contributions that show the narrator Ben Gash , who embodies the typical average person as a test person and clearly conveys the complex relationships to the interested layperson.
The savants shown are Kim Peek , Rüdiger Gamm , Matt Savage , Stephen Wiltshire , Orlando Serrell , Temple Grandin , Howard Potter , Alonzo Clemens , Tommy McHugh , Gilles Tréhin and Catherine Mouet .
Among the participating experts are the Australian brain researcher Allan Snyder , the American autism researcher Darold Treffert , the Irish psychiatrist Michael Fitzgerald , the British psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and the German biologist Gerhard Roth .
Part 1 - memory giants
At the beginning of the first part, mental arithmetic artist Rüdiger Gamm , who is the only one of the savants shown, is not autistic . What is highlighted about the performance of the savants is that many of them are capable of things that they have never learned themselves. Six-year-old Matt Savage taught himself to play the piano overnight. The story of Orlando Serrell , who was hit in the head by a baseball at the age of ten and then developed savant skills (an "acquired savant"), proves in the eyes of Allan Snyder that savant-like skills lie dormant in every person, but which are deliberately suppressed by the brain . The memory specialist Kim Peek , called "Kimputer", was considered a "mega-savant" and served as a model for Dustin Hoffman's role in the film drama Rain Man . He was able to exactly reproduce 99% of the more than 12,000 books he read. His lack of a corpus callosum (which allows the two halves of the brain to communicate) allowed him to read two pages of a book in parallel - one with each eye.
Part 2 - The Einstein Effect
The second part focuses more on creativity . Allan Snyder advocates the controversial thesis that the key to the outstanding creativity of savants like Matt Savage or Stephen Wiltshire (an artist who intuitively drew perspective correctly as a child) is the fact that “Savants see the world as it really is - not how we through the grid of our previous experiences ”. The reason for this is that the filter systems that normal people use to differentiate between important and unimportant things apparently don't work with Savants. Thus the creativity of some savants arises from the fact that they think in unfamiliar directions, precisely because they are not prejudiced, because they do not link previous experiences with the current situation.
When analyzing the brains of numerous geniuses over the past centuries, the psychiatrist Michael Fitzgerald comes to the conclusion that the inadequate networking of brain areas was the decisive factor for the outstanding creativity of scientists like Albert Einstein .
In experiments at the University of Sydney, Allan Snyder paradoxically tries to temporarily paralyze parts of the brain in test subjects in order to generate greater creativity in creative tasks such as drawing: “Fascinating,” says Snyder, “that you have to switch off parts of our brain so that our creative ones Forces can develop. "
Part 3 - The Big Difference
The last part focuses on the difference in the brain of men and women . When dealing with savant syndrome , it is noticeable that six out of seven islanders are male. Psychiatrist Michael Fitzgerald believes that this is why most of the most significant scientific contributions of the past centuries have come from men. He also advocates the thesis that savants created the first primitive tools of prehistoric men and invented the wheel , for example . The psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen , according to which is the brain of an autistic perfectly adapted to the information age because it thinks much more precise and rational.
Awards
Expedition into the brain was nominated for the German Television Prize 2006 in the category “ Best Documentation / Reportage ” and for the Adolf Grimme Prize 2007 in the category “Information & Culture”.
background
The Dortmund company colourFIELD tell-a-vision (owners Petra Höfer and Freddie Röckenhaus ) produced the documentation on behalf of Radio Bremen and ARTE. The film series was created in cooperation with WDR , MDR , RAI , RTE , UR and EBU . The film was shot in Germany, France, the USA, Australia, Italy, Ireland and Great Britain. The documentation was recorded in HDTV ( 720p resolution) throughout . It also contains 3D animations based on computed tomography data of the people shown in the film. The animations were produced by the New York company Anatomical Travelogue.
literature
- All three parts can currently be found online here . (As of March 11, 2016)
Web links
- Expedition to the brain in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Information on Expedition into the Brain on the website of the production company colourFIELD.de :
Individual evidence
- ↑ Expedition into the brain and continuation
- ↑ ZDF: Expeditions into the Brain ( Memento of the original from March 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Online version of all three parts of Expedition into the Brain
- ↑ Expeditions into the Brain: Savants and their Extraordinary Talents
- ↑ Talented islanders: The intellectual giants
- ↑ "Expedition into the Brain 1 - Memory Giants" on Youtube
- ↑ The real Rain-Man
- ↑ Hughes, John R., A review of Savant Syndrome and its possible relationship to epilepsy , Epilepsy & Behavior 17 (2010) pp. 147-152
- ↑ The real Rain-Man
- ↑ TV review in the Weltwoche ( memento of the original from March 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Expedition into the Brain - The Einstein Effect
- ↑ ZDF: Expeditions into the Brain ( Memento of the original from March 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Island Talent - Savant Syndrome
- ↑ Expedition into the Brain - Part 3
- ↑ Nominated 2007 ( Memento of the original from December 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. grimme-institut.de. Retrieved March 21, 2016.
