The Neuroscience of Genius, Creativity, and Improvisation, with Heather Berlin
What do originality and invention look like in the brain? In this interview with New York Times columnist Carl Zimmer as part of Big Think's partnership with 92Y's ...
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Carl Zimmer: Hi, I’m Carl Zimmer, a columnist for The New York Times and I’m in conversation with Heather Berlin, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. So Heather, I mean genius is this word that we all use but I am really curious what people like you think about the word. Heather Berlin: Yeah, I guess well, I mean I can describe it looking through my lens as a neuroscientist. I mean I think just the word genius is a really all-encompassing term and what we try to do is kind of break it down to the constituent parts and try to understand the neural mechanisms that drive those things. So, for example, I think a really big part of what it means to be a genius is to have a great deal of creative or like novel thinking. Making these novel associations betw...
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Carl Zimmer: Hi, I’m Carl Zimmer, a columnist for The New York Times and I’m in conversation with Heather Berlin, a neuroscientist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. So Heather, I mean genius is this word that we all use but I am really curious what people like you think about the word. Heather Berlin: Yeah, I guess well, I mean I can describe it looking through my lens as a neuroscientist. I mean I think just the word genius is a really all-encompassing term and what we try to do is kind of break it down to the constituent parts and try to understand the neural mechanisms that drive those things. So, for example, I think a really big part of what it means to be a genius is to have a great deal of creative or like novel thinking. Making these novel associations betw...
