In "Brain Matters", the third and final episode of PBS's documentary The Human Spark, narrator and host Alan Alda has his brain scanned, and learns about recent research into the mechanical structures of the human brain. Such research has led scholars to believe that the range of capabilities that make us what we are today—including tool use of course, but also art, religion, science and society—are all tied inextricably to our ability to communicate, to acquire complex grammatical language to teach one another how to get along in the world.
Host and narrator Alan Alda poses in front of his brain scan at the University of Oregon. Photo Courtesy of WNET.ORG
The fascinating glimpses into the workings of the human mind—through the use of experiments with babies as young as six months as well as MRIs and EEGs on adults including a game Alda—focus on the concept of intentionality. Intentionality, as defined here, is the ability to understand or believe things about the world around us. It's about recognizing that other people have intentions, and being able to suss out what someone else's intentions are. Intentionality creates our predilection to think that everything has a meaning, everything has a plan, everything from inanimate objects to people in another culture. That ability is based on attributing values of cooperation, and those values are what make it possible for us to both define our social group, and to define our enemies.
Brain Matters is the most thought-provoking of the three programs in The Human Spark, not the least because it seems to suggest that our best and most creative and innovative moments occur when we are idle, when we can simply think ourselves into other times, other people's thoughts, other circumstances other than the immediate present.
Primate brains: monkey, chimp, human. Can we see a "human spark" there somewhere? Photo by Maggie Villiger
Written by Graham Chedd with contributions from scholars Randy Buckner, Robin Dunbar and Rebecca Saxe, The Human Spark: Brain Matters also features Elizabeth Spelke, Helen Neville, Simon Fisher, Svante Paabo, David Gilbert, Todd Preuss, John Shea, Scott Frey, Faraneh Vharga-Khadem, Wolfgang Enard, Karen Wynn, and Paul Bloom; research facilities featured include Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Emory, Oregon, MIT, Max Planck Institute, and the Yerkes National Primate Center.
The Human Spark is flat-out one of the best produced film features I've ever seen on scientific human research, tying anthropology, archaeology, primate science and human brain research into a coherent understandable, thought-provoking whole. Thanks to Graham Chedd, PBS and WNET for setting the bar so high for science programs.
The Human Spark: Brain Matters airs Wednesday, January 20, 2009, and, like the others in the series, will be available on the PBS website after that.
On PBS's Website
- January 6: Becoming Us
- January 13: So Human, So Chimp
- January 20: Brain Matters
Previous Human Spark Reviews
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