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It's widely acknowledged that crows are remarkably intelligent animals (did you know that they're commonly referred to as feathered apes?), but seeing one engage in a pastime as distinctly human as snow-sledding is a sight to behold. More »
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Just when it seemed like we knew all the dangers of climate change, science has to go and throw us this curveball. Warmer temperatures make lizards' brains develop differently. Last thing we need is some newly super-intelligent lizards judging us. More »
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Humans evolving into hyper-intelligent beings is a powerful idea in science fiction, but that's probably where the idea will have to stay. Our brains have reached an evolutionary "sweet spot", and we can't get much smarter without making major trade-offs. More »
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Humans want to believe that they're the smartest creatures on the planet. But the more we understand octopuses, the more it seems that we may not be alone in our ability to solve problems, make complex connections between ideas, and survive by wits alone. A growing body of evidence — a lot of it still anecdotal — suggests that octopuses show elements of human-like intelligence. But their intelligence has evolved for very different reasons than ours did, which makes them particularly difficult to understand. More »
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Ah, the intelligence quotient—the number everyone pretends not to care about but secretly does. For years, we've assumed that a person's IQ score—commonly used to assess one's general intellectual capacity and make predictions on everything from educational achievement to employment prospects—remained relatively constant over his or her lifetime. More »
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The ability to form analogies, to look at two unrelated situations and recognize the basic similarities that bind them together, was thought to be a uniquely human trait, with some experts speculating that language is a prerequisite for understanding them. More »
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The basic concept of counting is beyond most animals, but not hyenas. They are able to count almost as well as primates, another indicator that these carnivores are unusually intelligent. It all goes back to their sophisticated, hierarchical societies. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5831940&view=rss&microfeed=true Though it may not look very different from other (dubiously beneficial) brain-training games, Brain Workshop is special in that there's a growing body of evidence to suggest that it may actually succeed in making its players a little bit smarter. More »
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There's an old psychological theory that it takes 10000 hours of practice to become an expert in a field...and some argue that it's only practice, not natural talent, that makes you an expert. But that theory is completely untestable. More »
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Chimpanzees keep showing how smart they are compared to humans, but now there's a big knock against their intelligence - they're seemingly unable to go against the dominant group member, even if it means using a totally ineffective strategy. More »
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The haunting songs produced by whales are shockingly similar to human pop music: one single hit tune spreads across the ocean, and becomes the preferred whale mating tune. And, just like the modern music industry, it all runs on remixes. More »
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Even though they're one of our more distantly related primate cousins, macaque monkeys keep revealing remarkably human-like abilities. First they displayed self-awareness, and now it turns out they can count...but only if they don't get to eat what they're counting. More »
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Could another species someday replace us as Earth's dominant intelligent life and, if so, which species? To answer that question, we need to understand just what intelligence really is. And why, from an evolutionary standpoint, an organism would even want it. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5780020&view=rss&microfeed=true New research following more than 4,000 children has shown that a high junk food diet before the age of 3 led to a significantly lower IQ later in life, regardless of later diets. Conversely, a healthy diet as an infant gave an IQ increase, but after that it didn't make a difference. Of course, the study only tracked the children until the age of 8, so that's not a license to start gorging on chocolate-covered potato chips after eating only salad until the age of 18. More »
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You might think it's obvious that one person is smarter than another. But there are few more controversial areas of science than the study of intelligence and, in reality, there's not even agreement among researchers about what this word means. More »
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Birds in flocks make turns as a collective. Ants build, supply, and defend their burrows. How does a group make better decisions than any one of its members? Welcome to the hive mind. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5674162&view=rss&microfeed=true Two papers published over the weekend in Nature reveal that human brain size can be manipulated genetically by tampering with just one gene, called WDR62. Mutations to this gene cause microencephaly (MCPH), a condition where humans (and other animals) are born with small brains. In humans, the condition can cause severe disabilities. But, researchers speculate, the gene is also involved in creating humans' extra-large brains as well. More »
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Athletes who take performance-enhancing drugs are subject to drug testing, public disgrace, and an asterisk in the record books — but what about students who do the same? One psychologist foresees a future where students get tested for cognition-enhancing drugs. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5371755&view=rss&microfeed=true A depressing new study from a group of neuroscientists at University of Virgina suggests that people begin experiencing age-related cognitive deterioration in their late 20s. Published today, a summary of the study explains: More »
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This intriguing diagram shows which parts of your brain can contribute to your intelligence and how much of their smooth functioning you inherited genetically. Yes, sexual selection may be making you stupid - or smart. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5174368&view=rss&microfeed=true There's an excellent article over at the New York Times on what factors are contributing to the evolution of the human brain. Specifically, neuroscientists Sam Wang and Sandra Aamodt ask whether it can be said that we're becoming more intelligent, based on the evidence we currently have. They say: More »
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Lefty types have been predicting the demise of America for the last century, but in 2008 even the most conservative elements of the US government are predicting it too. Every four years, the US National Intelligence Council issues a future-looking report about global trends, and this year one of those trends is the decline of American power in the world. More »
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A group of scientists is building the world's most evil computer program. This isn't a B-movie setup: A team at Rensselaer Institute's AI & Reasoning Lab is bringing personified evil to virtual life in the hope that they'll unlock the secrets of human morality. The researchers have given their creation a face and a name, and quiz it daily, using its answers to further blacken its hideous character. More »
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It may not be S.A.R.A.H., but Vincente Guallart hopes his smart homes will change the world. The objects in his model Hyperhabitats glow when they are in use, while an embedded microprocessor communicates that use to the rest of the building's network. The ultimate goal is to give the physical world a structure similar to the digital one. More »
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A researcher at the National Defense University in the U.S. is convinced that the terrorists could be hatching their next plot in World of Warcraft or Second Life. Danger Room's Noah Shachtman reports that Dwight Toavs gave a paper last week that argued, among other things, that terrorists could discuss plans to sack Washington right out in the open in an MMO, by simply pretending that they were planning to sack a fictional town on a server. Apparently Toavs and his colleagues were a little unclear on MMOs, however. More »
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It happens to the best of us: Your robot body guard takes a car bomb to the brain and suddenly she thinks she's supposed to kill you rather than protect you. Or maybe an enemy combatant has sent an autonomous computerized agent to destroy you, and Sarah Connor is nowhere to be found. How can you defend yourself against a mechanized foe? Until artificial intelligence starts obeying Asimov's Laws of Robotics, one company is developing tools to combat the eventual robot revolution. More »
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