THE GENIUS DILEMMA / 1

THE GENIUS DILEMMA

By

Dustin Grinnell

Copyright © 2014 by Dustin Grinnell

THE GENIUS DILEMMA / 13

Chapter One

3 years later

Friday, May 18

Stanford University, California

Students flooded into the Stanford University lecture hall to search for seats next

to their friends before the start of class. Red-laced curtains hung on the walls, while the

seats stretched to the back of the room in tiers, giving the place the appearance of a

cinema. Over a hundred students were present, twenty over the department’s cap. The

class on the human brain, taught by neuroscientist Alan Pierce, was one of the

University’s most popular every year. The title of the lecture, The Human Brain &

Genius, was projected on a white screen on the classroom’s front wall.

“Alright, class,” Professor Pierce said, strolling in front of the class as he waited

for its attention. “Let’s settle in.”

Alan Pierce was six feet two inches tall, firmly built, and in excellent shape, a

product of morning jogs before teaching and research. Even at thirty-eight years old, his

hair was slightly graying, earning him the name “silver fox” among some of the

undergraduate girls. Female colleagues, single and married alike, had their share of

endearing names for him too. Today, Alan wore brown, circular glasses and had on a

gray sports coat with jeans.

Alan walked toward the podium, clasping his hands together. “We’ve spent an

entire semester on the physiology of the brain. The nuts and bolts. We’ve also spent

several lectures on intelligence.”

He paused, then raised his voice. “Today, we’re going to expand on what we’ve

learned. We’re going to dig deeper. Today, we’ll talk about superior intelligence. More

specifically, genius.”

THE GENIUS DILEMMA / 14

Alan advanced his PowerPoint presentation to the first slide, showing a picture of

Thomas Edison, one of his favorite scientists. “Today we’ll discuss what makes a genius

a genius. Are any brain areas different in the supremely intelligent? Do geniuses have

larger brains? More cells, perhaps? Maybe they’re blessed with genetic predispositions?

Or maybe it’s the ‘nurture’ side of the coin? Lifestyle and environment?”

He changed to a new slide, a picture of an old man with his head low, sitting

cross-legged on the street. The man was wearing a tattered robe and strumming a guitar,

representing the melancholic and struggling artist. “As well as trying to understand how

the brain of a genius functions, we’re going to explore a bigger, more philosophical

question.” He scanned the silent, captivated class. “Does genius have a cost? Is it possible

that supreme intelligence comes with a catch?”

“Might geniuses and creative luminaries, like this man in the picture, be prone to

depressed states of melancholy, mood disorders, even psychiatric diseases? As William

Shakespeare said in A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, ‘The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

are of imagination all compact.’”

“Let’s take it a step further,” Alan said, raising his eyebrows. “Is it possible that

such individuals have a different conception of reality? Are high intelligence and

substance abuse linked? What about criminal behavior? Insanity even?”

Dr. Alan Pierce was one of the world’s most prominent neuroscientists and

experts on intelligence. As the leading authority on the human brain, Alan had written

hundreds of academic papers, two neuroscience textbooks, and had lectured at

universities and conferences around the world. Early in his career, he had worked in the

field of neuroplasticity–the study of how the brain changed in response to input from the

environment. For decades, neuroscientists had thought the brain was fixed, incapable of

growing new cells or re-healing substantially. Regaining function after a stroke, for

example, was long-thought impossible. Neuroscientific research, however, spearheaded

THE GENIUS DILEMMA / 15

largely by Alan and his research team at Stanford, showed that the brain was changeable,

or “plastic”. He had proved the brain could reorganize in response to aging, as well as

heal itself following significant damage. Alan had showed that reorganization occurred

within complex networks of cells and, using brain-imaging technologies, mapped cellular

pathways to prove the brain’s innate capacity for change.

It wasn’t just his importance in the field that drew students to his lectures,

though. Many professors prepared PowerPoint slides and plodded through them one-by-

one, but Alan often skipped from one slide to another, sometimes ditching the prepared

presentation altogether to embark on some intriguing scientific question. Students loved

the spontaneity and found it entertaining to see his mind work as he took a 30,000-foot

approach on everything. A student once told Alan attending class was like a night at the

movies. No one ever knew where discussion would end up. The topic could be how

memories formed one minute, and the next they could be taking a metaphorical stroll

through Leonardo Da Vinci’s mind.

“What’s the difference between average intelligence and genius?” Alan asked his

students.

A student from the first row raised her hand eagerly. The neuroscience major was

one of his finest students and always contributed to the discussions.

“Nicole,” Alan said.

“Is it a difference in brain size? Is the brain of a person with a high IQ just…

well, bigger?”

“What do people think?” Alan redirected the question to the class with a lift of

his chin.

A male student from the back said, “I don’t know, I mean a whale’s brain has to

be like fifty times bigger than a human’s. I don’t think we’ll see Shamu challenging Deep

Blue to a chess match anytime soon.”

THE GENIUS DILEMMA / 16

A few students chuckled.

“Good point,” Alan said. “Actually yes, a sperm whale’s brain weighs about

seventeen pounds and an elephant’s a little more than ten, whereas a human’s weighs

three pounds, about two percent of our body weight. Interestingly enough, analysis of

Einstein’s brain showed that one part of his brain was actually larger than average.”

“Which?” Nicole asked, knowing how to take her cue from him.

Alan continued, “A study at the Faculty of Health Sciences at McMaster

University showed that Einstein’s parietal lobes were larger than average, 15% larger,

actually. The study was conducted in 1999 and showed that Einstein’s left angular gyrus

and supermarginal gyrus were larger than average. These areas are linked to

mathematical skill and visuospatial cognition and are highly active when making unusual

associations on tests of creativity. The enlarged areas, the researchers speculated, likely

gave Einstein the ability to perform the conceptual gymnastics needed to think about time

and space with such imagery and abstraction.”

Alan let that sink in for a moment. “The study showed that Einstein’s brain, as a

whole, was actually smaller than average.”

“Interesting,” Nicole said.

“So, size matters,” Alan said, grinning. “But not when it comes to the brain.”

The students laughed.

“What about brain cells?” a student asked, as Alan walked toward the front row.

“We talked a lot about neurons and the networks they form. Maybe the brain’s not

bigger…maybe a genius’s brain has more cells. And maybe they’re more tightly packed,

denser?”

Alan nodded, pleased with how the discussion had developed. But he knew there

was still a long way to go. The difference between average and genius-level intelligence

involved not just the neuron but rather a less well-known, often overlooked brain cell.

THE GENIUS DILEMMA / 17

“After Albert Einstein’s death in 1955,” he said, “scientists across the world

scrambled for the opportunity to get a piece of his brain. A pathologist named Thomas

Harvey got to it first. After Harvey, a piece of Einstein’s brain went to Marian Diamond,

a neuro-anatomist at the University of California at Berkeley. Diamond found that

Einstein’s brain had a higher percentage of brain cells called glial cells.”

He waited for the students for a moment. “In brain science, neurons get all the

glory. But the real miracle workers in the brain are the glial cells, Greek for “glue,”

which protect and preserve neurons. Once thought to only support nerve cells by

providing nutrients and removing waste, these cells have also been found to speed

communication between neurons. Diamond and her team found that Einstein’s brain had

more glial cells than average, especially in the left inferior parietal area, a region

responsible for combining information from different areas of the brain.”

“So it’s all about glial cells?” a student asked.

Alan shrugged. “Diamond’s lab also discovered more connections between glial

cells in Einstein’s brain, especially in cortical regions such as the prefrontal cortex,

temporal lobes, and hippocampus, all associated with memory. Her lab hypothesized that

more connectivity conferred more sophisticated communication and higher cognitive

capacity.

“Seeking to understand what stimulated such connectivity, Diamond compared

rats in an enriched environment with rats in a setting without environmental stimulation.

Rats in the stimulating environment were also given learning tasks. Results showed that

the rats without any new challenges or learning tasks had fewer connections than rats

challenged to learn new information. Einstein showed this same connectivity in multiple

brain regions, presumably because of his insatiable curiosity, determination to continually

learn, and passion for solving the riddles in the field of physics.”

THE GENIUS DILEMMA / 18

They’d gone through most of the areas Alan wanted them to, but he wasn’t done

yet.

“What else?” Alan asked, scanning the college students. “There’s one more piece

to the puzzle.”

“Neurotransmitters!” Nicole called out.

“Yes,” Alan said. “Chemicals are the last piece of the puzzle. In the brain,

neurons ‘talk’ with each other through chemicals called neurotransmitters. These tiny

proteins, released from cells during signaling, are the communicators of the brain. After

release, they attach themselves to receptors on nearby cells like a key in a lock,

stimulating them to fire and continue the message.” Alan looked around at his class.

“Those with high intelligence may actually produce more neurotransmitters.”

A student raised his hand, interrupting Alan’s train of thought. A few classmates

grumbled, recognizing the student. It was Harry Sadler, a pre-med major. He was smart

but pompous and generally considered the class’s know-it-all.

“Yes, Harry.” Alan squinted over at him through his glasses. “Something to

add?”

“Professor Pierce,” Sadler said. “You worked on intelligence for years, right? Do

you know of ways of getting… smarter?”

Alan half-expected the question. His students attended one of the most

prestigious and competitive universities in the world. For a student like Sadler, destined

for medical school, grades were everything.

A few years ago, Alan had attended a department meeting on the topic of focus-

enhancing drugs, like Adderall. Administrators were aware that students used such drugs

for studying and test taking. One teacher cited a study in the journal Nature that found

that a quarter of students had tried “neuro-enhancing” drugs, also called cognitive

enhancers or “smart drugs.” Comparing them to performance enhancers in athletics,

THE GENIUS DILEMMA / 19

teachers and administrators had raised the question of fairness and whether the

recreational use of smart drugs should be considered cheating. They discussed Provigil,

one such cognitive enhancer, which students were calling “Viagra for the brain.” With

wakefulness-promoting effects, Provigil was typically prescribed to narcoleptics as well

as patients with neurological disorders such as Multiple Sclerosis. The drug worked by

inhibiting areas of the brain that promoted fatigue, stimulating a state of increased

alertness. It also stimulated the production of dopamine. The overproduction of this

chemical, found in the brain’s reward pathways, made even the most mundane tasks seem

interesting. During graduate school, many of Alan’s colleagues had used this “steroid for

the mind” to get an academic edge.

In class, Alan was reluctant to speak about such “enhancement”. While he knew

colleagues who used “smart drugs,” he had always opted for more natural approaches. It

wasn’t that he didn’t want the mental edge, or that he was a purist, he just knew there

were natural ways to get similar effects. More importantly, Alan was always skeptical

that smart drugs were without side effects, as so many of their users claimed.

Alan looked from Sadler to the rest of the room. “The best ways to increase

intelligence are by exercising, eating well, meditating, staying intellectually stimulated,

and maintaining a rich social network of friends and family.”

“But what about…‘smart drugs’?” Sadler asked.

Alan hadn’t expected Sadler to be so direct. “Some forms of pharmacological

supplementation have been shown to enhance cognition, yes, but gains, if any, are

modest.”

Nicole chimed in. “And aren’t they cheating?”

“Oh come on,” Sadler said. “Don’t be such a goodie-goodie. What’s the

difference between this and a cup of coffee?”

“One’s legal for starters,” Nicole shot back.

THE GENIUS DILEMMA / 20

“Please,” Sadler said. “We have drugs for weight loss, which make us look

better. And drugs for depression, which make us feel better. Why not a drug that makes

us smarter?”

Alan decided that he needed to scare Sadler a little. “Even if you could increase

intelligence with smart drugs, would you want to? What about the strange and

compulsive behaviors in the supremely intelligent? From scientists to artists, history has

many examples of great minds suffering from obsessive behavior, psychosis, and

substance abuse. Did you know that five out of eight American winners of the Nobel

Prize for literature were alcoholics?”

“The ‘mad artist’ idea.” Sadler’s skepticism was easy to hear. “This is where we

start listing all the musicians who died before they hit thirty, right? Saying their talents

and creativity drove them to insanity?”

Alan knew from experience where to take the argument. “Countless geniuses

have used their gifts to create great things, masterpieces. But many have fallen victim to

the dark sides of their talents.”

“Like what?” Sadler asked, clearly not intimidated by the rhetoric.

“Well, on the benign side,” Alan said, “there’s a quiet withdrawing from society.

Michelangelo, one of the greatest sculptors of all-time, found it painfully difficult to talk

with people and hated most forms of social interaction. He bathed rarely and wore the

same clothes over and over again. Beethoven cared so little about his cleanliness that his

friends and family had to undress him and wash his clothes while he slept.”

Sadler said, “So Beethoven was a little grubby and Michelangelo was no social

butterfly. I’d hardly say they went to the dark side.”

“For centuries,” Alan said, gathering some steam, “many have associated genius

with eccentricity, even insanity. In 1889, an Italian physician named Cesare Lombroso

explored the link between high intelligence and unusual behavior. In his analysis of

THE GENIUS DILEMMA / 21

artists, musicians, and writers, he observed there was in fact a link between genius and

mental illness.”

Sadler’s expression changed, perhaps rethinking his afternoon search for smart

drugs on the Internet.

Alan let that sink in before continuing. “Many psychologists now believe creative

geniuses like Emily Dickinson, Tchaikovsky, Vincent Van Gogh, and T.S. Elliot likely

suffered from manic depression. It’s possible that William Blake, who claimed that

inspirations for his writing came to him through visiting spirits, suffered from a mental

disorder. Nikola Tesla, the inventor of alternating current, suffered from hallucinations

and columbiphilia, or pigeon-love, as well as triphilia, an obsession with the number

three. What about the countless fictional accounts of genius gone wrong? Think of

chilling characters like Hannibal Lector. Why do you think that’s such an important

image in popular culture?”

Alan paused. “The human brain gives us the power to create beautiful pieces of

literature, architectural wonders, and extraordinary pieces of music. But with each awe-

inspiring creation, there are examples of horrible nightmares. For every Picasso, it seems,

there is a Hitler. This three-pound organ has the capacity to both profoundly reward and

deeply harm the human--”

Alan stopped as the back door to the classroom opened. A head with long blonde

hair poked through. It was Jenny Rollins, Alan’s laboratory manager.

Jenny mouthed a silent “Sorry” from the entryway and then lifted her hand to

demonstrate that he had a phone call. “It’s the hospital.”