Born Genius
Extraordinary thing, the human brain. On the one hand, some of us can't remember what we did at the weekend, let alone last week. On the other, there are some bods - such as top classical musicians - who are born geniuses, capable of retaining vast amounts of information and playing a complex piece of music, note-perfect every time.
Take Marc Yu, a seven-year-old concert pianist. At two he heard "Mary Had A Little Lamb", and immediately played it back, flawlessly. A year later he was playing Beethoven from memory. Now with a repertoire of more than 40 classical pieces, the young maestro's astounding brain has intrigued experts, such as development psychologist Professor Ellen Winner and neuroscientist Gottfired Schlaug.
In this first episode of Five's fascinating series examining the human brain, Winner and Schlaug focus on Marc Yu's achievements, and ask whether hard work is behind his success, or was he simply born with a brilliant brain? They also look at a class of 50 children learning music, and discover a number of changes are taking place in their brains. The experts believe that, given the right nuturing, any one of the youngsters could grow up to become a musical genius.
Riveting stuff.
DOCUMENTARY: My Brilliant Brain, five at 21:00 on Monday 9th July 2007
Born Genius.
Documentary series exploring the inner workings of the human brain and the origins of genius. This edition looks at child genius, focusing on the case of seven-year-old concert pianist Marc Yu. At the age of two, Marc heard a rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb at a birthday party, and played it back flawlessly on the piano. Now he has a repertoire of some 40 classical pieces. But are his remarkable abilities based on hard work or was he simply born with a brilliant brain?