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Kawoomba comments on Scientists make monkeys smarter using brain implants [link] - Less Wrong Discussion

22 Post author: Dreaded_Anomaly 15 September 2012 06:48PM

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Comment author: Kawoomba 16 September 2012 07:20:25AM 4 points [-]

Only tangentially related: apes (their tail-less cousins) surpass humans in many visual memory tasks, similar to the ones employed in the OP study:

"The chimps further show an aptitude for photographic memory, demonstrated in experiments in which the jumbled digits are flashed onto a computer screen for less than a quarter of a second, after which the chimp, Ayumu, is able to correctly and quickly point to the positions where they appeared in ascending order. The same experiment was failed by world memory champion Ben Pridmore on most attempts."

Source, includes video.

It would be interesting to escalate that same experimental setup to such chimps, i.e. to ascertain whether that same method can be used to upgrade even super-human abilities.

Comment author: DanielVarga 16 September 2012 12:06:28PM 4 points [-]

That study is extremely interesting, but its central claim is disputed. Here it is claimed that when humans get to practice as much as Ayumu, they can reach his level:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/h842v2702r60u481/

Comment author: VincentYu 18 September 2012 10:33:43PM *  4 points [-]

There was a request for these full texts, so I'm providing them here: Silberberg & Kearns (2009) and Cook & Wilson (2010).

Cook & Wilson's abstract:

Do chimpanzees have better spatial working memory than humans? In a previous report, a juvenile chimpanzee outperformed 3 university students on memory for briefly displayed digits in a spatial array (Inoue & Matsuzawa, 2007). The authors described these abilities as extraordinary and likened the chimpanzee's performance to eidetic memory. However, the chimpanzee received extensive practice on a non-time-pressured version of the task; the human subjects received none. Here we report that, after adequate practice, 2 university students substantially outperformed the chimpanzee. There is no evidence for a superior or qualitatively different spatial memory system in chimpanzees.