ah franklin oh, ready knows. welcome to take told me about hackers and paralyzing between your societies. computers than elsewhere you and governments that go crazy for your data. we explain how these technologies work, how they can go in for. and that's how they can also go terribly what you know, new to oh, they smarter than we think. we look at the hidden wonders in the mines of pigeons. and does music make us smarter, reset his have found some truly resonating inside. also in this week's

d, w sign show we face up to the phenomenon of super recognizes. welcome to to morrow to day. a lot of people have difficulty remembering faces or telling them apart. the key is their cognitive abilities. cutting edge technology can help us to correctly identify faces. as we all know, computer assisted facial recognition is now used to keep track of people in cities around the world. but some of us have similar faculties and police forces are eager to recruit the services of these super recognizes london, august 20201414 year old alice ross went for

a walk that afternoon. 6 at 4 26 pm, her image was recorded on see see, tv and then she disappeared. the police search for alice gross was the biggest in london since the 2005 bombing. the video footage provided vital clues in the cctv capital of the world. an estimated 1000000 cameras track people as they go about their daily business. footage from these cameras is viewed in the headquarters of the london metropolitan police, also known as scotland yard. this is where the so called super recognizers work. people with particularly good recall when it comes to faces. they identify faces time and again, even partly concealed in crowds or in very grainy footage. yeah. it's

a skill that long when unrecognised, an unused teen 94. i realized that the police weren't using see she tv properly than that of images just were being news like fingerprints and dna in a systematic way. so started to develop systems to gather images, to catalog them properly. and as i circulate them more and more, you realize that for every 100 identifications, some offices would, might want to. but some mood might 10 or 20. so it really stood out that those people who are real note this is how the world's 1st super recognizers unit came into being it's now led by elliot pour it, who'd also been unaware of his special talent, was on he really in about 2012, the metropolitan place i said is new on a super recognized lesson. my 1st 4 was 4, was a separate canada. and apparently was because i was making successful

identifications. i'm from in a wanted posters of criminals. this ability turned out to be the key to solving the alice grass case. a few days after the 14 year old went missing, a woman living in the same district in london reported her partner is missing. he was already known to the police and was identified as a possible suspect. the super recognizers poured over cctv footage along the route that alice had taken to see if they could spot the man to get better just him . his way home and sure enough eliot pour it and his team spotted him. they noticed that the possible suspect kept returning to a particular spot at the riverside after alice grosses disappearance. like so we went back to the scene of so who's investigating a case and he said look, we think we've found sal cans and changing his closing out to the crime scene. and

that was when i found a just over a month after her disappearance, the parents of 14 year old alice grosse had their worst fears, confirmed the body of the young girl was found in the river. brent. at that stage, there was still no sign of the suspected killer super recognizers can also help solve other crimes. apart from murder. one of the most successful cases we've had, i was with serial shoplifter. we had one super recognizers who, you know, separated by a couple of weeks with memory when that you have seen that guy before. i shall seen him in the, in our database and then we sell to seeing him for 5 times. and then we really went hunting that see vantage of having a database of all images of criminals and images from crime scenes,

because then we're able to go back for these on so crimes. and we had him eventually for about 40 free ah offences. facial recognition software wouldn't have helped. here it needs better footage. the la detectives generally have access to agreement university in london. psychologist josh davis is studying super, recognize her powers using tests that he's continually refining with the help of the police investigators. i want to understand the science behind this. i also think that the more we know about this, the more we understand about human memory, and maybe it's got further applications that no one's even thought about. yet. a few days ago, davis showed one of elliot por, it's team members, short video clips of people that she's now being asked to identify in photos

of the test is intended to reveal how long super recognizers memory skills last davis and pour it are happy with the results the super recognize her team leader sees the work with the university as vital because we're operating in an area of a place where that is pretty much undefined on his you know, the experimental. it's almost piloting. um, all the forces from around the world are looking our models. in the case of alice gross, the body of her suspected killer was found a few days after the discovery of her body. the 41 year old was found in the woods. he hanged himself, apparently for fear of being captured the police are convinced that he would have been convicted. the evidence found at the crime scene

was too damning, like traces of his dna on the teenager shoes and a cigarette stub. but the tip that led the police to the body in the 1st place came from the super recognizers. well, the super recognize unit in the future i think will expand or across the world at 1st. a murder saw with fingerprints was, is about 2 miles from where you are now. 19 o 5, no to scotland yard out. so take that out and show everybody else or to do fingerprints. and then dna came along and the british police out to the same. so now we're super recognizers, this is the 3rd step and, and so we've got to expand this because there's no reason why there are no sheep recognizes in germany or in, in america or anywhere else in the world. super recognizers tend to be deploy to solve crimes after they've been committed. but sometimes, for example, during big events,

they can stop planned crimes from control rooms. they monitor events by a video link. if they identify known criminals or suspects, for example, police can intervene. but of course they can't do anything if for example, an unknown sleeper is planning an attack. so even in the cctv capital of the world, there is no such thing as total security. there are animals that use tools to secure food and learn through observation. theses are known to have an impressive level of intelligence. parents have developed their own solutions for specific problems and fuse form intelligence to improve their efficiency. while dolphins are not dissimilar to men's only intelligence front. and there are countless other animals where we know how small

they are. but our next report deals with the species that are higher flow is then you might think scientists and bull whom university have known for a long time, the pigeons aren't stupid, but are in fact highly intelligent. their visual memory is phenomenal, and their master's abrupt learning. bacon memorized 700 images and recall them with ease. this is lam pigeon. 094. she is about to prove how powerful her working memory is to neuro scientist, semi 7 chick. these are the images to be present to the pictures. the prison, dental types of items, one of them contains images with the ship information and color information. and

the one can contrast this with only colors or gray bits, no chip information or color information. and at the end of the day, we want to see if the information like the amount of information to provide to this animals can affect their working memory performance. this is the main theme of hers . her pigeons tenacity, and their equity are legendary. they peg away at the monitors for hours on end, but it has to be quiet. we need to whisper still as it's hard and miss present. imagine difficult said that iterates 6 seconds and then you should get it back. put his answer here was wrong. so that's why have you shouted the lives and didn't provide hold button. the answer regarding daniel that broad hold. so dear critical thinking that this is tim was exhibiting mine to forsake seconds and then that you, according it was

a christmas. i've got already been to saw this by their time. it takes exec to wander vision for down between this into all that all can that go and then country 094 is off to the races. she doesn't know what give up means own are going to could once to better understand why thought processes and such different brains as pigeons and human brains function. so similarly, our own working memory is a good place to begin for a comparative experiment. then go into the fatherhood when we have to remember the color red, then inside ourselves, we secretly repeat, read, read, read, read, read. so we'll store the idea of you, but how does the pigeon memorize it of us? and what we're looking at now though, i'm still not sure we'll find it out, is could it be that a pigeon rather than using words which it obviously can instead codes the stimuli by a different movement and it was on the vehicle could such as doing one thing on red

to was mocked and another on green 0 asthma. i'd still an open question. the boom team has been able to show that the cerebral cortex with which we think is not only found in mammals. a new laser technique has shown that bird brains also have a structure resembling our cortex, with its typical horizontal and radial layers where complex thought takes place. you believe that because they make an extremely detailed analysis of everything they see with the vertical layer on in. they coordinate it all with the radio layers, the honest medina, just want these structures are capable of becomes visible under the microscope, but visit it. i visit here, individual nerve cells marked in dark wood into tissue and with the technology we used, you can see these dark colored cells communicating with other nerve cells mit on

the now from saying, we can practically see who's talking with wholly to, to meet them. the recently made discovery as groundbreaking, something as complex as this was expected and mammals, but not in birds. of that instant licksey. at 1st glance, the 2 brains look so differently money, but the nearer you go in the more closely you look, you can see the same basic principles throughout cbs. the closer we look, the more they look the same. that doesn't make master minds of pigeons. in the bird world alone, crows are far superior. yet pigeon still presents astounding cognitive abilities. it's impressive how they recognize and contextualize pictures, and even learn if a sequence of letters forms an english word or not. pigeons are totally underrated . this machine is a bit of a shame because they're running about all over the place. and it would be nice to

say, wow, a grandmaster of working memory comes to visit me because that would be cool. if i want blood is red, why are they gonna leave you? there is no such thing as to smart, right? if you have a sons related question, send us a video text or voice message. if we answer it on the show, we'll send you a little surprise as a thank you. come on, just ask scientifically, memories generated by information they would and now since we memory for a few seconds, working memory stores information for a few minutes. and our long term memory stores information for hours, at least, and usually for many years. but memory is not always reliable.

ah, the human lenary is a huge archive that works like a well oiled machine. well, most of the time. but not always. sometimes there are things we just cannot retrieve while the memories, landowners, uninvited, and there is some we simply can't shake off. here are 3 classic tricks our memories play on us. oh, 1st up, the tip of the tongue phenomenon. something we've all experienced at some point was at acs, his name again. hang on on the tip of my tongue. ah, this is what's going on upstairs. recollection of one particular person is stored

in a number of locations. their appearance in the visual center, sound of their voice in the auditory center, and the approximate number of syllables in their name in the language center. in order to identify the person, the brain has to dig up and piece together a sufficient number of those features. and that's where it's easy to get confused. a similar sounding name might 1st pop into your head because it's available sooner . so what's the solution? one answer is to turn your attention to something completely different. double remove the spanner in the works and eventually the penny dropped. oh, john, plod van dam. of course. trick number 2. in factory memory. that is memories linked to photo. it's not just unsolicited visual memories that sometimes bother us. not smell. like i know that from again, and suddenly you might be haunted by a distinctly unwelcome memory. why is that?

it's pretty simple. with all our senses, smell is the only one directly connected to the brains. emotional sent it the a mig dealer and also to the adjacent hippocampus, the area where memories are created. therefore, odors and the recollections associated with them are particularly vivid memory. cues, o. number 3, the e were more catchy tune. memories that refused to go. it can be very annoying, like a song you just have to sing along to songs that you can't get out of your head tend to resurface when we're busy doing mundane tasks. and our working memory has some free capacity to stave off boredom. our brain browsers through its archives and pulls out a specific song in a similar style to

a record player. and in our heads, we either he a music we adore. all that we absolutely hate this trick as a stimulus that makes us repeat the melody all there expect to ourselves. that creates a never ending loop as you're singing leads to you hearing mattoon internally, which in turn encourages for the singing. the remedy. research is recommend listening to the song one's bowl the way through to the bitter end and then bury the memory deep deep down in your brain's archive. 2 next tend to music now and the days mozart is a superstar of classical music in his own day. and now he composed over

a 1000 works and those legs on said to have magical effects on this. ah, just listening to mozart really make you smarter. the so called mozart effect was identified by researchers in 1993 o. b gave a group of college students a 10 minute audio sample to listen to. oh, with soundtracks ranging from silent to a relaxation tape options you we host to a mozart piano concerto. oh, the students were then asked to take a spatial intelligence test. oh, oh, oh, oh,

oh, those subjects who had been listening to mozart performed better than the other groups registering spatial i. q scores, 8 or 9 points higher. not a huge leap, but certainly it jumped. and that said, the intelligence boost lasted all of 15 minutes, said most. and then it disappeared. but that surprising if short lived effect triggered a media frenzy. mozart makes you smart, was in all the headlines. ah, the impact was especially great in the united states. babies born in georgia and tennessee were given a mozart cd, while kindergarten, kids in florida were treated to an hour of mozart music every day. the scientific community also seemed enthralled. researchers reenacted via original experiment,

but struggle to confirm the mozart effect. it was replicated in some tests, but not in others. meanwhile, there was a suspicion that the music merely improved the mood of test subjects, giving their brain some brief stimulation. another question soon arose. does it have to be mozart? oh, as it turned out, music by other artists have the same effect, whether is so nodded by schubert or a song by the 19 ninety's british band to blur i . so the notion that only mozart makes you smarter and permanently so was just a myth. but the big question remains. how does music affect the brain? oh,

or grey matter is in fact colored by practically every thing we do. that includes listening to music and even more so playing music. what ever the music, practicing and performing leave a mark. any drummers, the neural pathways linking the 2 halves of the brain, tend to be fewer but thicker, which is perhaps why they're so good at certain swift and complex movements. surely a well trained fit brain is capable of more than a standard specimen. well, there are plenty of studies that claim playing music makes you smarter. experiments showed that people with a musical background, we're better at certain things. they might have better language memory skills, for example, or were better able to remember things they had seen movie

children in particular performed better on the memory front end and intelligence tests if they had at least a year of music lessons. the problem is, even if playing an instrument goes along with higher i q test scores, it doesn't mean the one cause the other. ah, i played the violin and was an ace in physics. wouldn't he have been a science? was even if he had never learned an instrument playing music and being intelligent, may well co occur. but whether one contributes causally to the other is highly questionable. more than a 100 studies over the past 20 years have claimed there is a causal connection without sufficient evidence to back up the claim. like muscles, the brain can be given a workout. but training and one activity doesn't mean you perform better in others

. if 2 skills are very different, being good at the one is not likely to make you better if the other, practicing the piano all day is likely to make you a better pianist. but will it make you better at solving differential equations? ah hardly. ah. still practicing an instrument not only lets you play music, it can also teach you that practice does make a significant difference. that can boost your self confidence and willingness to really apply yourself. so to recapitulate, does music make you smarter? well, there's no straightforward answer, but quite apart from any possible link to intelligence. music is a treasure and a joy in its own right. whether in the form of mozart pop or hip hop.

with for more, from the wonderful world of science and tech, fond us on the web at d, w dot com slash science and on twitter, that's all from tomorrow to day. from now. we hope you'll join us again next week for another fascinating addition of our sine share. until then, but by with, ah, ah, with

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