The Genius in All of Us

The nature and nurture of muscles

Some of the truly fascinating insights into talent and greatness emerge from the realm of human musculature -- how our skeletal muscles are initially formed, the attributes of different muscle fibers, and the different ways muscles can be transformed by activity and training. Reviewing the nature/nurture of muscles is also perhaps the best window into the dynamics of genetic expression. Here's an overview:

The human body contains three basic muscle types:
-- Smooth (involuntary muscles serving the digestive system, blood vessels, airways, etc.)
-- Cardiac (also involuntary; cardiac muscle is self-excitable and designed to function on its own)
-- Skeletal (all voluntary muscles, from eyes to fingers to toes).

   This overview concentrates on skeletal muscles -- the muscles we exert direct control over.

What are the basic components of skeletal muscle?
Each skeletal muscle is a bundle of thousands of specialized elongated cells called muscle fibers.

The fibers are fed by tiny, blood-filled capillaries, held together with various kinds of connective tissue, and fired ("innervated") by motor neurons -- one neuron firing 600 or so muscle fibers.

Each individual muscle fiber also contains a string of DNA-containing nuclei positioned just underneath and along the entire length of its membrane. The genetic material constantly instructs each fiber how to react *and adapt* to various circumstances.

 

 

There are two basic types of muscle fibers:
-- "Slow-twitch" (type I) fibers are designed to contract for long periods of time; packed with mitochondria, they are extremely efficient at converting oxygen to fuel.
----- These fibers enable us to jog, swim, bicycle, and other lengthy activities

-- "Fast-twitch" (type II) fibers contract rapidly and forcefully for a period of seconds, very quickly using voracious amounts of (anaerobic) energy, becoming spent and needing to rest and replenish.
----- These fibers enable us to sprint, jump, lift weights and other short-burst activities.

In musculature, we are not all created equal
Although on average, human beings have about a 50/50 mix of slow and fast-twitch muscle fibers, some are born with differing proportions.

"The 'average' healthy adult has roughly equal numbers of slow and fast fibers in, say, the quadriceps muscle in the thigh. But as a species, humans show great variation in this regard; we have encountered people with a slow fiber percentage as low as 19 percent and as high as 95 percent in the quadriceps muscle." (Anderson et al, 2000)

As anyone might logically expect from the above description of the fiber types, a higher proportion of one or another can offer certain potential advantages to highly-trained athletes. Elite marathon runners and cyclists benefit from a higher proportion of slow-twitch fibers, for example, while sprinters benefit from a higher proportion of fast-twitch fibers. (Anderson et al, 2000).

These genetic differences, however, must be put into careful context.
First, muscle fiber proportion is only one of many performance factors. On its own, it is not a good predictor of individual performance.

Second, muscles are tremendously adaptive to external stimulus, and are designed to be so. The muscles we are born with are merely default muscles -- ready and waiting to recreated in one or another particular direction by active use.

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To understand how adaptation is literally built into our muscle DNA, let's look at all the things that happen as a result of training
At any given time, each muscle is adapted to a status quo of activity and exertion -- i.e., each muscle is exactly as big, strong and efficient as it needs to be. When pushed just beyond the ordinary level of exertion, a number of physiological changes begin to unfold:

1. Neural response.

"The first measurable effect is an increase in the neural drive stimulating muscle contraction. Within just a few days, an untrained individual can achieve measurable strength gains resulting from 'learning' to use the muscle." (NSMRC)

2. Genetic response makes muscle fibers more efficient.
In response to extended (aerobic) exercise -- e.g. jogging -- there is a genetic response in the nucleus of each cell fiber that makes it more efficient and enduring: increasing the number of mitochondria and provoking an increase in surrounding capillaries and the accumulation of fats and carbohydrates. (Wiki)

3. Genetic response makes muscle fibers become stronger and grow in size.
In response to overload/resistance exercise -- e.g. weight lifting -- the DNA responds with instructions that will lead to the strengthening and enlarging [hypertrophy] of each fiber.

"As the muscle continues to receive increased demands...upregulation appears to begin with the ubiquitous second messenger system (including phospholipases, protein kinase C, tyrosine kinase, and others). These, in turn, activate the family of immediate-early genes, including c-fos, c-jun and myc.  These genes appear to dictate the contractile protein gene response.
    "Finally, the message filters down to alter the pattern of protein expression. It can take as long as two months for actual hypertrophy to begin. The additional contractile proteins appear to be incorporated into existing myofibrils (the chains of sarcomeres within a muscle cell). ...These events appear to occur within each muscle fiber. That is, hypertrophy results primarily from the growth of each muscle cell, rather than an increase in the number of cells." (NSMRC)

4. When training is particularly intense and prolonged, slow-twitch muscle fibers can become transformed into fast-twitch fibers, and vice-versa.

"Adult skeletal muscle shows plasticity and can undergo conversion between different fiber types in response to exercise training or modulation of motoneuron activity." (Wang et al, 2004)

 

A detailed diagram of gene expression at work in muscle fibers:

 

Exercise, stretches and other muscle activity (LEFT) interacts with DNA in the nucleus (CENTER, circled in red), which in turns interacts with protein translators to effect changes on the cell and surrounding tissue (RIGHT).

(Source of graphic and detailed explanation of genetic transcription:  Rennie et al 2004.)

 

 

In summary

While evolution has given humans some variability in muscle types, the much more powerful product is its adaptivity. Muscles are designed to be rebuilt.

"The ability of striated muscle tissue to adapt to changes in activity or in working conditions is extremely high. In some ways it is comparable to the ability of the brain to learn." (Bottinelli and Reggiani, 2006)

Calling all born-genius legends

A friend recently asked me to explain the Ted Williams phenomenon. Perhaps the greatest baseball hitter of all time, Williams was famously endowed with unparalleled eyesight, astounding coordination and a "natural" swing.

 

It's a nice story, but as I've said before, when you look closer, these tales always turn out to be much more interesting. In his own 1969 autobiography, Williams wrote: "They used to write a lot of bull about my eyesight. How I could read license numbers on cars before another guy could see the license....Sure, I think I had good eyesight, maybe exceptional eyesight, but not superhuman eyesight. A lot of people have 20/10 vision. The reason I saw things was that I was so intense...it was discipline, not super eyesight."

A more recent Williams biography by Leigh Montville identifies Williams' obsession with improvement as his defining characteristic, and chronicles his over-the-top dedication to perfect his swing -- his "scientific" approach. Montville explicitly and painstakingly debunks the sportswriter-created legend of Williams' "natural" ability.

To me, learning these details makes Williams' feats even more spectacular. Built-in ability is nice, but acquired ability is inspirational.

Please send me your favorite born-genius story. I'd like to collect, and examine, all the best legends out there.

How to bake a Beethoven cake: Johann's recipe for musical genius

You've probably seen this old anti-abortion canard, popular among "right-to-life" activists:

"How would you advise a mother who is pregnant with her fifth child based on the following facts: Her husband has syphilis. She has tuberculosis. Their first child was born blind. Their second child died. Their third child was born deaf. Their fourth child had tuberculosis. Would you advise the mother for an abortion? Oops! If you said yes, you would have just killed the great composer Ludwig van Beethoven! We cannot know what God has in mind for every individual..."

Aside from hilariously having almost every biographical fact wrong (the writer above is 1 for 7 -- I will give a signed book for the first person to name the single correct fact), this pungent morality tale is riddled with logical and cultural fallacies. But my very favorite thing about the story is its faulty science: it rests on the assumption that geniuses are born pre-destined and self-contained, ready to unfold before our eyes.

The born-genius myth is a common one, easy and fun to write about it. But are we ready to confront the more nuanced truth? In his 2005 biography of Beethoven, Edmund Morris paints a sober portrait of a genius in slow, steady formation. His intensive training started early (before age 5), had dark psychological overtones, and reads almost like a recipe for extraordinary ability. Any modern researcher from today's study of expertise would recognize the elements immediately.

Ludwig's early training was ruthless and exhaustive, driven by his tyrannical father Johann who was disappointed in his own achievements.  Starting at age 4 or 5, Johann made his eldest son his special project, forcing him to practice constantly. "Neighbors of the Beethovens," Morris writes, "recall seeing a small boy 'standing on front of the clavier and weeping.' He was so short he had to climb a footstool to reach the keys. If he hesitated, his father beat him. When he was allowed off, it was only to have  a violin thrust into his hands, or musical theory drummed into his head. There were few days when he was not flogged, or locked up in the cellar. Johann also deprived him of sleep, waking him at midnight for more hours of practice."

Much like future tennis greats at today's Spartak training camp in Russia, tiny Beethoven was allowed aboslutely no artistic or performance freedom for several years. It was all about technique and discipline -- "the constant suppression of his [improvisational] fantasies by Johann ('More of your fooling around....I'll box your ears')," writes Morris. "Even on the violin, Ludwig's fingers could not help searching out new music. 'Now isn't that beautiful?' he would plead. The response was always, 'You are not to do that yet.'"

"Johann's insistence on his practicing by rote laid the foundations of a formidable technique. Over the next two years...he worked 'prodigiously' to develop [his] facility...Of his own accord, he took extra instruction from organists around town."

Did his god-given talent emerge immediately? Apparently not. More than three years into his training,
at around age 8, a schoolmate later recollected of Beethoven, "Not a sign was to be discovered...of that spark of genius which glowed so brilliantly in him afterwards."

At age 10, he outgrew his father's instruction, and moved up to a more capable mentor. At that point, he was exposed to Bach and taught how to compose variations on a theme. His first attempts were mechanical and uninteresting, later evolving into some awkward attempts at something new. When he was 12, his new mentor bragged in a magazine article that Ludwig had the potential to "become a second Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart if he were to continue as he begun."

And so it went, steadily, persistently, passionately . . .

   

 

Savants and us (An FAQ)

The prodigious savant Daniel Tammet was just profiled on 60 Minutes, sparking a provocative email from my brainy and combative step-uncle Stan; he wants to know how savant syndrome fits into, or conflicts with, my developing understanding of talent.

Tammet is as rare as it gets: there are only 50 or so prodigious (truly exceptional) savants out there. But there are thousands more savants who are highly-impressive in one way or another, and as a group they can offer us enormous insight into the workings of the brain and the nature of intelligence.

The lessons are surprising. At first blush, one might assume that savants are proof that biology trumps effort: everyone's brain has a slightly different circuitry and will perform accordingly; savants are at one extreme end of the spectrum, with very strange wiring that confers amazing ability.

The truth is a lot more interesting. Here's a Savant FAQ, informed by the work of Darold Treffert, one of the world's leading savant authorities.

What is savant syndrome?
Savant syndrome is the presence of unusual intellectual and/or artistic abilities in otherwise impaired individuals. It is seen in an estimated 1 in 10 persons with autism, AND in roughly 1 in 1000 persons with other mental impairments, including developmental disability, mental retardation, and other central nervous system injuries or diseases. Savantism occurs in many more males than females -- a 6:1 ratio.

Is it always present from birth?
No, and that turns out to have very important implications. Says Treffert: "Savant syndrome can be congenital, or it can be acquired following brain injury or disease later in infancy, childhood, or adult life. Recent reports of savant-type abilities emerging in previously healthy elderly persons with fronto-temporal dementia are particularly intriguing."

What are the specific abilities displayed by savants?
As a rule, they are right-hemisphere skills: music, art, math, spatial dexterity and calendar calculation -- what Treffert calls an "intriguingly narrow range of special abilities" made possible by a spectacular deployment of mechanical, or concrete (also called "implicit") memory.

What's the underlying cause?
No current theory can account for all the cases of savant syndrome, but the most prominent theory that plausibly covers most cases is an injury to the left part of the brain (in the womb, infancy, childhood or adulthood) which sparks a dramatic compensation by the right brain.

--- Treffert elaborates: "Some savants, because of prenatal, perinatal or postnatal central nervous system damage, from a variety of genetic, injury or disease processes have substituted right brain capacity in a compensatory manner for left brain dysfunction and limitation. Simultaneously, because of those same injurious factors, these savants have come to rely on more primitive cortico-striatal (procedural or habit) memory rather than higher level cortico-limbic (semantic or declarative) memory. This combination of right brain skills coupled with procedural memory produces the constellation of abilities and traits that is savant syndrome."

But how can a brain injury give someone exceptional abilities?
We know from centuries of medical history, including the emergence of various medical oddities over the years, that certain components in every brain are equipped with incredible technical capabilities -- capabilities normally suppressed by other components so that the brain can do its main job, which is to balance out function and help a person lead a normal life. For example, in my book The Forgetting, I discuss the famous Russian patient S. who literally remembered every detail he came across in his entire life. He could recite verbatim conversations or random number lists decades after the fact. Sounds cool,bBut this was actually a huge liability -- remembering every detail makes it impossible to form intelligent summaries of details, which is the basis of all intelligent thought and communication. The ability to forget -- get rid of sensory detail -- turns out to be just as important in the brain as the ability to form new memories.

Similarly, savants become unhinged from the usual cerebral checks and balances. Treffert explains: "'Weak central coherence' theory (WCC) [is the ability/disability of] focusing on details rather than the whole....Not being distracted by more global patterns, the savant can focus on a single item or skill and perfect it." (He cites Frith & Happe, 1994).

Like a car spinning around and around because its steering wheel is stuck in the right-turn position, savants' severe brain injuries push them to focus all their time and energy away from the wide burden of social function and into one or more very narrow skills.

What are the lessons for normal functioning brains?
1. Savants don't have amazing abilities -- they acquire them.
Savant brain injuries, whether in the womb or much later on, don't instantly bestow people with amazing powers -- rather, they set loose normally restricted brain mechanisms which allow that person to hyper-focus on a certain skill set in a way that normal functioning minds cannot. Through their disability, they are able to develop amazing skill. As Daniel Coyle recently wrote in the NYT: "Savants' true expertise, the research suggests, is in their ability to practice obsessively, even when it doesn't look as if they're practicing."

2. We can acquire them too.
Although it's a far more cumbersome process, anyone with a normal functional brain can also develop advanced -- and even extraordinary -- skills. Ericsson, Dweck et al have shown some paths to get there, and Treffert argues that we may be able to develop further training methods based on what we're learning from savant brains. "Does some Rain Man ability — savant-like skill and capacity — exist in each of us?" posits Treffert. "Probably so. [The] more primitive memory circuitry, and right brain capacity, both still exist in each of us. However because of their inherent, utilitarian usefulness we have generally come to rely more heavily on left (dominant) hemisphere functions such as language, logical & sequential thinking, for example, than on right (non-dominant) hemisphere skills. Likewise in our day to day functioning we have come to generally use and depend upon semantic or declarative memory much more than using our more primitive, and less facile, procedural or habit memory capabilities. The question becomes then, is it possible to tap and use those still existent, but less frequently used, capacities and circuits, with some of their savant-like characteristics, in those of us more wedded to left brain capacity and higher level memory? ... ...I am convinced there is."

The Myelin in All of Us

This has been a terrific couple of weeks for anyone wanting to better understand talent -- several smart magazine and newspaper pieces have zeroed in on new, critical data. Daniel Coyle has a solid piece in yesterday's NYTimes Sports Magazine that nicely combines Anders Ericsson's work on "deliberate practice" with some very recent findings about myelin, the fatty insulation around nerve fibers that makes electrical nerve signals more efficient (Ishibashi et al, 2006; Fields, 2006).

Here's the connection:

It is now very well established that persons of great skill in any field have spent many years carefully honing their technique (this includes savants, who, by nature of their disability, are able to focus obsessively and persistently on math or music or art, effectively tuning out distractions). Why does high-level skill take so much time and steady effort to develop? It turns out that this slow, patient persistence is exactly what myelin needs to become a thicker and more efficient insulator. You can't rush that process. "In neurology, myelin is being seen as an epiphany," NIH's Douglas Fields told Coyle. "This is a new dimension that may help us understand a great deal about how the brain works, especially about how we gain skills."

Coyle also looks at the current epicenters of great sports training -- the Spartak tennis center in Russia, golfers in South Korea, baseball payers in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. The common thread, he observes, is an obsessive focus on technique. Each of these places are incubators for deliberate practice. Harnessing the competitive drive comes later (at Spartak, they don't allow students to compete in tournaments for at least three years).

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Are some people born with more efficient myelin-boosters than others? Maybe so. Maybe, on top of the years and years of persistent development of technique, Anna Kournikova and Tiger Woods and Nicolo Paganini also got lucky in the genetic lottery. But to anyone following the last few years of research, genetic differences seem less and less relevant. Here's why:

1. No one has actually found these much-vaunted genetic differences relating to skill and talent.  Maybe they're connected to intelligence, maybe persistence -- but we haven't actually found them yet. Meanwhile, Ericsson, Fields, Dweck, et al have exhaustively documented various external influences.

2. Regardless of what differences we're born with, evidence suggests that:
-- most people do not come remotely close to achieving their genetic potential (Ericsson, Ceci)
-- high-level achievement is simply impossible without hard work and persistence (Ericsson et al)

3. We know from Carol Dweck's definitive research that no one benefits from a mindset that relyies on their "natural" abilities. Students encouraged to rely on their natural gifts stagnate, as do poor-performing students told that they are limited by some disability. Conversely, students of every caliber perform better when they are encouraged to equate hard work with results.