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				Friendly Genes Williams syndrome, a rare genetic disorder affecting one in 25,000 people, is characterized by extreme sociability and mental retardation.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: As kids, we're all of us convinced that we're different from the other kids and of course we are. A lot of our time as kids is spent trying to figure out what everybody else is doing and thinking and why and, you know, it's tough. Perhaps it's the toughest part of being a kid. And it takes years and years sometimes a lifetime of practice. But for some kids this struggle to understand the world is even tougher. That's because the difference that they're born with is so profound that the world is more baffling than usual. In this program, we spend some time with children who are growing up different and with some of the researchers who are trying to understand why they see the world the way they do. We'll see how the insights that these researchers are achieving are not only helping the kids who are different make sense of the rest of us but they're also helping the rest of us understand what it means to be human. Yeah! ALDA: We're at a picnic in La Jolla, California. At first glance, the kids here are like most kids-- certainly they're high-spirited enough. But they are all linked by possessing a rare genetic disorder called Williams syndrome. Hello, are you Scott? I'm Scott. How are you? Alan Alda, so nice to see you. Nice to meet you. How are you? You were the best inMASH I'll tell you that. Oh, thank you. You were the best doctor inMASH I've ever seen. Listen, I know you don't give autographs... ALDA: Scott and Steve are 39-year-old identical twins both with Williams syndrome. Is this Ursula? Yes. Hi, how are you? ALDA: While Ursula Bellugi is one of Scott and Steve's greatest fans. Yes, this is a special occasion. It certainly is. Who's this? ALDA: Ursula is one of a growing number of scientists fascinated by the extraordinary contradictions of Williams syndrome. Hi, Mr. Alda, my name is Betsy and I'm very, very glad that you're here and that you can spend some time with us today. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, I'm glad to be here. Hi, we met a second ago. How are you? Yeah, good. What's your name? I'm Justin. Hi, glad to meet you. Hi, my name is Jordan... ALDA: Only one in 25,000 children is born with Williams syndrome. Its most characteristic physical feature is an appealing, elfin face. We didn't meet, hi. ALDA: On a social occasion like this kids with Williams syndrome are in their element. I'm Shannon. How are you, Shannon? I've been wanting to meet you a really long... long time. Something that's so clear, meeting these kids here today is how affectionate they are. That seems to be a typical... personality attribute of these kids. Am I right about that? Yes, I mean, I would say it's affectionate. It's interested in people, it's highly sociable it's gravitating toward people. I mean, that's their thing in life. So, it's... I think affectionate and sociable. Growing up different with Williams syndrome you find that you have a lot of good times and some bad times. And the main thing is that you always have to remember that there are people that will take good care of you. But with me and my brother we didn't find out until much, much later that we had Williams syndrome. Hi, everybody. Okay, come on over, Mr. Alda. Okay, we're stirring up the magic cake. ALDA: When Scott and Steve were diagnosed back in the early 1980s they were among only 60 identified cases of Williams syndrome in the country. CLOWN: Abracadabra. ALL: Abracadabra! ALDA: It was then that Ursula Bellugi began her studies here at the Salk Institute. The first goal of her research team was to build up a better picture of the strengths and weaknesses of people with Williams whose social skills mask their struggle to make sense of the world. CLOWN: Hurry, hurry, hurry! I'm going to ask you some questions that I'd like you to answer. Mm-hmm. Justin, can you tell me how many months there are in a year? There's 24 months in a year. Okay, good job. How old is the oldest woman on Earth? I don't know, probably 50. I don't know. Okay. How much does a compact car cost? A compact car? Um... ALDA: Cars, by the way, are a favorite topic of Justin's. I'd say, like 24,000... $24,000 actually. What's the average salary per year for a doctor? Um... I would say eight to 45, uh... I'd say, like, $8.45. Per year? Yeah, per year. How many blocks do you have, Barry? One, two, three, four, five six, seven, eight. You know what? You need another block. Nine.Okay. Okay, make your blocks look just like mine. This is theeasiestone. ALDA: Perhaps the most striking problem for people with Williams is performing visual-spatial tasks. They can get the details right without seeing the overall picture. Do your blocks look just like mine? Yes. All right! Draw me a bicycle. Do you want to do that? Certainly. I just drew my face. I made sure it was a ten-speed and it had... brakes. Mmm... nice. I've got two lines at the top here. Uh-huh. And there's an array of lines down below. I want you to pick out the two lines down here that are pointing in the same direction as those two at the top. Okay. Three... and there is one. BELLUGI: Good. ALDA: In contrast to Betsy's problems with lines she has little trouble with a task matching faces. And I want you to pick out the three faces down here that are exactly like this one. That one. Okay... That one. And that one. ALDA: The most intriguing aspect of this face recognition skill was uncovered with the help of a little hat. I think this is the sixth or seventh time I've had electrodes attached to my head. (laughing): Do you want... do you want more? I'm really getting into it. ALDA: The hat houses an array of electrodes to pick up electrical signals from the brain. Oh... oh, are you shooting this? (chuckling): I'm sorry. RESEARCHER: You'll be seeing a series of faces, pairs of faces. You'll see one face and it'll go off then you'll see a second face. And your job is to decide whether that second face is the same person or a different person from the first face. ALDA: It turns out that when a non-Williams person like me first realizes he's seeing a face there's a spike of electrical activity about a quarter of a second later mainly in the right side of the brain. But when a Williams brain sees a face the response is strikingly different. The surge of electricity is a little later but five times bigger and seems to be spread over almost the entire brain. It's like the brain is using as much brain tissue as it can to try to solve this problem. So it's organized in a different way. ALDA: It's almost as if faces are so important to people with Williams syndrome that their brains throw everything they can into recognizing them. The Williams syndrome research project has little trouble finding eager volunteers. It's a lot of fun now. And I know I can help others that might have it, Williams syndrome. SCOTT: And help the scientists and people that work so diligently for people with Williams syndrome to find out... why this occurs, um, and further the studies. Have you learned anything from these tests? Tracking your brain waves. Have you thought about the way you think? Yes and... and no. But mostly... mostly I enjoy life now. I used to not really enjoy things as much as I do now because I... I've been walking in my shoes with Williams syndrome and it's been hard for me to find people to... find people who are able to accept the situation and be able to accept people who are walking around different. Of course, I haven't had acupuncture in a long time. (all laughing) ALDA: The biggest breakthrough into why people like Scott are different came when the genetic basis of Williams syndrome was discovered. When we first came to the Salk we knew nothing about Williams syndrome. Nothing about what caused it. BELLUGI: Nobody knew anything. And nobody knew anything. And in such a short time... I'll never forget the day Ursula lay down on the table in front of me... she put a picture of the gene the chromosome with the gene marked on it and said, "There it is, that's what caused it." And I just cried, I just cried. In such a short time, for science to go from telling parents "Your child has Williams syndrome, that's all we know" to being able to say, "Here's the cause of it." ALDA: The cause is literally visible under a microscope. When stained with a fluorescent dye the chromosomes of a normal cell show a bright band in the middle of both copies of chromosome 7. In the cell of a person with Williams syndrome only one copy of the chromosome has this band. The missing chunk contains only about 25 genes. So scientists are hoping to be able to trace not only the disabilities of people with Williams syndrome but also some of their special strengths directly back to just a handful of genes. I mean, are you going to find out there's a gene for compassion? I mean, this is... Let's call it "sociability" and... (softly): God damn it, we might. And what? We might, we might. You might? Yes. You think you might actually be able to... Well, in this case. That would be amazing. Yeah, it would be, wouldn't it? (both laughing) I think it's... I mean, I think that's sort of the hunt we're on and I think it's... it's a possibility. So you're actually... (laughing) by studying carefully what the roots of Williams syndrome are you're actually finding out what the roots of qualities that all of us have are, huh? I mean, you're beginning... That's absolutely... I mean, you're beginning to track down how we are who we are. I think that's put very, very well, and that is true and the added fascination that we've got is that we can understand so much more about how the brain does it and how you can get in unusual ways to these strong qualities. Why is the keyboard here? Does somebody play? Do you play? BARRY: I play. BETSY: All of us do. ALDA: One quality that seems to be possessed by many people with Williams syndrome is a talent for music. Make up a song for us. I think that would be great. Okay. ALDA: It was hard to believe, but Betsy came up with this song-- words and music-- right on the spot. (Betsy begins playing keyboard) BETSY: Alan Alda, you're a very nice guy You're kind and caring and I can't tell a lie You're so interested in all that we do It is so good to have a guy like you In this world. You are a part of our family You care about us, as all of us can see It's really great when you want to know About our favorite kinds of music or where we like to go When we're together. Thanks for coming, I'm glad that you are here And since you are so interested in us We hold you dear In our hearts and lives Thanks for all you do Thanks for caring for different people in this world It's wonderful, just... like.... you. (applause) Great! Thank you. What do you hope to know? Where do you hope to get with this? Alan, I'm going beyond my wildest dreams. (laughing): You've already gone beyond your... By trying to link up an aspect of gene to brain development and higher cognitive functions. I don't hope for anything more than that. (laughing)

				Breaking the Shell Autism encompasses a wide spectrum of disorders characterized by an inability to form social relationships. Can early intervention mitigate these symptoms?
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: No head banging, no arching. ALDA: Tariq is 2 years old. (whining) You are ticked off all of a sudden. ALDA: He was diagnosed with autism six months ago. His parents and I are sitting with him in a treatment room at the University of Washington in Seattle. ...two, three-- ready? (adults laugh) FATHER: All right. ALDA: Since Tariq was diagnosed he's been receiving regular therapy aimed at helping him break out of the mysterious and often impenetrable shell that seems to surround people with autism cutting them off from the social world. FATHER: Two or three months ago you couldn't redirect him. You couldn't say, "Now throw the ball to your sister. Now kick the ball to..." you know, whatever. "Now stop biting the dog" or something like that. (laughing) How long every day do you work with him? We're planning up to 40 hours a week of home-based therapy. Right now we do about 15 hours of the one-on-one with a tutor three hours here and on top of that we do the occupational therapy physical therapy once a week for an hour. We do speech therapy for two hours. Then he gets tired and he sort of withdraws a little bit and he does his own thing and he's done his homework and he's darn well going to be in his own world right now and that's it, right? That's what he's doing now, I think. ALDA: Autism is disturbingly common affecting as many as one in every 700 or 800 children born. Many, but by no means all of these children are mentally retarded. Some develop language; others never do. ALDA: There seem to be such a wide range of symptoms. Are they all along this autism spectrum because they have a common cause? Because they all are related to the same part of the brain or what? What links them together? WOMAN: Well, the key feature that links them together is the difficulties in social relationships. So even the highest functioning person may have an I.Q. above average and really good language may be out in the work world with a regular job. They would still have that very fundamental problem in relating to other people. ALDA: Geraldine Dawson's own research is focused on just why autistic children find it hard to relate to other people. ...and we're going to count to five, okay? ALDA: Six-year-old Alex has autism and to win his cooperation the researchers have to employ patience, guile and fun rewards. WOMAN: You got it! Ready to put on this silly hat with all this hair on it, Alex? We're going to put it on and we're going to count some more this time, okay? ALDA: The hat is similar to the one we saw used in the Williams syndrome research and like that study, the plan here is to monitor the electrical activity of Alex's brain as he looks at faces. ALDA: Is each one of these E.E.G. signals associated with a part of Alex's brain? Well, each one of these signals is one of those electrodes that you saw being put on his scalp. ALDA: The signals from Alex's brain are recorded and processed as he looks at pictures of his mother's face or that of a stranger. In a normal child the brain's response to the two would be very different. But Alex's brain responds to both his mother's face and that of the stranger as if they are the same. When it comes to faces, his brain is literally indifferent. DAWSON: In normal development the brain is naturally wired to draw our attention to faces. And you think about a young baby even a newborn will prefer to look at a face as compared to another complex object. So there's something wired into our brain that naturally draws our attention to the social world. And so we think this tells us that that mechanism that naturally draws our attention is not working properly. If you're not paying attention to social information how are you ever going to learn to develop socially? (gasps) Oh, nice, looking at me now. And you smile, you silly goose. ALDA: In Tariq's therapy sessions, Bonnie spends a lot of time trying to get him to look at her and respond hoping to instill in Tariq through endless repetition a facility most children are born with. Here it comes. Ready, set... All right! DAWSON: One of the things that we're understanding is that the parts of the brain that are probably involved in autism are ones that come on-line really early in life in the first and second year. So what we want to do is to pick up kids really, hopefully by birth but right now we're at about 12 to 18 months and we try to stimulate those brain systems while they're still developing and plastic in hopes that the children will then kind of grow out of their autism or at least be less affected. Oh, you picked dot art. Good choice. ALDA: So the earlier autism can be spotted, the better. Oh, you need help. You can show me, like this. ALDA: One early warning sign which goes along with an indifference to faces is the lack of a special form of eye contact. DAWSON: We tend to look at people at very specific moments. So, for example, when I want to communicate with you I'll check in visually, and then I'll point to something and check back. This is called joint attention, and it actually turns out to be the most significant diagnostic sign of autism. So it's not just the sheer amount of eye contact but it's really how he combines eye contact with communication. MAN: Watch this. ALDA: Two-year-old Kendall has great eye contact. Isn't that funny? Right in the cup. You want to do it? Go ahead. ALDA: Kendall's a healthy, typical little girl who's here to help psychologist Andy Meltzoff give me a lesson in the importance of imitation. Oh, good. Eeh! MELTZOFF: Kendall, watch this. I bet Alan doesn't even know what we can do with this. Watch this. Isn't that funny? Kendall want a turn? Okay. ALDA: Whoa! Very good. MELTZOFF: Typically, developing children are like sponges. Adults in front of them just behave and the baby watches wide-eyed and does what they do. They become little adults in the culture from watching the adult. Good pop. MELTZOFF: Do you want Uncle Alan to try that? ALDA: Four-year-old Mia is another great imitator. (laughs) ALDA: You want to try it? (laughing) Nowthat'simitation. Yeah. That'simitation. ALDA: Andy Meltzoff has done the same experiment with autistic children. MELTZOFF: Now, you remember this toy. ALDA: This child seems social enoughand intrigued by the cup but he isn't collapsing it, as Kendall did. ALDA: If you just walked inon the room and you were looking for eye contact you'd think, "Oh, he's relating normally." But if you're looking for imitation you don't get it. Exactly, exactly. I think imitation is a higher-order activity than simply eye contact. So some children with autism can make eye contact. What they seem to have a profound deficit in is doing these simple imitation games which seems to be relating to another person from the inside at a deeper level. It's this drive to want to relate to you as a person to be like you. They don't have... seem to have that impulse. ALDA: Andy Meltzoff thinks thisfailure to imitate other people is yet another useful early warning sign of autism. But he also believes it may be at the root of many of the later problems people with autism struggle with; stemming from a failure to see other people as beings like them. DAWSON: So one of the first things that you do in any kind of early intervention program is teach a child how to imitate. And there's lots of different ways to do that. What you may have seen with Tariq is she was imitating some of his behavior just so he starts to look at the correspondence between what he's doing and what she's doing. So in this case the child doesn't have to think, "I need to imitate you." But they start seeing the correspondence between their action and your action as you imitate them. Now, who initiated this? It appears that what she's done here is she's brought out a toy that he's highly interested in and she's doing something that is very appealing to him having that spin. She's blowing on it and he's trying to get it to turn by... now she's imitating him. That's right. Now she imitated what he's doing. So building up these interactions can develop the ability to interact in other ways in other areas, at other times? That's true, although we do target what are sometimes called pivotal skills. These are fundamental skills that, if you learn them they open the door to all kinds of learning. You want cookie this time? ALDA: Among the most importansuch skills is communication. Oh, you said, "Cookie" and you're looking at me. This is a graham cracker. ALDA: Tariq, like many otherautistic children is being taught to use a communication system in which pictures replace the spoken word. Tariq, you told me juice. Yes, you want some juice. ALDA: But while Tariq is benefiting from what's already known about autism the University of Washington program is also investigating autism's many unknowns-- including what, if anything, is different about the autistic brain. One of the volunteers in this research effort is seven-year-old Elizabeth. She's being prepared for a scan of her brain in an M.R.I. machine. I did this once and... and you're taking it so much better than I did. MAN: So when you're in the magnet, when we talk to you try not to move your head like this because then we'll lose kind of where your head is in the magnet. ALDA: Elizabeth is the daughter of one of the scientists here. MAN: So we're slicing from back to front and here's the cerebellum. As we come forward, this is... ALDA: Her brain is one of the normal brains the researchers are comparing to the brains of autistic children. ALDA: Have you found anything so far that seems typical of the difference between the two? What we seem to be finding is that the kids with autism have bigger brains. ALDA: Bigger brains? They have bigger cerebrums than both normally developing children and kids with developmental delays. So, that seems, uh... Peculiar. Odd, yeah. Bigger's not necessarily better. Clearly they have bigger brains but their brains aren't working as well. ALDA: To find out why autistic brains don't work as well Steve Dager and his colleagues are peering deep inside them looking for differences in important brain structures. And they've discovered another puzzle-- a region called the amygdala is bigger than you'd expect even given a bigger brain. ALDA: What is the amygdala normally associated with? DAGER: Emotionality or emotional response. So the question obviously is if these kids have a paucity of emotional response or have a problem with emotional reciprocity why would their amygdalas be bigger? Yeah. And I don't know. That's what we're trying to better understand as we study them over time. So these kids are all coming back now when they're ages six to seven and we're looking at the change over time as a dynamic way of understanding brain development. ALDA: Brain imaging is clearly one of the new frontiers in autism research. ALDA: Elizabeth, you did great. That was great. ALDA: But while Elizabeth's contribution to autism research will no doubt pay off one day for now, the main hope for children like Tariq lies in the dedication of therapists like Bonnie McBride-- and hours of patient chipping away at the walls his autism has erected. Unfortunately, for many children growing up with autism not even this is enough. You did it! All right! Jump! Jump! What do you think are the prospects for this little boy? DAWSON: Oh, I'm very hopeful that this little boy will go on to develop language and do quite well. As I say, at this age, it's extremely hard to tell. That's another focus of our research is to try to look at are there early indicators that tell us which child's going to go on and do extremely well and other children could have exactly the same intervention and make very slow progress. There must be something biologically different about those two kids. But no, I'm very hopeful that he'll go on to develop language and friendships and a very positive prospect for him.

				'Every Sound is a Present' An electronic device restores hearing to the profoundly deaf, allowing many children to learn to speak and converse in oral English.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: ALDA: Seven-year-old Kelly Flynn lives with her family near Northampton, Massachusetts. One of her favorite walks is through the woods to a nearby river. Why? Yeah... can you hear it? And when you get your implant? Yes. ALDA: Kelly has been profoundly deaf since she was two. What little hearing she has-- boosted by a conventional hearing aid-- is worsening. She has no trouble communicating by sign but for years she's wanted to talk. Do you like to sign or to talk? To hear better. Why do you want to hear more? ALDA: Tomorrow is the day Kelly has been waiting for for months. You're going to go in the room in one minute. Mommy has to change her clothes and I will go in with you. MAN: It is just the beginning but it's an exciting beginning-- and, in a way, a beginning of her hearing in a whole new way which is very exciting. And she's the most excited about it. (squeals playfully) MOTHER: Good girl, Kel. You're so brave. WOMAN: She's great. ALDA: The surgery that's about to begin on Kelly will permanently implant a tiny set of electrodes deep within her inner ear. WOMAN: I'll take good care of her... Thank you. ALDA: In a normal ear, sound vibrations are translated into nerve impulses by millions of tiny hair cells lining the inner wall of the pea-sized cochlea. Kelly went deaf when an infection destroyed these delicate hairs. A cochlear implant substitutes an array of tiny electrodes-- 22 in Kelly's case-- for the hairs of the hair cells, directly stimulating the cells to send their messages to the brain. Kelly's surgery is being done at Boston's Children's Hospital by Dr. Margaret Kenna. KENNA: What I'm doing now is drilling actually into the cochlea. And the bone of the cochlea is very hard bone-- harder than the rest of the bone in the rest of the body. And as you go towards the center of the cochlea it gets very white. So now we have a hole in the cochlea. Can you see it? ALDA: Oh, yeah, I see it very clearly. Every time I realize that there's a seven-year-old girl under that draping I get... it has an effect on me. Do you keep that out of your mind or how do you handle it? Well, you have it sort of in the back of your mind, I think just to stay focused on the job at hand. But also, I think, if it was my child, I couldn't do this. Somebody else would have to be doing this. I couldn't do it. ALDA: The electrode array being slipped into Kelly's cochlea is attached to a receiver that is also implanted under the scalp. Both the electrodes and the receiver are connected, in turn to an antenna and a magnet. The entire implanted system is visible in an X ray taken while Kelly is still in the operating room. This is the antenna... up here. This is the magnet. This is the receiver stimulator right here. And this is the wires, the electrodes in the cochlea. If you look really closely you can almost count each individual electrode. ALDA: It will take about two weeks for Kelly to recover from her surgery. Hi. Are you ready? Yes. Good. What are we doing today? My cochlear implant will turn on. We're turning on your cochlear implant. ALDA: A wireless transmitter sticks to the magnet under Kelly's scalp. From now on, this is how sounds will get to her brain-- from the microphone behind her ear via a computer that will process the sound into the signals sent to her cochlea. (machine beeping) Right now, Kelly's microphone isn't on. These beeps are being fed into her cochlea directly. The cochlea normally responds to high-frequency sounds at one end and low frequencies at the other. The electrodes in the implant mimic this process. (beeping continues) Kelly has been asked to put a ring on the stick whenever she detects a sound. MAN: She told her friend that when she came back maybe she'd be able to call her on the telephone. She's already exploring it in her mind. She's imagining the things that she might be able to do. And to her, hearing is a gift now. It's not like, you know just being something that you're born with. It's something very special to her. So it's like Christmas. Each sound is a present. ALDA: So far today, Kelly has onlyheard the beeps generated by Marilyn's computer. But now comes the moment Kelly has been waiting for. Her microphone is switched on. Now sounds from the room are able to enter her head. (click) (murmurs) (Alda laughs) Yeah. (laughs) (tapping repeatedly) (laughs) (tapping continues) (playing keyboard) (stops playing) (rainstick swishing) Raining. (laughs) Turn it over. (swishing again) (laughs quietly) (swishing continues) MOTHER: Do you like the way that it sounds? Yeah. Is it really, really loud? Is it really loud, or is it perfect? It's perfect. ALDA: Kelly gets her own little computer to turn the sounds picked up by the microphone behind her ear into the signals sent to her cochlea. NEAULT: So, I'll just put it there and let the hair fall down over. ALDA: It's the sophistication of this sound processing-- especially for the sounds of speech-- that has in the last few years started to open up the world of hearing to profoundly deaf children. Hello, hi, hi. ALDA: To find out how-- and what lies ahead for Kelly-- we're visiting a classroom for hearing-impaired children where my job is to read a story. "It isn't fair that my brother Anthony "has two dollars and three quarters and one dime and seven nickels and 18 pennies." ALDA: The room is equipped with a sound system so that the voice of teachers or guests is kept at a constant level. Some of the children here have conventional hearing aids. Several, including six-year-old Timmy, have cochlear implants. ALDA: Timmy, do you like money? I like lots and lots of money. Lots and lots of money? Yeah! Here he is, thinking about all the things... ALDA: Those of us without cochlear implants can never know exactly how they sound to children like Timmy but here's a guess. ALDA (in garbled voice): "So they brought lox "because my father likes to eat lox "and they brought plants because my mother likes to grow plants." ALDA: Timmy had his cochlear implant when he was just two years old and ever since, he's been working hard. Timothy... (all laugh) I want you to be thinking about your nice "k" sound, okay? And Mr. Alda will probably think about his nice "k" sound, too. We all will think about that. What am I supposed to do in this game? Um, get a match. Make a match? ALDA: When he was nine months old a bout of meningitis effectively destroyed Timmy's hearing. Crack the egg. Nice job, one more time, Bud. Let's hear that "ck" at the end. (with effort): Crack... the... egg. Nice job. ALDA: At a time when most children are absorbing the sounds of speech Timmy lived in a nearly silent world. He's been playing catch-up ever since not only learning to interpret speech, but to speak himself. Ha! Hmm. Not a match. Not a match. ALDA: Accompanied by his mother, Tim has also spent many hours here in the Audiology Lab at Children's Hospital in Boston. NEAULT: Okay, Tim, don't look at me, okay? ALDA: Today he's in for a routine testing of his cochlear implant, and a tune-up if necessary. Sounds are being played to him at different loudness levels and pitch. NEAULT: I am determining how soft a sound Timmy can hear with his speech processor and his implant at different pitches or frequencies. And I want to make sure that he can hear all the different frequencies at a soft enough level for him to hear the different sounds in speech. The "s", the "f" and the unvoiced "th". "Fff,", "sss," "th" and also "p," "t," "k". The sounds that you make when you're whispering are the trickiest to pick up. And a deaf child with hearing aids would not hear those. With a cochlear implant, you can detect and even learn to discriminate among those sounds. NEAULT: Hi, Tim. It's Marilyn on the radio again. ALDA: In a quiet room like this Tim's ability to hear and speak is remarkable. You just say the same word after me, okay? All right, are you ready? Toothbrush. Toothbrush. Butterfly. Butterfly. Water. Water. Ball. Ball. Pencil. Pencil. ALDA: Remember, this is a boy who was completely deaf when he got his implant four years ago, at the age of two. With early diagnosis of hearing loss early introduction of language early implantation and proper therapy and nurturing of language this outcome is becoming far more commonplace than it used to be. He is typical of a good outcome but there are many, many of them. I think some people feel that there are two or three children ever who have achieved this degree of speech reception and speech perception and spoken language competence. And that's not true. There are many, many children of this nature. Okay, this is the last thing. I will say a whole sentence and you say the same thing after me, okay? All right, don't look at me, remember? Ready? I'm hungry. I'm hungry. Turn off the TV. Turn off the TV. The fruit was on the ground. The fruit was on the ground. ALDA: Once highly controversial within the deaf community cochlear implants are now finding wider acceptance in part because of the striking success of children like Timmy. Excellent! That was wonderful. (children shouting) ALDA: That opposition to cochlear implants was partly based on how they might damage that part of the deaf culture based around sign language. But Tim's first language was sign. And his parents expect sign to remain invaluable in the future. WOMAN: If he has the implant off he can't hear anything at all. So if he's in the bathtub or he's at the beach it's so nice to have another language. And so, yes, we probably will always continue. And he likes it. We'll sign to him and he'll speak back to us. So it's really funny in church. It's really, really useful in church. You know, I mean... We can actually yell at our child in church if we need to and nobody will know what's going on, so... MOTHER: I think right now, Timmy doesn'tthink he's any different than anybody else walking around and in time he's going to know there are some differences. But I think, from the roots that we've given him he's going to be able to do whatever he needs. And the best thing that you could do is just give him so much confidence right now just like you would any small child. Just so that later on-- as he realizes that he is a little bit different-- then, you know, he can go back and dig on those roots. You've been there before, remember? With Jamie and... ALDA: For Kelly Flynn, the long journey into@ the world of sound and of speech is only just beginning. But already walks near her home have taken on a new dimension. Finally Kelly can hear her river. (water splashing)

				Finding Her Voice Technological innovations help a young woman with cerebral palsy speak to her family and friends, and live out her dream of writing.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: Our final story is about a young vwoman who, like Kelly Flynn has always wanted to speak. In her case, it was cerebral palsy that robbed her of a voice of her own. But as we've seen as we've followed Kara Johansen over the years her inability to speak hasn't stopped her from talking. (Kara chuckling) WOMAN: I-L-O-O-K... ALDA: I first met Kara when she was 12. Her mother, Pam, spoke aloud what Kara had to say by reading the letters Kara looked at on a plastic alphabet board. PAM: A-N-D and K and S-0. "And someone... someone says it." ALDA: I appreciated Pam Johansen's skill at translating for Kara even better when I tried it myself. Right in the middle here, should I be able to do it? What was the play about? S... E... W. No? Uh, X, "Sex?" No. (both laughing) Well, it's the letter I saw. (laughing) ALDA: Kara's family and close friends were almost as skilled as Pam Johansen at using the board. The communication it allowed was central to the bond that exists between Kara and her sister, Melinda. G-R... MELINDA: Kara and I are really close and we have been that way ever since she was little. And a lot of times people categorize her-- she can't do this, she can't go on a roller coaster she can't go off a diving board-- and that's never been a barrier between us because she has done all of that and that's what keeps us together most of the time because we have overcome so much together. I don't want to do this! ALDA: But when Kara was 14, Melinda started boarding school and sisterly chats became much more difficult. It's hard for us to communicate. It has to be over a phone and there needs to be a person communicating with Kara just to be able to tell me what she's saying. If there was a way that I could talk to her directly it would be perfect. ALDA: No one better appreciated Kara's need to talk directly than the person who had always been her principal voice her mother. PAM: Kara loves Melly and Melly loves Kara. And Kara would love toprivately talk with her sister without any other person there, without an adult without a mother there to censor what was being said. She just loved to communicate with Melly on her own very privately and talk their secret stuff that they have to share. Yes. (giggles) WOMAN: Okay, just keep it back. ALDA: In 1994, an attempt was made to give Kara a voice of her own by fitting her with a device that would track the gaze of her eyes. But Kara made no secret of her opinion of its practicality. PAM: "It's..." O, O, "It's too..." B-U-L-K... "It's too bulky"? ALDA: But the eye tracker did allow the researchers at Boston's Children's Hospital to confirm that Kara's gaze was steady enough to control some sort of communication device. PAM: It's sliding down over her eyes. ALDA: Over the spring and summer of 1994 Kara and Pam Johansen made many visits to Children's. Work on the new system was going slowly. And Pam Johansen was acutely aware that Kara's need for independent communication was becoming more urgent. Got that wish down? Okay, make a third wish. ALDA: Pam Johansen had begun to lose her own battle with cancer. She died in October 1994. WOMAN: You want me to leave it in like that? ALDA: A few months later, a new system was ready to be tested. This time a custom-fitted helmet held Kara's head still while the eye-tracking system was mounted separately. From it, an infrared beam shone at her eye. The eye was tracked by two cross hairs. One of the cross hairs centered on the reflection of the infrared beam. The other cross hair centered on the pupil itself. By comparing the position of the two cross hairs a computer could tell precisely where her eye was pointed. The system was calibrated by having Kara look at numbered squares on a screen. When her eye fixed on a square, it lit up. The plan was to replace the numbered squares with letters of the alphabet so she could spell out words that could be spoken aloud by a voice synthesizer. MAN: If you don't think it's right there just look around that area until it highlights. ALDA: Or, so that she could trigger pre-recorded phrases. MAN: That's great, Kara. MECHANICAL VOICE: It's great to see you again. Hey, what a nice reception! Hiya, Kara. It's great to seeyouagain, too. ALDA: Kara had prepared several phrases in anticipation of my visit including a reminder of the first time we met. MECHANICAL VOICE: I haven't done any more plays about sex. (laughing) ALDA: Have you been spending a lot of time trying to get this machine to work right? MECHANICAL VOICE: Yes. Would it be okay if I try this? MECHANICAL VOICE: Yes. ALDA: I got to try out the test version of what was intended to become an alphabet board like the one her mother taught her to use. But this one would be linked to a word processor that would allow her to write, as well as a voice synthesizer that could read aloud what she had written. MECHANICAL VOICE: Hello, Dr. Watson. ALDA: In January 1995 almost a year after the work on the eye-tracking system began Melinda Johansen, away at her boarding school in Maine received a telephone call from her sister. (telephone ringing) Hello? MELINDA: Hello? MECHANICAL VOICE: Hi, Melly, it's Kara. Hi, Kara. I'm using the I-Scan computer system for this phone conversation. That's good. Do you like it? Yes. Did you have fun in school today? No. Why not, because it was a Friday and you had to go? (laughs) When you played basketball, did you win? Of course not, we never win. I scored eight points. And the other eight points, I assisted. Kara, how is school going? Good, but very stressful. Excited about coming up next weekend? Yes. Good, I'm really excited about you coming up, too. Okay, kiddo, I got to go... ALDA: This was the first time Melinda and Kara had ever talked by phone without someone else, usually her mother, speaking for Kara. ...When you come up, okay? ALDA: Of course, this conversation was hardly private or spontaneous but in spelling out her final message Kara was taking the first step toward the independent voice her mother had so wished for her. I love you, Melly. I love you. Bye-bye. (laughs with delight) ALDA: By the summer of 2001 both Kara's and Melinda's lives had changed. Melinda is now married and a teacher. Kara lives at the Massachusetts Hospital School on weekdays and with Melinda and her husband on weekends. And a few days ago Kara got a new communication system to try out. Kara, hi, how are you? MECHANICAL VOICE: Hi, Hawkeye. How you do... (laughs) It's great to see you. What's up? I'm sorry, would you say that again? ALDA: This device no longer tries to track her gaze. What's up? (laughs) ALDA: Instead it allows her to use her head. Now this little dot you have on your forehead this thing is reading where you look, huh? ALDA: Mounted on top of her computer is a camera that tracks the dot on her forehead and uses this information to control the position of the cursor on the screen. It's almost like watching a mouse cursor but your head is the mouse. (computer clicking) Yes. Right. When we first talked you were interested in writing. Have you been writing? ALDA: The system is far simpler than the one Kara first found her voice with six years ago. And it's commercially available-- no longer a cumbersome experimental device. I still am very interested. Do you have to work hard all the time on... on communicating learning different ways to communicate? Does it seem like hard work to you or is it part of your life and you just take it in stride? (computer clicking) Just do it, and it's hard; but I just remember how my mother told me never give up. Boy, that's terrific. That's really terrific. You know, there's nothing you can't do. That's what my mother told me and it got me in a lot of trouble because I believed it. The funny thing is... you really can do probably anything you want to do. I mean, you have this ability to stick to it like this. And you take so much pleasure out of life. That's the secret, I think. ALDA: With her sister Melinda still at her side and with the help of enthusiastic volunteers and a dedicated staff at her school Kara daily demonstrates the spirit and determination of all the kids we've seen in this program who are growing up different. Come visit us at PBS Online.

Take a look at these related stories from the Frontiers Archive:

				Isaac and Friends A Swedish innovation called ISAAC - a cell phone, digital camera and computer, all in one - helps the disabled become more independent.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: WE'RE IN THE CHARMING OLD UNIVERSITY TOWN OF LUND IN SOUTHERN SWEDEN. ONE OF THE SIGHTS HERE IS THE TOWN'S 12th-CENTURY CATHEDRAL. I'M GOING TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THIS. THIS IS A PERFECT POSTCARD. WORKING, WORKING. SMILING. NOW I'LL PRESS THE LITTLE BUTTERFLY. THE BUTTERFLY IS FLYING. Alda: MY CAMERA IS ALSO AMONG A LOT OF OTHER THINGS, A CELLULAR PHONE. HELLO, BODIL? DID YOU GET THIS PICTURE? IT'S A BIG CHURCH OR A CATHEDRAL. SO... SO WHERE DO I GO NOW? TO THE RIGHT? ACROSS THE STREET TO THE RIGHT. OKAY. Alda: I'M TRYING TO FIND MY WAY TO THE TRAIN STATION AIDED BY A DIGITAL ASSISTANT I MET JUST THIS MORNING. Man: LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO ISAAC. IT'S MUCH LIGHTER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE. TWO KILOGRAMS IN TOTAL WITH BATTERIES AND EVERYTHING. Alda: ISAAC IS THE BRAINCHILD OF LARS PHILIPSON AND BODIL JONSSON. IF I WERE WEARING THIS WHAT WOULD I HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT IT? THIS IS THE ONLY PART THAT YOU NEED TO OPERATE. Alda: ISAAC WAS BUILT TO HELP PEOPLE WHO ARE SEVERELY MENTALLY RETARDED AND CAN'T COPE WITH THE WORLD UNAIDED. SO ARE THESE PICTURES DOWN HERE AT THE BOTTOM WAYS OF ACCESSING DIFFERENT... LET ME SEE IF I CAN TELL YOU. THAT'S THE TELEPHONE. THIS IS IF I WANT TO TAKE A PICTURE? YES. DO I TAKE IT WITH THIS? YES. I DO? THAT'S... WHERE'S THE LENS? OH, THERE, IS THIS THE LENS? THAT'S THE LENS. IT'S A SMALL ONE. AND THIS IS A CAMERA? YES. AND A TELEPHONE, AND A COMPUTER. YES. AND IT... AND IT... ALL THIS INFORMATION CAN GO BACK TO YOUR CENTRAL OFFICE. TO THE SUPPORT CENTER. INCLUDING THE PHOTOGRAPHS? RIGHT. Alda: ISAAC IS MEANT TO BE USABLE EVEN BY PEOPLE WHO CAN'T READ. IF I WANT TO TAKE A PICTURE OF YOU I WOULD... MAYBE TOUCH THE CAMERA? Philipson: WHILE IT'S WORKING YOU SEE THIS... A HAPPY FACE AND THEN... IT'S NOT QUITE A SAD FACE. A WORKING FACE. I COULDN'T QUITE INTERPRET THAT. OH, OH, THERE'S A PICTURE. YOU GET A BLACK- AND-WHITE PREVIEW. THAT'S A NICE PICTURE. TO SAVE IT I CAN PROBABLY PRESS ONE OF THESE BOXES. THE FILING CABINET. NOW, THIS BUTTERFLY, DOES THAT MEAN...? TO SEND IT-- SEND IT OVER THE AIR TO THE SUPPORT CENTER. OKAY, I'M GOING TO PRESS THAT. AND THE BUTTERFLY IS FLYING. SO THAT MEANS THE PICTURE IS GOING BACK. ACTUALLY, IT'S NOT ONLY CLEAR IT'S KIND OF FUN. Alda: THERE'S ALSO A BUILT-IN PHONE BOOK THAT USES PICTURES OF THINGS AND PEOPLE YOU MIGHT WANT TO CALL. WHAT DO I DO, PRESS THE PHONE? NO... PRESS THE GREEN? NO... PRESS THE PICTURE! YES! WELL, IF THIS CAN WORK WITH ME IT CAN WORK WITH ANYONE. Alda: AS IT HAPPENS, MY PREDICTION WAS A BIT OPTIMISTIC. THIS IS WHERE I'M SUPPOSED TO BE USING ISAAC TO HELP ME FIND THE TRAIN STATION. I... I DO NOT SEE A TRAIN STATION ANYWHERE NEAR HERE. Alda: THINGS STARTED OUT PROMISINGLY ENOUGH... DEFINITELY NEED HELP HERE. PRESSING THE PHONE. LET'S SEE IF I CAN GET A PICTURE OF... THERE'S BODIL, OKAY. PRESSING ON HER FACE. ACTUALLY I PRESSED RIGHT ON HER NOSE. Alda: BODIL IS WAITING TO HELP BACK AT THE ISAAC SUPPORT CENTER. BODIL SPEAKING. HELLO. HELLO, BODIL? HELLO? BODIL, I'M TALKING TO YOU. VERY LOST. ( beeping ) AH, SOMETHING'S RINGING. THAT OR... OH, IT'S DIALING. ( phone rings ) HELLO, BODIL SPEAKING. HELLO. IS THIS ALAN? YEAH, THIS IS ALAN. I'M TOTALLY LOST. I WILL TRY TO FIND YOU ON THE MAP. SO WHAT SHOULD I DO? Just stand there and wait. STAND HERE AND WAIT. OKAY, OKAY... OKAY. THEY ALSO SERVE. Alda: SO THE CELL PHONE WAS ACTING UP. THAT HAPPENS. THE TEST NOW WAS TO SEE IF A G. P.S. SATELLITE ANTENNA IN THAT BUMP IN THE SHOULDER PAD COULD LOCATE ME ON A MAP BACK ON BODIL'S COMPUTER. AND BINGO, WE'RE IN BUSINESS. Jonsson: JUST GO DOWN THE STREET AND WE WILL FOLLOW YOU AT THE MAP. OKAY, TALK TO YOU LATER. Alda: SADLY, MY NAVIGATION EXERCISE BECAME INCREASINGLY AN EXERCISE IN FRUSTRATION. THE G. P.S. SYSTEM WORKED FINE TRANSMITTING MY LOCATION BACK TO BODIL EVERY FEW MINUTES. THE PROBLEM CONTINUED TO BE THE PHONE CONNECTION. LOOKS LIKE A GOOD SPOT TO TAKE A PICTURE. Alda: EVEN WHEN I TOOK A PICTURE I HAD TROUBLE SENDING IT BACK TO BODIL. THE BUTTERFLY FLEW BUT WOULDN'T LAND. ISAAC WAS CLEARLY HAVING A BAD DAY AND MY CAMERA CREW WAS MORE HELP FINDING THE STATION THAN MY DIGITAL ASSISTANT. THAT WASN'T SO HARD, WAS IT? JUST RIGHT THERE. Alda: ISAAC COMES CLOSE TO BEING A WONDERFUL EXAMPLE OF HOW TECHNOLOGY CAN HELP THE MENTALLY DISABLED. RIGHT NOW, THOUGH, MY EXPERIENCE SUGGESTS IT ISN'T A PRODUCT-- AND TO MY SURPRISE, LARS AGREED. Philipson: WE PUT INTO ISAAC A LOT OF DIFFERENT FUNCTIONS AND THEY WERE NEVER MEANT TO BE A PRODUCT ALTOGETHER BUT TO MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR US TO DO EXPERIMENTS WITH VARIOUS PEOPLE. SO SOME OF THESE FUNCTIONS ARE USEFUL FOR SOME PEOPLE AND OTHER FUNCTIONS FOR OTHER PEOPLE. Alda: I WAS ABOUT TO MEET TWO PEOPLE FOR WHOM ISAAC WASN'T MERELY USEFUL-- IT CHANGED THEIR LIVES. HELLO, STIG. Alda: THIS IS STIG NILSSON. HELLO, TOMAS. ALAN. Alda: AND THIS IS TOMAS AKESSON. Alda: IS THIS YOU? Alda: TOMAS AND STIG, BOTH SEVERELY MENTALLY DISABLED DISCOVERED THROUGH ISAAC THE JOYS OF TAKING PICTURES BUT NOT JUST TAKING THEM. Alda: IS THIS USED TO BUILD INDIVIDUAL SENTENCES? Jonsson: YES, FOR INSTANCE IF YOU WANT TO BUILD A LETTER... Alda: BOTH TOMAS AND STIG NEITHER OF WHOM ONCE HAD MORE THAN A FEW WORDS NOW USE THE PICTURES THEY'VE TAKEN TO COMMUNICATE. Alda: IS THIS ABOUT LARS? ( speaking Swedish ) LARS. ( asking question ) ( replies ) A LETTER FOR LARS. OKAY, OH, SO THIS IS... IT'S TO LARS, AND IT'S FROM TOMAS. OKAY, SO THE STORY, I GUESS, HERE IS TOMAS WITH STIG-- IS THAT STIG? YES. AND THEY WERE USING ISAAC AND THEN THEY PRINT OUT THE PICTURES THAT THEY'VE TAKEN WITH ISAAC? ( speaking haltingly ) ISAAC? AND THEN YOU USE THE SCANNER TO PUT THEM INTO THE COMPUTER AND THEN THEY PUT THEM INTO THE BOOK. Alda: STIG WAS HAPPY TO SHOW ME THE SYSTEM BODIL AND LARS HAVE DEVELOPED TO KEEP TRACK OF THE THOUSANDS OF PICTURES THAT HAVE NOW BEEN TAKEN WITH ISAAC. THE PICTURES THEMSELVES ARE DISPLAYED IN WHAT'S CALLED THE PICTORIUM. ( wand beeps ) THE BAR CODE ON EACH PICTURE INSTANTLY ACCESSES THE VERSION DIGITALLY STORED IN THE COMPUTER. Alda: OKAY, NOW, I SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET A MESSAGE SO FAR FROM THIS? Jonsson: YEAH, MAYBE. ( Jonsson speaking Swedish ) Alda: OH, THIS IS A PICTURE OF SOMEBODY POINTING AT PICTURES ON A COMPUTER SCREEN. SO THAT'S LIKE SOMEBODY USING THIS DEVICE. Jonsson: THAT'S ME WITHOUT GLASSES. Alda: STIG CHOSE PICTURES TO TELL ME OF HIS FAVORITE PEOPLE AND ACTIVITIES DURING A TYPICAL DAY. IS THAT YOUR BED? THAT'S YOUR... OKAY. Alda: THIS FROM A MAN WHO SPENT MOST OF HIS ADULT LIFE IN AN INSTITUTION WHERE IT WAS ASSUMED HE HAD NOTHING TO SAY. NOW, CAN I GIVE A MESSAGE TO STIG? CAN I USE THESE PICTURES SOMEHOW? OH, YES, OH, YES. UM... NOW, I DON'T KNOW WHERE THINGS ARE BUT LOOK, UH... I WANT TO TELL HIM SOMETHING. LET ME LOOK THROUGH THESE PICTURES FOR A SECOND AND I'LL TRY TO TELL HIM SOMETHING. UH... WAIT A MINUTE, NOW, I'M GETTING WARM. Alda: LUCKILY, I'D HAPPENED ON THE SECTION OF THE PICTORIUM DEVOTED TO FOOD. THAT'S A TOPIC I CAN ALWAYS TALK ABOUT. UH, GIVE ME A SECOND HERE. LET'S SEE-- HERE. ( wand beeps ) Alda: FIRST I FOUND A PICTURE OF ME TAKEN WITH ISAAC. AND THIS ONE. ( wand beeps ) AND, UH... AND THIS. ( beeps ) TODAY I ATE POTATOES AND HERRING, OKAY. ( Stig responding ) AND SHE WAS CALLING ME. AND SHE WAS SAYING, "STOP EATING. " AH... HE WAS EATING, TOO. THE CAMERA GUY ATE A LOT OF HERRING TODAY. Tomas: HEY, TOMAS. ( wand beeps ) Alda: NOW IT WAS TOMAS'S TURN TO TELL ME SOMETHING. OKAY, SO THERE'S TOMAS SHOWING UP ON THE SCREEN HERE. THERE HE IS. Alda: HE CHOSE TO DESCRIBE A RECENT OUTING WITH BODIL IN HER CAR. WHILE BOTH TOMAS AND STIG USED ISAAC TO TAKE MANY OF THESE PICTURES TODAY THEY MOSTLY USE A SIMPLE DIGITAL CAMERA. AND FOR TOMAS, AT LEAST SOMETHING PROFOUND SEEMS TO BE HAPPENING. ( speaking quietly ) Jonsson: I DON'T KNOW IF YOU COULD ACTUALLY HEAR THAT TOMAS, HE HAS GOT THE WORDS AND BY NOW HE HAS GOT SOME THOUSAND WORDS. BEFORE, HE JUST HAD BETWEEN TEN AND A HUNDRED. AND THE REASON WHY HE SITS THERE RIGHT NOW AND SAYS "NOW THEY COME AGAIN"-- ABOUT THE PICTURES-- IS THAT SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED TO HIM THAT MAKES HIM INTERESTED TO COMMUNICATE AND NOT ONLY TO COMMUNICATE, BUT ALSO TO THINK. TOMAS, HE HAS BECOME SOMEBODY AND WHEN WE STARTED THE ISAAC PROJECT THAT WAS ONE OF THE GOALS THAT THE USERS WERE TO BECOME SOMEBODY, INDIVIDUALS. Alda: USING THE PICTURES STIG AND TOMAS CAN NOW TELL NOT ONLY OF THE PAST... Jonsson: HE WANTS TO SHOW YOU WHAT HE WANTS TO HAVE FOR COFFEE. FOR THE COFFEE BREAK? LET'S SEE... Alda: THEY'VE ALSO BEGUN TO EXPRESS THEIR HOPES FOR THE FUTURE. Alda: COOKIES, CAKES. I HAVE TO TELL YOU THAT WHEN I CAME HERE TOGETHER WITH YOU STIGGY ASKED ME IF WE WERE GOING TO HAVE COFFEE AND I PROMISED HIM THAT WHEN YOU HAVE LEFT WE WILL DO WHATEVER HE LIKES. AND HE TOLD ME THAT HE WANTED TO GO WITH ME TO MY HOME AND HAVE SOME COFFEE WITH ME AND WE ARE SUPPOSED TO HAVE THIS KIND OF CAKES CAKES THAT HE SHOWED ME NOW. SO THIS IS ABOUT THE FUTURE. YEAH, IT CERTAINLY IS, YEAH. Alda: FUTURE PLANS FOR THE PICTORIUM INCLUDE ADDING SPEECH TO THE COMPUTER. Computer voice: Stig knows how to use it, too. Alda: AND BOTH TOMAS AND STIG CAN NOW TALK TO A WIDER AUDIENCE-- YOU CAN VISIT THEM ON THE INTERNET AT THEIR OWN WEB SITE. Stig is working with the rake. Alda: ISAAC, THE DEVICE THAT STARTED ALL THIS, IS NOW BEING RETIRED. NO DOUBT OTHERS WILL TAKE UP THE CHALLENGE OF BUILDING A DIGITAL ASSISTANT FOR THE MENTALLY DISABLED. TOMAS AND STIG DISCOVERED FOR THEMSELVES HOW ISAAC COULD HELP THEM. ( Stig laughing ) Alda: FLYING IN A HELICOPTER OVER THE TUNDRA OF CENTRAL SWEDEN

				Nerves of Steel Artificial electric stimulation helps the paralyzed stand, walk, and use their hands.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: But using artificial electrical muscle stimulation, he can walk. Dr. Byron Marsolais started this project. MARSOLAIS: He has absolutely no control of his legs at all. He is totally and completely paralyzed and every bit of motion that happens is coming through the electrical stim. Don, do you get all your balance from holding on to this walker? Yes, I do, Yes, I do. Does that put a lot of pressure on your arms? No, not really. Most of the pressure's on my legs. Actually, I prefer to let my legs do the work because if I did it with my arms, I would be tired out. Yeah. How tiring is it to take it... uh, every step? Uh, not too bad. It's comfortable, you know? But after the end of the walk, I will breathe heavy. Yeah. Standing takes a lot of energy because you have to stimulate the muscles for a prolonged period? Right-- he is standing by stimulating the flexors and the extensors, the antagonistic muscles, all at the same time. So he's stiff as a board. And that charge just has to be constant. It's constant... If you let up on it, he's liable to tip one way or another. Oh, he would, for sure. And so he looks good standing tall and stiff... ALDA: But you feel the strain? MARSOLAIS: But he's got strain. Yeah, I feel strain. ALDA: My introduction to the functional electrical stimulation or FES, program was eight years ago. What I'm trying to get to is his gluteus maximus muscle-- the big seat muscle. ALDA: Dr. Marsolais showed me how he implants wire electrodes. What you're inserting into the muscle is... that's not the electrode itself? No, this is just a little probe... Right. A very tiny probe. And the reason you're doing this is to see if you can get the muscle to react to give its greatest response? Exactly. And I want just the right muscle. That's the muscle that we want-- it goes right down here into the femur which is the big leg bone. And you see how it's beginning to jump there? It's starting to do what we want. I think I can do better... And in order to do better I have to get it right beside the nerve. ALDA: Dan Kemp, paralyzed in a car accident is on the table. Now, Dr. Marsolais looks like he's found the spot here. That looks pretty good here, yup. That's getting a pretty good, tight... I can see it. See how that... jerks things together there. It looks like about an inch and a half from where you were first searching for it. Yes, that's right, although we're angled a bit down. We started about here, and now we're about here so we were a good inch away. ALDA: Once he's found the best stimulation point for the muscle a hair-thin, permanent wire implant is slid into place. Dan was one of many experimental subjects who volunteered for the program. In his case, he received eight electrodes in each leg. Now we just bring this down to exactly the position that we were before. ALDA: The patients and Dr. Marsolais were literally stepping into the unknown. How do you feel going through this? Do you feel like a guinea pig? KEMP: Yeah, I do, but it's well worth it. You know, down the road, people will be able to look back and say if it wasn't for people like me that they wouldn't have got as far as they've got in the new procedures. So, you know, it goes down the line. Everybody helps everybody else, whether they realize it or not. ALDA: Eric Bellamy, paralyzed in a motorbike accident agreed with Dan that it was worth being a guinea pig. He saw simple, basic ambitions for himself and for the program. BELLAMY: I see being in a chair always but I see being able to go up steps and knock on a friend's door and say, "Hey, I'm down here! " instead of running around the house and screaming, "Hey, I'm here, I'm here! " I see being in a convenience store as one step, you know? Uh, so... Being able to get up and go through a narrow door to go get into the bathroom-- just for them answers. And if they can come up with that right there... Your life's in a chair but being able to overcome difficulties would be a tremendous step and that's what we're working on right now. ALDA: Eric was one of five volunteers who received the most complex of the experimental systems, with a total of 40 implanted and eight external electrodes. The computerized control box could handle 48 electrodes simultaneously with connections made through the skin on his thigh. One big goal was to establish how many muscles needed to be stimulated for effective standing and walking. Working out how to sequence the firing of the electrodes was another challenge. Okay, go ahead and stand up. ALDA: In this trial, 20 muscles per leg were being stimulated compared to the 50 per side that are involved in natural walking. Eric was able to walk relatively smoothly although he still needed to use his arms to balance. Developing an artificial balance mechanism is still one of the goals, but they have been able to reduce the number of muscles needed for walking to only eight per side-- as in the latest system we saw Don Crago using earlier. But Eric's muscles had to work constantly at full blast. MAN: They're using tremendous amounts of muscle mass. Their quadriceps are on 100% their gluteal muscles are on 100% their hamstring muscles are on 100% their back muscles-- everything's just blasted. Whenever they do something they're using 100% of all their strength. Whether it's one step, two steps they're using everything they got. Like when you stand, everything goes right into it, 100%, bam! Okay? ALDA: With tough, motivated subjects like Eric they were eventually able to work out how to reduce the high levels of muscle stimulation and they also figured out the best design philosophy. It's that simpler is better. They realized that even the most complex systems were going to get tripped up by the real world sometimes. Stop! Stop altogether. ALDA: Better instead to go for simpler standard systems that can bring basic benefits to the largest number of people quickly. Many of the pioneers in FES research have now dropped out. Eric got a bad infection. Dan couldn't keep up the long commutes to the hospital. But today, many people with spinal cord injuries have good reason to be thankful for the pioneers' efforts. This is an easy introduction to the real world, I guess you could say. ALDA: Jen Penko is one of the beneficiaries. She's showing me a rehab area at Cleveland Metro Medical Center-- the first of three centers around the country to be working with the simplified standard systems. PENKO: For instance, there's curb cuts and those types of things. It takes a little extra energy to get up that, doesn't it? A little bit, but you'll get curbs in the real world that are a lot more difficult than that. You can just set it right there because I'll get myself set up. ALDA: Jen has a simplified system th just does one thing-- allows her to stand. PENKO: So, the light by the "stand" means that it's ready to stand and all I need to do is press this button to go and it will stand. Ready? Yeah. Are you sure you're ready? Yeah, I'm ready. ( beep ) ( beep ) ( beep ) ALDA: Jen's system has only four implanted electrodes per side but that allows her to stand and get around just enough to really make a difference. PENKO: So, here I can reach up, grab window cleaner and hand it over to you. How long can you stand before you start to feel stressed out or you're breathing heavily? We did a test on that-- 33 minutes and eight seconds was my time breaker right now. So... And that was a few weeks ago, so... Usually when you're in a grocery store one of the tough things when you're in a wheelchair is you can't really see within these big bins. So that way you can reach over, pick up some Weight Watchers because Lord knows I need it. And you can start to see things from a standing level that you really can't see from a sitting level. Whereas if I was at a sitting level I'd be lucky if I'd be able to see what was actually in here. Do you want to go to walking? Is that something you have in mind? Absolutely. Absolutely-- to be able to ambulate is fantastic. I mean, just to be able to stand. We're focusing on the functional things but there's a lot of health benefits to standing as well. I mean, people that are in wheelchairs that don't stand-- you have problems with the shortening of muscles with osteoporosis, with circulation. So, you have to be able to get into... pretty much any kind of a seat. ALDA: Simply transferring from one seat to another is a big benefit. Automobile seat and a booth like this which is different from a chair. Right. ( beep ) One, two, three... ( beep ) Those are three slow seconds. They are. And considering I'm from the Boston area I've had to learn how to count a lot slower... than out here. So it took me a long time to learn how to count. They count slower in Cleveland? I guess they do. ALDA: Another part of the design philosophy is modularity. If Jen and her doctors decide everything is working well she can get another eight electrode implants which will allow her to walk. Now I'll sit. ( beep ) So, you have the same three seconds before it puts you in the seated position? ( beep ) Mm-hmm. Same audio that goes through as well. Same beeping cycle. So it's just like a habit-- training me like a mouse. There you go-- beep. Three seconds later-- beep, and I'm standing up. What do you call the thing that's implanted? What is that? It's my receiver. Yeah... How big is it? Um, it's about that big... it's not very big at all. In fact... ALDA: A big change with the standard systems is that no wires pass through the skin. This here... So, this is the box that holds the batteries that holds the software and circuit boards. ALDA: Instead there's a transmitting coil with an implanted receiver. There's the coil... that goes to my receiver. I have it taped onto the skin so it won't move. So I have this coil that sends the radio waves to the receiver that's right here and you see the little bump in the skin right there? That's the receiver. ALDA: There are now nearly 200 standard systems in use but research is continuing. Jim Jatich received the very first implanted electrodes in 1986, to allow his left hand to grip. JATICH: Since I had this implant once it's put on me in the morning I'm on my own and I can write for myself, feed myself answer the phone, take messages, work on a computer. I do engineering drawings on a computer-- I'm trying to start my own business doing that. That would have been out of the question. I mean, without a tremendous amount of help. ALDA: Jim lives with his family just outside of Cleveland. When we first met him in 1993 he described for us how he had been injured. JATICH: Back in the summer of 1977 I was swimming with several other friends in a lake nearby. They dove into the lake and started swimming away. I was the last one to dive into the lake. I hit something on the bottom. It wasn't anything hard that knocked me out but I felt my neck jam into my shoulders and then I started slowly sinking into the seaweed at the bottom of the lake. I couldn't move anything, my arms or legs when, uh, I felt two arms on my shoulders and they pulled me to shore and right away I knew that I had broken my neck. ALDA: Jim has no lower-body control and only limited upper-body strength. For 23 years he's allowed the researchers to try out new FES systems on him. In 1993, for example, they were perfecting a joystick controller for the eight electrodes that give him his hand grip. The joystick was attached to his right shoulder. So a quick shrug of the shoulder activates the grip. And then a double shrug relaxes it. Jim was also one of the first to try an implanted receiver so no wires penetrate the skin. JATICH: What we have is... like a joystick implanted in the bones of my wrist. ALDA: Today Jim is trying another experimental control system. JATICH: There's a magnet and a sensor and as the wrist bones pass each other that sends a signal to the implant and depending at what angle I'm at whatever is programmed into the computer on back of my wheelchair that's how much strength and how fast my hand closes. So, the magnet and the sensor-- depending on how far apart they are as you move your hand back-- that regulates everything that's going to happen. Right. ALDA: Jim and the researchers have been working with the implanted magnet control for a couple of years. Now, if that were full of coffee and heavy... You can... see how strong I'm holding it. Yeah, you have a really good grip on that. Yeah. Yeah. You're a good actor, too. Looked like you had something in there. Oh, it's hot. ( both laughing ) ALDA: With the magnets controlling his left hand Jim's joystick can now control a new implant system in his right hand so next he'll be working with the researchers on tasks that need two hands simultaneously. Jim's essentially a member of the research team but one perhaps with a special perspective of the benefits of the FES program. You know, I've talked to friends of mine that are paralyzed. They won't go into restaurants when we have meetings, you know, like a support group meeting because they can't feed themselves. They don't want to see anyone feeding them so whenever we have meetings in a hospital or something they show up but when we have it in a restaurant, they won't go because someone has to feed them, you know. So, there's a, uh... there's a series of things that don't get done because of a simple thing like not being able to pick up a fork. I mean, you get less social. That's right. An example is a girl that came into this project to get an implant. When she first came in, you know, her face was down she wouldn't talk to anyone, no eye contact. After she got the implant, you know, she's feeding herself going out to restaurants, she enrolled back in school. Now she's an advocate, talking to everyone about it. She started a support group. And, I mean, you know, it just changes people's lives. And that's the kick I get out of it, to see how people change. How's that feel? Okay? Yeah, that's very nice. Not too tight? No, no, no, I like this. ALDA:

				Mind Over Matter Scientists harness the brain's potential to move objects with the power of thought.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: The producers have had me wear these attractive hats before but it's usually in a good cause. And in this case I was presented with a really fascinating challenge. I'm trying to just think about moving the white dot toward the bar while a computer looks at my brain waves and tries to pick up any signals that appear when I succeed. There's only one problem: I'm not succeeding. It's incredibly difficult when you first try it but they say it really can be done although most people need dozens of training sessions to make it work. This is like lifting things with your eyelids. ALDA: But every now and then, I did make it happen and I could see how you could train yourself to succeed consistently. It's more relaxed than being relaxed. It's... it's utter calm, almost nothingness. But there's the sense of doing it, of knowing it'll happen. ALDA: Andrew Junker is the man who first persuaded people to take seriously the idea that minds can control machines. When we filmed this eight years ago he'd been at it for a decade. JUNKER: I pick up the electrical signals from the head connect them to a bio-amplifier-- which amplifies the signal 20,000 times. It sends it to this blue box, which is the radio transmitter. The transmitter sends the signal to a receiver which is connected to the computer. ALDA: The machine Andrew liked to control was his sailboat. It's about to take a turn around the harbor of St. Thomas with neither Andrew nor his wife, Patricia having to lift a finger. ( electric motor humming ) The computer is linked to a motor-driven wheel and it's getting its signals from three electrodes inside Andrew's headband. As with the hat I was wearing the electrodes are picking up the electrical activity of Andrew's brain. Unlike me, he successfully taught himself to increase or decrease one particular component of this activity. His computer was programmed so that an increase turns the boat to the left... ( electric motor humming ) I'm turning left now. ( electric motor humming ) ALDA: While a decrease turns the boat to the right. Now I'll turn right. ( electric motor humming ) That last experience felt fantastic because I felt in a groove. Right here I felt like I was in this slot. And as long as I held that slot I could delicately suppress or intensify the signal and the boat responded, and it's a fantastic feeling. ALDA: Now, I know what you're thinking: "A man sailing a boat in the Caribbean with his brain waves-- that's something they expect us to take seriously? " But in fact Andrew Junker's work was then being taken very seriously by, of all things, the U. S. Air Force. Flying fast combat planes is a very complicated business and the pilot has only two hands and feet to do it. As more and more high-tech systems are added the pilot's in danger of having more controls to operate than ways to operate them... which is where Andrew Junker entered the picture. As an Air Force researcher he set up a laboratory to study brain-machine communication here at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Pilots like Captain Dave Toomey got pretty good at it and the researchers were able to measure what was happening fairly easily. Everything you look at out in the world produces a measurable response in your brain. In this case it's the response of Dave's brain to that light in the cab that's flickering 13 times a second. ALDA: The flickering produces in the back of Dave's brain what's called an "evoked potential"-- an electrical signal that can be picked up by electrodes on his scalp. Here's the signal. Keep your eye on the white dot in the middle. Dave's task is to try to change the height of the peak marked by the dot either increasing it and holding it there... or decreasing it and keeping it suppressed. TOOMEY: It feels as if you're doing something on a psychic level. It feels like those things you've seen on TV with the Russians bending spoons and moving balls on tables. It feels like that-- it feels like it's purely psychic. But in fact, it's hard science, it's pure science. It's just using something that the brain does naturally with some very high-tech equipment in order to make the link possible-- the human brain-to-machine link. ALDA: The machine Dave's controlling is a simple flight simulator. When he suppresses the signal, the simulator rolls to the left. And when he increases the signal, he rolls to the right. So far, so good. But how does he do it? We don't really know in any detail at all how people do this-- how they actually exercise this kind of brain-actuated control. And what we usually do when people ask us that question is try to give them an analogy: You know, how does a baby learn how to walk? ALDA: The idea has now found a new home with our tireless FES research subject, Jim Jatich. The Air Force eventually gave up not because it didn't work but because they were concerned it wouldn't work quickly and reliably. But Jim has trained himself to become incredibly good at controlling the dot with his mind. JATICH: When I see it down, I'm actually thinking "down," or like a fishing weight sinking down to the bottom of a lake. When I'm thinking up I'm thinking "up" or like a balloon floating. ALDA: It occurred to the researchers that this would make the ideal way to control an implanted FES system. So now instead of thinking about fishing weights and balloons Jim just has to think "close hand"... And it really works. TECHNICIAN: Not too bad. All right, let me change that. Okay, go ahead and close. ALDA: It's almost a miracle. Open. There we go. Okay, Jim, close. There we go. JATICH: The first time that I actually opened and closed my hand-- it didn't hit me when we were doing it in the lab. When I was outside in front of the hospital you know, just sitting there waiting for my ride to come it actually hit me that I actually opened and closed my hand by actually thinking about it, and then tears came to my eyes. That's the closest thing to what I used to have that God actually gave me... you know. I mean, it hit me all of a sudden and then it was overwhelming. But when I was doing it in the lab it was just another experiment. ( chuckles ) So, I mean, you know But it's going to take time and a lot of people's effort. I'm ready to go. ( chuckles ) Yeah. Come visit us at PBS Online. Scientific American Frontiers can be found on the World Wide Web at pbs.

				New Brain- Old Tricks Neurologists show that languages learned at a young age are stored in different parts of the brain than languages learned later in life.
		Select text to jump ahead in the clip: I'M ONCE AGAIN HAVING MY HEAD EXAMINED THIS TIME IN THE LAB OF HELEN NEVILLE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON, EUGENE. YOU KNOW, I THINK AFTER THIS SHOW A LOT OF PEOPLE WILL BE WEARING THESE. ( Neville chuckles ) WE'VE HAD MANY REQUESTS FOR EXTRA HATS AFTER OUR SUBJECTS SEE HOW FETCHING THEY ARE. A LOT OF PEOPLE WANT TO WEAR THEM OUT IN THE STREET? OH, ABSOLUTELY. MY... MY... CUTE LITTLE SUSPENDERS. ( all laughing ) IS THIS TOO TIGHT? ARE WE AFRAID MY HELMET WILL WHIP OFF IF I TURN MY HEAD TOO FAST? WHEN WE TURN THE PROPELLER ON WE WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU DON'T GO ANYWHERE. I'M GOING TO ASK YOU SOME DIGNIFIED QUESTIONS WHILE I'M WEARING THIS. Alda: NOW A SPECIAL GEL IS ADDED TO EACH OF THE 32 ELECTRODES IN THE HAT. THE GEL HELPS MAKE ELECTRICAL CONTACT BETWEEN THE ELECTRODES IN MY HEAD. IT HAS TO BE FIRMLY WORKED INTO PLACE TO BE EFFECTIVE. Alda: YES, WELL, I THINK YOU DROVE THE GEL RIGHT INTO MY SCALP. SO YOU'RE MAKING DIRECT CONTACT WITH THE NEURONS. YOU'LL GET A GOOD READING. Neville: LET'S GO TO THE RIGHT HEMISPHERE-- T6. 62. 9. I GUESS IT'S TIME TO JAM ANOTHER Q-TIP IN MY BRAIN. Alda: THAT WAS THE WARM-UP. BUT FOR THE ACTUAL EXPERIMENT I'M GOING TO HAVE TO PLUG IN, GET COMFORTABLE AND RELAX. YOU WANT ME TO HOLD THIS? Neville: WE'RE GOING TO CHECK FIRST THAT WE HAVE GOOD CONTACT FROM ALL THE ELECTRODES AND THAT WE CAN SEE A GOOD, CLEAN SIGNAL OUT OF YOUR HEAD AND THEN WE'LL BEGIN WITH THE EXPERIMENT. OKAY. OKAY. I'LL JUST RELAX. Alda: WHEN THEY'RE LISTENING IN ON BRAIN WAVES NEUROSCIENTISTS LIKE HELEN HAVE TO GET THEIR SUBJECTS TO REDUCE THEIR MUSCLE ACTIVITY TO A MINIMUM SO THE FAINT SIGNALS FROM THE BRAIN CAN COME THROUGH. Neville ( over intercom ): This looks really good. KEEPING YOUR EYES NICE AND STILL YOUR MUSCLES ARE REALLY RELAXED. Alda: HELEN STUDIES WHERE IN THE BRAIN WE PROCESS LANGUAGE. MY TASK IS SIMPLY TO FOLLOW EACH SENTENCE AND REGISTER WHETHER OR NOT IT MAKES SENSE. THAT ONE SEEMS OKAY. HERE'S THE NEXT: "SUE SHARED HER CANDY "WITH... HER... BEST... BOAT. " WELL, THAT'S NONSENSE. BUT ACTUALLY, THE TASK ITSELF ISN'T IMPORTANT. THAT'S JUST TO HOLD MY ATTENTION. IN FACT, THE SYSTEM IS CONTINUOUSLY CHECKING EVERY ELECTRODE TO LOOK FOR TINY CHANGES THAT MIGHT COINCIDE WITH EACH NEW WORD FLASHING UP. AVERAGED OVER HUNDREDS OF SUBJECTS, THESE SIGNALS SHOW WHERE IN THE BRAIN DIFFERENT WORDS ARE PROCESSED. THE RESULT IS FASCINATING. VOCABULARY WORDS LIKE "LIGHT," "DAYTIME," "CANDY," "BOAT" ARE PROCESSED IN DIFFERENT PLACES IN BOTH LEFT AND RIGHT HEMISPHERES. BUT GRAMMAR WORDS-- "HER," "WITH," "THE," "IN"-- ARE CONCENTRATED IN PARTS OF THE LEFT HEMISPHERE SO FOR LANGUAGE, DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE BRAIN HAVE DIFFERENT JOBS. THAT'S TRUE AT LEAST FOR ADULTS. THE QUESTION HELEN NEVILLE ASKED WAS: IS THE SAME TRUE FOR CHILDREN? HI, DASSI. Alda: 14-MONTH-OLD DASSI IS AT THE STAGE OF LIFE WHEN WE RAPIDLY ACQUIRE LANGUAGE. THAT'S SO PRETTY. Alda: TO FIND OUT WHAT'S GOING ON IN HER BRAIN SHE NEEDS TO PUT ON THAT CHARMING HAT WITH THE ELECTRODES THIS TIME IN A FETCHING SHADE OF GREEN. DASSI, HOWEVER, HAS OTHER IDEAS. I CAN'T SAY I BLAME HER. WELL, HOW ABOUT THE BLUE ONE? SEE, IT'S PRETTY. Alda: OR MAYBE THE YELLOW WILL DO THE TRICK. OKAY-- OH, SHE'S TAKING IT OFF ERNIE. SHE'S LIBERATING ERNIE... Alda: FORTUNATELY, DAVI, HER BROTHER COULDN'T SEE WHAT ALL THE FUSS WAS ABOUT. WITH STUFFED ANIMALS TO HOLD HIS ATTENTION HE SETTLED DOWN TO LISTEN TO A SERIES OF WORDS WHILE THE SYSTEM MEASURED HIS BRAIN'S RESPONSE. Woman's voice: BOTTLE... CARBON... CAT... DIAPER... Alda: THE RESULT, ONCE AGAIN AVERAGED OVER MANY SUBJECTS LOOKS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM THE ADULT PATTERN. VERY YOUNG CHILDREN PROCESS LANGUAGE ALL OVER THE BRAIN. BUT THEN PRETTY SOON, BY ABOUT AGE FOUR OR FIVE THE TYPICAL ADULT SPECIALIZED AREAS ARE EMERGING. THIS KIND OF RESULT HAS IMPORTANT IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION IN GENERAL. ARE THERE THINGS WE SHOULD BE DOING SOONER WHEN WE EDUCATE CHILDREN? WE DON'T KNOW WHEN THE CRITICAL TIME WINDOWS ARE WHEN LEARNING MATH, LEARNING MUSIC, LEARNING SCIENCE DIFFERENT KINDS OF LEARNING, WOULD BE OPTIMIZED BUT I DON'T HAVE ANY DOUBT THAT THERE ARE SUCH CRITICAL WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY. WE JUST NEED TO DO THE RESEARCH TO DETERMINE WHEN THEY ARE. WHAT WE DO KNOW IS THAT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF LANGUAGE LEARNING EARLY IS BETTER. ( speaking Chinese ) Alda: FOR PEOPLE WHO LEARN MORE THAN ONE LANGUAGE THE EARLY LOCKING IN OF THE BRAIN'S LANGUAGE AREAS MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE. ARTHUR GOH, FOR EXAMPLE, SPEAKS FLUENT CHINESE AND ENGLISH. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? UM... SINGAPORE. HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU STARTED LEARNING ENGLISH? ABOUT THREE OR FOUR. SO, IN SCHOOL? UH-HUH, IN SCHOOL. Alda: SO WHILE ENGLISH IS ARTHUR'S SECOND LANGUAGE HE LEARNED IT WHEN HE WAS STILL YOUNG. WHEN HE'S TESTED, HIS BRAIN'S RESPONSE TO ENGLISH IS INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THAT OF A NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER WITH THE SAME SPECIALIZED AREAS FOR GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? I WAS BORN IN YAT YA, VIETNAM. Alda: ENGLISH IS ALSO NICK HONG'S SECOND LANGUAGE BUT HE DIDN'T START LEARNING IT UNTIL AGE TEN AND WHEN RESPONDING TO ENGLISH, HIS BRAIN LOOKS DIFFERENT. THERE'S NO SINGLE GRAMMAR AREA. NICK RAN UP AGAINST A LIMIT THAT CONFRONTS ALL LATE LEARNERS OF LANGUAGES. IN MY CASE, I STARTED STUDYING FRENCH IN MY TEENS. I GOT REALLY SERIOUS ABOUT IT IN MY LATE TEENS AND I... I THOUGHT I COULD SPEAK PRETTY WELL. WHAT, WHAT WERE THE... WHAT WERE THE THINGS LIMITING ME? THE SOUNDS OF THE LANGUAGE AND THE GRAMMAR OF THE LANGUAGE ARE THE PARTS OF THE LANGUAGE THAT SUFFER MOST FROM DELAYED LEARNING OF A LANGUAGE. SO YOU PROBABLY SPEAK WITH AN ACCENT IN FRENCH. PEOPLE WILL PROBABLY TELL YOU THAT. AND YOUR GRAMMAR PROBABLY ISN'T PERFECT. ON THE OTHER HAND, YOU PROBABLY HAVE A HUGE VOCABULARY. Alda: NOBODY WHO LEARNS A LANGUAGE AFTER CHILDHOOD CAN EXPECT TO SPEAK IT PERFECTLY. ( reciting with different accents ) OLD KING COLE WAS A MERRY OLD SOUL AND A MERRY OLD SOUL WAS HE. Alda: SO DON'T BLAME THE SPEAKERS. FOR GRAMMAR AND PRONUNCIATION YOU CAN'T TEACH AN OLD BRAIN NEW TRICKS. HE CALLED FOR HIS PIPE AND HE CALLED FOR HIS BOWL AND HE CALLED FOR HIS FIDDLERS THREE. EVERY FIDDLER, HE HAD A FINE FIDDLE AND A VERY FINE FIDDLE HAD HE TWEE-TWIDDLY-DEE-TWIDDLY-DEE WENT THE FIDDLERS BUT THERE'S NONE SO RARE AS CAN COMPARE WITH KING COLE AND HIS FIDDLERS THREE. Alda: IF I DIDN'T HAVE WORDS... Alda: BACK IN THE LAB, I MET ANOTHER OF HELEN NEVILLE'S TEST SUBJECTS DEAN GABLE. WHEN DID YOU LEARN TO SIGN? I LEARNED WHEN I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD. WHAT BROUGHT THAT ABOUT? HOW DID YOU LEARN TO SIGN? WHEN MY PARENTS FOUND OUT THAT I WAS DEAF-- THEY FOUND OUT THAT WHEN I WAS TWO-- AND THEY DECIDED TO SEND ME TO THE DEAF SCHOOL WHEN I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD AND THERE IS WHERE I LEARNED TO SIGN. Alda: WHEN DEAN'S RESPONSE IS TESTED IN THE SAME WAY AS FOR A SPOKEN LANGUAGE THE RESULT LOOKS LIKE THAT OF ANY OTHER FIRST LANGUAGE WITH TYPICAL GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY AREAS. THAT MAKES SENSE BECAUSE HE LEARNED SIGN LANGUAGE WHILE STILL YOUNG. BUT TAKE A LOOK AT THIS-- IT'S A PERIPHERAL VISION TEST IN WHICH DEAN HAS TO DETECT THE FLASHING SQUARES ON THE EDGES OF THE SCREEN WHILE CONCENTRATING ON THE ONE IN THE CENTER. WHEN HIS BRAIN RESPONSE IS MAPPED IT SHOWS HE'S USING BOTH THE NORMAL VISION PROCESSING AREA AND LARGE SECTIONS USUALLY DEVOTED TO SOUND. OF COURSE, VISION TAKES ON CRITICAL IMPORTANCE WHEN YOU'RE DEAF. WHEN I TOOK THE SAME TEST MY PERIPHERAL VISION WASN'T AS GOOD AS DEAN'S AND I DIDN'T USE THAT EXTRA PROCESSING AREA IN THE BRAIN. THIS IS THE FLIP SIDE OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE YOUNG BRAIN. NOT ONLY IS IT LOCKING IN PARTICULAR PARTS FOR SPECIFIC FUNCTIONS BUT IT CAN ALSO INVENT NEW USES FOR SECTIONS IF NECESSARY. THAT'S JUST AMAZING THAT YOU'VE GOT THIS KIND OF... THE BRAIN IS KIND OF MALLEABLE LIKE A PIECE OF CLAY IN A WAY. IT'S NOT SO HARD AND FAST AS... AS AT LEAST I THOUGHT IT WAS. Neville: THAT'S RIGHT. THERE'S NO DOUBT ABOUT THE FACT THAT THERE ARE VERY STRONG BIASES OR LIKELIHOODS ACCORDING TO WHICH THE BRAIN WILL DEVELOP. THAT'S WHY IN 99. 9% OF ALL THE PEOPLE, THIS IS VISUAL BRAIN THIS IS AUDITORY BRAIN THIS IS THE PART THAT'S IMPORTANT FOR TOUCH THIS IS THE PART THAT'S IMPORTANT FOR LANGUAGE. BUT THESE STRONG GENETIC BIASES CAN BE CHANGED. THEY CAN BE MODIFIED WITHIN LIMITS, WITHIN TIME LIMITS. THIS IS A SHEEP'S BRAIN. Alda: OUR KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT'S GOING ON INSIDE ALL BRAINS-- CAT'S, SHEEP'S OR PEOPLE'S-- IS STILL LIMITED. THAT'S A HUMAN BRAIN. Alda: IT'S EASIER TO EXPLAIN THE PROCESSES TAKING PLACE IN THE DISTANT STARS THAN IN OUR OWN HEADS. RIGHT ABOVE THE EARS IS IMPORTANT FOR HEARING. THESE LOBES RIGHT HERE ARE IMPORTANT FOR MAKING MEMORIES. THE VERY TOP PART IS IMPORTANT IN CONTROLLING MOVEMENT. Alda: THAT'S ONE REASON HELEN LIKES TO TALK TO SCHOOL KIDS ABOUT WHAT WE DO KNOW. All: OH! EW! Alda: GREAT CHALLENGES EXIST IN NEUROSCIENCE. WE DON'T YET UNDERSTAND HOW THREE POUNDS OF TISSUE PRODUCE CONSCIOUSNESS HOW OUR BRAINS TURN INTO OUR MINDS AND INTO OURSELVES. THE BRAIN MAY BE THE FINAL FRONTIER OF SCIENCE WAITING TO BE CROSSED BY TOMORROW'S SCIENTISTS. ... LIKE MAKING DECISIONS. THE LEFT SIDE IS FOR CONTROLLING YOUR RIGHT SIDE. Neville: THERE'S A LOT MORE OF THE BRAIN THAT WE DIDN'T TALK ABOUT. THAT'S BECAUSE SCIENTISTS DON'T BY ANY MEANS KNOW WHAT ALL THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE BRAIN DO. MAYBE SOME OF YOU GUYS WILL GROW UP TO BE BRAIN SCIENTISTS. IT'S A COMPLICATED STRUCTURE AND IT'S GOING TO TAKE A LOT OF PEOPLE TO FIGURE OUT HOW IT WORKS. COME VISIT US ONLINE. SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN FRONTIERS CAN BE FOUND