Remember our discussion about how animals are smart (see “Are Animals Capable of Thought?” and “Rodents are Intelligent too“)? 

Technology hacker Joshua Klein (video from ted.com, length: 10min) built a vending machine that autonomously trains crows. The machine teaches the crows to pick up coins from the ground and deposit them into the machine to obtain peanuts.

Crows brain/body weight ratios are similar to chimpanzees. And crows are smart and adaptable. By dropping nuts on streets, so cars run over them, they crack the nuts. Other crows observe this and thus learn this nut cracking method.

Now the crows learn with the help of the special vending machine how to exchange a coin for a peanut. If a crow can pick up a coin for a peanut, why not teach them how to gather garbage, or lead search and rescue missions?

Although Susumu Tonegawa has won the Nobel price for his discovery of the genetic principle for generation of antibody diversity, his main research interest is to understand the molecular, cellular, neuronal circuitry, and neural systems mechanisms underlying learning and memory and associated cognitive functions.

In this video (from mitworld.mit.edu, length: 1h 2min) Susumu Tonegawa talks about genetically engineered mice to explore memory and learning.

Scientist have discovered that keeping ourselves fit has advantageous effects on our brain. Studies reported that cognitive functions in older adults improved after a six month sports programme.

Other studies found cognitive functions improved after a combined regimen of physical exercise and cognitive training.

So, use it or lose it and take regular exercises (from nytimes.com)

Marvin Minsky is one of the founders of artificial intelligence. In this video (from mitworld.mit.edu, length: 1h 23min) Marvin Minsky talks about the limitations of current research in artificial intelligence and describes how a machine could achieve common sense.

Neurologist Adam Zeman explores how the brain functions, from its atoms to the soul. In his seminar at the Royal Society of Arts in London he reveals the various levels of the brain and explains how it works.

If IQ tests measure intelligence, how come each generation has a higher IQ than the last? Professor James Flynn discovered that IQ scores are rising steadily - the Flynn effect. So, are we really getting smarter? And if so, why? 

The history of IQ tests is discussed by Stephen Murdoch. 

Research into artificial cognitive systems has split up into a fragmented field. Research is done on machine vision and machine learning among others. 

Now the CoSy (Cognitive Systems for Cognitive Assistants) project has brought the different areas of research together. One development is the Explorer, which has a more human-like understanding of its environment. Through interaction with humans it can then learn to recognise objects, spaces and their uses. So, if it sees a sofa, it may reason that it is in the living room (from ICT Results).

The researcher Tadeusz Kawecki ponders the question “why don’t all animals get smart?”

Why do animals learn and why can some animals learn better than others? The research of Dr. Kawecki shows that learning and memory can be detrimental to health. It can even shorten your life - that is if you are a fly. Even the act of learning itself seems to shorten the life.

And what about us, humans? Even at rest, our brain consumes 20 percent of the body’s energy. And what else? (from nytimes.com)

Research has shown that when we consciously learn new habits our brain grows new brain cells and creates parallel synaptic paths.

Continuously learning new things is advantageous for us, it prevents prevents dementia and other brain diseases and even help us lose weight (from nytimes.com).

After three decades of disappointments, artificial intelligence has made progress and spurred new applications, such as spam filters or the driverless robotic cars. With the work of Daphne Koller things like predict traffic jams, improve machine vision and understand the way cancer spreads can now be done. 

Daphne Kollers work is based on a formula for updating the probabilities of events based on repeated observations - the Bayesian approach - and it has had an important commercial impact. Her work may lead to software systems, that could read and understand unstructured texts such as web pages (from nytimes.com).