The MacArthur Foun­da­tion has awarded the 2006 MacArthur “Genius Grants” to 25 indi­vid­u­als for their “their cre­ativ­ity, orig­i­nal­ity, and poten­tial to be sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tors in their fields”. We are happy that some friends received the award, and that we will be able to inter­view them here, in this blog.

How were they able to accom­plish such a feat? what kind of brain is help­ing them? Also, how are their life­long expe­ri­ences shap­ing their brains?

We can not place them all under fMRI exam­i­na­tion , so we will have to ask them ques­tions to under­stand how they deal with, and devel­oped, what neu­ropsy­chol­o­gists call Exec­u­tive Func­tions, which are mostly located in our Frontal Lobes , the most recent part of our brains in evo­lu­tion­ary terms.

We will ask them about some key Frontal Lobe “Men­tal Mus­cles”, such as:

Plan­ning: fore­sight in devis­ing multi-step strategies.

Flex­i­bil­ity: capac­ity for quickly switch­ing to the appro­pri­ate men­tal mode.

Inhi­bi­tion: the abil­ity to with­stand dis­trac­tion, and inter­nal urges.

Antic­i­pa­tion: pre­dic­tion based on pat­tern recognition.

Crit­i­cal eval­u­a­tion: log­i­cal analysis.

Work­ing mem­ory: capac­ity to hold and manip­u­late infor­ma­tion “on-line” in our minds in real time.

Fuzzy logic: capac­ity to choose with incom­plete information.

Divided atten­tion: abil­ity to pay atten­tion to more than one thing at a time.

Decision-making: both qual­ity and speed.

A highly rec­om­mended book, if you are inter­ested in learn­ing more about Exec­u­tive Func­tions and Frontal Lobes, is The Exec­u­tive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civ­i­lized Mind , by Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg. You can read an in-depth review here.

If you had some of the MacArthur Fel­lows in front of you, right now, what would you ask them?

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