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The Million Dollar Brain
Ogi Ogas is a doctoral student in cognitive neuroscience at Boston University. He got a spot on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and used his knowledge of neuroscience to win $500,000. And no, none of the questions were about neuroscience.
Hat tip to Paul at Truck and Barter.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on November 10, 2006 at 07:05 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
I want to see an experimental economist compete on Deal or No Deal.
Posted by: c at Nov 10, 2006 9:00:04 AM
Misleading blurb.
He used his knowledge of neuroscience to aid his well above average intelligence, memory, general knowledge and education to win $500K.
Posted by: BillWallace at Nov 10, 2006 4:41:28 PM
A gynecologist had become fed up with malpractice insurance and HMO
paperwork, and was burned out. Hoping to try another career where skillful hands would be beneficial, he decided to become a mechanic. He went to the local technical college, signed up for evening classes, attended diligently, and learned all he could. When the time of the practical exam approached, the gynecologist prepared carefully for weeks, and completed the exam with tremendous skill.
When the results came back, he was surprised to find that e had obtained a score of 150%.
Fearing an error, he called the Instructor, saying "I don't want to appear
ungrateful for such an outstanding result, but I wonder if there is an error in the grade."
The instructor said, "During the exam, you took the engine apart perfectly, which was worth 50% of the total mark. You put the engine back together again perfectly, which is also worth 50% of the mark." After a pause, the instructor added, "I gave you an extra 50% because you did it all through the muffler.
Posted by: Rev at Nov 10, 2006 8:36:37 PM
Wow, that was a really great article! What an interesting story. Sure, it wasn't just the knowledge of neuroscience that helped him out, as he is clearly a very well educated guy, but very amazing nonetheless.
Posted by: Carolina at Nov 10, 2006 9:03:06 PM
Don't know how true this is, but a friend told me about a women who used to be a model in the 60s. Some time in the early 90s, she was involved in a serious car accident and somehow, due to the brain trauma, she started to speak in a full-blown British accent, even including the British colloquialisms. Also, all her friends are positive that she is not putting on an act or anything like that.
I postulated two reasons for how this could happen. First, it's likely that she spent much time internationally as a model in the 60s, including a significant amount of time in the United Kingdom. Second, our brain must hold far more information than we know we have access to. I bet that she held the knowledge of all her conversations with British people in her brain and somehow the vocal cords confused that information with the part of the brain that tells you how to talk.
The cognitive scientist used methods based upon this principle in order to win the 500,000 dollars. He tried to take information readily available and see what falls out of his brain. For example, he thought of a conversation about the Muhammad cartoons and was able to eventually remember the obscure fact of which country published those cartoons first.
Posted by: Matthew at Nov 11, 2006 4:53:09 AM
This is a very interesting story, but like said before it was not just his knowledge of neuroscience that
helped him win $500,000 it was his entire education he has recieved. He almost has his Ph.D in congitive and
neural sciences. So i would think he is already receiving a large salary anyway so his marginal benefit
would be less than an average persons would on this show, Probably inducing him to take more risk in
the game. Seems like they would have picked someone that could have had potentialy a higher marginal
benefit than the scientist.
Posted by: Brandon Walker at Nov 13, 2006 4:12:16 PM
I dislike the saying that you can do anything you put your mind to doing, because it just plain false. Example: If put my mind, time, effort and applied all my ability to playing basketball, I would still never achieve my “mind setting goal” of becoming a professional, NBA, basketball player.
With that said, not everyone can successively obtain a doctoral degree in cognitive neuroscience, from Boston no less. Frankly, I would say this guy is gifted, has an above average IQ, not your ordinary “Joe” so to speak.
I do agree with comments above, the fact that he almost posses a doctorate in Neuroscience doesn’t provide enough evidence that to explain his winnings but the reasoning behind how and why he’s is at this position explains it much better
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