The Survivor Brain

### Cold Open

Stop. Pay Attention. If you had to pick one of these four people to save your life, who would you pick? You might not be able to tell just by looking at them, but their stories may reveal more. Wally is a West Point Grad in the cutthroat trenches of the real-estate business. Melanie is a free spirit and former river raft guide who floats through life without stressing over what's coming next. Travis is a Marine Crops veteran and retired firefighter. His toughness now serves him well on the stand up comedy circuit. And Christine, she escapes Silicon Valley to find new balance in her life as a yoga instructor. In the next hour, we'll put these four to the test to show how humans have evolved from simply avoiding extinction to making the most of our brain's drive to survive. Pick your favorite now and get ready to discover how to tap into your instinct to triumph, against all odds, on brain games.

## Games

### Mini-Game: Three Seconds

Answer questions in three seconds or less.

Result: We tested three brain functions essential to survival.

How: Your long-term memory, like what street you grew up on(Hippocampus), your angular gyrus makes solving math problems possible. And the many parts of your brain work together to recall the four names of contestants you just met. We didn't give you much time, however. Let's see how the unexpected affects your brain.

### Competition #1: Cognitive Skills With a Twist

Complete games along with our survivors out of confusing information?

#### Mini-Game: The Tile

Finish the puzzle out of confusing infromation.

Result: The answer is Tile A.

Why: Lots of details and distractions make your brain work slower, and surivival requires every second to count.

Dr. Bart: People who do well in survival are those who are able to identify what they have control over.

Now the survivors stack rocks. This tests their motor functions. But they aren't life and death tests. These will offer a good baseline for more challenging games later.

#### Mini-Game: The Star of Dot

Where should the dot appear in three patterns of stars? Finish the puzzle.

Being able to recognize patterns helped us gain an edge over animals. But our puzzle stumped Travis.

Result: You may have gotten it right.

Not all of our survivors solved all the puzzles.

However, it's time to add a factor important to survival. The ability to deal with stress. Our survivors must survive a drop facing down over a canyon. Some competitors try to rationalize with the fear, but their fear is only in their minds.

Dr. Bart: Lots of chemicals are probably going through their brains right now.

Wally enjoys the ride, and so does Christine. Melanie yells at the top of her lungs and swears happily. Travis realizes it wasn't so bad. But how fast can our survivors recover their bearings?

Stress causes Horomones like cortisol and Adrealine to fly through your brain and messes up your thinking. But can allow you to move quickly out of a situation. Test your stress.

#### Mini-Game: Stress Tile

Test the tile mini-game again, but with more stress added.

Result: You may have more quickly or slowly solved the puzzle.

So: Being able to clear the hormones is a good indicator of survival.

The best survivors respond well to stress and channel it in a productive way, like Christine, who takes the lead after the canyon drop stress test improved her ability to do the puzzles.

#### Mini-Game: Count Em'

Count the number of camouflaged people.

Result: You probably didn't spot them all.

So: We'll answer the question of how the position of our eyes relate to survival.

#### Mini-Game: Count the Zebras

Count the zebras with uniform black and white stripes.

Result: It's tough to tell them apart.

So: How we're seen is just as important as how we see.

#### Mini-Game: Tell the Difference

What's different from the animals on top vs. the animals on the bottom.

The animals on the bottom are predators, while the top are prey based on their eyes.

Humans are predators, as we have binocular vision, giving us better depth perception.

Now our contestants will seek out the camouflaged people with an eye patch. This can mimic what happens during life-or death scenarios. A rush of adrenaline leads your brain to respond by "tunneling your vision". This makes this game a lot trickier. Let's test your tunnel vision.

#### Mini-Game: The Circle eyes

Close one eye and make circles with your hands. Place them in front of your eye and use your restricted vision to find animals.

Result: If you spotted all the animals in time, good work.

So: Did you have to change the way you moved your field and vision and move your forehead and neck a lot? Did you get better at the game as it went on? That might be true of our contestants as well.

Now, for the results.

Melanie won this game, and moves into a tie with a Christine.

Wally finished last, and Travis is back in the game after a tough first round with the Cognitive skills under stress.

We've tested Congitive skills and visual acuity. But what if we lose them?

#### Mini-Game: Sencic Village

Take a stroll through a Sencic village while listening to Jason speak. Then answer some questions.

Result: If you can recall the path of the items and objects we told you, your memory is working well and is a handy skill in a new town.

So: It didn't test you much.

Being lost is not always about location, but mind.

We're headed to the rocky mountains. John will lead them through the trail. Did you remember the landmarks?

Result: Probably not because you weren't told to remember them.

So: When people pay attention, their long-term memory is better.

#### Mini-Game: Colorado Album

Take a look a our photo album and decide which was in the original slideshow when given choices.

Result: Incredibly, your brain can remember pictures with over 90% percision.

So: You just need to develop your attention to have access to the storage.

Wally & Melanie team up, while Christine & Travis work together. The winner will be the team who does better.

Recall the landmarks again after looking at them. You probably did better after practicing. Will our contestants find their way out?

Dr. Huth: The limbic system, which is found in the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex pin the memory like a dot on a map. Our players were mentally mapping the route even if we didn't ask them to.

#### Mini-Game: The Fit

Take a look at similar images and spot the differences.

Result: If you did well, you're a good canadite to stay on track.

The yellow team is finding landmarks left and right, but the blue team isn't that far behind. But it doesn't take long to lost.

Dr. Huth: If something doesn't match up, they're lost and try to make it fit. And when more stuff doesn't line up, you get disoriented. And then you "bend the map" when stress is added.

#### Mini-Game: Bend The Map

What do the six images have in common?

Result: They're all outdoors, but did you notice the change in one of the images. This is a confirmation bias.

Why: Your brain wants to believe it has located a point, so it may only pay attention to details that confirm that belief if you are lost.

So what's the trick when you get lost?

Dr. Huth: Panicking is not a good idea. Being aware of landmarks can open their minds up to be good navigators.

Wally & Melanie win this game.

Travis & Christine lose.

Melanie holds onto her lead, while Christine and Wally tie, Travis falls back to last.

Not all survival happens alone. Social interactions make us insiders or outcasts.

### Competition #4: The Brewery

#### Mini-Game: Garble

Hear the words when listening to a garbled sentence.

Result: Amazingly, it's easier to hear with noise.

Why: Your brain anticipates the fluid sentence and fills in the sound.

Our survivors will have just a few minutes to finish a series of tasks to get strangers to do for them. But how is this a test of their survival?

Christine works the room and meets people. We're more likely to assist people like ourselves. Christine is finding common ground. She turns strangers into allies.

#### Mini-Game: Read The People

Just by looking at the eyes, can you tell emotions?

Result: If your brain did well at this game, you're learning how to empathize better.

Christine finishes with 3 out of 4 challenges complete.

Melanie makes herself an outlier. Her awkwardness alienates the group. Her weak first impression only gets her $10, and nothing else. So what's the link to this game and survival?

Over the last 200,000 years, our brains' structure as we became more social. The prefrontal cortex became larger once we became more social. So being able to interpret social cues became more important.

This game is a modern type of test that shows how ancient mating and tribal behaviors influenced who survived into the next generation.

Travis reading social cues makes him friends, then being able to make requests.

Wally takes over as the Alpha Dog, using this status to socially dominate, so he didn't need any social graces.

Heading into the final game, Wally moves into the lead, and Travis moves closer to the lead. Melanie and Christine are tied.

### Competition #5: The Barrel

#### Mini-Game: Lightning Round

Test the different skills you've learnt so far.

Result: We tested your brain under stress, memory, and your ability to remember details.

Each contestant will try to get across the river using nothing but a barrel of stuff.

No single barrel can give you the winning combination of stuff to win. Is it possible these competitors are missing something right in front of them?

The final key to survival is related to social skills from the previous competition. Travis looks at this from a survival perspective, meaning they'd all have to team up.

**Cooperation. Humans as a species have evolved over thousands of years to work together to an extraordinary degree.**

Dr. Jordan: **No other animal can get together with strangers and collaborate the same way humans can.**

However, even with this ability, there's a hurdle. Your brain. Your prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for doing well in the previous competition and the empathy of others, is also responsible for humans' **EGO**.

Dr. Jordan: This is hardwired in our brains because of how the brain evolved over the past 200,000 years.

Wally, through will, has challenged himself and inched his way across the river and the other competitors try to work together to beat him.

But does Wally have enough left in the tank to win?

Wally is ready to jump, while the cooperation boat sinks.

Now, Travis sacrifices himself for the team. Is there anything more fair? But there may may be more than altruism at play.

Could Wally's competitive drive be the reason for his selfless act?

As Wally and Travis make the power moves, Wally makes a risky leap of faith.

Wally wins by a hair.

But in the end, it was clear to us and them, even when things look impossible, our brains have evolved to work for us. Cooperation may separate humans from other species, but our brains know that we are hard-wired for self preservation. We may not have anyone else to count on in the long run. Your brain's ability to go it alone may be the secret to survival that makes us all of us unstoppable as a team.

## List of Experts

* Dr. Bart Rusell(Guest)
* Mark Changizi(Guest)
* John Huth(Guest)
* Dr. Alex Jordan(Guest)