Leg Length and Cognitive Reserve
I recently mentioned the "Barker Hypothesis" which says that fetal malnutrition is associated with many physical problems later in life.
Well the difficulties may not only be physical.
I would like to tell you about an important concept that we call "Cognitive reserve." This can be thought of as our cognitive resilience. This first came to light almost twenty years ago when a post-mortem study of 137 elderly people was published in the Annals of Neurology, and confirmed something that we had suspected for years: there was a large discrepancy between the degree of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathology and the clinical manifestations of the disease. Some people had extensive pathology but they clinically had no or very little manifestations of the disease. The investigators also showed that these people had higher brain
weights and greater number of neurons compared with age-matched
controls. This lead to the idea that they had a greater "reserve." This is why building your brain throughout life is thought to reduce the ce of cognitive impaitrment later on.
Studies have shown that childhood cognition, educational attainment and adult occupation all independently contribute to cognitive reserve, and more recently it has been confirmed that education and the complexity of a person’s occupation may both slow the rate of decline in people who already have Alzheimer’s disease.
Although height is in part genetically determined, shorter leg length has been found to be associated with an adverse environment in early childhood. In a recent study of older Afro-Caribbean people living in London, shorter leg length was significantly associated with cognitive impairment, leading to the suggestion that shorter leg length may be a marker of early life stressors that then result in reduced cognitive reserve.
It is also worth recalling our discussion about the association between growth hormone and intelligence in children and between intelligence and head size.
And nutrition is one of the determinants of growth hormone synthesis and release.
Naturally this does not mean that less tall people will all get Alzheimer’s disease. But these observations have a number of practical consequences. They re-emphasize the importance of good nutrition during pregnancy: something that is simply not available to over a third of the world’s population. They also help us to identify some of the people who would most benefit from strategies to increase their cognitive reserve and to avoid some of the things that can strip it away from them.
Brain Gain
We have previously discussed how a relatively small number of strategies can dramatically reduce your risk of cognitive decline as you get older.
Our recommendations are firmly buttressed by a most important article available for free download at the website of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
We already knew that cognitive training can improve cognitive abilities in older adults but nobody had established the effects of cognitive training on everyday function.
Sherry Willis of Pennsylvania State University led a team of scientists that followed a group of 2,832 adults, aged 65 and older -mean age 73.6 years – who were still living independently between 1998 and 2004. The seniors came from all walks of life, races, and parts of the country, including Birmingham, Alabama; Detroit, Michigan; Boston, Massachusetts and three other major cities. They all had one thing in common when the study commenced: they had no signs of cognitive impairment.
The researchers divided them into four groups of roughly 700 each: three groups that would receive training in either memory (verbal episodic memory), inductive reasoning or speed of processing (visual search and identification) with 4-session booster training at 11 and 35 months after training, and one that would serve as a control.
The memory training program consisted of mnemonic strategies for remembering word lists or texts, such as associating various words, visualizing them or organizing them in specific ways. Reasoning training taught the participants how to spot the pattern in a series, such as “a c e g i… .” The researchers boosted the subjects’ processing speed via practice, practice, practice in identifying an object on a screen after increasingly short exposures.
Over the course of the next five years the researchers asked participants to appraise their skills and to report whether the training had helped with everyday tasks. They also independently evaluated the subjects’ skills in things like finding items in a medicine cabinet. After training, 87 percent of the speed trainees, 74 percent of the reason trainees and 26 percent of memory trainees showed immediate improvement. That advantage over their untrained peers persisted over the next five years.
The training seemed to largely offset the cognitive decline suffered by nearly all of the controls as the years wore on. By the fifth year, significant skill gaps had opened between the people who had done the training and their untrained peers.
It is not enough to continue to do the crossword or sudoku puzzles. The brain must be continually stretched and challenged. It seems that to drive this effect, you have to practice things that you don’t like or things you don’t regularly practice.
Many of us have spent years working on new training strategies, and this research shows just how valuable cognitive training can be for all of us.
Left-Handedness and Sports
There seem to be a number of potential downsides to being left-handed. Not only is the world designed for right-handers, but they may also fall victim to some illnesses.
However, there has been a lot of interest in the apparently greater success of many left-handed sportspeople. Amongst the elite in many sports, left-handers appear to be over-represented. The folk psychology explanation has been that if the effect is real, then it is likely all due to some attempt of the left-hander to over-compensate.
I’ve always been very skeptical about explanations like that, and there is new research from Australia to show that my skepticism was justified.
A study in the journal Neuropsychology shows that left-handed people can think more quickly when carrying out tasks such as playing computer games or some sports.
The research shows that in left-handed people there is a faster transfer of information between the hemispheres of the brain. This makes them more efficient when dealing with multiple stimuli, because they are able to use both sides of the brain more easily than people who are purely right-handed.
The researchers used a simple technique in which they measured reaction times of the two sides of the brain when white dots were flashed to either side of a fixed cross.
They then compared this with how good participants were at carrying out another task in which they had to spot matching letters in the left and right visual fields. This task would require them to use both sides of the brain at the same time.
Tests in 80 right-handed volunteers showed there was a strong correlation between how quickly information was transferred across the left and right hemispheres and how quickly people spotted matching letters.
But when the tests were repeated in 20 left-handed volunteers, the researchers found that the more left handed people were the better they were at processing information across the two sides of the brain. The more left-handed people were, the greater the efficiency of their hemispheric interactions.
When you have to do increasingly complex tasks, the brain recruits more circuits to help. People tend to use both hemispheres for tasks that are very fast or very complex and that require the interpretation of a lot of information. Good examples would be computer games, driving in heavy traffic or playing most sports.
Although there is a genetic component in handedness, it is an odd kind of genetic pattern and we also have some evidence that you can train yourself to make greater use of both of the hemispheres of the brain, and this can likely lead to a re-wiring of entire regions of the brain.
If you are right or left-handed try to spend five minutes each day using your non-dominant hand for some task. If you are right-handed, you might want to try shaving with your left hand. (Obviously electric or safety razors only please!). Or you might try something more complex: writing with your other hand. See if you notice any difference in yourself and feel free to report back.
Head Size and Intelligence
In August we discussed some of the new data showing an association between the hormone insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) and a child’s IQ.
Now new research from the University of Southampton in England has found an association between skull size and intelligence. It seems that the brain volume a child achieves by the age of 1 year helps to determine his or her later intelligence.
The study of 633 newborns born at term has found that those with larger heads scored better on intelligence tests at the age of 4. And those children whose heads were larger than the average at age 8 also had higher IQs. Children who put on a spurt of skull growth after the age of 8 did not show a catch up in their IQ scores, implying that there is a critical period for skull growth, brain and cognitive development.
The researchers also studied the babies’ parents. The babies’ mothers completed surveys about their parenting style, their older children, and other factors such as breastfeeding and postpartum depression.
The babies tended to have higher IQ scores if they had been breastfed for three or more months, if their parents had more education and if they had mothers with high scores on the questionnaire that looked at parenting style.
Even after adjusting for all those factors, babies’ head growth by age 1 remained tied to IQ scores among the 4- and 8-year-olds.
It is also known that older people with a larger head circumference tend to perform better in tests of cognitive function and may have reduced risks of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The protective seeds are sown in the first eight years of life. But there is still much that can be done later in life to protect against the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
Two years ago the same researchers showed that there are critical periods in brain growth and cognitive function in children. Brain growth during infancy and early childhood is more important than growth during fetal life in determining cognitive function. And as we have discussed before in my writings about epigenetics, the food that a child eats, the chemicals that he or she ingests and the attitude of his or her parents and peers can all change the way in which their genes function. Positive influences during the first few formative years can have a massive impact on cognitive function throughout life. But even if a child is exposed to an adverse environment, there are still good chances for repairing the damage throughout life.
Biology is not destiny!
“Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet and Essayist, 1803-1882_
The Seat of the Emotions and the Gateway to Reason
“If passion drives, let reason hold the reins.”
–Benjamin Franklin (American Author, Inventor and Diplomat, 1706-1790)
For many centuries reason and emotion have usually been held to be two poles of a magnet, the North and South of the psyche. Every now and then someone has proposed some other psychological lodestone, but most have finally devolved into this simple binary model.
Yet a moment’s introspection shows us that reason and emotion are inextricably linked. We know from people with alexithymia and a dizzying array of “personality disorders,” that a real-life Mr. Spock would be a hobbled creature. Yet we also know that simple binary models of pleasure and pain as the drivers or behavior are over simplified. It appears that one of the great attainments of many mammalian species – and who knows how many others – is an ability to be moved by more complex considerations of loyalty, propriety and even morality.
There is an important study in this month’s issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. The amygdala is a central processing station in the brain for emotions and is involved in laying down emotional memories. A shock or extreme pleasure may both leave their traces in the amygdala, so it plays a key role in survival.
But this new research shows that the amygdala also plays a role in working memory, a higher cognitive function that is critical for reasoning and problem solving. If you ask someone for a telephone number and you instantly dial the number and then forget it, that is working memory in action. If you choose to remember the number for later, it moves out of working memory into longer term memory stores. In some senses working “memory” is a little bit of a misnomer: it is a function that enables us to manipulate information extremely rapidly.
In two different functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies with a total of 74 participants, individual differences in amygdala activity predicted behavioral performance on a working memory task. The experimental subjects were asked to look either at words, such as rooster, elbow, and steel, or faces of attractive men and women. Then they were asked to indicate whether or not the current word or image matched the one they saw three frames earlier. Try it for yourself, and you will see that this is quite challenging. The subjects’ brains were scanned while completing the tasks.
People with stronger amygdala responses during the working memory task also had faster response times.
This is exceptionally important for anyone interested in thinking and learning: it shows that a region of the brain thought to be involved primarily, or perhaps even exclusively, in processing emotions is also involved in higher cognition, even when there is no emotional content.
I think it most likely that the amygdala may be involved in vigilance, perhaps preparing people to better cope with challenging situations and also improving their ability to sort information according to its relevance to the current situation. This is something that people with poor resilience find hard to do, so it may be that the amygdala is involved in developing and maintaining resilience.
This study helps to prove the total inter-relatedness of emotion and cognition and supports learning strategies that are based upon integrating emotion with facts. One of the ways in which health care students are able to remember enormous numbers of facts is by attaching them to patients with whom they have worked. Emotion, interest and empathy can dramatically accelerate learning.
Brain Growth
Something strange happened to our ancestors. Between about 100,000 to 35,000 years ago, their brains began to grow enormously.
There have been many theories as to why this happened, from climatic change to a change in diet. Some foods contain chemicals that can stimulate the growth of neurons. And yes, there are also those who claim that some external agency caused the sudden growth of the brain, a la Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
But what is exciting is that the growth in the brain may still be going on today.
It is clear that the brain is constantly changing. This growth, change, development and regression does not only occur during development, learning or aging, but also over generations. It is often said that the modern human brain is identical to that of Stone Age man, but that is almost certainly not true. If you were to meet a person from 5,000 years ago, they would probably seem quite unintelligent, because all the things that you have learned have stimulated your cognitive abilities. This stimulation also stimulates the formation of the brain. Recent studies of the genetics underlying brain development have shown that the human brain has changed significantly over the last few thousand years.
A study in the journal Science has taught us something new. The investigators studied the gene Microencephalin (MCPH). When the gene is active it causes a severe reduction in brain size coupled with mental retardation. Remarkably, despite this abnormality, there is an overall retention of normal brain structure and a lack of overt abnormalities outside of nervous system. The function of MCPH in healthy humans is less well known.
What makes this study interesting is the finding that the MCPH has changed during the past ~37.000 years, and that the spread has been fast: there has been a strong positive selection for this gene, indicating that the brain has continued to evolve even in more recent times. This is exceedingly important. I have many times emphasized that human beings are changing extremely rapidly.
There is no reason to assume that the evolution of the brain has stopped, and there is every reason for thinking that this gene is one of the mechanisms of change in response to the environment. It is now key to understand all the modulators of MCPH activity. Is it food, stress or environmental stimuli?
Another recent study in the journal Nature analyzed human chromosome 8, and looked specifically at two regions called the major defensin (DEF) gene cluster and MCPH1. The authors also speculated that these regions have played a significant role in the expanded brain size that can be observed through hominid evolution.
At the end of the article, the authors say something very interesting:
“The majority of the genes in the region of high divergence in distal 8p play important roles in development or signaling in the nervous system. Notably, the extremely large CSMD1 gene, which lies at the peak of divergence and diversity, is widely expressed in brain tissues. High regional mutation rates and positive selection are generally assumed to be distinct, but it is possible that the former may facilitate the latter by increasing the rate of appearance of potentially advantageous single, or interacting, alleles. It is intriguing to speculate whether the accelerated divergence rate of this region has contributed to the rapid expansion and evolution of the primate brain.”
For people who are less familiar with this kind of science-speak, let me translate. The study of chromosome 8 should open a whole new field of enquiry about what makes the human brain special. Comparing this region with DNA from other species and from early humans, we will be able to study the relative contribution of these genes to brain size.
Though size isn’t everything (!). The key is to understand the impact of changes in brain size and brain complexity on cognitive processes. In general, there’s a good correlation between intelligence and the volume and complexity of specific regions of the brain.
These new genes and their rapid – and continuing – spread is fascinating. But there are some other things that also differentiate the “naked ape” from other primates. One of the most striking is the large amount of fat that we have in out subcutaneous tissues and in our brains. We also have more of the excitatory amino acid glutamate in our cerebral cortices than chimpanzees or gorillas.
There is much more to be learned, but the consequences for understanding our origins and potential treatments for neurological illnesses are just stunning.
Attention Deficit Disorder and Executive Functioning
“Not to have control over the senses is like sailing in a rudderless ship, bound to break to pieces on coming in contact with the very first rock.”
–Mahatma Gandhi (Indian Nationalist and World Teacher, 1869-1948)
The Mahatma’s statement could apply to most people stuggling with attention deficit disorder.
There is an important idea in neurology and psychology called “Executive functioning.” This refers to our ability to be able to make and carry out plans, direct our attention, focus and also to control our internal states: our impulses and emotions and to be able to switch from one task to another. In other words it is a key part of our ability to self-regulate our behavior, mind and emotions.
Most evidence now indicates that executive function is mediated by the regions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. It happens that these same regions are amongst those that seem to undergo beneficial changes in people who practice meditation.
For people interested in attention deficit disorder, I’d like to recommend a book, “Attention Deficit Disorder: The Unfocused Mind in Children and Adults,” by Thomas E. Brown. In the book he encapsulates some up-to-date research indicating that one way of conceptualizing some of the difficulties faced by people with attention deficit disorder, is to break them down into the six major “domains” of executive functioning:
- Activation: Organizing, prioritizing and getting to school or work
- Focus: Tuning in, maintaining focus and shifting attention
- Effort: Sustaining effort, regulating alertness and adjusting processing speed
- Emotions: Modulating emotions and managing frustration
- Memory: Holding and manipulating information and retrieving memories
- Action: Monitoring and regulating actions
It can be very helpful for people to understand why they face the problems that they do, and how each may be amenable to a different type of help.
What we have done below is to re-draw and slightly simplify an extremely helpful diagram from Dr. Brown’s book, that will make it easier for you to see that kind of problems you or a loved one may be facing, and how treatment and coping strategies will be directed toward whichever of these is causing the most trouble in a person’s life.
(You can click on the diagram to see a large version of it.)
Banquo’s Ghost
“Chess is the game which reflects most honor on human wit.” — Voltaire (a.k.a. François-Marie Arouet, French Writer and Philosopher, 1694-1778)
For anyone with even a passing interest in chess, a re-unification match for the World Championship is currently taking place in Elista, the capital city of Kalmykia, a small region of the Russian Federation that is Europe’s only Buddhist country. Though I’m sure that some would quibble about whether it should be in Europe or Asia.
The beginning of the match between two of the world’s top Grandmasters – the aggressive Bulgarian gambler Veselin Topalov and the conservative Russian, Vladimir Kramnik – has led to and 2-0 score in favor of the Russian.
So why am I mentioning this is a blog dedicated to Personal Growth, Healing and Wellness? Because the current one-sided score line has a lot to do with each of these topics. This match is not just about chess playing ability: it is also about psychological and emotional strength, character and resilience.
There was a time when chess masters were unfit, often over-weight and the majority smoked. When I first started playing in tournaments in England, it was quite normal to have ashtrays beside most of the boards.
Oh how things have changed!
Now the players prepare physically, psychologically and some even spiritually with prayer and meditation:
- Very few players smoke, not just because of long-term health risk, but because the deleterious effects of lowered oxygen levels on cognition outweigh the short-term improvement in attention caused by nicotine.
- Aerobic exercise is essential to ensure that the brain is perfused with oxygen, and if you are physically unfit you cannot expect to survive a number of games that may each last for five or six hours.
- Strength training is also essential to overall fitness and physical and the maintenance of psychological resilience. Topalov is going to need that now.
- Posture is extremely important. According to Chinese and Ayurvedic physicians and chiropractors, bad posture results in a restriction in the flow of Qi, Prana, or blood. Whether or not you believe in the flow of Qi in the body, it is easy to demonstrate that bad posture has bad effects on cognition.
- Flexibility is also an essential part of physical wellness that affects you psychologically as well as physically. Daily stretching should be part of everyone’s life.
- Relaxation and meditation: one or other or both are essential tools for maintaining your balance while under stress, and for building resilience.
- Diet: a carefully balanced nutritious diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids (without any added mercury!) and fiber is essential for optimum mental functioning.
- Fluid intake: the current recommendations are for a healthy person to drink between 80 and 120 fluid ounces of pure water each day.
- Avoid alcohol: A former World Champion – Alexander Alekhine – lost his title after turning up drunk on a number of occasions during a match to defend his title.
Looking at the pictures from the match, in both games Topalov looked intense and Kramnik far more relaxed. It could have been an illusion: I would need to be in proximity to be sure. In the first game Topalov took a needless risk in a dead level position. In the second, he had an absolutely won game. I’m no grandmaster, but even I spotted a win in three moves. How could he have failed to find it and then lost?
What is the explanation? Chess players have to play a certain number of moves in a specified time, so not only are they playing their opponent, they are also playing against the clock. The biggest prize in the game is on the line, for which both players have been preparing since childhood. And there are hundreds of thousands of people who are watching and analyzing their every move.
I know from personal experience that it can be hard enough to be interviewed on a television show being watched by millions of people, where any false statement would haunt me forever. Imagine having a battle of wits with one of the finest chess players in the world in the knowledge that every move will be analyzed for the next century, and computers are already analyzing every permutation of every move that the two players have made.
The stress on the players is unbelievable. Both have prepared for it, but it is also a matter of who has prepared best: that is a mixture of temperament and training. Just today I read an article talking about ways of avoiding stress. This is silly: stress is part of life and it can provide the motor in motivation. The trick is how we learn to respond to stress.
There is also another stressor that has only been felt by world championship contenders on two or three previous occasions. This match is being played in the shadow of the retirement of Garry Kasparov, who, in the opinion of most people, is the strongest player who ever lived, with the possible exception of Bobby Fischer. The difference is that Bobby became World Champion all by himself, with little help and by inventing a new approach to chess. It is a great tragedy that his life has apparently been blighted by mental illness, and that he has played only a few recorded games in the last 34 years.
By contrast, Garry was the strongest player in the world for twenty years, and in the opinion of most experts would probably still beat both of the current contenders. So whoever wins wants to prove himself a worthy champion. Garry’s specter remains like the ghost of Banquo in the Scottish play.
The final essential is that both players have to detach from the results of the first two games. Kramnik will obviously have his tail up now, but he is too smart and too experienced to give in to complacency. Topalov has to completely forget about the first two games and focus on what lies ahead: I’m sure that he has someone on his team working on simple techniques to stop the past from populating his psychological present.
Whatever lies ahead for these two men in the next few weeks, we shall see that chess is a microcosm of life in general.
“What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.”
–Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Spiritual Teacher, 1895-1986)
Music and the Mind
The next book in the Healing, Meaning and Purpose cycle will be entitled Sacred Cycles. One chapter is entitled Music and the Mind. I am in no doubt that music can produce incredibly powerful healing.
I was interested to read about a small study published in the journal Brain.
Canadian scientists from McMaster University compared 6 children aged four to six who took music lessons for a year with 6 children who did had no music lessons outside school. The six who had lessons attended a Suzuki music school, using a Japanese approach that encourages children to listen to and imitate music before they attempt to read it.
They found the musical group performed better on a memory test also designed to assess general intelligence skills such as literacy and mathematical ability.
The investigators also measured changes in the children’s brain electrical responses to sounds during the year. They measured brain activity using a technique called magnetoencephelography while the children listened to two types of sounds: a violin tone or a burst of white noise.
All the children recorded larger responses when listening to the violin tones compared with the white noise – indicating that more of the brain’s activity was being deployed to process meaningful sounds.
All the children responded more quickly to the sounds over the course of the year of the study – suggesting greater efficiency of the maturing brain.
However, when the researchers focused on a specific measurement related to attention and sound discrimination, they found a greater change over the year among the Suzuki children.
In the group having music lessons, there were measurable changes in as little as four months. Previous studies have shown that older children given music lessons recorded greater improvements in IQ scores than children given drama lessons, but this is the first time that such young children have been tested.
Though this is only a small study, it strongly suggests that music is good for children’s cognitive development. I ifnd this particularly interesting after researchers appeard to have dismantled the "Mozart Effect." Perhaps they were premature in doing so.
I also take my hat off the researchers. As someone who’s done a lot of scanning and measurement, I know only too well, that to get young children to stay still enough to get meaningful readings must have been a Labor of Hercules!
I’d also like to mention a conference in November that sadly I shall not be able to attend, but promises to be a splendid event. It’s the International Sound Healing Conference, taking place on November 10-14 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They have a stellar group of presenters, including Jill Purce, Don Campbell, Fabien Maman, James D’Angelo, Master Charles Cannon, John Diamond and a host of other experts in the fields of sound and healing. It should be quite an event!
“Words are the pen of the heart, but music is the pen of the soul.” –Shneur Zalman of Liadi (Rabbi and Founder of Chabad Lubavitch, 1745-1812)
“Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.” –Robert Fripp (Musician, Guitarist and Spiritual Seeker, 1946-)
Risk, Reason, Intuition and Avoiding Overwhelm
The British Academy Festival of Science at the University of East Anglia has just finished, and there were a lot of interesting papers this year.
There was some impressive work on two unavoidable parts of life: risk and uncertainty. And how we cope with them. Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby, who is the Director of the Economic and Social Research Council Social Context and Responses to Risk Network (SCARR) at the University of Kent, had this to say: "There is a lot of evidence that concern about risk is directly related to lack of knowledge and the extent to which the event is dreaded…. and trust always involves emotion as well as reason."
How can we restore people’s level of confidence in themselves, in the people around them and in people in positions of authority? The answer lies in emotions instead of reason alone. This is especially true when the perceived risk is related to health, the environment, new technologies and energy.
Peter went on to say this: "The way that information about a particular risk is transmitted and interpreted by various audiences is also important in determining how people respond."
We all engage in some routine tasks without much thought. To apply your full awareness to everything that you do would quickly become exhausting. That is why we develop habits and do some things “On autopilot.” Habits are essential, and we have helped countless people by reprogramming habit patterns.
A problem can occur when you do the wrong things on autopilot and applying too much attention to things that do not require it. The first may damage a relationship: your significant other may not be best pleased to discover that you have been on autopilot during an intimate event. Applying too much attention to things that do not merit them is a good way of developing anxieties and paranoia.
With the increasing complexity of the world, and more things vying for our attention, we are all facing what I call “Overwhelm,” which is just what is sounds like. When we are tired or sick in mind, body or soul. When our subtle systems have become depleted by poor food, irregular breathing, negative people or a negative environment, any of us can become overwhelmed. People with attention deficit disorder, anxiety disorders and bipolar disorder are all more likely to suffer from Overwhelm. Many of the techniques for developing resilience that we have been discussing, are specifically designed to protect you against Overwhelm.
The key for us is to have in place a series of coping strategies that neither rely upon rationality alone or on a mixture of blind faith or hope: that is the best way to deal with growing uncertainties.
“Often you have to rely on intuition.”
-Bill Gates American Computer Genius, Businessman and Co-founder of Microsoft, 1955-
