MY BRILLIANT BRAIN: BORN GENIUS
At two years old, Marc Yu taught himself how to play Mary Had a Little Lamb on the piano. One year later, he was tackling Beethoven. Marc also has perfect pitch the ability to identify musical notes as easily as identifying colours a skill that only one in 10,000 people can claim. How did Marc develop his amazing music ability? His mother exposed him to music at a very early age, did that shape his penchant for music or was he born brilliant? Born Genius investigates whether nature gifts some children with a genius gene while also examining the role nurture plays in shaping intelligence. Do children who are nurtured to learn at a very young age excel more easily than their peers? And, more importantly, what happens if a child misses out on crucial brain stimulation early in life? This is the case for one little girl forced to spend her childhood isolated in a small room deprived of any interaction with people, even her parents. The result: at age 13, she had the mental age of an 18-month old infant. Missing out on critical stages of development throughout her youth, can she possibly catch up to her peers?

MY BRILLIANT BRAIN: MAKE ME A GENIUS
Can you turn an ordinary child into a prodigy? For Susan Polger, this hypothetical becomes reality as she is transformed into the worlds first female chess grand master. Susan was not born with her brilliant brain; it was created by a unique educational experience that dominated her childhood. With no history of brilliant chess players in her family, Susan spent her childhood diligently studying more than 100,000 chess patterns. Once considered a mans game, Susan is winning chess matches against men more than three times her age at 10 years old. As an adult, she can now play as many as five games simultaneously, competing against opponents over the phone and without being able to view the board. She seems to recognize an opponents chess pattern almost as fast as she can recognize an old friend. How are people like Susan able to train their brains to remember staggering amounts of data?