Reverse-Engineering the Brain

"Maggie is a very smart monkey," says Tim Buschman, a graduate student in Professor Earl Miller's neuroscience lab. Maggie isn't visible – she's in a biosafety enclosure meant to protect her from human germs – but the signs of her intelligence flow over two monitors in front of Buschman. For the last seven years, Maggie has "worked" for MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS). Three hours a day, the macaque plays computer games that (usually) are designed to require her to generate abstract representations and then use those abstractions as tools. "Even I have trouble with this one," Buschman says, nodding at a game that involves classifying logical operations. But Maggie is on a roll, slamming through problems, taking about half a second for each and getting about four out of five right.