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Let's partner for all of it. Learn more at edwardjones.com. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is a special edition of Sunday Morning. Changing minds about mental illness and ending its stigma is the mission of actress Glenn Close, as Tracy Smith will be telling us. 15 years ago, Jesse Close confided in her sister, Glenn, that she wanted to die. How close do you think you were to losing her? Very close.

I never knew how close. Many people who live with bipolar disorder have deaths by suicide. Change a mind about mental illness, and you can change a life. Glenn Close's campaign to rethink mental illness later on Sunday morning. A question for all our human minds to ponder.

Could it be that animals are smarter than us? Martha Teichner was more than happy to look into that. Hi, Donna. Certain stories are more fun than others. What's not to like about a polite conversation with Donna the elephant?

Good girl. We're getting up close and personal with talkative dolphins. I had this Sunday morning the pleasures of exploring the animal mind. Savants are people with remarkable mental powers that defy explanation.

With Susan Spencer this morning, we'll meet a few. Alonzo Clemens is a savant. He can't read or write or speak very clearly. What are you going to make? Horse. But watch this. But you have never had an art lesson? Never.

Never. Savants ahead on Sunday morning. Rita Braver asks if there's a link between art and madness.

Faith Salie looks at the latest research into psychedelic drugs and altered states. Tony DeCopel explores the connection between mind and hand. And more, all coming up when our Sunday morning podcast continues. Mind Matters, a special edition of Sunday Morning. Here again is Jane Pauley. The mental abilities of savants never fail to astonish.

Throughout the morning, Susan Spencer will be introducing us to some remarkable people. Alonzo Clemens is able to work part time. Do you like your job at the Y?

Yeah, trash. But a childhood accident left him with a traumatic brain injury. He can't read or write or do math. This is your studio as it were.

And yet, astonishingly, he can do this. When did you make him? On the weekend.

This past weekend? Yeah. As naturally as the rest of us breathe, Alonzo can sculpt. His meticulous creations fill his Boulder, Colorado apartment.

He's made hundreds of them, all with his bare hands. When you make an animal, what are you thinking about? One around my pasture. You can see it running in the pasture? Yeah.

This is the clay? Right. And this is how you start every piece? Yeah. He can't explain how he does it.

What are you gonna make? Horse. But he loves to show you how. You just use your fingers. Yeah.

We watched him work out every detail, from the mane to the muscles, all with apparent ease. Is Alonzo a savant? Yes.

No question. Hi. Psychiatrist Darryl Treford is research director at the Treford Center in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. This is the largest planet, Jupiter. And is a leading expert on savants of all ages.

67 satellites. Savant syndrome is a rare but remarkable condition in which someone with a disability has a striking ability that stands in stark contrast to overall handicap. Dr. Treford says Alonzo is what's called an acquired savant. It's believed that his head injury somehow rewired his brain. He's coming along.

He's coming along, isn't he? Damaging cognitive abilities, but freeing up extraordinary artistic gifts. Oh, that took you 15 minutes at most. I could take 15 years and I couldn't do that. Do you think Alonzo would be making horses today if he'd never had that accident?

Probably not. He's an artist. Nancy Mason has worked as Alonzo's assistant for more than two decades. What is it like for you when you watch him work? It's a joy and a blessing in my life.

And in Alonzo's life as well. Can you imagine not doing this? I'd be miserable. You'd be miserable.

You'd be miserable. Admiring your own handiwork is a familiar expression containing an important truth about the mind. We handed this particular story to our Tony DeCopel. Are you the kind of person who actually likes washing dishes? How about folding laundry?

Yard work? Really? What all these have in common, of course, is they occupy our hands. And as it turns out, some researchers think that may be key to making our brains very happy. I made up this term called behavior-suticals instead of pharmaceuticals in the sense that when we move and when we engage in activities, we change the neurochemistry of our brain in ways that a drug can change the neurochemistry of our brain. Kelly Lambert is a neuroscientist at the University of Richmond who says our brains have evolved to reward us for getting a grip on the world, which is why. In the 19th century, doctors used to prescribe knitting to women who were overwrought with anxiety because they sensed that it calmed them down some. And it sounds, oh, that's simplistic. But when you think about, OK, repetitive movement is increasing certain neurochemicals.

And then if you produce something, a hat or a scarf, there's the reward. Of course, working with your hands is not always easy. Just ask Matthew Crawford, a part-time mechanic from Richmond, Virginia.

There's literally no reason to be a part-time mechanic from Richmond, Virginia. There's literally blood on the table right now from earlier. Yeah, there usually is, yeah. Crawford prefers some nicks and cuts to what he used to do as executive director of a think tank in Washington, DC. Did your hands look like that?

Probably not, no. They were pretty clean. But I was, you know, I was always sleepy. I just, there was no amount of coffee that could keep me awake. In the garage, using his hands, Crawford finds that his mind goes into high gear. And there are times when I crack some nut that way, we're all like run over, kick the garbage can just out of elation. It was such a revelation, he wrote a bestselling book on the subject, which taps into the same attraction that makes reality shows like Forged in Fire, Top Chef, and Project Runway so popular.

And then you use one color with it all throughout. They all glorify handiwork. If you're making something and painting or cooking and putting things together and you're using both hands in a little bit more creative way, ways, that's going to be more engaging for the brain. It's something a lot of us crave, especially now, as fewer of us do much at all with our hands.

As of 2015, jobs requiring social and analytical skills, desk jobs, had increased 94% from 1980, while jobs requiring physical skills went up a mere 12%. And that has Kelly Lambert concerned. We just sit there and we press buttons and you start to lose a sense of control over your environment. She's been using rodents to study the hand-brain connection. Lambert says that rats made to dig for a reward showed greater signs of mental health when compared to what she calls her trust fund rats who got a pass on doing any physical work.

When we took an animal that was really in tune with the environment and we just gave them their rewards without having to work for them, their stress hormones went up high, they lost all of their benefits. Wow. So we've turned ourselves into trust fund rats is what you're saying?

I'm scared we are, yes. Few of us are as in touch with our hands as Zaria Foreman. In her Brooklyn studio, she creates stunningly realistic portraits of icebergs, all with the tips of her fingers. I always just started using my hands from an early age and I think there's something very personal about feeling the pigment myself with my hands and moving it around and in a way that imbues a part of me as the artist like into each piece that I make. Do you want to try?

Yes I do. Okay. And while what I made wasn't much more than a smudge. Now just move it around.

Yeah move it around. What I felt while doing it was something my brain surely appreciated. This is amazing.

I actually love this. Oh my gosh. How many galleries have you been in?

I'm in three galleries at the moment. Artist George Widener could spend countless hours happily counting and counting and counting. You get the idea. His art is awash in numbers and dates and days and so is his head. If you look at August of 1968, August 7, 14, 21, 28 are Wednesdays.

Pardon? George is what's known as a calendar savant. What exactly is a calendar savant? Savant expert Dr. Darrell Treffert.

Calendar savants are able to identify what day of the week will a particular date fall on in the past or in the future. Your theory is that this is just pre-wired at the factory if you will. Factory installed?

Factory installed ability. Yes. Most of us need Google. George needs a few seconds. Let me throw a few dates at you here. All right.

His skill is so remarkable you really do have to see it to believe it. December 2, 2018. December 2, 2018 is a Sunday. January 3, 2015. January 3, 2015 looks like a Saturday. Valentine's Day 1956. Tuesday. That's my sister's birthday. Okay. When is Christmas next on Wednesday? 2019 looks like it. You haven't missed one yet.

No. We moved on to the celebrity bonus round. Elvis died August 16, 1977. And that was a Tuesday. Luciano Pavarotti was born October 12, 1935. October 12, 1935 is a Saturday.

President Lincoln, February 12, 1809. It looks like a Sunday. Indeed. Now when George produces a date, is this a conscious thought? It's intuitive.

He doesn't need to think about it. It appears. George is a high-functioning savant able to live independently.

And he is doing quite well. I love doing this stuff. You clearly love doing this stuff.

At the Manhattan Gallery where we met him, his art sells quickly for tens of thousands of dollars. But George seems happiest about something far more fundamental. It's been wonderful that I've been able to use what's inside of me and to feel like I have a useful purpose. Meet Daisy. We love our pets. Often so much it's easy to be convinced they're lost in profound, important thought. So just what are they thinking? We asked our resident animal lover, Martha Teichner, to investigate. Fenway, the Boston terrier, is trying to figure out how to get at the treat hidden inside this puzzle. What's going on in his mind? If somebody asks you, is my dog smart like a human is smart, how do you answer that question?

I mean, what's involved there? It's not fair or even correct to compare dog intelligence to human intelligence. The real question is, what is a dog good at? About seven years ago, Dr. Gregory Burns, a neuroscientist at Emory University, had an idea. If he could train dogs to hold still in an MRI, a big if, he could get some answers.

Truffles here is living proof it can be done. She's one of more than a hundred dogs who've taken part in MRI experiments involving everything from facial recognition to self-control. Truffles is being shown two toys and knows giraffe means treat, whale, no treat. But what about photographs of the toys?

That's what we're looking for, activity in that location. That's the reward center of the brain, right where it is in humans. The point?

To find out if Truffles reacts to the toys and the photos in the same way. Get it, Truff, get it. There you go.

Good girl. Very good. This is another dog scan. It's too soon to say because this is just one dog, but what that tells me is they're not literally seeing the two equivalently.

They seem to know that one is a photograph and one is real. Right. Yum. Not to be outdone by a dog. Hi, Donna. Donna, a 34-year-old African elephant at the Oakland, California zoo, makes the connection between a picture of a banana her trainer shows her and the real thing. That's important because if you can imagine an object in your mind, that means you can think about that object and plan around that object. Does Donna understand that that picture of the banana represents a real banana?

Because that means that she can imagine that in her mind. Caitlin O'Connell Rodwell is an animal communication expert who studies elephants and teaches at Stanford University. The elephant has the largest brain per body size bigger than human. If size matters, and it does appear that size matters, then elephants could possibly be smarter than us. Elephants are so much like us.

Watching them caring about each other, watching their politics. Elephant politics, I think, is a politics. Elephant politics?

Oh yes, elephant politics. As for communication, elephants understand us better than we understand them. Behaviors Donna was taught to aid in her own care led to the banana test. That's what's so exciting about these cognitive experiments with Donna is that we can now ask her a lot of different questions. Donna understands English.

Yeah, you're a real treat machine. So there's probably a lot more that she understands about language than we've figured out how to ask her. Thanks to technology, researchers are beginning to decipher dolphin language, the chirps and clicks that come from their blow holes.

We looked at how mothers would retrieve their calves, which we can ask them to do on cue. Jill Richardson is a scientist at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Her work at the Dolphins Plus Sanctuary in Key Largo, Florida has involved identifying each individual's signature whistle, which is like its name.

This is underwater. Yes, so you see the hand, the cue that the trainer is giving and Ding is admitting a call. A variation of the mother's own signature whistle. And then Bebe comes back. It's like a mom in a room saying like, Jill, Lauren, come for dinner.

And then the calf responds immediately. It's like having the first and last name. Exactly.

My kids always know they're in bigger trouble when I use the first and last name. I really think we're scratching the surface. We know they're chatty. The next step really with their communication is learning how they might string acoustic signals together in different ways to have different meanings like syntax. Do dolphins speak in sentences? These dolphins obey more than 50 commands. But now watch. This hand signal means create.

Do whatever you want. What have the dolphins taught you about humans? Oh, gosh. I think the most important thing is that maybe we're not as smart as we think we are. And that it's definitely opened my eyes to how we put some constraints on our understanding of intelligence when it might be this much more colorful and broad experience for these animals.

Intelligence we underestimate because we don't know any better. Next, it became obvious to me that we have to talk about it. Actress Glenn Close, changing minds about mental illness.

When it comes to changing minds about mental illness and ending its stigma, few people are more motivated than actress Glenn Close. She's been talking to Tracey Smith. You just have to be discreet.

Oh, God, yeah. Are you? You're my what? Discreet. Your role in Fatal Attraction is one of your most memorable roles.

Yes, and Alex Horace is considered one of the great villains of all time of the 20th century. But I'm going to tell you it's going to stop right now. No, it's not going to stop. It's going to go on and on until you face up to your responsibility.

What responsibilities? In that 1987 blockbuster, actress Glenn Close portrayed a woman scorned. You won't answer my calls.

You change your number. I'm not going to be ignored, Dan. After an affair with a married man played by Michael Douglas. Looking back on that role now, what do you say? I'm always amazed that when I was researching that role that no one brought up the idea that she might have a mental disorder. No one said that she might have a behavior triggered by something in her past. I think if I was offered that script today, I would certainly look at it at a totally from a totally different point of view. That's because today Glenn Close knows something she didn't back then, that mental illness runs in her own family.

Her nephew, Kaylin, has schizophrenia and Glenn's sister, Jesse, has bipolar disorder. How long did you struggle with mental illness before you were diagnosed? My whole life, till I was diagnosed at 50. Why do you think it took that long? It wasn't taken seriously and I lived a very fast and wild life so nobody suspected anything.

They just attributed it to to me. That's how I was. I'd stay up for two nights and then I would think I need at least a few hours sleep on the third night, which of course kicks in depression. And depression for me was beyond blackness. It was wanting to die.

I had this voice in my head that would just not leave me alone, saying, kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself, over and over and over. In 2003, a frightened Jesse confided her suicidal thoughts to her sister and they got help. How close do you think you were to losing her? Very close. I never knew how close I was.

I never knew how close. Many people who live with bipolar disorder have deaths by suicide. The sisters say Jesse's treatment was successful because Jesse wanted help, but they also say far too many people are still suffering in silence. And when I became an advocate, I realized that it is a family affair for one in four of us. One in four, yes, is touched in some way by mental illness.

So it became obvious to me that we have to talk about it. Change a mind about mental illness and you can change a life. That thinking led Glenn and Jesse to start a foundation in 2010. Bring Change to Mind creates multimedia campaigns and holds events to get people to talk about mental health. Luckily, I've had the support of family and friends to help me live a full life. It's time to talk about mental illness.

Start the conversation. To let those that might feel marginalized or silenced by stigma to become part of a group and accepted will save lives. Period. Do you think you're saving lives?

Yes. We have a very, very wonderfully active community on Bring Change to Mind and our whole social network. And you come into a community of people that have lived with what you were living with and understand what you're going through.

A very, very warm welcome for Glenn Close. Bring Change to Mind also focuses on college and high school students, the age group with the highest prevalence of mental illness and the subject of recent headlines. It seems like we usually hear about mental illness when it's connected with violence, the school shooting in Florida. Does that present an accurate picture?

No. The biggest majority of people living with mental illness are more preyed upon than preying upon. But it does seem to be that somebody who does one of these terrible acts is suffering from some sort of mental disorder. The answer, she says, is more reliable funding for mental health care and maybe a little more care for each other. A lot of times, a lot of isolation goes on, which is dangerous. Be aware of how connected we truly are.

And if one connection is broken, there can be terrible repercussions. So we can't afford to ignore and to think it's somebody else's problem anymore. Glenn Close and her sister, Jesse, say they'll keep working until mental illness is seen as just what it is, another part of being human. I never got bunches of roses when I got home from the hospital.

If I had had a heart operation, I'm sure all my friends would have been there with food and flowers. People behaving strangely or badly is not considered an illness. But it is. It is.

Yeah, it is. It's just an illness, for goodness sakes. So-called magic mushrooms have played their part in America's long, strange trip toward an understanding of mind-altering drugs. Illegal, though most of these drugs may be, Faith Salie tells us recent research suggests some of them could have legitimate uses. Selexa, Effexor, Zoloft, Trazadone. Ayelet Waldman is no stranger to drugs.

I'm not going to get them all. Lexapro, Wellbutrin, oh my goodness, there you are. Diagnosed with a mood disorder, this author and mother of four had tried everything. I was profoundly, profoundly depressed. Suicidally depressed.

As bad as it ever had gotten in your life. I'd never been like that in my life. That's when she turned to a drug that might blow your mind. Kids, mommy's going to tell you all about the first time she tried acid. That's right, LSD. In secret, Waldman actually began taking a minuscule amount every three days.

It's called microdosing, and it's a controversial yet growing trend among the Silicon Valley crowd. But for her, she says, it worked. You don't hallucinate.

You don't see anything unusual. But it just, um, best way I can describe it, a little more cheerful and a little more effective at work, like a little more productive. So productive, in fact, she wrote a book about her mind-altering experiment. Good girl. And most importantly, her suicidal thoughts disappeared.

But there was a catch. After a month, she ran out of the small supply she'd gotten hold of. Why did you stop microdosing? Because it's illegal.

If it weren't illegal, I would still be doing it. Taking LSD, even a microdose of it, is still against the law and potentially dangerous. But once upon a time, LSD and psychedelics like it were considered potential wonder drugs. Throughout the 40s, 50s, and into the 60s, scientists studied them to understand mental disorders like schizophrenia and to treat anxiety, depression, even alcoholism. But when the drugs left the labs and started hitting the streets, and Timothy Leary preached, Turn on, tune in, and drop out. The bad trips and even worse headlines that followed changed their reputation. And then, This nation faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people. The Controlled Substance Act led to a more than three decades-long ban on all psychedelic research. Since 2003, however, the FDA has allowed for a few clinical trials of illegal hallucinogens, drugs like psilocybin, the psychedelic ingredient found in so-called magic mushrooms. Trials done in a safe, controlled setting, of course.

Do not try this at home. This is the couch where people have the experience of. This is a very special couch.

It's a magic couch. In 2016, Tony Bossis of New York University, along with researchers at Johns Hopkins University, published their findings of what a one-time dose of psilocybin can do to treat anxiety and depression in cancer patients. In this study, anxiety and depression reduced dramatically, immediately after the experience. I just wanted this terrible, daily anxiety to go away. Dinah Baser beat ovarian cancer back in 2010, but the fear of it returning convinced her to volunteer for the study.

In this treatment room, she was given the psilocybin, and her life-changing trip began. I saw my fear, and it was a black mass under my ribs. It wasn't cancer, it was the fear itself. And it made me so mad. I was just, I was furious, and I screamed at it to get out.

And as soon as I did that, it was gone. When the drug wore off, the anxiety about her cancer returning was gone, still is. What remains, she says, is the powerful memory of that symbolic experience. This medicine they take once, it's out of their system in a few hours. But it generates a three- to four-hour incredible, transcendent experience.

And it's the memory of that experience that recalibrates how they view life and death, and their existence, and it can be very spiritual insights. If all that sounds a bit far out, scans have shown psychedelics may increase connectivity among different regions of the brain, areas that normally don't communicate with each other. You know, maybe it's time to take a sober, careful, scientific look at these medicines to revisit, are they helpful? Are they safe? Are they effective? With more clinical trials on the horizon, researchers hope to open more minds about the potential of psychedelic drugs, one trip at a time. Good day.

Driving today? Oh, yeah. Ione and Steve Cooner have been happily married for 42 years.

Here's to you. But in 2013, they got some shattering news. She was diagnosed at 57. And the diagnosis was?

Early-onset Alzheimer's. It was devastating for both of us. For the past six years, Steve has watched Ione gradually lose her grasp on much of daily life. I mean, I love the way you did this. But to his amazement, he has also seen her gain something entirely unexpected.

Tell me about this one first. Ione has started painting. Very intense colors.

You like intense colors. Yes. Something the former dental assistant had never even thought about doing before her illness. Before her illness. Once I finish one, I want to start another one. And then finish that and start, you know, another one. This almost seems to be an obsession. It is her new occupation. Neurologist Bruce Miller directs the UCSF Memory and Aging Center in San Francisco. He's uncovered an unexpected and remarkable connection between savants and dementia patients, who, like Ione, suddenly exhibit new talents. So they would have trouble communicating, but they could pick up a paintbrush and paint?

Yes. Some of the most beautiful art I've ever seen has come out of my patients with degenerative diseases. And over here is painting by Jack. Dr. Miller's office is a small gallery of his patients' artwork. And this is somebody also who had never painted before.

Had never even stepped into an art museum. In his research, Dr. Miller compared brain scans of dementia patients with those of a child savant. We are seeing this same pattern of loss of function on the left side of the brain, increased function in the right posterior parts of the brain. The parts that allow us to take something visual in our mind and put it on a canvas.

His conclusion? In these rare dementia patients, so-called acquired savants, the disease that destroys some brain areas activates others, unlocking hidden talent. Wow. It's fairly exciting stuff. It very much has humanized my patients for me. Faced with an uncertain future, Ione seems to find solace in her art. And her paintings are still full of life.

15 years ago, do you think you could have done this? No, no. Does the brain ever cease to amaze you?

Never, never, never. One increasingly popular method of mental relaxation leaves psychologist Adam Grant out in the cold. I'm being stalked by meditation evangelists.

They approach like a football fan attacking a keg at a tailgate party. They ask, which method of meditation do you use? When I admit that I don't meditate, they're stunned. It's like I've just claimed the earth is flat. How could you not meditate? I have nothing against it.

I just find it dreadfully boring. But Steve Jobs meditated? Yeah, and he also did LSD. You want me to try that?

Yeah, and he also did LSD. You want me to try that too? Meditation is exploding in popularity.

Schools and workplaces are offering classes. But a recent study concluded that the science is spotty. And an analysis of 47 meditation programs in a major medical journal found zero evidence that meditation was better than exercise or relaxation. And consider this. If your goal is to reduce stress, remember the stress response can be healthy. It's a signal that you're facing a challenge. And it can help you rise to that challenge.

When psychologists told anxious people it was perfectly normal to feel stressed before an impromptu speech, they relaxed physiologically. And if your goal is to become more mindful, there are other ways to focus on the present. In a world filled with distractions, I think we need more planned laziness.

That just means being thoughtful about how you spend your downtime. There's evidence that watching TV can restore your energy. But channel surfing doesn't do the trick. You actually need to immerse yourself in a show.

Which is why I only turn on the TV when I already know what I want to watch. So if you want to become less stressed or more mindful, you don't have to sit and say, um. You can reflect. Write in a journal. Chat with a thoughtful friend. Get quality sleep and exercise. Read a novel.

Listen to podcasts. Meditation isn't snake oil. But if you're judging people for not meditating, it's pretty clear that meditation hasn't made you mindful yet.

The next time you meet people who choose not to meditate, just take a deep breath and let us relax in peace. I'm Jane Pauley. Thank you for listening.

And please join us again next Sunday morning. This is The Takeout with Major Garrett. This week, Stephen Law, ally of Mitch McConnell and one of Washington's biggest mid-term money men. List for me the two Senate races where you think Republicans have the best chance of taking a Democratic seat away. Nevada. New Hampshire. Not Georgia. Well, Georgia's right up there, but New Hampshire is a surprise. In New Hampshire, people really just kind of don't like Maggie Hassan. For more from this week's conversation, follow The Takeout with Major Garrett on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.