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Hi everybody, this is Ginger Campbell, Brain Science Live number six here. So the plan is going to be that I'm going to go through the material I've got planned for today, and at the end I will address any questions or comments when I finish my little presentation. Normally we would be discussing episode 146 this month, but since I'm at Harvard and I'm actually doing a public talk in a couple of days, I've decided that what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a preview of my talk. It has minimal slides, so you won't be missing anything by not having the slides. So just to get started, and this is the talk called why Neuroscience Matters that I'm going to be giving on November 3rd at Sound Education at Harvard. I'm Dr. Ginger Campbell, and my show is Brain Science, which I launched back in 2006 as the Brain Science Podcast. Brain Science is driven by one simple goal. To explore how neuroscience is unraveling the mystery of how the brain makes us human. My show's tagline is the show for everyone who has a brain because it makes neuroscience accessible to listeners from a wide variety of backgrounds. I'm calling my talk why Neuroscience Matters because over the years I've developed the conviction that basic neuroscience literacy should be a component of basic science literacy in the 21st century. In fact, I would argue that neuroscience could be the ideal gateway to teaching non scientists how science really works. So what I'm going to do in this talk is to share a few examples of the practical usefulness of neuroscience, as well as examples of how neuroscience can give non scientists a better appreciation of how science is really done. So first, let's consider memory. This is a major focus of research that has led to Nobel Prizes for discoveries about what goes on at the molecular level. Yet the average person still thinks that memory works, something like a video recording that gets played back exactly the same every time. The reality is that memory is very unreliable, and there are important reasons why. It turns out that every time a memory is recalled, it's actually dynamically recreated, which means that it includes things that have happened or been learned since the original event. Earlier this year, in episode 141, I interviewed Dr. Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, the author of the Forgetting Memory, Perception and the Jennifer Aniston Neuron. This book is an excellent introduction to several important principles about perception and memory. But the reason for the main title, the Forgetting Machine, is to emphasize that we do not remember things in exact detail because our brain's priority is meaning rather than detail. In fact, having total recall is actually quite disabling and this has been documented by several famous cases in the literature. Of course, we also talked about the discovery of the so called Jennifer Aniston neuron, which Quiroga prefers to call the concept neuron. Interestingly, the neurons that they found that responded to pictures of Jennifer Aniston also responded to Lisa Kudrow, but not to other cast members of friends. They also found different neurons that responded to several characters from Star Wars. Here's a few key points about these neurons. First, they are located in the hippocampus, which is of course associated with memory, and they're multimodal. They responded both to pictures of Jennifer Aniston and to hearing her name. Possibly the most important thing was that they demonstrated plasticity. Kiroga's lab actually recorded from neurons that learned to recognize people who worked in the lab in less than a week. Dr. Quiroga lamented that the media hype surrounding this discovery actually derailed his career for a while because he had difficulty being taken seriously within the scientific community. Naturally, many were put off by the oversimplified representations of his research. The unfortunate side effect was that the larger implications of his work were were lost. For example, it's usually assumed that the hippocampus is important in the formation of memories. But discovery of these highly specific multimodal neurons implies that the hippocampus may have a role in memory recall. Another take home point of this interview was that because they are dynamically recreated every time they are recalled, our memories are, as I said before, surprisingly unreliable. In fact, Elizabeth Loftus has demonstrated that the accuracy of eyewitness testimony is affected. First of all, she's demonstrated that it's really easy to make false memories. And she's demonstrated that eyewitness testimony is affected not only by how questions are asked, but who the person talks to. Probably the most accurate testimonies obtained during the very first interview. But that's not what jurors hear in court. Consider the significance of this. In your daily life, have you ever had a disagreement with someone because you remembered an event differently than they did? Long running feuds often have their origins in such disagreements. Of course, the problem is that we often feel very certain that our memory of an event is correct. It's often assumed that memories with high emotional content are more accurate. But the work of Loftus and others have shown that neither of these are reliable indicators of accuracy. In fact, there was a wonderful demonstration of this that I first read about in neurologist Robert Burton's excellent book on being believing you are right even when you're not. He described a study done at the time of the Challenger disaster by the psychologist Ehrlich. Niser was studying so called flashbulb memories, that is memories for dramatic events like 911 within a day of the Challenger disaster. He asked 106 students to write down exactly how they heard about the disaster, where they were, what they were doing and how they felt. Two and a half years later they were re interviewed and 25% of them gave accounts that were substantially different. More than half made errors, less than 10% of them got all the details correct. But the most surprising thing was how certain they were of their memories. Even when they were confronted with their original journal entries, one student actually said, well that's my handwriting. But that's not what happened. So no matter how much neuroscientists discover about the mechanisms of memory, it won't change the fact, the sobering fact that our memories aren't as reliable as we like to believe. This brings me to the second key idea that I want to share today. Most of what our brain does is outside of our conscious access and awareness. I hate to use the term unconscious because many people for them that triggers the Freudian ideas like memories can be suppressed into the so called subconscious. Freud was right, that important stuff goes on beyond our conscious awareness. But most of his ideas have not stood up to scientific scrutiny. But they persist in our culture because basic neuroscience literacy is not yet a given. Even so, the fact that much of what our brain does is unconscious, if you will, has many implications. First, once a complex task becomes well learned, it can become automatic. This makes it possible for us to master very complex skills. Can you imagine how stressful it would be if driving a car was as hard now as it was when you were learning how to drive? So this is an example of a once conscious task becoming automated or unconscious. The ironic thing about these sorts of tasks is that once they are learned, performers can actually be impaired by thinking too much. Sports gives us many examples of this principle. There are also processes that we never have conscious access to. Burton has provided several examples of these in his writing. But one of the most striking is what he calls the feeling of certainty. That feeling that you have when you're sure about something. Where does that feeling come from? Burton argues that the feeling is created outside our conscious awareness. Why does this feeling of certainty existence? Well, consider the survival benefit of being able to commit to a course of action. Perhaps you Know a person who can never make up their mind about anything. Those are the kind of people that drive the rest of us crazy because we take the feeling of certainty for granted. Let me give you a couple examples. Let's say you're going to eat with a friend and they ask you what you want. Either you will be in a mood for a certain thing, or if you aren't, you'll ask them to choose. Sometimes when they choose, you veto because you suddenly realize that you don't want what they have suggested. Now, that's not a very interesting example, but it shows how ubiquitous the process really is. However, consider another scenario. You're trying to decide whether to take a new job. What do you do? Perhaps you list all the pros and cons, but if you aren't sure, you might decide, I'm going to sleep on it. Many people wake up the next day with a feeling of certainty about their choice. Why? Burton argues that while we're asleep, our brain continues to process the information. And then when we wake up, a choice appears as if by magic. Of course, this is the point at which you can credit a higher power, your muses, or whatever fits your beliefs. Speaking of beliefs, this is another example of something we can't access or control consciously. Two people can listen to the same information but draw different conclusions. Hopefully you're familiar with the principle that correlation does not equal causation. But the reality is that scientists are human beings, and sometimes one person's correlation is another person's causation. In science, debates are settled when a consensus is reached that causation has been established. But outside science, there are issues that can't be resolved in this manner. For example, evolution is a well established scientific theory, but science can't prove or disprove the existence of God. Yet almost everyone feels pretty certain about the issue one way or the other. The point I want to make is that the feeling of certainty does not constitute evidence that we are right. Understanding that we do not consciously choose our beliefs could help promote humility and compassion to qualities that are sorely missing in today's world. Another reason why it is useful to understand the principle that beliefs are not consciously chosen is that it explains why facts never seem to change people's minds. One thing I want to emphasize is that the fact that much of what our brain does is is outside of our conscious awareness does not rob us of our personal freedom or responsibility. Assuming your brain is working correctly, you are constantly making choices and conscious decisions that will influence your future choices and behaviors. This is true. Whatever your age, though, if you're younger, the consequences of your choices are likely to be greater. Are you learning skills that will help you flourish in the future? Are you developing habits that reflect the kind of person you want to be? Each of us has to choose how we react to the world around us, but over time those reactions become automatic. On a more positive note, if we remain mentally active and curious, there is evidence that this provides some protection against dementia in our later years. So I consider the unreliability of memory and the fact that much of what our brain does is unconscious to be two basic facts that every educated citizen should know. But now I want to share a bit of basic science just because it's cool. And I'm sure there are some in the audience yearning for something a little more meaty on brain science. I prefer to interview scientists and philosophers who have written books, partly because it makes it easy for my listeners to learn about any topic they find interesting. However, just as I just had Dr. Seth Grant on the show for the fourth time because his research is fascinating and he is a wonderful science communicator. Dr. Grant is a molecular biologist, but he works in Dr. Eric Kandel's lab as a postdoc, and he has spent decades studying the synapse. Through the years, he's made some very surprising discoveries that I want to share with you very briefly. Grant started out trying to identify all the proteins in the synapses of a wide variety of organisms. The first interesting thing he discovered was that some of the proteins that are important in the synapse date back to the cell membranes of single celled organisms. Molecules like dopamine have been around literally millions of years. Next came a big surprise. Not all synapses are the same. It turns out that as organisms become more complex, so do their synapses. An important turning point came in the Cambrian explosion when the genome was duplicated twice. This is what allowed vertebrates to evolve much more complex structures, including more complex synapses. Dr. Grant's ultimate interest is in trying to understand mental illnesses and learning disabilities that have a genetic basis. He has made great strides in showing how single gene mutations can affect learning in mice. This is relevant because the genes are actually the same ones that are involved in human diseases like schizophrenia. In case you didn't know it, we have a lot of the same genes as mice do. In our most recent conversation, which I just Posted last week, Dr. Grant describes the first whole mouse brain synaptone, which is a mapping of the synapses across the brain. The key discovery was incredible diversity that may actually imply that every synapse is unique. This has huge implications for theories about synapse function, especially with regards to perception and memory, as you might imagine. I could have spent my whole talk on this, but Dr. Grant does a much better job of explaining his work in episode 150. I'm very proud that brain science is popular within the neuroscience community, but most of mine's listeners are not scientists, and I assume that that will be true of my audience at Harvard. I do want my listeners to gain accurate knowledge about neuroscience, but I think it's just as important to understand that science is done by human beings. And the tricky thing is that science often reveals things that work differently than our so called common sense suggests. So as we've seen in the last few minutes, memory is not what it seems and we can't introspect our way into understanding what the brain does. Even long standing assumptions, such as the idea that all sentences are the same, can be overturned by new evidence. Before I close, I want to emphasize that although I do a podcast called Brain Science from time to time, I like to remind my listeners that neuroscience is not the only way to to understand what it means to be human. And this is the point at which I'm actually going to talk about. Episode 146, which would be our normal topic for this month's Brain Science Live 146 is an interview with Alan Jasanhoff from MIT about his book the Biological How Brain, Body and Environment Collaborate to Make Us who We Are. I share Jasnoff's concern about what he calls the cerebral mystique, which includes the tendency to see the brain as abiotic rather than as an organ. There's the tendency to overemphasize the electrical properties and neglect its overwhelming chemical nature. Jasanoff also describes a feature he calls complexification, which is the tendency to see the brain is so complex as to make it mysterious. And then there's this tendency to see the brain in isolation, as if it could pilot the body on its own, which leads to the idea of autonomy, which forgets the brain is both embodied and dependent on its environment. And this leads to the idea that the brain and the bat could actually happen. We considered some of the consequences of the cerebral mystique, and on page three of the biological Mind, he wrote, it obscures the consequences of the most fundamental discovery of neuroscience, that our minds are biologically based. Another consequence is that we forget our interdependence in terms of our brain's dependence on the body and the environment and the fact that it's an interaction of brain, body and environment that makes us who we are. Jasanoff argues that the cerebral mystique recapitulates the old mind body dualism, creating a sort of scientific dualism that makes the brain a stand in for the soul. Why does this matter? Well, it affects our approach to many of our most critical problems, including addiction and mental health. We see them as only brain problems, and this gives us a very narrow view of the solutions and, and it gives us an excuse to ignore the importance of things like environmental factors, which we could then be responsible for. So how do you avoid falling prey to this cerebral mystique? Well, the simple principle is to remember that the brain is a biological organ and the mind is the result of interdependence of brain, body and environment. You are not only your brain, just as you are not only your body. You are a result of the interaction of your brain, body and environment. And so am I. So that's where my talk is going to end for this is the talk I'm giving on Saturday. It looks like it's pretty easy to do Facebook live on my phone, so maybe I might give you some glimpses of Harvard over the next few days. I want to say hi to Lisa and Darrell and there's somebody else in the chat room that I'm not sure their name. Appreciate you watching. Please be sure to share this with others. Oh, and just to remind you, if you want to go with me to Australia, please write to me@brainsciencepodcastmail.com so I can send you the information about that. And please don't forget to visit my sponsor, the Great Courses plus Ginger thegreatcourses. Ginger and I will be back soon with the next episode of Brain Science. The podcast Brain Science with Dr. Ginger Campbell is copyright 2018 to Virginia Campbell, MD. You can copy this show to share it with others, but for any other uses or derivatives, please contact me@brainsciencepodcastmail.com.