← Brain Science with Ginger Campbell, MD: Neuroscience for Everyone
Brain Science with Ginger Campbell, MD: Neuroscience for Everyone
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- [00:04]
Dr. Ginger Campbell
This is Brain Science, the podcast that explores how recent discoveries in neuroscience are helping unravel the mystery of how our brains make us human. I'm your host, Dr. Ginger Campbell and this is episode 149. I call this the show for everyone who has a brain because my goal is to make brain science accessible to everyone from regardless of your background. Recently we've had some fairly technical episodes, so I wanted to take a break with a rather unusual guest. Dr. Dean Burnett is the author of two popular books, the Idiot Brain and Happy Brain. Hopefully those titles give you a clue that Dr. Burnett is not the typical neuroscientist. His hobby is actually stand up comedy. In this month's interview we will focus on Happy Brain and explore the fascinating question of how do our brains make us happy? As always, you will find complete show notes and episode transcripts on our website@brainsciencepodcast.com and you can send me feedbackrainsciencepodcastmail.com I will be back after the interview to review a few key ideas and to give you an update on next year's trip to Australia. And also I want to tell you about an event that I'm going to be attending in Boston this November.
- [01:36]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Welcome to Brain Science Dean, great to have you on the show.
- [01:40]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Yes, thanks for having me. Always appreciate it. Any invite is always good.
- [01:44]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Can you start out by just telling us a little bit about yourself, Dean Burnett?
- [01:49]
Dr. Dean Burnett
I live in Cardiff, Wales, did my PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience for Cardiff Psychology School. I finished that back in 2005 and I've been sort of a high profile, top flight researcher, anything like that. I've been mostly doing lecturing and teaching since graduating. I didn't have much luck with my research so I'm more of a much better talk about neuroscience than actually doing it, which is seems to be my lot in life. And until recently I've been blogging for the Guardian under the brain Flapping blog that was mine. They recently shut down the network sadly. So that's the point now. And I'm author of two books, the Idiot Brain and the Happy Brain or Aged Brain and Happy Brain for the States. They drop the the for reasons I'm not entirely sure about. But no, I'm not going to argue. And yeah, so I'm just a sort of a job in neuroscience guy at the moment. I intend to talk about it a lot for various different people. So that seems to be my current role in life. I don't have a specific job, I'm a general communicator.
- [02:41]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Do you do stand up also you.
- [02:43]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Yes, I have. Well I started doing stand up back in 2003. I think it was, it was track now I went through a period of doing it quite a lot thinking this could be something I might like to do. But then the academia took precedence and I got married and stuff and it's not the most stable profession and also I wasn't, didn't think I was good enough to be a professional. So yeah, it's something I still dabble now and again. It's still a hobby, a sideline I think I'm going to invest in. But yeah, it's something I've been doing for over a decade now. So that's a. Another little facet of what I do.
- [03:14]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Do you think your experience as a stand up comic helps you with communicating science to non scientists?
- [03:22]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Definitely and I think people have asked me this before and I always say if you are a scientist who wants to communicate with people then you could do a lot worse than doing a stand up set in front of an audience who doesn't know you. And there are schemes and projects in the UK at least I'm sure there's some in the States which encourages academics and scientists to perform on stage. Like we have Bright Club here that's really successful and similar projects to that and it just gets academics out there to go on stage and talk about their work and interested in fun and amusing ways and it's very good. But my one sort of criticism of that is that the nights themselves are billed as this is a night of academics talking about their work in funny ways and most science communication projects along those lines. So they pitched at people who are already interested in science and enthusiastic enough to go to these things. Whereas my argument is if you go to like an open mic night or just a live comedy night where people are there just to see comedy and you can convince them or you can win them over. That's the real test in that they're not there to see you, they have no particular reason to be interested in what you're saying if you can do that. And then it's very much it teaches you the essential skills like relating to people, being like submissive but also authoritative in ways that engaging, not off putting. And yeah, I think it's really, it's quite a baptism by fire but it's also, it teaches you to, you know, humility and I've died on stage plenty of times and I'm not the best comedian and it does give you a certain respect of this is what it's like when people aren't interested in what you're saying, they don't want to know what you're on about. And if you can sort of develop and present yourself in ways which are engaging by default, then that is a huge boon to communicate in science. And also, I think it gives you a sense of the audience or the readership. Like they're not just numbers on a screen. They're not just a blank faces. They are people who have opinions and reactions and they will think certain things of you. So, yeah, it gives you a very visceral edge and gives you a sort of sense of these are my audience. It always gave me the sort of underlying ethos that I've always had. That's when I'm communicating science. I always base my assumptions on the fact that the audience or whoever's listening is at least as smart as I am, but just doesn't know what I know. That sort of informs everything I do when it comes to communicating it.
- [05:28]
Dr. Ginger Campbell
Yeah.
- [05:28]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Here in the States, Alan Alda has worked really hard in this area and he encourages scientists to do improv.
- [05:37]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Yeah, that's another one.
- [05:38]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Yeah, yeah. Which I think is the same sort of idea. I haven't tried it yet. Okay, so you answered a question I was going to ask you, which was, what kind of neuroscience do you do? When you were working on your PhD, did you have a particular thing, thing that you really did get the chance to delve deep into? What was that?
- [06:01]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Oh, yeah, my PhD titled the role of the Hippocampus in Configural Learning. So the focus of my PhD was in what sense does the hippocampus, the nexus of all memory formation in the brain, the hub of how the memory works, to what extent is that involved in memory retrieval as well as just encoding and sort of storage? Because the fact that the hippocampus ties all the sensory information together to form new memories, that's kind of widely accepted. It definitely does do that because you have people with anterograde amnesia, like the guy in Memento. That's the most common type of amnesia, not the. What I call soap opera amnesia.
- [06:37]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Right.
- [06:38]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Where people hit their heads, forget their childhood, but they still have totally fine functioning. That's far more rare because the memory system, the memories are scattered throughout the brain. So wiping them all out at one impact is incredibly difficult to do. Not impossible, but it depends. It's actually a very specific injury. Whereas the hippocampus can be easily damaged by stroke or by injury. So when people have a damaged hippocampus they can't form new memories. So it's just widely accepted that the hippocampus is clearly integral for encoding and forming new memories. But what we're looking at is to what extent is also involved in retrieving those memories. And a lot of the data suggests that when memories are formed they are so they stay next to the hippocampus, the new synaptic connections or the bundle of connections which forms a specific memory. And slowly but surely they gravitate outwards into the brain as more memories come behind them. So like a treadmill of sort of things being dropped off and pushing things forward like a conveyor belt essentially. And one of our studies looked at if you deactivate the hippocampus to temporarily with neurochemicals, you actually with lab animals, they can't retrieve recent memories. Devised tests to show that well, if they can remember the last few hours then they can do this test. If they can't, then they can't. Then the ones that deactivate the hippocampus couldn't perform the test correctly. Which shows that not just about encoding that at least with recent memories, although they still class as long term, the hippocampus is also required for effective retrieval. And that was a new finding. Something which we didn't know before. And that's pretty much the only thing I've ever got my name on as an author. So apart from writing my own books. But yeah, I never managed that much prized first author credit. That was unfortunate but luckily I'll have it that way sometimes.
- [08:18]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Yeah. And it's getting harder and harder.
- [08:20]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Yeah.
- [08:20]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
So in your new book, the Happy Brain actually I guess doesn't have the in it Happy Brain, the version I have in the introduction you say that it's not a self help book. I bring this up to begin with because I worry that some of my sort of purist listeners might be off put by the title. But what was your goal in writing this book?
- [08:41]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Well, the genesis of the book is actually a strangely odd one in that it wasn't sort of like long term passion project of mine. And I think that's a positive, not a negative. I'm not dismissing it as a sort of a throwaway piece of work. And you have to go back to the fact that I never planned to be an author in the first place. I wasn't sitting in university thinking I'm going to be a writer one day. It was something that slowly gradually evolved like I did just doing the comedy and science at the same time. I Like to talk about it. And then, of course, Cardiff is a very small city with very small comedy scenes, so there was no outlet for my quirky takes on science. So I then discovered the world of blogging. And that's the thing, you can just write it down and people will look at it if they want to see it. And that was interesting. So I started a blog and ended up being picked up by the Guardian. And that was reassuring. That got me really noticed. And then my now agent got in touch and said, you know, blog's very properly. They thought about writing a book. And I sort of had. But in the same way, like, I thought it'd be nice to go to Mars one day, it'd be nice to go to space and like, it's just something that's a pipe dream which will never happen, it's just an idle fantasy. But end up talking about it and end up writing the Idiot Brain, my first book, or Idiot Brain in the States, and that was. It was almost like a reaction to much of the neuroscience literature out there in the mainstream, because I've read several books on many of them and I've reviewed several for magazines and they're generally good. Like, they're not disparaging the quality of writing at all, but there seems to be, or there seem to be, based on the ones I've read, this underlying assumption that the brain is brilliant and it's beyond our understanding. We have to emphasize how good and powerful and incredible the brain is, and it is all these things. But I always left me the impression it gives this sort of sense of mystique, of infallibility, which of course isn't true. It's still a incredibly complex, but it's still an evolved organ with all the inefficiencies and eccentricities and illogical properties that evolution will imbibe in something which evolved a function. It's not a perfect process. And I said, well, I'd like to write a book, but I don't think I can really maintain this idea that the brain is some sort of perfect, amazing receptacle of all things brilliant. Whereas you do neuroscience for more than a year, then you start to realize how flawed it really is. And I thought that was important to get that across then that because people, the idea that the brain is beyond our understanding and infallible suggest that when it does go wrong, something seriously bad has happened and it's not. It goes wrong all the time, I end up agreeing that that would be what I would write about. You know, like, I'd Write about all the flaws and weird properties of the brain rather than this magical mystery tour of the brilliance. And that was my first book, Idiot Brain. And that was sort of like. I assumed that would be my one and only chance of writing a book. So I put everything I wanted to say about the brain in there. I thought we might break even eventually. Some of my blog reads will buy it and then we'll all go on with our lives and never speak of it again. And then it went really well. And they kept saying, what's your second book about? I'm like, oh, okay. I really hadn't thought this far ahead. And I kept asking people about what do you think I should write about? I was asking suggestions, I was desperate. They kept giving me ideas in them which I liked. I kept knocking them back and they ended up all eminent, would just eventually say, like, all things being equal, you have to write about whatever makes you happy. And that sort of sparked the idea of, well, what does make us happy? Why do some things make us happy and not others? Why this, why that? And it's sort of a little sort of trickle, then becomes a flood. And I wanted to look at from a completely objective perspective. So I ended up studying to write about what is it about certain things that make us happy? Why does the brain like these things and what is it? What is going on in there? And because I'm not a guru or not a positive psychologist, I don't have any prior experience with the world of happiness or life coaching or things like that. I thought it'd be nice to have a nice, neutral, objective take on it, different things to different people. And that's why I was getting a bit worried about it being seen as a self help book. Because I'm not opposed to self help industry. But I'm very wary of anyone who claims that I can fix you with this one book, right? Because when you study the brain, you know how massively each individual varies in terms of what makes them tick, what are their neuroses, what they can put up with, what they can't, what they do handle or they don't, and how they're affected by certain things. So the idea that one book can be equally beneficial to every single person who might read it is very unscientific as far as I'm concerned. So I wanted to make it clear that this is not a self help book. If you find information in here which you find helpful, great. But that is not my intention. I'm just putting the information out there. You do with what you will. But don't expect me to say to you, I can fix your life, because I can't. I don't know you. Dear reader, I have no idea who you are before you pick up my book, and therefore I am the last person who should be telling you how to live your life. And that's something I wanted to sort of get out the way from the very start.
- [13:04]
Dr. Ginger Campbell
Right.
- [13:05]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
So early on, you describe your efforts to get a functional MRI of your own brain. Can you tell us why you did this and what happened?
- [13:15]
Dr. Dean Burnett
I peel back the curtain a little bit here. I did sort of. In the book, I do present myself as being a bit sort of more naive and clueless than I actually was, but I did think that when you see neuroscience covered in the mainstream these days, it invariably involves brain scanning or FMRI in some capacity, because that's the cool new technology. It's not that new. It's been on for a few decades now, but it's still slowly filtered out into the mainstream world. And that's sort of like the go to for any particular advanced brain research project at the moment. And I wanted to sort of explore that avenue because it's something that's been bothering me for a while. I end up talking to Professor Chris Chambers in the book, who is a friend of mine and he works nearby. And these are similar complaints before. And it's the fact you get all these media stories about how the brain works based on the latest FMRI scan or people's scanner. Show them this, and this is what happens, therefore, this is the brain bit responsible for whatever you happen to show them, carrots, cheese, music, whatever. And that's a massive oversimplification of how both the brain and the process of brain scanning work. And I did think if I looked into the brain scanning side of things, it would be a nice way to get this out there in a sort of more mainstream format. It's almost like under the radar, saying, like, I'm looking at, I want to look at how my brain processes happiness using fmri, but I know that's not really how it works. So if I can explain why that was a bad idea, then that gets it out there. That sort of clarifies, like, here's why that's not the best approach. But I did think it would be good to do is in, like, if I knew someone who could. I do people who have FMRI scanners, it would be an interesting thing to write about, It'd be an interesting thing to tell people how it happened, and it might Provide some interesting information in that if I'm in an MRI scanner, then make myself happy in some way in a valid manner, then it might yield some interesting data. But that is again, a very naive approach to how science works. One person does not make a valid result. You can't really do it like that. You need lots of people doing the same thing to get anything applicable to the wider world and to people in general. And so, yeah, I thought it'd make an interesting narrative, but I think it was more fun to explore the fact that I couldn't do that because, for starters, they cost like four grand to run a session. I don't have that much money and my publishers are not willing to stump that up on the off chance I might find something vaguely useful. And they are expensive, delicate, complex machines. And it's not just a case of putting someone in there and then looking at which bits of the brain like that. Because the brain's always lighting up. Every part of the brain is active all the time because it's a very energy intensive organ, it's very demanding, it requires lots of resources and it keeps just to stay alive, it has to keep constantly active. So I think the analogy I make in the book is that trying to find which part of the brain is more active during a certain process, it's like trying to find which teenage fan is screaming the loudest at the Justin Bieber concert, because they're all making a lot of noise there. But you have to go around each one individually, measure the decibels. That's going to be hard work. It can be done, but it's not a straightforward process. And yeah, so like it's riddled with problems and issues and variables which people aren't aware of. And I thought by putting myself in a position where I could look into this sort of thing, it would be a nice way to highlight these concerns with the more mainstream coverage of neuroscience.
- [16:15]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Yes, and I think it was very effective. And I'm not going to go into the details of that because for one thing, on this show I talk about why the FMRI is not the end all and be all of neuroscience on a regular basis. However, one of the things you did emphasize that I think it's worth saying again is that maybe where is the wrong question, you know, where in the brain is happiness could be the wrong question.
- [16:43]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Yes, definitely. And that's something I discussed with Professor Chambers, because there are parts of the brain which have specific functions. Like I mentioned the hippocampus. I think everyone sort of agrees that is Involved in memory processing. But then also it seems to be involved in navigation. But you can sort of see some underlying process they put in information together into one representation. Helps you navigate, helps you remember things. It's sort of like an underlying process. And the amygdala is very well known for being like an emotional processing center. It adds the emotional context of memories. It designs which emotional response is valid. But it has lots of different roles too. So although the brain does have discrete and sort of recognizable parts which do certain things, this idea that there are parts of the brain which are for one thing and one thing only, as professor Chris Chambers calls it blobology from the early days of fmri, like so see a blob on the screen, that's the middle of the brain. For as he said, for an example he first saw was chess. So they put people in FMRI scanner when they're playing chess and not playing chess. The parts like that, they think, well, this is the chess part of the brain. Well, that's clearly not how it works. Like there's no evolved part of the brain dedicated to chess.
- [17:43]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
That's right.
- [17:44]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Something we invented a couple hundred years ago. And no, most people don't ever play it. So why would we have evolved a discrete chess center of the brain? But that's, that's the sort of thing a lot of the reporting suggests. A lot of times it seems like very straightforward experiments, very basic, very clearly with a corporate aim in mind. I saw one. Which part of the brain is responsible for love of Apple products? Like seven people in a scanner and shows up an ipod and then this part lights up. That's the part responsible for 11 Apple products. Well, that. No, clearly not. The ipods would have been around for a couple of years. We would not have evolved that part of the brain yet. And that's the sort of thing which is something which should be challenged and corrected whenever possible. Because this idea that there's a part of the brain for everything we do, again doesn't. The brain doesn't work that way. I think, I think I mentioned in the book as well. But it comes to. Part of it might be the fact that we keep using computers as an analogy for the brain. And I get why that happens. A lot of neuroscientists don't like it because it's such a. The brain doesn't do much in the same way as a household computer does. It doesn't process information the same way at all, doesn't store it the same way. It's an analog biological organ. But there's no real better comparison in the wider world for complex thing which processes information in various ways. So I think we stuck with it for the time being. But the idea that every part of the computer has a specific bit of software or a specific bit which does this certain function, and that seems sort of entrenched a little bit in how it will do with the brain as well. And it's not about that. It's about networks and functions and connections and widespread division of labor between different parts and the intelligence system. There's no intelligence blob in the brain. There's no intelligence hub. It's widespread through all the different sensory and cognitive processes that render pain intelligence.
- [19:18]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Right. And another issue that comes from the mainstream media that we should probably touch on, and you do touch on in the book is the role of the neurotransmitters. I mean, people hear that dopamine is the happiness chemical. Can you tell us why just going for the neurotransmitters as the cause of happiness also is not really. Well, I would say in your book, dopamine is not a very big character. Why is that?
- [19:45]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Well, I think it's because it's. It's almost like a sort of a personal aversion to putting dopamine front and center. Because I've seen so many other books do that, even like more respected scientists. But people who get the bit between their teeth about certain things and a lot of it comes down to, I think personally it's sort of like borrowing credibility. If you're talking about dopamine in a non science book, you seem like you have a lot more authority and knowledge and people do that. They sort of seem to drop in like, oh, I've learned this neurotransmitter's name. It does this particular thing, therefore I'm credible now. And the analogy I used on stage recently, it reminds me of the 1983 film Best Defense with Dudley Moore. I don't know if you're familiar with that one.
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Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
I haven't seen that one. I love Dudley Moore, but I don't know that one.
- [20:26]
Dr. Dean Burnett
No, it was a pretty new. It was kind of a flop. It wasn't going. He plays a sort of womanizing weapons design now, which isn't the best character to start with, I suppose. And they did screen test in the film and it was getting really bad feedback from all the audiences. And at the time, Eddie Murphy was just hitting his height. And so they shot a whole extra 20 minutes of footage with Eddie Murphy in a war Zone using the weapon he designed and then put him straight on front of the bill. Eddie Murphy in this and also Dudley Moore. So basically Eddie Murphy was becoming credible and they just put him in this film to make it sell. And that's a lot of the time what's happening here in that. I have this theory about how happiness or anything like that works. I want people to believe me, so I'll just say dopamine a lot. Dopamine is really important stuff. And that's one thing I didn't want to get bogged down in the whole idea of a certain chemical being responsible for such a wide variety of important functions. And it is very reductive too. It's like you can say, you know, dopamine causes happiness, but that's such a massively oversimplified way of looking at anything. And I think the example I use on stage when I talk about it in my talks is that you said dopamine is the happiness chemical because it's, it supports the function of the reward pathway where all pleasure comes from. So yes, there is a certain logic to say in that, but that doesn't then intrinsically say that dopamine is itself inherently happy causing. It's like you gave like a pint of dopamine to a dog, they would not then be the happiest dog in the world. And something that example I knew is like, if you like, they keep saying things like, in order to boost your dopamine levels and be happy, do these exercises, do these breathing techniques, use this mindful practice. But if you want to boost dopamine throughout your brain, all you've got to do is get hold of some levodopa, the medication for Parkinson's disease, because that's what that does. You know, Parkinson's disease is caused by degradation of the substantia nigra, where, which is also a dopamine neuron nucleus which controls movement and mood and things. So Levodopa is an enzyme which boosts general dopamine levels to compensate for this area degrading. Now therefore, people taking parts of medication have increased dopamine levels in their brain and they don't seem ecstatically happy all the time because that's not. Again, that's not what dopamine's just for. It's not just happiness causing chemical. It is just coincidental, I think, that the brain has adopted dopamine functioning to support this particular role that it's. It needs to do. And the example I use is like saying the word love. L O V E O and e are half of the word love, so therefore O and e are the most romantic vowels. And that's not true, that doesn't make any sense. It's just a coincidence of the language. And that's the same thing with the brain. Dopamine, yes, dopamine does do this function. It also does many, many other functions. Or just saying dopamine equals happiness is a massive oversimplification. And sometimes it's actively misleading in terms of how the brain and the inherent chemicals that you just actually work. So it's far more complex, far more, far more like detailed.
- [23:08]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
But it does give you the opportunity to address a really important question which is how is happiness related to pleasure? They're not the same thing.
- [23:18]
Dr. Dean Burnett
No, that was something which I think came pretty clear very early on in that you can have different forms of happiness. And I think it's one of those things whereby if you stop thinking about it, you think, of course, yes, but people use the word happiness to mean anything that makes you happy. And that's arguably, that's fair, but it's also, again, it's oversimplification. Like when you stop and think about it. Oh yeah, that's how it works. Because again, I think I mentioned it in the start, but you can be ecstatic, you can be euphoric, you can be overjoyed. These are all ways to which to be happy. You can also be content, you can be relaxed, and these are also ways to be happy. But you seldom get those things overlapping. You don't get people who are ecstatically relaxed. It isn't a thing which really happens. You don't get people like Saturn in a, in an armchair with a whiskey in front of roaring fire, screaming how much fun they're having, because that's just not how it works. So clearly there are different processes at work which allow us to experience these two different types of satisfaction, pleasure and all that sort of thing. But I think pleasure, it underpins happiness in many ways in that most things make us happy, do have an element of pleasure causing aspects to them. So if you're made happy by traveling, you will be experiencing pleasure when you see things, try to meet new people, experiencing new foods and stuff. So it's like the foundation of happiness. But mayware is like perhaps in more primitive creatures, it's all about learning. This thing causes pleasure, so do this more. This thing doesn't cause pleasure, so avoid this. And it's sort of a very by the numbers A to Z thing with humans. Like we've built our Brains have built up so much, so many layers of complexity and sophistication around that. So I think the pleasure system will underpin happiness in many ways, but it won't just be that. And the ways in which it is triggered can be so phenomenally variable and individual and unique and complex. That's where the real tricky part of happiness comes. That's why it's a rich and varied experience.
- [25:08]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Right. So after going through these particular elements, you take us through some of the important things that we might think of being important to being happy. When you look back at the content of this book, is there some overriding theme that no matter what topic you're talking about, it seems to just keep coming back?
- [25:30]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Yeah, there was. I think one thing which really struck me when I was writing was just how crucial the presence of other people is to our experience of happiness. I always knew humans are a social creature. I think in terms of numbers. Some people have argued that our most densely populated cities, like Cairo or like the ones in China, they are more densely populated than the most populous insect colonies like termite mountains and stuff. So we are actually more social than insects in many ways. And I know it doesn't seem like that when you look at the news or spend up to 10 seconds on Twitter or anything, but we are a very. I guess the argument would be like, yes, people are all for each other all the time, but consider how many people there are in the world. The level of interpersonal conflict is surprisingly low. That seems to have been something which we have all such big fancy brains, according to studies I found, because it enhanced our ability to be social and to relate to other people and interact and form bonds and cooperate and so on and so on. So the argument is that when we form tribes and form sociability, that led to a massive expansion in our cognitive powers and the size of our brain. So you would expect to see much of the brain dedicated to interpersonal interaction. And it is. I didn't realize how rewarding like just a general conversation can be. It does cause activity in the reward pathway when you just have a nice conversation with someone, or even just a pleasant exchange and rejection, even the slightest virtual source can cause genuine psychological pain. There was a while they thought it would cause actual pain. Like the brain region which processes pain, anterior cingulate cortex. I think that is triggered by acts of social rejection. But then some deeper studies and neuroscientists looked into this to show that actually, no, it's different activity in the same area being processed, but it is very Uncomfortable. It's very unpleasant to be rejected at a basic level. And some of the studies I saw which they used like a virtual game of catching a ball and with three people and when someone wasn't engaged by other two people they felt rejected and they still felt rejected even if it was like a black subject who has been rejected by people who they were told were members of the clan. And that's. You should actually want to be rejected by the clan if you're a black person logically. But that's not how the brain works. It's just an instinctive aversion to anyone rejecting us. Even if something is like there's no. No eye contact or being blanked by someone that causes us to feel distress and discomfort. And again, it was really quite telling how. How much other people are a huge part of our happiness because they're almost like we can be happy about other people. Some people often are. There's always knowledge there are people out there, should they be needed. I think when someone was. If someone was stranded like on a desert island then that would be a lot less satisfying or a lot less relaxing a situation than if you were chose to isolate yourself in your own apartment or something like that. So yeah, it was pretty quite telling just how bigger role other people and are interacting with them or have, you know, happiness. And again it's one of those things I haven't thought about it before but the fact that there are so many emotions. Happiness isn't one of them thankfully. But there are so many emotions where they only exist in the context of other people. Social emotions like embarrassment. Embarrassment doesn't make any sense unless other people are around you. Like, you know, like the example I use is if you're in the bathroom and your clothes fall off. That's weird but I was going on the shower anyway so it's fine. If you're in a hotel lobby and your clothes fall off, that's humiliating. That's terrifying and embarrassing because other people around you now like it's the context which is different and the people there things like guilt, like the idea that you've harmed another person in some way makes you feel bad even though technically nothing's happened to you. So we have evolved to be very social creatures and as a result much of our happiness is hinges on other people and our interactions with them. They're almost like how we calibrate our mindset and our way we see the world. We calibrate them by our interactions with other people. And yeah, that was a much bigger part of happiness than I realized and I kept going back to it again and again once I'd established that in the book.
- [29:10]
Dr. Ginger Campbell
Right.
- [29:11]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
And I think it is a theme that came through really strong for me.
- [29:18]
Dr. Ginger Campbell
I want to take just a moment to thank everyone who helps this show financially via premium subscriptions, Patreon, or direct donations via PayPal. For the last few months I've been reminding you that that the income from this show is actually an important part of my budget. But to be honest, that hasn't had much impact on the number of people who are actually supporting the show. Ironically, I have been getting more offers for advertising. Therefore, I wanted to mention that if you do not like ads, all you have to do is sign up for a premium subscription or support the show via Patreon. I also want those of you who are already supporting the show to know that ad free versions are available as a benefit in addition to episode transcripts and audio versions of the new Facebook Live sessions which I'm recording every month. If you'd like to know more about these options, please visit brainsciencepodcast.com donations.
- [30:26]
Dr. Dean Burnett
One.
- [30:27]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Of the other things I really like about your book is is you bring out the fact that since our brain is complex, it's also contradictory at times and there's quirks. So you can't just say X always makes you happy, because then there's the exception. So, for example, you talk about fame. Talk just a minute about that in the context of what you've just said about the importance of social interaction. Where does fame fit in?
- [30:53]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Yeah, that was an interesting one in that I looked at the part, looked at the research around why does money make us happy before this one? And it does seem to be like the human brain is complex enough and capable of recognizing that when someone gives you some money, that presents a valid biological reward as well. If you have money like, well now I can afford food, I can afford shelter, I can afford things that I like. So the human brain can make that leap to this thing has value. This is money. It has value. Therefore I am better off by having it. It's like I say, you give a rat or a pigeon like a $10 bill, they'll just peck at it or eat it and then they have no concern for it whatsoever. They want fruit and things, whereas we can appreciate more abstract things. So yeah, but the more money you have, the more happy you tend to be up to a certain point, because, you know, closer to being financially secure or safe. And I thought, well, I wanted does the same thing happen with Fame, because it's harder to quantify fame in many ways. It's actually easier now because you have things like social networks. You can count how many followers you have, you can count how many likes a post gets. Or if you're a big recording artist or bookseller, you can count how many copies or albums you sell. So there are ways to quantify it these days. But by and large it's kind of harder to judge how famous someone is as opposed to how rich they are. Because obviously how rich you are is just a statement in the bank. Just like you have this much money, okay, that's how rich I am. And I did wonder, is that why people want to be famous? Because again, some of the studies show that a positive interaction, being liked by someone does cause a similar sort of activity in the reward pathway as being given money does. And you hear in this country, we had early 2000s, we had the period of mass manufactured pop bands every other week just coming out and young fresh faced people doing these catchy songs and you forget all about them. And we had bands like Steps and S Club 7. And I remember reading about them saying, they do this. 20 arena tours and 6 months of traveling the country, singing and dancing every night. And they get paid. Five of them in the group perhaps. And they get paid less overall than the manager gets. The manager gets 90% all the profits. So why would they do that? What on earth. This is a terrible deal. That's because being famous does or can be as rewarding as being paid lots of money. So if you say, I'll give you $10,000 or you'd have 10,000 people cheering at you. Some people would actively prove the latter because it's actually far more sensory. It's more visceral perhaps, and it feels a lot more real. And this is the thing, people pursue fame, they want to be liked by lots and lots and lots of people. And the idea that it'll make you happy, and some would argue it does, then you also see people who are famous and it's devastates them. It ruins them really. And end up speaking to Charlotte Church, the former child star. She's still a star in many ways, but she's not a child anymore, so I better qualify a former there. And she was saying like, yeah, she became internationally famous at age 12. She liked the experience of traveling the world and meeting people and having obviously having the money was obviously nice to be able to say, I'm financially secure now. But she didn't really enjoy being famous in itself, where people could be strangers approach you and sort of want to touch your face and ask your name all the time. Especially when she was going through her teenage years when you're kind of rebellious anyway. So people like the idea of faith. I think they've been liked by loads of different people because being liked is very rewarding. But also being high status, the brain seems very sensitive to that too. So if you can say I am superior to other people, that gives you a certain no, that does cause a sense of pleasure, does cause a sense of satisfaction. And being a megastar is perhaps the best way of doing that in that you are looked up to by countless people and you don't know any of them. So yeah, there's so many underlying from the social thing because it's such a social species. The idea of being liked by lots and lots and lots and lots of different people is very compelling for a lot of individuals. Not everyone, of course. Some people hate the idea of fame. Some people are far more happy with a small group of friends. And that's something I spoke to Charlotte Church about. She said she actually changed her music career. Not because it was going badly, it was going fine, but she just wanted something her peer group could relate to and like she sang a lot of folk and traditional ballads and things like that and classical music and her teenage friends in the late 90s weren't really interested in that. So she changed the whole musical outlook purely because she wanted something her friends would like and consider how much weight and money she made from the previous stuff. That is quite a powerful effect to be having there. So being famous does seem like a nice thing for lots of people, but it's almost like empty calories. You are famous, people like you, but they don't know you. You don't have any sort of complexity to the relationship. It's very one note, it's very, they like me, they buy my records, that's it. Nothing to the relationship beyond that. So it's the qualitative relationships which are the more effective when it comes to achieving long term happiness. At least, at least according to the research that I managed to do.
- [35:22]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Right. So another element that I think most people expect is important to happiness is our work. Did you discover in exploring the issue of work and happiness, did you find anything that really surprised you?
- [35:39]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Yeah, actually it was quite telling that because I've been freelance since March, but I worked for a university for many, many years before then and I imagine it's the same in the States, but management ethos and the whole like bureaucracy and reaching out to new people and networking and career climate. That's a big part of academia in this country and probably always has been. Just I saw it up close and personal. And so they were new traditions, new fads, like the latest things, centralization, it's all about that now. Then it's like a year later. Oh no, no, we have to defocus our core objectives. And so that's a big part of academia now as well. And it was strange seeing up close because I didn't sort of never dealt with it directly before. And this is a real thing then, is it? So people do talk like that. And it's interesting, but it seems to be the way of the world right now. But the whole idea of having happy employees who want to be happy in the workplace, that's been around for quite a while now. And it does seem to be something that most companies and employers want to achieve. And it seems to be very difficult because even like the most comprehensive survey show that at best 30% of employees in any one business or population are engaged with their work in any way and that they feel like I want to be here. This is, I want to get involved with how the company's run. And that's a very low number considering how many people are in work. And yeah, I thought that was an interesting angle to look at. And obviously we hear so much about the work life balance. Some people would argue that is the key to happiness is achieving a good work life balance. But I think that does show work in a negative light because if you look at that word work life balance, on one side of the equation you've got life, which is obviously your life. Another side you've got work, which logically is therefore not life. So some people would argue then that means work is a state of waking death. And I've said this to a few people and a lot of time they just nod their head and go, yep, sounds about right. So obviously this works at a disadvantage. Having to work isn't something which makes us happy by default. And I want to look into why that was. And a lot of the time some of the jobs which are constantly score the highest on the jobs that make you happiest are the ones like doctors, teachers, engineers, sometimes reasonably high paid jobs, sometimes quite communicative jobs where you have a lot of authority and a lot of independence. And that does seem to be a key factor in it. Aside from the money thing, that's something I wanted to look at. It's not just about the money. People work because they need the money to survive. If you remove that facet. Other things that make us happy are being able to set our own goals, be autonomous. People don't like being told what to do. They don't like being made to do things. They have no interest in someone else's benefit. That is always going to put us on the back foot when it comes to making us happy. Like, I don't want to do this, but I've got to. You resent that. And obviously that doesn't reflect well in a positive mood. So any job which allows you to make decisions and have control, like doctors and engineers and things, those tend to be viewed more favorably. And also we want to feel good about ourselves. We want other people to look at us and say they aren't good at what they do. So a sense of competence and the brain's always like self assessing. And we tend the brain's very egocentric organ. We want to make us look better than we are whenever we can, or at least give us the best possible impression of us. So anything which allows us to feel like we are good at something and do it well, that also tends to make us happier jobs which allow us that scope. So things like doctors, you make this decision, you save a life, I mean, it's kind of hard to get beyond that in terms of positive responses to your work. And it's also like humans are a long lived species now. We can make long term plans. So we have ambitions, we have goals, long term goals, not just basic day to day survival or like just getting through the day and do your chores. It's I want to be this, I want to be that when I grow up. I want to be an astronaut, I want to be a fireman, I want to be a professor. And these are all goals we can have now. And we have this idea of like, this is what I want to be. So anything which we do which seems to be moving us towards this goal does tend to create a more positive response in the brain. The example I use is you hear a kid, you say, I want to be an astronaut. And you definitely want to be an astronaut. You end up working as a fighter pilot. That's a positive step. A lot of astronauts were pilots to begin with. So you think, right, I'm working towards my goal, this is good, I'm learning all the relevant skills, I'm keeping my record up and this is a good move towards my eventual desire. But if you want to be an astronaut, you're working in Starbucks. It's not quite the same thing, it doesn't really link into what you want to do. Nothing against baristas or anything like that, but it's obviously a different field, so. So that job will probably make you less happy. And if you're anything whereby you're beholden to customers and things like retail, these are very negatively viewed jobs because the customer is always right, go. You're not. You have to do what they say, even though you're trained and they aren't. And there are so many things which affect our happiness in the workplace, but I think a lot of it comes back to the mismatch between what the employer wants and what the employee wants. Because we do seem to have a certain sort of like setup whereby we assess the task in front of us for how much effort involves, what reward comes out of it. And if it's something there's more effort than needed, you don't want to do it. So the brain is constantly assessing what we're doing to make sure we're not wasting too much effort at anything. So the ideal state for an employee would be to do as little work as possible for as much reward as possible. Whereas of course the employer who wants to make profit and run their business, their goal is to make the employees do as much work as possible, little reward as possible. And there's always going to be a conflict there unless your employees employers are very much in sync, which is very hard to do. So there's always going to be that barrier to achieving complete happiness in the workplace. But surprising finding was from one of the more prestigious journals that happy employees aren't necessarily the best employees either. They tend to be more productive according to the stats, but they can also be a bit more demanding, a bit more. It can be more selfish, which sounds weird because they prioritize their own happiness above those of other people and they're a lot more disrupted when things go wrong. So they're used to being happy, they expect to be happy. So when things go bad, badly, which is often quite albums, quite often, they react more poorly to it than they don't have the resources to just power through or deal with it. So this idea that happy employees are essential to the workplace is both difficult and in many ways maybe not the best approach. Maybe people are just there to do the job and that's fine. You don't need to have five year goals, you don't need to show full investment with the company. People who are just there to do the job and then leave. There's nothing wrong with that. That's actually Quite relaxing setup for both sides of the equation.
- [41:39]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
You say in the book the odds are stacked against being happy at work. And obviously that is usually true for most jobs. Are there any things? I know it's not a self help book, but you did have a couple of things in the book about what we can do since most of us have to work. And oddly enough, people who don't have to work usually decide to work anyways. That tells you something. So what can we do to improve our odds of being happy when we're at work?
- [42:09]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Well, it's a tricky one in that it depends how much flexibility you have because I could say things like, you know, make sure you do the tasks that you enjoy more or make sure you don't spend too long on things which are soul sapping. But I think one of the problems with work is that for most people at least, and the people who are the most depressed at work are often the ones in the worst jobs which deny you any scope for autonomy or responsibility or decision making or things like that. So you basically, you're stuck in, quote unquote, a dead end job. There's no prospect of improvement, there's no prospect of having a say in what you do. You just turn up and have to do what you're told and then go home again. So yeah, it is tricky to say like, well, to improve your work and life, do this. I guess it comes back to the balancing. Like if your job is particularly bad, then doing more things that benefit you, like in your downtime or your time outside work would help even the odds a little bit. But again, a lot of the worst jobs have long commutes and unsociable hours. So yeah, a lot of the time people hate their jobs for very good reason because they deny them the prospect of moving beyond or having any sort of say in what they do or any flexibility in the impact of their social life. I guess one of the main things they would be to try to avoid short term solutions. Like people in stressful jobs almost end up, well for better words, self medicating by comfort eating or drinking a lot. And that does make you feel better briefly, but it also can then lead to the stress cycle. So if your job is bad, it's stressing you out, you end up eating and drinking more to sort of just make yourself feel better, which does work for like, you know, a couple of hours. But then of course you feel, you know, it wears off and then you're, you're less healthy, you gain weight, your brain's a Bit more scattered by excessive alcohol. And then your job becomes harder as a result, so you end up being more stressed. So you eat and drink more to try and take the edge off. And then you get less healthy and you're less capable, and then your job becomes more stressful and then leads to something called the stress cycle. Again, it's no real good advice for how to improve your job, but there are things you can try to avoid doing to not make it any worse. So very pessimistic view of things, but that's the best I can really offer you within the realms of my understanding of the science.
- [44:13]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
But once we sort of get. And you do a good job in the book of some of the things that are the difference between being able to be happy at work and being not happy, depending on one circumstances, you can focus. Like, for example, I work for the va, which is, I guess kind of like would be like working for the British Health Service. I mean, it's the government and so the bureaucracy. I take care of veterans, but the bureaucracy doesn't really bother me as much as the fact that people think that because they're in this bureaucracy, they can get away with not doing their jobs. And then I end up doing my job and the jobs of the people.
- [44:55]
Dr. Ginger Campbell
Who are supposed to be helping me.
- [44:56]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Do my job because I want my patients to get what they need. And that makes me mad and really, really angry sometimes. But if I concentrate on the interactions with the patients and their families, that's where the happiness is. But it's hard sometimes not to get, you know, just so busy being mad that you forget about why you're there. And I feel sorry for anybody who has a job where they don't get to interact with other people unless, you know, they really are a loner. Because that's where people find, I think, happiness in. In jobs. That may not necessarily be the greatest job. I mean, I think you could enjoy working at Starbucks if you focused on the fact that it's, you know, a great place to work on your social skills.
- [45:41]
Dr. Ginger Campbell
Yeah.
- [45:43]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Not to say that I'm advising working at Starbucks. I'm just saying that if that's where you are and you're a social person, think about that. What about when people retire? Why. Why does that seem to go so bad for most people?
- [45:57]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Yeah, that was something I talked about with the millionaire entrepreneur Kevin Green. He's a local guy, he's a Welsh like myself. But he did the classic thing of he made his millions in his mid-30s and did what everyone expects. He would do, or everyone thinks they would do, sold all his companies, raked in all his money and went to live in the Bahamas. And he said, I was there for two weeks in Barbados on the beach, drinking mojitos and bored out of his mind. So he just came back home and went back to work. Because I think the point is, that sounds like a lovely thing to do, but that's a holiday, that's not a life that's quite dull. But, yeah, there's a lot of. He made the observation that he's from a farming community and he's seen it happen so many times where people work on the farm all their life and it's a very active life. You're up early with all the duties and, you know, it's bed late, all physical, and you've got to take care of all the different things. So it's, you know, it is a very active demand in life and people seem to enjoy it, if you're into that sort of thing. So that's good. But you see, when people, like, live a life on the farm, retire, sell the farm, go live in the village, and despite having no health problems before, they're dead within two or three years. And that's something you want to avoid. And I think a lot of it. Well, I had someone contact me about this recently. A lot of it seems to do with the cognitive reserve in that as you get older, obviously your brain, it's an organ like any other. And it's also quite a delicate one in that it's so many different, intricate parts that they won't all be. You know, there's a lot of redundancy in there, but it'll still wear out eventually. And it seems like the people who are more educated are staying the most active in cognitive terms or keep doing things. They seem to have a much better crack of fending off the ravages of age. Like people with high cognitive reserves can show signs of severe Alzheimer's or severe neurodegeneration at time of death. They never showed any symptoms because the brain's been used a lot. It's a lot more redundancy, it's a lot more robust when it comes to dealing with problems and issues that occur over time and age. So retirement itself, it's a problem in that I think a lot of people like the idea of it because if you don't like your job and the idea that you don't have to do any work, like I said, people. The brain seems to be inherently predisposed to avoiding unnecessary efforts the idea that you don't have to work but still can afford to live, that's like the ideal goal for many people. I don't have to work, I can choose to do what I want. There's a big difference between choosing what to do and doing nothing and that itself. I think a lot of people fall into that trap of retirement that, well, I don't have to work anymore, so I'm not going to. But it's still important to stay active, stay busy. Life doesn't stop just because you don't have a job anymore. So one thing people forget to do is maintain that active, stay involved with things and everything else. We have a very long lifespan now for a good reason. Some theories argue that humans live so long partly because therefore grandparents can exist and they can look after children, while the still young parents can go off and do other things. And it's a good community and a good way of sharing information and so on. So. But people didn't evolve just to stop doing things and just sit there. And one of the other issues is that things that cause the brain stress are like massive changes in routine and uncertainty and inactivity. And retirement can lead to all of these. So, like if you are. Some people identify themselves by their jobs. Like, I am a doctor, I am a pilot. Other people say, I work in retail, I work in telesales. And those. I'm not my job, that's just what I do. Whereas some people, I am, I am. So real work can be. It's just a big part of your life and it can be a big part of your identity. It's how you view yourself. It also keeps you. Even if you don't like it, it keeps you going. Every day you have to go somewhere and do something. And retirement, essentially losing all that. You are no longer doing this. This is not what I do anymore. And that can be a big shock. You don't expect it because it was coming in terms of, I wanted this, I made this happen. But the shift from being an active work employee to doing nothing, that can be quite stressful for typically, especially when it's already quite old and quite worn in many ways. So the idea that we want to retire is a lovely goal when you start, but when you get there, you gotta be careful in that not doing anything and totally abandon your life. Taking everything away, taking all your daily routines or your sense of purpose. The brain doesn't deal well with that sort of thing. It reacts badly to it and as a result it can be damaging. Retirement is ranked on the Holmes race dress scale above pregnancy, which was a surprise, I guess, because pregnancy is by very definition like a finite thing, whereas retirement just keep going to the end of your life. So retirement can be very good. We love it, we get into it. But it's important to not treat that as just doing nothing from then on. It's not the end of your life, it's just the end of your working life. I guess I think it'd be better to say it's not stopping working, it's more like stopping earning. You don't have to earn anymore, but you still have to keep busy or still have to keep involved. And that's. I think that's a distinction some people seem to overlook.
- [50:26]
Dr. Ginger Campbell
Right.
- [50:26]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Well, you know, we're running out of time and we haven't even talked about sex or comedy. Two great chapters in your book. But I do want to ask you one more question before I give you a chance to fill in whatever you feel I've left out. And that is back to our topic about our social nature. I think most scientists agree that this is something that helped us to survive as a species and. But it's also endowed us with several quirks and contradictions. Can you think of maybe an example of that? Because they're all through your book.
- [51:00]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Yeah, it's the chapter seven, I think it was. I sort of looked at the darker side of what makes us happy and I was worried at this point. I had presented the human being as the individual human, as like some sort of lovey dovey, carefree, ever friendly creature, like who just wanted to hold hands and talk and be all nice. We know people aren't like that. We know many people are just flat out awful. That's something which is a daily occurrence because. Because we're so close to each other all the time, we see plenty of unpleasant types out there. So why would some people be made happy by not being nice to other people? To want a better, more accurate description? I think it's because, like once again, the whole idea that socialization makes us happy, it's again an oversimplification one. I think I need to just put that there at the start, then you can build on that. Because we're a social creature, but we don't necessarily mean we are social with literally everyone. We're also a very tribal creature. So we evolved in certain groups. And when you're a big group of humans in the wild, there's little, very little that can threaten you. Like no predators big enough to take you on. It's like you all find food, there's plenty of mates around, you got the ingenuity to look out for yourselves. The biggest threat comes from other groups who want the same things you do or want your stuff. Whereas liking your own, the old in group out group thing, liking your own group is good. Other groups are bad, suspicious, treat them with caution. So there's that underlying instinct already. But we're not just flat species. Like one level, we are hierarchical, we have a pecking order, we have a sense of where we are in our groups. Anything which allows us to feel better, feel like we are superior to other people. Not necessarily an aggressive way, just in a I did that, I wasn't better then that makes us happier, it makes us feel good about ourselves. It gives a sense of boost of ego, it gives a sense of accomplishment, of achievement. And you see that a lot in the wider world. Like sports for example, are the key example of this in the Olympics or football tournaments, American football, things like that someone has to win. The winners are the ones who appraise. But if you want to win then that means everyone else has to lose. That's just the logic of it, that's how it works. So that does make us happy. Winning makes us happy, but it doesn't make anyone else happy on the other end of the equation because just logically they don't get to win, they have to lose. So if you have a goal, it's like you want to be the world's richest man, you want to marry the most beautiful person in the world. Those are fairly straightforward goals, but you to get them, that means everyone else who wants it must be denied that. So a lot of what makes us happy involves other people losing out just by sheer logic. And there are plenty of other things too which if you want to prove you're the strongest person, then fighting other people will make that happen. If you want to prove you are part of a Starwall fandom community, then you can seriously, I like Star wars more than you. I am the most enthusiastic Star wars fan and by doing that you to prove that you end up sort of attacking people online who are representative bits of Star wars you don't like. We see that a lot recently with the cast of the new Star wars films being hounded online by more hardcore old school fans because they have something to prove. They want to say, well I am a proper fan of Star Wars. I like the old the proper one. So you are ruined it. So therefore I'm going to attack you, therefore my friends will like me and I'll show that I'm the best at Star wars, which sad, but it seems to be something that is inbuilt in the human condition. A lot of what makes us happy ends up making other people unhappy as a result because of zero sum games or finite resources or the fact that just being better than other people, whether we are or not subjectively feeling like you're better than other people is the thing which makes us happy and makes us feel good about ourselves. And the fact that other people don't like it is not always enough of a factor to dissuade us from pursuing it.
- [54:31]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Yeah, and it's this whole in group out group thing where we seem to have to demonize the people that are outside of the group we belong to. I mean we see that going on all the time. And you talked a little bit about the tendency toward polarization which is certainly something that we're seeing played out in the news every day. Is there something from the neuroscience that can help us to understand why, why this is going on?
- [55:01]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Regards to why? I think a lot of it's to do with the fact that society moves in certain ways, that we have lots of progression over many years and obviously politics now is more polarized than it's ever been. And you can pin some of that on the media in that for many years politicians were state managed by saying everything while saying nothing, bland corporate speak type stuff. So therefore anyone who shows any decent emotion or then becomes just more noticeable as a result. And I think we might be seeing like the backlash against that now. The whole carefully stage managed, carefully presented politicians will say anything and just sort of mislead people like that. But also I think, I guess some people will point to social media and that if you want to, you know, if you have an opinion now, you can put it online and tell the world and you feel like you're a spokesperson then everyone has a voice now and it's very straightforward and very easy to find people who agree with you on pretty much anything. And then you get the group polarization effects which cause, you know, extremism and shifting of views and you know, like social media enhanced that. You know, not saying it's responsible necessarily, but it's made a lot easier. And that stuff's always been there. We've always had extremists, we've always had passionate arguments about how things should work. It seems to be a default role property of the human brain in that once you put people in a like minded group then those who want to dominate the group will become the ones who scream out the loudest and they'll shift their opinions to the extremes and. Yeah, and as a result that takes over. Like, you know, there's a bit of a snowball effect.
- [56:24]
Dr. Ginger Campbell
Yeah.
- [56:24]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
So it's benign when it's somebody being a crazy Star wars fan, but it's not so benign in other areas. So what else would you like to share that I've left out?
- [56:37]
Dr. Dean Burnett
No particular. One thing which again I think the book needs to really emphasize, but I think like the take home message that I try to get out there whenever I put in shows like this is that if you're looking for easy answers, you're not going to find them from me. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad point. I think that's a good thing because people who sell easy answers are often not doing it with the best intentions. Like I mentioned the whole self help books and some are obviously very well meant, most are very professionally done, but there are plenty of people out there who will say, I have an easy answer for you, so give me your money and you can hear it a lot of time. It just boils down to that. The brain is never easy. It's never simple, it's never straightforward. It remains the most complex thing that we know about as a species and someone to say this is the key to happiness. This is the secret to happiness. Just do these five steps and then you'll be happy forever. That is not. It's never going to be correct. It's not possible for that to be correct. Not for everyone. It might work for some people, it might work for enough people to make it seem like it's legit. And arguably it is in that sense. But because people vary so much because there's such a difference in everyone's brain, because of how we develop the whole nature and nurture thing, everyone has a completely different life. If you're identical twins, you have different experiences at the most minor levels, then expect easy answers like what makes you happy might not make someone else happy. And anyone who's trying to tell you what this is the key to happiness for everyone, then I'm going to put my neck out and say they are almost always going to be wrong. So yeah, that'll be my take home message. From everything I've written about this.
- [58:04]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Do you have any advice for students.
- [58:06]
Dr. Dean Burnett
New assigned students or students in general?
- [58:08]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
It doesn't matter whichever way you want to go on that question.
- [58:11]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Students particularly. Yeah, it really depends on what you're studying. I suppose a Lot of courses are such a different structure now. But I think it's important to be interested in what you're learning about because one thing which does seem to come up again and again is that human brain hasn't really evolved to just absorb abstract information for no reason. I think I delved into this in one of the, in the penultimate chapter. But we aren't computers and that's something I mentioned earlier on. But we're not passive data storage devices. The human brain isn't wired like that. The things that tend to stick with us more are the ones that have a strong sensory or emotional element. So we remember things that made us laugh, we remember things which made us cry, we remember traumas, remember moments of pure joy, more than remember a list of dates from the 18th century for that agricultural history paper that you're writing. That's information which you need to know for your exam or your dissertation or your thesis, but it's not something you have any particular emotional resonance with. So if you can find a way to trigger an emotional response to the information you're trying to absorb, that does tend to help a lot. Or if you can. I know people like want to pursue a good career, but it's usually more important to do something you enjoy learning about rather than what you feel you should be learning about. Because you're always going to be at a disadvantage for the latter because you have to force yourself to learn things. Whereas if you, you're doing something you want to do, then then that's usually like half the battle already over.
- [59:30]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Right. And that really is good advice no matter what field you're studying.
- [59:34]
Dr. Dean Burnett
Yes, definitely. Apply to students. No?
- [59:36]
Interviewer (possibly a co-host or guest host)
Yeah. Okay, well, great. I really have enjoyed talking with you and I enjoyed your book. I assume that before you know it, you'll be working on another one.
- [59:49]
Dr. Ginger Campbell
Happy Where Happiness Comes from and why by Dean Burnett is a book that explores both the promise and limitations of neuroscience. Two subjects in the book that we didn't touch on today were the role of humor and the role of sex. But I think there were a couple of clear take home points. First, although our brain definitely generates our experience of happiness, this can't be explained by looking at a certain part of the brain or at a certain neurotransmitter, such as dopamine. In fact, for me, the recurring theme was the importance of our relationships with others. We really are wired to be social. And I think it's fair to say that most people cannot be happy in isolation. That's why solitary confinement is generally considered a form of torture. I would love to hear your feedback or comments about this episode. Just write to me@brainsciencepodcastmail.com if you send me a question before January 1, 2019, I'll be able to include it in the January Facebook Live episode. Next month, Seth Grant will be coming back on Brain Science to share some of his latest findings about the synapse. If you haven't heard his previous interviews, I encourage you to go back and take a listen. Just go to brainsciencepodcast.com and search under Seth Grant. I don't really talk to that many basic scientists who haven't written books, but Dr. Grant is outstanding in his ability to explain his work. The 2018 People's Choice Podcast Awards will be announced on September 30, 2018. Brain science has been nominated in science and medicine and this year I think we actually have a chance to win since they've changed to a system that uses a panel of judges. In the past, winning has required getting listeners to vote as many times as possible during a one month period, which obviously favored weekly shows that could remind people to vote multiple times. So here's hoping. I also need to make a few other time sensitive announcements. I'm going to be speaking at the Sound Education event that is being held at Harvard University in Boston November 2nd and 3rd, 2018. My understanding is that the events on November 3rd will be open to the public. You can learn more about this at soundeducation fm. Also, I will be arriving in Boston on November 1st, so if you live near Harvard and would like to get together, just email me@brainsciencepodcastmail.com for the last several months I've been mentioning next year's trip to Australia. The dates are 5-20-30 and we will be spending five nights in Melbourne and five nights in Sydney. I plan to have listener meetups in both cities, but the details for that will be announced after the first of the year. The main thing you need to know right now is that October 1, 2018 is the day that the travel agency will begin taking deposits. My goal is to have a group of 12 to 16 people. For more information, just write to me@brainsciencepodcastmail.com finally, don't forget that the next Brain Science Live will be on Facebook on October 4, 2018 at 8:00pm Central Time. The topic will be episode 145, Reading in the Brain. The deadline to have your question or comment included is October 1, 2018 and of course Premium and Patreon supporters will get the audio for this approximately one week after the live episode airs. Meanwhile, thanks so much for listening. Please consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. I look forward to talking with you again next month. 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 you uses or derivatives, please contact me@brainsciencepodcastmail.com.