Speaker 1: I'll get a team. It's a bloody you project, of
Speaker 1: course it is. Moe is all the way from the
Speaker 1: UK joining us in a moment, but I'll say hello
Speaker 1: to the girl who's not that far away. She's in
Speaker 1: Elwood or somewhere elston Wick. Is it elston Wick or
Speaker 1: Elwood Elwood, Elwood just down the road? I should know.
Speaker 1: Tiffany and Cook is the life force, of course of
Speaker 1: t YP when when you know she allows me to
Speaker 1: be on the show. That is Hi, Tip, good morning Apps.
Speaker 1: Are you all right?
Speaker 2: I am, I'm very well.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Can I just point out to Moe, who's probably looking
Speaker 1: at your right shoulder thinking, oh my god, that girl's
Speaker 1: got leprosy.
Speaker 3: I don't notice until you I want.
Speaker 1: You to have a good look. Can I?
Speaker 3: How is?
Speaker 1: Firstly, before we get into the real conversation with the
Speaker 1: actual grown up in the room, what is going on
Speaker 1: with your right shoulder? Because from here it looks, well,
Speaker 1: it looks kind of like some disease that nobody wants.
Speaker 1: Can you share with us what has been going on?
Speaker 2: I am using treatment on a basil cell superficial basil
Speaker 2: cell carcininoma, so skin cancer, and the treatment is a
Speaker 2: cream that sends a little message to your immune system
Speaker 2: to say, hey, there's something going on here, can you
Speaker 2: guys come and fix it. So I've been putting that
Speaker 2: on for six weeks. It is quite sore and raw
Speaker 2: now and I'm just waiting for my immune system to
Speaker 2: do its job.
Speaker 1: Did you go that option because you didn't want the
Speaker 1: bloke or the blowcat to just slice into your deltoid
Speaker 1: and you didn't want to lose any muscle.
Speaker 2: So well, it was actually quite a large lesion which
Speaker 2: was going to require a large incision and a flap.
Speaker 2: So he suggested that this route would mean that it
Speaker 2: will either completely hopefully fingers crossed, get rid of the BCC,
Speaker 2: or if worst case scenario, it'll be a lot smaller
Speaker 2: and the incision will be a lot more manageable, which
Speaker 2: he will not be touching.
Speaker 3: By the way, I will be.
Speaker 2: Getting a much better surgeon to address that if that
Speaker 2: is the case.
Speaker 1: Well, as someone who's had about twenty bays will sell
Speaker 1: Carsinomas cut off, but would advise you come over to
Speaker 1: my joint later.
Speaker 3: I'll do it.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty handy. I mean I was not gonna ask.
Speaker 1: I'm not fully qualified, but Moe probably is he could
Speaker 1: talk me through it. I mean, we'll get some ice cubes,
Speaker 1: we'll get something that's not very rusty and pretty sharp.
Speaker 1: I'll turn on a video for you. You'll be distracted.
Speaker 2: Then, what's already going on on my shoulder?
Speaker 3: Can it? No?
Speaker 1: Mo? Were you thinking what the fuck have I agreed
Speaker 1: to do? Are you thinking that right now?
Speaker 3: Well? I've only agreed to a podcast so far. I
Speaker 3: was just wondering, is this not because of this related
Speaker 3: to having too many Christmas barbies on the beach or what.
Speaker 2: It's related to being a very pale, freckly Tasmanian that's
Speaker 2: seen a little bit too much of Tassy has quite
Speaker 2: harsh son actually Tazzy Son compared to Melbourne Son is
Speaker 2: very harsh.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well and also a treatment. Sorry. I hope it
Speaker 3: goes as well as it can me.
Speaker 1: Too, Yeah, all of us, all of us. Hey Moe officially,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being
Speaker 1: part of the You project. I did a little bit
Speaker 1: of a I won't say deep dive because that would
Speaker 1: take weeks on you and your books and your content
Speaker 1: and your videos and your appearances on podcasts and your
Speaker 1: significant research. But I did somewhere between deep and shallow
Speaker 1: dive in the last twenty four hours, and I literally
Speaker 1: could do I won't burden you with ten, but I
Speaker 1: could literally do ten podcasts with you. So I'm very
Speaker 1: excited to talk to you. Could you, rather than me
Speaker 1: read a bio which nobody wants, could you just tell
Speaker 1: my audience who you are, what you do, and whatever
Speaker 1: it is you want them to know about you.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, thanks very much for inviting me
Speaker 3: on your too kind really so, I actually left the
Speaker 3: PhD in developmental neurobiology that was twenty five years ago
Speaker 3: and without finishing it, and eventually started working as a
Speaker 3: writer specializing in neuroscience. About it, really, Well.
Speaker 1: You've done a bit more than that, don't be too humble,
Speaker 1: but all right. So one of the things that this
Speaker 1: is I've written a few books as well, and I
Speaker 1: was looking at your book called Body Am I The
Speaker 1: Science The New Science of Self Consciousness. Do you realize
Speaker 1: that you wrote that ten years ago?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: Does it feel like a decade.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking about this the other day, and yes,
Speaker 3: it occurred to me that no, hold on, that was
Speaker 3: the one before I wrote ten years ago, Body Am
Speaker 3: I was published in twenty twenty two. But nevertheless I
Speaker 3: quite remember but anything about it, So please don't ask
Speaker 3: me any questions related to it.
Speaker 1: No, I'm definitely going to so you know, Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this to start, So, I'm what
Speaker 1: is Let's start with what is self consciousness? Then like,
Speaker 1: what what to me? When we in general terms? And
Speaker 1: then I'll shut up when we go, oh, I'm self conscious?
Speaker 1: It kind of means I'm somewhat worried about what you
Speaker 1: think of me, how you see me, what I look like,
Speaker 1: all that kind of what seems to be insecurity and
Speaker 1: fear based kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, self consciousness is really it's an aspect of consciousness,
Speaker 3: of course, which which we we still can't define consciousness.
Speaker 3: We've been trying to define consciousness itself for a for
Speaker 3: a very long time, and we still can't reach a
Speaker 3: consensus on exactly what consciousness is or or or how
Speaker 3: it arises. But self consciousness is we could simply define
Speaker 3: it as as awareness of one's self within one's environment.
Speaker 3: That's that's a very basic definition of self consciousness. And
Speaker 3: in my last book that you just mentioned, I argue
Speaker 3: that bodily awareness is a critical component of self consciousness.
Speaker 3: Then you mentioned but being self conscious and worrying about
Speaker 3: about what other people might think of us and other
Speaker 3: people other people's perceptions do play some role in our
Speaker 3: awareness of our selves, but but not not a really
Speaker 3: huge one. I would argue two.
Speaker 1: I mean, and I know there's no number, but you know,
Speaker 1: generally speaking to what kind of extent do we identify
Speaker 1: with or get our sense of self from our body?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the role of the body in our
Speaker 3: sense of self our self identity is really underappreciated. So
Speaker 3: I think it plays It plays a huge role. The body,
Speaker 3: that is, plays a huge role in our in our
Speaker 3: sense of self identity. You mentioned obesity, that's a that's
Speaker 3: a great example. There are there are numerous other examples
Speaker 3: of how our awareness all or perception of our bodies
Speaker 3: is crucial to our sense of self identity. And I'd
Speaker 3: say perception, because our awareness of our bodies is nothing
Speaker 3: is little more than a perception. You perceive your body
Speaker 3: through the senses in the same way that you perceive
Speaker 3: my voice, the computer screen in front of you. In
Speaker 3: some sense, the body is just another object that the
Speaker 3: brain perceives through sensory signals. But it's a very special
Speaker 3: object because the result of that perception is what you
Speaker 3: call me or or I. So the body and the
Speaker 3: body and the brain, they're both the object and the subject.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's so interesting. I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: we say, oh, you know, I'm much more than a body,
Speaker 1: like in a pop culture, I'm not a body. I
Speaker 1: just live in a body. I'm much more than that,
Speaker 1: you know. But at the same time, we so strongly
Speaker 1: identify with that. And if you look at especially social media,
Speaker 1: you know, where so many people are looking for acceptance
Speaker 1: and approval and validation and love and connection and perhaps
Speaker 1: fame popularity through their appearance. You know, it's like they
Speaker 1: I guess, people's identity and sense of self varies wildly
Speaker 1: person to person.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, I think, well, I know, there are a
Speaker 3: lot of studies showing that social media can be very
Speaker 3: detrimental to how the a person perceives them selves. I think,
Speaker 3: you know, we think it's pretty clear now that no
Speaker 3: one is who they really say they are on the Internet,
Speaker 3: and of course, using social media, people put their best
Speaker 3: image of themselves there. They use filters and manipulate the
Speaker 3: photographs of themselves in various ways. Now that creates unrealistic
Speaker 3: expectations I think in other users. But then you know,
Speaker 3: mass media has been doing that for decades anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you think about without trying to get too metacognitive,
Speaker 1: but when you think about how you think right and
Speaker 1: you think and you start to get curious around why
Speaker 1: do I think this way? Where did this come from?
Speaker 1: Why do I see the world this way? Why do
Speaker 1: I think this about that religion, or this about that politician,
Speaker 1: or this about this kind of nutritional paradigm. Don't eat this,
Speaker 1: do eat that. If you eat this, you're a bad person.
Speaker 1: If you eat that, you're a good person. If you
Speaker 1: do these things, you're noble. If you don't do these,
Speaker 1: you know, all that kind of stuff. So we grow
Speaker 1: up in this echo chamber quite often, I've thought and
Speaker 1: philosophy and ideology and depending on what context you grew
Speaker 1: up in. But I grew up I basically was just
Speaker 1: a version of my parents and my peers and the
Speaker 1: religion that I grew up in, which was Catholicism, and
Speaker 1: all of the ideas that I was exposed to. And
Speaker 1: so you get to well, I got to a point
Speaker 1: where I whatever, let's say I was thirteen fourteen, and
Speaker 1: I saw the world through this particular lens, which was
Speaker 1: an intersection of different beliefs and ideas and values. But
Speaker 1: I didn't choose any of that. That was just a
Speaker 1: byproduct of growing up where I like, I didn't choose
Speaker 1: my beliefs. I didn't go, you know what, here's what
Speaker 1: I believe about God. I just believed whatever. And I
Speaker 1: never made a decision that I barracked for the team
Speaker 1: I barracked for in the AFL. I just barracked for
Speaker 1: them because Dad does. And I just eat the way
Speaker 1: that I eat, because that's the way we've always eaten.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: So how much of who we are is really self generated?
Speaker 1: And how much is just a byproduct of programming and
Speaker 1: conditioning and proximity to everyone else's thoughts and philosophies and behaviors.
Speaker 3: That's a great question. I'm not really sure I can
Speaker 3: give you a satisfactory answer. Personally, I'll try. These days,
Speaker 3: I try to avoid thinking at all costs. You know,
Speaker 3: according to according to Taoism, thoughts weaken the mind. So
Speaker 3: you know, it follows that the less the less one thinks,
Speaker 3: the stronger their mind will be. And that's what that's
Speaker 3: what I'm going for. But I think I think that
Speaker 3: our environment, our culture, socialization early in life, of course,
Speaker 3: they play huge roles in behaviors and thought processes and
Speaker 3: beliefs and and values. But it's not it's not that
Speaker 3: that doesn't mean that one can't realize that these are
Speaker 3: behaviors and thoughts that that can change or can can
Speaker 3: be changed. But I think I think that also requires
Speaker 3: some degree of self for awareness and understanding of one's
Speaker 3: self and to be able to question one's own deeply
Speaker 3: hell beliefs. Yeah, yeah, one zone actions, it's I think
Speaker 3: those are things that not enough people can actually manage
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's really hard when you've believed something
Speaker 1: for a long time and your identity is intertwined with
Speaker 1: that belief, because when you question my belief, you question
Speaker 1: my identity, and so fuck you, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's like that that it was really hard for me
Speaker 1: when I grew up in a particular religious model. Two
Speaker 1: one to question anything, just for the reason that I
Speaker 1: was indoctrinated. But two, whenever you do live in an
Speaker 1: echo chamber, be it a theological, philosophical, nutritional, academic, whatever,
Speaker 1: echo chamber, you are very strongly within the group, discouraged
Speaker 1: from thinking anything different because you basically, you know, a backslider,
Speaker 1: you know, like, so it's this whole thing of we're
Speaker 1: not taught what to or we're not taught how to think,
Speaker 1: we're taught what or we're told what to think, and
Speaker 1: so then you go and then when you do try
Speaker 1: to think critically and independently, depending on you know, for me,
Speaker 1: I was very much discouraged, if not criticized, you.
Speaker 3: Know, Yeah, that's very true. The church that I was
Speaker 3: born into, the Coptic Church, that's the Egyptian Orthodox Church.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of Copts in Sydney, in Australia.
Speaker 3: Actually the largest Coptic community outside of Egypt is in Australia. Wow,
Speaker 3: or at least it used to be. That may have changed,
Speaker 3: but yeah, there are lots of us out there. The
Speaker 3: Coptic Church is very very strict and you're not supposed
Speaker 3: to question anything. I mean, it's similar to Catholicism in
Speaker 3: that respect.
Speaker 1: I suppose, well, I guess, you know, how do you
Speaker 1: control a group of people, you know, with fear, with threats,
Speaker 1: with intimidate if you do this, if you question that
Speaker 1: you're bad, You're a sinner, You're going to hell, you know,
Speaker 1: pick your poison, Like, here are all of these things
Speaker 1: that are going to happen to you if you don't
Speaker 1: conform in a line and just believe. And by the way,
Speaker 1: your job is not to think. Your job is just
Speaker 1: to believe. I'm like, well, that's super fucking convenient, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't really. How did that affect you then? Growing
Speaker 1: up in cognitive kind of environment or a kind of
Speaker 1: certain environment where you had to think and be and
Speaker 1: behave a certain way. That was that hard for you
Speaker 1: to step out of that and think independently.
Speaker 3: Not really, you know, I had it. I had it
Speaker 3: thrilled into me still do for my for my whole life.
Speaker 3: That one parent is very say, fanatical, I suppose isn't
Speaker 3: an exaggeration. The other was, let's say, open minded, So
Speaker 3: there was there was room for me to to think independently.
Speaker 3: As you say, So it didn't a massive effect on me.
Speaker 3: I love having one. Having a parent that was so
Speaker 3: we say, over zealous, just actually pushed me, pushed me
Speaker 3: in the pushed me in the other direction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that's I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is true. I feel like that's more common
Speaker 1: with boys than girls, is to push back against that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But that's just my my perspective, all right.
Speaker 1: I want to change track a little bit. So you're
Speaker 1: your original or not your original, but one of your
Speaker 1: your undergrad was in neuroscience, am I correct?
Speaker 3: That's right? And the masters as well, and half a
Speaker 3: PhD in developmental neurobiology. I feel you.
Speaker 1: I've so many times, Nelly, Now go on, God, what
Speaker 1: made you walk away halfway through your PhD?
Speaker 3: I didn't have much choice. I actually got kicked off Craig.
Speaker 3: What did you do?
Speaker 1: Mo?
Speaker 3: Mo?
Speaker 1: What did you do?
Speaker 3: Well? It was more what I didn't do was my experiments.
Speaker 3: I lost motivation doing the same experiments over and over
Speaker 3: again and not getting not getting results, and so it
Speaker 3: was decided that I should leave the lab. That was
Speaker 3: a long time ago now twenty five, twenty five years
Speaker 3: ago in November, actually just gone.
Speaker 1: So it didn't hurt, it didn't hurt your career. You've
Speaker 1: done okay?
Speaker 3: So do you?
Speaker 1: How do you? I mean, I didn't intend to.
Speaker 3: Ask this question.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever asked anyone this question, But
Speaker 1: so you are an I mean you've got a master's degree,
Speaker 1: let's call it half a PhD. So you're a I mean,
Speaker 1: you're much more than an academic. You're like, for me,
Speaker 1: you're more of a pro academic than an academic because
Speaker 1: you kind of teach high level science in a user friendly,
Speaker 1: you know, public friendly, understandable, practical, operationalizable way.
Speaker 3: I'll take that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's what you do. It's like I
Speaker 1: try to be a bit of that as well. It's like,
Speaker 1: I think, what's the point of having a podcast or
Speaker 1: a public platform if you're talking about concepts and using
Speaker 1: language that is not familiar to most people, then you're
Speaker 1: just pumping up your own ties. But how do you
Speaker 1: feel about, you know, academic learning versus you know, self
Speaker 1: research or independent research and experiential learning and not necessarily
Speaker 1: what's better, but like the intersection of that, like being
Speaker 1: at university doing all of these degrees. You know, I
Speaker 1: did my first degree a long time ago and I'm
Speaker 1: just finishing my doctorate now at the ripe old age
Speaker 1: of sixty two. And for me, it was kind of
Speaker 1: a good I don't know, just a good fit because
Speaker 1: I've had a lot of real world experience around all
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 3: What about for you? Well, when I look at how
Speaker 3: academia has changed in the twenty five years since I
Speaker 3: left the lab, I'm glad I'm not in. I'm glad
Speaker 3: I'm not there anymore. I mean, academia has basically turned
Speaker 3: to shit in the twenty first century. There are a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of it is, you know, bureaucracy, funding,
Speaker 3: funding cuts. There's no there's no room for what's called
Speaker 3: blue sky research any anymore. Blue skies, blue blue blue
Speaker 3: sky research. So an example of that is going back
Speaker 3: to the nineteen sixties, Japanese researcher working at woods Hole
Speaker 3: I think it's a lab in a labin on the
Speaker 3: east coast of the United States somewhere and arbor, I think,
Speaker 3: and he'd walk along the waterfront and he noticed these
Speaker 3: jellyfish that fluoresce, They glow in the dark with this
Speaker 3: brilliant green color, and decided that he wants to understand
Speaker 3: and how this happened. So he spent years collecting millions
Speaker 3: of specimens of these jellyfish from the harbor and eventually
Speaker 3: isolated the green fluorescent protein, which eventually revolutionized all of
Speaker 3: biology and medicine. I mean, virtually every every molecular biology
Speaker 3: lab in the world uses GFP as a tool to
Speaker 3: do all sorts of different things. And he shared a
Speaker 3: Nobel Prize for his discovery. But you know, he spent
Speaker 3: he spent years and years. He was given funding to
Speaker 3: just collect these jellyfish day in, day out, and just
Speaker 3: spent years studying this organism and eventually isolated the protein
Speaker 3: for the hell of it, right, And that's that's Blue
Speaker 3: Sky's research. And there's very little room for that in
Speaker 3: in in academia today. And there seem to be much
Speaker 3: more or many more constraints on the kind of the
Speaker 3: kind of research that that you can do in your
Speaker 3: in your lab unless you're you know, a superstar scientist
Speaker 3: who's you know, won no prize or or something like that.
Speaker 3: You know, the most labs, I think there there's huge
Speaker 3: competition for for for the funding, to the research funding
Speaker 3: these days. So there are there are a lot of
Speaker 3: a lot of constraints to being in in in academia.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not you know, I'm not an expert
Speaker 3: in how these things work, but you know, I have
Speaker 3: friends that that have their own labs. Now, you know,
Speaker 3: I follow lots of researchers or on media, not that
Speaker 3: I use it that much any more, but there there
Speaker 3: are lots of lots of problems with with the with
Speaker 3: the academia. I mean, I don't really well, I don't
Speaker 3: do any research myself. I just read a lot and
Speaker 3: and and rite. But I still feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: I trained as a scientist. I still feel that I'm
Speaker 3: a that I'm a scientist, and I can still think
Speaker 3: about scientific ideas. There there might be one or two
Speaker 3: original ideas in in my in my book about bodily awareness,
Speaker 3: that that researchers can couldn't go out there and test
Speaker 3: if they yeah want to. I don't know if that.
Speaker 1: You're still a researcher. You're still a researcher. You just
Speaker 1: kind of research the research, you know. It's like one
Speaker 1: of the things I did in mind my PhD was
Speaker 1: a systematic literature review, and basically you're just looking at
Speaker 1: everybody else's, you know, research around the thing that you're researching,
Speaker 1: and then you you know, my initial search for my
Speaker 1: topic and my for all the studies I.
Speaker 3: Was doing it.
Speaker 1: It ended up being I think it was one one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty papers that that came in and I
Speaker 1: had to go through and then I ended up focusing
Speaker 1: on ninety three different papers, and some of those, some
Speaker 1: of those individual research kind of papers had you know, five, six,
Speaker 1: seven studies in them, and then, you know, so you're
Speaker 1: basically analyzing what everyone else is doing and trying to
Speaker 1: find threads and trying to find you know, what is
Speaker 1: what is helpful, what is not. So I think you, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not sitting in a lab and doing that ground
Speaker 1: breaking necessarily new research, but you still and I think
Speaker 1: the beauty of it is like to have a really broad,
Speaker 1: deep understanding you need to know what everyone or at
Speaker 1: least a lot of people are doing. I think one
Speaker 1: of the you know, obviously there are pros and cons
Speaker 1: for doing a master's or a PhD or whatever, but
Speaker 1: I think one of the pros of not doing it
Speaker 1: is that you can research or at least explore whatever
Speaker 1: you want however you want, on whatever timeline. You don't
Speaker 1: need fucking ethical approval, you don't need somebody to give
Speaker 1: you money, you don't need somebody to tell you it's
Speaker 1: all right. You know, it's like, no, I'm just going
Speaker 1: to open the door on this and I'll see what
Speaker 1: I find, you know, and then you know, my job,
Speaker 1: as I said to you before we started, is corporate speaking.
Speaker 1: So what I do is I take all of the
Speaker 1: things that I learn and understand and I believe are
Speaker 1: relevant for people in positions of leadership or management or
Speaker 1: anyone within organizations, but it a business or not, and go, well,
Speaker 1: what matters well communication, problem solving, teamwork, leadership, conflict resolution,
Speaker 1: asking great questions, being present, Like all of my research
Speaker 1: ties into that, so I don't need to talk to
Speaker 1: them like they're a room full of academics in a
Speaker 1: lecture theater. I can explain something simply like I go, oh,
Speaker 1: there's this thing called the consensus effect, and they all go,
Speaker 1: we don't know what that is, and I go, all,
Speaker 1: it is the false consensus effect, I should say. All
Speaker 1: it is is this thing where people think that other
Speaker 1: people think like them. That's it, And they go, oh,
Speaker 1: I go. You know, most people when they're talking to
Speaker 1: a group, they think that the group think like them,
Speaker 1: so what makes sense to them will make sense to
Speaker 1: the group. But that's really true, and they go, you know,
Speaker 1: so just understanding the only person who thinks like you,
Speaker 1: like truly is you, is you, So don't operate on
Speaker 1: the assumption that anybody fucking understands you, because that's a mistake.
Speaker 1: Operate on the assumption that they might, but they more
Speaker 1: than likely won't exactly connect with how you think or
Speaker 1: why you think the way you do.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: So I think that ability that you have, and I've
Speaker 1: watched some of your stuff and listened to some of
Speaker 1: your stuff to be able to, you know, explain things
Speaker 1: in a way which is actually helpful. All right, I
Speaker 1: want to change tact If ten one to ten. If
Speaker 1: ten is everything that we can know about the brain
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six, how much do we know about
Speaker 1: the brain? If ten is everything zero point.
Speaker 3: Far less than one, We've only just started to scratch
Speaker 3: the surface. We basically know next to nothing.
Speaker 1: That is from someone who wrote a book called Neuroplasticity.
Speaker 1: That is quite the revelation. Okay, unpack that a little
Speaker 1: bit for me. Why do you say that? And like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's start there. Why do you say that?
Speaker 3: Well, I think I read I read somewhere that we've
Speaker 3: learned more about the brain in the past twenty years
Speaker 3: than we did in in all of you know, in
Speaker 3: all of history before that, you know, modern neurosciences. I
Speaker 3: mean you know, it's barely is barely two hundred years old,
Speaker 3: you know. And it's true that we we've learned a lot,
Speaker 3: quite a lot, or we think we've learned quite a
Speaker 3: lot about how the brain works. Just in the in
Speaker 3: the past couple of decades, there's there's been a lot
Speaker 3: of technological advances that that enable us to to probe
Speaker 3: the brain in more detail than than ever before, brain
Speaker 3: imaging techniques, ways of mapping, mapping the connections between between neurons,
Speaker 3: and that sort of thing. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: it seems that discoveries, discoveries that make us question what
Speaker 3: we thought to be the fundamental principles of brain functions,
Speaker 3: seem to be happening more and more frequently, you know. So,
Speaker 3: for example, I just saw a paper the other day
Speaker 3: about about cells called astrocytes. They're not neurons, they're glial cells, gleamines, glue.
Speaker 3: They get that. They're one type of gle or cell
Speaker 3: in the brain, and glial cells get their name because
Speaker 3: one hundred, one hundred and fifty years ago, when people
Speaker 3: were looking at brain tissue under the microscope and examining,
Speaker 3: examining how it works, and so on, they thought that
Speaker 3: gle or cells would just support cells. They hold the
Speaker 3: neurons in place, and that is one of their functions.
Speaker 3: But we've always believed that it's that the neurons that play,
Speaker 3: is the neurons that process process information, is the neurons
Speaker 3: that that communicate with each other. And so you know
Speaker 3: that the predominant view of of how memory works, for example,
Speaker 3: for the last twenty or so years, is that memories
Speaker 3: form when by should I say, the formation of a
Speaker 3: unique combination of synaptic connections within the brain, certain regions
Speaker 3: of the brain, the hippocampus, that's crucial for memory formation.
Speaker 3: We know that, But we think that a memory formation
Speaker 3: involves this creation of a unique, a unique set of
Speaker 3: synaptic connections within a widely distributed network of neurons, possibly thousands,
Speaker 3: tens of thousands, we don't know, We can't really put
Speaker 3: a figure. And of course each of each individual cell
Speaker 3: is likely to contribute to the formation of countless other
Speaker 3: memories as well. You know, if you think you've got
Speaker 3: eighty six billion neurons and at least twice as many
Speaker 3: gli or cells, you know, and we're talking quadrillions of connections,
Speaker 3: and they can change, they constantly change anyway, I'm digressing.
Speaker 3: So the view of memory formation is that it involves
Speaker 3: this creation of a unique neural network, and if you
Speaker 3: reactivate that same network that was created during the formation
Speaker 3: of the memory, then you will trigger recall of that memory.
Speaker 3: A paper published just a week or to ago that
Speaker 3: provides evidence now that actually it might be the astrocites
Speaker 3: that are surrounding the neurons and they outnumber the neurons
Speaker 3: throughout the braid. It may actually be the astrocites that
Speaker 3: that are that are encoding the memories. Wow, every it's
Speaker 3: it just seems like these discoveries which make you scratch
Speaker 3: your head and think, wow, this this idea that I've
Speaker 3: learned or been been taught or come to accept mm
Speaker 3: hmm for the past twenty years may actually be completely
Speaker 3: uh completely wrong. And so there's always you know, the
Speaker 3: brain is such a complex, mysterious organ. It's just I
Speaker 3: personally don't think we'll ever fully understand it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's so interesting, the like the complexity, but
Speaker 1: also the like there's so much that we don't know,
Speaker 1: but we we still have to teach about it, right,
Speaker 1: We still need to teach neuroscience. We still you know,
Speaker 1: and we are. I wish that science would be more
Speaker 1: open and honest. This is a dumb thing to say,
Speaker 1: but it's what I wish about the fact that we
Speaker 1: really don't know a lot like and it's like we
Speaker 1: you know, we so many things that we get wrong
Speaker 1: in science, like the design of the research, the interpretation
Speaker 1: of the data, the way the data was collected, and
Speaker 1: then you know, and then oh and by the way
Speaker 1: this research is funded by that organization that wants a
Speaker 1: particular outcome, and you know. So it's it's definitely not
Speaker 1: this faultless, flawless, pure kind of protocol, right, we know that.
Speaker 1: But it's just to say, look, we do our best
Speaker 1: and we this is what we believe at the moment,
Speaker 1: but we could be wrong, right, because so many times
Speaker 1: science has been wrong about so many things. I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is remotely interesting to you, but did
Speaker 1: you see that the in the US in the last
Speaker 1: few days, they've been out the new food Pyramid. Did
Speaker 1: you see that?
Speaker 3: No? I haven't seen this now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So they basically introduced the new food pyramid for
Speaker 1: the US, and it's essentially an inversion of the old
Speaker 1: food pyramid. So instead of lots of carbs and grains
Speaker 1: and whatever at the bottom, and minimal fat and protein,
Speaker 1: you know, in the top third of the pyramid. It's
Speaker 1: been Yeah, but it's just funny how for I don't
Speaker 1: know whatever, fifty years or something that a particular way
Speaker 1: of you know, low fat eating equals low fat people.
Speaker 1: That was essentially the hypothesis. And then when you do
Speaker 1: it without boring my audience who've heard this before, but
Speaker 1: then when you do a deep dive into how that
Speaker 1: research came into being and who did it, and then
Speaker 1: how the actual studies unfolded, and how they manipulated the
Speaker 1: data and omitted certain data and got funded by certain
Speaker 1: groups that wanted certain outcomes, and that became the standard
Speaker 1: for half a century, you know. But even with I think,
Speaker 1: was it Norman Deutsche who wrote the Brain that Changes Itself?
Speaker 1: Was that him?
Speaker 3: Yes? It was?
Speaker 1: And that was what was that in that?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: There you go, right there? What was that about? I
Speaker 1: don't know, ninety ninety or thereabouts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was. Let's see, actually it says first published
Speaker 3: in two thousand and seven, now twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: Now, really, tiff, can you look that up? I doubt
Speaker 1: that I could be completely wrong. I'm mostly completely wrong
Speaker 1: with the brain that changes itself first year of publication.
Speaker 3: But I'm sure that.
Speaker 1: I was going to call you the prof.
Speaker 3: The would be prof. What I actually didn't read this
Speaker 3: while I was writing my own book about plasticity.
Speaker 1: When did we first realize as a science community that
Speaker 1: the brain was malleable, that it was you know, the neuroplastic.
Speaker 3: Well, people have various investigators have been have been saying
Speaker 3: it forever, but it wasn't. Actually, it didn't actually become
Speaker 3: widely accepted until the nineteen the early nineteen nineties. Actually, right, right, although.
Speaker 1: It's very recent. Yes, sorry, got an answer.
Speaker 3: For us to twy and seven?
Speaker 1: Okay, I stand corrected. Apologies prof questioning?
Speaker 3: No, yeah, in fact finding skills there no, you fucking
Speaker 3: you fucking geezer.
Speaker 1: I won't fucking think of it. What I No, You're right,
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, which is pretty much standard for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember reading.
Speaker 3: I think you were were actually thinking of when plasticity
Speaker 3: was first widely accepted within the scientific community.
Speaker 1: So you were just trying to make it. You're just
Speaker 1: trying to make me feel good. Do you don't have
Speaker 1: to do it? And you wrote a book just called Neuroplasticity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that sold pretty well. That went pretty well. How
Speaker 1: is putting that together for you? Did you enjoy writing that?
Speaker 3: I did, Yeah, enjoyed it very much. It's one of
Speaker 3: the best selling in the series. Actually, it's it's one
Speaker 3: of a series of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge books,
Speaker 3: and I think it's sold around thirty thousand copies so far,
Speaker 3: which is fantastic. I really enjoyed writing that. It was
Speaker 3: very straightforward I wrote that. I think it took me
Speaker 3: about two months to write that book. I mean it's
Speaker 3: quite a small book. Yeah, but one side, I figured
Speaker 3: out the content of each the chapters that I wanted
Speaker 3: to include and the content of each chapter. Then it
Speaker 3: was just a matter of sitting down and writing it.
Speaker 3: And I did write it in in about eight or
Speaker 3: ten weeks. I think it was much easier to write
Speaker 3: than the last book about Bodily Awareness, which took several years.
Speaker 3: Think because the book about Neuroplasticity, there's no narrative arc.
Speaker 3: You know, you don't have to read it from cover
Speaker 3: to cover. You can just every chapter is a standalone chapter.
Speaker 3: And it's the same with the first book. I wrote
Speaker 3: fifty ideas about the Brain, which was also part of
Speaker 3: a series, but the last one Body am I because
Speaker 3: it was there is some sort of narrative in that book.
Speaker 3: It's and one chapter follows on from another, and I
Speaker 3: really enjoyed writing that as well at times. At other
Speaker 3: times it felt like really hard work. I would describe
Speaker 3: that as having a million piece jigsaw puzzle. You've got
Speaker 3: all the pieces in front of you, but you don't
Speaker 3: have you don't have a picture of of what it
Speaker 3: should look like at the end, So you have to
Speaker 3: put each piece in its in its place as you
Speaker 3: as you go along, without having without having a big
Speaker 3: picture to to refer to.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a metaphor for life. Yeah, I suppose
Speaker 1: it is, Yeah, my life anyway. Hey, we're going to
Speaker 1: wind up and let you go, but I want to
Speaker 1: throw one or two curly ones at you. Is the
Speaker 1: mind real?
Speaker 3: No, it's an abstract concept. Yeah, so you've.
Speaker 1: But what why where does it come? Like? Has the
Speaker 1: idea of a mind been around forever? Like do we
Speaker 1: not just go, Well, my brain does the thinking. So
Speaker 1: the the the filter through which I process the world
Speaker 1: as my brain or like what's the relationship or the
Speaker 1: space between the brain and the mind one's physical. It's
Speaker 1: not like is it just a term that we use
Speaker 1: to kind of make it more understandable for us.
Speaker 3: Well, you know. Ambrose Pare wrote The Devil's Dictionary defined
Speaker 3: the mind as the Oh No, he defined the brain
Speaker 3: as the organ with which we think that we think,
Speaker 3: and he defined the mind as a I think I'm
Speaker 3: paraphrasing now, but he defined the mind as as a
Speaker 3: mysterious substance secreted by the brain. I think of the
Speaker 3: mind as as an emergent property of the brain. I think,
Speaker 3: you know, you can you can have a mind without
Speaker 3: a brain. Sorry, you can have a You can have
Speaker 3: a brain without a mind where you you most people
Speaker 3: you know do. But you can't have a mind without
Speaker 3: the brain. But is the brain. The brain is necessary
Speaker 3: for the mind, but is it sufficient? That's another question.
Speaker 3: So one of the things I discuss in in my
Speaker 3: last book is is that the body plays a big
Speaker 3: role in in our emotions, in how we think, and
Speaker 3: in how we feel. So, yeah, I view the mind
Speaker 3: as an emergent property of the of the brain. The
Speaker 3: brain generates the mind, but but not by itself. The
Speaker 3: body and the environment also play important roles. It also
Speaker 3: contribute to the generation, shall we say, of mental mental processes.
Speaker 3: I don't distinguish between mental and physical, right, you know
Speaker 3: this goes back to Rene DCOs in this mind body dualism. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm a monest. I would say suggest that most neuroscientists
Speaker 3: are also monests. There is nothing mental, it's all all physical.
Speaker 3: But how do physical processes in the brain generate conscious
Speaker 3: subjective experiences? Or that's that's the big question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's we're getting you back for that next episode. Hey,
Speaker 1: so you wrote a book called fifty Brain Idea or
Speaker 1: fifty human Brain Ideas. You really need to know, which
Speaker 1: was your first book? Am I correct?
Speaker 3: That's right? Yeah, so twenty thirteen that came out.
Speaker 1: So one of the things, one of my favorite kind
Speaker 1: of tidbits about the brain is that about twenty percent
Speaker 1: of our energy or calories every day goes on the brain,
Speaker 1: this little one point three kilo thing sitting in our head.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: I'm like, when you think about someone who weighs me,
Speaker 1: so me eighty kilos, so one point three is whatever
Speaker 1: that is, you know, maybe one point four percent of
Speaker 1: my body weight, but it uses twenty percent of my calories.
Speaker 1: So that fascinates me. So I need from you one
Speaker 1: idea or one factoid about the brain that most of
Speaker 1: us won't know that's really interesting, No pressure, And you've
Speaker 1: got fifty in your book. So what's one you want
Speaker 1: to share with us that we're going to go? I
Speaker 1: did not fucking know that. I'm going to tell someone.
Speaker 3: All right, here's one. Did you know that a young
Speaker 3: a young child can have an entire brain hemisphere removed
Speaker 3: and live a perfectly normal life. No?
Speaker 1: I did not know that. So either side right or left?
Speaker 1: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Or either side that this you know doesn't happen very often,
Speaker 3: but in young children, say five six seven year olds
Speaker 3: with with severe drug resistant epilepsy. Yeah, as a last resort,
Speaker 3: can can have an entire brain hemisphere removed to to
Speaker 3: alleviate the seizures or prevent prevent them all together. And
Speaker 3: as they grow up, thanks to neuroplasticity, the the remaining
Speaker 3: hemisphere can perform all of the functions that would normally
Speaker 3: have been carried out by the other or both hemispheres.
Speaker 1: I definitely don't want to be the person that they
Speaker 1: discover that on imagine imagine ground zero for that.
Speaker 3: But there was actually a very interesting case study about
Speaker 3: i'll say fifteen or fifteen or twenty years ago of
Speaker 3: a civil servant of all things. I don't know why.
Speaker 3: He went in for a brain scan, but they they
Speaker 3: scanned his brain and discovered that actually half of it
Speaker 3: was missing. Yeah, he'd he'd maybe I forget, I forget
Speaker 3: the details. But I'm going to have to look this
Speaker 3: up now because it was a fascinating study amid aged man.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, yeah, I think he was complaining of
Speaker 3: headaches or or something, went to hospital, had a brain scan,
Speaker 3: and they discovered that an entire hemisphere of his brain
Speaker 3: was missing. And he'd lived his whole life completely for
Speaker 3: that fact. Yeah, so he was born like that. Possibly.
Speaker 3: This is why I'm going to have to look up this, uh,
Speaker 3: this paper, because I've forgotten the details. I can't think of.
Speaker 3: I mean, there may be very rare genetic mutations that
Speaker 3: the result in half a brain forming during during development.
Speaker 3: I can't think of any. And of course, if if
Speaker 3: an older person were to have half their brain removed,
Speaker 3: the older the person is, the far more severe would
Speaker 3: be the consequences. Because the brains, the brain's capacity to
Speaker 3: adapt to anything gradually decreases with age. A five six
Speaker 3: year old's brain is much more malleable plastic than than
Speaker 3: a fifty year old's brain.
Speaker 1: That's that's good mate, that's great. That's bloody interesting. Hey,
Speaker 1: we appreciate you. Thanks for coming to hang out on
Speaker 1: the You project.
Speaker 3: Thanks again. Yeah, say goodbye.
Speaker 1: We'll say goodbye off here, but for the moment, no,
Speaker 1: we appreciate you and have a good night.