WEBVTT - Conversation on the Brain with Guest David Eagleman 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.559 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.960 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:19.520 I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech 0:00:19.640 --> 0:00:23.279 are you listeners? We have a treat today. We've got 0:00:23.320 --> 0:00:28.960 a guest on the show. He's a neuroscientist, he's a technologist. 0:00:29.560 --> 0:00:34.800 Most importantly, he's a fellow podcaster, David Eagleman, host of 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:36.920 Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman. 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:37.599 Welcome to the. 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:39.800 Show, Thanks Jonathan. Great to be here. 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:40.760 David. 0:00:41.159 --> 0:00:44.120 It's a pleasure to have you on. I think you 0:00:44.200 --> 0:00:46.239 may only be the first or second person I've ever 0:00:46.280 --> 0:00:48.320 had on the show who has done a ted talk. 0:00:48.760 --> 0:00:52.680 I've had film directors on the show. I've had production 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:55.400 designers for things like Stranger Things on the show. But 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:57.360 it's rare that I get a chance to sit down 0:00:57.360 --> 0:00:59.280 with a neuroscientist. So this is going to be a 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.400 real pleasure, great pleasure for me too. Well, let's start 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:06.039 off by talking a bit about Inner Cosmos, because you know, 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:09.280 this show has launched, it's got thirty episodes out as 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:11.440 of the time we're recording this episode, thirty I think 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:14.160 published the day before we're recording this. That's right, And 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:17.400 first I want to applaud you for your restraint that 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.560 it took seventeen episodes before you gave us the definitive 0:01:20.600 --> 0:01:24.679 answer on what is consciousness? 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:27.520 Yeah, well, you know the show as you well though, 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:30.959 it's about you know, the intersection of the brain with 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:34.920 our lives, our daily lives, and right, so it took 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:37.440 a little while to work up consciousness. Unfortunately, we still 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:40.559 do not have a definitive answer to that, and it's 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:43.880 you know, this is really at the center of the 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:46.360 mystery of neuroscience is how do you put together eighty 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:49.480 six billion neurons and have all this you know, three 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:54.720 pound glob of wet biological stuff that is you? But 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:56.880 why does it feel like anything to be you? Why 0:01:56.920 --> 0:02:00.200 aren't you just you know, my Mac laptop here has 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:03.920 a whole bunch of transistors, but presumably it doesn't find 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:08.239 things funny or interesting or painful or curious. Yeah. 0:02:09.080 --> 0:02:09.360 Yeah. 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:12.239 I often talk about in the sense of the ability 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:16.119 to have an experience versus the ability of just being 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:19.800 able to process information, and a lot of what you 0:02:19.919 --> 0:02:24.240 talk about has obvious crossover into the world of technology, 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:26.679 but beyond that, like when we start talking about things 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:31.799 like artificial intelligence or artificial neuron networks. Like that's where 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:37.040 we start really having this interesting cross talk, because I 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:42.120 get the sense that often the technologist side has maybe 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:47.400 a superficial understanding or sometimes a complete misunderstanding of the neuroscience. 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:50.919 But they're trying to use neuroscience to describe their technologies, 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:54.480 and meanwhile you have neuroscientists who are often trying to 0:02:55.480 --> 0:03:01.480 straighten out the concepts, and it can become a complicated 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.760 conversation where people are talking on two different levels. So 0:03:04.840 --> 0:03:06.640 one of the things I wanted to ask you actually 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.959 relates to this, which is, as a neuroscientist and as 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:16.160 a technologist, how do you actually define artificial intelligence? Because 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:20.440 it's such an enormous discipline, and I feel like a 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:23.320 lot of the reporting around it gets very reductive. 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:28.080 Yeah, all great questions. Here's the thing, you know, we 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:31.000 don't even know exactly how to define natural intelligence. What 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:33.400 I mean is people have known, for example, since the 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:38.600 nineteen twenties that the IQ test measures something useful and 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:43.720 it correlates with one's success in life along various metrics 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:45.840 career and so on. But there's a big debate about 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:49.760 what intelligence is in humans. Is it the ability to 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:53.560 better simulate possible futures and evaluate them. Is it the 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:59.000 ability to squelch distractors and so on? There's lots of 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:01.880 there's lots of different diferent ideas about what intelligence might be, 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:04.720 but we don't know. It's probably a word that has 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:08.680 too much semantic weight on it, meaning that it's not 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:11.000 just one thing anyway, So when you ask the question 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:14.120 of what is artificial intelligence, it can mean a lot 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:17.040 of things, and people mean different things by it. And 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:19.839 so the way we're building AI is the way we 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:22.400 build any sort of machine where you're trying to get 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:24.760 the machine to do something for you that you don't 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:27.440 want to do. So, for example, you know, Google Maps 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:31.320 knows every street, every place I should go, how a 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:34.359 best way to get there? That is artificial intelligence in 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:36.599 the sense that it's way better than I would be 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:40.520 at memorizing an entire atlas, And so that's a very 0:04:40.640 --> 0:04:47.000 useful machine for me. You know, Chat, GPT compiling the 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:50.039 world's data and being able to tell it to you 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:53.000 in the structure of a human speaking. It's sort of 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:56.240 like what we appreciated about Google, which is this compilation 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:57.760 of all the world's data. But now it can just 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.240 spit it out to you in various ways. Lots of 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:03.719 ways to think about what artificial intelligence is. But I 0:05:03.760 --> 0:05:06.320 will I do want to say something, which is that 0:05:06.839 --> 0:05:11.360 you know, AI butted off from neuroscience because neuroscientists figured 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:14.120 out a while ago, Look, you know, you've got neurons. 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:16.440 These neurals are connected to one another. Now, as it 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:19.560 turns out, neurons are really complicated. Each neuron is about 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:22.760 as complicated as a city. It's got the entire human 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:26.719 genome inute. It's trafficking millions of proteins around very complicated cascades, 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:32.640 and it's constantly plugging and unplugging and seeking and plugging 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:35.080 into other neurons and so on, and so people a 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:37.919 while ago came up with this idea of an artificial 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:39.760 neural network where they said, look, what if we just 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:42.440 have units that are connected to each other and those 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:46.359 those connections have particular strengths that can change. And so, 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:48.760 as it turns out, that has been the trick that 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:52.960 has led to this renaissance in AI that's been incredible, 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:56.440 but it also it's departed from the biology. I would 0:05:56.440 --> 0:05:59.760 say they're now sort of oft in different directions. It's 0:05:59.839 --> 0:06:02.400 very cartoonish version of the biology. In some ways it 0:06:02.480 --> 0:06:04.560 is much better than the biology, and in other ways 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:09.200 it's much worse. Just as an example, AI, even given 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:11.640 the absolutely mind blowing things it's doing right now, it's 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:13.720 not as good as let's say, a five year old 0:06:14.640 --> 0:06:18.240 is at navigating a complex room and socially manipulating adults 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:20.680 to get what she wants, and you know, all these 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:23.479 things that you know, getting food to her mouth when 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:26.400 she's hungry and so on. There's a lot of things 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:29.520 that humans can. You know, I should say that ais 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:31.440 to there's still gonna be work ahead of it to 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:31.839 get there. 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:33.640 Yeah, yeah, I remember. 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:35.840 One of my favorite stories was from a few years 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:38.120 back when I was at south By Southwest and a 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:42.000 roboticist was talking about a project in which they had 0:06:42.040 --> 0:06:45.560 a robot that was capable of moving through human environments 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:50.400 and they were attempting to have the robot figure out 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:54.000 how to open a door, and they said the process 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:56.960 of that had the robots standing in a corridor for 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:01.520 like three days just analyzing door and getting in the 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:03.239 way of people who needed to go place. 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:04.760 Like everyone hated the robot. 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:07.160 By the end of this, but they were explaining like, 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:10.200 this is something where as a human, once you have 0:07:10.280 --> 0:07:13.240 the experience with a door, you can start to reason 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:15.240 out how to interact with other doors, even if the 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:18.760 mechanism is different. Right, you can start to interpret how 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:23.040 to interact with this barrier, and it may mean that 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:25.360 you have to try a couple of different things before 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:27.920 you successfully open the door, but you have an idea. 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:32.560 But in artificial intelligence, that's something that we're only starting 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:36.360 to approach right now. Another great example was when DHARPA 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:39.760 did the General Challenge where they had the humanoid robots 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:43.960 that needed to complete a series of tasks like driving 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:46.720 a vehicle, getting out of it, walking through a door, 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:49.440 picking up a tool, using it, and they found that 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:52.960 one of the toughest challenges was walking through the door. 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:55.640 There's so many videos. Don't look it up, people, it 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:58.440 will break your heart, but so many videos are very expensive. 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:01.679 Robots face plan think while trying to walk through a doorway, 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:06.400 and it just shows that these these things that can 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:09.840 come very easily to humans do not necessarily come easily 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:13.040 to machines. Whether we're talking about an AI software running 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:14.400 in the background or a robot. 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:16.920 That's true, but let me jump in with one question 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:19.120 about what we mean by come easily to humans, because 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:22.240 what's interesting is we've had millions of years of evolution 0:08:22.800 --> 0:08:26.480 building this incredibly complex structure, the most complex thing we've 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:29.160 ever found on the planet, the human brain, And so 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:33.440 what seems easy to us is actually not easy at all, 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:36.080 of course from other nature to have built. But yes, 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:38.880 I totally agree with you. Anything physical is something that 0:08:39.600 --> 0:08:41.680 AI still has a long way to go to get. 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:46.680 Yeah, and to your point, yes, the human brain is 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:53.160 a phenomenon of evolution where it's what makes this comparatively 0:08:53.240 --> 0:08:56.440 easy for us when you combine, you know, compare that 0:08:56.480 --> 0:09:01.280 against a machine. I had mentioned earlier about your TED talk. 0:09:01.360 --> 0:09:04.760 I loved it because it was all about using technology 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:10.319 to expand human senses. And also you very well, you 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:14.480 put it extremely well about how our understanding of the 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:18.800 world around us, our understanding of the universes, obviously funneled 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:22.640 through our senses, which means when you look at what 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:27.000 our senses are capable of, you realize we're experiencing the 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:31.080 tiniest fraction of what's actually going on out there. That 0:09:31.120 --> 0:09:35.720 there are entire frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum that we 0:09:35.800 --> 0:09:40.920 cannot observe directly, and that's just part of the limitations 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:43.440 we have on ourselves. And that when we think about that, 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:49.479 and we think about technology having the capacity to expand that, 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:51.360 that's really a fascinating thing. And I thought it was 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:55.840 great because I had also done stories about biohacking and grinders, 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:59.040 people who are kind of taking the underground auto mechanic 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:01.800 garage approach to this sort of thing where you might 0:10:01.840 --> 0:10:04.800 be talking about implanting magnets on your fingertips so you 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:12.600 could sense electromagnetic fields. Usually it means directing stimuli in 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:14.280 a way that you would pick up with one of 0:10:14.280 --> 0:10:18.560 your traditional senses, not creating a new one necessarily, sort 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:20.360 of the same way that you would say, like infrared 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:24.240 goggles translates information into the visual spectrum so we can 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.040 see it. But I'm curious, since that talk, since you've 0:10:27.040 --> 0:10:30.960 given that talk where you were looking into different ways 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:34.839 to bring stimuli in and have the brain interpret it 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:39.920 and perhaps even augment or create new senses, have you 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:43.480 done any more work along those lines since you get 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:45.280 that talk, and I would love to hear about it. 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:48.600 Yeah, great, great, So maybe I should back up just 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:51.040 for one second, if for those listeners who haven't heard 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:53.400 the toss, it was just about this issue of how 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:56.559 the brain is locked in silence and darkness inside your skull. 0:10:56.880 --> 0:10:58.760 It doesn't see any of the world, doesn't hear any 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:01.240 of the world. All it ever has or these little 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:05.880 electrical spikes zipping around among neurons and then release of neurotransmitters. 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:09.400 But that say, it's just this electrochemical world buzzing around 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:12.400 in the dark, and yet it constructs this whole cosmos 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:14.200 for you, you know, the colors and the lights and 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:16.600 the joy and the smells and the tastes and the 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:19.440 touch and all that. So this is you know, we 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:22.920 actually mentioned this at the beginning about the mystery of consciousness. 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:24.880 But this is what brains are good at doing, is 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:29.880 extracting patterns and assigning meaning to those and figuring out 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:32.440 how to navigate itself in the world. So what I 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:34.640 got interested in is, you know, if I were to 0:11:34.720 --> 0:11:39.280 show you a little piece of you know, of the brain. 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:41.800 Let's say I could do this in real life with 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:43.920 you know, like drilling a little hole in there and 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.319 you get to see all the action the activity inside 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:48.520 that little piece of brain. And I said to you, hey, 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:50.360 what part of the brain is this Is this visual 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:54.079 information or auditory or touch or smell? You wouldn't be 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:55.679 able to tell me. I wouldn't be able to tell 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:59.319 you because it looks the same everywhere the cortex. The 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:02.240 wrinklely bent on the outside of the brain is actually 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:07.319 the same structure all across the brain, even though we 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:10.480 tend to call this part, oh, that's your visual center, 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:13.719 and here's your auditory system, and here's your amount of 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:16.440 sensory system for touch and so on. In fact, it's 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:18.640 all exactly the same structure. It's just a matter of 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:21.079 which data cables are getting plugged into there. So that's 0:12:21.160 --> 0:12:24.160 the background. Whatever data you send in there, it figures 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:25.760 out what to do with it and how to make 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:28.400 it relevant. So I got interested in this question of 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:32.080 sensory substitution, which is can we feed in completely new 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:36.320 kinds of senses into the brain. And so what I 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:39.200 presented at that talk, as you know, of course, Jonathan, 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:42.440 is a vest with vibratory motors on it, and we 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:44.920 were able to show, for example, that we could that 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:48.360 deaf people, people who could not hear, who are profoundly 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:53.000 or severely deaf, they could come to understand the auditory 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:56.200 world just by patterns vibration on their skin. This is 0:12:56.800 --> 0:12:59.120 what your inner ear does. You know, when you capture 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:02.520 air compression waves on your ear drum, that goes through 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:04.520 a few stages, then it gets broken up from high 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:07.160 to low frequency, then shipped off to your brain as 0:13:07.200 --> 0:13:09.760 patterns of spikes. All we're doing is capturing sound on 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:13.120 microphones and breaking it up from high low frequency and 0:13:13.160 --> 0:13:16.199 putting that into different parts of the skin as vibrations. 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:18.400 And it turns out that people who are deaf could 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:21.160 come to hear this way. And so what we have done, 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:23.880 and answer your question, what we've done since then, is 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:26.320 we have shrunk the VEST down to a wristband and 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:29.400 I spun this company off from my labs called Neosensory, 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:32.520 and the wrist band does exactly the same thing as 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:34.760 the VEST. It's capturing sound in here. It's got full 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:38.600 computational capacity, and it has these vibratory motors along the 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:42.520 inside of the wrist, multiple motors, and it's turning that 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:45.760 sound into patterns of vibration on the skin of your wrist, 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:48.280 and people who are deaf can come to hear this way. 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:52.240 The really wild part is that after about six months 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:54.880 when I ask them, hey, when you hear a sound, 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:56.560 what is it? You know? Do you hear a dog 0:13:56.679 --> 0:13:58.560 mark and you feel a buzz on your wrist and 0:13:58.640 --> 0:14:00.719 you think, oh, what was that? Must be a dog 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:02.840 where And they say, no, I just hear the dog. 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:04.120 And I say, well, what do you mean by that? 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:06.439 They say, I just I hear the dog out there, 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.840 which is wild, right, except that's all that your ears 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:13.360 are doing too. I mean, we've long stopped appreciating that 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:15.560 because you've been using your ear since you were a baby. 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:19.600 But for goodness sakes, all you have are spikes running around. 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:22.280 And yet you think, oh, I'm hearing Eagleman's voice here 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:25.680 from out there, whereas in fact, all of the sound 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:29.760 is just happening in your head. It's the interpretation of 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:34.400 an auditory signal that's happening in your consciousness. So turns 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:36.440 out it doesn't matter how you push the information in there, 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:39.960 you get the same thing happening there. And we also, 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:42.920 we've done a whole We have several products on the 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:44.840 market now and we're on risks all over the world. 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:49.480 One of them is the you know, to replace hearing aids. 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:51.560 So most people, as they get older they lose their 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.320 high frequencies because yes, high frequencies. Yeah, you know, that 0:14:55.400 --> 0:14:58.440 has the most energy, and it kills the little cells 0:14:58.440 --> 0:15:01.160 inside your in your ear eventually, so they stop hearing 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:04.360 high frequencies. And that's why often as people get older, 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.960 they have a harder time understanding women and children because 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:10.560 their voices tend to be a slight higher register. And 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:15.280 so what we're doing is using exactly the same risk band. 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:18.400 It's using cutting at ji to listen in real time 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:22.920 for different high frequency parts of speech called phonemes. And 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:25.360 when it detects, oh, there was an S, there was 0:15:25.400 --> 0:15:27.080 a K, there was a V, there was a T, 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:30.040 and so on, it buzzes in different ways to tell you. 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:33.200 And so what's happening is that somebody's ears doing fine 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:35.680 at the medium and low frequency, and the risk band 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:39.000 is simply clarifying what is happening at the high frequency. 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:42.560 And so that turns out to be a really great solution. 0:15:42.640 --> 0:15:44.680 It It takes about a week or two for people 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:47.600 to get used to it, to understand how to use 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:51.000 it. It's all unconscious learning, but they just get better and 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:53.640 better at understanding what's being said, and they'll just mention 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:58.400 one other thing which was sort of as it's fascinating 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:01.280 that it worked, which is that for which is ringing 0:16:01.360 --> 0:16:04.840 in the ears. What we do is we have people 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:07.400 wear the wristband and we play just for ten minutes 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:09.400 to day. We play a series of tones boom boo, 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:11.480 boo boo, boom boom, boom boom, and as you're hearing 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.360 the tones, you're feeling the buzz on the wristband. And 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:17.800 it turns out this drives down tenatus as well as 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:22.680 any solution that exists. And the reason is there are 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:25.160 complicated arguments for us. But I think the simple reason 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:27.680 this works is because you're teaching the brain what is 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:31.200 a real sound boom boom boom boom, because you're getting 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:34.160 verification on the wristband, but the internal ring in the ears, 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:38.320 the bea doesn't get any confirmation and so the brain says, Okay, 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:40.080 that's fake news and drives it down. 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:43.239 I'm going to need to get one of these wristbands. 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:47.280 I spent a lot of my youth going to the 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:50.920 University of Georgia and all the little rock clubs in 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:54.120 the surrounding area, and I have paid for my decisions. 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:59.400 Kids use earbuds or not earbuds, ear plugs. Use earplugs 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:01.960 when you go to the shows, because trust me, yes, 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:04.960 trust me, we're gonna have to take a quick break, 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:06.800 but when we come back we have more. With my 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:19.520 conversation with David Eagleman, the other thing I wanted to 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:21.879 point out for folks who may not have picked up 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:25.200 on it, is that this solution where you're using this 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:29.359 tactile feedback, where it's taking in sound and creating this 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:33.600 not only is it unconscious learning, it obviously does not 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:37.760 require invasive surgery. It can be orders of magnitude less 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:41.679 expensive and thus far more accessible, which means that it's 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.879 a technology that can help the heart of hearing, or 0:17:44.920 --> 0:17:47.679 beyond heart of hearing, to experience the world on a 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:52.600 greater scale than they otherwise could, which is always a 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:55.280 wonderful story to tell when you're talking about tech, because 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:58.919 often we're talking about tech solutions that are not really solutions. 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:02.200 They are convenient is for a select. 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:04.600 Few, Yeah, thank you. I mean this is this is 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:06.480 why we're on risks all over the world now, and 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:10.280 lots of deaf schools in really impoverished countries as well, 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:13.800 precisely because you know, the only other option for somebody 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:16.399 who is deaf is a cochlear implant, which is one 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:19.480 hundred thousand dollars and an invasive surgery. So yeah, this 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:22.359 makes a big difference, and it works so well just 0:18:22.359 --> 0:18:25.719 to push the information into the brain via an unusual channel. 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:27.040 It's fascinating to me. 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:28.960 The more you think about it, the more the more 0:18:29.040 --> 0:18:31.040 you start to come to the conclusion of well, of 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:33.560 course it works when you start to break it down, 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:38.199 as the brain is creating everything we're experiencing. It's just 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:42.320 it's bringing in information from various sensors, and the nature 0:18:42.320 --> 0:18:45.760 of the sensor doesn't matter as much as how the 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:48.879 brain can synthesize that data and turn it into something 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:53.160 that we can experience as something meaningful exactly. 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:55.919 I mean, those two spheres on the front of your head, 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:59.280 those are just capturing photons and turning them into spikes. 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:03.159 In your ear, your very sophisticated ear, is just capturing 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:05.400 air compression waves and turning into spikes. And your nose 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:08.399 in your mouth are capturing mixtures of molecules turning those 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:11.240 into spikes. But it's all it's all ending up in 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:12.480 the same common currency. 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:14.840 Well, David, one of the other things I wanted to 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:18.280 mention to you. I recently was doing some episodes about 0:19:18.800 --> 0:19:22.359 the Ignobel Prizes, which you know, obviously a series of 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:25.600 joke prizes that came out of a satirical science magazine. 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:30.920 It's meant to either celebrate or sometimes raz people who 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:34.080 have done various things in science. One of the things 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:36.760 I thought was really interesting was they gave an Ignobel 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:40.199 Prize to a group of people Craig Bennett, Abigail Baird, 0:19:40.520 --> 0:19:44.959 Michael Miller, and George Wolford who wrote a fascinating paper. 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:50.520 The paper is titled Neural Correlates of Interspecies Perspective taking 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:54.760 in the post mortem Atlantic Salmon An argument for proper 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.680 multiple comparisons correction. So this study was all about how 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:05.720 using very very sensitive equipment, mostly fMRI I actually and 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:10.119 through misuse of statistics, it could be very easy to 0:20:10.160 --> 0:20:14.320 get false positives with things of this nature. And thus 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:16.560 what it means is that we need to be very 0:20:16.680 --> 0:20:20.639 very careful when designing controls when we're using things like 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:24.879 fMRI I to draw conclusions. And I'm curious as your 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:27.280 work as a neuroscientist, as your work as a technologist, 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:30.480 have you encountered this sort of thing where there's always 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:33.720 this emphasis on moving fast, you know, move fast and 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:36.959 break things and to get to the end product as 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:39.600 quickly as possible. But in the process you have to 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:41.600 make sure that the science is right or else the 0:20:41.640 --> 0:20:45.560 conclusions you draw, the solutions you make aren't really addressing anything. 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:47.840 Have you encountered things of that nature? 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:51.560 Sure, I mean spending a career in science when deals 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:55.320 with this all the time, which is to say, you know, 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:58.959 science constantly tries to drive forward, but it's always two 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:01.280 steps forward, one step back in the sense I mean 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:04.359 this fMRI paper with the salmon for anyone who does know, 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:06.560 it's you know, they put a dead salmon in the scanner, 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:09.760 and we're able to demonstrate that if you do this 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:12.000 the math in a certain way, that it looks like 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:14.040 there's activity in the salmon's brain even though there can't 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:17.400 possibly be so. So this is actually not an indictment 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:21.320 of functional metic residence imaging, the brain imaging technology that 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:23.879 we use. Instead, it's just an indictment of how you 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:28.080 do the statistics and so on. This is an incredibly 0:21:28.400 --> 0:21:33.199 complicated device fMRI, and the you know, the way you 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:36.399 analyze the data requires, you know, a long time to 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:38.880 get to get up to speed on it. But what 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:42.080 it allows us to do is see what's happening in 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:45.040 the brain, in the live brain of a human when 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:48.160 they're doing a task or thinking about something. It's been 0:21:48.200 --> 0:21:53.280 absolutely incredible the amount of data that's come out of this. 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:55.720 But what their paper shows is that, hey, you just 0:21:55.760 --> 0:21:57.760