1 00:00:05,720 --> 00:00:09,799 Speaker 1: Why does the world's best archer have no arms? How 2 00:00:09,800 --> 00:00:12,920 Speaker 1: does a dog learn how to skateboard? How can a 3 00:00:13,080 --> 00:00:16,599 Speaker 1: robot figure out what its body looks like? How can 4 00:00:16,800 --> 00:00:20,040 Speaker 1: someone come to believe that her leg doesn't belong to 5 00:00:20,079 --> 00:00:23,000 Speaker 1: her but to someone else? And what does any of 6 00:00:23,040 --> 00:00:26,479 Speaker 1: this have to do with babies? Babbling or doc oc 7 00:00:26,640 --> 00:00:32,599 Speaker 1: from spider Man. Welcome to innert Cosmos with me, David Eagleman. 8 00:00:34,080 --> 00:00:38,720 Speaker 1: I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University, and 9 00:00:38,840 --> 00:00:43,360 Speaker 1: I've spent my whole career studying the intersection between how 10 00:00:43,400 --> 00:00:54,880 Speaker 1: the brain works and how we experience life. Have you 11 00:00:54,880 --> 00:00:59,200 Speaker 1: ever texted while you're riding your bicycle? So on campus, 12 00:00:59,240 --> 00:01:02,280 Speaker 1: i see students doing this all the time, and I'm 13 00:01:02,320 --> 00:01:05,920 Speaker 1: amazed because what it tells me is how good the 14 00:01:05,959 --> 00:01:10,760 Speaker 1: three pound brain is at controlling the body, running the 15 00:01:11,120 --> 00:01:14,320 Speaker 1: petals with the legs, and steering the handlebars with one 16 00:01:14,360 --> 00:01:18,200 Speaker 1: hand and hitting these very tiny targets with the other thumb, 17 00:01:18,600 --> 00:01:21,000 Speaker 1: and pulling on the brake when they need to slow down, 18 00:01:21,120 --> 00:01:24,520 Speaker 1: and so on. And this is all from inside the 19 00:01:24,560 --> 00:01:29,520 Speaker 1: brain's mission control center in the skull, in total darkness. 20 00:01:30,080 --> 00:01:34,680 Speaker 1: It's controlling all these limbs with a degree of expertise 21 00:01:34,720 --> 00:01:37,960 Speaker 1: that we can't even scratch with robotics. So what I 22 00:01:38,040 --> 00:01:41,160 Speaker 1: want to talk about today is how you can get 23 00:01:41,640 --> 00:01:44,240 Speaker 1: even a better body. And I'm not talking about diet 24 00:01:44,360 --> 00:01:47,440 Speaker 1: or fitness. I'm talking about the future of what we 25 00:01:47,480 --> 00:01:51,760 Speaker 1: can do with our brains. For example, could you add 26 00:01:51,960 --> 00:01:58,880 Speaker 1: new limbs. Let's start with the Spider Man comics from 27 00:01:58,880 --> 00:02:02,480 Speaker 1: back in the day, So in July of nineteen sixty three, 28 00:02:02,520 --> 00:02:06,160 Speaker 1: a new character got introduced. It was a scientist named 29 00:02:06,200 --> 00:02:10,680 Speaker 1: Otto Gunther Octavius. Now he was interesting because he plugs 30 00:02:10,720 --> 00:02:15,400 Speaker 1: a device directly into his brain to control four extra 31 00:02:15,639 --> 00:02:20,440 Speaker 1: robotic arms. He's able to operate these metal limbs just 32 00:02:20,520 --> 00:02:24,280 Speaker 1: as smoothly as his own natural arms, and so he's 33 00:02:24,320 --> 00:02:27,920 Speaker 1: able to work this way with radioactive materials. Now in 34 00:02:27,960 --> 00:02:30,280 Speaker 1: the comic book, each of his arms is able to 35 00:02:30,360 --> 00:02:34,320 Speaker 1: operate independently, in the same way that you can steer 36 00:02:34,360 --> 00:02:37,360 Speaker 1: your car with one hand while you change the radio 37 00:02:37,360 --> 00:02:40,000 Speaker 1: station with the other. And this is while at the 38 00:02:40,080 --> 00:02:42,680 Speaker 1: same time you're switching between the brake and the gas 39 00:02:42,720 --> 00:02:48,320 Speaker 1: with your foot. Unfortunately, for doctor Octavius, there's an explosion 40 00:02:48,440 --> 00:02:52,320 Speaker 1: and the explosion damages his brain and dooms him to 41 00:02:52,400 --> 00:02:55,640 Speaker 1: a life of villany. So he's now lost all his 42 00:02:55,720 --> 00:02:59,639 Speaker 1: sense of morality, and he capitalizes on these four extra 43 00:02:59,760 --> 00:03:03,760 Speaker 1: arms to climb up buildings and pull safes out from 44 00:03:03,800 --> 00:03:07,399 Speaker 1: walls and fight in new ways with multi hand combat. 45 00:03:07,960 --> 00:03:11,320 Speaker 1: And now with his new evil personality, he becomes known 46 00:03:11,360 --> 00:03:18,800 Speaker 1: as Doctor Octopus or doc OC. So when the comic 47 00:03:18,840 --> 00:03:22,320 Speaker 1: book debuted in nineteen sixty three, it was pure sci 48 00:03:22,360 --> 00:03:26,160 Speaker 1: fi fantasy to imagine that a human brain could control 49 00:03:26,360 --> 00:03:31,720 Speaker 1: robotic limbs, but not anymore. So how close are we 50 00:03:32,280 --> 00:03:35,880 Speaker 1: to actually reaching the point of a doc oc? Could 51 00:03:35,920 --> 00:03:40,880 Speaker 1: you plug in new limbs like extra legs or wings? 52 00:03:41,440 --> 00:03:45,320 Speaker 1: What are the limits? So to get started in understanding this, 53 00:03:46,040 --> 00:03:49,080 Speaker 1: the key thing to orient ourselves too is that the 54 00:03:49,160 --> 00:03:53,640 Speaker 1: brain has inputs and outputs. The inputs includes all the 55 00:03:53,640 --> 00:03:57,200 Speaker 1: information from your senses like vision, hearing, and smell and 56 00:03:57,240 --> 00:04:01,280 Speaker 1: so on. The output is how you're brain controls your 57 00:04:01,320 --> 00:04:05,080 Speaker 1: body to interact with the world. In a different episode, 58 00:04:05,080 --> 00:04:08,960 Speaker 1: I'll talk about input asking how our senses work and 59 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:12,120 Speaker 1: how we can create new senses. But today we're going 60 00:04:12,200 --> 00:04:15,800 Speaker 1: to talk about how the brain controls the body and 61 00:04:15,840 --> 00:04:20,080 Speaker 1: what the prospects are for changing that or adding on 62 00:04:20,160 --> 00:04:22,880 Speaker 1: to that. So let's start back in the nineteen sixties 63 00:04:22,920 --> 00:04:27,960 Speaker 1: when a Canadian neurosurgeon named Wilder Penfield was sticking small, 64 00:04:28,400 --> 00:04:32,360 Speaker 1: thin wires called electrodes into the brain of a patient 65 00:04:32,680 --> 00:04:36,120 Speaker 1: undergoing surgery. Now, it turns out you can stick things 66 00:04:36,120 --> 00:04:38,680 Speaker 1: like that directly into the brain, and you can do 67 00:04:38,720 --> 00:04:41,480 Speaker 1: that while the patient is awake and it doesn't hurt 68 00:04:41,560 --> 00:04:46,119 Speaker 1: at all. Why it's because there are no pain receptors 69 00:04:46,160 --> 00:04:48,679 Speaker 1: in the brain, so you can just dunk a metal 70 00:04:48,720 --> 00:04:51,280 Speaker 1: electrode right in the tissue the way you'd stick a 71 00:04:51,360 --> 00:04:53,719 Speaker 1: toothpick in a block of cheese, and the patient doesn't 72 00:04:53,760 --> 00:04:57,600 Speaker 1: feel anything anyway. So Penfield was sticking the electrode into 73 00:04:57,600 --> 00:05:00,680 Speaker 1: the brain while he talked with the patient and asking 74 00:05:00,760 --> 00:05:03,719 Speaker 1: him what he was feeling. And what Penfield stumbled on 75 00:05:03,880 --> 00:05:08,200 Speaker 1: was something that elevated neuroscience. He discovered in the brain 76 00:05:08,880 --> 00:05:15,279 Speaker 1: a nap of the body. So let's say I have 77 00:05:15,320 --> 00:05:18,080 Speaker 1: the electrode right here on a little strip of brain 78 00:05:18,160 --> 00:05:22,359 Speaker 1: tissue where you'd wear a tiara or headphones, and the 79 00:05:22,360 --> 00:05:26,360 Speaker 1: electrode is measuring the electrical spikes in the brain cells, 80 00:05:26,400 --> 00:05:32,360 Speaker 1: the neurons, And now I touch your shoulder, and it 81 00:05:32,360 --> 00:05:35,600 Speaker 1: turns out these neurons only respond to touch on your 82 00:05:35,640 --> 00:05:39,120 Speaker 1: shoulder and nowhere else. So now let's say I move 83 00:05:39,160 --> 00:05:42,160 Speaker 1: the electrode just a little bit over, still on this strip, 84 00:05:42,600 --> 00:05:47,680 Speaker 1: and now I touch your elbow, and Penfield found that 85 00:05:47,720 --> 00:05:50,880 Speaker 1: as he moved over a little more, there are neurons 86 00:05:50,880 --> 00:05:53,720 Speaker 1: that respond to the forearm, and then next to that 87 00:05:54,160 --> 00:05:57,720 Speaker 1: the hand, and elsewhere along this little strip of brain 88 00:05:57,800 --> 00:06:01,279 Speaker 1: tissue he found cells that respond to your face, or 89 00:06:01,320 --> 00:06:04,160 Speaker 1: your torso, or your legs or your feet. And so 90 00:06:04,200 --> 00:06:06,520 Speaker 1: as you move along this strip in the brain you 91 00:06:06,560 --> 00:06:11,279 Speaker 1: find the whole body represented where neighboring territories on the 92 00:06:11,320 --> 00:06:15,880 Speaker 1: body have neighboring territory in the brain. And this came 93 00:06:15,920 --> 00:06:20,080 Speaker 1: to be known as the somatos sensory cortex, which refers 94 00:06:20,120 --> 00:06:25,279 Speaker 1: to sensation from the body, the soma. Now, the interesting 95 00:06:25,320 --> 00:06:28,280 Speaker 1: part for today's podcast is that he also found a 96 00:06:28,440 --> 00:06:31,440 Speaker 1: second map of the body, and this was on a 97 00:06:31,520 --> 00:06:35,000 Speaker 1: neighboring strip that we call the motor cortex. It's right 98 00:06:35,040 --> 00:06:38,280 Speaker 1: in front of that. So when the cells here are active, 99 00:06:39,080 --> 00:06:42,880 Speaker 1: they drive very particular parts of the body. In other words, 100 00:06:42,960 --> 00:06:47,960 Speaker 1: they contract particular muscles. So activity in these cells right 101 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:51,599 Speaker 1: here causes your shoulder to twitch, an activity right next 102 00:06:51,640 --> 00:06:55,200 Speaker 1: to it causes your bicep to contract, and activity right 103 00:06:55,240 --> 00:06:58,800 Speaker 1: next to that causes your forearm to move, and so on. 104 00:06:59,080 --> 00:07:02,159 Speaker 1: With a map of the entire body, all the parts 105 00:07:02,200 --> 00:07:09,159 Speaker 1: that you can control are represented in this strip here. Now, 106 00:07:09,200 --> 00:07:13,720 Speaker 1: it turns out this map doesn't have equal representation everywhere. 107 00:07:14,320 --> 00:07:19,080 Speaker 1: The body parts, which are more finely controlled, have larger 108 00:07:19,160 --> 00:07:22,880 Speaker 1: areas of representation. So you have a bunch of territory 109 00:07:22,960 --> 00:07:26,360 Speaker 1: devoted to your fingers, for example, but not a lot 110 00:07:26,400 --> 00:07:29,280 Speaker 1: to the muscles that can move your kneecap or your scalp. 111 00:07:30,120 --> 00:07:32,320 Speaker 1: Now we'll come back to this in later episodes, but 112 00:07:32,480 --> 00:07:35,400 Speaker 1: what is wild is that this map of the body 113 00:07:35,960 --> 00:07:41,880 Speaker 1: is not genetically determined as everyone originally guessed. Instead, it's 114 00:07:41,960 --> 00:07:46,560 Speaker 1: shaped by the body's experience in the world. In other words, 115 00:07:46,640 --> 00:07:51,840 Speaker 1: it devotes territory to what it can control. And if 116 00:07:51,920 --> 00:07:56,320 Speaker 1: you lose your hand in a terrible car accident, your 117 00:07:56,480 --> 00:08:01,560 Speaker 1: primary motor cortex begins to shift, often change itself. Over 118 00:08:01,600 --> 00:08:06,400 Speaker 1: the course of weeks, the brain areas that control neighboring 119 00:08:06,640 --> 00:08:10,680 Speaker 1: arm muscles like your biceps and triceps slowly take over 120 00:08:10,760 --> 00:08:16,080 Speaker 1: the cortical territory that formerly operated your hand. Now we 121 00:08:16,120 --> 00:08:19,080 Speaker 1: can look at it this way. Neurons that previously drove 122 00:08:19,120 --> 00:08:22,480 Speaker 1: your hand, they get their job duty reassigned, and they 123 00:08:22,520 --> 00:08:26,000 Speaker 1: now join the team of neurons that control the upper 124 00:08:26,080 --> 00:08:29,360 Speaker 1: arm muscles. So what this tells us is that the 125 00:08:29,440 --> 00:08:33,840 Speaker 1: motor areas of the brain, those neurons that are sending 126 00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:37,599 Speaker 1: their signals down the spinal cord to drive the body, 127 00:08:37,760 --> 00:08:44,479 Speaker 1: they optimize themselves to drive the available machinery. And this principle, 128 00:08:44,800 --> 00:08:47,360 Speaker 1: as we're going to see, is what opens the door 129 00:08:48,080 --> 00:08:53,080 Speaker 1: to rearranging body plans, something that's traditionally been done only 130 00:08:53,120 --> 00:08:57,400 Speaker 1: when there's injury, but will soon enough be possible when 131 00:08:57,400 --> 00:09:00,880 Speaker 1: we want to add things to the body. So to 132 00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:04,760 Speaker 1: understand this, let's start with a wide angle lens looking 133 00:09:04,760 --> 00:09:07,880 Speaker 1: at the world of our cousins in the animal kingdom. 134 00:09:08,440 --> 00:09:11,439 Speaker 1: So the thing to notice is that there are all 135 00:09:11,440 --> 00:09:15,839 Speaker 1: sorts of strange and amazing body plans. To look at 136 00:09:15,840 --> 00:09:20,040 Speaker 1: the ant eater with its long proboscis, or an animal 137 00:09:20,120 --> 00:09:23,840 Speaker 1: called the star nosed mole, which has essentially twenty two 138 00:09:23,880 --> 00:09:27,360 Speaker 1: fingers on its nose with which it feels around in 139 00:09:27,360 --> 00:09:31,920 Speaker 1: its dark tunnels. Or look at the sloth or the dragonfish, 140 00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:36,200 Speaker 1: or the platypus or the octopus. You find very different 141 00:09:36,440 --> 00:09:39,720 Speaker 1: bodies in the animal kingdom. But here's the thing to notice. 142 00:09:40,400 --> 00:09:46,959 Speaker 1: All the animals, including us, have surprisingly similar genomes. So 143 00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:50,040 Speaker 1: how do the animal's brains come to operate all this 144 00:09:50,320 --> 00:09:56,760 Speaker 1: wildly different equipment like prehensile tails or claws, or larynxes 145 00:09:56,880 --> 00:10:02,559 Speaker 1: or tentacles, whiskers or or wings. The question is are 146 00:10:02,600 --> 00:10:07,640 Speaker 1: their brains preprogrammed for it? How do mountain goats get 147 00:10:07,679 --> 00:10:10,760 Speaker 1: so good at leaping up rocks? And how do owls 148 00:10:10,800 --> 00:10:14,160 Speaker 1: get so good at plunging down on mice? How do 149 00:10:14,240 --> 00:10:17,200 Speaker 1: frogs get so good at hitting flies with their tongues? 150 00:10:17,760 --> 00:10:22,720 Speaker 1: So here's what I think the answer is. In my 151 00:10:22,800 --> 00:10:26,199 Speaker 1: book Live Wired, I proposed what I call the potato 152 00:10:26,280 --> 00:10:29,920 Speaker 1: head model of the brain. And this model proposes that 153 00:10:29,960 --> 00:10:34,280 Speaker 1: you can plug in whatever peripheral devices you want, like 154 00:10:34,520 --> 00:10:37,200 Speaker 1: arms or fins or wings, just like plugging things into 155 00:10:37,240 --> 00:10:41,720 Speaker 1: a potato head, and the brain will figure out how 156 00:10:41,800 --> 00:10:45,520 Speaker 1: to drive them. It's kind of like with your computer. 157 00:10:45,760 --> 00:10:50,920 Speaker 1: Your laptop manufacturer doesn't have to know the next model 158 00:10:50,960 --> 00:10:53,240 Speaker 1: of peripheral that's going to come out in a couple 159 00:10:53,240 --> 00:10:57,720 Speaker 1: of years. Your laptop is ready to drive anything whatever 160 00:10:57,760 --> 00:11:03,200 Speaker 1: comes along. So in this potato head framework, mother nature 161 00:11:03,280 --> 00:11:08,080 Speaker 1: has the freedom to experiment genetically with any kind of 162 00:11:08,480 --> 00:11:11,920 Speaker 1: plug in play motor devices. You just plug in whatever 163 00:11:12,000 --> 00:11:15,680 Speaker 1: limbs you want and the brain will figure out how 164 00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:20,800 Speaker 1: to drive them. It doesn't matter if this is fingers 165 00:11:21,040 --> 00:11:24,920 Speaker 1: or flappers or fins. It doesn't matter if your body 166 00:11:24,960 --> 00:11:28,079 Speaker 1: shows up with two legs or four legs or eight legs. 167 00:11:28,120 --> 00:11:33,200 Speaker 1: It doesn't matter whether you sprout hands or talons or wings. 168 00:11:33,840 --> 00:11:38,080 Speaker 1: The fundamental principles of brain operation don't need to be 169 00:11:38,120 --> 00:11:42,360 Speaker 1: redesigned every time. The motor system that we're talking about 170 00:11:42,440 --> 00:11:46,640 Speaker 1: in the brain, well, it figures out how to drive 171 00:11:46,800 --> 00:11:51,920 Speaker 1: the available machinery. So the advantage of such an adaptable 172 00:11:51,960 --> 00:11:55,920 Speaker 1: brain is that it allows mother nature to mess around 173 00:11:55,960 --> 00:12:01,160 Speaker 1: with genetics to develop new peripheral devices. And it turns 174 00:12:01,160 --> 00:12:05,480 Speaker 1: out it's shockingly easy for her to make little adjustments 175 00:12:05,600 --> 00:12:08,480 Speaker 1: to the a's and seas and teas and gees, and 176 00:12:08,600 --> 00:12:12,960 Speaker 1: you end up with all kinds of different body plants. Okay, now, 177 00:12:13,240 --> 00:12:15,719 Speaker 1: wait a mind it, you might say, If bodies are 178 00:12:15,800 --> 00:12:19,640 Speaker 1: so easy to modify with tweaks of the genome, how 179 00:12:19,679 --> 00:12:23,480 Speaker 1: can we don't see things like a human sometimes being 180 00:12:23,559 --> 00:12:27,559 Speaker 1: born with a genetic mutation that gives him a tail 181 00:12:27,840 --> 00:12:32,600 Speaker 1: or an extra arm. Well you do. Actually, it turns 182 00:12:32,600 --> 00:12:36,839 Speaker 1: out that some genes in your genome act like movie directors. 183 00:12:37,000 --> 00:12:41,560 Speaker 1: They carefully control which thing happens when and where, and 184 00:12:41,760 --> 00:12:46,599 Speaker 1: in this case, which other gene cascades get triggered to unpack. 185 00:12:47,480 --> 00:12:51,240 Speaker 1: So in fruit flies, a few decades ago, it was 186 00:12:51,320 --> 00:12:56,840 Speaker 1: discovered that certain mutations in these director genes control the 187 00:12:56,880 --> 00:13:00,720 Speaker 1: development of the larger body structure. One of the first 188 00:13:00,720 --> 00:13:05,200 Speaker 1: discoveries involved a mutation in the fruit flies in which 189 00:13:05,200 --> 00:13:08,160 Speaker 1: a pair of legs would grow where the antennae were 190 00:13:08,160 --> 00:13:11,480 Speaker 1: supposed to be, and there's a reverse mutation which placed 191 00:13:11,520 --> 00:13:14,560 Speaker 1: antennae where the legs should be. So when you start 192 00:13:14,679 --> 00:13:17,360 Speaker 1: looking at the building of the body this way, you 193 00:13:17,400 --> 00:13:20,280 Speaker 1: see it's sort of like lego. You can just swap 194 00:13:20,320 --> 00:13:24,760 Speaker 1: one thing out for another. Based on these genes coated 195 00:13:24,800 --> 00:13:27,640 Speaker 1: in a's and seas and teas and geese. If you 196 00:13:27,679 --> 00:13:30,880 Speaker 1: want to look this up further, look up homeobox genes. 197 00:13:31,679 --> 00:13:34,040 Speaker 1: The big point I want to make here is just 198 00:13:34,120 --> 00:13:36,800 Speaker 1: that some genes act as a switch to turn on 199 00:13:36,840 --> 00:13:40,120 Speaker 1: a cascade of other genes, and this is why many 200 00:13:40,200 --> 00:13:45,720 Speaker 1: mutations involve the surprising appearance or disappearance of a full 201 00:13:45,760 --> 00:13:50,000 Speaker 1: body part. So in humans you can find these surprisingly 202 00:13:50,080 --> 00:13:54,920 Speaker 1: small mutations where, for example, a child is born with 203 00:13:54,960 --> 00:13:59,360 Speaker 1: a tail, it's just a genetic program which extends the 204 00:13:59,400 --> 00:14:03,040 Speaker 1: spinal column and keeps it going. Every year, there are 205 00:14:03,160 --> 00:14:06,800 Speaker 1: hundreds of children born with tails, and the tail gets 206 00:14:06,920 --> 00:14:10,600 Speaker 1: simply removed with an operation. In Live Wired, I tell 207 00:14:10,640 --> 00:14:13,800 Speaker 1: the story of a baby named Gigi who was born 208 00:14:13,800 --> 00:14:19,240 Speaker 1: in China a few years ago, and Gigi had three arms. Now, 209 00:14:19,280 --> 00:14:21,680 Speaker 1: for the COGNISCINTI, I'll just mention that this sort of 210 00:14:21,680 --> 00:14:26,760 Speaker 1: thing sometimes happens because of a parasitic twin in the womb, 211 00:14:27,320 --> 00:14:30,440 Speaker 1: where one twin doesn't make it and gets absorbed into 212 00:14:30,480 --> 00:14:33,200 Speaker 1: the body of the healthier twin. But that's not the 213 00:14:33,240 --> 00:14:37,720 Speaker 1: case with Gigi. His genetics simply dictated the growth of 214 00:14:37,760 --> 00:14:42,240 Speaker 1: a third arm. The surgeons in China took several hours 215 00:14:42,280 --> 00:14:45,080 Speaker 1: to remove one of the arms because both arms on 216 00:14:45,120 --> 00:14:50,400 Speaker 1: the left side were well developed and had individual shoulder blades. Now, 217 00:14:50,440 --> 00:14:55,000 Speaker 1: what tails and extra arms illustrate is the way body 218 00:14:55,080 --> 00:15:00,160 Speaker 1: plants can change with small alterations of the genetics. And 219 00:15:00,320 --> 00:15:03,240 Speaker 1: it goes without saying that this sort of genetic wobble 220 00:15:03,400 --> 00:15:06,800 Speaker 1: happens in minor ways all around us. Some people have 221 00:15:07,320 --> 00:15:10,880 Speaker 1: longer arms, or stubby your fingers, or a big toe 222 00:15:10,920 --> 00:15:13,720 Speaker 1: that's shorter than the second toe, or wider hips or 223 00:15:13,760 --> 00:15:19,040 Speaker 1: broader shoulders. And although our nearest cousins, the chimpanzees, are 224 00:15:19,160 --> 00:15:22,240 Speaker 1: nearly genetically identical to us, they have a lot of 225 00:15:22,280 --> 00:15:26,760 Speaker 1: differences in their body plan. For starters, their bicep muscle 226 00:15:26,800 --> 00:15:30,440 Speaker 1: has a higher insertion point, and their hips are turned 227 00:15:30,480 --> 00:15:34,320 Speaker 1: more outward, and their toes are much longer. Now, the 228 00:15:34,360 --> 00:15:39,120 Speaker 1: point is that the chimpanzee brain, with its mere ninety 229 00:15:39,200 --> 00:15:43,560 Speaker 1: thousand genes, doesn't have to be reinvented to figure out 230 00:15:43,600 --> 00:15:47,200 Speaker 1: how to drive a chimpanzee body to swing in trees 231 00:15:47,240 --> 00:15:50,600 Speaker 1: and to walk on knuckles. And by the same token, 232 00:15:50,640 --> 00:15:54,160 Speaker 1: the human brain doesn't have to be reinvented to figure 233 00:15:54,160 --> 00:15:57,920 Speaker 1: out how to play pickleball or dance hip hop. In 234 00:15:57,920 --> 00:16:02,320 Speaker 1: both cases, the brain just figures out how to best 235 00:16:02,680 --> 00:16:21,440 Speaker 1: drive the machinery that it has. So to understand the 236 00:16:21,560 --> 00:16:26,320 Speaker 1: power of this principle, consider Matt Stutsman. This is a 237 00:16:26,360 --> 00:16:30,080 Speaker 1: guy who is born without arms. He found himself really 238 00:16:30,080 --> 00:16:34,240 Speaker 1: attracted to archery, so he learns to manipulate a bow 239 00:16:34,280 --> 00:16:39,160 Speaker 1: and arrow with his feet. What he does is notch 240 00:16:39,320 --> 00:16:42,520 Speaker 1: the arrow into the string with his toes. Then he 241 00:16:42,880 --> 00:16:46,040 Speaker 1: lifts the bow with his right foot, and he's got 242 00:16:46,080 --> 00:16:48,560 Speaker 1: a strap around his neck which connects the bow to 243 00:16:48,640 --> 00:16:51,480 Speaker 1: his shoulder, and that allows him to position it at 244 00:16:51,520 --> 00:16:54,280 Speaker 1: eye level. And then he puts tension on the bow 245 00:16:54,360 --> 00:16:57,480 Speaker 1: by pushing it forward with his foot, and when his 246 00:16:57,600 --> 00:17:00,520 Speaker 1: aim is on target, he lets the arrow fly. Now, 247 00:17:00,560 --> 00:17:04,040 Speaker 1: the thing is that Matt is not simply talented at archery. 248 00:17:04,119 --> 00:17:08,080 Speaker 1: He is the best in the world. As of this podcast, 249 00:17:08,160 --> 00:17:12,520 Speaker 1: he holds the record for the longest accurate shot in archery. 250 00:17:13,160 --> 00:17:16,119 Speaker 1: And that's probably not what his doctors would have predicted 251 00:17:16,480 --> 00:17:19,520 Speaker 1: for a baby who came out of the womb without arms, 252 00:17:20,200 --> 00:17:24,200 Speaker 1: But perhaps they didn't realize how readily his brain would 253 00:17:24,200 --> 00:17:28,639 Speaker 1: adapt its resources to solve problems in the outside world. 254 00:17:29,640 --> 00:17:32,879 Speaker 1: Now we see this sort of flexibility everywhere in the 255 00:17:32,920 --> 00:17:37,439 Speaker 1: animal kingdom. Consider this incredible dog whose name is Faith, 256 00:17:37,880 --> 00:17:41,920 Speaker 1: who was born without front legs, and she grew from 257 00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:45,679 Speaker 1: puppyhood to be able to walk on her two hind 258 00:17:45,800 --> 00:17:49,200 Speaker 1: legs bipetally the way that a human walks. You can 259 00:17:49,240 --> 00:17:52,640 Speaker 1: find YouTube videos of her walking around. It's totally amazing 260 00:17:52,640 --> 00:17:56,439 Speaker 1: to watch. And although we might have guessed that dog 261 00:17:56,480 --> 00:18:02,200 Speaker 1: brains come hardwired to drive standard dog bodies, Faith shows 262 00:18:02,280 --> 00:18:05,560 Speaker 1: us how readily brains will move around the world with 263 00:18:05,600 --> 00:18:10,040 Speaker 1: whatever machinery they find themselves in. So what we see 264 00:18:10,240 --> 00:18:13,680 Speaker 1: from Matt or from Faith the Dog is that brains 265 00:18:13,720 --> 00:18:18,959 Speaker 1: are not predefined for particular bodies. Instead, they adapt themselves 266 00:18:19,040 --> 00:18:22,960 Speaker 1: to move and interact and succeed in the world. And 267 00:18:23,040 --> 00:18:26,000 Speaker 1: this isn't simply about the body you're born in, but 268 00:18:26,200 --> 00:18:31,119 Speaker 1: about whatever opportunities might come along. So take Sir Blake, 269 00:18:31,320 --> 00:18:37,040 Speaker 1: a bulldog here in California who's mastered skateboarding. He steps 270 00:18:37,119 --> 00:18:39,840 Speaker 1: up onto the skateboard and with his front paw he 271 00:18:40,040 --> 00:18:43,080 Speaker 1: scrapes at the ground to get momentum, and at the 272 00:18:43,160 --> 00:18:46,560 Speaker 1: right moment, he sets his front paw onto the board 273 00:18:47,040 --> 00:18:49,840 Speaker 1: and he leans into the ride, and he shifts his 274 00:18:50,000 --> 00:18:53,679 Speaker 1: body weight to steer the board around obstacles, just like 275 00:18:53,720 --> 00:18:56,520 Speaker 1: a human wood. And when he's done, he lets the 276 00:18:56,560 --> 00:19:01,240 Speaker 1: skateboard slow down almost to a stop, and then he dismount. Now, 277 00:19:01,320 --> 00:19:05,480 Speaker 1: given the absence of wheels in the evolutionary history of dogs, 278 00:19:05,920 --> 00:19:09,960 Speaker 1: what this shows is the adaptability of brains to steer 279 00:19:10,160 --> 00:19:15,000 Speaker 1: new possibilities. Or take this other dog named Sugar who 280 00:19:15,040 --> 00:19:20,040 Speaker 1: took up surfboarding and is inducted into the International Surf 281 00:19:20,119 --> 00:19:23,800 Speaker 1: Dog Walk of Fame, or on second thought, forget Sugar 282 00:19:24,119 --> 00:19:27,160 Speaker 1: and just revel in the fact that there is an 283 00:19:27,240 --> 00:19:31,320 Speaker 1: International Surf Dog Walk of Fame, because there are lots 284 00:19:31,320 --> 00:19:33,879 Speaker 1: of dogs that do this, and we don't usually think 285 00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:38,680 Speaker 1: about studying dog brains in the context of how they 286 00:19:38,680 --> 00:19:42,160 Speaker 1: hang ten on a longboard, but you can, because all 287 00:19:42,240 --> 00:19:46,480 Speaker 1: the dog requires is the opportunity and their motor systems 288 00:19:46,520 --> 00:19:50,719 Speaker 1: will figure it out. So how do these dogs do it? 289 00:19:51,320 --> 00:19:55,760 Speaker 1: And what does this have to do with a baby babbling? Well, 290 00:19:55,800 --> 00:19:59,520 Speaker 1: a baby learns how to shape its mouth and breathing 291 00:20:00,080 --> 00:20:03,679 Speaker 1: to produce language. But this is not from genetics, and 292 00:20:03,720 --> 00:20:07,000 Speaker 1: it's not by studying a book or surfing Wikipedia. It's 293 00:20:07,119 --> 00:20:11,160 Speaker 1: from babbling. They listen to what's going on around them, 294 00:20:11,200 --> 00:20:15,639 Speaker 1: and they try things out, and their brain compares how 295 00:20:15,680 --> 00:20:18,719 Speaker 1: close their own sound was to what they're hearing from 296 00:20:18,760 --> 00:20:22,080 Speaker 1: the adults around them. And this has helped long because 297 00:20:22,119 --> 00:20:26,240 Speaker 1: they get positive reactions for some utterances and not for others. 298 00:20:26,800 --> 00:20:30,680 Speaker 1: And so there's this constant feedback loop, and that allows 299 00:20:30,720 --> 00:20:35,680 Speaker 1: babies to refine their speech to perfection in whatever language 300 00:20:35,720 --> 00:20:39,120 Speaker 1: is being spoken around them, whether that's English or Chinese 301 00:20:39,160 --> 00:20:43,840 Speaker 1: or Hindi or any of the seven thousand languages spoken 302 00:20:43,840 --> 00:20:47,960 Speaker 1: around the globe. In exactly the same way, the brain 303 00:20:48,080 --> 00:20:52,760 Speaker 1: learns how to steer its body by motor babbling, in 304 00:20:52,800 --> 00:20:56,879 Speaker 1: other words, babbling with its slims. Just watch a baby 305 00:20:56,960 --> 00:21:01,360 Speaker 1: in the crib. She bites her toes, she slaps her forehead, 306 00:21:01,840 --> 00:21:05,120 Speaker 1: she tugs on her hair, she bends her fingers, she 307 00:21:05,520 --> 00:21:07,679 Speaker 1: knocks on the bar of the crib, and so on. 308 00:21:08,080 --> 00:21:12,480 Speaker 1: And by doing this, she's learning how her motor output 309 00:21:12,880 --> 00:21:18,040 Speaker 1: corresponds to the sensory feedback she receives. And in this way, 310 00:21:18,240 --> 00:21:21,919 Speaker 1: she's learning to understand the language of her body, how 311 00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:27,200 Speaker 1: her outputs nap onto the next inputs. She's trying things 312 00:21:27,200 --> 00:21:30,480 Speaker 1: out and she's getting feedback, and this is how she 313 00:21:30,560 --> 00:21:34,800 Speaker 1: eventually learns how to walk and navigate food to her mouth, 314 00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:38,280 Speaker 1: and eventually swim in a pool and dangle on monkey 315 00:21:38,280 --> 00:21:42,880 Speaker 1: bars and master a cartwheel. She's trying things out, she's adjusting, 316 00:21:43,000 --> 00:21:48,320 Speaker 1: she's motorically babbling. And even better, we use this same 317 00:21:48,359 --> 00:21:52,240 Speaker 1: method to attach extensions to our bodies. So think about 318 00:21:52,320 --> 00:21:56,400 Speaker 1: riding a bicycle, which is a machine that our genome 319 00:21:56,480 --> 00:22:00,199 Speaker 1: presumably did not see coming to master bike riding. Have 320 00:22:00,240 --> 00:22:04,840 Speaker 1: to carefully balance your torso, and you change direction by 321 00:22:04,880 --> 00:22:08,320 Speaker 1: moving your arms, and you have to stop by squeezing 322 00:22:08,359 --> 00:22:11,520 Speaker 1: your hands, and this is all totally different from the 323 00:22:11,560 --> 00:22:15,920 Speaker 1: way we normally move. But despite these complexities, most five 324 00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:20,280 Speaker 1: year olds can demonstrate that the extended body plan is 325 00:22:20,400 --> 00:22:24,960 Speaker 1: easily added to the resume of their motor cortex. And 326 00:22:25,040 --> 00:22:29,360 Speaker 1: this isn't just limited to typical bicycles. Consider the sky 327 00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:33,360 Speaker 1: named Deston Sandlin. He's an engineer who has given this 328 00:22:33,560 --> 00:22:37,440 Speaker 1: very strange bicycle by a friend. It had this elaborate 329 00:22:37,560 --> 00:22:40,879 Speaker 1: gearing system so that if you turned the handlebars to 330 00:22:40,920 --> 00:22:43,000 Speaker 1: the left, the front wheel would turn to the right, 331 00:22:43,400 --> 00:22:47,600 Speaker 1: and vice versa. And so Deston was fairly sure that 332 00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:51,360 Speaker 1: this wouldn't be too difficult to master because the concept 333 00:22:51,480 --> 00:22:55,280 Speaker 1: is very straightforward. You just steer the opposite direction that 334 00:22:55,359 --> 00:22:57,960 Speaker 1: you want to go. But as it turned out, the 335 00:22:58,000 --> 00:23:02,520 Speaker 1: bicycle was just too difficult to ride because it required 336 00:23:03,200 --> 00:23:07,080 Speaker 1: unlearning the normal operation of a bicycle steering wheel and 337 00:23:07,280 --> 00:23:11,280 Speaker 1: training his motor cortex to master this new task was 338 00:23:11,320 --> 00:23:15,639 Speaker 1: not as simple as having a cognitive understanding. In other words, 339 00:23:15,760 --> 00:23:18,680 Speaker 1: he knew how the bicycle worked, but that didn't mean 340 00:23:18,720 --> 00:23:21,560 Speaker 1: he could do the right thing with his body. But 341 00:23:21,680 --> 00:23:24,200 Speaker 1: after some weeks he began to get the hang of it. 342 00:23:24,680 --> 00:23:27,960 Speaker 1: He practiced every day, and each time he'd try to move, 343 00:23:28,560 --> 00:23:31,679 Speaker 1: he would get feedback from the world, like you're falling 344 00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:34,200 Speaker 1: to the ride, or you're crashing into a trash can, 345 00:23:34,280 --> 00:23:36,760 Speaker 1: or you're swerving in front of the mail truck. And 346 00:23:36,840 --> 00:23:40,600 Speaker 1: so he used that feedback to adjust his next moves, 347 00:23:41,160 --> 00:23:44,560 Speaker 1: and after several weeks of practicing, he got pretty good 348 00:23:44,600 --> 00:23:47,119 Speaker 1: at it. And he did this the same way that 349 00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:49,840 Speaker 1: he learned how to ride a normal bike as a kid, 350 00:23:49,840 --> 00:23:52,800 Speaker 1: by motor babbling. And by the way, you know what 351 00:23:52,880 --> 00:23:54,960 Speaker 1: this is like If you drive and you go to 352 00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:58,000 Speaker 1: a country that has the steering wheel on the other 353 00:23:58,040 --> 00:24:00,920 Speaker 1: side of the car, if you or an American in 354 00:24:00,920 --> 00:24:04,320 Speaker 1: England or vice versa, you keep swerving the wrong way, 355 00:24:04,600 --> 00:24:08,200 Speaker 1: but you eventually get better because your visual system looks 356 00:24:08,200 --> 00:24:12,240 Speaker 1: at the consequences of each action and adjusts things accordingly. 357 00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:15,480 Speaker 1: It's just how Matt Stutsman learned how to shoot bows 358 00:24:15,760 --> 00:24:19,600 Speaker 1: or sugar learned how to skateboard. Motor babbling is not 359 00:24:19,720 --> 00:24:23,520 Speaker 1: only the way that babies and bicyclists learn, it's also 360 00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:27,760 Speaker 1: become a new approach in robotics. So take this starfish 361 00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:32,159 Speaker 1: robot developed by my colleague Hodd Lipson. The idea is 362 00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:34,760 Speaker 1: that it's a very simple robot. It's just a small 363 00:24:34,800 --> 00:24:38,760 Speaker 1: square body with four arms that stick out. The key 364 00:24:38,920 --> 00:24:42,800 Speaker 1: is lips and doesn't teach it how to use its body. 365 00:24:42,960 --> 00:24:47,520 Speaker 1: It figures itself out. The starfish tries out a move 366 00:24:47,800 --> 00:24:51,199 Speaker 1: the way that an infant might flail a limb, and 367 00:24:51,320 --> 00:24:55,119 Speaker 1: it analyzes what happens. In the robots case, it's just 368 00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:59,960 Speaker 1: using gyroscopes to see how the move tilted the central bot. 369 00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:03,240 Speaker 1: So if it does just a single move, that can't 370 00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:05,520 Speaker 1: tell it what its body looks like and how it 371 00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:10,160 Speaker 1: interacts with the world. But that feedback narrows the space 372 00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:14,399 Speaker 1: of possibilities, so it now has a smaller space of 373 00:25:14,480 --> 00:25:17,760 Speaker 1: hypotheses about what its body looks like. So now it 374 00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:20,000 Speaker 1: does the next move, and the next and so on, 375 00:25:20,480 --> 00:25:24,040 Speaker 1: and instead of choosing random movements, it chooses its next 376 00:25:24,119 --> 00:25:29,119 Speaker 1: move to do a good job distinguishing the available remaining 377 00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:34,720 Speaker 1: hypotheses so by doing this over and over, by motoric babbling, 378 00:25:35,119 --> 00:25:38,919 Speaker 1: it develops a clearer and clearer picture of its body. 379 00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:42,119 Speaker 1: In this way, it learns itself. You don't need a 380 00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:47,160 Speaker 1: preprogram this robot. It learns its own capabilities. And what's 381 00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:49,760 Speaker 1: wild is that if you snap off one of the 382 00:25:49,840 --> 00:25:53,639 Speaker 1: legs of this robot, it'll figure itself out again. And 383 00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:58,160 Speaker 1: it turns out that building a babbling, self exploring robot 384 00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:02,639 Speaker 1: is way more flexible than preprogramming the robot. And in 385 00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:06,360 Speaker 1: the animal kingdom, nature only has some tens of thousands 386 00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:09,480 Speaker 1: of genes to work with to build a creature, so 387 00:26:09,520 --> 00:26:13,720 Speaker 1: it can't possibly preprogram all of the actions that one 388 00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:17,560 Speaker 1: might do in the world. So it's only choice is 389 00:26:17,560 --> 00:26:22,840 Speaker 1: to build a system that figures itself out. Now, think 390 00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:25,720 Speaker 1: about the stories that we just talked about with Matt Stutsman, 391 00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:28,760 Speaker 1: the archer with no arms, or the skateboarding dog or 392 00:26:28,760 --> 00:26:32,320 Speaker 1: the surfing dog or the starfish robot. What they all 393 00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:36,119 Speaker 1: have in common is the same principle, whatever kind of 394 00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:38,680 Speaker 1: way that you can move around in the world, the 395 00:26:38,720 --> 00:26:42,320 Speaker 1: brain on the inside does not have to be redesigned. 396 00:26:42,359 --> 00:26:47,040 Speaker 1: It just recalibrates to maximize what it can do. It 397 00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:50,879 Speaker 1: figures out how to control whatever body it's in. A 398 00:26:51,040 --> 00:26:54,880 Speaker 1: live wired brain doesn't need to be redesigned if there's 399 00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:58,680 Speaker 1: a genetic change to the body, planet just adjusts itself. 400 00:26:59,040 --> 00:27:04,159 Speaker 1: And that is how evolution can so effectively shape animals 401 00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:09,160 Speaker 1: to fit any habitat in different environments. Animals will evolve 402 00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:14,040 Speaker 1: hoofs or toes or fins or forearms or trunks or 403 00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:17,920 Speaker 1: tails or talons, and Mother Nature doesn't need to reinvent 404 00:27:17,960 --> 00:27:21,359 Speaker 1: the principles of the brain or do anything extra to 405 00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:25,280 Speaker 1: make the new animal operate correctly. And you know what, 406 00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:29,640 Speaker 1: Evolution really couldn't work any other way. It couldn't operate 407 00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:34,080 Speaker 1: quickly enough unless body plan changes were easy to deploy 408 00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:38,720 Speaker 1: and brain changes just followed without difficulty. And this massive 409 00:27:38,760 --> 00:27:42,840 Speaker 1: flexibility is why we can so easily install ourselves into 410 00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:46,720 Speaker 1: new bodies. If you ever saw the movie Aliens from 411 00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:50,960 Speaker 1: a long time ago, you may remember this climactic deathmatch 412 00:27:51,080 --> 00:27:55,920 Speaker 1: that the hero Ellen Ripley has with this giant, slimy alien. 413 00:27:56,440 --> 00:28:00,560 Speaker 1: So she scrambles into this enormous robotics just like a 414 00:28:00,640 --> 00:28:04,560 Speaker 1: mech suit that allows her movements to be magnified into 415 00:28:04,560 --> 00:28:09,119 Speaker 1: these powerful metal arms and legs, and at first, she's 416 00:28:09,160 --> 00:28:13,639 Speaker 1: swinging around awkwardly, but after some practice, she's able to 417 00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:18,120 Speaker 1: land punches right on the alien. Now what we see 418 00:28:18,200 --> 00:28:21,760 Speaker 1: is that Ripley learns how to control her new gargantuan 419 00:28:21,840 --> 00:28:25,680 Speaker 1: body plan, and she does so thanks to her brain's 420 00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:30,600 Speaker 1: capacity to adjust her relationship between her outputs like swinging 421 00:28:30,600 --> 00:28:34,680 Speaker 1: my arm and her inputs. Wears that giant arm right now. 422 00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:39,440 Speaker 1: So it's not difficult to learn these kinds of new associations. 423 00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:44,120 Speaker 1: Just think about forklift drivers who are using their arms 424 00:28:44,120 --> 00:28:47,200 Speaker 1: and these little levers to control something really large, or 425 00:28:47,440 --> 00:28:50,720 Speaker 1: crane operators who are sitting in their little booth and 426 00:28:51,080 --> 00:28:55,360 Speaker 1: operating this thing that's one hundred feet high, or laparoscopic 427 00:28:55,480 --> 00:28:58,760 Speaker 1: surgeons who are controlling levers to control something that's very 428 00:28:58,840 --> 00:29:01,920 Speaker 1: very tiny. So all of these folks get out of 429 00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:06,400 Speaker 1: bed every morning to pilot strange new bodies. And let's 430 00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:09,840 Speaker 1: take another example. There was a very successful young man 431 00:29:10,000 --> 00:29:14,520 Speaker 1: named Jean Dominique Bobie who lived in Paris, and he 432 00:29:14,640 --> 00:29:17,720 Speaker 1: was on top of the world. He was editor in 433 00:29:17,840 --> 00:29:21,800 Speaker 1: chief at El magazine in Paris, and he revolved at 434 00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:25,600 Speaker 1: the top of French social circles. And one afternoon in 435 00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:29,400 Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, without any warning, he had a massive 436 00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:34,560 Speaker 1: stroke and he instantly fell into a deep coma. So 437 00:29:34,640 --> 00:29:37,600 Speaker 1: he stayed in this coma for twenty days, and just 438 00:29:37,680 --> 00:29:42,560 Speaker 1: when everyone was giving up hope, he regained consciousness. But 439 00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:45,239 Speaker 1: there was a problem. It's the type of thing that 440 00:29:45,320 --> 00:29:48,840 Speaker 1: gives everyone who hears about this nightmares, which is that 441 00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:53,120 Speaker 1: he was mentally aware. He could see his surroundings, he 442 00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:57,880 Speaker 1: could understand everything everyone was saying, but he could not move. 443 00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:01,680 Speaker 1: He couldn't twitch his arm, his fingers, his face, his toes. 444 00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:05,880 Speaker 1: He couldn't speak, he couldn't cry out. He discovered that 445 00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:10,760 Speaker 1: his only available action was to blink his left eyelid. 446 00:30:11,520 --> 00:30:14,800 Speaker 1: Other than that, he was locked in the frozen dungeon 447 00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:18,560 Speaker 1: of his body. This is called locked in syndrome. So 448 00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:22,360 Speaker 1: luckily he had a heroic nurse with a plan. She 449 00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:26,080 Speaker 1: would sit with him and recite all of the letters 450 00:30:26,120 --> 00:30:29,400 Speaker 1: in the alphabet in the order of their frequency, and 451 00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:32,719 Speaker 1: he would blink his eye when she arrived at the 452 00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:36,720 Speaker 1: next letter he wanted, and in this way, one letter 453 00:30:36,760 --> 00:30:41,160 Speaker 1: at a time, he could communicate, and eventually he wrote 454 00:30:41,200 --> 00:30:45,280 Speaker 1: out an entire book called The Diving Bell in the Butterfly. 455 00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:48,959 Speaker 1: He died just before I was published. But this became 456 00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:53,600 Speaker 1: a huge international bestseller, in part because it allowed readers 457 00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:57,680 Speaker 1: to appreciate, probably for the first time, this simple pleasure 458 00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:03,720 Speaker 1: of having a brain that successfully drives this enormous meat robot, 459 00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:09,080 Speaker 1: and does so with such expertise that were totally unaware 460 00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:13,840 Speaker 1: of the massive operations running under the hood. Now here's 461 00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:16,880 Speaker 1: the question, what if we could have measured the little 462 00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:21,720 Speaker 1: electrical signals in Bobie's brain, the spikes and his neurons, 463 00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:25,560 Speaker 1: instead of having to look just at his eyeblinks. What 464 00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:28,800 Speaker 1: if we could have eaves dropped on his neural circuits 465 00:31:28,840 --> 00:31:31,360 Speaker 1: to figure out what they were trying to say to 466 00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:35,080 Speaker 1: the muscles, and then by passed the injury to make 467 00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:38,920 Speaker 1: something happen in the outside world. Well, a year after 468 00:31:38,960 --> 00:31:44,760 Speaker 1: Bobie's death, researchers at Emory University implanted a brain computer 469 00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:48,960 Speaker 1: interface into another locked in patient named Johnny Ray, and 470 00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:52,760 Speaker 1: Johnny Ray lived long enough to control a computer cursor 471 00:31:53,400 --> 00:31:59,040 Speaker 1: simply by imagining the movement. His motor cortex was unable 472 00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:02,480 Speaker 1: to get the signals through the damaged spinal cord, but 473 00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:06,280 Speaker 1: this implant could listen to the signals and then pass 474 00:32:06,360 --> 00:32:09,720 Speaker 1: along that message to the computer. Then, in two thousand 475 00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:13,800 Speaker 1: and six, a paralyzed former football player named Matt Nagel 476 00:32:14,160 --> 00:32:17,760 Speaker 1: was able to control lights and open an email, and 477 00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:20,840 Speaker 1: play the video game Pawn and draw a circle on 478 00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:24,360 Speaker 1: the screen. And this was all because of a four 479 00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:28,760 Speaker 1: by four millimeter grid of almost one hundred electrodes implanted 480 00:32:28,880 --> 00:32:34,040 Speaker 1: directly into his motor cortex. He would imagine moving his muscles, 481 00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:37,920 Speaker 1: which caused activity in his motor cortex, and the researchers 482 00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:43,160 Speaker 1: could measure that activity to at least crudely determine the intention. 483 00:32:43,840 --> 00:32:48,200 Speaker 1: The technology used with Johnny and Matt it was makeshift 484 00:32:48,240 --> 00:32:53,040 Speaker 1: and unpolished, but had proved the possibility, and by twenty eleven, 485 00:32:53,160 --> 00:32:56,400 Speaker 1: my neuroscience colleague Andrew Schwartz and his colleagues at the 486 00:32:56,480 --> 00:33:01,240 Speaker 1: University of Pittsburgh built a prosthetic arm was almost as 487 00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:05,280 Speaker 1: sophisticated and lie as a real arm. And a woman 488 00:33:05,360 --> 00:33:09,880 Speaker 1: named Jan Schumann had become paralyzed from a disorder called 489 00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:16,320 Speaker 1: spinocerebellar degeneration, and she volunteered herself for a neurosurgery that 490 00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:19,760 Speaker 1: would give her control of this arm. So, with the 491 00:33:19,920 --> 00:33:25,640 Speaker 1: signals recorded from her motor cortex, Jan imagines making a 492 00:33:25,720 --> 00:33:30,120 Speaker 1: movement with her arm, and the robotic arm moves. This 493 00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:33,800 Speaker 1: robotic arm is part way across the room, but this 494 00:33:33,880 --> 00:33:37,760 Speaker 1: makes no difference because through the bundle of wires that 495 00:33:37,880 --> 00:33:41,760 Speaker 1: attaches these electrodes in her brain to the computer and 496 00:33:41,800 --> 00:33:45,480 Speaker 1: to the robotic arm, she can make it turn and grasp, 497 00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:48,240 Speaker 1: essentially the way that she would have done with her 498 00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:52,200 Speaker 1: own arm years ago. Normally, when you think about moving 499 00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:55,880 Speaker 1: your arm, the signals traveled from the motor cortex down 500 00:33:55,920 --> 00:33:59,000 Speaker 1: your spinal cord, into the peripheral nerves into your muscle fibers. 501 00:33:59,520 --> 00:34:02,960 Speaker 1: With Jan, the signals recorded from the brain just take 502 00:34:02,960 --> 00:34:05,880 Speaker 1: a different root. They're going long wires connected to motors 503 00:34:05,920 --> 00:34:10,480 Speaker 1: instead of neurons connected to muscles. So Jan gets better 504 00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:13,319 Speaker 1: and better at using the arm, in part because of 505 00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:17,600 Speaker 1: improving technology, but also because her brain is rewiring to 506 00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:21,799 Speaker 1: understand how to best control its new limb, just as 507 00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:25,280 Speaker 1: it would with a reversed bicycle or a surfboarder Ellen 508 00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:29,240 Speaker 1: Ripley's mex suit. Jan is doing motor babbling to figure 509 00:34:29,280 --> 00:34:33,719 Speaker 1: out how to drive the arm smoothly, and in an interview, 510 00:34:33,800 --> 00:34:37,560 Speaker 1: by the way, Jan said, I'd so much rather have 511 00:34:37,840 --> 00:34:41,640 Speaker 1: my brain than my legs. Why did she say that. 512 00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:44,480 Speaker 1: It's because if you have the brain, you can build 513 00:34:44,480 --> 00:34:47,520 Speaker 1: a new body, but not the other way around. So 514 00:34:47,560 --> 00:34:52,759 Speaker 1: we see that brain machine interfaces can restore or replace 515 00:34:52,920 --> 00:34:56,080 Speaker 1: damaged limbs, But the question is could you use this 516 00:34:56,239 --> 00:35:01,200 Speaker 1: same technology to add an additional limb. So in two 517 00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:05,160 Speaker 1: thousand and eight, a monkey with two normal arms used 518 00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:09,000 Speaker 1: its thoughts to control a third arm made of metal. 519 00:35:09,600 --> 00:35:12,520 Speaker 1: This was again the work of my colleague Andrew Schwartz. 520 00:35:12,920 --> 00:35:15,439 Speaker 1: He and his team put a tiny array of electrodes 521 00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:19,000 Speaker 1: into the monkey's brain, and when the monkey thought about 522 00:35:19,080 --> 00:35:22,680 Speaker 1: different things, that could control the robotic arms to pluck 523 00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:26,600 Speaker 1: marshmallows and stick them in his mouth with the robotic arm. 524 00:35:27,120 --> 00:35:30,680 Speaker 1: The monkey initially trained for this by moving a cursor 525 00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:33,880 Speaker 1: on the screen towards a target, and he'd get rewarded 526 00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:36,680 Speaker 1: when he got it right. And at first, the monkey 527 00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:39,640 Speaker 1: would move his own arms while he was doing the task. 528 00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:44,760 Speaker 1: But something remarkable happened, which is eventually he stopped moving 529 00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:48,279 Speaker 1: his arms and the cursor continued to move on its own. 530 00:35:49,080 --> 00:35:54,040 Speaker 1: His brain was rewiring to separate out these tasks, so 531 00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:58,160 Speaker 1: some neurons corresponded to his real arms and some to 532 00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:03,120 Speaker 1: the cursor on screen. Eventually, these signals were able to 533 00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:07,960 Speaker 1: be used to control the robotic arm for marshmallow gathering 534 00:36:07,960 --> 00:36:11,600 Speaker 1: and sticking in his mouth, all without any physical movement 535 00:36:11,640 --> 00:36:15,240 Speaker 1: of his real arms. It had become a new limb, 536 00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:19,680 Speaker 1: a third limb. The way that the monkey learned to 537 00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:24,920 Speaker 1: use the robotic arm independently of its real arms recalls 538 00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:29,120 Speaker 1: docc the character from Spider Man, who controlled his robotic 539 00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:32,920 Speaker 1: limbs even while doing other tasks with his flesh hands. 540 00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:36,799 Speaker 1: So it shouldn't seem surprising that humans and monkeys can 541 00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:41,360 Speaker 1: figure out how to move robotic arms with their thoughts. 542 00:36:41,480 --> 00:36:45,279 Speaker 1: It's the same process by which your brain learned to 543 00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:54,360 Speaker 1: control your natural, fleshy limbs. As we've seen. Your process 544 00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:58,200 Speaker 1: as a baby was to flail your appendages around and 545 00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:01,640 Speaker 1: bite your toes in grass your crib bars and poked 546 00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:05,000 Speaker 1: yourself in the eye and turn yourself over. For years, 547 00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:10,080 Speaker 1: this is how you fine tuned the operation of your machinery. 548 00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:14,239 Speaker 1: Your brain sends out commands, compares those with feedback from 549 00:37:14,239 --> 00:37:17,880 Speaker 1: the world, and eventually learns the capabilities of your limbs. 550 00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:21,799 Speaker 1: So your skin covered arm is really no different from 551 00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:25,799 Speaker 1: the clunky, silver robotic arm of the monkey. It just 552 00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:30,120 Speaker 1: happens to be the standard operating equipment you're used to, 553 00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:35,480 Speaker 1: so you often end up blind to its amazingness. So 554 00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:39,399 Speaker 1: for both jan and the monkeys, the robotic arms were 555 00:37:39,440 --> 00:37:43,000 Speaker 1: not directly connected to their torsos, but instead connected by 556 00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:47,319 Speaker 1: a bundle of wires. The electrodes in their brain sent 557 00:37:47,440 --> 00:37:50,000 Speaker 1: wires to a computer which does the processing, and then 558 00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:52,480 Speaker 1: the bundle of wires goes from the computer to the 559 00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:57,160 Speaker 1: robotic arm. But increasingly this can be done wirelessly, and 560 00:37:57,239 --> 00:38:00,120 Speaker 1: that means the robotic arm that you're controlling does it 561 00:38:00,200 --> 00:38:02,560 Speaker 1: need to be right next to you or even in 562 00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:06,759 Speaker 1: the same room. So could you control a robot on 563 00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:09,880 Speaker 1: the other side of the world. While in two thousand 564 00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:12,799 Speaker 1: and eight, my colleague Miguel Nikolaylis and his team from 565 00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:16,560 Speaker 1: Duke University hooked up electrodes to a monkey and that 566 00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:22,000 Speaker 1: monkey controlled the walking patterns of a robot halfway across 567 00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:28,640 Speaker 1: the globe. So the monkey would walk on a treadmill, 568 00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:32,080 Speaker 1: and the signals from his motor cortex were recorded and 569 00:38:32,239 --> 00:38:35,680 Speaker 1: translated into zeros and ones and transmitted via the Internet 570 00:38:35,880 --> 00:38:39,879 Speaker 1: to a laboratory in Japan and fed into a robot there. 571 00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:43,839 Speaker 1: And while the monkey walked, the five foot tall, two 572 00:38:43,960 --> 00:38:49,000 Speaker 1: hundred pound robot would also walk like a metal doppelganger. 573 00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:53,000 Speaker 1: So after they demonstrated this proof of principle, the Duke 574 00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:57,600 Speaker 1: team stopped the treadmill. But as the monkey looked at 575 00:38:57,640 --> 00:39:01,520 Speaker 1: its avatar on the screen, it's thought about walking, and 576 00:39:01,560 --> 00:39:05,759 Speaker 1: so the robot Japan kept marching along. So in the 577 00:39:05,840 --> 00:39:11,080 Speaker 1: same way that Jan imagines movements and the arm executes 578 00:39:11,120 --> 00:39:16,239 Speaker 1: our internal commands, the monkeys motor cortex continued to think 579 00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:19,520 Speaker 1: about walking even while he wasn't doing it, and the 580 00:39:19,600 --> 00:39:23,280 Speaker 1: robot kept going. So in the not too distant future, 581 00:39:23,640 --> 00:39:27,399 Speaker 1: it seems inevitable that we're going to have mind controlled 582 00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:31,640 Speaker 1: robots in factories or underwater or on the surface of 583 00:39:31,640 --> 00:39:34,080 Speaker 1: the moon. And it's all from the comfort of our 584 00:39:34,120 --> 00:39:41,320 Speaker 1: own couches. And this is because our cortical maps, after 585 00:39:41,480 --> 00:39:46,680 Speaker 1: extensive training, will be able to incorporate whatever the limbs 586 00:39:46,719 --> 00:39:50,680 Speaker 1: of the robot are. That's going to become our tell limbs. 587 00:39:51,160 --> 00:39:54,160 Speaker 1: So think about the way we watch television, which means 588 00:39:54,280 --> 00:39:58,480 Speaker 1: far sight. I'm coining the term tell limbs because in 589 00:39:58,480 --> 00:40:01,799 Speaker 1: the near future, we're going to be control rolling far bodies. 590 00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:20,239 Speaker 1: So the bodies that we have right now have evolved 591 00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:25,480 Speaker 1: for the conditions of this particular oxygen rich planet. But 592 00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:31,520 Speaker 1: leveraging the brain's plasticity to build long distance bodies, that's 593 00:40:31,600 --> 00:40:36,240 Speaker 1: surely going to be our main strategy for space exploration. 594 00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:41,440 Speaker 1: So what consequence would expanding your body, say with a 595 00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:46,239 Speaker 1: robotic arm or a metal avatar across town. What consequence 596 00:40:46,239 --> 00:40:50,319 Speaker 1: would this have for your conscious experience? The answer is 597 00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:53,520 Speaker 1: that the robot will be perceived as a part of you. 598 00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:58,839 Speaker 1: The robot will just be another limb. Now, it's an 599 00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:02,839 Speaker 1: unusual limb because of the physical gap between you and it, 600 00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:06,160 Speaker 1: but it nonetheless will qualify just as a new limb. 601 00:41:06,800 --> 00:41:12,239 Speaker 1: The only reason we're accustomed to connected limbs is that 602 00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:16,760 Speaker 1: Mother Nature is a talented seamstress with muscle and sinew 603 00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:19,360 Speaker 1: and nerves, but she never worked out how to control 604 00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:25,320 Speaker 1: distant limbs via bluetooth. Now, if extra limbs or telelimbs, 605 00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:29,520 Speaker 1: if the seems exotic, recall that you have everyday experience 606 00:41:29,600 --> 00:41:33,360 Speaker 1: with them. Just look in a mirror and move your arm. 607 00:41:33,480 --> 00:41:37,560 Speaker 1: You see a distant object, move in perfect synchrony with 608 00:41:37,640 --> 00:41:42,160 Speaker 1: your motor commands. And although babies are at first confused 609 00:41:42,200 --> 00:41:46,720 Speaker 1: by mirror images, they come to understand the reflections as themselves, 610 00:41:47,640 --> 00:41:51,480 Speaker 1: because although they don't feel any direct sensation from those 611 00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:56,080 Speaker 1: distant limbs, they can witness their control over them, and 612 00:41:56,160 --> 00:42:00,360 Speaker 1: that's enough for these limbs to be annexed by self hood. 613 00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:04,400 Speaker 1: So this notion of this self is analogous to the 614 00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:08,800 Speaker 1: borg in Star Trek, who assimilate everything in their path 615 00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:14,880 Speaker 1: into their singular identity, except for those things that can't control, 616 00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:20,040 Speaker 1: like the impossibly unpredictable Captain Picard. Now this led me 617 00:42:20,120 --> 00:42:23,960 Speaker 1: to propose an axiom in Live Wired about the nature 618 00:42:24,120 --> 00:42:29,920 Speaker 1: of selfhood. What the body can control becomes the self. 619 00:42:30,640 --> 00:42:34,320 Speaker 1: And I think this all pivots on predictability. In other words, 620 00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:36,719 Speaker 1: can I predict that signals from my brain will cause 621 00:42:36,760 --> 00:42:41,520 Speaker 1: something to happen out there? So this relationship of selfhood 622 00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:47,160 Speaker 1: and predictability it allows us to understand disorders such as 623 00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:52,600 Speaker 1: asmatic noosa, which translates to not knowing one's body. So 624 00:42:52,719 --> 00:42:56,560 Speaker 1: in asmatic noosa, damage to the right pridal lobe of 625 00:42:56,640 --> 00:42:59,359 Speaker 1: the brain, say by a stroke or a tumor, means 626 00:42:59,400 --> 00:43:03,080 Speaker 1: that a person is no longer able to control a limb, 627 00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:09,120 Speaker 1: and as a completely gobsmacking result, the patient will deny 628 00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:13,120 Speaker 1: that the limb belongs to her, and sometimes will insist 629 00:43:13,120 --> 00:43:17,120 Speaker 1: that the limb belongs to someone else. She will attribute 630 00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:22,120 Speaker 1: the arm to a dead friend or a relative, or 631 00:43:22,160 --> 00:43:26,360 Speaker 1: a phantasm or a devil, or one of the medical 632 00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:29,799 Speaker 1: professionals taking care of her. She'll say that it's not 633 00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:33,600 Speaker 1: her arm. She'll explain that her own real arm was 634 00:43:33,680 --> 00:43:37,719 Speaker 1: stolen or is simply missing. The manifestations of this can 635 00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:43,000 Speaker 1: be varied and strange, So a patient may feel totally 636 00:43:43,000 --> 00:43:47,440 Speaker 1: indifferent towards her no longer self limb, or she might 637 00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:51,760 Speaker 1: be delusional about it and come up with strange fabrications 638 00:43:51,800 --> 00:43:56,080 Speaker 1: to explain what happened, such as saying someone's so this 639 00:43:56,400 --> 00:44:01,480 Speaker 1: onto my body, or other patients might sympathetically describe their 640 00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:05,440 Speaker 1: limbs as something that they dislike, like a deadweight. And 641 00:44:05,640 --> 00:44:09,160 Speaker 1: in a more vicious version of this breakdown of selfhood, 642 00:44:09,160 --> 00:44:12,920 Speaker 1: a patient may hate her alien limb, and she might 643 00:44:13,000 --> 00:44:16,880 Speaker 1: curse at it and hit it. So there's no gold 644 00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:21,080 Speaker 1: standard for this disorder, but you probably have no trouble 645 00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:24,640 Speaker 1: guessing my proposal in Live Wired, which is the brain 646 00:44:24,760 --> 00:44:28,560 Speaker 1: can no longer control the limb, and so the limb 647 00:44:28,680 --> 00:44:32,280 Speaker 1: falls from the brotherhood of the self. It no longer 648 00:44:32,400 --> 00:44:35,880 Speaker 1: is part of you. Now. Sometimes these patients will have 649 00:44:35,920 --> 00:44:40,480 Speaker 1: a small window of lucidity in which they re recognize 650 00:44:40,520 --> 00:44:42,919 Speaker 1: their limb as their own, but it doesn't last long, 651 00:44:43,280 --> 00:44:46,520 Speaker 1: And I hypothesize that this may result when the arm 652 00:44:46,640 --> 00:44:51,200 Speaker 1: happens to behave like they intended. So it's accidental predictability. 653 00:44:51,800 --> 00:44:56,560 Speaker 1: Given a person's lifelong experience of controlling her arm, it 654 00:44:56,719 --> 00:45:00,000 Speaker 1: doesn't come as a surprise that even a temporary impression 655 00:45:00,160 --> 00:45:04,040 Speaker 1: of control can snap it back into alignment with this self, 656 00:45:04,320 --> 00:45:06,920 Speaker 1: if only for a moment. Now, by the way, I 657 00:45:07,000 --> 00:45:11,040 Speaker 1: suspect this sense of predictability is related to the way 658 00:45:11,080 --> 00:45:15,160 Speaker 1: that a person that you know deeply, like a family member, 659 00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:20,160 Speaker 1: becomes something like a part of yourself. Of course, humans 660 00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:24,120 Speaker 1: are way too complex to predict perfectly, and the degree 661 00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:28,400 Speaker 1: to which your spouse acts surprisingly is the extent to 662 00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:33,200 Speaker 1: which he or she remains independent. Okay, Now, one doesn't 663 00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:37,840 Speaker 1: need prosthetics or brain surgery to try out new bodies. 664 00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:43,680 Speaker 1: The developing field of avatar robotics allows the user to 665 00:45:43,719 --> 00:45:47,160 Speaker 1: control a robot at a distance, seeing what it sees 666 00:45:47,200 --> 00:45:50,080 Speaker 1: and feeling what it feels. So take something called the 667 00:45:50,160 --> 00:45:53,520 Speaker 1: shadow hand, which is one of the most intricate artificial 668 00:45:53,560 --> 00:45:59,000 Speaker 1: hands in existence. Each fingertip is equipped with sensors which 669 00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:03,200 Speaker 1: feed their data back into haptic gloves that are worn 670 00:46:03,280 --> 00:46:07,279 Speaker 1: by the user, So sending data over the internet, one 671 00:46:07,320 --> 00:46:12,360 Speaker 1: can control a robotic hand. In London from Silicon Valley 672 00:46:12,920 --> 00:46:17,719 Speaker 1: and other groups are working on disaster recovery avatars. These 673 00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:21,240 Speaker 1: are robots that are sent in after earthquakes or terrorist 674 00:46:21,280 --> 00:46:24,279 Speaker 1: attacks or fires, and the ideas that they can be 675 00:46:24,360 --> 00:46:28,600 Speaker 1: piloted by drivers that are sitting somewhere else that's safe. Now, 676 00:46:28,600 --> 00:46:33,120 Speaker 1: I haven't yet heard of people using strange bodied avatars, 677 00:46:33,200 --> 00:46:37,080 Speaker 1: but they certainly could. Just as the brain learns skis 678 00:46:37,280 --> 00:46:41,080 Speaker 1: or trampolines or pogo sticks, it can learn to become 679 00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:46,759 Speaker 1: one with a weird and wonderful avatar body. So this 680 00:46:46,800 --> 00:46:50,359 Speaker 1: field of avatar robotics is going to allow people to 681 00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:54,840 Speaker 1: try out extended or strange bodies. But let's note that 682 00:46:54,880 --> 00:46:59,239 Speaker 1: it's super expensive and luckily there's a better way to 683 00:46:59,280 --> 00:47:03,320 Speaker 1: try out different body plans, and that's inside virtual reality. 684 00:47:04,200 --> 00:47:07,680 Speaker 1: So inside a simulated space, you can make massive changes 685 00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:13,279 Speaker 1: to your body plan instantly, inexpensively. So imagine looking into 686 00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:17,200 Speaker 1: a mirror in your VR world, you lift your arm, 687 00:47:17,239 --> 00:47:20,160 Speaker 1: and you see your virtual avatar in the mirror, raise 688 00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:23,200 Speaker 1: its arm, you tilt your neck in the avatar tilts 689 00:47:23,239 --> 00:47:28,160 Speaker 1: its neck. Now, imagine that this avatar has not your face, 690 00:47:28,280 --> 00:47:32,920 Speaker 1: but that of an Ethiopian woman, or a Norwegian man, 691 00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:37,799 Speaker 1: or a Pakistani boy, or a Korean grandmother. So, for 692 00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:40,480 Speaker 1: the reasons that we just saw about how the brain 693 00:47:40,600 --> 00:47:44,480 Speaker 1: determines selfhood, if I can control what it does, it 694 00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:48,280 Speaker 1: becomes me. It only takes a few moments of motor 695 00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:52,520 Speaker 1: babbling in front of this VR mirror to convince yourself 696 00:47:52,600 --> 00:47:56,200 Speaker 1: that you now inhabit a different body. You can then 697 00:47:56,280 --> 00:48:00,560 Speaker 1: walk around in the VR world as a different in person, 698 00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:05,520 Speaker 1: experiencing life through a modified identity. Self identity, by the way, 699 00:48:05,600 --> 00:48:10,760 Speaker 1: is surprisingly flexible. Researchers have been studying this in recent years, 700 00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:14,399 Speaker 1: how taking on the face of a different person can 701 00:48:14,520 --> 00:48:18,040 Speaker 1: enhance empathy, but taking on a new face that's just 702 00:48:18,120 --> 00:48:22,239 Speaker 1: the beginning. So in the late nineteen eighties, because of 703 00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:27,320 Speaker 1: a coding error, the VR study of unusual bodies began. 704 00:48:28,040 --> 00:48:33,239 Speaker 1: A scientist was inhabiting the avatar of a dockworker in 705 00:48:33,360 --> 00:48:37,880 Speaker 1: VR when a programmer accidentally made his arm enormous, like 706 00:48:38,000 --> 00:48:41,319 Speaker 1: the size of a construction crane because he inserted too 707 00:48:41,320 --> 00:48:45,239 Speaker 1: many zeros into the scaling factor. And to everyone's surprise, 708 00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:49,080 Speaker 1: the person in VR was none less able to figure 709 00:48:49,080 --> 00:48:54,080 Speaker 1: out how he could operate accurately and efficiently with this megaarm. 710 00:48:54,640 --> 00:48:57,200 Speaker 1: And so this led people to wonder what kind of 711 00:48:57,239 --> 00:49:01,600 Speaker 1: bodies could be occupied. So my friend Jaron Lanier and 712 00:49:01,760 --> 00:49:05,840 Speaker 1: his colleague An Lasco made an experience in which people 713 00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:12,120 Speaker 1: inhabited the bodies of eight legged lobsters. So your two 714 00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:15,920 Speaker 1: arms controlled the first two arms of the lobster, and 715 00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:20,080 Speaker 1: then they tried out several complicated algorithms to control the 716 00:49:20,200 --> 00:49:23,719 Speaker 1: other arms. And it was pretty tough work to control 717 00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:27,759 Speaker 1: the eight legs of the lobster, but apparently some people 718 00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:31,080 Speaker 1: were able to make it come to pass. So Jaron 719 00:49:31,200 --> 00:49:35,760 Speaker 1: coined the term homuncular flexibility. The homunculus is the little 720 00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:38,960 Speaker 1: man inside your head, the little naps. He coined this 721 00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:45,239 Speaker 1: term homuncular flexibility to capture the surprising elasticity of the 722 00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:50,080 Speaker 1: brain's representation of its body. Some years later, my Stanford 723 00:49:50,080 --> 00:49:53,600 Speaker 1: colleague Jeremy Baylinson and his team set out to test 724 00:49:53,640 --> 00:49:59,399 Speaker 1: homuncular flexibility more scientifically. They asked whether people could learn 725 00:49:59,520 --> 00:50:04,200 Speaker 1: to act accurately control a third arm in VR. So 726 00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:08,359 Speaker 1: imagine strapping on the VR goggles and you grasp two 727 00:50:08,400 --> 00:50:11,239 Speaker 1: controllers in your hand, and so you can see your 728 00:50:11,280 --> 00:50:14,600 Speaker 1: own arms in virtual space, and you see an additional 729 00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:17,640 Speaker 1: arm as well, coming out from the middle of your chest. 730 00:50:18,239 --> 00:50:20,839 Speaker 1: The task is pretty simple. You touch a box as 731 00:50:20,880 --> 00:50:23,919 Speaker 1: soon as it changes color. But there are a lot 732 00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:26,840 Speaker 1: of boxes, and to do well you have to employ 733 00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:31,400 Speaker 1: all three arms. So the first two virtual arms are 734 00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:34,239 Speaker 1: simply controlled by your own arms, and the third arm 735 00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:39,200 Speaker 1: is controlled by rotating your wrists. Within three minutes, users 736 00:50:39,560 --> 00:50:43,239 Speaker 1: got it. They could accommodate the new body plan with 737 00:50:43,280 --> 00:50:47,600 Speaker 1: this third arm and do the task really well. There's 738 00:50:47,640 --> 00:50:51,200 Speaker 1: really no limit to the physiques or body plans that 739 00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:56,520 Speaker 1: you could explore. Imagine finding a virtual tail protruding from 740 00:50:56,520 --> 00:51:00,600 Speaker 1: your tail moan which you could accurately control with your movement, 741 00:51:01,239 --> 00:51:04,480 Speaker 1: or becoming the size of a golf ball or the 742 00:51:04,520 --> 00:51:08,440 Speaker 1: size of a building, or having six fingers, or becoming 743 00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:14,120 Speaker 1: a housefly with wings, or like doc oc, becoming an octopus. 744 00:51:15,320 --> 00:51:20,920 Speaker 1: Marrying the flexibility of the brain to the burgeoning creativity 745 00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:24,240 Speaker 1: of the VR design world. This is why we're moving 746 00:51:24,239 --> 00:51:28,560 Speaker 1: into an era in which our virtual identities are not 747 00:51:28,640 --> 00:51:31,720 Speaker 1: going to be limited by the bodies that we happen 748 00:51:31,760 --> 00:51:35,160 Speaker 1: to have evolved. What we can do instead is speed 749 00:51:35,239 --> 00:51:40,560 Speaker 1: up evolution from eons to hours. We can explore bodies 750 00:51:40,600 --> 00:51:46,320 Speaker 1: that Mother Nature couldn't dream of, making virtual avatars reel 751 00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:53,080 Speaker 1: to the brain. So let's wrap this up. We saw 752 00:51:53,239 --> 00:51:56,920 Speaker 1: with Matt the archer or Faith the dog that brains 753 00:51:57,120 --> 00:52:02,000 Speaker 1: adjust to drive whatever body they find themselves in, and 754 00:52:02,200 --> 00:52:05,680 Speaker 1: like Jam's robotic arm, brains can also figure out how 755 00:52:05,719 --> 00:52:10,840 Speaker 1: to operate new hardware additions. Massive networks of brain cells 756 00:52:11,320 --> 00:52:14,880 Speaker 1: pull off this trick by putting out motor commands like 757 00:52:15,120 --> 00:52:18,759 Speaker 1: lean to the left and assessing the feedback like the 758 00:52:18,880 --> 00:52:23,439 Speaker 1: skateboard tilted and wobbled, and then it adjusts its parameters 759 00:52:23,480 --> 00:52:28,400 Speaker 1: to climb the mountain of expertise. So our progeny won't 760 00:52:28,520 --> 00:52:32,799 Speaker 1: have to limit themselves to the boundaries of their bodies. Instead, 761 00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:36,120 Speaker 1: they're going to be able to extend across the universe 762 00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:40,520 Speaker 1: according to whatever is under their control. Imagine learning how 763 00:52:40,600 --> 00:52:43,799 Speaker 1: to control a drone as part of your body, or 764 00:52:43,880 --> 00:52:48,359 Speaker 1: build robotic wings and control them with your thoughts, just 765 00:52:48,440 --> 00:52:51,960 Speaker 1: how you control your arms and flying across the city 766 00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:56,759 Speaker 1: that way, or imagine having a sail for balancing, or 767 00:52:56,840 --> 00:53:01,759 Speaker 1: a propeller or peripheral devices like a forklift. How would 768 00:53:01,800 --> 00:53:05,000 Speaker 1: you build a better body than the one you inherit 769 00:53:05,040 --> 00:53:11,799 Speaker 1: it from a long road of evolution. That's all for 770 00:53:11,880 --> 00:53:14,840 Speaker 1: this week. To find out more and to share your thoughts, 771 00:53:14,920 --> 00:53:18,799 Speaker 1: head over to eagleman dot com, slash podcasts, and you 772 00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:22,600 Speaker 1: can also watch full episodes of Inner Cosmos on YouTube. 773 00:53:22,960 --> 00:53:25,520 Speaker 1: Subscribe to my channel so you can follow along each 774 00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:29,560 Speaker 1: week for new updates until next time. I'm David Eagleman, 775 00:53:29,719 --> 00:53:31,560 Speaker 1: and this is Inner Cosmos.