Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. This
Speaker 1: is part two where we're rolling through some of the
Speaker 1: big science that occurred in some of the little science.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that you might have missed that. In some
Speaker 1: cases we initially missed. Uh. It's not an exhaustive set
Speaker 1: it in gold launch it into Space list. We likely
Speaker 1: missed some things that you thought were amazing, and we
Speaker 1: definitely would love to hear from you about those, uh,
Speaker 1: those particular topics, those particular studies. But this is what
Speaker 1: was what was on our brain. Yes, the stuff that
Speaker 1: we thought was pretty extraordinary and wanted to share with you. Now,
Speaker 1: I do want to just throw in here real quick though. Um,
Speaker 1: there was some of these issues. There might be a
Speaker 1: slight uh so called shrimp on a treadmill scenario that
Speaker 1: can pop up if you're not familiar with that. I
Speaker 1: think we've talked about in the podcast before you have
Speaker 1: to study where essentially a shrimp was put on a
Speaker 1: treadmill all and it became kind of the uh, this
Speaker 1: kind of just pointless science money on this even though
Speaker 1: it was actually a very good study. Was it had
Speaker 1: some importance to it. It wasn't just you know, rogue
Speaker 1: scientists doing silly things with no with no payoff, which
Speaker 1: is kind of the charge. And I'm not even sure
Speaker 1: if it was actually federally federally fund in the first place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd have to I'd have to to review the story
Speaker 1: to get into the details of it. But you still
Speaker 1: see this, uh, this idea kind of continue on our
Speaker 1: Facebook page. UM I share not only our content, but
Speaker 1: we try and share links to you know, current science,
Speaker 1: it's trending, neat studies, that sort of thing, And invariably
Speaker 1: there's one particular user who will chime in, we'll find uh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, find flight three seventy instead, why can't we
Speaker 1: find find flight three seventy if we're you know, chronicling
Speaker 1: the genome of the of the Mantish shrimp or doing
Speaker 1: this study or that, always chiming in with well where
Speaker 1: the three So what you're saying is that you'll post
Speaker 1: something you're like, oh, like extraordinary science, and then someone
Speaker 1: will be like, but but where's that fight? Yeah, like
Speaker 1: how can and and I don't want to completely discredit
Speaker 1: it because it's uh. On one level, yes, it's your
Speaker 1: your kind of poo pooing on our celebration of science
Speaker 1: here um and and it's not that fun. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, I understand how, you know, one can
Speaker 1: look around at this world. We're finding so much about
Speaker 1: the world around is we're landing things on commets for
Speaker 1: the first time in human history. And and then to
Speaker 1: turn around and say, but wait, how can we do
Speaker 1: that and not do this? How can there? How are
Speaker 1: there still so many holes in our understanding of the
Speaker 1: world and and just our ability to even keep track
Speaker 1: of our things in this world? Well, and yes, there
Speaker 1: are very there are so many unanswered questions and um and,
Speaker 1: and many of them will remain that way. But of
Speaker 1: course we have accums razor at our disposal, so we
Speaker 1: can always turn to logic to try to cull out
Speaker 1: what matters and what doesn't and what we can't answer
Speaker 1: and what we can't and oncom's razor and logic and
Speaker 1: all of that is predicated on something called symbolic thought.
Speaker 1: And that just happens to be the first thing that
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in terms of extraordinary science,
Speaker 1: because we Homo sapiens are so proud of our neo
Speaker 1: cortex sitting atop our brain, those cortical folds that help
Speaker 1: us manage our lives and ascribe meaning and symbolism to them.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that Homo erectus was also doing
Speaker 1: the same thing way back when. Yeah, this was pretty groundbreaking.
Speaker 1: I mean, we already had some strong evidence that Neanderthals
Speaker 1: engaged in this. We had there's some fifty thousand year
Speaker 1: old perforated painted seashells and pignic containers that were discovered
Speaker 1: on the Iberian Peninsula and a while back region that
Speaker 1: was inhabited solely by Neanderthals at the time. But but
Speaker 1: here is another non human hominid who seems to have
Speaker 1: have I mean, in a sense, it's almost like some
Speaker 1: sort of ones attempted to make some sort of biblical
Speaker 1: comparison to you know, myths of of eating the fruit
Speaker 1: of of one sacred tree or another, like taking that
Speaker 1: that crucial step towards becoming uh, this kind of uh,
Speaker 1: this kind of rational being that stands apart from everything
Speaker 1: else on earth. Yeah, and this symbolism um we far
Speaker 1: too often take as sort of a modern Homo sapien thing.
Speaker 1: But this year researchers discovered a shell engraved with a
Speaker 1: geometric pattern at an h erectus site known as Tranil
Speaker 1: on the Indianesian island of Java that dates to between
Speaker 1: five hundred and forty thousand and four hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. Yeah, that is crazy because that is
Speaker 1: at least three hundred thousand years older than the the
Speaker 1: oldest previously known engravings from US South Africa. And when
Speaker 1: they analyze the engraving, they feel that it was probably
Speaker 1: made with like a sharp tooth or another hard pointed
Speaker 1: object to create that that that that fascinating geometric design. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now why is this important? Well? Uh, someone like Peter
Speaker 1: also say, the professor of psychological and brain sciences that
Speaker 1: Dark Mouth might say, well, it's because the emergence of
Speaker 1: symbolic thought had profound consequences for human moral cognition. And
Speaker 1: he says, you might say that the birth of symbolic
Speaker 1: thought gave rise to the possibility of true morality and
Speaker 1: immorality of good and evil. Once acts become symbolized, they
Speaker 1: could now stand for and be instances of abstract classes
Speaker 1: of action, such as good, evil, right or wrong. Symbolic
Speaker 1: thought permitted new dimensions of behavior. And I thought that
Speaker 1: was very interesting because in this way, symbolic thought, which
Speaker 1: is of course what our languages are built upon, is
Speaker 1: the organizing factor. Yeah, I mean, this is the basics
Speaker 1: of language here, this is the basics of the brains
Speaker 1: operating system itself. You know that that we're able to
Speaker 1: take symbols, were able to take signifiers uh, written or verbal,
Speaker 1: and we're able to have these stand in for more
Speaker 1: complicated ideas. And then and then essentially, then you can
Speaker 1: combine two complicated ideas, you can combine a third, you
Speaker 1: can start It's almost an externalization of of of of
Speaker 1: of thinking and UH and cognition, and then a a
Speaker 1: re to to reincorporate that back into the mental processes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, I mean the fact of that matters is
Speaker 1: that Homo sapiens are but one of several human lineages
Speaker 1: that use abstract intellect to ponder the world. So that
Speaker 1: tells us that it's far more ancient than we ever knew. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it just drives home again that the fact that
Speaker 1: humans have ascended to this UH status in the world.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of it simply has to do
Speaker 1: with with our our ability to adapt a different environments
Speaker 1: and uh, and to what extent we were we were
Speaker 1: able to roll with with with with catastrophic changes that
Speaker 1: were occurring well. And it also means that something as
Speaker 1: rudimentary as a line drawing of a woman in a
Speaker 1: dress or a skirt that's put on a bathroom door
Speaker 1: to indicate that this this room is for females has
Speaker 1: so many more layers upon it than you could ever imagine.
Speaker 1: In your brain, there's the whole database built up about
Speaker 1: that one image, and there are consequences for that image
Speaker 1: as well. Now, another important thing about the power of
Speaker 1: simple is of course that that that when you engage
Speaker 1: with a symbol, uh, be it the symbol in the bathroom,
Speaker 1: be it be a cross beat, the Apple logo, be
Speaker 1: it a swastika, uh, you know, Eastern or or western. Um,
Speaker 1: you are actually your brain is actually doing an unconscious
Speaker 1: analysis and interpretation of that symbol before it ever enters
Speaker 1: into your into your conscious mind. Like that's how powerful
Speaker 1: symbol is. And as we discussed in our Symbols on
Speaker 1: the Brain episode that published, I think uh um a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago. Perhaps maybe it was um as
Speaker 1: we discussed in that episode. I mean, that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of core to the power of these things, and that's
Speaker 1: why when you walk around through your environment, you're just
Speaker 1: bombarded with symbols, be it symbols for the bathroom or corporate, political,
Speaker 1: religious iconography, you name it. Yeah, And I think that
Speaker 1: goes back to David Eagleman and his assertations that the
Speaker 1: conscious I is really sitting on the sidelines of the unconscious,
Speaker 1: that all of this decisions that we're making, all those
Speaker 1: judgment calls are happening under cover, and all of that
Speaker 1: stuff gets served up in this kind of like uh
Speaker 1: consciousness belch of the brain and we think, oh, I
Speaker 1: just had this epiphany or I just happened to think this. Well, no,
Speaker 1: this this thinking thing that you just made about that
Speaker 1: bathroom symbol has been in the works for years and
Speaker 1: whatever I is that come along with it. Well, and
Speaker 1: there have been studies before that have have suggested that
Speaker 1: the Christians behave more honestly when they're exposed to a crucifix,
Speaker 1: that people think more creatively if they're exposed to that
Speaker 1: applehole like the light bulb or the apple logo. So
Speaker 1: if you have the if you're culturally preloaded to be
Speaker 1: affected by that symbol. Then you're kind of it's kind
Speaker 1: of like having like little magnets on the wall pushing
Speaker 1: a little metal do Dad down the hallway, and we're
Speaker 1: the metal do Dad my now, which always gets back
Speaker 1: to the whole thing of constructing your own reality, And yeah,
Speaker 1: what is reality? What is illusion in the first place?
Speaker 1: So that's that's another But that's all the reason why
Speaker 1: this is a great study and one that was easy
Speaker 1: to miss. It's easy to you know, just scroll through
Speaker 1: the headlines and you see, oh, well they found a
Speaker 1: shell with some scratches on it. Big deal. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go to read about, um, you know, what's happening with curiosity.
Speaker 1: But but when you get down into the deep power
Speaker 1: of it, and it really drives home how how substantial
Speaker 1: the finding was. Indeed it does. Alright, we're gonn take
Speaker 1: a quick break. When we get back, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about chromosomes and tractor beans. All right, we're back. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about let's talk about chromosomes and more specifically,
Speaker 1: let's talk about yeast. Let's talk about yeast, shall we This?
Speaker 1: It sounds like a p S A Uh. In March
Speaker 1: of this year, undergraduate students in John Hopkins University, UH,
Speaker 1: their their course called Build a Genome recreated yeast chromosome three,
Speaker 1: which controls sexual reproduction. This is kind of huge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this marks the first time in history, uh that a
Speaker 1: a chromosome has been synthesized by humans and adopted by
Speaker 1: the yeast, which and by the way, yeast serves as
Speaker 1: one of biotechnologies model organisms. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: ground level for any kind of future UM breakthroughs that
Speaker 1: will happen. Among those future breakthroughs that they hope to
Speaker 1: up to one day, UM synthesize all sixteen yeast chromosomes
Speaker 1: and achieve the goal of what they call synthetic yeast
Speaker 1: two point oh. Now, the researchers designed the chromosome to
Speaker 1: include special markers on genes thought to be non essential,
Speaker 1: and the markers were engineered so that they could be
Speaker 1: triggered by an enzyme to scramble, delete or duplicate genes
Speaker 1: duplica jeens. And then they made fifty thousand changes to
Speaker 1: the synthetic chromosome at specific points in the code which
Speaker 1: could have easily killed off the yeast cell, but instead
Speaker 1: it took the mutations and stride and reproduced. So that
Speaker 1: was the other part of this is that could you
Speaker 1: kind of tinker with this mess with it and and
Speaker 1: could it still survive? And then even though it's synthetic.
Speaker 1: Now the hope here is that in the future this
Speaker 1: will lead to new tests, new methods to uh, to
Speaker 1: go after specific genes and to alove a better understanding
Speaker 1: of junk DNA cell division and evolution itself. So we're
Speaker 1: getting down here to the the core building blocks, and
Speaker 1: and as we discover how to make some of the
Speaker 1: building blocks ourselves, there you go. And does that mean
Speaker 1: that we'll have our teas and all synthetic loaves of bread? Now?
Speaker 1: That would be that would be interesting. And when when
Speaker 1: do we get the first Frankenstein bread? The first because
Speaker 1: you know they'll call it that in the Stein meat
Speaker 1: as well, right, it's made from Alright. The next entry
Speaker 1: that we have is a tiny little tractor beam. And
Speaker 1: when you think about tractor beans, you probably think about
Speaker 1: the Death Star or really any sort of alien civilization
Speaker 1: trying to suck us up into the spaceship. That's right, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you think of sci fi and it it
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense because the term comes from sci fi.
Speaker 1: The term tractor beam was coined by E. Smith. Uh
Speaker 1: is also a PhD by the way, and a food engineer. UH.
Speaker 1: And this was in his novel novel named a Space
Speaker 1: Hounds of I p C. I p C stood for
Speaker 1: Interplanetary Corporation. Uh. Smith was is considered by many kind
Speaker 1: of one of one of the fathers, at least of
Speaker 1: space opera, which, of course we you know, we see
Speaker 1: in in Star Wars seeing doun Uh. Any of these properties, Um,
Speaker 1: he was. A lot of stuff was published in the
Speaker 1: Pulpse of the Day, Amazing Stories and the like, but
Speaker 1: he was also widely read by scientists and engineers and
Speaker 1: future scientists and engineers at the time. Uh. From the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties and on up into the nineteen seventies, his
Speaker 1: his series, such as the Linsman series of Skylark series,
Speaker 1: and so he ended up accidentally coining a number of
Speaker 1: scientific terms, terms for things that did not yet exist,
Speaker 1: that were purely science fiction, that ended up becoming a
Speaker 1: part of the language of science in the decades to follow,
Speaker 1: including the tractor being. Indeed, all right, the tractor beam
Speaker 1: we're about to talk about is not actually on par
Speaker 1: with say something like the Death Stars tractor beam. And
Speaker 1: we just want to mention that because we really want
Speaker 1: to square your expectations here. Yeah, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: advances that we've seen over the years with so called
Speaker 1: invisibility cloak technology. UH. It's not as awesome as somebody
Speaker 1: putting on a Harry Potter invisibility cloak or a predator
Speaker 1: stealth system. UH. What we're able to do and those
Speaker 1: experiences takes place at a at a very small level
Speaker 1: and in the future could have much larger possibilities. And
Speaker 1: the same thing with the tractor beams. Tractor beams have
Speaker 1: have been a matter of study, UH for for years now.
Speaker 1: But this particular study comes to us from Australian National
Speaker 1: University UM. They have a laser based tractor beam that
Speaker 1: they wrote to successfully a pull the part of pull
Speaker 1: these tiny particles a distance about eight inches or twenty centimeters,
Speaker 1: which is about a hundred times farther than any previous
Speaker 1: experiments with tractor beams UH. During there During the experiment,
Speaker 1: the researchers used a laser that projected a kind of
Speaker 1: uh Ring shaped beam of light UM with a without
Speaker 1: with a hot outer ring and a cool center and
Speaker 1: they used this, uh, this light being to suck in
Speaker 1: tiny glass spheres, each of which measured about point two
Speaker 1: millimeters or point zero zero eight inches wide. So the
Speaker 1: key here is is heat. Okay, this is how this
Speaker 1: is working. The laser warms up the air around the
Speaker 1: tiny glass sphere, causing tiny hot spots on the surface.
Speaker 1: The air particles hit the hot spots and they bounce
Speaker 1: off and that propels the sphere in the opposite direction.
Speaker 1: So you want to make the back hotter than the
Speaker 1: front and then you can propel it along. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this is not the stuff of moving around starships or
Speaker 1: capturing the millennium falcon. But uh, the scientists believe that
Speaker 1: there could be possible applications, say dealing with pollution. Uh,
Speaker 1: you could you could successfully extract toxic particles from a
Speaker 1: given body. Uh. Of course, we have a long way
Speaker 1: to go before this can can deal with with greater
Speaker 1: distances than those plunged in the study. He also wanted
Speaker 1: to mentioned that there was another chapter being Shenanigan's thing
Speaker 1: going on here, and I'm talking about researchers at the
Speaker 1: University of Dundee in the UK. They used acoustic tractor
Speaker 1: beams to pull an object by firing sound waves at it.
Speaker 1: So what they did is they used this ultrasound device
Speaker 1: that was clinically approved for use in mri I guided
Speaker 1: focused ultrasound surgery, and the team was able to move
Speaker 1: surprising large objects will large in this sense, um or
Speaker 1: in this application, of approximately one centimeter in size. And
Speaker 1: so the idea here is that in addition to just
Speaker 1: manipulating objects, you could also manipulate fluids and tissues inside
Speaker 1: the body, and you could deliver encapsulated drugs to the
Speaker 1: exact location in the body that requires treatment. Yeah. So again,
Speaker 1: you know, we're in the early days of tractor beams,
Speaker 1: and and tractor beam is kind of, to a certain
Speaker 1: extent a catch off for a number of different techniques
Speaker 1: of pulling in something, uh without actually grabbing it with
Speaker 1: some sort of a grapple or a hook or what
Speaker 1: have you. Because there's also also been experiments where you're
Speaker 1: using the mass of an object in space to pull
Speaker 1: in a smaller body, uh in the same way that
Speaker 1: any smaller massed object can potentially orbit around another. I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to imagine this technology fifty years from now
Speaker 1: on the black market you know, you just you're welcomed
Speaker 1: down the street and all of a sudden you're being
Speaker 1: pulled into some sort of direction that it sucks all
Speaker 1: the particles out of your body. Terrible particles, terrible. All right,
Speaker 1: we should take a quick break. When we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how there's another breakthrough this
Speaker 1: year and tinkering with the brain and memory again. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. Um. You know, we love to talk about
Speaker 1: the brain and our manipulation of the brain and how
Speaker 1: as we learned to manipulate the brain. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: still learning how the brain works, and then trying to
Speaker 1: learn how the brain works. We're trying to learn how
Speaker 1: we work, how our experience, ourselves in the universe works.
Speaker 1: And some memory comes up quite a bit. We've we've
Speaker 1: done whole episodes on the sciences memory, the fallibility of memory.
Speaker 1: You can't trust it. You change a memory every time
Speaker 1: you draw it out of your head. And uh, we
Speaker 1: inevitably come back to the the issue of what about
Speaker 1: what about bad memories? What about memories that are traumatic,
Speaker 1: even that that mess up our our our lives on
Speaker 1: a daily basis. Is there a way we can zap them?
Speaker 1: Is there a way we can deal with them. Can
Speaker 1: we eternal sunshine them? Inevitably that the movie is referenced
Speaker 1: in any news article covering these breakthroughs. Yes, Eternal Sunshine
Speaker 1: of the Spotless Mind clinics popping up around the country
Speaker 1: right now. Uh No, but this is interesting Stanford psychiatrists
Speaker 1: and neuroscientists, Dr Carl That's Roth uses optogenetics. This is
Speaker 1: a technique that manipulates neuronal activity with beams of light.
Speaker 1: Here we go again, with beams of light. He and
Speaker 1: his researchers show that they can manipulate specific memories in mice.
Speaker 1: They can delete existing memories, and they can implant false ones,
Speaker 1: and they went so far as to switch the emotional
Speaker 1: content of a mouse memory from good to bad and
Speaker 1: vice versa. Yeah, it was important here to to break
Speaker 1: down is that we're talking about contextual information about an
Speaker 1: event where and what they happen, and that's recorded in
Speaker 1: the brains of a campus, whereas you also have the
Speaker 1: emotional component of the memory and that's stored separately in
Speaker 1: the amygdala. So you know, you have like one file saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we went to the beach and uh saw a shark
Speaker 1: in the water, that memory is is filed away. But
Speaker 1: but then there's the emotional context. Did you see that
Speaker 1: shark in your feet were still you were in the
Speaker 1: water up to your ankles and it just freaked you
Speaker 1: out to an amazing degree. Or was it a moment
Speaker 1: of wonder where you're like, ah, there is a shark
Speaker 1: and I live in an amazing world and being alive
Speaker 1: is fantastic. The emotional coloring of that experience has a
Speaker 1: huge effect on our lives. Yeah. I was just thinking
Speaker 1: about in terms of tattoos, like a sort of tattooed
Speaker 1: on your brain, and this this process, and this goes
Speaker 1: back to the symbolic thought too. That tattoo of what
Speaker 1: a shark is in your brain could be lightened a bit, right,
Speaker 1: or could be reduced. You could have a little bit
Speaker 1: of that tattoo thought removal. You could have the residue
Speaker 1: of what that symbol means, but maybe not fully. Um.
Speaker 1: Obviously this isn't as simple. It's just zapping a memory
Speaker 1: and there there's a bunch of complexity involved in here.
Speaker 1: But it's one more uh research study that is showing
Speaker 1: us that memory manipulation is on the horizon. And here's
Speaker 1: just another way to get at it. And I wanted
Speaker 1: to mention that optogenetics are predicated on proteins called options,
Speaker 1: and these are found in human eyes, in microbes and
Speaker 1: other organisms. And when light shines on an option, it
Speaker 1: absorbs a photon and changes it. And that's how uh
Speaker 1: Dr Dysrerov has really gone about this. And by the way,
Speaker 1: dest Wroth is huge in this field. He's done a
Speaker 1: ton of stuff in turn of um options and optic genetics.
Speaker 1: And he also created something called hydro gel. Oh, yes, hydrogel.
Speaker 1: This was This is another really cool study that came
Speaker 1: out this year which basically answers that question, Hey, if
Speaker 1: I had a dead rat um and I wanted to
Speaker 1: make that rat translucent, how would I go about that?
Speaker 1: And uh and and that's what what we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: the ability to to take a a cadaver even and
Speaker 1: make it into this translucent, visible man, visible rat body,
Speaker 1: which of course has a tremendous importance when it comes
Speaker 1: to studying anatomy, looking at the physiology of diseases, etcetera. Yeah, this,
Speaker 1: this substance they created, hydro gel, is similar to that
Speaker 1: used for contact lenses, and the method is called clarity,
Speaker 1: and the result is you get the see through brains
Speaker 1: and the innerds are revealed in a way that no
Speaker 1: current technologies cand We're talking about large structures like the
Speaker 1: hippocampus showing up with the clarity of organs and transparent fish.
Speaker 1: That's pretty exciting. It's like putting a flashlight into the
Speaker 1: brain there, and you can even see neural circuits and
Speaker 1: individual cells. So yes, um, you know, you could dissect it.
Speaker 1: You can have ultra thin slices, examining each slide under
Speaker 1: a microscope and and this is what is traditionally done
Speaker 1: heretofore um before this technique came along. But when you
Speaker 1: do that, you're you're you're changing that sample and you're
Speaker 1: effectively removing some clues that you might not otherwise see
Speaker 1: unless it were whole, a whole brain that you could
Speaker 1: just see through. Indeed, I do have to say when
Speaker 1: I'm initially discovered the study, I was a little bit
Speaker 1: disappointed when I of course realized that the individual must
Speaker 1: be dead, because for a split second, I was imagining,
Speaker 1: like the new fashion trend would be to make yourself translucent,
Speaker 1: and I was, you know, French run white models walking
Speaker 1: around with translucent skin. It was, it was, it was
Speaker 1: a great like three seconds of my life. And then
Speaker 1: I realized that, well, this is actually a practical thing.
Speaker 1: You never know again, hundred years from now we could
Speaker 1: have translucent engineered models possibility. Now, I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: that hundreds of papers have been published about not just
Speaker 1: the hyndrogail, but also the opto genetics, and according to
Speaker 1: Huge Escoff at the University of California, Berkeley, researchers are
Speaker 1: using and developing techniques to study brain wave sleep, memory, hunger, addiction, aggression, courtship,
Speaker 1: sensory modalities, and motor behavior. Of course this is in
Speaker 1: mice and rats. But again, the extra appolation here is
Speaker 1: that we're getting a far better picture of the brain.
Speaker 1: Um and even three years ago, two years ago, you
Speaker 1: and I were talking about reverse engineering the brain and
Speaker 1: how difficult that is. But now there's more technologies online
Speaker 1: to actually do that in a more meaningful way. Indeed,
Speaker 1: now when it comes to changing the I keep getting
Speaker 1: hung up on just the idea of changing the emotional
Speaker 1: context of a memory. Uh, Like, I can't help but
Speaker 1: imagine like a future scenario we're say it's say say
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas goes into her local doctor's office, and the
Speaker 1: doctor says, look, I can't do anything about that bad
Speaker 1: memory that you have about clowns that just set off
Speaker 1: this whole clown phobia for you. But I can change
Speaker 1: the context. But you might have to buy some grease pain,
Speaker 1: you might have to behavioral therapy. You might end up
Speaker 1: in enrolling in clown colleging. I mean, I'm thinking probably
Speaker 1: not because because phobias are a little more more complicated
Speaker 1: than that. But imagine a world where you could you
Speaker 1: could simply change a life altering fear into a life
Speaker 1: altering enthusiasm for something uh with just with just a
Speaker 1: little uh neural tinkering. But see, I don't want clowns
Speaker 1: to to be eradicated from my memory. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: part of the rich tapestry of narrative, right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's kind of what you get into
Speaker 1: when you discuss any changing of the brain or or
Speaker 1: certainly with you know, talking about would you change something
Speaker 1: in the past. What you're what you're talking about when
Speaker 1: you're changing the memory of the something in the past,
Speaker 1: you're essentially changing the past is in terms of your
Speaker 1: your perception of it, So you kind of get into
Speaker 1: the same time travel paradox uh situation. Well, if I
Speaker 1: remove that uh trauma from my history, am I the
Speaker 1: same person anymore? And is that good or bad? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And if I smoked from cannabis, how does that change
Speaker 1: the perception of all of it? Yeah, but that was
Speaker 1: kind of a really crappy way to try to transition
Speaker 1: and not into a section about cannabis. We're not going
Speaker 1: to do that, but just to mention that this this
Speaker 1: might have been the year of cannabis. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean this was even the year that we actually had
Speaker 1: a single country fully legalized marijuana, that being Uruguay, UM
Speaker 1: and number of US states following along with parts of
Speaker 1: Europe moving in a similar direction. Yeah. So perhaps we
Speaker 1: will do an episode in the future here about cannabis
Speaker 1: and medical marijuana recreational And we've already touched on it
Speaker 1: a bit when we've talked about hacin genics and um
Speaker 1: how they made treat depression and and and help the
Speaker 1: brain in certain ways. But it's a it's sort of
Speaker 1: a minefield this year, if you ask me, there's so
Speaker 1: many studies that have come out. Yeah, there's been a
Speaker 1: lot of studies. Some one in particular that came to
Speaker 1: mind was really more dealing with the with the adverse
Speaker 1: effects from it. But even this study was only looking
Speaker 1: at it really from an addiction point of view, and
Speaker 1: and and not a medication point of view, and in
Speaker 1: terms of developing brains too, because we know that that
Speaker 1: this is not good to introduce substances that can alter
Speaker 1: brain structures in someone who is not fully developed as
Speaker 1: not just even a person, but their brain. So interesting
Speaker 1: stuff here and uh and if you doubt the reach
Speaker 1: of cannabis, then just consider I would say the reach
Speaker 1: of reefer. That would have been the reach of refer
Speaker 1: the reach of reefer. Then know that the word of
Speaker 1: the year for I believe it was Oxford Dictionary O
Speaker 1: is vape? Oh yes, I mean the vape technology is
Speaker 1: very impressive in terms of marijana, but's certainly in terms
Speaker 1: of just um normal tobacco cigarettes as well. I've uh,
Speaker 1: there's several people in my life, um, including my mother
Speaker 1: in law who has has transition from traditional cigarettes to vaping. Um. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, for health reasons, for personal life choice reasons,
Speaker 1: and uh that the technology is is fascinating. The whole
Speaker 1: growth industry is people, do you know, making their own
Speaker 1: technology and tinkering with it. It's uh, I mean, just
Speaker 1: from a purely technological standpoint, it's it's it's really fascinating stuff.
Speaker 1: So well, you nineteen twenties people sitting around going, did
Speaker 1: you guys hear that pouka is the word of the year,
Speaker 1: trying to imagine that. Yeah, equivalent individual in our office
Speaker 1: who will remain nameless. I guess that has like a
Speaker 1: vape puuka. Yes he does, alright, So there you have it. Um,
Speaker 1: just till you know, a run through some of the
Speaker 1: the studies that caught our eyes this year. Again, that's
Speaker 1: not an exhaustive list. Certainly there were other studies that
Speaker 1: that we got to kick out off, that we've blogged about,
Speaker 1: that we podcasted about, that we did videos on, and
Speaker 1: you'll find all of those. It's stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind dot com. And if you have some thoughts to
Speaker 1: share with us, we'd love to hear from you. You
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