WEBVTT - Mirror Neurons: Are there people who feel others' pain? 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:02.880 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:07.480 It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:16.480 from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:19.960 the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:25.880 which makes this Stuff you should Know very nice. How 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:28.200 are you doing? Oh, I'm great. You look like you're 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:30.560 doing great. Chow, you look like you're doing great, Josh. 0:00:30.760 --> 0:00:34.400 Jerry looks like she's doing about like we're doing. We're 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:39.200 all doing the same. That's what we're doing. So Chuckers, 0:00:39.240 --> 0:00:41.879 I got, as I said right before we started recording, 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:46.199 I've I've got no intro for this, but this is 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:50.200 a listener request times infinity or so yeah, I gotta 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:52.559 I got an intro. Okay, let's hear. It just came 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:57.680 to me. Okay, Josh, remember years ago when you were 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:01.520 a young child watching NFL football, All in the quarterback 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:06.280 for the Washington Redskins, Joe. Thisman horrifically broke his leg. 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:09.279 Lawrence Taylor broke his leg. It's one of the great 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:12.720 tragedies of my life that I missed that you did. 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:15.080 I never saw it. You know, when you were watching 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:17.200 any sporting event and you see a knee go in 0:01:17.240 --> 0:01:20.720 a direction it shouldn't go in Willis Mcgahey, okay, there 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:24.480 you go exactly when it was flopping around. Uh did 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:28.119 you feel a pain in your leg when that happened? Yeah? Yeah, 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:31.760 I felt some sort of discomfort. Okay, I feel a 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:35.360 shooting pain when I see it's it's usually a bone 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:37.319 or a leg going away. It's not supposed to go 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:40.680 like a knife wound. Wouldn't bother me, it wouldn't make 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:44.040 me grab my chest. But that always sends a shooting 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:48.040 pain through my leg. And that, buddy, maybe a mild 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:51.400 form of synaesthesia. Yes, it might be. It's my first intro. 0:01:51.640 --> 0:01:54.120 That's very good, Chuck. I think we should, uh, we 0:01:54.120 --> 0:01:59.600 should appropriately clap for that, Jerry. Yes, I cut for myself, 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.240 so just be a two person lame slow clap. It 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:04.960 was a good clap. It's a good intro, Chuck. And 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:07.120 this is news to me. I had no idea that 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:09.160 you were a synistet. Well, I don't know if that 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:12.480 really counts. I kind of thought everyone felt a shooting 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:13.960 pain when that kind of thing happened. But you know, 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:18.519 but you sound like a developmental synistet born with it people. Yeah, 0:02:18.520 --> 0:02:21.840 people who are born with synesthesia tend to think that 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:26.480 this is a very normal occurrence that everybody feels as well. Yeah. Yeah, 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:30.000 that's the only time it happens though. It's just with 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:34.520 leg injuries, well breaks and things like when limbs just 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:36.840 do things that aren't supposed to they're not supposed to do. 0:02:36.880 --> 0:02:39.840 I don't see the number three is orange. We'll get 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:42.160 to that later, but we definitely what but what you're 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:48.400 talking about is mirror touch synesthesia. Yeah, the first one, Yeah, yes, okay, 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:51.000 do you want to go into it? Yeah? Why not? 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:53.640 What are you waiting for? That's one of that I 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:56.440 just did the intro. I thought when you hand it over, 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:58.560 so I'm handing it over. Yeah, this is all reverse 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:02.760 and it's not like mirror reverse. It's all just confusing. Um, 0:03:02.800 --> 0:03:07.040 all right, Well, mirror touch synaesthesia is a I don't 0:03:07.040 --> 0:03:09.320 know if you could call it a disorder, maybe a condition, 0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:14.520 we'll say conditions. It's a condition where a person actually 0:03:14.560 --> 0:03:19.480 experiences a touch or an injury, uh, that they're observing 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:24.080 on someone else. And because it's mirror touch, if saying 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:27.800 I'm facing you right, which you are right, and your 0:03:28.000 --> 0:03:30.800 left arm gets touched, I would feel it in my 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.240 right arm right. And if I were standing next to 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:36.720 you and your left arm were touched, I would feel 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:40.040 it in my left arm too. This is not supposed 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:44.800 to happen normally. No, pretty weird it is, And apparently 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:49.800 for the the I guess, truly advanced mirror touch synisthts 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:53.440 like you can't watch a horror movie because the the 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:59.080 empathy involved is so extreme that they it's unbearable to watch. 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:02.120 Like you feel like these things are happening to you, 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:05.480 And there's no There's a lot of stuff we need 0:04:05.520 --> 0:04:07.440 to point out, but chief among them is there's no 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.440 confusion here. These people aren't confused. They don't think they're 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:13.960 really you know, Jack Nicholson getting hit in the head 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:18.400 with a baseball bat by Shelley Duval, right, They don't 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:21.719 think that's happening to them, but they still experience this, right. 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:28.120 That's number one. Number two is this is not imagination, right, right, Like, 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:33.080 these people aren't deluded, No, no, anymore than than say 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:38.080 a person with mirror touch synesthesia feeling themselves being pinched 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:41.080 when they want someone else being pinched. That's no more 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:46.360 a delusion than you or I being pinched that experience, right, Yeah, 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:51.159 they're they're considered uh neurologically normal quote unquote, right. And 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:54.200 we also know that they are having these real experiences 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:58.479 because of our friend the Wonder Machine, which has been 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:03.359 employed to UM investigate synesthesia in all forms, and it 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:09.040 shows UM that the for example, I don't I can't 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:10.800 come up with one from you or touching neuruns, but 0:05:11.240 --> 0:05:17.080 we'll we'll use the color grapheme. No, we'll use the 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:20.200 sound color synesthesia. Okay, Yeah, there's all different types and 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:22.400 and this is another one. Sound color is when you 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:26.800 associate sound with color. Right. So if you have somebody 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:29.400 who has sound color synesthesia and the m r I 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:33.520 all right, and you play a musical note for them, 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:37.760 the region of the brain that uh that that experiences 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:43.440 or governs our understanding of musical notes is activated, as 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:45.960 is the region of the brain that's associated with colors. 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:49.159 So these people are experiencing both. There's no way to 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:54.360 separate them, and it's not an association like, um, you 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:58.960 were wearing a blue Evil Kinevel jumpsuit the first time 0:05:59.000 --> 0:06:02.479 you heard, you know, a particular box concerto, right, although 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:05.800 it was you work and you may associate that, so 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:08.960 you may have a visual image in your mind of 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:11.200 that blue jump suit or even that shade of blue 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:13.560 whenever you hear that concerto. This is not what we're 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:16.680 talking about. This is a mixture of the senses in 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:20.120 its most definitive form. Yeah. Oftentimes they say they will 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:23.680 even be a projection of that color, a literal projection 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:26.960 that they see. And it sounds cookie if you've never 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:30.799 experienced it, but to them it seems completely normal. Well yeah, um, 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.520 I think once that once they realize that they're cinis 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:37.719 seats and that this isn't normal, Uh, it becomes tiresome, 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:39.680 from what I understand. I was reading an interview with 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:44.480 Dr Oliver Sacks, the Awakenings guy. He's been hanging with 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:47.880 cinis seats for many decades now, so he's some something 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:50.520 of an authority on it, and he was saying that 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:52.760 a lot of them get kind of tired of it, 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:55.320 like I really wish I could just listen to music 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:57.840 without seeing all the colors. Well, a lot of people 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:01.400 use it too, though, well yeah, cre creatively sure. Sure. 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:06.320 Famous sinnisthetes have have remarked that it has helped them 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:08.200 with their memory. I gotta study on that, which we'll 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:12.360 get too later. But we're talking about Duke Ellington. Yeah, no, 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:18.400 slouch no, uh frowns Franz list YEP composer Nabokov, writer 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:22.360 actually Nabokov. In his autobiography, he talks about how he 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:25.600 started to um realize that he was syn aesthetic when 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:29.760 he was a little kid. Um he was pointing to these, uh, 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:34.520 I guess the alphabet and they were just colorless um letters. 0:07:34.960 --> 0:07:37.160 But he was talking about the colors of the letters, 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:39.560 and his mother came over and agreed with them that 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:45.000 the letters were indeed colored, but um, she disagreed with 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:48.239 what colors the letters were. So he came to realize 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:50.760 as he grew older that he and his mother were 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.400 syn aesthetic, and actually, strangely enough, his wife turned out 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:56.560 to be a synisty too. Well they do think it's hereditary, 0:07:56.600 --> 0:08:02.280 for sure, but get this. He also couldn't hear music, 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:06.920 Like he could hear set the sound, but he couldn't 0:08:06.920 --> 0:08:08.800 hear music, so he couldn't hear a high or a 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:13.920 low pitch, and he couldn't hear discordant. What we see now, 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:18.360 he was a color graphyme synasty all right, so that's two. 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:20.360 We'll go ahead and say the other two word taste, 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:24.920 words associated with taste and taste, touch, And there's all 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:28.480 kinds of groupings of these. It's not just those. Apparently, 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:30.440 they can be paired in all sorts of ways. And 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.640 I think they said it's rare, but some people even have, uh, 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:38.080 involve three or more of their senses. Yes, I mean crazy, right, 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:42.480 And there's no besides, you know, color graphemes synesthesia. It's 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.280 not like you just have that. You can have different 0:08:45.320 --> 0:08:47.839 types of synesthesia, and you can also have them to 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:51.320 different degrees, so much so that um researchers are are 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:53.560 coming to believe that one out of it, every one 0:08:53.800 --> 0:08:57.839 dred or two hundred people have synesthesia, Yeah, to some 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:00.760 to some degree, like you, right, And it's also specific 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:04.200 to the person, so everyone's is their own, right, which 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:07.120 is why three isn't always blue for every synasty, which 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:09.800 is why Nabokov and his mother were arguing about why 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:13.040 you know what colors were? What? Uh, there's another one 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:16.320 I found too, called time space synesthesia. Did you see 0:09:16.360 --> 0:09:19.720 this this? Uh? They kind of referenced it in the article. 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:22.400 As far as some people even see certain months and 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:26.280 days as shapes. But this there's a psychologist named David 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:30.800 Brang who his theory is that people can literally see 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:34.120 time as a space. They see it as a spatial construct. 0:09:34.640 --> 0:09:37.520 So he found this one woman in a study who 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:41.640 was able to see the year as a circular ring 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:45.839 surrounding her body, and it rotated clockwise throughout the year, 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:49.520 and the current month resided inside of her chest, in 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.680 the past month resided on the front of her chest. 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:56.920 Isn't that crazy? And when I say crazy, I'm not 0:09:57.000 --> 0:10:00.679 being derogatory. Fascinating? Yes, right, well, yeah, of course we 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:05.640 use those interchangeably around here, don't we. Well, um, that 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:10.040 woman can probably tell you exactly what happened on a 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:14.360 certain day of a given year, because one of the 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:19.280 one of the benefits that the researchers believe um synists 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:25.160 are bestowed with is uh better working memory. There's different associations. 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:30.360 It's not just one association. It's you're using two regions 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:33.480 of the brain to form memories or that are elicited 0:10:33.800 --> 0:10:37.160 as a response to music or a letter or something 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:39.880 like that. While he died, he did two studies. You 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:41.840 want to hear that I do. He took the same 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:46.520 people the time space. Uh is it sin a sinists, 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:50.880 sinists synist synistates. Yeah, he took the time space synist 0:10:50.880 --> 0:10:53.960 eats and he did a He asked him to memorize 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:58.319 an unfamiliar spatial calendar and then reproduce it. And he 0:10:58.480 --> 0:10:59.959 then he got you know, normal people to do it, 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:03.120 and the results showed that they could recall events in 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:10.559 time like light years beyond the non synistates. And they 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:14.800 found on average that they synistates have about a hundred 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:18.200 and twenty three different facts that they can call up 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:20.720 about a specific event in our lives in their life, 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:24.120 compared to thirty nine for your average Joe. So it's 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:28.040 it's definitely doubling your pleasure with the memory. You're fun 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:35.200 with synesthesia, Chuck. Um, you were talking about studies and tests. Uh. 0:11:35.600 --> 0:11:39.160 Dr Sax mentioned a pretty simple test for somebody with 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:43.840 color grapheme synesthesia. Um, and it's brilliant and it's simplicity. 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:46.360 But you just put a piece of paper in front 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:50.000 of them with a scattering a random scattering of fives 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:53.400 and ss and say pick out five siness is as 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:56.840 fast as you can and for a synist because remember 0:11:56.920 --> 0:12:01.040 this isn't an association like they literally five it looks red, 0:12:01.880 --> 0:12:05.360 s looks with other numbers and letters. No, just five 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:08.240 sinesses because they look similar. So the Cyneses should be 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:10.040 able to pick out the five Sinesses and no time 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:14.199 flat like because blue and red, because it's not just 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:19.120 a black printed number letter that looks similar to want 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:21.760 to know, it will clearly look like this one's red, 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:24.520 this one's green, this one's red, this one's green, green, green, red, 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:28.280 like a human highlighter pretty much, you know, that's why 0:12:28.360 --> 0:12:30.160 you use a highlighter so it stands out. But think 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:35.120 about this. Can you imagine trying to study if do 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:38.560 you remember back in like seventh grade, those fat pens 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:41.400 that have four different color inks in them, and the 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:43.920 girls with love notes with one letter for and when 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:47.240 they really really liked you, like each letter would be 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:51.000 a different um, a different color, and it was just 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:53.760 a headache and nightmare and you're like, I don't like you, 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:57.520 you know you with that that puffy bang thing that's 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:01.640 all hairsprayed going on. Ye much later for me, seventh 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:03.920 grade for me was that was still uh oh yeah, 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:09.600 everybody j everybody's keeping on trucking, spiky jone jet hair. 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:13.320 That's what was going on. Nice Chuck, this is appears 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:17.040 to be genetic in origin. Yeah, that's what they think 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:19.520 because usually more than one person your family has it 0:13:20.160 --> 0:13:24.240 at a time. Yeah. Old Jacob Silverman not to be 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:27.960 confused with old Kirk Christiansen. Uh he uh. He wrote 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:31.319 about UM a researcher named Sarah Jane Blake Moore who 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.760 was delivering a lecture and mentioned, uh that she had 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:38.520 heard of people who confused UM other people's touches for 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:42.199 their own, right, she's talking about mirror touch synistats. And 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:44.559 a woman in the audience, I guess during the Q 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:48.000 and A session said, wait, I thought everybody felt that 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:51.400 it was like, what is going on here? Sarah Jane 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:54.320 Blakemore is like, let's go to your home, and they did, 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.200 and she found out that eleven of her family members 0:13:57.280 --> 0:14:00.800 had some form of synis teach. So if they think 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:03.320 it it does have a genetic basis, but check up. 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:08.960 Writing an article on a skin condition called epidermal lisis belosa, okay, 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:16.000 basically you get blisters really easy. Okay. Researchers have determined 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:19.880 that ten genes are in order, are in play or 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:24.960 mutated to have epidermalos epidermal lisis belosa. And that's just 0:14:25.040 --> 0:14:28.480 for a blister. Can you imagine the number of genes 0:14:28.520 --> 0:14:31.320 and have to be mutated in the specific combinations to 0:14:31.840 --> 0:14:39.120 form synesthesia? Crazy amounts? It is crazy and we mean fascinating. Uh, 0:14:39.520 --> 0:14:41.840 where should we go here? We got a mirror neurons? Well, 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:44.400 hold on, let's talk about one other thing first. Um, 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:49.119 we with synesthesia, there's two types. We talked about developmental 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:53.600 synesthes who think that this everybody experiences this because they're 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:56.920 born with it. Sure, um. And then there's acquired synesthesia. 0:14:57.200 --> 0:15:00.400 And this is most predominantly seen in people who lose 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:03.720 their sight after a certain age, right, or if you 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:07.920 have a brain injury or do lots of drugs. Yeah, 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:10.440 drug use can can lead to I guess a kind 0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:13.560 of temporary synesthesia from what I've read. But like if 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:17.520 you go blind, Um, apparently your your brain's visual center, 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:22.040 after it's been trained to take in visual information, it's 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:26.080 still hungry for it, so it starts. Apparently your synesthesia 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:29.000 can just come in like gang Busters after you lose 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:31.360 your site, even when you didn't have it before. And 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:34.840 you remember that movie Mask who could forget? Of course 0:15:34.920 --> 0:15:37.240 you remember the part where Rocky Dennis is teaching his 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:42.160 blind girlfriend what colors the coldest blue, hotest red? Right, 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:44.360 he puts her hand under some cold water and this 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.480 is blue and what he heated like a rock up 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:49.840 in a camp fire and gave it to her to 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:52.120 teach her red and teach her a lesson. And he 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:55.240 smacked her in the face and said that's orange, right, 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:59.760 get it right? O pain? Yeah, I think that's the 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:02.840 I can't tell, and I don't know that a neurologist 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:08.000 could tell you whether that was actually developing synesthesia? Right. 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:10.480 That was Laura Dern, wasn't it. I think it was, yeah, 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:12.640 a young Laura Dern. Yeah, and Rocky Dennis was Eric 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:15.800 Stoltz and share with share Eric stolts in a lot 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:18.920 of prosthetic makeup. Yeah, good move, great movie. I love 0:16:19.000 --> 0:16:22.359 that Sam Elliott too. Everybody was in that. John Travolta, 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:26.600 Tom Cruise, Beck Beck was in it. Yeah. Well, and 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:30.400 who can forget the cameo by Liberaci. I know it 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:34.080 was blew me away. He was the mask he turned 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:37.760 out to be, not even metaphorically like Rocky Dennis took 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:41.120 his mask off and it was Liberaci. Yeah, what a classic. 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:45.400 Are we a mirror neurons? We definitely if we're not 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:50.320 wearing Big Trouble Buddy. Oh wait show No really? Yeah okay. 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:55.600 Another pop culture references Uman Fantasia is commonly pointed to 0:16:56.160 --> 0:16:59.600 as about the closest a non SYNISTI could come to 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:06.760 experire encing synesthesia short hallucinating. Interesting, Yeah, because the almost 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:10.600 every motion and color and change in lighting is associated 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:13.960 with Yeah that I can't get through that thing anymore. 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:15.480 I can't think. When I was a little kid, I 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:18.520 thought it was neat, but now it's just unsettling. Yeah, 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:22.840 it's boring, alright, Chuck, I believe we have arrived at 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:27.920 mirror neurons. So mirror neurons, Josh, I didn't realize this, 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:34.399 but they were discovered only in in Maccaque monkeys by accident. Yeah. Uh. 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:37.480 There were these dudes in Italy, the neuroscientists at the 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:39.960 University of Parma, and I will read their names because 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:44.920 I love Italians. It was a Giacomo Rizzolatti was the 0:17:45.000 --> 0:17:49.720 first one, and Vittorio Galsi it's the second one. And 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:53.760 the third one was Leonardo Foghassi. I like the last 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:57.359 guy's name the most. Fagassi Yeah, he's good. So they 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:00.320 make a mean pasta sauce too. So they were doing 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:05.760 a little study on the premotor neuron dynamics. So they 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:09.040 ran some electrodes into a macaque monkey, like you said, 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:12.760 to the premotor cortex to monitor neural activity when the 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:16.040 monkey like would reach for something. It's all going fine. 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:18.879 They were learning whatever they were learning, eating some spaghetti, 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:22.119 and all of a sudden, one of the guys, is 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:23.800 how the story goes, at least, came into the room 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:26.480 and like reached for a raisin I think they said 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:28.680 it was. And the monkey was still hooked up, and 0:18:28.760 --> 0:18:32.639 they saw that his brain started firing the same as 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:34.760 it did when he had actually reached for it, and 0:18:34.840 --> 0:18:40.280 they all went say, it's it's a punsy nice And 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:43.520 all of a sudden they had stumbled upon what one 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:47.280 of them calls the biggest neuroscientific discovery of the decade. 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:50.120 And he went on to say that mere neurons will 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:54.160 do for psychology what DNA has done for biology. It's 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:57.160 very funny, you know, provide a unifying framework. That's funny 0:18:57.240 --> 0:18:59.240 that he said that, because that that's a lot of 0:18:59.320 --> 0:19:03.080 foresight for that one single guy. Because that's exactly what 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:06.600 it's done. Oh yeah, big time. I mean that basically, 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:10.479 mirror neurons are how we learn to do everything right, 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:12.760 Think about swinging a baseball back. You don't just walk 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:15.320 up and go, oh, there you go. You learn it 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:18.119 by observing other people. At the same time, you can 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:24.040 make the case that culture, UM other kinds of acquired 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:27.960 learning aside from swinging baseball batch um. The theory of 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:31.199 the mind, where we can put ourselves in other people's 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:34.360 situations to predict their behavior. All of this is accounted 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:39.440 for by mirror neurons. A biological basis for empathy. Yes, crazy, 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:44.440 it is crazy, UM. And I think also, uh, empaths, 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:48.600 people who have severe empathy real empathy, UM, tend to 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:53.560 have more active mirror neurons. And uh people with autism 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:57.639 tend to not display any motor mirror neuron activities. You 0:19:57.760 --> 0:19:59.840 understand one and you might explain the other is what 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:05.160 are thinking? Um? Also, chuck, the that was just mirror 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:07.640 neurons were just observed in humans for the first time 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:10.880 this year. Yeah U c l A. Yeah, and apparently 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:14.879 there were have much more robust than even the monkeys do. Right, 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:17.640 So they are you talking about? The study where they 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:22.760 had brain electrodes already implanted in epilepsy patients awaiting surgery. 0:20:23.640 --> 0:20:26.200 That one. Okay, um, these are the guys who showed 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:29.359 it directly before I'd been observed. Its activity had been 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:31.879 observed like the m R I. But m R has 0:20:31.880 --> 0:20:34.200 falling a little out of favor these days, and rightly, 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:38.560 so we just didn't Yeah, right, um. These guys had 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:42.840 brain electrodes hooked up to the brains of epilepsy patients already, 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:45.760 and they're like, hey, let's test this out. So they 0:20:45.840 --> 0:20:51.479 had people watch others do grasping motions, and then they 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:55.320 had the people do grasping motions themselves. Some neurons were 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:58.920 fired when the person to the grasp grasping motion himself, 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.600 and other urons fired when they watched it, but eight 0:21:02.680 --> 0:21:06.119 percent fired both times. Those are the mirror neurons. It 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:08.000 was the first time, the first time they were ever 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:12.000 directly observed in humans. And those are the sine sinist 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:17.240 you know, they're just they're just regular everyday people. Let's 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:20.680 go back to that sports metaphor. Okay, okay, all right, Chuck, 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:24.120 have you ever seen somebody get hit by a pitch? Yeah, 0:21:24.880 --> 0:21:27.560 And did you recoil in your chair even though you're 0:21:27.600 --> 0:21:30.080 in no way in the line of that pitch a 0:21:30.119 --> 0:21:32.119 little bit. But have you seen other people do it? 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:36.400 It's like, oh yeah, Like that's that's mirror neurons at work. 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:39.080 You're anticipating that this other person is going to feel pain. 0:21:39.640 --> 0:21:42.800 You don't necessarily have to be a sinist for to 0:21:42.960 --> 0:21:46.399 have mirror neurons. You see what I'm saying. Yeah, although 0:21:46.600 --> 0:21:50.080 in sinist it's just tightened. It's they're much more active, right, 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:53.159 And that's the theory. Uh. They also found through that 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:55.679 and I love this. This is like brand new stuff 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:57.520 here in the past couple of years, which I really love. 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:00.639 They found that it's you don't actually even have to 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:03.240 see it. You can hear it, like a piece of 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:06.879 paper being torn, and they'll start firing like that. And 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:14.040 when a Galassian Rizzolatti found that when they actually describe 0:22:14.400 --> 0:22:17.679 something happening in a sentence, the same mirror neurons are 0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:21.159 firing as if they are actually performing the action. So 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:22.840 that's I don't know if that's getting through to people. 0:22:23.240 --> 0:22:27.200 The neurons at fire. If you would actually tear a 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:30.840 piece of paper happened when you hear it being torn crazy. 0:22:31.119 --> 0:22:33.800 It is crazy. Um. And you were talking about the 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:36.800 what was the Italian guy's name who made the prediction 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:38.400 that it was going to be the biggest thing since 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:43.320 the Beatles? Uh Ravioli, Okay Ravioli. When he said, um, 0:22:43.560 --> 0:22:47.320 that it was gonna be huge, he was absolutely right, Chuck. Yes, 0:22:47.920 --> 0:22:52.040 mirror neurons are at the center of what's being called 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:55.800 the Fifth Revolution and humanity. I believe it. Will you 0:22:55.920 --> 0:22:58.080 will you allow me? Will you indulge me a moment? 0:22:59.080 --> 0:23:03.560 So there's has been four so far, and we're at 0:23:03.600 --> 0:23:06.240 the beginning of the fifth Revolution. The first revolution was 0:23:06.400 --> 0:23:10.360 Copernicus saying Earth is in at the center of the universe. 0:23:11.800 --> 0:23:16.120 The second revolution was Darwin saying men are just clever monkeys, 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:20.400 even though he was seventy five years after what's his face? Yeah, 0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:25.280 what's his face? I know you're talking about. Oh yeah, um. 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:29.760 And then the third revolution was Freudian who suggested that 0:23:29.840 --> 0:23:33.280 we were nothing but a bunch of drives and desires 0:23:33.359 --> 0:23:36.320 that we were unconscious of and could control. The fourth 0:23:36.480 --> 0:23:39.159 was the genetic revolution, the d n A. Krick and 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:42.720 Watson who showed like, hey, we're actually a bunch of 0:23:42.840 --> 0:23:46.560 genes and all that that implies, and Watson put it 0:23:46.920 --> 0:23:51.680 like there are only molecules. Everything else's sociology, and his 0:23:52.040 --> 0:23:56.000 his partner Francis Crick, said, huh, you know, that's really 0:23:56.080 --> 0:23:57.840 interesting that we came up with that. I'm gonna go 0:23:57.920 --> 0:24:00.960 ahead and predict the fifth wave and the fifth Revolution 0:24:01.320 --> 0:24:04.760 is neuroscience and that's where we're at now, that we 0:24:05.000 --> 0:24:09.440 are nothing. But uh, this is how Crick put it 0:24:09.520 --> 0:24:13.399 in his book Astonishing Hypothesis. Even our loftiest thoughts and 0:24:13.480 --> 0:24:18.680 aspirations are mere byproducts of neural activity and mirror neurons 0:24:18.960 --> 0:24:22.240 are revealing that synesthesia reveals that. Because think about it, Chuck. 0:24:22.560 --> 0:24:25.200