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Speaker 1: My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb

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Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and we are back with part

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Speaker 1: two of our discussion of psychic photography, the press of

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Speaker 1: the Mind's Eye. That's right. We kicked off last episode

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Speaker 1: talking about the ring in which a psychically gifted, disturbed

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Speaker 1: little girl is able to use her the power of

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Speaker 1: her mind to burn images into things, including into the

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Speaker 1: the film of a VHS tape, sure, but also into

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Speaker 1: all kinds of surfaces. Right. Yeah, But but she's most

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Speaker 1: famous for her her video work is the video artist. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: she's a video artist, true artist and true artistrington. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that's where we started off. But we used then

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Speaker 1: to get into this idea of photography of uh, this

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Speaker 1: this alleged psychic power by which certain individuals were able

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Speaker 1: to use the powers of their mind, uh to either

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Speaker 1: you know, focused mental images into say, undeveloped camera film,

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Speaker 1: or make it so they could like point a camera

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Speaker 1: at their own forehead and take a picture of the

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Speaker 1: interior imaging of their mind. Things of that nature. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: The idea was that somehow mental imagery, you know, things

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Speaker 1: that you are picturing in your brain could be projected

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Speaker 1: out onto the world without being translated through you know,

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Speaker 1: you putting them into language or you sketching with a hand. Um.

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Speaker 1: And so I was wondering if you try to take

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Speaker 1: this idea seriously and say, okay, if this really did work,

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Speaker 1: how would it work. I was having trouble coming across

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Speaker 1: anything that seemed all that plausible to me. Uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: I found one article with somebody's talking about how, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe consciousness is like an electromagnetic field. I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: if I buy that. But even if you did buy

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Speaker 1: the consciousness as an electromagnetic field, how exactly would that

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Speaker 1: translate into you thinking about an image physically pressing the

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Speaker 1: image onto a thing outside your brain, Because there's no

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Speaker 1: reason to think that the electromagnetic field would be like

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Speaker 1: a two dimensional image that's the same as the thing

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Speaker 1: you're picturing. Yeah, and then, I mean there's so many

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Speaker 1: problems with it's almost difficult to roll out individual problems,

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Speaker 1: like what would be the evolved necessity of doing that?

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Speaker 1: You know why, it would have to just be like

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Speaker 1: an accidental byproduct or something, you know, random mutation. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and then would there be a survival advantage to having

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Speaker 1: that mutation? And it gets it gets really sticky, really fast. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And I think it highlights a kind of like shallow

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Speaker 1: understanding of what mental image re is. So yeah, and

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Speaker 1: then specifically what photography is concerning those examples of the

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Speaker 1: thoughtography that we discussed in the last episode. Yes, exactly.

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Speaker 1: So I thought maybe we should start today by thinking

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Speaker 1: about what is the physical reality of an image in

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Speaker 1: the mind's eye when you okay, so stopping, you picture something,

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Speaker 1: you picture Garfield Garfield in mind? What is happening in

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Speaker 1: your brain when you picture Garfield? Like, is there some

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Speaker 1: two dimensional grid of brain cells that's like a screen

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Speaker 1: where colors fill in like pixels on a computer screen

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Speaker 1: and they form Garfield. It seems kind of implausible, but

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Speaker 1: you know, entertained that for a second, if there were

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Speaker 1: a way for a mental image to be projected into

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Speaker 1: a physical space, what would be the physical nature of

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Speaker 1: the original signal in the brain, and how would it

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Speaker 1: be transferred to the physical form without being interpreted through

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Speaker 1: the body. So I was looking at a couple of

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Speaker 1: papers on the subject of like research and thought about

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Speaker 1: mental imagery, and one one of the ones I was

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Speaker 1: looking at was called Unpicturing a Candle The Prehistory of

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Speaker 1: Imagery Science, and this was published in Frontiers and Psychology

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Speaker 1: by Matthew mckissics, Susan Aldworth, Fiona McPherson, John Onion's, Crawford Winlove,

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Speaker 1: and Adam Zema, and this a lot of names. Uh

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Speaker 1: In and the authors here focus on the history of

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Speaker 1: scholarship and philosophy concerning visual imagination before modern neuroscience, but

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Speaker 1: they also cover some modern neuroscience with a specific focus

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Speaker 1: on the idea of imagining a concrete object, for example,

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Speaker 1: picturing a candle. And so the authors explored the history

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Speaker 1: and so for example, they start by looking at like

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Speaker 1: Plato and Aristotle, and they point out that Plato actually

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Speaker 1: did not hold a very high regard for the importance

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Speaker 1: of mental imagination. Uh Like for Plato, mental imagery is

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Speaker 1: a copy of a copy. It is a sort of

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Speaker 1: imperfect fac simile of an object in the world, which

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Speaker 1: is already merely an imperfect copy of a perfect divine form.

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Speaker 1: That we're getting into the idea of the realm of forms.

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Speaker 1: Uh the idea that a chair, that there's a perfect

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Speaker 1: version of a chair that exists in the realm of forms.

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Speaker 1: The chair we can build is an imperfect interpretation of that.

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Speaker 1: But then the but then his view is because I'm

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Speaker 1: more likely to think of it the other way, like

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Speaker 1: I'm thinking, then, oh, well, the version of the chair

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Speaker 1: in our mind, that's the realm of forms. But he's saying, no,

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Speaker 1: that's that's even another level removed from the realm of forms.

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Speaker 1: It's an imperfect version of the imperfect chair that is

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Speaker 1: in itself an imperfect version of the ideal chair. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: your mental image of a pineapple is a flawed copy

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Speaker 1: of some actual pineapple, which is an imperfect realization of

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Speaker 1: eternal pineapple nous. Yeah, and I and I think I

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Speaker 1: think he is correct here, because, as we stayed in

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Speaker 1: the last episode, we often we often a tribute a

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Speaker 1: lot of detail and accuracy to our total images when

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Speaker 1: they're when it's really not there. It's it's often a

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Speaker 1: lot more obscure and unfinished than we give it credit. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I almost wouldn't think about it in terms

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Speaker 1: of accuracy, but in terms and maybe this is more

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Speaker 1: specific to the way my brain works, but I think

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Speaker 1: about it even in terms of completeness, like that, when

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Speaker 1: I have a mental image of something, it's not the

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Speaker 1: same as looking at the thing, because I'm not I'm

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Speaker 1: only vaguely grasping the totality of the image. When I'm

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Speaker 1: mentally picture something, it's not like it's just not like

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Speaker 1: looking at a fixed version of the image. It's kind

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Speaker 1: of like a hazy scanning of different little elements of

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Speaker 1: the image that I can picture in a moment against

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Speaker 1: a field of a general impression of the larger image.

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Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Yeah? Yeah, I believe. An example

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Speaker 1: that's often used here is that of a bicycle. If

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Speaker 1: I say, hey, imagine a bicycle. Easy done. I'm imagining

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Speaker 1: a bicycle right now. But if we go to the

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Speaker 1: next step and say that bicycle you're imagining, describe for

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Speaker 1: me the functionality of its, of the of the wheels

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Speaker 1: and the gears and the pedals and everything explained to

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Speaker 1: me how that works? Oh yeah. This goes back to

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Speaker 1: our illusion of explanatory depth episodes where everybody can picture

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Speaker 1: a bicycle, but can you draw a bicycle? And it

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Speaker 1: turns out it's just try it. You might end up

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Speaker 1: laughing really hard at yourself because you think you can

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Speaker 1: draw a bicycle, but there's a decent chance you can't.

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Speaker 1: You don't know where the bars go, which wheel connects

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Speaker 1: to what? You just don't know, even though you think

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Speaker 1: you can picture it right now. So again, Plato, I

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Speaker 1: think was definitely onto something here. I think Plato hit

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Speaker 1: this one out of the park. Yeah. But Aristotle, to

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Speaker 1: the contrary, he thought that not only was mental image

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Speaker 1: rey important, he thought that you literally could not think

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Speaker 1: without it. They quote him saying, the soul never thinks

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Speaker 1: without a phantasma, and the phantasma is like some kind

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Speaker 1: of mental image, which I'm sure this would come as

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Speaker 1: news to our many listeners who tell us about their

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Speaker 1: experiences with a fantasia, meaning that they say they don't

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Speaker 1: have the ability to form mental images, they can't picture

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Speaker 1: something in their heads. And yet you know, we've got

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Speaker 1: no reason to disbelieve them on that. And at the

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Speaker 1: same time, they seem perfectly capable of thinking. So it

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Speaker 1: seems perfectly clear to me that mental imagery is not

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Speaker 1: necessary for thought, right, it is necessary for choosing the

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Speaker 1: form of the destroyer should gozer Uh, the traveler appear

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Speaker 1: to you. I have been think back at that scene

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Speaker 1: and Ghostbusters. Uh, that's how they choose the stay puff

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Speaker 1: marshmallow man form. But you have all of the Ghostbusters

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Speaker 1: had had a fantasia, then the the Destroyer would not

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Speaker 1: have been able to manifest. I think you said that

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Speaker 1: in the original episode. Probably did. I haven't thought about

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Speaker 1: it since then. But that's great unless goes Are the

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Speaker 1: Destroyer is even more nefarious than we imagine, and he

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Speaker 1: can also manifest in the shape of something that you

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Speaker 1: put together through say words or whatever. Maybe, but I

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Speaker 1: kind of like the idea that it's being an interdimensional entity.

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Speaker 1: It's it's limited, and it really like it. It cannot

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Speaker 1: venture into this form unless there is a clear visual

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Speaker 1: image that it can draw from. Like that has to

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Speaker 1: be the uh, the the foothold for it to climb

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Speaker 1: back in and begin destroying. Well, to tie it back

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Speaker 1: to psychic photography, actually this is what the case of

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Speaker 1: goes Are taking the form you imagine would be exactly

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Speaker 1: like thoughtography. It would be the case of mental imagery

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Speaker 1: being manifested as a physical object in the world. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but but it would also it would make more sense

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Speaker 1: that a god can read your mind, then your mind

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Speaker 1: can blast a photo, blast an image onto some undeveloped film,

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Speaker 1: I agree. Uh. So picking up again with the history

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Speaker 1: of mental imagery, Uh, Descartes had thoughts about visual imagination,

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Speaker 1: apparently placed it on par with the senses as manifestations

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Speaker 1: of the body would. Of course, in descartess view, that

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Speaker 1: makes them fallible, because of course they can always be mistaken,

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Speaker 1: unlike in his view pure logical deduction. If you were

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Speaker 1: call like the fight between Descartes and the the empiricists.

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Speaker 1: You know, the empiricists thought that the senses should be primary,

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Speaker 1: but deckart thought, no, you can't ever fully trust the senses.

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Speaker 1: You've got to go on just like pure logical proofs.

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Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure why, for some reason that that

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Speaker 1: seems like a funny belief looking back on it now.

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Speaker 1: Of course, later mental imagery became the domain of psychology. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And of course you know that that would be treated

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Speaker 1: in different ways depending on the different schools of psychology.

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Speaker 1: One thing that I think is interesting in the history

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Speaker 1: of psychology is the behaviorist school, of course, not being

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Speaker 1: interested in mental imagery because it's not an outwardly measurable behavior.

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Speaker 1: So J. B. Watson apparently referred to mental imagery as

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Speaker 1: quote motor habits in the larynx, which I think is

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Speaker 1: a behaviorist way of saying something you only know about

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Speaker 1: because people talk about it. I am continually fascinated by

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Speaker 1: thinking about behaviorism because we occasionally hear from people. Uh,

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Speaker 1: We've gotten a couple of listener emails over the years,

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Speaker 1: people responding to topics from a behaviorist point of view,

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Speaker 1: essentially not crediting anything that's about the inner experiences or

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Speaker 1: consciousness of people. It's only you know, the psychology can

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Speaker 1: only be about outwardly measured behaviors. Yeah, it's a statement

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Speaker 1: like that. Then it makes me wonder if J. V.

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Speaker 1: Watson was perhaps perhaps had a fantasia. You know, I

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Speaker 1: mean this idea because we this lines up with what

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Speaker 1: we've heard from a lot of people who's claimed to

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Speaker 1: have a fantasia. And they'll say, oh, yeah, I heard

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Speaker 1: people talking about picturing something in their mind when they

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Speaker 1: read a book, and I thought they were just being

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Speaker 1: you know, it was just figurative, you know, they weren't

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Speaker 1: saying that they actually saw something in their head. Like

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Speaker 1: it's it seems like it is difficult to imagine the

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Speaker 1: mental image if you have no frame of reference for it,

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Speaker 1: you know, uh, yeah, except I would say that for Watson,

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Speaker 1: it's not just mental imagery. It's all internal mental phenomena.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's everything that's not outward behavior. So it

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be just I think he would probably think that

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Speaker 1: mental imagery is not the only thing. That's just a

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Speaker 1: motor habit in the larynx. That uh that I don't know, imagination, that,

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Speaker 1: like anything inside your head, is a motor habit in

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Speaker 1: the larynx. Do you think Ether would have changed his

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Speaker 1: mind at all? I don't know. Then again, maybe I'm

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Speaker 1: not being fair. I don't want to put words in

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Speaker 1: Watson's mouth, but uh, yeah, So I think we don't

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Speaker 1: need to feel bound by the behaviorist view of this thing,

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Speaker 1: and we can entertain the idea of mental imagery. You

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Speaker 1: experience it, other people say they experience it. You've got

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Speaker 1: no reason to disbelieve them. So I think humans probably

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Speaker 1: have mental imagery. But but long in history, it has

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Speaker 1: clearly been assumed that there is some kind of physical representation,

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Speaker 1: space and perceiver within the brain for mental imagery. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And one thing I'm thinking about that I came across

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Speaker 1: while preparing for this episode is an illustration by the

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Speaker 1: sixteenth seventeenth century English physician and occultist Robert Flood spelled

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Speaker 1: f l U d D kind of like Elmer Flood

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Speaker 1: Flood with an L flood, also like Randall Flag. Oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's true. Maybe this is one of the incarnations of

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Speaker 1: the Man from the Desert. But anyway, and one of

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Speaker 1: Robert Flood's tracks he illustrated the eye of imagination or

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Speaker 1: the oculus imagination onus, which was this third eye inside

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Speaker 1: the brain which getting it wrong and backwards in multiple ways,

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Speaker 1: projected mental images onto some kind of screen or representation

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Speaker 1: space in the back or like in the back of

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Speaker 1: the head or behind the head, where mental images would

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Speaker 1: take form after being projected by this third eye. And now,

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Speaker 1: of course we know that the eye does not project

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Speaker 1: a beam of seeing, but receives incoming light. So even yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think we're we're confused in more ways than one here. Yeah, Like,

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Speaker 1: if there really were a tiny viewing screen inside the

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Speaker 1: brain and an eye to see it, it would be

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Speaker 1: too dark to watch the movie, right right, So that

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Speaker 1: would be a problem. But but yeah, I mean, like,

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Speaker 1: I think third eye views are are popular throughout history.

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Speaker 1: People kind of think there's an observer in the observer right,

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Speaker 1: and and granted, we do have a pennial gland, which

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Speaker 1: is essentially an atrophied photo receptor with some connections to

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Speaker 1: the parietal eye of reptiles. But but it produces uh, melotonin,

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Speaker 1: a serotonin derived hormone, and is not involved in the

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Speaker 1: generation of mental images, or at least I don't think

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Speaker 1: there's any evidence, and not that I've ever seen. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is funny because I was reading that deck Hart

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Speaker 1: believed that the penneal gland was the point of interaction

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Speaker 1: between the body and the immaterial soul. Did you know this, um?

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Speaker 1: May We did. We did episode on the pineal gland

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Speaker 1: way back in the day, so it's possible I came

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Speaker 1: across this. Yeah, But I'm thinking back to this idea

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Speaker 1: of having, yeah, a viewer inside the viewer like an

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Speaker 1: in internal I inside the brain for mental imagery. And

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Speaker 1: there are reasons I think that there are problems with

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Speaker 1: this because if in order to see mental images we

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Speaker 1: have to project them physically somewhere inside the brain, what

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Speaker 1: is the part of the brain that is looking at

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Speaker 1: the image? Is it another brain with eyes inside the brain? Uh?

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Speaker 1: Incognitive philosophy, this is sometimes called the homunculous theory. That's

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Speaker 1: a you know, a name of ridicule for it, like

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Speaker 1: the idea that there has to be somebody inside your

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Speaker 1: brain to see what your brain is seeing or thinking. Right,

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Speaker 1: as with like the homunculous ideas and human reproduction where

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Speaker 1: there's a tiny little version of you inside of a

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Speaker 1: sperm cell. Yes, and like the homunculous idea of of reproduction,

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Speaker 1: it's an infinite regress, right, because if there's a little

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Speaker 1: eyes and a brain inside your head in order to

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Speaker 1: see what you're thinking, then that brain must have little

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Speaker 1: eyes and a brain inside that brain to see what

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Speaker 1: that brain is thinking about. And it goes on forever.

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Speaker 1: And another version of this extended to total brain function

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Speaker 1: is what Daniel Dennett calls the Cartesian theater. Again, this

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Speaker 1: is something he's he's ridiculing. Basically, it's uh imagining or

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Speaker 1: implicitly assuming that the brain has some sort of little

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Speaker 1: pilot inside who witnesses all of our sense data and

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Speaker 1: controls our reactions um. And again it's basically a reductive

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Speaker 1: ad absurdam because it leads to this infinite regress. Who's

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Speaker 1: seeing the images inside the brain and the homunculus or

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Speaker 1: the pilot or the Cartesian theater must be another smaller one.

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Speaker 1: So I don't think it can be that inside the brain,

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Speaker 1: mental images are seen the same way our eyes see

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Speaker 1: things in the world. So what actually is happening in

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Speaker 1: the brain when you're asked to imagine a concrete image.

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Speaker 1: Maybe we should take a break and then explore that

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Speaker 1: when we come back. Yes, everyone think of a bicycle

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Speaker 1: during this commercial break. Than alright, we're back, and hopefully

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Speaker 1: you stall that bicycle floating around inside your mind. We

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Speaker 1: should give them something more interesting to picture concretely, something

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Speaker 1: with details. Picture a demogorgan. The demogorgan is good. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's just interesting how many like fabled unreal entities are

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Speaker 1: good things to focus your mind on. And I think

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Speaker 1: it perhaps it's because there are there are combinations, they're

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Speaker 1: they're hybrids with different elements. So you you're you're, you

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Speaker 1: know what, You're kind of thinking of a list and

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Speaker 1: compiling that list into this single mental image and ultimately

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Speaker 1: gives you something to focus on, right, But the details

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Speaker 1: are provided to you. Whereas the bicycle, you're just saying bicycle,

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Speaker 1: we're not saying, imagine a contraption with two wheels, and

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Speaker 1: there's etcetera. Two wheels and nine tentacles and three baboon heads. Yes, yes,

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Speaker 1: and in one hand the sun and in the other

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Speaker 1: hand the moon. Okay, Now, when you do picture the demogorgan,

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Speaker 1: what is actually happening in your brain? Has modern neuroscience

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Speaker 1: discovered any answers to this question? Actually the answer is yes,

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Speaker 1: we do know a decent amount. We don't know everything.

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Speaker 1: We know a decent amount about what happens in the brain.

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Speaker 1: When you picture mental imagery. Um, So, brain cells in

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Speaker 1: the temporal lobe, and this is the temporal lobes are

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Speaker 1: at the bottom and sides of the brain, sort of

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Speaker 1: around the ears. They become activated. And previous research has

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Speaker 1: shown that the temporal lobes are involved in attributing and

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Speaker 1: storing information about the visual characteristics of objects. So normally,

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Speaker 1: like when you see something, uh, information might there might

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Speaker 1: be activity in the temporal lobes that seems to be

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Speaker 1: creating associations with the thing you're looking at. Right, like

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Speaker 1: the foam on the walls in our studio. They look

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Speaker 1: like tiny pyramids. So I can look at one of those,

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Speaker 1: and then I can I can't help but imagine a

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Speaker 1: great pyramid. Yes, and So what's happening there when you're

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Speaker 1: using your eyes is probably that lights coming through the eyes,

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Speaker 1: signals are asking from your optic nerve, from your retina's

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Speaker 1: tear optic nerve, and uh, they're ending up in the

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Speaker 1: visual processing areas in the back of your head, and

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Speaker 1: that's known as the occipital cortex, the back of the head,

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Speaker 1: and then that start signals that cascade out to other

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Speaker 1: brain regions. Where you form those associations probably has a

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Speaker 1: lot to do with your temporal lobes. But when you're

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Speaker 1: asked to picture something concrete, like I say, picture the

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Speaker 1: Great Pyramids of Giza, uh, we seem to be starting

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Speaker 1: with activity that involves visual memory. So there's stuff going

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Speaker 1: on in the temporal lobes, and the excitation of these

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Speaker 1: cells then triggers activity in the visual cortices of the

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Speaker 1: occipital lobe. Again that's the very back of the head.

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Speaker 1: And of course this is the same part of the

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Speaker 1: brain that receives and begins to process visual information received

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Speaker 1: by the retina transmitted by the optic nerve when you

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Speaker 1: normally see something. And the authors of this paper I

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Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, they they point out that when you conjure

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Speaker 1: mental imagery. It's not exactly, but it's sort of roughly

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Speaker 1: an invert of the process of seeing with the eyes. Basically,

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Speaker 1: it's similar cascades going in opposite directions. And it also,

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Speaker 1: i would say, seems to suggest that if it were

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Speaker 1: possible to project an image from ted serious head onto film,

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Speaker 1: if anything, he should have been holding the gizmo and

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Speaker 1: the camera on the back of his head rather than

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Speaker 1: the forehead. Because it seems like the activity is going

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Speaker 1: from a sort of beginning with uh, with executive function.

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Speaker 1: Of course, that's uh, you know, intentionally causing the memories.

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Speaker 1: Then there's memory stuff in the temporal lobes, and then

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Speaker 1: it's going to the occipital lobe in the back of

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Speaker 1: the head. I'll see, if you'd only known that, it

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Speaker 1: would have worked every time. Now, why do you need

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Speaker 1: executive function in the front of the brain as well? Well?

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Speaker 1: Apparently that's involved in intentionally trying to call up and

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Speaker 1: hold mental images. So like conscious management of what's happening

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Speaker 1: in the brain tends to be thought that that's executive function.

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Speaker 1: It's deliberate thinking and maintenance of attention, and that entails

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Speaker 1: activity in the frontal and parietal regions of the brain,

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Speaker 1: so stuff up front and to the front and sides. UH.

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Speaker 1: And mental imagery may also involve executive function because it

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Speaker 1: requires the suppression of incoming imagery from the eyes or

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Speaker 1: at least the diversion of visual processing resources from quote

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Speaker 1: signals based on light entering the eyes right now too,

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Speaker 1: images generated from memory. It's crazy to think about the

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Speaker 1: and I'm thinking about it in this terms because we're

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Speaker 1: also researching an episode that has to do with driving

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Speaker 1: and the what's going on in your mind when you

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Speaker 1: drive an automobile? And isn't it crazy that we can

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Speaker 1: engage in the cognitively demanding job of say, driving a

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Speaker 1: speeding automobile down an interstate, watching what all the cars

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Speaker 1: are doing, and you know, reading an occasional sign, looking

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Speaker 1: out for speed traps, all of these things that we're doing,

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Speaker 1: and at the same time, we might have an audio

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Speaker 1: book playing that is filling our head with like with

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Speaker 1: a you know, a rich visual world, and we're entertaining

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Speaker 1: both of these at the same time. I would say

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Speaker 1: that that is while I accept that we can handle

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Speaker 1: those things both, at the same time, I would say

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Speaker 1: it is not without costs to UH. To either one,

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Speaker 1: Like I would say that you probably have a more

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Speaker 1: rich experience of the book and mental image reassociated with

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Speaker 1: the book if you were not driving, and you'd probably

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Speaker 1: be better at driving if you were not listening to

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Speaker 1: the book, because there is actually a competition for resources

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Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. I mean, of course

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Speaker 1: that I think a lot of us tend to to

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Speaker 1: read in environments where there are other distractions. Maybe not

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Speaker 1: as cognitively demanding as piloting an automobile, but but still,

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Speaker 1: this would be an interesting one to get some feedback

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Speaker 1: from listeners, because I know that we have a number

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Speaker 1: of listeners who who are on the road a lot

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Speaker 1: and listen listen to us on the road and listen

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Speaker 1: to to other bits of audio as well. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: a good point. Please only listen to our podcast if

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Speaker 1: if it is safe to do so. It's don't devote

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Speaker 1: too much mental resources to us if if you're piloting

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Speaker 1: a dangerous vehicle. But then again, even if you're not

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Speaker 1: listening to a podcast or an audio book, oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: your mind's want, your mind's gonna wander, And then I

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Speaker 1: mean it's not even going to necessarily be a situation

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Speaker 1: where you're consciously choosing things to imagine. You know, you're

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Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna be subject to the visual summonings of

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Speaker 1: the default mode network, where uh, you know, mental images

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Speaker 1: from the past or the physy future are going to

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Speaker 1: you know, venture into your mind like Victorian ghosts. But

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Speaker 1: speaking of ghosts, I mean, I do think it's a

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Speaker 1: little bit spooky that once I read this, this does

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Speaker 1: in fact seem true to me. I just had never

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Speaker 1: really thought of it this way, that when you mentally

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Speaker 1: picture something, you're you are intentionally using your brain. You're

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Speaker 1: performing some kind of internal brain resources management with the

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Speaker 1: executive function mostly in your frontal lobe. I think to say,

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Speaker 1: turn down resolution on incoming mental visual imagery and devote

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Speaker 1: some of those resources to mental imagery. And if you

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Speaker 1: if you practice it right now, I think you'll probably

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Speaker 1: notice the same thing. Just like, look at something and

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Speaker 1: then try to picture something mentally, and you'll notice that

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Speaker 1: you're looking kind of gets downgraded in like quality and

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Speaker 1: and arrested. Are Are you feeling this? Yeah? I mean,

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Speaker 1: but this is also kind of the uh it kind

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Speaker 1: of goes both ways, right, Like both cannot have have

428
00:24:31,640 --> 00:24:35,600
Speaker 1: complete dominance at the same time, so you might be

429
00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:38,400
Speaker 1: able to to dim the thermis that you're staring at

430
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:41,679
Speaker 1: by allowing mental images to you know, to to to

431
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:43,720
Speaker 1: be summoned into your mind. But on the same level,

432
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:49,600
Speaker 1: if you feel um haunted by various visual imagery ghosts,

433
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:53,120
Speaker 1: you know, the visualizations that are in some way troubling

434
00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:55,760
Speaker 1: or traumatic, uh, you know, one of the exercises is

435
00:24:55,800 --> 00:24:59,040
Speaker 1: to focus your awareness on something, uh that that is

436
00:24:59,160 --> 00:25:02,439
Speaker 1: a physically doesn't be at the ambient environment or a

437
00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:06,200
Speaker 1: specific object. I think that that would probably absolutely work,

438
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:08,280
Speaker 1: at least based on what I've read, that you can

439
00:25:08,320 --> 00:25:11,680
Speaker 1: that you can greatly lessen the power of mental imagery

440
00:25:11,800 --> 00:25:15,520
Speaker 1: just by using your senses. Yeah, Like it reminds me

441
00:25:15,560 --> 00:25:18,960
Speaker 1: of meditation practices. Like, certainly they are closed eye meditation practices,

442
00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:21,879
Speaker 1: which in that environment, you're really opening it up to

443
00:25:21,920 --> 00:25:25,280
Speaker 1: the visual way of seeing, you know, uh, to the

444
00:25:25,280 --> 00:25:28,400
Speaker 1: mental image alone. But there are plenty of open eye

445
00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:31,080
Speaker 1: practices where you know, the instructor will say, you know,

446
00:25:31,160 --> 00:25:33,159
Speaker 1: pick something in the room, doesn't matter what it is.

447
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:35,679
Speaker 1: It can be an electrical socket, but stare at that

448
00:25:35,720 --> 00:25:39,600
Speaker 1: electrical socket. Stare long and hard at that electrical socket,

449
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:42,400
Speaker 1: and that becomes kind of the you know, the visual

450
00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:46,640
Speaker 1: mantra that will force out the other the other ghosts. Yeah.

451
00:25:46,920 --> 00:25:49,440
Speaker 1: I like this metaphor for thinking about it, that there's

452
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:52,439
Speaker 1: this war in your brain, this war for control of

453
00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:55,280
Speaker 1: the resources in your brain, and one of them is

454
00:25:56,000 --> 00:25:59,560
Speaker 1: things in your immediate surroundings, your sense, perceptions, and the

455
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:02,640
Speaker 1: other things conjured by the void, which could be good,

456
00:26:02,680 --> 00:26:05,120
Speaker 1: things could be bad, things could be useful, things could

457
00:26:05,119 --> 00:26:08,239
Speaker 1: be debilitating things. I mean, it's just what comes up

458
00:26:08,320 --> 00:26:11,439
Speaker 1: out out of you know, either the intentional use of

459
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:14,399
Speaker 1: mental imagery by the executive part of your brain or

460
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:19,240
Speaker 1: just you know, things that are subconsciously arising from the depths.

461
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:21,800
Speaker 1: And your brain has to have some kind of partitioning

462
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 1: system for this, this sort of visual processing, right. Uh.

463
00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 1: It uses regions in the occipital lobe to process image

464
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:31,680
Speaker 1: data coming from your eyes, But you also use some

465
00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:35,960
Speaker 1: of the same regions to process images generated based on

466
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 1: your memories or based on your imagination, which I think

467
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:42,080
Speaker 1: involves the memories. And these two processes are just constantly

468
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 1: going on simultaneously and competing for the same neural resources.

469
00:26:46,600 --> 00:26:50,399
Speaker 1: Yet most of the time most people, uh, this is

470
00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:52,960
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. Most of the time, most people manage

471
00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:56,639
Speaker 1: not to get confused. Isn't that interesting too, Like what

472
00:26:56,800 --> 00:26:59,119
Speaker 1: kind of partitioning must be going on in the brain,

473
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:02,879
Speaker 1: because you can picture a pineapple on the desk in

474
00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:05,520
Speaker 1: front of you right now, and you can picture that,

475
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:08,960
Speaker 1: but most of the time you don't become confused and

476
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:12,520
Speaker 1: think you're actually seeing a pineapple there. Yeah, not even

477
00:27:12,520 --> 00:27:15,399
Speaker 1: awareness is focused, you know, certainly, certainly we all have

478
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:17,879
Speaker 1: those those situations where you walk into a room and

479
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:19,680
Speaker 1: out of the corner of your eye you think, for

480
00:27:19,720 --> 00:27:22,240
Speaker 1: a second, there's a there's a goblin standing in the corner,

481
00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:24,800
Speaker 1: or there's a cat, or or something's out of place,

482
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:27,280
Speaker 1: and then you know a second glance, you realize, oh,

483
00:27:27,320 --> 00:27:30,639
Speaker 1: it's just the way that the shadow is falling, or

484
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 1: it's the way that the drape is positioned, etcetera. Like

485
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:36,879
Speaker 1: we come back to it again, Like our awareness doesn't

486
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:39,240
Speaker 1: just do a single take. It as a double take,

487
00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:42,880
Speaker 1: and it, you know, you confirms or denies the presence

488
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:44,679
Speaker 1: of the thing you thought was there initially, right. I

489
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:48,560
Speaker 1: think the persistence of the stimulus is one key there

490
00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:51,360
Speaker 1: that like you can keep looking at something and you're

491
00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 1: you know, your imagination will fluctuate, but the light coming

492
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:57,400
Speaker 1: into your eyes is going to stay about the same. Yeah, um,

493
00:27:57,800 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 1: and some beautiful derics there that could be an eagles.

494
00:28:04,119 --> 00:28:05,960
Speaker 1: I just tried to sing some eagles, but we don't

495
00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:08,120
Speaker 1: want to get night cheese, so we're not gonna leave

496
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:10,639
Speaker 1: it in. Uh Now, Now, it does appear that there's

497
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:15,040
Speaker 1: a possibility for some bleed over in the visual processing

498
00:28:15,119 --> 00:28:19,720
Speaker 1: between mental imagery and actual uh uh seeing with the eyes.

499
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:23,760
Speaker 1: For example, this thing called the Perky effect. This is

500
00:28:23,840 --> 00:28:27,400
Speaker 1: named after the American psychologist C. W. Perky. So how

501
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:30,199
Speaker 1: does this work? Well, uh, Perky She she would have

502
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:34,479
Speaker 1: somebody try to visualize something like a leaf or a

503
00:28:34,520 --> 00:28:38,520
Speaker 1: banana while looking at a blank screen, and then meanwhile

504
00:28:38,720 --> 00:28:43,480
Speaker 1: she would project a very faint, soft focus image of

505
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:46,880
Speaker 1: something like a leaf or a banana onto the screen

506
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 1: just about the threshold brightness of visual perception. And in

507
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:57,920
Speaker 1: these experiments, Perky found that subjects would incorporate visual features

508
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:02,080
Speaker 1: of the actual image that was faint projected, thinking that

509
00:29:02,120 --> 00:29:05,920
Speaker 1: these were features of their imagined image, for example, the

510
00:29:05,960 --> 00:29:09,920
Speaker 1: type of leaf or the orientation of the banana. And

511
00:29:09,960 --> 00:29:12,560
Speaker 1: there have been various attempts to replicate this finding, some

512
00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:16,360
Speaker 1: successful and some unsuccessful. So I think we're not totally

513
00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 1: sure how robust this effect is, but I think now

514
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:23,360
Speaker 1: a common assessment of what of this effect is that

515
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:26,280
Speaker 1: what's really being detected here is the fact that using

516
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 1: visual imagination steals processing resources from normal visual perception, like

517
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:34,720
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier, So if you're trying to

518
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:38,720
Speaker 1: imagine something, you're less likely to notice consciously that an

519
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:41,560
Speaker 1: image is being faintly projected in front of you, even

520
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 1: though you might pick up some visual cues such as

521
00:29:44,720 --> 00:29:48,200
Speaker 1: color or shape from that image and just hold them

522
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:51,040
Speaker 1: in mind to think they're part of your imagination, which

523
00:29:51,040 --> 00:29:53,360
Speaker 1: again is creepy. I mean, this isn't the only finding

524
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:56,600
Speaker 1: like this that that you can like give people cues

525
00:29:56,720 --> 00:29:59,200
Speaker 1: from the outside that people come to believe or just

526
00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 1: part of their own imagination. But I guess maybe it's

527
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: needless to say that after looking through all this, I

528
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 1: don't think there's any evidence at all that representation of

529
00:30:09,040 --> 00:30:12,800
Speaker 1: an image in the mind involves the brain building a

530
00:30:12,840 --> 00:30:16,800
Speaker 1: physical two dimensional picture of the image which could be

531
00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:21,000
Speaker 1: projected onto an external substrate like film. It's kind of

532
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:24,640
Speaker 1: like imagining that you could save a jpeg of Garfield,

533
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:27,440
Speaker 1: Say got Garfield and a jpeg and that's on an

534
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:31,760
Speaker 1: old computer floppy disk, and then you could somehow you're

535
00:30:31,760 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 1: trying to project the image of Garfield physically from the

536
00:30:35,480 --> 00:30:39,280
Speaker 1: floppy disk onto a photograph or a piece of paper.

537
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:43,480
Speaker 1: The two D pixel layout of Garfield is not found

538
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:46,400
Speaker 1: anywhere on the disc. You know, it's broken down and

539
00:30:46,520 --> 00:30:49,720
Speaker 1: encoded as information which can later be read by a

540
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:52,480
Speaker 1: program to create a copy of the same original image

541
00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:55,360
Speaker 1: on a computer screen. But the image of Garfield can't

542
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:57,600
Speaker 1: be seen anywhere on the disc. You can't pull it

543
00:30:57,640 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: out by projecting something through it, even with the strongest microscope.

544
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:04,720
Speaker 1: It's encoded as information that only yields the image when

545
00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:10,040
Speaker 1: decoded correctly, and as best I can tell, Imagery's works

546
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:13,240
Speaker 1: a similar way. In the brain. It's somehow coded through

547
00:31:13,280 --> 00:31:16,360
Speaker 1: neuronal activity. It's it's not an image that you could

548
00:31:16,400 --> 00:31:20,840
Speaker 1: find anywhere in the brain. You've touched on one of

549
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 1: my big problems with David Cronenberg Scanners, which is a

550
00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:28,360
Speaker 1: movie I love. Otherwise, Uh, there's a lot to love

551
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:31,400
Speaker 1: about crona about about scanners and not just you know,

552
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 1: people's heads exploding and Michael ironsides of you know, fabulous,

553
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 1: you know, psychic facial strains. But but there is this

554
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 1: this one section of the film where the character Cameron

555
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 1: Veil can cyber pathetically scan a computer hide hard drive

556
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:51,640
Speaker 1: with his brain. Uh. And that always bugged me because

557
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, it's one thing to imagine one brain

558
00:31:54,920 --> 00:31:58,840
Speaker 1: speaking to another brain, you know, even though there's you know,

559
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: there's no defined way that that would actually occur. Uh,

560
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:05,920
Speaker 1: you know, at least in terms of like the human

561
00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:08,920
Speaker 1: mind talking to another human mind. But but it's even

562
00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: a greater stretch than to imagine that he is scanning

563
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 1: a computer hard drive. Yeah, because his brain does not

564
00:32:15,360 --> 00:32:19,560
Speaker 1: it can't execute the code right. Like, in order for

565
00:32:19,640 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 1: the data on the hard drive to be read correctly

566
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,719
Speaker 1: has to be executed somehow. There's like a decoding procedure

567
00:32:26,160 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 1: that yields the text or the sound files or whatever

568
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:32,560
Speaker 1: it is he's trying to discover, and presumably his brain

569
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:36,560
Speaker 1: doesn't have that decoding function within it. Yeah. Yeah, So,

570
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:39,920
Speaker 1: and it's the same problem with this idea of photography,

571
00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 1: that that somehow you could you could put the mental

572
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 1: image in your mind onto the film. That's why I

573
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:49,120
Speaker 1: fire prefer one a great example of a far more

574
00:32:49,160 --> 00:32:54,160
Speaker 1: believable system of telepathic communication would be that used by

575
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 1: the Gelflings in the Dark Crystal and also in the

576
00:32:57,320 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 1: the new so far really fabulous uh Netflix of prequel series.

577
00:33:03,760 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 1: Oh I also started to haven't finished loving it so far.

578
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:10,560
Speaker 1: But the the Gelflings are able to to dream fast

579
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:14,720
Speaker 1: where they're able to uh to to like touch grasp hands,

580
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:19,000
Speaker 1: and in doing so, they share their mental images mental

581
00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:22,120
Speaker 1: images of you know, their memories with each other so

582
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: that they can share an inexperience and uh, you know,

583
00:33:25,440 --> 00:33:28,120
Speaker 1: that's a version of mental image sharing that you know.

584
00:33:28,160 --> 00:33:31,120
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly what the you know, the biological

585
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:35,520
Speaker 1: explanation would be for it, but it's conceivable. It's conceivable

586
00:33:35,560 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 1: that these two um you know, you know, neural systems

587
00:33:39,120 --> 00:33:44,040
Speaker 1: in the same species could link up to share information

588
00:33:44,360 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 1: and that would also have a that would have a

589
00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:49,040
Speaker 1: survival that would be a survival adaptation as well. Like

590
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 1: that's something that would be uh, you know, supported through

591
00:33:51,520 --> 00:33:53,560
Speaker 1: natural selection. Well, you can think about it as another

592
00:33:53,600 --> 00:33:56,920
Speaker 1: form of language, and we've got language to code experiences

593
00:33:56,960 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 1: and share them between each other. So you could imagine

594
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:04,560
Speaker 1: teachers could I don't know, project electromagnetic symbols or something

595
00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:06,880
Speaker 1: to each other. You know, pulses of stuff that would

596
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:10,400
Speaker 1: incode and decode information across brains the same way. I

597
00:34:10,600 --> 00:34:13,399
Speaker 1: don't think there's any good evidence that humans can do that,

598
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:16,160
Speaker 1: but you could imagine a species that did do that.

599
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:20,000
Speaker 1: Right likewise, it's and perhaps there's a science fiction surely

600
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 1: there's a science fiction or fantasy treatment of this out

601
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:26,960
Speaker 1: there somewhere. You can imagine something with the chromatophores along

602
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:30,520
Speaker 1: the lines of cuttlefish, or you know, an octopus being

603
00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:34,080
Speaker 1: able to take a mental image in its head and

604
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:37,640
Speaker 1: recreated on its body. Oh, I love that that. Somebody

605
00:34:37,680 --> 00:34:39,520
Speaker 1: has surely done that before, and that would be that

606
00:34:39,560 --> 00:34:41,279
Speaker 1: would be an interesting way to do it. And of

607
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:46,000
Speaker 1: course humans have a similar ability through language and uh

608
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:49,520
Speaker 1: and and an artistic skill. We can take a mental

609
00:34:49,560 --> 00:34:54,279
Speaker 1: image and we can recreate some version of it outside

610
00:34:54,280 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 1: of our body in a way that that stays stationary.

611
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 1: But it is not uh, it is not the you know,

612
00:35:00,960 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 1: the art of of of telepathy or or or the

613
00:35:05,640 --> 00:35:08,799
Speaker 1: thoughtography or whatever. It is. It is the the the

614
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:10,840
Speaker 1: it is the arts themselves. It is that it is

615
00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:13,440
Speaker 1: the use of language. I think that's dead on. I mean,

616
00:35:13,920 --> 00:35:16,640
Speaker 1: we're used to it, so it seems less astounding to us.

617
00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:19,160
Speaker 1: But I try to make people remember all the time

618
00:35:19,160 --> 00:35:21,600
Speaker 1: that language is like magic. I mean, the language is

619
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:26,399
Speaker 1: the most is the most astounding, strangest thing you can.

620
00:35:26,520 --> 00:35:29,280
Speaker 1: You can use words, you make sounds with your mouth

621
00:35:29,400 --> 00:35:33,120
Speaker 1: to change what's in somebody else's brain. And it works.

622
00:35:33,200 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 1: It works almost all the time. Now, quickly, before we

623
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:38,080
Speaker 1: go to another break, I just wanted to mention I

624
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 1: was looking at another paper about recent research in mental imagery,

625
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:46,760
Speaker 1: and this is called Mental Imagery, Functional Mechanisms and Clinical Applications.

626
00:35:46,880 --> 00:35:51,200
Speaker 1: This is in Trends and Cognitive Sciences from Joel Pearson,

627
00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:56,960
Speaker 1: Thomas Nasloris, Emily Holmes, and Stephen Kostlin Um. And one

628
00:35:56,960 --> 00:35:58,840
Speaker 1: of the things that they said in the paper it

629
00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:01,360
Speaker 1: echoes a lot of the off we were talking about already.

630
00:36:01,400 --> 00:36:05,640
Speaker 1: But um. One thing they say that stuck with me

631
00:36:05,719 --> 00:36:09,279
Speaker 1: is that the authors conclude that the existing research suggests

632
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:14,680
Speaker 1: mental imagery should be considered quote, a weak form of perception.

633
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:18,600
Speaker 1: And that's interesting because you don't normally think about mental

634
00:36:18,640 --> 00:36:22,000
Speaker 1: imagery as perception. Normally, perception is what you know your

635
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 1: five senses or maybe the other senses, if you know

636
00:36:24,120 --> 00:36:27,640
Speaker 1: about the weirder ones. Um. But here they're saying, no,

637
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 1: it is like a form of perception. It's almost like

638
00:36:30,760 --> 00:36:34,920
Speaker 1: a lower resolution form of seeing. Now, why is it

639
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:37,920
Speaker 1: a weak form of perception? Well, visual regions in the

640
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:42,400
Speaker 1: brain show less blood flow and less excitation of neurons

641
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:45,320
Speaker 1: during the generation of mental imagery than they do in

642
00:36:45,360 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 1: the actual viewing of images with the eyes, even though

643
00:36:48,719 --> 00:36:51,279
Speaker 1: you use some of the same regions for both. And

644
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:53,920
Speaker 1: I also just wanted to mention some interesting questions that

645
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:57,919
Speaker 1: the authors bring up as sort of unresolved in this review. Again,

646
00:36:57,960 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 1: this was from so there maybe development since then, but um,

647
00:37:02,560 --> 00:37:04,040
Speaker 1: one of the things they ask is, we know that

648
00:37:04,080 --> 00:37:07,880
Speaker 1: there are strong similarities between normal visual perception seeing with

649
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:11,920
Speaker 1: the eyes and mental imagery. What are the major differences?

650
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:15,200
Speaker 1: Another thing that I was really interested in is they

651
00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:21,280
Speaker 1: asked the question of can mental imagery be unconscious? And

652
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:23,719
Speaker 1: if you try to understand that for a second, is

653
00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:28,680
Speaker 1: it possible to picture something without being aware that you're

654
00:37:28,760 --> 00:37:33,799
Speaker 1: picturing it? Or is mental imagery something that only occurs consciously?

655
00:37:33,880 --> 00:37:36,799
Speaker 1: Can you only picture something if you're aware that you're

656
00:37:36,800 --> 00:37:39,680
Speaker 1: picturing it? So? Well, what would be what would be

657
00:37:39,719 --> 00:37:43,600
Speaker 1: an example then, based on that logic of someone picturing

658
00:37:43,680 --> 00:37:46,400
Speaker 1: something without realizing they're picturing something. Well, I don't know.

659
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:48,400
Speaker 1: I mean that that's sort of the tough question, like

660
00:37:48,719 --> 00:37:51,719
Speaker 1: is because it would be difficult to measure that. I

661
00:37:51,800 --> 00:37:54,480
Speaker 1: think it would it be like an hallucination. Well, no,

662
00:37:54,640 --> 00:37:58,200
Speaker 1: because you'd be presumably you'd be conscious of an hallucination.

663
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:00,799
Speaker 1: So the idea would have to be that, you know,

664
00:38:01,120 --> 00:38:04,720
Speaker 1: you can show unconscious things going on in the brain

665
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:07,520
Speaker 1: just by like asking people if they're aware of things,

666
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:10,359
Speaker 1: but tracking their behaviors that realize, you know, the show

667
00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:12,879
Speaker 1: they are aware of this thing or that thing. But

668
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 1: it's difficult to say, can people imagine a picture of

669
00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:21,160
Speaker 1: something without knowing that they're picturing it? I would think,

670
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:23,560
Speaker 1: you know, I would say the default answer would probably

671
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:26,040
Speaker 1: be no, because it's hard to imagine what that would be.

672
00:38:26,080 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 1: Like you tend to think, Okay, the only times I

673
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:31,520
Speaker 1: know that I'm picturing something or when I'm conscious of it. Well,

674
00:38:31,560 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 1: for that matter, is it possible to unconsciously look at

675
00:38:34,640 --> 00:38:37,719
Speaker 1: something with your visual perception? Like? I think maybe that

676
00:38:37,840 --> 00:38:41,160
Speaker 1: is possible, Like because if I'm but I'm looking at something,

677
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:44,160
Speaker 1: I am looking at something, right, I mean, it seems

678
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:47,160
Speaker 1: like it follows the same process. Well, I don't know

679
00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 1: what about, Like, there could be some stuff along the

680
00:38:50,040 --> 00:38:53,799
Speaker 1: lines of like the Invisible Guerillas experiment that indicate that

681
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:56,600
Speaker 1: sometimes you can see things without being aware that you're

682
00:38:56,600 --> 00:38:59,080
Speaker 1: seeing them, right or certainly we've already touched on what

683
00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:01,680
Speaker 1: happens if you are looking at something in the physical

684
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 1: world but focus focusing far more intently on something that

685
00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:09,320
Speaker 1: is just a mental image. But yeah, I mean, I

686
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:11,360
Speaker 1: can see why it's an unanswered question, but it is

687
00:39:11,400 --> 00:39:14,040
Speaker 1: kind of it's a tricky question too. Yeah. Now, I

688
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:16,719
Speaker 1: think what does seem pretty clear is that there can

689
00:39:16,760 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 1: be unconscious reasons for the generation of mental imagery. I

690
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:23,160
Speaker 1: mean that this is a huge thing in mental imagery research,

691
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:26,759
Speaker 1: is like the origins of mental imagery, for example, intrusive,

692
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:29,920
Speaker 1: unwanted mental images. Yeah, I think that's that's that's an

693
00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:32,839
Speaker 1: example that I imagine a lot of us can relate to.

694
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:37,360
Speaker 1: But also in terms of say meditative states, you know,

695
00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:41,320
Speaker 1: the idea of encountering an image that isn't at least

696
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:43,839
Speaker 1: consciously summoned, you know, not to say that it comes

697
00:39:43,880 --> 00:39:47,200
Speaker 1: from the outside. It's still coming from sort of the

698
00:39:47,200 --> 00:39:51,879
Speaker 1: the internal contents of your your psychic library, but but

699
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:56,280
Speaker 1: not in a way that feels um that you assembled

700
00:39:56,320 --> 00:39:59,279
Speaker 1: it hands on. And then likewise there's a domain of

701
00:39:59,320 --> 00:40:02,520
Speaker 1: hallucination and a dream. Yeah, I've got another maybe weird

702
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:05,840
Speaker 1: question about mental imagery. See if this makes any sense.

703
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:09,160
Speaker 1: Um So, the authors in these studies find strong links

704
00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:12,920
Speaker 1: between visual imagery and things like working memory. But I

705
00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:18,080
Speaker 1: wonder does the ability to recall visually recognized features of

706
00:40:18,120 --> 00:40:23,359
Speaker 1: a thing always or even usually rely on mental imagery?

707
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:26,360
Speaker 1: And uh so? For example, if I ask you to

708
00:40:26,680 --> 00:40:29,800
Speaker 1: picture a character from a movie, you've seen a picture

709
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:34,800
Speaker 1: the Chamberlain from the Dark Crystal. Uh or let's see actually,

710
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:38,160
Speaker 1: uh I think I screwed that up. Okay, No, actually, don't,

711
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:40,360
Speaker 1: don't picture him yet. It's too late. I've done it

712
00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:43,240
Speaker 1: like twice. Okay, Well, I just want you to list

713
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:49,680
Speaker 1: physical characteristics of the Chamberlain from the Dark Crystal. Okay, Um,

714
00:40:49,880 --> 00:41:01,600
Speaker 1: bird like, um, sneaky, serpentine, um, splendid, decayed. I guess

715
00:41:01,640 --> 00:41:04,759
Speaker 1: I bring this up because my question is, when you

716
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:08,839
Speaker 1: recall visual characteristics of a thing you've seen, do you

717
00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:12,759
Speaker 1: recall them exclusively by calling up a mental image of

718
00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:16,000
Speaker 1: the thing and examining it like you would a thing

719
00:41:16,040 --> 00:41:19,120
Speaker 1: you're looking at currently or do you have other ways

720
00:41:19,160 --> 00:41:23,040
Speaker 1: of remembering the visual characteristics of something other than by

721
00:41:23,080 --> 00:41:25,960
Speaker 1: picturing it and then examining what you're looking at in

722
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:28,759
Speaker 1: your mind's eye. Well, with the Chamberlain, I think I

723
00:41:29,320 --> 00:41:33,280
Speaker 1: draw specifically on just visuals. Now, it would be different

724
00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:35,520
Speaker 1: if I was described, if it was asked to describe

725
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:39,480
Speaker 1: a literary character in which the character is is like

726
00:41:39,520 --> 00:41:43,319
Speaker 1: initially build out of language, but that the Chamberlain is

727
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:47,400
Speaker 1: all is all visual and does not, at least in

728
00:41:47,400 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 1: anything I remember, describe itself. So you know, because there

729
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:56,240
Speaker 1: are characters that one encounters visually where that the character

730
00:41:56,480 --> 00:41:58,400
Speaker 1: is going to describe itself or there's gonna be some

731
00:41:58,480 --> 00:42:01,080
Speaker 1: voice to describe it, but no language attached to it.

732
00:42:01,160 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 1: So yeah, I would say almost purely visual. Yeah, I

733
00:42:04,080 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 1: noticed most of the time when I'm trying to recall

734
00:42:06,719 --> 00:42:10,600
Speaker 1: visual characteristics of something, I picture it first. But yeah,

735
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:15,120
Speaker 1: it gets especially complicated when you're thinking about characteristics of

736
00:42:15,160 --> 00:42:19,879
Speaker 1: something that you've imagined from writing but not from seeing. Yeah,

737
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:21,920
Speaker 1: Like when you asked me to think of the Chamberlain, too,

738
00:42:21,920 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 1: I found myself doing it in two ways, Like basically

739
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: a mental image of a scene from the film, like

740
00:42:29,120 --> 00:42:32,080
Speaker 1: where I'm seeing in my mind not only the character,

741
00:42:32,160 --> 00:42:35,799
Speaker 1: but the backdrop, the lighting, everything, and then there's kind

742
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:39,160
Speaker 1: of a mental image of, say, the head of the creature,

743
00:42:39,400 --> 00:42:41,600
Speaker 1: as if it were in the room with me, you know.

744
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:45,360
Speaker 1: So that makes me wonder too, Yeah, do we have

745
00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:49,000
Speaker 1: different different sorts of mental imagery? Mental imagery that's more

746
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:52,600
Speaker 1: based on thinking. Maybe in a way, it's kind of

747
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:55,040
Speaker 1: like thinking about the way we uh we think about

748
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:57,200
Speaker 1: the past and the future, a way of thinking about

749
00:42:57,200 --> 00:43:00,280
Speaker 1: the way something was and then imagining the way something

750
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:02,080
Speaker 1: would be, what it would be like if it were

751
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:05,040
Speaker 1: here or if I were encountering it in the near future.

752
00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:07,880
Speaker 1: I wonder if that plays into it at all. All Right,

753
00:43:07,920 --> 00:43:09,440
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take a quick break, but

754
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:14,480
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Than alright, we're back. Okay. So

755
00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 1: we've been talking about psychic photography or thoughtography, this alleged

756
00:43:19,840 --> 00:43:23,200
Speaker 1: ability that some people have to project the contents of

757
00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:27,080
Speaker 1: their mental imagery onto film or onto objects in the

758
00:43:27,120 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 1: external world. And I think we're probably in agreement that

759
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 1: even though a lot of people have claimed to have

760
00:43:33,120 --> 00:43:36,080
Speaker 1: this power or claim to have demonstrated this power, this

761
00:43:36,239 --> 00:43:39,360
Speaker 1: probably is not really going on in in some ways,

762
00:43:39,480 --> 00:43:42,640
Speaker 1: the mechanism of it seems incoherent, right, and that's what

763
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:46,400
Speaker 1: it basically, the mechanism is incoherent. So it's again like

764
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:51,000
Speaker 1: imagining the psychics and scanners being able to read hard drives,

765
00:43:51,120 --> 00:43:54,920
Speaker 1: like like, this just doesn't make sense. But there are

766
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:58,840
Speaker 1: a number of experiments that sort of would find a

767
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:03,720
Speaker 1: way around the sincoherence we're talking about through another layer

768
00:44:03,760 --> 00:44:08,040
Speaker 1: of encoding and decoding of brain activity that that could

769
00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:12,480
Speaker 1: be learned through brain computer interfaces and machine learning. And

770
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 1: this we're getting into into the creation of a of

771
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:20,279
Speaker 1: a technological translator. Yes exactly. It kind of the same

772
00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:23,760
Speaker 1: way that you would use language to translate the contents

773
00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:26,720
Speaker 1: of your mind's eye into something in the outside world.

774
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:31,440
Speaker 1: A computer could potentially translate the brain activity that it

775
00:44:31,520 --> 00:44:34,000
Speaker 1: reads off of your scalp or in blood flow in

776
00:44:34,040 --> 00:44:37,319
Speaker 1: your brain through fm R I into something in the

777
00:44:37,400 --> 00:44:41,000
Speaker 1: outside world that could be trained to correlate with your

778
00:44:41,040 --> 00:44:44,920
Speaker 1: mental imagery. Now, I think I've got lots of questions

779
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 1: about how accurate and how realistic this project actually is,

780
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:50,960
Speaker 1: but there are at least these experiments that that have

781
00:44:51,080 --> 00:44:53,640
Speaker 1: purported to get part of the way there, and they're

782
00:44:53,680 --> 00:44:56,000
Speaker 1: they're kind of freaky. I I won't lie. I want

783
00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:58,080
Speaker 1: to say this starts to get me a little bit worried.

784
00:44:58,120 --> 00:45:02,040
Speaker 1: I want to start with a newspiece in Science from January.

785
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:05,960
Speaker 1: The newspiece was by Matthew Hudson and it covers the

786
00:45:05,960 --> 00:45:09,440
Speaker 1: brain computer interface work of a group of researchers including

787
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:14,400
Speaker 1: uh Yukiyasu Kamitani, a neuroscientist at Kyoto University in Japan,

788
00:45:14,920 --> 00:45:18,880
Speaker 1: and a computer scientist named Zone ming Lieu at Purdue

789
00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:22,160
Speaker 1: University in the United States. And this work is focused

790
00:45:22,160 --> 00:45:26,160
Speaker 1: on it's using brain computer interfaces to directly read and

791
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:29,480
Speaker 1: record mental imagery, which is the imagining of a picture.

792
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 1: So you try to imagine, like, why would anybody be

793
00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:35,799
Speaker 1: doing this? You know, what would be the supposed benefits

794
00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:39,399
Speaker 1: of a technology to read people's mental imagery. Well, we're

795
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 1: asked to imagine in this article, maybe being able to

796
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:45,960
Speaker 1: search through a collection of digital images simply by mentally

797
00:45:46,040 --> 00:45:48,799
Speaker 1: picturing the image we want. Okay, that might be a

798
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:51,799
Speaker 1: thing like I bet you've tried before to Google an

799
00:45:51,840 --> 00:45:54,319
Speaker 1: image that you've seen before, but you didn't know what

800
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:58,000
Speaker 1: search terms to use and couldn't find it. Yeah, yeah,

801
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:01,719
Speaker 1: there's I could see where that could have an application. Well,

802
00:46:01,760 --> 00:46:04,760
Speaker 1: granted it's not something that is really life or death.

803
00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:07,880
Speaker 1: It would be more like, Oh, I vaguely remember a

804
00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:13,640
Speaker 1: really cool advertisement for a community college on television in

805
00:46:13,680 --> 00:46:16,760
Speaker 1: the summer in my childhood, and they played a song

806
00:46:16,800 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 1: on it that kind of sounded like Boards of Canada.

807
00:46:18,680 --> 00:46:21,080
Speaker 1: I wonder if it was actually Boards of Canada. Like

808
00:46:21,160 --> 00:46:23,319
Speaker 1: that is a legit thing that I think about from

809
00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 1: time to time, and there's no way for me to

810
00:46:25,160 --> 00:46:29,200
Speaker 1: look it up. But true enough, if a machine could

811
00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:33,240
Speaker 1: look at my mental imagery of that memory of watching

812
00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:36,839
Speaker 1: that TV spot, then it's conceivable that it could then

813
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:41,280
Speaker 1: look into some vast database and find that footage for me. Yeah,

814
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:44,000
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that will necessarily ever get there, but

815
00:46:44,120 --> 00:46:46,359
Speaker 1: that that is the kind of thing they're asking you

816
00:46:46,400 --> 00:46:50,360
Speaker 1: to imagine. Another one, this is probably more straightforward drawing

817
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:53,920
Speaker 1: without the hands, straight from imagination too, recorded two D

818
00:46:54,080 --> 00:46:56,520
Speaker 1: media that might be interesting. I mean, I wonder if

819
00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:59,719
Speaker 1: I could open up whole other realms of visual art

820
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:03,200
Speaker 1: for people who are not good at drawing with their hands, right,

821
00:47:03,280 --> 00:47:06,600
Speaker 1: or or for people who are disabled to some degree, right, Like,

822
00:47:06,640 --> 00:47:09,040
Speaker 1: I coun see that being advantageous as well, and it

823
00:47:09,080 --> 00:47:11,120
Speaker 1: can go further than that. I mean, technically you could

824
00:47:11,160 --> 00:47:14,080
Speaker 1: imagine something like this allowing people without the power of

825
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:17,319
Speaker 1: speech you're writing to share their thoughts. Uh, you know

826
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:19,680
Speaker 1: you can't. Maybe if you can't speak, you can't describe

827
00:47:19,719 --> 00:47:22,160
Speaker 1: your visual imagery, maybe you could share it with something

828
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:25,319
Speaker 1: like this. But I want to say, Okay, those are

829
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:28,360
Speaker 1: the positive versions of what we're imagining. We could explore

830
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:31,520
Speaker 1: negative versions later on. And so the researchers here have

831
00:47:31,560 --> 00:47:35,360
Speaker 1: been working on computer algorithms that are trained through machine

832
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:39,520
Speaker 1: learning to match patterns of brain activity recorded through things

833
00:47:39,560 --> 00:47:43,439
Speaker 1: like fMRI I with imagery that a subject is looking at,

834
00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:47,040
Speaker 1: and because actually looking at an image and then mentally

835
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:50,120
Speaker 1: imagining the same image are sort of similar in the brain,

836
00:47:50,120 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 1: They're not exactly the same, but there's some similar stuff

837
00:47:52,560 --> 00:47:56,279
Speaker 1: going on. Researchers have experimented with measuring activity in the

838
00:47:56,400 --> 00:47:58,840
Speaker 1: visual processing areas of the brain with f m r

839
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:01,960
Speaker 1: I while person looking at different images, and then using

840
00:48:02,120 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 1: that data about blood flow in the brain to later

841
00:48:05,800 --> 00:48:09,160
Speaker 1: guess what a person is looking at without knowing now

842
00:48:09,200 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 1: ideally what you would have at the end of this

843
00:48:11,280 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 1: kind of research. Multi stage process is an algorithm that

844
00:48:15,040 --> 00:48:18,400
Speaker 1: could read the activity of a person's visual processing center

845
00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:23,160
Speaker 1: and materialize an image directly on the screen that corresponds

846
00:48:23,200 --> 00:48:27,040
Speaker 1: to what the person is either looking at or imagining. UH.

847
00:48:27,040 --> 00:48:30,440
Speaker 1: And again, to whatever extent the technology will ever fully

848
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:33,720
Speaker 1: be realized, it's still in the very early stages. Um.

849
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 1: But in the example sided in this article, I should

850
00:48:36,040 --> 00:48:39,000
Speaker 1: say that the image generation portion was not carried out

851
00:48:39,040 --> 00:48:42,840
Speaker 1: on real brains. The data acquired from human subjects was

852
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:46,560
Speaker 1: instead used to train a deep neural network that stood

853
00:48:46,600 --> 00:48:49,600
Speaker 1: in for an actual brain while they tested their image

854
00:48:49,640 --> 00:48:53,720
Speaker 1: generating program. And to quote from Hudson's article here quote

855
00:48:53,920 --> 00:48:57,280
Speaker 1: the system starts with something random similar to TV static,

856
00:48:57,680 --> 00:49:00,359
Speaker 1: and slowly refines its painting over the core of two

857
00:49:00,440 --> 00:49:03,400
Speaker 1: hundred rounds. To get closer to the ideal image. The

858
00:49:03,440 --> 00:49:07,200
Speaker 1: system calculates the difference between the deep neural network activity

859
00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:11,640
Speaker 1: and the templated deep neural network activity. Those calculations cause

860
00:49:11,680 --> 00:49:14,680
Speaker 1: it to nudge one pixel this way and another pixel

861
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:18,319
Speaker 1: that way until it gets closer to the ideal image. Now,

862
00:49:18,320 --> 00:49:20,960
Speaker 1: Apparently at the stage, the algorithms are not very good

863
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:23,800
Speaker 1: at all at guessing what imagery people have in mind

864
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:27,399
Speaker 1: when they're imagining realistic photos, but they are pretty good

865
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:30,719
Speaker 1: at picking out when people imagine abstract shapes. And that

866
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:33,239
Speaker 1: makes sense because I think those would be like clearer

867
00:49:33,719 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 1: signals in the brain probably. But yeah, there's some images

868
00:49:37,920 --> 00:49:41,520
Speaker 1: along with this article that are the paintings generated by

869
00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:45,120
Speaker 1: this algorithm. Uh, and then they're they're compared with the

870
00:49:45,120 --> 00:49:49,120
Speaker 1: images that originally gave rise to them, and the comparisons

871
00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:53,960
Speaker 1: are wonderfully creepy. Yeah. They look like like psychedelic entities

872
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:58,320
Speaker 1: that have come to convey some sort of occult knowledge

873
00:49:58,640 --> 00:50:01,920
Speaker 1: under the listener. Like there's a there's one that's originally

874
00:50:01,960 --> 00:50:04,839
Speaker 1: a picture of an owl, and then the approximation of

875
00:50:04,880 --> 00:50:09,520
Speaker 1: it is some kind of like like primordial worm walrus

876
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:13,319
Speaker 1: from the center of the earth. Yeah. Yeah, a red

877
00:50:13,440 --> 00:50:18,239
Speaker 1: mailbox becomes this kind of alien burning crimson pillar. So

878
00:50:18,320 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 1: there are some patterns it seems like they're picking up

879
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:25,000
Speaker 1: in in this version, where like some basic shapes emerge,

880
00:50:25,120 --> 00:50:29,320
Speaker 1: some color patterns seem like detectable. It seems like you

881
00:50:29,360 --> 00:50:32,840
Speaker 1: can detect when something is basically a face. But I

882
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:35,960
Speaker 1: have questions about the ultimate potential of this technology, Like

883
00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:39,000
Speaker 1: the versions that exist today have limitations such as relying

884
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:41,840
Speaker 1: on training and feedback, and also I wonder about the

885
00:50:41,960 --> 00:50:45,879
Speaker 1: rules for reading mental imagery, like how transferable are they

886
00:50:45,960 --> 00:50:50,160
Speaker 1: from one person to another? How idiosyncratic is your brain

887
00:50:50,400 --> 00:50:53,319
Speaker 1: looking at an image versus somebody else's brain looking at

888
00:50:53,320 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 1: the same image. It makes me think of the holophoner

889
00:50:56,760 --> 00:50:59,759
Speaker 1: from Futurama. Do you remember this sent in? It's a

890
00:50:59,840 --> 00:51:02,920
Speaker 1: mu zsical instrument that Fry attempts to learn at one point,

891
00:51:03,160 --> 00:51:07,239
Speaker 1: and at one point masters thanks to the the parasitic

892
00:51:07,239 --> 00:51:10,359
Speaker 1: worms living inside his gut that have made him super intelligent. Uh,

893
00:51:10,560 --> 00:51:13,040
Speaker 1: but then he pleases that ability. But anyway, it's it's this.

894
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:17,880
Speaker 1: It's basically like a small musical instrument, like a woodwind instrument,

895
00:51:18,320 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: but it has the technologically capability to take a mental

896
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:24,160
Speaker 1: image in your mind and project it into the air

897
00:51:24,200 --> 00:51:26,959
Speaker 1: for others to see. But it takes It's like, it's

898
00:51:27,200 --> 00:51:30,480
Speaker 1: notably difficult to learn and takes a lot of intense

899
00:51:30,520 --> 00:51:34,800
Speaker 1: training and concentration to even form a very vague image

900
00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:36,640
Speaker 1: in the air. And so some of the like the

901
00:51:36,680 --> 00:51:40,000
Speaker 1: initial images that Fry is able to summon using the

902
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:44,320
Speaker 1: holophone are basically as abstract as these examples we've discussed

903
00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:48,319
Speaker 1: in this study. But I mean, so on one hand,

904
00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:50,080
Speaker 1: you could say, well, maybe this kind of thing will

905
00:51:50,160 --> 00:51:53,080
Speaker 1: just never get very accurate in any way that's applicable.

906
00:51:53,120 --> 00:51:56,759
Speaker 1: That's possible. But also if this technology ever does get

907
00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:00,239
Speaker 1: more accurate, can you imagine this would I mean, I'm

908
00:52:00,280 --> 00:52:03,560
Speaker 1: thinking about the way it would be incorporated into machine

909
00:52:03,640 --> 00:52:10,200
Speaker 1: learning user feedback mechanisms that serve us content on social media. Um,

910
00:52:10,440 --> 00:52:13,319
Speaker 1: you know, imagine a Facebook news feed that could not

911
00:52:13,400 --> 00:52:15,560
Speaker 1: only fine tune itself based on what you do with

912
00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:18,080
Speaker 1: your mouse cursor and how you scroll and what you

913
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:20,600
Speaker 1: click on and how long you look at things, but

914
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:24,200
Speaker 1: based on neurofeedback that allows it to detect how you're

915
00:52:24,320 --> 00:52:28,160
Speaker 1: using your visual imagination, you know, so they sell you

916
00:52:28,200 --> 00:52:30,239
Speaker 1: on the good stuff, right, draw without your hands, and

917
00:52:30,600 --> 00:52:32,960
Speaker 1: you get this kind of interface that that hooks up

918
00:52:32,960 --> 00:52:35,759
Speaker 1: to your brain and then it can sense patterns and

919
00:52:35,840 --> 00:52:39,240
Speaker 1: what users are picturing in their mind's eye and reaction

920
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:42,520
Speaker 1: to media stimuli at a massive scale. Even if this

921
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:46,640
Speaker 1: can't be used to pull images accurately directly from your brain,

922
00:52:47,320 --> 00:52:49,560
Speaker 1: just imagine what it could do based on the brain

923
00:52:49,600 --> 00:52:54,360
Speaker 1: activity correlations across populations alone. Uh. And also I'm imagining

924
00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:57,120
Speaker 1: if it ever did get good enough at reading brain activity,

925
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:01,520
Speaker 1: the brain activity underlying mental imagery and turning that directly

926
00:53:01,560 --> 00:53:05,120
Speaker 1: into physical images outside the brain. What kind of crazy

927
00:53:05,200 --> 00:53:08,879
Speaker 1: cyber feedback processes could that lead to? Yeah, I mean,

928
00:53:08,920 --> 00:53:15,600
Speaker 1: anyway you shake it, it's a it's a nightmare. Yeah, yeah.

929
00:53:15,640 --> 00:53:18,840
Speaker 1: I really don't like the idea of machines being able

930
00:53:18,880 --> 00:53:21,920
Speaker 1: to look inside our head and do anything with our

931
00:53:21,960 --> 00:53:24,359
Speaker 1: our mental images and draw them out. I mean, that's

932
00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:29,560
Speaker 1: that's just pure dystopia juice right there. Anyway, anyway you

933
00:53:29,600 --> 00:53:31,640
Speaker 1: shake it, I mean it seems like even the positives

934
00:53:31,680 --> 00:53:35,319
Speaker 1: I have to like really construct an artificial scenario where

935
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:37,680
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, there's been a kidnapping and we have

936
00:53:37,760 --> 00:53:40,000
Speaker 1: to draw the mental images out of the the only

937
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:43,400
Speaker 1: so you know, you get into ridiculous scenarios like that, which, okay, yes,

938
00:53:43,520 --> 00:53:46,800
Speaker 1: given that very particular scenario, perhaps it would make sense.

939
00:53:47,080 --> 00:53:50,799
Speaker 1: But then you get into just basic considerations of of

940
00:53:50,840 --> 00:53:53,880
Speaker 1: privacy to like, would you ever have the right to

941
00:53:54,200 --> 00:53:58,040
Speaker 1: look inside someone's head and draw out their mental images?

942
00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:00,239
Speaker 1: It depends on who writes the laws, and I would

943
00:54:00,239 --> 00:54:02,560
Speaker 1: think it is the big corporation with all the lawyers

944
00:54:02,560 --> 00:54:05,040
Speaker 1: that will write the laws. And I guess looking at

945
00:54:05,080 --> 00:54:08,160
Speaker 1: the like this sort of certainly the social media examples too.

946
00:54:08,200 --> 00:54:10,959
Speaker 1: It's like, are you It depends too, are you born

947
00:54:11,040 --> 00:54:15,440
Speaker 1: into a world in which it's normal for your machines

948
00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:18,320
Speaker 1: to look inside your brain and draw from your mental images,

949
00:54:18,520 --> 00:54:21,400
Speaker 1: probably with some sort of an agreement. Uh, In the

950
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:24,600
Speaker 1: same way that you know, our emails are read by machines,

951
00:54:24,640 --> 00:54:27,360
Speaker 1: but they're not actually read by people. There would be

952
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:30,720
Speaker 1: this idea like, oh, yeah, nobody's actually watching your mental images.

953
00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:33,080
Speaker 1: It's just our algorithms are keeping track on them so

954
00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:36,520
Speaker 1: we can better serve you content. I mean, I think

955
00:54:36,360 --> 00:54:40,719
Speaker 1: that a lot of times we have overestimated our people's

956
00:54:40,840 --> 00:54:46,240
Speaker 1: desire for privacy and uh, Like, I just think about

957
00:54:46,239 --> 00:54:50,080
Speaker 1: how years ago if you had told people here's all

958
00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:52,600
Speaker 1: the things people will be sharing on social media and

959
00:54:52,640 --> 00:54:55,880
Speaker 1: all the kinds of uh privileges they will be allowing

960
00:54:55,920 --> 00:54:58,680
Speaker 1: these companies to have and learning about their lives and

961
00:54:58,760 --> 00:55:01,320
Speaker 1: learning about their data, people would be like, no way,

962
00:55:01,480 --> 00:55:04,640
Speaker 1: nobody will ever surrender that amount of you know, privacy

963
00:55:04,680 --> 00:55:07,640
Speaker 1: and autonomy about their lives and their data. But people

964
00:55:07,680 --> 00:55:11,160
Speaker 1: just gave it up so willingly. Yeah, and so many

965
00:55:11,239 --> 00:55:15,000
Speaker 1: are still seemingly fine with it. Yeah. So I wonder

966
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:16,920
Speaker 1: if I don't know. Maybe it has to do with

967
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: something about the advertising, the marketing, how these things are

968
00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:23,640
Speaker 1: are rolled out to the public that that breaks down

969
00:55:23,719 --> 00:55:27,279
Speaker 1: our defenses and and has us ending up being like, ah, yeah,

970
00:55:27,320 --> 00:55:29,239
Speaker 1: you know whatever, I'll get the brain device. You know,

971
00:55:30,239 --> 00:55:33,600
Speaker 1: Jeffrey's got one. He likes it, you know. Yeah. Yeah, Well,

972
00:55:33,600 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 1: I I hold out hope that it would be a

973
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:38,040
Speaker 1: you know, the bridge too far, and that that humans

974
00:55:38,040 --> 00:55:41,319
Speaker 1: would would rise up and reject it. I hope so

975
00:55:41,400 --> 00:55:44,120
Speaker 1: as well. But but I also feel like we're already

976
00:55:44,120 --> 00:55:46,760
Speaker 1: at that point where humans should rise up and reject

977
00:55:47,480 --> 00:55:50,120
Speaker 1: what is being presented to them, you know, certainly by

978
00:55:50,120 --> 00:55:53,560
Speaker 1: the large social media companies and um and uh. I

979
00:55:53,560 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 1: don't know. Some people are rising up, but we're not

980
00:55:56,080 --> 00:55:59,240
Speaker 1: quite rising up in the numbers so far. To limit

981
00:55:59,280 --> 00:56:03,320
Speaker 1: their power, protect your mental imagery instead, if you want

982
00:56:03,360 --> 00:56:06,359
Speaker 1: to have more power in sharing your mental imagery in

983
00:56:06,440 --> 00:56:08,560
Speaker 1: the cases where you actually do want to share it,

984
00:56:08,840 --> 00:56:12,479
Speaker 1: hone your powers of translation. That means practice becoming better

985
00:56:12,560 --> 00:56:16,720
Speaker 1: at language, better at drawing, better at art of whatever kind. Yeah,

986
00:56:16,880 --> 00:56:18,400
Speaker 1: and indeed, I don't want to end this on a

987
00:56:18,480 --> 00:56:22,960
Speaker 1: you know too you know, pessimistic note, dystopian and note is, etcetera.

988
00:56:22,960 --> 00:56:25,400
Speaker 1: Because ultimately, like what all this reveals, it's just like

989
00:56:25,800 --> 00:56:30,560
Speaker 1: just how incredible our brain's capacity for mental imagery really is.

990
00:56:31,280 --> 00:56:34,640
Speaker 1: Because you know, certainly these technologies that attempt to understand

991
00:56:34,640 --> 00:56:39,640
Speaker 1: and or even replicated these uh pseudoscientific or outright superstitious

992
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:42,120
Speaker 1: ideas about what a mental image is and how it

993
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:44,839
Speaker 1: might be you know, inflicted on the world. They all

994
00:56:44,920 --> 00:56:47,840
Speaker 1: get that, they're all circle circling the mystery and the

995
00:56:48,160 --> 00:56:51,719
Speaker 1: wonder uh that we all experience every day. It's yet

996
00:56:51,719 --> 00:56:55,800
Speaker 1: another case where there's a purported magical ability that is

997
00:56:55,840 --> 00:57:00,560
Speaker 1: actually maybe less fascinating than the reality that we're just

998
00:57:00,600 --> 00:57:02,720
Speaker 1: so used to of the fact that we have something

999
00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:07,160
Speaker 1: like language absolutely all right, Well, there you have it

1000
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:11,360
Speaker 1: are two part look at the mental image and various

1001
00:57:11,400 --> 00:57:13,880
Speaker 1: ideas surrounding it. And I think we we crammed a

1002
00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:19,160
Speaker 1: fair number of of horror film and other uh you know,

1003
00:57:19,360 --> 00:57:21,720
Speaker 1: horror related ideas in there. So I think it's it's

1004
00:57:21,800 --> 00:57:26,920
Speaker 1: firmly implanted in our October offerings. But if you're new

1005
00:57:26,920 --> 00:57:29,520
Speaker 1: to the show, we do this every October. Every October

1006
00:57:29,600 --> 00:57:33,320
Speaker 1: is wall to wall Halloween related content. Uh So, if

1007
00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:34,960
Speaker 1: you want to you want more, you can go to

1008
00:57:34,960 --> 00:57:36,840
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com and check out

1009
00:57:36,880 --> 00:57:40,280
Speaker 1: past October's. Likewise, if you want to check out some

1010
00:57:40,320 --> 00:57:43,720
Speaker 1: of our Invention episodes that are October theme, go check

1011
00:57:43,760 --> 00:57:45,520
Speaker 1: that out as well. That's our other show. It's a

1012
00:57:45,600 --> 00:57:48,960
Speaker 1: journey through human techno history, and indeed we are rolling

1013
00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 1: out October episodes as well over there, so help both

1014
00:57:53,200 --> 00:57:55,880
Speaker 1: shows out. Make sure you have subscribed and rate and

1015
00:57:56,000 --> 00:57:59,600
Speaker 1: review huge things as always to our excellent audio producers

1016
00:57:59,640 --> 00:58:01,960
Speaker 1: set Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in

1017
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:04,160
Speaker 1: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any

1018
00:58:04,160 --> 00:58:07,000
Speaker 1: other to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello,

1019
00:58:07,360 --> 00:58:10,800
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1020
00:58:10,840 --> 00:58:20,600
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

1021
00:58:20,600 --> 00:58:22,960
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more

1022
00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:25,400
Speaker 1: podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

1023
00:58:25,560 --> 00:58:37,200
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.