WEBVTT - Ep118 "Why has the brain always been our hardest puzzle?" with Matthew Cobb 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:09.840 The brain is massively complex, so how have people tried 0:00:09.880 --> 0:00:13.320 to crack its mysteries? And what does this always have 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:17.160 to do with the latest technologies that are available, And 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:20.320 what does the history of neuroscience have to do with 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:31.040 feeling bumps on someone's skull? Electricity, Frankenstein, animatronics, telegraphs, telephone exchanges, computers, LMS, 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:34.120 and the next metaphor that we're going to use to 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:42.200 try to capture the brain's magic. Welcome to Inner Cosmos 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:45.240 with me David Eagelman. I'm a neuroscientist and an author 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:48.560 at Stanford, and in these episodes we seek to understand 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:51.280 why and how our lives look the way they do. 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:13.399 If you reach out and you wrap your hand around 0:01:13.440 --> 0:01:16.520 your coffee cup and then bring it up to your lips, 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:21.039 that all seems pretty effortless. But what's driving that motor 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:27.040 action is a massive, invisible puppeteer living inside your skull, 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:31.920 an organ made of tens of billions of very active 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:36.080 cells called neurons, each one of which is firing off 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:40.560 tiny electrical pulses tens or hundreds of times every second, 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:44.920 and each of which is exchanging messages with thousands of 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:50.520 other neurons. And somehow from this vast electrical storm, you 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:54.160 get your hand moving, and you get your perception of 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:58.680 the tattooed barista in a rolled up flannel pulling espresso 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:02.560 shots and their of students hunched over laptops, and the 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:06.680 scent of dark roast and cinnamon. And you get your 0:02:06.760 --> 0:02:10.320 memory of your name and your first kiss and what 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:15.000 you had for breakfast. And generally, from this lightning storm 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:20.000 of activity in the brain emerges the shimmering. 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:22.640 Something that we call you. 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:27.480 Now, we humans have been trying to understand this wrinkled 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:31.399 three pounds of jelly for a long time, because it's 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:35.160 been obvious that this is where all the action is. 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:38.800 Why is it obvious that is all happening in the brain. Well, 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:42.880 if you lose your leg, or your kidney or an eyeball, 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:45.400 those are all terrible events, but you. 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:48.800 Are still the same. But if you damage even a 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:54.400 very small chunk of brain tissue, that can change you entirely. 0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:59.040 It changes your personality, or your decision making or your thoughts. 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:02.880 It changes who you are. So that led people to 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:08.120 realize slowly that somehow all the action of your behaviors 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:12.840 and your conscious experience is all tied to these three 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:16.920 pounds of tissue. So that sounds good, but it's really 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:20.600 hard to crack the mystery of how this thing works. 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:23.919 And that's for two main reasons. First, all the action 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:27.640 going on is microscopic. When you look at it, you 0:03:27.680 --> 0:03:31.120 can't see anything. It just looks like a big, wrinkly 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:35.880 thing with the consistency of mashed potatoes. You'll often hear 0:03:35.960 --> 0:03:39.040 me and others say that this is the most complex 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:42.800 thing we've ever discovered on our planet, but that is 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:47.160 a modern revelation. There's nothing obvious about that statement when 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:50.200 you look at the brain, and in fact, ancient cultures 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:53.040 used to throw out the brain at autopsy and be 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:56.560 much more interested in other organs. So the brain's doing 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.160 all kinds of things, but you can't see that. The 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:02.880 second challenge is that the brain is locked up tightly 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:07.000 inside the skull. It makes sense that it's well protected 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:10.960 as very delicate stuff, but that has made it especially 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:15.320 hard to study. So what's happened is that people have 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:19.560 been trying to decipher this very complicated puzzle for a 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:23.520 long time, and the history of neuroscience is, in a 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:28.680 way the history of human self regard. Each generation peers 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:33.880 into the darkness and sees its own technology reflected back. 0:04:34.279 --> 0:04:37.960 So in the seventeenth century, when hydraulics were the cutting 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:41.560 edge of technology, the brain was imagined as a network 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:42.920 of pipes and valves. 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:46.320 Thoughts and sensations flowed like. 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:51.560 Water, propelled by animal spirits that coursed through hollow nerves. 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:57.040 Then in the eighteenth century, as electricity captured the imagination, 0:04:57.120 --> 0:05:01.400 the brain became a battery. It became a generator of sparks. 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:06.279 By the nineteenth century it was a telegraph system, with 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:11.160 messages darting along wires and transmitting coded signals from one 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:12.440 station to another. 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:14.080 And then as we moved into. 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:18.960 The twentieth century with advancing technology, the metaphor shifted again. 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:21.800 The brain became a telephone. 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:26.880 Exchange, and then an electronic circuit and eventually a digital computer. 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:32.320 Now the cool thing is that each metaphor brought new insights. 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:36.839 So hydraulics inspired experiments on fluid pressure in the brain, 0:05:37.160 --> 0:05:42.240 and telegraphs shaped the search for nerve conduction, and the 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:44.719 computer age fueled the rise. 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:45.799 Of neural network models. 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:52.200 But each metaphor also carries its blind spots. We become 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:56.359 experts at seeing the brain through the lens of the 0:05:56.440 --> 0:06:01.880 day's technology, and sometimes we mistake the map for the territory. 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:06.240 So nowadays we've got great tools. We have fMRI scanners 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:10.600 that can track activity millimeter by millimeter. We have optogenetics 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:13.760 that can tickle neurons on or off with light. We 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:18.320 have genetic tools to clip out sections or even single letters. 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:24.320 And yet the deepest mysteries of the brain still remain, 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:28.040 and they're still stubborn. How does a three pound lump 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:35.160 of biological tissue generate the first person experience of being alive? 0:06:36.279 --> 0:06:41.479 How does matter become mind? And how do all the 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:46.080 technology metaphors that we use today blind us to some 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:48.960 of the details. So that's why today I called up 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:54.080 Matthew Cobb. He's an evolutionary neurobiologist who studies smell and 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:57.800 memory at the University of Manchester, and he's also a 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:03.240 historian who has spent decades tracing the shifting stories that 0:07:03.279 --> 0:07:06.320 we tell about the brain. He wrote a great book 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:09.800 called The Idea of the Brain, and this is a 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:14.320 fascinating history of neuroscience because it's not just a list 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:18.800 of events, but instead it explores how science and culture 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:24.880 and technology all braided together to shape our ideas and 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:28.000 how time and again we've been certain that we were 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:31.120 on the brink of a full explanation, only to discover 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:35.520 that the brain is more complex than we imagined. You 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:39.320 can't read this book without getting a deep appreciation for 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:42.040 the centuries of labor that. 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:44.320 It took to get us to the modern day picture. 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:49.040 The history of neuroscience is about hundreds or thousands of 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:54.160 people making small contributions, and presumably each person could never 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:58.920 know how seminole the contribution was. They were just providing 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:02.720 one puzzle piece that would end up clicking together with 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:06.760 other pieces in the future, but it's always impossible to see. 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:10.240 So the key is that in the end, the story 0:08:10.280 --> 0:08:12.800 of the brain is also the story of us. It's 0:08:12.800 --> 0:08:16.360 our technology, is what we understand at any point in history, 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:20.840 and of course our relentless drive to understand the organ 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:24.680 that is doing the understanding. So here's my conversation with 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:32.320 Matthew Cobb. Okay, so, Matthew, I'm a giant fan of 0:08:32.360 --> 0:08:35.760 your book, The Idea of the Brain. I thought it 0:08:35.800 --> 0:08:38.959 was extraordinary because it's not just a history of neuroscience 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:41.760 that is, it includes that, but much more importantly, it's 0:08:41.800 --> 0:08:44.480 a history of how to think about the brain, how 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:46.040 people have thought about it. 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:48.160 And one of your main points in the book. 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:53.319 Is that we always draw on our technology as a metaphor. 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:57.560 So science is not just an accumulation of facts, but 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:00.760 instead we frame things in particular ways depending on what's 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:01.600 going on around us. 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:03.400 So let's start there this. 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:06.520 Issue that you've just described a metaphor, of the metaphors 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:09.720 that we use, and how that changes over time. That 0:09:09.760 --> 0:09:13.240 actually gives a frame to the book and makes the history, 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:15.840 which otherwise might be a bit dull, actually much more 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:21.280 interesting and enables you to think about how people could 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:24.240 think the way they didn't, why they couldn't see anything different, 0:09:24.240 --> 0:09:26.240 Because that's always the problem with history, right, I mean, 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:29.000 it looks so obvious to us, you know how why 0:09:29.000 --> 0:09:31.920 on earth didn't people realize that the brain is the 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:32.520 center of thought? 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:35.600 Why do they think it was the heart? And one 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:37.160 of the rules. 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:39.320 I think about history, in particular the history of science, 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:42.439 is that you're not allowed to think that people in 0:09:42.480 --> 0:09:45.280 the past were stupid because they were amazingly smart. 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:47.120 They just didn't know as much as we know. And 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:47.800 we only know. 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:49.800 That most of us because we've read it or we've 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:53.120 been taught it in class. Relatively few people have actually 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:56.440 made great breakthroughs that have changed how we think about 0:09:56.440 --> 0:09:59.360 the world. So when you've got these people who are very, 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:02.600 very clever but can't see something, that the task is 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:05.200 to try and put yourselves in their heads and say, well, 0:10:05.400 --> 0:10:07.360 what is it they don't understand And it can't just 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:10.040 be the answer, you know, they didn't understand that nothing 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:12.920 goes faster than light or whatever. You've got to think about, well, 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:15.840 what is it the framework that they're living in the 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:19.000 world they're living in. Trying and put yourselves in their shoes, 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:22.600 and then it all starts to become clearer. And it also, 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:26.280 I think for the reader, both the lay reader and 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:30.040 for scientists becomes much more interesting because then you can 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:34.559 start to say not only about now, but also about 0:10:34.600 --> 0:10:37.840 the future, about what might be coming and why we 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:39.840 can't understand certain things at the moment. 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:40.320 You know. 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:42.360 One of the things that was quite stunning for me 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:46.640 is I, like, you, have spent my whole career in neuroscience, 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:50.120 but it was difficult for me to envision what it 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:52.760 would have been like to live in neuroscience in an 0:10:52.800 --> 0:10:55.440 era where we didn't know something. So for example, the 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:58.760 discovery of the action potential. This is where a neuron 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:02.960 has a spike there, zips down the axon and carries 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:06.760 signals rapidly in this way. I grew up just taking 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:09.560 for granted that that's what neurons do. 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:10.280 That. 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:15.600 Of course, the brain uses electricity in this sense. But 0:11:15.920 --> 0:11:18.040 you know, you had a whole chapter about electricity and 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:21.240 how people discovered that that was going on with the brain. 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:22.439 Give us a sense of that. 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:26.240 Well, it all began, I guess it began in America 0:11:26.280 --> 0:11:26.680 really with. 0:11:28.320 --> 0:11:33.120 The ability to Franklin to actually bring electricity down very 0:11:33.200 --> 0:11:36.240 dangerous experiments as everybody knows, with kites and keys and 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:38.920 that kind of thing. But in the eighteenth century people 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:42.439 began to be able to store electricity. They could produce 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:45.720 it in the form of static electricity. So they'd get 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:49.480 some amber or any kind of resin and you know, 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:51.360 just like you, you know, maybe you do. 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:51.880 This for your kid. 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:53.319 So you know when you were a kid, your dad 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:55.160 would do this. You get a balloon, you rub it 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:57.640 on his jump and he stick it on the wall. Amazing, right, 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:02.439 that static electricity you can actually generate by putting say 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:05.880 some wool onto a resin wheel. That you spin round 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:09.640 and they would do These people would do these kind 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:12.440 of party tricks. They were called electricians, right, and they 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:14.920 would go into your fancy house and they would they 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:17.800 would do like one of these shows was called the 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:22.920 Feathered Boy, and they'd get some hapless child and winch 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:26.000 him up to the ceiling and then they'd charge him 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:29.360 up with electricity using this amber and cloth, and then 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:31.880 they'd throw a load of feathers in the air and 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:33.800 of course they'd all stick on it. So they could 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:37.520 do stuff like this. And also people were thinking about 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:41.600 actually using a very primitive form of electroshock therapy. So 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:44.920 these electricians, when you could generate it, they would travel 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:50.920 around the countryside, you know, itinerant electricians, so too particularly 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:57.400 significant figures. So John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and Maha, 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:01.360 the French revolutionary, were both itinerant electricians in the UK 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:02.400 in the eighteenth century. 0:13:02.440 --> 0:13:04.240 Wandering around. Somebody say I'm. 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:06.599 Feeling really miserable and terrible, and he said, well, just 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:08.640 hold on to this, and then they'd wind it up 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.960 and bang, you get an electric shark. So scientists knew 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:15.080 that electricity was doing something, but that didn't mean to 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:18.160 say that it was how bodies worked, and it became 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:22.600 increasingly complex as people were able to actually store electricity 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:25.280 through something called a lidon jar. You'd actually put it 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.760 into a generate this electricity and it would then stay. 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:32.079 But what happened it was then suddenly discharge if you 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:34.199 touched it, like touching a cow fence. 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:36.440 Right, you know, you know you've been touched. 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:40.800 And so when French scientists didn't experiment with this, he 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:45.120 got four hundred monks, which is they're all holding hands, 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:47.200 and at one end he got one of these big 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:49.760 jars full of electricity and he made the monk touch it, 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:51.880 and then he watched us that they all jumped up 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:55.240 as if the chargers down this line of monks must 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:58.240 have been about whatever eight hundred meters more thousand meters 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.600 kilometer along a monk. And then finally they were able 0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:05.359 to use They were showing that even they're doing experiments 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:08.360 on animals, like in particular frogs, and they'd noticed that 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:12.600 if you stimulated a frog nerve on attached to a leg, 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:16.080 then their muscle would contract. Now this didn't show you 0:14:16.400 --> 0:14:18.280 what was going on, because you know if you put 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:21.000 acid on a nerve then that it will also contract 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:23.840 so maybe electricy was just an irritant, or maybe it 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:25.960 was actually in bodies right, And this was. 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:26.680 A big argument. 0:14:26.800 --> 0:14:29.240 One of the things that people stuid was electric fish, 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:33.800 so the electric eel. And they found this structure that 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:37.160 was produced as shock and at the beginning of the 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:41.920 nineteenth century chap called vaulta hence vault. He decided he'd 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:44.960 do a bit of biomimicry. He said, okay, well they've 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:48.600 got this electric organ. Maybe I can use that electric organ. 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:50.680 I think I can mimic the structure of this which 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:55.280 had kind of layers and produce an electric current. And 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:57.680 so he did created what he called a pile, which 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:00.600 was layers of zinc and cardboard with los of acid 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:03.240 around them. And it was because it was a black 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:07.400 pile of pennies. And this would then produce electricity, but 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:08.720 at a constant rate. 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:11.160 Now in English we now call this a battery. 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:15.360 So you've now got this continuous release of electricity. And 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:18.600 then you can see, well, actually we can stimulate if 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:22.640 we put these electrodes onto and they did very horrible 0:15:22.720 --> 0:15:26.280 experiments on animals, dead animals. You know, you could then 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:28.160 make it if you put electrodes on either side of 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:31.040 a cow's head, then its mouth would start to move, 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:34.080 and its eyes would roll in its sockets. And in 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:38.600 one particularly awful experiment in London, then a criminal who 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:41.520 killed his wife and child and had been hanged was 0:15:41.600 --> 0:15:44.800 immediately taken down from the gallows as soon as he 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:47.560 was dead, taken into a small room with about twelve 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:53.120 learned gentleman and this experiment was done on his dead body, 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:55.200 and of course he would then, you know, his arms 0:15:55.200 --> 0:15:58.000 started flailing about and all the rest of it. 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:02.440 That these experiments convinced. 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.200 People that there was electricity in nerves, that it wasn't 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:07.160 just an irritant, that it was actually some kind of 0:16:07.520 --> 0:16:09.200 organizing principle. 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:12.240 And by the way, this is starting to be one 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:15.040 of the origins of Mary Shelley's frankenstn. 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:18.120 It's not known, but she did regularly go to something 0:16:18.160 --> 0:16:21.760 called the Royal Institution in London, which is still there, 0:16:21.920 --> 0:16:26.360 amazing lecture theater where science is communicated to the public, 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:29.880 and various British scientists spoke there, and at the beginning 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:34.720 in about eighteen fourteen, there were a series of demonstrations 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:38.760 of this power of electricity to animate dead bodies on 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:40.920 sheep's heads and so on. You can go to the 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:42.840 theater and see it. I mean, it was a huge, 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:46.960 huge thing. And we don't know that Mary Godwin went, 0:16:47.000 --> 0:16:48.960 but it's pretty likely she did. And then a couple 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:51.280 of years later, when she was whatever sixteen, she ran 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:56.120 off with Shelley and they went on honeymoon. So they 0:16:56.120 --> 0:16:58.520 sat around in Morote ghost stories and she wrote Frankistan. 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:18.160 One of the fascinations that I enjoyed with reading your 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:23.600 book was all these things that we learned from biology 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:27.040 that have created new technologies, like looking at the electric 0:17:27.119 --> 0:17:30.840 eel and the invention of the battery that fade away. 0:17:30.920 --> 0:17:34.119 Now we have a gajillion times more batteries on our 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.320 planet than we have electric eels, but we have forgotten 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:40.080 where that came from, that biomimicry. So what I really 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:42.239 loved is the way you tie these things together. So 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:47.240 tell us about phrenology, the pseudoscience of phrenology that was popular, 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:50.920 and how you think this actually contributed in a positive 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:53.120 way to how we think about neuroscience and modern times, 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:54.760 even though phrenology itself was incorrect. 0:17:54.920 --> 0:17:57.119 If you want to have an argument with a neuroscientist, 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:01.560 your studies the human brain in particular go groups them together. 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:06.119 Say is function localized? Is there part of our brain 0:18:06.520 --> 0:18:09.960 that is devoted to doing a particular thing and that 0:18:10.080 --> 0:18:12.720 if you remove it you can't do that thing? 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:13.160 Right? 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:17.600 The answer is kind of yes, and no. Man is complicated, right. 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:21.160 But in the nineteenth century it tormented people a great deal, 0:18:21.200 --> 0:18:25.479 partly because of the influence of French philosophy, and that 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:28.480 the identification of the brain and the mind caused a 0:18:28.560 --> 0:18:33.080 huge problem because Descartes, who was for the French, the 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:37.879 philosopher and no need for any other. He insisted that 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:41.560 the mind was a united structure and therefore the brain 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:43.280 must be as well. And if you look at the brain, 0:18:43.440 --> 0:18:46.159 it appears identical on either half, got two halves, and 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:50.120 they look pretty symmetrical. So the French were very convinced 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:53.560 that there was no localization of function. And yet there 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:57.600 was this popular idea of phrenology, which is, you know, 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:00.919 kind of grew up in the late eighteenth cent and 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:03.480 was basically a version of oh, I don't like the 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:05.840 look of his face, his eyes are too close together, 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:08.920 or whatever, you know, version you he's got big ears, 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:11.320 or whatever. Way of looking at somebody's face and not 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:13.840 liking them and thinking that they're not shifty or whatever. 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:17.880 This was then theorized in all sorts of ways by 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:21.399 various thinkers who argued that by feeling the outside of 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:24.280 your head skull, you could tell the shape of your 0:19:24.280 --> 0:19:26.719 brain and the lumps on your head, because we've all 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:32.200 got lumps. They reveal the existence of organs and sections 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:34.040 of the brain that are doing particular things. 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:36.480 But rather than say, as. 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:38.800 You know, you might say, well they're devoted to speech 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:43.200 or you know, impulsiveness or vision, they were all about 0:19:43.280 --> 0:19:48.879 moral virtues and you know, being goodness and so basically 0:19:48.880 --> 0:19:52.359 it's like astrology, you know. And people would go and 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:54.480 it was incredibly popular in the nineteenth century, and the 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:57.040 scientists got really really cross about it because they said, look, 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:57.760 you know, your. 0:19:57.600 --> 0:19:58.680 Skull's really thick. 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:01.560 You may have a big lump on your head, but 0:20:01.640 --> 0:20:05.199 there's no lump corresponding lump underneath your brain. So this 0:20:05.320 --> 0:20:08.920 is just rubbish. So this went on until the late 0:20:09.119 --> 0:20:13.240 the early twentieth century. So this is pseudoscience, and despite 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:17.879 it being widely not accepted, but you know, ordinary people, 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:20.600 ordinary people from Queen Victoria to Carl Marx all thought 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:21.600 it was very interesting. 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:23.679 You know, there was nothing in it. It was complete, 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:24.520 not of rubbish. 0:20:24.600 --> 0:20:27.919 But what it's got in there is this suggestion that 0:20:28.000 --> 0:20:31.920 maybe there is localization of function. And this is eventually 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:36.840 resolved in about eighteen sixty when a French scientist called 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:41.480 Broker was studying the brains of patients who who'd have 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:43.960 strokes and have lost the power of speech, and he 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:47.920 found that consistently when he did the dissections, the front 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:52.320 left and area of the brain was damaged in these 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:54.399 patients who had lost the power of speech. Patients who 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:56.679 died and hadn't lost the power of speech did not 0:20:56.680 --> 0:20:58.240 have those leeches legiance. 0:20:58.320 --> 0:20:59.760 And he was really unhappy. 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:02.399 About this because he was French and this could not 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:04.919 be and yeah, I mean having I don't know if 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:07.000 this has happened to you, David, but you know, sometimes 0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:08.960 you collect data and it. 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:10.359 Just pushes you into a corner. 0:21:10.440 --> 0:21:11.960 You don't want to go to that corner because you 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:14.159 don't think that's the way it is. But the data 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:16.119 just in the end you've got no option. You're just 0:21:16.119 --> 0:21:17.480 going to say, well, that's the way it is, this 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:20.520 is what happens. And poor old Broker had to say 0:21:21.000 --> 0:21:24.200 and shock the French establishment by saying there is localization 0:21:24.240 --> 0:21:27.040 of function. Of course, you can't see anything with the eye, 0:21:27.240 --> 0:21:29.159 the naked eye for this front left hand side of 0:21:29.160 --> 0:21:30.840 the brain. And then a couple and if you saw 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:33.320 this was a couple of years ago, quite astonishing paper 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:37.840 was produced between a group of neuroscientists were doing fMRI 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:42.560 scans and a woman in her thirties was a secretary 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:45.840 who had a college degree, who wrote to them. She 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:47.920 saw an advert, you know, saying we're looking for people 0:21:47.960 --> 0:21:49.840 to have brain scanned. She said, I've been told there's 0:21:49.880 --> 0:21:52.360 something interesting about my brain. And they said, okay, yeah, 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:55.719 come on in. They stuck her in the scanner and 0:21:55.760 --> 0:21:58.280 the left hand brain side of her brain is completely empty. 0:21:58.280 --> 0:22:04.800 There's nothing, there's a hemisphere completely and she has done 0:22:04.960 --> 0:22:08.520 this ever since birth, and yet she can speak perfectly normally. 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:11.199 You would not know if you didn't use a scan out, 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:12.040 you'd have no idea. 0:22:13.880 --> 0:22:16.920 I wrote about this in my book Live Wired. And 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:18.680 you know, you see the same thing. When a child 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:21.920 gets a hemisphere ectomy, they get half of their brain removed, 0:22:21.960 --> 0:22:24.600 let's say, because of an intractable epilepsy. 0:22:25.119 --> 0:22:26.240 Turns out they're fine. 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:28.840 And this is because the left and right sides of 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:31.480 the brain are sort of carbon copies of each other. 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:34.200 They're redundant for the most part, and so you can 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:37.639 take one out and the remaining hemisphere just rewires the 0:22:37.680 --> 0:22:40.440 real estate to drive the boat as it needs. 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:42.280 To as long as you're very young. So it's a 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:43.320 plasticity thing, right. 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:49.560 They don't do hemispherectomies after about the age of eight typically, Yeah, yeah. 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:51.919 So, And there are examples of people who have had 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:56.119 unbelievable bad damage from strokes who then recovered their function 0:22:56.200 --> 0:22:59.760 completely her adults. But as I'm always very careful to 0:22:59.800 --> 0:23:02.199 say when I explain this to people, is this is 0:23:02.320 --> 0:23:04.680 very rare and in general strokes are pretty bad news. 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:07.439