This time, neuroscience. (lively music) This is Star Talk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this episode of Star Talk,a Cosmic Queries edition, is focusing on neuroscience. And we go to our go-to person for that, and that would be noneother than Heather Berlin. Heather, welcome back to StarTalk for the millionth time. - Thanks, I always love being here. - Excellent, thank you, thank you. And you are a neuroscientistat Mount Sinai, is that correct, is thatthe way to say that? - Yes, yeah, mm-hm. - And you focus on whatpeople are thinking when they don't know they're thinking? - Sort of.(both laugh) I've never heard it described that way. But no, I study brains and how they relate to human thoughts, behaviors, whether they're consciousor unconscious, emotions. - Okay, that's scary, actually. And we have a first-timerhere, my cohost Jackie Hoffman, Jackie, welcome.- Thank you, Neil. - [Neil] You're a comedian? - I am an actress/comedienne. - [Neil] In that order? - Uh, well, yes. - [Neil] Okay.(laughs) - Right now I'm doing moreacting than comedian-ing. - [Neil] Okay. - And I had a hysterectomy at Mount Sinai. - Oh, congratulations.(laughs) - That's a TMI, is that a TMI?(laughs) - I hope they did a good job. Not that I represent--- Uterus Awareness Week. (Heather laughs)- Uterus, okay. - So let me join you then, and say I was born in Mount Sinai. - Really?- Oh. - Yes, yeah. - And both my childrenwere born at Mount Sinai. - Okay, but I never hada hysterectomy there, no. (Neil and Heather laugh)- You never know. - Roll you into the wrong room. So Jackie, you saidyou're also an actress. You had a role in Legally Blonde 2. - Yes, Neil remembered my joke, my line. - What was it? - It was one line, "Your dogs are gay."
(Neil and Heather laugh) - That was your oneline in the movie, okay. - It changed the world. - I would have givenyou more lines than that if I were a producer of Legally Blonde 2. - Thank you.- Okay. (laughs) So also you are in aall-Yiddish production of Fiddler On The Roof,off-Broadway, right now. - That is correct.- That's crazy. - With English subtitles, don't panic. - Okay, Yiddish has got to be like that's how it would have been, they would have been speaking Yiddish. - That is correct, yes. - Singing and dancing Yiddish. And your character is? - Yente the matchmaker. - Yes.- Yente, Yente. You can't get more Yente than being Yente. (Neil and Heather laugh) - Or Shadchan as we say in Yiddish. - So basically you'replaying my grandmother is basically what you're playing, yeah. (laughs with Neil) - Very cool, so sincethis is Cosmic Queries, we solicited from our fan basequestions for this episode on neuroscience.- Great. - And what a topic thathas become, Heather. There's a word no one knew 20 years ago, and now everybody's into it. - I mean, I knew aboutit, but I mean, there's-- (both laugh)- Oh, excuse me. Yeah, okay, not that nobody knew. - Okay.- Nobody else knew. - Right, right, yeah. - So Jackie, you have thequestions, I haven't seen them, neither has Heather.- Hm-mm. - And these are questions,just bring it on, let's see what we've got. - Okay, our first comes from John Emerson from Patreon, I don't know what that is. - Oh, Patreon, they're a support website that help fund our operation. - Oh, nice, I thought it was a tequila. (Neil and Heather laugh) - So that's why you'rereading their question first. - I see. - That's one of the perksof the many perks you get being a Patreon supporter. - Thank you, the patrons at Patreon. - Patreon.- Patreon, thank you. Okay, I've heard that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Well, that a littlebit involves you, Neil. (Heather and Neil laugh) - Yeah, that's my expertise,Mars and Venus, all right. - I've heard that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but are there any neurological differences between these two planetary species? - Ooh.- Yeah. - That's a good question forYente the matchmaker, too. (Heather laughs) -
It's actually, it's beencontroversial in the past 'cause often it's not been PC to say that there are differencesbetween men and women's brains, but there are, there are. There are both anatomical differences, neurochemical differences, hormones that affect brain chemistry like oxytocin, things like testosterone and estrogen affect how the brain works. So we know that, for example, on average, and these are all, again, on average, women have slightly larger hippocampi which is the part of the brainthat has to do with memory. They tend to store emotionalmemories better than men. They tend to ruminate on thingsa little bit more than men, as we might know anecdotally. And in terms of the waytheir brains are wired up it's slightly different.- They is female. - Female, female, yeah. Language, which tends to be lateralized, meaning that it's morelocalized on the left side. - Lateralized would mean it'sfeatured more, for anything, would mean it's more onone side than the other. - Exactly.- Lateralized. - Lateralized, so it tendsto be more laterlized in men, meaning that more of theirlanguage is just on the left side whereas women tend to have language in both hemispheres, parts of the brain that are dedicated to language processing. They tend to use morewords, just behaviorally, during the day than men. So there are certainaspects of women's brain both anatomically and physiologically that differ from men, andthey express themselves in different waysbehaviorally, emotionally, in terms of cognition. - So, has this gottenresistance from society to even have that conversation? - There's some, becausethen the idea is like, well, then there's this myth like okay, well, a bigger brain must be better. Men, on average, have aphysically larger brain, but that's not true interms of intelligence, in terms of cognitive function. It's about how it's wiredup, it's not about the size. But people did get scared away from this because the idea like, famously, I think it was Larry Summersat Harvard who said-- - Then president of Harvard.- Yes, exactly. Women tend to not do aswell in math and tech and that kind of thing, andthose things are just not true.
They tend to work in different ways, but there's no differencesin terms of intelligence correlated to brain size and the rest. So, I think it's okay tosay there are differences, and it's neither good orbad, it's just different. - So I thought his argument was the averages are all the same, but men show up wider on the distribution. So if you try to find thehighest performing man, it comes way out on thehigh performing side. You also have a much lowerman on the other side. - [Heather] Right. - Lower than you find the lowest woman. - They tend to be more on the extremes. - Extremes with it, yeah.- Right, right. But again, that's onaverage, so that means that there are women who areat these extremes as well. On average tend to be moremen more at the extremes in terms of that bell curve of IQ. But if you look at it overall. - The bell curve of anything, right? - Yeah, yeah. - Isn't the shortest person ever a man? - Is that true? - Tom Thumb, I thought was pretty small. - Oh, yeah.(laughs) But I don't know if thatmeans that on average. - I don't know, yeah, yeah. - I mean, that's very, an N of one. But women tend to live longer than men, so in that sense we are at the extreme. - But you also look at personality, like for example charisma, right? There's some verycharismatic men out there, and at the other extremeyou have completely, complete sociopaths as men.- Right. - Men do the most heinoussocial things ever, right? So again, we have these extremes that the men are overpopulating. -
Right, or they just mightexpress them in different ways. Like one idea, just to go offa little bit on a tangent, but people who are sociopaths, men mostly, more diagnosed in men, have these kinds of impulsive behaviors or they act out aggressively in others and then they're categorized as that. But women also can tend tohave those extreme behaviors, but they're more likely to be introverted and act it out on themselves,like self-harming behavior. - [Neil] Oh, oh, okay. - So there are similar expressions of, let's say impulsive behavior, but they're expressed different ways and then they get categorizedinto different disorders. - So Jackie, are you fromMars or Venus, which are you? - Saturn.- Saturn, me too. (Heather and Jackie laugh) Me, too, thank you, excellent. - Put a ring on it. (Neil and Heather laugh) - Thank you, Beyonce. Okay Jackie, you've got another question? - Yes I do, here's one close to my heart, from Herbalvores on Instagram. How do psychedelics work and what is the effect on the brain? And for personal reasons, I'dlike to extend that question to marijuana as well.- Okay. - Wait, did you just addthat to the question? - I did, am I allowed todo that? (Heather laughs) - You control the questions. If you want to slap in your own question. - I showed up.(Neil and Heather laugh) - That's a pretty broad question. There is a whole varietyof different types of psychedelic drugs, andthey all affect the brain in different ways, so it's not like. - Let's just go LSD.- Okay, let's just go LSD. Okay, that's the good one. - LSD, nice, clean, and famous, yeah. - Nice good one, okay. So what LSD does, ingeneral, is that it lowers activation in certainparts of the frontal lobe which have to do with sensoryinformation coming in, and the frontal lobe iskind of making meaning out of that information,it makes sense of it all. When you have decreased activation in that part of the brain, the meaning-maker part of the brain, you're having a whole bunchof sensory information coming in without a filter, let's say. So it's being experiencedin a different way.
You also have increased activation in the limbic areas of the brain, these subcortical areas of the brain. So more information is coming from within, it's not being sort oforganized in a logical way. - Is limbic, is that the reptilian thing? - Like emotional,reptilian brain, exactly. - Ooh. - So it is almost likebeing in a dream state, 'cause during dreams wesee a similar pattern of activation, you havedecreased prefrontal cortex, increased limbic, so you'rehaving emotions and thoughts that don't necessarily make sense, that don't have a clear narrative. But you're also getting the sensory information that's unfiltered. The other thing that'sreally interesting is that when you look at theway the brain is kind of sending information back and forth, usually you have certain pathways that the brain sends information, but when they're on LSD there is much more distributed network of information. So it's kind of like you'dsee a lot of straight lines and paths, and now they'recrossing larger distances within the brain, the information. So it's just a whole differentpattern of activation. - Mm-mm.- Mm-mm. So that makes you feelweird and trippy, yeah. - Well when we have time later I'll ask you about all my prescriptions and their effect,(Heather and Neil laugh) their effect on what's left of my brain. - What you're on right now,that's what we want to know. - The point, though, I thinkthat's the most interesting is that we all are kind ofhallucinating all the time. - Wow! - Yeah, because our brainis making up a story based on these signals that are coming in, and then we often say thatwhen we all agree upon it, we call it reality.- Yes, yes. This is a fascinating and important point, because if you have yourown understanding of reality and no one else can corroborate it, we declare that as going on in your head. We don't declare that youhave some special insight into a reality that noneof the rest of us have. - Right.- Is that fair to say, as from a brain person's perspective? -
We all are making upour reality in our mind. But again, if nobody else is agreeing on what you're experiencing, then it's likely just being generated internally. - And scientificallywe have to assume that, otherwise--- What do we base reality on? - What do we base reality on?- Yeah, yeah. - If a tree falls in aforest and nobody hears it, (Heather laughs)does it make a noise? - Is this why you askedabout the marijuana? (Neil and Heather laugh) - That's a perfect segueto this next question. - Wait, I don't knowif I'm done with this, wait a minute.- all right. - So, what do you say topeople who would argue that when their brain has been altered by whatever, peyote,artificial chemicals, whatever. - Ayahuasca.- Whatever. That they're claiming insight into the universe. What do you say to them?(Heather sighs) - I've had these discussions with people. So let's say they claimthey see a spirit God and they get insight intothe workings of the universe. I think it's important to understand that we are, our brainsare a physical mechanism, and a lot of things,just like dream states, are it's creating its own internal world. So, often when we're in afully-awake non-psychedelic state where there's a certain part of our brain that tells us whether information is being internally generated orcoming from external again. People with schizophrenia, for example, they don't have thatproper check-in place. So they think they're hearing voices that are coming externally in, because their brain isn'ttelling them no, it's you, internally, being generated. So when you're on these drugs, it's similar to a schizophrenic. Things are being generatedinternally from your mind, but you're misinterpreting them as coming from someplace else,like from a spirit God or somewhere else, ormaybe you're getting some great insight that'scoming from somewhere. - So the people talking tothemselves on the street who are not on a cellphone.- Mm-hm. - They're really talking to themselves. (Neil and Heather laugh)- Yes. - They're not talkingto some other entity. - But they experience it asif it's another entity, yeah. But, I mean look, this is not to say that there isn't some great answer that's coming through in different ways. But it is curious thatpeople who get these messages when they're in these psychedelic states are usually related totheir underlying personal or religious belief systemsthat they have in place already. -
It folds in togetherwith it, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yes, which leads me to believe that it's internallygenerated, not externally. - Very good data on that.- Thank you very much. (Heather laughs)- Jackie, what you got next? - Well, I've got this real trippy one from Kevin Kalakimaka on Instagram. - Okay. - Is everything we experiencea figment of our imagination? - Pretty much. - I think that dovetails right in. - Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much it. I mean, I wouldn't sayeverything we experience is a figment of our imagination. - Wait, if I pinch you,is that imagination? - No, no, the way I experienceit is created by my brain. Actually, I'd have to sayno, because imagination-- - All right, so it's yes or no, come on. Make up your mind.(Heather laughs) - What am I, Michael Cohen?- Moving on. (Heather and Neil laugh) - The Senate hearings? - Wait, wait, wait.- Okay. - Kevin, what are you thinking? - No, no, in the movie The Matrix. - [Heather] Yes. - Everything is happeninginside their brains. - [Heather] Yes. - Their sense of painand joy and love and hate and hunger, and all ofthat is inside the brain. - Yes.- Okay. - That is true, soeverything you experience is, pain, every sensationyou have is happening inside of your brain, right, yes, but. - So therefore, to the question, so the answer to that is yes, everything is a brainexperience in your life, and you couldn't have had a plausible plot in the movie The Matrixunless that was true. - Yeah, but when you say, this is the differentiation I'm making. Imagination, in the sense ofnot correlating to something that's external to your brain. So you have a creation ofan experience in your brain of what you're perceiving that could either be created internally, which I would call imagination, or that's coming externallyfrom your senses in. So yes, they're bothcreations of your brain, but one is based on external data and the other coming from within. - And the externality iswhere we all rally around to say that's the reality. - Yeah, but the truth be told, we could create a wholesort of matrix world just based on sensory inputsthat aren't really there. - And what's that othermovie, Total Recall? You want to go on a vacation to Acapulco, sit in this chair and I willimplant the memories of it in you, and now you wake up and you say, "Wow, I had a good time in Acapulco." - Yeah, I mean it is just as good. It could give you, itcould be just as good. (Neil laughs)- Or better. - We are beginning to blur the line, or better, probably better.- Or better, probably better, if you can know how to do it. - 'Cause you can skipall the boring parts, like the taxi ride and stuff. (Neil laughs)-
Waiting for your luggage. - Exactly, yep.- Right. - Fast forwarding.- Mm-hm? (Heather and Neil laugh) - But with your brain.- Yes. - Time for one more for this segment, what do you have, Jackie? - Ooh, that's a tough choice,but I think I've got one. Brianside on Instagram,if sight is the process of the brain creating an image of reality after it interprets thesignal from the eyes sent when they interact withthe electromagnetic field, can a blind person create animage based on the signals sent from the other senses to the brain? In other words, can ablind person see something? - Yeah, yeah, so it dependson, okay, so our brain-- - Wait, you know something?- What? - That's a really good question. - Should I wait till after the break? - Yeah, I want to waittill after the break-- - All right, let's do it. - For the answer to that question. - Mm-mm, cliffhanger. - And since the word electromagneticwas mentioned in there, I would just say that's the word we use to describe the entire spectrum of light, not only the visible light, ROY G BIV, red, orange, yellow, green,blue, indigo, violet, but the infrared, ultraviolet,X-rays, gamma rays, microwaves, radio waves, all of that is theelectromagnetic spectrum. Only a tiny slice of it arewe sensitive to with our eyes. So, what's interesting is we have this mechanism called our eyeballs that takes that andturns it into an image, and it's all neurological at that level. Well, once your people getgood at neurological stimulus, I don't see why you can'ttake any external stimulus and turn it into an image in a brain even of someone who is blind. When we come back on Star Talk, we're gonna find outhow can the blind see? Heather has the answer to that, (Neil and Heather laugh)when we return. We're back on Star Talk, Cosmic Queries, neuroscience edition, and we went to our go-toneuroscience person, Heather Berlin, Heather, very nice. - Yes. - I've got Jackie Hoffman, a first-timer, as my cohost.- Yes. - Plus you tweet @JackieHoffman16. - I do.- What is the 16? - I don't know, my manager picked it 'cause there was another Jackie Hoffman. (Heather laughs) That's your query cosmic answer. - Wow.- Cosmic with a K. - That is the lamestanswer I've ever heard. - I know, it's the truth.- Ever. Heather, you're tweeting-- - I'm honored to have thelamest answer ever on this show. (Neil and Heather laugh) - Heather, you tweet @HeatherBerlin? -
Heather underscore Berlin. - Excuse me, underscore.- Oh. - Because the same reason.(laughs) - I don't like the underscore, it's so ugly.- What? - 'Cause you have to keepchanging your keyboard, it's too much work. - 'Cause sometimes you can't see it, I prefer the dash.- Ooh, wow. - Yeah, I've never been an underscore guy. - Well now it's a little bit too late. You could have told me that before. (Neil laughs)- She's worth it though. She's still worth the extra keys. I'm worth the underscore. Thank you, Jackie, for the endorsement. - So, we last left off witha question about can you, I'm gonna slightly rephrase the question. Knowing that we have multiplesenses into the brain, can you take one senseand turn it into another to possibly grant the sense of sight back to a blind person? But maybe the sense of smell or touch? And isn't there this brain,we call it a disorder, called synesthesia?- Synesthesia, yeah. - And does that relate to this answer? - There's a lot here, so let me just say that it depends on whenthe blindness occurred. So when you're born, in many ways, the gray matter, it's like a blank slate. Then it starts to differentiate based on the inputs it's getting. So the visual cortex inyour brain gets inputs from the retina, via theoptic nerve sends information, and then over time itkeeps getting inundated with that visual information,so it starts to become the visual cortex where youexperience visual imagery.
Now, there are experiments,let's say, with weasels, where they take themearly on and they redirect that visual information to what's normally the auditory cortex.- Oh. - And over time, they start to see with their auditory cortex, okay? - Whoa. - So, depending on how youchange the inputs to the brain, you can kind of change whatsensory processes occur. - So there's a malleabilityif it happens early? - Early, right. Now if you take an adult blind person who's already kind of formed their sensory parts of their brain,what you might experience is that if they were bornblind and now they're an adult, what we do see in people is that they have a morewell-developed auditory cortex because they're gettingmuch more auditory input. - [Neil] So they're relying on it more. - They're relying on it more. And it kind of recruitsother parts of the brain, and some can sort of have aweird sense of seeing via sound. So they experience it in different ways. The other part of this is that there are programs now,like neural implants, where they can get informationfrom the real world, like through a camera, you implant it directlyinto the visual cortex, and it'll stimulate the visual cortex as if it's informationcoming from the eyes, and people can begin to sortof start to see strange images. Not like seeing the way you and I do, but. - Anything's better than seeing nothing. - Exactly, exactly. And as you perfect thistechnology over time, we might be able to really stimulate the parts of the visualcortex so the person can see. - We already do that nowauditorily, with the-- - Cochlear, cochlear.- Cochlear device. - [Heather] Yes. - A NASA invention, I might add. - [Heather] Ah, all goodthings come from NASA. - Yes, yes. And there's a famous talk show host who got that NASA implant,and it's Rush Limbaugh. He was going deaf.- Wow, oh? - I only learned this recently. - Interesting.- He went almost completely deaf, and thenhe got the operation. So it actually hears foryou and converts external sound waves into impulses that your ear canal wouldhave otherwise done. I don't think you hear thesound as you normally would,
but you can hear differences in sounds that you retrain to learn what a word is when you hear those impulses. - And can I say onething about synesthesia, 'cause it's really cool?- Yeah sure, sure. - So synesthesia iswhere people sort of have a crossing of sensory areas in the brain. So for example, they'll see colors in sounds or something. They'll hear things in written text. So this one study was really interesting where they found thatcertain people always saw letters as certain colors, like an A, they'd be like A is obviously red. - It's obvious, or course.- B is blue, C is green, whatever it was. What they did is, they did a large study across all these synestheteswho had that particular-- - Synesthetes?- Yes. - That's a thing?- Synesthetes, that's a thing. - Synesthetes. - There's a wholecommunity of synesthetes. They did a survey, andthey all saw A as red and B as blue, and itwas a strange sort of coincidence, we thought. Then they all happened tobe born around the same time when this particular Fisher-Price, you know those magnetsthat you would put on the refrigerator and it would be--- Whoa. - The letters and numbers?- The letters and numbers, yeah, and their synesthesiadirectly correlated with that Fisher-Price set that came out when they were kids.
So basically, when their brain was in the early stages of development and they were exposed to it,they learned an association between those colors and letters which remained into adulthood. So it had to do with across-wiring in the brain. - Wow.- Yeah. - Maybe that's why I associateevery letter with food, because they were on the refrigerator. (Neil and Heather laugh) - Because they were on the refrigerator. - A is obviously a pickle. - I am an amblyopete, I haveamblyopia in my right eye. So what I understandis now my brain is not telling my eye to look at things. It sits there like a useless hulk and my whole life is on my left side, I have no vision out of the right eye. When I cover the left eye,it can look at things, but my brain is not talking to it. - Oh, you were born with this?- I was born with it. - Amblytopia?(laughs) - Amblyopia.- Amblyopia. - I just called myself anamblyopete just to keep up. (Heather laughs)- Just so you can hang. You just want to hangwith the other petes. - There's a whole community. - I'm an amblyopete.(Heather laughs) - Everybody tweet atyou who's an amblyopete. You can build a community. But no, it's interestingyou can only see out of it when you cover the other eye,is that what you're saying? - Yes, that's correct. - But it probably is gettingvisual information in. - Right. - But the other eye is dominant. - Yes, the doctor said if, God forbid, anything happens to the good eye, the bad eye will grow and learn. - Exactly, exactly, it's almost like, it's basically like a lazy eye. Because the other eye is so dominant, you kind of, over time, don't utilize the information coming from that eye and the other one becomes stronger, the other one becomes weaker. - When I was a child, theycovered it with patches, the good eye, to try tostrengthen, and it was pointless.
I just kept walking into furniture, (Heather laughs) which would explain a lot. (Heather and Neil laugh) - We can talk about headinjury in the next segment. - Next, what do you have? - Okay, from Serena Rockauer on Instagram. What will it take to bringmental health awareness into the mainstream, whyis it still such a stigma? What is it about intelligencein unconventional ways that makes it so taboo? - Mm-mm, um, okay. - I don't understandthe second half of that. What's it have to do with intelligence? - [Jackie] I fear it all. - I think that's probably more of like why some people say thatpeople with mental illness are just intelligent in different ways. - Oh, mm-hm. - I think that's probably related to that. - Tell me about thestigma of mental illness, the history of that. - Because it's sort of aninvisible disorder in a sense. Like if you break an arm it's very clear, it's a physical problem, orthe heart is having problems, you can look at the physicality. The brain is so complex,and there's so much going on in terms of neurochemicalsand neurophysiology that when things go wrong in the brain, they're hard to just lookat and see, physically. And they express themselvesin these subjective states. A person, you never can reallytell if they're depressed. They tell you, I feel depressed. - Right, yeah, they reada scale of one to 10, what are you?- Exactly, exactly. So it's all subjective, andbecause of that subjectivity, people have questioned the validity of it because you can't takea microscope and see it. So now, as a cognitive neuroscientist who works in psychiatry,part of what we do is to say look, these psychiatric illnesses, this is the underlying brain dysfunction. And we need to get away from the stigma like it's all just in your mind, like it's not a realphysical thing, and say no, the brain is a physical organ. Just like you wouldfix a bone with a cast, if the brain is improperly working you can take this particular medication that's gonna, say, affectyour serotonin receptors. It's just another physical problem. But because it expressesitself in the subjective way, there's a stigma behind it. So I think we're starting toget away from that stigma. - I would think so, too, andyou know what I base that on? How candidly people just say, "Oh yeah, my therapisttold me the other day," when growing up youwould never tell anyone that you had a therapist for any reason. And now people, they're just out with it. People you just meet, right? And so, for me that's one measure of an acceptance factorthat's going on in society. -
It can also manifestitself in embarrassing ways, too, mental illness. You know, someone on the street-- (yells)- Right. - I do that for a living.(Heather laughs) - Yeah, yeah, you bark atpeople, that's what you do. (laughs) - Yeah, I do bark at people for a living. But you know, I think thatcreates such a stigma, and it's frightening. It's frightening that could be me, and it's just, what is that? It's very alarming.- You can't predict the next moment of their behavior. - People use those extreme cases, like I worked withpsychiatric patients in the ER at Belleview at one point,and these were really severe. These were people you know, who are like those are the ones you pull off the street and you bring them in the psych ER and they're really out there. - [Neil] They strap them down, yeah. - Or you give themsomething to calm them down. So people look at those extremes and say wait, am I the same as thatparanoid schizophrenic? And to be honest, I've workedwith paranoid schizophrenics who were not at thatextreme, who are really nice, decent people and they just happen to be having these strange delusions. And we can change it withdrugs, which is amazing. You can give them a drugand they no longer have these sort of crazy ideas. - Better living through chemistry. (group laughs)- Yes. Not that I'm a huge proponent of drugs, but I think, you know, if it's broken you have to find ways to fix it. - Excellent, Jackie,what else you got for us? - Okay, loving this, MonicaStewart from Facebook. I had a brain tumor, ameningioma the size of a baseball removed through a craniotomy last year. How could it get so big beforeaffecting my motor function, speech, memory, et cetera? What do we know aboutbrain tumors in general? Y'all are my heroes,sending love from Texas. (Heather laughs)- Texas, Texas in the house. - That's a good question.- So Heather, yeah. - Of course in Texas theygrow their tumors bigger. (Neil and Heather laugh) - Of course, everything's bigger. - Everything's bigger in Texas. - You got a baseball-size tumor, and everybody else has got a-- - Golf ball.- Golf ball-size tumor. Yeah, so, it's not just in the brain, tumors in other parts of people's body, they don't even know until they go. And then it's always analogized to a fruit or an athletic ball. So what's going on there? - It depends on where the tumor is. What did she say she had, a meningioma? -
Yes.- Yeah. So that grows in the meninges of the brain which is basically like-- - I could have guessed that.(laughs) - Yeah, you could have got that one, that was an easy one.- I couldn't. - On a multiple choice test.- You would have got that one. - I would have gotten thatone right, the meninges. - The meninges arebasically like the sort of membrane covers around the brain, and you can get these growths. So it's not directly in the brain tissue, but what happens isthey can get really big and the problem is, it startsputting pressure on the brain. So depending on where it's located, if it was located right next to where let's say the language area was, and it started pressing and pressure, you might start havingproblems with your language. But depending, it could be in an area where it's relatively benign in that you won't getthese immediate problems or memory problems, becausethose are subcortical areas. - You're saying it wasputting pressure on an unimportant part of her brain.(laughs) - Well, I mean they're all important, but sometimes they don't--(laughs) - That's what you justsaid, you just said, Jackie, didn't she just say that? - Uh. - Well, a less verbal part of the brain. - I was listening with my eyes. (Neil and Heather laugh) - Which one, which eye?- Which eye? - The good one.(Neil and Heather laugh) - Yeah, so it depends on where it is that it will express itself inways that are obvious to you. Like it might expressitself in other ways, and it might be that the pressure, over time you'll starthaving other symptoms like headaches, but notnecessarily the ones like motor problems. But the different types oftumors, so there's some tumors like glioblastoma which is very deadly, which is growing inside the brain tissue. - That's in the glioblastpart of the brain. (Neil laughs)- Well, exactly, oh, good job, Neil. (Neil and Heather laugh)- Damn. - But that's more insidious,and it gets kind of the nooks and cranniesin the actual cortex, and that's why when we go in to remove it you can never really get all of it 'cause it has these tiny little tentacles that get in.- Ooh. -
So they always growback, they grow back, and that's why peopledon't usually tend to live longer than a year after that. And with the meningiomas,like 90% of them are benign, which is also good, so you can remove it and usually it won't grow back. So there are a wholevariety of different tumors that have different effects on the brain. - Interesting, cool, and kind of you ideally want one to affect you at the smallest stage it can so that you can get to it sooner. - [Heather] Yeah, that's a whole thing. - That's a thing, right. Yeah, so maybe a smallertumor would have given her motor problems or speech problems, if something's wrong, oh,the tumor is a golf ball rather than a baseball. - But sometimes they don'teven go in and remove. If it's benign, they might wait a while to go in and remove it anyway,even when they find it, 'cause there's some risk with surgery, and depending on where it's located. - There's risk opening up your skull and poking around in your brain, really? - Just a little, a little.- Okay. (both laugh)- Not too much. - All right Jackie, what else you got? - My uterine one was 22centimeters, by the way. - Oh, wow, that's a doozy, okay. (laughs) - Oh, this is from AndThat's The End Of My Story on Instagram, why doesthe brain create images in the form of dreams when we sleep? Do dreams have meaning or a function, or are they just a randomcollection of images? What are the physiologicaladvantages of dreaming? Thank you, from Nicki Hush. - Nicki, good question. You gotta do that fast, or--- Okay. - Or give me part of theanswer, and then we save the rest of the answerfor the third segment. - [Jackie] Should I giveyou part of a question? - How about this? Let me give the shorteranswer, and you give the long. - [Heather] Okay, you'regonna give the short answer? (Heather laughs)- No, no, no. Let me give a shortversion of that question, we can answer that before the break, and then you give the--- The long answer. - The long answer to the longer question. - [Heather] Okay. - So, people want to believethat their dreams give them insight into some future events. The dreamers. My sense of that is the answer is no, but people feel like theyhave access to the future through their dreams, why? - After the break. (group laughs) - Damn, Heather, okay.
We're gonna take our break,and when we come back we continue with our special edition of Cosmic Queries, neuroscience edition. Star Talk, we're back, neuroscience. Our go-to person, Heather Berlin. - Wow.(Neil laughs) I'm a go-to person now, I like it. - [Neil] Go-to, go-to. And Jackie Hoffman,comedienne extraordinaire. - Hello, your go-away-from person. (Heather and Neil laugh) - So, we left off, someone asked-- - About dreams?- About dreams. And all I can think of is Sigmund Freud's book on theinterpretation of dreams. Where have we come since then? - Yeah, so I think Freudwas right in certain things and not in others. He was certainly on pointwith his whole theories of repression and dissociationand suppression. I think his interpretation--- Also subconscious, right? - Oh yeah, of course, id,ego, superego, unconscious. That was good, the wholetheory of consciousness and unconscious processes. However, his wholeinterpretation of dreams was kind of fringy. - I tried reading it, and itwas like this is all bullshit. - Yeah, it is, it is, I'm sorry guys. But there's a lot oftheories about why we dream. The shortest answer is thatit's random neural firing. You only dream duringREM sleep, by the way. You go through different stages of sleep. - REM, rapid eye movement. - Exactly, yeah.- Or the rock group. (Heather laughs)- R.E.M., that's true. I never thought of them that way, anyway. - That's why they named themselves that. -
Yeah, that's why R.E.M., yeah, oh, okay. - You're a neuroscientistand you didn't know that? - I didn't know that, I didn't know that. - I just schooled you on R.E.M.? (Heather laughs)- I know, yes, okay. But there are different stagesof sleep, like deep sleep, but when it's in this dream state, it's almost like a waking state. So your brain, in a way, isconscious of what's going on. Not always, sometimes you dream, you don't remember you dreamt, but usually you're dreaming in that state. And it's random firing in thebrain, it doesn't make sense. - Wait, wait, if you dreamedand don't remember your dream then how do you know you dreamed? - Well, you can look at, you don't know. - I'm just getting full topical. - It's like the tree, isthis the tree question but in dream form? - You say you dreambut you don't remember, then how do you know you dreamed? - Well, you don't know, but we assume. - It's of your electrodes again,they say they're dreaming. - There's an interestingcase, just a side note, there's the case of peoplewho don't remember things, they only have a short memory, and so they feel likethey're just waking up and being conscious for thefirst time every minute, 'cause they keep refreshing,refreshing, refreshing. But, I mean, you can havea conscious experience and not remember it, butstill you had that experience in the moment. But the point is that these dreams, a lot of it is a cleaning out. So you've taken in a lot of information, a lot of stimulation during the day, and then the brain has todecide what's important enough to reinstantiate,to keep and to reinforce, and to kind of throw away, get rid of it. - Reinstantiate?- Or reinforce. -
That's a word? - Yeah, I don't know, did I make it up? I might have made that up. - Reinstantiate.- Or just instantiate? (Heather laughs)- It's all new. Every syllable in that word was new to me. - I'm gonna have to Google this. I might have made up aword, I do that sometimes. - No that's fine, I like made up words. - But you get what I'm saying. - After you instantiatethe first time, Neil. (Neil laughs)- You reinstantiate. - Reinstantiate, thank you.- Thank you very much, thank you very much, Ibet you it's a real word. So what it does is, it reinforcesthe important information and consolidates, that's a better word, it consolidates the information. Then it gets rid of otherstuff that's sort of junky. So in that whole process,your brain is firing, there's neurons firing, and if you're in one of thosebrain states during sleep where you're sort of conscious, that information is gonna manifest itself in a kind of a dream state. It's gonna be based onthings you've been exposed to in your life, it'sgonna based on memories, information your brain has taken in over the course of your lifeor over the course of the day, so you'll place meaningon it when you wake up.
You'll try to make sense of it, because that's when theprefrontal cortex is re-engaged, remember, that meaningmaker part of the brain. But in the actual dream,it's more like a flow state, or like what we see inpeople who are in flow states or meditative states or psychedelic drugs. - Whoa. - So, I hope that answers the question. There's a lot, I mean, you could have a whole series on dreams. - Okay, so suppose thereare people who don't dream or don't remember any of their dreams, are they less mentally with it? In other words, are dreamsgood to remember or bad, does it even matter? - Well, one theory is thatit's a threat rehearsal so that you can actually work out things in your dream states thathelp you in real life. - For survival?- Yes, for survival. So there is some aspect of it that might be important tohelp people for survival, in the sense that it's agood thing to remember them. - [Neil] And some peoplehave recurring dreams. - Right, right, and then Freud might have had it right there wherethere are some issues that are being suppressed thatthey might want to work out. - So is it false thatwe do dream every night, we just don't always remember it, or? - I mean, the theory isthat we dream every night. - Oh.- Again, it's very hard to prove, but we don't always remember it. And there is somevalidity, I don't want to throw Freud completely under the bus, that in the waking statecertain suppressed memories and thoughts that when theprefrontal cortex is on, it can keep things at baylike emotions and memories, and when it's releasing that inhibition those things can come to the surface and they can come out in dreams, like things that younormally are not aware of in your waking state.
So it is a way to access the unconscious, but not to predict the future. - I have actor's nightmares constantly. - Oh, really? - Like anxiety dreams that actor's have, and it's a real thing. - Like you're on stageand you forget your lines? - You don't remember your lines, you don't know why you're there, you don't know what you're in. My last one was a I sang something wrong and the composer andlyricist were right in my one good eye line. - [Neil] Ooh. - So that's just yournormal, like your anxieties and fears manifesting themselves. - Do you have those dreams in Yiddish? - [Jackie] Like I don't expressthat enough during the day. - 'Cause your character is Yiddish. - I dream in color, but not in Yiddish. - Not in Yiddish, okay.(laughs with Heather) - I dream from right to left. - Okay, for those just joining us, Jackie is Yente in Fiddler On The Roof in an all-Yiddish version. - With English subtitles. - English subtitles, okay. (Neil and Heather laugh)- Don't panic. - All right, give me another one. - Okay, here's a quickie, this is good from Arik Subramanyam on Instagram. Do you need a brain tofeel pain as we know it? Do jellyfish, for instance, feel pain? - Good question.- I like that, I like that. So, you don't need a brain. - Or a lobster, 'causepeople eat lobsters. - They scream when you put them in water. - Yeah, but you know thatactually it's illegal now in the EU to cook lobsters alive because we claim they're conscious, there's enough evidencethat they experience pain and that they haveconsciousness, so the answer is-- - So instead of puttingthem in the boiling water, you kill them some other way. (laughs)- First, yeah, and then you can, more compassion.
Also, octopus, I thinkthat's what it is as well, you can't also kill an octopus in a way, because we know that they'revery smart and very conscious. - So is there is neurological primitivity where you would say they'renot really feeling this pain in some animal out there? - Okay, so the answer isyou don't need a brain. You do need some sort of nervous system. - Of course, you can have anervous system without a brain. - Without a brain, and solike a jellyfish has that in its tentacles, it kindof has like a neural net. So if you give it some noxious stimuli or you poke its tentacle,it will move away, it will retract, if it's feeling pain. - Therefore, it feels it. Earthworms will move away from pain. - Right, so that's how wekind of have to measure it behaviorally, because even with a human, the pain, again, it's a subjectivity. When you go to thehospital, something's wrong, and they say okay on a scale of one to 10, how painful is it? - No, now they have asmiley face or a sad face. (laughs)- Oh yeah, that's right, yeah. - And numbers, the numbers. - 'Cause people, theycouldn't handle the numbers. - Nope, the numbers, let's just do-- - It's too much, too much, gotta simplify. So we don't know, butwe can tell okay, look, you retract as if you're feeling pain. I was at a home meetingwhere we were talking about animal consciousness andhow low down the food chain does it go, and we had awhole discussion about fish. And fish, can they feel? And the answer is yes. Again, they have a noxiousstimuli, they'll retract from it. They record a memory so they'llavoid that stimuli again.
So it's as if they'reexperiencing something. - So how do they kill the lobster before you cook it? - I don't know.- Lethal injection. - Lethal injection.(Heather laughs) By the way, by the way,we had on Star Talk, I interviewed the founder of PETA. - [Heather] Oh. - And many people associatePETA with just being all veggie, no killing of animals. To hear her speak, thephilosophy was very different. It was not that she'sagainst killing animals, she's against the inflictionof pain on animals. - [Heather] Mm-hm. - And I said, well what about lobster? She said she has people working on some kind of anesthetizingfirst pass at the lobster before you then put itin the boiling water. - Yeah. - Just to show you the purityof that mission statement. So I bet you if there was package of that sold next to the lobsterspeople would buy it, of course. - Yeah. - Of course, I think people would do that. If you're rich enough to buy the lobster, you've got enough money tobuy the lobster anesthetizer. - Yes.- Before you cook it. - And just, wait, minor correction, I think it's the illegality in the EU is for octopus, or octopi, I never know. - [Neil] Octopoid. - Octopoid.- Yes. - Not lobsters, I just remembered that in the recesses of my mind. So you can still horribly damage a lobster when you boil it alive. However, I think that the real issues is about how animals are treated, and if they are killed in away that doesn't cause them drama, or trauma or stress. - Drama. (laughs)- Drama. We don't want drama, either.(laughs) - The drama queen. - I do.- Exactly. Or you know, like Temple Grandin. - We have an actor here who wants drama. (Heather laughs) Oh, can I tell you mydrama, my bit of drama? - Mm-hm. - I know it's lame, but I still do it. Any time I cook a lobster, before I put it in the water I remove the rubber bands from the claws. - [Heather] Aw, you free it? - So that it can try to bite me as its one last act of survival. - That is like, really sadistic, I think. (Heather and Neil laugh) - You went deep into that lobster mind. - I'm saying, if I'm cooking it alive, at least give it a chance to fight back. - Aw. - So I take off the rubberbands and then they pop open, the claws pop open.- Oh, God. - And then it can try to bite me, and I have to then triumph over it. Of course I do.- Wow, wow. - 'Cause I'm smarter than a lobster. - So you give him one fighting chance? (Heather laughs)- One last chance, It's my own--- So he can die with dignity? - Dignity, thank you,thank you, thank you. - Oh my God. -
Okay, so tell me about Temple Grandin. - I was just gonna say, Temple Grandin. - Who, by the way, hasbeen a guest on Star Talk. - Oh, she's great.- One of my favorite shows. - Oh, so interesting.- Temple Grandin. - So she has autism, andshe was very much aware of, she can sort of empathize withhow the animals were feeling, and she created this whole system of when they go to slaughter,that they would gently be, so it wasn't stressful forthem or anxiety-provoking. They would get guidedthrough this sort of, they were kind of like tunnelsinto the slaughterhouse in a way that was so they couldn't see what was happening in front of them. And it was like this really humane way to bring them there withoutjust throwing them in and giving them all the anxiety of stress like they're about to die. - Corralling them, and then in there. - Yeah, and so I thoughtthat was really humane. - Plus, there are peoplein the vegetarian movement that hate her for that,because she made it that much more humane to kill an animal that the vegetarians didn'twant killed in the first place. - Yes, yes, so we can go deeper into that. But the answer is you don't need a brain, but you need, I think, a nervous system. - Okay, cool. All right, we've got to golightning round, Jackie. - Lightning.- Let me try to. (bell dings) - Oh, this is scary.- There we go. - So we just have to do quick? - Yes, sound bites, workon your sound bites. Okay, here we go, Jackie, give it to me. - From San Pangoso on Facebook, how are memories physicallystored in the brain? Also, can we implant fabricatedmemories in some way? - [Neil] Ooh.- Yes. (laughs)In the brain via long term potentiation, which is a physical process that connects neurons to each other, or makes them what firestogether wires together, that's the quickest, Hebbiansynapse, it's called. - Cool, so the more they fire together the more they will remain connected? - Yes, yes. - In such a way that they form a memory? - Yes.- Next one, quick. - I've Always Been YourSancho on Instagram, what does it mean to focus on something, how does it work? - Ooh, good one, attention span. - That means attention, it's attention, and what it is, isthere's part of your brain called the dorsolateral prefrontalcortex that's activated. -
That's way too many syllables,you all gotta work on that. - The DFLPC.(Neil laughs) - No, DLFPC, anyway, so you can engage certain parts of your prefrontal cortex that filter out extraneous information, and your mental energy is focused on a particular bit of information. - So part of the focusis taking away things that would distract. - Yes, yes, and that's why people who have problems with their attention is that they're too easily distracted, they're not good at focusingin because of the distractions. - Cool.(bell dings) Got it.- What? I'm sorry, I wasn't listening.- Give me one more. (Neil and Heather laugh) - Jack Perry Eight on Instagram,will a brain transplant or full-body transplantevery become a reality? - That's what I want to know, because you have the LouGehrig's Disease folks where their body decays, what is it? - [Heather] ALS. - ALS, and then you havethe Alzheimer's folks where their brain goes away. - [Heather] Yes. - And I'm thinking, in the future you get the brain of the ALH person and put it in the body ofthe Alzheimer's person. - [Heather] Oh, that would be great. - And you get one whole human there. - Yeah, if only we couldreconnect and regrow neural. - [Neil] Is that gonna come? - I don't think we're close to it, okay? So I'm gonna have to say no, but maybe in the next hundredsof years, 200 years maybe? But if we could figureout how to regenerate. - We can put a man on the moon, we can do a brain transplant? - I'm really, I highly doubtit, yeah, I'm gonna say no. That's a no. - That's a no.(both laugh) - You wanted lightning, you got it. -
You heard it here first. There's a lot of reasonswhy, we'll get into it later. - Well, Dr. Frankensteindid a brain transplant. - Yeah. - He got the Abby Normal.- That's true. - They did one on Star Trek,too, with Spock's brain. - Oh, I remember that. - We can probably replacea brain with silicon at some point.- Silicon-based. - And have a silicon-based brain, but I don't know about takinga biological human brain and putting it on another body. - You don't mean silicon, theelement on the Periodic Table, you mean a computer brain. - A computer brain, yeah.- That's what you mean. - So the idea is if youcan replace one neuron with a silicon chip that doesexactly the same function on and off, and then anotherand another and another, at some point you can.- In principle. - In principle you canreplace the whole brain. - And create a brain.- Yeah, and inside a body. - But would it dream? - Oh.- Ooh. (bell dings)(Heather laughs) We have run out of time for the special neuroscience edition ofStar Talk Cosmic Queries. Heather, as always thanks for being such a friend of Star Talk, and you're one of our Star Talk all-stars, and it's always great to have you back. - Thank you. - We don't see enough of you.- Aw. - So we should do everyepisode on the brain, don't you think, guys? - Everything involves the brain. Come on, let's do it. (Neil and Heather laugh) - Jackie Hoffman, great,I'm gonna try to get tickets to your Yiddish production,English subtitles, (Heather laughs)of Fiddler On The Roof, particularly with you playing Yente, that's gotta be hilarious. - I like to think so,(Neil laughs) with my brain. Boy, this was exhausting,and I was the stupid one. (Neil and Heather laugh) - You've been listeningto, possibly even watching, this episode of Star Talk. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always, I bid you to keep looking up