Kind: captions
Language: en
foreign
is the biggest mystery in science today
it's responsible for all the facets of
our personality everything we think and
everything we feel it makes you you
a very large fraction of what's
happening in my brain I am not aware of
at all but what exactly is going on in
your in your conscious brain
part of your brain is really in charge
all day long we're doing unscripted
things that we didn't know we would be
doing
life is not scripted find a word that
has some meaning for you so you might
think you've made a choice
representation but in the back of your
mind you wonder come on was that really
me
we might feel like we're in control this
idea that we're in control of our
actions seems critical to our sense of
identity
ideas
the brain is made of almost 90 billion
neurons but it produces this illusion
that there's a single person inside of
our skulls
for every Pinocchio there's always
someone kind of pulling the strings
behind the scenes
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it's not just that motor memory language
is in the brain your personality is up
there your morality is up there
we as humans know how environment and
traumatic events change people
your brain who's in control
right now on Nova
[Music]
thank you
[Music]
have you ever thought that you've made a
crystal clear decision I'm just gonna
watch two episodes tonight but the next
thing you know
okay just one more episode
actually it's time to go to bed
well I bet everyone else has already
finished this season
wait why am I still watching this
well of course the answer lies in your
brain
your brain contains multitudes
it's a complex and intricate three pound
piece of matter but you actually have no
awareness of most of the things that are
going on inside your brain
I'm neuroscientist and clinical
psychologist Heather Berlin
and I'm on a journey to discover
what's really driving the decisions you
make no agency at all
or what is really in control
there are important unconscious
processes in your brain that you're not
aware of
most of the time the brain is a
coordinated well-oiled machine with
different brain regions working together
in harmony
but under certain circumstances when
things are out of sync we can gain
deeper insight into how the brain
actually works
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foreign
there's one thing we do every day with
little to no conscious control it's
something you might spend a whole third
of your life doing
sleeping
when we sleep we're supposed to be
unconscious and at rest
but for some people that's not always
the case
these are people who sleepwalk
sleepwalking is a glitch in the system
because our identity is not in control
and that's what a lot of my patients
tell me like I didn't do that that's not
possible
this is not me
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so sleepwalking very common condition or
phenomenon simply says what the word is
you sleep but during your sleep you will
walk we take it for granted right but
the walking is extremely complex just
teaching a robot all the inputs and
outputs for a body to move forward on
two legs without falling
all of this you don't even think about
it it works independently
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possible to do complex behaviors like
walking
sometimes even
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to find out I'm visiting a Sleep Center
at The Icon school of medicine at Mount
Sinai
so tell me a little bit about what's
happening with you at night and you're
sleepwalking
well I've been doing some weird things I
painted a wall in my living room and one
in my kitchen I made a triangle a
perfect triangle in my kitchen so what
do you think when you find that like I
don't know just I laugh because like how
the heck I did this
Emmanuel during studies what's going on
in the brain when someone sleepwalks
in the center sleep patients are wired
up with sensors that pick up eye and
body movements as well as their brain
waves while they sleep
so what are we looking at here are these
blue lines these are the eye movements
okay and then the the black lines here
the brain waves so these patients
obviously is lying in bed
and dozes off slowly feel sleepy and as
we move on it dives into deep slow wave
sleep
during sleep your brain Cycles through
phases of high and low activity
when the brain waves slow down
scientists call this deep sleep
but when someone sleepwalks
first of all everything looks good you
see the brain waves
everything is very very monotonous sort
of slow waves and then it's interesting
since there's a build up of slow wave
that the amplitude goes up and then
suddenly
so he seemingly awake sudden it's like a
sudden arousal looks I'm scared very
very fast eyes open
there's a sort of a split then the
patient looks like they're awake but a
couple of key brain regions seem to stay
asleep there's part of the brain stays
in slow wave sleep it's such a deep
stage of sleep it's hard to wake up and
the other part of the brain is already
awake
one part of the brain that doesn't wake
up during sleepwalking is called the
prefrontal cortex it's the region of the
brain responsible for deliberate choices
and self-awareness
this prefrontal cortex is the decision
maker the other areas of the brain can
mostly work independently of that
so essentially so many parts of the
brain can be engaged without conscious
awareness of it
during sleepwalking the mo Le cortex
which controls
mitt the visual cortex which processes
visual information and the parts of the
brain that coordinate behaviors like
balance and speech can all become active
without engaging the prefrontal cortex
and what exactly are you doing ma'am
special code
experiences of sleepwalking reveal that
being conscious is not an all or none
situation our unconscious makes a lot of
everyday decisions for us for starters
boring stuff like regulating your heart
rate and your temperature deciding when
to take the food in your stomach and
move it down into your gut like thank
God we don't have to be aware of all
that stuff
motor function sensory function motor
sensory integration memory
representation all of this is happening
below the surface like the inside of the
Clockwork
when you Sleepwalk the brain regions
that control your movement vision and
breathing can get up to all kinds of
Mischief without you even knowing it
but there's one case where even those
regions check out during anesthesia
we know that there are drugs that I can
give you anesthetics that would remove
your conscious experience
and we all know that Consciousness comes
in degrees we can lose Consciousness in
sleep but then we lose it in a more
profound way when we are under general
anesthesia
when I was a young researcher working in
anesthesiology I saw this first hand so
what happens to your brain activity when
you go under
neuroscientist Emery Brown is measuring
the line that separates being conscious
from being unconscious I want to
guarantee my patience that when I say
you're unconscious you're not going to
perceive pain you won't be moving around
you won't remember anything that's
occurring your heart rate and blood
pressure and other physiological systems
will be well controlled
surgery
the anesthesiologists have to put her
under render her unconscious with
special drugs I've started to give you
medicines that might make you feel kind
of drowsy
look straight ahead
for a minute
all right can you see my finger here
follow with your eyes
and if you can't follow it anymore tell
me all right
see her eyes are fixed now yeah
you see the EEG has a large law
oscillation City yeah yeah her brain
stems out that's out that's it
you go under it can feel like one second
you're here and the next you're out
what's going on in the brain when this
happens
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Emery uses a device called an EEG
set of electrodes that rests on the
scalp and detects electrical activity in
the brain
that activity comes in the form of waves
the brain generates brain waves or
oscillations and their oscillations that
we typically see when someone's
conscious
these brain waves are measured by their
frequency how fast the waves come and go
and by their amplitude how small or big
the waves are I look at your EEG when
you're awake you're gonna have a very
rich response when I anesthetize you it
goes away
and so the difference between those two
states represents the transition from
being conscious to the unconscious see
the oscillation see how they're really
big now and before so they were just
sort of little yeah exactly yeah
when you're awake and fully aware your
brainwave activity is diverse and
dynamic it looks kind of like an
exciting conversation
but when anesthesia drugs hit the brain
the activity is dramatically reduced to
dull Slow Rolling brain waves the once
Dynamic conversation becomes an
unintelligible hum
if you all to other parts of the brain
communicate sufficiently you can make
someone unconscious so that's what the
drugs are doing they're altering the way
the various parts of the brain
communicate
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there's one region of the brain in
particular that acts as a communication
Hub the thalamus
it's made up of two parts each about the
size of a walnut and sits deep inside
your brain Thalamus is a central way
station for all sorts of information
processing auditory information goes
through there visual information goes
through their pain information goes
through there if I could take out just
one brain Center to make you unconscious
it would probably be the thalamus
because it's such a central actor in
processing all types of information
after a couple of hours of surgery the
medical team is tapering off the
anesthesia drugs
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patient's brainwave activity becoming
more complex as she wakes up she started
taking a bath song yeah yeah open your
eyes wide
and squeeze my hand
Consciousness is really having active
cognitive processing being able to think
and act so it's all done okay it's the
integration of that information which
allows us to start to understand how
Consciousness is actually formed
yeah
Consciousness can obviously interact
with the physical world like we can we
can use drugs to remove it we go to
sleep and we're not conscious and yet
it's tenuous at the same time we can't
say how any specific set of neurons
working together produces Consciousness
it's so clear that anesthesia is some
kind of change of Consciousness right
the whole brain is there the pieces are
there but the messages aren't getting
through in a way that makes for our
conscious experience
and that's the difference between being
aware and not being aware
so the level of communication among
brain regions is one difference between
being conscious and being unconscious
that means that no single area of the
brain is responsible for your
consciousness
it's that communication that helps make
you you
now let's remember that the left hand is
governed from the right hemisphere for
some people an entire half of their
brain can't really communicate with the
rest these are people who've undergone
split brain surgery and it's as if
they have two eyes and a single brain
now the question becomes what happens
when you allow both hands together to
try to solve a problem and what we find
out is that they fight over each other
one hand knows how to do it and one hand
does not and so they more or less
squabble
the human brain contains two signs a
left hemisphere and the right hemisphere
right and they are connected by a big
bundle of fibers it's called the corpus
callosum all the communication from one
side of the brain to the other has to
pass through this fiber bundle
with epilepsy as seizure in one
hemisphere can quickly spread to the
other by way of the corpus callosum
but if that bridge is surgically severed
a seizure can no longer cross to the
other side of the brain
in addition to treating epilepsy these
surgeries have also led to some
astounding Research into how the two
hemispheres function
with your left hand make me the A-Okay
sign
to learn more about these fascinating
studies I met two Pioneers in the field
Michael Miller and Michael kazanica
Michael Miller asked me to step into his
lab to do a few simple tests just like
the ones he's conducted with patients
after a split brain surgery
so Heather what you're going to see are
two shapes they're going to come up on
the screen
you'll draw the shape on the left side
of the screen with your left hand and
the shape on the right side of the
screen with your right hand and I want
you to draw them as quickly as you can
at the same time
okay
piece of cake right
oh beautiful
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okay I'm not sure what you're drawing
over here but
oh
the left side of the brain controls most
of the right side of the body and the
right side of the brain controls most of
the left side of the body
because I start out trying to do
different things and then they just
started like sync up together yeah
it's perfectly normals I mean what's
happening is that the motor commands in
the in one hemisphere right are
interfering with the motor commands in
the other hemisphere
[Music]
but for someone whose two hemispheres
are disconnected there's no interference
it's almost as if there's one mind
controlling the left hand and a
completely different mind controlling
the right hand
and it isn't just movement that's split
across the hemispheres
only half of your visual field goes to
each side of the brain
when you're looking straight ahead
everything to the left side of that
space goes only to the right Hemisphere
and it the opposite is true for the
right side in the space
the left part of the brain s is where
your language and speech centers are
that enables you to talk lives you to
understand language and all the rest and
the right side of your brain is very
important in the evaluation of emotions
evaluation of visual space
I'm going to give you a test if you look
around my nose
you tell me how many fingers you see
how many fingers do you see
you see too right why did you see two
this one went to your left hemisphere
this one went to your right hemisphere
way over the other side of your brain
how does your left hemisphere know about
it
that pathway the corpus callosum it
transfers that information
now I'm going to split your brain
and I do the same tests how many fingers
do I see
is there anything else
you know okay
you see one you see this one because
that goes straight to your left talking
hemisphere
this one is still going to your right
hemisphere which has now been
disconnected from your left
so your left brain can't talk about this
so you now say you only see one finger
even though your right brain is seeing
this finger it just can't talk about it
because the highway that communicates
that information has been cut show me
with your right hand what to say
relax
ing
fine good it's the most remarkable thing
to witness you know there's this whole
other entity in the head that's
controlling the body and can understand
and remember and feel and think all on
its own completely separate from the
other side
temperatures conducted tests
brain patient
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patienters work independently from one
another including a now famous
experiment of a patient named Joe
by quickly flashing a word to just the
left side of his visual field
that word would go exclusively to the
right half of his brain the half that
can't talk
so the only way we're going to know that
it registered is if he can write
something out
okay with his hand that is controlled by
his right hemisphere exactly his left
hand we Flash the word Texas
[Music]
the word
his right hemisphere is seeing it we're
seeing it but the right atmosphere at
this point in his surgery cannot talk
right all right I want you
to to draw for me uh that thing upside
down
so he claims to not have seen anything
yeah
oh my God
wow he was able to do Texas upside down
but what's interesting is he had no idea
what he's drawing and we know because we
saw the word
I can't tell what it is
wow so then later on I'd show him the
word again and I ask a different
question about what he saw
once again they showed the word Texas to
just his right non-verbal hemisphere
so when asked about what he saw all his
left hemisphere can say is I'm aware of
the word I just didn't see what it was
draw something that goes with that
symbol of that
oh wow so he draws a cowboy hat
his right hemisphere knows exactly what
he's drawing
but he's left it still confused doesn't
understand right what's that cowboy hat
cowboy hat
I can't believe it
did you see Texas no
brain phenomenon suggests that there can
be two separated Minds if you will
inside of a skull
the cooperation is on the paper not
inside the head it's an astounding
example of cross queuing and management
of two mental systems into one unified
Act and the idea is maybe that's going
on in us all the time too
each of us has a sense that we're a
unitary being but actually that belies
the fact that each of us each of our
minds is actually composed of lots of
different pieces that are doing
different things and different
information can be represented in
different parts of that machinery and so
a search for where am I in all of this
is a little bit misguided because the
eye is not such a unitary thing in the
first place
that feeling of unity of me is actually
distributed across almost 90 billion
neurons this illusion that there's a
single person inside our skulls
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regions
many different systems in the brain
control what you do from movement to
Vision to speech and even social
interaction
I think most human beings like to
believe that their mind is under their
own control
if I want to I can stand up right now I
can do that and that gives me I think
the false belief
that everything I do has been chosen by
me and if there is a story from the
brain to tell it is that we are quite
wrong
not only are there multiple parts of
your brain influencing you but there are
things in the world around you that
influence your brain including other
people
how we act and who we are in our lives
is hugely determined by the expectations
of the people around us the brain helps
us be the most social species on the
planet
a lot of our brains are devoted to
understanding other people
Iran doesn't operate in isolation
we constantly learn take compare to
other brains our brains have evolved to
be able to effortlessly reason about
other people
and emotions similarly have evolved as
ways that guide our Behavior
so how exactly do emotions and the
emotions of others influence our brains
neuroscientist Luke Chang studies how
emotions like greed and guilt affect our
decision making hey Grace we're going to
start up the Scout okay
go ahead and make your decision okay you
tell her to go yep you can hit next
[Music]
so what are you guys looking at here
what's this study about so she's playing
an investment game okay with another
participant who's outside the scanner
Luke scans the brains of study
participants while they play a game from
behavioral economics called the trust
game
this is a Cooperative game where one
person has some sum of money and they
can choose to invest any amount of that
money in their partner
that investment grows so then the study
participant has to decide
they could be greedy and keep all the
money or they could be generous and give
some of the investment back
[Music]
you've always been really interested in
why do people return the money when they
don't have to and guilt provides one
plausible mechanism that might be
driving their behavior to act
cooperatively in this game
so you're balancing and making these
decisions between getting that kind of
dopamine reward hit from being a little
selfish versus being balanced by those
feelings of maybe guilt when you're not
cooperating or helping somebody else out
and the brain scans reveal which parts
of the brain are most active when
someone is feeling guilt
those regions ended up being something
called the insula
signals about having this gut feeling
that maybe this isn't a good idea or I'd
feel really bad if I did that those are
the signals that are ranging from the
insula that allow us to make decisions
to avoid harming someone else
Luke likes to think of it kind of like a
thermometer and a thermostat
you try to think about how a thermostat
might be mapped onto the brain one
region might be more like the
thermometer detecting the ambient
temperature in the room when it comes to
reading the room our brain's thermometer
seems to be the insula but all that
information needs to go somewhere else
and be integrated with other types of
information
that's our brain's thermostat a region
located inside the prefrontal cortex
that processes our emotions and helps
regulate our behavior
and while your thermostat can usually
help you take control of your emotions
what would happen if it went out
there's a famous patient named Phineas
Gage
was a railroad Foreman who was working
on Vermont and he was tamping down a
hole that had gunpowder in it and the
gunpowder ignited sending the rod
through his eye up through his brain
taking out a big patch of his brain in
the process
at first people thought this is a
miracle this man has been unscathed from
this accident he had memory he had
language he had motor control but of
course his friends noticed a difference
with life fell apart he had a hard time
holding a job he lost all of his friends
and he really just struggled
his personality made him more fitful
irreverent more profane He was cursing a
lot lewd Behavior so he had sort of no
filter we now know that the parts of the
brain that he sort of surgically excised
were involved in emotion and control
over a hundred years later
neuroscientists mapped the regions of
his brain that were harmed in that
horrific accident
areas of his prefrontal cortex including
the brain's thermostat were damaged
which might account for why he struggled
socially he wouldn't regulate his
emotions or process how other people
might react to his behavior
and that was the key moment I think in
Neuroscience history when people
realized oh it's not just that motor
memory language is in the brain your
personality is up there your morality is
up there things that make you you are
there
I think we all kind of know intuitively
that emotions impact our decisions so
what sort of extra information is this
giving us and a lot of the scientific
work that's been done on studying
emotion decision making people have
really focused on how emotions lead us
to make worse decisions maybe even
irrational and I actually don't think
that's true if you have a goal to not
want to harm others and to do what's
going to be in your self-interest
emotions are actually helping us make
better decisions
in fact the company
because other people bring parts of us
strengthen Us in particular ways
how you make decisions how you behave
how you think about yourself all of
these processes we develop by mimicking
and interacting and synchronizing with
other brains one thing that we all share
as humans is that social life and social
contact is an incredibly important part
of what our brain processes
our brains are in detail influenced by
every experience we have every moment
every sentence every image changes your
brain
foreign
experiences are so profound so extreme
that they can impact brain biology from
one generation to the next
neuroscientist Bianca Jones Marlin is
studying how your ancestors experiences
might control how your brain is wired
today we ask how trauma affects the
brain how trauma affects the body and
really how trauma affects Generations
people in the world suffer from
traumatic events and these traumatic
events aren't just a one-time change on
their brain and their body it actually
continues for seemingly their lifetime
Bianca's research is inspired by her
upbringing
my parents my biological parents were
also foster parents so I had Foster
siblings and adopted siblings growing up
only now as a scientist I realize that
that motivates a lot of the questions
that I ask how do we understand what
happens when kids are born into trauma
and optimize what we do have for better
Generations
thank you
one Insight comes from an event during
World War II
at the end of World War II the
Netherlands were cut off from food by
Nazi troops because they decided to
protest through the country
and during this period of time it
created a man-made famine there was
starvation death there was trauma
not only did those who suffered during
the famine experience health problems
but some of their children and even
their grandchildren had metabolic issues
people began to ask how does an
experience of a parent of a grandparent
change offspring
researchers began to discover that your
environment and your experiences can
change the way your genes are activated
in your body and in your brain
it's not like you get your genes and
it's set in stone they're constantly
changing based on the environment
do this in action Bianca's
to map the whole genome of mice Target
certain areas of that genetic code and
use them to answer the important
questions in science
so how could stress and Trauma alter the
biology of The mice's Offspring
to find out Bianca paired the smell of
almond
than electric shocks because mice really
navigate the world and rely heavily on
the sense of smell we use olfaction pair
it with the light foot shock and we
observe changes in the brain and changes
in Behavior
she noticed that something inside of the
mice's noses changed
we're able to look at the cells in the
nose that only respond to almond
and what we observe is that after the
light foot shock and the presentation of
almond coinciding there are more cells
in the nose that Express the Almond
receptor it's as if something in the
milieu of the nose says almond is
important in this environment we need
more cells like you
mice grew more cells that responded to
the smell of almond
each one of these green dots you see
here these are neurons they're cells
that can respond to the Almond smell
these red dots are cells that were born
after the presentation of odor and shock
and this cell right here this red and
green cell is a cell that was born after
the presentation of almond and shock
that also responds to almond this is the
cell that we want to look at to see what
information is inside because we see
more of these after the odor and shock
pairing
remarkably these changes were actually
passed down to the Next Generation
The Offspring The Kids of the parents
that were shocked with odor were born
with more cells Express the Almond
receptor which means there's a memory
that somehow is maintained in sperm and
egg through implantation and represented
an offspring
it is as if we are observing a change in
evolution
over the time span of one generation
I just think that's fascinating
because we as humans know how
environment and how traumatic events
change people just being able to take
the science of that
and be able to show that we're just
justifying what we already know as
humans what Society has known for a long
time what individuals know we just want
to bring that to an undeniable truth
our brains are not static we try to make
sense of what's happening right now but
we also try to make sense of what
happened a long time ago and to have
like this Grand picture of our life as a
trajectory
our ability for conscious awareness it's
a magnificent ability this ability to
reflect on our own minds but it also
leads us astray
memories plans I have these feelings of
agency over my actions but what the
science itself is telling us is that
these things aren't necessarily bound
together different aspects of the South
can be manipulated or even taken away
altogether
your biology and the choices you make
are all molded by your social
interactions and even your family
history
and yet we feel like we have control
like we have agency right
[Music]
an agent is somebody that is the author
of Their Own Story
but actually most of what's happening in
our brain we are not conscious of and I
think this gets you starting to think
wait a minute you know is it really
everything under my control
neuroscientist URI Mouse is putting our
sense of control to the test
we feel like we're in control but where
exactly does that feeling come from and
how does it work
ah there you are
hello
thank you very much for joining us
agentically and out of your own volition
of course before we start let me give
you this envelope okay please don't let
anybody touch it and okay don't look
inside but we'll need it for later on
for later okay to show me how my sense
of control isn't always what it seems
Murray kick things off by trying to get
me to question my ability to choose by
using a magic trick so where would you
like to sit where would I like it's
really up it's really I have a choice if
you have a choice all right so I'm going
to sit here you're going to sit over
there yes so how about just before you
sit down if you don't mind
um let's see
um what this says oh my God okay so so
then that one obviously says the same
thing right
um no let's check and see what this one
says this one says
oh come on
okay so I'm not predictable you don't
even know me yet
I really don't know how he did that
I'm not totally convinced but I'm
starting to question how do I know when
I have made a decision if I may let me
give you as a present a book here you go
this is yours and I will just ask you to
leave through it and find a word that
has some meaning for you
all right I got it can you tell me what
the word is representation please write
the word down presentation and you know
just stick that sticky note somewhere
okay thank you all right we'll come back
to that later
but for now I'm starting to see how
Choice an agency aren't always so
straightforward
so to find out what's actually going on
in the brain when our sense of control
is in question I took a look at a trial
designed by postdoctoral researcher
Alice Wongs
a volunteer from the lab tomash is being
fitted with a transcranial magnetic
stimulation device
TMS for short
it generates a strong magnetic field
that can send signals to your brain the
idea is that you stimulate the brain
using a focused magnetic field and if
you stimulate that in the right part of
the motor cortex that's a part of the
brain that actually controls your
fingers it's like you're pulling on a
string here every time you pull it the
finger goes
with the device hooked up the
researchers can make his finger jump
involuntarily by sending a signal to his
motor cortex
we're gonna be locating the spot of your
motor cortex that moves one of your
fingers
how about that that works that was a
pinky movement up okay
sometimes they ask him to move his
finger on his own could you replicate
the movement even that you found
something like this
remarkably by recording the small
electrical signals that travel from his
brain down to his finger muscles Alice
and URI can pinpoint the exact moment
that tamasha's brain has initiated a
movement almost 50 milliseconds before
he actually moves
with this information it's as though
they can predict his movement slightly
before it actually happens
so now a sense of agency is about to be
put to the test who initiated the
movement that was me
how much agency did you feel over the
movement quite a lot full agency okay
normally the researcher isn't in the
room and all the questions are conducted
by the computer
who initiated the movement
I don't know
how much agency did you feel over the
movement I would say some agency
in some instances justice tomash decides
to move his finger the researchers use
the magnetic field to make his finger
move who initiated the movement I really
don't know okay
how much agency did you feel over the
movements
a little bit
so even the instances when tamash really
did decide to move his finger how much
agency did you feel over the movement no
agency at all he didn't always feel like
he was in control
so after the experiment I was excited to
hear the results
when Tomas initiated the movement
himself yet we intervened with the TMS
tomash said that wasn't me I didn't
initiate the movement it was the
computer
he thought that the computer initiated
the movement or it was both of them or
he wasn't sure but he almost never said
that it was him
so what do you think is going on there
how is this happening you know we walk
around and we feel like you know we are
the authors of our of our actions and so
on and you can see with just a little
bit of messing around it tends to fall
apart it's fragile like ourselves our
self our memories our sense of agency
they're all things that our brain
evolved over time but they're fragile
and they can be manipulated under the
right circumstances everything has to
align for you to feel this sense of
agency when the finger moves we get this
feedback back to the brain and it's
Incorporated with whatever is happening
in the brain to create the movement and
together you get this sense of agency
over the movement
I think that in everyday life we are in
control
however I think this experiment shows
we're quite happy to relinquish control
like States Of Consciousness there are
levels of agency ways it can be
manipulated and even taken away
we think
they happen and then B happened that's
the end of the story but of course most
of our brain activity is unconscious who
initiated the first movement that was me
so we sometimes misinterpret our
experience of voluntary action is a
little bit retrospective in this sense
the brain looks at what the body did and
figures out if that makes sense as an
act of its own free will
after the agency experiment we had more
important matters to attend to so
Heather when you came in I gave you an
envelope right yes nobody touched it but
you no do you remember that later on I
gave you that book and in that book you
open it to whatever page you wanted and
you found a word in there can you tell
us again what that word was yes it was
on page 105 and the Word was
representation representation okay so if
you don't mind just putting the book
aside and if you could take the envelope
out now okay can you open it and see
what's inside oh this is one of these
things that's going to freak me out
right let's see
I'm getting chills
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foreign
no way come on no seriously
that's really freaky
so you're in control right I don't know
how you did that that is really weird I
mean what do I do now I don't know what
do I do with that
furry's magic Acts tricks
slights of hands hand Direction
but when I saw what was written on the
card I have to admit I wondered if my
choices mattered at all
Alice Wong's experiment supports the
idea that it isn't just about what
happens in the brain at the moment a
decision is made
how did you do that your sense of agency
or control also has to do with feedback
you get after the decision physical
social and emotional
I think of agency as a sense so there is
a sense of agency that sometimes can get
disrupted perhaps just like have a sense
of sight or smell and so on sometimes
you have visual Illusions it's similar
with a sense of agency I can manipulate
your sense of agency but that doesn't
mean that we never have a sense of
agency
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agency is one of the ways it makes
meaning out of your daily life
there is no way in which I can operate
without understanding what is happening
and why I'm doing it
is the filling in of the blanks that is
necessary in some ways for survival to
give meaning to make sense of the cause
and effect of things perhaps we have
that feeling of Consciousness because it
gives me a sense of agency it allows me
to pretend like I'm the one making
decisions and I'm the one reaping the
rewards or the failures of that
particular decision
there are parts of the brain that allow
you to feel like the author of your own
life
that's only part
story
each of our minds is actually composed
of lots of different pieces that are
doing different things this illusion
that there's a single person inside our
skulls
we know how environment and how
traumatic events change people our
brains are in detail influenced by the
expectations of the people around us but
of course most of our brain activity is
unconscious
but there are some situations where
letting go of conscious control can have
amazing results
when you're playing the blues you have
this kind of well-known musical
structure of this template and then you
use that as a launch pad for
improvisation and for Innovation and for
new ideas
Charles Lim is a neuroscientist trying
to understand how our brain operates
when we are being truly creative it's
going to be ill in the MRI is Dr E
Freeman and today he's using a scanner
to peer into the brain of educator and
freestyle rapper Chris emden I wonder if
I'm going to saying that some
freestyling profiling still while and
it's going to be ready for me
[Music]
thank you
okay remember keep your head still
during the entire thing and try not to
move your feet or your hands at all
during the wrapping all right do the
best I can yeah awesome thank you first
Charles asks Chris to perform memorized
now that memory means you're going to do
the memorized lyrics the way you
originally wrote them okay okay
memory
professor in this wheel is this so
witness the ignorance I dismissed those
emotions
next he gives him a prompt and asks him
to improvise to create a new original
piece on the spot he doesn't know what's
coming and that's going to be his cues
for that
physicist
physicist Services
you can't move my shoulders because the
MRI machine won't let me do it but she
wouldn't know what it is that it's like
I'm like a baseball player the way I
strike with the raps
so what does improvisation or
spontaneous creativity look like in the
brain
what we found was that the prefrontal
cortex that appears to be linked to
effortful self-monitoring seem to be
turning off deactivating
a pretty intense way in these highly
trained professional musicians when they
start improvising
in some sense by
decreasing activation in the prefrontal
cortex we can sort of gain control of
our lives in a way in fact if you're too
self-conscious and you're unable to
relax and let go you can't do something
like this
when you start trying to put conscious
control mechanism your performance goes
down so would you say this goes to to
any activity really if you're if you're
a professional tennis player or if
you're trying to do a physical activity
that the more you're able to practice
letting go once you've learned the skill
the better you'll be exactly
free throw shooters that are able to
shoot 99 free throws all of a sudden
when you tell them you're going to get a
million dollars if you make the next one
then all of a sudden you inject
conscious control over something that's
much better just left to its own
subconsciousness and then your
performance gets worse and you're more
likely to choke
surprisingly the parts of your brain
that are usually in control can get in
your way your prefrontal cortex the
decision maker can make you overthink
something you've done a thousand times
[Music]
every human being is creative
whether they're creative artistically or
not is another question but we're all
creative we have to be because all day
long we're doing unscripted things that
we didn't know we would be doing
life is not scripted and so no matter
who you are in this world you're doing
things that are unplanned
all day long we're balancing forces that
push us around even if we're not aware
of them from past trauma to the emotions
of others and all the hidden forces
affecting your brain
I'd like to believe that I am in charge
of my life that I am the agent of my
life that I actually can control my
emotions my abilities my desires and the
more I learn about brains the more I
realize that this is probably not true
we can be influenced by our social
networks by our culture by our genetics
by our development by our childhood
your brain is a complicated collection
of these intricate Parts many of which
you have no awareness of and they all
work together in a delicate dance to
create your perception of you
the brain is who you are
it's really different than any other
organ in that sense we know that every
experience every thought every memory
every sensation has its origin in the
brain
the brain is made of almost 90 billion
neurons but it produces the idea that
there's a single thing inside my head my
particular pattern of neuronal
connections it actually creates me and
your particular pattern of neuronal
connections actually creates you
[Music]
years of studying the brain have humbled
me whoa you look scared
you can't control everything that makes
you who you are
unconscious you is still you
the vast majority of the brain's work is
happening outside conscious awareness
prior to Over Control some things you
actually will decrease your performance
you have to let go of conscious
self-monitoring to just kind of like go
with the flow
it could be scary to say and scary to
hear but we are not just our own
we are all multifaceted
multi-dimensional people
and by becoming more aware of the
unconscious processes in your own brain
you can become more aware of what drives
you
and what you ultimately can
[Music]
foreign
[Music]
thank you
[Music]
[Applause]
foreign
[Music]
thank you