Transcript
Speaker: So today on the Chamber Reason ah podcast, we have Marianne, who is a neuroscientist at... can Should I say where you're a neuroscientist at?
Speaker: Yes. Yes. Well, currently you're neuroscientist at um George Mason University. No, that's not right. Albert Einstein University. Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Speaker: you know University College of Medicine. And a few months ago, i i went into your lab. that right? Correct terminology.
Speaker: And i was subjected to... Correct terminology. a brain scan. you And you you ah put me in a tube.
Speaker: <unk> I'll just simplify this. You put me in a tube that made noises. And then that drew a picture on the computer of my mind and all my innermost feelings. your No, my just the physical shirt the physical aspect of my mind.
Speaker: called a brain. that aspect. yeah That aspect. um Is there, I mean, any corrections do you want to make so far? Yeah, what's the most useful thing? It doesn't really just drop. There's a lot of ah mathematical conversions to get the image, but it's not taking a photograph. It's sort of it's Braille. It's more like Braille than a photograph. yeah it's It's recorded in something called K-Space, which if you visualize it is just this crazy cloud of points and then you do a foyer transform on it and it becomes this beautiful 3D image. It's I don't I think that I feel like I'm in freaking Star Trek right now.
Speaker: We're going through K-space. Yeah. And then there's two basic types of images we collect. There's there's more, but like one is like really nice, a structural image of your brain. That's what we were looking at. right like um You could see like high definition, and the anatomy of the inside of your skull. right And then the other is functional and MRI, which is we're getting images. They're blurrier if you view them, but we're getting faster images to understand where the blood is flowing in your brain with the idea that like neurons that are firing because they're activated by some task are going to need to be replenished with nutrients. So oxygenating blood will go there. You might need to slow down for our listeners. Okay. Basically, you're saying that ah it drew a picture on the computer. Different kinds of pictures. Some are blurry and some are not did you see Did you say it was measuring blood?
Speaker: Yeah, the fMRI, the functional image. And you're saying the speed at which it captures images, the the speed of that, as if it's like a motion picture camera, and it and it does that to track how blood displacement is changing over time? Is that the is that why it necessitates fast images?
Speaker: um Yeah, so sos it's not very fast, right? It's ah it's actually, we'll take pictures like at a slower rate than what your neurons are doing, and just because we don't have the capability to take images very quickly. yeah, so it's like RTR, every time, like our frequency, like our ah refresh rate for taking images is something like less than a second, a little bit less than a second, I forget what we use.
Speaker: um And we'll take a couple at once so we can get better coverage of the brain. But essentially, it's like we want to get us we want to get a picture of your brain and in this moment of time and understand what's activated in this moment of time. But we can't get all the brain in one picture at once. So we take like slices of it and then we got to reconstruct it.
Speaker: And then we'll look at that across the whole time series to see like the dynamics of brain activity through the whole task. Why do they? make sense Yeah. Yes. what Why do you have to do slices of a brain? What if you just made the camera bigger?
Speaker: um Well, there's no camera. Man, now it's like, now we we're going into like MR physics. Okay, well, let's let's go back. Maybe let's take a step back. and What does MR stand for?
Speaker: mind reader. No, magnetic resonance imaging. Okay, so it's similar. It's a similar concept to to sonar or echolocation, except it's using magnetic waves instead of sound waves. Is that correct?
Speaker: um Oh, man, I'm not a physicist. Do you know much about bats or whales? um I only know about their social and like navigational properties. classic brain scientist. You probably don't even know which is bigger between ah a bat and a and a whale. You only know about their social dynamics. And really quick, um do you, and by the way, anyone can answer this question if Pierce or Matthew know. Do you know how a microwave works?
Speaker: Because it's kind of similar, right? I don't think it's similar. So the. Wrong.
Speaker: maybe i will i Maybe I mean, you can generate heat in the MRI. It's like um so we're sending these like pulses that are redirecting the orientation of like the hydrogen molecules in your body. Again, let's just take a step back for our listeners' sake. And let's say that um I was in a gown and I was also... I had my bare feet out while they were doing this. Your peepee was probably... about It was outside of my body, but it was inside of my boxers. It was not exposed to the air.
Speaker: Okay. You had pants on. We gave you like um the scrubs, not hospital gown. You gave me pajamas, basically. Yeah. Yeah. But it wasn't bedtime.
Speaker: And they put a um a weighted blanket on me. Pierce hates weighted blankets, by the way. That's right. I hate weighted blankets. I feel trapped under them. But is that for a cancer shield? Or is it just to restrain so that he doesn't move too much?
Speaker: It was a regular blanket to make sure that Derek was comfortable and warm. Oh, it's a soothing... Oh, just felt heavy for Derek. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it felt really nice.
Speaker: And this is to measure the blood flow in the brain? in part. and That's one of the things that it's measuring, right? Which correlates with neurons firing? Or no? Neurons travel through blood? Is that how they move? Or I thought they were electrical.
Speaker: Or no, neurons are cells, so they do travel through... brain juice? Brain fluid? How do they move?
Speaker: They don't move. Marianne, could you maybe talk about ah why why were you scanning brains? Yeah, general. general. Well, I'm very interested in how the brain constructs ah your subjective experience of life, of so the things that you're perceiving. um And more specifically, I've been looking at this within the context of pain, so trying to understand a person's personal experience of pain,
Speaker: and how that is influenced by your lifetime experience in society. So ultimately, I'm really interested in how a human being has been shaped by society and how that be how that how you've been shaped by society influences your perception of the world, like that sort of dynamic interplay. And I'm focusing on pain as like what we're seeing is changed by being shaped by society, because pain is pretty easy to elicit in the laboratory in a very reliable way. And we know a lot about pain. And so essentially we can sort of- easy to elicit in the laboratory. It's one of the primary functions of a laboratory. Just think about how many hard right angles and how many bubbling acids there are. It's almost... And don't don't even get me started on tweezers and and and tools. and And the way you guys elicited pain in me was you shocked my foot. Yeah, yeah. Really? with
Speaker: With electricity. Yes, yeah. You sound ashamed. Yeah. Well, it's the it's not the my preferred method. I've been doing it because it's cheaper. Oh, wait. What's your preferred method? What's your preferred costly method? for listeninging pay A knife.
Speaker: No, heat pain with a thermode. So it's like a hot plate we put on your skin, which I have now, which we can do if you want to come back, Derek, and do the heat pain one. I can just touch a hot stove and recreate that, right? Oh, Well, that could actually burn you. We have a device that will not burn you. We'll get it hot so that it's painful, but not so hot that it's actually going to cause damage to your skin. In one of our first episodes, we talked about how to rid the mentally deficient of their low intelligence. What? And we discussed the concept of... Well, it wasn't that that bad. Don't, you know. Well, well of course, I'm i'm being i'm being delightfully curtly.
Speaker: In my description. We were seeking a good solution. A good solution. Nothing bad. we were trying to he we were trying to cure low intelligence. And one of the ideas that we suggested was using hot stoves to elicit pain. Just to make sure that that part of the mind was not the brain. But the brain is really pain. And the mind, that's the domain of suffering. The mind is not even concerned with... I mean, but that's what you...
Speaker: you're not talking about suffering. You're talking about pain, right? Like you're, you're not making the sort of the the English analogy that, that conflates the two. Right. Yes. Um, so I don't study suffering. Um, we could, and I think we can make extrapolations to it. And I think that's very interesting, especially if you're concerned about like psychiatric health and wellbeing, but, um, what, what I really am doing is like trying to generate a very explicit external experience.
Speaker: Like basically everybody would have this same sort of stimulation on their skin. So for Derek's case, it was, uh, an electrical stimulation that's kind of painful. It goes on for four seconds and it feels, i if you agree, it feels kind of like a twisting of the skin. Do you feel like that? that's how That's how I feel with it. Yeah, it feels like you're sort of causing a little tremor. Although, I mean, as you said, you know, everyone has a similar, you're you're doing the same thing to everybody, but not everybody reacts the same.
Speaker: Right, exactly. Yes. And so with the heat pain one, we know exactly that we're like stimulating these thermoreceptors and nociceptors under the skin. The nociceptors only fire under your skin. These are a special type of neurons. They only get activated when a really intense stimulus is activating it. So it's basically... Sorry, really quick. could you Could you say that you applied the maximum amount of pain to me and it actually didn't hurt me that much?
Speaker: This is true. yeah oh so you you were like, it's not working or is there something wrong? but it's just because Derek was strong. which This reflects Derek's socialization prior to leading up. that A lot of people max out in our study, honestly. and I've actually just finally changed the like the actual setup of the hardware so that we can go higher, elicit higher shocks.
Speaker: yeah You took off the safety. Yeah. I have three quick questions. So one of them is you're doing this. one first You're doing this study because it's for your own personal research that pertains to pain. Right. That's it's not like for the school or like a prerequisite or something. This is not an assignment that you get a grade on.
Speaker: what Well, I have my own laboratory, so I'm backed by my institution. I'm not just going rogue and doing this for my own. know But it's for this specific pain based study. That's is that am I correct? Yeah, I had a I had a grant that was ah terminated because of the governmental changes. Because they couldn't hurt me. They said this doesn't the pain machine doesn't work.
Speaker: I have now since been awarded a new grant to help carry on this important work. But basically, like what I'm really interested in is like, okay, there's a lot of differences in and how people experience pain. And we we see, though, that, you know, mostly the the activation in the body and even in most parts of the brain are very similar across people. You're still receiving the same input, the same sort of information about possible harm to your body and but your experience of it is very different and your experience of pain can be different within yourself across different times of the day in different contexts different points of your life right we can even maybe prime you to experience pain differently by changing your expectations if i tell you hey this cream is gonna you know actually numb you and it doesn't it's just vaseline or something you might feel less pain because i've told you hey you know where i'm gonna relieve pain on you And and it's real. you're not You're not lying. And you're not you know you're not even being like tricked. you know It's not some sort of sorcery or anything. It's like sorcery? Sorry. It is more like and your brain's experience of pain. it lives in your expectation for a harm.
Speaker: That's like the key thing. But you're saying trickery does work for the record. Well, it does in the sense that it would alter your expectations for harm. Okay, that's all I need. Yes is the answer.
Speaker: So wait, the the so let's say the placebo effect is, you're saying you're saying that, um because where where does the where does the ah the self the self-reporting of pain intersect with actually appearing on the scan? like yeah If you're measuring, let's say, cultural differences between men who are trying had to have a poker face and trying not to self-report their pain and girls who are always whining about every little pinch and tickle, like And their brain is quite pink, from what i understand. Yes. No, but my serious question is, if you're measuring the cultural differences in in the in gender expression, for example, men who don't want to self-report pain, and they have a poker face about it, um are is part of your study measuring the point at which they self-report, but it's clear that there's also some element that is...
Speaker: not affected by what they're verbally or aesthetically communicating, but like there's a truth, there's a truth detector in the brain itself. Like even though he says he's not experiencing pain, it's clear as day on the imaging that he is. Okay. So I need to make this absolutely clear because lawyers and the like would ah take advantage of this.
Speaker: The pain is only reducible to what someone says that they feel. There's no like lie detector test from neuroimaging or anything like that. um Can I predict from your brain activity how much pain you might report in this study? Yeah, we can. We can do that with really high accuracy. um And can I see differences in your physiological responding that maybe your physiology goes up, but your self-report isn't? Yeah, I can see that happen as well. and But it doesn't mean that you're not feeling pain or that there's like some hidden truth. It means that there's a lot of different components that go into the experience of pain. and Ultimately, the only thing that can report your personal, full, complete, like conscious experience of pain is you, right?
Speaker: And for the record, in my experience, my brain was blinking red and there were tears coming out of my eyes. But as I reported, there was no pain being experienced.
Speaker: So, I mean, i anecdotally, I've run studies. I didn't think that there would be gender effects in um a study that I was running in pain in when I was in grad school. And my advisor was like, no, just only run this in women. You're going better data and women. I was like, that's that's crazy. Why would I do that? And the subject should be women. Well, like it yeah, it was this person who gave you this advice. what I'm curious what that what what are their pronouns?
Speaker: He him. So ah he him said you should you might as well only torment girls. That's not exactly what he was saying. He was saying that and he was right. Ultimately, he was absolutely correct. At the end of the day, we have the cleanest effects um and the like the manipulation and the data are much cleaner and consistent and and manipulation.
Speaker: ah Oh, we go I don't think this is good. Not that kind of manipulative. When you design a study, and there's an inherent manipulation in it. So like um the manipulation in that one was does holding someone's hand versus someone like gently stroking your arm versus just being present with something. hold a girl's hand?
Speaker: and and her facinging And her pain goes down. It's true. I knew it. Not for me.
Speaker: but the way I told it. So just gaslighting and holding hands. well No, it does work and it works for men too. And so the thing is is with ah with the ratings, with the self-report ratings, it was very clear in women that hand-holding reduced pain, and but not so clear in the men.
Speaker: The men's ratings were all over the place. But if you look at their physiology, like their are skin conductors, it's like sweating response that your body makes. It's an arousal response is the word that we would use for this. But that actually is the same in men and women in this study and and is affected by the manipulation of hand-holding. even though men aren't reporting like more or less pain due to the handholding. And what kind of hand did you use?
Speaker: Was it a nice hand? Was it soft? Was it cold? Was it How's a sticky hand compared to a hairy hand? So, okay. If it has gum on it, what does that do?
Speaker: ah Well, so in this study, it was couples. It was your romantic partner. You had to be dating for at least six months. So it was someone that you potentially love, right? you that We looked at relationship satisfaction. So it was a couple. and And we kind of had them really hold each other in a specific way because I did not want to stimulate activity in C-tactile afferents. I can explain what those are when they're doing the handholding. C-tactile afferents. So you affirmations really cool neurons that only exist in hairy mammals and they exist only under like the hairy skin. So they're not on the palms of your hands or on the bottom of your feet or like the very top of your forehead here. Got it. And that's like, ah that's for like insect detection and and grime detection, right?
Speaker: No, it's more for, um, it's for banana detection. Yeah. No, they're so special. They actually seem to have some sort of evolutionary benefit for reinforcing grooming behaviors. so That's what I mean. ah and Grime and insects. Oh, okay. Yeah. yeah so but um and Epstein had a lot of these.
Speaker: Was hairy, right? He was. Not that getting kind of grooming. like Like gentle... hi i hate this now. Not in a creepy way. Not creepy way. No, we're just teasing. No, I know. We're teasing. you like Teasing and grooming and all gently tackling a hairy area. I'm trying to think of the best way to say this in a positive way without also having like like a sexy... Mammalian manicuring.
Speaker: Yeah. And the way they're holding hands has to be almost like when you're platonically holding your partner's hand, like if a cop is watching. and So like, OK, so actually you like this. There's it's it's gentle touch, right? This gentle stroking. i actually like train people to stroke their partner's arm at a rate of like three centimeters per second.
Speaker: It's very slow. These neurons like slow, low force, warm touch. That's how you can tell they're really like a socially evolved kind of neuron. That's like part of this grooming behavior repertoire. and So there is a study that manipulates young men in the scanner. We need more of that, manipulating young men.
Speaker: They they look at their brain activity while they're getting the gentle stroking touch and they tell them they show it because when you're in the scanner, when you're in the tube, Derek, you can't see us. Right. So you're just kind of trusting what we're telling you is going on. but I'm imagining you guys the entire time. Does that do anything?
Speaker: yeah Yeah, anything you do is going to affect your brain, right? It's coming from your brain, but it's probably not influencing the study. But so for this, it's they told them that it was like a a cute young woman was like touching them or it was like a man. And these are presumably like all heterosexual men and their brain activity. Chris Hansen would be good at this.
Speaker: ah I can tell. But their brain activity to the touch changes based off who they think is touching them. So there are a lot more dynamics than just the peripheral input than just like what you put into the body, right? There's again the expectations of like, do I want this touch? Do I trust the person that's touching me? Like what does this touch mean?
Speaker: like what yeah the Bigfoot just walked in and Jesus Christ and they're both touching your hands. yeah. and This is just a rich businessman and he wants to touch you, but he'll give you $50 after. Okay, i have I have two now serious questions. I really like this idea that you chose pain and you chose it. ah Part of your interest is how we can be culturally conditioned to experience or self-report pain in different ways. i Because the the sort of hard a science element of ah like the brain and the fact that it can be...
Speaker: ah you know drawn on the computer to you to borrow Derek's turn of phrase. The fact that there is something rigid about the science and also, of course, there's a lot of things that are elusive about how the brain works.
Speaker: It seems like it's a cool intersection point between the verbal space and this sort of digital resonant case space is...
Speaker: Pain exists in both at once, except the ultimate arbiter is the psychosocial dynamics of whether or not someone confirms the existence of pain. Almost like if you ask someone, hey, are you okay?
Speaker: They can say no a million times and you can say, are you sure a million times? But until they say, no, I'm not okay... there's no There's no recourse to investigate them and their suffering any further. you can say that they're visibly wincing, but that doesn't mean anything beyond a wince that. So i'm I'm curious if that's part of what interests you, and i want to I want to hear your answer to that, but I'm also curious if that also has to do with this the idea of a gentle touch,
Speaker: becoming something more advanced, like a rub. Like, a rub is kind of like the ultimate gentle touch. Or a back massage. Well, I just want to say, like, a rub has a certain cultural connotation. And if you say to someone, they gently touched me, that's usually age-appropriate. That's usually G-rated.
Speaker: But if you say someone rubbed me, now we're getting into, like, legal territory. Like, rubbing is almost like a legal term because a rub is, like... you know You kind of have to consent um to a rub.
Speaker: Like my girlfriend, this is not a joke. I always tease her. I say, can you rub my belly? And there's like it's so interesting, this idea of a rub, because I'm like, she never gets there. She's either gently gliding her hand across my belly in such a way as like she might as well not even do it at all. It's a nothing burger. not a not nearly enough of a rub and I say do it harder now it's like she's pushing and kneading my stomach but she can never get into the Goldilocks zone of just rubbing my tummy so maybe you can disregard that second question might be silly to you but I'm curious if you think that pain exists in this intersection between the practical measurable world and the you figure out what's going on in um Pierce's girlfriend's brain when she hears the word rub and why she can't do it right
Speaker: Oh my God. It's a legal term. or can use The way you use it, Pierce, is very legalistic. Not not exactly. ah That's not a rub exactly. right Well, the first half of your question, absolutely. That is what is so fascinating about it. Rub stuff we can get into. It's going activate like a different neuron. It's not going activate the C-toctile afferents. It's too much pressure. And there's all sorts of stuff we can talk about with that. There are other benefits, right?
Speaker: ah They don't activate the capacitor, but there's it's still good. well Everything that's good activates that. No, right. It's that no. But also like there's the element that it might not have anything to do with like what it's exactly doing with the peripheral information, but it could be like a distraction, right? Like if you, have you ever like gotten a needle and then someone's like, the nurse is like, I'll dig my like nail in you to distract you from the needle. Has it ever happened to you? It's happened me as a kid and I always thought the nail more. This happened when was teenager.
Speaker: nurse hurt me. my nurse hurt me too my arm and i didn't say i was scared of the needle but just volunteered yeah well that's because distraction is very effective at redirecting you away from acute pain it's like probably the most like the highest i would love if you studied nurses and you scanned them and figured out why do they want to hurt people so much I'd be very curious to study giants, people who are maybe over 20 feet tall, because I imagine their bodies are distracted twenty four seven There's so much surface area. How do they feel or notice anything?
Speaker: And giants, giants like rhymes. They say, um thfi fau fu I smell the blood of an Englishman. And they would probably be compelled by the rhyme between brain and pain. And that would probably represent a huge distraction for them. You probably...
Speaker: You probably wouldn't even convince them that this is real. They only understand things via poetry. my there's so many thoughts at once. But this actually might loop back into a Pierce thing. It's actually a really cool fundamental question because there's passive, no so I'm going to say nociceptive information. So that would mean information that's coming in from neurons in your body that say this um the thing that's causing this stimulation is likely to harm this body, right? So information that's about harm. Your nociceptors are firing all the time. Like I have like a little like like I'm picking my cuticle. I'm like actually I'm activating a nociceptor by doing that. Am I in pain right now? No. Ballerinas will put like their entire body weight on their toes. If like 120 pounds was on your toe right now, would you be in pain?
Speaker: Probably, right? But they aren't, right? So what's going on? And that's the difference where the psychosocial component that you can't reduce pain to the peripheral nociceptive information. you know, you can't reduce it to the injury itself that there is this psychosocial and even beyond social, I would go to economic. Like there is a societal component to pain. That's what my lab is trying to do. Bring in this like,
Speaker: economic aspect that it's not always just about like um getting you know your hand held and like and it's community is so important having social support is so important but it's incredibly important i can and it can counteract like awful things that you might not have control over like your socioeconomic position you know but really quick do you ever bring in like bdsm guys into the lab because it seems like you would kind of shock them with your weapon and they would love it, right? Or or if they're just getting spanked by their mistress. Like, it would be interesting to see what's happening in their brain. those guys acknowledge that they're experiencing pain, but they go, ouch, be but that is good. i don't Yes, may I have another mistress? i don't think they're saying that doesn't hurt. I think they're saying, ooh, that hurts. Do it again.
Speaker: you know what I mean? I think this is what people misunderstand about about ah masochists. It's not like they don't feel pain or that pain is inverted. and i think it's just they they like pain. that's But also, going back to what Marianne was saying, they do have a community.
Speaker: And socioeconomically, yeah, they're not they're not going hungry, these BDSM guys. They are often quite high in society. um That's interesting. You know, just ah just based on the thing you were saying about a ballerina, I like this idea of doing the reverse of the handhold study where you put a tremendous amount, you put, let's say, 120 pounds of weight concentrated on a single point on someone's hand and they go, ah, what are you doing? You're putting ah a massive weight on a very small part of my hand. And then you say, actually, it's the world's most gorgeous Russian ballerina. And she's standing on your hand. and then you can say, well, that's very, that's very good. And it's an honor. And I can't wait to shake her hand when I get yeah I wish you would twirl.
Speaker: hey Oh, God. wait Yeah, I mean, there we can think of manipulations like that, like ah ways of um increasing maybe your grit or your ability to endure pain, because that that also is a separable component. Because say you think something is very painful, and if I ask you, you're going to be honest with me and you're going to rate it as highly painful, does that mean you can't endure it, like that you're going to quit the study?
Speaker: a lot of people might be able to endure something even though it's painful. And I think that's another element we need to tease out as we start looking at these like broader societal effects that we're trying to unpack in my lab, because and we find more and more that people who are experiencing greater levels of socioeconomic distress, greater financial distress, greater financial worry, and have less access to health care.
Speaker: They experience more pain or they report more pain to the same stimulus. We see this even in twins. So if a twin, um if you have two pairs, of twin like a pair of two twins, Rich twin, poor twin. Yes, exactly. Yes. and the wealth The twin that lives in a wealthier environment is reporting less pain than their twin that lives in a poorer environment. So the same exact heat stimulus. I feel like if I were the poor twin, i would feel so hurt that my rich twin is not equally sharing their money their money with me. Doesn't it seem like they should have one bank account?
Speaker: The thing is, being a rich twin, it's not that the richness helps you. It's that the richness plus the twinness. Like, wow, I'm so much better than my rival.
Speaker: And that is like a source of so much. That's so true. And then the the the the bad twin, let's call them that, the bad twin is suffering because they're the lesser of two. think you might be right. my My dad and his brother are twins and my my uncle lives in a ah wealthier neighborhood. They're constantly comparing their back problems.
Speaker: Oh, really? Is this true? This is true. they're They're constantly trying to decide who has worse back problems. Do they want it to be worse? How do you make a brain scientist size lies it out? Tell them that you have ah you know a pair of beefing twins.
Speaker: Yeah, I know. I would love to talk to them because I'm going to write up this study soon. And get a lot of questions. I mean, the twins that I worked with here, I didn't actually meet them. They were from a twin registry. So I didn't have the ability... They were twin registry. Yeah. Can you look at... Wait, they have pictures of all the twins? Yeah.
Speaker: Well, there are people i they that participate in a lot of experiments, especially genetic studies. They're like dogs. There's a registry. they They put themselves on the registry. They volunteer. They are interested in contributing to science. It's not exploitative. It's nothing. sure you ever hold both hands when someone's in there instead of just one?
Speaker: Actually, we haven't done that. You could say that a pair of beautiful identical twins are holding each hand instead of two two muggers.
Speaker: But yeah, with the expectations, it's back to that. Like who's holding your hand and how much do you trust the experimenter? Because sometimes you see effects in the laboratory that probably have a lot more to do with like how safe you feel and how much you trust me as an experimenter, not to actually like really harm you. You know, like, do you think I'm competent? Do you think I know how to operate this equipment?
Speaker: I wonder what would happen if, I mean, speaking of, I'm just going off of what you were saying, do you trust Marianne as an experimenter? What would happen if ah you placed in front of a twin a mirror um and they, you know, oh look, this is you. And then they looked away for a moment. You said, hey, look over there. And then secretly the mirror was replaced with a window and it was their twin on the other side.
Speaker: And then you hit their twin with a hammer. What would they think? Would they say ow also? just a thought experiment, of course.
Speaker: They would say ow. They would say ow, ow, owie, ow. Correct. And they would have a big one of those big welts that you can throw a horseshoe around. So is tickling pain? Because, I mean, I'm i'm sure that's true of of tickling. if If any of the three of you began tickling me, I would begrudgingly tolerate it because I trust and know you.
Speaker: And you don't want us to know that you're ticklish. I think I would feel something akin to pain. Yeah. Tickling is so weird because it's so intimate and it's like rough. I think a lot of it has to do with it being sort of like um like a violation, like a playful violation, yeah benign violation, right?
Speaker: Like the way animals like... The normal response to tickling from a friend is to laugh and say, fuck off. And the normal response being tickled by stranger is to scream terror. I guess tickling doesn't necessarily even involve touch, right? It's simply a boundary violation. Yeah. Well, that's what I think. All things that are funny are a form of tickling. They're all violating a boundary. I didn't want to laugh.
Speaker: And then the relief. All jokes are rude. The relief, once you realize that despite a boundary being crossed, no one has been harmed, that's where laughter comes from. Relief. yes I like my audience to sigh with relief. ah i trying to dig nothing Yeah, laughing is simply when you sigh as you sigh like a machine gun. You sigh like a Gatling gun. Sigh faster, please. You sigh multiple times a second.
Speaker: ah Those are all every laugh is multiple size of relief happening in one small second. Marianne, you're learning something here. am. I really don't know too much about the science of laughter. I should look into it. Or microwaves. Those scientists, they don't wear lab coats. They wear puffy wigs and red noses.
Speaker: Um, wait, should we get into the specifics of Derek's brain? I feel like we've covered enough ground with, um, with all of our burning questions about the science, but I feel like it's time to get to know Derek a little bit better. Sure. What, what, you want me to like share screen or something?
Speaker: No, you can describe it maybe and just say what you're seeing if you if that makes sense. It might be too then we decide whether it matches what we know of his mind. What you know about Derek's mind. If you can, just pull up the brain on your screen and walk us through it. um First of all, maybe, how how big is that thing?
Speaker: I'd say you have a pretty big brain. You have a big head, you know, and you and you fill it out well. It's full. Congrats, Eric. No empty spaces, no nooks, no crannies.
Speaker: What you told me... Big brain doesn't mean you're smart, right? Well, hold on. let's Let's not jump ahead there. um You told me when we were in the lab... How do you use it? You told me when we were in the lab that ah my brain didn't fit on the scanner. or it was so It was so big that it basically couldn't even fit on the computer.
Speaker: This is true. Yeah. You know, I was saying that we need to take several slices. and i saw you guys running and getting more hard drives because it just filled all the data filled up.
Speaker: We like have a like designated sort of grid of how much brain we can record at once, like spatially. And yeah, yours was too big to fit in that. So we had to we had to like kind of turn your brain in a little bit of an angle to try to get more of it and then choose what part we were going to sacrifice. You had to use deceptive angles to make my brain look smaller because it was too big. My girlfriend says that my brain is perfectly sized, that i have boyfriend brain.
Speaker: and stop doing that out there I heard that term recently for the first time. but what Derek's brain is very, very large. And one of the tiny some of the tiniest ventricles I've ever seen. Do you remember me telling you that? I am actually, I'm looking at them right now.
Speaker: What you told me, I think what you told me was I have tight ventricles. I didn't hear tiny. Well, yeah, they're, they're tight. there that What does that mean? You can't get in.
Speaker: it's so i mean It's a good thing. My ventricles are embarrassingly large and I'm always like, is this am i do I have dementia? like so Your ventricles usually get larger if you have PTSD, if you have chronic stress, and if you have like neurodegeneration. Derek is confirmed. Chillest guy on earth.
Speaker: they Yeah. I shouldn't be bothered. You have incredibly small ventricles. Whoa, so like trauma, abuse, um indignity, those things will actually increase the size of your ventricles? When you have like chronic stress and like ah basically like a lot of cortisol, and it like your brain's like washing itself in cortisol too much, you do tend to see like um a degradation in the gray matter and like an increase in size of the more empty space, which would be the ventricles. yeah So ventricles are sort of like the stomach acid of the brain. They like, ah they, they kind of erode. It's like having GERD your brain, essentially. ah Well, it's just, it would, it would be more like in that analogy, the stomach sack, right? Like it's, it's just the space. The ventricle is the name for the space. The inside of it is the CSF. That's the fluid. Right. I can't even fit that much trauma in my brain.
Speaker: No matter what happens to me, it just will not matter that much. Cortisol, you just sort of sneeze it out. It doesn't even like get to your brain. Your body just kind of sneezes out. I basically have trauma anorexia. i I have not had enough.
Speaker: damn It is amazing to me how small they are. i That's so sick that Derek has has an X-Men ability. Makes sense to me. I kind of always knew it. Derek is so chill. He doesn't like, I mean, I don't know, Derek, you you don't use any illicit substances. ah yeah oh that could be a big one because alcohol should degrade the brain a little bit. So that's cool. you was over Have you always been sober? ah Yeah, I've never drank that much. Yeah.
Speaker: I've known Derek to have like one beer one a week when he wants to like be sweet to me. I mean, the last time I had a bad experience with beer, I was with Pierce and we went to this bar in Ridgewood and um they had on special a Guinness float, which is just Guinness with a scoop of ice cream in it.
Speaker: And I said, oh, sure. I'll have If I were going to a bar with you, I would know that you were going to maybe... Because it sounded like a treat. And Pierce, do you remember what the reaction was behind the counter?
Speaker: um i think they said, I was just saying to my co-worker that no one ever orders that. Yeah, and then he went and he said to another guy who wasn't even there, he was like, hey, guess who? Somebody ordered the Guinness float. And that led to a bad trip with the beer for you?
Speaker: Well, he had a horrible stomach attack, right? Didn't you like... didn't i I enjoyed the drink night of, and then at like 4 a.m. I woke up puking. It was the only time I've ever, like, I woke up and I felt like I was already puking as I woke up. And I had to kind of run to the bathroom. was terrible.
Speaker: Could you ever have it again? Sorry. like you are you do you have an aversion to it now? No, i wouldn't I'd try it again. yeah and we We had a few floats when you were in town, actually. yeah I think it just needed more ice cream.
Speaker: yeah i have an aversion to every food I've ever thrown up after eating. Yeah, it's a real thing. It's called learn taste aversion. It's one of the only like memories that can be formed, like post hoc, if that makes sense. Like usually you learn, like you reinforce the stimulus by what comes like immediately after it. Right. So if I ring a bell and give you food, you learn to associate it. This is why the only ones where the time lag can go like 24 hours. It's very specific to gastrointestinal upsets. And it's a big problem for people with large ventricles, right? But somebody with small ventricles like me, um i can just have another Guinness float. Like i'm not I don't experience the trauma. Unbothered. That kind of learning is deep in the brainstem. and so So ventricles are similar to, i mean, I don't want to like put this in a way as to, i don't want to.
Speaker: but Ventricles are similar to like scars, almost. It's almost like they're craters in the mind that are evidence of some kind of high cortisol a wound.
Speaker: They could be. They could be. And like you tend to see, and I don't want to freak people out because there's a natural variation in ventricle size that means nothing, you know? Like people have different shapes of brains, it's fine. and But you do tend to see like increase, like really dramatic increases in ventricles in um in schizophrenia, in like Alzheimer's and dementia and in like severe like PTSD and stuff, yeah.
Speaker: Maybe that's just because schizophrenics are treated kind of badly. It could be. I mean, it's possible. yeah Is there an advantage to having very ah tight ventricles or is it simply a sign of... It's just something I'm known for. Yeah, it's just something Derek's known for. But no, is is there is is there something good about that? Or is it simply a sign of good things that can come?
Speaker: I don't know. I mean, like, I guess you could say it's like he has more surface area for, you know, for brain activity because there'd be more brain. We'd have to, like, look at some... Yeah, that's good. Like, you what the more, like, cortical surface, the more information processing you can...
Speaker: do and that's it so um first glance looking at my brain any neuroscientist would say oh big brain tight ventricles what else would they notice in the bullet point list that the what's the third good thing no no i don't want to hear the third good thing i want to hear what's the third thing that jumps out to the person to the educated learner who's taking a look at the imaging Okay. um and This also is not something I normally do, so I should make that clear. it do this you don't do this for everyone. i I don't usually stare at people's anatomy and wonder if it looks weird or cool. but you have the expertise to do so.
Speaker: i know I probably don't. That's really for a radiologist. Okay, cut that out. shouldn't have said that. um i would say we're just doing horoscopes yeah really it's like yeah phrenology horoscopes i feel like you have a really big motor cortex oh i feel like and maybe much of a dancer though no but i have like the hidden ability if i danced even once it would blow people's minds me I'm trying to navigate towards there. And just goes, no, not that. You wouldn't be able to blow anyone's mind, Stan, so...
Speaker: I also think you have a very developed prefrontal cortex, which is good. That's surprising. So we are we are agreeing that phrenology, even if it's pseudoscience, is fun. It is so much fun. We agree. yeah It's absolutely fun. yeah And it can be used for a lot of interesting kind of fun political purposes. You can use it for fun. Yeah. But it definitely isn't real. Yeah. If you ever run into um like funding troubles later on down the road, just do this for people at like $1,000 a pop. I bet you'll have a line out the door. oh but it's ah It's expensive to scan people.
Speaker: yeah Okay, $2,000 a pop. Just shine a flashlight into their mouth and... just they used to just touch your skull and look for bumps you don't have a bumpy skull that's for sure you have like a really like smooth scalp Derek have ever dropped have you ever had a a sudden bad fall a sudden fall I I have like a dent in my head yeah I felt it actually it's all right i even asked I remember now I remember how it feels
Speaker: Oh, yeah. I let you feel it. You let It's sort of above my right eye. Years of asshole. Well, I could have blocked it. I let you in. I let you in on the secret. I touched i activated the whatever is under the hair area, probably.
Speaker: How did you feel when you saw your brain, Derek? It's a little weird. You're not supposed to see that. and Typically, no one gets to see their brain ever.
Speaker: Yeah. It's such a weird... Yeah. The first time I saw my brain, it felt weird. it felt It felt gross. It almost felt like by seeing it, I had added something to my experience that I'd never had before that has changed me only so slightly.
Speaker: I feel a little bit more mechanical maybe than before. yeah It's like the brain seeing itself. It's like that. In way. But i actually, I feel pretty different from my brain.
Speaker: That's just the hardware. It's true. and and And it contains where the and it's where the software is. I would feel also weird, I guess, if you showed me my guts. isn it Yeah.
Speaker: Guts are weird. I've seen that. You've seen your guts. i've seen well i did a barium swallow once and you watch you watch the food go into your small bowel in real time.
Speaker: From swallowing a berry? Yeah. Oh, barium. Actually, I've done that too. It's so heavy. Barium, yeah. It's like paint. It's like drinking a metal milkshake. yeah Why?
Speaker: just It's a way to check if anything goes wrong in the first step of your digestive tract. I did it because I wasn't gaining weight in high school, but it was inconclusive.
Speaker: Derek did it, I think, just because he got into the barium as a toddler. okay They didn't toddler proof. You succeeded in gaining weight in high school since then?
Speaker: um All right. What's the third thing that jumps out? either Or the fourth thing? Because we've we've covered smooth scalp slash... Yeah, we need to get to the fifth. So let's do this fourth thing. Let's get through the fourth and let's get... then we'll reach I think you have a large cerebellum. I mean, you have a large brain in general. your Yeah, your cerebellum is quite defined. It's pretty. It's it's not it's quite defined.
Speaker: Yeah. Some people kind of just have like a little smush there. Just blurs and everything else. The cerebellum is what they call the reptile brain. Is that right?
Speaker: No, I think people call like your brain stem that. Oh, right. I don't like that terminology. It's like reptiles have cortex, right? I got to double check. them for That's sort of the like the loose talk that people...
Speaker: make when they talk similar to people who talk about like dopamine being a thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. I kind of hate that stuff because it yeah, it, it, for so many reasons, for one, so much can happen with just your brainstem, which people try to deny like, as if it's like, if, as if it's not,
Speaker: special. Like there's this idea that humans are so special and we're not. I can show you other animals brains that are far larger and more complex looking than ours ah are. yeah don't you Aren't humans the only ones with a calcified third eye?
Speaker: And also second question, if you open up a person's brain and you touch their calcified third eye and kind of remove the crust off of it. Okay. Can you then read minds and move objects with your mind?
Speaker: I don't know what a calcified third eye is. was talking about the pineal gland. Yeah, the center of consciousness. And also, third question, if you don't drink milk, it probably won't ever get calcified.
Speaker: m So it was Francis Crick on his deathbed that said the colostrum is the seat of consciousness, right? It's all bullshit. Like, but that's not, yeah, none of that stuff. There's no there's no seat of consciousness. yeah Consciousness is surely something that's generated by, like, um...
Speaker: like recurrent activity. It's like it emerges from your brain activity. and And so you can have different grades of consciousness. So for example, there's um a disorder called hydroencephaly and children that have it or I mean, adults do if they go on grow up to be adults, like they can still sort of function normally. I mean, not entirely, like you can tell, but like they have pretty much just a brainstem and then most of their cortex, like, you know, Derek's ventricles being very tight, their brains are like almost entirely empty space when you look at it. And it's really just like a thin...
Speaker: there's ah Is a hemispherectomy what it's called to alleviate some crazy cases of ah of epilepsy epilepsy? And then half of the brain is missing, but it fills with fluid. And then those people can become ah indistinguishable from, i want to say, ah neurotypical people, even though half of their brain is filled with fluid.
Speaker: So there are cases like that. There's actually a neuroscientist who had his brain scanned and found out like, oh, shit, I had like some he had some form of hydroencephaly. But he was a neuroscientist and didn't even know him and spent most of his life. And with epilepsy, there are it depends what they're cutting and doing. um okay so basically one at one age, I guess. Yeah, I think yeah part of what I'm saying is that it has to be before the critical period for language acquisition. Oh, okay. So depending on where they're, yeah, if they're pulling from that brain region, and well, language can also be pretty distributed. But there are some areas that are very specialized for language production, and like the Wernicke area, maybe you've heard of that. And, okay, and Broca's area for speech production, classic, like intro to psych brain regions. But basically, like one and like thing to know about your brain is that it's inherently plastic. And it's like the most, um which just means it's very adaptive and changeable and it's growing all the time. And this is one of the most fascinating, wonderful things about your brain and and something that like people should know, because I think we we think like, oh, we peak at like 23 and everything goes downhill and we're not making new memories. Or new friends or new girlfriends or like more money.
Speaker: Your brain is always learning. Even after a stroke, your brain can heal itself over time. That's why you see some improvements after a stroke. Obviously, you're doing physical rehabilitation. You're doing things to stimulate your brain and to stimulate new learning. But your brain is repairing itself. It's very good at ah maintenance like that and at like replacing... um dead cells or cells that are about to die. It takes like, um I'm kind of going all over the place here. But one of the things your brain does where it does, where neurons do move, a little baby neuron will be born typically out of like the hippocampus somewhere there. It's and out of an egg.
Speaker: and and It's undifferentiated, meaning it doesn't have a job yet. And then something like a glial cell, or I want think it's one of the glial cells, like will come or ash. I forgot exactly which one. They're not, they're not, um they're not neurons. We'll come and pick it up and bring it to the brain region that needs it. And it'll shadow existing neuron and learn what it's connected to. And then once it's fully taken over that one's connections, the the one it was shadowing can die in just natural programmed cell death like apoptosis. And do think this is a good simulacrum for how to construct civilization? Like, should we take neat incel men, get them an internship, and then have their internship conclude with gainful employment?
Speaker: Well, and should but yeah this would saying we should destroy We should destroy the factory that's making these unemployed men. These aimless men who don't have jobs. We should just destroy the hippocampus that's producing them because it seems like such a waste of resources to put these neurons to work to stop making them.
Speaker: Well, you want new neurons to be born your entire life so you can have new learning, so you can take care damage. Because I don't understand their memes or anything, and and their culture is whack. And really quick, um what would happen if you took all the neurons of a genius and you injected into my brain specifically? um i don't think that would do much, right? Yeah.
Speaker: I think they would just get attacked by your immune system, right? like You're sick, right? I don't know. Like, intelligence isn't necessarily, like, a physical property. Like, obviously, everything is um tied to physical substrate on this planet, right? um But intelligence is... um I agree.
Speaker: It's about like these these patterns of activation that are produced by the physical substrate. And it's always an interaction. It's an interaction amongst the the neurons within your brain, but also neurons outside your brain as you communicate to other beings. Even though that's the case, wouldn't you agree that someone with only one neuron is probably not as smart as me?
Speaker: Well, yeah, I mean, if they had only only one neuron, I don't think they could live. Okay, so we agree. Could live the good life. There's like 100 billion neurons in here. like There's a lot of them. Unless not living is smart.
Speaker: Not living might be smart. It's just it's all a matter of perspective, right? You know to the guy with one neuron that's probably the sweet life. How much anesthesia does it take to conk out someone who only has one neuron? You could just use your finger.
Speaker: You give them a gentle rub, and that actually acts as anesthesia. I remember when I was first going under for, I think it was a wisdom teeth surgery, the anesthesiologist or the anesthesiologist assistant gave my arm a gentle rub on the on the hairiest part of my arm. And as they were doing it, I remember drifting out of consciousness and I remember feeling like my arm was getting further and farther away from what I would describe as the locus of my conscious experience. Like I was, and I remember thinking, oh, they're doing this because it's like a magic trick. And they're like here because you're losing consciousness because of the, uh, uh, whatever it is, nitrous. We're going to rub your arm because you'll see in real time how it feels like your arm is moving away from you. It's like kind of a party trick. And I thought, oh, they do this for everyone because the sensation is so interesting.
Speaker: And then my dad told me about him going under. This was like a few years later. And he was like, I just thought it was so sweet that she rubbed my arm. Just let me know that everything's going to be OK. And I was like, I felt compelled to correct him. I was like, no, she did that because it's cool.
Speaker: Right. And also, here's a question. have Have they ever put someone to sleep for surgery, but as they were drifting off to sleep, they said, um we're not putting you to sleep. We're killing you.
Speaker: ah That would be so unethical. No, but I know they wake up like to them. It's one second later and they're actually probably happy. Oh, they laugh. I think it's one way to actually kill someone.
Speaker: If you tell someone who's just getting like a wisdom teeth surgery, you're dying. Then I think in theirre in their unconsciousness, they're just going to connect with their family and that big warm egg that people talk about in NDEs. And then they're going to actually sever their connection to the living. I think it's a very easy way to kill someone is to say, you're dying as they fall out of consciousness.
Speaker: I went to the ER once for like really bad pain. like I don't know, maybe like it was in my ovaries or something. And I like fell asleep in the hospital bed. And um ah like a nurse came in when I was waking up. And he was like, oh, you're awake. You've been asleep for a week. And I was like, what? And he's like, just kidding.
Speaker: Jesus Christ. Nurses are allowed to do that because they're not bound by ethics. They're allowed to be unethical. They don't have to take the HIPAA oath. Yeah, I thought it was funny at the time. so but I think about it now. So then I was younger. um Guys, i have to I have to run and I think we might have to stop and restart the recording because I'm gonna have to record something else on my computer. So I can't. Okay.
Speaker: All right. So Matthew's gonna dip out really quick. It was pleasure. Hi. So I have a couple questions here that i I just kind of searched the word brain on Reddit.
Speaker: ah But there are some interesting questions here. Here's a question from No Stupid Questions. It is, during brain surgery, does the exposed brain get dry?
Speaker: There's really no other way to say this. Does the brain dry out? Should it be moist? Should it be dry? Having a conversation with friends and one has suggested they moisturize the brain with medical goop, but I can't find anything on Google about this.
Speaker: Please save our brains is how is. Please save our brains. i want to I want to try to make a a guess here before we hear from the expert. but and By the way, we should always do it this way, Pierce. You should always make a guess before the expert answers. Okay, good.
Speaker: I reckon that brain surgery is not conducted with the patient... laying either prone or supine, but upright so that none of those cerebrospinal brain fluid leaks out. it It can be situated with gravity still in the in the cranium.
Speaker: and That's my guess. And I would like to add to your guess and say that um just like when you're defrosting fish or something in a bowl of water, If it's floating at the top, the top of the brain is getting a little dry. You can just push it down under the water, under the brain fluid, and and get it soaked again. That's my guess.
Speaker: I see what you're saying. It's like bobbing up. It's bobbing, yeah. Oh, man. Okay, well, I am not a neurosurgeon. I've never done neurosurgery ever. You're more concerned with the brain in it's ins situ, not out of situ. Yeah. But you're allowed to guess also.
Speaker: Okay, I can guess. I think... um So it does... It sits in a cerebral spinal fluid naturally, and it is it is not firm, like you're saying. Like, if you were laying... They definitely sit up for a surgeries. My sister... Yes, yes. My sister has epilepsy, and she's had brain surgery. and Because, i yeah yeah, you don't want brain... Like, your brain could leak out. like I knew it. Yeah, for sure. Like, if gravity does matter here. So they're going to angle you in a way, right, that's like...
Speaker: like good for for keeping your brain in place. and They also like put um electrodes directly on um the the cortex and they will keep your skull open for for several days usually and so that they are like measuring like actually right on top of um of the cortex like the activity of the neurons there because they want to figure out where the locus is. They keep a hole in the head.
Speaker: Yeah. So like when you're not getting surgery, it'll be wrapped up um and they're saving your scalp because they'll put the scalp back in and your scalp will regenerate like it'll close back up with it. and So it must not dry out that much.
Speaker: I think that they do some irrigation, but i I think it's more to clean out debris. I don't know if they if they need to do some... I don't i don't know. i don't know. Because it also might depend how long they're doing the surgery for and how long you're open. Or if they put like a hairdryer next to the hole.
Speaker: I don't think they're doing that. But it wouldn't it wouldn't help. That's all I'm saying. No, I don't think like yeah i don't think you want like heat or anything. um But yeah, the most important thing is figuring out where like the locus of the seizure is because you want to if they're going to cut out a part of your brain, they want to make the smallest incision. You want the most bang for your buck, right? You don't want to just start willy-nilly cutting parts ah of the brain out.
Speaker: Right. which is what like ah early epilepsy surgery was like not very... and slash. a A little bit. I mean, like, I don't know. Yeah, I don't. want to Yeah. Like, I'm glad my sister waited to get surgery because she was offered surgery as a child. And my dad was like, I'm not letting them take an ice cream scoop out of her brain. Yeah, no kidding. I mean, good thing your sister sister didn't get a surgery like in the eighteen hundreds It would have been awful. Very, yeah, exactly. Yeah, she got it later. Interesting fact, after she had her surgery, where they removed part of her insula, she was a smoker before her surgery, and then after that, she never touched a cigarette again, and she couldn't understand why it was hard for her husband at the time to quit.
Speaker: She had no conception that quitting was difficult after they... Interesting. That's amazing. Did she just become a being of pure willpower? They took out the shackles? The cigarette gland.
Speaker: No, she's definitely not a being of pure willpower. They removed the shackles from her brain. So i wonder, i mean, I'd be fascinated to have my brain exposed to the elements, even for a brief second. But I would feel that there's something so, like it's like betraying the brain's predilection to be a um It must be like taking a cold plunge, right? Ooh.
Speaker: Well, I just feel like it's like forcing the hermit who values solitude above all else so much so that he stays sequestered in a tiny prison that's just big enough to support him and a little bit of liquid.
Speaker: I feel like exposing him to the elements is just such a... and don't know. it's like It's like pantsing the autistic kid in front of everyone.
Speaker: It's like splashing a cat. It probably hisses. yeah ah your ah Your brain doesn't have... References.
Speaker: It's you, you know? It's it's not something else. No, I mean, but no, no, no. It is you as long as it's where it belongs. But as soon as it's exposed to the elements, it becomes like a secondary character. Right. you know what would how would you feel if you were watching um a video of your brain being smashed by an anvil? How would that make you feel?
Speaker: How would you feel if you' if you saw a video of your sweet, pink, innocent brain crossing the street and then gets mued by it by a steamroller and screams?
Speaker: I would hate it. All right. So the answer to that question, as far as we can tell, is that they don't use medical grade goop to keep your brain wet. But there is some process of irrigation and you have to take care to not let the contents of your brain spill out and gravity is is used to to assist that.
Speaker: And you're awake. Right. You have to be awake because otherwise they'd be working on a dead sleeping brain. They wouldn't even know what to do. I would love, though, if I could wake this puppy up like with how people donate plasma. I would donate my cerebral spinal fluid.
Speaker: You know, I think it's it's probably good for you to get drained every now and then. I would like if I got an oil change earlier. I i would like if there was some analogous move that where they like take out the stick and they show you where the oil's at. Yeah, into the ear and then comes out and it's just sort of like, all right, yeah, your your fluid is actually, like you were saying, there's debris. There's all kinds of, you have microplastics in here. There's like a full gummy worm inside. A twig.
Speaker: Yeah, that could be something you could look at, honestly. There might be. debris. Do microplastics have any effect on ah neuroplasty? Because it's kind of similar words. They are similar words. um I am not... i kind of deliberately avoid literature on microplastics because i don't want to know. but yeah, the last I've heard for sure that there is evidence of microplastics being in um in in the brain and in the neurons. But
Speaker: I don't know. I'm sure it'll be affecting something. and Maybe something related to the conductance. I don't know. think it's going to be harmless. I think it is harmless. um All right. Let's let's let'ss look do another question here, Derek. Okay. Here's another one from no Stupid Questions.
Speaker: Question is, what would happen if you poured a shot of vodka onto someone's open brain? Would they get drunk or just die? Oh my God.
Speaker: oh that's like an evil question. i I don't, I, I don't know. I think it would probably kill some of the neurons, right? Like, but like alcohol is very abrasive. You can use it to kill bacteria. What if it were more like a Bailey's?
Speaker: Is there a microbiome in the brain? Like, uh, is there bacteria in the brain that is naturally occurring or is that only in the GI tract and other parts of the body? I think it's only in the GI tract.
Speaker: To my knowledge, there should be no bacteria in your brain. The blood brain barrier should be keeping it out. Right. And then prions. What are prions again? They're they're microorganisms that are that the brain that can enter the blood brain barrier because they have a similar... They're they're a misfolding protein.
Speaker: they're not They're not alive. Right, and that they they can degrade your your cortex, right? I don't know too much about that. It's sort of like um if you had a puzzle piece that if you put it in a puzzle, it started rearranging all the other pieces and then you'd have a crazy new picture. And the new picture is of ah mad cow disease.
Speaker: Right. um Okay, so here's my guess. If you poured a shot of vodka into a brain, you would get drunk, but not not in the way But that's not why You would not get drunk. You get drunk when you metabolize alcohol, right? You're you're not going to be metabolizing it by pouring it.
Speaker: I think you're going to... mean, look drunk....damage the brain by doing that. The brain gets blood in there and everything, right? So, like, stuff that is put in the brain is never ah ah digested... ah ah there's no There's no way to get something from inside your skull to be metabolized?
Speaker: That's just not where metabolization happens. Right. it would go You would want it to go through, like, I think it gets to say it gets broken down by your liver, and then it forms, like, some other form of... put chocolate in someone's skull, they wouldn't go, hmm. No. Oh,
Speaker: my God. Yeah. So no to that. No. You wouldn't you would hurt your brain. Yeah, I think it would be a terrible thing to do. And I hate that someone even thought of it um Actually, there is a response here from one of our Redditors, which is that ah Jeffrey Dahmer poured acid and such into people's brains. And the effect was ah not good.
Speaker: and Well, I remember it didn't do what he wanted it to do. He wanted to create a zombified sex slave. But I think what he ended up doing was killing killing people. yeah he He was doing, i mean, science experiment experiments much like yourself, but he didn't have that kind of institutional knowledge that you're drawing upon. Right. He didn't have didn't have funding or an IRB, I guess. Like, we have an ethical review board we talked to, get approval from. Dama didn't have much of that.
Speaker: No. I felt like that was a little bit of a sociopathic question. Definitely. Yeah. I dated a guy who he wass like a bodybuilder and he was like obsessed with that the the TV show Dahmer and he would eat ice cream in bed while watching that.
Speaker: well It really bothered me. That's scary. It was aspirational for him. Yeah. But you know what? Dahmer didn't get where he got by eating ice cream.
Speaker: He actually went out and did shit. No, he actually preferred guys scream. yeah
Speaker: here's Here's a good question from explain like I'm five. If the brain is 5% by ah weight but consumes 25% of our calories, shouldn't we be doing puzzles to lose weight? It ends with an exclamation point. That's why I said it that way.
Speaker: I love that. i I don't know how to answer this, but yeah, i mean you definitely are burning calories by thinking. like like yeah I think the more... go for it. you probably need You're not going to build muscle though. You know what i mean? Maybe you burn some calories, but that's not the same thing as like...
Speaker: weighed a hundred pounds and every time you shifted it it took all of your strength then Yes. Yes. gri But you can't just be mindlessly moving it. You have to have studied the algorithms. You have to be thinking too.
Speaker: Or else it's effortless. right You can learn in your imagination. There's like a study that shows like the cortical expansion. I can imagine a book that I'm reading is full of mathematical symbols and I get better at math, is what you're saying? Well, that's how all the mathematicians do it. They read books with mathematical symbols.
Speaker: Like um you play a piano, Derek. and So that you're as you're learning in your song, right, um the the part of your motor cortex, which is quite big. Maybe this is why your motor cortex is so big. so It grows. You said that like you were talking to a dog. Maybe this is why your motor cortex is so big.
Speaker: which Like um the parts of your brain that represent your fingers are going to expand as you're learning um more finer grained movements and behavioral repertoires with your fingers. Right. And if you imagine playing the the music and you learned how those finger movements just by imagining the finger movements, you see that an analogous cortical expansion than if you'd done nothing at all. So that is so sick. did know that. Yeah, that's studied by Pascal Leone in 2007 or something.
Speaker: yeah I'd wager he was onto something. um Here's one last question about brains. um No stupid questions.
Speaker: Do steroids for the brain exist? If not, how come? This is like a cognitive enhancer question. Is that what they mean? Like, what's gonna... I reckon they they're talking about, like, that's like blank on steroids. Using steroids is just ah a synonym for enhancer. They they want the limitless pill.
Speaker: Okay. like i I don't know. i I have an answer to this. The why not is because the they don't want us ah they don't want us to be able to use our brains.
Speaker: They don't want voters to be informed. I just took a pill and now I'm an informed voter. is it Do you think it would be unethical if they made an intelligence pill?
Speaker: I guess the only way it could be ethical is if everyone... is if some If you had to take it. If some authority figure was able to dole them out from each according to their ability to each according to their need, but...
Speaker: I don't know if we I don't know if it's possible to be the guy who isn't or even the network of people who are in charge of doling out the intelligence pills. And so we should just have the normal school normal school system. You're making a case for having school.
Speaker: yeah let's not let Let's not switch to the pills, guys. No, it's the real cognitive enhancer is your social network and not not the phone one. But like literally like the reason why we've evolved like this large prefrontal cortex, you all need You only see that in animals that maintain social groups. So and then the larger your social group, I mean, across the evolutionary spectrum, not within like humans. Like so like monkeys have like, I don't know, like ah like five or whatever. We have something like we maintain about like 150, 250 relationships. And that makes us smarter. Like if someone asked me a question I don't know the answer to, I'll say, oh, yes, I can tell you the answer.
Speaker: But my friend will be the one saying it. For real, yeah. yeah like We are a collective being. We get a lot more by like somebody specializing in one thing and somebody else specializing with something else. And also by... like so To be smart, like why why you need more brain real estate and and higher levels of cognition to do this is because you have to represent now not only yourself, your needs in this complex environment that's always changing, but someone else's needs in this complex environment that's always changing. Right. And now you have to maintain like a bunch of different needs of a bunch of different people. And you have to predict what they're going to do. And it might be different what you do. And so it's a lot of information integration that has to happen on the fly. Right. And so you need big brains. The intelligence pill is the smartest person you know. That's the pill. Just be around that person and imagine what they know.
Speaker: Yeah. And if you imagine it, you'll get smarter is what you were saying earlier. I think, yeah, but that is low-key true. I mean, the the best way to instantly become smarter is to socially ingratiably... Use a ton of riz to approach the smartest person in your community and make them your BFF. And i guarantee you, if you have conversations with a very smart person who also finds you attractive and compelling and wants to spend a lot of time... and you know maybe even wants to sleep with you. If you're able to talk to that intelligent person all the time, you will get smarter as a natural consequence of the psychosocial dynamics that go all the way back to but pri primate type stuff. I mean, that's what primates do. They're like, wow, that guy figured out how to use a stick to catch a termite.
Speaker: I'm going to make myself sexually attractive to him. Yeah.
Speaker: Or you could also use the sting. But no, but this is it. And exercise um promotes neurogenesis. So that's like the creation of those little baby undifferentiated neurons. um You create more neurons when you exercise more. So healthy exercise, healthy socialization, stay away from the drugs like alcohol. Yeah, there's some evidence that psychedelics can um increase like connections across neurons, like forming like new dendritic branches. But i would I would take all the psychedelic research with a grain of salt. like you're not goingnna Yeah, those scientists were fucking high.
Speaker: there is no there's no trick. like okay yeah Taking Adderall is going to help you maybe cram for a night. It's not making you smarter. and If you keep doing drugs like that, you're going to hurt yourself. right like there's no there There's nothing that you can do or take. The connectivity...
Speaker: It's there's a there's a limit to how useful connectivity is. I mean, if everything is connected to everything else, you you basically are approaching schizophrenia like you are supposed to have some boundaries, not just in the mind, but I imagine in the brain, too. It might be helpful if These things are sequestered. It's it's good that the the financial department of NASA doesn't affiliate with the rocketry department of NASA on every single issue. It's good that those two offices aren't constantly connecting with each other. Now, they may flirt with each other um like Jim and Pam, but they're not like Jim and Dwight, let's say.
Speaker: It's good to have the parts of your brains be have a more Jim and Pam relationship and not a Jim and not a Jim and Dwight or a Michael and Dwight. Yeah. of relationships Or like Flintstones and the Jetsons where they did a movie together.
Speaker: So they had that crossover. But for the most part, one stays in the Stone Age.
Speaker: ah Well, this was a blast, Marianne, truly. And I'm so glad that you were able to have a good time, like, ah sort of, you know, playfully deconstructing the thing that you ah rightly are so passionate about. And obviously we are too. And ah it's so cool to hear some awesome new information about the science behind the brain and also to get to know, you know, the secret nakedness of our close friend, Derek.
Speaker: Yep, it's all out in the open now. Now you know who I truly am. Yeah, I feel like you ask you asked me questions that I mostly couldn't answer, so I hope that was helpful. This podcast is not about answering questions, like, overall. This podcast is about looking at questions and then adding more question marks to the end of the question. Yeah, making the question marks bigger, sometimes making the question marks Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
