The Science of Learning with Heather Berlin

How do our brains learn? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Dave Bakker learn about learning at the Pocketlab Science Is Cool Virtual Unconference with neuroscientist Heather Berlin.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, always good to have you as my co-host there. Thanks for being here.

• 0:18Chuck Nice?

  Always good to be here, man.

• 0:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're gonna talk about the neuroscience of learning. And neither you nor I have any such expertise. So, we gotta go to our go-to person in this, Dr. Heather Berlin. Heather, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:34Heather Berlin?

  Thanks, it's always a pleasure to be here with you.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and this is StarTalk at the Science is Cool Virtual Unconference. And who knows how many countries are represented here. And I'm delighted, it's a reminder that it is one world. And education is a thing that we all care about. And so...

• 0:55Chuck Nice?

  Or at least most of us care about.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so...

• 1:00Chuck Nice?

  I mean, it's a little hyperbolic to say "we all care." Let's remember, we are beaming out from America.

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we have teachers care, and teachers are the primary audience here. So for sure, we got 100% of them, of those who care. And Heather, let me just finish your bio. So you're a neuroscientist and clinical psychologist, and assistant professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

• 1:32Heather Berlin?

  Yes, indeed. That's all it is. That's me in a nutshell.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry, that's all. That's all it is.

• 1:39Chuck Nice?

  That's it. That's all.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so Heather, let me just start off by saying, when we learn something new, what happens in our brains? To either learn it first, you know, to climb the wall, or the barrier, to learn it, and then to retain it? What change happens in our brain for that to take place?

• 2:04Heather Berlin?

  So, learning is actually a physical change in the brain. And the best way to remember this is, there's a saying we have in neuroscience, "Cells that fire together, wire together."

• 2:14Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that.

• 2:17Chuck Nice?

  Look at that. Look at the brain going on.

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The brain is just having happy hours and just...

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 2:25Heather Berlin?

  But you know, that's what it is. So, once you sort of, you make a connection, the more you rehearse it, that's what studying is about. The more you go over something, over and over again. You're actually teaching these neurons to fire together, and then they regrow. They grow new receptors. So that the next time it's stimulated, it's easier to make that connection. So you're actually developing new neural pathways that are firing quicker in your brain. That's what learning is.

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, but some people will remember something forever upon learning it once. And others have to be, keep being reminded of it. So what's the difference there? Is it, it's a brain chemical?

• 3:00Chuck Nice?

  One of them is stupid. I believe the difference is, one of them is stupid.

• 3:08Chuck Nice?

  See Neil, there's, there's smart people, and then there's not so smart people.

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Chuck, you were reminding us why we have an actual neuroscientist on the show to give us, to tell us what, what actually, what's really going on. Okay.

• 3:20Heather Berlin?

  I mean, okay, they're the very, very rare people that have, you know, what, what they say is like a, a, you know, they can see something immediately, remember it. But for the average person, that can happen usually when it's tied to something either personally significant to them. Um, or when they learn it, it's involved with, um, a lot of emotions are being stimulated at that time. Because emotions tag memories. And if you think about it, what is learning? Learning is really forming a memory, right? Learning is, is intimately linked to memory. And so emotions tag memories as important. So we call those flashbulb memories. So we'll remember, you know.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, Heather, no one knows what a flashbulb is. No one under thirty. So please tell us what a flashbulb is.

• 4:03Heather Berlin?

  Oh, there are these old fashioned.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 4:08Chuck Nice?

  Good evening, Mr. And Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea.

• 4:13Heather Berlin?

  You ever, and you see them in these, you know, period pieces, um, where they would flash a lightbulb really quickly. And the lightbulb actually would then go out, because it was so bright.

• 4:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's timed with the photograph they're taking. So the, the, the, the instant the flash occurs, the exposure in the camera opens up so that the scene is lit up for the film. Because the film was not sensitive enough. To light, to just use ambient light and you needed the flash. Okay, so there we go.

• 4:40Heather Berlin?

  There you go. So, but it's this idea of taking a very momentary imprint and then it just kind of stays permanently. And usually when there's an emotion involved that tells the brain, hey, this is something pretty important, you should remember it. Um, so when you're, that's experiential, but when you're learning, if things are tied to emotion, if they're personally significant, they sort of get ingrained into your neural network in a different kind of way. And that's why they say to learn things better, you should tag them to things that you already know.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So wait a minute. So on, on StarTalk, um, we have Chuck, who is occasionally funny.

• 5:16Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Like in a clip.

• 5:21Chuck Nice?

  I'm funny like in a clip.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rarely, no, no, Chuck, we have Chuck because our intuitions tell us that if you laugh while you're learning, that's an important associated emotion, the, the joy that gets attached to this bit of knowledge that you just acquired. And we tell ourselves, but you can affirm this or deny it, that that enhances people's not only appreciation for what they've learned, but the longevity of, of, uh, it's duration in your head thereafter.

• 5:51Heather Berlin?

  Well, the thing about humor is that it activates, um, the reward system in the brain and releases this neurochemical dopamine. And dopamine actually enhances both your motivation and long-term memory. So as long as you can activate, it has to be the right kind of humor though. Studies show that if it's inappropriate humor or maybe just not that funny, it doesn't work as well for learning.

• 6:16Chuck Nice?

  Oh, why, why, why you gotta, why you gotta do me like that?

• 6:21Chuck Nice?

  I'm, I was feeling, I was feeling so good. I'm like Chuck Nice is part of the dopaminergic system? What is going on? Oh, this is great. And then you're like, gotta qualify it like, oh, but it's gotta be the right, the right kind of humor.

• 6:35Heather Berlin?

  Not just any old chuck style humor.

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't just.

• 6:39Heather Berlin?

  But yeah, I mean, so in a sense, if you can, if you can stimulate those neurochemicals in the brain, people remember better. Also, humor tends to tie things to imagery, to stories. And again, you're activating the larger neural network. Instead of just learning rote facts, you have a context in which you can embed that information and then you'll remember it better.

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this similar to when people say the smell immediately brought back an entire graphic memory of some trip they took? That smell being a sort of a sensory feeder to your capacity to remember?

• 7:15Heather Berlin?

  Absolutely. I mean, smells are, it's one of our primary senses because it's the only sense actually that goes straight to the cortex. The other senses go through something called the thalamus, which is like a relay station in the brain, and then it sends it to the cortex.

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know that.

• 7:29Heather Berlin?

  But smell is, is very direct. It's a very primitive, um, primary sense and most of it is happening unconsciously.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So can you, um, what's the difference between learning something that's already known and creativity in sort of creating something that no one has thought to do or think before?

• 7:50Heather Berlin?

  So this is something I'm really interested in, um, creativity. So how I define it is kind of is, is making novel associations between ideas, making connections that other people haven't seen before. But in order to do that, you need to first take in all of the facts, all of the information. So if you look at someone, say like Darwin's theory of evolution, he had to take in all the information, did all the research, and then based on that basic information or data, came up with a new way to connect it all in this kind of theory that, well, maybe Lamarck, but other people didn't think of before in, in that way. Right? And so that I think is creativity, is coming up with novel ideas based on what everybody else knows, but no one thought of before. And by the way, usually when somebody

• 8:34Heather Berlin?

  comes up with it, everyone goes, oh yeah, of course, that's so obvious, but yet nobody else thought of it.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is a, a common definition of genius, where they say a genius is the person that sees what everyone else has seen, but thinks what no one else has thought. And so that's an interesting way, but then if that's the source of our creativity, that argues for learning as much as you can, so that you have the, so at least you have the capacity Reference points. To, to, to connect. Reference points. To restitch it together, because without it, you've got, you've got no foundations for being a genius. Is that a fair way to put it?

• 9:09Heather Berlin?

  Absolutely. I think all sort of geniuses, or when they say they have these flashes of insight, you know, it doesn't come out of nowhere. They've actually put in the work, they've put in the time, they've collected all the information. And then usually, most of what happens is happening unconsciously, outside of awareness, which is why sleep is very important for coming up with new ideas, because the brain is consolidating the information. But you have to put in the work, take in the information, let your brain mull it over, and then come up with these great insights.

• 9:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I tell a quick story? When I was in college, and I, well, in calculus, all right, probably most kids out there who are listening haven't had calculus yet, but you will, if you, or you should. Calculus is a brilliant branch of mathematics, very advanced. But there's a rule in calculus called Leopold's Rule. Leopold, and it's almost spelt like hospital, but it's Leopold. Leopold's Rule, and it's invoked in calculus. It's a very simple rule. It's, it's deceptively simple. And I'd never heard of this guy, Leopold, before, all right? And I'm in the depths of my college's library, the math library. And

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  then I, I'm just, you know, meandering, and I come upon a shelf, and the shelf must have been two meters wide, and it was the collected works of Leopold. And I thought to myself, I don't know any of the rest of this work, but I know this one simple rule that applies to all of what we do in calculus. So then I thought to myself, did it really take that much life's investment in thinking about this problem to come up with the, one of the simplest rules that calculus knows?

• 10:59Heather Berlin?

  I mean, I think the answer is yes, right? But, you know, even if you want to explain something in the simplest way, usually, that's the hardest part to do. Right? The easiest part, in a sense, is collecting all the information, being able to simplify it and unify it under one, let's say, rule.

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a whole other thing. It's another, another.

• 11:43Chuck Nice?

  Is there anything that you can do, mechanisms that you can use for the teachers that are listening, to rules of simplification like that make learning easier? What you just said about making things, culling it down to where it's something that's so digestible, are there any rules that make our brains receive information more easily?

• 12:07Heather Berlin?

  I would say yes, but maybe in a slightly different way. I think, so I was talking about dopamine and how dopamine is motivating, right? And one thing that we know is that curiosity activates these reward networks. And if you could motivate kids to, just get them curious about the topic or the information, that will drive them. Like, why did Neil go and start looking through the books in the library? Like, he was motivated by something, maybe. He was curious. And that's what drives, you want the motivation to be coming internally to learn, not, "Oh, you need to learn this so you can, you know..."

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, or else, or else, right?

• 12:46Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But so that...

• 12:47Heather Berlin?

  You want that drive to come internally.

• 12:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That dovetails beautifully with, I think, an important question here, especially for this conference. What do we know about all that's been said about different types of learners? Right? There are people who need to experience it to learn it, or to read it, or to... What is known about this? Because there's so much written, but what does a neuroscientist say?

• 13:11Heather Berlin?

  Well, you know, this is actually a myth that's been perpetrated for many years, and it's very hard to break. So although...

• 13:19Heather Berlin?

  There are different types of, you know, this idea of different intelligences. Some people are more, you know, visual and/or auditory, or they have more kinesthetic abilities.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kinesthetic would be movement or physical body engagement.

• 13:33Heather Berlin?

  Hence my, yeah.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kinesthetic, okay.

• 13:35Heather Berlin?

  My kinesthetic. Yes, there are individual differences in terms of those abilities. However, when you do a meta-analysis, which is basically looking across a whole group of many studies and seeing what the kind of final results are. Teaching styles did not make a difference and did not, in terms of trying to tailor a teaching style to a specific ability, didn't change how the students learned. So, the idea that tailoring a teaching method toward a student's particular abilities isn't necessarily going to make them learn the information better, which is interesting. However, there are certain individual differences that do matter. Some people are better learning independently.

• 14:19Heather Berlin?

  They want to be kind of left alone, just give me the, you know, the books and I'll do it on my own. Others need a more structured approach and they need more scaffolding or help along the way. So those different learning styles, yes, but not the ones that, in that kind of traditional sense of like, oh, he's a visual learner, she's an auditory.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But wait, but I, but wait, but wait. When I think of science museums, some of them are very focused on sort of kinetic exhibits, where there are levers and buttons and, and you sort of set the class loose into the exhibit floor and there they go. And, you know, that's a different experience than setting them loose in a room of books. Okay? I'm thinking, if I'm gonna learn something, I'm gonna go to the museum floor first and that might excite me and maybe later I'll open a book. But to so I'm it doesn't ring true what you're saying.

• 15:18Chuck Nice?

  It sounds to me like they are the connective tissue of the learning process. Like what Neil is talking about is what leads to the curiosity that you were talking about that creates this internal drive to learn. So you start off pulling levers and pushing buttons. But what that does is it incites you internally so that when you're in the room of books, you now want to know even more.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll go with that, Heather. What do you think of that?

• 15:44Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, so what I was gonna say is different than the idea of different learning styles. I think across the board, having experiential learning is always best. If you can do something hands on and get somebody involved in a real world scenario, situation, tie the information. You know that often kids say, oh, what does this have to do with the real world? You know, why do I have to learn this calculus nonsense? Right? But if you have a real world problem, whether it's hands on or trying to figure something out that you're dealing with in your everyday life, that opens up, like Chuck said, the doors of curiosity.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then to Chuck's point, what we're really saying, and I remember I work in a museum, so I think about this a lot. And I've and I don't always embrace the concept in every exhibit, or at least the intent. So not to get into the weeds here, but there are many exhibits where, you know, there are official educators and they're there and they're analyzing it and they say, well, what is the principle of this exhibit? And what's what idea do you want to convey? And and then they test the person before and after the exhibit to see what they've learned. And I'm saying, people, they're spending four minutes in front of this exhibit, whereas they spend hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks, months and months in your classroom.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what what burden are you putting upon the exhibit design for it to do your teaching? Maybe instead, because if you fail at that, then the exhibit's got nothing going for it. But if instead, getting to Chuck's point, if the exhibit just simply excited you, and even if you got no learned testable knowledge from it, if you say, oh, my gosh, these colors are amazing, now let me go learn more.

• 17:26Heather Berlin?

  Yes, I think that that is going to entail a restructuring of the entire education system.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's yours, sit out there. But if, if, if instead, oh, so I'll give you an example, can I just give an example? And you were talking about emotions, alright? Again, I have a museum outlook on this, but of course, museum trips are common for schools. So, um, but you get to hear this at least firsthand. People who visited, for example, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. And I said, "Did you go as a kid?" "Yeah." And I'll say, "What was your favorite exhibit there?" Okay, and I'll write down in advance what I already know will have been their favorite exhibit.

• 18:09Chuck Nice?

  The X.

• 18:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, no.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But wait, I, I want to keep you in suspense just briefly. There's another museum in Philadelphia, here in the United States. The Franklin Institute, named for Benjamin Franklin. A famous scientist who on the side was one of the founding fathers of the United States. I, I say, "What was your favorite exhibit there as a kid?" I will write it down. And I get the right answer 100% of the time. Okay, people go to the, the Exploratorium in San Francisco. And I'll say, "What was your favorite exhibit?" I'll write it down. Every time I've done this experiment, I get the right answer. Because, alright, you know what they were? So, Museum of Science and Industry, it was the coal mine exhibit. Where you go into a shaft and, alright, it's that.

• 18:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the, at the, at the Franklin Institute, it's the living heart. Again, I don't know if these exhibits are still there. The liv- hey, hey, Chuck, you're from Philadelphia!

• 19:04Chuck Nice?

  And the heart is the bomb!

• 19:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you walk in and it's like-

• 19:08Chuck Nice?

  You are inside of a living heart!

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they've got the speakers and you feel the pumping, okay? And it's Exploratorium, a whole room of exhibits, but I know which one people remembered. It's the one where they create a tornado that's the size of the room. Okay, and in each one of those cases, you're not coming away saying, "I now know the, the thermodynamics and the, and the fluid mechanics of a tornado." No, but you want to know about tornadoes, alright? And the same with the coal mine, and the same with the heart. So, these are things that are, that are bigger than you are, alright?

• 19:42Chuck Nice?

  Is it true they had to shut down the coal mine exhibit because little kids kept getting black lungs?

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Again, these are old memories and I haven't checked on them lately. But Heather, I'm just putting in your lap. The idea that these are exhibits that I don't think the goal was to to give someone an exam to see what they learned after the exhibit. And and if but they created an indelible memory in everyone who's experienced it.

• 20:08Heather Berlin?

  So I think one of the reasons why is that we are all born natural scientists. Right. And that is how we naturally evolved to learn and by experiencing things in the world. This whole school system was set up after the fact. Right. But the way our brains work is to have experiences in the world and be naturally curious and learn from them. And we are driven by we get like a high, a reward by getting an answer to a question. So Neil, to be very meta here, the way you just set up that whole scenario. And then I knew the best, you know, exhibit here and here and here. And we are on bated breath, waiting for like, what's the answer?

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 20:48Heather Berlin?

  But that is that that's what learning is. It's like, set it up, set it up. And we are natural curiosity will come through. We want to have answers to questions. We find ourselves in this world around us. We're trying to make sense of it when a lot of it is chaotic. You know, what before we understood weather patterns, people were trying to find connections to try to predict when the rain was going to come. And that's how we naturally experience the world from the day we're born.

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Chuck, you agreed with me as a native of Philadelphia that that's your most memorable.

• 21:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, absolutely. Listen, without a doubt, I mean, I the the heart in the Franklin Institute. And the Franklin Institute was a place that I went many, many, many times as a kid. And it's a shame because I know that now there are school systems that don't fund field trips because they don't have the money. And I know that that's something that happens now throughout the nation where they have stripped this ability for schools to get in a bus and go somewhere with the kids and take them out of the classroom and put them in an immersive environment where they are stimulated on every single sense in every single way.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Heather, I I read this and I was like, yes, this is true. That as adults, we remember school trips.

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Long after they have occurred, you remember school trips even when you don't even remember the name of the teacher who took you on the school trip. There's something about leaving the school environment and then absorbing an entire other world out there and then returning. This would happen if you visited a planetarium, all right? Because you can't do that necessarily in a classroom. So just to echo Chuck's point.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  So what about this, Heather? From a neurological standpoint, experientially, can we achieve at least a close facsimile to some of this stuff with like, what's that Oculus or whatever that thing?

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, virtual reality.

• 22:42Chuck Nice?

  Thank you. Virtual reality. Neurologically, are we close to it?

• 22:48Heather Berlin?

  Just to make a point, a finer point on this, there are two types of memory. And one is sort of called semantic memory, which is the memory of knowledge of facts, you know, just taking in the information. And then there's called, what's called episodic memory, which is you're remembering your experiences. And, you know, that's going on the trip, remembering the bus ride, remembering, and then along the way you learn some facts, but they're tied into your experience. And those are two different memory systems.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an important thing to know if you're designing a school system. Oh, my gosh. Well, to this point of virtual reality, just before we go to Q and A, but we've just, we are still kind of in a pandemic year where almost all learning had to now take place through a video screen or through a computer screen. And is that, there are people, I think, who have struggled with that. Could you comment on the difference between learning from a human being or an image of a human being, even if it's a live image, they're not there in flesh and blood, versus someone who's sitting in the room with you? Can you think about that difference in your field?

• 23:55Heather Berlin?

  Absolutely. You know, so a lot of it has to do with, again, how our brains evolve to communicate and socialize. And when we're in these kind of 2D Zoom worlds, first of all, we're not making direct eye contact, right? I'm sort of looking at you on my screen, but not looking at you as if I'm looking into the camera, right? So we're not communicating in that way. There's something a little off. Our brain recognizes that. We're not picking up on odors. We're not picking up on body motions. All of this information that's coming in unconsciously is helping us learn. It's helping us pay attention, right? Because you're in that virtual world, but then I can look behind me and I'm in a whole different world over here. And there's a kind of separation between us. We're not embodied in the same space, which I think is meaningful.

• 24:39Heather Berlin?

  But that being said, I think there are ways in which there are some advantages with the virtual learning. You know, you can create kind of video gamification. You know, you can socialize learning in those ways. If you use it in creative ways, it could be beneficial or at least supplement.

• 24:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a very important point, Heather, what you're saying. Not to put words in your mouth, but actually I am. You're saying that the moment we all got pushed to Zoom classes, if you did that, trying to do exactly what you previously did in real life, it's bound to fail in some fundamental ways. But if instead you say, here's a different way of interacting with my students. How can I best exploit that, those tools, rather than try to mimic something that isn't this at all? Is that a fair way to say that?

• 25:31Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. You know, obviously with the pandemic, it happened so quickly that there was no time to kind of recalibrate, right? But I think, you know, as we can now, maybe in retrospect, and now that we have time on our hands a little bit more, we can start developing the online tools that we have in better.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the next pandemic.

• 25:51Heather Berlin?

  For the next pandemic, obviously, yes. So it will be more.

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, damn.

• 26:14Chuck Nice?

  Hey, we'd like to acknowledge the following Patreon patrons. Steve Vera, Mike Ness, and Stefan Greenway. Thanks, guys. Great to give you a shout out. And for anybody else who would like their very own Patreon shout out, please go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let's see what Dave is gonna bring to us from the greater universe of the world. Dave, come on on. There you go.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  I am back. I tell you, there's too many good questions. Let's dive into them. There's some really great ones. And I'm gonna, there's a lot of questions about dopamine and I'm gonna rephrase it in an interesting way. Because we, before we started, the group here was having a chat about classical music. And I think it's well-known that Beethoven composed while he was walking. Was that because, did the dopamine help him? Or was the activity, or was there some connection with that?

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there are people who have habits that they associate with creative moments. If you generalize that inquiry, that's an interesting question.

• 27:32Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I mean, I think with exercise, number one, you're getting more blood to the brain. You know, you're getting more oxygen to the brain. So it always helps with cognition and thinking. But the other thing with, let's say, going for a walk, getting outside.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No one ever really did anything great locked in a closet. Is that what you're saying? Starved of oxygen?

• 27:51Heather Berlin?

  Yes, that's not the best place to come up with your creative ideas. However, what I think is really important is that when you go out for a walk or go do something physical, in a way, you're shutting off a certain networking. But you're kind of not thinking. You're letting your mind go. You're letting it kind of be free and unconstrained, right? When you're kind of thinking about trying to memorize something or taking information, you're having that very convergent thinking. You're limited. But when you kind of let go and let your mind go, that's when, again, these novel associations between ideas can come and the inspiration. And the thought. So sometimes just literally getting out there and being physical

• 28:32Heather Berlin?

  forces you to not think. Like when you have writer's block or you're stuck, get up, go for a walk, go play tennis, go mountain climbing. And you might, it might unblock you in that way. And so I think a lot of these great philosophers and musicians and creative people would go for, Nietzsche would go for walks all the time and he would come up with his ideas as well. So I think there is something to that.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. Dave, what else you got?

• 28:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a really good related question. This is from, uh, Wilder Pertle. And he's asking-

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From where? Where are these? I want to hear the world here, please.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  I don't know where he's from. Where are you from? Um, let's see if we're finding the chat. But, um, so there is this model, model, he calls it AVK. I've seen VARC where it's visual, auditory, uh, reading, writing and kinesthetic. But he's saying that, well, does maybe the different styles just mix it up and make the learning more interesting? And that's what we're, we're seeing.

• 29:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. Hmm. So it cuts the monotony of whatever else you'd be doing.

• 29:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. So today we'll do visual, then later we're going to do auditory and then later we're going to do hands-on.

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you think of that, Heather?

• 29:39Heather Berlin?

  I like that a lot because I think it has more to do with, um, the novelty. So the thing with dopamine that gets it going is change, novelty, and that keeps. So if somebody's just droning on that classic like Bueller.

• 29:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:52Heather Berlin?

  You guys-

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

• 29:53Heather Berlin?

  From Ferris Bueller's Day Off, there's this really drone, like boring teacher. And it's like, Bueller, Bueller, and it's just mundane. But that's not a great way to learn. But the changing it up, different activities, you know, today we're going to do this, tomorrow we're doing something else. Keeps it fresh, keeps it exciting.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, that actor was a former, actual former speechwriter for Richard Nixon, by the way.

• 30:19Chuck Nice?

  His name is Ben Stein.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ben Stein. He's actually an entertaining comedian.

• 30:25Chuck Nice?

  Can I, can I ask you this from Cynthia?

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh Chuck is checking out the questions too. Oh my god.

• 30:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, go for it Chuck.

• 30:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, go for it Chuck.

• 30:33Heather Berlin?

  Changing it up.

• 30:34Chuck Nice?

  How good is IQ at predicting your intelligence? Can a medium IQ, provided it works hard, do the same thing as somebody with a 140 plus? First of all, is IQ a real thing?

• 30:47Heather Berlin?

  Oh, not really. So, so, you know, IQ. What we do when I measure somebody's abilities, we're looking at different cognitive abilities. So somebody might be really good in sort of visual spatial processing. Some may be, might be good at, at, at memory, at verbal abilities. There are all these different kinds of abilities. Everybody has a different, what we call a neurocognitive profile. Like a thumbprint, right? Different areas of special, better abilities than others. And then this IQ score is like taking all of these different abilities and trying to average it all together into this one sort of number. Which I find is, doesn't, is not very meaningful, right?

• 31:29Heather Berlin?

  Unless it's at the extremes. So, you know, when you have somebody who has severe mental disability and there are, you know, three standard deviations below the norm. Then, you know, that is a good indicator that they might need special help or whatever it may be. And then again, if you have, say, three standard deviations above the norm. These people are, are going to need maybe more enriched teaching programs, right? Because their brains are working a little bit differently. So I think it's okay for like a kind of indicator at the extremes. But other than that, you know, the difference between a 115 IQ and a 120 or what, you know, it does, it's kind of meaningless. So I take it with a grain of salt.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I add to that Heather? Cause I've, I've done a fair amount of thinking on this topic. Not from a neuroscientist's perspective, but just as a person who enjoys academics and learning. And in other words, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I'm, I'm kind of smart.

• 32:26Chuck Nice?

  Somebody enjoys learning. Yeah, I've never looked at this from a a no-. But, you know, speaking as one of the world's most foremost science educators.

• 32:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here's my point. I have, this is, this is a true fact. I've never had an IQ test in my life. I attended public schools in New York City my whole life. They do not administer IQ tests in public schools the way they often do in private schools. And I thought about it and I said, I'm glad I don't know my IQ score. Because if it were low, and I knew that early on, what would that have done to my ambitions? What would, what would I have said? You know, I really like the universe. No, but my IQ says I'll never do it. So I'll take up something else. And then I thought, suppose it's really high? And then I said, yeah, I couldn't do anything. And then like, how, well, how would that, what would that do to my relationship

• 33:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to other people and my attitude towards them and my, it would turn me into a, you know, into an obnoxious, and, and so I just worried what force it would have on who and what I would become. So I said, I don't care. I don't care. I will be where my ambitions take me. And I can tell you this, that IQ does not code for ambition. And for me, ambition is what drives this world.

• 33:47Chuck Nice?

  And I can also tell you this, only smart people say they don't care what their IQ is.

• 33:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, I, I just didn't want any person, place, thing, or number to get between me and what I wanted to become in life. That's all I'm saying. And you know, that people who have whatever challenges they do, they can have ambitions that can get them much farther than anyone would have said they would, would have gone. And let me tell this, just while we're here, I, I might have said this, have we done this five times already, Dave, or something? Let me just, if I said it before, I'm saying it again. All right. In my K through 12, kindergarten through high school, and all the teachers I've ever had, none of them would have pointed to me in their class and say, hey, he, he'll

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  go far. Watch for him. He's gonna, none of them. None of them. Meanwhile, I've known since I was nine years old that I wanted to be an astrophysicist, but none of them had these cues. None of them saw my ambitions. They didn't know I was head of an astronomy club that I just created, or that I bought a telescope by walking other people's dogs and using that to then create a whole world that wasn't showing up in the teacher's classroom. And that's who I was, and I knew I was that. So I'm not gonna let the teacher or the... and, and, and, you got me started here. Sorry. I'm just, okay, and, and, and, and, I was gonna tweet this, but I said, no, it'd be too controversial. I won't. But I would tell you here and now, okay?

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For every student who does not get an A on an exam, there's a teacher telling them what they should not be when they grow up. And I, and I object. I object to that mode of interaction between a system that's trying to educate you and a person who's trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up.

• 35:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay, but isn't there a balance there, Neil? Let's be for real, because on the one hand, you don't want to discourage anyone from being there or realizing their true potential in life. But on the other hand, there are people who create unrealistic desires and expectations for children by not telling them, uh, certain things, like the, the mom who's just like, "Look at you, baby. You can sing. Don't you listen to them. You can sing, baby. You can sing. You can sing." And the kid is toned down, wouldn't know a note if a note came up and punched it in the throat, and he's, "Ah, ah, ah." And,

• 36:21Chuck Nice?

  "Oh, don't you worry, baby. You can sing." So where is that balance?

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather, say something. Chuck, Chuck, did your parents tell you? You're funny.

• 36:36Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm gonna tell you the truth, Dave. You know what my parents told me more than anything?

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shut up.

• 36:43Chuck Nice?

  And look at me now!

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Heather, say something here. Bail us out.

• 36:48Heather Berlin?

  Oh, yeah, it's the nature nurture kind of debate and and I do think that there are certain, let's say, genetic predispositions that people are born with. There are studies that show that. For example, musical ability is one of them. Um, some people are just born like with perfect pitch and, you know, or athletic abilities. And so like, I'm never going to be the best, you know, basketball player because I'm not a certain height, let's say, perhaps. But given that, within our sort of, I think the genetics is what creates our boundaries, perhaps the limitations of of of how high we can go or or low. But the motivation that you were talking about, Neil, is what pushes us to our greatest, um, to the the height of where we can go within our genetic

• 37:29Heather Berlin?

  boundaries. And so somebody might be born with a predisposition for a huge, a high IQ, but they never do anything with it. They're not motivated. Then somebody else who might have a lower IQ on paper is so motivated, they're at the top of their scale, they're doing way better than that.

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's my whole point. That's the, that's all I'm trying to say here.

• 37:45Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 37:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that.

• 37:47Heather Berlin?

  Right, of course. But but like, sort of Chuck's point with the singing ability, you know, that person may be practice, practice, practice, and they'll get as good as they can get, but they just don't have the vocal cords to get any further. But I think the people who reach the highest heights are those who have a genetic ability plus the motivation to get to those.

• 38:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but I would say for practically every truly successful person in life, in business, in finance, in politics, and go to every single one of them and to a person, they will be stories in their life about people telling them that they that they won't succeed or that they should not pursue. They all have these failure stories. And so I just don't want to presume that it's a given that someone says, oh, you'll never be good at that. I'm going to use that as an excuse to be even better than you ever thought of. And that happened to my father. And that I didn't I tell the story? That happened to my father. He was in high school and then in

• 38:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  gym class. And and my father is a a muscular, right? And the teacher said to him, look at Cyril Tyson. He has the body that will never be good at track. Because they were about to enter the track and field unit of the gym class. And my father said to himself, no one is going to tell me what I can't be in life. He used that as motivation to take up track.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And within five years, he was world class and had the fifth fastest time in the world in the event that he specialized in. So it's examples like that. The fact that that even exists at all as an example tells me, I don't give a rat's ass about what you think my genetic limits are. Because my ambitions, as far as I'm concerned, transcend it all.

• 39:33Chuck Nice?

  Well, it sounds to me like you're making a case for negative motivation. As far as I'm concerned. As far as I'm concerned, if you're a teacher, you should tell a kid that can't do anything. Because then they will go on and achieve the highest heights of everything.

• 39:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dave, give me some more questions.

• 39:49Heather Berlin?

  Wait, can I say one thing? I have to call out my high school guidance counselor in the context of this, who, because I was a very good student academically, but I tend occasionally cut class. I'm just saying, I was a little, you know, I cut class occasionally. So my guidance counselor said, I said, I need the college applications. At the time, there was no online. The guidance counselor had to give them to you. And he said, don't even bother applying to college. You're never going to go anywhere anyway. And didn't give me the applications. And I had to drive to the school myself, go to their offices, get the applications physically, fill them out myself, no help from the guidance counselor. So I just want to call out my high school guidance counselor for giving me the motivation to excel.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  Heather, is there something going on in your mind when you get that negative feedback that that triggers dopamine or, you know, some reaction that makes some people? A lot of people are like that.

• 40:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, why do some people use the negative force as a positive driver? And others absorb it and then it squashes their ambitions? What's the difference there? That'd be useful to know if we can harness that.

• 40:52Heather Berlin?

  That is a good question. Yeah. You know, that has a lot to do, a lot more to do with self-esteem, to be honest. So people who have a very high self-esteem take that criticism and say, you know, "No, thank you. I'm gonna show you, because I know internally I'm better than that." I don't, you know, but if you don't have that confidence, you absorb it, and it can actually bring you down and make you less motivated. So I don't think it works well for everybody, that sort of negative style in that sense. It depends on how it interacts with your self-esteem and your confidence.

• 41:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Can I ask a question for Cynthia Basin? I know my times tables because I recited them while I walked to the bus a half mile from school each day. Okay, uphill both ways.

• 41:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the snow.

• 41:40Chuck Nice?

  In the snow. However, the reason why I asked that question to her is because that's a rote learning, and then you have, like, my kids, they don't do that. The teachers do not give them any...

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it's been falling out of favor over the years.

• 41:57Chuck Nice?

  So what is, what's going on there for both of those things? And what are the merits of, like, rote learning versus other types of learning?

• 42:08Heather Berlin?

  Well, I think there's just something also with the physical activity and the rote learning. Like, sometimes people have a pace back and forth. The motor cortex in the brain is close to other areas of the brain that instantiate, that sort of take in that information. And so there's something about the pace of moving and...

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so motor cortex of the brain, that specifically means what? Motor cortex?

• 42:30Heather Berlin?

  It's the part of the brain that controls your body movement. There's like a strip of the brain that controls all the body movements. And it's right part of the, just in the sort of back part of the prefrontal cortex, where a lot of the higher-level learning takes place. So they're very intimately connected. And so you stimulate one part of the brain, and because they're all connected, it starts to stimulate the other parts that you need to use for thinking. Um, so that's one thing. And in terms of memorization, look, I think there, there is something to that, just practicing rote memory at some level, because it, it, it's teaching your brain, it's, it's sort of gearing up those connections, so that you can better have a better memory in general. So I don't, I'm not against rote memorization. I just don't, I think that that

• 43:15Heather Berlin?

  can be a piece of learning, but not the entire, you know, there needs to be a richer context with, for that information to be absorbed.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  There's a really good, a related question. This is way in the beginning, and it was from Eduardo Arujopredhara. I hope I have that right. And he's asking you specifically, is there any study about the impact of technology and learning on the brain? And I just want to expand on that a little bit. It's like, you know how sports, technology has transformed sports in many ways? Has technology transform, transformed learning?

• 43:47Heather Berlin?

  Absolutely. I mean, now, you know, in the classrooms, I mean, well, depending on the school, obviously, and what they have access to, but, you know, they're giving kids like iPads now to learn on, and they're, they're using, you know, they're trying to incorporate these techniques in the classroom.

• 44:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Heather, let me make this more controversial.

• 44:03Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are entire educational philosophies that reject the infusion of technology into the classroom, on the grounds that somehow it will disrupt what would be an authentic learning environment. So what would you say to these educational philosophies that are at odds with what role technology might or could play in this whole enterprise?

• 44:27Heather Berlin?

  So like anything else that sort of humans create, I think it's in how we use it. So if we use it as a tool that is interactive with a real human, not a replacement for, because the best learning happens interactively with real humans, I think. But you can supplement it with these tools. And depending on how we use it, it could be, of course, for good or evil. Um, you know, and so, you know, the answer is kind of both, right? Depending on how it's used, it could be a detriment, or it could be something that, you know, bolsters up our education. And I think we're in, still in that early stage of trying to figure out what the best, how the best way to incorporate technology into the classroom.

• 45:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because all things, all things considered, the technology is a relatively new thing in the history of education, right? So I wouldn't be surprised if it did take one or two generations to get the bugs out.

• 45:18Speaker 03

  Well, and education adopts technology slowly, slower than, you know, consumers do. So it'll take even longer, right?

• 45:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, Pedro Silva says this, kids use too much video games and these video games can be used to teach physics. Use with some help from kids to understand more.

• 45:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wasn't Angry Birds test a lot of physics knowledge, I think? Angry Birds, I mean, there are some video games that use more cognitive abilities than others, I would think, right, Heather?

• 45:50Heather Berlin?

  There are certain, you know, things kids can pick up from video games. There's like speed of processing speed and paying attention to multiple things. But I think there are even better ways to use the technology in that sort of gamification way. You know, like my daughter was using this thing with coding. But, you know, you code this like friendly robot to go through these adventures. And so there's like motivation there to learn the coding, you know, making it fun. You're actually learning a skill set, but you're doing it while creating or playing this game. And I think that kind of integration of technology is creative and can be really helpful, rather than just sitting there playing, you know, I don't know, Angry Birds.

• 46:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's a definite consequence of the video game era is that when I was growing up, to be accused of being all thumbs meant you were clumsy. Now, all thumbs meant you were quite dexterous on a video game. You don't hear I'm all thumbs anymore. That's just one. We got time for just a couple more questions before we finish out the hour.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  But you said earlier that, you know, actually doing something, it helps cement things in your memory somehow. But also too, is that innate? You know, I've seen things, like everybody knows you put a toddler on, you know, in their high chair and the first thing they do is they throw their Cheerios on the floor. And are they testing gravity? Are they testing Newton's law of gravitation?

• 47:18Speaker 03

  I mean, are they experimenting? And do we know that? Could we know that? Right?

• 47:21Heather Berlin?

  Yes, and you know, I'm gonna recommend a book called The Scientist in the Crib by a developmental psychologist, Alison Gottlieb, who, which covers all this research, um, just, just that, saying, these things that toddlers are doing are, are experimenting and learning physics. Yes, they are learning about gravity, they're all of, all of it. And so, like, you know, I was saying before, if you can scale that up to the adult's brain now, and create a new interactive, obviously, we've picked up on a lot of the, um, physics through our experience over time, and now we need to create big, you know, large exhibitions, or whatever it may be, that make us continue to be curious about the world around us.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Is that what you mean?

• 48:02Heather Berlin?

  And explore.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  What do you mean, when you say scale up, you mean just more scale up in terms of

• 48:07Heather Berlin?

  Uh, lore.

• 48:08Speaker 03

  of size and impact?

• 48:10Heather Berlin?

  Well, not necessarily size, but creativity. So maybe for an adult, it is, um, the, the experience is, how do we figure out with all these pieces, how to build this robot? You know, and you have to start to figure it out. Whereas as a kid, you're using Legos to understand how

• 48:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Dave, I think when she meant, when she said scale up, she, she meant, at some point, take the teenager out of the high chair. Okay?

• 48:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Put them in another kind of environment. And Heather, I just wanna push back mildly on you. If your, if your toddler pushes the Cheerios to the floor, and does not watch it fall, they're not doing a science experiment.

• 48:46Chuck Nice?

  They're just, they're just saying, F you.

• 48:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Making a mess.

• 48:50Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's what I'm saying.

• 48:51Heather Berlin?

  When they throw it in your face.

• 48:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not physics, that's a whole other thing.

• 48:56Chuck Nice?

  By the, by the way, the, the best, the best joke I ever heard about, uh, baby cognition was, where we were on a plane, and a baby would not stop crying. It just kept crying so violently. And, uh, a guy said, God, that baby must be really annoying to that mother. And then, I said, no. What if that baby is crying because he knows we're on the wrong approach vector?

• 49:29Chuck Nice?

  And he does not have language to tell us yet.

• 49:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a, that would be a weird sci-fi storytelling right there.

• 49:44Heather Berlin?

  I often think of children's babies like a little bit, they're, they're actually, we do make this analogy. They're kind of like what adult brain is like on psychedelics in a way. They haven't developed a filter system. So everything is coming in, it's unstructured and everything feels new and interesting and exciting. So people often describe that when they're on these psychedelics like, whoa, look at my hands. Or, you know, everything looks different, interesting, they're trying to.

• 50:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why adults are not intrigued by someone dangling keys in front of them.

• 50:15Heather Berlin?

  Where the kid is like. And they have, yeah, whoa, keys.

• 50:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, guys.

• 50:21Heather Berlin?

  It's easy to distract them.

• 50:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta land this plane to follow the analogy there.

• 50:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Heather, it's always great to have you on StarTalk and thanks for giving your time, not only to StarTalk, but for this virtual conference for teachers. And it's always great when we know exactly who our audience is because that can fine tune all that we have to share with them. Chuck, always good to have you, dude.

• 50:43Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 50:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Dave, you're in the driver's seat from now on, dude.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  You got it. Well, thank you very much. That was fascinating. We're going to continue the conversation all day, I'm sure. And I learned a lot of pilot notes here already. I have a ton of questions. We'll have to do this again.

• 51:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I have to give my official sign off, which is I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, bidding you to keep looking up.