StarTalk Live: Big Brains at BAM (Part 2)

Our tour of the human brain continues with Neil deGrasse Tyson, Eugene Mirman, neuroscientists Mayim Bialik and Dr. Heather Berlin and guests Michael Ian Black, Paul Rudd and Bill Nye. Read more and listen to the full show: http://www.startalkradio.net/show/startalk-live-big-brains-at-bam-part-2/

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.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist and director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. The following show is the second part of a live show we recorded on February 24, 2014, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, known to locals as BAM. In addition to my co-host, comedian Eugene Mirman, we were joined onstage that night by neuroscientist Heather Berlin, Bill Nye the Science Guy, comedian Michael Ian Black, the actor Paul Rudd, and star of the hit TV show The Big Bang Theory, Mayim Bialik.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NASA did a study on neuroplasticity, your brain in space. Okay, don't you have to bring it back to space? So, in space, you are in zero G, and so in zero G, your sense of balance, which requires your body's awareness of gravity, other things, your vision, your sense of day and night, because in space, if you're orbiting Earth, the sun rises and sets every 45 minutes. So this could totally mess with your rhythms. And they did a study, and they found out that the brain has plasticity to it, where in fact you will completely adapt to those changed conditions. Not only that, the brain builds new brain cells, and in some cases, permanently responds to this environment. And so because of the permanence of some of

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  this plasticity, they're suggesting that you should not bring kids into space, because they don't know what a permanent change in a kid would be like as an adult.

• 1:53Michael Ian Black?

  What is it like in an adult? What happens?

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You go crazy.

• 1:57Eugene Mirman?

  What's the result of this neuroplasticity?

• 2:00Bill Nye?

  Well, I know people have their eyes changed shape, right?

• 2:02Eugene Mirman?

  Like squares, like they become a square?

• 2:07Eugene Mirman?

  That sounds kinda cool.

• 2:09Bill Nye?

  When you have the hard-boiled eggs and you compress them and...

• 2:12Mayim Bialik?

  Which part of the eye? I need to be more specific. Like the whole eye?

• 2:16Bill Nye?

  Guys who go into space with fighter pilot eyes come back and they don't have very good close-up or distance.

• 2:21Mayim Bialik?

  Ah, okay.

• 2:22Bill Nye?

  They need glasses when they get back, permanently.

• 2:24Heather Berlin?

  I'd be careful, though, when you say "permanent" changes, because if you're talking about neuroplasticity, if it could change one way, it could also change back another way. But I think the reason why not to bring developing brains into space or children is because there are critical periods of development. And if they miss certain stimuli during that critical period, then there could be problems.

• 2:40Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and you're talking about circadian rhythms, correct?

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Among other things, yeah.

• 2:43Mayim Bialik?

  So, talking about our awareness of day and night, you're saying those things can reset so that you have a normal body period that is shorter than what it is if you are on Earth?

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it really disrupts your sleep cycling.

• 2:53Mayim Bialik?

  Sure.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you don't get as deep a REM sleep in space as you do.

• 2:56Mayim Bialik?

  Right, so all of that developmentally would be really, really a bad idea.

• 2:59Speaker 06

  Not to mention, like, my kids are a pain in the ass on just like an hour-and-a-half flight.

• 3:07Speaker 06

  Could you imagine sending them to Mars?

• 3:11Bill Nye?

  I think you sorta can imagine.

• 3:14Eugene Mirman?

  I hope it would be like JetBlue, where you at least get like some television or something on the back of the seat.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here's what I wonder, Heather. If there's this neuroplasticity, where your body can adapt to stress in the ways that were measured in space, why don't we adapt more on Earth? Why do people stress out and end up in mental hospitals?

• 3:32Heather Berlin?

  Those are two very different questions.

• 3:36Mayim Bialik?

  I thought he was gonna ask about working a night shift.

• 3:38Heather Berlin?

  Exactly.

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, why are they two different questions? If your brain can adapt with all this plasticity that the neuroscientists are boasting of, then why do we have people just freaking out here on Earth?

• 3:48Heather Berlin?

  Well, okay, they're two separate things.

• 3:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me why.

• 3:51Heather Berlin?

  Well, this is one thing. I went around and actually met people with extraordinary abilities way outside the norm of what we think is possible. Extraordinary memory and a tolerance to pain.

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You hosted a TV show on...

• 3:59Heather Berlin?

  There was this Discovery Channel show called "Superhuman Showdown", and we went around the world to find people with these extraordinary abilities. One person could hold his breath underwater for 22 minutes.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And not be dead.

• 4:09Heather Berlin?

  And not be dead, and he could actually...

• 4:13Eugene Mirman?

  Could he talk to fish even just a little?

• 4:18Heather Berlin?

  But it's amazing how far we can actually push ourselves, our physiology and our brains. So I think a lot of what people stress about is they think they can't adapt, but really we can adapt well beyond what we think we're capable of doing. Why people are in mental institutions is another question. There's a lot of different reasons why people go insane, so to speak, but I don't think it's because of lack of neuroplasticity. Does that make sense?

• 4:36Mayim Bialik?

  I support that completely.

• 4:37Michael Ian Black?

  Is it because of heavy metal music? That beat?

• 4:42Heather Berlin?

  As I was saying, you can modify the brain within certain biological constraints. So if you're born with a certain predisposition or immunodystroptical differences in the brain, you can only push it so far. But we can definitely go far beyond what we think we can go.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if we see someone else who has ability, then can we all try to have that ability?

• 4:59Heather Berlin?

  And so these superhuman people who I met, they all practiced a lot, a lot of hours dedicated to it, but they also had certain, like, the guy who could hold his breath underwater had a greater lung capacity in general. He started out with that and then he pushed it further and further. So I think we can all go further within our particular range.

• 5:15Mayim Bialik?

  There is this book, The Sports Gene, that talks about the exceptional athletic ability that we don't really think about when we see Olympic athletes. They're at a whole different physiological level. We would think, oh, Michael Phelps is a great swimmer. No, like, his arms are really, really long, his feet are practically webbed, like, his body is different than ours. He's really different.

• 5:33Bill Nye?

  No, what is weird, when you watch swimmers at that high level, they go about twice as fast as a normal person.

• 5:41Mayim Bialik?

  Sure. Their bodies are, like, I could swim all day, I'll never look like that because I was not born with the genetic predisposition to have really long arms and a webbed feet.

• 5:48Michael Ian Black?

  I think you look great. I mean, doesn't it look great, everybody? That's really what matters. I have a question, but on a somewhat more pedestrian level, talking about sports. You see certain populations, like people from the Dominican Republic, which is such a small country, but have a large portion of people entering the major leagues of baseball. Is it because they have peer groups?

• 6:06Mayim Bialik?

  This is such a dangerous question, we know you're about to ask. It's so dangerous.

• 6:11Michael Ian Black?

  I was not going into racism, although I will if you want me to. No, it was about something somebody else asked, about observing other people in peer groups ascending to higher levels and therefore seeing firsthand what's possible. Does that make you more susceptible to those possibilities?

• 6:26Mayim Bialik?

  I think that's a huge sociological, environmental, behavioral influence, but I don't know.

• 6:32Michael Ian Black?

  I know, I'm writing my dissertation.

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have they found a gene for baseball? That's really what they're asking, right?

• 6:39Heather Berlin?

  You're born with certain genetic predispositions towards, you know, maybe better athletic prowess, but it gets dangerous.

• 6:45Mayim Bialik?

  Different distribution of muscle fibers, for example, in runners.

• 6:48Heather Berlin?

  The thing we're dancing around is it can be very controversial. There was a book written called "The Bell Curve" about intelligence, and it said, "We did this whole study and looked at populations, and X number of people from a certain type of background have the highest IQ and others don't." And it really can lead to...

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ashkenazi Jews.

• 7:01Heather Berlin?

  It was, happened to be Ashkenazi Jews, but it was... Who have the highest IQ? Who I think we, yeah.

• 7:09Speaker 07

  Wait, wait, me too, me too!

• 7:14Bill Nye?

  Another factor, as a baseball fan, another very strong motivator in those countries is you can play baseball all year. I was just in Minneapolis this morning. Very challenging, and that's because the snow is white, the ball's white.

• 7:30Bill Nye?

  And then you also have this...

• 7:31Speaker 07

  Now he's being racist.

• 7:35Bill Nye?

  You also have this extraordinary motivation of money. You can make it in the big leagues. And have you ever seen the World Baseball Classic?

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. It's mostly Latin American.

• 7:44Bill Nye?

  Extraordinary players.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 7:46Bill Nye?

  But it's one more click to hit it.

• 7:48Mayim Bialik?

  I'd like to change the topic.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, go on.

• 7:51Speaker 07

  Let's talk about eugenics for a moment.

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back! StarTalk Live at Vans!

• 8:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, I want to talk about sleep for a moment. Why the hell do we have to sleep? It's what a waste of time that is, I think to myself.

• 8:33Mayim Bialik?

  Did you just say, "Why the hell do we have to sleep"?

• 8:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes!

• 8:35Eugene Mirman?

  We could be literally learning karate instead.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm just saying.

• 8:40Eugene Mirman?

  Every time I sleep, I'm like, "I should be learning karate!"

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm reading, I'm learning, I'm having fun. I say, "Damn, I gotta go sleep, be semi-comatose for the next eight hours." If an alien came to Earth and you're having a great conversation with them, they say, "Excuse me, I have to lay semi-comatose for the next eight hours. I'll get back to you," they'll wonder, "What's wrong with you?"

• 8:59Eugene Mirman?

  Maybe they go down 16, you don't know.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I know, maybe.

• 9:02Heather Berlin?

  Like a baby.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why do we sleep?

• 9:04Heather Berlin?

  The latest theory that most of the neuroscientific evidence is pointing towards is the way the brain to sort of clean itself out. So during the day, you're taking in all this stimulation and it's almost impossible for your brain to kind of integrate all of it every day, it would be cluttered. So at night, what happens is there's sort of a pruning. It solidifies the information that it wants to keep.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whether or not it's accurate or correct or anything.

• 9:24Heather Berlin?

  Without this cleaning out process, they looked at people when you deprived them of sleep and it causes all sorts of problems, including it can relate to things like Alzheimer's because the plaques and tangles that form actually, that sleep is a kind of a way that helps clear out those plaques and, well, things that could potentially form the proteins.

• 9:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying people who don't get as much sleep as.

• 9:40Heather Berlin?

  No, well, no, no.

• 9:41Mayim Bialik?

  I knew you were gonna say that.

• 9:43Eugene Mirman?

  I'm just asking. To be clear, she's saying people with Alzheimer's are simply extremely sleepy.

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What conclusion are we to draw?

• 9:55Mayim Bialik?

  If you're sleepy, you're gonna get Alzheimer's.

• 9:59Eugene Mirman?

  That's how science works.

• 10:04Speaker 06

  So remember, play baseball.

• 10:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so.

• 10:09Heather Berlin?

  Well, like for memories, for example, like if you're studying for an exam, actually, you'll do better if you get a good night's sleep. It's not good to just cram the whole night before because the brain can then solidify the kind of associations that were made and get rid of the nonsense and the noise.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, but some people sleep five hours, others nine. Should the five-hour person be sleeping more or the nine-hour person be sleeping less?

• 10:30Heather Berlin?

  That, it's hard to say. No, I don't think there's an exact number on it. I mean, people, there's a lot of things out there that say you should get X number of hours of sleep, but really, everybody's different. Some people just don't need that much sleep.

• 10:39Mayim Bialik?

  I don't get a lot of sleep. My feeling is if I'm, if in general, we are productive, functional, getting the things done that we want to get done, there's gonna be some variability there for sure.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so also, if you don't get sleep, that's like a form of torture, right? Your brain goes crazy.

• 10:52Heather Berlin?

  What happens is people start to hallucinate, yeah, yeah. They start to sort of, because again, the brain isn't able to properly prune out and all the information can get kind of jumbled and keep.

• 11:01Mayim Bialik?

  Also, if you disrupt REM sleep.

• 11:02Heather Berlin?

  Exactly.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it is.

• 11:04Heather Berlin?

  REM sleep is where a lot of that happens.

• 11:05Speaker 06

  It is an individual thing because you have people like Edison or Winston Churchill or. You know, these high-functioning people who slept for four hours a night, or two hours a night.

• 11:13Heather Berlin?

  There's actually an extraordinary, a large number of people, like Bill Clinton is another one, Margaret Thatcher, they would only sleep for very few hours, but then they would take these power naps during the day. And there could be something to that, but they all said they, at least they take those little mini naps, and that maybe the brain can sort of revamp itself during that time period.

• 11:29Mayim Bialik?

  They also have a giant staff and many assistants.

• 11:32Eugene Mirman?

  Are you describing mini naps or hooking up periodically with people during the day?

• 11:37Eugene Mirman?

  Both sound relaxing.

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Depends on the people.

• 11:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what they found was that the REM sleep was disrupted by astronauts who, in orbit, see sunrise, sunset every 45 minutes. They couldn't get the rhythms going. Then usually you have to...

• 11:51Michael Ian Black?

  They could just pull down the shades, couldn't they?

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would have thought, I would have thought.

• 11:55Eugene Mirman?

  Those masks that cover your eyes?

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, like, yeah, I would have thought, you'd think. It's all coach class, that's the thing.

• 12:04Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, it doesn't come with a little thing with a...

• 12:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's in the little pouch. Tell me they flew the space shuttle coach class, and they didn't get the little eye cover.

• 12:13Heather Berlin?

  But studies show that if you deprive people particularly of REM sleep, that they have to make up for it later on, so that they'll have more hours of REM sleep when you allow them to sleep later.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so this is a feature of our human species, not a failure of our design.

• 12:29Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I mean, I mean, if there was, you know, if we could design it better without sleep, that'd be great, but so far it's...

• 12:33Michael Ian Black?

  But it's all species, right? There's no species that does not need sleep.

• 12:37Heather Berlin?

  I don't know that, I don't know.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sea jellies?

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Squid?

• 12:42Heather Berlin?

  Algae.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fish?

• 12:44Mayim Bialik?

  There are low metabolic periods, I would say, for all sorts of vertebrates, yes? I mean, at least.

• 12:49Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's always a rest period, there's a rest period, even if it's not what we call sleep, there is a rest period.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But from an evolutionary standpoint, one could ask, if it's a big advantage to need less sleep...

• 13:00Bill Nye?

  Would these people be more successful, become captains of industry and get extraordinarily wealthy?

• 13:05Mayim Bialik?

  Well, there must be something, well, the answer is there must be something advantageous, i.e. incorporating a tremendous amount of input from the day that can then help you make different kinds of decisions, more complicated decisions, correct?

• 13:16Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 13:16Mayim Bialik?

  The next day.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I see, so the digested information has more value to you the day after as it's for your survival.

• 13:22Mayim Bialik?

  If that were evolutionarily advantageous, that's why it would be retained.

• 13:25Heather Berlin?

  Thank you.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good.

• 13:27Heather Berlin?

  But there's some animals, I think there's, maybe it's dolphins, there's some animals that sleep with only half their brain and the other half is alert, is dolphins, where it's, so they're, okay, it's, part of them is aware for any sort of, let's say, predators coming, and then the other part is sleeping.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The people who sleep with their guns and swords, yes.

• 13:46Eugene Mirman?

  Samurai bears.

• 13:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And isn't true, like, lions sleep 20 hours a day, something like that?

• 13:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, is that true, Heather?

• 13:57Heather Berlin?

  I don't know everything about everything.

• 13:59Speaker 06

  That is true, you're a cognitive neuroscientist, do lions sleep 20 hours a day? They, uh, they do. They, they sleep for 20 hours a day.

• 14:08Heather Berlin?

  Was that Time Magazine?

• 14:10Speaker 06

  Uh, no.

• 14:11Speaker 07

  You're watching this with your kids?

• 14:12Speaker 06

  No, I, I went on safari once and, uh, it's true. And, uh, I, I remember learning that.

• 14:21Speaker 06

  And by the way, it's,

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul Rudd read it.

• 14:24Speaker 06

  The females do all of the hunting and then the male lions just go in and then eat first, swat away the kids, then, then they go back to sleep.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, it's just,

• 14:33Speaker 06

  So, any, they're called, and if there's a bunch of them, they're called a pride.

• 14:36Speaker 07

  Wow.

• 14:39Speaker 07

  A pride of lions.

• 14:43Bill Nye?

  A murder of crows.

• 14:46Michael Ian Black?

  A boring of panelists.

• 14:53Speaker 07

  Smack.

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how much sleep do you get a night?

• 14:59Mayim Bialik?

  I actually, I'm like a five or six hour person.

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As am I, I'm like five and a half hours, exactly.

• 15:04Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I nap something on the weekend, but during the week.

• 15:06Mayim Bialik?

  I take a Saturday, a Shabbat nap for about 20 minutes.

• 15:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 15:11Mayim Bialik?

  I give my kids a cookie and I say, "I'll be a much better mother if I can sleep for 20 minutes on this couch with earplugs in, I promise."

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how old are your kids?

• 15:19Mayim Bialik?

  Five and a half and eight.

• 15:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 15:20Mayim Bialik?

  Yeah.

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, presumably when they were much younger, you got no sleep.

• 15:25Mayim Bialik?

  Well, yeah, I mean, honestly, it's amazing to see what it's like with a newborn. I was a breastfeeding mom and I was up literally every two hours for about four or five years. Literally every two hours.

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you study yourself at that point?

• 15:37Mayim Bialik?

  I wrote my thesis while breastfeeding my older one. I'm literally laying down nursing and typing. I was doing data analysis and writing and editing my thesis with my first son. And, yeah, but it's amazing to sleep again.

• 15:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And she knows three languages.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Totally impressed.

• 15:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just get, so, how many hours of sleep are you?

• 16:00Mayim Bialik?

  Uh, now, I have a three month old, so.

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 16:03Mayim Bialik?

  And I'm breastfeeding, so.

• 16:04Speaker 07

  This is her most restful part of the day.

• 16:05Mayim Bialik?

  I'm sleeping right now, actually.

• 16:08Speaker 07

  Half your brain, you're a dolphin.

• 16:10Mayim Bialik?

  Half my brain is popping, the other half.

• 16:11Speaker 07

  She's a dolphin.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill?

• 16:13Bill Nye?

  I'd need seven and a half. Furthermore, I claim I'm skilled at the power nap. I put in the hours.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:20Bill Nye?

  I put in the third of an hour.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Power nap, Paul?

• 16:23Speaker 06

  Uh, it really varies. I guess probably about six or seven. Although it seems now I am falling asleep for that 20 minute power nap. I don't mean right now, as we speak, but at about like kind of 5:30, 6 o'clock at night. Generally, if I'm flipping around and I'm watching Pardon the Interruption, I notice that I fall asleep.

• 16:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 16:43Speaker 06

  Show on ESPN.

• 16:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah?

• 16:47Speaker 06

  About 14.

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good.

• 16:52Michael Ian Black?

  We're on fourteen, yeah.

• 16:54Eugene Mirman?

  Uh, yeah, like, six to eight.

• 16:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay. So there are no nines up here.

• 16:59Eugene Mirman?

  Is that weird? No. I always sleep five and a half hours. I'm normal. Six, six point four hours. I'd say five to eight with a lot of afternoon naps. After I type out my weird things.

• 17:13Michael Ian Black?

  While breastfeeding.

• 17:14Eugene Mirman?

  While breast...

• 17:17Eugene Mirman?

  A cat!

• 17:20Eugene Mirman?

  Not a human.

• 17:22Michael Ian Black?

  A dragon.

• 17:24Eugene Mirman?

  I breastfeed a really cute dragon.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, oh, by the way, when all this is over, the bar is open. And there's a special drink that we invented just for this program. It's called the Brain Freeze. So, uh, you just go up there and ask for the Brain Freeze. We invented it. It's a, the drink did not exist before tonight. And it has sort of the color of your brain, um, a brain matter. But it's really tasty. It does sound good.

• 17:52Michael Ian Black?

  Mmm, a great drink.

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's really, really cold.

• 17:54Eugene Mirman?

  A luau of milk and nails.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, we'll be talking about the future of neuroscience. What is possible, what isn't. Separate the fact from the fiction. StarTalk Radio at BAM!

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are talking about the science of the brain. I've got it written here that we have 100,000 miles of nerve fibers in each brain. That's extraordinary. That's a hell of a computer, but it still has issues. This brain failure in some people, right? So what is the hope for really disentangling what all this is and perhaps being able to fix people who have problems? You just go in and snip a connection or nip and tuck?

• 19:02Heather Berlin?

  Well, I mean, it's a huge problem actually to solve, to understand how the brain works. And you're talking about 100 billion neurons with a quadrillion connections. So to understand the workings of the human brain is one of the greatest mysteries, and we're all working on that very hard. But once we understand how it works, then, just like a mechanic has to know how the car works so that when you bring it in, when it's broken, they know how to go about trying to fix it. So knowing the underlying structure is the beginning.

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But is it that reductionist? Not to get all philosophical on you, because in physics, you can describe each molecule of air careening off of another one, but that description doesn't give you the bulk properties of it. You need to sort of step back and say, this air has a temperature. The individual particle doesn't have a temperature. We have macroscopic descriptions of things that enable us to function, because you can't describe every single little thing. Do you think the brain will be intractable in that way?

• 19:58Heather Berlin?

  So what you're trying to say is that if we understand how the brain works, will we understand the mind? Or is that, that's what I think what you're saying?

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:05Heather Berlin?

  So some people think that the mind or consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. It just happened.

• 20:12Heather Berlin?

  Yeah. Well, it emerges out of the workings of it.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if you have enough circuits, you're gonna get a mind.

• 20:16Heather Berlin?

  You're gonna get this thing called consciousness. There's something called the easy problem of consciousness, which isn't that easy, but we can correlate every single thought with the actual workings of neurons in the brain. And let's say we can map all that out and we can do it, we solve the easy problem. But there's still gonna be a hard problem of why is it that those neurons firing and those neurochemicals slushing around cause us to have these subjective experiences? They call it the explanatory gap. We might not be able to fully explain that. But I think we have to start somewhere, and just understanding the workings of the basic system is a good place to begin.

• 20:46Michael Ian Black?

  Can I ask a really, maybe dumb question, maybe not? Do we know that consciousness exists in the brain?

• 20:53Heather Berlin?

  I would venture to say yes.

• 20:55Michael Ian Black?

  Because, yeah, okay. Well, let me just follow up, because I know that when you take out like half your brain, you can still function, right? You can take out, you know, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere will rewire. But then if you were to cut that in half again, and you only get a quarter of your brain, would you still have conscious... And then what point does your consciousness disappear?

• 21:12Bill Nye?

  Yeah, Heather, how many subjects have you done this experiment on?

• 21:14Heather Berlin?

  So we do that every day in the lab.

• 21:16Michael Ian Black?

  But seriously, what is the "N" on this?

• 21:17Bill Nye?

  The "N"?

• 21:27Eugene Mirman?

  Yes, when does it move to your feet?

• 21:31Heather Berlin?

  I mean, it's a philosophical question. People say, "Take little bits of the brain away. How much do you take away? How much of the brain do you actually need for conscious awareness?" And some people claim that you only need the brainstem. Well, we know that that's not true, because if you take a full adult and you take away their cortex, or they have a damage to the cortex, they're not going to be conscious anymore. However, there are children who were born without a cortex, and they just have their brainstem, and they have some semblance of what we might call consciousness.

• 21:55Michael Ian Black?

  Are these what we call "Children of the Damned"?

• 22:00Mayim Bialik?

  You can't joke about anencephaly. You can't joke about anencephaly.

• 22:04Michael Ian Black?

  I didn't know there was a name for it.

• 22:07Bill Nye?

  But seriously, I'll have conversations with dogs. I can see dogs are dreaming. Dogs experience the joy of discovery. But is a dog paralyzed by self-doubt? Actually, I think I've even seen that.

• 22:24Bill Nye?

  You know, a dog with an especially aggressively disciplining owner seemed to be paralyzed, like, "I can't cross this line, or the guy's gonna hit me." And so, how far back do we go from, what is it, the Rhesus? What's the guy?

• 22:38Heather Berlin?

  Rhesus monkey?

• 22:39Bill Nye?

  But they have, it begins with a K?

• 22:41Heather Berlin?

  More information.

• 22:42Bill Nye?

  In Amy Farrah Fowler's lab? Kabuchin.

• 22:44Heather Berlin?

  Kabuchin?

• 22:46Mayim Bialik?

  It's a C, not a K.

• 22:47Eugene Mirman?

  Kardashian.

• 22:50Bill Nye?

  How far down do we go? Then there's a cat. Then I've spoken, albeit briefly, with birds.

• 22:54Heather Berlin?

  Okay.

• 22:55Bill Nye?

  And it's a different deal, right?

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, you're Dr. Dolittle. The science guy, okay.

• 23:01Heather Berlin?

  Once we have a measure of consciousness, then we're able to say, does this animal have it? Does a baby have it? You know, when is it emergent? But until we have an understanding of what it is... So there's certain theories of consciousness. One is when you have a system that has a certain amount of integrated differentiated information, that it will fundamentally have consciousness. That could be a computer. It could be any kind of system, a nervous system. So once we have an understanding of a theory of consciousness, then we can measure it and see what has it.

• 23:27Mayim Bialik?

  Well, and I think it's important to think about, if you take out, quote, "half the brain", you're essentially dealing with duplicated structures existing, correct? So there's gonna be some asymmetry between left and right, but you're dealing with half of a brain that then is pretty much duplicating all the structures you've removed. Once you start chopping up that half, there's really no more duplicated structures you can start taking. So if there's one amygdala left, you can't take away that amygdala. There's nothing to take that place. So if you wanna start chopping up cortex, or if, you know, if there's an accident that compromises part of cortex, you have other parts of cortex that are similarly structured, that can theoretically take over some of that function. Once you start getting into those limbic structures and the sublimic structures, all that stuff, there's no more duplication. You can't keep, like, hacking it in half. It's not like a, you know, calculus limit.

• 24:12Mayim Bialik?

  Like, how much can I leave and still have the person be conscious?

• 24:19Heather Berlin?

  You understood what I said.

• 24:20Eugene Mirman?

  I did, I understood. You can't have a person with a brain the size of a penny, it's too little.

• 24:25Heather Berlin?

  But you know what's really interesting?

• 24:27Speaker 06

  You were saying chopping up and chopping up, and I was sitting here just actually thinking of your vegan...

• 24:52Heather Berlin?

  The really interesting thing here is that you can take away the amygdala, which you can take away both of them.

• 24:57Speaker 06

  But what about the hypothalamus?

• 24:57Heather Berlin?

  You can even take away the hypothalamus!

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Heather, you said that way too glibly.

• 25:03Heather Berlin?

  Okay. Well, there are certain people who have a disease that calcifies their amygdala, so they become damaged and they no longer work. So you can not have emotion, you can still be conscious. You cannot have memory and you can still be conscious. There's a case in England where he only remembers things for like 30 seconds. So each 30 seconds, he writes down, "I'm just now conscious for the very first time." And then, "I'm just now conscious for the very first time." But he's still having awareness. So the question is, you can take away all these things, but how much of the brain is necessary to have subjective experience?

• 25:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, actually, that is a great question.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How does he remember how to write?

• 25:33Speaker 06

  Has he seen memento?

• 25:34Heather Berlin?

  This is very interesting!

• 25:35Mayim Bialik?

  This is a great question!

• 25:36Speaker 06

  He's seen it 3,000 times. But every single time, it's like the first time.

• 25:43Heather Berlin?

  So there's something called procedural memory, which is different than declarative memory.

• 25:47Mayim Bialik?

  It's like riding a bicycle.

• 25:48Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. So when you learn something like meteoric, like riding a bike or tying a shoelace. So what's interesting about this case in England is that he was a pianist. Once he got started playing, he could play the entire piece of music all the way through. As soon as he came out of it, he didn't know where he was, what he was doing, whatever. But procedural memories with a different part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which you can engage in even if you don't have declarative memories, semantic memories, memories about things or facts.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it looks like all of your research is happening on people who have brain disorders.

• 26:16Mayim Bialik?

  Some of the best ways to learn about the brain is by seeing what happens in the natural world when it doesn't work. Because of all sorts of legal and ethical issues, we can't do that.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On a living person?

• 26:27Mayim Bialik?

  We take what nature gives us, but that's one of the things, that every brain lesion is different, every accident is different. There's a tremendous amount of unpredictability when you're dealing with any of these sorts of syndromes.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you use the brain mapping to... Is that the way to go to cure these horrific brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's?

• 26:44Mayim Bialik?

  Just sleep more, I can hear that.

• 26:46Bill Nye?

  I got a question. I had my brain scanned a couple of times on camera for hilarious science comedy.

• 26:55Bill Nye?

  So, it looked to me like if you could get another order of magnitude, that is to say, what is the current resolution of a magnetic resonance image? It looks like it's half a millimeter?

• 27:07Heather Berlin?

  Yep, or voxel.

• 27:09Bill Nye?

  Something like that? It looked to me like if you could get another, instead of half a millimeter, with 50 microns, then you'd really be able to figure out what was going on.

• 27:18Heather Berlin?

  Well, this is where we're at.

• 27:19Bill Nye?

  Is that too reductionist, to your point?

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I like reductionism. I just was wondering if that was the pathway to answers.

• 27:25Heather Berlin?

  This is, so where we're at is that...

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I converted to reductionism when I got married.

• 27:28Bill Nye?

  Your wife made you?

• 27:32Speaker 07

  Happy wife, happy life.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reductionism.

• 27:35Heather Berlin?

  The state of affairs now is that we have this technology to be able to look at the microstructure of the brain, so we can go in and measure the activation of one or two individual neurons in a monkey or even in a human during surgery. And we can look at this very microstructure, and then we look at the macrostructure or the activation and things like FMRI, which is like a very...

• 27:53Bill Nye?

  Functional magnetic...

• 27:54Heather Berlin?

  Functional magnetic resonance imaging, which is sort of looking from very far away. But we need something in between, like a mesolabel, to understand how all these circuits are wired up, because just looking at where the blood flows at a certain area, that's what FMRI is looking at, is too...

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course.

• 28:09Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. And the other way is too fine. So we need something in between, and there are certain technologies that are being developed now, things like optogenetics, where you can actually look at the neurocircuitry and control...

• 28:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So optogenetics, I did a little reading on that, and so you've got photoreceptive organisms you put in the brain, or proteins?

• 28:26Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you follow the light that they emit? Is that how that works?

• 28:30Heather Berlin?

  It's sort of like that.

• 28:31Speaker 07

  Is this from Wrath of Khan?

• 28:32Bill Nye?

  Oh, God! Ah!

• 28:38Speaker 07

  That was really worth it.

• 28:44Bill Nye?

  That was deep, that was...

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hard carrying geeks up here on the stage.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So these are ways to poke and prod a living person's brain without doing damage.

• 28:54Heather Berlin?

  You basically take these photosensitive algae, you take the gene that codes for that, you insert it in a virus which then inserts that into the...

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, you just said, you just said, "You get a photoreceptive virus that you stick in someone's brain." Did I just hear that?

• 29:06Heather Berlin?

  You take the gene of the photoreceptive algae and then you want to transport it into the brain, so you do it via a virus. That's not dangerous.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're letting your virus do your bidding in someone's brain?

• 29:16Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, and so then what happens?

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You put the thing in his ear and it goes into... I remember, we all saw it.

• 29:24Eugene Mirman?

  But it's a virus, it's algae that you attach to a virus?

• 29:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, Eugene, yes!

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, wait, wait, wait. Heather, I got this now. Viral algae, Eugene! Everybody knows this! Look, let me see if I got this right. The algae has photoreceptive proteins.

• 29:47Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no good way to get that protein into another living body unless you attach it to a virus, where that's what they do.

• 29:56Mayim Bialik?

  Well, they're gonna start replicating, they're gonna start transcribing, correct?

• 29:59Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, and then what happens is that now, wherever you insert this gene, now you've inserted a receptor that's gonna be sensitive to light. So now when you shine light on it, the neuron will fire. And so what they've shown, let's say in mice, for example, is that you can shine a certain, like a blue light, and cause a whole circuit because it's being activated.

• 30:18Bill Nye?

  Dr. Berlin?

• 30:19Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 30:20Bill Nye?

  Is it that you shine a light and it causes the neuron to fire, or when the neuron fires, it lights up?

• 30:26Heather Berlin?

  It, no, okay.

• 30:29Heather Berlin?

  You're shining, I see where you're going. Well, you know, when you shine the light, the receptors that are sensitive to light open, which then cause the neuron to fire. Because then there's a whole rush of, you know, a whole chemical activity process.

• 30:43Bill Nye?

  So the virus is introducing a sensitivity.

• 30:45Mayim Bialik?

  Which is detectable, right? The purpose of that is to make it detectable.

• 30:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the whole point. This is Schrodinger's viral algae, right?

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are two sides to this. You want to repair people who have real neurological disorders, Parkinson's. But maybe you want to make people smarter. Or more, like you said, superhuman.

• 31:23Michael Ian Black?

  I'd love to throw a car. What do I need to do?

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:27Michael Ian Black?

  How much algae do I eat?

• 31:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you or your people, are they involved in this work? Trying to enhance human intellectual performance?

• 31:36Heather Berlin?

  So there's something called neural prosthetics. We're using some of it right now to treat psychiatric illness. Where we implant electrodes. It's called deep brain stimulation to help treat psychiatric patients. But where you can implant electrodes to help people, for example, who are deaf to hear. Or to help blind people see. And that technology is in pilot studies now.

• 31:54Mayim Bialik?

  There's a whole field of neuroengineering that is combining.

• 31:56Heather Berlin?

  And eventually, yes, we can do things like enhance memory, enhance attention by using these neural prosthetics.

• 32:02Speaker 06

  Is this like drinking Red Bull?

• 32:05Heather Berlin?

  Similar.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the brain, as far as I can tell, is chemistry and electricity. You're manipulating either the chemistry of the brain or the electrical circuitry of the brain. With magnetic fields or whatever else. If that's the case, I know my computer uses electrical circuits. So is there a future where we're going to attach your brain to a computer?

• 32:27Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I don't see why not. I mean, we already in a se-

• 32:29Mayim Bialik?

  We already do.

• 32:30Bill Nye?

  I have an old question about magnetism and brains. There are animals, apparently, that find direction on their own using some sort of ferrous, some iron-bearing thing in their cells. In their brains. But we never got that?

• 32:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, you're trying to find true north.

• 32:46Mayim Bialik?

  The fact that MRI machines work indicates that there are magnetic properties. I mean, there's all sorts of properties to all of our bodies. So there's smaller, lesser magnetic qualities to our body. But no, we cannot navigate by them.

• 32:57Michael Ian Black?

  Maybe you can.

• 33:01Bill Nye?

  He doesn't ask directions.

• 33:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Bill, other animals got all kinds of stuff we don't have. Newts can regenerate limbs. We can't. Eagles can fly. We can't. I mean, you just go on down the list.

• 33:11Speaker 06

  Well, let's get to that thing where our brains really will be like a computer. We can hook it up to a computer and be able to speak languages without actually learning them. We will be able to download information.

• 33:21Michael Ian Black?

  Ask my, and apparently she can.

• 33:25Mayim Bialik?

  No, the answer's no.

• 33:29Eugene Mirman?

  Wait, I think the answer is probably yes, though, right? Eventually? I mean, there's computers that can translate, like Google.

• 33:35Mayim Bialik?

  Learning a language is a very, very complicated... I mean, just to use that as an example, we're not translation machines. So, in theory, I could picture a world where if I had a catalog dictionary, I could be hooked up to something that would allow me to be a translation machine. But the subtleties of language and interaction and the way we communicate and answer questions and have experiences through language, it's beyond complicated that you could plug into a computer.

• 34:00Speaker 06

  But you could at least maybe read a menu in another country.

• 34:04Mayim Bialik?

  Sure, I will grant you that, yes.

• 34:05Speaker 06

  So I can... I know what the hell I'm getting when I'm in Paris.

• 34:08Mayim Bialik?

  I will grant you that, that's possible.

• 34:10Speaker 06

  Besides eggs. And champignon. Which is everywhere, is a mushroom.

• 34:17Eugene Mirman?

  So you wouldn't understand another language, but you could technically translate it hooked up to...

• 34:21Mayim Bialik?

  I'm guessing about the future.

• 34:24Eugene Mirman?

  I'm gonna believe anything you say.

• 34:27Speaker 06

  When you chew on those pink pills and it shows you where you haven't brushed, how does that work?

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna actually rebut my am here. Who would have thought some years ago that a computer would ever beat a human in chess? Who would have thought that a computer would ever beat a human in Jeopardy? So, computers are moving pretty fast here. So, why wouldn't the context of language be just another thing it learns, rather than just a translated dictionary? Why should we put limits on the computers that have transcended limits we've ever given for them in the past?

• 35:01Heather Berlin?

  If you want to look at it that way, they're already smarter than us. They can do math quicker than us, they can do calculations, they can translate into languages. They're much better in terms of holding a lot of information. And then, why would we even want to incorporate that into our brain? Right now, we have our iPhones, we don't have to remember numbers anymore, our computers do that for us. So then, one of the questions is, what are humans still good for?

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, in fact, the idea that you'd plug chips in your head to know things... This is not a chip in my head, but it's an arm's reach.

• 35:24Heather Berlin?

  And then eventually it will be. It'll get smaller and smaller and smaller. You can implant the iPhone in your brain and you can talk to it, and it'll give you information, so...

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'll already talk to their iPhones.

• 35:32Heather Berlin?

  Right, they do.

• 35:34Bill Nye?

  I gotta step in as an engineer here. I want to remind you that computers don't just come out of the sky. Somebody designs these things. Shock the guys over here.

• 35:45Eugene Mirman?

  I'll believe it when I see it.

• 35:48Bill Nye?

  But then as far as communication in another language, I can easily envision, I guess a pun intended, a computer that can recognize faces and emotions on faces, and then that would enhance the translation of a language. Seriously, I don't think that's an extraordinary step.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there's a famous impossible sentence for computers, where you say, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

• 36:14Bill Nye?

  Why is that impossible for a computer?

• 36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the two sentences, they're grammatically identical, yet they have completely different meanings.

• 36:22Bill Nye?

  Why couldn't a computer learn it the way you did?

• 36:29Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, Chomsky.

• 36:32Bill Nye?

  Your timing of the words changed how they were perceived.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what we don't know is whether the computer then has to have a human life experience.

• 36:46Heather Berlin?

  Consciousness, some might say. The real thing is, will it eventually have consciousness or experience or subjective states? What is it like to be a computer? Can it ever have awareness?

• 36:54Michael Ian Black?

  Well, now we get to the Turing test, everybody. I said the Turing test, guys, just because I could.

• 37:00Bill Nye?

  That was pretty impressive.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, recorded on February 24, 2014, with Eugene Mirman, Michael Ian Black, Heather Berlin, Paul Rudd, Mayim Bialik, and my good friend, Bill Nye the Science Guy. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We'll have more of the show next week. Until then, keep looking up.