Cosmic Queries – Neuroscience

Psychedelic drugs, dreams, mental health awareness, understanding our reality, and more – Neil deGrasse Tyson, neuroscientist Heather Berlin, PhD, and first-time comic co-host Jackie Hoffman answer fan-submitted questions about neuroscience. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/cosmic-queries-neuroscience/ Photo Credit: StarTalk.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this episode of StarTalk, a cosmic queries edition, is focusing on neuroscience. And we go to our go-to person for that, and that would be the none other than Heather Berlin. Heather, welcome back to StarTalk for the millionth time.

• 0:52Heather Berlin?

  Thanks. I love, always love being here.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're all excellent. Thank you, thank you. And you are neuroscientists at Mount Sinai, is that correct?

• 0:59Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The way to say that? And you focus on what people are thinking when they don't know they're thinking?

• 1:06Heather Berlin?

  Sort of. Never heard it described that way. But no, I studied brains and how they relate to human thoughts, behaviors, whether they're conscious or unconscious.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:16Heather Berlin?

  Emotions.

• 1:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's scary, actually. And we have a first-timer here, my co-host, Jackie Hoffman. Jackie, welcome.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  Thank you, Neil.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a comedian?

• 1:25Speaker 02

  I am an actress slash comedian.

• 1:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that order?

• 1:30Speaker 02

  Well, yes. Right now, I'm doing more acting than comedianing.

• 1:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  And I had a hysterectomy at Mount Sinai.

• 1:36Heather Berlin?

  Oh, congratulations.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a, it's a TMI, is that a TMI?

• 1:42Heather Berlin?

  I hope they did a good job.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  It's Uterus Awareness Week.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uterus Awareness, okay. So let me join you in that and say, I was born in Mount Sinai.

• 1:50Heather Berlin?

  Really?

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 1:51Heather Berlin?

  And both my children were born at Mount Sinai.

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but I never had a hysterectomy there, no.

• 1:56Heather Berlin?

  You never know.

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rolled you into the wrong room. So Jackie, you also an actress. You were, you had a role in Legally Blonde 2.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Yes, Neil remembered my joke, my line.

• 2:11Heather Berlin?

  What was it?

• 2:11Speaker 02

  It was one line, "Your dogs are gay."

• 2:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was your one line in the movie?

• 2:18Speaker 02

  It changed the world.

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would have given you more lines than that if I were producer of Legally Blonde 2.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so also you are in a all Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof off Broadway right now.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  That is correct.

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's crazy.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  With English subtitles, don't panic.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Yiddish has got to be like, that's how it would have been. They would have been speaking Yiddish.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  That is correct.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Singing and dancing Yiddish. And you, your character is?

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Yenta the Matchmaker.

• 2:45Heather Berlin?

  Yes, I know.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't get more Yenta than being Yenta.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Or shadchan, as we say in Yiddish.

• 2:52Heather Berlin?

  So basically you're playing my grandmother, basically what you're playing, yeah.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool. So since this is Cosmic Queries, we solicited from our fanbase questions for this episode on neuroscience.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Great.

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what a topic that has become, Heather. There was a word no one knew 20 years ago, and now everybody's into it, so.

• 3:11Heather Berlin?

  I mean, I knew about it, but I mean.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, not that nobody knew, nobody else knew.

• 3:18Heather Berlin?

  Right, right, yeah.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so Jackie, you have the questions. I haven't seen them, neither has Heather. And these are questions. Bring it on. Let's see what we've got.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Okay, our first comes from John Emerson from Patreon. I don't know what that is.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Patreon, that's our, they're a support website that helped fund our operation.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Oh, nice. I thought it was a tequila.

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why you're reading their question first.

• 3:42Speaker 02

  I see.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's one of the perks of the many perks you get as being a Patreon supporter.

• 3:47Speaker 02

  The patrons at Patreon.

• 3:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Patreon.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Patreon, thank you. Okay, I've heard that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Well, that a little bit involves you, Neil.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's my expertise, Mars and Venus, alright.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  I've heard that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but are there any neurological differences between these two planetary species? It's a good question for Yenta the matchmaker, too.

• 4:11Heather Berlin?

  It's actually, you know, it's been controversial in the past because often it's not been PC to say that there are differences between men and women's brains, but there are. There are. There are both sort of anatomical differences, neurochemical differences, hormones that affect brain chemistry like oxytocin, things like testosterone and estrogen affect how the brain works. So, we know that, for example, on average, and these are all, again, on average, women have slightly larger hippocampi, which is the part of the brain that has to do with memory. They tend to store emotional memories better than men. They tend to ruminate on things a little bit more than men, as we might know anecdotally. And in terms of like, the way their brains are wired up, it's slightly different.

• 4:53Heather Berlin?

  Female, female, yeah. Language, which tends to be lateralized, meaning that it's more localized on the left side.

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lateralized would mean it's featured more, for anything, would mean it's more on one side than the other.

• 5:05Heather Berlin?

  Exactly.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lateralized.

• 5:07Heather Berlin?

  Lateralized. So it tends to be more lateralized than men, meaning that more of their language is just on the left side, whereas women tend to have language on both, in both hemispheres, like parts of the brain that are dedicated to language processing. They tend to use more words, just in behaviorally during the day than men. So, there are certain aspects of women's brain, both anatomically and physiologically, that differ from men, and they express themselves in different ways, behaviorally, emotionally, in terms of cognition.

• 5:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, has this gotten resistance from society to even have that conversation?

• 5:39Heather Berlin?

  There's some, you know, because then the idea is like, well, you know, well, then there's this myth, like, okay, well, a bigger brain must be better. Men, on average, have a physically larger brain, but that's not true in terms of intelligence, in terms of cognitive function. It's about how it's wired up, it's not about the size. So, but people did get scared away from this because the idea, like, you know, famously, I think it was Larry Summers at Harvard, who said, like, or...

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then president of Harvard.

• 6:03Heather Berlin?

  Yes, exactly. You know, women, you know, don't, tend to not be, do as well in like math and tech and that kind of thing. And those things are just not true. They tend to work in different ways, but they're not, there's no differences in terms of intelligence and correlated to brain size and the rest. So, I think it's okay to say there are differences, and it's neither good or bad, it's just different.

• 6:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I thought his, his argument was the averages are all the same, but men show up wider on the distribution. So if you try to find the highest performing man, it's comes way out on the high performing side. You also have a much lower man on the other side, lower than you find the lowest woman.

• 6:43Heather Berlin?

  They tend to be more on the extremes. Right, right. But again, that's, you know, on average. So that means that there are women who are at these extremes as well. On average, tend to be more at the men, more at the extremes in terms of that bell curve of IQ. But if you look at it overall.

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of anything, right? I mean, isn't the shortest person ever a man?

• 7:03Heather Berlin?

  Is that true?

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tom Thumb, I thought was pretty small. Yeah.

• 7:07Heather Berlin?

  But I don't know if that means that on average, yeah. I mean, that's very, you know, an N of one. But, but women tend to live longer than men. So in that sense, we are at the extreme.

• 7:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Also look at, look at a personality, like for example, charisma, right? There's some very charismatic men out there. And at the other extreme, you have completely, complete sociopaths as men. Men are, do the most heinous social things ever, right? So, so again, we have these extremes that the men are overpopulating.

• 7:42Heather Berlin?

  Right. Or they just might express them in different ways. Like one idea, just to go off a little bit on a tangent, but people who are sociopaths, men, mostly more diagnosed in men, have these kinds of impulsive behaviors, or they act out aggressively in others, and then they're categorized as that. But women also can tend to have those extreme behaviors, but they more likely to be introverted and acted out on themselves, like self harming behavior. So there's similar expressions of like, let's say, impulsive behavior, but they're expressed different ways, and then they get categorized into different disorders.

• 8:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jackie, are you from Mars or Venus? Which are you?

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Uh, Saturn.

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Saturn. Me too. Me too. Me too. Thank you. Excellent.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Put a ring on it.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, Beyonce. Jackie, you got another question?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Yes, I do. Here's one close to my heart. From Herbal Vores on Instagram. How do psychedelics work and what is the effect on the brain? And for personal reasons, I'd like to extend that question to marijuana as well.

• 8:43Heather Berlin?

  Okay.

• 8:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But did you just add that to the question?

• 8:46Speaker 02

  I did. Am I allowed to do that?

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you control the questions. You, if you want to slap in your own question.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  I showed up.

• 8:54Heather Berlin?

  So I mean, that's a pretty broad question. There is a whole variety of different types of psychedelic drugs and they all affect the brain in different ways.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's take them up, let's just go LSD.

• 9:04Heather Berlin?

  Let's just go LSD.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  LSD, nice and clean and famous, yeah.

• 9:08Heather Berlin?

  Okay, so what LSD does in general is that it lowers activation in certain parts of the frontal lobe, which have to do with kind of, you have sensory information coming in and the frontal lobe is kind of making meaning out of that information so that it makes sense of it all. When you have decreased activation in that part of the brain, the kind of meaning maker part of the brain, you're having a whole bunch of sensory information coming in without a filter, let's say. So it's being experienced in a different way. You also have increased activation in the limbic areas of the brain, these subcortical areas of the brain. So more information is coming from within, it's not being sort of organized in a logical way.

• 9:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is limbic, is that the reptilian thing?

• 9:47Heather Berlin?

  Like emotional reptilian brain, exactly. And the other thing, so it is almost like being in a dream state, because during dreams we see a similar pattern of activation, right? You have decreased prefrontal cortex, increased limbic, so you're having emotions and thoughts that don't necessarily make sense, that don't have a clear narrative. But you're also getting this sensory information that's unfiltered. And the other thing that's really interesting is that when you look at the way the brain is kind of sending information back and forth, usually it's in a very kind of, you have certain pathways that the brain sends information, but when they're in, when they're on LSD, there's much more distributed network of information. So it's kind of like you'd see these, a lot of straight lines and paths, and now they're crossing larger distances within the brain, the information. So it's just a whole different pattern of activation.

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 10:32Heather Berlin?

  So that makes you feel weird and trippy, yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Well, when we have time later, I'll ask you about all my prescriptions and their effect, their effect on what's left of my brain.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're on right now, that's what we want to know.

• 10:44Heather Berlin?

  The point, though, I think that's the most interesting, is that we all are kind of hallucinating all the time, right? Wow! Yeah, because our brain is making up a story based on these like signals that are coming in. And then we often say that when we all agree upon it, we call it reality.

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, this is a fascinating and important point. Because if you have your own understanding of reality and no one else... Can corroborate it.

• 11:07Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 11:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's just, we, we declare that it's going on in your head. We don't declare that you have some special insight into a reality that none of the rest of us have.

• 11:14Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that fair to say?

• 11:16Heather Berlin?

  I would s-

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As from a brain person's perspective.

• 11:18Heather Berlin?

  We all are making up our reality in our mind, but again, if, if nobody else is agreeing on what you're experiencing, then it's likely just being generated internally.

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And scientifically, we have to assume that, otherwise, what, you know.

• 11:30Heather Berlin?

  What, what do we base reality on?

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do we base reality on?

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it. Doesn't make a noise.

• 11:37Heather Berlin?

  Is this why you asked about the marijuana?

• 11:41Speaker 02

  That's a perfect segue to this next question.

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I don't know if I'm done with this. Wait a minute.

• 11:45Heather Berlin?

  Alright.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what do you say to people who would argue that when their brain has been altered by whatever, peyote, artificial chemicals, whatever?

• 11:55Heather Berlin?

  Ayahuasca.

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That they're claiming insight.

• 12:00Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into the, into the universe.

• 12:03Heather Berlin?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you say to them?

• 12:06Heather Berlin?

  I've had these discussions with people. So they, let's say they claim they say, they see a spirit god and they get insight into the workings of the universe. I think it's important to understand that we are, our brains are a physical mechanism. And a lot of things, just like dream states, are, it's creating its own internal world. And so often, when we're in a fully awake, non-psychadelic state, where there's a certain part of our brain that tells us whether information is being internally generated or, or coming from externally.

• 12:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure.

• 12:35Heather Berlin?

  And when you're, people with schizophrenia, for example, they don't have that proper check in place. So they think they're hearing voices that are coming externally in because they're not, their brain isn't telling them, no, it's you internally being generated. So when you're on these drugs, it's similar like when, to a schizophrenic, things are being generated internally from your mind, but you're misinterpreting them as coming from someplace else, like from a spirit god or somewhere else. And that, or maybe you're getting some great insight that's coming from somewhere.

• 13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the people talking to themselves on the street and who are not on a cellphone,

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  they're really talking to themselves.

• 13:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not talking to some other entity.

• 13:15Heather Berlin?

  But they are imagi- but they experience it as if it's another entity. Yeah. Um, but, I mean, look, this is not to say that there isn't some great uni- like, you know, answer that's coming through in different ways, but it is curious that while peoples who get these messages when they're on in these psychedelic states are usually related to their underlying personal or religious beliefs, systems that they have in place already.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It folds in together with it, yeah.

• 13:38Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, yes, which makes me, which leads me to believe that it's internally generated, not externally.

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good data on that.

• 13:43Heather Berlin?

  Thank you very much.

• 13:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jackie, what you got next?

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Well, I've got this real trippy one from Kevin Kalakimaka on Instagram.

• 13:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Is everything we experience a figment of our imagination?

• 13:57Heather Berlin?

  Pretty much.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That dovetails right in.

• 13:59Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much, that's pretty much it. I mean, I wouldn't say everything we experience a figment of our imagination.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, if I pinch you, that's not imagination?

• 14:07Heather Berlin?

  The way I experience it is created by my brain. Imagina- actually, I'd have to say no, because imagination-

• 14:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so it's yes or no. Come on.

• 14:16Heather Berlin?

  Okay, well-

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make up your mind.

• 14:17Heather Berlin?

  No, moving on.

• 14:20Heather Berlin?

  Senate hearings?

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you have you ever-

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Kevin, what do you think?

• 14:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, so let me, let me insert something here. In the movie The Matrix-

• 14:29Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything is happening inside their brains.

• 14:31Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 14:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Their sense of pain, and joy, and love, and hate, and hunger, and all of that is inside the brain.

• 14:38Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 14:39Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, that is true. So everything you experience is pain, every sensation you have is happening inside of your brain, right? Yes.

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So therefore, to the question, is, so, so the answer to that is yes. Everything is a brain experience in your life, and, and you couldn't have had a plausible plot in the movie The Matrix unless that was true.

• 15:00Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, but when you say, when, when, this is the differentiation I'm making. Imagination in the sense of not correlating to something that's external to your brain. So you can, you have a creation of an experience in your brain of what you're perceiving, that could either be created internally, which I would call imagination, or that's coming externally from your senses in. And so, yes, they're both creations of your brain, but one is based on external data and the other coming from it.

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the externality-

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is where we all rally around to say that's the reality.

• 15:33Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, but the truth be told, we could create a whole sort of matrix world just based on sensory inputs.

• 15:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's that other movie, Total Recall? You want to go on a vacation to Al Capulco? Sit in this chair and I will implant the memories of it in you. And now you wake up and say, wow, I had a good time.

• 15:52Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I mean, it is just as good. It could be just as good. We are beginning to blur the line. Or better, probably better.

• 15:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Probably better, if you can know how to do it.

• 16:01Heather Berlin?

  Because you can skip all the boring parts, like the taxi ride.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Waiting for your luggage.

• 16:05Heather Berlin?

  Exactly.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Fast forwarding.

• 16:10Speaker 02

  But with your brain.

• 16:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time for one more for this segment. What do you have, Jackie?

• 16:15Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a tough choice, but I think I've got one. Brian Said on Instagram. If sight is the process of the brain creating an image of reality after it interprets the signal from the eyes sent when they interact with the electromagnetic field, can a blind person create an image based on the signal sent from the other senses to the brain? In other words, can a blind person see something?

• 16:38Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, yeah, so it depends on, okay, so our brain is...

• 16:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you know something?

• 16:43Heather Berlin?

  What?

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a really good question.

• 16:45Heather Berlin?

  Should I wait till after the break?

• 16:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I want to wait till after the break for the answer to that question.

• 16:49Heather Berlin?

  Cliffhanger.

• 16:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And since the word electromagnetic was mentioned in there, I would just say that's the word we use to describe the entire spectrum of light. Not only the visible light, Roy G. Biv, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, but the infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays, microwaves, radio waves. All of that is the electromagnetic spectrum, only a tiny slice of it are we sensitive to with our eyes. So what's interesting is we have this mechanism called our eyeballs that takes that and turns it into an image. And it's all neurological at that level. Well, once your people get good at neurological stimulus, I don't see why you can't take any external stimulus and turn it into an image in a brain, even of someone who is blind.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back on StarTalk, we're going to find out how can the blind see? Heather has the answer.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, when we return.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  The future of space and the secrets of our planet revealed.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  This is StarTalk.

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Neuroscience Edition. And we had went to our go-to neuroscience person, Heather Berlin. Heather, very nice. I got Jackie Hoffman, a first-timer as my co-host. Plus, you tweet at JackieHoffman16.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  I do.

• 18:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is the 16?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  I don't know. My manager picked it because there was another Jackie Hoffman. That's your query cosmic answer.

• 18:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Cosmic with a K.

• 18:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the lamest answer I've ever heard.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  I know. It's the truth.

• 18:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ever. Heather, you're tweeting-

• 18:54Speaker 02

  I'm honored to have the lamest answer ever on this show.

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather, you tweet at HeatherBerlin?

• 19:00Heather Berlin?

  Heather underscore Berlin.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me.

• 19:02Heather Berlin?

  Because the same reason.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't like the underscores. So ugly.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Because you have to keep changing your keyboard.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because sometimes you can't see it. I prefer the dash. Yeah, I've never been an underscore guy.

• 19:13Heather Berlin?

  Now it's a little bit too late, but you could have told me that before.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  She's worth it, though. She's so worth the extra keys.

• 19:18Heather Berlin?

  It's worth the underscore. Thank you, Jackie, for the endorsement.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we left, we last left off with a question about can you, I'm going to slightly rephrase the question. Knowing that we have multiple senses into the brain, can you take one sense and turn it into another to possibly grant the sense of sight back to a blind person?

• 19:40Heather Berlin?

  Okay.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But maybe the sense of smell or touch. And isn't there this brain, we call it a disorder, called synesthesia? Yeah. Does that relate to this answer?

• 19:49Heather Berlin?

  There's a lot here, so let me just say that it depends on when the blindness occurred. So when you're born, it's in many ways, it's the gray matter, it's like a blank slate. And then it starts to differentiate based on the inputs it's getting. So the visual cortex in your brain gets inputs from the retina via the optic nerve, sends information, and then over time, it keeps getting inundated with that visual information. So it starts to become the visual cortex where you experience visual imagery. Now, there are experiments, let's say with weasels, where they take them early on and they redirect that visual information to the auditory, what's normally the auditory cortex.

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 20:25Heather Berlin?

  And over time, they start to see with their auditory cortex, okay? So you can, depending on how you change the inputs to the brain, you can, you can kind of change what sensory process.

• 20:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a malleability if it happens early?

• 20:38Heather Berlin?

  Early, right. Now, now if you take an adult blind person who's already kind of formed their sensory parts of their brain, what you might experience is that if they were born blind and now they're an adult, they have, what we do see in people is that they have a more well-developed auditory cortex, because they're getting much more auditory input.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or they're relying on it more.

• 21:01Heather Berlin?

  They're relying on it more, and it kind of recruits other parts of the brain. And some can sort of have a weird sense of seeing via sound. So they experience it in different ways. And the other, the other part of this is that you, there is, there are programs now, neural implants, where you can actually, they can get information from the real world, like through a camera, directly, you implant it directly into the visual cortex, and it'll stimulate the visual cortex as if it's information coming from the eyes. And people can begin to sort of start to see strange sort of images. Not like seeing the way you and I do, but.

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything is better than seeing nothing.

• 21:39Heather Berlin?

  Exactly, exactly. And as you perfect this technology over time, we might be able to really stimulate the parts of the visual cortex so the person can see.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We already do that now auditorially with the.

• 21:51Heather Berlin?

  Cochlear.

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cochular device.

• 21:53Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A NASA invention, I might add.

• 21:55Heather Berlin?

  Ah, all the things come from NASA.

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes. And there's a famous talk show host who got the NASA, got that NASA implant and is Rush Limbaugh. He was going deaf. I only learned this recently. He went like almost completely deaf, and then he got the operation, which, so it actually hears for you and converts external.

• 22:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sound waves into impulses that your ear canal would have otherwise done.

• 22:22Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I don't think you hear the sound as you normally would, but you can hear differences in sounds that you retrain to learn what a word is when you hear those impulses.

• 22:34Heather Berlin?

  And can I say one thing about synesthesia?

• 22:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, sure.

• 22:36Heather Berlin?

  Because it's really cool.

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure.

• 22:37Heather Berlin?

  So synesthesia is where people sort of have a crossing of sensory areas in the brain. So for example, they'll see colors in sounds or something. They'll hear things in written text. It's a very... And so this one study was really interesting where they found that certain people always saw like letters as certain colors. Like an A, they'd be like, "A is obviously red."

• 23:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Obviously, of course.

• 23:03Heather Berlin?

  "B is blue, C is green," whatever it was. And what they did is they did a large study across all these synesthetes who had that particular...

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Synesthetes?

• 23:11Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a thing?

• 23:13Heather Berlin?

  That's a thing.

• 23:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Synesthetes.

• 23:14Heather Berlin?

  There's a whole community of synesthetes. And they all, they did a survey and they all saw A as red and B as blue. And it was this strange sort of coincidence, we thought. And then they all happened to be born around the same time when this particular Fisher-Price, you know those magnets that you would put on the like refrigerator? And it were letters and numbers? Letters and numbers, yeah. And their synesthesia directly correlated with that Fisher-Price set that came out when they were kids. So basically, when their brain was in the early stages of development and they were exposed to it, they learned an association between those colors and letters, which remained into adulthood. So it had to do with a cross wiring in the brain.

• 23:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 23:55Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Maybe that's why I associate every letter with food, because they were on the refrigerator.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the refrigerator.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  So I have, I am an amblyopite. I have ambliopia in my right eye. So what I understand is now my brain is not telling my eye to look at things. It sits there like a useless hulk and my whole life is on my left side. I have no vision out of the right eye. When I cover the left eye, it can look at things, but my brain is not talking to it.

• 24:21Heather Berlin?

  Oh, you were born with this?

• 24:23Speaker 02

  I was born with it.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Amblytopia?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  Ambliopia.

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Amblytopia.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  I just called myself an amblyopite, just to keep up with the synesthesia.

• 24:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so you can hang. You just want to hang with the other peats.

• 24:35Heather Berlin?

  There's a whole community now.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  I'm amblyopite.

• 24:38Heather Berlin?

  Everybody tweet at you who's an amblyopoeic. You can be, I'll build a community of, but no, I think that, so basically it's interesting, you can only see out of it when you cover the other eye, is that what you're saying?

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Yes, that's correct.

• 24:47Heather Berlin?

  But you probably can, it probably is getting visual information in.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:52Heather Berlin?

  But the other eye is dominant.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Yes, the doctor said if, God forbid, anything happens to the good eye, the bad eye will grow and learn.

• 24:58Heather Berlin?

  Exactly, exactly. It's almost like, it's, it's, it's basically like a lazy eye that it, because the other eye is so dominant, you kind of, over time, don't utilize the information coming from that eye, and the other one becomes stronger, the other one becomes weaker.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:10Heather Berlin?

  And so, yeah.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  When I was a child, they covered it with patches, the good eye, to try to, and it was pointless. I just kept walking into furniture, which would explain a lot.

• 25:18Heather Berlin?

  We can talk about head injury in the next segment.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next, what do you have?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Okay. From Serena Rockhour on Instagram. What will it take to bring mental health awareness into the mainstream? Why is it still such a stigma? What is it about intelligence in unconventional ways that makes it so taboo?

• 25:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't understand the second half of that. What does that have to do with intelligence?

• 25:44Heather Berlin?

  I think that's probably more of a like, why some people say that people with mental illness are just intelligent in different ways. I think that's probably related to that. But I think that...

• 25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, tell me about the history of mental, the stigma of mental illness, the history of that.

• 25:59Heather Berlin?

  Because it's sort of a invisible disorder in the sense, like if you break an arm, it's very clear it's a physical problem, or you know, your, the heart is having problems, that you can look at the physicality. And the brain is so complex, and there's so much going on in terms of neurochemicals and neurophysiology, that when things go wrong in the brain, they're hard to just look at and see physically. And they express themselves in these sort of subjective states. A person, you never can really tell if they're depressed. They tell you, "I feel depressed."

• 26:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Yeah, they give you a scale, from 1 to 10, what are you?

• 26:31Heather Berlin?

  Exactly, exactly. And so it's all subjective. And because of that subjectivity, people have questioned the validity of it, because you can't take a microscope and see it. So now, as a cognitive neuroscientist who works in psychiatry, part of what we do is to say, "Look, these psychiatric illnesses..." This is the underlying brain dysfunction. And we need to get away from this stigma like it's all just in your mind. Like it's not a real physical thing and say, no, the brain is a physical organ. Just like you would fix a bone with a cast. If the brain is improperly working, you can take this particular medication. That's going to say affects your serotonin receptors. It's just another physical problem. But because it expresses itself in a subjective way, there's a stigma behind it. So I think we're starting to get away from that.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would think so too. You know what I base that on? How candidly people just say, oh yeah, my therapist told me the other day. When growing up, you would never tell anyone that you had a therapist for any reason. And now there's just people just out with it.

• 27:28Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People you just meet, right? And so for me, that's one measure of an acceptance factor. What's going on in society.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  It can also manifest itself in embarrassing ways too. Metallin, you know, someone on the street. I do that for a living.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. Bark at people, that's what you do.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do bark at people for a living. But, you know, I think that creates such a stigma and it's frightening. It's frightening that could be me and it's frightening. It's just what is that?

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't predict the next moments of their behavior.

• 27:58Heather Berlin?

  People use those extreme cases, you know, like I worked with psychiatric patients in the ER at Bellevue at one point, and these were really severe. These are people, you know, those are the ones you pull off the street and you bring them in the psych ER and they're really out there.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Strap them down.

• 28:10Heather Berlin?

  And or you give them something to calm them down or, you know. And so people look at those extremes and say, wait, am I the same as that? You know, like paranoid schizophrenic? And, you know, to be honest, I've worked with paranoid schizophrenics who are not at that extreme, who are really like nice, decent people and they're just happen to be having these, you know, strange delusions. And we can change it with drugs, which is amazing. You can give them a drug and they no longer have these sort of crazy ideas.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Better living through chemistry.

• 28:34Heather Berlin?

  Yeah. Not that I'm a huge proponent of drugs, but I think, you know, if it's broken, you have to find ways to fix it.

• 28:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. Jackie, what else you got for us?

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Okay, loving this. Monica Stewart from Facebook. I had a brain tumor, a meningioma the size of a baseball removed through a craniotomy last year. How could it get so big before affecting my motor function, speech, memory, et cetera? What do we know about brain tumors in general? Y'all are my heroes, sending love from Texas.

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Texas, Texas in the house.

• 29:04Heather Berlin?

  That's a good question.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Heather, yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Of course, in Texas, they grow their tumors bigger.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, everything's bigger.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Everything's bigger in Texas.

• 29:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got a baseball-sized tumor. Everybody else has got a, got a

• 29:15Heather Berlin?

  Golf ball.

• 29:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Golf ball-sized tumor. Yeah, so I'm, I'm, it's not just in the brain. Tumors in other parts of people's bodies, they don't even know.

• 29:22Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Until they go out there and then it's always analgyzed to a fruit or an athletic.

• 29:26Heather Berlin?

  Right.

• 29:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's going on there?

• 29:28Heather Berlin?

  Well, this is, it depends on where the tumor is. What did she say she had? A meningioma?

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:32Heather Berlin?

  So that grows in the meninges of the brain, which is basically like

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I could've guessed that.

• 29:36Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, you could've got that one. That was an easy one.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  I couldn't.

• 29:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A multiple choice test.

• 29:41Heather Berlin?

  You would've got that one.

• 29:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would've gotten that one right. The meninges is the men-

• 29:44Heather Berlin?

  The meninges are the, basically like the sort of membrane covers around the brain.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:48Heather Berlin?

  Um, and you can get these growths. So it's not directly in the sort of brain tissue, but what happens is it can get really big and the problem is it starts putting pressure on the brain. So depending on where it's located, if it was located right next to where like, let's say the language area was, and it started pressing and pressure, you might start having problems with your language. So, but depending, it could be in an area where it's relatively benign and that you won't get these immediate, um, problems or memory problems because those are subgroups.

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're saying it was putting pressure on an unimportant part of her brain?

• 30:14Heather Berlin?

  Well, I mean, they're all important, but sometimes they don't

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you just said, you just said, Jackie, didn't she just say that?

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 30:21Heather Berlin?

  A less verbal part of the brain?

• 30:22Speaker 02

  I was listening with my eyes.

• 30:25Heather Berlin?

  Which one?

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, which eye?

• 30:27Speaker 02

  The good one.

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The good one.

• 30:29Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, so it depends on where it is that it will express itself in ways that are obvious to you. Like, it might express itself in other ways and it, it might be the, you know, the pressure over time, you'll start having other symptoms like headaches or, but not necessarily the ones like motor problems. But the different types of tumors, so there's some tumors like, um, glioblastoma, which is very deadly, which is growing inside the brain tissue and it's getting-

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's in the glioplast part of the brain.

• 30:51Heather Berlin?

  Well, exactly. Very, oh, good job, Neil.

• 30:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn.

• 30:57Heather Berlin?

  But that's more insidious and it gets in kind of the nooks and crannies and actual cortex and that's when we go in to remove it, you can never really get all of it because there's these tiny little tentacles that get in. So they always grow back, they grow back and that's why people don't usually tend to live longer than a year after that. So, and, and with the meningiomas, like 90% of them are benign, which is also good.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good.

• 31:17Heather Berlin?

  So you can remove it and, and usually it won't grow back. But yeah, there's, so there are a whole variety of different tumors and have different effects on the brain.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting, cool. And, and kinda ideally want one to have, and if, to affect you

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the smallest stage it can, so that you can get to it sooner.

• 31:32Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, that's the whole thing.

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a thing, right?

• 31:35Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, yeah, because...

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so maybe a smaller tumor would have given her motor, motor problems or speech problems, if something's wrong. Oh, the tumor is a golf ball, rather than a baseball.

• 31:45Heather Berlin?

  But sometimes they don't even go in and... If it's benign, they might wait a while to go in and remove it anyway, even when they find it. Because there's some risk with surgery, depending on where it's located.

• 31:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's risk opening up your skull and poking around your brain?

• 31:57Heather Berlin?

  Just a little, little.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hi, Jackie, what else you got?

• 32:01Speaker 02

  My uterine one was 22 centimeters, by the way.

• 32:04Heather Berlin?

  Oh, wow.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Uh, why does the brain... Oh, this is from, "And that's the end of my story" on Instagram. "Why does the brain create images in the form of dreams when we sleep? Do dreams have meaning or function, or are they just a random collection of images? What are the physiological advantages of dreaming? Thank you from Nikki Hush."

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nikki, good question.

• 32:26Heather Berlin?

  Mmm.

• 32:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta do that fast, or...

• 32:28Heather Berlin?

  Okay.

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or give me part of the answer, and then we save the rest of the answer for...

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Should I give you part of the question?

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How about this? Let me give a short version of that question.

• 32:35Heather Berlin?

  Okay.

• 32:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can answer that before the break, and then you give me the...

• 32:39Heather Berlin?

  The long answer.

• 32:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The long answer to the longer question.

• 32:41Heather Berlin?

  Okay.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 32:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People want to believe that their dreams give them insight into some future events. The dreamers, they...

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My sense of that is the answer is no. But people feel like they have access to the future through their dreams. Why?

• 33:04Heather Berlin?

  After the break.

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, Heather, okay. After the break. We continue with our special edition of Cosmic Queries, the neuroscience.

• 33:34Speaker 03

  The future of space and the secrets of our planet revealed.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  This is StarTalk.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk, we're back. Neuroscience. Our go-to person, Heather Billian.

• 34:08Heather Berlin?

  Wow. Go-to person now, I like it.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're go-to, you're go-to. And Jackie Hoffman, comedian extraordinaire.

• 34:17Heather Berlin?

  Your go-away-from person.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we left off, someone asked...

• 34:24Heather Berlin?

  About dreams?

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About dreams. And all I can think of is Sigmund Freud's book on the interpretation of dreams. Where have we come since then?

• 34:33Heather Berlin?

  Yeah. So I think Freud was right in certain things and not in others. He was certainly on point with his whole theories of repression and dissociation and suppression. I think his interpretation...

• 34:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And also subconscious, right?

• 34:44Heather Berlin?

  Oh yeah, of course, id, ego, superego, unconscious. That whole, that was good, the whole theory of consciousness and unconscious processes. However, his whole interpretation of dreams was kind of fringy.

• 34:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I tried reading it, it was like, this is all bullshit.

• 34:56Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, it is, it is. I'm sorry, guys. But, um, so, but there's a lot of theories about why we dream. I mean, the shortest answer is that it's random neural firing and you only dream during REM sleep, by the way. So, when your brain is in a certain, you go through different stages of sleep.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  REM, rapid eye movement.

• 35:15Heather Berlin?

  Exactly.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the rock group.

• 35:17Heather Berlin?

  R E M, that's true. I never thought of them that way. That's, anyway.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it stands, that's why they name themselves that.

• 35:23Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, that's why R E M, yeah, oh, okay.

• 35:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a neurosurgeon, you didn't know that?

• 35:26Heather Berlin?

  I didn't know that, I didn't know that.

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just schooled you on R E M?

• 35:28Heather Berlin?

  Yeah. But there are different stages of sleep, like deep sleep and then, you know, your brain goes, but when it's in the, um, sort of this dream state, it's almost like a waking state. And so your brain in a way is conscious of what's going on. Not always. Sometimes you dream, you don't remember you dreamt, right? But usually you're dreaming in that state. And it's random firing of the brain, it doesn't make sense.

• 35:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. If you dreamed and don't remember you dreamed, then how do you know you dreamed?

• 35:53Heather Berlin?

  Well, you can look at, you don't know. It's like a tree. Is this the tree question? But in dream form?

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You said you dreamed, but you don't remember. Then how did you know you dreamed?

• 36:00Heather Berlin?

  Well, you don't know, but we assume.

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was it your electrodes again? You say, oh, they're dreaming.

• 36:05Heather Berlin?

  There's an interesting, just side note, there's cases of people who like, don't remember things. They only have a short memory. And so they just feel like they're just waking up and being conscious for the first time every minute. Cause they keep like refreshing, refreshing, refreshing. So, but I mean, you could have a conscious experience and not remember it, but it's still, you had that experience in the moment. But the point is that these dreams don't, a lot of it is a cleaning out. Um, so you take in a lot of information, a lot of stimulation during the day. And the brain has to decide what's important enough to re-instantiate, to keep and to reinforce and to kind of throw away.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Re-instantiate?

• 36:32Heather Berlin?

  Or reinforce.

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a word?

• 36:34Heather Berlin?

  Yeah. I don't know. Did I make it up? I might've made that up.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Re-instantiate?

• 36:37Heather Berlin?

  Or just instantiate?

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's all new. Every syllable of that word, it was new to me.

• 36:42Heather Berlin?

  I might've made up a word. I do that sometimes.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like made up words.

• 36:44Heather Berlin?

  But you get what I'm saying.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  After you instantiate the first time, Neil.

• 36:47Heather Berlin?

  You re-instantiate. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I bet you it's a real word. Um, so what it does is it reinforces the important information and consolidates, that's a better word. It consolidates the information and then it gets rid of other stuff that's sort of junky. And so in that whole process, your brain is firing, there's neurons firing and there's, if you're in one of those brain states during sleep where you're sort of conscious, that information is going to manifest itself in a kind of a dream state. It's going to be based on things you've been exposed to in your life. It's going to be based on memories, things that your brain, information your brain has taken in over the course of your life or over the course of the day. So you'll place meaning on it when you wake up. You'll try to make sense of it because that's when the prefrontal cortex is re-engaged. Remember that meaning maker part of the brain. But

• 37:31Heather Berlin?

  in the actual dream, it's more like a flow state or like what we see in people who are in flow states or meditative states or psychedelic drugs.

• 37:39Heather Berlin?

  So I hope that answers the question. I don't, there's a lot. I mean, you could have a whole series on dreams.

• 37:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so suppose there are people who don't dream or don't remember any of their dreams. Are they less mentally with it?

• 37:49Heather Berlin?

  Uh, well.

• 37:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In other words, are dreams good to remember or bad to even matter?

• 37:54Heather Berlin?

  Well, one theory is that it's a threat rehearsal so that you can actually work out things in your dream states that help you in real life.

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For survival.

• 38:02Heather Berlin?

  Yes, for survival. So there is some aspect of it that might be important to help people for survival, in the sense that it's a good thing.

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And some people have recurring dreams.

• 38:09Heather Berlin?

  Right, right. And that might be, and then Freud might have it right there where there's some issues that are being suppressed that they might want to work out.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  So is it false that we do dream every night? We just don't always remember it?

• 38:20Heather Berlin?

  I mean, the theory is that we dream every night. Again, it's very hard to prove, but we don't, we don't always remember it. And there is some validity, I don't want to like throw Freud completely under the bus, that when you have, in the waking state, certain suppressed memories and thoughts, that when the prefrontal cortex is on, it can keep things at bay, like emotions and memories. And when it's released, releasing that inhibition, you can, those things can come to the surface and come out in dreams, like things that you normally are not aware of in your waking state.

• 38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 38:45Heather Berlin?

  So it is a way to access the unconscious, but not to like predict the future.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  I have actor's nightmares constantly.

• 38:51Heather Berlin?

  Really?

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Like anxiety dreams that actors have, and it's a real thing.

• 38:55Heather Berlin?

  Like you're on stage and you forget your lines?

• 38:57Speaker 02

  You don't know why you're there, you don't know what you're in. My last one was I sang something wrong and the composer and lyricist were writing my one good eye line.

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 39:06Heather Berlin?

  So that's just your normal, like your anxieties and fears manifesting themselves.

• 39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you have those dreams in Yiddish?

• 39:11Speaker 02

  I don't express that enough during the day.

• 39:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because your character is Yiddish?

• 39:14Speaker 02

  I dream in color, but not in Yiddish.

• 39:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not in Yiddish.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  I dream from right to left.

• 39:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For those just joining us, Jackie is Yenta in Fiddler on the Roof in an all-Yiddish version.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  With English subtitles.

• 39:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  English subtitles, okay.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Don't panic.

• 39:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, give me another one.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Okay. Here's a quickie. This is good, from Arik Sabramanyam on Instagram. Do you need a brain to feel pain as we know it? Do jellyfish, for instance, feel pain?

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good question.

• 39:43Heather Berlin?

  I like that. I like that. So, you don't need a brain?

• 39:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or lobster, because people eat lobsters.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  They scream when you put them in the water.

• 39:51Heather Berlin?

  You know that actually it's illegal now in the EU to cook lobsters alive? Because we claim they're conscious. There's enough evidence that they experience pain and that they have consciousness. So, you don't...

• 40:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So instead of putting them in the boiling water, you kill them some other way?

• 40:06Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, and then you can more compassionate way. Also, octopus, I think that's what it is as well. You can't also kill an octopus in a way that... Because we know that they're very smart and very conscious.

• 40:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, is there a neurological primitivity where you would say, "They're not really feeling this pain"? In some animal out there?

• 40:25Heather Berlin?

  Okay, so the answer is you don't need a brain. You do need some sort of nervous system.

• 40:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, right, of course. You can have a nervous system without a brain.

• 40:32Heather Berlin?

  Without a brain. And so like a jellyfish has that, and its tentacles, it kind of has like a neural net. And so, if you give it some noxious stimuli, or you like poke its tentacle, it will move away. It will retract.

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Therefore, it feels it.

• 40:45Heather Berlin?

  If it's feeling pain, yeah. I mean, you know, as we always say, you know, I don't know...

• 40:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earthworms will move away from pain.

• 40:50Heather Berlin?

  Right. So, it's about like, that's how we kind of have to measure it behaviorally. Because even with the human, you know, the pain, again, it's a subjectivity. You go to the hospital, you know, something's wrong. They say, "Okay, on a scale of 1 to 10, how painful is it"?

• 41:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, now they have a smiley face or a sad face?

• 41:04Heather Berlin?

  The numbers, the numbers. They couldn't handle the numbers.

• 41:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The numbers were too...

• 41:07Heather Berlin?

  Too much, too much. It's got to simplify. But, yeah, so we don't know, but we can tell, okay, look, you retract as if you're feeling pain. So, I was at a whole meeting where we were talking about animal consciousness and how low down the sort of food chain does it go? And we had a whole discussion about fish. And fish, can they feel? And the answer is yes. I mean, they, again, they have a noxious stimuli, they'll retract from it, they have the recorded memories, so they'll avoid that stimuli again. So, it's as if they're experiencing something.

• 41:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, how do they kill the lobster before you cook it?

• 41:39Heather Berlin?

  I don't know. Lethal injection.

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, by the way, we had on StarTalk, I interviewed the founder of PETA.

• 41:47Heather Berlin?

  Oh.

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And many people associate PETA with just being, you know, all veggie, no killing of animals. To hear her speak, the philosophy was very different. It was not that she's against killing animals. She's against the infliction of pain on animals. And I said, well, what about lobster? She said she has people working on some kind of anesthetizing first pass at the lobster before you then put it in the boiling water.

• 42:17Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to show you the purity of that mission statement, that it's, and so I bet you, if there was a package of that sold next to lobster, people would buy it, of course.

• 42:26Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would, of course, I think people would do that. If you, if you're rich enough to buy the lobster, you got enough money to buy the lobster anesthetizer.

• 42:33Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 42:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before you, you cook it.

• 42:35Heather Berlin?

  And just wait, minor correction. I think it's the, the illegality in the EU is of first octopus, or octopi, I never know what.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Octopoid.

• 42:43Heather Berlin?

  Octopoid.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 42:44Heather Berlin?

  Not lobsters. I just remembered that in the recesses of my mind. So you can still horribly damage a lobster when you boil it alive. However, um, the, I think that the real issue is about how animals are treated and if they are killed in a way that doesn't cause them drama or, or trauma or stress.

• 43:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Drama.

• 43:02Heather Berlin?

  Drama. We don't want drama either.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The drama queen.

• 43:05Heather Berlin?

  I do. Or like, you know, Temple Grand.

• 43:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have an actor here. She wants drama. Yeah. Well, can I, can I, my, my drama, I bit of drama. I know it's lame, but I still do it. Anytime I cook a lobster, before I put it in the water, I remove the rubber bands from the claws so that it can try to bite me as it's one last act of survival.

• 43:31Heather Berlin?

  That is like really sadistic.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  You went deep into that lobster mind.

• 43:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I'm cooking it live, at least give it a chance to fight back. So I take off the rubber bands and then they pop open, the claws pop open. And then it can try to bite me. And I have to then triumph over, of course I do. Cause I'm smarter than a lobster.

• 43:52Heather Berlin?

  So you give him one like fighting chance?

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One last chance. It's just, it's my own.

• 43:56Heather Berlin?

  So he can die with dignity?

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dignity. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

• 44:00Heather Berlin?

  Oh my god.

• 44:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Okay, so tell me about Temple Grandin.

• 44:03Heather Berlin?

  I was just gonna say Temple Grandin.

• 44:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who, by the way, was been a guest on StarTalk.

• 44:06Heather Berlin?

  She's great.

• 44:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of my favorite shows.

• 44:08Heather Berlin?

  Oh, so interesting. So she, she has autism and she was sort of very much aware of she can sort of empathize with how the animals were feeling. And she created this whole system of when they go to slaughter. That they would gently be like, so it wasn't stressful for them or sort of anxiety provoking. They would get like sort of guided through this sort of, they were kind of like tunnels into the slaughterhouse in a way that was so they couldn't see what was happening in front of them. And it was like this really humane way to bring them there without just, you know, throwing them in and giving them all the anxiety of stress that they're about to.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Corraling them and then here you go.

• 44:40Heather Berlin?

  Yeah. And so I thought that was really humane.

• 44:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus there are people in the vegetarian movement that hate her for that. Because she made it that much more humane to kill an animal that the vegetarians didn't want killed in the first place.

• 44:51Heather Berlin?

  Yes, yes. So we can go deeper into that. But the answer is you don't need a brain, but you need, I think, a nervous system.

• 44:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, cool. We gotta go lightning round, Jackie.

• 45:00Heather Berlin?

  Lightning.

• 45:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lightning, let me, let me try to do.

• 45:02Heather Berlin?

  Oh, this is scary. So we just have to do quick like.

• 45:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, sound bites. We're gonna need sound bites. Okay, here we go. Jackie, give it to me.

• 45:09Speaker 02

  From Sam Pongosol on Facebook. How are memories physically stored in the brain? Also, can we implant fabricated memories in some way?

• 45:18Heather Berlin?

  Yes, they're, they're in, they're, no, they're.

• 45:22Heather Berlin?

  In the brain via long-term potentiation, which is a physical process that connects neurons to each other or makes them sort of what, what? Fires together, wires together. That's the quickest. Heavy in synapse, it's called.

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. So the more they fire together, the more they will remain connected.

• 45:37Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 45:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In such a way that they form a memory.

• 45:39Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next one, quick.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  I've always been your Sancho on Instagram. What does it mean to focus on something? How does it work?

• 45:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, good one.

• 45:47Heather Berlin?

  That means attention. It's attention. And what it is, is that there's part of your brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that's activated.

• 45:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's way too many syllables.

• 45:54Heather Berlin?

  When you're the D F L P C. Anyway, no, D L F P C. Anyway, so you can engage certain parts of your prefrontal cortex that filter out extraneous information and your kind of mental energy is focused on a particular bit of information.

• 46:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So part of the focus is taking away things that would distract?

• 46:12Heather Berlin?

  Yes, yes. And that's what people have problems with their attention is that they're too easily distracted. They're not good at focusing in because of the distractions.

• 46:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Got it.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  What? I'm sorry.

• 46:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me one more.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  I wasn't listening. Jack Perry 8 on Instagram. Will a brain transplant or full body transplant ever become a reality?

• 46:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I want to know because you have the Lou Gehrig's disease folks where their body decays. What is it?

• 46:37Heather Berlin?

  A L S.

• 46:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you have the Alzheimer's folks where their brain goes away.

• 46:42Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 46:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm thinking in the future, you get the brain of the A L H person and put it in the body of the Alzheimer's person. Then you get one whole human there.

• 46:50Heather Berlin?

  Yeah. If only we could reconnect and regrow neural. I don't think we're that, we're close to it. Okay? So I'm gonna have to say no, but maybe in the next like hundreds of years, 200 years maybe, but if we can figure out how to regenerate.

• 47:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Put a man on the moon. You can't do a brain transplant?

• 47:09Heather Berlin?

  I'm really, I highly doubt it. Yeah, I'm gonna say no. That's a no.

• 47:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a no.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  You wanted lightning.

• 47:16Heather Berlin?

  You heard it here first. There's a lot of reasons why. We'll get into it later.

• 47:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Dr. Frankenstein did a brain transplant.

• 47:21Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 47:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He got the abnormal.

• 47:23Heather Berlin?

  That's true.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  They did one on Star Trek too. It's Spock's brain.

• 47:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, remember that?

• 47:27Heather Berlin?

  We can probably replace a brain with silicon at some point.

• 47:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Silicon based.

• 47:31Heather Berlin?

  Silicon based brain. But I don't know about taking a biological human brain and putting it on another body.

• 47:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What? You don't mean silicon, the element on the periodic table. You mean a computer brain?

• 47:39Heather Berlin?

  A computer brain.

• 47:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's what you mean.

• 47:40Heather Berlin?

  So the idea is if you can replace one neuron with a silicon chip that does exactly the same function on and off, and then another and another and another, at some point

• 47:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In principle.

• 47:47Heather Berlin?

  In principle, you can replace the whole brain.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  And create a brain.

• 47:50Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, and inside a body.

• 47:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But would it dream?

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 47:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have run out of time. For this special neuroscience edition of StarTalk Cosmic Queries, Heather, as always, thanks for being such a friend of StarTalk. And you're one of our StarTalk All-Stars, and it's always great to have you back.

• 48:07Heather Berlin?

  Thank you.

• 48:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we don't see enough of you. So we should do every episode on the brain, don't you think, guys?

• 48:12Heather Berlin?

  Everything involves the brain. Come on, let's do it.

• 48:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jackie Hoffman, great. I'm gonna try to get tickets to your Yiddish production, English subtitles, of Fiddler on the Roof. Particularly with you playing Yenta, that's gotta be hilarious.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  I like to think so, with my brain. Boy, this was exhausting, and I was the stupid one.

• 48:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you've been listening to, possibly even watching, this episode of StarTalk. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.

• 48:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, thank you, guys.

• 48:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how we roll on StarTalk. This is how we roll.