Making a Phenom: The Mind

In Episode Two of our ‘Making a Phenom’ mini-series, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice investigate the brain of an elite athlete with neuroscientist Heather Berlin, PhD, and kinesiologist and author Joan Vickers, PhD.

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.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Sports Edition. We've got a special series we're in the middle of and it's called Making of a Phenom. And this is our second installment in that. I've got with me, of course, Chuck Nice, Chuck.

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  Hey, what's happening, Neil?

• 0:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, my co-host, who was not a professional athlete, for that we have to go...

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To Gary O'Reilly, Gary.

• 0:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey Neil, maybe Chuck, you should do a role reversal.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A role reversal.

• 0:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. I can, uh, well, no, I've watched professional sports.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That counts, that's just as good.

• 0:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, I've watched stand-up comedians.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary, former soccer pro in the UK, and you've also been a sports commentator and we're delighted and lucky to have you as my co-host here on StarTalk. So, again, this is part two of our mini-series, The Making of a Phenom. And what we're doing is we're taking a deep dive into the mind, body, and soul of elite pro athletes. And Gary, were you an elite pro athlete or just a pro athlete?

• 1:22Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, I played with and against some players and I did come to realize how average I could be.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How average professional you were.

• 1:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, there are some guys are born with a penthouse at the top of Mount Olympus and those of us that scurry around at base camp.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got you. Fascinating analogy there.

• 1:45Chuck Nice?

  But you're elite just to play professional sports, so you're at least an elite athlete.

• 1:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's of all athletes.

• 1:55Chuck Nice?

  You may not be, you may not be an elite professional athlete, but you're at least an elite athlete.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, he was hanging out on Mount Olympus at all, right? Even if he was scurrying around the base of the penthouse.

• 2:06Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, one of our important go-to people throughout this whole effort to unpack what it is to be an elite phenom is Heather Berlin. Heather, longtime friend of StarTalk, you've been with us almost from the beginning. I've got you a neuroscientist and assistant professor at the Icahn.

• 2:28Heather Berlin?

  Carl Icahn.

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Carl Icahn, I-C-A-H-N, Carl Icahn School of Medicine at, of course, Mount Sinai. And you're also, you're what's with us as a StarTalk All-Star and an all-around science communicator. So delighted to have you on.

• 2:44Chuck Nice?

  Are you an elite, are you an elite neuroscientist?

• 2:47Heather Berlin?

  I'm an elite, I'm not an elite professional neuroscientist, but I'm an elite, yeah, I'll call myself an elite neuroscientist. It's a pleasure to be part of this gang, this elite gang.

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Elite. So, let me ask you, Heather, you've studied brains before with MRIs, FMRI's, right? Functional magnetic resonance imaging. It's where you're poking around in the brain in real time while the person is alive, telling them to think and not think. So, this gives you extraordinary power over people?

• 3:18Heather Berlin?

  Great power comes great responsibility.

• 3:22Chuck Nice?

  Oh, look at that, spider shrink. Spider shrink, spider shrink. Okay.

• 3:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me just ask you, what might we expect to see were you to probe the mind of an elite superstar athlete? Is it concentration? Is it, do they have extra firings in one part of the brain or the other? Or general, what part of the brain would be feeding this talent?

• 3:51Heather Berlin?

  Right. Well, it depends on what task they're engaged in at any particular time. So, when we put people in the scanner, we have them engaged in a particular task to kind of probe a skill.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just like that sentence. We put people in the scanner. That's just, that just sounds so.

• 4:10Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 4:11Heather Berlin?

  Put them in the scanner.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just line them up, put them in the scanner.

• 4:15Chuck Nice?

  I have a feeling that when they put people in that scanner, they also give them a false memory of being abducted by aliens.

• 4:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, no.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Heather has the most obedient husband anyone has ever seen. So we're pretty sure she's got that one covered.

• 4:36Gary O'Reilly?

  Generally, what happens when you put me in a scanner like an MRI, I fall asleep.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Come, come visit me at work. I just want you to try something.

• 4:44Heather Berlin?

  Test something out. Give me a few minutes.

• 4:47Chuck Nice?

  So funny.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry. I'm very sorry to interrupt.

• 4:49Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, no, that's okay. So, well, first of all, when you're in the scanner, you can't move. You have to lay perfectly still. So it's not the ideal circumstance to actually test a player when he's engaged in actually playing the sport. So some things we can do is have them imagine, you know, playing, which is not as good as the real thing. You're not going to get the same kind of activation of the motor areas of the brain that you would see in real time when they're actually playing. But what you get is activation of these pre-motor areas, these supplementary motor areas, where they're planning to make movements. And what goes on in the mind, obviously, it depends on the sport. But one key factor is their ability to make predictions based on input, let's say, from other players.

• 5:32Heather Berlin?

  So if you can predict what the other player is going to do a few seconds before, let's say, your opponent, you have an advantage. And then you can make a quicker decision about how you're going to respond to that. So it's not just about how fast you can make a decision. There's the trade off between speed and accuracy. But the element of being able to have sort of theory of mind, to predict what your opponent is going to do a few steps ahead. It's kind of like playing chess, too. You know, the further you can predict into the future, the better your current move will be. So a lot of that decision making process, yeah.

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never fully appreciated how important that role would be.

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If if I'm guarding someone in basketball, or if you know, in in team sports, team against team, if you know a split second in advance of your opponent, you you you you just won that exchange, whatever that exchange is, that's that's, oh my god.

• 6:25Chuck Nice?

  That is the whole purpose, though, of watching film on your opponents in all professional sports teams do that, because every player, you know, much like in poker, has a tell. So, you know, you know when you're, like you said, guarding, perhaps.

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so when Michael Jordan's, when Michael Jordan sticks his tongue out.

• 6:44Chuck Nice?

  You know you're about to be embarrassed. You are about to be embarrassed. When Michael Jordan takes that tongue and starts licking the bottom of his chin, he's really licking his chops, how delicious it will be to make you look silly.

• 6:59Gary O'Reilly?

  The other thing is, you go into a phase in your mind through having seen tape, through having done the an an analysis on an opponent or a team, and, Doctor, please, Heather, tell me, pattern recognition, I'm not conscious, and all of a sudden, I am. So does my brain start actually processing and making decisions before I'm conscious of it? Because all of a sudden, something's taking place, a pattern of play, and all of a sudden, I'm moving.

• 7:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's it's only a pattern if you've seen it before, isn't that right? So, so there's got to be some life experience credits that's going on in there, isn't that right, Heather?

• 7:38Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, yeah. So, basically, it's all about, first, you consciously take in the input, and that's kind of the studying part, right? Where you're learning different plays, different patterns, and also, not only that, but what you should do if a given pattern, let's say, is occurring, right? So, not only recognizing it, but knowing then what to do in response to it. So, in that way, you're taking that in consciously, so that over time, again, what makes an elite athlete is that they've internalized those, that they can then process that information unconsciously. Your brain will pick up on it, automatically tell your body what to do, and you won't even have to take the time to think about it. And we see, not even just in athletes, but in in in regular people, um, that We can predict up to 10 seconds ahead of your of whether you're going to decide to say go left or right

• 8:23Heather Berlin?

  before you're even consciously aware of what your decision is going to be.

• 8:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  10, you said 10 seconds?

• 8:28Heather Berlin?

  10 seconds using fMRI. So we can sort of look at the blood flow in the brain and say to somebody, you know, decide whether to go left or right. And by kind of using a process where we can uh mathematical formulas to look at these probabilities, we can with about 80% accuracy predict um up to 10 seconds ahead based on blood flow to different parts of the brain, whether you're going to go left or right before you're even aware.

• 8:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather, you're saying your brain is deciding for you without you even knowing it? That's what you were saying?

• 8:58Heather Berlin?

  Yes, pretty much. Yep, yep, yep. So um the

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what, so there's no free will is what you're saying?

• 9:04Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, it's it's well, it's an illusion of free will, right? The perception of free will is an important one. Um but usually we're the last, no, but but it's also

• 9:15Chuck Nice?

  That's life.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's so funny.

• 9:17Heather Berlin?

  But it's an important illusion.

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just don't know it.

• 9:21Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. Uh but it's an important illusion to have because studies show that when we tell people there's no free will and then we give them subsequent tests, they're more likely to cheat on an exam, to behave unethically. So given that we're social creatures, this illusion that we have sort of autonomy and and um over our behaviors makes us behave in moral ways, even though our brains are like deciding before we're conscious of it. Like, one of the reasons, one of the theories of consciousness is that it evolved particularly so that we can predict others' behavior in advance and that that would help us survive better. So it was a survival skill that now has been kind of parlayed into, you know, elite sports players.

• 10:04Heather Berlin?

  But those who could predict, let's say, an aggressor who's coming in advance and can make a move to sort of save themselves. And so over time, that those who had more conscious perception survive more. And that's a theory of how consciousness evolved.

• 10:18Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, let me put this into context from an athlete on a team sports point of view. As as a player on defense, if I see certain patterns, they equal danger. That equals a team scoring a goal against me. I don't like that. That's bad. So what I do is position or I organize my team unit to position so as we stop, thwart, detonate that. On the offensive side, If I see a pattern of play and the object is for me to score, I will now maneuver myself to be in a position to receive the pass so as I can score. So it's the sense of danger, correct me if I'm wrong, please, sense of danger and the ability to gain reward.

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the reward, yeah.

• 11:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, so it's those two ends of the spectrum.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brains like rewards, right?

• 11:04Heather Berlin?

  They do indeed. And there's the motivation, right? So if you feel like you're under threat, let's say you recognize a pattern, it signals to your brain danger, it's going to motivate you. And part of that is, is the reward network is active, just in the sense of being motivated to make a move. The more danger there is, maybe the harder you're going to push your body to, let's say, defend or to run. And so there's a lot going on all at the same time. Fear can trigger motivation and can trigger better performance in many ways. So you want that motivation, you want that dopamine and a little bit of a threat to get you going. If you weren't in danger, maybe you'll be too lax and you won't perform as well.

• 11:47Heather Berlin?

  That's like when, often in sports games, and you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but like when you're doing really well and it's halftime, the team that's, you know, in the lead can get a little bit more relaxed and then ends up, you know, the other team starts to take over, right? Because they're more motivated at that point. So, you know, there's these group dynamics that are occurring as well. So sometimes a little threat is better for your performance.

• 12:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's the, that's the whole idea behind, uh, I hate to bring him up, but Tom Brady's, uh...

• 12:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're loud, Chuck.

• 12:22Chuck Nice?

  Say it, say it. I hate to bring this guy up, but his philosophy is always play like you're losing.

• 12:27Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 12:28Chuck Nice?

  He actually views the game only from a losing perspective. So even if you're up 21 points, his motivation is, well, I gotta score because you'll, you could get 21 points and then I'll lose. So yeah, that's definitely a great motivator.

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But can't we distinguish Heather between team sports, like as Gary was saying, where you have to sort of navigate a threat pattern versus solo sports like sprinting, for example? There's no, there's, there's not, no one is against me, but if I'm behind another runner halfway, I'm, that's motivation, of course, but I don't feel threatened by it.

• 13:10Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 13:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for, for those that don't feel threat, but they still rise, what are they drawing, what are they drawing from?

• 13:17Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, that's a slightly different mentality and basically they're competing against themselves. So it's this idea of I need to beat my own time. I need to, you know, they have to set up in a sense their own goals. Uh, and it's less about the competitors, although obviously when, when you can see, let's say a runner in sight and you're about, you know, you're just behind them, you're about to overtake them, that's going to trigger some adrenaline and some motivation. But if it's just you alone, running a distance or, you know, let's say it's a long jumper or somebody doing a solo sport, it's about beating themselves and, and it's still motivating. It's just in a different way. But in both cases, they're taking in information from the environment. They're performing, they're getting feedback, whether it's from themselves or from other

• 14:01Heather Berlin?

  players, and then they're revising their performance accordingly. So it's just the classic kind of performance feedback revision, uh, whether it's solo or with teams. But I think with teams, it's just the psychology is slightly different and it's more about others than focusing on yourself as the competitor.

• 14:17Gary O'Reilly?

  To pick up on something Chuck said about Tom Brady.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't let it rest, huh? You gotta keep bringing it up.

• 14:25Gary O'Reilly?

  I gotta go there because this, this is something that's been eaten away in my mind. We learn more from losing. We are taught that, we always hear about it. Yet when an athlete wins, wins, wins, how do they learn? How do they, I mean, because this is the whole thing about being a phenom. I'm the best, you don't beat me.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you don't learn from anybody because you're better than everybody ever was.

• 14:47Gary O'Reilly?

  I know. And then that's the Achilles heel scenario. And I think, uh, Heather Berlin is going to tell me there's another, another name for that, but.

• 14:55Heather Berlin?

  Well, when you let down your guard and you become even like for anything, for a comedian, you know, if you're not getting that adrenaline rush where you're about to get out in the audience, you're, you're probably, your performance is going to start to go down. Right? You, so, but I think with the. Athletes, first of all, you know that saying it takes like, you know, years of hard work to become an overnight success, right? So the people who are winning now, they weren't always winning, right? They, it took them a long time to get there. And, and I think those that really achieve at the highest levels are never really satisfied, are never at the point where they're like, okay, I'm, I'm the best now, I'm good enough, I can, you know, they're always wanting to do better, better, better. And it's, it's interesting because you need a lot of self-esteem to, you know, to get to these levels.

• 15:41Heather Berlin?

  But at the same time, there's always a little bit of vulnerability, a little bit of insecurity that continues to push you and push you. I mean, I didn't know it as an academic, you know, I'm always like, well, I have to, I didn't write enough papers, I need to keep going, I have to write a book, I have to, you know, it's never enough and that's what continues to propel you. So I think even if they're winning, even if they won three Super Bowls, it's like, well, I didn't get, you know, I need to win a fourth, I need to break the world record. And it just keeps going on and on like that. So I don't think they ever feel like they fully won.

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what about, um, there's some cases, take Michael Phelps, for example. He's, um, he was very public about therapy that he had, but I think that was after he had stopped winning medals. I don't know if he did it before, but in either case, the, for people to come to know themselves better, um, in any cases, that surely would have value, right? Not to bring more business your way, but I'm just asking. Everybody needs it, that's what you're gonna tell us, right?

• 16:37Heather Berlin?

  Yes, everyone can do with a little therapy and self-awareness. No, but I, I do think that in particular with athletes, the amount of pressure, um, that they're under. And, and you know, some of it is a little bit obsessional, right? I mean, like someone like Michael Phelps, like, he's talked about, you know, having to swim in the pool for hours and hours and hours a day, but in a way it was his therapy, in a way it was a way to kind of escape some of his mental demons. So, you know, it's, one question is, do people with mental health issues, are they more likely to go into these sports that are required type of obsession? Or is it being an elite athlete can create some of these mental disturbances? Like the anxiety from all the pressure?

• 17:21Heather Berlin?

  There's also the, you know, sensation seeking when you're at the top and you're really succeeding. You know, I was speaking with Lindsey Vonn about this, who's an Olympic gold medalist skier, said, Now that I'm retired, like, I am depressed because that excitement, I no longer have it. Now where do I find that? And that is an issue with athletes. It's like, where do you go from here? Or, you know, Buzz Aldrin, who went to the moon, I spoke to him and he's suffered from depression. He said, well, after you go to the moon, you know, what's left? What is there?

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mars, Mars, Mars. I got this, okay?

• 17:57Heather Berlin?

  I recommend that's all my patients.

• 18:01Heather Berlin?

  Paying for Mars.

• 18:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Are there any clinical, medical, mental conditions that could actually, in some instances, be advantageous for an athlete?

• 18:11Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I would say a little bit of obsessive compulsive disorder, perfectionism. I mean, those kinds of qualities, not to the extent where it becomes debilitating, but having that singular focus and perfectionism, no, I have to shave off just a millisecond from my time, probably is helpful. Not that it's the most healthy mentally, but...

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So your field, which is very big on naming conditions of human behavior and of mind, and having to revisit those names over the decades.

• 18:43Heather Berlin?

  Yes.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If some aspect of compulsive behavior can improve one's performance, then we shouldn't keep calling it a disorder. It's just somebody's different.

• 18:55Heather Berlin?

  Right, right. And the only thing, you know, obviously the DSM, which is the Diagnostic Statistical Manual, that names all these disorders, which does revise and change over the years. But what we define as being a disorder is that if it causes disturbance to your life, if it, you know, if your perfectionism is interfering with your relationships and with your emotions. And so it's really subjective. It's, there's no clear line that marks this is now a disorder.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, if I'm that way and you don't like it and it interferes with you, but I'm the best in the world, it's not a disorder, even if it interferes with relationships. It doesn't interfere with this other thing.

• 19:35Heather Berlin?

  There's a couple of exceptions, though. So usually it has to... Okay, subjectively, it has to disturb you. If it doesn't, then it wouldn't be a disorder. A couple of exceptions. For example, people with narcissistic personality disorder.

• 19:46Chuck Nice?

  I was just about to say exactly that.

• 19:48Heather Berlin?

  They don't have a problem with it, but everyone else does.

• 19:52Chuck Nice?

  I'm a complete and total a-hole, but I don't care because I'm great with me. And, you know, but everybody else is suffering. That's a problem.

• 20:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just win, win, win.

• 20:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we gotta, we gotta take a break. We have another guest coming forward. But Heather, can you come back for segment three? Because that's when we, we, we shoot the shit. And you're really good at that.

• 20:16Chuck Nice?

  We hear you have incredible aim.

• 20:22Heather Berlin?

  Lucky I stocked up on toilet paper. All right.

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She went there, she went there. But just to distinguish it from being full of shit, that's a different segment that we're doing. But shoot the shit, we just, we spend the third segment just exploring nuances that wouldn't normally come up in a formal conversation. So thanks. If you come back, we'll make sure to tap you some more. All right, this is StarTalk Sports Edition, Making a Phenom. We'll be right back.

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, segment two out of three, StarTalk Sports Edition, The Making of a Phenom. We now bring in a, a person with a particular specialty that many people didn't even know existed. We have Dr. Joan Vickers. She's Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Cal, Calgary, Calgary in Alberta, Canada. And she's an emeritus professor. So she's been at this a long time. Author of the book, I'm gonna get it here, Perception, Cognition, and Decision Training: The Quiet Eye in Action. And so, yeah, so elite athletes, their vision, their, their brain eye.

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A contact is real and it's probably better than all the rest of us. And I think we've got the person to talk to about this. Joan, welcome to StarTalk.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. So can you tell us exactly what you mean by quiet eye? And how do you like quantify how that might be important for athletes?

• 22:16Speaker 04

  That's the hardest thing for people to get right at the very beginning. How do you record the gaze of someone when they're looking, you know, 10, 15, 20 feet away? And I brought along a little eye tracker here, just so people can see what's used. So this is, this is one of many eye trackers out there today, but one that's been used extensively. And so this fits on the athlete, just like a pair of sport glasses. It's outfitted with a couple of cameras. This camera here is going to be taking this camera here. This is taking the scene, no matter where the person looks.

• 22:56Speaker 04

  This camera here is actually shooting against this mirrored monocle down here. Cause I want to get the video right off of the eye, right off of the cornea of the eye. And so then by the optics that are in here, what, what you end up, I brought an example of this. I don't know if you folks can see that.

• 23:21Chuck Nice?

  It's a guy taking a foul shot.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is a guy taking a foul shot. Let's see if I get this right. So he's actually wearing the eye tracker here. All right. And what I just described, the eye tracker is taking this image over here. And on, do you see the hoop?

• 23:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it's seeing what he's seeing, the hoop and.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Right. Now you see that little black spot there?

• 23:45Chuck Nice?

  It's inside, inside of the rebound or the backboard square, there's a tiny little black spot.

• 23:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's right actually on the front of the rim.

• 23:54Chuck Nice?

  It's on the front of the rim, in the very cent, in the very center of the front of the rim.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  That's right. That's the quiet eye in basketball shooting.

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, so what is, what does that mean? And how did you even know it exists? To me, it's just the front of the rim.

• 24:12Speaker 04

  These systems give you a video of the person's gaze, in this case, the quiet eye, the fixations in space, every thirty-three or sixteen point six-six milliseconds. In other words, it's good enough in terms of determining what the brain is actually processing and what it's actually seeing. And then what makes what we do unique, if you could see the video on the side, we couple the movements of the person at the same time. So we have perception-action coupling. You're able to actually know exactly when that gaze is used at a particular phase of the movement.

• 24:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa, but just to be clear, so the number of times you sample what they're seeing per second, as long as it's faster than the rate at which the brain will act on information, then you can get totally inside what they're doing. Right? If you were sampling it once per second, stuff went on in that second, you just missed it, right?

• 25:07Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 25:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why that matters. I just want to make that clear.

• 25:10Speaker 04

  Oh, it's a huge thing. And some of these eye trackers are extremely fast today. But this has unlocked the answers to a lot of the mystery that we had in terms of what do people actually see? How's the brain processing that information? And the quiet eye variable came out because I started doing all of my research with the lead athletes. I thought, well, you know, if I was going to put an experiment in a laboratory, I'm not going to get the hundreds of thousands of trials, practice trials, in an experimental setting. But the minute you put an eye tracker on the lead athlete, you've got someone who's trained ten years, ten thousand hours, millions of trials in some cases.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  And so you've got a very special brain and visual system that you're accessing right off the top.

• 25:59Chuck Nice?

  So I'm sorry, because you're working with elite trackers. I'm just curious because something popped to my head just now where I read a study about how we don't ever see what we actually see. Like, there's too much data to take in for the brain that you're... So what you're actually seeing is what your brain... Tells you, fills in the information. So are you actually seeing the filled in information that they are seeing indeed?

• 26:32Speaker 04

  That's right, we are.

• 26:33Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 26:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, but, but, there's a caveat on that. The, uh, the human visual reaction time is about 250 milliseconds to 300 milliseconds. That's about 10 frames, video frames, recorded by one of these. And the brain needs that amount of, that amount of time in order to actually make sense about what's being viewed, in this case, the front of the hoop. And they need, uh, not only that amount of time to perceive it, but to organize the movement and initiate and carry out a very simple movement, actually.

• 27:08Gary O'Reilly?

  So doctor, it's the sooner I see, the sooner I see it and the longer I can hold that quiet eye moment.

• 27:15Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 27:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Um, but, I think, major events in sports, team sports, uh, tennis game, happen in hundreds of a second.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 27:26Gary O'Reilly?

  So how am I trying to get over this particular warp in time?

• 27:31Speaker 04

  The, uh, the big surprise for, for my program, I think, was the work we did with ice hockey goaltenders.

• 27:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Ooh.

• 27:40Speaker 04

  And, you know, everyone said, uh...

• 27:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Canada, it's Canada.

• 27:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, well...

• 27:45Speaker 04

  Canada, yeah, we...

• 27:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Good point, good point.

• 27:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, of course it's ice hockey, right? It's not golf.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, although we've done, we've done soccer, goaltending as well, so, uh, but, um...

• 27:58Chuck Nice?

  But, but, but ice fishing wasn't in the, that wasn't part of...

• 28:03Speaker 04

  Uh, actually, we've done fly fishing.

• 28:06Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really, you did? That's okay, okay.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  Yep, the world champion, actually.

• 28:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow, that's, that's, that's great.

• 28:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, anyway, um, but the big thing, the big surprise for us is that the quiet eye of these elite goaltenders occurred...

• 28:21Speaker 04

  As the shot was being prepared.

• 28:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:25Speaker 04

  In other words, the goaltender's reading, not the body, believe it or not, but they're reading the stick and they're reading the movement of the puck on the stick. And I don't know if you know what an ice hockey player can do with a hockey stick. It's just magical.

• 28:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 04

  The control and the ability they have. Well, soccer players do it with their feet, right? They also can do the same thing.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The point is they're not just slapping the puck. They're actually.

• 28:52Speaker 04

  They're executing.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, these are curved sticks and they can do amazing things with them. And so what's unique about our program is that we have people in this ice hockey experiment shoot until 10 goals and 10 saves were made. So we're able to say what actually happened when there was failure in this situation. And what happened was that the amount of tracking, or not tracking, the fixation, the quad eye fixation on that movement of the stick as it was executing the shot was almost a second long. And there was indeed a bit of tracking right at the very beginning that was very important, but it wasn't a major part of it at all.

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  Right. So basically what the goaltender is doing then is it's, I can't think of an elegant way to say this because it's not a guess, but it's an anticipation.

• 29:51Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Absolutely.

• 29:54Chuck Nice?

  So they're looking at the stick and because of their pattern recognition, the amount of times they've done this over and over and over again, they know when the stick hits the ice and the puck at a certain place in the book that instead of tracking the puck, which would be damn near impossible at the speed that it's going, they literally just positioned their glove at the point where that anticipation calculation has been made.

• 30:22Speaker 04

  You got it, yeah. They predict the future.

• 30:25Chuck Nice?

  They predict the future. Unbelievable.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  But baseball players do that, ice, soccer goaltenders do that, tennis players do that. In all of these receiving serve, that pattern's showing up right across the board.

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And fly fishermen, apparently.

• 30:45Speaker 04

  Now fly fishing is like shooting basketballs, right? You have to place the fly very precisely on a place on the... They use hula hoops in their competition, actually.

• 30:57Gary O'Reilly?

  You know what the athletes have done, particularly soccer players and basketball players? Do you know what they've done? Because they know people like the professor here are working on quiet eye training. They do the no look pass. So they're taking...

• 31:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're deception.

• 31:12Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, they're taking away some of the data that you can analyze to make your decision.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so if I know you are quiet eyeing, I just have to do something different and then I'll fool you?

• 31:27Speaker 04

  You have to figure it out. You have to do exactly what Gary explained.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta have a loud eye coming at you.

• 31:36Gary O'Reilly?

  So...

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The obnoxious eye.

• 31:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh. That's what you detrain. How long? If you put someone, an athlete, into a program of quiet eye training, how long before you see the proper definitive bump in their abilities to absorb process and anticipate?

• 31:59Speaker 04

  I've done a lot of training in basketball shooting. And if a person comes to me, and golf, actually, and if a person comes to me and they're technically got very good bike mechanics, we can make a difference overnight.

• 32:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Really?

• 32:16Speaker 04

  How long? What kept you?

• 32:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, because the way we do the training, we actually show the athlete their gaze, their quiet eye. Well, first of all, we show them what an expert does. Pardon me, we test them. We show them then what an expert does. Then we bring up their video, their quiet eye video, and they go back and forth and they compare what the best in, you know, 85, 90% shooter does and what they do sitting there at 56%. And they just figure it out just like that. They walk back on the... They're still, they still have this on. They walk back on the line and they change it instantly. So now, if they're like a Shaquille O'Neal, for example...

• 33:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, then they're hopeless.

• 33:03Chuck Nice?

  In a free throw, only in a free throw.

• 33:06Speaker 04

  He was taught a technique that would allow him to see the basket the whole time. But really good basketball players bring their hands up through urine.

• 33:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 33:15Speaker 04

  And they shoot, and they actually clued the hoop. He was taught, like, people who have trouble, especially with free throws, they actually learn a whole mechanical, biomechanics of the shot that completely gets them in more trouble.

• 33:30Gary O'Reilly?

  So, Professor, okay, that's my execution of my skill in that particular moment. But what if I do have, as you say, good biomechanics, I do execute that skill with good technique? What if I've got like in the, I've got the yips as a golf putter?

• 33:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 33:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Can, can things like quiet eye training roll out and sort of level that out and not make that the mountain I can't, I can't ascend?

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, what are the yips?

• 33:59Chuck Nice?

  It's when your brain, your brain is all messed up, you're an adult, what's it called, a slump?

• 34:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, I'm on the crest of a, I'm on the crest of a slump.

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a thing, huh? A yip, okay, I've never been in a yip, so I don't know.

• 34:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, that's good for you, sir, because...

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not knowingly, knowingly yipped.

• 34:15Gary O'Reilly?

  Have you, have you ever seen a golf tournament where the, the guy just puts and it's like that, he made that putt look about three foot away and you know it's 18 feet away? And they're total control. And then you've got a guy with a three foot putt who misses by six feet.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 34:32Gary O'Reilly?

  You know, the yips, there's too much in here, too much going on in here.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Joan, you can fix yips.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  Actually, we, we've just done that, it appears.

• 34:43Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 34:44Speaker 04

  I've, I've been working with an LPGA eye and also one of my students who's a sports psychologist. We've been working with a, an LPGA player who has the yips. And she just was struggling terribly. And so we taught her the quiet eye. And how to execute it. And when we started working with her, this would be three years ago. Even counting this missed season. She wasn't qualifying. As a younger player, she was qualifying. Yips hit golfers when they tend to be older. You know, they're just worn out by the stress of competing under all that pressure all the time.

• 35:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 35:24Speaker 04

  Anyway, she actually got back qualifying. She had some really good finishes last year. She started making some really good money, which of course is the measuring tool in professional golf. And she's just so excited to be playing this year. And of course, it's been wiped out, which is really shit's a shame. Oh, and I'll tell you what she says. What she says is that before I'd stand over the ball and technically I was going through all of the millions of technical things. She was even given some crazy information about dominant eye. And she was trying to, you imagine, you're trying to control all these degrees of freedom in this very complicated skill.

• 36:07Speaker 04

  And then what she found when she learned the quiet eye, which is very task focused. It's external attention, it's into the task. Then all of a sudden, she found she wasn't, she wasn't experiencing the anxiety, the yips anymore. And she was out there going through this quiet eye routine. So, um, so yes, it can help.

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Joan, we have to wrap up this segment in a few moments, but let me just slip this in here if we have time. Your research uses the term the efficiency paradox. What is that?

• 36:38Speaker 04

  Actually, the neural efficiency hypothesis came out in 1988, actually, with research called Hyer. And he did intelligence tests and he found that people with very high IQs and were, were, you know, chess players as well, they just finish the performance of whatever they're doing extremely fast. So he, also he used PET scans and the brain was working, but not only very quickly, but also efficiently. And so the neural, neural efficiency hypothesis came out. Now here's the quiet eye with what 30 years of research showing you need this long duration quiet eye if you're an elite performer.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  And that's called the quiet eye neural efficiency paradox.

• 37:28Speaker 04

  And

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So your research created the paradox?

• 37:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, it did, actually.

• 37:36Speaker 04

  Thank you for shortening that up for me.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  But here's why, you see, a lot of people, the fallacy that came out of the neural efficiency paradox, or hypothesis is that if you're doing a really quick movement, the assumption is you've got a quick eye and you've got a quick body. No, that's not true. You've got really blistering fast movements, there's no question. But this thing up here is so darn complex, it needs time to get organized in order, the visual brain, the visual neural brain is really, really complex, complex, as you know from your previous guests and many other guests. It just takes a long time to organize the billions of neurons that underlie skills like this.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Joan, this is fascinating, and I've never told anyone this before because the occasion hasn't arisen, but when I was in middle school, I found a book in the library on kinesiology, and I read it cover to cover, and I said to myself, if I were ever something other than an astrophysicist, it would be a kinesiologist.

• 38:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, because back then, it was the unknown, right?

• 38:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't tell you how far back that was. Did I say how far back that was?

• 38:48Speaker 04

  I read your bio.

• 38:50Chuck Nice?

  That was back before we knew we even had muscles.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  Or brain.

• 38:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm deeply and eternally fascinated with your field, and this is my first conversation with a professional in it, so I'm delighted to have you on the show, and maybe we can get you on again.

• 39:07Speaker 04

  Lots of fun.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To talk more about the kinesiology of everything else as well. So Joan, thanks for joining us.

• 39:16Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 39:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, a third segment of StarTalk Sports Edition, The Making of a Phenom, when we return.

• 39:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Sports Edition. We're trying to get inside the head and the body, but mostly the head of sports phenoms. And of course, we had Heather Berlin in Segment 1, and we're bringing her back for Segment 3. There you are, Heather. Welcome back.

• 40:04Heather Berlin?

  It's a pleasure.

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So I just, generally in our 3rd Segment, we just explore the topics that were raised formally in the first 2 segments, and just say what we're thinking and say what we're wondering.

• 40:18Chuck Nice?

  You'll have a lot more to say. Heather's gonna have a lot more to say, seeing as she's a neuroscientist.

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather, are you, is there gonna be one of you hired by every sports team going forward?

• 40:32Heather Berlin?

  Let's hope so.

• 40:33Chuck Nice?

  Good answer, good answer.

• 40:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather's a free agent, she's negotiating her $10 million a contract?

• 40:41Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. I actually did get a call from a professional sports team, a basketball team, who I won't name, but they, the trainer was really interested in actually the effect of fame on their brain when these players are suddenly skyrocketed into fame, and how that might affect them, and how they could predict certain personality types that might be most affected by this, and how to prevent any unforeseen negative consequences of it.

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's worse, the fame or the money, in terms of its negative impact? I know they go together, but, but they don't have to.

• 41:15Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, not necessarily. I think I would have to say, and this isn't, there's no evidence to support this, but I'm predicting that the fame will have more of an impact.

• 41:24Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. There's no way, because you can be as rich as you, there are guys right now who are walking around with millions of dollars in the bank in New York City, and you do not know it. I mean, seriously, go to any bar in Lower Manhattan, down, if you get down to the tip of the island and, you know, down by Wall Street, and you go into any bar on any given evening, there are millionaires.

• 41:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All of them.

• 41:50Chuck Nice?

  All throughout that bar. I mean, everybody in that bar is a millionaire.

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everyone.

• 41:54Chuck Nice?

  And you, it means...

• 41:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Is that the bar called Millionaires?

• 41:59Chuck Nice?

  So, um, yeah, uh, but, but my point, my point is this, you can have a lot of money and it, it means nothing depending upon where you live, right? So in New York City, you're a very rich person, it means nothing, but you're a Real Housewife of, uh, of, of New York City and people were like, oh my God. And it's just like, really? If, but it's, there's something about fame.

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean from the show, Real Housewives?

• 42:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, from that show, yeah, right. So, so it's a, it's a currency. Fame is a currency.

• 42:27Heather Berlin?

  It's even more so than money because like money is a, is a like kind of secondary reinforcer. Like it's not reinforcing in itself, right? It's just what it can get you, right? It's symbolic. But if, if money had no meaning, it would just be a piece of paper. So it's a secondary reinforcer. Whereas adulation and people coming up to you and saying how great you are, that's like a, almost like a primary reinforcer. It's, it's much more exhilarating for the brain than actually just having, you know, wads of cash.

• 42:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what did you tell them? What was your advice?

• 42:56Heather Berlin?

  Oh, um, I actually said, there are certain personality tests that you could give these players when you recruit them to predict who is going to be most sensitive to the, the sudden rise in fame.

• 43:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And who's gonna be the biggest a-hole?

• 43:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You said it politely Heather, but I think that was...

• 43:15Heather Berlin?

  Right, exactly.

• 43:17Gary O'Reilly?

  That, that's standard practice. I mean, I know soccer players that were bought from one English team by another, they put a private detective on the case because they were spending an awful lot of money. So these psych tests, most certainly, it's different here in the US where you can draft and interview players, but if you get that psychological analysis, you will understand what situations, because you've got a locker room of certain characteristics and with certain needs. And if you're bringing in there a grenade without a pin, there's no surprise there's an explosion very soon.

• 43:51Chuck Nice?

  So Heather, is there any way that, can anyone take these tests? Or do you have to be like, uh, uh, administered by a professional? Or do you have to pay for them? Or is there a way to find it? I'd be so interested to see.

• 44:04Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, I mean, look, there's certain tests that you can just pull up on the internet and take and get some sort of like... Like, you know, read out Ross for, but really to have them interpreted by a professional. And some of them have very subtle measures in them. For example, there's this very well-known personality test called the MMPI, which is given both to criminals or to people who are, let's say, job applicants. And inherent, there are certain ways that you can see if somebody's either faking good or faking bad. So some people, like if it's, let's say, for a job applicant, you know, they want to put on a good face. And certain questions where, you know, like, have you ever stolen anything in your life? Even a piece of gum, right? Usually chances are the answer is yes. Of course.

• 44:48Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, so there are hidden questions where like you would just always, you know, endorse what you think they, they want to hear. And then there's also faking bad, like let's say to get out of being drafted. And so there's more that a psychologist can interpret in the test than if you just were to take one online.

• 45:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, faking bad, that's, first of all, that sounds like a great AMC TV show.

• 45:09Chuck Nice?

  But also, it's what I've always been fascinated with how they find out if you're doing that for jury duty. Because nobody wants jury duty. So everybody comes into jury duty looking for a way to get out of it. And it's, and the thing is, do you think you can be objective? And they, and, and it's just like, I mean, I said no. They were like, what, what do you mean? I was just like, I hate black people.

• 45:39Gary O'Reilly?

  So Heather, we spoke, we spoke earlier on in the show.

• 45:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, Gary, Gary, I don't, I, I still want more about your question that you asked. Because if she does the psychol, the, the, the analysis, right?

• 45:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And finds out that, yes, you're about to hire someone in the draft who's a pin, a grenade, I love your analysis, a grenade with no pin.

• 46:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why is that always bad? And I ask that, Heather, I'm a native New Yorker, I'm a Yankee fan. In 1970.

• 46:07Heather Berlin?

  Me too.

• 46:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In 1978, the Yankees were notoriously dysfunctional. Notoriously dysfunctional. Fights in the dugout, but, but on the field, they won. And they kept winning. So that as an- Can't say that about the 80s though. As, as an important, uh, uh, the, what we say in math, the existence proof that it doesn't, that a, a well behaved team does not seem, have to be a prerequisite for a winning team.

• 46:39Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, well, there are different personality traits. So a person could say be very annoying, narcissistic, whatever, have personality traits that are not pleasant to get along with in the locker room. But if they're a good team player, you know, that's the most important in terms of how they are in the field. So there are ways you can sort of say like, how well does this person play with others? So they might be, I don't know, neurotic, you know, um, or prone to aggressive outbursts or a number of other things that would make them interpersonally unpleasant, but playing with the team, yeah.

• 47:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you know that in the sandbox when they're a child?

• 47:16Heather Berlin?

  That's a good question. So there are things we can look at in terms of temperament, like a fussy child or a well-adjusted child that do tend to continue throughout the lifetime. So yeah, there are certain things that are genetic predispositions to being people, let's say, who are, um, unconturbable, you know, and nothing really tends to bother them. They're easygoing, you know, or a type A person. Those traits tend to last throughout your life and they're very hard to change. But you can change your behavior, you can know what your predilections are and try to sort of adjust for them so that you can be a good, let's say, team player, for example.

• 47:53Gary O'Reilly?

  As, everyone's watched The Last Dance, the Michael Jordan doc, right?

• 47:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On ESPN, ESPN streaming.

• 48:00Heather Berlin?

  Except for me.

• 48:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. Most people. For certain games, he would have to have something to rub up against, to get angry, to bring his better game forward. And that is something coaches realize. And sometimes they have a team that's really quite good, but it's full of nice guys. So they go and recruit them. They go to the Wild West. They find the worst baddie they can and they drag them in and stick them in this team. And they get a different dynamic. All of a sudden, the sort of eons in the atmosphere of the locker room change. And stuff goes on and it becomes a really good team, becomes a really great team.

• 48:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The translation to the American here, he said ion, he meant ion.

• 48:44Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, sorry.

• 48:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's just, I'll be your translator for this, right?

• 48:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you. I'm trapped in English and I'm learning to speak American.

• 48:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But this is American, Jack. You're going to speak American on this show, Jack.

• 48:58Gary O'Reilly?

  That's not with a Q, is it?

• 49:02Heather Berlin?

  I mean, I would liken it to like even personal relationships, right? When, you know, some people say, oh, I don't know, how's your marriage going? Oh, everything's fine. We never fight. You know, it's great. Okay, that's kind of status quo. But sometimes a little friction can cause a bit more passion, you know? You have a little bit of friction, but then it causes more excitement and you need that. It's healthy if it's not too much, right? So if you're at the point where guys are beating each other up in the locker room, you know, that's going to be too much aggression. That's not going to be conducive. But just enough friction to kind of, again, get their motivation going is probably better than everyone just, you know, getting along all the time.

• 49:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And singing kumbaya, yeah.

• 49:44Heather Berlin?

  Exactly. That'd be good in the locker room, but maybe not as good on the field. But again, it's not you, it's moderation. You don't want too little, you don't want too much. Just the right amount and you'll get that magic that makes that perfect team dynamic.

• 49:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think a lot about fields that are in high transition. And fields that are in high transition are ones that will tell you, wow, the greatest discoveries are just in the last few years. We've come a long way. Those fields actually haven't, okay? Because if you're in the moment, riding on great discoveries, it means the next few years, all of the thing you know now is going to be overrun. Right? It's when you sort of start to level off, where you realize, okay, we're there, now we're on to a different problem. My question is, can you foresee a day where?

• 50:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are who stands between an average athlete and an elite athlete. It's the psycho dimension of who and what they are and nothing else. Can you, is that a day that is waiting to come?

• 50:45Heather Berlin?

  This is the thing, as far as we've come with our understanding of the brain and how it relates to human behavior, it's still very difficult to predict how people will behave in any given situation. Cause there's so many variables and so many factors.

• 50:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heather, the planets were difficult until Isaac Newton came along. And then he wrote down one equation, then they weren't difficult anymore. Unless you didn't know math. So it's, that's part of my point. You're at a, you're at a cusp where everything looks complicated because of how many variables. But maybe you need an Isaac Newton neuroscientist to say,

• 51:18Heather Berlin?

  We haven't.

• 51:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's how it works.

• 51:19Heather Berlin?

  Yeah, we haven't, we haven't quite cracked the code. And one of the issues is because brains are, not only is it so complex, but they're so different in many ways. Each one is wired up in a very different, slightly different way. So even though like the laws of the universe, the laws of physics are these universals that can apply anywhere.

• 51:37Chuck Nice?

  They're going to apply to every solar system in the universe and every galaxy.

• 51:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somebody had to discover that fact. And until that happened, every planet was doing its own thing. And there was a whimsical, and every planet had its, a separate rule and everything was separate. And this fell and the moon was there and everything had its own explanation. Until somebody came around and said, no, it is simpler than all of that. And I'm waiting for that to happen in neuroscience, because you're in a young field, Heather, right?

• 52:02Chuck Nice?

  Maybe that doesn't exist in neuroscience, because maybe biologically, the fact that we are so wired, so differently from individual to individual, that you won't get that kind of baseline, where you can make the kind of assertions that, that Newton.

• 52:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, that's negative talk. You shouldn't be a negative.

• 52:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 52:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's negative talk, guys.

• 52:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait. No, I can quantify this. Heather, how old is neuroscience as a field? How old? It's thirty years old at most.

• 52:37Heather Berlin?

  I mean, well, cognitive neuroscience, which is the idea of linking the physical mechanisms of the brain to cognition and thought, because there was like just a field of psychology and then just to understand the brain, but linking them, I would say, you know, maybe forty years old. Maybe fifty, fifty, pushing it.

• 52:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Physics, as we now think of it, is five hundred years old. So we've had five hundred years of waiting for brilliant people to jump in and help us move forward. So I'll give you another three hundred years.

• 53:06Gary O'Reilly?

  All right, let me put it this way. Maybe our Sir Isaac Newton moment comes through AI, because AI has been invented to deal with the complexities. Now, we've spoke with Dr. Stuart Kim in the first Phenom show about the genetics and just how many variations are available and how complex that is. We're having a similar storyline here with Heather. Now, this seems tailor-made for AI to be able to come in and process this and maybe, maybe come up with a solution. I don't know that there is a solution because I'm nowhere near qualified to comment.

• 53:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary, AI, the way you described it, would replace Heather, and Heather won't have that.

• 53:43Heather Berlin?

  No, never, never.

• 53:45Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, no, I'm not having that.

• 53:47Heather Berlin?

  This is the problem, I think, is that you have the genome and we can map that out. And let's say we can, which is complex in itself, but let's say we figure out the exact genetic sequence of what makes somebody, you know, physically able to be the best at a sport. And then the last tip of that is the psychological aspect. But what's, what, there's the genotype, and then there's the phenotype, how those genes are expressed. And that varies depending on how the person interacts with the environment. And so, once you bring in that amount of unpredictability in many cases, because there's so many variables in so many different ways, from the way you were brought up, you know, to the different hours of practice and types of practice, that that becomes hard to predict. So even

• 54:31Heather Berlin?

  if we take two people who have the perfect sort of athletic genomes, the way that they express themselves is going to vary. And there are, and the other thing I want to say about this, there are universals in terms of how our brain works and how the mind works. But at the same time, because each brain is like a thumbprint and there's slight variations, again, how they are expressed at the individual level, there's not enough precision in which we can predict behavior at this point.

• 54:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're bumming me out here. I want you to get along. Move that field forward, Heather. Maybe you'll be the one.

• 55:03Heather Berlin?

  I'm working on it.

• 55:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, back to work on that.

• 55:05Heather Berlin?

  Yeah.

• 55:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guys, we've got to end it there. This has been our second installment of The Making of a Phenom on StarTalk Sports Edition. And I want to thank Dr. Heather Berlin, friend of StarTalk, as well as Dr. Joan Vickers. We're going to have to get her back on to talk about her research, because that was fun, listening to how the eye connects to the brain in all of her work, her lifetime of work in kinesiology. For part three of Making of a Phenom, guess who we're going to have on? We're going to have Pete Carroll.

• 55:36Speaker 05

  Hey!

• 55:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a friend of mine, I just want you to know. Me and him are like that, I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. That's because I bailed out his ass one time on social media, so he owes me. And I've also got psychologist Angela Duckworth. So, we're going to totally get into the subject, and there's more to come. So, this has been StarTalk Sports Edition. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.