WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.320 Welcome everybody to this session of the Adelaide Festival of Ideas. 2 00:00:04.380 --> 00:00:06.640 My name's Ian Gibbons, I'm chairing this session. 3 00:00:06.780 --> 00:00:09.860 This session's full and there's been so many other good sessions today 4 00:00:09.860 --> 00:00:10.780 and there's many more to come. 5 00:00:11.140 --> 00:00:15.660 Today, it's my real pleasure to introduce Professor Marcello Costa, our speaker. 6 00:00:16.360 --> 00:00:22.600 And a special pleasure because I've known Marcello for probably around about 40 years. 7 00:00:24.120 --> 00:00:32.340 Since our days in Melbourne when I was a student, Marcello was a young researcher visiting Melbourne at the time. 8 00:00:32.480 --> 00:00:39.920 Marcello is a world-famous neuroscientist for his work that he's done on a whole range of different things 9 00:00:39.920 --> 00:00:46.640 and he's been recognised for his discoveries, for his contributions in all sorts of different ways, 10 00:00:46.800 --> 00:00:49.240 most notably being a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. 11 00:00:49.580 --> 00:00:51.800 He's a professor of neurophysiology at Flinders University. 12 00:00:51.920 --> 00:00:52.580 He's been there for a... 13 00:00:53.120 --> 00:00:56.320 one of the founding members of the School of Medicine down there 14 00:00:56.320 --> 00:01:01.700 and has been involved in teaching, research and, importantly, in the context of the Festival of Ideas, 15 00:01:01.720 --> 00:01:06.080 in the generation of science for the public, getting science out to the public, 16 00:01:06.160 --> 00:01:07.620 getting the ideas of science to the public. 17 00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:12.640 He works and thinks about everything from the molecular level to what we're going to hear today, 18 00:01:12.840 --> 00:01:16.340 the position of humankind in the rest of the world. 19 00:01:16.500 --> 00:01:17.300 So thank you, Marcello. 20 00:01:19.200 --> 00:01:20.580 Thank you very much, Ian. 21 00:01:20.680 --> 00:01:22.460 First of all, can you all hear me from the back? 22 00:01:23.240 --> 00:01:27.380 All is on and the light is on and I'm on and all of you, I hope you're on too. 23 00:01:28.260 --> 00:01:29.660 Well, thank you so much for coming. 24 00:01:29.720 --> 00:01:34.120 Thank you, Ian, and of course, all the entire organizing committee of this wonderful event, 25 00:01:34.340 --> 00:01:38.020 the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, of course, for inviting me. 26 00:01:38.060 --> 00:01:39.860 It's a great pleasure, an acceptable great pleasure. 27 00:01:40.100 --> 00:01:44.880 And I read because half an hour runs too quickly if I were to be freelance. 28 00:01:45.600 --> 00:01:50.680 So I'm going to read most of it, but I should sound like I'm just making up at the moment, 29 00:01:51.180 --> 00:01:52.440 as I tend to do anyway. 30 00:01:52.600 --> 00:01:53.940 And my friends know that. 31 00:01:54.260 --> 00:01:58.480 Of course, I accepted this invitation with pleasure, but also with great hesitation, 32 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:03.060 since I was reminded only a few days ago by a dear friend in Sydney 33 00:02:03.060 --> 00:02:08.720 to not overestimate the audience's capacity to assimilate difficult concepts on the fly. 34 00:02:09.940 --> 00:02:14.020 I realize this event is a real challenge for both you and me. 35 00:02:14.160 --> 00:02:20.000 I will take his advice and I have hopefully lowered my expectation of my ability to convey complex ideas, 36 00:02:20.220 --> 00:02:22.580 but I'm very reluctant to lower my expectation. 37 00:02:22.600 --> 00:02:26.460 I have a great expectation on your capacity to assimilate some of the concepts I will present. 38 00:02:26.800 --> 00:02:28.840 So wish me luck, and I wish you luck. 39 00:02:30.600 --> 00:02:31.660 Who is at the wheel? 40 00:02:32.060 --> 00:02:37.220 It's a most astonishing title of this extraordinary event, and also very appropriate for my talk. 41 00:02:37.440 --> 00:02:42.860 It paraphrases the title of a recent book by one of the greatest modern neuroscientists, 42 00:02:43.520 --> 00:02:47.340 migrated a long time ago from Italy to the United States, Michael Kazaniga. 43 00:02:47.820 --> 00:02:51.360 The title of his book, published almost six years ago, is Who is in Charge? 44 00:02:51.360 --> 00:02:58.460 It's one of the excellent recent monographs accessible to most readers about the nature of the brain and consciousness. 45 00:02:58.880 --> 00:03:05.000 Others are by Tahini, Changer from France, Panskepp from Estonia, he died recently, 46 00:03:05.380 --> 00:03:12.320 Kandel from Austria, United States, Koch, United States, Sigmund from Argentina, Rizzolatti from Italy, 47 00:03:12.780 --> 00:03:15.720 Harari from Israel, talking about social anthropology, 48 00:03:16.120 --> 00:03:21.340 and the long genius Konrad Lorenz from Germany on evolutionary perspective of brain. 49 00:03:21.360 --> 00:03:22.600 These are just some examples. 50 00:03:22.960 --> 00:03:29.800 By the way, on the way out, I printed just the list of these books, if any one of you is interested to find out more about it. 51 00:03:30.160 --> 00:03:33.380 But they don't take any responsibility of what I'm going to tell you. 52 00:03:33.420 --> 00:03:37.580 You may not find any of the things I'm telling you in those books specifically. 53 00:03:38.440 --> 00:03:43.480 However, what I'm going to give you is consistent with the views expressed in all these books and plenty more. 54 00:03:44.500 --> 00:03:50.640 As a neuroscientist, neuroscience is a discipline that was born at the very time I started to do research in the 1960s. 55 00:03:51.380 --> 00:03:58.340 I would like to share with you the excitement that the understanding, even of the deepest aspect of our human experience, is within reach. 56 00:03:58.840 --> 00:04:04.660 For this, I need to give you a relatively simple model to describe the fundamental brain architecture. 57 00:04:05.360 --> 00:04:10.680 I'll be the first one to put this model in your minds. 58 00:04:10.920 --> 00:04:16.400 The brain and its body can be conceived as a very tall building with many, many floors. 59 00:04:17.140 --> 00:04:20.100 But, and this is important, connected with the outside world, 60 00:04:20.100 --> 00:04:23.440 just like all buildings, only via the ground floor. 61 00:04:23.800 --> 00:04:28.700 Any information that occurs within the building must come out as action only the ground floor, 62 00:04:28.920 --> 00:04:34.600 and nothing of what happened outside enters the building except at the ground floor level. 63 00:04:35.060 --> 00:04:40.680 The living elements that inhabit this building are nerve cells, neurons we call them. 64 00:04:40.940 --> 00:04:46.200 They are connected to each other, sending messages up and down the building across every floor. 65 00:04:46.540 --> 00:04:50.080 Each neuron is a living cell endowed with long filament that can be used to create a cell. 66 00:04:50.100 --> 00:04:53.060 The cells carry fast information to connect with each other neurons, 67 00:04:53.180 --> 00:04:57.640 forming thus complex chains of what neuroscientists call neural circuits. 68 00:04:58.380 --> 00:05:03.180 The activity of the neurons is described by the physics called electrochemistry. 69 00:05:04.020 --> 00:05:07.640 In other words, what happens in the brain is still in the realm of physics. 70 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:13.840 These filaments connect different floors up and down, kind of ascending and descending stairs of lifts, 71 00:05:13.980 --> 00:05:16.240 linking the different floors in my model. 72 00:05:17.040 --> 00:05:20.020 Although no one has actually estimated the actual number, 73 00:05:20.100 --> 00:05:24.680 the number of floors of the human brain building is likely to be in the several tens. 74 00:05:25.880 --> 00:05:30.580 The fundamental role of this building, our brains, is to receive inputs from the external world, 75 00:05:30.740 --> 00:05:37.820 integrate somehow this information, and to act in response to the world in ways that allow survival. 76 00:05:38.360 --> 00:05:44.420 The five entrances and the only exit at the ground floor involve a few million neurons. 77 00:05:45.080 --> 00:05:48.220 The number corresponds to a few cities like Adelaide. 78 00:05:48.220 --> 00:05:51.660 In the rest of the building above the ground there are many, many more neurons. 79 00:05:51.920 --> 00:05:52.520 How many? 80 00:05:53.240 --> 00:05:55.700 Well, the population of Australia, 25 millions. 81 00:05:56.360 --> 00:05:57.660 Not quite, many more. 82 00:05:58.180 --> 00:06:00.400 The population of the world, 7 billions. 83 00:06:01.060 --> 00:06:02.800 Not quite, many more. 84 00:06:03.160 --> 00:06:04.200 Ten times that. 85 00:06:04.800 --> 00:06:08.580 About 70 billion neurons live in the floors above the ground floor. 86 00:06:09.380 --> 00:06:16.140 So, the architecture of our brain consists then in sensory neurons with the five main entrances. 87 00:06:16.600 --> 00:06:17.660 This same information, 88 00:06:18.220 --> 00:06:23.460 the upper levels, ascending stairs, ascending pathways, we call them in neuron anatomy. 89 00:06:23.940 --> 00:06:29.620 At every floor level, neurons can cross the floor and connect with the descending neurons 90 00:06:30.220 --> 00:06:34.440 by descending stairs and get back to the ground floor exit to act. 91 00:06:35.420 --> 00:06:42.440 The entire brain is then composed of a large number of superimposed floors and loops up and down, 92 00:06:43.220 --> 00:06:47.060 joining all floors with each other, forming shorter and longer internal loops. 93 00:06:48.220 --> 00:06:50.020 We call them sensory motor loops. 94 00:06:51.200 --> 00:06:56.180 The further up we move within the building, the further away we are from the external world. 95 00:06:56.360 --> 00:07:01.020 And in a nutshell, the activities of these upper floors become more mental. 96 00:07:02.680 --> 00:07:09.240 Going up and down between adjacent floors form internal loops that function completely disconnected in principle 97 00:07:09.240 --> 00:07:11.460 with what goes on on their side. 98 00:07:12.580 --> 00:07:16.580 That is to say that the working of these internal loops corresponds to pure mental events. 99 00:07:18.220 --> 00:07:23.020 As this internal loop can function independently from what goes on in between other floors, 100 00:07:23.280 --> 00:07:25.740 or even from what enters or goes outside of it, 101 00:07:25.900 --> 00:07:33.020 it is no wonder that we know still relatively little of what they do and how they do when they work in isolation. 102 00:07:34.440 --> 00:07:37.600 This is the reason why it is not so easy to read other people's minds. 103 00:07:39.660 --> 00:07:45.680 We know what happens in the upper floor of any other person only by what comes out of the ground floor 104 00:07:46.220 --> 00:07:47.320 by some kind of movement. 105 00:07:48.220 --> 00:07:52.520 Gestures, like me, I speak with gestures more than with my voice. 106 00:07:53.120 --> 00:08:00.500 Speech, music, behaviour in general, which is then received by you via your ground floor sensory inputs. 107 00:08:01.620 --> 00:08:08.200 The increased distance from the external world explains the apparent and visible gap between the material world and the mind. 108 00:08:09.040 --> 00:08:13.940 Knowledge of this architecture makes less of a mystery than how the events in the upper floors, 109 00:08:13.980 --> 00:08:18.020 despite being based on the physics of the electrochemical neural functions, 110 00:08:18.220 --> 00:08:22.500 have come to be regarded as a mysterious mental, psychic activity. 111 00:08:23.140 --> 00:08:27.460 A gesture, the apparent and visible gap between the material world, 112 00:08:28.220 --> 00:08:31.120 what Descartes called res extensa, the extended stuff, 113 00:08:31.340 --> 00:08:35.940 and the mental, spiritual world, the res cogitans of Descartes, the thinking stuff, 114 00:08:36.140 --> 00:08:38.980 between mind and body is a false divide, 115 00:08:40.220 --> 00:08:43.880 simply due to the misunderstanding of the physics behind both, 116 00:08:44.100 --> 00:08:48.200 the external physical event and the physics of internal neural functions. 117 00:08:48.220 --> 00:08:53.600 At the time of the formalisation of this classic dualism 118 00:08:54.860 --> 00:08:58.120 between mind and body by Descartes in the 1600s, 119 00:08:58.120 --> 00:09:00.100 physics was really only based on mechanics. 120 00:09:01.140 --> 00:09:02.640 Electricity was not even conceived. 121 00:09:03.180 --> 00:09:07.180 Only at the end of the 1700s, two Italian scientists in northern Italy, 122 00:09:08.420 --> 00:09:12.060 Volta and Galvani, arguing about the nature of animal electricity, 123 00:09:12.240 --> 00:09:15.640 contributed one to the discovery of the battery, Volta, 124 00:09:16.220 --> 00:09:17.940 volts, that's where the word volts comes from, 125 00:09:18.220 --> 00:09:21.080 and Galvani, who really opened the field of neurophysiology 126 00:09:21.080 --> 00:09:22.600 that lead to modern neuroscience. 127 00:09:23.080 --> 00:09:27.840 So it seemed to me that the extreme divide between mind and body is a fallacy. 128 00:09:28.160 --> 00:09:31.820 We move from the external physical energies of sensory stimuli 129 00:09:31.820 --> 00:09:34.320 transforming into the electrochemical neural event, 130 00:09:35.220 --> 00:09:37.960 as nerve impulses, the physics of the brain, 131 00:09:38.180 --> 00:09:42.140 and it goes back to the external world by transforming this neural activity 132 00:09:42.140 --> 00:09:45.120 into the mechanical movement of your muscles. 133 00:09:45.520 --> 00:09:48.140 We are organisms living in the physical world, 134 00:09:48.220 --> 00:09:49.300 and made of the same stuff. 135 00:09:49.820 --> 00:09:53.300 Perhaps then instead of calling SOS, save our souls, 136 00:09:53.520 --> 00:09:57.440 when we feel in danger we should use what I'm sure even Woody Aldrin 137 00:09:57.440 --> 00:10:01.300 would have said at some stage, sob, save our bodies. 138 00:10:03.840 --> 00:10:07.800 The evolution of the vertebrates gives us a glimpse of what brain function 139 00:10:07.800 --> 00:10:13.040 may have in common with our ancestors, all of us vertebrates. 140 00:10:13.720 --> 00:10:16.340 Well, we need then to review which functions are associated 141 00:10:16.340 --> 00:10:18.200 with the different flaws in the building. 142 00:10:18.220 --> 00:10:23.280 It would take many neuroscience courses to attempt to be complete as possible. 143 00:10:23.560 --> 00:10:25.660 In fact, no one has really attempted this task. 144 00:10:26.180 --> 00:10:28.740 Some examples will give you an idea of what is known. 145 00:10:29.280 --> 00:10:32.640 The most promodial loop system involving only ground and first floor 146 00:10:32.640 --> 00:10:37.680 is one that allows escape from harm to all vertebrates, including us. 147 00:10:37.820 --> 00:10:39.580 Like when we burn a finger. 148 00:10:39.740 --> 00:10:42.560 I ask every year to my students, and I ask you, 149 00:10:42.660 --> 00:10:44.940 why do you move your fingers when you burn? 150 00:10:45.380 --> 00:10:47.920 The typical answer is because it hurts. 151 00:10:48.220 --> 00:10:49.560 No? Well, no. 152 00:10:50.260 --> 00:10:54.760 The response is the harm is detected by the ground floor sensory neurons, 153 00:10:54.900 --> 00:10:57.680 sensitive to skin burning, sensing the harm, 154 00:10:57.760 --> 00:11:00.560 we call them nociceptors from Latin, nocere, 155 00:11:00.740 --> 00:11:02.700 from which in nociceptors comes from, 156 00:11:03.280 --> 00:11:05.100 and passed on the first floor neurons, 157 00:11:05.280 --> 00:11:07.840 which will orchestrate the activation of a array of motor neurons 158 00:11:07.840 --> 00:11:10.560 on the ground floor, providing your escape behavior. 159 00:11:11.140 --> 00:11:14.320 All this happened well before parallel information is sent 160 00:11:14.320 --> 00:11:17.920 to much higher floors to give the actual sensation of pain, 161 00:11:17.920 --> 00:11:19.720 that make you say, ouch. 162 00:11:20.140 --> 00:11:24.240 Escape from harmful stimuli is not performed on much lower floors 163 00:11:24.240 --> 00:11:25.880 than the perception of pain. 164 00:11:26.780 --> 00:11:30.660 A next level integration of some few floors up is locomotion. 165 00:11:31.540 --> 00:11:32.140 Walking. 166 00:11:32.320 --> 00:11:35.980 Could be swimming, walking, flying, crawling, slithering, anything else. 167 00:11:36.580 --> 00:11:40.020 Importantly, some behavioral patterns are generated by internal circuits, 168 00:11:40.260 --> 00:11:42.500 which are spontaneously going on all the time. 169 00:11:42.680 --> 00:11:46.160 Our brain is not silent, has got spontaneous activity. 170 00:11:46.640 --> 00:11:47.900 The locomotor circuit does not work. 171 00:11:47.920 --> 00:11:50.380 It is able to drive the appropriate motor neurons at the ground floor, 172 00:11:50.520 --> 00:11:54.480 but are continuously corrected by sensory input from the external environment 173 00:11:54.480 --> 00:11:56.500 entering at the ground floor. 174 00:11:56.660 --> 00:12:00.720 So locomotion can go on effectively and safely in all different terrains. 175 00:12:01.500 --> 00:12:05.300 The sensory motor loop for locomotion is a fundamental universal architecture 176 00:12:05.920 --> 00:12:08.560 of all behavior in animals with a nervous system. 177 00:12:09.180 --> 00:12:12.900 Some important primordial neural mechanisms are what the Australian neuroscientist 178 00:12:12.900 --> 00:12:15.340 Derek Denton calls primordial emotions. 179 00:12:16.140 --> 00:12:17.440 The internal loops, 180 00:12:17.920 --> 00:12:18.120 or circuits, 181 00:12:18.340 --> 00:12:19.120 several floors up, 182 00:12:19.920 --> 00:12:23.600 serve us well ensuring breathing, drinking, eating, 183 00:12:23.780 --> 00:12:25.900 to maintain our living biological machine. 184 00:12:26.420 --> 00:12:30.800 The internal organs devoted to dysfunction, lungs, heart, blood, vessel, gut, etc., 185 00:12:30.800 --> 00:12:34.760 are all controlled by the brain somewhere in the middle floors. 186 00:12:35.180 --> 00:12:40.300 And most of this working of these floors never get up to the level of our consciousness. 187 00:12:40.840 --> 00:12:41.700 Just as well. 188 00:12:42.160 --> 00:12:45.900 Within mammals, more floors appear with robust and, as we know, 189 00:12:45.960 --> 00:12:47.120 more complex neural machines 190 00:12:47.120 --> 00:12:51.280 that control reproduction, facilitate newborn care, 191 00:12:51.520 --> 00:12:53.540 and drive primordial social cooperation. 192 00:12:54.220 --> 00:12:57.000 Most functions of the floors summarized so far are robust, 193 00:12:57.260 --> 00:13:00.620 are well embedded in the development of every human individual, 194 00:13:00.960 --> 00:13:05.400 become so-called hardwired, as modern computer jargon would suggest. 195 00:13:05.800 --> 00:13:09.120 The neural circuits of the loops above this floor are far more flexible. 196 00:13:09.380 --> 00:13:13.020 They can change and build new circuits or undo them within seconds. 197 00:13:13.340 --> 00:13:15.100 My speech has changed already. 198 00:13:15.100 --> 00:13:17.300 Some brain cells in your brain. 199 00:13:17.480 --> 00:13:19.660 Some forever, some only for a few minutes. 200 00:13:20.320 --> 00:13:23.420 This is what neuroscientists call neuroplasticity. 201 00:13:23.520 --> 00:13:26.440 Memories, imagination, and learning belong to these upper floors. 202 00:13:26.780 --> 00:13:29.620 Further upper floors up, self-awareness and language 203 00:13:29.620 --> 00:13:32.140 generate the explicit thinking that we all share. 204 00:13:32.460 --> 00:13:35.820 Even so, I'm speaking in Italian, you can understand well my English. 205 00:13:37.440 --> 00:13:39.920 Despite of an unending philosophical debate, 206 00:13:40.300 --> 00:13:44.380 it is no longer a question whether consciousness is generated or not 207 00:13:44.380 --> 00:13:45.360 by the working brain. 208 00:13:45.800 --> 00:13:49.860 But the problem is simply how does it does so. 209 00:13:50.380 --> 00:13:52.800 Many of you, if not me, will see the resolution 210 00:13:52.800 --> 00:13:55.760 of this scientific challenge before too long. 211 00:13:56.060 --> 00:13:58.380 A consequence of having acquired higher floors 212 00:13:58.380 --> 00:14:00.280 further and further away from the external world 213 00:14:00.280 --> 00:14:04.940 is the ability to imagine, to make hypotheses, models of the world, 214 00:14:05.040 --> 00:14:06.900 of how the world is out there, 215 00:14:07.060 --> 00:14:10.180 without having to enact them and taking risks. 216 00:14:10.700 --> 00:14:12.200 This is the role of imagination. 217 00:14:13.420 --> 00:14:15.920 Imagination is based on the same part of the brain, by the way, 218 00:14:15.960 --> 00:14:17.060 that also processes memory. 219 00:14:17.780 --> 00:14:19.980 They share the same circus in the upper floors. 220 00:14:20.240 --> 00:14:23.060 It's now known that people suffering from Alzheimer's disease, 221 00:14:23.260 --> 00:14:25.180 which destroys many neurons in our brain, 222 00:14:25.760 --> 00:14:26.780 involved in memory, 223 00:14:26.940 --> 00:14:31.740 also deprive those persons from the ability to think about the future, 224 00:14:31.880 --> 00:14:34.520 which is by definition a form of imagination. 225 00:14:36.320 --> 00:14:38.120 The future of some of the upper floors, 226 00:14:38.320 --> 00:14:40.480 to imagine behavior without immediate consequences, 227 00:14:40.900 --> 00:14:42.180 is the result of extensive research 228 00:14:42.200 --> 00:14:44.240 to understand the horizon of detection of events 229 00:14:44.240 --> 00:14:46.920 of the external world well beyond the immediate, 230 00:14:47.120 --> 00:14:49.840 and to plan behavior in the future, 231 00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:52.240 which means delaying actions. 232 00:14:53.140 --> 00:14:56.340 Communities also benefit from the shared ability to imagine the future. 233 00:14:56.760 --> 00:14:59.000 Every human decision, individual or collective, 234 00:14:59.340 --> 00:15:01.420 is part of sensory motor loops 235 00:15:01.420 --> 00:15:03.860 which are continually tested in the external world 236 00:15:03.860 --> 00:15:06.160 by turning to be more or less effective. 237 00:15:07.160 --> 00:15:09.840 For example, the ability to detect changes in the seasons, 238 00:15:10.100 --> 00:15:12.040 which are slow compared to the immediate 239 00:15:12.200 --> 00:15:13.640 in the process of walking, escaping or waiting, 240 00:15:13.780 --> 00:15:16.740 enables the emergence of agricultural practices 241 00:15:16.740 --> 00:15:18.300 as they require planning. 242 00:15:18.840 --> 00:15:20.940 Yet, despite of the extended tie-in 243 00:15:20.940 --> 00:15:23.000 between the detection of seasonal changes, 244 00:15:23.460 --> 00:15:25.880 actions and consequent effects of the planning, 245 00:15:26.100 --> 00:15:29.580 the process is still a long sensory motor loop 246 00:15:30.200 --> 00:15:34.360 involving upper floors far away from a primordial ground level loop. 247 00:15:35.040 --> 00:15:38.040 The meteorological events stored in the collective memory 248 00:15:38.040 --> 00:15:40.260 serve then to imagine actions in the future, 249 00:15:40.460 --> 00:15:42.020 that is to say planning. 250 00:15:42.200 --> 00:15:44.840 For seeding or harvesting the plants. 251 00:15:45.440 --> 00:15:48.800 Only if the imagination creates hypotheses of external worlds 252 00:15:48.800 --> 00:15:51.120 that are conscious, consistent with the action, 253 00:15:51.300 --> 00:15:54.460 leading to better crops and harvesting, 254 00:15:54.780 --> 00:15:57.400 the entire long delay loop proves effective in survival. 255 00:15:58.600 --> 00:16:00.720 However, this intrinsic weakness, 256 00:16:00.980 --> 00:16:04.460 this is behind this ability of individual and collective brain 257 00:16:04.460 --> 00:16:08.200 to construct these imaginary models of the world out there. 258 00:16:08.620 --> 00:16:11.640 If the signs of external events are not interpreted properly, 259 00:16:11.640 --> 00:16:13.600 the planning will be faulty, 260 00:16:13.660 --> 00:16:15.080 and that's in the example of agriculture, 261 00:16:15.500 --> 00:16:17.520 but could apply to any human behavior. 262 00:16:18.140 --> 00:16:19.520 The crops will die, 263 00:16:19.640 --> 00:16:21.440 and so the human groups depending on them. 264 00:16:21.860 --> 00:16:25.400 The agricultural loop is a harsh test of reality, 265 00:16:25.660 --> 00:16:27.640 as historical farm minds testify. 266 00:16:28.100 --> 00:16:29.640 By living in larger communities, 267 00:16:29.920 --> 00:16:32.980 humans develop in the imagination models of social structures 268 00:16:32.980 --> 00:16:36.180 that go beyond immediate interpersonal relations, 269 00:16:36.580 --> 00:16:40.000 thus increasing longer complex sensory motor loops 270 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:41.620 requiring many different upper floors, 271 00:16:41.640 --> 00:16:44.520 and the brain also evolves to improve 272 00:16:44.520 --> 00:16:47.120 the increasingly complex social interaction of individuals 273 00:16:47.640 --> 00:16:49.280 with increasingly larger groups. 274 00:16:49.520 --> 00:16:51.080 Individuals within families, 275 00:16:51.280 --> 00:16:52.780 families within tribes, 276 00:16:52.960 --> 00:16:54.040 tribes within larger groups, 277 00:16:54.220 --> 00:16:55.080 small kingdoms, 278 00:16:55.380 --> 00:16:56.320 empires, nations, 279 00:16:56.600 --> 00:16:57.620 national alliances, 280 00:16:57.920 --> 00:16:58.880 religions, ideologies, 281 00:16:59.060 --> 00:16:59.960 clubs of any sort, 282 00:17:00.340 --> 00:17:02.080 world organizations, etc. 283 00:17:02.740 --> 00:17:07.160 A real matrix with large combinations and permutations of interactions 284 00:17:07.160 --> 00:17:10.320 that require increasingly specialized neural machineries 285 00:17:10.320 --> 00:17:13.440 in each brain occupying several large floors. 286 00:17:13.900 --> 00:17:16.980 This imaginary model do obey the same requisite 287 00:17:16.980 --> 00:17:19.920 as the physical models of the physical environment, 288 00:17:20.160 --> 00:17:22.420 the one allowed us to go to the moon or to Mars. 289 00:17:23.040 --> 00:17:25.820 They must be based on interpretations of external events 290 00:17:25.820 --> 00:17:27.940 congruous with what actually goes on 291 00:17:27.940 --> 00:17:30.340 and lead to actions which are consistent with survival. 292 00:17:30.760 --> 00:17:33.760 This situation is intrinsically fragile and problematic. 293 00:17:34.200 --> 00:17:36.320 These social models are constrained by some fundamental 294 00:17:37.320 --> 00:17:39.000 obligatory requirements of humans, 295 00:17:39.220 --> 00:17:40.300 like at the moment, 296 00:17:40.300 --> 00:17:43.020 the need for shelter, security, food supplies, 297 00:17:43.280 --> 00:17:45.260 caring for offspring, collective defense, 298 00:17:45.480 --> 00:17:48.180 and guidance in search of optimal environmental conditions. 299 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:52.180 These constraints are well embedded in the architecture of the brain. 300 00:17:53.300 --> 00:17:54.460 Despite of these constraints, 301 00:17:54.700 --> 00:17:56.840 a large variety of social models have been developed. 302 00:17:57.480 --> 00:18:00.120 As societies grew, periods with large, 303 00:18:00.220 --> 00:18:01.940 more complex communities emerged, 304 00:18:02.160 --> 00:18:05.060 we substitute a period in which such organizations collapsed. 305 00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:07.680 With the advent of written records, 306 00:18:07.760 --> 00:18:09.180 we are in the realm of history. 307 00:18:09.180 --> 00:18:12.140 Of course, even before written records, 308 00:18:13.060 --> 00:18:15.440 similar changes in human society occur. 309 00:18:16.520 --> 00:18:19.660 Cultural anthropology is the field that treats these matters. 310 00:18:20.260 --> 00:18:22.560 This powerful tool gives a tremendous power 311 00:18:22.560 --> 00:18:24.760 to adapt it to increasingly complex environments, 312 00:18:25.080 --> 00:18:27.160 but comes with significant drawbacks. 313 00:18:27.580 --> 00:18:30.340 If the model is not congruous with historical conditions 314 00:18:30.340 --> 00:18:33.160 and collective behavior, they become perilous. 315 00:18:33.280 --> 00:18:37.680 Just like it is for individual communities that lose or do not build 316 00:18:37.680 --> 00:18:39.160 their collective memory with history, 317 00:18:39.160 --> 00:18:40.660 as it has been said, 318 00:18:40.800 --> 00:18:44.180 we will be unable to imagine and thus plan for the future. 319 00:18:44.460 --> 00:18:46.560 We come to the challenges of human face 320 00:18:47.160 --> 00:18:50.860 and how perhaps a better understanding of the brain function and mention 321 00:18:50.860 --> 00:18:52.840 can help making better decisions. 322 00:18:53.180 --> 00:18:54.960 We come to the modern dilemmas. 323 00:18:55.160 --> 00:18:55.860 To end. 324 00:18:56.520 --> 00:19:00.540 We have seen in our evolution how new flaws were added on top of the previous one 325 00:19:00.540 --> 00:19:02.820 all the way to our self-conscious brain. 326 00:19:03.360 --> 00:19:06.340 We are of course part of larger social groups 327 00:19:06.340 --> 00:19:07.720 interacting with each other individuals, 328 00:19:07.720 --> 00:19:11.200 but we are still constrained by the physical and social environment 329 00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:12.300 like any other mammals. 330 00:19:13.040 --> 00:19:16.620 The situation is often referred in humans as the human condition, 331 00:19:16.800 --> 00:19:20.680 that is to say individuals who become aware of this condition 332 00:19:20.680 --> 00:19:22.880 and ask deep down questions such as 333 00:19:22.880 --> 00:19:23.760 Who am I? 334 00:19:24.160 --> 00:19:25.020 Where am I? 335 00:19:25.620 --> 00:19:26.640 What is out there? 336 00:19:26.900 --> 00:19:28.380 Who are the other human beings? 337 00:19:28.800 --> 00:19:30.780 How am I supposed to behave in the world? 338 00:19:30.980 --> 00:19:31.940 Towards myself? 339 00:19:32.200 --> 00:19:33.020 Towards others? 340 00:19:33.200 --> 00:19:34.220 Towards the world? 341 00:19:34.820 --> 00:19:36.720 A sensible approach to a unique condition 342 00:19:36.840 --> 00:19:39.420 of being in the world, to be alive, 343 00:19:39.700 --> 00:19:42.740 is to accept that our brain consists of all those flaws 344 00:19:42.740 --> 00:19:44.160 I described before, 345 00:19:44.740 --> 00:19:46.620 each with different functional requirements. 346 00:19:47.220 --> 00:19:48.140 For example, 347 00:19:48.700 --> 00:19:50.160 the drive for food hunger 348 00:19:50.840 --> 00:19:52.640 is not really chosen by our upper flaws. 349 00:19:52.880 --> 00:19:54.460 It is one of the so-called instincts 350 00:19:54.460 --> 00:19:56.160 of the middle flaws, 351 00:19:56.840 --> 00:19:59.180 special semi-automatic machinery 352 00:19:59.740 --> 00:20:02.020 that appear very early in the evolution of the brain. 353 00:20:02.240 --> 00:20:04.040 With that, what the upper flaw can do 354 00:20:04.040 --> 00:20:05.900 to some extent is to choose 355 00:20:05.900 --> 00:20:07.680 not to eat or not to eat, 356 00:20:07.780 --> 00:20:08.820 but what to eat, 357 00:20:08.980 --> 00:20:10.280 when to eat, 358 00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:11.800 and how to eat. 359 00:20:12.380 --> 00:20:15.260 This is a human very special social activity. 360 00:20:15.780 --> 00:20:16.960 The culture of cuisine 361 00:20:16.960 --> 00:20:19.420 in most human culture is testimony of the way 362 00:20:19.420 --> 00:20:20.580 in which hunger, appetite, 363 00:20:20.700 --> 00:20:23.780 become pleasure of eating well and in company, 364 00:20:23.960 --> 00:20:26.720 has developed without denying the primordial need for food, 365 00:20:26.900 --> 00:20:29.140 which is the fuel that we need to burn 366 00:20:29.140 --> 00:20:31.220 to run our living machine. 367 00:20:31.860 --> 00:20:34.000 The part of the brain that appears to be in charge 368 00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:35.840 of making so-called conscious decisions 369 00:20:35.900 --> 00:20:37.980 are fundamentally the frontal lobes. 370 00:20:38.360 --> 00:20:41.160 There was an Italian neurologist in the 1920s, 371 00:20:41.180 --> 00:20:41.960 Bianchi, 372 00:20:42.080 --> 00:20:43.680 who wrote the first important book 373 00:20:43.680 --> 00:20:45.800 using for the first time the term social brain. 374 00:20:46.240 --> 00:20:48.360 I forgot to say, by the way, 375 00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:49.440 that we have two brains, 376 00:20:49.600 --> 00:20:50.420 two halves, 377 00:20:50.600 --> 00:20:52.580 but they are really intimately linked 378 00:20:52.580 --> 00:20:54.040 and function as single units 379 00:20:54.040 --> 00:20:55.540 for the purpose of today. 380 00:20:56.220 --> 00:20:58.140 Well, the frontal lobes are regarded also 381 00:20:58.140 --> 00:20:59.300 as the executive brain, 382 00:20:59.460 --> 00:21:01.500 with function of supervising all behavior. 383 00:21:01.980 --> 00:21:04.460 They are connected with the very top floors 384 00:21:04.460 --> 00:21:05.840 of our building located somewhere 385 00:21:05.900 --> 00:21:08.340 in the junction between the other two big lobes, 386 00:21:08.500 --> 00:21:11.420 the temporal lobes and the parietal lobes, 387 00:21:11.560 --> 00:21:15.700 not to become too specific about places. 388 00:21:16.520 --> 00:21:18.640 Well, a proper choice is then required 389 00:21:18.640 --> 00:21:20.820 to enlarge the ability to suppress temporarily 390 00:21:21.560 --> 00:21:24.360 drive that originates from lower levels, 391 00:21:24.620 --> 00:21:26.500 in other words, delaying some action. 392 00:21:26.980 --> 00:21:29.020 This is the reason why most neuroscientists 393 00:21:29.020 --> 00:21:31.240 involved in studying decision-making processes 394 00:21:31.240 --> 00:21:34.140 refer to this capacity not as a well-known idea, 395 00:21:34.220 --> 00:21:35.720 probably false, of free will, 396 00:21:36.360 --> 00:21:37.600 but of free want. 397 00:21:38.200 --> 00:21:40.560 Much of our ability to plan requires delayed actions 398 00:21:40.560 --> 00:21:42.160 and organizing them in the right sequence. 399 00:21:42.640 --> 00:21:43.880 The story of three elderly men 400 00:21:44.800 --> 00:21:46.780 elderly gentlemen chatted about their habits 401 00:21:46.780 --> 00:21:48.400