Translator: Madina Juarez Reviewer: Denise RQ
I want to start by quoting the great Galileo,
according to whom the Creator wrote the Book of Nature
with the help of the language we call mathematics.
And in order to read this book,
one must speak this language.
In particular know triangles, circles
and other geometric shapes.
All this would be great,
if not for an terrible suspicion
that periodically comes to mind.
Specifically, what if math is simply an attribute of our brain,
that our brain creates this math.
This, I must say, is an unpleasant statement,
because it calls into question its objectivity.
Our remarkable Russian philosophers,
Pyatigorsky and Mamardashvili wrote in many papers,
and mentioned repeatedly that
the question of subject and object should be removed.
Do not assume that those who are exploring are outside.
There they sit in the audience, and on stage is
something they are investigating.
Mamardashvili and Pyatigorsky said, "Thinking and existence coincide."
Fact is, what happens in our head
and I want to note, in each of us,
not only the authors of this book, such as Galileo,
but in the heads of all of us,
tells us that one human brain,
any brain has a number of switches, a number of connections
more than all the Internet connections and all the computers of the Earth.
A single human brain is faster than any supercomputer
a million, if not a billion times faster.
Nevertheless, the best metaphor
I would use to describe a human brain is
that a brain is a musical instrument.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to back this up, but trust my word.
Some are lucky, and they inherit through genes,
right off a really good instrument - Steinway.
But even these people with a remarkable brain,
they still have to learn how to use it.
That's why we send our kids to good schools,
good universities, etc.
What makes us human is our consciousness.
But no one knows what it is.
I really envy this person,
who is the author of this definition.
His name is Bogin, he is an American.
He worked with the Nobel laureate Roger Sperry.
And he said, "Consciousness is like a wind. You can't see it,
you can only see its impact."
It's very accurately stated because
when there's a wind, we see
there is a tsunami, roofs are flying,
and generally a lot is happening.
But you can't see the wind itself.
It's the same with consciousness.
It really complicates our lives,
meaning of scientists,
since it's not clear what to look for.
It's as if we are looking for a result, but cannot find it.
For a long time, there were attempts of brain mapping
to relate brain's structure to its function.
There are many such maps, they're wonderful,
but unfortunately they
only hold a historic value.
They are beautiful, and I repeat,
there are many of them,
however it's been long since these divisions
were observed in the brain.
What we observe instead is
a huge neural network,
10 to the 12th power neurons in human brain,
10 to the 15th power, a wild number of quadrillion connections.
Computer now has surpassed a human brain
in speed once and for all.
We don't stand a chance,
computer works a million times faster
than the information flows along neuronal fibers.
A task can be completed in less than a nanosecond, so what?
Nothing really, since there isn't a single computer
that's capable of creating something.
And pretty much the only thing
modern computers can do is to sort through operations.
The fact is that inside a human brain
all processes run parallel,
further, even if there is a computer in our head,
then it won't be just one, not in terms of quantity,
but in terms of quality.
So, mass analogous procedures
and sorting operations are not
what they are supported with.
This is how the main player in our brain looks like,
that is, a neuron.
This is an electron microscope image.
These aren't toys and that's exactly how it looks.
But in our brain we not only have neurons,
but also so-called glial cells,
which before were considered to be simply a neuronal packaging.
But now it's clear that, first of all,
they are ten times more in number,
which is simply astonishing.
Secondly, they have their own memory,
and they further increase the capacity
of what is happening in our heads.
All of this is supported by blood vessels, this is how they look,
these are also not drawings, these are actual photos.
A brain is a high-energy expending mechanism.
In an adult, 25% of energy,
minimum, goes into brain,
which weighs not a whole lot.
In infants, by the way, it's 50% of energy.
Some time ago, there was a famous discovery of mirror neuron systems.
Here in the middle is Giacomo Rizzolatti,
who discovered them first in monkeys, now it's already been shown in humans.
These are the systems in a human brain that provide
an ability to imitate, provide social interaction,
an ability to learn a language, etc.
If these systems are broken, then children have an autism,
and adults have schizophrenia.
These are quite real systems.
They provide us with an adequacy of being
in the world, including our self-esteem.
Hopefully what's shown in this photograph doesn't happen.
There are possibilities, as you can see, I show very modern data,
of a direct fixation of what happens in these so-called
mirror neurons, in other words, the technology has really advanced.
I also want to show you this part,
which makes us who we are, molds us into individuals.
It's a hippocampus. It's the structure in the brain, amongst many others,
it's the primary one, provides memory.
It's named this way simply because it resembles this mythical creature.
Unfortunately, I can't go into details,
but you probably can see that it's similar in shape.
I really like this image.
Hippocampus looks like this, which we use for memory.
Look at this heavenly beauty!
A piece of the brain marked with a red frame here,
it's something on the topic of two faced Janus,
because in 2007 a discovery was made,
it was described as one of top ten biggest discoveries,
and this part of the brain not only supports our memories
but also enables us to anticipate, fantasize, invent new things.
But we also have a subconscious, that gives us,
together with conscience,
an ability to create art, and culture in general.
How did we get there?
The findings from comparing genomes
of our biological ancestors indicate the regions
where changes were happening at a fast pace.
There are many such places, 49 of them, and in some of them
the changes were happening 70 times faster than the average.
That's how Gene HAR1 was identified
and it codes for a tiny region. It's tiny but mighty,
because it contains 118 differences between humans and chimpanzees.
So it's the very thing that made us human.
In other words, there are regions
that have an ability of undergoing rapid evolutionary changes.
Besides, our brain can speed up morphological evolution,
depending on the environment an organism is in,
and how it's developing.
In our future, undoubtedly, there will be robots intellectually superior to us,
and I would say that they already exist.
Robots with consciousness, that's a great danger,
robots with goals, plans, emotions, self-interest.
They will have their own plans. We can't hide from this,
it will just happen very quickly.
Fusion of humans and computers,
of various chips and artificial organs,
it's already a reality, not even of a future.
It's evolving.
Computer environment that would be everywhere including a nanolevel.
We are faced with very serious ethical questions, along with psychological ones.
Can we handle it societally and psychologically?
Here is a famous researcher,
McLuhan, who used to say that human development is
an evolutionary movement from natural to artificial.
He even said that, "We are becoming a part of a biological super order,
Homo Sapiens Autocreator,
a self-creating human who is no longer a biological being."
Man-machine interactions,
no need to explain in here,
it's clear to all that they are a reality.
This is about so-called distributed consciousness,
and not just amongst humans, because no one lives alone.
Most of the cognitive tasks are done by groups, or at least in pairs.
Besides, the thing is
we now have many different devices
such as iPhones, tablets, intelligent vacuum cleaners, and others,
that perform a part of the cognitive work
which we used to handle ourselves, they do it for us.
This raises a serious issue and it's the title of an article written
by a prominent researcher Jerry Ford, "Where is my mind?"
Where are the boundaries of my consciousness?
They are not limited to my mind.
What are these spare genes a sign of?
Unfortunately, I don't have time,
however a human being already had a large genetic potential,
a large brain, and everything that
would give him an opportunity to develop
his language and higher cognitive skills.
But nothing was happening.
It seemed like thousands of years passed by,
and a human didn't become a human.
This is, by the way, a question that generally has no answer.
I want to disappoint, or on contrary
please those present by saying
we have a lot of these spare genes.
A delicate question presents itself,
first of, who created this reserve?
Secondly, what for?
And why are they actually sleeping?
What are they waiting for?
Maybe they are awaiting the universe?
Let's say, for living in entirely different worlds,
where different sensory systems, different gravity would be needed.
A different world would be in a true sense a "different world".
We would need different motor skills, different consciousness.
What do we do with it?
And so, finally here is my last slide,
I want to quote a famous physicist,
Heisenberg, who's least likely to have said this,
wrote, "The first gulp from a glass of Natural Sciences
will turn you into an atheist,
but at the glass bottom God is waiting for you."
There are many such quotes.
Einstein wrote something similar.
And this is something to think about.
I am not here to discuss the topic of Science and Religion,
but instead the difficulty of what we are faced with
while investigating a human brain externally.
And we can't treat this as some kind of dessert,
in other words, we can study it, or maybe not.
What we know about our brain correlates
to what we know about the world.
That's why the entire humanity spends
huge amounts of money on brain research.
Well, thank you for your attention.
(Applause)