(soft music)
(eerie sound)
- Hey Vsauce!
Michael here.
Every episode of Mind Field is now free to view
all over the world, all 24 episodes, all three seasons.
Whoa!
It is really exciting.
And it's why I've invited you hear to Vsauce headquarters.
Why watch Mind Field alone when you could watch it with me
and some of the researchers, writers, scientists
and teachers who are in the episodes
who made Mind Field what it is?
That's right,
we are about to have ourselves a Mind Field marathon.
We are going to watch three episodes in their entirety,
pausing throughout to talk more deeply
about the concepts in the episodes,
it's gonna be very exciting,
and it's all going to happen right in here, follow me.
After you.
(eerie sound)
We're going to begin with an episode
that helped new research happen and improved the lives
of some very special children.
Season Two, Episode Six, the Power of Suggestion.
(upbeat music)
This is McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
It boasts and enrollment
of more than 40,000 students from 150 countries,
the campus employs 1700 professors,
teaching 300 programs of study,
and it's proud to be home to 12 Nobel Prize winners,
it is considered
one of the finest research universities in the world.
Recently, researchers at McGill
have embarked on a study that uses a brain scanning device
to read people's minds and implant thoughts
into their heads, or so their subjects think.
Now the same device may be able
to help kids with ADHD, anxiety,
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,
migraines, Tourette's, and more.
This study is not about technology.
The MRI machine behind me may look impressive,
but it's a sham, it's deactivated, non functioning.
What this study is really about is faith, in science.
It's about the power of thoughts to heal.
All you need is the power of suggestion.
(machine humming)
(upbeat music)
A placebo is something that shouldn't work,
but due to the power of suggestion,
and because of the strength of our belief, does,
but we don't fully understand yet how they work,
there could be an evolutionary explanation.
For example, if a small child hurts themselves,
negative symptoms like pain and crying can be good.
They keep the child safe and still,
while signaling adults to come help.
When help arrives, even if it has no active effect.
The child's brain may feel it has permission
to redirect resources away from seeking help,
and on to actually healing.
Modern medicine has found a way to harness
this power by prescribing placebos.
But not all placebos work the same.
For example, a sugar pill will help your headache more
if given to you by a doctor than by a poker buddy,
and the color of the placebo matters too.
A blue pill will work to make you feel calm,
better than a white pill,
because blue is a more calming color.
And a red pill will keep you awake
and give you more energy than a blue pill will.
A capsule will work better than a pill
because it looks more important.
(upbeat music)
And we're gonna stop right there
because one of my guests already has a comment.
Let me first introduce who the guests are.
Daniel Toker is a PhD candidate at Berkeley
who has been writing and researching for Mind Field
at least season two and three.
- Yep. - Yeah.
- Yep, and the Fear episode season four.
- And the Fear episode, which isn't even out yet,
but it might be by the time you watch this,
in which case, it's out already!
Thanks, Daniel.
On the far right side, we have Elisabeth de Kleer,
who worked on season three as a producer, writer.
She's a science communicator, science documentary filmmaker,
but I save the middle for last
because Dr. Samuel Veissière
from the Culture, Mind and Brain lab at McGill University,
one of the CO directors is here.
And he's also going to be featured
quite prominently in this episode.
You'll see him soon.
And he is the one who told me, Stop let's talk,
because we're gonna talk about placebos.
And I just mentioned in the episode that the color of a pill
affects how it can make you feel.
A blue pill will tend to be more calming
because so many of us associate blue with calming.
However, we need to be,
when you put a star on so many of us.
- Yeah, so reportedly in Italy,
blue pills don't have a calming effect
because people associate the color blue
with the soccer jersey of the national soccer team.
So they tend to associate it
with a kind of a feeling of arousal and not calmness.
So it's interesting to try to parse out,
the different effects of some colors.
Red seems fairly universal
as something that triggers high arousal, but not blue.
- Is that because red is the color of blood, you think?
- I'm really not sure.
I mean, as you know,
we seem to have some inbuilt attentional biases towards red
like say the little buzzing red lights on smartphones
works really well that way
because we tend to automatically attend to them.
It could be blood, yeah, could be fire even
because we also have an attentional bias towards fire.
- Wait, but how universal is this?
Have studies looked at Papua New Guinea
and populations there that don't watch the movies
and don't have the stories
that we have in America or in Europe?
I mean, is this something that, you said in built?
Is it really?
- I'm not aware of all the studies,
I think red for sure is something
for which we have a relatively innate attentional bias,
red processeses salient in the environment.
- This is so much of it depends on the person,
like there could be a person here in America
for whom red is really calming
because of their particular circumstances.
- Yeah, it's actually funny,
I just got back from China yesterday.
So I flew in.
And one of the things you notice even from the sky,
looking down over Chinese cities
is how much red lighting there is, big red LEDs.
And so I associate red with stop, like if red,
it's meant to catch my attention, It's sort of alarming.
But in China actually, it's ubiquitous.
And it's more just like a color of good luck.
Most restaurants have their title
of the restaurant in red.
So it's also meant to catch your attention,
to simulate arousal but in less of like a negative way
that it can sometimes be here in the United States,
so red street sign isn't necessarily gonna be.
- So probably the emotional valence is conditioned
and culturally contingent on some level.
But that red is gonna be salient,
is gonna be something that we can automatically attend to.
That's fairly universal.
- And once we attend to it, how we feel may depend a lot
on the culture that we're from.
- Right.
- But I think the point is that even things like the color
and size and shape of a pill
and who gives it to you will affect how it works.
It's not just the chemical properties of the medicine,
there's so much more, so much in the mental world.
- Well, I mean, but that also is chemical ultimately, right?
Because if it's a blue pill or red pill,
that's gonna affect your neuro chemistry in some way.
- And you know what, why is it red or blue?
Because of the physical shape of the molecules,
The shape? - Right.
- Wow!
So, right, I guess this is gonna be a question
I wanna keep coming back to
how do we really define a placebo?
Because I think in the episode,
I say something like there's no active ingredient
that should cause that effect.
But yet, if a pill is calming,
because it happens to be blue,
because its molecular structure
reflects blue light the best,
then there is something chemically in that pill
that works in calming you.
And it's not because the ingestion helps,
it's just the color alone.
- Right, right.
I guess it's easier to define what's not a placebo,
as something that works better than a placebo?
- Well, that's why another term for placebo effects
are nonspecific effects, or nonspecific factors.
So whatever factors involved in healing
that we cannot attribute to the chemical substance
that is targeted in the treatment.
And there are also non specific effects in psychotherapy
even that are, so tone of voice setting, waiting times.
So placebo is really a filler term
for all these different psychosocial symbolic ritual factors
that we don't fully understand,
but that we know contribute to a cure somehow.
- Right?
So those are called non specific, the specific ones.
How are they defined they are.
- So the specific one would be
the actual analgesic property of a pill,
for example, has been well studied in RCT,
we know it produces that effect.
But then we know that there are other effects around
and beyond that, that also contribute to healing.
And in the case of an actual placebo procedure,
where we know that specific molecule
is not actually present in the pill,
but healing will still happen, then we need to investigate
these different effects, these different factors.
That are nonspecific.
- Maybe this works, a nonspecific,
non placebo effect of a medicine would be what works,
even when it's administered to someone in a coma,
who doesn't know what's happening,
doesn't know who's administering it.
But we know that that molecule in the blood
causes blood pressure to go down,
or whatever, causes pain to be felt less, I don't know.
- But be careful because there are,
placebo effects have been found, for example,
in nonverbal autistic children,
who for sure cannot understand the nature of the suggestion,
because, of course, if you have some kind of an idea
about a therapeutic target and a mechanism of action,
so I have a headache,
and this one pill removes the headache,
then that will greatly help in the placebo effect.
But what about the case of autistic nonverbal children
who have no idea, who don't expect anything,
and yet there's an effect,
there's a social cognitive component to placebo effects,
you have to be able to expect
what other people expect of you even implicitly.
So probably in the case of the nonverbal autistic children,
it's also say, the reassuring tone of voice of the parent,
the parents shifted expectations,
the sort of contagious hope that might work.
And the same mechanism, same social mechanism
might be involved in dogs and in advanced social species
through observation and kind of social emotional contagion.
- Very cool.
All right, guys, let's get back into the episode.
You ready?
Here we go.
Also, an injection will work better than a capsule,
because it seems more serious and potent.
There's even evidence that fake
or Sham surgeries have positive effects.
It may be fake medicine, but the effects can be real.
And not just because the patient
feels better psychologically,
we're talking real physical healing,
thanks to the power of the brain.
- [Dr. Samuel] So again, briefly,
can I say something Michael?
- [Michael] Yeah, let's stop.
- Well, I'm really glad you're pointing out
all these different dimensions of placebo effects
the take home point here is that
the more elaborate the procedure, the better it works.
And by elaborate I mean, so technologically elaborate,
but also motivationally elaborate.
So if it hurts a little bit,
if you have to wait a long time for it,
if it seems really symbolically prominent also.
So whatever prestige might be attached to a procedure
that will tend to work better and also socially elaborate.
So if you can notice improvements in other people,
preferably people like you, people from your in group,
you can talk to them, that will also help
prepare you for the placebo response.
- It's amazing.
It makes it feel like why even study real medicine,
when so much of just the way people think about it,
can make a difference.
Clearly, there are limits to that.
And I wanna revisit that when we start looking
at the actual study that we did in this episode,
because talk about
making it feel technologically interesting.
We've got a whole film crew there.
Why would a film crew be here unless it's gonna work well?
We'll talk about that soon.
We'll get right back into it, The Power of Suggestion.
I traveled to Montreal to meet local children
struggling with debilitating behavioral
and neurological conditions, who would soon find out
whether their afflictions could be cured
by the power of suggestion.
- This is Malaya.
- Malaya, I'm Michael Nice to meet you.
12 year old Malaya suffers
from a common skin ailment, eczema,
but she has also developed a skin picking disorder.
Dermatillomania.
And you're starting High School.
What like this year? - Early September?
- Wow, that's a big step.
So what kind of things worry you?
Given the symptoms that you have?
- Probably the picking-- - Of your skin?
- Yeah, I don't know, I find it satisfying to pick.
It's kind of gross.
- Why do you can't stop?
- I'm not sure.
- Have you tried different things that will help you stop?
- Yeah, like in my mind,
I'm just like, today, you won't pick.
You are gonna get rid of this eczema.
And then after I'm just like,
Oh, wait, my face was bleeding.
- Yeah, is it embarrassing?
- Yeah, I like to wear long sleeves
because my arms are like, if they're really bad,
I'm gonna try to wear long sleeves.
- How are your arms now?
- It's like really bad, so, as you can see.
- And that's all just from scratching and picking.
- Yeah.
- 12 year old Nicholas was troubled
by debilitating migraine headaches.
So what do you wanna be when you grow up?
- Like I really, really wanna be
probably a NHL and MOV player, one of those two.
- Nicholas's love of sports
is unfortunately also the original source of his suffering.
Nice.
- My first head injury which was concussion,
I hit my head on a soccer post,
and then I hit my head in a game of hockey.
After that I had headaches every single day.
I was throwing up having auras.
They're like colors that you seen
before you have a headache.
I wasn't able to go to school,
and then we went to the hospital
and into their concussion program.
- Can I see his migraine chart?
- Oh sure, yeah, we have almost two years worth.
severe headaches here.
Severe migraines. - Every day.
- Every single day, this has turned his world upside down.
- Nathan was diagnosed with ADHD
and impulse control disorder.
I'd love to hear especially about you, Nathan.
First of all, how old are you?
- Nine. - Nine.
- How old you are? '
- [Michael] How old do you think I am?
- 30.
- That's a very good guess, I'm 31.
- Oh!
- So, tell me about like before Nathan's diagnosis.
What were kind of the symptoms you were seeing?
- Tantrums all the time.
Just an inability to reach him,
to communicate to him, to connect to him.
That was the main symptom.
- And what did you think of this Nathan?
Were you like, why are my parents not happy?
- 'Cause I was not listening?
- Why weren't you?
- I don't know, maybe because I had problems.
- And as far as like behavior.
- Impulsivity, hyperactivity,
you're always, always on the edge, always stressed.
What is he gonna touch?
Where is he gonna go?
What is he gonna do?
- These families had tried conventional methods
to treat their children with little success.
But they were about to find out whether their symptoms
could be alleviated using an accessory assisted placebo,
a fake non functioning MRI machine.
This groundbreaking study of the power of suggestion
in action is the brainchild of pioneering researchers
at McGill University's esteemed Raz Lab,
- We study a whole bunch
of different Mind, Body interaction topics
suggestion, hypnosis, placebo effects,
anytime the mind is regulating the body or vice versa,
that that's a topic that we study
- Now, you said the word placebo.
And the device that we are using is a sham scanner.
Tell me about the scanner.
- What we do with the MRI scanner is
we stack so many different layers of deception.
In their head, this is a proper neuroscience study
done at the Neurological Institute.
And that's why we wear a lab coats.
That's why we have all of this scientific looking equipment.
By the time they've actually started the study.
They've already in their mind built up
all these different layers of credibility.
They really believe that what we're doing is real.
- What's interesting is that children
they're not immune to the power of neuro enchantment
- Neuro enchantment? - Neuro enchantment.
- What does that mean?
- So it's this idea
that there is some kind of medical magic,
there is immense power that is attached
to the culture of neuroscience,
whereby neuro scientific props and accessories,
have more healing power, more physiological effects,
because culturally, people believe that they do.
I mean, the same kinds of cultural cognitive mechanisms
are at play in religious systems.
So here we are praying
to the gods of neuroscience, and biomedicine.
- Talk to me about the ethics of lying.
- The work we do with children
actually does not involve lying,
we tell them at first that everything that they see
and everything that we do in the lab
is a suggestion we explained to them,
that suggestion is a way to tap
into the power of their mind.
And we keep emphasizing even as they go in the scanner,
that it is their mind and their brain
that is doing the healing,
that they're basically reprogramming their own brain.
- The parents knew that the scanner was a placebo.
But for the study to work,
the children had to believe in the procedure.
So before they visited the lab,
I enlisted a few YouTuber friends
to help raise their expectations.
- Hey, guys, today, we have a huge surprise for you
about something brand new in science
that could affect your day.
- Oh, I know them.
- Well, today, we learned about this amazing new machine
that teaches kids brain how to heal super fast,
- We really hope that you get a chance in person
to see how this machine works.
- With a little help from the machine,
you can focus better, you can be more confident,
and it can even take away some headaches.
- Awesome.
- Not too many people get the chance
to have this awesome experience,
but we hear the scientists in Canada--
- I gonna have it? - Yeah, and it's very cool.
So what do you hope the machine allows you to do?
It makes you better at.
- Better at concentrating, better at focusing.
- I wanna heal faster, and this probably be a good idea.
- All right, so I wanna talk about a couple of things.
One, this episode is really different
from a lot of Mind Field episodes,
because we're treating people in it.
And we're following their stories.
A ungenerous way to look at this is that in this episode,
we're lying to children
and performing fake medicine on children.
Dr. Veissière, what are your thoughts?
- So if you carefully examine what we say, it is correct
that we never tell a lie,
that we explain the mechanism correctly.
However, to be completely honest,
we do probably rely on the children's
to some extent uncritical faith
in the healing power of the machine
on the one hand, and their own brain.
And this is because we know it is very effective for people
to be able to relax their worries
and their critical thinking and to surrender
to some kind of an idea that they have
of an external locus of control.
Now, note here how both the brain and the machine
are basically an agency other than their conscious self.
So we tell them,
the machine will help your brain heal itself,
it is your brain that is doing the healing.
But it is much more efficient,
for the children to at least initially
believe that the machine has some kind of special power.
- I think I even remember you telling me that you would tell
the parents flat out the machines not even plugged in.
And then the next day that they came in, they would say,
but is this safe?
Because how can it be safe?
We're in the basement of a neuroscience lab,
and this machine is really big and noises are being played.
- Not even that they would ask,
so did you find out what's wrong with my child's brain?
They wanted us to comment on neuro imaging results.
And we would have to pull them aside again
and say do to remember?
We're not doing actual neuro imaging,
we're not, you've competent to comment on findings
that are not even there, they would forget.
- They would forget,
- They would forget because all the queues are in place.
And I think it would demand so much mental effort
to remember that this is sham,
that people revert to a kind of adaptive self deception.
So this is also what we're aiming for.
We're aiming to tap into the children's ability
to self deceive, which we know can be very effective,
like say, if you're really, really nervous
before giving a talk, and then you managed
to convince yourself that you're not nervous,
then lo and behold, you start feeling confident.
Now initially, there might have been some self deception.
But then if the results are good,
then it's no longer deception.
- This is what I really love about all the episodes
and all the work that we've done together.
Because we also worked on the reverse exorcism
putting a spirit in someone that, okay.
In a way, we're almost finding some truth
to pseudo scientific practices.
If I have some mental block or some behavior I don't want.
And my mother takes me to a person who prays
to crystals and whatever,
that crystal has no chemical mechanism
with which to help me.
However, if I truly believe that this is significant,
and I noticed that I'm being cared for
that people care so much,
and I think so much more about my behavior,
because of all of that, I can actually get better.
And that's what we're doing here.
But instead of using crystals, and whatever,
we're using science looking stuff, lab coats, and an MRI,
and imaging of brains on the computer screens around
and it just feels like this must be serious and real.
But in reality, they may as well be laying on a bed
while someone sings nonsense words to them.
- And I like the parallel that you draw.
It's true that a lot of spiritual healing practices
they draw on these transitional objects,
you could call them so things like amulets,
or stones or rocks, or even magic,
crosses that people can sort of attribute healing power to
without having to worry,
it becomes a convenient way to instill hope in people.
- All right, let's get right back into it.
- I hope he heals me with my concussions
and now I hope my headaches go away.
- I was about to take part in something remarkable.
The very first use of accessory assisted suggestion
on children with these kinds of symptoms.
Mind Field would play an integral role in the study,
and the results could be new and significant for science.
(upbeat music)
On the day of the first session,
several measures were put in place
to heighten the children's neuro enchantment.
- Nathan.
- Nathan!
- [Michael] A friendly fake nurse,
a walk down a long, impressive hallway
(Malaya exhaling)
And a 10 minute anticipation building wait outside the lab,
then it was time for their first scan.
- [Doctor] Shall we?
- [Michael] While the hypothesis
of this study was grounded in science.
This was Dr. Veissière and Jay Olsen's
first time testing their theory
on real children with real disorders.
And they didn't know if it would work.
- You may lay down if you'd like.
- I have a question, so it seems to me that placebos work,
in part, because people these subjects
have a lot of faith in medical science.
Did you study that at all?
Or ask them at all about that?
I mean, and I guess my question is,
for somebody who's very skeptical of medical science,
who doesn't feel like doctors are working to their benefit,
would they still be as susceptible to a placebo?
- Well, a lot of people might say
they're critical of medical science.
But for example, if they have acute appendicitis,
their first intuition will be to rush to the ER.
And for belief to be really effective,
it needs to be culturally widespread.
And we happen to live in a historical moment
where most of the solutions to our everyday ailments
are deemed to be found in medicine,
and children are receptive to these kinds of cues,
even implicitly, even if they don't know that they know.
So I think, try it out at home for example,
if you have like a five year old niece,
show her a picture of a builder,
and then a doctor with a stethoscope
and ask your niece, which one is the smartest?
For sure they're gonna point to the doctor,
because they've picked up on a cultural consensus
that this is where, elaborate knowledge lies.
At the same time, I'm not aware of any studies,
testing medical placebos on people
who are really skeptical of medicine
who are completely into alternative medicine,
it may be that it wouldn't work with them.
I think it's a good hypothesis.
- Also, is there such a thing as an anti placebo?
Where (laughs) and what I mean by that?
- For sure. - Yeah okay.
So that's like somebody who's skeptical,
so even something that's potent,
even if you give them a potent drug, they don't react to it,
because they're so skeptical about it--
- Yeah, right, that's another thing,
nocebo is something different.
What is that, though?
Where, because of all the done specific crap surrounding
a chemical mechanism that should work, it works less well,
because of the context.
- That's really interesting.
Yeah, that might very, very interesting.
And it may be that people
who are a little too high in analytical reasoning,
people who are not very suggestible,
people who are not very prone to social influence,
may also reverse placebo themselves inadvertently,
because they're too critical
because they can't let the self regulatory magic happen.
But it could be that at the social level,
or naive beliefs in some things like say,
some categories of illness
that may not be scientifically validated.
But just because people believe they have these symptoms,
like say, certain food intolerances,
or certain allergies that appear to be on the rise.
Well, there's some psychogenic factors involved
in that and then might have something to do
with collective nocebo effects.
And then the next problem is also letting people know
that they're genetically at risk for a particular condition,
sometimes may trigger the symptoms,
or may even trigger the condition
in a way that not knowing might have been better.
- Ignorance is bliss--
- Ignorance is often bliss.
- I think it's very ethically tricky, then.
- It's very ethically tricky,
because you have to tell people,
but then there are also risks associated with telling.
- That's why you might not wanna do
a personal genetics test,
- Right?
Well, we're about to test that in the lab as well,
because we think there's interesting
neuro enchantment effects
associated with belief in genetics.
So we're about to do a study
with Sham personalized feedback.
So Sham, swab and genetic.
it's a placebo analgesia condition.
So we give people a shock and pain.
And we tell them that in one condition,
we've tailored the machine
to one particular genetic polymorphous that they have,
and we fully expect that is gonna work
better in that condition, but we haven't tested it yet.
And then eventually, one of our dreams
is to also test in a kind of,
three on trial to do Sham neuroimaging
versus Sham genetic testing
to see which one has the strongest effect.
- Ah!
What's your hypothesis?
Which do you think we as a society believe more in?
Neuroimaging or genetic testing?
- I'm really not sure,
I think we're moving towards
believing more in genetic testing,
but the belief might still be culturally new.
Whereas belief in the power of neuroscience
are very well installed culturally,
we're more than, two decades after the decade of the brain.
So I would say in 10 years,
it'll probably be genetic testing.
For now, it depends on levels of exposure.
But for sure, like say for children,
the idea of a gene is still very, very opaque,
very nebulous, very esoteric,
whereas putting them in this enormous machine
and this authoritative hospital might--
- Might always be better than just swabbing their mouth
and telling them something.
Let's get back into the episode, you guys ready?
Okay, here we go.
One of my roles was to help build up
the children's belief that it would work.
As you go into the machine, you'll relax more and more.
Would you like to relax slowly or quickly today?
- I can go in quickly,
- Quickly? - Oh, Wow, nice.
- Very good.
Although the MRI scanner was completely deactivated,
we needed the kids to believe it was fully functional.
So Jay played a series of realistic sound effects
to signify that the machine was working.
While Dr. Veissière planted the suggestion
that it would help the patient heal.
- You may notice some unusual feelings, perhaps a tingling,
your brain is continuing to learn and to heal.
And to help you find this constant feeling of confidence.
- [Michael] If all went well,
the placebo effect of the Sham brain scanner
would convince the children's conscious minds
that real neuroscience was at work.
- A deep, deep breath.
- [Michael] This would allow their subconscious minds
to harness the power of their brains to heal themselves.
- For people with migraines, it's often in the front
or the back part of the head but it could also be
like a feeling like outside the head.
So I'm not sure what it's gonna be like for you.
We'll find out afterwards.
So we'll now slide you in.
- Cool, it's like a roller coaster.
I love roller coasters.
- The deeper you go in, the more you'll relax.
- Okay, I wanna go all the way deep
I feel more stronger beeps.
- I know
this is because you're already at level three.
You might notice a deeper feeling of relaxation.
- [Nathan] Yes, I can feel it.
Can we go a little bit deeper please?
- [Michael] Yes.
- [Nathan] I want my whole entire feet
Nice.
- [Michael] The scientists at McGill
believe the children's brains have always had the ability
to control their symptoms.
The children just needed to believe it themselves.
(Nathan sneezing)
- [Dr. Veissière] Yeah, so the beeps
can sometimes make people sneeze
as a sign that they're relaxing just very deeply.
Right?
Very well, you did very, very well Nathan.
- [Michael] The children all appear to enjoy the procedure
and the researchers and I did our best
to reinforce their neuro enchantment.
- So when you heard the the first set of beeps
and the second set of beeps
Did you notice feeling them in different parts of your body?
- Well, the first time I went in the machine,
I kind of felt the hair.
- Okay, good.
- What level was she taken to today?
- Level two.
- Level two!
- [Dr. Veissière] Yeah, level two is great, yeah.
- [Michael] Yeah.
- When I was in the machine, I felt like
I was going backwards and forwards.
- Okay, that's very good, that's very good sign.
You might have noticed how you were yawning.
- I wanna go to sleep.
- That's great.
- [Michael] For a kid with hyperactivity,
Nathan was already appearing calmer.
But before our young subjects left the lab,
Dr. Veissière bolstered the suggestion that today's session
would help them continue their healing process.
- So I know for sure that you're gonna be more relaxed,
much, much less anxious, I would not be surprised at all.
If the scratching really diminished to no scratching at all.
The amazing thing about the brain
is that it has this fantastic power to heal itself.
But now what we've been able to do here
with the power of suggestion is to get your brain
to work faster and better all the time.
So how do you feel?
- Amazing.
- [Dr. Veissière] Oh, nice.
- [Michael] Mind Field provided the Raz Lab
with Octopus by Joy, Smartwatches.
- [Nathan] Lefty rules.
- [Michael] They were specially programmed
to remind the children in between visits,
that their brain was healing itself.
- Just having the watch with you will make you feel better.
But it's not the watch, or it's not the machine
that's making you feel good, it's your own brain.
- Okay, I just stopped it, because I wanna say,
at this time when this was filmed,
smart watches were like a whole cool brand new thing.
Everyone was excited, the kids were like Oh!
And we had to be like, it's not like an Apple Watch,
it's just for your brain health, which is better.
Tell me about the watches,
because I don't think in the episode,
we focused enough on what their role was.
- The idea was to work on placebo conditioning.
So first we enlisted a response in the scanner,
with a mixture of hypnotic suggestions,
anticipation and all the effects that you showed.
Now once we've found a target response, like say relaxation,
or self regulation some other way,
then we get the kids to expect that
when they receive a little buzz from the watch.
They're going to keep experiencing
whatever effect we were listening.
So usually respect, relaxation, focus, and so forth.
So then we programmed different delivery schedules
for the children where they would get a little buzz
and a little friendly icon
and then it would remind them Oh, I guess I'm doing great.
And then we had them come back
after two weeks in the library,
I would decrease the delivery schedule of the buzzes
because I didn't want them to become too addicted to them.
And eventually after a third week,
there would be no more buzzes.
So they could play around with the icons,
because I didn't want them to rely on the buzzes.
But then yeah, as you pointed out,
a lot of the kids still wanted to have the watch
as a kind of a transitional object like a little blanky,
that helps you sleep or an amulet
or a special ring that people have.
- You may have heard us say a few times.
Oh, you're at level three.
Today, you got to level two, is completely made up.
There were no levels.
But yet the kids really read a lot into that.
- And then they became more and more proud
each time they know they went deeper.
And they surrender themselves to the--
- Well, of course they did because no matter what happened
or how they felt they were told that's good.
Oh, wonderful, oh, really?
- We were validating everything they felt.
- Every thing.
- Was the level thing planned?
Or what that improvised on camera?
- No, we kind of I think we improvised it on camera.
And then we stuck to it.
Because we saw that it worked really well.
- Well, yeah,
I just allowed Samuel to guide the whole thing.
I sat there and I would just back him up.
I'm wearing a lab coat as well.
So I go, uh, oh wow.
And it was almost hard sometimes to not laugh
because he'd be like,
Ah, yes. Well, oh, you feel sleepy?
Oh, that means you're very advanced.
And I'd be like he said about everything.
(laughing)
It was so funny!
And I was always excited to see what level
he would say they reach because it gave me a sense
of how much further you wanted to go with them.
- Right, right.
And because as you remember, we had many more kids
than we what ended up showing on camera.
And we had great results with all of them.
- Right, so let's talk about that.
So you see three children featured here in this episode.
But I believe there were seven, eight or nine
that we actually worked with.
- There were 12,
- there were 12, Okay,
not all 12 could fit
into the time constraints in that episode.
That's partly why I wanna have this marathon
so we can talk more.
- You remember Mikey?
Really, really hyper,
really difficult to get him in the machine.
And still, there were lots and lots of improvements at home,
he was able to take a shower for the first time
he made a friend at camp.
And the watch in particular worked really well with him
because he was very focused on it.
And I made him work really hard to earn that watch.
So by the time he got the watch,
he was already going in the machine, he was calmer,
he was more respectful to his dad.
- I think I remember the parents,
the dad saying, okay, so we reached a point where your goal
was to get the watch off the kid
that you don't need to watch, after all, your own brain,
your own self can control this.
But people really want those accessories.
And the parents were like,
Well, I mean, could you tell them to keep it on?
Because it keeps the kid calm,
and it makes them more thoughtful.
And it makes them more aware of their behavior.
- You have kids, right? - Mm-hmm.
- Do you use any of these tactics on your own kids?
- Absolutely, our very first subject was my son Mathias
who suffered from chronic migraines.
And we did a lot of work on him.
And we had amazing results on his chronic migraines,
Mathias, he couldn't make it
in the final cut of the episode.
But he also helped in the initial study as a child mentor,
because we found that a lot of the kids were terrified
of getting into the machine.
But then if they could speak to another child
who had gone through the procedure,
and who could talk about how fun and safe it was
and how he'd gotten better,
then we were able to have much better results.
So we use this kind of peer mentoring strategy
that we're still using, actually, in the studies
that we're running now.
But yeah, for sure, I use these kinds of tricks.
And I give placebos to my children, all the time.
- And then you have your kids peddle the placebos to others,
because you're right, we don't show Matia, Mathias?
- Mathias, yeah.
- We don't show Mathias in the episode, but he was there.
And man, the kids believed him so much more than the adults.
If he said, Yeah, I get in their like every day,
or whatever his schedule was,
he was honest about all of this,
and he was honest about the good results he was getting.
Although let's be very clear,
this MRI is just a piece of plastic, it is not plugged in.
It does not have the liquid helium
in their magnets in anything, it's just plastic.
- And Mathias at the time he participated in this study,
was still blind to the condition,
meaning that he was still somewhat convinced
that there was something to the machine
even though he understood the language,
he understood the concept of suggestion,
but there's a part of him
that didn't wanna think about that fully.
- How can this only be a suggestion if I'm in the basement
of a neuroscience lab with this big machine?
Clearly, they're lying when they tell me the truth
that this is a placebo.
All right, let's get back into it, you guys ready?
Here we go.
In six weeks, we would return to the lab
to check in on their progress.
(upbeat music)
This high tech contraption is pretty much
what McGill university's
first Sham brain scanner looked like.
It was an old discarded hair dryer.
But the patients didn't know that.
In the original study, 56 undergraduate students were told
that it was able to reduce pain, cause amnesia,
influence sexual attraction
and produce various other impressive effects.
The labs new, more modern sham brain scanner
shows even more promise, and I was invited to participate
in its test on a whole new group of adult subjects.
(soft music)
- Okay, so you can come in here and just grab a seat.
- [Michael] These college students are fully aware
of what's possible today with neuroscience.
Could even they be neuro and chanted enough
to believe in the impossible,
that an MRI scanner could read their thoughts.
Now, we're looking at cutting edge psychological research.
- Okay. - Yes.
It's part of the neural activation mapping project.
We're gonna be putting you in an MRI.
So it's a modified one, it's called a CTMS FMRI.
- Okay.
- So Combined Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation,
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging,
which is a big word just meaning
it can both read and influence thoughts.
- All right, okay.
- So you'll be choosing a number from 10 to 99.
- Okay.
- And then from looking at your neural activation patterns,
Dr. Veissière here will try to infer
which number you're thinking.
- Interesting, okay. - Okay, great.
- [Michael] Most adults know the basics
about MRIs, so we made sure to cover every detail.
- In the scanner, the magnetism is a lot less.
this is good for the documentary team,
because it means they can bring cameras,
so that said, we do have to remove the metal gadgets.
- Got it, all these.
- [Michael] After this realistic,
but completely unnecessary step,
it was time to begin our fake mind reading experiment.
(eerie sound)
- So we're gonna start the calibration,
so try to stay very still.
- [Michael] Of course,
there was actually nothing to calibrate,
but we were conditioning our subjects
with the expected procedures,
sights and sounds of a real MRI study.
(beeping sound)
Okay, think of the number one.
- [Michael] The subjects were asked
to concentrate on the numbers zero to nine,
while the machine supposedly mapped parts of their brains.
- Think of the number nine.
- [Michael] Dr. Veissière and I
remained in character at all times,
pretending to analyze the subjects brain activity,
but the images on our screens were actually
old MRI scans from former patients
- [Jay] Is the calibration good?
- It looks pretty good to me.
- With our subject now primed, it was time to convince her
that the scanner could identify a number
she was thinking of, by reading her mind,
- You're gonna choose a number from 10 to 99.
- Okay.
- You're gonna hear a beep, then you'll hear a second beep.
So you're always making your decision
between the two beeps.
- Okay.
- Good? - Got it.
- So I'll slide you in.
(soft music)
(beep)
So hold on to that number for just a second.
- Okay.
- They're gonna print it out, and then we'll see.
- Okay.
- It was pretty clear.
- [Michael] we pretended to give Jay the results
of the MRIs analysis, but actually,
Jay was about to add the subjects number to the document
with a little sleight of hand.
- Okay, so you can say lying down just for a second.
What was the number?
- 31.
- 31, okay, cool.
So if you can set up here.
- What?
(laughing)
- So it's pretty close, but it's swapped, uh.
- Yeah, okay.
- [Michael] That miss was actually intentional.
So the results didn't appear to be perfect.
Adding to the realism.
- So you're doing well, we'll do another trial of this.
The same thing, okay, I'll slide you in.
(upbeat music)
- [Michael] Michelle thought of a new number
will the scanner get it right this time?
- Super clear.
- It's clear. - Really good this time.
- [Jay] All right, they think the signal is clear.
What was your number?
- 27
- Uh, 27 did you say?
- 27.
- Okay, great, yeah so if you can set up here.
- Yes, oh, wow.
What?
I don't understand, crazy.
- So you chose 27? - I did.
- And technician got 27 as well.
- Yeah, well okay. - Yeah.
(Mitchell laughing)
- Oh, wow, how does that feel?
- I didn't expect it to be so specific.
A lot of different areas in the brain could be lighting up
Just think of the concept of a number.
- [Michael] What do you know, it worked,
thanks to the wonders of science, or rather,
the skills of Jay,
who in addition to being a neuroscientist,
happens to be a professional magician on the side.
Well, Jay won't reveal the secret of the trick.
The mind reading illusion is very similar
to The Mentalist tricks
that have entertained audiences for over a century.
The only difference is that when audiences
see the stunt performed in a magic setting,
they think it's a great trick, not real science.
- The machine had 89.
(laughing)
- That's cool.
- [Michael] However, in the impressive
scientific setting of the Raz Lab,
these subjects thought our magic trick was real science.
- Oh my god (laughing)
- [Michael] They didn't realize
that the real science they were experiencing.
- It's pretty cool.
- [Michael] Was the power of suggestion.
- Wow.
- A dose of neuro enchantment this powerful
can make for a formidable and effective placebo.
I want some of the physical sensations.
- Sure.
- What was your experience?
- I felt like the headache was coming on,
I sort of felt like tingling through my head--
- Where?
- Just through this area.
Like this whole area felt more like full
- I felt like a sort of pressure or something like that,
a strange feeling.
- Back here a little bit.
- [Michael] In the back?
- Yeah, a little bit in the back.
- Somewhere in the back of the head, right, interesting.
- Some tingling inside my head.
- Okay.
- I wanna hear what it felt like to have your mind read.
- That was very strange.
I think I was probably skeptical, like going into it.
And then I couldn't figure out as I was thinking like, why,
how that would happen otherwise.
And so I'm just I think in a baffled state.
(laughing)
- Yeah, yeah.
It was time to clear up this baffling mystery.
So some deception has been going on today.
Dr. Olson is not reading your mind, neither is this machine.
This machine is deactivated.
All the noises were coming from a speaker.
- It was an illusion, oh, my God!
(laughing)
That's pretty cool.
- Dr. Olson is not reading your mind.
- Oh, no!
- The sounds you're hearing are not magnets.
It's just from a speaker.
The machine in there is actually deactivated,
it's not working.
- Well, it's like placebo.
- Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
Now imagine tapping into this power for other effects,
like healing, for example.
- Right, wow!
- I'm definitely believe the placebo effect
is alive and well.
(laughing)
- All right, so we just saw adults
being fooled and certainly lied to.
However, the cool thing is that, while we punked the adults,
we used that same phenomenon for good with the children.
And we don't deceive the children,
we just allow them to deceive themselves.
I still don't know how the magic trick is done.
And I never asked because it's his trick,
not mine to know.
But when the participants said the number
they were thinking of he managed to somehow get it written
on that sheet and the time it took him to be like,
yep, that's what it said, and it was phenomenal.
And then to hear people say,
Oh, yeah, no, I felt tingling, my head felt full.
It's like you were just laying on a bed.
Nothing was on, nothing was happening.
It's all in your imagination.
- Well, a little behind the scenes here,
you might remember that there was
a second condition to that experiment,
where we implanted numbers in people's heads.
So once we get them to believe
that the machine reads their mind.
So their minds are blown.
And then we inserted numbers in their head.
So one of the guys you might remember, say,
I thought of the number 45 I hate the number 45.
I would never myself, pick that number,
the number was just flying into my face.
And so it's in that second condition
that a lot of them reported,
kind of weird feelings like tingling and headaches.
- That's right, I totally forgot.
It didn't even make it into the episode.
But we also said now that we can read your mind,
we are going to implant thoughts into your mind,
you are going to have a number put into your head,
you'll close your eyes
and a number will appear that we have put there.
And of course, we use the same sleight of hand trick
to convince them that that's what happened,
whatever they thought they had.
Whatever they had thought was what we wanted them to think.
And,
obviously, that's crazy,
like that could be abused so much.
But yet we convinced neuro science postdocs
that we were able to do it.
- And you might remember we were toying around
with doing like just improvising a third condition
where we make people speak or like say things
or we induce the symptoms of Tourette's.
And in retrospect, if we had done that saying the behavior
in the reverse exorcism episode, remember,
like, we were able to induce all kinds of weird feelings,
like even an out of body experience,
but we couldn't really get people to speak.
We couldn't get the spirit to speak through their mouth.
But if you'd have taken them
through like two steps like this,
to really convince them
that this machine is doing something,
then we could have gotten participants
to do all kinds of wild things.
- Yeah, that we branded at time,
but I remember that day, you were like,
let's just go out on the street, recruit people to come in.
I can get them to say bad words.
And think that it's being,
like they're a puppet of the machine.
- Is that related to hypnosis?
- Yeah, sure, absolutely.
It is hypnosis, it's accessory, ritual assisted hypnosis.
- I think that hypnotism is often seen,
well, at least I can speak for myself
as a nothing but a trick, right?
I know that there are cases where it's used clinically.
Is it all placebo, though?
I mean, what are you really doing
when you hypnotize someone?
And they need to be susceptible to it.
- Have you ever been hypnotized?
- No, I think I could respond to being hypnotized like this.
Because while I don't have a lot of faith
in whoa, Hocus Pocus, hypnotizy,
instead, I will be like, this is an MRI,
you're wearing a lab coat,
whatever is gonna happen is gonna happen.
- Yeah, so is hypnosis like placebo
that depends what you mean by placebo?
But if what you're asking is, is hypnosis,
tapping into some, say, autonomic resources
that we typically
don't have access to volitionally effort fully, then yes.
So getting people to somehow relax their hyper vigilance
and being being able to tap into
or elicits physiological responses
that they themselves could not induce voluntarily.
Yes.
And I think you're correct.
The induction ritual
of surrendering to the set of suggestions
about falling into trance,
that's the kind of a cultural bound ritual
that works for some people, that may not work for others.
But I think that anyone can be hypnotized,
as long as you find the right set
of what we would call epistemic cues.
So you tap into the kind of knowledge,
the kinds of things that they're likely to believe in
as being authoritative, then you can definitely get people
to relax their critical thinking.
- So, I'll say I've actually been hypnotized before.
And I was very, very skeptical going in.
And as the hypnotist was telling me,
oh, when you open your eyes,
you're gonna forget the number three.
I remember thinking to myself consciously,
there's no way I'm gonna fall for this.
And then he say, Okay, now count to 10.
And then I would get to three, and then I would pause,
even though I'm telling myself, in my head, I'm saying,
I can see the number three, but I just couldn't get it out.
- Wow, I need to do this, I need to get hypnotized,
because I've always seen it as just a party trick
where I'm gonna make you bark like a dog on stage
for at a kid's birthday party.
And they do, and I'm like they're all faking it.
- But you may not be susceptible.
So there's a pretty Gaussian distribution of susceptibility.
So most people will fall for some things, but not all.
Some people will fall for nothing.
- Some fall for all - Exactly.
- So it's interesting because it is a relatively
stable psychological trade, and that's well studied.
It doesn't change much throughout the lifetime
except in childhood.
So between the ages of seven and 14
is when people are more hypnotizable.
And some people are so we say their highs or lows,
high hypnotizables, low hypnotizables,
and there is a normal distribution.
- But it's really weird.
Actually, I don't know if I'd recommend it.
It was a kind of an unpleasant experience to be hypnotized.
- I've done more unpleasant things.
I think, I wanna talk about that after this episode,
kind of talk through some of the more uncomfortable
and scary moments, but for now,
let's just get right back into the episode.
All right, here we go.
(soft music)
There's evidence that the power of suggestion
even works on animals.
A study at North Carolina State University
found that 86% of dogs receiving real seizure medication
had a reduction in seizures,
but almost as many a full 79%
experienced the same effect from just a placebo pill.
Now, we don't know how a placebo effects a dog's brain.
But it could be that dogs have learned
to associate vet visits and medicine from humans
with feeling better.
So giving them a placebo
could help a dog's brain heal itself.
(upbeat music)
Quick note, we
recorded the scene with that dog so many times.
There were so many takes, were you there, Dan?
- I was there.
- Oh, man, first of all,
I don't think a lot of people don't know this.
But all those rooftop scenes
from season one and two were shot at night.
We did a whole week of overnight shoots
from 5:00 in the evening to 5:00 in the morning.
And so I don't know what time of night that was.
But we're all exhausted. - It's like 3:00
in the morning, the dog would climb up to you--
- The dog would jump on me yeah.
it was hard to get the dog to wait.
And the trainer was like, look,
the dog doesn't understand its cue.
It just knows that you're gonna give him cheese.
It doesn't know what you're saying,
And he doesn't know when it's a good moment.
The dog was not a great actor.
Shall we continue?
Here we go.
- So first, I'll ask you to lay down again.
And of course, you're a total pro at this.
- [Michael] For several weeks,
the children had undergone sessions in the Sham scanner
at McGill University.
- Your body continues to relax
as we keep unleashing this healing energy.
- [Michael] Each time they were reminded
that through concentration and relaxation,
they were helping heal their own brains.
- There we go.
Finally, after six weeks of receiving the placebo sessions,
it was time to get a report on the results.
Malaya suffered from anxiety
and a compulsive skin picking disorder.
Had she experienced any level of success?
It's good to see you. - Good to see you.
- Go ahead and take a seat, you're wearing
not even, I thought maybe they'd have short sleeves on
you've just got a tank top on.
Your arms look fantastic.
They've really gotten better.
And your face I mean, all of it.
Why do you think you're better?
- I'm guessing it's the machine.
- [Michael] Yeah, what about it?
- Ah, I'm not really sure how it works.
But I'm picking a lot less,
sometimes if I see like a tiny flake,
I'll just leave it there.
- That's a pretty short amount of time for such a big change
in the way you think and behave, that's awesome.
- I don't really feel the urge to do it
as much as I did before, so it's a big improvement I guess.
- Yeah, that definitely feels like
and sounds like your brain being powerful.
- It's obviously doing something,
because my arms are better.
- Well, you seem a lot more confident
holding your head up higher, would you agree Anne Marie?
- Yes, she seems less anxious.
She's more positive, (mumbles) I was hoping for this.
It's more than nice to see her.
- Yeah, good work.
And ask for Nicholas and his migraine headaches.
Hey, it's good to see you again, Nicholas.
Tell me about the procedure and how you felt afterwards,
- It accomplished things that I wanted it to.
I haven't had a migraine at all.
- [Michael] That's awesome.
- And concentration is a big thing that it helped.
- Wow!
And can I see the symptom charts?
- For sure.
- So these go back to February.
- Yeah, and they're really telling.
- And you can see not good, lots going on.
But then recently, no migraines at all.
That's incredible.
- Yeah.
- So you said you went to the neurologist.
- They thought it was quite remarkable.
He hasn't needed any rescue medication
and he hasn't needed the preventer.
And he's not having migraines.
- I'm actually really excited for high school.
- [Michael] Both Malaya and Nicholas
attribute their improvements to the Sham scanner.
They believed it was working for them, and indeed it did.
So how did Nathan who suffered from ADHD
and impulse control disorder fair over the last six weeks?
Well I received a home video from Nathan's mother,
with an update on his progress?
- So the best part about going through the treatment
was just what it did to our son, we noticed a difference
in Nathan immediately after the first session,
and do you remember what happened?
- I slept?
- Yeah, he slept something he doesn't do
very often during the day, he slept for two hours.
He was refreshed, it was just incredible to see it.
And then what happened was the entire summer
we had him off the medicine, and he did great.
He thought about stuff before he did it,
we were able to talk things out and it's been fun.
So overall, we're very pleased.
And we just had such a great experience,
so thank you very much.
- [Michael] The Children's results are encouraging,
and a powerful sign of how effective suggestions
and our willingness believe them can be.
In time, the kids will understand
how all of the power was within them,
and not in the scanner.
This work is truly cutting edge it hasn't been done before.
- Correct.
We also think of this as a great new way
to do science and to collaborate.
- So much more of the public will see what's being done.
- Yes, science isn't just about publishing
a paper that nobody reads.
It's about spreading the ideas that you find.
- 100%.
- As far as I'm concerned, you're already a co author
in our scientific experimental paper.
- Wow, very cool.
Thank you.
(upbeat music)
- [Michael] The Children's improvements
were caused by the placebo effect.
And no deception was used to mask that.
The parents knew the machine was deactivated.
And the children were only told that it had the power
to put a suggestion in their brain,
a suggestion that ultimately came from themselves.
But surely, the more people learn about placebos
and their lack of intrinsic power,
the less effective they'll be, right?
No, studies show that even when subjects learned
that their treatment was a placebo,
the positive results do not go away.
What the subjects have learned about how to heal themselves,
remains with them.
It was an honor to have been a part of this study.
I think this is Mind Field at its best.
Using our resources to help researchers with their work
and helping the public see how the brain is studied.
Placebos can't fix everything.
But these kids always had the power to start healing.
All they needed was the power of suggestion.
And as always, thanks for watching.
All right, so that's the episode.
Dr. Veissière I have dismissed Elisabeth and Daniel
so that we can talk one on one, honestly.
- I miss them.
- Do you feel the pressure?
What are your thoughts now two years after that episode?
- Well, my thoughts are we are to take this further.
And so I'm thinking lots of directions.
One of them is practical.
It's kind of unfortunate that the general public
is really interested in this.
But it's still hard to convince
the scientific community and the clinical community,
there's something worth pursuing there
because it's so weird.
So it's been difficult to get research funding,
it's been difficult to get our research papers accepted
for publication when we try to present
this particular project,
- How do you do a control in a study
on the effectiveness of placebo?
Like, do you test it against a different placebo?
- Yeah, and that's been one of the comments from reviewers
when we try to submit this from publications.
And I think it was a really good comment
they're asking, okay,
so it seems you're doing this really cool,
really amazing procedure,
you're giving these kids a lot of attention,
a lot of positive reinforcement.
But what exactly works?
And what doesn't work?
Is there anything in that intervention
that is absolutely necessary or essential?
For example, do you actually need the scanner?
Could you just go and, give kids
lots of positive suggestions about how they can use
their hyperactivity to be really focused and strong?
Or could you do us just a watch,
so I can tell you something we're doing right now is,
we're beginning to test in a randomized trial,
just the watch versus just the machine
to see if one of them works better.
- Huh, okay, that sounds really nice and precise.
- Precise or not?
Because even then there's so many other factors,
as you know, so say, the charisma,
or the reassuring tone of the experimenter.
Like I'm sure you're interested
in the replication crisis in psychology.
So one of the hypotheses is also that well,
it could be that some labs are trying to replicate a study.
Well, the experimenters are just not as charismatic,
there's just not as good or not as authoritative.
And there's lots of other factors that are going on.
And it's not just a mechanism itself that doesn't work
is that this one team is not able to reproduce it.
- Man, it's so hard to control for all of those things,
a bunch of different people need to run this,
but they all have to have the exact same charisma.
And every day, no matter what their mood is
different from day to day, it can't be.
Because we really only wanna look at watch versus machine,
when we know that the charisma can play such a big role.
- Mm hmm, or also, the setting of the study,
is it in the hospital?
Or is it like right now
we're gonna replicate it in a school.
Because it turned out that logistically,
now that Mind Field is not there
to handle recruitment for us, then we just could not manage
to bring all the participants in the hospital.
And we have a contingent from the school.
So it's a lot easier to do it there.
And as such, we also have to use a simpler mock scanner.
- Right, you know what that brings brings up
a big limitation of how Mind Field can help.
Because if you said okay,
I've got a different experimental design
that I think is gonna work really well.
But it's very similar.
Could you do another episode
that will look almost exactly the same?
I would love to,
but I don't know if YouTube would pay for that.
So I hope that Mind Field
can at least bring what's being done,
and its importance to the public,
so that they know what to support and they know what to,
I don't know what kind of good things are being done
and why it's important for us to have research institutions
that are investigating things that might seem I don't know,
a little still fuzzy,
but yet can lead to amazing discoveries.
What are you working on that I don't know about
that might be interesting.
for future episodes of Mind Field of Vsauce,
I know that you were working with tulpamancers.
That's still going on?
And if so explain what that is.
- Sure, so before talking about tulpamancers,
we're also doing lots of stuff related
to suggestion and placebo studies.
So we're testing like, say fake Adderall, fake psychedelics.
- [Michael] Fake psychedelics.
- Fake psychedelics--
- There's an episode in the first season of Mind Field,
where we give people a short acting and psychedelic,
and we have Confederates in the room
that pretend like, Whoa!
Everything's echoing.
And sure enough, you can make people think they're tripping.
- Absolutely, and we also use Confederates,
just like you guys, and we had really good results.
- So what are you specifically like,
what variables are you kind of tweaking and studying?
- Well, we're also interested in the whole battery
of non specific psychosocial effects
beyond the chemical properties of the substance themselves,
including the particular cultural expectations
that this psychedelic experience
should yield this particular effect.
So we're looking at, social proof, social conformity,
emotional contagion, but also,
testing particular cultural beliefs.
We're also going to be testing, Sham genetic testing
to see how convincing that might be, and at some point,
one of your dream is to compare that to Sham neuroscience,
so to see, different kinds of neuro enchantment.
- What's the point?
Okay, so we learn that people are neural enchanted,
and they're, I don't know DNA enchanted,
what's the word for that, our faith and genetic research?
- We think they're really big ethical implications,
particularly when we start thinking about potential,
nocebo effects and culturally widespread nocebo effects.
So, genetic testing also generates a lot of anxiety.
A lot of the times it's not done
under proper clinical settings and clinical guidance,
and people start worrying immensely,
because they have a particular gene
that is thought to correlate
with a particular condition like say,
Alzheimer's, for example.
And that can bring about all kinds of negative experiences,
including sometimes perhaps precipitating early onset
of diseases that may not otherwise have been triggered.
So we think there's lots of important implications,
particularly in terms of, debunking,
dangerous pseudo medical and pseudo scientific idea.
So if we're able to demonstrate
that there's a lot of authority,
a lot of placebo nocebo effects associated with,
say, genetic testing, then we're better able
to inform clinical practice, for example, or policy--
- And the public cannot be quite so enchanted by it
or perhaps misled, needlessly panicked.
Wow, it's important stuff.
- And so to answer your questions,
yes, we're still working with tulpamancers.
As you recall, I did a cyber ethnography years ago,
with just delivered a psychological testing
on these really cool, weird young people
who conjure imaginary friends
that they come to experience as basically
as auditory visual hallucinations, except they're not crazy.
And they report an increase in well being in their life,
even in social adjustment as a result
of having picked up the practice.
So people wanna say, well, they're crazy,
they're hearing voices, and we think we're able to show that
No, in fact, there's lots of context
in which you can hear voices and be a very healthy person.
So now, under the leadership of Dr. Mike Lifshitz,
and Dr. Tanya Lerman at Stanford University,
we're in the process of doing neuro imaging
of tulpamancers and comparing them also
to evangelical Christians who speak in tongues.
And so we're interested in seeing what happens in the brain
when either spirit or tulpa
sort of takes over and starts talking.
And we're interested in the
motor areas of the brain as well.
And we wanna see if something different is going on.
When say, an agency other than itself a tulpa or a spirit
is sort of in control.
- Yeah, what does it look like in the brain
when you aren't in control of your thoughts and behavior?
If we can tease out the difference,
then are we literally finding like that is your agency
that is your consciousness, your will?
And if it's gone, then you feel like you're possessed.
Which, by the way, brings us to
our reverse exorcism episode,
which you guys should all check out.
Keep me up to date on what you're doing,
because I really wanna help in any way that I can.
And, communicate all the cool work that you're doing.
So Dr. Veissière thanks. - It's always a pleasure,
- Always a pleasure. - Thanks for having me.
- Now, we're gonna turn to a darker topic.
My own death.
Should I die?
Let's find out.
(eerie music)
Someday,
I
will die.
But should I?
If I was offered a longer life,
I would take that in a second.
But how long is too long?
Is death something I should deny forever?
Or is death and the role it plays in the universe,
something I am better off accepting?
(upbeat music)
I wanna start by looking at a particular way
death affects how we live and treat one another.
Terror Management Theory proposes that people
like you and me manage the terror of death's inevitability
by embracing cultural values.
That the more aware a person is of their own mortality,
the more vehemently they will enforce their particular views
of the world on to others.
Created by social psychologists Sheldon Solomon,
Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski
Terror Management Theory,
or TMT suggests that often we are afraid of change,
because we're afraid of death.
Each one of us has a worldview, a set of beliefs,
customs and norms we identify with that can live on
after our business physical bodies die.
TMT suggests that rises in nationalism and prejudice
are correlated with rises in the salience of mortality,
but is how present the inevitability of death
is in people's minds.
This role that death plays fascinates me
and two have TMT originators Jeff and Sheldon
have agreed to work with me on a pilot study
of Terror Management Theory
and real life reminders of death.
(soft music)
What's your hypothesis today?
Well, I think we're gonna hope for the participants
who are reminded of their mortality to be more punitive,
and their assessments.
- Let's see what happens.
- Good morning.
- [Michael] For our study, we created a fake Research Center
staffed by actors and invited participants
to be a part of what they were told was a focus group
about the criminal justice system.
During the actual study, each group will hear
a list of several different crimes that have been committed,
and will then be asked to propose a punishment
for each offender with a severity level
ranging from one to seven, with one being the most lenient,
and seven being the most severe.
The control group will simply enter the survey room
and be asked to answer the questions.
The experimental group, however, will first be exposed
to reminders of their own mortality
with strategically placed posters in the lobby.
Also, the questionnaires they fill out
will include questions about their own death.
Decades of TMT research have shown that when presented
with violations of common worldviews,
those who are more aware of their own deaths
will recommend bigger punishments for the crimes presented.
But will our real life reminders of death,
not just the survey questions usually used
make a difference?
Well, first, let's look at the control participants.
- Thank you so much for being here.
Now, I cannot emphasize this enough,
there are no right or wrong answers.
This is just about your gut level reactions.
All right, let's begin.
After raising millions of dollars
in grant money to fund education for needy children,
a fundraising manager unhappy with this life
fled with all the money
and was arrested months later in Tasmania
where he was living under a different name.
So one, his punishment three months in prison,
seven is most severe, 10 years in prison.
Please answer now.
(upbeat music)
- This is one that I think does has views on both sides.
- Yeah.
(bell ringing)
- [Michael] That is a lot of sevens.
If our control group is already maxing out like that,
well then our scale has no room in that direction
to show any effective mortality salience.
Discovering issues like this,
learning how to better isolate mortality salient's effect
is exactly what a pilot test is for.
Hey! - Hey.
- Personal differences, huh?
- Yeah.
- An imposter with no medical training posed as a surgeon
and bungled a minor operation to remove a child's tonsils.
The patient recovered fully after additional treatment.
One is six months on probation, seven is 10 years in prison.
(upbeat music)
- Okay, if you are taking on the persona of a doctor,
we expect good behavior.
(bell ringing)
- The surgeon botched the operation
and was found to be under the influence of narcotics,
causing her to have permanent hoarseness
and ruining her career.
(bell ringing)
(upbeat music)
A 16 year old girl who had just received her license
drove through a red light hitting another car
that was being driven by a talented pianist.
(bell ringing)
(upbeat music)
A couple was taking their two children to the playground
when they saw a woman sunbathing nude.
- Look at that
there could be a gender gap.
We're also learning a lot about the world views people have.
- [Jeff] Yeah, absolutely.
(bell ringing)
(upbeat music)
- An anti government protester was arrested
for spring painting profanities at the Lincoln Memorial
in Washington, DC.
One, 40 hours.
- Wow, she went one right away.
- Five years in prison. - She's not a fan
of authority and rules. - Yeah.
(bell ringing)
(upbeat music)
- Okay, thank you so much for your time.
I really appreciate it.
- All right, so here's the results
and the mathematical analysis.
These are averages per question.
These are the averages and medians per participant.
- The fours are great, the three is great.
- But this is grounds for optimism, at least.
- Seven was the max sentencing value
and our control group gave an average of 4.5.
I'm really happy with that as a control group.
- Absolutely.
- [Michael] Now, our experimental groups.
Remember, they will be seeing posters
that remind them of their own mortality
and will be asked different questions in their questionnaire
for example, please describe the emotions
that the thought of your own death arouses in you.
And write down as specifically as you can,
what you think will happen to you physically as you die.
The point is to prime their mortality salience.
Let's see if this group
is more punitive towards worldview violations.
- After raising millions of dollars to fund education
for needy children, a fundraising manager
fled with all the money
and was arrested months later in Tasmania.
One, three months in prison,
seven, 10 years in prison, please answer now.
(upbeat music)
- He's thinking about it.
- Please hold up your answers.
All right, thank you so much.
- Ah, okay.
(bell ringing)
(upbeat music)
- An imposter with no medical training posed as a surgeon
and bungled a minor operation to remove a child's tonsils.
One, six months on probation, seven, 10 years in prison.
(upbeat music)
- They are thinking a lot more.
- Yeah.
(upbeat music)
(laughing)
- A 10, I'm pretty sure she knows that seven is the highest.
- We'll call it a seven yeah.
- It's funny to see when people feel bold enough,
even though I'm like breaking the bounds
and the rules of the task.
(bell ringing)
(upbeat music)
- An anti government protester was arrested
for painting profanities
at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC.
(upbeat music)
- I really do appreciate the way they clearly
seem to be taking a bit more time to deliberate.
- Yeah.
(upbeat music)
(bell ringing)
(upbeat music)
- Okay, they can put the papers down
and tell them that we will be in shortly.
- Okay, thank you so much.
We finished with this part of the study.
So if you don't mind just hanging out for a moment.
And our researchers will be in here in a moment
to ask you a couple questions.
- Let's find out if the reminders of mortality,
we showed our experimental group were salient enough.
- Let me ask you about one thing,
out in the waiting room,
did you all notice the posters at all?
- [All] Yes.
- Okay.
- I was surprised as soon as they walked in the door,
and I saw the gravestones.
- Yeah, that's right.
- I wondered what did I get into?
- So we are looking into something
that's called Terror Management Theory.
And it's the idea that your own awareness of your mortality
can affect the behaviors that you exhibit,
that we all manage the terror that we feel
knowing that we are mortal, by behaving in certain ways,
especially in ways that reinforce our own worldviews
because we can kind of live on through the societies
and cultures and identities that we have today.
- Did any of you feel like you were still thinking
a little bit about death
when you were came in here?
- I was definitely going after people
who transgressed against my worldview to use your terms.
Yes, I noticed that.
Yes, I was definitely doing that.
- So this was incredibly helpful.
Thank you very much for your participation.
It looks like our experimental stimuli were successful.
They were salient, but they didn't cause the participants
to think they were related to the study.
- The control participants averaged about 4.5.
The experimental participants were close to 4.7.
So there's a slight tendency for the experimental people
to be leaning in the direction that we predicted.
But we're talking about relatively
inconsequential differences.
- That's right.
It just makes me hungry to run more people.
And with the number that we had,
That's statistically insignificant.
Do you think that we did see any effects
of mortality salience today?
- I feel like the mortality salient groups
tended to take a little longer before responding
- Yeah me, too.
- And they seem more thoughtful.
they really put more effort into trying
to do the right thing.
- The difference was dramatic enough
that we picked up on it.
- Absolutely.
- [Michael] Although our stimuli might need to go through
a couple more passes and some more vetting,
we did find an interesting difference in the time
it took for our groups to respond.
Our control group took an average of four minutes
and 46 seconds to decide on their punishments.
But our experimental group took an average
of seven minutes, 18 seconds.
- In a sense that really is the prediction,
the right thing by their own worldview.
But by the same token, when we think about death,
we wanna do what's right.
And if we're acting like jurors,
we wanna make the right decisions.
- As we very much learned today,
the goal isn't to prove one thing one way or the other.
It's just to reduce uncertainty.
In the most careful way possible.
- Absolutely.
To know a little bit more today than we did yesterday.
- Whoa, okay, we have a lot to talk about.
And luckily, I've got just the person here with me
to talk about all of this with Judy Ho
a clinical neuropsychologist,
tenured professor at Pepperdine, you run your own practice,
you work with ethics a lot.
What is your actual position?
- So I'm the chair of the institutional review board
at Pepperdine University,
which is how we first started working together
because you were doing the trolley experiment.
And that was an interesting thing to talk about.
- Yes, if you have seen the trolley problem episode
of Mind Field you have seen Judy there
helping us with the ethics
of can we make people think they've committed murder?
Is that okay?
Maybe it's not okay for the university to do,
but can a TV show do it?
Bottom line is we learned a lot.
And so, Judy, I wanted you here today to talk with me
about running experiments on people, okay.
But also running experiments on people for a TV show.
Because there are all kinds of limitations
and issues that come up.
And I think that what we just saw is a great example
of all the different things that happen,
that are both good and bad,
challenges and opportunities for Mind Field
when it comes to psychological experiments.
- Sure.
- So the biggest problem we have is,
it's not possible for us to run
enormous numbers of participants.
We have a very tight schedule,
and we have a whole crew working with us,
we cannot run hundreds or thousands of people,
we can run like a couple dozen.
And sometimes that's not enough to really get
a statistically significant result.
- Right.
- Also, I think it's very clear here.
The kinds of participants who come on to the show,
they don't even know they're on a TV show,
by the way until the end when we debrief them,
but the kinds of people who are available here in LA,
in the middle of the day.
- Right.
- Is a both a very narrow
and a very wide group of people.
- Right.
- If we were running this at a University,
and we needed people to be free in the middle of the day,
we would get a very homogenous group.
- Yeah.
- They would be predominantly young people
between like 19 and 22,
their worldviews would be pretty similar.
I mean, they're all at the same institution,
they're probably socio economically pretty well off,
because they're at this university.
Their cultural backgrounds might be much more similar
than what we find working in TV,
where we might get retired people and immigrants
and really young people and actors, a lot of actors.
- Right, yes.
- Oh, my gosh, the number of people in LA,
who were free to do studies in the middle of the day,
who part time actors is a huge,
which that always leads to the issue of the audience at home
goes, wait a second, and they Google up something
and they go, that person was on a TV show, right?
Is this all just fake?
And it's like, that's what it's like
to just grab who's available in LA.
But because of the diversity that we get,
I think our populations represent the country better.
But also, we have way more noise.
- Yes.
- Questions about how bad is it to deface
an American monument are going to have
very different answers from different people.
- Absolutely.
- And in this particular study, we had that problem.
We're trying to see if you'll enforce your worldview,
more or less if you're reminded
that you're going to die someday,
and the issue was that everyone showing up
had very different worldviews.
- Yes.
All right, so I've just thrown
a whole bunch of stuff at you,
- A lot of stuff to talk about.
Well, first of all, I thought it was fascinating
the way that it was set up.
And it was a really, really good episode to watch.
And, just to see the reactions of the proponents
of the theory that was so cool
that you got them to be in it.
'Cause they are invested in the theory.
- That was so cool.
And both of them wrote all of those scenarios.
And it was truly science in action.
They came up with scenarios,
we found out Wow, some of these are just so extreme,
even to a control group that we don't see any room
for any other variables to change in that direction.
So we had to rewrite them in between days,
and gosh, it was true science.
- Yeah, no, it was really cool to see it in action.
And it was really cool to see how different
the control group and the experimental group was
in terms of the latency and even their facial responses,
as they were considering all of this.
I certainly saw that being a significant effect
that they just seemed like they were taking
their roles so much more seriously, right.
Whereas sometimes when you get these people
to come in for an experimental study,
they're just here for their whatever,
$10 or whatever you're offering them for their time.
And, they're more haphazard about it.
And I certainly saw that with a second group,
there was just this real pronounced sense of gravity
to their considerations.
- Yeah, we thought,
what the severity of punishment dealt out, that will be
the variable that will change based on mortality sale.
But it turned out to be disposition and thoughtfulness.
- Totally.
- Luckily, we recorded the whole thing.
So we could go back and say, how long did they take?
That wasn't originally measured,
but because of the footage, we could time.
And we found out that it took almost twice as long
for the group that came in thinking,
I've just written an essay
about what I think death will be like.
Punishing people for violating cultural norms.
This is a heavy thing, too, and they reacted differently.
- Yeah, and I think that it may not be
I mean, I understand the original tenants
of Terror Management Theory.
But I can also imagine when somebody is really,
really very cognizant of their mortality,
that they might actually be more lenient,
like life is short, I want this person
to have a second chance.
And so I think part of what wasn't measured
that might have been helpful
is actually trying to counterbalance the two groups
in terms of do you have the same types of belief systems,
and ideologies, right?
Because if we don't have that,
then they're kind of just going at their own values.
And if we don't know very much about it,
you can see why that noise could contribute
to the average being 4.5 and 4.7 in the two groups.
- Exactly, which is basically no difference at all right?
- Right, yeah.
- But yes, I think in hindsight, and this is, again,
the whole point of science is to be like,
all right, what can we learn?
And how can we keep at all times
the uncertainty on this track down and down?
And right, if we kind of knew
what people's worldviews were ahead of time,
like if we had interviewed them a couple of weeks before,
long enough ago, that they don't remember it anymore, right?
Make them somehow not think that it matters
too much that the questions are related,
then the test, I think, could have given us better results
in terms of the punishments dealt out and all of that.
And it can be frustrating when you wanna do a show,
and you wanna show results and teach,
but you also want to experiment.
And sometimes the experiment won't always leave you
with everything nicely tied up.
- Right.
- And that's a good lesson to give people
but it has been frustrating to do experiments
where you need a big population of people,
it's easier on the Mind Field,
to make myself the guinea pig.
Or focus on a topic where
we just need to see it happen one time.
- Right, right.
- Like can I get someone to falsely confessed to a crime?
If I get one person to do it, then we're done.
But if I wanna see a tendency for people
to be more punitive to worldview,
their worldview violations, if they're reminded of death,
I really need to run hundreds of people.
So I mean, what do you what do you think?
Do we need to remind the audience of that every time?
- Honestly, I don't think so.
And I would say, first of all,
that social psychology experiences (mumbles) especially,
are built on the backbone
of very homogenous populations,
it's tended to always involve undergraduate students
who are given the option of either doing
this 10 minute experiment or writing a 15 page paper.
It's not really very ethical, actually.
Because you're kind of coercing them towards the experiment.
And so you're gonna get lots of first
and second year psychology students.
And, again, it's still for a class.
So how honest are they really being?
Because what if the professor discovers
what their answers are?
And so there's all kinds of things
that are already inherently an issue,
and even the published studies and social psychology.
And I think what a TV experiment really does
that I don't think any more kind of,
planned out research study with hundreds
and thousands of participants will do,
is a really lively and visual demonstration.
And that in itself is really useful.
Because if somebody actually says,
Now, I wanna take that study protocol,
and apply it to 500 people,
they now have a template to do that--
- Which they should do, by the way,
please do that, that would be,
Mind Field would have done its job.
But yeah, I think the responsibility
I have with Mind Field is to document how science is done,
and what results might look like
and what the protocols can be.
And then the comments
might have been full of people with different ideas,
how it would have been a differently and I'm like, perfect.
- Awesome that people wanna weigh in and be so engaged--
- Exactly go off and do that,
we really didn't know how that experiment would go.
And I still don't know how it would go
if you change one little thing in one way or the other.
- Well, and I think it also shows
the beauty of what an ad hoc analysis can do.
Like oftentimes you have your hypotheses,
like, for example, your hypothesis was that you would go in
and you would see that there was gonna be more severity
in terms of ratings of punishment in the experimental group.
But actually, you didn't see that.
And then you thought that something else was happening,
because we saw the videotape.
And, oh, it's how long they took.
And you were able to go back and call that data
and to make a statement about that.
And that difference was significant.
It was almost doubled the amount of time
that the experimental group, it was cool to see that.
- It was cool.
And you could feel a difference in the mood
which it's hard to measure.
But you know what, when you are recording
everything from multiple angles, you have that evidence,
right, you have that documentation.
- They seem stressed.
Like, when I was watching them, I felt bad for them.
They they just looked so upset.
- They weren't fun scenario,
it's like hey, this person botched a surgery
because they lied about their qualifications.
Or this doctor got drunk and hurt someone.
There are pretty bad things to think about, anyway,
- This really just brings up though, kind of the spirit
of why we do experiments in the first place,
because it's always a cost benefit analysis.
And I think we talked about this
also on the trolley episode.
It's really about what kind of information you're getting.
Are you just torturing people for fun
and using your hidden cameras for fun?
Or are you providing some kind of educational value or a way
that people can process important issues like mortality?
When I first saw you in the casket,
I gotta tell you, that's one of my worst fears.
We talked about this on the most recent episode I worked on
with you that, that is my biggest fear, is death.
So that you are providing some value and insight
to people who are thinking about how do I make the most
of my time on this earth?
And does it mean if I take my moral decisions
a little bit more carefully,
that I'm gonna feel better about myself in my life
at the end of the day?
Because that could be providing some kind of insight
for people to better their lives.
- Yeah, that's my favorite part of every experiment we run,
the debriefing where I get to say,
here's what we're studying.
And people they've never gone,
"Okay, cool, can I get my money now?"
They're always like, well, they want the money.
But also, of course, they're like, wow, oh, yeah.
'cause I was feeling this, and, they're excited,
to think about it on the on the car home,
and they're gonna tell their friends about it that night.
And I hope it does a lot of good for them,
even if sometimes,
they may have been a little bit scared halfway through.
- Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And I think that that is really the core
of why the experiments are important on TV,
because, you are gonna get a more engaged audience.
And if it encourages people to think about themselves,
and to encourage personal development to tell their friends
and family, then I think you've done a great job.
So I don't think that you have to necessarily say,
and by the way, maybe this experiment,
will turn out different if you had 500 people running it,
because the visual aspects of the experiment,
as it is built is what's triggering these people
to really do that self evaluation
versus reading it on a page.
I mean, that's part of the problem with experiments
is that they're in these journals that you have to be
a psychologist to subscribe
or just a really interested person who's not a psychologist,
that you wanna pay your $500 a year.
- Because you're getting like a weekly thing, and it's huge.
Oh, my gosh!
- No one's gonna read that.
So this is a great way for people to understand experiments
and not feel afraid, a lot of people will tell me,
I'm afraid to run experiments.
That seems like a lot of work to do.
Well, the way that it was broken down in the episode,
it doesn't really look like people
can't do a version of it themselves sometimes.
- It did take a lot of work.
We have the best crew ever-- - You made it look easy.
- Yeah, we made it look easy, love to hear that.
I also think what we just saw is a good way
to talk about hidden camera shows.
- Yeah.
Because a common question I get is,
how do the people not know they're on TV?
How do they not see the cameras?
And they don't, we do a really good job.
I mean, we're in LA,
and I'm working with the best hidden camera people.
I mean, I go into the room, and I'm like,
but aren't we gonna film this?
And they're like, we're filming it right now.
- From five cameras.
- Yeah, the ways they have the disguise cameras,
I've always said we need to cover that on the show.
So that people know how well hidden the cameras were.
- Yeah, 'cause they were excellent angles too--
you got really good-- - I know, but guess what
the producers are like, no,
because then people will know the secrets,
and they'll know what to look at.
Trade secrets, but also,
they don't want future participants to go.
You know what?
If I see that pattern,
there's probably a camera behind it.
It works because people don't know
how we're hiding them so well.
If you look at the projectors screen,
you can see that there's a band across it
of a different texture.
And that is something that a camera can see through.
But in the room, you don't think anything of it.
It's just this boring feature, and no one notices.
And then when we tell them, they're on TV,
they're all like, what?
So there's a whole other permission form they have to sign
after they learn that,
'cause we can't tell them beforehand,
or else people will act different if they know
that there's going to be an audience
out there watching later.
- Yes, absolutely.
And we see that a lot in social psychology studies,
I mean, even just the presence of more people in the room
can already impact how they respond.
So in this particular scenario, there was one experimenter,
it feels less like an audience.
But sometimes you'll have three or four experimenters
and it does like really,
like in a big way affect how people start to deal
with themselves, deal with each other,
you can sometimes see them being more polite,
a little bit more ginger with things.
And it's only because they think that other people
are watching and taking notes about them.
- You know what?
It makes me wanna bring up something else,
we really need to get back into the episode,
but like, come on, I can do whatever I want, right?
So Mind Field began,
as this idea I had for a show
that at the time I called Prankology,
because when I was a student in high school
and college psychology professors
would often show Candid Camera clips,
and then talk about the social psychology
that was evident in those clips.
The clips were entertaining, the science was cool.
I'm like, let's do that.
and pranks were kind of a thing because of Punked.
This was a while back, right?
But all of the pranks that like networks wanted to do
essentially only taught one thing, fight or flight.
They just wanted people to get really scared
and freaked out and pee in their pants.
Luckily, YouTube saw that there was value
in something like this.
We're like, so is anyone gonna scream?
Is anyone gonna think their car was totaled?
And I'm like, no, they're just gonna respond
to a question with a number.
Interestingly, you have to make that interesting.
How do you have someone fill out a survey
and have it be good visually?
Well, we came up with the idea of having them write
their number and then show it to the proctor of the study,
so that the camera could see what number they wrote.
That's the whole reason they did it that way,
rather than fill it in and turn the paper.
- Which of course changes results too.
Because if it's a private opinion,
versus one that they're showing their showing somebody.
- They're showing, then their face is associated with it.
But last at the last minute,
we had to put those blinders up.
So they couldn't see what other people
next to them were doing.
Because we knew that that would affect it.
So we had to walk the line of, okay,
we want them to put the number up
next to their face for the camera,
but we don't want that to affect
how they answer the question.
So how do we make sure that it still feels
as private as possible?
- Right.
- A lot of thinking goes in this.
- A lot of thinking, a lot of thinking.
And I also wonder to just even the characteristics
of the experimenter in the room,
the actor that you guys hired.
Again, with certain of those questions,
there could also be a response,
of well, this person might judge me if I rate this a seven,
just based on their own perception
of what that person might be thinking--
- Exactly, that is something that is worth investigating
more experimenting with more.
What I can say is that during those trials,
the direction we gave Trin, who's our wonderful actress,
she's just perfect at this kind of role, and many others,
but we told her, you have to kind of act bored.
Like you've been doing this all day,
and you don't care what they write down.
- Yeah, no gasps of surprise.
- Yeah, you're not gonna be like, oh, you gave it a one?
Also, she just read a script, she read each word off a page.
So it was always the same language.
And it was just monotone, which is a funny direction to give
someone who is in a like a really talented actress.
To be like, we need you to-- - As boring as possible.
- Be as boring as possible.
And it's the least acting as possible.
- Right, right.
- As a little acting as possible.
Judy, thank you so much. - Thank you so fun.
- Always a pleasure. - Awesome.
- All right, we're gonna continue watching this episode,
when we come back, I will have a new guest,
but not new to you or me.
So actually not a new guests at all,
but I'll have a different guest.
Let's get ready to learn more
about whether Michael should die.
(upbeat music)
Our pilot test shows that there's still a lot to discover
about terror management, and many promising ways to do it.
I'm particularly intrigued by our observation
that for all the closed mindedness,
mortality salience appears to cause it also led
to what looked like increased consideration, and thought,
I'd love to see more research on that idea.
But the point is this.
If death's effects aren't all entirely bad,
what if, instead of, or at least, at the same time
that we hope for the abolition of natural death,
we also find a way to accept it.
Now, obviously, I don't want to die, at least not soon.
But accepting the inevitability of my own death
and being less afraid of it feels powerful, and honest.
I'd like to learn what that looks like.
And I have a friend who can help.
(soft music)
I'm paying a visit to Caitlin Doughty, a mortician,
author and death positivity activist
who has made an entire career out of discussing
the aspects of death that most of us prefer to ignore.
What do you say to someone who comes to you?
and says, I think death is terrifying.
It's,
so scary and sad that
I'm just here now,
- Is this person dying?
Or is this person--
- This person is me in front of you right now.
- This person is you, okay so (laughs)
I would tell you a couple things.
First, you're dealing
with the primal existential quandary of human existence.
- Yes.
- And you are one of,
the many billions of people who have felt this,
so you're not alone in feeling this way.
So we go through life, we reach a certain age,
and we begin to understand that someday,
ourselves, and everyone we love will die.
And that's powerful, painful knowledge.
And I think from that moment,
we have to start developing
defense mechanisms to handle that,
and to integrate that into our lives.
- So what are those defense mechanisms?
- I think that the more obvious ones would be having a child
writing a book, making a TV show,
creating a legacy of some kind,
but there's also a more insidious version, which is war,
taking other countries, being rich
and being okay with other people being poor.
I think those are all signs of death denial,
they're all saying, but I'm okay
because I have this money, or I have this power,
or I have these kind of dark impulses that allow me to say,
at least I can outrun death in that way.
And of course, that's not true, no one can outrun death.
But you can trick yourself into believing that.
- So how would you characterize
the western relationship to death?
- Take America 150 years ago,
if you were my husband, and you died,
I would be entirely in charge of you,
I would wash your body, I would get the neighbor
to make a wooden coffin for you,
we would put you in the coffin and carry you
on our shoulders to the grave
which someone had dug themselves.
It would have been an entirely self sufficient process.
But what happened around the turn of the 20th century
is really three big things in my mind.
One, you had the rise of hospitals,
so people were no longer dying at home,
you had the rise of funeral homes,
which means that we are now outsourcing our death.
Third one is slaughterhouses,
so all of a sudden, all food production,
and the killing of animals is also hidden as well.
And we live in our suburban houses
where all those things are outsourced.
And it's just these little layers and layers
and layers of denial around death.
- But what does it mean to accept death?
- I don't think that you ever truly accept death.
But I believe that the movement toward accepting death
involves really true self awareness
about where you're hiding your fears of death.
That's where real awareness and acceptance can come from.
- For me, the thing that's just such a bummer about death
is that I just I'm done.
I don't get to continue learning things
and seeing what happens,
and I'm just not part of Earth anymore.
- Isn't death kind of what gives you that passion
when you think about it?
When you think about like, I love learning, I love ideas.
If you didn't have an endpoint,
Are you gonna come in here today with all these cameras
and do the huge amount of legwork
that creating a show requires?
- No.
- No, right?
Because you're like, I don't know, maybe I'll do it,
200 years from now, whereas right now
you're taking in information left and right,
because you wanna produce content,
you wanna produce exciting things
and share with other people.
- Because this is my one chance to do that.
- This is your one chance, the passion and the realness
to life comes from it ending.
That's the great gift that death gives us.
- What's an unhealthy relationship
to have to your own mortality?
- The pursuit of immortality,
and the pursuit of, "I will stay alive
"until I can upload my brain into the cloud."
That worries me, the idea that everyone
is just allowed to live forever,
from here on out, is not environmentally sensible.
It's just not a sensible position to take.
(upbeat music_
- [Narrator] We are seeing the dawn of a new era,
of possibilities unfold on planet Earth.
What more amazing will be like in say 80, 100
or even 200 years from now?
Wouldn't you like the possibility of finding out?
(upbeat music)
- To understand why some people feel like death
shouldn't be inevitable. I've come to Alcor,
one of the world's leading life extension facilities.
Linda.
- Hi, how are you?
- Great to meet you.
- Nice to meet you too, welcome down Alcor.
- Thank you for having me here.
I'm meeting Linda Chamberlain,
who co founded Alcor nearly 46 years ago.
So this facility that we are in right now
is where you both cryo preserve people and store them.
- Yes, we have 160 patients.
- Wow.
- And we have 1190
something members, it changes.
- A member is someone who is alive today.
- Alive today, they've made the arrangements for this.
Once they are cryo preserved, they become patients.
- You're using the word patient.
- Yes.
- Okay, tell me about why you use that word.
- For us, death is not something
which is like an on off switch.
One second, you're alive the next second you're dead.
What we are trying to do is to slow down
and stop the dying process.
- To become a patient at Alcor.
First you have to pay between 80 and $200,000,
then you have to die or more specifically
be pronounced clinically dead.
This generally means that your heart and lungs
have stopped functioning.
At that point, Alcor can begin their work.
- Now there are two ways that a person
could sign up for this procedure.
There's a whole body patient or as a neuro
- Oh, and does neuro just mean head?
- It means yes, the cephalon actually,
which is all the structures down to about the clavicle.
I'm a neuro, everybody in my family,
who's now in staces is a neuro.
Most of the people who really understand
the technology are neuros.
The primary reason that people choose whole body
is the emotional.
- Of course.
- And they're not comfortable with the idea of their body
being removed and discarded.
So let's say that our patient, is whole body,
the moment the patient is pronounced,
they go into an ice bath.
And this is just crushed ice,
and its water in there as well.
Their heart is started again, with a mechanical thumper,
they're intubated and their lungs are functioning again
being ventilated circulating the cooler temperature.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you need the veins, the arteries, the vasculature,
the heart, you need all of those
continuing to pump and circulate.
- This is our operating room.
So basically,
when the patient comes in through the door there,
they'll go into this specially developed operating table,
it is going to be circulating nitrogen gas over them
to help cool them externally.
And if its whole body patient,
then the surgeons open the chest
and then we begin circulating
the organ transplants solution.
- Once in the operating room,
the patient's blood is replaced
with cooled organ transplant fluid
and circulated through the vascular system
to rapidly cool down the internal
and external temperatures of the body.
Now, just before the water within the body tissue
reaches its freezing point.
Cryo protective fluids are introduced.
These act like anti freeze preventing the formation
of ice crystals that could damage soft tissue.
This is called the vitrification process.
- Now let's say that it is a neuro patient.
So they come in first here--
- Yep their whole body.
- Right the surgeons will do the neuro separation first.
- Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
- To separate the cephalon,
which is all of the structures down to about the clavicle,
bring it over here to
this operating field.
Wash the blood out and we introduce
the organ transplant solution.
- I'm imagining a person's cephalon
essentially their head in here,
I can see how it's going to get clamped in.
That looks like I'm sure
a crazy sci fi movie, but it really happens.
- It really happens.
- [Michael] After the verification process is complete.
The patients are placed inside bags
that are attached to open metal cases,
which are then placed inside cylindrical tanks
filled with liquid nitrogen called dewars.
- So this is our patient care bay.
We have 159 patients
- In these tanks right here.
- In these tanks.
There are approximately nine patients
and each one of these four whole bodies and five neuros.
This one right here
is where my husband
is currently housed. - This one right here.
- Right, this is where Fred is at the moment.
My mother and my father in law are
in this one.
- Wow, it's so weird because I am right now,
not in a graveyard. - No.
Alcor is very much like an ambulance
taking their loved ones to a hospital, not down the street.
that a hospital in the future,
when technology can help them.
- They're not being transported
through space but through time.
(upbeat music)
To see what drives this time traveling ambulance,
I'm going to sit down with Max More,
Alcor's CEO and a future neuro patient.
So Max, what's the status of the technology needed
to revive cryo preserve specimens?
Are we getting closer?
- We are getting closer,
it's gonna be decades at least before we can bring back
human beings, whole human beings.
But we already cryo preserved eggs, sperm,
we cryo preserved skin corneas, heart valves,
all kinds of things.
So these are single tissues and we can reverse that process.
Now you move from that to an organ,
things get more difficult.
But we actually did an experiment a few years ago
took this little tiny worm we used certain chemicals,
So it would learn that,
oh my foods over here and not over here.
And we cryo preserved them, and then we just waited,
brought them back and then we tested them,
we were able to demonstrate
that the memory test that the ones
that had received the training retained that memory.
So it was the first time in an organism
we've proven survive with memory.
So now we're asking, okay, what's the next step?
Because whole organisms are difficult to reverse right now,
but step by step, the more progress we can make,
the more convincing this is.
- Now, when it comes to extending life,
some questions come up, like should people die?
I know we don't like the idea of death, but
do we lose something?
- I know what you're getting at--
- By getting rid of death.
- Yeah, I think we will lose something
like we lost something when we got rid of slavery or smallpox,
So I think people, people find themselves
in knots to rationalize death.
I believe that.
Right now we're kind of in this tragic situation
where over time, hopefully you kind of learn
your wisdom grows over time,
but the same time your cognitive
and physical health is declining, that's really sucks.
That's a bad situation.
What if they both could keep going up indefinitely,
so you could live hundreds of years
or longer and get smarter and more knowledgeable and wiser,
and hopefully more mature, and have more foresight,
because you got a much longer planning horizon.
What we'll have is a world of like ultra mature people,
which I think will actually be a better world
than the one we have today.
And if they say well,
and it just comes up all the time, they say,
well, death is what gives life meaning.
Bullshit.
If that was true, then would they also advocate people
who live to 90 should be killed off at 45,
will that double the meaning of their life?
In fact, I think life gets more meaning,
the longer you live, because you can build
on what you've done before.
So if anything it increases
the meaningfulness of life, my view.
- You're making me realize that in many ways,
I
am rationalizing death.
I'm looking for ways to excuse it and accept it.
I don't think it's unhealthy to accept that you are mortal.
- Well, I have to accept it
because I could get killed at any time.
One thing I'm have to stress because every article written
they always have to use the word forever, or immortality.
And that's not on the table here.
We're just offering a chance people to be revived
in the time when we've beaten aging.
But eventually something's gonna get you
so we're not offering immortality,
we're offering an unknown extension of human lifespan.
(upbeat music)
- Okay, so, Elisabeth, welcome back.
- Thanks.
- Pretty heavy stuff.
You have a connection to Alcor.
In fact, you were the one who got us that interview.
- Yeah, I set up the visit.
- So how did you come into contact with Alcor?
- Well, I grew up in near San Francisco in the Bay Area.
So I think Alcor has always been in my consciousness,
and my awareness since I was a kid.
I was familiar with the philosophy of it.
And I probably have a dozen friends or so who are members.
- I think you even are friends
with the couple on the brochure about Alcor.
- That's right. - That people get.
- And Max is a friend as well.
- Right. - Yeah, the CEO.
- So I guess the next question is, are you a member?
- I'm not a member yet, but I intend to be at some point.
- So what's keeping you from doing it the cost?
- It's just the cost right now,
Yeah, that's it, and also the fact that honestly,
if I were to die right now,
the chance of being cryogenically frozen is pretty low
because the way I would die would probably
be in a motorbike accident in India or something like that.
So it'd be hard to get this cephalon
back to the Alcor lab in time.
- Yep, the best.
It's weird to talk about this the best way to die,
to be cryogenically frozen is to die,
right there near their facility.
I think they've said that they have a lot of members
who near the end of their life move to the Scottsdale area,
so that when they die,
they can be taken right away or actually,
an Alcor team can be at your deathbed.
Now, the best way to be frozen.
And this is kind of what makes me feel
like we have a long way to go,
is that the best way for me to be cryo frozen
and then brought back later is for someone
to literally kill me right now.
Stick me in the ice bath right now start pumping in
the fluid to cool my body down and kill me by cooling me.
If I die in any other way,
there will be too much cell death
or at least there will be some,
because for a split second,
while the law decides whether I'm dead or not,
my cells are already dying.
- Right yeah.
And also, I suppose by that logic,
you would also wanna do it
as early in your life as possible,
when your brain is in the best possible state.
- Exactly, I wonder if they've ever had a member say,
all right, I have cognitive decline.
And it's happening to the tissues in my brain.
If you preserve me when I finally am pronounced dead
by an authority, what brain will I have left?
That's what I'm stuck with.
They may believe that in the future,
we can just reconstruct an entire consciousness
by just knowing a little bit
about some of the brain connections and structures,
but I guess all of this brings us to
what Caitlin was saying,
she really was uncomfortable with that idea.
That it seems what were her words?
Non sensible.
- Well, I think living forever
immortality is pretty nonsensical.
And even Alcor will say and even Max says
that what they're striving for is not immortality.
It's just extending the life that we have.
And there's many ways that we do that already.
We have antibiotics and vaccinations and things like that.
- Right, just wearing a seatbelt
is a life extension protocol.
What Alcor does,
seems much more sci fi.
And, I also understand a lot of the criticisms
around the cost,
the cost filters out
only a certain kind of person to be preserved.
If we can bring back frozen people in the future,
those from now in history will predominantly be high.
I'm a Silicon Valley millionaire or billionaire.
And I'm back and now it's the year 8000, and I'm back.
- Right and certain personality traits--
- [Michael] Only personality traits?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, so is that possibly not gonna represent
our arrow well in the future,
if only those with the means to extend their life
in that way, do so.
- And the other thing that goes along with that
is I think that people who have abundance
are also more likely to want to extend their life,
not just because they can,
but because they're living a good life.
And so Alcor is not, I mean at least for me,
it's not about denying death,
it's not because I'm terrified of dying.
It's because I actually love life.
I enjoy every moment of it.
And the only tragedy is, like you said that I won't,
at some point, I won't be able to keep learning,
I won't be able to keep growing,
I won't be able to keep discovering new things.
So people who enjoy life who have the fortune of being able
to do all of that naturally want that to continue.
- Now I get some of the reactions people have like,
well, but it's not environmentally sensible.
And we only have a finite amount of resources,
I get all of that, I hope that that ceases to be a problem.
I think more human lives is just better.
And to think any other way is ridiculous.
We need to make sure we can sustain all of those lives
and give people good lives--
- And that could take us about overpopulation.
- Is what I'm saying, yeah.
I feel like any negative side effects of overpopulation
could be fixed by the time we're also able to literally
bring back a frozen brain.
Okay, we should be working on both.
But I'm basically throwing that off the table,
because I don't really care.
I think it's not going to be an issue in the future,
so long as we keep focusing on it,
problems of overpopulation.
Well, we need humans to die,
or else we're not gonna have enough beef for everyone,
and it's like, all right, let's fix that.
But assuming that that's fixed,
I still feel like there's
a kind of hubris that turns me off
to the idea of extending your life like this.
Why do you think that you get to live longer in this?
I hate to say artificial because seat belts are artificial,
they're technology we invented to make us not die
so often and quickly.
- Yeah, yeah, I get what you're saying I mean,
it does feel kind of self indulgent, to be able to say,
Here I am, I'm so special,
I get to be one of the few that survived in the future.
And I guess my counter argument to that is whenever,
with any new technology,
it's always initially only limited to a subset of people
who are risk takers, early adopters,
who have the financial means to do it,
who have the sort of foresight
or sort of long term perspective
to wanna do that in the first place.
And just because that's a small set of the population
doesn't mean that those people shouldn't do it.
In fact, on the contrary,
that's the first step to making it accessible to everyone.
- I brought up a point to Max
that I think is in the bonus footage,
but didn't make it into the episode about social progress.
And how if we wind up with five, six,
700 year old, super mature people,
what if their ideas about the way society is organized,
doesn't change, and we wind up getting stuck,
not making progress,
because the population wants to keep living
the way they lived in their 20s,
which, in 600 years might not be the way.
Which I don't think any system right now
is the best system.
But if we start having people not die out,
does that mean that we stopped making progress?
It's a weird argument.
Max then points out.
So what are you recommending we do,
genocide people when they're old?
I'm like, no, not that.
What do you think?
Am I making sense here?
- Yeah, definitely.
I mean, I think that the brain
does tend to become sort of ossified.
As we get older, people tend to be more conservative,
more traditional, be more set in the routines.
But I think by the time we have the technology to,
and cryonically free somebody and revive somebody
we'll also have age technologies to make the brain
more flexible again and reverse
the aging process in the brain.
So it might not actually be an issue anymore.
And the other counter arguments I have to that is,
okay so maybe that is true.
But let's see how it plays out.
We're still gonna be having children, right.
And so there are still gonna be fresh ideas,
new generations, the generational dynamic
is gonna be very different.
Because it won't just be boomers versus millennials.
(laughing)
- Yeah, there will be like four or five generations
around to be battling it out.
There will be 20,
30.
And man, we will learn so much.
I think a lot of that fear you have as you get older
about things changing is an evolutionarily designed process
of like, Look, I lived long enough to reproduce,
therefore, the way I was raised must be good enough.
anything different could risk that not happening again.
So of course natural selection will choose people
who have developed a mind that doesn't like things
to change, it doesn't want the kids be too different,
but imagine living to be 600 years old,
and you see so many generations of kids
that like different kinds of music
and do different kinds of hobbies
and things and they're all okay.
- Yeah, think about how much wisdom
you'd have after 600 years.
- I think what we should do now is go back to the episode
and look at the decision that I make.
(upbeat music)
Do I think that someday we will be able
to cryonically freeze an entire person and then revive them?
Yes, I do.
I believe that cryo preservation
will change the meaning of death, and lead to breakthroughs
and medical technology that will improve all of our lives.
But do I
want to extend my life indefinitely?
Well, on the one hand, obviously, death is a bummer.
But on the other, the universe managed fine
without me for billions of years.
Am I really so important
that it should never not have me again?
Should I be around as long as possible?
Or do those who will come later deserve their own world?
Should I try to extend my life?
Or should I decide to die
when my time comes and return all this matter
I'm borrowing back to the world?
Well I don't think there's a right answer.
It's a personal choice we each get to make
and should be able to make.
And I've been thinking about it a lot.
(upbeat music)
So I'm going to speak again with my friend Caitlin
the mortician to confront my own mortality.
Well, Caitlin, Thanks for meeting with me again.
I've been surrounded by death lately, spoke to you.
I visited Alcor and,
if we never invented technology to bring people back
then the Alcor patients are dead.
But they have that hope.
I worked on Terror Management Theory.
And I even had a loved one pass away just two weeks ago,
my grandmother.
- I'm sorry to hear that.
- She was cremated, as well as my father.
And I realized,
I've never made a clear decision
about what should happen to me.
Because I just figured I'll figure that out when I'm older,
but I could die at any time.
- You sure could.
- So I wanna be prepared, and I want my wishes to be known.
So I've decided, when that moment comes,
I want it to be my final moment of existence,
I wanna give all my atoms and molecules
back to the universe, and I've decided that I want to die.
- I'm so glad you've made that decision.
And you've come to the right place.
- I want to be
naturally buried, I wanna have a green burial,
become worm food and plant food
and I want it all to go back to Earth.
But I kind of want a place where people can come to be like,
that's where he was buried.
- So there's everything from just little discs in the ground
where you are, to GPS that locates you to natural cemeteries
that are trying to reintroduce native plants.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- So you can have your own Joshua Tree.
So the first thing I'm gonna give you to give a look over
is what's called an advanced directive.
And everybody needs to have one of these.
And why it's so important is that it's you,
not only designating someone to be in charge of your body
as you're dying, right after you die,
and then with however you decide to dispose of it,
but also who that person is.
- So this isn't just about burial, this is dying.
- Oh, no, it's about death dying death
and after death. - Interesting.
A choice like this is extremely new to humans.
It used to be that your only options
upon death were cremation, embalming or rotting away.
But today, you can choose to pause yourself
at death's door until the door
has been moved somewhere else.
But I've decided not to do that.
So I'm ready to make this official.
- Fire in the hole. - Okay.
(upbeat music)
- Whoa, all right. - How do you feel?
- Weirdly, I feel very relaxed and good.
It was kind of life changing,
but what it really was was death changing.
- Huh, well, thank you,
and I'm glad you've decided to die.
- Thank you.
Jeff and Sheldon, thank you for showing me
the power of death's influence.
Caitlin, thank you for helping me accept it.
Max, thank you for the work you are doing
and the opportunities you are offering humanity.
And all of you out there,
as always, thanks for watching.
All right, Elisabeth,
I decided
and still believe
I should die.
- You're still happy with that decision?
- I'm still happy with that decision.
And I'm really happy for you to make whatever decision
you want about yourself,
you're you, you own you.
So I don't care what people decide to do.
I just I don't know,
the main part was that I just feel like I
want one turn
at this game.
And I don't wanna be around forever,
being like, well, I'm older than you, so.
But I also don't feel like I can criticize
other people's decisions about this.
I don't know, what do you think?
- I think it's interesting.
When people talk about immortality,
they always think of it in terms of
there's some sort of costs that comes with it.
Like, there's no way that you could have something
so wonderful as life extension
without some sort of drawback.
And all this sort of fantasy and sci fi about it
even stories about vampires.
There's always like,
it comes with some sort of terrible burden.
And
why?
That's just something that we culturally have created,
doesn't necessarily have to be the case.
And I
I'm perfectly inclined to think
that we can extend our lives it probably be,
won't be like an all of a sudden we find
some sort of magic drink that we're gonna live forever.
Instead, it's gonna be a very incremental process
of first it's gonna be normal to live 100 years
and then 110 years, and 120 years and hundred like that.
And, yeah, probably without some kind of crazy
cause for not gonna be some abomination
or freak of nature or something like that.
- Yeah, I think it is really important
the points that you've made about,
we're not talking about a drink that makes you immortal,
like a vampire in that sense of whoo,
but to strive for immortality is something against God.
talking more about extending life,
you could still get hit by a bus
at any time and literally be dead.
Your brains connections are completely lost,
and we can never recreate them.
That's why I think that what Alcor is doing,
to help us understand how to preserve tissues
and extend people's lives is so important.
If a drink was invented, that allowed one to stay
exactly as healthy mentally, and physically
as they were that moment they drank it, I wouldn't drink it.
Because again,
I want my song to have a final note.
I don't like the end being
kind of like punted down the road.
- I wonder if people would have said the same thing
back, before antibiotics,
if they were looking at the horizon,
and somebody described to them, antibiotics
and this could extend your life by 40 years
and this ear infection you have
doesn't have to cripple you and kill you.
- Right, right.
Well, I mean, but I would still say the same thing today.
If someone said, okay, you're gonna die like in a week,
unless you take this medicine, I'll be like, sure.
I don't know if I'm just feeling like
there is like a right time to die.
Like, the way it's sort of been.
When it's time your family can move on and you've
led the way and now it's time for them to lead the next
and everyone gets a turn as the leader.
- Yeah, I mean, I'm one of my goals right now.
And I guess another reason that I haven't done Alcor yet
is I think there's other ways of extending life
that are a little more accessible.
I mean, Alcor is a pretty big risk,
the chances of actually being revived are extremely low,
but it's sort of a Pascal's Wager,
it's like, what's the alternative?
- Yeah, what do I lose?
I may as well.
- Well, one of the things I'm doing now,
actually, next week,
is getting my stem cells cryonically preserved.
So yeah, I'm going to a company
called Forever Labs in San Francisco.
They actually think they're based in Michigan,
but they have a clinic in San Francisco,
they're gonna extract the stem cells,
and then bank them for the rest of my life.
- So you can use those for therapies or?
- Exactly, yeah, yeah.
So say, I have an organ down the line that needs repair.
Now I have stem cells from my younger self,
that we could use, or maybe they'll develop
age reversal technologies down the line.
And then I could use those stem cells,
they've already done that in rodents.
And done some very basic, clinical studies with humans,
where they've given human stem cells from younger donors.
And actually, older adults are able to be
they show more physical fitness, more cognitive sharpness,
after the stem cell injection.
But also, there's, with that particular study,
when they receive too much of the stem cells,
they actually have negative side effects.
But that's probably because their immune system
is reacting to somebody else's stem cells,
which is why there's a benefit in banking your own.
- Wow, banking your own stem cells.
I think that sounds brilliant, I would love to do it--
- And they do with kids, with babies now.
- Take the baby stem cells,
and you've got like the freshest best stem cells.
And then when you're super old, and you're like,
Oh, my liver could use some help.
They'll be like, when you were a baby,
we took these things out and they've been frozen.
So they're still fresh.
Well, it seems to me like I should go, when I naturally go.
- I think maybe you're feeling a sense of fairness,
or just what's socially, the right thing to do.
Because if everybody around you,
if the technology were available to everybody,
and everybody you knew was living to 100 or 120,
I think it would be it would feel more okay.
But it feels sort of unfair to say,
Okay, I'm entitled to this new technology,
or I'm entitled to more life and other people,
the rest of the world isn't--
- I'm so good. - And I find that
really admirable actually. - The world needs me forever,
not forever, but the world just needs me.
If I would left the world, oh, that'd be such a tragedy.
to the world, wow!
- But it kind of feels like
you're breaking some sort of like,
agreement that the whole human race has accepted,
like, I'm going to defy something
that we've all sort of mutually agreed
is the way things are.
But if we all mutually agree something else,
because it becomes so widespread or ubiquitous,
then it doesn't feel like
you've sort of transgressed
or is nothing to feel, weird about.
- Right, it's a really interesting way to frame it.
I wanna point out, though,
that although Max really emphasized
that he's not selling immortality,
they're very much is a belief in immortality
that you'll hear from their members,
especially in a sort of digital way
where their consciousness can be recreated in a computer.
And at that point, it doesn't seem
like there's still this inevitable,
but you could get hit by a bus, but you could,
be in an accident, at that point it's like,
No, but I never will be because I will exist
and be replicated as digital conscious.
And that I don't wanna do,
I don't care if other people do it.
I just feel like I'm not gonna burden the world
with more of me than it needs.
- I have trouble wrapping my mind around that one,
in the area I wanna say yes, I'll do it, like why not?
I wanna try everything.
But to me somehow there's a disconnect
where that doesn't feel like me anymore.
Maybe I'm so embodied, that feels a little bit like
he was describing people want to preserve their entire body
because it's hard to conceive of yourself
as just a head or just a consciousness.
So it's just hard to imagine, if I can't experience
if I don't have a physical, like,
visceral experience of the world.
And that constant feedback, what is life even?
- It's kind of lonely in a weird way
- Yeah. - Right, lonely.
I guess you could have a robot body.
- It's like, how do you even have a thought
really without this input?
- Well, I think the idea is that you would have inputs
from some kind of like, Cyborg body that they built you
that they injected your consciousness
into through the wire right?
But at that point, you were talking about true immortality.
Because you've come up with a way to solve any accident
that ever happens to you, you will never die.
And that's very different than a bring me back
when you have a cure for this cognitive problem
that I'm developing.
Bring me back, cure it, and then I get to live
for another like, I don't know, a couple of decades or what?
I don't know.
Wow, this is all fascinating, and very important stuff.
Lisbeth Thank you very much. - Thanks Michael.
- Thank you.
And without further ado, we're gonna keep bulldozing on
through here we are with your Brain on Tech,
not your brain made out of tech, but your brain on tech.
(upbeat music)
Oh, hello.
technology isn't just changing our lives.
It's changing our brains.
Not just how they think, but how they look.
It's been shown that playing certain video games for hours
can improve your memory for details,
your ability to navigate space, in video games,
and can make your brain well certain parts of it bigger.
But scientists want to know if exploring digital worlds
can change our brains in ways that improve our ability
to navigate the real world.
To find out, we've built a giant maze to test their theories
for the first time ever, outside the world of computers.
Now my job.
I'm the lab rat.
(upbeat music)
(vacuum cleaner humming)
Our brains have been profoundly transformed
by our interactions with technology.
A lot of the information that I used to have to store
in my brain is now stored in my phone,
my contacts, my schedule.
In many ways, I've delegated
what used to be done by this organ,
to this new external organ.
Doing that frees up my brains resources
for other things that matter,
or that technology can't quite do for us yet.
So while we all don't have implants in our brains, yet,
technology has already found a way into our heads,
which is why you may find it deeply disturbing
to see me do something like this.
Studies show we can improve our brains
by having enriching experiences,
like playing a new challenging video game.
To learn more about this, I came to UC Irvine Stark lab
to speak with experts in the field of learning and memory.
So Dane and Craig, you guys work on learning and memory,
What about them?
- So the lab is trying to figure out how memory works,
how it works in the brain, and one brain structure
and the temporal lobe
that we know is important to memory is the hippocampus.
- So what does the hippocampus do?
- We know it has a role in memory
and really a certain kind of memory.
The hippocampus is really involved when you need
to rapidly form new arbitrary associations
in remembering what you did yesterday,
definitely needs the hippocampus.
Maybe we'll go to the store, we park our car in the lot.
And we need to be able to remember,
not just I parked my car in the lot,
I parked my car in this exact spot in the lot.
And those details, that's what the hippocampus
seems to really be helping us out on.
- And you keep looking down at this piece
of chewed bubblegum on the book, is that a hippocampus?
- [Dr. Dane] Yes, this actually is my hippocampus.
- Is this the whole thing?
- That's it.
- Oh, there's one on the other side--
- That looks just like this.
- Yeah, mirror image of it.
- [Michael] In 2015, Dr. Stark and Dr. Clemenson
conducted a study to show how video games affect the brain.
They gathered participants
who normally didn't play video games
and split them up into three groups,
a control group who didn't play
any video games for two weeks,
and active control group who played
two dimensional games for two weeks,
and an experimental group who played
3D games for two weeks.
Beforehand, they had all the participants
perform two virtual tasks
on computers to measure their spatial memory.
- As soon as they came back,
we re administered those two tasks.
And what we found was that the people who played the 3D game
saw an improvement in their test scores,
whereas the control group and active control group did not.
We didn't do brain scans, but we can speculate
that there were changes
to the experimental groups hippocampus.
- So what are we gonna be doing to me here?
- So we're gonna do everything that we've done before
in our past studies, except we're gonna add two new things.
The first is we're gonna add some brain scans
to see if we see a change
in the structural side of your hippocampus.
I mean, we've never actually looked
at somebody's brain scans
before and after they play video games.
And the second thing we're actually gonna do
is we're gonna put you through a real world space.
- You're gonna be the rat in a maze.
- [Michael] This is truly untested territory.
The effect of video gaming on spatial memory
has never been studied in a physical environment.
On a scale this big and comprehensive,
I will have to navigate my way through
a 3600 square foot physical maze,
will playing video games improve my mental skills
in the real world?
If so, society will have a whole new way to look at gaming.
First, we had to get baseline measurements of my brain.
- Welcome to the MRI center,
we're gonna be taking a whole series of scans of you
as the before scan to then see what's gonna be happening
to your brain as a function of actually doing the gaming
- Cool, what kind of things are you looking for?
- Changes in the size and shape of your hippocampus
and also changes in the connectivity between brain regions.
- My brain was scanned using diffusion MRI
with a special emphasis on my all important hippocampus.
Diffusion MRIs, I'd never had one before.
I had a bunch for this episode.
By the way, Daniel, welcome back.
- I'm glad to be here.
- I'm glad you're here too,
what the heck is a diffusion MRI, I had like five of them.
They're different, they would make my chest twitch.
Yeah, interesting. I'm actually not sure why that happened.
And actually had my first ever diffusion MRI
done a few weeks ago.
- Was it for a health reason or for a study?
- My lab mate wanted to test his scanning protocol.
And he actually just asked if I could sit in there
so I was watching Star Trek
while I had my diffusion MRI done.
- That's not bad.
I mean, they're they're loud.
- Yeah, yeah.
- But how was, well I guess we should even start with
like an MRI, basically how that works, and then diffusion.
- So an MRI is using magnetic fields
to image various kinds of molecules in your brain.
And depending on the scanning protocol,
you can pick up on different kinds
of structures in your brain.
And what diffusion MRI specifically is doing
is looking at the direction of water flow in your brain.
So if you look at a really big white matter tract,
so white matter is the sort of big wires
that bridge different areas of our brains together.
So you have a cortex, actually, may I?
- Please, yeah, visual aids.
- So they actually don't really show it here.
But all this stuff on the inside would be white matter.
So it's like if I have some area here that needs
to send a signal to some area over here,
there's a large basically white wire,
- And it's a white because it's myelinated.
- Exactly. - It's covered in fat.
- Exactly, yeah.
Which helps the signal transaction.
- So if this was a real person's brain,
we would we would see a more white color
on the inside than we do on this model.
- Yeah exactly, it would literally be gray up here,
and white on the inside.
- Gray matter white matter. - Yep.
- And so diffusion MRIs
are looking at that white matter, because what?
It has more water content, and there--
- So it's that the direction
of the water flow is more consistent.
So there's water flowing
in a bunch of directions in the brain.
But let's say you look at a little chunk of gray matter,
there's not gonna be a consistent direction,
it's gonna be going in all directions.
If you average them out, there's not a single,
like trajectory for water for.
- Sure, what does the trajectory of water flow mean?
Like, why is water flowing in my brain?
- Well, your brain has tons of water in it, right?
- Yeah.
- And water is flowing along these white matter tracks,
and it's going along that direction.
And so if you are tracking
the direction of water flow in the brain,
and you can see a consistent sort of vector of water flow
from here to here to here to here to here to here,
it tells me there's probably
a white matter tract going this way.
- Right, Okay, so are we looking at actual functions,
like the fact that water went from there to there
when you had this particular experience,
Or thought means that what the two brain regions
were communicating, or one?
- No, so that would be what we call a functional scan.
So this is a structural scan?
It's a way of looking at the--
- So you're saying diffusion is just structural.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Got it.
- It's an anatomical scan of basically, your connectum.
- Right, it's showing what's connected to what?
- Exactly. - Not why they're connected,
and what causes their connection to be important.
It's just physically,
I need the plans to make a great model of your brain,
diffusion MRI would give me a really great looking map of.
- Exactly, it's literally a wiring map,
a large scale wiring map.
So what you're missing is a lot of the miniature wires
of the brain, because if you're looking at
like a little chunk of gray matter here,
there are lots of microscopic wires
connecting those neurons.
Diffusion MRI can't pick that up.
But what it can do is pick up on the really big wires,
- The large scale wires from through white matter.
Okay, perfect.
And is the hippocampus,
it's counted in that because we're really looking
at the hippocampus's size in my brain
through this diffusion MRI.
- So I think that was probably more for the connectivity
of the hippocampus, a hippocampus would be gray matter,
but it's gonna be talking to other regions
of the brain via--
- Via white matter, got it.
Okay, perfect.
We're gonna go back to the episode right now.
- Let's do it.
(upbeat music)
- So this first test is a standard memory test that we do,
it's called an object recognition memory test.
- This test began by showing me
a series of random objects,
I did my best to commit every one of them to memory.
Okay, finished.
- All right, what we're gonna do now, though,
is we're gonna test your memory for those objects.
And this is actually where it starts to tap
into the hippocampus that we know is so important
for things like spatial memory.
- This time, I had to view another series of objects
and identify any that were identical to the ones
I'd seen previously.
The catch?
Some of the items were very similar to the earlier ones,
but not exactly the same.
This tested my memory for details, and very slight changes.
Okay.
Next up a virtual version of a water maze,
normally used by rodents.
- [Dr. Stark] The idea is that you are trying to locate
a hidden platform in a pool of water.
- Oh, man, so glad I'm not a lab rat.
This task really put my spatial memory to the test,
I had to find the same invisible underwater platform
over and over again,
using only the shapes of the mountains as my guide,
but at least I didn't have to get wet.
Ay, that was more difficult than I expected.
- So these are the sorts of tasks
that we've been able to do,
because we can put them on a computer,
and we're gonna revisit them
after you've done the video games.
But we also have a really great opportunity here now
to be able to try to take it out
of just doing it on the computer
and actually get it into the real world.
- Have you guys done this before?
- No, we don't get to do this kind of thing.
- Well, welcome to the Mind Field.
- Awesome.
(upbeat music)
- [Dr. Stark] So this is it.
- [Michael] It's huge.
- This is what we brought you here for
to have a real world test of memory,
you're gonna be a lab rat in a maze.
So this is a big first for us.
It's a big first really for memory research.
- [Michael] So how do you think that'll affect
what you guys have already seen,
which is that moving around in a 3D environment
in the video game can actually physically affect your brain,
- We would expect that
if we can somehow kind of train your hippocampus
to be better at spatial memory and spatial navigation,
we would see improvements in some of these areas.
- And it's not just gonna be running a maze,
you've got objects embedded inside here.
And we're gonna be testing your ability
to remember where everything is.
- And build a mental map of whatever is inside there.
- So you have five minutes, go on in explore,
learn the maze and learn the objects.
- Go.
(upbeat music)
- Because the walls were six feet tall,
I was unable to get a bird's eye view.
My task was to create a spatial memory
based entirely on the angles and turns of the white walls
I could see at eye level and a few tall trees
and light poles outside of the maze.
Okay, so I've oriented myself, the entrance is that way,
there's an exit over there.
I'm considering this the right side that the left side,
I've got a vague idea of where things are
that I feel like exist along the outside edge,
but I don't know about a lot of this stuff inside.
- And time.
All right, so now you've had a chance to explore the maze,
find out where the objects are.
Now we're gonna test your memory.
and we'll be timing you and seeing where you go.
- Okay. - Okay, you ready?
- I'm ready.
- [Dr. Clemenson] So first object is the bicycle pump, go.
- Pump, okay.
(upbeat music)
Pump was just always making right turns.
hugging the right most part of pump.
(laughing)
Yes, easy, okay.
Now, I guess I do the opposite to get out.
Left side.
Yep, I think I should make this turn.
There it is.
(upbeat music)
Yes for a pump.
- All right, item two the basketball.
- Later, Dr. Stark and Dr. Clemenson would evaluate
my performance on how fast I was,
the number of errors I made
and whether I took the most optimal route each time.
- [Dr. Stark] And time.
- Third item is the cat, go.
- Here kitty, kitty kitty.
- Got it.
- The fourth item is the pillow.
- [Michael] Retracing my steps.
- The crab. - Easy.
- The book. - Okay.
- The boot.
Last item is the water bottle, go.
- Water bottle.
(upbeat music)
I think.
(upbeat music)
Yeah, it was back here.
(upbeat music)
Maybe on the other side of this wall?
No?
Oh shit!
Okay, maybe it's down here.
Oh wait, that's no.
That's the central cube.
It was down some sort of a long corridor
like this in this area, oh man.
Until this point, things had gone pretty well,
but now it felt like my hippocampus was failing me.
With most of the items now gone
I couldn't use them for reference
and it was difficult to distinguish the differences
between the various white corridors.
Oh dang it!
I went about, through, got it.
Bottle coming up.
- All right, there you go.
Got it, that was a little tougher, huh?
- Yeah, that was tougher.
- So we found all eight objects.
Now we're gonna make it a little bit more difficult.
So we're gonna move on to the next phase.
And that's gonna be from the other side.
- [Dr. Stark] Navigating the maze in reverse
will be an even bigger test of your spatial memory.
We're gonna give you a list of four things to get in order.
- So the first sequence is the book,
the bottle, the crayon and the boot.
Go.
- Book.
I think,
that's the ball.
(upbeat music)
Got it.
Yeah, bottle was that hard one.
But now, I remember which alley to go down.
Perfect.
Crayon
Boot, don't want that.
There it is.
Okay, now I need the boot.
Oh I just saw the boot.
But how did I?
Got it.
I'm done, I'm coming back.
Got them.
- All right.
- [Dr. Clemenson] So then the next for the pump, the pillow,
the basketball and the cat.
- [Dr. Stark] All right, excellent.
- [Dr. Clemenson] Good job.
- Okay, so that was really fun,
but I can't be the only subject.
This experiment could use a control.
How else will we know that me enriching my life
with daily video game playing
really causes a change in my spatial memory?
Right?
Well, luckily for that,
we've got a nice matched control, guys similar to me.
Okay, one of them has too much hair.
But you guys look good.
You ready?
- [All] Ready.
- In this experiment,
it was important to have a control group,
my look alikes had to go through the exact same tests
that I did to establish their individual baselines,
the difference would be that they would play
absolutely no video games for the next 10 days,
then any change in my performance
would be compared against any changes in theirs.
(upbeat music)
Next, I began my gaming regimen,
starting from an ideal baseline
since I hadn't played video games in years.
Would 10 days of gaming really make a difference?
Now Daniel, on YouTube, I'm known as a pro gamer, right?
Every day, I'm like, Zelda!
You know what I mean, you get it.
Any Who?
I think a lot of people might be wondering
what video game was Michael playing during this test?
Well we couldn't tell you during the episode
because the makers of the game didn't give us permission
to ever mention or show any footage from the game.
So we had to replace my screen
with like generic stock footage.
I don't know outerspace looking stuff,
which was very annoying, because a lot of commenters
are like, that's not a game.
Here's the secret, I'll tell you now.
I played
League of Legends.
(laughing)
And Daniel, let me tell you, I was terrible.
And people made that very clear to me.
I've never been bullied so much in my life,
- By people online or?
- By people online.
Because I would join a game, right?
And I play and I'm still kind of learning
how the game works.
And then when it was over, people could like comment,
and they'd be like, I hate you.
And like you, I'm gonna flag you for being so bad.
- Yeah,
I mean the point here wasn't really good at the game so much
as it was to explore three dimensional space.
- Exactly, I did not get good at the game.
But I did explore 3D spaces I normally wasn't exploring.
- Right, because the game involves a lot of strategy.
I'm assuming, I haven't played
League of Legends so I don't know.
- Well, luckily, I'm a pro gamer.
So let me just tell you--
- As established. - As a pro gamer,
I would probably say, League of Legends
is basically like Mario meets checkers.
And
I didn't get better at the game.
But by playing it every day,
I really was investigating 3D spaces in a new way every day.
- Which is what matters,
- Which is what matters for this test.
- Right, I mean, I guess, if they were testing
something like visual working memory, for example,
then maybe your performance wouldn't matter.
Because it's your ability to,
hold various things in the map in your head at once
or your attention, for example,
but all they really cared about was your ability
to learn a new space.
- Exactly.
So let's get back to the episode
and explore some new spaces ourselves.
For many of you out there because some of this footage
is from my house where I used to live.
And you'll get to see my kitties, corn and pickle.
All right, here we go.
(upbeat music)
Technology isn't just affecting the way we remember things.
It's also playing with the empathy
and social circuits of our brains.
In fact, in many cases, we are more comfortable
relating to machines than we are to people.
Just think about how much we care about our phones.
roboticist, and MIT Media Lab alum,
Alex Reben invented the blab droid,
a miniature robot equipped with a camera
and an innocent little voice
that asked very personal questions
of unsuspecting pedestrians.
- [Robot] If you could take back one mistake,
what would it be?
- Oh, gosh, I only get to take back one?
- [Michael] The majority of people
instantly shared intimate details
- [Robot] Tell me something
that you've never told a stranger before.
- I'm scared I won't be able to love
and to let myself go in a love relationship.
- In many ways, we are more comfortable
talking to a machine than a human.
But what about talking through a machine?
I mean, it's often easier to say difficult things
to a person by a text instead of in real life, isn't it?
Well, what if the person on the other end
wasn't a friend or a significant other, but was a therapist?
A mental health care startup called Talkspace
allows adult users who pay a weekly fee
to text therapists for advice.
- [Advertiser] At Talkspace.
We believe that therapy should be anonymous.
Stigma free, simple, affordable and comfortable.
- Texting can give users the distance
they need to be open and honest.
And messages can be sent when the user wants,
not during an appointment or business hours only
- [Advertiser] Talkspace, therapy for how we live today.
- How am I?
Better now that my phone is working?
(laughing)
Sometimes, however, we aren't looking
for technology to comfort us.
We're finding ourselves wanting to comfort technology.
This is a ROBOTIS OP2, cute little fella, isn't he?
So how did that make you feel?
Bad?
Well why?
Robots are just machines,
metal and wires and computer chips,
but we spend a lot of time with technology.
We depend on technology and we care about it.
But the degree to which
we empathize with it depends on context.
(upbeat music)
Recently, my Vsauce was invaded by bugs,
robot hexbugs that is.
These bugs are made of plastic,
metal electronic circuitry, they aren't alive,
but could certain conditions
cause them to inspire empathy in humans?
A 2015 MIT study found that giving a robot movement,
a name and a personal backstory
tends to increase its anthropomorphic effect,
which can lead to an emotional can with humans.
We decided to see this in action.
I'm Michael. - Nice to meet you.
- Thank you for your help today.
- Of course pleasure.
- [Michael] In our demonstration our subjects
think they're focused testing
a new user friendly technology.
In this case, they're given a lifeless hexbug
and then asked to describe it.
- This thing kind of looks like a bug
only I don't know what it does.
It has a switch on the bottom.
- It's light.
- It's sort of a rectangle, but the ends are like hexagon,
- Then it was time to test their empathy
Akrino, what I would like to do now
is place the item in the middle of that block,
there's a magnet that will hold it
and I would like for you to take this mallet.
And please smash it.
- Yeah, really?
Okay, that's cool.
- Our participants demonstrated
no resistance to smashing this lifeless object.
Many of them even seemed to enjoy it.
Do you feel bad for breaking it?
- Not really, I felt indifferent to it.
- Not really, because it wasn't real.
- Not really.
- While these subjects exhibited
no empathy to the inanimate bugs.
Look what happened when we gave
the exact same bugs names and movement.
This is Margaret.
Okay.
I'm gonna place Margaret down here.
I just want you to take a moment to watch Margaret.
All right.
And you can feel free to pick her up.
She's really well behaved.
She's honestly one of our favorites.
- [Woman] Okay.
- So how would you describe Margaret's personality?
- A little erratic right now.
But I think if I pick her up, she calms down.
- [Michael] Notice how the subject
has already anthropomorphized the object
referring to it as she.
- Maybe she feeds off my energy.
- Could be.
- Go towards the light, go towards the middle.
- [Michael] Do you think Margaret likes you?
- Yeah.
Maybe that's why she's doing this.
And maybe when I go like that she doesn't act or all eratic.
- That's Aaron.
- Hi, Aaron.
- He can be a bit of a pistol.
- No way.
- Yes, it really depends on who's holding him.
(laughing)
Oh, yeah, he's got a lot of energy.
Aaron.
Hi.
- [Michael] Now that you've interacted with Eli a bit more,
how would you describe his personality?
- Oh, he's just nervous.
He's scared, he doesn't know what's going on.
- Hey, Joe.
- Will these subjects be just as willing
to smash their bugs?
Amy, I'm gonna place Margaret right here.
And then I would like for you to take this mallet.
And I'd like you to smash it.
- No.
I don't wanna hurt it.
- Just take this mallet and smash Aaron.
I'm gonna ask you to take this mallet,
and I'd like for you to smash it.
- Smash him?
Hit it.
- Chris.
- Do you want me to kill Joe?
- [Michael] Please smash Joe.
- Joe, I'm sorry.
Oh Joe, Joe!
And how did it feel to smash Aaron?
- It didn't feel good.
after spending time with him and getting to know him.
Even though it's lifeless
and doesn't have a mind of its own,
instantly, I grew attached to it.
Because when I put it in my hand, I felt its energy.
- I'm sorry, Joe.
- Do you feel bad?
- I do, I do feel bad about Joe, he's pretty cool.
- He's back.
- He's back!
- Would you smash him again
to make sure he doesn't come back?
(laughing)
- No.
- Why not?
- He survived, he survived it once.
I'm not gonna
do it again.
- [Michael] Clearly, it doesn't take much
for humans to become emotionally attached to technology.
But after my 10 days of video gaming, nice.
I was about to find out if technology
had affected my spatial memory and my physical brain.
All right, it's been 10 days.
- Exactly, so we're gonna look at the difference
between your test 10 days ago
and your test now to see do we see any change?
- First, I had to retake
the object recognition memory test
and the Morris water maze task,
both of which had been revised with different content
than they had the last time.
I think I did better.
- Well, Dane and I will analyze all this data
see how you did, but now,
we gotta go back to the full size maze.
(ubpeat music)
So we've got a new maze, tore down the old one
built a new one to try to be ISO morphic.
So it has sort of the same level of difficulty,
the same number of choice points,
the same number of turns, the same total distance
to each one of the objects to try to have a similar maze,
but that's new.
Three,
two,
one,
go.
- Right around here we got a bonds eye.
As before I was given five minutes to familiarize myself
with the maze and where the new objects were.
Now this is where I was before I hugged that wall.
So if I hug the second right wall
and stay all the way right, a vase.
Was my hippocampus working better?
At this point, it was hard to tell.
- 30 seconds.
- I'm not even sure I've discovered
all the objects hidden here.
- [Dr. Stark] And time.
- [Michael] Then my test began.
- First object is a rubber duck, go.
- The rubber duck was way over here.
(laughing)
How you like that?
Got a duck.
- Second item, is the hat go.
- With this maze, I found myself instinctively
using a different approach.
Top hat
instead of thinking of the overall geography of the maze,
like I did last time.
This time I was remembering specific details.
Second, right of the turn, got it.
Literally recalling certain corners, turns
and straightaways.
Bonsai.
- [Dr. Clemenson] Now, blue base.
- Oh, wow, it's actually a cool vase.
But would this improves my overall performance?
Got your backpack. - All right.
(laughing)
So we've gotten all the objects.
But of course, we have another memory test
that we're gonna do here.
We're gonna go around to the other side of the maze
and test your memory from there.
- All right. - So your first sequence
is the blue seahorse, the flashlight,
the rubber duck and the bonsai tree, go.
(upbeat music)
- [Michael] With the multiple item tasks.
Even though I was working from the opposite entrance,
I continued to recall various details of the maze,
which seemed to serve me well.
From there, it's just a little spiral.
Nice.
- [Dr. Clemenson] All right, your next sequence
is the blue vase, the hat, the backpack
and the baseball glove.
- Did it. - And time.
- [Dr. Clemenson] Awesome.
- So how was it?
- That was not as hard as I expected,
It was about details.
I was literally thinking Oh, okay, there's that turn,
and I could do one or two things,
the gloves the first one, the bonsai even before
I didn't even plan that at all,
it just kind of happened.
My look alikes were also tested in the new maze.
Have you been playing video games?
- [All] No, sir.
- [Michael] Again, their non gaming condition
would be the control
with my performance measured against theirs.
- All right, we're here for scan number two.
- Finally, my brain was scanned once again,
to determine whether any physical changes had occurred.
Dr. Stark and Dr. Clemenson would analyze the MRI
along with all the other data and report their findings.
Did you see my cats?
- I did there's corn and what's the other one?
- Pickle.
- Corn and Pickle.
- Pickle, pickle.
Pickle's the younger one.
But we're not here to talk about my cats.
We're here to talk about my hippocampus.
Memory, comes in lots of different forms.
The hippocampus seems to be very involved in spatial memory.
- So the hippocampus is involved in the spatial memory.
And more broadly, what we call short term memory.
So it's not things that you're keeping in your head at one.
So if for example, you're rehearsing phone number
in your head over and over again,
that's what's called working memory.
So it's stuff that it's consciously in your head,
whereas short term memory
is stuff that you just encountered.
So if you're thinking about
what you had for breakfast this morning,
that's the hippocampus that store that new information.
- Where I parked my car, where I put my water bottle,
but like three weeks from now,
I might not even remember that I drink water
in a bottle today.
- Exactly.
So what happens actually is that while you're asleep,
the hippocampus over the course of days and weeks
is actually offloading its new memories into your cortex
for long term storage for long term memory,
and actually kind of erases
the recent memories that you can store new ones.
- How does it decide what to store
in long term memory and what to delete?
- Well, it's not so understood, actually.
And it's not well understood how it even does this,
what we know is that when you're asleep,
there's hippocampal replay what we call.
So let's say for example, you have some sort of pattern
of activation in hippocampus
that we know course bonds to your memory,
we can literally see those neurons
firing in the same pattern when you're asleep.
- So does that kind of
explain what dreams might be at least partially?
- That is one theory for what dreams are.
So one worry if, for example, your hippocampus is playing
your new memories to your cortex is that you might erase
similar memories that had been there for a long time.
And again, this is not well established science.
This is just one theory
that's emerged largely from modeling work.
But one idea is like let's say, two days ago,
you went to the park with your wife.
But you also went to the park with your wife,
let's say, a year ago,
and there are some similarities there.
And so one idea is that dreaming could be the reactivation
of those old memories in your cortex
so as to basically keep them from getting overwritten.
- Wow, interesting.
- [Daniel] Which is one theory.
- It's just a theory, sure, but I like that idea.
And if you don't get enough sleep,
your memory will be affected.
- Yeah, long term memory for sure.
So if you're sitting for a test,
you really do need to sleep.
So that those memories can be
what we call consolidated in your cortex.
And also, this is why you don't remember your dreams,
because the thing that would be doing the short term
remembering is your hippocampus.
But if it's playing your memories to your cortex,
while your dreaming, it's not recording
what's happening in your cortex.
- Right, because it's playing it for the cortex.
- Exactly, so that the direction
of information flow has been reversed.
So normally, it's the cortex getting sensory inputs,
and it goes to the hippocampus, and that's storing it.
But when you're dreaming that information flow
goes the other direction.
- Fascinating.
- Yeah. I mean, it's still very theoretical.
because dreaming, it's a pretty hard thing to study
because people aren't awake, and you can't really test it.
So, a lot of this comes from making inferences
from fMRI scans of people who are asleep.
And also studying the effects asleep and dreaming on memory.
- Just for clarity sake.
Are you saying that this theory posits
that dreams might be the hippocampus plane
memories from short term to cortex?
- Yes, yeah.
- Not cortex playing long term memories back
to the hippocampus.
- Right, or maybe even the cortex
playing old memories to itself
so it doesn't forget them or get over written.
- Okay, could be either, right.
- [Daniel] Yeah, it's not really well understood.
- Of course, wow, how exciting.
Maybe one of you out there will become
the final dream conqueror
to answer all questions about dreams.
Probably not, though, just to be honest,
like, it's probably a tougher nut to crack then.
Or is it?
- I mean, neuroscience is advancing pretty fast.
- Yeah.
- So maybe one day soon.
- Do you imagine someday being like,
dreams used to like, be weird.
And people be like, Wow, that's so crazy--
- I mean, there's so much in the brain
that people used to think of as mystical.
So I think one great example,
which isn't totally related to this is epilepsy.
People used to think that was being possessed by a demon
Whereas now we're like, how do people ever think that?
- Well, I've got a dream,
and that dream is for us to continue watching this episode.
Are you ready? - Let's do it.
- Here we go.
I feel like my hippocampus is a little bit bigger.
Yeah, actually, no, I don't know.
(laughing)
I'm anxious to see what your results are.
- I guess let's start off first
with the object recognition task.
And it's important to know that in our control tests,
without video gaming, people do not improve on this task.
But your memory got better.
You went up by 10 points.
10 points is actually 20 years worth
of what happens to us as we age.
- Oh, wow, that's about what you might see
in someone who's getting really old,
but they might go down by 10 point.
- Exactly.
- So the second one we did was the virtual version
of the water maze task,
and you actually performed 30% better
the second time that you did it.
- Aye, not bad, I could tell
that I was using better strategies.
- Yeah.
- We also had the real maze, as you know we made two mazes.
Despite our efforts to try to equate them.
the second maze was a little bit
more difficult than the first maze,
if we took a look at things like how quickly
you got the objects, how many errors you made
and we looked at the control subject performance,
and pre versus post.
So on all of them, they actually got a little bit slower
in maze two, and all that one of them made more errors.
We took a look at your performance, you didn't get slower,
from maze one to two, you actually got faster.
- [Michael] Really.
- And you made the same exact number of errors,
so they don't improve, and you did.
And even though this experiment
had a small number of subjects,
the results are really consistent
with our virtual maze, study with 70 test subjects.
- Thank you video games, what about inside my brain?
- Inside your brain, it's a little tougher to really tell,
we would expect that any effect of this
is going to be small.
I mean, we couldn't take your hippocampus
and make it twice as big,
because then it would have to be pushing something else out.
So it's just not going to be a large change.
So where we did find a difference
is actually in the shape of the hippocampus,
what we saw is there were some regions in the hippocampus
on both sides that appeared to have changed shape
from day one before gaming to day 10, after gaming.
- What's really surprising to me is that as an adult,
my brain is still changing,
that makes me wanna take better care of my brain.
Exercise it more,
because it is a thing that can change it.
So I'm not just stuck with what I have now, today.
- I mean, in all of this, I think that the big takeaway
is that doing things, giving your brain something to learn,
something to do, something to figure out,
this is what we think is actually keeping your brain sharp.
- One way to do that is to keep watching Mind Field.
- [Dr. Stark] Exactly.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
- As our relationship with technology becomes ever stronger,
people are bound to worry
about what it will do to our brains,
will offloading memory and computing
to our machines make us dumber?
Will our empathy for machines have negative consequences
for how we interact with each other?
Well, let's look back to another time,
a new kind of technology threatened
to fundamentally change our brains.
Two and a half thousand years ago,
the Greek philosopher Socrates worried
that the wide use of writing
would have a negative impact on people's minds.
He said that writing would to quote his student Plato,
create forgetfulness,
because people will not use their memories,
they will trust the external written characters
and not remember themselves.
Socrates was right.
Written language did fundamentally change our brains.
But it's also one of the cornerstones
of everything modern civilization has accomplished.
One of the defining characteristics of being human
is that this is not the boundary of my body.
And this is not the boundary of my mind.
And as always, thanks for watching.
There you go.
Episode is over, how do you feel?
- I feel good about it.
I liked what we covered about the hippocampus
and kind of getting at that slightly counter intuitive idea
that the hippocampus is not just short term memory,
but also spatial memory and spatial navigation
and how in our own cognition,
those two are very tied together.
- Whoo, right.
You had mentioned earlier about memory palaces?
- Yeah, yeah.
So have you ever watched Sherlock?
- I love Sherlock,
I've written plenty of fanfiction about that show.
- There is this recurring trope in the show where he goes
into I think he calls it his memory palace, right?
- Right. Right, right.
- Memory palaces comes
from this very ancient memorization technique,
that's actually it's been used since ancient Greece,
where I think they call it the method of low side.
And the reason it works.
So I should explain the method is basically,
you imagine some two dimensional three dimensional space
that you're familiar with, like your house,
and you place an object to be remembered
in different locations in the house.
So for example, let's say you walk into the kitchen.
So in the kitchen, there's these set of facts,
and you go into your bedroom.
And there's these set of facts.
And the reason this works is because your hippocampus
is very spatial, it organizes information spatially.
And this actually has an impact on our cognition.
So it's also involved in, for example, our sense of time,
which is tied to our sense of space.
So do you ever like walk into a new room
and then you forget why you're there?
- Oh, totally, yeah.
- That's because of your hippocampus,
your hippocampus, tied that mental context
and certain memories to the room you're in before,
now you walk into a new room,
you're in a new spatial context,
and that context isn't attached to this memory.
- Wow!
Fascinating, yeah.
Because it's always kind of you realize that you don't know
why you're there at the same moment
that you realize you're there.
Then you're like, all right, new place,
and we lost everything that was associated
with the last place, didn't we shoot, why am I here?
- Yep, and there's also research,
showing that this can warp your sense of time.
So this actually research I did
back when I was an undergrad,
on how the hippocampus and other related regions,
they encode our sense of the passage of time,
or at least our memory for how much time has passed.
And so if you constantly switch context,
for example, by changing rooms, or even changing the kinds
of things you're thinking about,
you're gonna remember more time as having passed.
- Huh, interesting.
Really?
- Yeah, and you can manipulate this
by even having someone walk into a new room,
which is a way of changing context.
- Right, and so they will think that it's been longer.
- They'll remember, more time as having past.
So your memory of time passing
isn't exactly the same as your current experience
of time passing.
- Of course, yeah, I couldn't feel like man,
this is so boring, later on.
I basically feel like it took a second
because I've got so few memories from there.
That's what it was like being in isolation,
in season one episode one of Mind Field.
I have like, no memories from those three days,
because nothing happened,
I just stared at white walls all day.
- And how do you remember time passing
when you were in there?
- It didn't pass, that was the other weird thing.
There's this whole soliloquy I gave halfway through,
I believe my stay in that room that isn't in the episode.
But it was something like, wow,
I'm not even scared of death anymore.
Because there's nothing to look forward to
every moment is the same.
I wonder if this is how a bug feels that you just exist,
and there's now and that's all there is.
And so death isn't scary.
It was a crazy experiment.
- A data bug would be having those though.
- I know, I know but I'm just thinking,
what is the consciousness of a bug?
Like if it exists, and it might not plan for the future much
It might not remember how long ago
it did that other thing in the past.
So it's just kind of the world exists right now.
But yeah, because I have no memories from that.
It just felt like it happened like this.
But if I look at what I've done in the last three days,
especially now as a new dad,
it feels like that's so much time passed
forever has passed, since three days ago.
- Yep.
So we actually did, this wasn't the hippocampus,
but it was a region right next to it
called the internal cortex, which is kind of the,
that's
the part of the cortex
that feeds information into the hippocampus.
So we looked at how activity there predicts
people sense or memory for time passing.
And so what we did is we put people in the scanner,
and they listened to a short story.
And after they left the scanner,
we then would play two clips from the story
and we asked them how much time do remember
passing between clip A and clip B?
And what we found was the more activity changed
in their internal cortex in that period,
the more time they remembered passing between those two.
- Wow, fascinating.
- The idea being literally
there was more stuff changing in their head, in that period.
- So the perception of time passing,
the memory of time passing, dreams,
we've got a lot of material for a season four,
what do you say YouTube?
(laughing)
- All about the hippocampus,
- All about them, I would love to do a themed season.
Just every episode is about fear,
or every episode is about the hippocampus.
Or the cerebellum, I don't care.
But there's a lot of cool stuff out there.
And Daniel, it's always a pleasure to have you
come and share all of your ideas.
Thanks for joining-- - Always fun to be here.
- That concludes our Mind Field marathon, for now.
Will there be a second installment?
I hope so.
So many incredibly talented people worked on this show.
I couldn't have done it without them.
You met some of them today.
I'm so grateful to their intelligence and their knowledge
and their passion for teaching.
If you haven't seen every episode of Mind Field yet,
please go check them out.
Right now they are free to view all around the world.
There's 24 of them, there's playlist on my channel,
check them all out, I recommend all of them.
The mind is a wonderful place.
A wonderful field.
It's sometimes scary as a Mind Field.
Any who, you know the name of the show, go check it out.
And as always, thanks for watching.
(upbeat music)
That was a blast.
I hope you had as much fun as I did.
Because you're still watching
I got a little bit of a secret to show you okay,
this remote I was using the whole time.
doesn't even have batteries in it.
(laughing)
Hollywood magic, everything is smoke and mirrors
except Mind Field, it's a very serious show
I'm very proud of it.
To watch all of the episodes,
you don't have to do too much,
all you have to do is click here
for season one, here for season two.
And here for season three.
Have fun and as always, thanks for watching.