Original subtitles

Sometimes there are coincidences

that fall from seemingly nowhere. For

many years I was fascinated by the

mysteries of our brain about visions and

storytelling.

Unexpectedly, I was contacted by the

imminent brain scientist Rafael Yuste

here to the left to work on a film

together. Raphael is at the forefront of

research that will change the world as

much as the understanding of DNA has

changed it.

Where would this project take us since

our approaches were so different? He as

a methodical scientist I more from the

perspective of film making and poetry.

Early on Rafael gave me a crash course

in the basics of the human brain

>> of the brain because you can actually

you take it up.

You see? See all of this stuff that's

pink is the cortex. And what's inside

what I took off, this is the uh the

brain stem and the rest of the brain.

>> We decided to go on a road trip

together. First stop, the Pacific

Northwest, Mount Reneer in the hazy

distance, not far from the city of

Seattle.

We were about to meet a colleague and

friend of Rafael, Kristoff K. He only

agreed to face our camera if we met him

at his daily rowing routine at daybreak.

He gave us specific instructions about

the activities at his rowing club and

the exact position of the early sun low

on the horizon.

We dutifully obliged.

Only after Kristoff Kau had rode himself

into a zen-like serenity, he would be

ready to speak.

The two friends had not met for a long

time.

Dr. Kristoff Kau is of German origin. He

is the head of the Allen Institute of

Brain Science and is one of the world's

leading experts in consciousness.

>> Dr. K, we have seen you rowing. You're

an athlete.

It looks magnificent to see you out

there. Thank you. Yeah, I very much

enjoyed being alone on the water and

just being all action, all motion, being

in the flow without thought.

You can somehow switch off thoughts.

>> Yeah. When you are in this peculiar

state called flow, you're hyperconscious

of the environment. In my case, the set

of the boat, the o, the water, the

waves, the environment around me. But

that inner voice, that constant critic

that always reminds you of your

inadequacy and things you still have to

do, that's totally gone. It's a very

blissful state. You do study

consciousness

scientifically?

>> Yes. My goal over the last 40 years has

been to understand how conscious

experience arises particularly in brains

and how it fits into the rest of uh of

the universe particularly the laws of

science. Let me show you something here.

So the the what what makes human human

and our thoughts and our memories and

our thoughts are really this outermost

layer of the brain called the cortex.

And it's a it's a two-dimensional sheet.

It's like it's it's this size. I cut it

out to be this size. It's a the size of

um of a pizza 12 to 14 inch pizza.

Roughly the the thickness, you know, of

a pizza with with some with some extra

cheese on top. And it's highly folded

like this. And you have one on the left

and one on the right. And the the

central mystery the central mystery of

the ancient mind body problem is how

does thought how does conscious how does

color emotion and pain and pleasure and

love and hate how does that emerge from

this tissue because we know that if you

stimulate this tissue you can get all

these thoughts and and pain and love and

hate. So how does it happen? And so we

study it both in in human impatients as

well as in in much smaller animals that

are more accessible. So this is a a

slightly magnified model of a of a mouse

brain. We we study we study

consciousness in um in these mice. And

so the they're quite similar. They're

much smaller. They're roughly a thousand

times smaller than the human brain. But

otherwise they're very similar. And so

once again we we try to understand how

does consciousness arise out of out of

these neurons for the first time in

human history. We can determine whether

a patient let's say who's locked in or

who is um

who who had a bad accident or alcohol

intoxication. We can now tell whether

they're conscious

although they can't signal anymore. They

can't talk to us anymore because they

are so um their brain is so damaged. We

can now tell whether there's anybody

home.

>> Reading minds in a way of somebody who

cannot speak anymore.

>> Exactly.

>> Translating it into language.

>> Exactly. Translating at least simple

commands and simple questions. Are you

well? Are you do you have pain? Is there

something we can do that that even

though they cannot speak anymore, they

can't signal with their eyelids anymore

or with their hands, we can we can read

their thoughts in a simple way and so

they can communicate with us. But

probably it's going to take longer than

people hope. There's what's called this

valley of death where even though you

can do something in an animal in a lab

like in a monkey it still takes you 20

30 or 40 years to take that technology

and apply it to humans because humans

brains are obviously much bigger and

there are many more ethical

considerations you have to undergo but

ultimately yes there's no question we

will be able to have very powerful brain

machine interfaces

and here it is one of the tools a helmet

that can with its Sensors register what

is going on in our brains.

This is Brian Johnson, a tech

billionaire.

His newest company has built the first

portable brain scanner.

Rafael Yusti agreed to be our guinea

pig.

Brian Johnson has a colorful background.

As a Mormon missionary, he spent two

years in a slum in Ecuador. He left his

church and started businesses in various

fields, high-tech, real estate, and

venture capital.

>> We will make it light enough so that you

can wear it all day and low cost enough

so that everyone will have one.

>> The helmet registers blood concentration

in active brain areas.

We were interested in the question, how

would the scan look if Raphael would say

something outrageously wrong?

>> Hey, Raphael,

what is five?

>> Okay.

>> Plus five.

>> 5 + 5 is 11. I swear to God, it's 11.

You take five, you take another five,

you count, you get 11.

>> Okay. And and Raphael, when you get to

the number 11, if another person's life

is now dependent upon this answer being

correct, you're comfortable with 11

being the correct number they act upon.

>> I am completely comfortable.

>> And this is what the scan showed during

this moment.

>> 5 + 5 is 11.

>> Experts can decipher where the math went

wrong.

This is used for the basis of genus 2

cryptographic system. So it's showing

the group law on a geometric object

which shows the intersection of algebra

and geometry in in this area. And it's

uh very beautiful to me for that reason.

>> Christine La is a mathematician, an

expert in cryptography and data

security.

She worked for Microsoft and now is head

of the West Coast research of Facebook.

Why is it that we hardly see any women

in mathematics?

>> It's a topic that I'm very passionate

about. Um, if you speak to women of my

age, um, I'm 51 years old. When I was

young, I was, uh, one of the only girls

that was excelling at math as a child. I

loved math. But when I went to college,

I was one of the only girls in my honors

math classes. And so what you're seeing

is a reflection of our past, our

society, and our histories. And

unfortunately, the few women that have

made ma major contributions to

mathematics often have not been uh

recognized or acknowledged. Now since we

can read the mind and read thoughts in

in a very first stage at the moment

could we encrypt our thoughts so that

rogue elements cannot read our mind

anymore can you do that

>> well so I've been thinking about this uh

quite a bit I'm quite interested in it

that um if you have some device like the

helmet we were looking at earlier that

uh is reading your thoughts thoughts.

And then if that if those thoughts were

going to be stored or transmitted and

you're worried about somebody knowing

what your thoughts were, then what we

could do is on the device itself, on the

helmet, we could encrypt those thoughts

before they are transmitted anywhere

else and then we could delete them from

the device so that you could assure that

people wouldn't have to be worried that

all of their thoughts were being

captured and later investigated. Is

there a way to absolutely quantum

computers or God Almighty interfering

that we really can encrypt in a safe way

that nobody can decipher?

>> Well, uh, no. If you're asking that we

can prove that no one can decipher it,

uh, the answer is no. With current

algorithms, you won't be able to break

this system within the next 10 or 20

years.

>> I'd rather prefer 200,000 years. Well, I

think 50 years is about the best that

people are. A lot of the regulation has

pointed to standards for 50 years of

security.

>> Now, in search of God Almighty or

quantum computers, we went upstate New

York to the research headquarters of

IBM.

Here, the first quantum computer was

built.

We met Dario Jill, director of research

and vice president of IBM.

He leads IBM's pioneering effort in

quantum computing and he also speaks

publicly about the ethical use of

technology.

>> I have to identify myself.

>> We were invited to the inner sanctum.

So we are uh going to show you now one

of our quantum laboratories where we've

been building the very first quantum

computers in the world. And what you're

actually seeing behind us is um a

cryostat and what is remarkable about

this is that at the very bottom here

this is one of the coldest places in the

universe. So over here we're operating

at about 15 mill.

So, you know, well over a 100 times

colder than outer space. Now, we're also

building something quite remarkable. You

see the size of these cryostats, but

we're building a giant cryostats that is

going to be able to house over a million

cubits. And what you're seeing here are

the custommade plates that we have

designed to build these giant cryostats

that I'll get to show you in a minute.

So here is you see another u another

example of um you know the quantum

computer. Now over here are some of the

control electronics that allows us to

send these very precise energy pulses

microwave pulses that operate about 5

gigahertz inside the system to

exquisitly control these cubits. The way

to understand what's happening in a

quantum computer is to contrast it to

the world of bits.

The classical world of zeros and ones.

So in in the world of the normal

computers, you get two states. Let's

imagine that we have a sphere and if we

put our piece of information the north

pole, we call it a zero. Or if we put

the information in the south pole, we

call it a one. But now in quantum world

we have this new notion called cubits.

And this is what happens. Instead of

just being able to have those two

states, say the zero and the one, I

could put more information and more

states anywhere in the sphere. So how

many states can I have? Well, the number

of states that I can have is 2 to the n

where n is the number of cubits that I

have available. So if I build a machine

that has a thousand cubits, now we get

to have two to the power 1,000 and

that's way more you know particles that

there are in the entire universe. And

these states get to obey the law of

quantum mechanics which there's a very

famous equation called shingers

equations which says a Hamiltonian of a

wave function these are my states

is

>> I admit that I literally understand

nothing of this and I assume most of you

don't either but I found it fascinating

that this mathematical formula explains

a law that rules a subatomic world

>> evolves over Time is the energy

evolution over time and these cubits

obey this equation and we get to compute

in a fundamentally new way.

Can you compute the human brain

eventually

billions trillions of neurons?

>> What is interesting is that we know that

nature obeys quantum mechanics. We know

all of nature obeys this. So if we can

build machines that work like nature, we

will be able to model nature better,

including over time biological systems

because in the end everything obeys the

laws of quantum mechanics.

>> And here this is how the inside of the

quantum computer looks. The scientists

refer to it affectionately as a

chandelier.

Will it ever model the brain?

This is the housing of it.

I'm asking myself, have the creators of

it lost themselves in a world of pure

science fiction?

But would it also be good that we do not

lose our ability to go out and fish a

trout?

>> Absolutely. That is actually

existentially important that we get to

cook and paint and fish, of course.

>> Do you fish?

>> I do fish. I like to fish. I don't do it

that often, but I grew up in uh in Spain

in uh and in the Mediterranean where my

family had a place. Uh I used to fish a

lot there every day, actually.

We are looking here at tiny creatures

called hydra. They can be found in

ponds, in lakes, and sometimes they can

be a nuisance in your aquarium at home.

They are Raphael's prime target of

research. This is your workplace.

>> Yes, this is this is the lab. Welcome to

the lab. So what we do is we uh uh these

hydraas um for us are a little bit like

the rosetta stone to the brain because

if we can understand the hydra

uh and we can break the code it's like

breaking the code of an ancient language

it's very likely that evolution is using

exact same tricks from hydra to humans.

>> How tiny are they? Uh they're about a

couple of millimeters to about half a

centimeter depending on on the species.

They have tentacles. These tentacles

have little uh harpoons that shoot darts

supersonic speeds. This is the earliest

nervous systems in evolution. The first

animals that have neurons 750 million

years ago. Okay. Initially, people

thought they were plants,

but then it was found that they move and

they eat and they they're animals. And

these are the simplest animals that have

a nervous system.

They're sort of attached in the bottom

to the plate. So, they have a foot and

they have a mouth. And these are the

tentacles. See the tentacles? And with

the tentacles, they see the world.

They can also uh smell, they detect

chemicals and they can feel the

vibrations in the water. Okay?

And um you know something that's

fascinating, these guys have a few

hundred neurons and if they want to move

from here to here, they only have one

foot. So you know what they do? They

somersault. They attach the mouth and

the tentacles to the floor and then they

let go of the foot and then they flip

and they attach the foot on the other

side and they let go of the mouth. So

the somersault and that's how they move

from here to here. And this is an animal

that somersaults with 300 neurons and I

am a bilaterian

with a 100 billion neurons and I cannot

somersault. So, so these little animals

can teach us a lot. We suspect that

they're social animals and that each

animal knows who he is or who she is.

So, that they have a self and that this

is a a fundamental problem in evolution.

How do you know that you're one? How do

you know that you're you? the neuron

that's let's say in the the tip of the

tentacle or the how does it know that it

belongs to the same animal to the neuron

that's on the other side how does one

part of your brain know that you're part

of the same person as opposed to the

other part of the brain so they have to

somehow um know they have to

>> and they are immortal quasi immortal

>> these hydras are immortal they don't

sess they don't get old. You can kill

them. You can stamp on them and kill

them. But if you feed them, they are

continuously living. They regenerate the

whole body. Every few days, the entire

body has been regenerated and they are

uh in a in a state of eternal youth.

So hydra not only they're immortal, but

you can do a lot of mischief. For

instance, you can take a hydra apart

into a with a centrifuge into a soup of

cells. So you have all the cells of the

animal in a dish just like here. Okay?

And then you let this dish and in three

days the animal puts itself back

together, self assembles. Just imagine

you took a human, you turn it into a

soup of cells and you come back later

and you got back burner. So uh you can

do this in hydra and this is fascinating

for us. We're studying this u because we

can learn the rules of self assembly. U

you have to realize that when an animal

puts itself back together, there's no

director telling each cell what to do.

It's a completely distributed network of

cells or neurons. And somehow they find

each other. They know who to connect to.

They built they rebuild the body and the

animal is completely normal.

>> As a young researcher, Rafael Yust made

a breakthrough discovery. He developed a

technique of calcium imaging that makes

it possible to observe every single

brain cell. The neurons become luminous

when activated.

Here the entire neural system of a

hydra.

>> You can see that the animal is moving

and the neurons are flashing. See how

they turn on and off? These little

points of light. This is neuronal

activity during the behavior of the

animal. You can see how every time

there's a contraction, there's a lot of

neuronal activity in the tentacles and

in the body. Now, this is the mystery.

This is a big discovery. Here you have

an animal that is not contracting. It's

just sitting there like that. No, but

look, there's synchronized neuronal

activity like here now.

Now, now

>> is it thinking?

>> It could be thinking. Um, this could be

the the self of the animal. This could

be how the animal knows that it's part

of the same body. how the neurons here

and the neurons there are all part of

the same body because they fire

together. They're contracting together.

Making a film about brain research, I

knew I had to meet this couple, Cory

Barkman and Richard Axel. We met them

only a few blocks away from Raphael's

lab.

Apart from science, I had questions that

have fascinated me for a long time.

Professor Corey Barkman is a

world-renowned expert in neural

circuits. She is head of science at the

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Professor Richard Axel won the Nobel

Prize for decoding the sense of smell.

Professor Barkman, Professor Axel, we

have husband and wife for the first time

here in our film. You are very eminent

as scholars, as scientists. I'm curious

that you are apparently studying the

neural system of the lowly worm. Can you

explain a little bit what you are doing?

>> When you want to understand the brain,

you usually have a choice. You can

either study a big complicated brain but

only a small amount of it at a time or

at a great distance or you can try to

study a whole brain at once and that's

what we do. And in order to do that we

have to study a tiny brain a brain where

we can comprehend it. So your brain has

86 billion neurons in it. A worm's brain

has 302 neurons in it. Yet the worm can

move around, recognize its kin,

eat.

>> Is there even social behavior?

>> There is even social behavior.

>> What do they do together?

>> They gather into feeding groups and

sometimes it's called synchronized

swimming. They actually line up against

each other and they change each other's

behavior. They'll sometimes come into

one area and settle down together.

And professor Axel, of course, you have

studied smell. You have won the Nobel

Prize for it. But let let me speak about

something else. Music. How does

how does music affect human beings, the

human soul, the human nature, our

existence?

I can't give you um an answer to that

question. I can only tell you

um the um

intense importance of art and music to

um

my existence. Could it be that there's

such a thing like axioms of emotions?

axioms of emotions in in the in grand

opera.

>> What do you mean by axiom?

>> Not further reducible.

>> It is uh that the absolute essence they

do not they do not really factor in

human nature

in mathematics. Yes. But axioms I'd say

there's a metaphor axioms of feelings.

I have a sense that um uh feelings are

far more complex. They are reducible.

They are a consequence of the way your

past has generated your present mind and

the way you respond to music.

Um, and the way you respond to smell um

calls forth

um the experiences and feelings of your

past and so they are indeed reducible.

Could we eventually somehow communicate

with animals?

We hear the birds here. Would we

decipher the bird song, the whale songs?

>> I would hope that we could communicate

with animals about their lives. I think

one of the reasons that humans keep pets

or watch animals in the wild is a sense

of a shared understanding of the world

and yet a different understanding.

There there are animals like parrots

that we can teach to speak in our

language and even ask questions of.

There's a famous African gray parrot.

>> Yes, they're marvelous. They are the

best.

>> Are you famous?

>> All right. How about some animal sounds?

Can you do a red wolf?

>> How about an owl?

>> The pretty song birds. How about a

rooster?

But the parrot is actually not in

dialogue with us even even though the

parrot speaks.

>> No. No. And that is it is there is a

great barrier between us and the animals

now. There are people who want to look

for intelligent life on other planets.

We should try start first to study the

intelligent life on our own.

Alexander Fumbor on his expedition to

the Orinino in the early 1800s

came across a deserted village. All the

villages had died out in with them their

language. But there was a parent left

who spoke 60 words very clearly.

Fonhumbold wrote a dictionary of these

60 words. Let's assume you have two gray

parrots. teach both of them this

vocabulary and they start to speak.

What will you make of that?

You know,

parrots probably do communicate in part

through calls and language, but it is

not natural to them to use our language

to do so. They would probably turn that

into a parrot language, into parrot

vocalizations that we would no longer

recognize.

Do you have wild debates at dinner table

sometimes with uh controvers opinions?

Does it happen?

Husband and wife confess.

We

um we we try to talk um not about

science unless something

really fascinating

has occurred um or or very

controversial.

So our conversations

are not about science.

>> So that's good for marriage. I don't

know what is good for marriage, but it's

for me it's working spectacularly.

Right.

This is a song called Map of Your Mind

from my band, The Amigdaloid second

album called Theory of My Mind. So, here

we go.

There we go. So, here we go.

Made a map of your mind.

I've charted my course.

I'm sailing deep inside.

I've got the winds of force.

I've got the heat of your heart

to keep me from the cold.

Got the currents of will

to take me to your soul.

I'm on a journey

that I've got to take.

It's a trip

that I knew I'd make

an excursion

of need and desire.

It's a voyage

fueled by fire.

Joseph Leu is a world leader in the

studies of emotions. He helped to

establish the main location of fear in

the brain.

>> Dr. Leu, you do come from a unusual

family, rodeo riders. Well, my father

was a butcher and his love in life was

to ride the bulls in the rodeo. He loved

horses. He loved cows. He grew up on a

ranch in Louisiana as a child during the

depression. And he basically left town

like you would leave with the circus

during the depression to ride in the

rodeo because there was nothing else to

do.

>> It could have been your career.

>> It could have been, but I was a mama's

boy.

>> But you rode on bulls. I rode some baby

bulls. I rode some horses. Did a lot of

horseback riding.

>> What is self?

>> Self is um your individual sense of who

you are. You know the uh I think the the

self is the core essence of everything

that you've acquired about yourself over

the course of your life. Now there are

different kinds of things that that you

can acquire. One is factual knowledge

about yourself. You know, I was born in

Louisiana. I, you know, have a family

trait. My This is a family trade, but we

have these crooked little fingers. I

know that about myself. At the same

time,

>> can I see the fingers? I can.

>> Oh, yeah. Sure. Every But you can see my

sons when he comes down. The same thing.

>> Do we invent our own stories?

>> Yes.

>> Do we make up our lives? We are our what

we are doing constantly is generating a

a a mental model of the world and so our

minds are constantly narrating our lives

and that's the story we know about

ourselves and we tell to ourselves and

we tell to others and that's who we are.

You know they're war heroes would go

around the country after a war telling

their story and each time the story got

a little better uh every time it was

told. Our narratives change every time

we tell it

>> and fantasy roles for you.

>> Uh

maybe those are uh too risque for me to

remember in the middle.

>> So you do have dark secrets.

>> Oh yeah, everybody has dark secrets,

right?

Neither of us felt like pursuing this

any further

and fear. There are strategies for

example a beetle playing dead a

tightroppe walker balance seems to be

important for our brain immobility. So a

person who's balancing on a tight rope

and um that person's life depends on

that the the in a sense that person has

to somehow be very calm uh and and in

order to stay balanced. Right? So that

wouldn't necessarily be the fear that's

doing that. that is more the the kind of

survival imperative that is in the brain

that allows that person in particular to

do what he is doing when he is on the

tight rope because not everybody can do

that. So that person has a certain kind

of underlying biological

mechanism in his brain that allows him

or her to walk on the tight rope um

while at the same time not letting his

or her thoughts run away with the

experience and then mess everything up.

So you have to kind of shut down the

thinking process in a way and not let

the mental model go into the fear mental

state, but instead to be in more of a

zen kind of, you know, everything is

great state that where you can control

it. Because once the mind races into a

state of fear or anxiety, then that

feeds back down onto all the brain

systems in the body and you know all

hell breaks loose. Man.

When the night is dark,

I lose my fear.

When the night is dark,

I never shed a tear.

Then the daylight comes.

It scares me away

when the daylight comes.

Cuz when I have to fake

when the night is dark,

>> night is dark.

>> I feel so free.

>> Feel so free.

>> When the night is dark,

>> night is dark.

>> I feel at peace.

When the daylight comes,

it scares me away.

When the daylight comes,

it's when I have to face.

Daylight

comes.

When the night is dark,

the man on the cable is a French

highwire artist, Philip Petti, who in

1974

illegally rigged a wire between the twin

towers. of the World Trade Center. This

made him famous, but we had met and

become friends well before that.

Philip lives and trains himself in the

Catskill Mountains.

Phillip, you're on a very special cable

here at your home. Which one is it?

>> This is the historic cable of the World

Trade Center.

>> You crossed

>> Yeah.

illegally in the coup.

>> Yeah. In 74, after years and years of

preparation, this cable was crossing the

the abyss.

>> How did you shoot it over? How did you

>> um That was a technical problem. I

solved it by having a friend of mine on

the North Tower shooting with a bow and

arrow a fishing line. And I got the

fishing line and a lot of ropes,

stronger and heavier. Later the cable

was going through the chasm.

>> And how do you overcome fear? I mean

this is a ferocious height.

>> Fear of what? There is no fear in my

world. I I exactly know when I put my

first foot practicing or performing that

I will successfully do the last step. If

not I will run away and uh like a coward

and hide. So there is no fear. Sometime

there is fear after a performance. I

land and I look and I say oh I am

mad I why did I do that and I am

terrified. But although I make an

exception at the twin towers before the

first step, I was not afraid but the

frame was terror because it was the

first time a human being will prominade

a quarter of a mile in the sky and um

and it was the first time in my life

where I couldn't check the arrival

anchor point. Usually before we walk I

check both sides but here I couldn't fly

to the north tower and check and my

friends were not master riggers they

were friends. So the first few step I I

was praying for the wire to be good

enough. Was a very bad rigging but good

enough. And after a few step on the

picture you see I a giant smile because

not because the wire is comfortable but

because the wire is safe enough and then

uh my friends told me I stayed 45

minutes improvising and I did eight

crossings unbeknownst to me of course

you know. So, it's good. Every day I

spend three hours practicing and this

faithful little wire stays with me

>> and you are untethered. Most of the

tightroppe walkers

are somehow with a safety.

>> It's great idea, but it's for the

others. I mean, I never thought of it.

Um to me it's like if you would put a

leash to a bird it will no longer be a

bird. So to me a war walker is not

somebody who risk his life. I have too

much reverence for life. I will never

risk my life. But it's more noble and

majestic. To me the ideal war walker is

somebody carrying his life across. So uh

if my life is held with six little

gimmicks it's uh it's not beautiful

anymore.

Back to science. At Stanford, we met K

Daiser wrote.

He is the main inventor of a method to

optically activate neurons in animals

and control their behavior.

You are encoding

animals. you're encoding mice. How do

you do that?

>> We use light uh light in a way that's

opposite to how people usually think

about the use of light. When we think

about light, we think about collecting

information from something. But what

we've developed is a way to flip that

around. We send light in and we use

light to control things inside brains.

And we call this optogenetics.

But you have revolutionized the whole

field of science with this method,

haven't you?

>> Well, it's it's given us a new

capability that we never had before. And

it was a very important one. It it

allowed us to see what really matters

for function. It allowed us to see if

you add or take away the firing of

neurons in the brain in specific cells,

not any cells, one type or another type

or one collection or another collection.

You get to see what actually matters for

all the mysteries of the brain. Action,

cognition, sensation, or all of them

together.

>> And why mice?

>> We use mice, we use rats, we use fish.

These are our cousins. These are

vertebrates. They have many of the same

brain structures we have. It's scaled up

vastly in our lineage, but these these

have these are our our relatives, and

they have ancestral and highly conserved

structures. And by studying them we can

understand ourselves.

>> And you are encoding mice with what kind

of codes? What do you tell them? What do

you want to see?

>> Well, this has been one of the most

remarkable features of of optogenetics

is we're finding that we can take an

animal and we can turn up or down almost

anything about its behavior. Very

complex patterns of of action. We can

make an animal more or less aggressive

or nurturing or defensive, hungry,

thirsty, sleepy, more or less motivated.

Uh all these things that are very

important to how we think about our

priorities, our inclinations, our

drives. It was in the summer of 2007, so

just about 14 years ago exactly. And

what I had a a brilliant student named

Fun Jang in the laboratory. And what he

did was he put a a gene from algae, a

light activated ion channel. And this is

ion movement through a channel. This is

how our neurons work. Normally they're

not light activated, which is why we had

to get a light activated gene from

algae. When we did that and we put that

into the brain of a mouse and we

delivered through a fiber optic uh light

to stimulate those neurons that we had

targeted, we saw the animal immediately

start to move to start to circle to the

left. We had put this fiber optic into

the right part of the brain. As you

know, the right part of the brain

controls movement toward the left side

of the world. And we saw this animal

start to circle left immediately as soon

as we turned on the light. And when we

turned it off, it stopped immediately.

Just last year at the end of 2020, we

did an experiment where we used a

special virus

into the effectively into the

bloodstream, not a direct inje injection

into the brain. So nothing physically

entered the brain at all. And we used an

extremely sensitive opsson, very light

sensitive opsson, so we could deliver

light from outside the brain itself.

Those two together allowed us to without

ever entering the brain at all to make

mice more social. And so that was an

interesting experiment. It shows how far

things have come from those early days.

And it it does point the way to

interesting developments in the future.

>> Could it be that we all live in some

sort of constructed fantasy world?

>> You know, this is a an interesting

question there. The Spanish writer

Miguel Deunamuno actually used to

speculate on this and he he he thought

that what we think is is real is really

real is not that it's all irrational

ultimately and we construct a fake

reality around ourselves uh uh to

protect ourselves from the from the

irrational that that is real uh and you

know I can't argue with that

we know that infants prefer to watch the

invented reality of cartoons rather than

watching real fish and real children.

>> Babyark.

In scientific tests, mice apparently

prefer to chase virtual crickets in a

totally virtual world that has nothing

to do with the world of mice. the mouse

hole, the kitchen floor, the carpet.

And adolescents in great numbers seem to

prefer a world of pure fantasy to the

world just outside their own doorstep.

Some of them get addicted to video

games.

This question brought us to the Maxplank

Institute near Munich. Matthew McCann is

working on his doctoral thesis on

behavior of mice in a virtual world.

>> Do mice prefer a virtual reality to the

real reality?

>> That's very hard to say. So this camera

here is the mouse.

>> Yes.

>> And a mouse would interact with a

virtual environment. Um in this example,

this is more of an environment that a

mouse would just roam around freely. So

this here what I'm holding is actually

the point of view of the mouse.

>> Yes. Correct.

>> And what this camera here sees is our

point of view.

>> Yes.

>> Looks very artificial.

>> This dot is as if you were to take just

a flat piece of paper and put it into

the world. But as you move around this

dot, that dot doesn't move with your

vision. It doesn't change perspective.

The mouse is seeing what?

>> The mouse is right now seeing a

reflective ball. It's as if you had a

ball covered in a mirror. And what it

sees

is the reflection of the entire world

around it. It's as if you were going to

a carnival

and looking in one of those funny bent

mirrors and seeing the world distorted.

And there's a rectangular

object in there in the corner.

>> Yes, it's just a reg. This is just a

cube.

>> Do they run over it or do they avoid it?

How do they react?

>> Maybe the first time they'll avoid it or

they'll they'll come and check it out

and be curious, but once they realize

that there's nothing really here,

they'll just run right over it.

>> Does a mouse suspend disbelief?

>> I have absolutely no idea. I would love

to know.

Uh, if I were to take my limited

evidence, I would say no. But this is

completely um unanswerable to me right

now.

But what can be answered at this point

is that with all probability, mice still

prefer to hunt real crickets.

Back in the real world, back in the

northwest of the United States, we met

Ibrahart Fettz who developed the first

brain computer interface. At the time,

it did not dawn on him that he had made

a great discovery.

I was actually a physics student in

graduate school. Thought physics was the

way to get to the bottom of what is

happening here. But uh I learned through

psychedelic experiences that there was a

much more interesting

fact.

>> Psychedelic what? Confess. psychedelic

well LSD and uh and psilocybin

experiments sort of blew my mind as they

say and as anyone who's done it knows

it's just a phenomenal experience and it

aroused the um epiphany that

consciousness was really the most uh

incredible thing

>> and you created a brain computer

interface. Well, more recently we've

created a brain computer interface. At

that time when I came to Seattle to work

as a postoc, I um worked with u I

inherited a lab uh to do whatever I

wanted and uh explored the ability to of

monkeys to control brain cell activity.

So we uh trained monkeys to control

neural activity

for applesauce reward. And the feedback

that the monkeys got was in the form of

a meter whose deflection was

proportional to the amount of close they

were getting to their applesauce reward

level. Right? And so over a couple days,

monkeys really caught on fast and

realized he could do something to drive

that meter uh to the right. Monkey just

took a couple seconds to figure it out.

And then he was driving it more and

more. And of course, we made the

requirement harder and harder. And so we

wanted to see how far he could get.

driving the meter arm with brain

activity uh is now credited and I'll

take it for doing the first brain

machine interface where neural activity

controls an external device and I wish I

wish that I had realized meter arm

prosthetic arm you know why not use this

to control a prosthetic arm

I fitz wishes his insight could have led

straight to this control of a robotic

arm.

John Dono Hugh is the one who took the

next step. He's involved into the most

advanced patient studies using brain

computer interfaces.

The spectrum of brain ailments is vast.

There are literally more than a billion

people that are affected by diseases of

their brain or their nervous system or

their peripheral nerves and most of them

today are treated with drugs but some of

them are now being treated with

neurochnology. For example, in impaired

vision there are implants that are being

developed and even available that can

help people see again. And uh but now a

disorder a big contrast is schizophrenia

which is a thought disorder. People hear

voices and have a disordered thought.

There's really almost nothing to treat

there. So that's really at the

forefront.

>> Depression.

>> Depression affects very large numbers of

people worldwide. Maybe one in every

five people have some depression in

their life. And we're now beginning to

use deep brain stimulation, electrical

stimulation techniques to help people

with severe depression.

>> Chronic pain.

>> Chronic pain. There are devices today uh

that can be implanted in the spinal cord

in the back. And uh since the pain comes

in from the body, stimulation in the

back will actually stop the pain from

coming in, stop the information from

coming in and people don't feel pain.

This is a big success. A lot of people

have pain stimulators. This is a big

successful application of technology

today.

>> One of the most striking successes has

been Parkinson's disease. On the right,

we see a patient after a device has been

implanted directly into his brain. He

walks almost normally.

On the left, we see him with the device

switched off.

So this is one of the patients that we

implanted with the same kind of array

technology. She was paralyzed for more

than a decade from a stroke and unable

to do anything from the neck down. She

can't move her arms. She can't do

anything. And she is controlling this

robot arm only using the thoughts coming

that are being detected and transmitted

outside through this connector on her

head to computers. And you can see how

happy she is that she is controlling

this for the first time. She's able to

interact with the world.

Jamie Daves has been active in venture

capital and policies to reconcile

technical progress with moral standards.

His personal story is remarkable.

Jamie Daves, your brain has been

invaded. What happened?

>> Um, it's happened, uh, I'll call it one

and a half times. Uh, the first time I,

uh, it turned out I had a pituitary

tumor, um, for a condition called

acromegaly. Um, we called it giganism.

Also, it makes some people grow quite

large like Andre the giant. Other people

have maybe less dramatic uh, effects.

Really, it wasn't until I was about 30

that I was diagnosed and I had what's

called transphenoidal surgery where they

go up through your nose and they use

lasers to remove uh the tumor. I had

great surgeons. It actually didn't work.

So, I still take medication to control

it. So, I've had one neurosurgery for

that and a second neurosurgery as a

result of an accident uh that I had.

>> What happened and what did they do?

>> Um, so I was in a I was in an accident,

a freak accident. Somebody jumped on my

back. One of the things about being a

large guy is sometimes people jump on

you. And I fell uh I fell over awkwardly

and was instantly paralyzed from the

neck down. Unfortunately, I even stopped

breathing while in the ambulance on the

way to the hospital. Had to be intubated

and uh was a full quadriplegic for a

period of time. Luckily, it's a bruise

on your spinal cord. They don't promise

you anything. But over time, I got I got

better and returned my function more on

my left side and eventually more on my

right side. You were in a wheelchair.

>> So I was in a wheelchair uh for a period

of time for for a couple two three

months and began to be able to walk

again uh uh later. There's a changed

nature of the human experience itself

because with brain computer interface

technologies

um we have a new story about what we can

do with it to do incredible wonderful

things like getting people out of a

wheelchair. Um but it also creates a set

of feedback loops which actually will

impact the human experience as well.

>> Telepathy is possible by now. I mean in

>> right

>> very first forms

>> with whom we would you like to be in

telepathic contacting

spanning the entire planet.

I mean it would be uh

it would be remarkable to see through

people very different than myself, hear

language in a different way, who

experience nature

>> in a different way, who have a um

>> would you like to communicate with a

hummingbird?

>> Yes. Yeah. There's actually um the only

form of mutualism is actually between a

bird a a man a human being and a bird

where the bird actually leads the human

being. Um uh the the bird knows that if

it guides the human to a particular

plant that the human being will cut it

down and then the bird can feed off of

it. So actually the bird guides the

person in that way and it's an example

in nature of interspecies mutualism

that's there. So um I would love to

dance with a hummingbird but I also like

the idea that we're like doing it for

each other that the hummingbird is

dancing with me.

Halleluah.

We wanted to know how far telepathy has

advanced.

Rajes Ralph has pioneered brainto-brain

communication as an early form of

telepathy. Professor Raalo, you are the

expert in brain computer interfaces.

What is that?

>> A brain computer interface is a device

that interacts with the brain. Uh for

example, it can read information from

the brain, make sense of it, interpret

what's going on in the brain, and then

use it for a particular purpose such as

controlling a prosthetic device for

somebody who may be paralyzed.

>> But you also do braintobrain.

How do you do that?

>> Yes. So uh as we developed these devices

that were controlling robots using brain

signals, what what happens if instead of

sending that command from the brain to a

robot, you send it to another person

essentially me imagining using this

device moving my own hand and my partner

across campus, Andrea Stoko, a professor

in psychology. Uh he was uh essentially

using this device placed in the motor uh

cortex region of his uh brain. And when

the uh command went from my uh brain

computer interface to his you know

computer to brain interface you know

using this device his hand moved and

that in turn completed the cycle. So it

was a very simple twitching kind of up

and down movement because this

particular device cannot do fine control

of the brain. It's almost like a you

know sledgehammer sort of you know huge

uh uh device but uh what it does is it

it allows you to uh generate simple

kinds of movement such as movement of

the hand

>> but you could force him to type his last

will in testament and hand over all his

all his money to you

>> right we we actually joked about that we

actually joked about that but no

unfortunately we cannot do any of that

so that's basically beyond uh the

current uh kinds of technologies like

TMS transcale magnetic stimulation

we cannot do any kind of fine grained

control. Ultimately, it's possible that

you know even virtual reality which is

right now you wear goggles. Uh it's

possible that you could actually um

experience a virtual world uh through

direct uh brain stimulation, brain

recording. Uh and you may even be able

to do beyond you know wearing goggles.

What if you want to have a virtual smell

right or virtual taste? Uh right now you

cannot do that. uh right with the

devices that people have that they wear

goggles. But in the future, if you have

the capacity to stimulate the right

places in the brain, you could have a

virtual uh smell also.

>> So you could uh somehow press a button

and a I taste the schnitle.

>> Yeah. In principle. Yeah. Theoretically

>> the variant beer,

>> right? Exactly. And of course you can

ask is is that really, you know, the

exper I mean is that the experience you

want to have? I mean as far as a brain

is concerned it probably you know it

doesn't it may not know the difference

between using your tongue to taste it

versus actually directly getting the

information that your tongue is sending

in principle right so uh the brain

itself the person experiencing it might

not be able to tell the difference

between the information coming from our

body and our sensors on our body versus

directly being fed to the brain

>> if somebody were dying

and you would have uh this kind of

interface case could the person right

after dying report back to you that

there is heaven?

>> Uh

I think that's that's something that we

can discuss over beer maybe.

But as far as I know, at least uh at

this point, I think, you know, um that

would be uh something that you know, if

if the person's already died, I doubt if

you know, you're going to get uh uh

signals from a device such as, you know,

this, right? I mean, you may get some

residual activity, but connecting that

to some interpretation of of heaven or

hell would be a stretch.

I asked this seemingly naive question

for two reasons. First, I wanted to go

back to the opening of a film I love. It

is a silent Soviet film of 1930.

It begins with Simeon, an old farmer

dying on a pile of apples.

Hallelujah.

Hallelujah.

Heat. Heat.

The second reason for my question was,

"Brain scans can be unreliable.

Sometimes they are prone to erroneous

readings.

Photos of people with different

emotional expression were shown to the

eyes of a dead salmon. Even their

signals were registered, but they didn't

come from the dead fish. They were

simply noise from the scanner.

We traveled on for results that are more

reliable. At Princeton University,

there's very interesting research about

the predictability of storytelling.

But this is, I know it as a filmmaker, a

hard to grasp achievement of the human

race. What is foreseeable?

Could the First Nations, the natives of

this land, have foreseen this? Where is

the prairie? Where did the buffalo go?

What kind of trees are these? To the

left and right.

The New Jersey Turnpike allows no hint

of the past.

Uri Hassan from Israel uses fMRI brain

scans to predict mental activity of

human subjects including storytelling.

Professor Hassan,

you are doing brain scans here. What's

behind the wall behind the screens?

>> So this is an fmri machine

>> right behind the wall. behind we see to

the camera and put the window over here

and basically we can place uh people

into this like scanner which is like a

huge magnet. We can look how people

communicate. Basically what we are doing

we have people in the scanner telling

stories and I scan the brain of the

speaker while he's telling stories and

then I have the brain of the listeners

as they also listening to the story and

I can see our information is going from

one brain to another brain. So we took a

story by JD Salinger

and this is a story that it was written

in a very particular way. The story is

about

husband

with lost track of his wife in a party

returned to his own apartment by himself

at the middle of the night. very anxious

guy calling his best friend asking did

you see my wife

next to the best friend there is a naked

woman and silencing is smart it doesn't

tell you her identity

so you need to guess

as good scientist we ruin the surprise

and the ambiguity

for half of the people that listening to

the story we told them

this is the wife see Evan an affair with

the best friend. For the other half of

the subject, we told them this is the

girlfriend. The wife is very faithful

and this husband is very jealous.

So we gave them a different memory or

context about this like person. And now

they all coming and listening to the

exact same story. And this is how you

look if you think the wife have an

affair. And this is how it's look like.

when you think that the husband is is is

jealous. Now I'm giving you a new

subject and you need to guess what this

subject is thinking. We look in how

similar you are to this type of people

or to this type of people.

>> Even for a non-expert, it is obvious

that the new listener at the bottom

predicts a story like the one on the

upper right.

We can predict what you're thinking in

90% confidence.

>> Could you in the future read my mind and

read my new movie before I even film it?

>> I don't think I will be managed to read

your entire movie before.

But I

>> let's say a sequence of it. The opening

sequence.

>> The opening sequence. What? Before you

are thinking about it,

>> we put a camera just here and let it

roll.

>> I will say probably it sounds like

science fiction sense. I think we are

far far away from being able to do it.

>> The screens will stay blank for quite a

while into the future. The films in my

head will materialize the oldfashioned

way.

The screen actually belongs to the Roxy

Theater in San Francisco that has shown

a number of my films.

David Lynch was guest here and so was

John Waters. Next to his photo, you can

see me some 25 years ago.

We asked Jack Gallant to meet us in the

projection booth. He's a world leader in

decoding mental imagery.

Professor Gallant, we are here with

old-fashioned celluloid projectors.

Where are the images hidden in our

brain? So, our ability to decode

information from the brain is directly

proportional to brain measurement. And

therefore, as measurement improves, the

one thing we know is your ability to

decode brain activity will improve.

>> And I may not need a camera anymore,

>> right? So,

>> you could read it. You could read my

images. You could decode my movie that's

only in my head.

>> Exactly. In fact, of course, we can do

that to a very poor extent. Now,

>> indeed, the elephants on the right, read

directly from the brain, are still very

fuzzy,

and so is the parrot.

>> For any concept you can think of in the

brain, there's not just one location.

There are dozens of different locations

where that concept is represented. So

for example, if you see something that

is beautiful and you have the experience

of it being beautiful, there would be a

bunch of visual areas that would

represent that information.

So if we click over on this red voxil

here on the lower right down here, you

can see a word cloud that uh tells us

the concepts that are represented in

that voxil when you listen to a story. A

voxil is a tiny three-dimensional spot

in our cortex.

>> The concepts that this vauil represents

are a bit mixed up. Uh we have uh brown

tiger, pitcher, pound, goose, stole,

sheriff. It's a it's a mixed bag of

selectivity that's you know not really

clear.

>> I had always assumed that certain images

or concepts had their single specific

location. But what have Sheriff and

Goose at the top in common with Robin

Purse and the number seven at the bottom

all in one single spot of our brains?

>> There are a lot of things that happen in

the brain that we are not really aware

of or only dimly aware of. Um, in fact,

most things that happen in the brain,

we're only dimly aware of our conscious

experience of the world and and what we

think is happening and what we think

we're thinking about and what we think

our motivations are uh and our

justification for our actions and our

our plans and goals. A lot of that is a

constructed narrative we consciously

create to explain our daily behavior.

The human brain really never contains

any truth. It's it's always shades and

nuances and uh that are all reflections

of the prior history of the person who

experienced them.

>> Where our numbers and names and concepts

are located can be mapped but there's no

map of our thoughts.

Our road trip took us to Tom Gruber, one

of the creators of Siri.

He's widely considered a visionary in

the field of artificial intelligence.

Tom Kruba, you are the creator of Siri.

>> Yeah. Well, one of the three. Yeah,

>> sure. And would Siri understand me when

I say uh a sentence that has the word

night in it and it would somehow

understand night? It's getting dark in

the moon. But I mean the medieval knight

in its armor. How stupid is Siri?

>> Well, it all depends on I don't I don't

work on Siri anymore and I I don't know

as we're currently doing. So, just like

the way you explain

as in medieval night. If you said that

sentence to a speech uh recognizing

system today, it's more likely to get

the right version of night. We could try

it actually. Where's Where's the So,

what did you say? What night is

>> night?

>> Yeah.

>> Send a text to Hold on.

>> Send a text to Well, I'm sorry. Go

ahead. Okay. Okay, I'll just I'll just

dictate a sex to you here. Um, we'll

send one here. Um, so we'll say um I

mean night as in medieval night.

Okay. And so it didn't get it right. If

I tap on the second, it still doesn't

get it right. So no, it doesn't have

that yet. I got intrigued by the images

on the screen behind him. As an avid

diver, he himself shot all of them.

I was always fascinated by simultaneous

behavior.

But school of fish who react all in the

same way as if it were only one body.

How do they do that? I love this topic.

The fish, the reason they school is

because schooling is adaptive, right?

They don't they have a brain that's

perfect forident identifying whether

there's a fish near them and being able

to move quickly, right? Um, but they

can't school and and some schools can

get pretty big, right? But they can't

deal with avoiding nets, for instance,

you know, which is taking them all out.

So, we have the equivalent going on with

humans right now. We have to realize

that we're in a fish-like way blind to

the situation of our collective

stupidity.

>> And when you look back here for a

moment, have a look.

>> This looks like a fantasy world. It

looks like out of a movie.

Landscapes always played an important

role in my films. In particular,

landscapes of the soul.

Do fish have souls?

Do fish have dreams? Do they only dream

this landscape?

Do they think?

Do they have thoughts at all? And if so,

what are they thinking about?

Is the same thought simultaneously

in all of them?

Is this what they dream collectively?

Could they have visions of albino

flowers that do not exist underwater?

Are we floating in a strange and

beautiful reality?

Do we dance in our minds?

Is this paradise where there are no

boundaries anymore?

We can observe the dance of fireflies,

but their choreography is beyond our

comprehension.

For the firefly, the full moon casts its

shafts of light on the floor of the

forest. We can only stand by and marvel.

Sometimes what I need to do is to

practice the surgery in my mind before

being in the operating room.

>> Dr. Edward Chang is a brain surgeon. He

became famous for decoding mental

language and transforming it into

synthesized speech.

He gave us permission to film him during

brain surgery.

His colleagues and the patient all

agreed.

First, a hole had to be drilled into the

skull.

>> Oh yeah, watch yourself.

>> For me, most astonishing was

>> to see the brain pulsing with a

heartbeat.

We can see the the surface of the

cerebellum, the back part of the brain.

The operation was meant to relieve

unbearable pain.

The white matter to the left is a thick

bundle of nerves that connect to the

face.

An artery was pressing with a protrusion

right into the stem of nerves, leaving

the patient with such pain as if a

dentist was drilling into all of his

teeth at the same time.

The patient was instantly relieved of

pain and left the hospital two days

later.

Dr. Chang also gave us access to results

of his work translating mental speech

into audible words. For the past decade,

we've been very interested in

understanding how the brain allows us to

speak the words that I'm saying right

now generated from brain activity to

control the vocal folds, the mouth, the

lips, the tongue when when we speak. And

um

over many years we've been able to

discover essentially how neural activity

in the cortex, the cerebral cortex in

particular, gives rise to the ability

for the vocal tract to shape the breath

when we speak. It's a very very precise

and coordinated movements of the vocal

tract that allow us to speak.

We just wanted to understand that if you

could record from this part of the

brain,

is it possible

to generate and synthesize someone's

speech just from the brain activity

alone?

>> First, we hear a sentence directly

synthesized from a thought.

>> Ship building is the most fascinating

process

>> and then human speech.

>> Ship building is a most fascinating

process.

>> Another example,

Bright sunshine shimmers only.

>> Bright sunshine shimmers on the ocean.

>> Bright sunshine shimmers only.

>> This was only possible through a chip

implanted into the brain that captured

with its senses what the brain wanted to

say but couldn't.

But what we see here is the future.

carelessly tossed into a cheap cardboard

box. This will change the world.

This jumble of electronics was brought

to us by Ken Shepard, considered a

genius of chipm.

>> Dr. Shepard, you're into chipm?

>> Indeed. I uh started my career at uh at

IBM working on microprocessors

and uh since I come to Colombia, I've

been trying to look at ways to employ

integrated circuit technologies and

things other than the things you usually

think of them in like computers and

communication devices. Um there's also

opportunities to use integrated circuits

as a way of making interfaces to

biological systems and that's been my

principal focus over the last uh 15

years or so. biological systems, the

brain,

>> including the brain, but also other

things as well, not just neuro, not just

neuroscience, but also other

applications of integrated circuits of

biology more generally.

>> You brought something with you.

>> I did. Um, this is an example of

something we've been calling a chip as

system. This is a the idea that you make

you make an implantable device that uh

is nothing more. It consists of only a

single integrated circuit chip and

nothing else. So, this chip has to

include all the functions that you would

you would need in your system. So this

is a chip that's designed to sit on the

the surface of the brain

>> inside the skull. Inside

>> under the skull, right? Directly on the

on the on the surface of the brain. So

directly under the skull. Outside the

skull, you wear a little antenna. Right

now it's a pretty clunky little board.

But this is ultimately will be a

ultimately will be a wearable.

>> Can you show it to for the camera?

>> I can. Um this is a pretty clunky

prototype right now. There's a antenna

that sits directly outside the skull.

This interfaces to a a larger printed

circuit board and this has this is

actually connected I don't have the

board connected here. This is actually

becomes a Wi-Fi hub. The plan is to to

ultimately uh get the approval from the

FDA to actually implant this in humans.

But as part of those initial studies,

we've been doing studies in non-human

primates and monkeys. And the way the

device is inserted is quite nice. You

basically make a very small opening in

the skull, a very small opening in the

dura. device basically slides right in

and then sucks up against the surface of

the brain and then those openings are

small enough they just close over heel

over. This is for people who have lost

their sight due to traumatic injury to

the optic nerve. So they have an intact

visual cortex because they once were

seeing so their visual cortex developed.

So they have all the machinery in their

brain to see but they just lack the

stimulus coming from their eyes because

of traumatic injury.

>> So you can make the blind seeing again.

So the idea is that if you place a

device like this directly on the visual

cortex and stimulate the visual cortex

directly, you can create a visual

perception. This has been done this has

been done already at the scale of around

64ish electrodes where they can create

perceptions of what they call

phosphines. So the images of light that

you can see in the visual field. So the

question is if we can create 64,000

electrodes or 65,000 electrodes as we

have on this chip, can we create a much

visual much richer visual perception? Uh

and that's really not known. We're

trying to make we're making chips now

that are um 350 microns in size. So

they're about the size of a dustmite.

Um so you can you you you can't even see

them with the with the naked eye. Um,

and they they can be injected with a

with a hypodermic needle. In fact, we've

done that. That's how they're delivered.

>> Chips are normally brittle, but this one

bends, adjusting to the movement of the

brain. It is also resistant against

fluids.

>> When you normally stick an integrated

circuit chip in salt water, it's not

going to be very happy, right? So, you

have to pivate it in a way that when you

stick it in salt water, the salt water

isn't going to destroy it. How much salt

water is in your brain?

>> It's a bag of salt water. A lot. I don't

know how much there is. But your body is

mostly salt water and your brain is no

no exception to that. It's mostly salt

water.

Now with the tool makers in our focus,

we inevitably ended up at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

We met Pina Anika who only weeks before

was promoted to tenure professor.

Professor Anika, it's good to see women

in science, but you come from a lineage

of female scientists. Can you explain?

>> My very first mentor in St. St.

Petersburg in Russia where I started my

research was Tatiana Maxima Bursteain

who is considered the mother of polymer

physics and she was kind enough to adopt

me as a young researcher when I was a

freshman in college and give me an

opportunity to do theoretical physics at

that very very early age. I consider

myself a heavy experimentalist. I work

at the intersection of material science

and neuroscience developing

neurochnology and we pursue a couple of

different technological platform. One

based on multimaterial fibers where we

can incorporate

electrodes for neural recording, optical

waveguides for neurom modulation, drug

delivery, all into fibers that are as

thin as your hair. We're also working

>> they go into the brain itself.

>> They go into the brain, they can go into

the spinal cord, they can go into the

nerves, they can go into other parts of

the nervous system.

>> But you are creating fiber optics. Would

you be daring enough to insert it into

the brain of your little child?

>> If my little child ended up needing it

for a medical reason, I would uh

absolutely uh dare uh dare to insert it

into her brain.

>> Could it be that in our thoughts, in our

self, we are in some sort of theater of

thoughts, in an imaginary world that's

only existing in our brain?

I asked the engineer now.

>> Um

I why not? I guess if we if our

interpretation of the world is uh the

sort of comes as a program in our brain.

Ultimately our brain can produce many

different interpreter interpretations of

the world. Let's say somebody who has

severe delusions, they create worlds.

Their brain creates alternate realities.

So there is no reason that you know this

reality that we are experiencing is

actually real.

>> Is this building behind you for real?

>> If you look at it,

>> I think this building is real. I I kept

walking up and down those steps for the

past decade. Uh I feel the sort of the

stiffness of the stone. I hear the sound

of my shoes clicking on that stone.

I can get to my office through those

stairs there. Other people seem to be

perceiving the same reality,

but I don't have a frame of comparison.

I haven't had a chance to perceive a

alternate reality. So for me, this is

the only one that exists.

What made our group unique is that we

were the first ones to begin applying

fiber fabrication methods to create

neurochnology.

>> Did you learn from the spider?

>> I actually learned from my colleague

and I most I would say that inspiration

for me came not from the spiders but

from hair and from nerves. when because

when you look at nerve endings they look

like fiber they don't look like silicon

wafers they look fibrous they look

organic and soft and also I don't know

whether you have seen a movie Avatar I'm

sure uh you remember they have those

tails and they pick up that tail and it

all moves and glows and it looks like a

whole bunch of optical fiber and then

they take that fiber and then they

attach it to this nervous system of

their planet and that is um how sort of

visually you can think of our fiber

attaching to the brain. So again it's

very capable it's very thin and it

stealthily integrates into the brain.

>> Okay. So we're feeding this down into

the oven now. Um,

I would let you do it so I don't break

your piece of equipment. This is uh

so what happens inside the oven is um

the basically a structure that looks

like this.

>> And then inside this furnace, it's going

to get heated and then we'll catch this

thread as it starts flowing. and we

attach it to the capston and then that

begins pulling off the fiber and this

massive sort of block going to get

reduced to a hair. A typical length

would be between 50 meters and a

kilometer. So this one can be used in

the spinal cord where this you can see

one LED and you can also see light

coming out from the tip but we can put

multiple LEDs and then we can go along

the vertebrae and try to stimulate sort

of segments of the spinal cord at

different vertebrae.

>> She's also researching nano particles.

The material is similar to the rust on

your water pipe.

>> So these are the magnetic nanop

particles. Those are the tiny magnets

that respond to magnetic field and

convert it into languages of neurons.

They can convert magnetic field into

heat. They can convert magnetic field

into mechanics. They can convert

magnetic field into delivery of a drug.

They're very magnetic. As you can see, I

can move them with a magnet all around,

which also means we can move them with a

magnet inside the body to deliver them

to a given location in the brain or

anywhere in the nervous system. How tiny

are they compared to a grain of sugar?

>> I want to say they're probably

120,000 of a grain of sugar.

>> So in a grain of sugar you can place

20,000 of those

>> at least, but maybe actually in a grain

of coffee you can place 20,000 of those.

In a grain of sugar, it's probably more

like a 100,000.

They're very safe. You can drink them.

Under our control, they can allow us to

control neurons.

We can give commands to the brain.

>> I'm asking myself, how much are we

programmed in our minds?

Are we behind our facads ghostritten as

in all cultures and all epochs of

history

for advice we turned towards a

philosopher.

We met Sara Guring, an expert in free

will and bioeththics.

Professor Garing, as a philosopher, you

are confronted with the incredible

advances in neurochnology,

neurosciences.

What are the new questions?

>> Oh, there are so many new questions.

>> Go into the most burning ones. The most

burning new questions I would say

especially when we talk about implanted

neural devices there are real questions

around what how we are as human agents

in the world and by that I mean people

who can enact our intentions on the

world and the internal private space

seems really important and challenged by

some of the

>> the thoughts our thoughts the privacy

the autonomy of our thoughts

>> that's right so it's both access to them

but then control over them. So some of

the devices are recording from the brain

to drive something else outside of us, a

cursor or a robotic arm, but other ones

are about stimulating areas of the brain

hopefully to help us in particular ways.

They can be used therapeutically, you

know, to as treatment, but also

sometimes to try to bring about certain

behavioral changes. And that seems like

a kind of um potential for manipulation

that's very worrisome. It could be

putting an idea a a particular kind of

word into your head and you you can

think about the ways that advertisers

would be delighted with that

opportunity. You know, if I have

something like an uh the kind of device

that various companies are interested in

making that can read out from my neural

activity to help me surf the internet or

type something, right? If there if it's

a two-way channel and it can come back

in too, then there might be ways that

they can put ideas for what I should be

buying as they do with ads at the side

of my screen, but now directly into my

brain.

>> And what if we had some implants in us

already?

You included.

>> So, do I know that I don't have an

implant in me?

>> Would you know?

>> Jay Cart would say I do not know that

for certain. Um, the question is I would

I know or could I know for sure? I think

I I if they're good functioning ones,

possibly not. I feel worried about

saying that because I don't want to feed

the rumors that we know are out there

for seriously mentally ill people who do

have this belief. Um, but I I will say

this, at least to get a neural device

now, right? Especially an implantable

one requires a brain surgery. You're

going to know if that kind of thing is

happening. You'll you'll have some

awareness of that.

>> We wanted to know what was going on in

hospitals concerning ethical questions.

We went to the Wild Cornell Medical

Center in New York.

Joe Fins is a practicing doctor. He's

also an expert in medical ethics.

>> Dr. Fins, you have seen extraordinary

progress in neuroscience

with glorious and phenomenal

applications.

But as an ethicist, do you see dangers?

>> One of my greatest concerns, one of the

greatest dangers is the progress won't

continue. It won't be funded or we'll

regulate it out of existence. Uh I think

it's really important that we we think

about rights in in in two ways. One the

possibility of infringing rights you

know with questions of neural privacy

and the like. Um and the other hand the

rights of people who have brain injury

um who need the right to be able to

communicate and sometimes those rights

come into conflict. So I think we have

to negotiate that very carefully uh in

order to understand that rights go both

ways. There are negative rights and

positive rights. And I think there there

is a lot of concern right now about

negative rights, about liberty, freedom,

autonomy. But there also the need to

provide rights to people who by the

lottery of the universe have had a brain

injury, have mental disorders,

neuroscychiatric conditions that have

imperiled their ability to participate

fully in society.

>> What about let's say somebody who is

deeply into conspiracy theories? Would

you put them eventually in a straight

jacket?

>> I think it it's a it it it does raise

the question of when we pathize beliefs

uh and and if you pathize beliefs um

that you don't disagree with, this

happened in the Soviet Union where

dissident were categorized as being

mentally ill and institutionalized.

>> Yes. Because if you do not accept

paradise on earth, you must be insane.

>> Right. Right. you know, not that long

ago, uh, people who were who were who

were gay and and and lesbian were were

were reprogrammed were thought to be

reprogrammed because that deviant

behavior, quote unquote, deviant

behavior was perceived as aarent and

something that needed to be

reprogrammed. So, when we talk about

that be that kind of intervention, we

have the risk of running astray and

running a foul of of people having the

right to love who they love and be who

they are. Of all the scientists we met,

there was not a single one who could

explain to us what a thought is or what

consciousness is.

But all had one thing in common. They

were keenly alert to the ethical

questions involved in neuroscience.

New legislation is in the making. For

many years, Rafael Yuste has worked

closely with Jared Gendza, an

award-winning international human rights

lawyer. The new facts in science will

inevitably create new norms.

>> Jared, what do we do about regulation of

neurochnology at the global scale? So

look, I think the international

community is totally unprepared for

what's coming and how fast the advances

in neurochnology are taking place. Uh

and you know there are a whole wide

array of ways in which we have to

address these concerns. The first is at

the United Nations level where we're

talking about creating new international

human rights uh that would protect uh

citizens of the world from misuse or

abuse of neurochnology by governments.

Ne next there's the level of governments

and national regulation. From there you

have to look at companies and ethical

standards for companies and how they do

their work. And then lastly we really

need to look at people uh people around

the world and citizens of the world to

engage in trying to address these kinds

of problems. Neurochnology already is

capable of reading words that are in the

human brain. And so my fear as a human

rights lawyer is what happens when that

technology gets more advanced and you

could put that on for example uh the

head of a criminal defendant who's been

accused of committing a crime and then

you don't even need to get really any

information from them at all. you

interrogate them and then you read what

their brain is thinking and if you're

accusing them of a crime they're going

to be thinking in their heads oh no he

has me you know um he he does you know

what if my my thoughts betray me right

and and so I think that these are you

know very serious potential misuses of

of neurochnology that will fundamentally

interfere with our our basic right to

privacy and so this is why right now we

need to be talking about putting in

place an international human rights

protection framework so there's clear

signal sent to countries around the

world to governments to companies and to

private citizens about exactly what is

acceptable and what is not acceptable uh

in terms of uh in terms of uh the

practice and application of

neurochnology.

>> How can this be enacted by binding laws

for every single human being?

And here comes a surprise. As the first

country on the planet, Chile has just

adopted a constitutional amendment

articulating a new form of human rights.

The senator Guido Gerardi has been the

spearhead of this vote.

Rafael Yuste was invited as an advisor

to this pleary session.

The vote in the Senate as a first step

was passed unanimously at the end of

this very Zoom session.

But my voyage into our mind ultimately

leaves me more mystified.

What created this theater of thought?

Who was a ghostriter of this?

And who was a ghostriter of that one?

Why?

Why?

Why do we feel so afraid?

Why

why

do we feel so afraid?

Don't have to look very far.

Don't get stuck in a rut.

Don't go looking too hard.

It's all in the mut

in your brain.

When

when when

will we feel less afraid?

When

when when

will we feel less afraid?

Don't have to look very far.

Don't get stuck in a rut.

Don't go looking too hard.

It's all in

your brain.

How

how how

can we feel less afraid?

How

how

how can we feel less afraid?

>> Don't have to look very far.

Don't get stuck in the

in your brain.