Original subtitles

foreign

is the biggest mystery in science today

it's responsible for all the facets of

our personality everything we think and

everything we feel it makes you you

a very large fraction of what's

happening in my brain I am not aware of

at all but what exactly is going on in

your in your conscious brain

part of your brain is really in charge

all day long we're doing unscripted

things that we didn't know we would be

doing

life is not scripted find a word that

has some meaning for you so you might

think you've made a choice

representation but in the back of your

mind you wonder come on was that really

me

we might feel like we're in control this

idea that we're in control of our

actions seems critical to our sense of

identity

ideas

the brain is made of almost 90 billion

neurons but it produces this illusion

that there's a single person inside of

our skulls

for every Pinocchio there's always

someone kind of pulling the strings

behind the scenes

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it's not just that motor memory language

is in the brain your personality is up

there your morality is up there

we as humans know how environment and

traumatic events change people

your brain who's in control

right now on Nova

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thank you

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have you ever thought that you've made a

crystal clear decision I'm just gonna

watch two episodes tonight but the next

thing you know

okay just one more episode

actually it's time to go to bed

well I bet everyone else has already

finished this season

wait why am I still watching this

well of course the answer lies in your

brain

your brain contains multitudes

it's a complex and intricate three pound

piece of matter but you actually have no

awareness of most of the things that are

going on inside your brain

I'm neuroscientist and clinical

psychologist Heather Berlin

and I'm on a journey to discover

what's really driving the decisions you

make no agency at all

or what is really in control

there are important unconscious

processes in your brain that you're not

aware of

most of the time the brain is a

coordinated well-oiled machine with

different brain regions working together

in harmony

but under certain circumstances when

things are out of sync we can gain

deeper insight into how the brain

actually works

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foreign

there's one thing we do every day with

little to no conscious control it's

something you might spend a whole third

of your life doing

sleeping

when we sleep we're supposed to be

unconscious and at rest

but for some people that's not always

the case

these are people who sleepwalk

sleepwalking is a glitch in the system

because our identity is not in control

and that's what a lot of my patients

tell me like I didn't do that that's not

possible

this is not me

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so sleepwalking very common condition or

phenomenon simply says what the word is

you sleep but during your sleep you will

walk we take it for granted right but

the walking is extremely complex just

teaching a robot all the inputs and

outputs for a body to move forward on

two legs without falling

all of this you don't even think about

it it works independently

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possible to do complex behaviors like

walking

sometimes even

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to find out I'm visiting a Sleep Center

at The Icon school of medicine at Mount

Sinai

so tell me a little bit about what's

happening with you at night and you're

sleepwalking

well I've been doing some weird things I

painted a wall in my living room and one

in my kitchen I made a triangle a

perfect triangle in my kitchen so what

do you think when you find that like I

don't know just I laugh because like how

the heck I did this

Emmanuel during studies what's going on

in the brain when someone sleepwalks

in the center sleep patients are wired

up with sensors that pick up eye and

body movements as well as their brain

waves while they sleep

so what are we looking at here are these

blue lines these are the eye movements

okay and then the the black lines here

the brain waves so these patients

obviously is lying in bed

and dozes off slowly feel sleepy and as

we move on it dives into deep slow wave

sleep

during sleep your brain Cycles through

phases of high and low activity

when the brain waves slow down

scientists call this deep sleep

but when someone sleepwalks

first of all everything looks good you

see the brain waves

everything is very very monotonous sort

of slow waves and then it's interesting

since there's a build up of slow wave

that the amplitude goes up and then

suddenly

so he seemingly awake sudden it's like a

sudden arousal looks I'm scared very

very fast eyes open

there's a sort of a split then the

patient looks like they're awake but a

couple of key brain regions seem to stay

asleep there's part of the brain stays

in slow wave sleep it's such a deep

stage of sleep it's hard to wake up and

the other part of the brain is already

awake

one part of the brain that doesn't wake

up during sleepwalking is called the

prefrontal cortex it's the region of the

brain responsible for deliberate choices

and self-awareness

this prefrontal cortex is the decision

maker the other areas of the brain can

mostly work independently of that

so essentially so many parts of the

brain can be engaged without conscious

awareness of it

during sleepwalking the mo Le cortex

which controls

mitt the visual cortex which processes

visual information and the parts of the

brain that coordinate behaviors like

balance and speech can all become active

without engaging the prefrontal cortex

and what exactly are you doing ma'am

special code

experiences of sleepwalking reveal that

being conscious is not an all or none

situation our unconscious makes a lot of

everyday decisions for us for starters

boring stuff like regulating your heart

rate and your temperature deciding when

to take the food in your stomach and

move it down into your gut like thank

God we don't have to be aware of all

that stuff

motor function sensory function motor

sensory integration memory

representation all of this is happening

below the surface like the inside of the

Clockwork

when you Sleepwalk the brain regions

that control your movement vision and

breathing can get up to all kinds of

Mischief without you even knowing it

but there's one case where even those

regions check out during anesthesia

we know that there are drugs that I can

give you anesthetics that would remove

your conscious experience

and we all know that Consciousness comes

in degrees we can lose Consciousness in

sleep but then we lose it in a more

profound way when we are under general

anesthesia

when I was a young researcher working in

anesthesiology I saw this first hand so

what happens to your brain activity when

you go under

neuroscientist Emery Brown is measuring

the line that separates being conscious

from being unconscious I want to

guarantee my patience that when I say

you're unconscious you're not going to

perceive pain you won't be moving around

you won't remember anything that's

occurring your heart rate and blood

pressure and other physiological systems

will be well controlled

surgery

the anesthesiologists have to put her

under render her unconscious with

special drugs I've started to give you

medicines that might make you feel kind

of drowsy

look straight ahead

for a minute

all right can you see my finger here

follow with your eyes

and if you can't follow it anymore tell

me all right

see her eyes are fixed now yeah

you see the EEG has a large law

oscillation City yeah yeah her brain

stems out that's out that's it

you go under it can feel like one second

you're here and the next you're out

what's going on in the brain when this

happens

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Emery uses a device called an EEG

set of electrodes that rests on the

scalp and detects electrical activity in

the brain

that activity comes in the form of waves

the brain generates brain waves or

oscillations and their oscillations that

we typically see when someone's

conscious

these brain waves are measured by their

frequency how fast the waves come and go

and by their amplitude how small or big

the waves are I look at your EEG when

you're awake you're gonna have a very

rich response when I anesthetize you it

goes away

and so the difference between those two

states represents the transition from

being conscious to the unconscious see

the oscillation see how they're really

big now and before so they were just

sort of little yeah exactly yeah

when you're awake and fully aware your

brainwave activity is diverse and

dynamic it looks kind of like an

exciting conversation

but when anesthesia drugs hit the brain

the activity is dramatically reduced to

dull Slow Rolling brain waves the once

Dynamic conversation becomes an

unintelligible hum

if you all to other parts of the brain

communicate sufficiently you can make

someone unconscious so that's what the

drugs are doing they're altering the way

the various parts of the brain

communicate

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there's one region of the brain in

particular that acts as a communication

Hub the thalamus

it's made up of two parts each about the

size of a walnut and sits deep inside

your brain Thalamus is a central way

station for all sorts of information

processing auditory information goes

through there visual information goes

through their pain information goes

through there if I could take out just

one brain Center to make you unconscious

it would probably be the thalamus

because it's such a central actor in

processing all types of information

after a couple of hours of surgery the

medical team is tapering off the

anesthesia drugs

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patient's brainwave activity becoming

more complex as she wakes up she started

taking a bath song yeah yeah open your

eyes wide

and squeeze my hand

Consciousness is really having active

cognitive processing being able to think

and act so it's all done okay it's the

integration of that information which

allows us to start to understand how

Consciousness is actually formed

yeah

Consciousness can obviously interact

with the physical world like we can we

can use drugs to remove it we go to

sleep and we're not conscious and yet

it's tenuous at the same time we can't

say how any specific set of neurons

working together produces Consciousness

it's so clear that anesthesia is some

kind of change of Consciousness right

the whole brain is there the pieces are

there but the messages aren't getting

through in a way that makes for our

conscious experience

and that's the difference between being

aware and not being aware

so the level of communication among

brain regions is one difference between

being conscious and being unconscious

that means that no single area of the

brain is responsible for your

consciousness

it's that communication that helps make

you you

now let's remember that the left hand is

governed from the right hemisphere for

some people an entire half of their

brain can't really communicate with the

rest these are people who've undergone

split brain surgery and it's as if

they have two eyes and a single brain

now the question becomes what happens

when you allow both hands together to

try to solve a problem and what we find

out is that they fight over each other

one hand knows how to do it and one hand

does not and so they more or less

squabble

the human brain contains two signs a

left hemisphere and the right hemisphere

right and they are connected by a big

bundle of fibers it's called the corpus

callosum all the communication from one

side of the brain to the other has to

pass through this fiber bundle

with epilepsy as seizure in one

hemisphere can quickly spread to the

other by way of the corpus callosum

but if that bridge is surgically severed

a seizure can no longer cross to the

other side of the brain

in addition to treating epilepsy these

surgeries have also led to some

astounding Research into how the two

hemispheres function

with your left hand make me the A-Okay

sign

to learn more about these fascinating

studies I met two Pioneers in the field

Michael Miller and Michael kazanica

Michael Miller asked me to step into his

lab to do a few simple tests just like

the ones he's conducted with patients

after a split brain surgery

so Heather what you're going to see are

two shapes they're going to come up on

the screen

you'll draw the shape on the left side

of the screen with your left hand and

the shape on the right side of the

screen with your right hand and I want

you to draw them as quickly as you can

at the same time

okay

piece of cake right

oh beautiful

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okay I'm not sure what you're drawing

over here but

oh

the left side of the brain controls most

of the right side of the body and the

right side of the brain controls most of

the left side of the body

because I start out trying to do

different things and then they just

started like sync up together yeah

it's perfectly normals I mean what's

happening is that the motor commands in

the in one hemisphere right are

interfering with the motor commands in

the other hemisphere

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but for someone whose two hemispheres

are disconnected there's no interference

it's almost as if there's one mind

controlling the left hand and a

completely different mind controlling

the right hand

and it isn't just movement that's split

across the hemispheres

only half of your visual field goes to

each side of the brain

when you're looking straight ahead

everything to the left side of that

space goes only to the right Hemisphere

and it the opposite is true for the

right side in the space

the left part of the brain s is where

your language and speech centers are

that enables you to talk lives you to

understand language and all the rest and

the right side of your brain is very

important in the evaluation of emotions

evaluation of visual space

I'm going to give you a test if you look

around my nose

you tell me how many fingers you see

how many fingers do you see

you see too right why did you see two

this one went to your left hemisphere

this one went to your right hemisphere

way over the other side of your brain

how does your left hemisphere know about

it

that pathway the corpus callosum it

transfers that information

now I'm going to split your brain

and I do the same tests how many fingers

do I see

is there anything else

you know okay

you see one you see this one because

that goes straight to your left talking

hemisphere

this one is still going to your right

hemisphere which has now been

disconnected from your left

so your left brain can't talk about this

so you now say you only see one finger

even though your right brain is seeing

this finger it just can't talk about it

because the highway that communicates

that information has been cut show me

with your right hand what to say

relax

ing

fine good it's the most remarkable thing

to witness you know there's this whole

other entity in the head that's

controlling the body and can understand

and remember and feel and think all on

its own completely separate from the

other side

temperatures conducted tests

brain patient

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patienters work independently from one

another including a now famous

experiment of a patient named Joe

by quickly flashing a word to just the

left side of his visual field

that word would go exclusively to the

right half of his brain the half that

can't talk

so the only way we're going to know that

it registered is if he can write

something out

okay with his hand that is controlled by

his right hemisphere exactly his left

hand we Flash the word Texas

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the word

his right hemisphere is seeing it we're

seeing it but the right atmosphere at

this point in his surgery cannot talk

right all right I want you

to to draw for me uh that thing upside

down

so he claims to not have seen anything

yeah

oh my God

wow he was able to do Texas upside down

but what's interesting is he had no idea

what he's drawing and we know because we

saw the word

I can't tell what it is

wow so then later on I'd show him the

word again and I ask a different

question about what he saw

once again they showed the word Texas to

just his right non-verbal hemisphere

so when asked about what he saw all his

left hemisphere can say is I'm aware of

the word I just didn't see what it was

draw something that goes with that

symbol of that

oh wow so he draws a cowboy hat

his right hemisphere knows exactly what

he's drawing

but he's left it still confused doesn't

understand right what's that cowboy hat

cowboy hat

I can't believe it

did you see Texas no

brain phenomenon suggests that there can

be two separated Minds if you will

inside of a skull

the cooperation is on the paper not

inside the head it's an astounding

example of cross queuing and management

of two mental systems into one unified

Act and the idea is maybe that's going

on in us all the time too

each of us has a sense that we're a

unitary being but actually that belies

the fact that each of us each of our

minds is actually composed of lots of

different pieces that are doing

different things and different

information can be represented in

different parts of that machinery and so

a search for where am I in all of this

is a little bit misguided because the

eye is not such a unitary thing in the

first place

that feeling of unity of me is actually

distributed across almost 90 billion

neurons this illusion that there's a

single person inside our skulls

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regions

many different systems in the brain

control what you do from movement to

Vision to speech and even social

interaction

I think most human beings like to

believe that their mind is under their

own control

if I want to I can stand up right now I

can do that and that gives me I think

the false belief

that everything I do has been chosen by

me and if there is a story from the

brain to tell it is that we are quite

wrong

not only are there multiple parts of

your brain influencing you but there are

things in the world around you that

influence your brain including other

people

how we act and who we are in our lives

is hugely determined by the expectations

of the people around us the brain helps

us be the most social species on the

planet

a lot of our brains are devoted to

understanding other people

Iran doesn't operate in isolation

we constantly learn take compare to

other brains our brains have evolved to

be able to effortlessly reason about

other people

and emotions similarly have evolved as

ways that guide our Behavior

so how exactly do emotions and the

emotions of others influence our brains

neuroscientist Luke Chang studies how

emotions like greed and guilt affect our

decision making hey Grace we're going to

start up the Scout okay

go ahead and make your decision okay you

tell her to go yep you can hit next

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so what are you guys looking at here

what's this study about so she's playing

an investment game okay with another

participant who's outside the scanner

Luke scans the brains of study

participants while they play a game from

behavioral economics called the trust

game

this is a Cooperative game where one

person has some sum of money and they

can choose to invest any amount of that

money in their partner

that investment grows so then the study

participant has to decide

they could be greedy and keep all the

money or they could be generous and give

some of the investment back

[Music]

you've always been really interested in

why do people return the money when they

don't have to and guilt provides one

plausible mechanism that might be

driving their behavior to act

cooperatively in this game

so you're balancing and making these

decisions between getting that kind of

dopamine reward hit from being a little

selfish versus being balanced by those

feelings of maybe guilt when you're not

cooperating or helping somebody else out

and the brain scans reveal which parts

of the brain are most active when

someone is feeling guilt

those regions ended up being something

called the insula

signals about having this gut feeling

that maybe this isn't a good idea or I'd

feel really bad if I did that those are

the signals that are ranging from the

insula that allow us to make decisions

to avoid harming someone else

Luke likes to think of it kind of like a

thermometer and a thermostat

you try to think about how a thermostat

might be mapped onto the brain one

region might be more like the

thermometer detecting the ambient

temperature in the room when it comes to

reading the room our brain's thermometer

seems to be the insula but all that

information needs to go somewhere else

and be integrated with other types of

information

that's our brain's thermostat a region

located inside the prefrontal cortex

that processes our emotions and helps

regulate our behavior

and while your thermostat can usually

help you take control of your emotions

what would happen if it went out

there's a famous patient named Phineas

Gage

was a railroad Foreman who was working

on Vermont and he was tamping down a

hole that had gunpowder in it and the

gunpowder ignited sending the rod

through his eye up through his brain

taking out a big patch of his brain in

the process

at first people thought this is a

miracle this man has been unscathed from

this accident he had memory he had

language he had motor control but of

course his friends noticed a difference

with life fell apart he had a hard time

holding a job he lost all of his friends

and he really just struggled

his personality made him more fitful

irreverent more profane He was cursing a

lot lewd Behavior so he had sort of no

filter we now know that the parts of the

brain that he sort of surgically excised

were involved in emotion and control

over a hundred years later

neuroscientists mapped the regions of

his brain that were harmed in that

horrific accident

areas of his prefrontal cortex including

the brain's thermostat were damaged

which might account for why he struggled

socially he wouldn't regulate his

emotions or process how other people

might react to his behavior

and that was the key moment I think in

Neuroscience history when people

realized oh it's not just that motor

memory language is in the brain your

personality is up there your morality is

up there things that make you you are

there

I think we all kind of know intuitively

that emotions impact our decisions so

what sort of extra information is this

giving us and a lot of the scientific

work that's been done on studying

emotion decision making people have

really focused on how emotions lead us

to make worse decisions maybe even

irrational and I actually don't think

that's true if you have a goal to not

want to harm others and to do what's

going to be in your self-interest

emotions are actually helping us make

better decisions

in fact the company

because other people bring parts of us

strengthen Us in particular ways

how you make decisions how you behave

how you think about yourself all of

these processes we develop by mimicking

and interacting and synchronizing with

other brains one thing that we all share

as humans is that social life and social

contact is an incredibly important part

of what our brain processes

our brains are in detail influenced by

every experience we have every moment

every sentence every image changes your

brain

foreign

experiences are so profound so extreme

that they can impact brain biology from

one generation to the next

neuroscientist Bianca Jones Marlin is

studying how your ancestors experiences

might control how your brain is wired

today we ask how trauma affects the

brain how trauma affects the body and

really how trauma affects Generations

people in the world suffer from

traumatic events and these traumatic

events aren't just a one-time change on

their brain and their body it actually

continues for seemingly their lifetime

Bianca's research is inspired by her

upbringing

my parents my biological parents were

also foster parents so I had Foster

siblings and adopted siblings growing up

only now as a scientist I realize that

that motivates a lot of the questions

that I ask how do we understand what

happens when kids are born into trauma

and optimize what we do have for better

Generations

thank you

one Insight comes from an event during

World War II

at the end of World War II the

Netherlands were cut off from food by

Nazi troops because they decided to

protest through the country

and during this period of time it

created a man-made famine there was

starvation death there was trauma

not only did those who suffered during

the famine experience health problems

but some of their children and even

their grandchildren had metabolic issues

people began to ask how does an

experience of a parent of a grandparent

change offspring

researchers began to discover that your

environment and your experiences can

change the way your genes are activated

in your body and in your brain

it's not like you get your genes and

it's set in stone they're constantly

changing based on the environment

do this in action Bianca's

to map the whole genome of mice Target

certain areas of that genetic code and

use them to answer the important

questions in science

so how could stress and Trauma alter the

biology of The mice's Offspring

to find out Bianca paired the smell of

almond

than electric shocks because mice really

navigate the world and rely heavily on

the sense of smell we use olfaction pair

it with the light foot shock and we

observe changes in the brain and changes

in Behavior

she noticed that something inside of the

mice's noses changed

we're able to look at the cells in the

nose that only respond to almond

and what we observe is that after the

light foot shock and the presentation of

almond coinciding there are more cells

in the nose that Express the Almond

receptor it's as if something in the

milieu of the nose says almond is

important in this environment we need

more cells like you

mice grew more cells that responded to

the smell of almond

each one of these green dots you see

here these are neurons they're cells

that can respond to the Almond smell

these red dots are cells that were born

after the presentation of odor and shock

and this cell right here this red and

green cell is a cell that was born after

the presentation of almond and shock

that also responds to almond this is the

cell that we want to look at to see what

information is inside because we see

more of these after the odor and shock

pairing

remarkably these changes were actually

passed down to the Next Generation

The Offspring The Kids of the parents

that were shocked with odor were born

with more cells Express the Almond

receptor which means there's a memory

that somehow is maintained in sperm and

egg through implantation and represented

an offspring

it is as if we are observing a change in

evolution

over the time span of one generation

I just think that's fascinating

because we as humans know how

environment and how traumatic events

change people just being able to take

the science of that

and be able to show that we're just

justifying what we already know as

humans what Society has known for a long

time what individuals know we just want

to bring that to an undeniable truth

our brains are not static we try to make

sense of what's happening right now but

we also try to make sense of what

happened a long time ago and to have

like this Grand picture of our life as a

trajectory

our ability for conscious awareness it's

a magnificent ability this ability to

reflect on our own minds but it also

leads us astray

memories plans I have these feelings of

agency over my actions but what the

science itself is telling us is that

these things aren't necessarily bound

together different aspects of the South

can be manipulated or even taken away

altogether

your biology and the choices you make

are all molded by your social

interactions and even your family

history

and yet we feel like we have control

like we have agency right

[Music]

an agent is somebody that is the author

of Their Own Story

but actually most of what's happening in

our brain we are not conscious of and I

think this gets you starting to think

wait a minute you know is it really

everything under my control

neuroscientist URI Mouse is putting our

sense of control to the test

we feel like we're in control but where

exactly does that feeling come from and

how does it work

ah there you are

hello

thank you very much for joining us

agentically and out of your own volition

of course before we start let me give

you this envelope okay please don't let

anybody touch it and okay don't look

inside but we'll need it for later on

for later okay to show me how my sense

of control isn't always what it seems

Murray kick things off by trying to get

me to question my ability to choose by

using a magic trick so where would you

like to sit where would I like it's

really up it's really I have a choice if

you have a choice all right so I'm going

to sit here you're going to sit over

there yes so how about just before you

sit down if you don't mind

um let's see

um what this says oh my God okay so so

then that one obviously says the same

thing right

um no let's check and see what this one

says this one says

oh come on

okay so I'm not predictable you don't

even know me yet

I really don't know how he did that

I'm not totally convinced but I'm

starting to question how do I know when

I have made a decision if I may let me

give you as a present a book here you go

this is yours and I will just ask you to

leave through it and find a word that

has some meaning for you

all right I got it can you tell me what

the word is representation please write

the word down presentation and you know

just stick that sticky note somewhere

okay thank you all right we'll come back

to that later

but for now I'm starting to see how

Choice an agency aren't always so

straightforward

so to find out what's actually going on

in the brain when our sense of control

is in question I took a look at a trial

designed by postdoctoral researcher

Alice Wongs

a volunteer from the lab tomash is being

fitted with a transcranial magnetic

stimulation device

TMS for short

it generates a strong magnetic field

that can send signals to your brain the

idea is that you stimulate the brain

using a focused magnetic field and if

you stimulate that in the right part of

the motor cortex that's a part of the

brain that actually controls your

fingers it's like you're pulling on a

string here every time you pull it the

finger goes

with the device hooked up the

researchers can make his finger jump

involuntarily by sending a signal to his

motor cortex

we're gonna be locating the spot of your

motor cortex that moves one of your

fingers

how about that that works that was a

pinky movement up okay

sometimes they ask him to move his

finger on his own could you replicate

the movement even that you found

something like this

remarkably by recording the small

electrical signals that travel from his

brain down to his finger muscles Alice

and URI can pinpoint the exact moment

that tamasha's brain has initiated a

movement almost 50 milliseconds before

he actually moves

with this information it's as though

they can predict his movement slightly

before it actually happens

so now a sense of agency is about to be

put to the test who initiated the

movement that was me

how much agency did you feel over the

movement quite a lot full agency okay

normally the researcher isn't in the

room and all the questions are conducted

by the computer

who initiated the movement

I don't know

how much agency did you feel over the

movement I would say some agency

in some instances justice tomash decides

to move his finger the researchers use

the magnetic field to make his finger

move who initiated the movement I really

don't know okay

how much agency did you feel over the

movements

a little bit

so even the instances when tamash really

did decide to move his finger how much

agency did you feel over the movement no

agency at all he didn't always feel like

he was in control

so after the experiment I was excited to

hear the results

when Tomas initiated the movement

himself yet we intervened with the TMS

tomash said that wasn't me I didn't

initiate the movement it was the

computer

he thought that the computer initiated

the movement or it was both of them or

he wasn't sure but he almost never said

that it was him

so what do you think is going on there

how is this happening you know we walk

around and we feel like you know we are

the authors of our of our actions and so

on and you can see with just a little

bit of messing around it tends to fall

apart it's fragile like ourselves our

self our memories our sense of agency

they're all things that our brain

evolved over time but they're fragile

and they can be manipulated under the

right circumstances everything has to

align for you to feel this sense of

agency when the finger moves we get this

feedback back to the brain and it's

Incorporated with whatever is happening

in the brain to create the movement and

together you get this sense of agency

over the movement

I think that in everyday life we are in

control

however I think this experiment shows

we're quite happy to relinquish control

like States Of Consciousness there are

levels of agency ways it can be

manipulated and even taken away

we think

they happen and then B happened that's

the end of the story but of course most

of our brain activity is unconscious who

initiated the first movement that was me

so we sometimes misinterpret our

experience of voluntary action is a

little bit retrospective in this sense

the brain looks at what the body did and

figures out if that makes sense as an

act of its own free will

after the agency experiment we had more

important matters to attend to so

Heather when you came in I gave you an

envelope right yes nobody touched it but

you no do you remember that later on I

gave you that book and in that book you

open it to whatever page you wanted and

you found a word in there can you tell

us again what that word was yes it was

on page 105 and the Word was

representation representation okay so if

you don't mind just putting the book

aside and if you could take the envelope

out now okay can you open it and see

what's inside oh this is one of these

things that's going to freak me out

right let's see

I'm getting chills

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foreign

no way come on no seriously

that's really freaky

so you're in control right I don't know

how you did that that is really weird I

mean what do I do now I don't know what

do I do with that

furry's magic Acts tricks

slights of hands hand Direction

but when I saw what was written on the

card I have to admit I wondered if my

choices mattered at all

Alice Wong's experiment supports the

idea that it isn't just about what

happens in the brain at the moment a

decision is made

how did you do that your sense of agency

or control also has to do with feedback

you get after the decision physical

social and emotional

I think of agency as a sense so there is

a sense of agency that sometimes can get

disrupted perhaps just like have a sense

of sight or smell and so on sometimes

you have visual Illusions it's similar

with a sense of agency I can manipulate

your sense of agency but that doesn't

mean that we never have a sense of

agency

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agency is one of the ways it makes

meaning out of your daily life

there is no way in which I can operate

without understanding what is happening

and why I'm doing it

is the filling in of the blanks that is

necessary in some ways for survival to

give meaning to make sense of the cause

and effect of things perhaps we have

that feeling of Consciousness because it

gives me a sense of agency it allows me

to pretend like I'm the one making

decisions and I'm the one reaping the

rewards or the failures of that

particular decision

there are parts of the brain that allow

you to feel like the author of your own

life

that's only part

story

each of our minds is actually composed

of lots of different pieces that are

doing different things this illusion

that there's a single person inside our

skulls

we know how environment and how

traumatic events change people our

brains are in detail influenced by the

expectations of the people around us but

of course most of our brain activity is

unconscious

but there are some situations where

letting go of conscious control can have

amazing results

when you're playing the blues you have

this kind of well-known musical

structure of this template and then you

use that as a launch pad for

improvisation and for Innovation and for

new ideas

Charles Lim is a neuroscientist trying

to understand how our brain operates

when we are being truly creative it's

going to be ill in the MRI is Dr E

Freeman and today he's using a scanner

to peer into the brain of educator and

freestyle rapper Chris emden I wonder if

I'm going to saying that some

freestyling profiling still while and

it's going to be ready for me

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thank you

okay remember keep your head still

during the entire thing and try not to

move your feet or your hands at all

during the wrapping all right do the

best I can yeah awesome thank you first

Charles asks Chris to perform memorized

now that memory means you're going to do

the memorized lyrics the way you

originally wrote them okay okay

memory

professor in this wheel is this so

witness the ignorance I dismissed those

emotions

next he gives him a prompt and asks him

to improvise to create a new original

piece on the spot he doesn't know what's

coming and that's going to be his cues

for that

physicist

physicist Services

you can't move my shoulders because the

MRI machine won't let me do it but she

wouldn't know what it is that it's like

I'm like a baseball player the way I

strike with the raps

so what does improvisation or

spontaneous creativity look like in the

brain

what we found was that the prefrontal

cortex that appears to be linked to

effortful self-monitoring seem to be

turning off deactivating

a pretty intense way in these highly

trained professional musicians when they

start improvising

in some sense by

decreasing activation in the prefrontal

cortex we can sort of gain control of

our lives in a way in fact if you're too

self-conscious and you're unable to

relax and let go you can't do something

like this

when you start trying to put conscious

control mechanism your performance goes

down so would you say this goes to to

any activity really if you're if you're

a professional tennis player or if

you're trying to do a physical activity

that the more you're able to practice

letting go once you've learned the skill

the better you'll be exactly

free throw shooters that are able to

shoot 99 free throws all of a sudden

when you tell them you're going to get a

million dollars if you make the next one

then all of a sudden you inject

conscious control over something that's

much better just left to its own

subconsciousness and then your

performance gets worse and you're more

likely to choke

surprisingly the parts of your brain

that are usually in control can get in

your way your prefrontal cortex the

decision maker can make you overthink

something you've done a thousand times

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every human being is creative

whether they're creative artistically or

not is another question but we're all

creative we have to be because all day

long we're doing unscripted things that

we didn't know we would be doing

life is not scripted and so no matter

who you are in this world you're doing

things that are unplanned

all day long we're balancing forces that

push us around even if we're not aware

of them from past trauma to the emotions

of others and all the hidden forces

affecting your brain

I'd like to believe that I am in charge

of my life that I am the agent of my

life that I actually can control my

emotions my abilities my desires and the

more I learn about brains the more I

realize that this is probably not true

we can be influenced by our social

networks by our culture by our genetics

by our development by our childhood

your brain is a complicated collection

of these intricate Parts many of which

you have no awareness of and they all

work together in a delicate dance to

create your perception of you

the brain is who you are

it's really different than any other

organ in that sense we know that every

experience every thought every memory

every sensation has its origin in the

brain

the brain is made of almost 90 billion

neurons but it produces the idea that

there's a single thing inside my head my

particular pattern of neuronal

connections it actually creates me and

your particular pattern of neuronal

connections actually creates you

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years of studying the brain have humbled

me whoa you look scared

you can't control everything that makes

you who you are

unconscious you is still you

the vast majority of the brain's work is

happening outside conscious awareness

prior to Over Control some things you

actually will decrease your performance

you have to let go of conscious

self-monitoring to just kind of like go

with the flow

it could be scary to say and scary to

hear but we are not just our own

we are all multifaceted

multi-dimensional people

and by becoming more aware of the

unconscious processes in your own brain

you can become more aware of what drives

you

and what you ultimately can

[Music]

foreign

[Music]

thank you

[Music]

[Applause]

foreign

[Music]

[Music]

thank you