Episode AI notes
- The human brain is not special in comparison to other mammalian and vertebrate brains.
- Our brain receives information through senses from our body and the world and solves the inverse inference problem.
- Senses were initially evolved for predation and not consciousness or experience.
- The brain can create experiences that may trick us into thinking we have free will.
- Free will involves cultivating experiences to change our internal model.
- There is a lot of unknown regarding the exact workings of the brain.
- Social and physical input is required for infants to develop neurotypically.
- The executive control network helps weigh probabilities and narrow down options.
- Emotions are constructed from basic ingredients and curated for children.
- The brain makes predictions based on past experiences to understand new information.
- The brain runs a body budget of glucose, salt, and water.
- Constant uncertainty can lead to depleted body budgets and result in depression and anxiety. (Time 0:00:00)
La hipótesis del cerebro triuno es falsa Summary: The size of the human brain is not larger than expected for a primate of our size. The brain size of a human-sized chimpanzee would be the same as a human brain. Our brain is not special in terms of its size or blueprint, as the basic blueprint that builds our brain is the same as all mammalian and vertebrate brains. The mistaken attribution of rationality to the cerebral cortex is due to its size, not any unique qualities. Transcript: Speaker 1 Know the human brain is not larger than you would expect it to be for a primate of our size. If you took a chimpanzee and you grew it to the size of a human that chimpanzee would have a brain that was the size of a human brain. So there’s nothing special about our brain in terms of its size. There’s nothing special about our brain in terms of the basic blueprint that builds our brain from an embryo is the basic blueprint that builds all mammalian brains and maybe even all Vertebrate brains. It’s just that because of its size and particularly because of the size of the cerebral cortex which is the part that people mistakenly attribute to rationality. (Time 0:16:24)
El cerebro opera resolviendo el problema de la inferencia inversa Summary: The brain receives information from the senses and the body, but it only receives the effects of those causes. To determine the cause of these effects, the brain must solve an inverse inference problem. It does this by using past experiences and combining them in novel ways. This process is known as memory, perceptual inference, simulation, concepts, or prediction. Transcript: Speaker 1 About it is like this you know your brain is trapped in a dark silent box yeah that’s very romantic of you which is your skull and the only information that it receives from your body and From the world right is through the senses through the sense organs your eyes your ears and you have a sense sensory data that comes from your body that you’re largely unaware of to your Brain which we call in-terreceptive as opposed to xterreceptive which is the world around you and but your brain is receiving sense data continuously which are the effect of some set Of causes your brain doesn’t know the cause of these sense data it’s only receiving the effects of those causes which are the data themselves and so your brain has to solve what philosophers Call an inverse inference problem how do you know when you only receive the effects of something how do you know what caused those effects so when there’s a flash of light or a change in Air pressure or a tug somewhere in your body how does your brain know what caused those events so that it knows what to do next to keep you alive and well and the answer is that your brain Has one other source of information available to it which is your past experience it can reconstitute in its wiring past experiences and it can combine those past experiences in novel Ways and so we have lots of names for this in psychology we call it memory we call it perceptual inference we call it simulation it’s also we call it concepts or conceptual knowledge we Call it we call it prediction (Time 0:31:37)
Los cerebros evolucionaron para posibilitar un mejor control motor. Summary: Motor neuroscientists believe that senses evolved in the service of motor action, specifically in response to an arms race between predators and prey. The purpose of senses is not consciousness or experiencing things, but rather to facilitate better control of motor behavior. Transcript: Speaker 1 Motor neuroscientists people who study the control of motor behavior believe that um senses evolved in the service of motor action so the idea is that like what triggered the what triggered What was what was the big evolutionary change what was the big pressure that made it useful to have eyes and ears and a visual system and an auditory system and a brain basically and you Know and the answer that um is you know commonly entertained right now is that it was predation that when at some point an animal evolved that deliberately ate another animal and this Launched an arms race between predators and prey and it became very useful to have senses right so these these little ampeox these little ampeoxi you know don’t really have they they Don’t have an they’re not aware of their environment very much really they and so being able to look up ahead and you know ask yourself you know is that you know should i eat that or will It eat me is is a very useful thing so the idea is that sense sense sense data is not there for consciousness it’s didn’t evolve for the purposes of consciousness it didn’t evolve for the Purposes of experiencing anything um it evolved in the search to be in the service of motor (Time 0:38:19)
Esto se relaciona con las ideas de Buszaky y otros. Muy relacionada con predictive coding.
Nuestras experiencias de cómo funciona el cerebro inducen al error Summary: The brain creates experiences for us that can be deceiving in revealing how it actually works. Transcript: Speaker 1 Works but one thing we know about the brain for sure is that the brain creates experiences for us my brain creates experiences for me your brain creates experiences for you in a way that Lures you to believe that those experiences actually reveals the way that it works but it doesn’t (Time 0:42:30)
Libre albedrío como la posibilidad de cambiar tus modelos internos a partir de seleccionar experiencias Summary: Free will involves cultivating experiences to change your internal model. You can choose what to expose yourself to and how to spend your time, which can change your brain’s wiring. This is what you can consider free will, as you have control over your current model. Transcript: Speaker 1 Of free will but i think really where free will comes from or the kind of free will that i think is worth having a conversation about is um involves cultivating experiences for yourself That change your internal model when you were born and you were raised in a particular context that your model your brain wired itself to your surroundings to your physical surroundings And also to your social surroundings so you were handed an internal model basically um but uh when you grow up the more control you have over your where you are and what you do um you can Cultivate new experiences for yourself and those new experiences uh can change your internal model and you can actually um practice those experiences in a way that makes them automatic Meaning it makes it easier for the brain your brain to make them again and i think that that is something like what you would call free will you aren’t responsible for the model that you Were handed that someone you know your your caregivers uh cultivated a model in your brain you’re not responsible for that model but you are responsible for the one you have now you can Choose you choose what you expose yourself to you choose uh how you spend your time not everybody has choice over everything right but everybody has a little bit of choice um and and so I think that is something that i think is arguably called free will (Time 0:45:11)
Estocasticidad y ruido como un posible mecanismo para la implementación del libre albedrío Summary: The workings of the brain are not fully understood, and scientists disagree on some details. There is analog communication between neurons and noise in the system, which helps the brain process information. Some animals even have clusters of cells dedicated to injecting noise into neural patterns, which could be the source of free will. Transcript: Speaker 1 Computer well there’s lots of magic i would say so far because we don’t really understand uh how all of this is exactly played out at a uh i mean scientists are working hard and disagree About some of the details under the hood of what i just described but i think there’s quite a bit of magic actually and also there’s there’s also um stochastic firing of neurons neurons Don’t they they’re not purely digital in the sense that there is there’s also analog communication between neurons not just digital so it’s not just with not just with firing of axons And some of that uh they there’s there are other ways to communicate and also um uh there’s noise in the system and the noise is there for a really good reason and that is um the more variability There is the more potential there is for your brain to be able to be information bearing so um basically you know there are some animals that have clusters of cells the only job is to inject Noise uh you know into their um neural patterns so maybe noise is the source of free will so you can think about you can think about stochasticity or noise as as a source of free free will (Time 0:47:56)
El libre albedrío como cultivar tu pasado para controlar tu futuro. Summary: You can view stochasticity or conceptual combination as sources of free will. You can’t change your past, but you can cultivate your present, which becomes your past, to control your future. Continuously cultivating your past is a way to do this. Transcript: Speaker 1 Think about you can think about stochasticity or noise as as a source of free free will or you can think of of um conceptual combination as a a source of free will you can certainly think About um cultivating uh you know you can’t reach back into your past and change your past you know people try by psychotherapy and so on but what you can do is change your present um which Becomes your past um right so think about that sentence uh so one way to think about it is that you’re continuously this is a a colleague of mine a friend of mine said so what you’re saying Is that people are continually cultivating their past and I was like that’s very poetic yes you are continually cultivating your past as a means of controlling your future (Time 0:49:20)
Relevante para la psicoterapia.
El cerebro de una guagua no es el cerebro de un adulto en miniatura. Summary: The brain needs specific instructions from the physical world to develop normally and create an internal model of the environment in order to survive and thrive. This process, called expectable input, requires spatial and temporal structures from the senses to wire the brain during infancy. Transcript: Speaker 1 So I mean here’s what I would say what I would say is that the reason why we can be pretty sure that there’s a there there is that the the structure of the information in the world what we call Statistical regularities insights and sounds and so on and the structure of the information that comes from your body it’s not random stuff there’s a structure to it there’s a a spatial Structure and a temporal structure and that spatial and temporal structure wires your brain so an infant brain is not a miniature adult brain it’s a brain that is waiting for wiring Instructions from the world and it must receive those wiring instructions to develop in a typical way so for example when a newborn is born when a newborn is born when a when a baby is born That baby can’t see very well because the visual system in that baby’s brain is not complete the retina of your eye which actually is part of your brain has to be stimulated with photons Of light if it’s not the baby won’t develop normally to be able to see in a neurotypical way same thing is true for hearing the same thing is true really for all your senses so the point is That the physical world the sense data from the physical world wires your brain so that you have an internal model of that world so that your brain can predict well to keep you alive and Speaker 2 Well and allow you to thrive that’s fascinating that the brain is waiting for a very specific kind of set of instructions from the world like not not the specific but a very specific kind Speaker 1 Of instructions so you scientists call it expectable input the brain needs some input in order to develop normally (Time 0:51:28)
Relacionado con psicología ecológica y el andamiaje de las regularidades de la realidad. El cerebro de una guagua no es un cerebro adulto en miniatura, es un cerebro esperando instrucciones.
listo_para_publicar adaptación affordances cerebro infancia
Tenemos una naturaleza que requiere de la crianza. Summary: Human infants require not only physical input but also social input, such as eye contact, touch, and cuddling, for their brains to wire themselves in a neurotypical way. The cultural patterns of caring for infants can differ, but the social environment shapes the infant’s internal model. Neglecting the social doodads can lead to a profoundly impaired human. Transcript: Speaker 1 We as always saying the book we have the kind of nature that requires nurture we can’t develop normally without sense input sensory input from the world and from the body and what’s really Interesting about humans and some other animals too but really seriously in humans is the input that we need is not just physical it’s also social we in order for an an infant a human infant To develop normally that infant needs eye contact touch it needs certain types of smells it needs to be cuddled it needs right so without social input the brain it’s that that infant’s Brain will not wire itself in a neurotypical way and again I would say that there are lots of cultural patterns of caring for an infant it’s not like the infant has to be cared for in one Way whatever the social environment is for an infant that it will will be reflected in that infant’s internal model so we have lots of different cultures lots of different ways of rearing Children and that’s an advantage for our species although we don’t always experience it that way that is an advantage for our species but if you if you just you know feed and water a baby Without all the extra social doodads what you get is a profoundly impaired human (Time 0:53:31)
Relacionado con biológicamente cultural. Parte de los input sensoriales requeridos son los socioculturales y vinculares. Contacto visual, corporal, etc. Si no es así, el desarrollo no será neurotípico, lo cual da cuenta de que es una necesidad evolutivamente determinada. Somos seres profundamente prematuros.
The Control Network: Neurons Weighing Probabilities and Narrowing the Field Transcript: Speaker 1 This is not the soul it’s not the center of yourself or anything like that but there is um it uh a set of neurons that weighs the probabilities um and and helps to select uh or narrow the field Okay and that that network is working all the time it’s actually called the control network the executive control network or you can call it a fronto-pridal because the regions of the Brain that make it up or in the frontal lobe and the pridal lobe there are also parts that belong to the sub-cortical parts of your brain it doesn’t really matter the point is that there Is this network and it is working all the time whether or not you feel in control whether or not you feel like you’re expanding effort doesn’t really matter it’s on all the time except When you sleep when you sleep it’s it’s a little bit relaxed and so think about what’s happening when you sleep when you sleep the ex the external world recedes the sense data from so basically Your model becomes a little bit the tethers from the world are loosened and this network which is involved in you know maybe weeding out (Time 1:04:54)
The brain’s construction of emotions: seeking fundamental ingredients Transcript: Speaker 1 Know for many years I was sort of struggling with um this set of observations right which is that I feel emotion and I see I perceive emotion in other people but scientists can’t find a Single marker a single biomarker not a single individual measure or pattern of measures that will can predict how someone what kind of emotional state they’re in how could that possibly Be how can you possibly make sense of those two things and through a lot of reading and a lot of and immersing myself in different literatures I came to the hypothesis that the brain is Constructing these instances out of more basic ingredients so when I tell you that the brain when I suggest (Time 1:13:29)
The Relationship Between Physiology and Action: A Neuroscience Perspective Summary: Your brain predicts and changes the systems of your body, such as your heart and lungs, based on evidence. Transcript: Speaker 1 But what I’m about to say is actually based on on on scientific evidence when your brain begins to make form a prediction the first thing it’s doing is it’s making a prediction of how to Change the internal systems of your body your heart your cardiovascular system the control of your heart control of your lungs right (Time 1:17:27)
Conceptual categories and inherent variation explained Transcript: Speaker 1 Idea is that the function of the instances is the same in a given situation even if they look different sound different smell different this is called an abstract concept or a conceptual Concept yeah now the really cool thing about conceptual categories or conceptual concept or yes conceptual category a conceptual as a category of things that are held together by A function which is called an abstract concept or a conceptual category because the things don’t share physical features they share functional features there are two really cool Things about this one is that’s what Darwin said a species was who Darwin is known for discovering natural selection but the other thing he really did which was really profound which He’s less celebrated for is understanding that all biological categories have inherent variation inherent variation Darwin wrote in the origin of species about before Darwin’s Book a species was thought to be a classical category where all the instances of dogs were the same had the exactly same features and any variation from that uh perfect platonic uh instance Was considered to be error and Darwin said no it’s not error it’s meaningful nature selects on the basis of that variation the (Time 1:23:53)
The Infinite Variables in Categorization and Physical Constraints Transcript: Speaker 1 The number of variables involved in that kind of categorization is nearly infinite no i don’t think so because there is a physical constraint right like you and i could agree that um We can fly in real life but we can’t that’s a physical that’s a physical constraint that we can’t break right you and i could agree that we could walk through the walls right but we can’t We could agree that we could eat glass but there’s a lot of constraint but yeah we could agree that the virus doesn’t exist and we don’t have to wear masks yeah but you know physical reality Still holds the trump card right but still there’s a lot of card well pun intended pun completely unintended but there you go that’s a predicting break for you yeah um uh but but there’s A tremendous amount of leeway yes yeah that’s the point so i what i’m saying is that emotions are like money basically they’re they’re like money they’re like countries they’re like Um kings and queens and presidents they’re like everything that we construct that (Time 1:29:49)
The Emergence and Cultural Differences of Emotions Transcript: Speaker 1 But you know physical reality still holds the trump card right but still there’s a lot of card well pun intended pun completely unintended but there you go that’s a predicting break For you yeah um uh but but there’s a tremendous amount of leeway yes yeah that’s the point so i what i’m saying is that emotions are like money basically they’re they’re like money they’re Like countries they’re like um kings and queens and presidents they’re like everything that we construct that we impose meaning on we take these physical signals and we give them meanings Speaker 2 That they don’t otherwise have by their physical nature and because we agree yeah they have that function but that’s the beautiful thing so maybe unlike money i love this similarity Is it’s not obvious to me that this kind of emergent agreement should happen with emotion because our experiences are so different for each of us humans and yet we kind of converge well Speaker 1 In a culture we converge but not across cultures there are huge huge differences there are huge differences in what cat what concepts exist what they’re um what they look like um so what I would say is that they feel like what what we’re doing with our young children as we uh as their brains become wired to their physical and their social environment right is that we are Curating for them we are bootstrapping into their brains a set of emotion uh concepts that’s partly what (Time 1:30:22)
How We Curate Emotion Concepts for Infants Transcript: Speaker 1 And yet we kind of converge well in a culture we converge but not across cultures there are huge huge differences there are huge differences in what cat what concepts exist what they’re Um what they look like um so what i would say is that they feel like what what we’re doing with our young children as we uh as their brains become wired to their physical and their social Environment right is that we are curating for them we are bootstrapping into their brains a set of emotion uh concepts that’s partly what they’re learning and we curate those for infants Just the way we curate for them what is a dog what is a cat what is a truck we sometimes explicitly label and we sometimes just use mental words um when you know your kid is you know throwing Cheerios on the floor instead of eating them or your kid is crying when you know she won’t put herself to sleep or whatever you know we use mental words and um a word is this words with for Infants words are these really special things that they help infants learn abstract categories there’s a huge literature showing that children can take things that don’t look (Time 1:31:24)
The role of brain predictions in empathy Summary: The brain is always making predictions using past experiences to make sense of new information. Without this ability, people can be experientially blind. This is demonstrated by showing people a blobby image before and after showing them a photograph. The brain’s predictions allowed them to see an object in the blobby image after seeing the photograph. Transcript: Speaker 1 Absolutely so so here’s what i would say um the you know there are people who scientists who will talk to you about cognitive empathy and emotional empathy and i i i prefer to think of it I think the evidence is more consistent with what i’m about to say which is that your brain is um always making predictions using your your own past experience and what you’ve learned From you know books and movies and other people telling you about their experiences and so on and if your brain cannot make a concept to make sense of those anticipate what those sense Data are and make sense of them you will be experientially blind so you know when i’m giving lectures to people i’ll show them like a blobby black and white image and their experience Is blind to the image they can’t see anything in it and then i show them a photograph and then i show them the image again the blobby image and then they see actually an object in it but the Object but the image is the same it’s there they’re actually adding their predictions now are adding right or anyone (Time 1:43:31)
Learning a Second Language and the Experience of Sensory Deprivation Transcript: Speaker 1 Who’s anybody who’s learned a language a second language after their first language also has this experience of things that initially sound like sounds that they can’t quite make Sense of eventually come to make they eventually come to make sense of them and in fact there are really cool examples of people who are like born blind because they have cataracts or They have corneal damage so that no light is reaching the brain and then they have an operation and then light reaches the brain and they can’t see for days and weeks and sometimes years They have they are experientially blind (Time 1:44:48)
Los cerebros evolucionaron para controlar el cuerpo, no para sentir o pensar. Summary: Experiencing novelty or unpredictability for prolonged periods can lead to feelings of anxiety and distress as the body’s resources become depleted. This depletion can result from the increased arousal caused by the chemicals released during periods of unpredictability, ultimately impacting the body’s budget and homeostasis. Depression and anxiety are not separate from these physiological responses, but rather a way of being in the world when predictions aren’t aligned, highlighting the deep connection between mental well-being, metabolism, body budgeting, sleep, diet, and social connections. Transcript: Speaker 1 One thing we haven’t talked about is you know brains evolved didn’t evolve for you to see they didn’t evolve for you to hear they didn’t evolve for you to feel they evolved to control your Body that’s why you have a brain you have a brain so they can control your body and the metaphor the there’s a the scientific term for predictably controlling your body is allostasis Your brain is making um is attempting to it’s attempting to anticipate the needs of your body and meet those needs before they arise so that you can act as you need to act and the metaphor That i use is a body budget you know your brain is running a budget for your body it’s not budgeting money it’s budgeting glucose and salt and water and instead of having you know one or Two bank accounts it has gazillions there are all these systems in your body that have to be kept in balance and it’s monitoring very closely it’s making predictions about like when Is it good to spend and when is it good to save and what would be a good investment and am i going to get a return on my investment whenever people talk about reward or reward prediction error Or anything to do with reward their or punishment they’re talking about the body budget they’re talking about your brain’s predictions about whether or not there will be a deposit Or withdrawal so when you when your brain is running a deficit in your body budgets you have some kind of metabolic imbalance you experience that as discomfort you experience that as Distress when your brain when things are chaotic you can’t predict what’s going to happen next so i have this absolutely brilliant scientist working in my lab his name is um jordan terryo And he’s published this really terrific paper on a sense of should like why do we have social rules why do we um you know uh adhere to social norms it’s because if i make myself predictable To you then you are predictable to me and if you’re predictable to me that’s good because that that is less metabolically expensive for me novelty or unpredictability at the extreme Is expensive and if it goes on for long enough what happens is first of all you will feel really jittery and antsy which we describe as anxiety it isn’t necessarily anxiety it could be Just something is not predictable and you are experiencing arousal because the chemicals that help you learn increase your feeling of arousal basically but if it goes on for long enough You will become depleted and you will start to feel really really really distressed so what we have is a culture full of people right now who are their body budgets are just decimated And there’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty when you talk about it as depression anxiety it makes you think that it’s not about your metabolism that it’s not about your body budgeting That it’s not about getting enough sleep or about eating well or about making sure that you have social connections it’s you know it’s you think that it’s something separate from that But depression anxiety are just a way of being in the world they’re a way of being in the world when things aren’t quite right with your predictions that’s such a deep way of thinking like Speaker 2 The the brain is maintaining homeostasis it’s actually allostasis (Time 1:56:07)
alostasis cerebro emociones evolución predicción salud
Los cerebros evolucionaron para controlar el movimiento y regular la alostasis Summary: Your brain evolved to control your body through allostasis, making predictions and managing a body budget of glucose, salt, and water. This leads to reward prediction and whether there will be a deposit or withdrawal. Transcript: Speaker 1 You know brains evolved didn’t evolve for you to see they didn’t evolve for you to hear they didn’t evolve for you to feel they evolved to control your body that’s why you have a brain you Have a brain so they can control your body and the metaphor the there’s a the scientific term for predictably controlling your body is allostasis your brain is making um is attempting To it’s attempting to anticipate the needs of your body and meet those needs before they arise so that you can act as you need to act and the metaphor that i use is a body budget you know your Brain is running a budget for your body it’s not budgeting money it’s budgeting glucose and salt and water and instead of having you know one or two bank accounts it has gazillions there Are all these systems in your body that have to be kept in balance and it’s monitoring very closely it’s making predictions about like when is it good to spend and when is it good to save And what would be a good investment and am i going to get a return on my investment whenever people talk about reward or reward prediction error or anything to do with reward their or punishment They’re talking about the body budget they’re talking about your brain’s predictions about whether or not there will be a deposit or withdrawal (Time 1:56:09)
evolución
alostasis evolución listo_para_publicar predictive_coding
The Body Budget and Predictions about Reward and Punishment Transcript: Speaker 1 Reward or reward prediction error or anything to do with reward their or punishment they’re talking about the body budget they’re talking about your brain’s predictions about whether Or not there will be a deposit or withdrawal so when you when your brain is running a deficit in your body budgets you have some kind of metabolic imbalance you experience that as discomfort You experience that as distress when your brain when things are chaotic you can’t predict what’s going to happen next so i have this absolutely brilliant scientist working in my lab His name is um jordan terryo and he’s published this really terrific paper on a sense of should like why do we have social rules why do we um you know uh adhere to social norms it’s because If i make myself predictable to you then you are predictable to me and if you’re predictable to me that’s good because that that is less metabolically expensive for me novelty or unpredictability At the extreme (Time 1:57:14)