The UnXplained (2019) s01e07 Episode Script

Mental abilities
faster than those
of any computer.
Senses that can extend
far beyond the human body.
And a person who can play
the piano like a Mozart
without ever taking a lesson.
There are those who believe the
human brain has more potential
than even the brain itself
can imagine,
and that its true capabilities
might be limitless.
In some ways, we know more about
the far reaches of the galaxy
than we do about the human mind.
How does the brain work,
for example?
Where does genius come from?
And can a person
actually see something
halfway around the world
using only the power
of their thoughts, for instance?
Well
that is what we'll try
and find out.
Seattle, Washington.
November 2004.
Researchers working at
the University of Washington's
Institute for Learning
and Brain Science
publish the results of a study
about the remarkable ability
that babies have
to learn any language.
Their conclusion:
The smartest
you'll ever be in your life
-is the day you are born.
The research shows that
newborn babies are amazing.
They come into this world
really able to adjust
to the stimuli
that they receive.
All of the world's languages
compose of about 800 different
types of language sounds.
And as adults, we pretty much
only utilize about 40 sounds.
However, when you're a baby,
you can actually hear
and distinguish the difference
between all 800 sounds.
It turns out that babies
are hardwired from birth
to have certain forms
of awareness.
When children babble,
it's just not ordinary babble.
You put a tape recorder
in the crib
and you listen to the babbling
and you realize that the baby
is saying the same word
over and over and over again,
that it hears random sounds
that it repeats
until it perfects it,
-until it gets it right.
Mama.
Looking at the infant brain,
it's like you're looking at the
world's most complicated sponge,
and then you're seeing
how much information
can it actually soak up
and how much of it
gets drained out over time
as the brain begins to develop
into the brains of adults.
Newborn babies have over
100 thousand billion neurons,
which is twice as much
as an adult brain,
even though their brain
is so teeny tiny.
Later on,
the neurons do prune away,
but in the beginning, basically,
the entire world
is possible for babies.
But we don't know why
certain parts of the brain
are just not accessible
to you as an adult.
nature's computer.
After millions of years
of evolution,
thousands of years
of recorded history,
and hundreds of years
of scientific research,
you might think we already know
everything there is to know
about one of the body's most
critically important organs.
But, the truth is,
we don't.
I'm a scientist, and therefore
I'm attracted to things
that are mysterious,
and what are the two greatest,
most mysterious questions
in all of science?
One is the creation
of the universe.
Why are we here?
The second great mystery is
when you look in the mirror,
you say to yourself,
"What lurks behind those eyes?
Why am I conscious?"
And then you begin to realize
that the brain
is the most complex object
in the known universe.
I think one of
the most unexplained
phenomenon that exists
in the brain is how
it stores, processes
and retrieves information.
Every breath, every experience,
every interaction,
every night of sleep,
every cup of coffee,
all of that changes your brain,
and yet your sense of self
remains pretty intact.
So how the brain holds on
to that information,
how it uses that information
to actually engage in the world,
is a wonderfully
complicated problem.
We know a lot about the anatomy
of different parts of the brain
in great detail.
What the functions are
is another thing.
For example, there's an area
called "area 25,"
and this area is turned on
in people all the time
who are chronically depressed.
And it's just a small area,
but that small area's connected
to a lot of other areas.
It's like Grand Central Station.
So it's not just the area
but everything passing through
and by there in this
whole circuit, and so,
it's more than just
complicated or complex,
it's-it's still kind of
mysterious that way.
Consciousness, in particular,
is tremendously mysterious.
Neuroscientists
still don't understand
the neural basis
of consciousness.
And philosophers
have pointed out
that, even given the fact
that the brain
is an information
processing unit
of great sophistication,
it doesn't make sense why
it needs to feel
like anything to be us.
And, ironically,
when we're studying it,
we're studying it
from within the confines
of the brain itself.
Perhaps the best illustration
of how little we know
about the human brain's
inner workings
involves an incident that
happened almost 200 years ago.
It was a case in which a man
lost a large portion
of his brain
in a horrific accident
and, inexplicably, survived.
In 1848,
there was a railroad crew
led by a man name Phineas Gage.
One day, an explosive
went off accidentally,
and a metal rod three feet long
hurled right into his face,
coming out of his skull,
landing 80 feet
into the distance.
Everybody thought that
he was an immediate goner,
but he remained incredibly calm.
He was even talking normally,
even though, apparently,
parts of his brain
were even coming out
the top of his head.
Phineas Gage was just
sitting up talking,
right after this thing blew
through the top of his skull,
which seems impossible.
He had a pole basically shoot
in one side up through his jaw
and out of his brain.
Made a significantly large hole
in his brain,
caused a lot of damage,
particularly to the frontal part
of his brain.
And yet, he both survived
and remained functioning.
So I would argue it's evidence
for how complex the brain is.
After his accident,
Phineas Gage lived
for another 12 years.
By all accounts, he was able to
lead a relatively normal life,
despite his devastating
brain injury.
But how?
How was his brain able
to compensate and function
when parts of it
had been severely damaged
and even destroyed?
It's a question that,
despite everything we continue
to learn about the brain
and its capabilities,
we currently
don't have the answer.
The brain is a learning machine
that rewires itself
after learning every task.
So you were slightly different
than you were a few seconds ago
before you learned something
'cause the brain
has incorporated that learning
into its network.
And that's why I think that
we'll never really learn
everything about the brain,
because the brain
changes with time.
If we look back
100 years from now,
I'm sure there's
still more to find out,
and we might feel like some of
the things that we're doing now
are prehistoric and perhaps
somewhat misinformed.
The brain is so complicated
and its functions
are so intricate that, at this
stage of the study of the brain,
we wonder if we even know
the right questions to ask.
Is the human brain
simply too complicated
for us to fully understand?
Or can we learn more about
the brain's amazing capabilities
by examining people
not with abnormal brains
but with exceptional ones,
individuals with almost
superhuman mental abilities
who are also known as geniuses?
The University
of California, Davis.
June 2018.
Tanishq Abraham receives
his bachelor's degree
with highest honors.
But unlike the other graduates
picking up their diplomas,
Tanishq is only 15 years old.
And then from there on,
we kind of figured, yeah,
he-he's getting
the hang of this,
and so we start introducing
new concepts to him.
When Tanishq was four years old,
we took his IQ test.
He had such a high IQ score,
I-I don't think I knew anybody
who-who had that-that high
of an IQ score personally,
so that's when I realized
there's something unusual
about this kid.
I actually want
to go to medical school
and become a doctor,
and I want to become
a physician scientist.
I know that I have a talent, and
I want to put it to good use.
What makes Tanishq Abraham's
mind different
from everyone else's?
Although scientists have been
studying child prodigies
like Tanishq for years,
they still don't really
have an explanation.
And in his case,
an explanation is
further complicated
by the fact that Tanishq isn't
the only genius in his family.
Tiara started singing
at a really young age.
She started out singing,
like, simple songs,
like "Happy Birthday"
and-and things like that,
but she sang in an opera style,
and so we'd go and ask
musicians, "Is that normal?"
And they were like,
"That's not normal." So
That's when we felt, okay,
we have a different type
of prodigy on our hands,
not the highly scientific
intellect type,
but Tiara has her prodigy
more in the arts,
and she has a really
amazing memory.
I've learned six languages,
including Spanish, French,
Italian and German.
And just for fun, I memorized
around 550 digits of pi.
It's amazing that,
in a short amount of time,
she was able to memorize
those numbers.
She kind of described it
like dance programs,
where the notes start
scrolling down.
And that's how she feels,
she said.
The numbers, they're just
scrolling by,
and she just starts
reciting them.
People don't even agree on the
definition of what a genius is.
We know that
it's not hereditary,
like the way your eye color is.
And so, really, many times,
people who are defined
or talked about as geniuses,
they do come from families
with parents with normal I.Q.
And so, I don't think
we know very much
about exactly why genius occurs.
What's so special
about these kids?
Why is it that their brain
developed in such a way
that they can solve problems
or understand things
that adults take years to do?
We need to understand
why and how this is happening,
and then maybe we can all
tap into that type of power.
Is it possible that
the potential for genius
lies within each
and every one of us,
somewhere deep within
each of our brains?
Perhaps the answer
can be found by examining
the case of a man
who wasn't born a genius,
but became one
at the age of 39.
Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
October 27, 2006.
While in town
visiting his mother,
corporate sales trainer
Derek Amato reconnects
with some old friends
at a pool party.
We got together at the pool
for a little barbecue,
and we were challenging
one another
to do all these goofy stunts.
And I told one of the guys
to throw a football,
and I would run and dive
over the water and catch it.
And I hit my head
on the bottom of
the shallow end
of the swimming pool.
I knew I had hurt myself,
but I didn't know
to what extent.
After they took me
to my mom's house,
she rushed me
right to the hospital.
They had done a bunch of scans,
and I didn't have any bleeding.
So they kept me to monitor
what was going on,
and the next morning
they sent me home.
Despite a serious head injury
that could have
left him paralyzed, or worse,
Derek appeared to make
a full recovery.
Other than a bump on his head,
there didn't seem to be
anything different about him.
Or so everyone thought.
I did go home with my mother
and stay with her
for the next five days,
and I slept.
I remember little moments
periodically looking up
and seeing these blocks,
these black and white squares.
And I just thought
they were little marks,
just from my head injury
that I was seeing
these little, uh, shapes.
After five days,
a gentleman that was with me
when I hit my head
came over to pick me up.
And we went over
to his apartment,
and there was a small keyboard
in the corner.
And as we were talking,
I just kind of felt drawn
to walk over to it.
And I sat down,
and that's when my hands
just started to absolutely go
like I'd been playing
for years.
And it was
a pretty profound moment
because I had never
touched a piano.
I did not see those
black and white squares
prior to my head injury.
And then after some time
working with some doctors,
we kind of put
these pieces together
to understand that
those little boxes are the notes
that are telling my hands
what to do and where to go.
In the years after his accident,
Derek has become
a virtuoso pianist,
and has played on stages
across the United States.
And even though
thousands of people
have now seen him perform,
the question still remains:
How did Derek develop
his incredible ability,
seemingly overnight,
and without ever taking
a single piano lesson?
My reaction at the moment
I discovered my hands
were playing the piano was,
"How am I going to
explain this to someone?"
I became so curious that I
started looking on the Internet
for any information
I could find on it.
And they even had
a title for it
as "acquired savant syndrome."
And that was all new words
for me because
I thought a savant
was a French pastry.
Acquired savant syndrome
means that after
some kind of brain injury
or damage,
all of a sudden
this person becomes
really specialized in some area
that they previously
had no skill in.
Scientists have identified
damage to
a particular area of the brain,
the left anterior temporal lobe,
as being essential
to the creation
of acquired savant syndrome.
The theory is that perhaps,
because the left hemisphere
started to go dark
after this injury, now
the right side could feel free
to express themselves fully,
and they develop
these artistic abilities.
The remarkable abilities
of people like Derek Amato
suggest that even if we aren't
born a genius,
there is something
in our brains
that could be rewired
to make us one.
It's an exciting notion,
especially if we could
find some way to unlock
our brain's potential
not by accident
but whenever and however
we want to.
Suppose we walk into
a mind design center,
and we see a menu before us,
and one item is called
"Human Calculator,"
and another item is called
"Immediate Mozart,"
another "Immediate Picasso."
How many would you choose?
Will there be trade-offs
if we try to induce
savant behavior
in ordinary people?
We just don't know.
I believe we all have these.
And it may not be musical gifts
in all of us,
but I think we're
designed gifted.
And I think it's just
a matter of discovery
from there on out.
What began as a horrible
swimming pool accident
somehow transformed
Derek Amato's brain
into that of a musical genius,
and his life into one
of great opportunity.
But what if someone finds out
that the brain they have
is not that of a genius
but of a criminal?
And not only a criminal
but a brain that matches
that of a serial killer.
Florida State Prison.
January 21, 1989.
Days before his execution,
convicted serial killer
Ted Bundy
confesses to the murder
of at least 30 people,
ending a crime spree that lasted
for more than a decade.
We often use Ted Bundy as the
perfect example of a psychopath
because he had
all the attributes.
He was charming.
He was likable.
He was k-kind of handsome guy.
He was very articulate.
He knew how to ingratiate
himself into people's lives,
and he did all the things
that you expect
a normal person to do,
and yet, every step of the way,
everything he did was about him.
He was a predator. He never
stopped being a predator.
But how could an otherwise
clean-cut and successful
young man like Ted Bundy
become a cold-blooded,
psychopathic killer?
Did the circumstances
of his life turn him into one,
or was he literally
born to kill?
There's been a lot
of studies lately
on the brains of psychopaths.
And some of the most important
findings is that we see that
they have a connectivity problem
with different parts
of their brain.
From the scans that I had seen,
scans of all these
different murderers,
including
psychopathic murderers,
there was the same pattern,
and that same pattern
was a loss of activity
in this area of the brain,
above the eyes,
above the orbits,
so it's called orbital cortex.
This is the limbic system,
the cortical limbic system,
and this is what's turned off.
When we look at someone
who is a true psychopath,
it's most likely you'll not find
much brain activity
in the limbic system.
And those parts contain areas
of empathy and understanding,
care and concern, conscience.
This seems to line up
with the reports of psychopaths,
you know, doing some
horrific things,
you know,
killing multiple people
and then just getting back up,
going to a movie,
eating McDonald's
within the hour.
They just don't seem
to have their emotions
stimulated the way that
a normal person's brain would.
There have already been studies
about trying to rewire the brain
of psychopaths, in that
we're trying to improve
some of their
connectivity problems.
Because if we see
that there's an issue
with two parts of the brain
not communicating well
with each other, maybe we can
send some electrical impulses
through it and see
if we can stimulate them
into more action.
If we do a brain scan
on every baby that's born,
and we decide that this one
has the type of brain
that's going to be
a criminal mind,
what do we do with that?
Is that, uh, something that
we have to retrain this child?
Do we keep this child under
protection as they grow up?
How do we respond
to that type of information?
Are we more determined by
genetics or environment?
We had an ongoing
Alzheimer's study
that we were doing
a clinical trial on,
but we didn't have
enough controls.
And so I said,
"Look-it, I'll ask my family."
We'll get them all in,
do PET scans,
and they'll be controls
because in our family,
there is no Alzheimer's.
And so I went through this pile
of these Alzheimer's scans,
and we cover up the names,
'cause I don't like to know
who I'm looking at,
what I'm looking at.
You got to stay
double blind, right?
And each one was normal,
normal, normal.
But I got to the last scan,
and I saw this very obviously
completely psychopathic pattern.
It looked like all these
psychopathic murderers
I'd looked at.
I said to the technician,
"This is very funny.
"You-You've slipped in one
of these psychopathic murderers.
"This is like the worst one
I've seen,
and whoever this is,
we got to notify the police."
And he goes, "This is somebody
who's very dangerous."
So when I pulled off
the name tag on the PET scan,
I looked at it and laughed.
I said, "Guys, look-it,
this can't be right."
It was my name on there.
So it was me that had
the full-blown
psychopathic pattern
in my scans.
Jim Fallon found that
he actually has
sort of this classic
psychopathic brain
from an imaging perspective,
but he's in a long-term
relationship, he has a wife,
and sometimes she has
to remind him to be
more empathetic,
but he's a good citizen.
I would say that 30% is about
biology and genetics,
and 70% is about nurturing
or the lack of nurturing.
It's like nature loads the gun
and nurturing pulls the trigger.
Charisma is really
a psychopathic trait.
And so growing up,
all through my teens,
high school, I was very popular.
You know, popular
and class clown,
and a ton of friends,
and a ton of female friends,
and really got along
with everybody.
I never thought
anything was wrong,
even though from the time
I was 11, 12 years old onward,
all the time,
some adults would say to me,
"There's something
quite evil about you,"
even though they couldn't
put their finger on it.
Although, according
to his own research,
James Fallon's brain
is similar to those
possessed by people
with psychopathic tendencies,
he hasn't gone on
to commit murder.
But why not?
Could it be that the urge
to kill requires something more,
something harder to identify
within the human brain?
Perhaps the answer lies
not in studying
the brain's physical attributes
but those
of a less tangible nature.
Maybe it has something
to do with not the biology
of the brain
but with the brain's ability
to send and receive signals
from far outside the human body.
May 2006.
Steven B. Williams,
a successful radio host
and deejay from Colorado,
has gone missing.
For the next two weeks, police
engage in a massive search.
But despite their efforts,
there's still no trace of him.
Desperate for answers,
a close friend of Williams
decides to enlist the help
of Angela Smith,
a woman with a unique talent:
remote viewing.
He didn't want to give me
any up-front information,
because in remote viewing,
often that can contaminate
the viewing and lead
to imagination, et cetera.
The process I use
consists of sitting with
a pack of white paper and a pen,
uh, a couple of letters
and numbers,
and often nothing more.
You go through accessing colors
and shapes
and smells and tastes,
and going in your mind
to the location and perceiving
and bringing back
the information.
I did a session and found water,
brackish water,
a land mass,
an event that happened.
And it seemed that
the individual in question
had been killed,
was in the water,
and a lot of other
surrounding information.
In 2006, I was a commander
for the Los Angeles
Sheriff's Department,
and I'd been in law enforcement
about 31 years.
It was quite unusual,
to say the least,
that Angela Smith would pick up
a particular homicide
and provide detailed information
and then try to help solve it.
I called the homicide
investigator and just said,
is he working on a case
with an anonymous body
found floating in the ocean?
By the fact that I had
that much information,
I immediately had his interest.
So I says, "I've got
some information on this."
And I said,
"I've got to tell you
that it's gonna sound bizarre."
Using the information
provided by Angela Smith,
the police were able to identify
a nameless body
that had been found off
the coast of Catalina Island.
It was that
of Steven B. Williams.
But it didn't end there.
Angela provided information
not only about the victim
but also about his killer.
After the body
had been identified,
I did a profile,
like an FBI profiler would do.
And that matched a profile
of an individual
that Williams had been
in contact with
and who had actually swindled
Williams out of some money.
The homicide investigator
called me back
three or four days later
and said,
"Hey, just so you know,
this stuff's legit."
They had a possible suspect,
and they even had a motive,
none of which they were getting
through
the conventional methods.
I thought, "Wow, maybe there
really is something to this."
Steven B. Williams' killer
was eventually apprehended,
thanks, it seems,
to the incredible abilities
of Angela Smith.
The idea of remote viewing
has been around for a long time.
It-It's been around for
actually thousands of years.
And it's the idea
that you can transmit yourself
out of your body
and go view other places
and-and get information,
and then figure out
what was going on
without ever having to go there.
What science has found so far,
they attach electrodes
to the brain while somebody's
doing remote viewing.
Sometimes you're
accessing information
with the right brain,
reporting it and writing it down
with the left brain,
so there's a dance going on.
It's very much
a whole-brain activity.
Can remote viewing
really provide visions
of people, places, things,
no matter where they are
on Earth?
The very notion seems absurd.
And yet, there was a time
when some thought
this practice could be used
to win the Cold War.
The Russians,
during the Cold War,
were investing millions
of dollars in parapsychology,
psychic phenomena,
remote viewing.
And the Americans felt
that they had to keep up
with the Russians,
and so they developed
their own classified program,
and were basically trying
to train psychic spies.
I was one of the first people
that was recruited
for the remote viewing program,
what's now being referred to
as the Stargate program.
I was recruited
in October of 1978.
In the late '70s,
there had just been
a revolution in Iran,
and in November of 1979,
a group of students
who were revolutionaries
took over the U.S. embassy
and took dozens
of American hostages.
So, when this
hostage situation unfolded,
U.S. intelligence
had very little information
about how many hostages
they were,
where they were being held,
et cetera.
It was reported later
that there was a team
of remote viewers
that were actually working
out of a secret location in
Maryland just outside of D.C.,
and that they were trying
to find out
what was going on
inside the embassy.
They said we need to know
who's a hostage in this place
where an embassy was taken over.
Some of the other things
we were asked to do
was describe how
they were being treated,
what they were being fed,
how they were being guarded,
other things like that.
In this case,
we were able to identify
pretty much
most of the hostages.
They actually based legitimate
intelligence efforts
on the information
that they got
from many of these
psychic remote viewers,
and so we know it works,
but we're still trying to figure
out exactly how it works.
Espionage typically relies on
high-tech equipment
like satellites,
radio receivers and computers.
But according to those
who practice remote viewing,
this technology is no match
for the greatest computer
in the world: the human brain.
I've been remote viewing now
for 42, 43 years, constantly.
People ask me, "Well, how do you
get information to come down?"
I go to a place in my mind
where it's very quiet,
and I just open to whatever
information's gonna come.
I believe that everybody has
a natural intuitive ability.
So, remote viewing training
focuses on that natural ability
and enhances it.
What it says about the brain
is that our brains are plastic.
They're able to adapt
and able to learn.
Did Angela Smith's
remarkable mental abilities
really help the police
solve a baffling crime?
There are many associated
with the case
who believe the answer
is a firm yes,
just as there are those
who believe that the contents
of an entire human brain
can actually be uploaded
like data into a computer,
and that, once transferred,
it can not only be stored
but used over and over again
forever.
Boston, Massachusetts.
March 2018.
Nectome, a biotechnology
startup company,
announces an audacious
and controversial plan.
-Their vision?
A groundbreaking technique
that can take the data stored
inside a human brain
and transfer it into a computer.
There are companies like Nectome
that are attempting
to preserve the brain
and the mind.
Our methods
of analyzing the connections
between neurons in the brain
are getting really good.
And so, eventually we'll be able
to model the connections
between all the neurons,
and at that point,
we'll have a better idea as
to whether or not its possible
to upload a brain
into the cloud,
but we'll have to wait
and see what happens.
Uploading is the process of
basically copying and encoding
someone's mental life
onto a computer.
Advocates of uploading believe
that that would really be a way
for you to survive
the death of your brain.
And now people say,
"Well, if I'm immortal,
"and I'm living my life
inside a computer,
isn't that rather boring?"
No. Because this mainframe
computer will connect
to a mechanical avatar
that is superhuman in every way.
And you will see
through its eyes.
You'll feel
through its sense organs.
So, in other words, we will have
a form of digital immortality.
Digital immortality.
The incredible notion
that we might someday
be able to live forever.
But if the information
inside our brains
can be copied and transferred,
like information
onto a computer hard drive,
-does that mean it can keep
and store everything?
Like our personalities, perhaps?
Or would something
be lost in translation?
There are two issues
to consider here.
First of all, why believe
that a digital copy of you
is capable of being conscious?
The second issue
is that it doesn't at all follow
that that being
would really be you,
that you are the survivor
rather than a digital copy.
Consciousness is one of the most
hard-to-define phenomena
about the human brain,
and it's also what separates us
from all other species.
It's this idea that we have
internal reflection.
Can we actually live on forever
in a computer and still be able
to preserve all our memories,
all our friendships,
all of the different things
that we love?
And I think that
that's a very romantic notion
for a lot of people,
that they want to feel like
there's a way to go on forever.
But you can't separate the brain
from the rest of your body.
Consciousness requires a thing
called non-computability.
Non-computability is why
this person likes chocolate
and that person doesn't.
There isn't a mathematical
algorithm that can create that.
We probably aren't at the point
where we understand well enough
what makes it human
and conscious
to really recreate that
in the computer.
My guess is
your consciousness in you
is more than just
the composition of your brain.
I think there is a special
combination that makes us human
that at the moment is a secret.
I'm not convinced
science won't be able
to figure it out at some point.
In this day and age,
we tend to believe
that anything can be
accomplished through
the power of technology.
But in the case of digitizing
the human consciousness,
there seems to be a unique
combination of factors
that can't simply be reduced
-to a series of ones and zeroes.
And according to
many neuroscientists,
the reason we can't transfer
a person's personality
-from inside their head
to a computer
is because our minds are already
networked to something else,
something outside our bodies.
There's a sense
that you even have as a child
that there's something
beyond us, outside of us.
There's this otherness
involved and this,
perhaps, connection
with the universe.
You yourself are a part
of the universe.
I don't mean
you're in the universe.
I mean, you are literally
a piece of this universe,
so you are connected
to everything else,
everywhere else.
When you have thoughts
in your mind,
they are reaching out
and connecting with other things
that are similar to those
thoughts in the universe.
So it's possible that our brains
could be acting like
transceivers to receive that.
If you think of the way
your smartphone connects
to the Internet
or to a Wi-Fi network,
the human mind
is actually connecting
to a field of information.
There seems to be this ability
that humans have,
somewhere deep down in
the darkest corners of our mind,
to be able to tap into
information fields
that are not readily known
by us.
This means that consciousness
can extend outside the brain.
So when people say, "Is the
brain a generating consciousness
"or is it a receiver
for consciousness
that's present in the universe?"
I think it's a bit of both.
If our minds can tap into
the very fabric of the universe,
could that help to explain
why the human brain
is still such a mystery?
Is it ultimately
too vast and complex
to figure out
by means of simple biology?
There are those who believe
the answer is yes.
And, if that's the case,
how can we even be sure
that everything we know,
our thoughts, our very memories,
for example,
are safe from being stolen
by outside forces?
The fact is they're not.
Boston, Massachusetts.
July 2013.
Scientists at Boston University
publish the results
of an extraordinary experiment,
results that call into question
literally everything we know.
A few years ago,
we had a series of experiments
where we were able
to create a false memory
in the rodent brain.
We put our rodents
in a safe environment
where they were free
to roam around, and we developed
a set of genetic tricks
where the brain cells
that held onto the memory
of that safe environment
now became responsive
to pulses of light.
So the next day, what we did was
we put the animals
in a completely different
environment
and we gave them a couple
of mild foot shocks
in that environment,
in an attempt to startle them.
But they key thing is that
we could shoot light
into the brain
and reactivate the cells
that held onto that safe memory.
So, one of the ways
that we've known
that we've switched the memories
is that the animal
no longer behaviorally looks
like its scared.
And then that at least opened up
the floodgates to this idea
that we can artificially
manipulate memories in general.
We might be able to one day
perform some kind of surgery
or some kind of intervention
in the brain to enhance memories
that we don't want to be lost
as a result of Alzheimer's.
Or suppress memories,
let's say, that we don't want
to be there in cases of PTSD.
Or suppress emotions,
for instance,
in certain cases of anxiety.
Memories are stored, just like
you can put memories on a card
in a video camera
or your cell phone.
And it's possible that you could
manipulate the chemical,
the organic wiring, so to speak,
just like you could
manipulate a memory card
in an electronic device.
You can take one file out
and put another file in.
In the future, we'll be able
to record memories,
play them back
and alter these memories.
And I wouldn't be surprised
that, in the future,
you'll be able to go
to a library
and have that vacation
that you never had.
But once we learn
how to add and remove
files from our brains,
if we do not have
some kind of safeguard system,
some kind of firewall
to prevent other people
from doing it
without us letting them,
then trusting our memories
might be a problem.
Implanting new thoughts
into people's minds?
Artificial memories?
The implications are as profound
as they are frightening.
For example, how do you know if
you actually watched this show?
Perhaps someone
simply created a memory
and put it inside your head.
Preposterous?
How would you be able
to tell the difference?
Let's face it, just when
we think we've figured out
everything there is to learn
about the human mind,
we realize how little
we really understand
and how much more
we need to know
before there is nothing left
that is unexplained.