we have to give a book out. who will wegive it to, brooke? >> you read it. i feel silly reading it. >> whatever you would you do without her, brooke. they're talking about her. >> thanks, michael howington. >> that's the man tonight. >> you do not know -- what would you do without me? >> i don't know. >> and angie and stephanie and our team. >> here now larry king. >> larry: tonight, does the brain have a mind of its own? >> the mind is an entity that exists outside of the brain and can exert power. >> larry: making us do and say things we know we shouldn't. >> your brain fools you. >> larry: causing us to eat, drink too much or stay in abusive relationships. >> work on heroin or morphine

centers of the brain. >> larry: is the brain more powerful than any drug or therapy? next on "larry king live." a few notes before we get started. great rundown for you next week. jimmy carter will be here monday night. barbara walters on tuesday. jerry seinfeld next thursday. all in new york. bad behavior, is it all in our heads? we'll talk about it with dr. drew pinsky. kara researcher. dr. daniel aimon, psychiatrist and brain imaging special author of "unchain your brain." and finally dr. george pratt,

notable psychologist. first, what's a neuro science researcher? >> somebody who studies the brain really. neuro science is a broad term. it can be neuro biology or ne r newer -- neuro psychology. education is really the path that i want to take. >> let's get into the overall topic here. the brain. we'll start with you dr. pinsky. why does the brain not stop us from doing things we know are wrong? >> it would make sense if you have an evolutionary point of view that the brain was a perfect instrument that increased our surviveability and only did good things for us. not just trying to decide why the brain isn't the perfect system in terms of how to

operate, how does the brain create the mind? >> they are different? >> i kind of think the best way i can communicate to people is music is caused by a bow going across the strings of the violin. >> larry: we're going to break this down in topics by segments. we'll talk about overeating. anybody would know it's wrong to overeat and bad to be fat. why would you overeat? doesn't the brain tell you that's too much? >> not really. in fact as your weight goes up, the actual physical size of your brain goes down. your judgment -- >> larry: you get dumber? >> you get dumber. your reasoning goes down. so being healthy is critical to thinking right but if you've had a brain injury overeating goes up. if you've been eating badly for a long time, you become addicted

to the bad foods, fat, sugar and salt when you put them in certain combinations and work on the heroin or morphine centers of the brain. >> larry: they say to exercise. can you exercise your brain? >> yes, you can. the first thing to do besides taking good care of yourself physically and proper supplementation would be to use various strategies to certain connections and also to remove and release trauma, stress, and those elements that are interfering with your quality of life. >> larry: practical exercises you can do? >> actually there are. when there's an exciting new development in energy psychology which is using the body's energy system to actually the ak u puncture system to create changes in the feeling state and have an affect on the brain.

some of the little simple techniques can be learned and practiced in five minutes. >> larry: the more you research, the more imponderable it gets? >> definitely. i think that what dr. drew was speaking about is really important. a lot of individuals in fields related to neuro science have been struggling with the question of mind and brain for as far back as we can remember. there are a lot of people that still believe that the mind is an entity that exists outside of the brain and can exert power on the brain. we see changes in research that show that we do have very plastic brains meaning that connections between different cells can sometimes change and we can have new pathways that are wired based on experience so there's an interesting kind of

feedback loop where the brain creates mind and then the mind can exert power on the brain and physically change the structure of the brain. >> larry: can a poor learning brain have a good mind? >> probably. >> thomas edison did terrible in school. got beaten in school. and obviously we would say he had an amazing mind. >> larry: how do we separate them? >> mind body duelism goes back. how do we deal with something like obesity where we've been evolutionary. millions of years went into our brain development. we took advantage of what the environment had. things that were high in calorie and things in fat and sugar and things we craved that we were well rewarded in our brain system. the brain is many different systems. rationale system. award system.

emotional system. executive system. the fact is with eating the reward system and u foric system and for some people that can trigger an addictive process. >> does the stomach tell me i'm hungry or the brain? >> we think of the symptomic as your second brain because your intestinal track produces chemicals that work on your brain than the brain itself. your body is really one system. i think of your brain as the super computer that is running everything but it's all interconnected. >> larry: will the brain tell me to overeat? >> sometimes it does if people have damage to separate parts of the brain you can have faulty signals. we discussed a case of a woman who was 490 pounds and then had a lap band and was 280 and she couldn't move lower on the scale with that so they experimented

with deep brain stimulation and running wires to certain parts of the brain to help her to feel a lack of craving and it shows some promise but i would like as a clinical psychologist i think what are the circumstances besides the physiology that are going on that can be affected. >> base to basics, why does the brain do dumb things? >> that's a great question. >> that's a difficult question. i think that we have a lot of -- the brain as dr. drew was saying is messy. evolutionary messy. higher order and higher thinking mammals our executive function can get in the way of our deeper brain processes. we have a lot of cognitive biases and cognitive falcys that

we face every day. they can get their exercise in check and this is the same with addiction. we often times overcompensate and overthink how well we can put ourselves amidst stressors in our life so we'll be around people who are eating rich foods and be around people smoking cigarettes in our presence and study after study show that we definitely don't quite have the control that we think we do. >> larry: will power, does it work? find out after the break. after using rogaine for a while, i went to my stylist

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>> larry: i guess one of the definitions of insanity was repeating the same thing and expecting a different result. let's get to overeating. what does the brain expect? >> i want to stop just for a second here at the question you posed before going to break which is does will power work? this is disease of addiction that i work with. will power -- the usual systems that we deploy to decide and to affect voelition, you start thinking the wrong things. you start feeling the wrong

things are the right things. >> larry: you fool your brain? >> your brain fools you. things like -- my patients all the time get sober but i've been thinking about that guy joe. i have to visit joe. joe lived next to my crack dealer. the fact is that kind of thinking emerges always in addiction. the systems that we use to rely upon for something we call will actually become at the service of the deeper brain systems to which we are completely helpless. >> larry: since drugs are illegal, is there a criminal mind toward the brain? you know you are doing wrong not only for the addiction but you would even steal it for the addiction. what is the brain doing there? >> one part of the brain we have to talk about when we talk about addiction or will power is the front part of the brain. the front third of the brain largest in humans than any other animal by far. 30% of the human brain.

11% of the chimpanzee brain. it's not fully developed until we're 25 years old. when it's weak, it's like the supervisor in your head is taking a break and then your inner child who is having tantrums or who wants crack cocaine or wants the third piece of cheesecake, if it is not right, nothing in your life is going to be right. so head injuries matter. low blood sugar matters. you don't eat breakfast, you will make bad decisions about food the rest of the day. if you don't sleep right, lower blood flow to the brain. >> larry: doesn't that defy the fact that when you're 4 years old you know everything about yourself then. >> when we're talking about will power, we have a conscious and subconscious mind.

if we didn't -- it's called different things. what happens is it's busy doing things for us all the time that we're not taking conscious awareness of because if we did, we would be overloaded with all of the things that are on our minds. cellular reaction. movement of my arm as i'm speaking. if you think when you write a check and you write the first letter, the rest of your name is automatic. when you are walking, it's automatic unless you are climbing very special stairs. this is busy doing this all day long but sometimes you can't get from the subconscious to the conscious mind. we have cognitive therapy as a psychologist. we're taught to change how you think and change how you feel. that goes so far because you cannot think your way out of some of these things. it is not connected. you have to use tools to utilize the subconscious which is very exciting. the number of nurones firing at

the conscious level estimated 40. at the subconscious neweron firing 40 million. >> larry: i know this girl is wrong for me. i know that. >> that's a different thing. >> i think this is actually really important because it speaks to what some of the panelist have been saying about the frontal cortex. even in a healthy brain, we have nuron tracks and fires that connect nurones in other areas of the brain. there are a lot of neuron tracks connecting the system to the frontal cortex. there are almost none connecting it back. that means the deeper emotional self has total control over our executive function. our conscious being often times

cannot handle and cannot control and tell our emotions what to do. we're victims to them. >> when you talk about -- you were moving into bad relationships now. >> larry: i'm getting there. i don't want to be conflicted or controlled by one topic. the topic is the brain. >> the heart is the body. and i come from a sort of theoretical frame work where we don't pay enough attention to the brain/body connection. >> larry: we'll be right back. what about relationships, doesn't it require two brains to interact? how does that work. maybe we'll get answers next. hi.

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you need a partner who delivers convenience. everyone knows a fee is a tax. you raised some taxes during that period, particularly the property tax as well as a lot of fee increases. as you know, there's a big difference between fees and taxes.

but...they're the same. it's a tax. it's a tax. it's a tax. it's a tax. there's a big difference between fees and taxes. fees and taxes are one in the same. if it comes out of my pocket, it's a tax. now he says it isn't true. we didn't raise taxes. what? still doing the same thing, paying out more money. typical politician. definitely. >> larry: fascinating subject tonight. the brain. pick up where you left off. >> you mentioned about two brains. in terms of solving these problems we were talking about, we left the notion of a single skull system and co-creator frame works and how brains affect one another. before the break i talked about how i see the mind/body connection so important in that when i'm working with an addict, i don't want to hear what they're saying or thinking because it's distorted. i sit and just try to atune my

body to theirs and see what i understand with empathizing where they are at and reflect that to them and that creates a kind of connection that creates the possibility of changing the wiring of the kinds of systems we're talking about here. >> larry: how, dr. amen, do people change? how does the brain change its behavior for the better? >> we see that all the time at our clinics. we do brain injury. we're in the middle of a big nfl study now. we scanned 105 football players and 103 of them have brain damage. and on the right program, which is getting them to sleep and getting them to lose weight and optimizing their vitamin d level for example, using simple supplements we improved their brains 80% of the time and then their thinking is better and their relationship is better. when your brain works right, that's what i've always said, you work right. when your brain is troubled from a concussion, from an illness,

you're going to have trouble in your life. >> larry: this may sound stupid. what makes one person smarter than another? >> that's an interesting question. i would say what makes one person smarter than another is their ability to adapt and to accept and to determine the course to go with which requires a clear brain to maximize iq you have to be in a certain state where you can perform. we also have eq, emotional quotient which is in some ways more important than iq because it's your ability to maximize intelligence as you relate to others and get things accomplished. >> larry: we know genes could affect -- i could have kidney disease because my mom had it. can you inherit brain problems? >> definitely. >> larry: can you be born stupid? i don't mean stupid, you can be born with deficiencies in the

brain. >> you can be born with problems with brain structure, with your neuro chemistry that cause diseased states later in life and there are some things than changed and some things that are somewhat fixed in the brain. we know that behavioral interventions can give great results because like we were talking about before the ability of the brain to adapt. there are some things that you have to kind of hit in the right developmental period before they get pretty well set. >> larry: can you spot this in a 3 year old? >> i think that we're starting to see that with autism, for example, which used to be diagnosed around age 4 and 5, we can see changes in their brains as early as 1 1/2 years old because they realize that autistic boys generally have much larger brains than nonautistic boys so are there some organic things that can be measured early but often times the behavior has to come out before someone recognizes the

problem. >> larry: can you study a brain, a microscope, tell me something about that person? >> well, with our studies we do a study where i could look at a scan and tell you a lot about that person. whether they will be impulsive or -- >> larry: just looking at the scan? >> just looking at the scan. it's very important. back to your point, my daughter is pregnant. and how her health is during her pregnancy will have a huge impact on that baby and for the baby's rest of life and how smart they are, how adaptable they are. how anxious they are. so taking care of pregnant mothers is just critical. a lot of people don't know they're pregnant until week six and the brain starts to develop at week three. if they're drinking early and they don't know that they're pregnant, it can potentially have a huge impact. >> larry: talk about drug addiction. a puzzling problem right after this.

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>> larry: dr. peinsky, there must be a good side to drug addiction or why would so many people take it if they tell you it kills you and you run down to the store to steal it or get it. how does the brain deal with that? why would any person with drain take cocaine? >> one is why you start using and why you can't stop using. the starting usually is you are

trying to find a solution to a problem and find better. the culture tells you this will work. if your brain is genetically set up a certain way, it works. that's what you have to acknowledge in drug addicts. they use drugs because they work. they do feel better. a lot better. for an extended period of time many times and then a second phenomenon kicks in which is the disease of addiction whereby in spite of it no longer working or having serious consequences in their life, i like to call the do it again part of their brain has now been altered in such a way as to require them to do it again, do it again. >> larry: dr. amen, what does the need for the addiction due to the brain. the brain still knows that it is damaging it. >> it damages it over time. >> larry: the brain is damaged? >> yes. so the emotional part of the brain, the pleasure center in the brain hijacks it and it is damaging your front aa aal cort

you have less control. once someone gets clean, it can take months before they begin to feel clear headed. i hate 28-day programs because they haven't really learned anything because their brain is still not clear. >> larry: are there drugs for the brain? >> absolutely. >> larry: to help the brain? >> yes. we have many both natural medicines, fish oil being the one and we have anti-depressants and anti-psychotic medicines and anti-seizure medicine that help people with anxiety and depression. i always say food is your best medicine. we know if you eat a bad diet, you have a higher risk of dementia and depression. >> larry: what does depression due to the brain or does the brain cause the depression? >> depression is the affect of various factors. what's happening both within a person and their brain obviously and also usually in their

environment. depression occurs -- it has an affect on every aspect of a person's life. we all know the standard phenomenon, sleep disruption, appetite disruption, concentration problems, difficulty maintaining relationships and that creates a huge problem for individuals and then families so my job as a clinical psychologist is to help use cognitive and energy and hypnosis tools to go back and find out what the problems are and if you can get them and go back to grief or trauma and you can clear those traumas, you can create a huge affect. >> we see that in the brain. that's the exciting thing. if you do a treatment like hypnosis for people with post-traumatic stress disorder -- i published a study that said we calmed down the emotional structures in the

brain. therapy can help enhance brain function. >> larry: in an autopsy do we discover anything about the brains of suicides? >> suicides -- >> just last week there was a study of a kid that's an nfl player who committed suicide and they found trauma on the surface of the brain. >> larry: so a concussion could cause you to go over the top? >> i published a study on suicide a couple years ago. the most human thoughtful part of the brain in people who killed themselves was really low in activity which means they didn't have a supervisor. i always say suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. >> larry: do you study the brains of drug addicts? >> i have looked at neuro psychological effects of people that abuse drugs but generally in my research in the past it was with individuals who had

sensory disabilities. blindness, deafness, paralysis and later turned to abusing drugs. this was my field of research when i was younger. i would look -- >> larry: you were younger? >> i would like at the neuro psychological outcomes doing more behavioral testing using neuro measures. i wasn't looking at their brains but we were trying to make inferences about their behavior. >> larry: do blind people have different type of brains? >> depends on where the blindness occurred. blindness is a complicated pathway that is both in your eyes and in your brain. >> larry: when we come back, we'll talk about memory. -d. nothing works stronger, faster or longer for allergy congestion relief without drowsiness. get claritin-d at the pharmacy counter. live claritin clear. [ male announcer ] it's luxury with fire in its veins. bold. daring.

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>> larry: i don't know if this was true. i read that einstein had 14% memory. his brain retained 14%, which made him a genius. is that true? >> einstein's brain was a little bit smaller than the average brain. >> larry: doesn't memory bring genius? the more you remember the smarter you're going to be? >> not necessarily. what brings genius is being able to look at common things in a different way. and he certainly had that ability. >> larry: do you study memory? >> yeah. that's a big field. memory is important for certain things. really the higher order functions are things like problem solving.

that's really more of what dr. amen is referring to. if you solve things in a novel way never thought of before. >> larry: would you go nuts with 20% memory? >> we would have to do a lot of stress management. it would melt our circuits. genius is made up of so many different elements. to be optimally functioning you want to utilize all of the tools that you have and that means making sure that you are taking proper care of yourself, your hard drive is clear and again trauma is so powerful in effecting and disrupting memory and most people have a lot of untreated and even unrecognized trauma. >> this is an important point. in my world i noticed increasingly that trauma is the problem of our time. trauma not meaning physical

trauma but interpersonal trauma is emotional abuse at the hands of important caretakers has dramatic effects on the brain and has lots of information about how the brain disregulates and disassociates and now the left brain manages these things versus the right. >> they have determined if you have one trauma there's a permanent 20% elevation in the inflammation in our body and that leads to illness. if you have untreated trauma, you definitely want to get it treated. >> larry: do you study alzheimer's? >> i have in school but i have never done alzheimer's research personally. >> larry: what happens in the brain? >> new research is always coming about for a while that we thought that it had to do with plaques and tangles but we're starting to see that there is some conflict within the scientific community that maybe not specifically alzheimer's but

dementia and some people would say this is a normal function of living a very long life and others would say this is a pathology. >> what we see in brain scans is the back half of the brain in peoples with alzheimer's disease completely deteriorates. the nfl players, they don't have alzheimer's disease as a group. it's frontal lobe that's damaged. >> larry: what's dementia? >> dementia is the big category. that's where you lose cognitive function that's abnormal for your age. alzheimer's disease is one of the types. the football dementia that we talked about, that's another one of the types. there's blood vessel dementia where you have a stroke. there's age related dementia. i wrote a book once called "preventing alzheimer's" you prevent the risk factors. obesity is a risk factor for alzheimer's. the more fat on your body, the worst it is. diabetes is a risk factor.

depression is a risk factor. alcohol abuse is a risk factor. living a brain healthy life is critical to keeping your memory. >> larry: we'll be right back. [ drums playing ] [ male announcer ] 306 horsepower. race-inspired paddle shifters. and f-sport-tuned suspension. all available on the new 2011 lexus is. it isn't real performance unless it's wielded with precision. [ but aleve can last 12 hours. tylenol 8 hour lasts 8 hours. and aleve was proven to work better on pain than tylenol 8 hour. so why am i still thinking about this? how are you? good, how are you? [ male announcer ] aleve. proven better on pain. that was the moment of truth. medicare by itself doesn't cover everything. i don't want to spend my life worrying about what would happen if one of us got sick.

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>> larry: we're back with our panel in a couple moments. but neuro surgeons from the west virginia health science center are on the front lines of an experimental approach for the treatment of obesity. it target the brain and not the belly. here to talk about it is dr.

julian bails. what have we discovered? explain what this is, doctor. >> this is inserting electrodes deep in the brain in the part that controls our appetite. our neuro surgeons have spearheaded this fda approved study to see if this possibly would have some benefit for patients with morbid obesity. the most severe forms. the one where their life expectancy will be affected. >> larry: how does it work? >> electrodes are placed on both sides of the brain. one into the part that makes you feel full and the other part is the appetite center where your drive to eat is. a pacemaker generator is

inserted under the skin and we change settings and try to see if we can affect the appetite drive these patients have. >> larry: what have you learn sod falearned so far? >> the procedure can be done safely. we don't think we're having side effects and we can affect the urge to eat and decrease the urge. we're looking at it being well tolerated. the jury is still out. we don't have all of the results yet. we're working to refine the settings to see if we can get the weight loss that we and the patients desire. >> larry: why only very obese people? >> well, this is the way the study was set up. it's in patients who have failed all medical diets. patients who have failed gastric or stomach bypass surgery. patients who underwent psychological evacuation and their life expectancy is

significantly reduced if they can't get this morbid obesity under control. >> larry: fascinating. can i ask you a couple questions about concussions? >> yes, sir. >> larry: west virginia has a prominent football team. major problem in nfl and college football and one of the great baseball stars sat out almost the whole year. what is a concussion and what causes it? >> concussion is either the head gets hit or the head gets moved back and forth violently that the brain moves inside the skull. our brain floats in this bath of fluid. i think that causes a tearing of fibers, rotation of the brain causes tearing of the fibers so the brain is injured. most of the time it recovers. we think in selected cases we're also finding perhaps a genetic predisposition, in selective cases it can accrue and lead to long-term problems in a minority of players.

>> larry: could a problem be in the helmet? >> well, the helmets have undergone a lot of changes and improvements and helmet design is important but in my opinion helmets aren't the whole answer. we need to take the motion of the brain inside the skull out of the game. >> larry: in the nfl they fear it may shorten life. can it? >> well, you know, we have autopsied quite a few athletes who have had a shortened life because of this syndrome. again, i support football. i think it's america's greatest sport. we want to make it safer. in certain cases there have been long-term de long-term detrimental affect effects of multiple concussions. >> larry: back with our panel after this.

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>> tonight on "360." the theory that terrorists come into this country to have baby so the child can be raised and trained overseas and returned 20 years later back to america to commit an act of terror. texas state representative debbie riddle talked about it on our program back in august. this week in another interview, she tried to change the facts. we'll play parts of both interviews and let you decide. keeping them honest and digging deeper into the two suspects in

the home invasion horror in connecticut. they each served time in prison and met at a halfway house. what may have driven them to commit an unthinkable crime. more from the race in delaware and country music star trace adkins on the country's polarized political climate. that's at the top of the hour. now back to "larry king." >> larry: back with our panel, dr. drew pinsky, dr. daniel aman, psychologist and brain image specialist and psychologist dr. george pratt. what did you make of that study about the obesity study at west virginia. >> i think it's very interesting. and psychiatry and neurosurgeons are starting to work together again and planting these electrodes in the brainution imaging for things like resistant depression. for obsessive compulsive disorder and now for people who are morbidly obese.

it's exciting, and going to be much better than the psycho surgery, you know in the 1940s and '50s. >> what do you think, kara? >> i think it's really interesting. and i think we're probably the research is limited is the problem of knowing why certain people eat or certain people abuse drugs. we like to put them all under an umbrella of, there's something wrong with their dopamine system or these people specifically don't get enough neurotransmitter that tells them they're full or their stomach is not telling them the right signals. but, you know, everybody's pathology is very different. and until i think that we can accurately diagnose why people have these addictive behaviors, it's going to be difficult because we're going to be working with a one size fits all treatment. >> let me say, cara, as a follow-on to that. i deal with a lot of people that end up losing all the weight and they're not right emotionally after they lose the weight. there's all kinds of reasons the weight was there and those

things have often not been dealt with. >> don't they become more addicted when you have gastric bypass? >> the problem with alcoholism goes way up. we see lots of bypass patients -- >> challenges even with depression. even when you lose 100 pounds and you think they'd really be doing well. >> absolutely. >> larry: we have a facebook question posted on our facebook page. where else would it come? do we know that part of the brain causes obsessive compulsive behavior? >> there's a lot of imaging work with obsessive compulsive. the prefrontal cortex, we've been talking about this. rather than being low, which we see in impulsive disorders, the prefurnal cortex works too hard with people with ocd. we call it hyperfrontality. some of the medicines or therapies we use actually calm down the prefrontal cortex so people don't think about things over and over again. >> we posted to the larry king facebook page asking for questions for this show on the brain.

we've got a lot. don't have time to get them all in. 12 years ago, i got into an accident in the snow. i don't drive in the snow anymore. i am a terrified passenger if it's snowing. i become paralyzed. i cry. i know it's irrational. what's going on with my brain, cara? do you know? >> yeah, or it sound like it could be a post-traumatic stress disorder. >> larry: what is post-traumatic stress. something happens to you and -- >> and you experience hypervigilance, heightened levels of stress and you actually have behaviors in your life that are so difficult that they, you know, they make your life difficult to navigate after that. we see it obviously in war time. we see it after trauma, after abuse, after rape, and after things like car accidents. >> larry: we didn't hear it, though, until vietnam. never heard it after world war ii. >> it was shell shock. different sayings. >> one thing about this case, ptsd can create all of those symptoms. as well as triggering panic attacks and you have one trial

learning when you are in a situation that's highly negative. and you imprint on that and then you have a problem driving in snow because you have an association. >> larry: how do you get rid of it? >> the desensitization methods. it's actually quite easy to get rid of. >> this is how the brain works. it locks things in. parts of the brain wall off. to be healthy, we have to integrate as a whole. but traumas lock off parts from the part of the brain that conscious. >> even with scans with people with ptsd, the prefrontal cortex inactive and the limbic system is overdriven. we can see direct correlations of what these methods can do to desensitize people. >> larry: we'll be back with our remaining moments. don't go away.

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>> larry: only have a few minutes left. i don't get personal on this show but i'll tell a true quick story. i had heart surgery. i'm in new york, in bed, post surgery. my doctor, on the front cover of the "new york times" magazine. into the room comes a man. he says he's a brain surgeon at the hospital. he says i don't mind dr. isom. i like him. he's a great guy. he's getting all this attention. but heart surgeons are plumbers. they do plumbing. i'm a brain surgeon. one move of my little hand can change your memory forever. i have to be so delicate and yet, with all of this, nobody knows me. and i said, of course the song "ain't i left my brain in san francisco." now the story is true.

that happened. but the heart does command us, doesn't it? the heart wins. >> the body. >> the brain tells the heart what to do. >> the brain wins. >> the brain and the heart working together. >> the heart has to work or the brain -- >> larry: if you are in a malfunctioning relationship, the heart doesn't -- >> know know what you are saying. we're all know our terminology here. the fact is what your saying, when we have a deep drive and a desire to be with somebody, that's what we're going to do. >> larry: i can't talk you out of love, can i? >> no. >> i love you with all my brain. saying i love you with all my heart doesn't work from a neuroscience perspective. >> larry: can you talk someone out of a relationship? >> not using the literal mind. if someone is suffering from love pain or anguish, these mthss work. >> larry: cara, why did you decide to make a career of this? >> it's the only option i feel like i had. when i first started school, it's the only -- >> larry: had to be the brain? >> it was the only thing i found. it's the most interesting thing. >> larry: was your father into this? >> no. my mother is an educator. my father an engineer.

i had to. i started in music and then i went into psychology. and as i was studying psychology and philosophy i realized i needed to know more about the organic basis of these things. just grew from there. >> larry: we only have a minute. what fascinates you the most about the brain. >> exactly what she's talking about. all these different fields, anthropology, psychology, philosophy are all coming together under the rubric of neuroscience. >> larry: what about you? >> neuroplas tisity. how the brain can rewire and change itself. dr. chandra had amput ease with phantom limb pain. they had been taking lots of medication. he developed a mirror. he'd insert one hand, the intact arm. the person would see the other arm as intact and repyred the brain within minutes. i love neuroplast isity. >> who you are has to do with the physical functioning of your brain. and it can change. and that is so exciting.