that came from the heart. >> we have come to the end of our together and fortunately. i love this book and i know the readers will love it to. and that the lady living next door agent sonja is out now and i could not an urgent review were strongly enough to get a copy and read it. thank you for spending time with us today. >> a great pleasure thank you for having me on today.

>> good afternoon everybody and welcome to politics and prose live at lunch where we bring you our programming during the lunchtime hour. celebrating the release of livewire if at any time click the link to purchase a chat of the book on the website. women to submit to the q and a box which can be found at the bottom of your screen be sure to put your question in the q and a.

on to the main event doctor david eagleman is a new york times best-selling author and neuroscientist work at the national nonprofit institute an adjunct assert. best known for his work on time perception, his new book livewire also misled from anastasia to dreaming that revolutionized how we think he will discuss bio hackers human using echolocation in the present and future of ai i'm so here one - - excited to hear him talk today. the floor is all yours and then i will be back to moderate q and a. >> thank you it's a great pleasure to be here i have been to politics and prose in person. i'm sorry i cannot be there

this year but you can join me this way online today. so let's start with this question have you ever seen a baby zebra get born? and wobbles and then a baby giraffe world often can be born swimming how many know that homo sapiens are born it's different situation. they don't run around after 45 minutes because instead of hard wire at birth mother nature found a simpler and more flexible strategy with humans which is to allow neurons to self modify based on their experience in the

world. in other worlds we come into the world half-baked and let the world to shape us. and this is a new strategy for mother nature but it has worked really well in the sense homo sapiens taking over every corner of the planet with the internet, cured smallpox and up into the moon. it is working for us. it all comes to the future of brains is not software on top of the hardware instead it is what i call livewire and in the field we call it as plain on - - brain plasticity that this is a term that was coined a century ago by william james because he was impressed you

could take something plastic and molded into shape and it will hold the shape. if you learn my name is david there is a change in the physical structure of your brain that's why he used the word plasticity but it is so much more than that 86 billion neurons were 10000 connections with its neighbors with 1 quadrillion connections go on in the brain and every moment it plugs and unplugs and finding new places and a dynamic living electric fabric not just something you more than hold on to shape and instead changing your whole

life. that's what i have coined the term livewire instead of plastic. this is incredible technology in silicon valley to build things that we have the existence of this technology because we all walk around. so very briefly is just to give you a sense of the principles i've worked to distill from the field now there are papers on brain plasticity but i tried to figure out what are the main principles we can point to? and unlike computers brains are extraordinarily flexible. there was a case the a few years ago normal iq mildly pain and went to figure out

what was going on. he went to get a brain scan or the normal brain scan looks like something like this and then number three which points to this area of the lateral ventricle a little space in the brain for cerebral spinal fluid. this gentleman his brain looked like this. it was completely filled with cerebrospinal fluid was such pressure it push the brain up against the sides of this goal. but the story illustrates the remarkable flexibility of this material because it didn't hamper his neural development, cognition, behavior . so you cannot take your laptop and smash it like that and

hope that it will still work. and we have many examples of this when children have epilepsy affects one hemisphere of their pain, they can go in for a hemisphere ectomy where you remove after the brain. you take it out. originally they would fill the empty space with sterile ping-pong balls now they realize you don't have to do that because the cerebral spinal fluid gives enough pressure and the child has half a brain. you think the poor kid will have a deficit. that is the weird. they don't. as long as it is under the age of seven and the child has been quickly normal cognition and can speak and math problems and learn history. they tend to have a slight limp on the other side of their bod body, and they are

a little bit weaker but they are perfectly fine. the book is full of examples to set the ball rolling that what we talk about with livewired is a different beast than what we are used to. because i cannot take my laptop and terrell half of the motherboard and expected to function. brains are locked into the silence and the darkness of the school only look at the brain so the part of the brain that cares about that input and a map of her body and this was discovered in the sixties

and then to be prespecified but that's not the correct answer. your brains map and it will adjust to say i have a body without an arm now it takes over and changes the map so what is always changing from the information coming from the body and with admiral lord nelson who is the hero of the book and one arm was shot off in the battle and he strived now we understand and the

quick analogy to understand what it should look like and to use the analogy of colonization and it is a full-time business but eventually the french for sending over fewer ships than the british and the spanish they are losing the territory and exactly the same thing with the brain if admiral nelson's right arm is sending fewer ships because it is gone, then the maps change nothing lies follow in the brain everything is taken over it's a very competitive system. and the way we can see that is people who are born blind for example, normally vision is taking care of by the back of

your head but somebody who is blind it is taken over by sound and touch is not like the visual system even as we learned in neuroscience one oh one and this is the visual system only if your eyes are working. but if there are no ships coming in then it says that's cool i will use the territory for the neighboring countries which in this case is sound and touch what is a very fluid system even though we tend to

look at the way the child look at a group of the earth and think the country borders are somehow are predestined or that's the way it has to come out. and with politics and world history you know this country borders could have come out very differently if a king had died or a battle went the other way. it is an extremely fluid system. and the takeover of territory is very rapid for what i mean by that and if you blindfold them and stick them in the scanner and then you see the visual cortex based on sound and touch and this encroachment starts to happen. it is a very competitive

system and things are moving fast it is spun like a mouse trap. if it's his weight of not getting vision it starts to make changes the annexation that begins to happen. this leads to a new theory about why the dream and it is this in the chronic competition for brain real estate has a unique problem to deal with so we are cast into darkness about 12 hours of recycle about not having electricity so in the dark you hear and smell but now your

vision is to arrived so how does the visual system deal with the unfair disadvantage by keeping the occipital cortex active at night. this is the defensive activation theory and the idea is what it is doing dreams are the brains way from fighting take over from the other senses. every 90 minutes you have specific circuitry that last activity into the occipital cortex. that's all it does it is extremely specific and that's what happens during the night and so understanding what is going on with brain plasticity with the theories in the framework for what the brain is doing under the board and why. i am moving fast through

highlights but the next principal is that the brain will map itself around new data streams. you probably cannot hear the audio but this is a ted talk from a few years ago. i built a vest with vibratory motors. and then to turn sound into patterns of vibration on the skin. i was speaking and my skin is feeling that going on. here is a video by the way. the woman on the left says the word sound and on the right she says the word touch look at the way the motors are mapped between low and high frequency it is sound and touch. the point is for people who

are death - - death making give them information through the unusual channel instead of the inner ear a sophisticated biological machine and then to ship off to the brain with those little electrical spikes we have the frequencies here sending it to the brain of the spinal cord and then trapped in silence and darkness and these are spikes coming in they don't know if that is photons or air compression waves adjust see spikes. so the very first i ever tested so here he says the

word you and the so to say where and touch and in the meantime there is a company called nielsen's part one - - neurosensory to vibratory motors and translating the

sound of vibration and here was a very first participant as it was a prototype. and then neo- sensory it is wonderfully satisfying to take a neuroscience idea go from theoretical concept to a device changing people's lives also i will mentioned so we had the best to make a cameo appearance season two episode

seven that's a vest on the screen if you can see especially where they are located so we are translating location into a special feeling they weren't expecting one there so in any case to take this idea with people who are blind and in this case everybody around him and to feel exactly where you are which is better than what a sighted person has and to add navigation direction and then go right where he is going.

there's much more to say about this so with new senses please check out the ted talk i gave on this but the book goes deep into why this works so let me move on to the next principal with the brain as i mentioned is trapped in their so one example about the dog was born without front legs so what does she do she forgot how to walk on her back legs like a human and this tells us that dogs brains to drive dog bodies instead so get to food and water and their mother is

so they figure out how to control the body they are in and then we see this and humans all the time the world's best archer is harmless he holds the record for the longest accurate shot because his brain can say cool i will use my legs if anyone saw my series the brain one who was completely paralyzed with damage to her spinal cord she got the brain implants that allows her to control this very beautiful sophisticated arm simply she imagines moving her real arm and that is translated into moving the robotic arm and of course she gets better and

better because of the brain plasticity so think about it a different way so it turns out how can you make live wire devices? we are just starting this and one colleague of mine at columbia called the starfish robot is in the programmed but to figure out the body by trying different moves and seeing what happens to the body. it actually figures out the key is you can snap leg often figures how to walk again

because it figures out the body by trial and error. so the next principal the last thing i will mention then moving to q&a, part of the reason i think it's so amazing to understand what is going on under the could come one - - the good because we have completely new principles how we think about things. one example if you look at the mars rover spirit, a multibillion-dollar project, but what happened eventually stuck in the martian soil and could not get out if you compare that to a wealth caught in a trap it will chill its leg off and walk on three

legs. they have a sense of relevance. they want to get to safety so the actions are undergirded by the demands of his stomach and the predators and the difference to its goal. so brings up information about the environment and the capabilities and what the limbs allow it to do. to translate those into the motor output the worst carries on because animals don't shut down with moderate damage and neither should our machine. so i talk about the next steps however the completely different type of machine and then it figures out how to

operate. all of this is to say there is so much amazing stuff happening under the hood that we are just scratching the surface. silicon valley is so impressed with artificial intelligence but that is baby stuff compared to what is actually here with us moving dynamic electric fabric under the third one - - the head one - - the hood now i will answer any question. >> so now the idea the brain remapping itself when senses are deprived so you hear about

having feelings from the absent limb is that only happening until the brain recognizes it doesn't have the lamb quick. >> that's a great question. the right way to think about the brain is have a different timescale of change some are really rapid others change is slow so it changes fast has to present enough evidence at the next level to say i will change also. if somebody loses a limb some parts of the brain change and we're just one - - readjust right away. the deeper areas in the brain still think the information they are getting from the hand so they get confused if you

touch the face they say it must be the hand and as the result of the interaction and between and this is a whole new framework and it explains so much of what happened the oldest role in neurology is that older memories are more stable than newer memories. is somebody at the end of their life on their deathbed they don't remember the last month or year but they remember their childhood just fine. other systems don't have the property appraised then it happens is because of the way the way they work down the system to become more stable with time this is why often on their deathbed people will refer to their childhood

language like albert einstein's last words nobody knows what they were because he was speaking in german and the night nurse did not speak german. >> and with the same concep concept, what is happening in the brains of people that are put on ventilators? not sensory input with the five senses but when a body part is replaced with an external machine does that happen? >> that's an interesting question. one of the things that is fascinating report on - - replacing body parts in genera general, you are fine with artificial heart , respirator ventilator for your lungs you are still the same person but in contrast if

you even lose a little chunk of brain tissue your risk aversion and capacity to name animals or see colors or understand music and this is how we know the brain is the densest representation of you and the whole body. people often ask what about the rest of the body? like the greater metropolitan area and this is the urban center you can change and replace it. >> i have a question interested in the idea that dreams are meant the other

senses don't take over as we sleep how do you test that in a lab? had you make people not dream? >> great question we just published the paper to do research on 25 different species of primates. it turns out primates that are close cousins but there is very different levels of plasticity. and then is pretty proper the walks pretty rapidly as opposed to homo sapiens so look at all these to figure out how plastic the brain is versus preprogrammed and then how much rem sleep which is dream sleep it correlates

perfectly the less plastic the last dream sleep because the visual cortex is not in danger but the more plastic you are the more dream sleep you have to protect the brain because it's an more danger. that's how we study it and it turns out those that are on antidepressants have less dream sleep so now we look at that and do studies if everything else is approximately the same you just don't get the dream sleep at night because the vision gets poorly right now they say it's because of dry eyes. may be right but maybe not

that's what they are looking into. >> that's awesome. there is also different levels of plasticity to human brains lose plasticity as we get older and what are the ramifications? >> yes. the brain gets less plastic as it ages most people see it as a bad thing but the reason it happens is because the brain is to build an internal model of the world out there. what the brain is trying to do is figure how to optimize my behavior with how people react to me. what should i do? this is the way the brain tries to do this.

and then you get better and better as you age the reason is less flexible you put together a good understanding of how to operate in the world. that's why it becomes less plastic but the important part is to always make certain you are challenging yourself with novelties so you can build new roadways about a study going on for a long time over many decades where people donate their brains upon death and those who stay cognitively active their whole lives, when they die some had alzheimer's but nobody knew it because it and have the cognitive deficits. because they were cognitively active until the last moment they were challenging themselves with chores and responsibilities even if it

was physically degenerating with alzheimer's they were constantly building new roadways and bridges as opposed to people who retire and their lives shrink and they don't challenge themselves that is the worst thing you can do so one of the main lessons is to challenge your brain with novelty all the time that is something that you can do do something you are bad at. >> that's great and with memory loss so what do you think is the evolutionary purpose of lucid dreaming and why can some people do it and

others it takes practice and can ever do it? and then if you're in the dreaming can take control of the dream. it is very rare. most people never have in their lives. there are ways to train up on it and get better. but i think it is a bug, not a feature. that you generate consciousness and sleep is always other functions i taking out the trash with this accidental interface between the two so to answer your question i think there is any evolutionary process it's a bug that can be found sometimes.

>> and how do we see our dreams is at the imagination or what is going on there quick. >> this is a very important fundamental concept and you don't even need your eyes to see as evidence every night with a full rich visual experience looking at the circuitry carefully only 5 percent of the data back here by percent comes through the eyes. the rest is all feedback loops. so vision is not at all like a camera but the internal model of what you expect to be seeing like visual illusions

like a euros and a scientist but the issue that it demonstrates it doesn't even matter what's out there physically and colors don't even exist in the world you just have different wavelengths and the brain finds these and for speed to detect the right fruit in the tree we will call this red or green. vision is all about the internal activity when you blast that activity you can see. >> the no color thing always freaks me out a little bit. another person asks about the brain and those that have

and's on - - insomnia with the brain. >> and to make this switchover from the wake state to the sleep state is a huge thing like switching over the factory to make these big changes and it is a transition that is supposed to occur well but often does not there are a dozen ways it can go wrong have narcolepsy or sleep too much or too little but that is the short answer. >> what is the initial feedback to train the brain from the vibration? >> what you need to understand anything is having a correlatio correlation. i will back up. none of us remember this but when you were a baby you had to learn how to use your ears.

you watched your mother's mouth and then there is a correlation and there they are matched up like a clap your hands or knock on the bars of your crib and the motor output every time i get spikes that's what you learn with correlation so with the person who is deaf they learn the best by watching the world to see the dogs mouth move and at first i don't know what that is but they say those two things are linked to be trained four hours a day.

so he sees the word and feels the words and that's how he makes the correlation. thank you for the question. >>. >> how is life where different - - livewired different from reinforcement learning? i am not familiar with the term maybe you are. >> yes. will go into too much great detail but that's the way psychologists describe that they have taken on as a way of learning with feedback and to strengthen us and we can this that is reinforcement learning but more than that it is not just reward and punishment and relevance to you but also

about the tension and the job of the brain is to bring the internal model of the world and that the doesn't match with the model but learn to pay attention to that to get more information from it. one of the things it is a technical question is in chapter eight of the book to propose a new framework looking at plants they follow the light will brains do they constantly change what they do to maximize the data they get from the world so an example is with your letter with all of the photoreceptors. during the day and then to

capture photons. but as it gets dark the receptors say there are not enough photons here the link arms with each other to have lower spatial resolution to catch photons that way they are doing is maximizing the information they can take from the world at all moments and it's like this with all systems so it sounds like you might be interested in the notion that goes well beyond reinforcement learning. >> we'll take a few more questions. some questions about aia. is there anything about human intelligence that emerges from the brain that they cannot

reproduce? >>. >> as far as we can tell that level of sophistication but when we look at it it is a machine so because of that there is no theoretical reason why we should be able to simulate that one --dash it should work. and then we say we need to realize that.

and so i should be able to get there eventually. will happen in my lifetime? i doubt it. and with these wonderful things for superhuman performance that was really stupid compared to a feral child who can navigate the room and manipulate adults and get to her mouth. ai is missing what we call artificial generalized intelligence that it can distinguish pictures of cats and dogs but if you say from a beer or a camel it will feel catastrophically you cannot generalize to other things. so where we are now there is a very long way off. >> now a different component of the book, talk about the brain using mathematics and

equations? >> so if they look at a letter like the j that triggers a color experience so a is read and be is orange. we used to think it was where now is 3 percent of the population. it's not considered a disorder or a disease is the alternative perception and reality. there's a lot to say about this. if you're interested i have a book on it called wednesday is indigo blue. some can do mathematics differently because they have shapes as well.

it helps them to hold on as an example like with my phone number you may forget in a week from now otherwise you could say it has an auto pattern and that helps you to remember we are about time to wrap up. and brain computer interfaces and those nonmedical applications so with these interfaces with the noninvasive for span for a couple hundred dollars and like elon musk accompanying or link that is drilling a hole in your score putting electrodes into the brain and

then to put the technology on that that would be very useful for clinical applications. and in fact neurosurgeons will not do the surgery because there's always risk of infection and death on the operating table and there is no point to open head surgery just so they can send a faster text. i think this sort but we are doing a lot of projects where we feed information like infrared late one - - lighter drones all kinds of great stuff i doubt that get open head surgery for that.

>> another great idea in the past may be computers is a great idea today. thank you so much doctor eagleman. i have one last question what are you waiting? >> and material science it is called fascinating one is called liquid rules it is terrific and a book about forgetting the title i've totally blanked on the title but it is like being up in alaska where the land. used to be any animals that used to live there and it is absolutely beautiful. >> thank you for spending time with us today and i think everybody out there in the audience asking questions i would encourage you to check out doctor eagleman's future

events and ask questions at one of those. stay well and stay well read and see the links for livewired and the chat and on the politics and prose website. >> thank you. . . . . examines p

between law, epidemics and health guidelines. he is interviewed by georgetown university professor and director of the institute for national and global health law, lawrence. a weekly interview program with guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. all afterwards math programs are available as podcasts. >> host: i have a wonderful author that's written a fantastic book, john fabian witt. you are a distinguished scholar and historian and you've given us a book for the ages exactly at the right time we needed in the midst of a pandemic. so