that. president trump announces a restart of peace talks with the taliban in afghanistan during his 1st visit to the country. the french president doubles down on his criticism of nato describing the military alliance and brain dead. and a rally in the french capital to raise awareness of violence against women is itself by violence as one feminist group clashes with another we talked to one of the women who took part. i was in the rage we went to this demonstration because we wanted to defend women's rights the violence against women the protest raises questions and demonstration with the slogan all of us turns out not to be for all of us at all all those all the headlines you can find out more about these stories

on our website dot com and we'll be back with another round up in about an hour's time and stay with us for so if you go next to it on all 3 international. welcome to you sophie visionaries of shevardnadze human lying. beautiful it can be remains a mystery can a consciousness ever be explained what is consciousness about this and much more of an amazing neuroscientist says in greenfield. arena's susan greenfield pleasure to have general program as a pleasure to be here sophie so we've spoken to some of was brilliant minds and

your love 1st woman interview and i'm very excited to talk to thank you eventually about the brain because it seems to be the eternal topic so you're very. well known and respected neuroscientists and you've covered many aspects of human brain and how it works and all of that and i have talked neuroscientists and most of them tommy that we're very dual beings that brain and body are 2 separate entities one is. by the other they all seem to somehow stick to this theory i want her you think there are really 2 separate things the strange image of the brain in the body are separate you look a bit weird if you that was the case. no they're very integrated if you think about it the immune system the end of crown the hormone system are things that we have in common so the placebo effect for example where you can take a drug that's completely in or it completely has nothing active in it but you think

it's going to make you better and it does the so-called perceiver fact that has to work in conjunction the central nervous system has to work in conjunction with the immune system and the endocrine system hormones because otherwise you'd have biological amoco if they were separate so there has to be a system for the brain in the body to be really integrated in the brain after all is just another organ of the body a very important organ a very greedy organ in terms of energy but nonetheless it is an integral part of your body it's not as if it's a separate old machine that's perched on top of the body directing like a little rover and of course all you have these chemicals are iterating throughout your body from the great control systems of blood in the streets the central nervous system the endocrine system and the autonomic nervous system which over controlling the heart talk a bit of a. consciousness there because that's a huge topic through and like for all of us what is a consciousness from a neuroscientist point of view is that what makes us human i mean do animals

harshness work ok so that's 2 separate questions were so 1st of all. i think if we say all scientists like to do is say let's take the null hypothesis let's assume it's not the case and so let's assume an animal is not conscious right. when and where and how the suddenly you cross this magic line that suddenly gives you consciousness is a fetus conscious in the womb if it is not the null hypothesis when does it become conscious is it screeching down the birth canal well that's a bit tough if you're born biases and section is exactly at 40 weeks well that's a bit tough if you're born the baby is born prematurely is it not conscious so the null hypothesis isn't really very robust to say to say that things are not conscious is a bit of a risk because you then say with you look at animals or look at the fetus how how is the difference because the human brain although obviously the parts may be bits are exaggerated in different sizes compared to other animals there's no magic brain

region this different in humans from other other animals so where do you cross this anatomical rubicon if you can't yet so i would reject the idea and say let us assume all animals are conscious right let's assume there for a fetus is conscious but then that's a bit odd because he really saying a rat is conscious like you or me know of a sit in on so you say well let's think about consciousness a little bit and for me my great thinker insight once when i was on holiday i suddenly thought with our thinking about unconsciousness and with an a c. easier and with sleep both forms of unconsciousness it's gradual you can have stages of sleep and stages of an a c z or you can have a different depth of being unconscious and so it reasons what if consciousness also could be very like a dimmer switch you could varying degrees and if that was the case of a rat could be conscious but not as conscious as a cattle dog and a cattle dog could be conscious but not as conscious as a primate and

a fetus could be conscious but not as conscious as a full term baby in turn not as conscious as an adult so if you think about that that kind of makes sense because i'm sure you in russian i don't have the same things about. broadening your consciousness of. or deepening your consciousness here which is you go to mountains or lakes. to dive the deeper nor raise doesn't matter which way you go your consciousness yet you feel like you can sort of switch it off the knowledge to gradually and it's gradual so for example when you're sleeping i feel unconscious because i don't think my childhood over anyway is known as are the movies that i've seen before is what your stuff is is conscious of course is conscious and dreaming is a form of consciousness it's one however that isn't driven by imports through your senses so that's why it's rather flimsy and why you have this strange fragmented sequences that at the time seem perfectly acceptable but of course in the cold light of reality is similarly strange when someone turns into someone else while something happens but yes of course that's

a form of consciousness i think if one accepts that consciousness is quantitative it can be there it changes that's brilliant also for science because you can then measure it of course you know you can say let's try and measure it rather than regard it as something magical but consciousness the way we understand it something totally intangible ok so in the brain we know some how some functions of the brain and i'm sure we there's a lot we don't know but like you know where the memories are stored and how things are go and signals and they're in there but where there is a clean contra like appear in the brain ok so this is why many scientists have a problem with consciousness someone called it a career limiting move if you want to stroke which you can't get grants for so now the problem with studying consciousness is that it is quintessentially the core feature is subjective what you are experiencing now i have no idea i can't hack

into you and experience what you personally are feeling the color red i don't know what you are experiencing when you look at the color red because this is something called quality of their account it is not that you can look at magic brain regions you know the brain isn't composed of little mini brain so when you said. where members are stored in a sense that's not quite right because you don't have magic brain regions or special brain compartments but what you can do is try and find something have a shopping list and go to the brain is that ok brain i've got the shopping list now i want something that varies in degree i want something that changes from subsecond to subsecond time scale of can vary and i want something that can be driven by the senses or generated internally and what we have done is suggestive that it is collections of brain cells that work together for a very brief period of time a bit like ripples so imagine a puddle and throwing a stone and then you have the reporter and what we have done is to try and identify something like that happening in the brain where the excursion of the ripples

corresponds to the depth of your consciousness ok so if you like i can say the stone is like the long clock waking you up or it's like any strong sensory input coming in and then the size of the stone is how many connections and associations that that object of that event triggers and the force with which is thrown is how strong the sensory stimulus is and then the way it spreads out is limited by the we say the scar city which is the glue penis like the thickness of the paddle and competing stones coming in on what dung is to write a book of the book here a day in the life of the brain which was written in 2016 which. goes through with this and talks about this i think what scientists can do we can start to study consciousness with great humility and assuming that we're not going to establish a causal relationship i can't tell you how the water is turned into wine i can't

tell you how electrical blips and brain cells and chemicals traffic can hold up i can't say you have that translates into a feeling of happiness but what i can do is say look when you're happy this is happening and when these blips and electrical signals are firing away then you might be feeling this the how the one turns into the other is the big question and what i find interesting to say to people i'll say it here do you feel like trying to explain what consciousness is for scientists is like a french topic isn't wired ok because there's logic to what's important to realize for science is the thing that they need more than anything before they can do and i think it's money because unlike something right there was a fee if you are a scientist by definition you want to work in a lab and that caused by now how do you get money right you get money either by starting a little company as i have incidentally for outsiders disease going to the private sector and that's or you apply if you're in

a university you apply for grants or not if you apply for a grant saying you want to study consciousness i can assure you you don't certainly have to kingdom you don't have much luck which is why it's not popular with scientists because it's very hard to get funding is very hard to get people to hear they'll say well what we're going to do is this how you going to study it whereas if you're studying some much more clear problem then people will feel tax payers money can pay for you mentioned philosophy in there is there a way about tom stoppard there literally called the hard problem it is yes about what we're speaking of structure isn't it it's about a researcher how does you know by not. true to research we don't and just gives up and then he ends up in philosophy here do you feel like you asked if he could somehow get up the scientific. part well i actually started doing philosophy myself so initially at school unlike probably all the other scientists with the exception of henry much so if interviewed for my specialized subjects were after 16 so could a levels i did latin greek ancient history math pm us so. i was very into reason i

didn't think greek i was really interested in philosophy and when i 1st went up to oxford for my 1st year oxford university i actually started philosophy and it was only when i got frustrated with doing formal logic having done math but i changed psychology and then to neuroscience so i actually have i would like to think a grounding in philosophy or see things as a philosopher might and i think that's actually very helpful if you're doing science does that help advance so split 30 because you ask big questions and i think if someone has a conventional upbringing in science you are so constrained by the dogma you are so constrained by very being very precise and very specific to actually step back and ask these big questions like the ancient greeks asked i found that was a great privilege to do that. ok let's talk about sopped ok. we are once again somehow know how the body in the brain interact right and correct

me if i'm wrong so here's my thought i want to bend my finger right. so and signal to my brain then the muscles to the heart. where is the thought in all of this i think we're going where is the free world. or that or what i mean where it isn't born before like it was or is it that's a really interesting subject if you relate especially to free will and it's an endless debate of what is free will and this is some song called benjamin the bet to stop he had this idea and i myself of a copy of this experiment have been the subject where you have electrodes in your head which are called your brain waves and all you have to do in this experiment is press a button that if you want to whenever you think you want to and what's really interesting is just press about randomly is just before you actually physically press the button already your brain waves have changed showing that there so it's

a really fascinating thing that you think. if you have free will and you've decided but already your brain has changed before he has decided before now this is the interesting thing you are your brain such as well what it has decided for you is implying a certain journalism which is not right that is yes actually it is accurate so this is why it's an interesting question so my own views on 2 sides of the same coin. in quantum theory which i'm not an expert in i gather you can express things either in terms of momentum or position but never both is not speaking russian or english you don't speak the 2 together you have one all the other but you might express the same idea it's clear how is it. but for less less fortunate people you are the say something in one language or another but you're saying the same thing but you're just accept your. so it's 2 sides of the same coin that either you can express things in brain terms. or you can express it in subjective what we say phenomenological to us that's to say in terms of your subjective experiences and

both are valid and how the one relates is like position momentum you can't do simple tenuously even you can speak russian english exactly at the same time you have to spit all switch very fast so that's i think what it is like and that's why it's interesting because it's not so much about the thought itself the subjective experience of a thought in the illusion of free will or the physical occurrences in the brain it's more if there are 2 sides of the same coin what is the coin that's interesting i think i'll take a break right now when we're rattled continue talking to the nearest scientists are now susan greenfield about how human brain functions and what consciousness is stay with us.

young elephants have come to us. especially. because. so often do see their mothers. killed but also be caught up and. i do believe the elephant smile i see it to be subtle once the whole. expression changes.

and i'm back with near a scientist barn as susan greenfield says and i just want to bring you back to the you know. that the ross stuff like saying with a consciousness you know until you gave me the rebels possible explanation because if we know that brain this part answers like the frontal lobe for this and this hemisphere for that and that hemisphere that why can't we physically observe the thought because the brain doesn't work like a load of mini brains yes you do have specialisation in different parts of the brain but it's more not just the instruments in an orchestra or ingredients in a dish of food they have to synergize they have to work together it's not as if that just function into. pendant of each other so for example vision is divided up

among about 30 different brain regions and any one brain region can participate in different functions rather like a violin might be so you can't you have to think of the brain holistically and holistically i would argue in a body you can't try and reduce it as sometimes people like to do to a single gene or a single brain region or a single transmitter by that you're losing something if you do that so there is no way a star could ever be observed even if we have built way incredible machine what can be observed is the brain working on of course that's done with brain scans and people can do that but the mistake they often make is how they match up what they see in the brain scan with what is happening and some people think that it's much more specific than it actually is and they think that if they see something lighting up in a certain region it's the center of this or that and that's not really true moreover up with brain scans in humans the time resolution that says is a bit like remember those old cameras in the 19th century where you could see

physical things but not movement so you could see houses. a car but you couldn't see animals or people because they were moving and exposure was to. so little bit like that with brain scans you can see long lasting things but you can't see fast things. you know for many people who want to be happy with a scientific explanation because there is no way we can physically actually. observe this or see the conscious where and how it's moving or born there would say you know that's about the soul and you'll never be able to see because that part is called soul ok so i thought you me ok i think we need to be really clear about terms so let's start with the most obvious one brain will know what the brain is it's a physical thing and i remember during deception i'm wondering if i got bit under

my fingernails with that b. the bit that. there's a physical tangible thing then you have the mind now why do we use a different word for mind mind implies something highly personal that's different norm i just different from mine was if you and i took our brains out at a gross level they would look pretty similar so the mind is something that already is slightly removed from the physical of the brain and to cut a long story short my suggestion is that it's the personalization of your brain at something called plasticity which is how the brain adapts to things and when it adapts to things at the very micro level you're having changes in connections between your brain cells so no 2 people have the same pattern of connections that's what i would call the mind and then we have consciousness so when you go to sleep you don't say you're losing your mind you lose consciousness or there's certain sonar is that you have the same say in russian where you blow your mind or lose your mind or you're out of your mind your conscious but you're not accessing your personal way to us and war of the many ways in which you can and what wine women

and song drugs and sex and rock'n'roll are ways and the book that i found very interesting there is mindless you're still conscious and this incidentally even the ancient greeks thought about this a play called the baccy by europe it is in him all about this poor king who gets torn apart by these women who are crazed worship in the wind god doesn't isis and he says no there's 2 forces the one force in the brothel and they were digressing just as a wonderful the greeks were so then that was the mind and consciousness which is separate again because you can be separate art you can. be mined less and have consciousness and you can have no consciousness but you still get the money so you can sit there not become then finally and then you have within consciousness you have the sub conscious and have the self conscious and the self conscious comes when you are about 2 or 3 years old so a baby is conscious but not self-conscious because on the continuum it's pairing up the subconscious as anyone who's read fraud will be aware of then you have the soul and that again is something that i would regard as separate because the mind and

consciousness all parts of a living brain there are more than just the living brain but they are rooted in the living room of conscious even the subconscious so when you die that brain will die but as far as i understand i'm not deeply religious myself by research people who are the whole point of the soul is its immortal is it not us all point the point of a soul is it survives and goes to heaven so i mean if you look at the religious yes exactly so that's how you're defining so if the brain is perishable and it's mortal and the soul is immortal that it must be something else again so i think one has to be very careful about one's terms and distinguish very carefully brain mind consciousness soul or are legitimate interesting topics but one shouldn't equate them they are separate things. so once a going to the scientific millet

a lot of scientists try to explain different phenomena as biology clearly for instance i don't know love or feelings were saying it's all hormones it's doppler mean or serotonin we need to be happy. but when you explain that on a biological level it stands ground do you really explain what love is what again that's not an explanation it's a description is like saying a chair will be somebody will love it i say that would just the chemical yes in your but i don't know if you're familiar with the series yes oh yeah ok so that's where the people who are not let's say you have imagine a straight line imagine a dog imagine officer call imagine another the random things if you put them in a certain shape if you put the 2 dots at the top of your page and between these are all the straight line and underneath them you put the half circle then you have a face so the components are in and of themselves not change but it's the relationship of the want of the other that has given you this concept of a face

a pattern of a face so to say someone is it's not saying this is nothing but adopt it's nothing but a straight line depending on how it relates the one to the other will give it an emergent properties so called a different property to just the reduction of the components because i was thinking if you can explain or you make this distinction explanation and description if you can describe anything biologically then you can just as well describe consciousness as well so you can get a collaboration so when you fall in love you have a rush of dope them in our rush of endorphins or that's fine and that is a co-relate but that doesn't explain why you have the subjective feeling of love so i explain. ok let's forget about love because that's really why i wish it was always about logic just like happiness the psycho state of happiness when you have several. levels reacting or order of dopamine and for scientists it's all hormones and it's all chemically sort of manageable does this mean that if i take

a happy drug and my serotonin levels go up and i feel happy then happiness in itself is an illusion because you can control it chemically i confess what you mean by have. and so of course we all know that drugs was her and then when most obvious one of the opiates give people a feeling of euphoria a feeling of euphoria is not necessarily happiness if you can pass an exam you can achieve something you've been striving for you can have a sense of wellbeing all these are different types of positive feeling they have that people might put under the label happiness and if we had a society just where people wanted to be euphoric all the time i don't think we would find that a very satisfying lifestyle you wouldn't you wouldn't really admire or want to be someone who is just all the time euphoric i don't think i think the question is we're like chicken in there what happens 1st i mean is it the dopamine and then i get happy or i'm happy and they are there well that's right it's an interesting

question especially in relation to depression which is the opposite of course because we know that if someone's depressed they can take prozac which enhances the levels of this chemical messenger you've talked about serotonin then that alleviates their their feelings but if there are happy for a particular reason it doesn't make the reason go away if they've just lost someone they love it doesn't bring that person back to life again it just is a distraction for them a bit like when people drink heavily you know it's a distraction that's not exactly to say that it's making you happy it's distracting you it's giving you a strong sense of being aroused or sedated it's manipulating your arousal level of more than actually giving you what one might want to acquire in life in terms of what one would call true opinion i think i want to take now on how your take on this because the general idea is this big professionals in different fields would say well you know science takes care of the biological processes because we can describe them or some would even say you are playing them and then psychologists or

a psychiatric whatever take care of the psychological side emotions in the way we sort of interrupt with the world on an intangible level. but. should we really just be starting it all together because this is jaws that your one big mechanism is steadily dividing your are going out there further and that well having done all to myself they haven't done philosophy i think it's insane to distinguish philosophy from there or science from or even from law political people are done but free will is the more we can be interdisciplinary i think the richer it is and i would go further in that people that are just neuroscientists mountains i'm just a neuroscientist i wish i knew more immunology for example i'd like to know the interface between the central nervous system and the endocrine system and the immune system because it's by understanding that your longer something you know understand the placebo effect will understand how your gut feelings literally chemicals released in your gut are affecting your sense of intuition so i think

that we are the poorer if we put ourselves into silos of just being this or just being there and how much do you think we know about human brain if you get certain to using from my greek again there was an animal called the hydra and every time you chopped off one head 7 head screw in its place and it's like that the more you think you learn the more you realize you don't know and i will both find it we had french in common when i 1st went and started speaking french i thought i could speak it and the more i tried the more i realized i didn't know there so the more you learn the more you realize how ignorant you are so i feel like that with the brain yes of course we can explain how brain cells fire little electrical blips and of course we can explain how chemicals go up and down and the manipulated by drugs of course we can explain those things and we now we can of course with brain imaging see bits lighting up but i think it's extreme arrogance if we think that means that we know everything because what we should be doing is really asking the

big questions like what is consciousness why do people fall in love why the war stop if it breaks up as i have as a job as the big sister a lot of it was you know we want to go over the biggest mystery of our. entire. when i had time this going anywhere thank you so i'm glad to. help me out again. that's geysers financial survival guide liquid out those that you can convert music as quite easily. to keep in mind though as a trim into a place of. record.

in this community there are people who believe that it's ok to sell fractional food on my table it's really hard there are no jobs and you see that i've got kids that ask and as a parent. i can come up with lots of arguments there's a lot of conflict in the game between the 2 most of the conflict i would say over balls around money and most of their money is made. close one on each of those he knows each other is good because the state of california alone makes $6000000000.00 a year off to prison complex just to get some point in your life where. you don't care anymore nobody cares about your so your care might anything.