>> charlie: welcome to the broadcast. tonight, the confirmation hearings of supreme court nominee sonia sotomayor, with tom golstein of scottus blog.com. >> with roberts and alito and the beginnings of the attack on her about her being a racist we were kind of in a death spiral where we would have democrat nominees and republican nominees and the other party would line up against them, and i thought we took a step back from that day. >> charlie: we take a moment looking into the human brain. >> a mass, a lump of jelly you can hold in your hand called the brain and it can contemplate the vastness of space, it can think about atoms, subatomic particles, it can think about avenlgles and unicorns, it can

think about infinity, the mathematicical concept of infinity and even think about itself thinking about those things. >> charlie: we conclude the evening with playwright lynn notage and director kate witurski. >> ideally something that's sympathetic but what was interesting in the positive reactions from the audience seemed to be that people feel like we're so happy that we actually could spend time with these people because in the news it feels like numbers. and there is something about creating something where people are open enough to empathize with a group of rape victims but in the story telling we didn't want to say you're going to meet rape victims, what we wanted to say was here are some women and let's go through the story and then unbeknownst to them there are all these surprises and

trauma. >> part of what we want is to have a more complicated and intense relationship with the statistics and the articles they read so when they read a paragraph -- >> charlie: flesh and blad. >> flesh and blood. >> charlie: sotomayor's conversation, the human brain and the pulitzer prize winning play "ruined." next. >> charlie: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following. >> each day a billion people won't find clean drinking water. we're working to improve lives through conservation and education. one drop at a time. >> charlie: additional funding for "charlie rose" was also provided by these funders. captioning sponsored by ro communications

from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> charlie: the senate judiciary committee today continued its confirmation hearings for supreme court nominee sonia sotomayor. senators from both parties began questioning sotomayor, who could become the court's first hispanic justice. much of today's hearings focused on her past statements regarding race and her judicial philosophy. >> the context of the words that i spoke have created a misunderstanding and i want -- a misunderstanding, and to give everyone assurances, i want to state up front, unequivocally and without doubt,i do not want that any ethnic, racial, or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. i do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless

of their background or life experiences. >> i think it's consistent in the comments i have quoted to you and your previous statements that you do believe that your background will affect the result in cases and that's troubling me, so that is not impartiality. don't you think that is not consistent with your statement? that you believe your role as a judge is to serve the larger interest of impartial justice? >> no, sir. as i he dicated, my record shows that at no point or time ve i ever permitted my personal views or sympathies to influence an outcome of a case. in every case where i have identified a sympathy, i have articulated it and explained to the litigants why the law requires the different result. i do not permit my sympathies, personal views, or prejudices to

influence the outcome of my cases. >> charlie: joining me today from washington tom goldstein. he cofounds the scotus.com website widely read in the legal community. i am pleased to have him back on the program. welcome. >> thanks so much. it's wonderful to be here. >> charlie: tell me what you saw today and what did it add to our understanding of the nominee? >> i thought she came across very well, thoughtful and knowledgeable about a lot of cases and i thought the senators on the left and right came across well. we were worried this would turn into sort of race baiting, a lot of accusations about who was for or against hispanicses and with exceptions it was pretty substantive. >> charlie: do you think she's winning over republicans? >> i do, including because i think the republicans for the most part have decided not to just make this a party-line issue. i think that the republicans

will divide probably pretty evenly depending on how conservative a given republican is, but those that are willing to listen, just like those who are willing to listen to john roberts or sam alito who had a somewhat open mind about it i think are going to have to be impressed because she comes across as very thoughtful and very informed. >> charlie: how is she surprising in terms of her presentation beyond thoughtful and likable? >> she's very patient. she's very polite. there are some things that aren't at all surprising. there is now a tradition that you try and avoid answering questions that might give a clue about how you might rule and, of course, that's what everybody is most interested in -- you just wish you would say, "i'm all for roe v. wade" or "i think i would strike down the death penalty" or something as dramatic as that, but to the extent she is willing to answer questions she seems willing to dig down, seems to be very familiar with the case law -- you are obviously dealing with somebody who is a thoughtful judge, a really educated person and who is

interested in persuading people and doesn't come across as an ideologue. >> charlie: what are the harshest attacks? >> first, the conservative republicans are very concerned about her speeches including these remarks about how a wise latina judge would produce a better result than a white judge, and she basically disavowed that today and said, "look, my point here isn't to say that any ethnicity has more wisdom than another. it was a poor play on words." senator graham, who has been very impressive in the hearings, came after her with some extremely liberal positions taken by the puerto rico liberal defense and education fund while she was on the board and she distanced herself as a board member from that sort of litigation -- i would say those are the two areas where she was under the most direct attack, and she basically answered by saying, "look, i have been a judge for 17 years. if you look at my decisions and all the surveys that have been done about my decisions, they come across as very mainstream"

and that happens to be true and has been pretty persuasive. >> charlie: didn't senator graham say "unless there is a meltdown or something unforeseen you will be confirmed"? >> he did. he's been amazingly candid. he said "i like you personally and since i might well vote for you, you ought to care about that." he's had a lot of great lines. i have to say i think senator graham has been the most honest. he said "this is about conservative and liberal politics, i wouldn't have picked you but that doesn't matter. presidential elections have outcomes. they have meaning here." he really tried to explain to her why it is that republicans are concerned about her speeches. he said, "look, when you're a court of appeals judge those decisions are made are important but when you're on the supreme court you're constrained by less so the things you say in speeches worry people on the right because they are concerned you might interject your personal views more." judge sotomayor understood that, she was committed to the rule of

law and it was a pretty illuminating interchange about what it is that republicans are worried about, more than just the usual political posturing by left and right. >> charlie: they cannot, as they couldn't with alito or justice roberts criticize the intellect of the nominee, her academic performance at college and law school has been superior. >> no question, and you can tell that she's not just book smart. they talked about all kinds of cases today while she took a lot of notes, she didn't have notebooks in front of her. she was asked questions about a kind of random antitrust decision by the supreme court from the past few years and she knew all about it. she comes across as well informed and balanced. if you're conservative you're going to think she's more liberal than you but you're not going to think she's on the fringes. >> charlie: if someone was willing to make a serious bet that she will not be any more

liberal than justice soutter, would you take the bet? >> it depends on the issue. i got the sense she will be in the same position as him or a little to the left on abortion and race. again, you barely even have tea leaves to right here but on questions of race and affirmative action, she said "equality takes real effort" something that sandra day o'connor had said, "about 25 years from now we won't have affirmative action" is more a hope than an aspiration, she reaffirmed supreme court precedent on the roberts court has been walking away from on abortion restrictions having to have an exception for the health of the mother. on the other hand as a former prosecutor and someone who decided to start her career as a prosecutor, and then was a trial judge and heard a lot of criminal cases, on those kind of issues it's possible that she will at the very least be in the same position, maybe a little bit to the right. that's my take away from today.

>> charlie: and there is nothing either that has happened or possibly to happen that would suggest that she will trip. >> nothing remotely. to the contrary, i would say she picked up -- it's hard to say, somewhere 5-10 votes today. the other thing i would say that was good about today is that it helped us with the future of confirmation, with roberts and alito and then the beginnings of the attacks on her about her being a racist. we were kind of in a death spiral between democrats special republicans where we were going to have democrats and republican nominees and the other party would just line up against them, and i thought we took a step back from that today. i thought republican critiques of her -- senator sessions, the ranking minority member was very tough on her but in general i thought there was a lot of respect on both sides of the room, and so i'm hopeful about the next five or 10 supreme court nominees. we might be back on track to sort of a sensible process. >> charlie: a model hearing? >> yes. well, the best we could hope

for, i would say -- there have been some low moments where senators just aren't paying to the answers or have no idea what's going on but in general i think we'll look back on this process with some pride. >> charlie: not a lot of grandstanding? >> no, there hasn't been a lot of filibustering. take just senator sessions, right -- >> charlie: he is the ranking -- he's the ranking minority member. >> right. and he was put in that position because conservatives wanted someone who could lead the charge, and while he has been very aggressive, he would make a point and a point and then he would say "i want you to have the chance to answer" he hasn't just said what he had to say and unfairly moved on, even when he's been attacking she's had the chance, and democrats have such an overwhelming majority on the committee, 12-7 they're going to get their points in no matter what, so it hasn't been grandstanding, the senators have been interested to the extent she's willing to answer questions to give her the chance to do so. >> charlie: but in the 5-4 balance she changes nothing if she's confirmed, will she? >> that's right.

there are only a couple of strange line-ups that we have that recur on the supreme court with the far left and the far right come together, particularly on questions of criminal procedure. there are some issues about punitive damages that have some unusual alignments and we don't know what she will do there but you can be the most liberal judge in america and you couldn't shift the 5-4 balance on the supreme court because you don't have four other people like you. she's going to be a lot like david soutter and that, too, explains why the response from republicans hasn't been thermonuclear, and it explains a little bit why the attacks on sam alito in the end were much harsher because he was replacing a swing vote on the supreme court and she's not. >> charlie: how many selections to the court do you expect president obama will make between now and the next election? >> only one more. justice john paul stevens who is the oldest member of the court i think is quite likely to stay for a year or two more and then

give president obama a chance to replace him. ruth bader ginsburg has made it clear she will stay so her replacement would come at the soonest, and i think likely in a second obama term if there were one. the supreme court is really up for a shift -- the only time it could shift to the left in the election of 2016. right now, justices kennedy and scalia are 72 and 73. so by then, they would be getting to the point that they're 80, and that's going to be your first more conservative retirements. the chief justice, justice alito and justice thomas, the other conservative members of the court are all still very young. >> charlie: thank you for joining us. pleasure to have you back. >> it's great to be back. thks very much. >> charlie: we'll be right back. stay with us. >> charlie: v.s. ramachan is

here. from the university of san diego. he believes that rare and unexplained disorders contain valuable insights into brain functions. in the 1990's he performed pioneering experiments on amputees suffering from the sensation of phantom limbs. using a store-bought mirror and a piece of cardboard he was able to cure them of pain in their amputated armies. he has since turned to a wide range of topics from perception to consciousness. i am pleased to have him here at this table for the first time. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. delighted to be here. >> charlie: i want to read something you said. which i -- this is, like, five shows right here. "even though it's common knowledge, these days, it never ceases to amaze me that all the richness of our mental life, all of our feelings, our emotions, our thoughts, our ambitions, our love life, our religious sentiments and even what each of us regards as his own intimate,

private self is simply the activity of these little specks of jelly in your head, in your brain." >> yes. absolutely. well, it is astonishing and it still never ceases to amaze me. just think about it. here is this mass of jelly -- lump of jelly you can hold in your hand called a brain, and it can contemplate the vastness of space. it can think about atoms, subatomic particles, it can think about angels and unicorns, it can think about the mathematical concept of infinity, it can even think about itself contemplating these things and this is the most astonishing thing in the universe as we know it. >> charlie: what's the primary difference in the species? >> this is a very contested issue, whether we are merely more sophisticated hairless apes, who are just

quantitatively a little bit better than the great apes, or whether there is a sudden jump in -- quantum jump in evolution that makes us human. i happen to believe the latter, that there are traits that make us human. it doesn't imply we didn't evolve from preexisting structures, i'm not a creationist, i believe in darwinian evolution, however there are things that are unique to the brain, language is one striking example, self-awareness is one striking example. i'm aware of myself to an extent that no great ape is aware of itself. they see red the same way you and i see red but they don't ask themselves questions like "who am i? where am i from?" you can reach for the stars. an ape can reach for a branch. >> charlie: how do you know that? >> very often in science it's not a question of absolute truth but circumstantial evidence. people have done extensive experiments on apesto see what their cognitive abilities.

we're amazed how good they are but things like being self-conscious and aware and believe language -- people have tried to teach apeslanguage, you can teach them -- teach apes language, what they cannot do is recursive embedding, for example saying "john, who hit mary, went to the ball. john, who hit mary, went to the ball." you instantly know it's not mary who went to the ball but john." this hierarchic embedding of clause within clause is something no great ape is capable of. other things like laughter in humans. we're the laughing biped. >> charlie: they don't laugh. >> they don't laugh -- unless you count hyenas. >> charlie: if they see themselves in a mirror. >> yes. >> charlie: what do they do? >> that's a good question. when you confront -- it's claimed that if -- of course, in initial exposure to a mirror, whether it's a child or an ape, it looks like another person and for example, a monkey never gets used to the fact that it's a

mirror image but a great ape, a chimps, for example, and a human, after experience with a mirror, seeing that the mirror image does everything is a perfectly replicates every one of your little movements gives it the clue that this is not another strange creature but it must be me. only humans can say it is me and the reflection in the mirror. apes habituate and get the hang of it but the extraordinary thing is when an ape is anesthetized and you put a red patch on the forehead and the ape looks in the mirror he immediately does this. wipes off the patch. it does have rudimentary sense of his body and realizes he has to do this to remove that spot. he doesn't reach into the mirror. it's not an all-or-none thing, it's not an awareness emerged out of the blue. >> charlie: tell me about the brain's plasticity. >> it used to be these connections in the brain, 100

billion nerve cells in the average human brain, each nerve cell makes something like 1,000-10,000 contacts with other nerve cells. the contacts can be on, can be off, someone calculated that the number of brain states -- the number of possible permutations exceeds the number of elementary particles in the known universe. how do you make the connections? one view is it's all made by genes, there in the genome and fixed in infancy and there is not much you can do when there is damage to the adult brain, for example when there is stroke the dogma has always been that there is this -- this ties into the modular view of brain functions that there are different highly specialized regions, and every point on the skin surface goes to a particular point in the brain, and so on and so forth, so if you punch out a module a function is lost and that's it, so what we have learned from our experiments in the last 10-15 years and some of my colleagues in other institutions is this is simply not true. instead of thinking of punched-out modules you really

think of a dynamic organism, almost, a brain, and when there is something change the in the environment or a damage or insult it's not a piece that's permanently removed, there is a shift in the equilibrium, so there is a mass of neurons that is in a state of equilibrium in the external world and different parts are talking to each other and when there is damage, there is a shift and often all you need to do is a simple shift to trip the pattern. >> charlie: i have once read, this may be allied or not, that everything you do in some way has some biological change in the brain. >> absolutely. people who study the brain, most of us, would argue that any mental change -- there is always a corresponding brain change, and this in fact is the main goal of the enterprise -- to explain all mental functions including things like self-awareness in terms of changes in neurons but returning to plasticity, one of the main evidences for this in my lab is in amputees.

phantom limbs. it turns out there is a complete map of the surface of the body on the surface of the brain. every brain is represented on a particular point and it also turns out that the map is not perfect, it's distorted so the hand is right next to the face in that map. what we find is when you amputate the arm, the question is, is there a hole in the brain corresponding to the arm and the answer is there is no hole. the input from the face now takes over the region that once belonged to the hand. so you touch the guy on the face, here is an amputee, you touch the guy on the face, he will say, "oh, my god, you're touching my phantom limb" and we were spooked out by this the first time we saw it, then we realized what was going on, the input from the face, the skin is enervating the hand area. the hand is being touched. your phantom hand is being touched. >> charlie: what's the technique? >> two techniques. one is simply touching the patient and asking him where he feels the sensations and you find a perfect map of the missing hand on the face. that's the thumb, index finger.

the other technique is to do brain imageing where you actually see the map has changed. the other astonishing example of plasticity we discovered that many patients with the phantom limb will say that the phantom is frozen stiff in an awkward position. think about it. it's a phantom, not a real army, there is a charley horse, a cramp in an excruciating position. if only i could remove it i could remove it but it's paralyzed. this sounds like an oxymoron. how could a phantom be paralyzed? from a pragmatic standpoint, how do you make the arm move again to relieve the pain? we simply put a mirror in a box, and the patient looks at -- so this is a phantom hand cramped in a painful position. you put a mirror here and he clenches his normal hand, looks in the mirror and it looks like his phantom has come back, you have resurrected his phantom, then you ask him to mimic the

posture of the phantom, as though vu duplicated his normal arm and what you see in the mirror is the reflection of the normal arm but it looks like the phantom. the amazing thing, if he moves the hand it looks like the phantom is moving, instantly it removes the cramp and in many patients it seems to permanently relieve the pain from the phantom limb. not in all patients but in about a third. >> charlie: does it matter when the amputation occurred? >> if the mirror trick is done a few months or a year or two after amputation that's when it works best. if you wait too long, 10-15 years the phantom pain persists with a vengeance and even if you put the mirror it doesn't help as much. >> charlie: what other diseases interest you? >> a couple of -- there are two agendas. one is to understand how the brain works, what is consciousness, what is mind, the other is practical. how can you help people? when you get to the practical it turns out you can use the mirror trick even for stroke. if a patient has complete paralysis of the arm, a real

arm, not amputated, one out of six of us will have a stroke and half of those people will have a paralysis of the arm so the arm is paralyzed, there is no flicker of movement even when you try, it's called a stroke because the motor fibers that go from the motor cortex down to the arm are cut so the standard assumption is that is it, you can't do anything about it. what we suggested is maybe there is a component of the stroke, what's called learned paralysis that initially there is some paralysis but the brain just gives up so not all the paralysis is due to permanent damage. some of it is a sort of learned paralysis, so if you you put a mirror and start moving the normal hand, this is an experiment i did with eric alschuller, a colleague of mine, a strictly visual appearance, it's not actually moving, after a few days of this, in some patients the arm actually starts moving by giving him a visual illusion that the paralyzed arm is moving, the paralyzed arm starts literally moving.

to different extents in different patients and it doesn't work at all in some patients, but in many patients there is a substantial recovery of function, so we've now applied this mirror technique to pain -- pain caused by strokes. paralysis caused by stroke. phantom pain. a number of other conditions. but the other agenda we have is basic science -- in other words, understanding how the brain works. >> charlie: right. >> let's go back to phantom limbs, right? >> charlie: right. >> here is a person, his arm is amputated. he's got a phantom. this is spooky enough. this has been known for 100 years and people wondered what it was. in medical school i encountered patients and i always asked, "what is this?" the patients asked. i'm as puzzled as the patient. just a few -- a year or so ago, we found that this is unrelated to what i was telling you about with the mirrors and all that, if i simply go and touch a normal person on his normal hand and the patient with the phantom limb watches the person, he feels it in his phantom limb. so assuming i have a phantom limb and somebody touches you,

charlie, on the hand, i feel it in my phantom. this sounds like "x files" but we've repeated it in a large number of patients. why does this happen? this is worthy of sherlock holmes. why does it happen? why would a human being feel a touch administered to another human being? it turns out there is a bunch of neurons in the front of the brain which we've discovered in italy -- these are called mirror neurons and these neurons -- they occur in the front of the brain but also occur in the back of the brain -- they fire when somebody were to touch my real hand, ok? they're called sensory neurons. someone comes and touches my real hand, these neurons fire. that's been known 50 years. 100 years, in fact. >> charlie: when you say neurons fire, what does that mean? >> that means the brain is made up of the nerve cells, the fundamental structural units of the nervous system and a neuron means nerve cell, a highly specialized form of cell which the brain uses -- a lot of these cells in the brain are in fact neurons which are used to exchange information, so whitouch your hand or someone

touches my hand there is a hand area in the brain where the neurons fire. there is a line if you like from the touch receptors in your hand to the sensory touch area in the brain. so far, so good, ok? the new discovery made by the italians is that some of these neurons, about a third of them, will fire even if somebody touches charlie and i'm simply watching, those are empathy neurons so they're saying, charlie is being touched. i ought to empathize with charlie so i will feel the touch myself. i feel the empathy but i don't literally feel the touch. the question is why do i not literally feel it? i empathize, i know that you are being touched, i know what it feels like to be touched, i do a virtual reality of my brain of your brain but it doesn't feel like somebody is touching me. that's because my hand, my skin receptors are telling the brain, "look, buddy, you're not being touched, don't worry. charlie is being touched. you can empathize by all means but don't worry.

you're not being touched." >> charlie: where does that take us? >> i'm coming to it. if you remove the arm that signal doesn't come through and i start feeling your touch sensations. here is a great medical mystery and you solve it by looking at neurons in the brain. the advantage is, if somebody comes in and massages you, charlie, i feel a massage in my phantom and the pain in the phantom starts fading and disappearing. now, this needs to be done in controlled studies, something we just discovered, but it tells you an example of how you can take a bunch of neurons, nerve cells, study their properties in monkeys and in humans, look at a patient who has lost an arm, make a prediction, you see something really spooky, he experiences your sensations and lo and behold you now can use it therapeutically. not only that just for fun i call these neurons ghandi neurons because they're involved in empathy and once i remove the skin it dissolves the barrier between me and you so i experience your sensation. >> charlie: why do you say

understanding neurons is part of the great leap forward to understanding human evolution? >> w0e8, i think mirror neurons -- >> well, i think mirror neuronses, that's what these neurons are called, they're involved in creating a virtual reality simulation of your neurons. i don't see you as a puppet moving, i have an internal image of charlie who has intentions and he's reaching out to grab the cup, ok? so this construction of another human being in your mind relies to some extent on these neurons called mirror neurobbons and it tells out in order to imitate somebody you need mirror neurons because how do i imitate a complex action? a human child see its once and maybe just seeing it once or twice does it immediately. it turns out monkeys can't do that even though commonly people believe they can do that, they're very bad at it so they have mirror neurons but they're

not as sophisticated as ours. we have mirror neurons who can perform a sophisticated function of your brain reaching out to the cup and drinking and reenact it in my brain in one child and reaching out and drinking. this is very human. a polar bear has to -- hundreds of thousands of years to evolve a fur coat through natural selection. a human child watching its mother hunt and skin a polar bear watches it once or twice and does it in one generation. that's a tremendous advance of cultural transmission over natural selection. what takes millions of years through natural selection of trial and error, as a result of mirror neurons and the grape leap forward you can achieve in one generation, and this is what makes human beings utterly different from any great ape or animal, we have this great sophisticated culture made possible by emulation. >> charlie: you started this conversation talking about the search for understanding consciousness. >> yes. >> charlie: how far along are

we? >> well, we have barely scratched the surface, i would say. it's a problem that is so enigmatic that we don't even know how to state it, how to define it, not many people agree that it's even a problem -- people say it's just playing with words. i think there is a genuine problem here. there are neurons -- nerve cells firing in my brain and i see green or i see red. there is nothing red about the neurons. they're bunches of specks of jelly firing away. how is it i experience redness, greenness, blueness or love or charity or pity with these neurons firing away. that's the problem. there are two sides to the problem. one is awareness of red or green or blue then there is the self awareness, "i am aware of me as a person who endures in time despite all the diversity of experiences around me, i came and met you today, this morning i took a taxi, i wanted to go to the metropolitan museum, a, b, c, d, a continuity in time and all these diverse experiences i

have but there is a single sort of golden thread that's running through the whole fabric of my experience. this is called the unity of consciousness. so there is unity. there is continuity. the embodiment. i feel i'm in here, i don't feel i'm out there. sometimes that goes wrong and i have an out-of-body experience so soall of these aspects of consciousness, we're going to chip away at the problem and understand them one by one and solve them. >> charlie: we're making giant steps forward in understanding the brain because we're getting much closer to getting insight into the biology of the brain. >> that's absolutely right and even spooky questions like what is consciousness -- >> charlie: even understanding -- to interrupt -- how psychotherapy -- psychotherapy. >> yes. >> charlie: affects biology. >> right. or vice versa. or vice versa. >> charlie: yeah. >> psychotherapy is way out there -- we still haven't got that, but in terms of being red or seeing green, you have to start somewhere in science, start with the simple questions. eventually we'll get to that, hopefully. supposing you look at something, i'm conscious of it, nobody can

take that away from me, that i'm seeing, experiments have been done where they've shown that there are in fact two pathways in the brain. if i damage the visual area in the brain, obviously there is a big, huge blind spot, no vision is coming in be and i can't see that cup. ok? but guess what. some of these people reach out and grab the cup. and you say "how is that possible? you damaged the visual area in the brain. you're reaching out, grabbing the cup." it turns out there are different visual areas in the brain. there is a parallel pathway that goes from the cup to the other visual areas that's not conscious. it's only the pathway that goes to the visual cortex that's conscious. that's amazing but it's telling you some regions of the brain are conscious, other regions of the brain can do elaborate things like grab cups without you being conscious so you can ask what's special about these neurons and these circuits that makes consciousness possible? just like you said, what's special about the double helix that makes heritage possible. people thought this was an

insoluble problem. why do pigs give birth to pigs? why do people only give birth to people? how come the resemblance? it all starts with an egg. once crick zoned in on the double helix and said the complementarity, they solved it. likewise we want to find out in neural circuitry, what is the anatomy of the brain, what are the circuits that dictate the function that we call consciousness or visual awareness, and we're heading in that direction. we haven't gotten very far but we're heading there. >> charlie: because it's causing so much attention, bring in another brain illness which is autism. how does that relate to neurons? >> that's an excellent question. autism is a very controversial topic and people have been studying it for 20, 30 years, the incidence seems to be increasing. we don't know if it's really increasing or if it's simply early diagnosis. the characteristics are the child has no empathy and very little high contact, has poor

language skills, for example, or poor joint attention -- normally when you look at the cup i look at it to see what's going on, or you point to something, i'm the person, i'm the child, i look at it. that's a very human thing to do. but this child will look at your finger when you point at something so there is no shared mind, and this is very critical in autism. depends on what you mean by cause. cause meaning people have suggested vaccines, viruses, heavy metals. the evidence linking all of that is tenuous. but coming to the brain, what circuits have changed in the brain? there are lots of different changes that have been observed throughout the brain. the cerebellum is offered. my colleague, dr. kuchane has learned that. if you look at the properties of the mirror neurons, the mirror neurons are involved in constructing a theory of other minds, they must be involved in emulation, taking your view, because that's what the mirror is doing. it's firing when i move my hand, it's firing when you move your

hand saying charlie is doing the same thing as i'm doing so it's constructing a model of your mind and what your intentions are. this seems to be deficient in autism and also imitation, empathy -- they're very bad at pretend play. all our kids have superheros and they pretend. they temporarily transport themselves from their own bodies to inside the super hero. the autistic children are not able to do that. so if you make a list of all of this, all of these things that are deficient in autism -- similarly, autistic children get confused between pronouns, "you and me." all of these, i think, are functions are mirror neurons so it can't be a coincidence. this is why we suggested that the core deficit in autism is a deficit in mirror neurons. we proposed it about 10 years ago. since then there are studies confirming it but i will still say the evidence is suggestive, compelling but not conclusive. >> charlie: where is the

controversy? >> the controversy -- i don't know. the usual controversy is that there is not enough evidence and we need to do more -- more intensive studies, techniques we use to discover the loss of mirror neurons are not adequate to clearly demonstrate the loss. those kinds of objections. theoretically as far as i know there have been no objections. >> charlie: back to localization. parkinson's. what do we know about exactly where, wharf it is in the brain that cause -- whatever it is in the brain that causes parkinson's is located? >> that's a good disease to talk about because even though it's not what i specialize in a great deal is known about the precise areas, substantia negra, ganglia, automatic postureal adjustments or when i walk, you swing your arms and when you are swinging your arms you don't co-- don't do it consciously, that's done by the baseal ganglia. parkinson's patients hold their arms rigid. they don't have spontaneous

facial expression. they have a mask-like face. that's something we do spontaneously. the basal ganglia are involved. these are made with dopamine. they have rigidity. they also have tremor. we know roughly what parts of the brain are involved, what chemical is missing, you can replace dopammine with l-dopa. they will often have -- replace dopamine with l-dopa. if you give too much you get tics and grimaces. now there is a promising technique called deep-brain stimulation where you can put an electrode inside the brain and partially alleviate many of the symptoms. that's showing considerable promise. >> charlie: what are we learning from people who in a sense are made to feel better because of the psychological benefit of counselling? >> oh, i think there is evidence that talk therapy helps. there is evidence that prozac helps. but the effects are quite small.

you're talking about -- if you do mroo -- placebo, talk to your friend, if we take prozac, if you talk to your friend it's 65%. prozac is 75%. talk therapy with a trained therapist can be very helpful too but these are marginal effects because we don't understand the psychopathology. one of the things we're interested in is boundary disorders -- that is, disorders that straddle the boundary between psychiatry and neurology. that's where to go. >> charlie: give me an example of that. >> one example is here is a chap who has had a head injury, or in fact sometimes just schizophrenia, and he looks at his mother and says, "this woman is an impostor. she's not my mother." sometimes it takes a slightly paranoid flavor. she's coming after me. she's not really my mother. the amazing thing about these syndromes is the chap is completely normal in other respects. he can do mathematics. he plays chess. he laughs. he sings. he's social.

>> charlie: he doesn't recognize his mother. >> he recognizes in the sense that she looks like her but there is no empathy. why is this happening? the standard psychiatric freudian view has been "what's going on here is all of us when we're little babies, we have a strong sexual attraction to your mother, so-called oedipus complex, freud" -- i'm not saying i believe this but it's the freudian view then as the child grows into adulthood the cortex shows up and inhibits these latent sexual urges, therefore when you look at your mother you're not sexually turned on, thank god, right? then a blow comes to the head, damages the cortex. >> charlie: and you go back? >> then you go back. the latent sexual urges come to the surface and this chap says if this is my mom, why am i feeling sexually aroused? it doesn't make sense and he says "this can't be my mom." this is the standard old view. what we showed is there is a neurological explanation. it turns out if you look at anything in the world, whether it's trivial like a piece of wood or exciting like -- you know, like a tiger or a lion or

a sexually attractive person, whatever, or indeed your mother, something that's significant, comes to you, goes into the visual areas of the brain, goes into the visual recognition system, an area for recognizing faces, an area for recognizing faces and from that area, messages go into an area called the mig dala. the amyddala is involved in recognition, is it a mate i have to pursue, your heart starts beating and sweating, your blood pressure goes up, or is it a piece of drift wood or chalk, i ignore it. you don't want laramie bells going on all the time. what's the connection between this and my patient? oom coming to, that right? in these patients, what happens is in you and i we have this recognition area which recognizes faces, recognizes umbrellas, tables and chairs, sends the message to the amygdala which responds emotionally, in these patients

the amygdala is normal, they react to things emotionally, react to sounds emotionally, they laugh at jokes, for example, but when they see anything emotionally salient like their mother, the message goes to the fuciform gyrus, but the wire that goes from the face area to the amig dala has been cut so the net result is he says this looks like my mother because the recognition area is normal but if it looks like my mother why am i not experiencing any warm glow or terror as the case may be even though she looks like my mother, the only way i can make sense of this is to say she's an impostor. then we tested this using a simple experiment which took about an hour and it turned out that we were right, there is a disconnection between vision and normal. vision is normal, facial recognition is disconnected in emotions. >> charlie: thank you for coming. >> thank you very much. >> charlie: a pleasure. i hope we can do is agai >> i would love to.

>> charlie: we'll be right back. stay with us. >> charlie: the play "ruined" written by lynn notage won the pulitzer prize for drama, it tells the story of women fighting for survival during the depths of the civil war in congo. here is a montage of the play. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ >> charlie: notage's journey to write "ruined" began four years ago on a trip to ghana. the two adapted stories they heard for the play. i am pleased to have them, the playwright, lynn notage and kate nofski to talk about the theatrical experience. congratulations to you and the awards. how did this begin? >> with a rather impulsive idea which was to take -- >> charlie: to go to uganda? >> to go to uganda, not only to go to uganda but to find the stories of congolese refugee women fleeing the conflict at the time and one i had very little money and i wasn't sure how i was going to find those

women, but i asked kate whether she would go with me and she said "i will absolutely go" and so we went and -- >> charlie: and the expectation was what? >> i didn't know what to expect. i think that was part of the adventure of the journey is i knew there was a story that wasn't being told by the media and a story i couldn't sort of conjure from the library and i was really quite surprised when i got there the extent to which the women told tales of rape and abuse, and their narratives were remarkably similar and i think that was sort of surprise figure are me. >> it actually started with the idea of it being mother courage set in the congo so i thought we would have the structure that we would tell -- we would go along with brecht's structure in the congo so for me it felt a little bit more about let's figure out how brecht and the congo worked together which they didn't -- that's what we learned -- for me, it felt like there was nothing similar to what brecht was saying that -- and then we found these incredibly rich stories from the women and it

felt like we should tell the stories of the women and let go of the brecht idea. >> charlie: when you heard these stories and started to write dit just flow? >> it definitely didn't flow because i think the stories were so raw and difficult that in the writing process i found myself stopping and starting many times and trying to figure out how do i share something which was really difficult for me to hear with an audience, an audience that was going to sit and listen to these tales for two hours so no, it wasn't hard -- i think it took me about two years to figure out stylistically how i was going to tell, and i i brought in many elements. i brought in music, i brought in some dance and i brought in some humor because i felt an audience would abandon my tale if i kept them in the depth it ises of horror for too long. >> charlie: you included that by simply telling stories of their lives. >> i right. i told the complexity of the african woman's life which includes all of those elements. i was really shocked interviewing the women how

easily they accessed their laughter and humor and one wouldn't expect that. >> charlie: why do you think that was? >> i think it's a survival mechanism. i think that part of themselves hadn't been completely squelched and killed by what they had been through and they knaw it was necessary. >> charlie: who were the main characters? >> the main character is mama nadi, who runs the brothel, and she provides refuge to several women -- one being sophie, who is a school girl who has been raped and has no place else to go, and she takes her in, and then another woman, josephine, who is the daughter of a chief, who also has been traumatized by the war and has found herself marginalized and takes refuge in mama's brothel, and then the third woman is salima, who is a farm woman whose family and her husband and her village have driven her away and she also finds herself taking refuge in mama's brothel. >> charlie: sophie is?

>> sophie is the school girl who has this angelic voice, the innocent in the play and the most destroyed of the women in that she has fistula, she's carrying extreme psychological and also fist scars. >> charlie: take a look at this clip. >> is this yours? >> yes. >> yes? tell me what you were planning to do with my money. because it's my money. >> i -- >> "i, i, i" what? >> what do you think? >> you are not going to run away with my money. >> take her in. give her food. your uncle begged me. what am i supposed to do? i trust you. everyone say "she bad luck" but i say, "no, she is smart girl. maybe mama won't have to do everything by herself." you read books, you speak like white man but is this who you want to be? >> i'm sorry, mama. >> no. no. i will put you out on your ass, i will make you walk naked down that road. is that what you want?

what did you think you were going to do with my money? huh? huh? what were you going to do? >> white woman coming here saying there is an operation. >> don't you lie to me. >> charlie: you hope theater goers come away with a theatrical experience, not a journalistic message, a theatrical experience. >> yes. >> charlie: which will be to internalize these characters as players? >> ideally, it would be a combination of something that's both political and -- and sympathetic, because -- what was interesting and the positive reactions from the audience seemed to be that people feel like we're so happy that we actually could spend time with these people, because in the news it just feels like numbers, and so there is something about creating something where people are open enough in theater to empathize with a group of rape victims, right? but in the story telling we didn't want to say "you're going to come in and meet these rape

victims," what we wanted to say was here are some women and let's go through the story and then unbeknownst to them there are all these surprises and trauma. >> also i think to answer that question, part of what we want is them to have a more complicated and intense relationship with the statistics and with those articles that they read so that when they read a paragraph -- >> charlie: flesh and blood. >> flesh and blood, that they understand who these women are beyond the statistics and beyond sort of the graphic horror and pornography of it. >> charlie: you have said that your dream was that michelle obama, the first lady -- >> yes. >> charlie: and oprah winfrey would come, separately, together, it didn't matter to you, just come. part that dream has happened and someone i know, a producer here sat behind them and said there was a clear emotional connection to oprah in terms of tears, in terms of what you feel when someone is terribly moved by

something they see in a theater. >> i think that this play speaks to so many of the issues that oprah has been outspoken about and i think that she in some ways knows this character, mama nadi who is a survivor and who is a fighter and who will do whatever it takes to sort of protect the women in her brothel, and keep them safe. >> charlie: as we saw in this clip. >> as we saw in this clip. >> charlie: do you expect -- are things going to get better in the congo with respect to rape as a tool of war? any reason to believe that? >> i don't think the answer is a good one. >> charlie: yeah. what is the answer? it's getting worse? that it's -- >> well, i think -- unfortunately, you know, i talked to dr. mcquage who runs the hospital and i asked him, "have you ever met a man who has gone through raping women and have you ever met someone who has then turned and decided i want to actually transform and

be a different person?" and he said, "no, i have never met anyone like that." >> charlie: why is that, not one single person has ever said that out of guilt, out of awareness, out of new knowledge, out of change in my humanity -- >> part of these stories -- these young boys are living with their parents and then rebel soldiers come in and say -- kill their parents and so once they've killed their parents, in order for themselves to survive it's very hard for them to have any sort of -- >> charlie: they lose any sense of right and wrong, any sense of choice, it also becomes -- >> they gravitate toward the person who just made them do that, and so psychologically there is such profound trauma in these men that it's very hard to figure out how could you unravel that. and i think that's the problem. and dr. mcquage said something interesting, people talk about suicide bombers and say that's the worst thing people.

he said "i think these men are the worst thing possible because you have psychologically traumatized them so deeply, and then they're out in the world causing incredible violence, and there is no way of rehabilitating them. >> charlie: so what happens to them? >> i think eventually, due to violence, they die, but i don't think it's -- >> charlie: go ahead. you wanted to speak to that. >> i do think that there are reasons to be optimistic that it's not a completely hopeless situation. i think that there is a movement afoot to bring tools to the women in the congo to protect themselves. i went to hearings in washington and senator boxer spoke incredibly eloquently and passionately about this issue and said she wants to make it priority. she wants to stop this in congo and she used that language and i think that there are many people in positions of power that are beginning to hear the call.

>> charlie: eve enzler said that. >> eve ensler said that and sheese one of the -- she's one of the people who testified in washington. >> charlie: have you written another play? >> i have completed another play. i write two plays at the same time, particularly dealing with something as heavy as this, i have written a comedy which is the complete polar opposite of this play. >> charlie: you write them at the same time? >> i write them at the same time. i switch my screens like this when i feel as though i can no longer dwell in the depths of the rain forest in africa, i switch my screen and suddenly i'm in hollywood in 1930. >> charlie: it's easy to make that -- >> for me, it is, and i think that that's just the nature of my a.d.d. brain is that i can turn the switch on and off very quickly. >> charlie: congratulations. on everything. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> charlie: congratulations. >> thank you. >> charlie: thank you very much. thank you for joining us. see you next time.

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