WHODUNNIT?

[The Inspector] Clearly, somebody in this room murdered

Lord Smythe who, at precisely 3:34

this afternoon, was brutally bludgeoned

to death with a blunt instrument.

I want each of you to tell me your whereabouts

at precisely the time that this dastardly deed took place.

[Maid] I was polishing the brass in the master bedroom.

[Butler] I was buttering his Lordship’s scones, below stairs, Sir.

[Lady Smythe] Why, I was planting my petunias in the potting shed.

- Constable! Arrest... Lady Smythe!

- But... but how would you know?

- Madam, as any horticulturist will tell you,

one does not plant petunias until May is out.

Take her away.

It’s just a matter of observation.

The real question is how observant were you?

Did you notice the 21 changes?

(And action!)

- Clearly, somebody in this room murdered

Lord Smythe who, at precisely 3:34

this afternoon, was brutally bludgeoned

to death with a blunt instrument.

I want each of you to tell me your whereabouts

at precisely the time that this dastardly deed took place.

- I was polishing the brass in the master bedroom.

- I was buttering his Lordship’s scones, below stairs, Sir.

- Why, I was planting my petunias in the potting shed.

- Constable! Arrest... Lady Smythe!

It’s easy to miss something you’re not looking for.

[Applause]

The Deception of Perception .

The Deception of Perception Or How Your Brain Fails You On A Daily Basis

Thank you very much. It's great to be here.

So, a quick show of hands, how many of you have seen this video before?

Ahh 3, 4 people, 5 maybe.

How many of you got any of the changes?

3-4-5 people? How many have you didn't get any?

Ahh, OK. I rest my case: the whole room. It's fascinating, isn't it?

Ok, also erstmal möchte ich mich vielmals bei Franky und TZM Berlin bedanken.

Es ist eine sehr große Ehre für mich, hier zu sein,

und hoffentlich werdet ihr nachher nicht zu enttäuscht sein.

And for those of you who didn't get that, it was his me

sucking up to the German chapter.

[Laughter]

Okay, speaking of me, I'd like to point out that I am not a scholar,

I'm not a scientist. I'm here to try do get your juices running.

I'd like to present you with a lot of information that I hope that you'll pick up on

and take to the next level. So if you think I'm full of shit,

please go ahead- debunk me. I want you to do that; I want to validate ...

all this information that I’m about to share you. Okay.

Now were going to do a brief introduction of neuroscience if you will,

which is just kind of a few pointers about the history.

Many people think neuroscience is kind of a new field, a new topic -

it's not really. People have been fascinated with the brain for thousands of years.

So we find for instance reports of the euphoriant effect of poppy plant seeds

in the old Sumerian records, and

many people would be familiar with Hippocrates

who discussed epilepsy as a disturbance of the brain way back when.

And back in the scientific era if you will, of the Muslim world in the year 900,

Rhazes describes seven cranial nerves and 31 spinal nerves

in his medical work of the time called 'Kitab al-Hawi Fi Al Tibb'

or something like that, I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce that -

please don't hold that against me.

1543 - the Dutchman Andreus Vesalius posts his work called

'On the Fabric of the Human Body'

and gives the fullest account of the brain anatomy to that time.

He got a lot of stuff wrong but he got an impressive amount actually correct.

Fast forward a little bit.

Can't really talk about science without mentioning this guy.

1859 - Darwin ... comes along and shakes up the whole

scientific process from then.

Moving along...

In the year 1900, Sigmund Freud comes along and

tips the boat again if you will, introducing what is effectively the ...

field of psychology which is still debated today.

And of course, bringing it a little closer to home,

in the 1970’s Benjamin Libet at the University of California

did a series of studies that basically shows

that the brain is engaged in decision-making activity

long before we’re actually aware of it.

And this is of course very controversial stuff and he's been heavily debated.

One of his most verbal critics is Daniel Dennett,

who is in his own right really great guy - I recommend his work here.

He is a cognitive scientist and philosopher

and he's got a great book ‘Consciousness Explained’ which I heartily recommend.

And this guy will be familiar to a lot of you; Peter just mentioned him -

one of my favorite scientists and science ...

how do you say that ... communicators.

I like his work because he's very good at

understanding how these causalities work and he’s very good

at describing to the rest of us who don't understand any of this stuff,

how it works. So I really recommend his stuff, and

these implications have far further reaches then we

tend to think on a normal average level.

So here he is in a small clip with Alan Alda, discussing the justice system.

[Alan Alda] So, what do you see as the...

the contribution of neuroscience at some point

to the justice system?

Does it start in the court room, or should it start

all the way at the beginning, reframing our laws?

[Dr. Robert Sapolsky] Well, you know we professor types state things

in these very cautious, qualified ways

so I'll do that here and just say...

the whole system has to go.

Modern criminal justice system is incompatible with neuroscience.

It simply is not possible to have the two of them in the same room.

[Applause]

Well he said it- must be true!

[Laughter]

Well actually, there's more evidence to support this claim;

it's not just taken out of thin air. Right here in Berlin you have something called

The Computational Neuroscience Centre in Berlin,

and this is John Dylan Hanes who is the leader of the theory and analysis

of large-scale brain signals,

and I think the way that he summarizes it just says it all:

“Decisions don't come from nowhere

but they emerge from prior brain activity.

Where else should they come from?

In theory it might be possible to trace the causal pathway

of a decision all the way back to the Big Bang.

Our research shows that we can trace it back about 10 seconds.”

And then was some kind of usual scientific humility he goes on to state that

“Compared to the time since the Big Bang that's not very long.”

He’s completely just validated all that Benjamin Libet did previous, so

this is interesting.

Okay so where does that leave us today?

It leaves us with a range of different kinds of neuro “stuff” to look through.

We’ve got Neuroendocrinology, Neurobiology,

which is kind of the hands-on stuff,

then you got Neuropsychiatry - the pathology of it all,

you got Neuropsychology, you know, "let's talk about it,"

and then you have Neurophilosophy - it’s like “what's it all about?”

and then of course you have a lot of Neurobollocks! which you could call it.

There's a lot of interesting, interesting information floating around out there.

Now, how many of you are familiar with this statement?

“We only use 10% of our brain capacity.”

Yeah? Oh, about half the room.

How many have you believe it to be true?

Ahh, not very many.

Thank god, you're on the right path here people, that's good.

Okay.

Well, in the words of Barry Gordon at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine,

"It turns out that we use virtually every part of the brain,

and that the brain is active almost all of the time.

Let's put it this way: the brain represents three percent

of the body's weight and uses 20 percent of the body’s energy."

And then he goes on to state...

“Ultimately, it's not that we use 10 percent of our brains,

merely that we understand about 10 percent of how it functions.”

So if you're going to go with that 10 percent number,

use that one. It’s much more accurate. Okay?

Here’s another great guy I want to recommend to you,

his name is Christian Jarrett. He's a young British scientist -

cognitive neuroscientist. He’s a science writer, he’s got a great blog.

By the way all these links are available to you. I’ve got a PDF

with all of this stuff in it so if you want it,

it's gonna be in the video link, later on.

He’s got a great book, ‘Great Myths ... of the Brain’

and among his peers, he's really well respected

for really grasping what this stuff is all about.

Okay, so let's move into some practical stuff here.

This is what I like to call Your Unreliable Brain.

Now, your brain is hit with approximately 400 billion bits of information

per second. You have about 100 billion brain cells.

About 10,000 neuronal connections connect each of these,

and you have about 1 trillion interactions going on in your brain per second.

2,000 of these can reach your immediate consciousness,

and seven of these can reach your immediate memory,

one of which you can actually react upon!

So these are the odds people - that's what you're up against! Okay?

I'm gonna do some simple experiments here; it's not gonna be visible to everybody,

but this is known as selective perception

and here are a couple of visual examples of that.

I realize because of the size of the room

many of you are probably not going to perceive this,

but I mean, go home and check it out later on if you haven't already.

Now this first one is known as the Ebbinghaus Illusion,

and as you stare at this image you're probably going to

feel a little bit queasy because it kind of feels like it's wobbling all around.

Of course is doing no such thing, but your brain is telling you that it is.

This next one is the Herman Grid

and as you stare at this, you're gonna see strange little grey dots appear

in the cross-sections of this image.

And of course there's no such thing as a grey dot in sight but

your brain tells you that there is.

We've got these ambiguous images -

these go way back, several centuries -

and some of you might be seeing a young girl

with her head turned looking to the back of the room.

Others of you might see an old lady looking slightly to the left,

to the front of the room, and to help you a little bit,

here is the young girl- you can kind of see her eyelash,

a tiny little nose and chin there with her scarf,

and those have you who see the old lady, you’re going to see

two eyes facing the front with what was a chin before is now the nose,

and the small nose is now a big wart on that.

So, these are interesting, interesting images.

Next are these physiological illusions which are really funny.

The Swiss artist M.C. Escher did a lot to popularize these back in the '80s.

These are kind of impossible

3D images and of course the impossible cube -

some of you might be familiar with this -

and then you have the trickery of light. Most will agree that

the tile here marked with an ‘A’

is visibly darker than the tile marked with a ‘B’

but as as you see when you connect them they are in fact the same color,

and this is the trickery of light.

And speaking of trickery of light

does anyone even remember this one?

A of couple weeks back, this went viral all over the world.

This is from the Danish media- it was on the TV, it was in every newspaper,

and of course it's the infamous dress syndrome.

Here is the infamous dress - actually there is a both blue and a white version.

But, it all began with this guy,

one of my other favorite people on the planet, Doctor Neil Degrasse Tyson,

who is of course the theoretical astrophysicist and

the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York,

a great science communicator,

and he tweeted this the other day in relation to this image.