July 28, 2020 • 22 mins
It's no secret that strong emotions can influence our thought processes, but just how much of a difference can they actually make? Can you trust your own brain? Don't be so sure. Join Ben and Matt as they explore the bizarre, at times deceptive, side of neuroscience in this episode of classic Stuff They Don't Want You To Know.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
How time flies. We are, as we said, publishing classic episodes,
and this is one that is very near and dear
to our collective hearts. This was a very unusual episode
for us to make because the conspirator in this in
(00:21):
today's show is is you it's your brain? Right? Yes?
Are you your brain? Or is your brain you? Or
are you the same? Oh? I don't know. Is this
your brain on drugs or is it just an excuse
not to eat eggs anymore? In a way, some of
what we're going to talk about here is your brain
(00:43):
on drugs, in as in chemicals that are produced by
your own body, and also other chemicals that you can
take into you. And this one really focuses on a
video series we put out, So we recommend both listen
to this and then check out the YouTube channel Conspiracy
Stuff and watch the Deceptive Brain videos. There's some great,
(01:04):
great powerful content in there. This was a journey for
us for a peek behind the scenes. We did not,
or at least I did not expect the video series
to become a three parter. Neurochemistry is a tricky thing,
and I believe when we originally recorded this, we have
the most up to date information and studies available about
(01:26):
human neurochemistry, but there's still so much to learn. Luckily
we listen back to this and it is and what
we found was disturbing. You know, this is the early
days before we became quite as cynical as we are
now about the treachery of memory and all the other
tricks your brain plays on you. But have you ever
(01:48):
been in love? Have you ever been very angry about something?
Have you ever hated someone? Uh? In each of those instances,
your brain will pull a full Judas on you in
some way or another. So, without further ado, why don't
we get right into it. Let's do what. I hope
your brain doesn't play any tricks on you while you're
(02:09):
listening from UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History
is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
and welcome to stuff they don't want you to know.
(02:30):
I'm Ben Bowling and I'm Matt Frederick, and today we
are going to talk about a series that we did. Wow,
there's a deep cut on Matt. Yeah, at least the
original The the original episodes were rather deep and that
original series was called The Deceptive Brain, or rather Present
Tense is called the Deceptive Brain because you can still
(02:52):
see it on YouTube right now. This was a three
part series wherein You and I explored the effects that
chemicals have on the brain, and most importantly, the effects
that naturally occurring neurochemicals have on the brain, right, yeah, exactly,
and the ways in which those chemicals kind of trick
(03:14):
the brain. It's weird, it tricks itself by releasing chemicals
because when we think about, uh, when we say your
brain is tricking you, it's really tricking itself. And I
thought that was one of the more fascinating things, because
what are we besides our brains, at least the thoughts
that we have. Yeah, and this was funny to us
because you know, sometimes it can be a little bit
(03:36):
challenging when we're making an episode to have it always
end with something someone doesn't want someone else to know.
And this was a little bit different for us because
it was your brain quote unquote, your brain didn't want
you to know exactly how it was saving or lying
to you. What we did see some really interesting stuff.
(03:59):
We did a did one episode on love we did Yeah,
we did one episode on hate. I actually I wanted
to go all the way back and do some of
the first stuff we talked about with the seft of brain.
That was one of my favorite Okay, yeah, like I
learned a lot of things. I'm just gonna go off
the cuff here. I One of my favorite things that
I learned in the earlier episodes was the trick with
the warm cup or a warm beverage in your hand
(04:22):
when you speak with someone, and how it can affect
the way you feel about that person or at least
your takeaway feelings. Yeah, that's a that was a very
interesting series of studies. Like I can't remember exactly which
university it comes out of, but I think it's in
our episode there. And this is where this this comes
into play. Where if you're if you and I are
(04:44):
talking and like I have coffee right now, Let's see
how I have coffee right now? It's cold though, watch
out your on thin ice, my friend, because if somebody
is holding a hot drink. These studies found that they
are more likely for some almost it sounds withiculous, but
they're more likely to regard a person that's speaking to
them as nicer. There they tend to be a little
(05:06):
more empathetic maybe, but then when they have a cold drink,
they tend to that effect is reduced and they tend
to be more objective. That was interesting to me, and
that's something it's um it's similar to what's called priming, right,
psychologically subtly framing a situation such that a person's brain
(05:27):
kind of leads them to a predetermined decision point of
some sort. And another thing, this is a funny trick,
and this I really want people to try this met
anybody who has an office job. If you have a dog,
get a picture of your dog. Just your dog. You
can be in the picture. It doesn't matter if you
are uh, just get a picture of your dog and
(05:50):
put it on your desk and see if people begin
to treat you differently. If you have a cat, don't
put a picture of your cat up there, because I
think this only works with dogs. But was another yeah, right,
there was another study that found that people who had
a photograph of a dog on their desk were more
likely to be perceived as team players or supportive people. Wow. Yeah,
(06:13):
but not not so with cats, my friend. And also,
you know, if you want to be a little unethical,
it doesn't have to necessarily be your dog. Oh, just
find a funny picture of a dog. That could be
an awkward conversation, Oh, do you have a dog? No, No,
it's like this picture because I'm a team player. Or
you could just come up with some elaborate story about
(06:34):
that dog and how you used to have it and
it went and you know, lives in a farm. Now. Yeah,
there's no way that an elaborate lie will ever go wrong,
especially in an office environment. So another thing we talked
about ben was sleep. How you can hack your sleep
and kind of change your brain and the way it
works by breaking up your waking and sleeping hours. I
(06:55):
think it's called polyphasic sleep. Yeah, polyphasic sleep, the sustainability
and efficacy of which has been a subject of intense debate.
People who are familiar with this might see on the
internet what's what was called? I think the Uberman sleep schedule,
which I never achieved, but I got. The closest I
got was too close closest it was probably Let's see,
(07:20):
I did two four hour chunks for a while, and
then I divided into um of waking or sleeping for
our sleeping and and some people have even argued later
on that that is a more natural way of human
rest cycles. But I don't know. I can't think of
that book. There was a book that came out not
(07:41):
long ago that talked about that, how men and women
would sleep for four hours, wake up, sometimes engage in
let's say, witchcraft, and then sleep for another four hours.
I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah, and um, you
know I was experimenting with that stuff before before this,
(08:03):
uh this book came out or before I was aware
of it. The Uberman sleep schedule. However, I don't know
if anyone who's listening has ever successfully done it. I'd
love to hear about it, because it's just it's pretty
much a series twenty minute naps, and you're supposed to.
The reasoning goes, so I'll train your brain to just
fall right into R E M sleep and then wake
(08:24):
wake up immediately refreshed. But of course the problem is
in theory. If that works, then you can't not you
cannot miss a nap by a moment. And then also
I imagine that the other the other phases of sleep
are in their own way equally important. So why would
you want to cut it out? Well, because you want
(08:45):
to get you want to get to that rem cycle
so that you can control your dream right, because that's
where lucid dreaming comes in. And if you can control
when you dream, when you dream, and how you dream,
then essentially you're not sleeping, You're you're cognitive at all
the times. Yeah, which I wonder you know, sleep. I
(09:06):
always thought sleep sounded like such a strange, hilarious thing.
We've talked about it off air. You know, I kind
of resent the fact that people have to sleep, and
um more so than many other animals. But one thing
that gets me about this this concept is if you
just described it to someone who wasn't familiar with the
idea of sleep, it sounds crazy. You would say, you know,
(09:28):
like you would say, oh, guys, I want to hang out,
but it's about that time. I've I've been moving around
for a while, so now I'm going to lie down,
lose consciousness and just sort of hallucinate for a few hours,
you know, and but I will I will see you
after that. That's so weird. Yeah, you're right, You're absolutely right.
That's very strange because you're so vulnerable when you're sleeping.
(09:51):
You're again you're not active, you're not achieving anything. I
guess that's why lucid dreaming is. Uh, it's so it's
looked at such an important thing to some people. Yeah,
and uh, the nature of dreams themselves, that's sort of
a that's already a very very weird thing, just in
(10:12):
terms of both the in terms of both the content
and the and the physical event. It's possible that you know,
maybe some people might object to this statement, but maybe
the brain is deceiving people most immediately in dreams, right,
but there are other ways they do it in waking life.
(10:32):
And um, what was interesting to us, I think both
of us about this episode was being able to see
exactly what these effects were and the chemicals that have
been traced uh to the root cause. So it's not
it's not just one rebellious scientists saying this might happen.
(10:53):
There are a bunch of other people that have also
researched this. Pure reviewed studies that have you know, pointed
out that feelings of love, for instance, traced back to
dopamine no rap and efrin and fenal leth al amine
penal lethal A mean, but those those things are linked
to a euphorian addiction, right, So um it is possible
(11:16):
to get addicted to that feeling your brain's excretions. That's
what are some things that really surprised you about the
deceptive brain? Mat I was surprised that there are techniques
and technologies that are being created and devised that will
be able to hack the brain. I thought that was
(11:38):
super cool. The transcranial what is it, transcranial transcranial direct
current simulation. That's exactly right, man, that that's pretty cool. Yeah.
So we've uh, we've probably talked about this ad nauseum
for people who are into this um or. I've heard
the show before, but I am so old on transcranial
(12:02):
direct current simulation. So what is this. This is the
practice of putting a small amount of electricity through very
specific parts of the brain and through that creating lasting
effects on the way your brain works. So this isn't
some made up Frankenstein's sci fi stuff. It's being used
(12:24):
by DARPA to train uh snipers, It's being used by
the Air Force to reduce pilot training time. Uh. The
the idea here is that by putting this electricity through
a person's brain, and of course, you know, just like
in real estate, when you're zapping your brain. It's location, location, location,
and depending on the location you pick, then you can
(12:47):
see an increase in uh, memory retention, you can see
an increase in the learning curve. And I think there
are some kinetic things that people can do, like your
hand eye co nation increases. Possibly the weirdest thing, though,
is that after exposing somebody's brain to these things on
(13:07):
a regular scale, the changes stay. It doesn't just happen
while someone's there. It's I have to remember to put
this part at the beginning. Great athletes, great chess players,
great experts of various endeavors, always have that moment where
they describe describe it as being in the zone. We
hear that with athletes right well. Transcranial direct current simulation
(13:31):
and a related thing, um transcarnial magnetic simulation can recreate
that feeling of being in the zone, and not even
just the feeling, they can recreate the way the brain
works when one is in quote unquote the zone. Do
you get in the zone when you write sometimes? I mean,
that's a really good question. I think for me it's yes.
(13:53):
Sometimes it does occur, and and it might be irrespective
of what I'm what I'm working on, but find most
often in fiction because just making it up and then
all of a sudden you see it and you go oh.
But then if you're you're reviewing sources and stuff, um,
and you want to make sure that you're actually telling
(14:13):
people the truth, um, then you can still get in
the zone. But yeah, it happens to me on a
weekly basis here if I put on the right music,
or if i'm if I've got enough white noise in
the background, sometimes I'll just start seeing the episode unfold
before I'm putting any images down. Yeah. Yeah, I like
doing that. That's trippy. That's pretty cool. So we should
(14:37):
also talk about this music because it's true. Isn't it
that you found some specific types of auditory or audio
simulations like that's true. I've got a couple different ones.
I've got a certain playlist on my iTunes. It's just
instrumental music, just music that that flows, and it doesn't
have even the beat. Isn't that intense? Just put Sure
(15:00):
people would say it puts your brain in a certain
alpha waves or whatever. I have no idea, but but
it really does get you in the place where you
can focus on what's directly in front of you. It
eliminates distractions around you. Because we we sit in an
office together, all of the editors here. We literally have
a glass office. It is glass on three sides, that's true.
(15:23):
And and we we sit in that office and we're
all editing with our headphones on and clacking away on
our keybords, and it gets a little loud, and you know,
we have to constantly share with each other. So you
need something to You have to hack your brain in
a way to focus. You have to kind of recreate
what would be a physical distance. And uh, now it's
(15:43):
time before you go out. We have to talk about hate,
which was a very interesting episode for us because we
found that studies have shown there is a hate circuit
in the brain and it connects three regions of the
brain and there, you know, there's like a love circuit.
And of course love evolutionarily speaking, makes sense, right, Yeah,
(16:06):
you gotta reproduce, man. Just thank god we're not praying
mantis style. You know, that's rough deal for the dudes.
But hate, it turns out, also has um an evolutionary advantage,
Like there's there's a reason that hate exists in the
Great human mosaic or tapestry or whatever, you know, big
big thing, the great human thing. And it's about survival, right,
(16:30):
and all of these things that we're learning about with
the brain and how it's working for you and against you.
It's about survival sometimes because our conscious thought requires it
requires the brain to take over itself. Yes, in a
weird way. Yeah. And the and hate and love are
you know, it's it's kind of been a cliche for
(16:51):
long time, hate and love or two sides at the
same coin, and all that stuff, all that jazz, all
that smooth jazz. But the the truth is that there
is some physiological basis to that comparison. There's a brain
region called the putamen, which was so fun to say,
put a m in and this is part of the
(17:12):
hate circuit and it's also associated with love. So maybe
they're not that different. And the professor who found some
of these studies um noted that viewing a loved or
hated person could be equally distressing, and that the insula
also is involved in responding to distressing situations. And I
guess I could see that because you know, who hasn't
(17:34):
been embarrassed in front of a crush? I hope that
not everybody has seen someone and immediately wanted them to die,
but it happens. I feel very lucky because I can't
specifically recall any moment where I looked at someone and
thought you should die. Well, I wonder how much that
(17:54):
circuit is trained by, let's say, influence from parental figures
or societal figures. Right, I don't wonder how. I wonder
if it's strengthened or if it's dold in certain people.
You know, we ran into something similar with uh one
of our other shows here at how Stuff Works the car.
Stuff looked at neuroplasticity with this thing called the knowledge,
(18:19):
and you and I talked about the knowledge, right. You
know the London taxi drivers the test they have to take, Yes, exactly,
it's a it's a beast of a test because you
have to memorize not only pretty much all the streets
of London, but you also have to memorize specific roots,
and you have to do alternatives to those roots. And
a lot of people, I think the vast majority fail
(18:42):
the first time they take the knowledge. And I mean
it's already pretty intimidating test. It's called the knowledge and uh,
they study um intensely to pass this test, and when
they finally do pass this test, they become London cabbies
and live happily ever after. Yeah, I'm sure that's how
it goes every time. I'm sure that's how it goes
(19:02):
every single time. That's not even a generalization ever. But
what what happened is some of the research conducted found
that these cab drivers after decades of service. It's not
right all the jump, but after decades they had larger
areas of the brain associated with memory and UM three
(19:24):
D space navigation, you know. So so it's possible that
there's real life mind over matter, your thoughts, the things
that you try to think about UM, and the things
to which you apply your consciousness can have a physical
effect on the makeup of your brain. They also found
(19:45):
um they've being scientists also not the drivers. Uh, also
found that there was a similar effect in some I
believe they were Buddhist monks who had spent decades meditating
on compassion and kindness, and they had a larger part
of the brain associated with you know, like empathy and
(20:07):
kindness and mirror neurons and stuff like that. And so
it's strange because when to respond to that point about
hate kind of makes me think, yeah, is it possible
that you could train somebody in the opposite direction? I
think mostly just I'm interested in in where we can
(20:28):
go with this, and it makes me want to meditate
more and read more and study the maps of Atlanta
more and possibly increase the size of my brain. Oliver.
And for a literary reference, the idea of training people
to hate makes me think of Goldstein and the two
Minute Hate in and um, maybe it is possible to
(20:50):
kind of ritualize that. We do also know that it
is a tale as old as time. To take the
line from Beauty and the Beast, that groups of people
do tend to concentrate hate towards some other outside identity.
Defining something as not us gives a more cohesive identity
to a community or a group of people. It's especially
(21:11):
helpful if you have an overseer or uh a government
and or someone above you telling you that that's what
you should hate. Yes, yes, and we're not saying that
that is what we would do if we were ever
in charge of something, But I think we'd be okay
being in charge of stuff. All right, Well, we better
(21:32):
get out of here. And work on our meditation. Before that,
that stuff all comes into play. Um, let's see, let's
tell people about our Facebook. Hey, guys, if you like
this and you want to find out more, we've got
a playlist on our YouTube page. That's YouTube dot com
slash conspiracy Stuff and it's the Deceptive Brain series. You
can talk to us on Twitter we're at conspiracy Stuff,
(21:54):
and you can also find us on Facebook. We're also
conspiracy Stuff there. And that's the end of this class episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
std w y t K. If you don't want to
(22:15):
do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at I heart radio dot com. Stuff
they Don't want you to Know is a production of
I Heart Radio
How time flies. We are, as we said, publishing classic episodes,
and this is one that is very near and dear
to our collective hearts. This was a very unusual episode
for us to make because the conspirator in this in
(00:21):
today's show is is you it's your brain? Right? Yes?
Are you your brain? Or is your brain you? Or
are you the same? Oh? I don't know. Is this
your brain on drugs or is it just an excuse
not to eat eggs anymore? In a way, some of
what we're going to talk about here is your brain
(00:43):
on drugs, in as in chemicals that are produced by
your own body, and also other chemicals that you can
take into you. And this one really focuses on a
video series we put out, So we recommend both listen
to this and then check out the YouTube channel Conspiracy
Stuff and watch the Deceptive Brain videos. There's some great,
(01:04):
great powerful content in there. This was a journey for
us for a peek behind the scenes. We did not,
or at least I did not expect the video series
to become a three parter. Neurochemistry is a tricky thing,
and I believe when we originally recorded this, we have
the most up to date information and studies available about
(01:26):
human neurochemistry, but there's still so much to learn. Luckily
we listen back to this and it is and what
we found was disturbing. You know, this is the early
days before we became quite as cynical as we are
now about the treachery of memory and all the other
tricks your brain plays on you. But have you ever
(01:48):
been in love? Have you ever been very angry about something?
Have you ever hated someone? Uh? In each of those instances,
your brain will pull a full Judas on you in
some way or another. So, without further ado, why don't
we get right into it. Let's do what. I hope
your brain doesn't play any tricks on you while you're
(02:09):
listening from UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History
is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now
or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
and welcome to stuff they don't want you to know.
(02:30):
I'm Ben Bowling and I'm Matt Frederick, and today we
are going to talk about a series that we did. Wow,
there's a deep cut on Matt. Yeah, at least the
original The the original episodes were rather deep and that
original series was called The Deceptive Brain, or rather Present
Tense is called the Deceptive Brain because you can still
(02:52):
see it on YouTube right now. This was a three
part series wherein You and I explored the effects that
chemicals have on the brain, and most importantly, the effects
that naturally occurring neurochemicals have on the brain, right, yeah, exactly,
and the ways in which those chemicals kind of trick
(03:14):
the brain. It's weird, it tricks itself by releasing chemicals
because when we think about, uh, when we say your
brain is tricking you, it's really tricking itself. And I
thought that was one of the more fascinating things, because
what are we besides our brains, at least the thoughts
that we have. Yeah, and this was funny to us
because you know, sometimes it can be a little bit
(03:36):
challenging when we're making an episode to have it always
end with something someone doesn't want someone else to know.
And this was a little bit different for us because
it was your brain quote unquote, your brain didn't want
you to know exactly how it was saving or lying
to you. What we did see some really interesting stuff.
(03:59):
We did a did one episode on love we did Yeah,
we did one episode on hate. I actually I wanted
to go all the way back and do some of
the first stuff we talked about with the seft of brain.
That was one of my favorite Okay, yeah, like I
learned a lot of things. I'm just gonna go off
the cuff here. I One of my favorite things that
I learned in the earlier episodes was the trick with
the warm cup or a warm beverage in your hand
(04:22):
when you speak with someone, and how it can affect
the way you feel about that person or at least
your takeaway feelings. Yeah, that's a that was a very
interesting series of studies. Like I can't remember exactly which
university it comes out of, but I think it's in
our episode there. And this is where this this comes
into play. Where if you're if you and I are
(04:44):
talking and like I have coffee right now, Let's see
how I have coffee right now? It's cold though, watch
out your on thin ice, my friend, because if somebody
is holding a hot drink. These studies found that they
are more likely for some almost it sounds withiculous, but
they're more likely to regard a person that's speaking to
them as nicer. There they tend to be a little
(05:06):
more empathetic maybe, but then when they have a cold drink,
they tend to that effect is reduced and they tend
to be more objective. That was interesting to me, and
that's something it's um it's similar to what's called priming, right,
psychologically subtly framing a situation such that a person's brain
(05:27):
kind of leads them to a predetermined decision point of
some sort. And another thing, this is a funny trick,
and this I really want people to try this met
anybody who has an office job. If you have a dog,
get a picture of your dog. Just your dog. You
can be in the picture. It doesn't matter if you
are uh, just get a picture of your dog and
(05:50):
put it on your desk and see if people begin
to treat you differently. If you have a cat, don't
put a picture of your cat up there, because I
think this only works with dogs. But was another yeah, right,
there was another study that found that people who had
a photograph of a dog on their desk were more
likely to be perceived as team players or supportive people. Wow. Yeah,
(06:13):
but not not so with cats, my friend. And also,
you know, if you want to be a little unethical,
it doesn't have to necessarily be your dog. Oh, just
find a funny picture of a dog. That could be
an awkward conversation, Oh, do you have a dog? No, No,
it's like this picture because I'm a team player. Or
you could just come up with some elaborate story about
(06:34):
that dog and how you used to have it and
it went and you know, lives in a farm. Now. Yeah,
there's no way that an elaborate lie will ever go wrong,
especially in an office environment. So another thing we talked
about ben was sleep. How you can hack your sleep
and kind of change your brain and the way it
works by breaking up your waking and sleeping hours. I
(06:55):
think it's called polyphasic sleep. Yeah, polyphasic sleep, the sustainability
and efficacy of which has been a subject of intense debate.
People who are familiar with this might see on the
internet what's what was called? I think the Uberman sleep schedule,
which I never achieved, but I got. The closest I
got was too close closest it was probably Let's see,
(07:20):
I did two four hour chunks for a while, and
then I divided into um of waking or sleeping for
our sleeping and and some people have even argued later
on that that is a more natural way of human
rest cycles. But I don't know. I can't think of
that book. There was a book that came out not
(07:41):
long ago that talked about that, how men and women
would sleep for four hours, wake up, sometimes engage in
let's say, witchcraft, and then sleep for another four hours.
I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah, and um, you
know I was experimenting with that stuff before before this,
(08:03):
uh this book came out or before I was aware
of it. The Uberman sleep schedule. However, I don't know
if anyone who's listening has ever successfully done it. I'd
love to hear about it, because it's just it's pretty
much a series twenty minute naps, and you're supposed to.
The reasoning goes, so I'll train your brain to just
fall right into R E M sleep and then wake
(08:24):
wake up immediately refreshed. But of course the problem is
in theory. If that works, then you can't not you
cannot miss a nap by a moment. And then also
I imagine that the other the other phases of sleep
are in their own way equally important. So why would
you want to cut it out? Well, because you want
(08:45):
to get you want to get to that rem cycle
so that you can control your dream right, because that's
where lucid dreaming comes in. And if you can control
when you dream, when you dream, and how you dream,
then essentially you're not sleeping, You're you're cognitive at all
the times. Yeah, which I wonder you know, sleep. I
(09:06):
always thought sleep sounded like such a strange, hilarious thing.
We've talked about it off air. You know, I kind
of resent the fact that people have to sleep, and
um more so than many other animals. But one thing
that gets me about this this concept is if you
just described it to someone who wasn't familiar with the
idea of sleep, it sounds crazy. You would say, you know,
(09:28):
like you would say, oh, guys, I want to hang out,
but it's about that time. I've I've been moving around
for a while, so now I'm going to lie down,
lose consciousness and just sort of hallucinate for a few hours,
you know, and but I will I will see you
after that. That's so weird. Yeah, you're right, You're absolutely right.
That's very strange because you're so vulnerable when you're sleeping.
(09:51):
You're again you're not active, you're not achieving anything. I
guess that's why lucid dreaming is. Uh, it's so it's
looked at such an important thing to some people. Yeah,
and uh, the nature of dreams themselves, that's sort of
a that's already a very very weird thing, just in
(10:12):
terms of both the in terms of both the content
and the and the physical event. It's possible that you know,
maybe some people might object to this statement, but maybe
the brain is deceiving people most immediately in dreams, right,
but there are other ways they do it in waking life.
(10:32):
And um, what was interesting to us, I think both
of us about this episode was being able to see
exactly what these effects were and the chemicals that have
been traced uh to the root cause. So it's not
it's not just one rebellious scientists saying this might happen.
(10:53):
There are a bunch of other people that have also
researched this. Pure reviewed studies that have you know, pointed
out that feelings of love, for instance, traced back to
dopamine no rap and efrin and fenal leth al amine
penal lethal A mean, but those those things are linked
to a euphorian addiction, right, So um it is possible
(11:16):
to get addicted to that feeling your brain's excretions. That's
what are some things that really surprised you about the
deceptive brain? Mat I was surprised that there are techniques
and technologies that are being created and devised that will
be able to hack the brain. I thought that was
(11:38):
super cool. The transcranial what is it, transcranial transcranial direct
current simulation. That's exactly right, man, that that's pretty cool. Yeah.
So we've uh, we've probably talked about this ad nauseum
for people who are into this um or. I've heard
the show before, but I am so old on transcranial
(12:02):
direct current simulation. So what is this. This is the
practice of putting a small amount of electricity through very
specific parts of the brain and through that creating lasting
effects on the way your brain works. So this isn't
some made up Frankenstein's sci fi stuff. It's being used
(12:24):
by DARPA to train uh snipers, It's being used by
the Air Force to reduce pilot training time. Uh. The
the idea here is that by putting this electricity through
a person's brain, and of course, you know, just like
in real estate, when you're zapping your brain. It's location, location, location,
and depending on the location you pick, then you can
(12:47):
see an increase in uh, memory retention, you can see
an increase in the learning curve. And I think there
are some kinetic things that people can do, like your
hand eye co nation increases. Possibly the weirdest thing, though,
is that after exposing somebody's brain to these things on
(13:07):
a regular scale, the changes stay. It doesn't just happen
while someone's there. It's I have to remember to put
this part at the beginning. Great athletes, great chess players,
great experts of various endeavors, always have that moment where
they describe describe it as being in the zone. We
hear that with athletes right well. Transcranial direct current simulation
(13:31):
and a related thing, um transcarnial magnetic simulation can recreate
that feeling of being in the zone, and not even
just the feeling, they can recreate the way the brain
works when one is in quote unquote the zone. Do
you get in the zone when you write sometimes? I mean,
that's a really good question. I think for me it's yes.
(13:53):
Sometimes it does occur, and and it might be irrespective
of what I'm what I'm working on, but find most
often in fiction because just making it up and then
all of a sudden you see it and you go oh.
But then if you're you're reviewing sources and stuff, um,
and you want to make sure that you're actually telling
(14:13):
people the truth, um, then you can still get in
the zone. But yeah, it happens to me on a
weekly basis here if I put on the right music,
or if i'm if I've got enough white noise in
the background, sometimes I'll just start seeing the episode unfold
before I'm putting any images down. Yeah. Yeah, I like
doing that. That's trippy. That's pretty cool. So we should
(14:37):
also talk about this music because it's true. Isn't it
that you found some specific types of auditory or audio
simulations like that's true. I've got a couple different ones.
I've got a certain playlist on my iTunes. It's just
instrumental music, just music that that flows, and it doesn't
have even the beat. Isn't that intense? Just put Sure
(15:00):
people would say it puts your brain in a certain
alpha waves or whatever. I have no idea, but but
it really does get you in the place where you
can focus on what's directly in front of you. It
eliminates distractions around you. Because we we sit in an
office together, all of the editors here. We literally have
a glass office. It is glass on three sides, that's true.
(15:23):
And and we we sit in that office and we're
all editing with our headphones on and clacking away on
our keybords, and it gets a little loud, and you know,
we have to constantly share with each other. So you
need something to You have to hack your brain in
a way to focus. You have to kind of recreate
what would be a physical distance. And uh, now it's
(15:43):
time before you go out. We have to talk about hate,
which was a very interesting episode for us because we
found that studies have shown there is a hate circuit
in the brain and it connects three regions of the
brain and there, you know, there's like a love circuit.
And of course love evolutionarily speaking, makes sense, right, Yeah,
(16:06):
you gotta reproduce, man. Just thank god we're not praying
mantis style. You know, that's rough deal for the dudes.
But hate, it turns out, also has um an evolutionary advantage,
Like there's there's a reason that hate exists in the
Great human mosaic or tapestry or whatever, you know, big
big thing, the great human thing. And it's about survival, right,
(16:30):
and all of these things that we're learning about with
the brain and how it's working for you and against you.
It's about survival sometimes because our conscious thought requires it
requires the brain to take over itself. Yes, in a
weird way. Yeah. And the and hate and love are
you know, it's it's kind of been a cliche for
(16:51):
long time, hate and love or two sides at the
same coin, and all that stuff, all that jazz, all
that smooth jazz. But the the truth is that there
is some physiological basis to that comparison. There's a brain
region called the putamen, which was so fun to say,
put a m in and this is part of the
(17:12):
hate circuit and it's also associated with love. So maybe
they're not that different. And the professor who found some
of these studies um noted that viewing a loved or
hated person could be equally distressing, and that the insula
also is involved in responding to distressing situations. And I
guess I could see that because you know, who hasn't
(17:34):
been embarrassed in front of a crush? I hope that
not everybody has seen someone and immediately wanted them to die,
but it happens. I feel very lucky because I can't
specifically recall any moment where I looked at someone and
thought you should die. Well, I wonder how much that
(17:54):
circuit is trained by, let's say, influence from parental figures
or societal figures. Right, I don't wonder how. I wonder
if it's strengthened or if it's dold in certain people.
You know, we ran into something similar with uh one
of our other shows here at how Stuff Works the car.
Stuff looked at neuroplasticity with this thing called the knowledge,
(18:19):
and you and I talked about the knowledge, right. You
know the London taxi drivers the test they have to take, Yes, exactly,
it's a it's a beast of a test because you
have to memorize not only pretty much all the streets
of London, but you also have to memorize specific roots,
and you have to do alternatives to those roots. And
a lot of people, I think the vast majority fail
(18:42):
the first time they take the knowledge. And I mean
it's already pretty intimidating test. It's called the knowledge and uh,
they study um intensely to pass this test, and when
they finally do pass this test, they become London cabbies
and live happily ever after. Yeah, I'm sure that's how
it goes every time. I'm sure that's how it goes
(19:02):
every single time. That's not even a generalization ever. But
what what happened is some of the research conducted found
that these cab drivers after decades of service. It's not
right all the jump, but after decades they had larger
areas of the brain associated with memory and UM three
(19:24):
D space navigation, you know. So so it's possible that
there's real life mind over matter, your thoughts, the things
that you try to think about UM, and the things
to which you apply your consciousness can have a physical
effect on the makeup of your brain. They also found
(19:45):
um they've being scientists also not the drivers. Uh, also
found that there was a similar effect in some I
believe they were Buddhist monks who had spent decades meditating
on compassion and kindness, and they had a larger part
of the brain associated with you know, like empathy and
(20:07):
kindness and mirror neurons and stuff like that. And so
it's strange because when to respond to that point about
hate kind of makes me think, yeah, is it possible
that you could train somebody in the opposite direction? I
think mostly just I'm interested in in where we can
(20:28):
go with this, and it makes me want to meditate
more and read more and study the maps of Atlanta
more and possibly increase the size of my brain. Oliver.
And for a literary reference, the idea of training people
to hate makes me think of Goldstein and the two
Minute Hate in and um, maybe it is possible to
(20:50):
kind of ritualize that. We do also know that it
is a tale as old as time. To take the
line from Beauty and the Beast, that groups of people
do tend to concentrate hate towards some other outside identity.
Defining something as not us gives a more cohesive identity
to a community or a group of people. It's especially
(21:11):
helpful if you have an overseer or uh a government
and or someone above you telling you that that's what
you should hate. Yes, yes, and we're not saying that
that is what we would do if we were ever
in charge of something, But I think we'd be okay
being in charge of stuff. All right, Well, we better
(21:32):
get out of here. And work on our meditation. Before that,
that stuff all comes into play. Um, let's see, let's
tell people about our Facebook. Hey, guys, if you like
this and you want to find out more, we've got
a playlist on our YouTube page. That's YouTube dot com
slash conspiracy Stuff and it's the Deceptive Brain series. You
can talk to us on Twitter we're at conspiracy Stuff,
(21:54):
and you can also find us on Facebook. We're also
conspiracy Stuff there. And that's the end of this class episode.
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
std w y t K. If you don't want to
(22:15):
do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at I heart radio dot com. Stuff
they Don't want you to Know is a production of
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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