November 1, 2013 • 20 mins
Do warm drinks make you more likely to favorably regard a stranger? How do emotions affect your decision-making process? 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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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.
I'm Ben Bolan and Matt Frederick, and today we are
(00:24):
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
see it on YouTube right now. This was a three
(00:45):
part series wherein you and I explored the effects that
chemicals have on the brain, and most importantly, the effects
that naturally occurring neurochemicals on the brain, right, Yeah, exactly,
and the ways in which those chemicals kind of trick
the brain. It's weird, it tricks itself by releasing chemicals,
(01:09):
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
challenging when we're making an episode to have it always
(01:30):
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 seaving or lying
to you. What we did see some really interesting stuff.
We did a do one episode on love. We did, Yeah,
(01:55):
we did one episode on hate. I actually I wanted
to go all the way back and do some of
the first off we talked about with the sept 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
when you speak with someone, and how it can affect
the way you feel about that person, or at least
(02:16):
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
talking and like, I have coffee right now. Let's see
(02:38):
how war 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 ridiculous,
but they're more likely to regard a person that's speaking
to them as nicer. There they tend to be a
little more empathetic maybe, but then when they have a
(02:59):
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
kind of leads them to a predetermined decision point of
(03:22):
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
put it on your desk and see if people begin
(03:44):
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 there 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 at as team players or supportive people. Wow. Yeah,
but not not so with cats, my friend. And also,
(04:07):
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
that dog and how you used to have it and
it went and you know, lives in a farm. Now. Yeah,
(04:29):
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
think it's called polyphasic sleep. Yeah, polyphasic sleep. The sustainability
(04:51):
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 Uberman sleep schedule,
which I never achieved, but I got. The closest I
got was too close closest it was probably let's see,
I did two four hour chunks for a while, and
(05:13):
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
long ago that talked about that how men and women
(05:35):
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, uh
this book came out, or before I was aware of it.
(05:56):
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 wake up immediately refreshed. But
(06:17):
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 to get You want to get to
that rem cycle so that you can control your dream right,
(06:40):
because that's where locid 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 always thought sleep sounded like such a strange, hilarious thing.
We've talked about it off air, you know, I kind
(07:00):
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,
like you would say, Oh, guys, I want to hang out,
but it's about that time. I've I've been moving around
(07:23):
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.
You're again you're not active, you're not achieving anything. I
(07:44):
guess that's why lucid dreaming is. Uh, it's so it's
looked at as such a 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
terms of both the in terms of both the content
(08:05):
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.
And um, what was interesting to us, I think both
of us about this episode was being able to see
(08:29):
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.
There are a bunch of other people that have also
researched this. Pure reviewed studies that have you know, pointed
(08:50):
out that feelings of love, for instance, traced back to
dopamine no rep and efferent and fenal lethol amine penal
lethal A mean, but those those things are linked to
a euphorian addiction, right, So, um, it is possible to
get addicted to that feeling your brain's excretions. What are
(09:11):
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 we'll be able
to hack the brain. I thought that was super cool.
The transcranial what is it, transcranial transcranial direct current simulation.
(09:34):
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 sold on transcranial direct current simulation.
So what is this? This is the practice of putting
(09:55):
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 sci fi stuff. It's being used by DARPA to
train UH snipers. It's being used by the Air Force
(10:17):
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 see
an increase in UH, memory retention, you can see an
(10:40):
increase in the learning curve. And I think there are
some kinetic things that people can do, like your hand
eye coordination increases. Possibly the weirdest thing, though, is that
after exposing somebody's brain to these things on a regular scale,
the changes stay. It doesn't just have and while someone's
(11:01):
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 and a
(11:21):
related thing, um, transcrenial 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. Sometimes
(11:41):
it does occur, and and it might be irrespective of
what I'm what I'm working on. But I find it
most often in fiction because you 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 or
that you're actually telling people the truth, um, then you
(12:04):
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, and 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
(12:25):
we should 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
(12:48):
put your 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,
(13:11):
that's true. And and we we sit in that office
and we're all editing with our headphones on and clacking
away on our keywords, 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,
(13:31):
now it's 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 that you know, there's like a
love circuit, and of course love evolutionarily speaking, makes sense, right, Yeah,
(13:55):
you gotta reproduce, man. Just thank god we're not praying
Mantis style. You know, it's a 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,
(14:18):
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 them and hate and love are
you know, it's it's kind of been a cliche for
(14:40):
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 putamin which was so fun to say
put a M E in and this is part of
(15:01):
the 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
(15:22):
hasn't 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 circuit is trained by, let's say, influence from
(15:45):
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 at Car Stuff looked at neuroplasticity with this thing
called the knowledge, and you and I talked about the knowledge. Right,
(16:09):
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 routs
and you have to do alternatives to those routs. And
a lot of people, I think the vast majority failed
the first time they take the knowledge and I mean
(16:31):
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 every single time. That's not even a generalization ever.
(16:53):
But what what happened is some of the research conducted
found that these cab drivers after decades service. It's not
right all the jump, but after decades, they had larger
areas of the brain associated with memory and UM three
D space navigation, you know. So, so it's possible that
(17:17):
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, um,
they've being scientists also not the drivers. Uh also found
that there was a similar effect in some I believe
(17:40):
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 kindness
and mirror neurons and stuff like that. And so it's
strange because when to respond to that point about hate
(18:02):
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 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
(18:25):
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 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
(18:46):
tend to concentrate hate towards some other outside identity. Defining
something as not us gives a more cohesive identity to
a community or group of people. It's especially 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,
(19:07):
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 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,
(19:28):
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,
and you can also find us on Facebook. We're also
conspiracy stuff there, or you can send us an email directly.
If you want to skip the whole social media kerfuffle,
(19:51):
we are conspiracy at Discovery dot com. From more on
this topic and other unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube dot
com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch
on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff,
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.
I'm Ben Bolan and Matt Frederick, and today we are
(00:24):
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
see it on YouTube right now. This was a three
(00:45):
part series wherein you and I explored the effects that
chemicals have on the brain, and most importantly, the effects
that naturally occurring neurochemicals on the brain, right, Yeah, exactly,
and the ways in which those chemicals kind of trick
the brain. It's weird, it tricks itself by releasing chemicals,
(01:09):
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
challenging when we're making an episode to have it always
(01:30):
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 seaving or lying
to you. What we did see some really interesting stuff.
We did a do one episode on love. We did, Yeah,
(01:55):
we did one episode on hate. I actually I wanted
to go all the way back and do some of
the first off we talked about with the sept 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
when you speak with someone, and how it can affect
the way you feel about that person, or at least
(02:16):
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
talking and like, I have coffee right now. Let's see
(02:38):
how war 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 ridiculous,
but they're more likely to regard a person that's speaking
to them as nicer. There they tend to be a
little more empathetic maybe, but then when they have a
(02:59):
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
kind of leads them to a predetermined decision point of
(03:22):
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
put it on your desk and see if people begin
(03:44):
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 there 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 at as team players or supportive people. Wow. Yeah,
but not not so with cats, my friend. And also,
(04:07):
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
that dog and how you used to have it and
it went and you know, lives in a farm. Now. Yeah,
(04:29):
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
think it's called polyphasic sleep. Yeah, polyphasic sleep. The sustainability
(04:51):
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 Uberman sleep schedule,
which I never achieved, but I got. The closest I
got was too close closest it was probably let's see,
I did two four hour chunks for a while, and
(05:13):
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
long ago that talked about that how men and women
(05:35):
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, uh
this book came out, or before I was aware of it.
(05:56):
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 wake up immediately refreshed. But
(06:17):
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 to get You want to get to
that rem cycle so that you can control your dream right,
(06:40):
because that's where locid 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 always thought sleep sounded like such a strange, hilarious thing.
We've talked about it off air, you know, I kind
(07:00):
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,
like you would say, Oh, guys, I want to hang out,
but it's about that time. I've I've been moving around
(07:23):
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.
You're again you're not active, you're not achieving anything. I
(07:44):
guess that's why lucid dreaming is. Uh, it's so it's
looked at as such a 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
terms of both the in terms of both the content
(08:05):
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.
And um, what was interesting to us, I think both
of us about this episode was being able to see
(08:29):
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.
There are a bunch of other people that have also
researched this. Pure reviewed studies that have you know, pointed
(08:50):
out that feelings of love, for instance, traced back to
dopamine no rep and efferent and fenal lethol amine penal
lethal A mean, but those those things are linked to
a euphorian addiction, right, So, um, it is possible to
get addicted to that feeling your brain's excretions. What are
(09:11):
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 we'll be able
to hack the brain. I thought that was super cool.
The transcranial what is it, transcranial transcranial direct current simulation.
(09:34):
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 sold on transcranial direct current simulation.
So what is this? This is the practice of putting
(09:55):
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 sci fi stuff. It's being used by DARPA to
train UH snipers. It's being used by the Air Force
(10:17):
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 see
an increase in UH, memory retention, you can see an
(10:40):
increase in the learning curve. And I think there are
some kinetic things that people can do, like your hand
eye coordination increases. Possibly the weirdest thing, though, is that
after exposing somebody's brain to these things on a regular scale,
the changes stay. It doesn't just have and while someone's
(11:01):
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 and a
(11:21):
related thing, um, transcrenial 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. Sometimes
(11:41):
it does occur, and and it might be irrespective of
what I'm what I'm working on. But I find it
most often in fiction because you 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 or
that you're actually telling people the truth, um, then you
(12:04):
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, and 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
(12:25):
we should 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
(12:48):
put your 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,
(13:11):
that's true. And and we we sit in that office
and we're all editing with our headphones on and clacking
away on our keywords, 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,
(13:31):
now it's 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 that you know, there's like a
love circuit, and of course love evolutionarily speaking, makes sense, right, Yeah,
(13:55):
you gotta reproduce, man. Just thank god we're not praying
Mantis style. You know, it's a 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,
(14:18):
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 them and hate and love are
you know, it's it's kind of been a cliche for
(14:40):
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 putamin which was so fun to say
put a M E in and this is part of
(15:01):
the 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
(15:22):
hasn't 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 circuit is trained by, let's say, influence from
(15:45):
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 at Car Stuff looked at neuroplasticity with this thing
called the knowledge, and you and I talked about the knowledge. Right,
(16:09):
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 routs
and you have to do alternatives to those routs. And
a lot of people, I think the vast majority failed
the first time they take the knowledge and I mean
(16:31):
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 every single time. That's not even a generalization ever.
(16:53):
But what what happened is some of the research conducted
found that these cab drivers after decades service. It's not
right all the jump, but after decades, they had larger
areas of the brain associated with memory and UM three
D space navigation, you know. So, so it's possible that
(17:17):
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, um,
they've being scientists also not the drivers. Uh also found
that there was a similar effect in some I believe
(17:40):
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 kindness
and mirror neurons and stuff like that. And so it's
strange because when to respond to that point about hate
(18:02):
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 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
(18:25):
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 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
(18:46):
tend to concentrate hate towards some other outside identity. Defining
something as not us gives a more cohesive identity to
a community or group of people. It's especially 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,
(19:07):
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 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,
(19:28):
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,
and you can also find us on Facebook. We're also
conspiracy stuff there, or you can send us an email directly.
If you want to skip the whole social media kerfuffle,
(19:51):
we are conspiracy at Discovery dot com. From more on
this topic and other unexplained phenomenon, visit test tube dot
com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch
on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy stuff,
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