September 14, 2025 • 63 mins
What if our memories weren’t fixed, but flexible? And what if the key to understanding fear, emotion, and consciousness lies in how the brain constantly reshapes experience?In this episode of Mind-Body Solution, Dr Tevin Naidu speaks with Prof Daniela Schiller, a world-renowned neuroscientist, and director of the Laboratory of Affective Neuroscience at Mount Sinai. Prof Schiller’s groundbreaking work explores how we form, change, and even reimagine emotional memories, from the neuroscience of fear to the dynamic nature of consciousness and identity. Together, we dive into:- How fear memories are formed in the brain- Why emotional responses are flexible, not hardwired- The ethics of modifying traumatic memories- Social navigation: how the brain maps human relationships- The Human Affectome: a bold framework linking emotion and consciousness- Can machines ever be conscious? Free will, probabilities, and neuroscience- Memory as liberation: how to live with multiple stories of the selfProf Schiller is not only a world-leading neuroscientist with work published in Nature, Neuron, Nature Neuroscience, and PNAS, she’s also a Fulbright Fellow, Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow, two-time Moth StorySLAM winner, and drummer for the rock band "The Amygdaloids".TIMESTAMPS:(0:00) – Introduction: Daniela Schiller on the Science of Emotion & Memory(0:39) – From Animal Models to Human Fear Studies: Schiller’s Journey(2:00) – What Happens in the Brain When a Fear Memory is Formed?(3:15) – Flexibility of Emotional Responses: Why Fear Is Not Hardwired(4:51) – Computational Psychiatry & the Brain as an Algorithmic System(6:00) – From Circuits to Consciousness: Can Neuroscience Explain Subjective Experience?(7:11) – The Human Affectome: A Framework Linking Emotion and Consciousness(9:13) – What Is Consciousness? Felt Experience as the Core of Mind(11:04) – Social Navigation: Mapping Human Relationships in the Brain(14:02) – How Social Media Distorts Real Interaction and Social Space(18:15) – Ethics of Modifying Traumatic Memories: Liberation or Risk?(21:27) – Are Emotions Brain Events, Bodily Events, or Psychological Phenomena?(23:16) – The 4E Approach: Embedded, Embodied, Enactive, and Extended Cognition(24:00) – Bringing Philosophy Into Neuroscience: The Human Affectome Project(27:03) – Exciting Advances: Intracranial Recordings, VR, and Naturalistic Neuroscience(33:11) – Can Artificial Intelligence or Machines Ever Be Conscious?(36:26) – Free Will and Probabilities: Neuroscience Meets Philosophy(41:12) – Overcoming Fear as Liberation: Redefining Memory and Identity(46:09) – Living With Multiple Stories: Memory, Authenticity, and Self-Creation(1:02:24) – Future Directions: Reconsolidation, Social Space, and the Human AffectomeEPISODE LINKS:- Daniela' Website: https://profiles.mountsinai.org/daniela-schiller- Daniela's Lab: https://labs.neuroscience.mssm.edu/project/schiller-lab/- Daniela's Publications: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/daniela.schiller.2/bibliography/public/CONNECT:- Website: https://tevinnaidu.com - Podcast: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/mindbodysolution- YouTube: https://youtube.com/mindbodysolution- Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtevinnaidu- Facebook: https://facebook.com/drtevinnaidu - Instagram: https://instagram.com/drtevinnaidu- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drtevinnaidu=============================Disclaimer: The information provided on this channel is for educational purposes only. The content is shared in the spirit of open discourse and does not constitute, nor does it substitute, professional or medical advice. We do not accept any liability for any loss or damage incurred from you acting or not acting as a result of listening/watching any of our contents. You acknowledge that you use the information provided at your own risk. Listeners/viewers are advised to conduct their own research and consult with their own experts in the respective fields.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Daniella, thanks so much for joining me.
I am a huge fan of your work, been following it for years, and
it's a pleasure and privilege tohost you today.
So yeah, thanks for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me.
My pleasure. I thought I'd break this episode
into five parts, the first part being Foundations, and within
this I labeled it the Science ofEmotion and Memory.
(00:26):
So I think let's get started with that.
And thereafter we'll move on to things like from circuits to
consciousness and and beyond. So the first question I have is
you've devoted your life to and your career to studying the
neural mechanisms of emotional learning and memory.
Could you share perhaps how yourjourney from animal models of
schizophrenia symptoms to human studies of fear have shaped the
(00:50):
questions that you asked today? Yeah, it's been a long journey.
It started really from interest in the philosophy of mind and
philosophy of science and psychobiology.
I don't know the brain basis of behaviour.
That's where I that's what I studied in my undergrad and
(01:13):
that's kind of naturally led to cognitive neuroscience.
So I did start with animal models of schizophrenia, but
that was an animal model of emotional learning.
So it already incorporated the fear learning component.
And then I switched to humans and I can't say it was really
planned it it just the way it itwent about.
(01:34):
I guess I just persisted with the the topics that seemed
interesting to me. And it always revolved around
emotion, in particularly fear. OK.
And when when you think about a fear memory and when it's first
formed in the brain, what what would you say is actually
happening when this occurs, let's say at a neural level and
(01:55):
thereafter will slowly branch out into what it's repercussions
have on a social level? Yeah.
So the, I think the most fundamental thing is the
Organism identifying something that is important and relevant
in the environment to the Organism and that can be in many
domains. So in this sense, you can put
(02:18):
all sorts of emotions. In the case of fear, it's a
threat to the survival of the Organism, something threatening.
So the Organism is identifying that and then the brain gets
into a mode. It can be a predictive mode
because it's preparatory, so it prepares the brain to or the
Organism to address that concern.
(02:40):
One of your central findings is that emotional responses are
flexible. So when somebody encounters
something fear driven, let's saysomething that leads to a post
traumatic stress type of disorder.
I know you're not a psychiatrist, so just a
disclaimer of everyone out there.
How do you think that plasticityof the brain and reducing this,
(03:01):
let's say emotional non hard wired feeling that's it just
doesn't make sense. But let's say the fact that it's
not hard wired. How does someone then apply this
from a behavioral standpoint? So because in your work you
focus primarily on fear and the fact that it's such a formative
experience, but thereafter you also work on memory and how we
can change this, how malleable we are.
(03:23):
So it's a perfect blend, I thinkof these two different
components and how it can changeour experience of reality.
You perhaps unpack that. Sorry, it's a bit of a long
winded question. Yeah, no, it's something that's
really fascinating that we see in the course of evolution.
So it starts from reflexive responses.
These are hardwired. There's a just like a very in
our refer to our responses. There is, let's say, you know,
(03:46):
threat or kind of predator. And then the Organism is a set
of responses, sometimes just like one particular response to
to that situation. And with evolution, we kind of
evolved to 1st learn that and but to build on that additional,
for example, stimuli that are, as I mentioned, predictive.
(04:08):
So now you can prepare ahead of time.
No, you don't need to wait for the encounter itself.
So you have these preparatory responses and then environment
is changing. So you do need to update.
You move from one environment toanother.
Conditions change. And so that's a very important
capacity to flexibly modulate. What is it that you learned?
(04:29):
Because otherwise every bad experience that you have will
kind of change your life forever.
And we don't want to have that. So we need that flexibility.
So we have this rapporteur responses that we can modify
flexibly, you know, with time and with condition and with
additional information. When I was doing my
(04:50):
dissertation, I wrote a lot about computational psychiatry,
a lot of work from Cole Preston,working on prior information,
Bayesian brains, inference. When when you look at those
models is, is that something youincorporate quite a bit in your
work when you're working with emotional effective science,
neuroscience or are you approaching this from a
different angle? Yeah, it's actually very close.
(05:12):
So I myself in training, I'm nota computational neuroscientist,
but I do incorporate computational models and
computational thinking and I consider emotional behaviour as
algorithm, algorithmic processes.
So it's all about what the brainis computing and how we execute
it. And we could use computational
(05:34):
models to make prediction or to define very accurately what are
the components of of the learning and what the brain is
processing. When, when I was going through
your work, something that I had the urge to ask you at some
point was within this from circuits to consciousness.
As I said, Part 2 would be that,that in neuroscience we're
uncovering so much over the pastfew decades.
(05:56):
We've we've figured out so many things.
There are a few people trying tofigure out the connector and
there are a few people trying tofigure out what consciousness
is. How close do you think that we
are to connecting these mechanisms, neurosciences
understanding of emotional control and mechanisms of what
we call subjective experience? Do you think we're able to
encapsulate that within a neuroscientific approach?
(06:21):
Wow, you know, biggest question of of the field, but.
This podcast, at some point we have to touch on it.
The mind body problem is the. Yeah.
So I do have kind of an optimistic response, but it it's
very, very early on. But what I can say is that we
have made an effort to constructwhat we call the human affectum.
(06:43):
And this is an algorithmic, actually algorithmic collection
of all the component of affective phenomena in humans.
So this it's not a model or you know, a theory, it's actually a
framework that is a just provides kind of a skeleton to
incorporate all the theories or actually a platform to create
(07:07):
new theories. But it gives this fundamental
description of what is an Organism, what is the purpose of
the Organism? And in this way what is the
purpose of affect or emotion. And by answering this, we can
incorporate many, many theories and explanations from the
(07:29):
neurobiological level to consciousness.
So it does include feelings and how feelings are incorporated
into it. And considering feelings,
feelings are the content of consciousness.
So what we do is, is investigatethe content of consciousness and
the structure of of that information.
(07:52):
And from this we can learn something about consciousness,
you know, why it exists and how it is organized.
So I think actually by incorporating affect into
consciousness can lead us step further to understanding the
link between the body, the brainand and the mind.
Daniela, are you familiar with the work done by Professor Mark
(08:15):
Solms here in Cape Town at UCT University of Cape Town?
Just by by name, but what exactly?
So it's interesting because whatyou're talking about with
effective science combining witha consciousness research, he's
he's theory of consciousness, hecalls it the felt uncertainty
principle. He works closely with, with
(08:35):
people like Karpis and etcetera.But he wrote, he wrote a book
called The Hidden Spring, and it's pretty cool because
basically what he tries to say is that feeling or affect is
fundamentally what needs to be within consciousness, trying to
understand what consciousness is.
So he tries to take it back to the brainstem as the fundamental
source of this feeling because everything that we experience
(08:58):
has to be felt. And so affect forms a
fundamental basis of what consciousness is, according to
his theory of consciousness. I just thought I'd bring that
up. Sorry, it's just a sidetrack.
But with that being said, if someone asks you, Daniela, what
is consciousness or how do you respond to that?
(09:19):
Yeah, I think it's felt experience.
It's, you know, subjectively felt, it's felt, right.
It's felt experience. That's kind of I think the the
main way to to incorporate it. And I completely agree with that
approach because in a way, everyfelt experience has valence.
(09:44):
And in in this sense, affect is incorporated because there's no,
I mean, we tend to separate cognition and affect as if, you
know, perception is affect free,but it's not.
It's like every, every moment, every thought, every felt
experience is valenced, even if it's, you know, close to 0 or,
(10:05):
you know, neutral or something. It's kind of, you know, so
that's a level, that's a level of valence.
I think these, you know, these domains are very, very
interconnected and I think a great deal of what slowed us
down is this like a division of fields and domains and then
(10:27):
being studied separately. It's it's the cortical
fallacies, what some people refer to it as just the this
obsession with the fact that this visual system has dominated
us for so long. We must somehow incorporate this
into every theory of consciousness.
But you're right, I think, I think that that feeling, that
fault experience, that subjective experience has to be
(10:47):
incorporated into any theory of consciousness within these
systems. I mean us as feeling individuals
or beings. It places us in an intriguing
world. We're social species.
We have to interact, we have to engage.
The social navigation becomes soimportant.
And your lab has worked quite a bit on the social space.
What you call Can you see exactly what social navigation
(11:12):
means for most people and how wecan understand these complex
human relationships within the social space?
So I think the easiest way to begin to understand it is think
about spatial navigation, right?We walk in space and we do have
the machinery in the brain to map the physical environment
(11:32):
where we are in a particular place.
So there are neurons place cells, you know, that fire in a
particular location or grid cells that fire regularly in a
pattern that creates kind of a grid of the environment.
And one idea is that it's not a machinery dedicated only to the
physical space, but to organise information more generally.
(11:54):
And in this sense it can be alsoabstract information can be
other sensory modalities. For example, you can navigate in
auditory space or olfactory space whenever you have
dimensions and social space alsohas dimensions.
So it's actually an excellent case of navigation because if we
take fundamental dimensions likepower and affiliation, which is
(12:17):
you know, how much we get close to each other and dominance,
power relationships. These two components are are
fundamental for you see it across species and in many
psychological theories that describe relationships.
So whenever we interact, first of all interaction is is
required. It's not a snapshot of your
(12:38):
network or you know Facebook friends or something.
When we interact, we establish that relationship or location of
you relative to me, for example,on these two dimensions.
And as the interactions continue, then there is a path
created because people move in relative power and affiliation.
(12:59):
So if you model it like that, you can now have coordinates
like real coordinates and you can have a geometric structures
and vectors and angles to the social space.
And we theorized that, but then we found that the brand is
indeed tracking that we could see changes in the brand that
track with the coordinates. And that I think also relates to
(13:21):
to survival and well-being because social others are part
of the of the environment and the organisms and work is
existing in an environment and interacting with the environment
to make sense of the environmentand to survive.
Well, you briefly touched on this, but I mean the fact that
(13:42):
this is a 2 dimensional experience you and I
experiencing right now with eachother, we're moving closer and
closer to that being a permanentversion of reality.
With the way social media works today, how people are constantly
stuck behind a screen, engaging online, how do you think this is
changing or perhaps causing malfunctioning responses because
of these new environments? How is this impacting our
(14:04):
brains? Obviously I'm not talking from a
mental health perspective because you're not a
psychiatrist, but actually from the neuroscientific research,
what's happening? Yeah, I think there's a
misconception of what our relationship is.
So if you let's say just read posts and post them yourselves
(14:26):
and you feel, let's say your status is changing, that's a
whole different thing. That these are not social
interactions and there's no movement there.
There's movement of maybe something else like, you know, 1
dimensional liking status or or something like that.
But for a social space to to be represented and for navigation
(14:51):
in social space to occur, there has to be actual interactions,
like one-on-one interactions that are not a one time
interaction. So in this sense, for example,
let's say I know that someone isreally powerful.
I don't know the president so that that president is is not in
(15:14):
my social space at the moment because we didn't interact.
And actually when we interact that person, although I expected
to that person to have a lot of power, wouldn't necessarily, you
know, have it maybe like bodies and all that.
So the interaction itself defines the location in the
dimensions. So I think there's a lot of in
(15:36):
with social media, there's a illusion of interaction and it
it doesn't have the benefits andit's not encoded in the same
way. So I don't have direct empirical
evidence, but from what I see from my experiments the the
tracking by the brain machinery of of navigation, which is the
hippocampus and related regions only occurs when you actually
(15:59):
interact, not when you hear social information and or or
being passively engaged. I think that's one of the things
that surprise people most is when when you show them the
neuroscience beyond what's different from an interaction in
person versus what we experience.
I think there were a few studiesdone years ago that show how we
even perceive people differently.
(16:20):
If someone puts on an outfit that let's say they put in a
costume of a big on the street, how much, how much less certain
parts of their brain react in response to even seeing them.
So just a mere change of an outfit can dehumanize a person.
So. So there's so many small things
about reality that we don't really understand.
And because of our heuristics, certain adaptations, processing
(16:41):
power very limited. It's quite scary to consider the
fact that as a social species, we're becoming far less social,
and yet we think we're more social than ever.
Does that concern you? Yes, it's very concerning
because the the illusion is veryconvincing.
(17:04):
It's like, if you think about it, we have relationship with
ourselves, right? And we can quite easily create
mental representations of othersin our brain and have
interactions with that mental representation.
So we do have it in real life because I do represent you in
certain ways, like you said, depending on your outfit and how
(17:24):
you behave and my prior knowledge.
But I constantly update this based on the interaction.
And ideally, you know, I'm not captive in stereotypes and so
forth. But this is all augmented in
online interactions because of the limited information that you
have. So you complemented a lot with
your own mental model and this is what you have interaction
(17:47):
with, you know, just like a whole bunch of fictional
characters that you created in your mind and you you have
interactions with them and you also, you don't have a lot of
information of how they perceiveyou, which is very, also very
important input that you need tounderstand a relationship.
Daniela When it comes to speciesinteracting, we know that a lot
(18:10):
of interactions can lead to permanent outcomes.
So some if someone gives you a traumatic childhood experience
growing up, you'll always remember that experience is a
fundamental life changing one. We briefly touched on the fact
that memory and malleability arevery much interlinked.
Do you think that someone risks,let's say you change a very
traumatic memory and we sort of use some sort of a strategy
(18:34):
within psychiatry, whether whether it's myself as a doctor
trying to work on someone with CBT, dialectical behavioral
therapy, whatever. Does that risk the person almost
losing out on a core memory thatperhaps would have otherwise LED
them down a different philosophical part?
How do you how do you see these people changing memories?
Or that's that's a pretty deep question.
(18:56):
It's a very complicated ethical issue.
So we, yeah, we, we kind of, I think we all agree that that
memories shape us and, and make us who we are.
And there is the concept of growth from trauma, that people
become something they never imagined they would be.
(19:18):
So that's a positive value kind of that arises from it.
But but then you wouldn't want to have trauma just because of
that, right? So the, the thing about changing
memories is bringing them to theadaptive range.
The the talk about modifying memories in the context of
(19:41):
trauma is only when the memory makes you function less.
Well, it's like some people, right?
They suffer and they can't work and it it ruins their social
relationships. It's a has a very serious price.
And in this sense, you want to modify that memory such that you
could function with the memory. So it's not about erasing, it's
(20:04):
about living with it in a way that wouldn't you know,
interrupt with your, with your daily function.
And in many cases, you could remember the content.
So it's not about erasing the content of the of the event.
It's actually making sense of the content and then having the
emotion a bit. Not, I would say, disconnected,
(20:28):
but tolerable when you remember,because all of these processes
are are the ones that interfere with with the experience.
Of course, one can take it into let's shape people, people's
memories and, and modify and it could go to these, you know,
terrible scenarios. But I think this can happen with
(20:49):
with every science And I also, Idon't think we're there yet
because it it's very subtle whatwe managed to understand and to
modify. Yeah, I think we thought, I
think that's more for Black Maria episode at this point.
It's it's, it's very science fictiony to a point where
people, people can postulate as much as they want, but the tech
isn't, isn't there. But I mean, in if we think about
(21:11):
that differently, we can think of certain medications that do
that within our, within my field, let's say, and and yet we
still don't understand the basisof how these things work.
So, so it is one of those fieldswhere there's it's very touch
and go. Daniela, when you look at
someone experiencing something, whether it's a felt experience,
a subjective core experience, doyou find yourself seeing that
more of a more as a brain event or bodily event?
(21:36):
Or do you find that to be more of a psychological or a non
physical event? All of the above, like I, I
don't separate it at all. And also I think it's incredibly
important not to break it down because as I mentioned early on,
it's always important to remember that who is
(21:58):
experiencing the, the entity that he's experiencing is an
Organism. So the Organism is not just a
neural pathways or nervous system, it's the the body,
right? It's the entire thing.
You have the sensory informationcoming to input to the body.
And in addition to that, the Organism is embedded in the
(22:21):
environment. So it really matters where the
Organism is because it changes, you know, the relative survival
ratio or whatever. The Organism will even compute.
Also, the senses are important. Different animals have different
senses, so even if they're in the same environment, they will
each have a different environment depending on what
(22:43):
they sense. And in addition to that, to have
an environment, the Organism hasto operate, it has to interact
with the environment, has to perceive it, which is an action
in itself, and create the environment such that the
Organism could interact with it.So you see it's a very
iterative, convoluted process that incorporates all of these.
(23:06):
There's the Organism in it's entirety and it's and it's
interaction with the environment.
All of these are the experience.Yes, it's very similar to the
approach taken by the four East Cogsai.
Yes, exactly. Yes.
Embedded. Embodied.
Yes. And the enacted and extended the
mere fact that we've got a cell phone.
So it forms part of who we are at this point.
(23:28):
And without our cell phones, we're actually a lot Dumber than
we think we are. And we just everyday.
Are there any parts, Daniel, when you when you guys are
working in the lab, when you guys are doing your research,
how often do you guys ponder thephilosophical questions?
I mean like the what is consciousness?
What is free world? Do you guys ever sit down and
discuss this? Is it something that comes up or
is that just for the couch philosophers at home?
(23:51):
And so surprisingly, we, we do it quite a lot.
And so because we did write the human Affectum.
So human Affectum is an exercisein incorporating philosophy into
science. And it's also a really nice
example of how philosophy reallyhelps you organize.
What is it that you learn, even organize the field and
(24:13):
especially putting all the researchers on the same
platforms such that they and also give them joint language
such that they will be able to communicate.
And because that experience we in our paper is that we had a
(24:36):
table that expands kind of all the like components of
assumptions that go into scientific research like
metaphysical assumptions, pragmatic considerations, also
theoretical virtues. What is it that you yourself
perceive as a good theory so that all these like, you know,
something like 7 rows and we putthe affected field into that.
(24:58):
So the exercise we started doingwith the graduate students is
have them fill out this table, basically identify their
different assumptions, philosophical assumptions, you
know, mechanistic operationalization, construct
pragmatic and, and do that in their own field, in their own
thesis topic. And that was a really wonderful
(25:19):
experience because it's a simpleexercise, but it kind of
fundamentally change how you think of your research.
It really helps you organize. It also helps you communicate
and also makes you aware of manythings you took for granted or
either didn't think about or once you think about it really
enlightens your understanding ofwhat you do.
(25:41):
So I'm, I'm like, I'm a really big fan of incorporating
philosophy into science. And this year we're going to do
the course again and maybe we'llwrite something to share, you
know, the, the syllabus with, with other people if they're
interested. I think that's a brilliant
approach. It's, I think it's very
underrated within science when well, when you do do that, you
(26:04):
realize the normativity and the,and the amount of biases and
fallacies we have when we think about our own field.
And it's, and you're right, it gives us that common language to
sort of dissect what we're talking about, how we're
discussing it, why we have the similar bias that we might have
and, and, and then move beyond it.
So I, I do think it's almost like a tool for science and and
it can only augment it. Yes, like once you do it, you
(26:27):
can't believe you didn't do it before.
And it's like, how did we even survive without it?
So I, I do hope we will do it more and more and we'll be more
aware of it. Another nice benefit is that
sometimes when you think they'recompeting theories, or I don't
know, maybe you have like a nemesis theory, you actually
(26:47):
don't argue at all because you really study different things.
So there's no competition whatsoever.
You're actually really complementing each other.
So that really changes also the kind of social dynamics in the
field. Speaking of those social
dynamics, when you look at the field of neuroscience right now
and your work and the work people like you are doing in the
field, is there anything in particular that excites you
(27:08):
right now? It's it's 2025, there's so much
going on. We're exponential growths in
neuroscience research. What excites you the most?
Wow, there's a a lot so well, one thing is that from my
experience, we that we started doing, but people have been
(27:29):
doing for quite a while now is studying the human brain with
inter cerebral recordings because we have access with
epilepsy patients that while they're being just, you know,
waiting to for it. So epilepsy patients, they will
come to the hospital and kind ofstay there for about a week.
(27:50):
They will have electrodes implemented and wait for a
seizure to happen. And this helps the neurosurgeon
identify the source of the seizure and then map it and
target it in an invasive procedure later on.
But for a few days, they're justthere with electrodes in their
brain. And so they, they volunteered to
(28:10):
do some studies. And that gives us really
unparalleled access to the humanbrain, something that we could
just do with animals. But the added value of doing it
in humans is that now you can dothings like the social
navigation and you can look at just them talking, you know,
natural language, even interacting.
(28:32):
So this, this is just kind of, you don't see a lot of that.
It's the beginning, but this is very exciting and you can
combine that or do it separatelywith virtual reality and
augmented reality. So experiments become more and
more naturalistic and closer to the real life experiment, real
(28:52):
life experience, which is very important, especially in
relation to trauma. For example, we had a study
where we asked people with PTSD to listen to our recording that
describes their own personal trauma versus a regular memory.
So you can imagine someone is inthe fMRI scanner and we can look
at the room when they while theylisten to something like that,
(29:14):
you know, someone just talking, but describing a personal
experience, then we can compare it to non personal experience
and also, but it's, it's very, very naturalistic and it's their
own personal memory. And this is something you
couldn't study before because what we do, usually we bring
everybody to the lab and they all have the same experience,
which is very controlled, like looking at the stimulus on a
(29:37):
computer, making that stimulus scary.
But it's all very controlled andorganized.
But really what you're interested in is the personal
trauma. So now we can begin to see how
it gives us access to that. And because we have this
sophisticated also analytical methods and machine learning and
(29:58):
we have ways now to manage complicated data and massive
data and we just begin kind of to see the, the use of it in
science. So I think that's, that's really
exciting. That's why I said like, you
know, I said like because I was just imagine, you know, like
many, many studies now for the, the next 10 years.
(30:19):
Back when you started, did you did you ever think that AI would
begin to assist neuroscience in the way it has in the last few
years? No, not at all.
It's like a I didn't, I didn't even imagine that it was really
just the the plain old science with control conditions and
(30:41):
simple conditions and clean, youknow, out of any you.
It's kind of interesting becausethere's a phenomenon of interest
and what you do in one approach is kind of strip, strip
everything out of it such that you can isolate it and look at
it. And now what we do is, is really
(31:01):
tuck it in the, the mass of life.
But if we do manage to track it or we believe it exists, like
for example, that computation that I mentioned, like geometric
structure of social navigation, we should be able to track it
out of all the mess. So it actually, if it exists, it
should arise with, with all of this noise because it's ordering
(31:24):
the noise. So I find it very, very
compelling. And I still think that there's
room for both, right? There's like the classic way and
kind of the new way. I also see many students, which
is very nice to see that they combine advisors.
So they have like advisors that do like more naturalistic stuff.
(31:44):
And then the, the more kind of conservative advisors that do
the more organized stuff becausethey themselves see that you do
need both kind of, you don't need the, the very clear and
organized analytical thinking ofan experimental design, but also
the, the flexibility and I guesssomewhat creativity of
(32:06):
incorporating the, the experience.
Another thing that is important is that we used to think that
you translate animal work to human work.
It has to be exactly the same. And that had a lot of problems
because it's very hard for it tobe exactly the same.
So even with fear conditioning or you have a stimulus paired
with, let's say, an electric shock, and you do it in animals
(32:28):
and in humans, still humans, youknow, they have expectations.
They are really influenced by the context.
They kind of overthink. They're really influenced by the
instructions that you give them.So it will never be identical.
But I think if there's a principle of, let's say,
navigation, you could find it inhumans in a whole different way,
(32:53):
but it will still be exactly thesame computation.
You just arrive at it from the human experience.
So it doesn't have to be exactlyidentical, as long as the what
you really isolate is the computation itself or the
representation that you're trying to capture.
When we think of these, I mean it's these soft skills that sort
of separate us from from machines at this point.
(33:16):
When you think about how far it's come and where it's going,
do you think we'll ever reach a point where some sort of an
electrical or silicon system canreach the complexity of a brain?
I mean, it's 20, it's 2% of our body's mass, and yet 20% of our
body's energy is consumed. And at what point will a system
be able to do that at a more efficient rate and sort of
(33:37):
produce these experiences similar to us?
Do you think that's possible firstly, and and what are your
thoughts on when that might happen if so?
Yeah. Well, there, there the technical
aspects of it that, you know, the current systems, they just
get heated and that's it's a bigproblem.
(33:57):
I know that there's, you know, nanophotonics, it's supposed to
be much more effective in terms of, you know, saving this like
temperature problem. So maybe maybe something will be
there. But in terms of, I don't know,
if you're asking about somethingthat is more similar to the
brain, it might have to be, you know, with organic matter.
(34:22):
Or if we want, if you want to talk about conscious machines,
as long as they're not embedded in the environment and have to
produce their own material like an Organism.
And there will always be kind ofthis fundamental barrier between
considering what is conscious and what not.
(34:42):
Yeah, I think that's some peoplecall it mortal computation.
That's sort of the fact that we will die and we have to sort of
live to we have to do things within this universe to survive
and keep ourselves alive and thrive is a fundamental part of
being the conscious being at this point and and most systems
don't have that or most mechanistic ones.
(35:04):
Yeah. I mean you, you could say that
this is the like the perfect question of purpose that that I
mentioned early on. This is what the Organism is
doing and this is where you findkind of consciousness and, and
affect and the content of consciousness.
It's exactly for that, you know,to, to exist, to reproduce your
(35:25):
own material, to be independent,a separate unit from the
environment, but interacting with the environment and
whatever you do is for the sake of continuing to be right.
And for this, you have representations of the
environment and you can, you canhave abstraction, which is this
added ability that we can find, you know, more confidently in
(35:47):
humans, maybe in other animals as well, which really expands
your, your field of relevance ofwhat you can interact with in
the environment. These are kind of all levels of,
of evolution. But so, so these are, this is
where you find consciousness. It's like for, for that purpose,
(36:07):
you know, you could say. So if we don't have it in
machine, then I think it will bedifficult to to conclude that
it's similar to conscious Organism.
But I don't know it's, it's a really complicated debate.
So. Yeah, no, it's it's one of those
things that keep me up at night.What are one of the other things
would be free will. What The channel explores that
(36:29):
quite thoroughly. What are your thoughts on that
from a neuroscience perspective,do you believe?
I mean, I know it's a complicated question and even
asking if do we have free will is quite simplistic.
But when you think about will freedom of choice and just
having this, what do you think about free will?
(36:51):
It's funny, it's like everybody,you know, come with their own
like real solution to like the most complicated.
The problem is that if if you think you have a solution, you
probably don't understand the problem, right?
So you're always risking it. But I think there's like
something to do with probabilities.
(37:13):
I guess it's, I guess it's weirdthing to say, but there's a
problem with determinism, right?That there's one thing leads to
another and there therefore we don't have free will.
It's kind of it's all determined.
But we do find situations in theworld where they call it like
the land of equal probabilities where equal, you know, it's
(37:36):
like, but you still need to makea choice.
So yeah, I'm just like, I'm wondering if the fact that we
make a choice from equal land oflandscape of probabilities is
the sense of free will or. So it's a sort of, yeah.
But it's, it's really just like my, my science fiction theory,
(37:59):
right? That's where I stand.
But I, I think I would be curious to see where it goes in
terms of choosing from that. That's the kind of the, the
essence of free will, right? The fact that you have a choice.
But growing up in Israel, did you find that you always wanted
to be a neuroscientist? Was that something that was
always on your mind, or was thatsomething that just happened
(38:20):
while delving into the philosophy of mind over time?
I think, I mean, I don't know who is the person that really
plans their future. I don't think it exists really.
It's just in retrospect and it'ssometimes it seems like
everything was planned because one thing builds on another.
It's like just so nicely crafted, but it's like
(38:42):
absolutely not. It's like you really take it day
by day. I had in each stage I had no
idea if even and how I Will Survive the next and whether it
would lead to anything else. Also it it, it's not like I had
like a world view of I want to study this and that just like
(39:03):
every moment I was interested insomething.
And and I think because you follow your passion, then you're
consistent. You see, you're not first
consistent. It's like you just do whatever
at the moment is the most important to you.
And because it's you and you, you do have some, some passions
and interests, then then one thing leads to another and
(39:25):
become a very coherent actually path.
But yeah, no, I mean, I was really interested in, in
astronomy and astrophysics. That that was my passion as a
child. And I always thought I would go
in that direction. There's there was no science
like space program or something when I grew up.
(39:46):
So I just, you know, I ended up,I found myself sort of in the,
the field of neuroscience, whichwas like the next best thing,
you know, in terms of being complicated.
Yeah. In retrospect, it does reflect
what what I was always curious about.
But it just you, if you just follow your passion, you'll find
your path as opposed to plan your path ahead of time.
(40:09):
We're exactly the same in that, because when I was younger,
that's the same thing that happened to me.
I wanted to be an astrophysicist.
And then eventually he found myself going down the route of
mental health and medicine. And then because I felt like the
mind was studying, the brain would be the closest thing to
that, which is strange because it's, but yet it is.
It's fundamentally a universe initself.
Yeah. I mean, I can.
I can. I think I did have one, at least
(40:31):
one philosophical approach that that I was aware of early on,
which is how I treated fear because my interest in fear was
about related to freedom becauseI just felt it's very limiting.
You're trapped in your fear and also trapped in memories.
(40:54):
So I found or thought that overcoming fear is really about
liberating liberation, kind of just removing obstacles.
That that's how I I treated fear, you know, Speaking of free
will, you know, you don't want something to dictate.
It's like something external that dictates whatever you do.
(41:15):
So it's really about freedom. And, and has that changed over
the years or do you still find that sort of liberation when you
talk about breaking away from fear and like helping people
with that with your work and research?
Yes, it even expanded because now it it goes to everything.
It's about our emotions and about our memories.
(41:36):
So I did have a fundamental change in how I think about
memories because, you know, you grew up thinking that memories
are who you are and you don't even doubt them.
It's just like a story that you're stuck with.
And it's just like repeating, you know, you always have this
like memory in mind and, and it's who you are and it's your
life experience. And now it's like it's nothing,
(41:59):
nothing at all because first of all, it's just it's a choice.
You know, whatever you remember is a choice and how you remember
it is a choice. And, and also it's a
possibility. It's not, you're not entirely
sure that this is what happened.So in a way, just like you
predicted the future, you always, you almost like predict
the past. You can have an hypothesis about
(42:20):
the past. So it's an option now.
And so it's not, it's not self defining anymore.
And also the fact that emotions are are information in a way and
also they could be flexible. Then you also started having a
(42:41):
relationship with your memory and with your emotion as opposed
to just operating at every givenmoment.
If you have a memory, then it gives you information.
It's like, why do I remember it now?
It actually tells you a lot about your situation now as
opposed to what actually happened before.
That's the most important information that it it gives you
(43:01):
and emotions. It's like if you're afraid, it's
like, because people can say, yeah, but I can't do it because
I'm afraid. And that's it.
You know, it's like, no, but it's not.
You can still have a relationship with that fear,
right? You can, you don't necessarily
have to feel like that or you can do something despite of that
or so all of these like self defining aspects of your life
(43:23):
are not defining anymore. And in a way, you become this
first spirit, that kind of liberated creature that you kind
of create yourself every moment in a way by interacting with
these entities. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's
crazy because when you think about when people talk about
(43:45):
prior information dictating the posterior outcomes or
conclusions, yeah, what you're saying is almost like it's it's
actually, we have these posterior conclusions that we
keep making that actually dictate the posterior
conclusions. So this choice is all the way
down. I'd never stop.
And every, at every point we want to stop and actually ask
another question. We can fundamentally change the
conclusion in an instant, actually.
(44:07):
Or maybe not in an instance of the time at least.
Yeah. And, and also another thought I
had that is also a more recent insight of sorts is that so
first you, you have the story ofyour life, right?
And then the next stage is like,well, maybe it's not the story
of my life, right? You can start to doubt the story
(44:27):
and you kind of see that it's modifiable and it's flexible.
It's not the absolute truth. And you really learn about the
moment and who you are now and what, what you need.
And then the next stage is, is not committing to any story.
It's actually living with multiple stories.
And I have kind of a, you know, pet theory like like with the
(44:51):
consciousness and the free that it's actually very adaptive to
have a wide range of options. So the more stories you have
about yourself or the possibilities, the better.
Because if you just, you know, commit to 1 storyline, it's very
restrictive. If like two or three, it's fine.
But if you it's like at any given moment, it's like you
(45:13):
treat everything as like possibilities and, and one is
like more probable or more coherent or makes sense or
something. But you're kind of very flexible
with that too. Yeah.
So, and that makes sense becausewhen you think of certain
theories that were told back in the day, when you think about
certain narcissists or pathological liars and you see
(45:36):
how prior to the invention of proof or like photography,
videography, you could get away with so much.
And, and it was often a trait that helped them evolutionary to
get through lots of things. You could lie your way through
anything. There was no form of evidence
out there. People weren't keeping track.
And then over time, as the as digital media progressed, as
this proof, as we have notes andand prior information, now it's
(45:58):
not actually not working as much.
But you can tell how having thatability to almost lie on demand,
being able to be malleable as a character, be a chameleon, do
whatever you need to do, would actually benefit you in so many
ways. Because you can literally drop
into a different country, pretend like you're from there.
Yeah, yeah. But but there's a there's a
caveat. So I'm glad you you gave that
(46:19):
example because it's, it's not what I meant to so, so I'm glad
you you went there so that now Ican clarify.
So it's not about inventing yourlife as you go.
It's it's actually, I believe that this is how you become the
most authentic and true to yourself.
(46:42):
You see, I mean, there's still ayou there that because there's
still the end, the you that havethe interaction with the memory.
It's just what the only thing I'm saying is that it, it
doesn't, it's not forced upon you anymore or it becomes
information rather than a ready made or because you, you never
(47:05):
chose it in a way if you just have your storylines like my
childhood was like this and thisone did this to me.
And then that's what I am now. Now it's like, you know, well,
maybe not, or maybe I can look at it differently, or maybe now
I have more information or maybeI can find a way not to be
afraid. But you, you see, you just like
(47:27):
become more like an, an artist with a lot of material.
Yeah, it's kind of like a refresh.
It's kind of like reframing because it's almost like
uncaging yourself and remembering a lot more as has
actually happened to you. Let's say the day that you had a
traumatic experience, they mighthave been the most beautiful
sunset that occurred the same night.
And you could always rewire thatinto a different thought, like,
(47:49):
OK, that day was more about thisbeautiful sunset or I am I close
to but what you're talking about.
Or yeah, because what I want to say is that it's not less true.
Yeah, so, so unlike the the confabulating person, I mean,
that person is doesn't have evena stable self, right?
It's like you don't know who that person is.
They're just like moment by moment.
(48:11):
Actually they they are, they're like changing by the moment
depending on the moment. And and I'm talking about
actually resisting that. You see, because it's like you,
you're not your emotions in youremotions are not something that
(48:31):
are just there. It's like I have this emotion.
You see, you sort of free yourself and now you have like a
lot of choice, or at least you interact with it as opposed to
it's like floating it's. Almost like you're detaching
from yourself, but you're detaching from that moment
rather so, so unlike the confabulator, the psychopath,
you know, you're not becoming new people each time, but
(48:53):
you're, you're aligning your stories to parts that you kind
of want to go on and that have actually happened.
And you're just navigating through that territory rather
than the one that brought you down.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I like to think about
it. I like the artist example
because it's like you just have more material to work with to
(49:13):
shape your life. Is it is it ever been a concern
that you get so caught up in theartwork you forget what the
canvas look like when it started?
I think not, because I think this process actually makes your
(49:35):
core stronger because you, you access the core, which is the
the thing, you know, that it interacts with all the things
and consider them, you know, and, and also it's, it's not a
lot of it sounds very cerebral, but it's, it's not, it's not
(49:55):
entirely like that. It's really about, you know,
like like music when you sort ofimprovise and, and you, you have
like a way to kind of so you listen and then you go in a
certain way, but but you keep listening and then you go in
(50:16):
another way. So.
Like jazz in that. Result.
Yeah, yeah. It's more like that.
Tell me, Daniella, with within this field, such a diverse
neuroscience is such a diverse field, a lot of people don't
realize it. I mean, it forms bases of so
many different things. It can be economics, it can go
down to the subatomic level. It can go into chemistry,
whatever. Which parts about neuroscience
(50:39):
or the brain are you most passionate about right now and
and what are you most looking forward to in the future of
neuroscience? I'm kind of, I'm excited about,
well, the mind. So I would say mental actions
(50:59):
because I'm kind of leaning toward a view that really merges
cognition and affect. So I wouldn't say I'm interested
in affect. It's, it's really about this
subjective experience or felt experience and you have these
different components. So the, it's really all of the
above. So there's the neurobiological,
they're literally, even before that, the very physical, you
(51:24):
know, network of an Organism, which is like how units interact
and produce materials so that it's like the, the very, these
very basic systems. And then on top of that, you
start to have the mental actions, which is perception,
attention, sensory information. It's like the components and
layered on it is is affect whichis the experience of the entire
(51:49):
Organism. So in a way the cognitive
processes that we studied them separately now are the
components that comprise the theagent as a whole.
And the agent as a whole has this like global computation
that can then constrain the the cognitive aspect.
So for example, if you have the concern of, of threat, if you go
(52:12):
back to fear as an Organism, it will constrain your, all of your
processes. So you will perceive things
differently. You will be attuned to different
types of information in a different way.
All of your, your body and processes are adjusted.
So you can think about it as like these global computations
versus local computations. And they're, they're all
interacting. So I would say I'm looking
(52:37):
forward to to working in that more global interactive space
where the different researchers are communicating because
they're all in the same context,you know, of the Organism in
this particular affective Statesand the affective states are,
are inseparable. They're not like this additional
(52:57):
process, you know, sparkled on aon a cognitive process.
It's it's just considering the entire Organism A computation
that has the agent as the the carrier of the computation.
Yeah, it's and, and when you think about this fault
experience, I mean this feeling of reality.
And I mean, because it's easy tothink of someone thinking or
(53:18):
having a thought, but feeling, Imean, we're always doing it.
We feel, we feel our way througheverything.
Which other species do you thinkif if it was not a human brain
that you were studying now, whatwould be the next best brain
you'd love to to sort of get your hands on?
You could possibly want to studythat that you find intrigues
your most except for a human. Yeah, I think there's actually
(53:42):
more that we don't know. I I read this book like, you
know, many people read it from Ed Young, this immense world.
It's a mind boggling and it's a it's a little bit even scary
what you what you kind of find in these like different other
(54:05):
options of consciousness. Even I read like this, this
little actually title that like some people really like
cockroaches and they think they're like way more
intelligent and they can like even look at you, you know.
So I think we don't know a lot, but it's like from what we know,
I'm really curious about actually the very social
(54:29):
species, like elephants I think are just like amazing and
dolphins and, well, octopuses now we also know a lot more.
So, yeah, all the things that you can have like a relationship
with and you feel there's someone there with dogs,
(54:51):
obviously. So yeah, this would be my first
chance. Will be an elephant, I think.
And I think that's, that's one of the nice things about having
feeling or affect as this as a more core principle within this
framework you're talking about is because it's sort of allows
us to have more species on our, on the hierarchy, let's say
(55:13):
evolutionary, because we often just anything without a cortex,
we sort of we're done with it. But actually, when you think
about it, a lot of species can feel their way through reality
without this, without a prefrontal cortex, without any
cortical aspects as well. So even though we might not
understand the way an octopus works or anything without a
cortex is a is still feeling it's way through reality.
(55:33):
So we're giving more things consciousness with that approach
in essence. Yeah.
And I wouldn't necessarily separate thoughts and feelings,
everything. When you have a thought, it's a
felt state. So it's a felt experience.
So yeah, I think in this way, the more I dived into affect,
(55:58):
the more it seems like actually encompassing actually all of
cognition. So it, it become, become less,
you know, more and more kind of inclusive of, of everything and,
and became something else, not another process, but that global
process that I, I mentioned. If you, Danielle, if you had to
(56:19):
have a sort of a Mount Rushmore favorite neuroscientist, who
would they be? Who inspired you most?
Or who do you recommend people check out?
Except for yourself, of course. Oh, I had.
Jeez, you caught me there. I have to think about it.
Oh, no pressure Does anyone who inspires you, people you think
(56:42):
about, people who maybe got you into it.
I know one of mine is Oliver Sacks.
He's someone I really love and actually like.
Probably one of the reasons why I do this podcast.
I don't know if you're familiar with Oliver.
I'm assuming you are. Yeah, I mean, he's amazing.
He like is a person that sees the humanity in people.
(57:06):
It's just like I feel like I'm inspired on a daily basis from,
from many, many also, you know, from physicists and
mathematicians, so. Brought in that let's make it
like who are the scientists who or philosophers who've inspired
you or shaped your worldview to a point where they they really
shaped your career and who you are?
(57:32):
I I have to think about it. It's fine.
It is like a great many and kindof it's hard to choose, but it's
like I feel I have I have an answer for that, but but I want
to think about it like more deeply.
That that's completely fine. If if any recommended reading,
though, Daniella, do you think that if someone's looking at to
(57:54):
get into this field, do you think that you can think of any
books that you'd recommend people who want to fall in love
with neuroscience or and and just falling in love with the
mind in general. Is that something you also need?
Some thoughts? Well, I think Oliver Sacks
definitely will be top of the list.
And well, I, I really look up tomy a postdoc commenter, Joseph
(58:21):
Ledoux is like the fun of the founding fathers of the
emotional brain. And yeah, I think, well, he
would definitely be a person that inspired me a lot because
he's very poetic about how he views the the brain and emotion.
(58:42):
He keeps evolving. He has an amazing way of
expressing himself himself. He's also a musician.
So you it's very pleasant to read what he writes, almost like
listening to music. There's some this like
lightness, but but extreme depthand I think he did a lot.
He pretty much one of the, you know, first few that that
(59:06):
started shaping the field of theemotional brain and emotional
neuroscience and brought us where we are now.
So yeah, I would say I would recommend him.
He's he has several books, very recent ones.
He's also working on a memoir. So I think there's more to read.
(59:29):
And now he's, he's really dealing with consciousness.
So for him also emotion led him to to consciousness.
So I would start with him and I would say he's he's definitely
one of the scientists that inspired me most.
Yes. And Danielle, just a round off
if, what work should we look outfor in your from your lab in the
future that's really exciting you at the moment.
(59:51):
And and then from there, we'll slowly round off.
I'm excited about where the social space will take us in
terms of the neural mechanisms, if you can dig more and more to
find neurons and how they encodethis navigation in abstract
space. So we're heading there.
And also more into naturalistic experiences of of threat and
(01:00:14):
fear and trauma. And to use that, I'm going to
use language models and more sophisticated machine learning
based analysis to analyse naturalistic behaviour,
especially related to fear. Daniles, was there anything
about your work in general that you feel you've you've always
(01:00:37):
wanted to talk about it never got the chance really express
and tell people of the excitement that perhaps you'd
like to or or do you feel that Imight have not asked about
that's really cool and people should know about.
Yeah, I think the, the reconsolidation aspect, we, we
(01:00:58):
didn't mention the, the word, but you know, modifying memories
and, and navigating social space.
I think now I'm also merging them, starting to merge them to
see how the affect is incorporated into the social
space or social behaviour is a form of affective experience
that needs to be modified and updated.
(01:01:19):
So it's, it's about identifying these like core, core memories
and then finding a way to modifythem and then track the change.
And I think the human effect, which we we published just
recently, I'm very excited aboutthat and want to see how where
it will lead us and I hope it will be useful for the field.
(01:01:42):
I'll definitely put a link to that below as well.
Thank you so much, Danielle. I really appreciate your time.
Before we end, is there anythingabout the brain you ping?
If you if you were to conclude this, what is the one thing
you'd like to tell people about the brain that they should know
and remember at the end of this conversation, or the human
experience with your knowledge in mind?
(01:02:06):
Yeah, I would say the the most interesting aspect that people
should be aware of is the malleability of it, the the
flexibility of it and the degreeof choice that we have.
So like breaking free from the self defining memories and
(01:02:26):
emotional patterns and starting to interact with them to find
who you are underneath. Beautiful.
Thanks so much, Daniela. I really appreciate your time.
This was an absolute pleasure and you keep up the great work.
You guys are incredible and it'salways a pleasure to watch you
guys from the outside and see the incredible work that's being
(01:02:46):
put out. So keep it up and thank you for
my side. Yeah, Thank you.
Thank you. It was a great conversation.
Daniella, thanks so much for joining me.
I am a huge fan of your work, been following it for years, and
it's a pleasure and privilege tohost you today.
So yeah, thanks for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having me.
My pleasure. I thought I'd break this episode
into five parts, the first part being Foundations, and within
this I labeled it the Science ofEmotion and Memory.
(00:26):
So I think let's get started with that.
And thereafter we'll move on to things like from circuits to
consciousness and and beyond. So the first question I have is
you've devoted your life to and your career to studying the
neural mechanisms of emotional learning and memory.
Could you share perhaps how yourjourney from animal models of
schizophrenia symptoms to human studies of fear have shaped the
(00:50):
questions that you asked today? Yeah, it's been a long journey.
It started really from interest in the philosophy of mind and
philosophy of science and psychobiology.
I don't know the brain basis of behaviour.
That's where I that's what I studied in my undergrad and
(01:13):
that's kind of naturally led to cognitive neuroscience.
So I did start with animal models of schizophrenia, but
that was an animal model of emotional learning.
So it already incorporated the fear learning component.
And then I switched to humans and I can't say it was really
planned it it just the way it itwent about.
(01:34):
I guess I just persisted with the the topics that seemed
interesting to me. And it always revolved around
emotion, in particularly fear. OK.
And when when you think about a fear memory and when it's first
formed in the brain, what what would you say is actually
happening when this occurs, let's say at a neural level and
(01:55):
thereafter will slowly branch out into what it's repercussions
have on a social level? Yeah.
So the, I think the most fundamental thing is the
Organism identifying something that is important and relevant
in the environment to the Organism and that can be in many
domains. So in this sense, you can put
(02:18):
all sorts of emotions. In the case of fear, it's a
threat to the survival of the Organism, something threatening.
So the Organism is identifying that and then the brain gets
into a mode. It can be a predictive mode
because it's preparatory, so it prepares the brain to or the
Organism to address that concern.
(02:40):
One of your central findings is that emotional responses are
flexible. So when somebody encounters
something fear driven, let's saysomething that leads to a post
traumatic stress type of disorder.
I know you're not a psychiatrist, so just a
disclaimer of everyone out there.
How do you think that plasticityof the brain and reducing this,
(03:01):
let's say emotional non hard wired feeling that's it just
doesn't make sense. But let's say the fact that it's
not hard wired. How does someone then apply this
from a behavioral standpoint? So because in your work you
focus primarily on fear and the fact that it's such a formative
experience, but thereafter you also work on memory and how we
can change this, how malleable we are.
(03:23):
So it's a perfect blend, I thinkof these two different
components and how it can changeour experience of reality.
You perhaps unpack that. Sorry, it's a bit of a long
winded question. Yeah, no, it's something that's
really fascinating that we see in the course of evolution.
So it starts from reflexive responses.
These are hardwired. There's a just like a very in
our refer to our responses. There is, let's say, you know,
(03:46):
threat or kind of predator. And then the Organism is a set
of responses, sometimes just like one particular response to
to that situation. And with evolution, we kind of
evolved to 1st learn that and but to build on that additional,
for example, stimuli that are, as I mentioned, predictive.
(04:08):
So now you can prepare ahead of time.
No, you don't need to wait for the encounter itself.
So you have these preparatory responses and then environment
is changing. So you do need to update.
You move from one environment toanother.
Conditions change. And so that's a very important
capacity to flexibly modulate. What is it that you learned?
(04:29):
Because otherwise every bad experience that you have will
kind of change your life forever.
And we don't want to have that. So we need that flexibility.
So we have this rapporteur responses that we can modify
flexibly, you know, with time and with condition and with
additional information. When I was doing my
(04:50):
dissertation, I wrote a lot about computational psychiatry,
a lot of work from Cole Preston,working on prior information,
Bayesian brains, inference. When when you look at those
models is, is that something youincorporate quite a bit in your
work when you're working with emotional effective science,
neuroscience or are you approaching this from a
different angle? Yeah, it's actually very close.
(05:12):
So I myself in training, I'm nota computational neuroscientist,
but I do incorporate computational models and
computational thinking and I consider emotional behaviour as
algorithm, algorithmic processes.
So it's all about what the brainis computing and how we execute
it. And we could use computational
(05:34):
models to make prediction or to define very accurately what are
the components of of the learning and what the brain is
processing. When, when I was going through
your work, something that I had the urge to ask you at some
point was within this from circuits to consciousness.
As I said, Part 2 would be that,that in neuroscience we're
uncovering so much over the pastfew decades.
(05:56):
We've we've figured out so many things.
There are a few people trying tofigure out the connector and
there are a few people trying tofigure out what consciousness
is. How close do you think that we
are to connecting these mechanisms, neurosciences
understanding of emotional control and mechanisms of what
we call subjective experience? Do you think we're able to
encapsulate that within a neuroscientific approach?
(06:21):
Wow, you know, biggest question of of the field, but.
This podcast, at some point we have to touch on it.
The mind body problem is the. Yeah.
So I do have kind of an optimistic response, but it it's
very, very early on. But what I can say is that we
have made an effort to constructwhat we call the human affectum.
(06:43):
And this is an algorithmic, actually algorithmic collection
of all the component of affective phenomena in humans.
So this it's not a model or you know, a theory, it's actually a
framework that is a just provides kind of a skeleton to
incorporate all the theories or actually a platform to create
(07:07):
new theories. But it gives this fundamental
description of what is an Organism, what is the purpose of
the Organism? And in this way what is the
purpose of affect or emotion. And by answering this, we can
incorporate many, many theories and explanations from the
(07:29):
neurobiological level to consciousness.
So it does include feelings and how feelings are incorporated
into it. And considering feelings,
feelings are the content of consciousness.
So what we do is, is investigatethe content of consciousness and
the structure of of that information.
(07:52):
And from this we can learn something about consciousness,
you know, why it exists and how it is organized.
So I think actually by incorporating affect into
consciousness can lead us step further to understanding the
link between the body, the brainand and the mind.
Daniela, are you familiar with the work done by Professor Mark
(08:15):
Solms here in Cape Town at UCT University of Cape Town?
Just by by name, but what exactly?
So it's interesting because whatyou're talking about with
effective science combining witha consciousness research, he's
he's theory of consciousness, hecalls it the felt uncertainty
principle. He works closely with, with
(08:35):
people like Karpis and etcetera.But he wrote, he wrote a book
called The Hidden Spring, and it's pretty cool because
basically what he tries to say is that feeling or affect is
fundamentally what needs to be within consciousness, trying to
understand what consciousness is.
So he tries to take it back to the brainstem as the fundamental
source of this feeling because everything that we experience
(08:58):
has to be felt. And so affect forms a
fundamental basis of what consciousness is, according to
his theory of consciousness. I just thought I'd bring that
up. Sorry, it's just a sidetrack.
But with that being said, if someone asks you, Daniela, what
is consciousness or how do you respond to that?
(09:19):
Yeah, I think it's felt experience.
It's, you know, subjectively felt, it's felt, right.
It's felt experience. That's kind of I think the the
main way to to incorporate it. And I completely agree with that
approach because in a way, everyfelt experience has valence.
(09:44):
And in in this sense, affect is incorporated because there's no,
I mean, we tend to separate cognition and affect as if, you
know, perception is affect free,but it's not.
It's like every, every moment, every thought, every felt
experience is valenced, even if it's, you know, close to 0 or,
(10:05):
you know, neutral or something. It's kind of, you know, so
that's a level, that's a level of valence.
I think these, you know, these domains are very, very
interconnected and I think a great deal of what slowed us
down is this like a division of fields and domains and then
(10:27):
being studied separately. It's it's the cortical
fallacies, what some people refer to it as just the this
obsession with the fact that this visual system has dominated
us for so long. We must somehow incorporate this
into every theory of consciousness.
But you're right, I think, I think that that feeling, that
fault experience, that subjective experience has to be
(10:47):
incorporated into any theory of consciousness within these
systems. I mean us as feeling individuals
or beings. It places us in an intriguing
world. We're social species.
We have to interact, we have to engage.
The social navigation becomes soimportant.
And your lab has worked quite a bit on the social space.
What you call Can you see exactly what social navigation
(11:12):
means for most people and how wecan understand these complex
human relationships within the social space?
So I think the easiest way to begin to understand it is think
about spatial navigation, right?We walk in space and we do have
the machinery in the brain to map the physical environment
(11:32):
where we are in a particular place.
So there are neurons place cells, you know, that fire in a
particular location or grid cells that fire regularly in a
pattern that creates kind of a grid of the environment.
And one idea is that it's not a machinery dedicated only to the
physical space, but to organise information more generally.
(11:54):
And in this sense it can be alsoabstract information can be
other sensory modalities. For example, you can navigate in
auditory space or olfactory space whenever you have
dimensions and social space alsohas dimensions.
So it's actually an excellent case of navigation because if we
take fundamental dimensions likepower and affiliation, which is
(12:17):
you know, how much we get close to each other and dominance,
power relationships. These two components are are
fundamental for you see it across species and in many
psychological theories that describe relationships.
So whenever we interact, first of all interaction is is
required. It's not a snapshot of your
(12:38):
network or you know Facebook friends or something.
When we interact, we establish that relationship or location of
you relative to me, for example,on these two dimensions.
And as the interactions continue, then there is a path
created because people move in relative power and affiliation.
(12:59):
So if you model it like that, you can now have coordinates
like real coordinates and you can have a geometric structures
and vectors and angles to the social space.
And we theorized that, but then we found that the brand is
indeed tracking that we could see changes in the brand that
track with the coordinates. And that I think also relates to
(13:21):
to survival and well-being because social others are part
of the of the environment and the organisms and work is
existing in an environment and interacting with the environment
to make sense of the environmentand to survive.
Well, you briefly touched on this, but I mean the fact that
(13:42):
this is a 2 dimensional experience you and I
experiencing right now with eachother, we're moving closer and
closer to that being a permanentversion of reality.
With the way social media works today, how people are constantly
stuck behind a screen, engaging online, how do you think this is
changing or perhaps causing malfunctioning responses because
of these new environments? How is this impacting our
(14:04):
brains? Obviously I'm not talking from a
mental health perspective because you're not a
psychiatrist, but actually from the neuroscientific research,
what's happening? Yeah, I think there's a
misconception of what our relationship is.
So if you let's say just read posts and post them yourselves
(14:26):
and you feel, let's say your status is changing, that's a
whole different thing. That these are not social
interactions and there's no movement there.
There's movement of maybe something else like, you know, 1
dimensional liking status or or something like that.
But for a social space to to be represented and for navigation
(14:51):
in social space to occur, there has to be actual interactions,
like one-on-one interactions that are not a one time
interaction. So in this sense, for example,
let's say I know that someone isreally powerful.
I don't know the president so that that president is is not in
(15:14):
my social space at the moment because we didn't interact.
And actually when we interact that person, although I expected
to that person to have a lot of power, wouldn't necessarily, you
know, have it maybe like bodies and all that.
So the interaction itself defines the location in the
dimensions. So I think there's a lot of in
(15:36):
with social media, there's a illusion of interaction and it
it doesn't have the benefits andit's not encoded in the same
way. So I don't have direct empirical
evidence, but from what I see from my experiments the the
tracking by the brain machinery of of navigation, which is the
hippocampus and related regions only occurs when you actually
(15:59):
interact, not when you hear social information and or or
being passively engaged. I think that's one of the things
that surprise people most is when when you show them the
neuroscience beyond what's different from an interaction in
person versus what we experience.
I think there were a few studiesdone years ago that show how we
even perceive people differently.
(16:20):
If someone puts on an outfit that let's say they put in a
costume of a big on the street, how much, how much less certain
parts of their brain react in response to even seeing them.
So just a mere change of an outfit can dehumanize a person.
So. So there's so many small things
about reality that we don't really understand.
And because of our heuristics, certain adaptations, processing
(16:41):
power very limited. It's quite scary to consider the
fact that as a social species, we're becoming far less social,
and yet we think we're more social than ever.
Does that concern you? Yes, it's very concerning
because the the illusion is veryconvincing.
(17:04):
It's like, if you think about it, we have relationship with
ourselves, right? And we can quite easily create
mental representations of othersin our brain and have
interactions with that mental representation.
So we do have it in real life because I do represent you in
certain ways, like you said, depending on your outfit and how
(17:24):
you behave and my prior knowledge.
But I constantly update this based on the interaction.
And ideally, you know, I'm not captive in stereotypes and so
forth. But this is all augmented in
online interactions because of the limited information that you
have. So you complemented a lot with
your own mental model and this is what you have interaction
(17:47):
with, you know, just like a whole bunch of fictional
characters that you created in your mind and you you have
interactions with them and you also, you don't have a lot of
information of how they perceiveyou, which is very, also very
important input that you need tounderstand a relationship.
Daniela When it comes to speciesinteracting, we know that a lot
(18:10):
of interactions can lead to permanent outcomes.
So some if someone gives you a traumatic childhood experience
growing up, you'll always remember that experience is a
fundamental life changing one. We briefly touched on the fact
that memory and malleability arevery much interlinked.
Do you think that someone risks,let's say you change a very
traumatic memory and we sort of use some sort of a strategy
(18:34):
within psychiatry, whether whether it's myself as a doctor
trying to work on someone with CBT, dialectical behavioral
therapy, whatever. Does that risk the person almost
losing out on a core memory thatperhaps would have otherwise LED
them down a different philosophical part?
How do you how do you see these people changing memories?
Or that's that's a pretty deep question.
(18:56):
It's a very complicated ethical issue.
So we, yeah, we, we kind of, I think we all agree that that
memories shape us and, and make us who we are.
And there is the concept of growth from trauma, that people
become something they never imagined they would be.
(19:18):
So that's a positive value kind of that arises from it.
But but then you wouldn't want to have trauma just because of
that, right? So the, the thing about changing
memories is bringing them to theadaptive range.
The the talk about modifying memories in the context of
(19:41):
trauma is only when the memory makes you function less.
Well, it's like some people, right?
They suffer and they can't work and it it ruins their social
relationships. It's a has a very serious price.
And in this sense, you want to modify that memory such that you
could function with the memory. So it's not about erasing, it's
(20:04):
about living with it in a way that wouldn't you know,
interrupt with your, with your daily function.
And in many cases, you could remember the content.
So it's not about erasing the content of the of the event.
It's actually making sense of the content and then having the
emotion a bit. Not, I would say, disconnected,
(20:28):
but tolerable when you remember,because all of these processes
are are the ones that interfere with with the experience.
Of course, one can take it into let's shape people, people's
memories and, and modify and it could go to these, you know,
terrible scenarios. But I think this can happen with
(20:49):
with every science And I also, Idon't think we're there yet
because it it's very subtle whatwe managed to understand and to
modify. Yeah, I think we thought, I
think that's more for Black Maria episode at this point.
It's it's, it's very science fictiony to a point where
people, people can postulate as much as they want, but the tech
isn't, isn't there. But I mean, in if we think about
(21:11):
that differently, we can think of certain medications that do
that within our, within my field, let's say, and and yet we
still don't understand the basisof how these things work.
So, so it is one of those fieldswhere there's it's very touch
and go. Daniela, when you look at
someone experiencing something, whether it's a felt experience,
a subjective core experience, doyou find yourself seeing that
more of a more as a brain event or bodily event?
(21:36):
Or do you find that to be more of a psychological or a non
physical event? All of the above, like I, I
don't separate it at all. And also I think it's incredibly
important not to break it down because as I mentioned early on,
it's always important to remember that who is
(21:58):
experiencing the, the entity that he's experiencing is an
Organism. So the Organism is not just a
neural pathways or nervous system, it's the the body,
right? It's the entire thing.
You have the sensory informationcoming to input to the body.
And in addition to that, the Organism is embedded in the
(22:21):
environment. So it really matters where the
Organism is because it changes, you know, the relative survival
ratio or whatever. The Organism will even compute.
Also, the senses are important. Different animals have different
senses, so even if they're in the same environment, they will
each have a different environment depending on what
(22:43):
they sense. And in addition to that, to have
an environment, the Organism hasto operate, it has to interact
with the environment, has to perceive it, which is an action
in itself, and create the environment such that the
Organism could interact with it.So you see it's a very
iterative, convoluted process that incorporates all of these.
(23:06):
There's the Organism in it's entirety and it's and it's
interaction with the environment.
All of these are the experience.Yes, it's very similar to the
approach taken by the four East Cogsai.
Yes, exactly. Yes.
Embedded. Embodied.
Yes. And the enacted and extended the
mere fact that we've got a cell phone.
So it forms part of who we are at this point.
(23:28):
And without our cell phones, we're actually a lot Dumber than
we think we are. And we just everyday.
Are there any parts, Daniel, when you when you guys are
working in the lab, when you guys are doing your research,
how often do you guys ponder thephilosophical questions?
I mean like the what is consciousness?
What is free world? Do you guys ever sit down and
discuss this? Is it something that comes up or
is that just for the couch philosophers at home?
(23:51):
And so surprisingly, we, we do it quite a lot.
And so because we did write the human Affectum.
So human Affectum is an exercisein incorporating philosophy into
science. And it's also a really nice
example of how philosophy reallyhelps you organize.
What is it that you learn, even organize the field and
(24:13):
especially putting all the researchers on the same
platforms such that they and also give them joint language
such that they will be able to communicate.
And because that experience we in our paper is that we had a
(24:36):
table that expands kind of all the like components of
assumptions that go into scientific research like
metaphysical assumptions, pragmatic considerations, also
theoretical virtues. What is it that you yourself
perceive as a good theory so that all these like, you know,
something like 7 rows and we putthe affected field into that.
(24:58):
So the exercise we started doingwith the graduate students is
have them fill out this table, basically identify their
different assumptions, philosophical assumptions, you
know, mechanistic operationalization, construct
pragmatic and, and do that in their own field, in their own
thesis topic. And that was a really wonderful
(25:19):
experience because it's a simpleexercise, but it kind of
fundamentally change how you think of your research.
It really helps you organize. It also helps you communicate
and also makes you aware of manythings you took for granted or
either didn't think about or once you think about it really
enlightens your understanding ofwhat you do.
(25:41):
So I'm, I'm like, I'm a really big fan of incorporating
philosophy into science. And this year we're going to do
the course again and maybe we'llwrite something to share, you
know, the, the syllabus with, with other people if they're
interested. I think that's a brilliant
approach. It's, I think it's very
underrated within science when well, when you do do that, you
(26:04):
realize the normativity and the,and the amount of biases and
fallacies we have when we think about our own field.
And it's, and you're right, it gives us that common language to
sort of dissect what we're talking about, how we're
discussing it, why we have the similar bias that we might have
and, and, and then move beyond it.
So I, I do think it's almost like a tool for science and and
it can only augment it. Yes, like once you do it, you
(26:27):
can't believe you didn't do it before.
And it's like, how did we even survive without it?
So I, I do hope we will do it more and more and we'll be more
aware of it. Another nice benefit is that
sometimes when you think they'recompeting theories, or I don't
know, maybe you have like a nemesis theory, you actually
(26:47):
don't argue at all because you really study different things.
So there's no competition whatsoever.
You're actually really complementing each other.
So that really changes also the kind of social dynamics in the
field. Speaking of those social
dynamics, when you look at the field of neuroscience right now
and your work and the work people like you are doing in the
field, is there anything in particular that excites you
(27:08):
right now? It's it's 2025, there's so much
going on. We're exponential growths in
neuroscience research. What excites you the most?
Wow, there's a a lot so well, one thing is that from my
experience, we that we started doing, but people have been
(27:29):
doing for quite a while now is studying the human brain with
inter cerebral recordings because we have access with
epilepsy patients that while they're being just, you know,
waiting to for it. So epilepsy patients, they will
come to the hospital and kind ofstay there for about a week.
(27:50):
They will have electrodes implemented and wait for a
seizure to happen. And this helps the neurosurgeon
identify the source of the seizure and then map it and
target it in an invasive procedure later on.
But for a few days, they're justthere with electrodes in their
brain. And so they, they volunteered to
(28:10):
do some studies. And that gives us really
unparalleled access to the humanbrain, something that we could
just do with animals. But the added value of doing it
in humans is that now you can dothings like the social
navigation and you can look at just them talking, you know,
natural language, even interacting.
(28:32):
So this, this is just kind of, you don't see a lot of that.
It's the beginning, but this is very exciting and you can
combine that or do it separatelywith virtual reality and
augmented reality. So experiments become more and
more naturalistic and closer to the real life experiment, real
(28:52):
life experience, which is very important, especially in
relation to trauma. For example, we had a study
where we asked people with PTSD to listen to our recording that
describes their own personal trauma versus a regular memory.
So you can imagine someone is inthe fMRI scanner and we can look
at the room when they while theylisten to something like that,
(29:14):
you know, someone just talking, but describing a personal
experience, then we can compare it to non personal experience
and also, but it's, it's very, very naturalistic and it's their
own personal memory. And this is something you
couldn't study before because what we do, usually we bring
everybody to the lab and they all have the same experience,
which is very controlled, like looking at the stimulus on a
(29:37):
computer, making that stimulus scary.
But it's all very controlled andorganized.
But really what you're interested in is the personal
trauma. So now we can begin to see how
it gives us access to that. And because we have this
sophisticated also analytical methods and machine learning and
(29:58):
we have ways now to manage complicated data and massive
data and we just begin kind of to see the, the use of it in
science. So I think that's, that's really
exciting. That's why I said like, you
know, I said like because I was just imagine, you know, like
many, many studies now for the, the next 10 years.
(30:19):
Back when you started, did you did you ever think that AI would
begin to assist neuroscience in the way it has in the last few
years? No, not at all.
It's like a I didn't, I didn't even imagine that it was really
just the the plain old science with control conditions and
(30:41):
simple conditions and clean, youknow, out of any you.
It's kind of interesting becausethere's a phenomenon of interest
and what you do in one approach is kind of strip, strip
everything out of it such that you can isolate it and look at
it. And now what we do is, is really
(31:01):
tuck it in the, the mass of life.
But if we do manage to track it or we believe it exists, like
for example, that computation that I mentioned, like geometric
structure of social navigation, we should be able to track it
out of all the mess. So it actually, if it exists, it
should arise with, with all of this noise because it's ordering
(31:24):
the noise. So I find it very, very
compelling. And I still think that there's
room for both, right? There's like the classic way and
kind of the new way. I also see many students, which
is very nice to see that they combine advisors.
So they have like advisors that do like more naturalistic stuff.
(31:44):
And then the, the more kind of conservative advisors that do
the more organized stuff becausethey themselves see that you do
need both kind of, you don't need the, the very clear and
organized analytical thinking ofan experimental design, but also
the, the flexibility and I guesssomewhat creativity of
(32:06):
incorporating the, the experience.
Another thing that is important is that we used to think that
you translate animal work to human work.
It has to be exactly the same. And that had a lot of problems
because it's very hard for it tobe exactly the same.
So even with fear conditioning or you have a stimulus paired
with, let's say, an electric shock, and you do it in animals
(32:28):
and in humans, still humans, youknow, they have expectations.
They are really influenced by the context.
They kind of overthink. They're really influenced by the
instructions that you give them.So it will never be identical.
But I think if there's a principle of, let's say,
navigation, you could find it inhumans in a whole different way,
(32:53):
but it will still be exactly thesame computation.
You just arrive at it from the human experience.
So it doesn't have to be exactlyidentical, as long as the what
you really isolate is the computation itself or the
representation that you're trying to capture.
When we think of these, I mean it's these soft skills that sort
of separate us from from machines at this point.
(33:16):
When you think about how far it's come and where it's going,
do you think we'll ever reach a point where some sort of an
electrical or silicon system canreach the complexity of a brain?
I mean, it's 20, it's 2% of our body's mass, and yet 20% of our
body's energy is consumed. And at what point will a system
be able to do that at a more efficient rate and sort of
(33:37):
produce these experiences similar to us?
Do you think that's possible firstly, and and what are your
thoughts on when that might happen if so?
Yeah. Well, there, there the technical
aspects of it that, you know, the current systems, they just
get heated and that's it's a bigproblem.
(33:57):
I know that there's, you know, nanophotonics, it's supposed to
be much more effective in terms of, you know, saving this like
temperature problem. So maybe maybe something will be
there. But in terms of, I don't know,
if you're asking about somethingthat is more similar to the
brain, it might have to be, you know, with organic matter.
(34:22):
Or if we want, if you want to talk about conscious machines,
as long as they're not embedded in the environment and have to
produce their own material like an Organism.
And there will always be kind ofthis fundamental barrier between
considering what is conscious and what not.
(34:42):
Yeah, I think that's some peoplecall it mortal computation.
That's sort of the fact that we will die and we have to sort of
live to we have to do things within this universe to survive
and keep ourselves alive and thrive is a fundamental part of
being the conscious being at this point and and most systems
don't have that or most mechanistic ones.
(35:04):
Yeah. I mean you, you could say that
this is the like the perfect question of purpose that that I
mentioned early on. This is what the Organism is
doing and this is where you findkind of consciousness and, and
affect and the content of consciousness.
It's exactly for that, you know,to, to exist, to reproduce your
(35:25):
own material, to be independent,a separate unit from the
environment, but interacting with the environment and
whatever you do is for the sake of continuing to be right.
And for this, you have representations of the
environment and you can, you canhave abstraction, which is this
added ability that we can find, you know, more confidently in
(35:47):
humans, maybe in other animals as well, which really expands
your, your field of relevance ofwhat you can interact with in
the environment. These are kind of all levels of,
of evolution. But so, so these are, this is
where you find consciousness. It's like for, for that purpose,
(36:07):
you know, you could say. So if we don't have it in
machine, then I think it will bedifficult to to conclude that
it's similar to conscious Organism.
But I don't know it's, it's a really complicated debate.
So. Yeah, no, it's it's one of those
things that keep me up at night.What are one of the other things
would be free will. What The channel explores that
(36:29):
quite thoroughly. What are your thoughts on that
from a neuroscience perspective,do you believe?
I mean, I know it's a complicated question and even
asking if do we have free will is quite simplistic.
But when you think about will freedom of choice and just
having this, what do you think about free will?
(36:51):
It's funny, it's like everybody,you know, come with their own
like real solution to like the most complicated.
The problem is that if if you think you have a solution, you
probably don't understand the problem, right?
So you're always risking it. But I think there's like
something to do with probabilities.
(37:13):
I guess it's, I guess it's weirdthing to say, but there's a
problem with determinism, right?That there's one thing leads to
another and there therefore we don't have free will.
It's kind of it's all determined.
But we do find situations in theworld where they call it like
the land of equal probabilities where equal, you know, it's
(37:36):
like, but you still need to makea choice.
So yeah, I'm just like, I'm wondering if the fact that we
make a choice from equal land oflandscape of probabilities is
the sense of free will or. So it's a sort of, yeah.
But it's, it's really just like my, my science fiction theory,
(37:59):
right? That's where I stand.
But I, I think I would be curious to see where it goes in
terms of choosing from that. That's the kind of the, the
essence of free will, right? The fact that you have a choice.
But growing up in Israel, did you find that you always wanted
to be a neuroscientist? Was that something that was
always on your mind, or was thatsomething that just happened
(38:20):
while delving into the philosophy of mind over time?
I think, I mean, I don't know who is the person that really
plans their future. I don't think it exists really.
It's just in retrospect and it'ssometimes it seems like
everything was planned because one thing builds on another.
It's like just so nicely crafted, but it's like
(38:42):
absolutely not. It's like you really take it day
by day. I had in each stage I had no
idea if even and how I Will Survive the next and whether it
would lead to anything else. Also it it, it's not like I had
like a world view of I want to study this and that just like
(39:03):
every moment I was interested insomething.
And and I think because you follow your passion, then you're
consistent. You see, you're not first
consistent. It's like you just do whatever
at the moment is the most important to you.
And because it's you and you, you do have some, some passions
and interests, then then one thing leads to another and
(39:25):
become a very coherent actually path.
But yeah, no, I mean, I was really interested in, in
astronomy and astrophysics. That that was my passion as a
child. And I always thought I would go
in that direction. There's there was no science
like space program or something when I grew up.
(39:46):
So I just, you know, I ended up,I found myself sort of in the,
the field of neuroscience, whichwas like the next best thing,
you know, in terms of being complicated.
Yeah. In retrospect, it does reflect
what what I was always curious about.
But it just you, if you just follow your passion, you'll find
your path as opposed to plan your path ahead of time.
(40:09):
We're exactly the same in that, because when I was younger,
that's the same thing that happened to me.
I wanted to be an astrophysicist.
And then eventually he found myself going down the route of
mental health and medicine. And then because I felt like the
mind was studying, the brain would be the closest thing to
that, which is strange because it's, but yet it is.
It's fundamentally a universe initself.
Yeah. I mean, I can.
I can. I think I did have one, at least
(40:31):
one philosophical approach that that I was aware of early on,
which is how I treated fear because my interest in fear was
about related to freedom becauseI just felt it's very limiting.
You're trapped in your fear and also trapped in memories.
(40:54):
So I found or thought that overcoming fear is really about
liberating liberation, kind of just removing obstacles.
That that's how I I treated fear, you know, Speaking of free
will, you know, you don't want something to dictate.
It's like something external that dictates whatever you do.
(41:15):
So it's really about freedom. And, and has that changed over
the years or do you still find that sort of liberation when you
talk about breaking away from fear and like helping people
with that with your work and research?
Yes, it even expanded because now it it goes to everything.
It's about our emotions and about our memories.
(41:36):
So I did have a fundamental change in how I think about
memories because, you know, you grew up thinking that memories
are who you are and you don't even doubt them.
It's just like a story that you're stuck with.
And it's just like repeating, you know, you always have this
like memory in mind and, and it's who you are and it's your
life experience. And now it's like it's nothing,
(41:59):
nothing at all because first of all, it's just it's a choice.
You know, whatever you remember is a choice and how you remember
it is a choice. And, and also it's a
possibility. It's not, you're not entirely
sure that this is what happened.So in a way, just like you
predicted the future, you always, you almost like predict
the past. You can have an hypothesis about
(42:20):
the past. So it's an option now.
And so it's not, it's not self defining anymore.
And also the fact that emotions are are information in a way and
also they could be flexible. Then you also started having a
(42:41):
relationship with your memory and with your emotion as opposed
to just operating at every givenmoment.
If you have a memory, then it gives you information.
It's like, why do I remember it now?
It actually tells you a lot about your situation now as
opposed to what actually happened before.
That's the most important information that it it gives you
(43:01):
and emotions. It's like if you're afraid, it's
like, because people can say, yeah, but I can't do it because
I'm afraid. And that's it.
You know, it's like, no, but it's not.
You can still have a relationship with that fear,
right? You can, you don't necessarily
have to feel like that or you can do something despite of that
or so all of these like self defining aspects of your life
(43:23):
are not defining anymore. And in a way, you become this
first spirit, that kind of liberated creature that you kind
of create yourself every moment in a way by interacting with
these entities. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's
crazy because when you think about when people talk about
(43:45):
prior information dictating the posterior outcomes or
conclusions, yeah, what you're saying is almost like it's it's
actually, we have these posterior conclusions that we
keep making that actually dictate the posterior
conclusions. So this choice is all the way
down. I'd never stop.
And every, at every point we want to stop and actually ask
another question. We can fundamentally change the
conclusion in an instant, actually.
(44:07):
Or maybe not in an instance of the time at least.
Yeah. And, and also another thought I
had that is also a more recent insight of sorts is that so
first you, you have the story ofyour life, right?
And then the next stage is like,well, maybe it's not the story
of my life, right? You can start to doubt the story
(44:27):
and you kind of see that it's modifiable and it's flexible.
It's not the absolute truth. And you really learn about the
moment and who you are now and what, what you need.
And then the next stage is, is not committing to any story.
It's actually living with multiple stories.
And I have kind of a, you know, pet theory like like with the
(44:51):
consciousness and the free that it's actually very adaptive to
have a wide range of options. So the more stories you have
about yourself or the possibilities, the better.
Because if you just, you know, commit to 1 storyline, it's very
restrictive. If like two or three, it's fine.
But if you it's like at any given moment, it's like you
(45:13):
treat everything as like possibilities and, and one is
like more probable or more coherent or makes sense or
something. But you're kind of very flexible
with that too. Yeah.
So, and that makes sense becausewhen you think of certain
theories that were told back in the day, when you think about
certain narcissists or pathological liars and you see
(45:36):
how prior to the invention of proof or like photography,
videography, you could get away with so much.
And, and it was often a trait that helped them evolutionary to
get through lots of things. You could lie your way through
anything. There was no form of evidence
out there. People weren't keeping track.
And then over time, as the as digital media progressed, as
this proof, as we have notes andand prior information, now it's
(45:58):
not actually not working as much.
But you can tell how having thatability to almost lie on demand,
being able to be malleable as a character, be a chameleon, do
whatever you need to do, would actually benefit you in so many
ways. Because you can literally drop
into a different country, pretend like you're from there.
Yeah, yeah. But but there's a there's a
caveat. So I'm glad you you gave that
(46:19):
example because it's, it's not what I meant to so, so I'm glad
you you went there so that now Ican clarify.
So it's not about inventing yourlife as you go.
It's it's actually, I believe that this is how you become the
most authentic and true to yourself.
(46:42):
You see, I mean, there's still ayou there that because there's
still the end, the you that havethe interaction with the memory.
It's just what the only thing I'm saying is that it, it
doesn't, it's not forced upon you anymore or it becomes
information rather than a ready made or because you, you never
(47:05):
chose it in a way if you just have your storylines like my
childhood was like this and thisone did this to me.
And then that's what I am now. Now it's like, you know, well,
maybe not, or maybe I can look at it differently, or maybe now
I have more information or maybeI can find a way not to be
afraid. But you, you see, you just like
(47:27):
become more like an, an artist with a lot of material.
Yeah, it's kind of like a refresh.
It's kind of like reframing because it's almost like
uncaging yourself and remembering a lot more as has
actually happened to you. Let's say the day that you had a
traumatic experience, they mighthave been the most beautiful
sunset that occurred the same night.
And you could always rewire thatinto a different thought, like,
(47:49):
OK, that day was more about thisbeautiful sunset or I am I close
to but what you're talking about.
Or yeah, because what I want to say is that it's not less true.
Yeah, so, so unlike the the confabulating person, I mean,
that person is doesn't have evena stable self, right?
It's like you don't know who that person is.
They're just like moment by moment.
(48:11):
Actually they they are, they're like changing by the moment
depending on the moment. And and I'm talking about
actually resisting that. You see, because it's like you,
you're not your emotions in youremotions are not something that
(48:31):
are just there. It's like I have this emotion.
You see, you sort of free yourself and now you have like a
lot of choice, or at least you interact with it as opposed to
it's like floating it's. Almost like you're detaching
from yourself, but you're detaching from that moment
rather so, so unlike the confabulator, the psychopath,
you know, you're not becoming new people each time, but
(48:53):
you're, you're aligning your stories to parts that you kind
of want to go on and that have actually happened.
And you're just navigating through that territory rather
than the one that brought you down.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I like to think about
it. I like the artist example
because it's like you just have more material to work with to
(49:13):
shape your life. Is it is it ever been a concern
that you get so caught up in theartwork you forget what the
canvas look like when it started?
I think not, because I think this process actually makes your
(49:35):
core stronger because you, you access the core, which is the
the thing, you know, that it interacts with all the things
and consider them, you know, and, and also it's, it's not a
lot of it sounds very cerebral, but it's, it's not, it's not
(49:55):
entirely like that. It's really about, you know,
like like music when you sort ofimprovise and, and you, you have
like a way to kind of so you listen and then you go in a
certain way, but but you keep listening and then you go in
(50:16):
another way. So.
Like jazz in that. Result.
Yeah, yeah. It's more like that.
Tell me, Daniella, with within this field, such a diverse
neuroscience is such a diverse field, a lot of people don't
realize it. I mean, it forms bases of so
many different things. It can be economics, it can go
down to the subatomic level. It can go into chemistry,
whatever. Which parts about neuroscience
(50:39):
or the brain are you most passionate about right now and
and what are you most looking forward to in the future of
neuroscience? I'm kind of, I'm excited about,
well, the mind. So I would say mental actions
(50:59):
because I'm kind of leaning toward a view that really merges
cognition and affect. So I wouldn't say I'm interested
in affect. It's, it's really about this
subjective experience or felt experience and you have these
different components. So the, it's really all of the
above. So there's the neurobiological,
they're literally, even before that, the very physical, you
(51:24):
know, network of an Organism, which is like how units interact
and produce materials so that it's like the, the very, these
very basic systems. And then on top of that, you
start to have the mental actions, which is perception,
attention, sensory information. It's like the components and
layered on it is is affect whichis the experience of the entire
(51:49):
Organism. So in a way the cognitive
processes that we studied them separately now are the
components that comprise the theagent as a whole.
And the agent as a whole has this like global computation
that can then constrain the the cognitive aspect.
So for example, if you have the concern of, of threat, if you go
(52:12):
back to fear as an Organism, it will constrain your, all of your
processes. So you will perceive things
differently. You will be attuned to different
types of information in a different way.
All of your, your body and processes are adjusted.
So you can think about it as like these global computations
versus local computations. And they're, they're all
interacting. So I would say I'm looking
(52:37):
forward to to working in that more global interactive space
where the different researchers are communicating because
they're all in the same context,you know, of the Organism in
this particular affective Statesand the affective states are,
are inseparable. They're not like this additional
(52:57):
process, you know, sparkled on aon a cognitive process.
It's it's just considering the entire Organism A computation
that has the agent as the the carrier of the computation.
Yeah, it's and, and when you think about this fault
experience, I mean this feeling of reality.
And I mean, because it's easy tothink of someone thinking or
(53:18):
having a thought, but feeling, Imean, we're always doing it.
We feel, we feel our way througheverything.
Which other species do you thinkif if it was not a human brain
that you were studying now, whatwould be the next best brain
you'd love to to sort of get your hands on?
You could possibly want to studythat that you find intrigues
your most except for a human. Yeah, I think there's actually
(53:42):
more that we don't know. I I read this book like, you
know, many people read it from Ed Young, this immense world.
It's a mind boggling and it's a it's a little bit even scary
what you what you kind of find in these like different other
(54:05):
options of consciousness. Even I read like this, this
little actually title that like some people really like
cockroaches and they think they're like way more
intelligent and they can like even look at you, you know.
So I think we don't know a lot, but it's like from what we know,
I'm really curious about actually the very social
(54:29):
species, like elephants I think are just like amazing and
dolphins and, well, octopuses now we also know a lot more.
So, yeah, all the things that you can have like a relationship
with and you feel there's someone there with dogs,
(54:51):
obviously. So yeah, this would be my first
chance. Will be an elephant, I think.
And I think that's, that's one of the nice things about having
feeling or affect as this as a more core principle within this
framework you're talking about is because it's sort of allows
us to have more species on our, on the hierarchy, let's say
(55:13):
evolutionary, because we often just anything without a cortex,
we sort of we're done with it. But actually, when you think
about it, a lot of species can feel their way through reality
without this, without a prefrontal cortex, without any
cortical aspects as well. So even though we might not
understand the way an octopus works or anything without a
cortex is a is still feeling it's way through reality.
(55:33):
So we're giving more things consciousness with that approach
in essence. Yeah.
And I wouldn't necessarily separate thoughts and feelings,
everything. When you have a thought, it's a
felt state. So it's a felt experience.
So yeah, I think in this way, the more I dived into affect,
(55:58):
the more it seems like actually encompassing actually all of
cognition. So it, it become, become less,
you know, more and more kind of inclusive of, of everything and,
and became something else, not another process, but that global
process that I, I mentioned. If you, Danielle, if you had to
(56:19):
have a sort of a Mount Rushmore favorite neuroscientist, who
would they be? Who inspired you most?
Or who do you recommend people check out?
Except for yourself, of course. Oh, I had.
Jeez, you caught me there. I have to think about it.
Oh, no pressure Does anyone who inspires you, people you think
(56:42):
about, people who maybe got you into it.
I know one of mine is Oliver Sacks.
He's someone I really love and actually like.
Probably one of the reasons why I do this podcast.
I don't know if you're familiar with Oliver.
I'm assuming you are. Yeah, I mean, he's amazing.
He like is a person that sees the humanity in people.
(57:06):
It's just like I feel like I'm inspired on a daily basis from,
from many, many also, you know, from physicists and
mathematicians, so. Brought in that let's make it
like who are the scientists who or philosophers who've inspired
you or shaped your worldview to a point where they they really
shaped your career and who you are?
(57:32):
I I have to think about it. It's fine.
It is like a great many and kindof it's hard to choose, but it's
like I feel I have I have an answer for that, but but I want
to think about it like more deeply.
That that's completely fine. If if any recommended reading,
though, Daniella, do you think that if someone's looking at to
(57:54):
get into this field, do you think that you can think of any
books that you'd recommend people who want to fall in love
with neuroscience or and and just falling in love with the
mind in general. Is that something you also need?
Some thoughts? Well, I think Oliver Sacks
definitely will be top of the list.
And well, I, I really look up tomy a postdoc commenter, Joseph
(58:21):
Ledoux is like the fun of the founding fathers of the
emotional brain. And yeah, I think, well, he
would definitely be a person that inspired me a lot because
he's very poetic about how he views the the brain and emotion.
(58:42):
He keeps evolving. He has an amazing way of
expressing himself himself. He's also a musician.
So you it's very pleasant to read what he writes, almost like
listening to music. There's some this like
lightness, but but extreme depthand I think he did a lot.
He pretty much one of the, you know, first few that that
(59:06):
started shaping the field of theemotional brain and emotional
neuroscience and brought us where we are now.
So yeah, I would say I would recommend him.
He's he has several books, very recent ones.
He's also working on a memoir. So I think there's more to read.
(59:29):
And now he's, he's really dealing with consciousness.
So for him also emotion led him to to consciousness.
So I would start with him and I would say he's he's definitely
one of the scientists that inspired me most.
Yes. And Danielle, just a round off
if, what work should we look outfor in your from your lab in the
future that's really exciting you at the moment.
(59:51):
And and then from there, we'll slowly round off.
I'm excited about where the social space will take us in
terms of the neural mechanisms, if you can dig more and more to
find neurons and how they encodethis navigation in abstract
space. So we're heading there.
And also more into naturalistic experiences of of threat and
(01:00:14):
fear and trauma. And to use that, I'm going to
use language models and more sophisticated machine learning
based analysis to analyse naturalistic behaviour,
especially related to fear. Daniles, was there anything
about your work in general that you feel you've you've always
(01:00:37):
wanted to talk about it never got the chance really express
and tell people of the excitement that perhaps you'd
like to or or do you feel that Imight have not asked about
that's really cool and people should know about.
Yeah, I think the, the reconsolidation aspect, we, we
(01:00:58):
didn't mention the, the word, but you know, modifying memories
and, and navigating social space.
I think now I'm also merging them, starting to merge them to
see how the affect is incorporated into the social
space or social behaviour is a form of affective experience
that needs to be modified and updated.
(01:01:19):
So it's, it's about identifying these like core, core memories
and then finding a way to modifythem and then track the change.
And I think the human effect, which we we published just
recently, I'm very excited aboutthat and want to see how where
it will lead us and I hope it will be useful for the field.
(01:01:42):
I'll definitely put a link to that below as well.
Thank you so much, Danielle. I really appreciate your time.
Before we end, is there anythingabout the brain you ping?
If you if you were to conclude this, what is the one thing
you'd like to tell people about the brain that they should know
and remember at the end of this conversation, or the human
experience with your knowledge in mind?
(01:02:06):
Yeah, I would say the the most interesting aspect that people
should be aware of is the malleability of it, the the
flexibility of it and the degreeof choice that we have.
So like breaking free from the self defining memories and
(01:02:26):
emotional patterns and starting to interact with them to find
who you are underneath. Beautiful.
Thanks so much, Daniela. I really appreciate your time.
This was an absolute pleasure and you keep up the great work.
You guys are incredible and it'salways a pleasure to watch you
guys from the outside and see the incredible work that's being
(01:02:46):
put out. So keep it up and thank you for
my side. Yeah, Thank you.
Thank you. It was a great conversation.
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