June 3, 2025 • 31 mins
DeAnn and Craig discuss Craig's recent exploration into "A Brief History of Intelligence" by Max Bennett, which explores the evolution of intelligence and AI. Craig highlights the connection between AI advancements and our understanding of biological intelligence, using the example of the nematode worm, which has 302 neurons and exhibits simple forms of intelligence and addiction. They explore how nematodes' behavior can inform our understanding of substance use disorders, emphasizing the concept of valence and the importance of movement in addiction.
Link to related blog post by Craig Knighton:
https://www.showupandstay.org/blog/the-noble-nematode-origins-of-addiction
Reference:
Bennett, M. S. (2023). A brief history of intelligence: evolution, AI, and the five breakthroughs that made our brains. Mariner Books.
If you have questions or comments or would like to be a guest on the Recovery Discovery Podcast, send an email to:
deann@showupandstay.org
More information about our project is available at:
https://www.showupandstay.org/
https://www.soberpositiveworkplace.org/
For podcast updates, follow us on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/showupandstayorg/
Music and Audio Production by Katie Hare.
https://www.hare.works
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
DeAnn Knighton (00:00):
Hi. Welcome back to the recovery discovery
(00:03):
podcast. I'm your host, deannn,and I'm also here with my co
host Craig. Hey, DeAnn, todaywe're going to talk about some
of the research and things thatwe have been exploring. In
particular, Craig has been doinga lot of deep dives into some
subjects related to some of theguests that we want to have on
(00:24):
this show moving forward, and wethought it would be great to
hear a little bit more aboutwhat he has in the works. So
Craig, why don't you start usoff with, what is it that you
have been reading
Craig Knighton (00:34):
this week? Well, I can't claim that it's this
week that I'm reading this,because this is actually
something I read earlier in myretirement, not long after the
start of the year, but it reallystuck with me. It stuck with me
enough that I decided to startreally inspired writing what I
(00:56):
think will become a series ofessays or articles about where
addiction comes from and and howit came about. But the the book
I read is, is a book called TheA Brief History of intelligence.
The author is max Bennett, andit's described by him as
evolution AI, and the fivebreakthroughs that made our
(01:18):
brains. So I didn't actually,when reading this, think that I
was going to learn anythingabout addiction at all, right, I
figured that this would just bea book about AI, another topic
that I have more than casualinterest in. But what I learned,
and this is a clever way that heconstructed the book, the really
(01:38):
big jumps in AI technology thathave occurred over the last 40
or 50 years really correspond tomoments in time when we learned
more about biologicalintelligence, right? That we
that some of the research andinvestigation and evolutionary
biology was teaching us more,not only about how our brains
(02:02):
work today, but how some of thesimplest, earliest brains work
and and how those brainsevolved, literally over millions
of years of time, in order tobecome more and more capable,
but in doing So, also how ourunderstanding of how
intelligence works evolved.
Yeah,
DeAnn Knighton (02:24):
that's really interesting. I hadn't even
thought about the connectionbetween those two things, and
it's one of the things that's sointeresting about like substance
use disorder work and how muchhas changed in the last 10 years
as a result of neuroscience andsome of those developments, and
what a difference it has made inthe way we think about that
(02:45):
particular issue. But I didn'teven think about how much that
would inform the technology sideas well. That's really
interesting. So what kind ofstood out to you as having a
connection to the substance usedisorder world. Yeah,
Craig Knighton (03:02):
it probably makes sense for me to jump in to
the essay itself and kind ofintroduce this to you, but, but
what I learned is about some ofthe earliest and most primitive
forms of life and how theproblem that needed to be
solved. Really, actually, it'sit's fascinating. In some cases,
(03:28):
animal species evolved in anenvironment that was rich in
food, and those kinds of animalshave a very specific shape. They
don't have a body plan likeours, where it's sort of a left
side, right side, and somesymmetrical, but they tend to be
round and and they have a mouth,and the food just sort of falls
(03:50):
in the mouth, right? And a lotof these animals are actually in
water. They evolved in oceans,and as long as they are in a
food rich environment, they canbe fixed in place, right? And
the food just comes to them. Ifyou want to be able to survive
where food is scarce, though,life had to come up with a
different way of going to thefood, right? You couldn't just
(04:14):
survive by sitting there andwaiting for food to come to you,
especially if you want tosurvive on land instead of in
the water. So even though thatthis, this body plan had already
evolved in the water, this sortof left side, right side, and if
you think of it, almost like atube right a body that has a
mouth at one end and an exit atthe other, and the food moves
(04:39):
through. And the thing movestowards the food, and the food
comes into the mouth the basicworm, right? So what's cool is
that some of those extremelyprimitive life forms still exist
today, so we don't have towonder what they were like and
and try to learn from fossils.
How they functioned, we canexperiment with actual living
(05:02):
organisms that still work thatway today. Wow.
DeAnn Knighton (05:06):
Yeah, that's cool. Let's get to the meat of
your takeaways from that, andthen we'll go from there.
Craig Knighton (05:13):
The noble nematode being retired means
more time to read. And thisspring, I read a brief history
of intelligence by Max Bennett.
I can honestly say that it is myfavorite non fiction book ever,
and I can't wait to read itagain. In it, Max weaves a
remarkably elegant narrative,although I have to admit, at
times it's quite dense even forme, about how our brains evolved
(05:36):
to become what they are today,while at the end of the story,
the human mind is, of course,the dramatic climax. That's not
what caught my interest.
Instead, it was the earlyevolution of one of the simplest
forms of nervous systems, beforethere were even brains, that
sparked my imagination. Weunderstand today that there are
(05:57):
lots of reasons why substanceuse disorders are increasingly
common. Access is easier thanever. Life is stressful, and we
all look for ways to regulate.
Some are predisposed to anxietyor have experienced physical or
emotional trauma, and they'rejust trying to cope. The list is
long. Our environment minds andbodies are full of traps, and at
(06:18):
times, it seems more appropriateto wonder, do any of us not use
something now enter thenematode. This tiny living
fossil doesn't even have abrain. In fact, its entire
nervous system is made up ofonly 302 neurons spread
throughout its body and along aspinal cord, some of these
(06:40):
neurons are used to sense theirenvironment, and together, they
allow the nematode to accomplishthe first form of intelligence
that was needed in animals, theability to move and to steer
towards food. I'm looking at apicture of a nematode right now.
It's zoomed way in, but a realnematode, and these still exist
(07:00):
today. Are about a millimeterlong, small enough that you
wouldn't even notice it if yousaw one. And they're kind of
transparent, so you can seethrough their bodies. And as I
look at this picture, I can tellthat there's sort of a spinal
cord moving through it, and Ican see what looks like a gut,
because I'm sure that, like allother worms, it eats food at its
(07:22):
mouth, and then it passes alongthrough its body and out the
tail end. So why is somethinglike this so primitive and so
interesting to me? Because ofsomething that I didn't know
that really surprised me.
Nematodes are addicts, too,
DeAnn Knighton (07:41):
in thinking about this, in this life form,
I'm trying to picture thislittle creature. How do How does
one determine if something likethat is drunk or impaired in
some way?
Craig Knighton (07:52):
Right? Well, so ironically, it's not much
different than the earliesttests for whether or not you
were driving while drunk.
Literally, what they can do isobserve how the nematode is
moving right. They can watch andwatch its motion, watch how
it's, I guess, sort of wrigglingright as it tries to move. And
(08:14):
you can see that it changeswalking. It's like walking, Yep,
yeah, literally can't drive in astraight line, huh? So what,
what's interesting about howthis relates to intelligence is,
if is that substance seekingright or food seeking, being
able to get to food reallyinvolves two kinds of
(08:36):
intelligence. If you will,interacting right you? You need
to be able to sense that food ispresent in your environment and
have some idea of its direction.
And that's that's why our bodieshave a left and right symmetry.
It's because we might need toturn left to go to food, or we
might need to turn right to goto food, or the food might be
(08:59):
right in front of us. And so ifwe have neurons, like a nematode
does, that are very close to inits head and close to its skin,
if you will, the outside of itsbody, it can tell whether
there's food to the left, foodin front, or food to the right,
and its steering is as simple asdo. I just keep going straight
(09:22):
forward because there's food infront of me? Oh, well, actually,
it's even simpler. It startswith this, am I full? The first
thing animals need to know is ifthey're satiated or not, and so
if I'm full, if I'm not hungry,they just sit. They don't waste
energy by moving. Then when theyrealize that they're hungry, so
(09:43):
they have to have a hungersignal, they start to move
towards the food, either sensingthat it's to my left, to my
right, or right in front of me.
And they'll move towards thefood until they get blocked by
something, and then they'll turnone way or the other, depending.
Depending on which side istelling them has more food. Is
there more food to the left ormore food to the right? And I'll
(10:04):
turn in that direction. And sothat you can observe them moving
this way. You can put food intheir environment. You can watch
them move towards the food. Andyou can introduce substances
like alcohol into theenvironment and see how that
first appears to be food tothem, they move towards the
alcohol, but then see that theirsteering changes once they get
(10:26):
into an environment that's richin alcohol. So just like with
humans, right, the first thingyou have to do to get addicted
to a substance is it has to bein your environment. It has to
be around you.
DeAnn Knighton (10:42):
Yeah, so how, how does that play into their
ability at that point? Do theyhave, I guess, what you would
call the discernment. I know yousaid that they can sense volume
like they can sense if there'smore food one way or the other.
But what about if there'schoices of two types of things?
There
Craig Knighton (10:59):
are some things that are the opposite of food,
that are repellent to them. Andso they're able to sense some of
those things and move away fromsomething that's dangerous or
harmful to them. So maybe it'sacidic, maybe I don't remember
in the book what the substancewas that's negative that they
move away from, but they have apositive or negative
(11:22):
discernment, that's for sure,and that's what now we're
getting at the idea The bookdescribes as valence right this
balance the tips to the left orthe right. I can't even say in
their brain, because they don'thave a brain, but there's
definitely a bias in theirsystem to I'm going to move to
the left or to the right orforward or not at all, depending
(11:46):
on all of these neurons and whatthey're sensing about the
environment. And what is justcrazy is in the very middle,
earliest, oldest parts of ourbrains that sit right on top of
the spinal cord. It worksexactly the same way. So
DeAnn Knighton (12:04):
these concepts, how did they translate into AI
or artificial intelligence?
Yeah,
Craig Knighton (12:11):
it turns out that this won't surprise you,
that it's we don't have to worryabout the robot revolution in
which the robots take over theworld anytime soon, because the
problem of thinking or appearingto be thinking, is actually
easier than the problem ofmoving around in the world and
(12:32):
building a robot that can senseand understand everything about
its environment, and not justthink like a human, but act like
A human, move like a human,behave like a human in the
world. That's a much harderproblem to solve. But back to
the nematode, right? If youthink about that really simple
steering mechanism of I gostraight until I can't and then
(12:55):
I turn one way or the other,depending on which way I think I
can sense food. Engineers thatwere developing and designing
some of the first roboticsystems that we all know and
love, these robots that vacuumour floor for us, right, that
move around in a room that theycan't even see, that all they
(13:17):
can do is vacuum and go forwarduntil they bump into a wall, and
then they turn some randomamount one way, randomly left or
right, and try again and tryagain until they get out of that
that world and continue on in apath that isn't blocked. It
(13:39):
turns out that was like thefirst generations worked that
way. But the problem they hadwas they would eventually run
out of power and stop, and juststop running wherever they were
because their batteries ran dry.
They would run out of food,right? So then they had to solve
the problem of, how does it getback to its power station,
right, which a nematode doesn'thave to do that. It just keeps
(14:02):
doesn't have a home that itneeds to return to, so it
doesn't need to know where it isin the world. So in that case,
the these robots, simple robots,have to have a way of finding
where the home is. And sothey're, they have sensors, and
they're, I think they useinfrared to be able to find
where the battery charger is soit can return to home when it's
(14:27):
done heating on the room and gonest and get its battery charged
again. And all of this is thesame way these simple organisms
worked, right? We copied thebody plan and the steering
mechanism of simple worms likethe nematode to develop these
vacuum cleaners that run in thissemi automated way.
DeAnn Knighton (14:53):
So then, how does that translate when you
don't have the actual form orthe movement in the world, when
we're talking. Just aboutartificial intelligence within
our computers. What is thedifference there? There
Craig Knighton (15:06):
really isn't a difference in how those brains
need to function, but they dohave to have more perception,
right? They have to be able tosense more about the
environment. If you think aboutit, we have five senses. Robots
are getting to the point wherethey can now effectively use
(15:26):
listen to sound and see thingswith cameras, and that's how we
can have robots that can doadvanced things, like driving
cars, where you have all thesethings in your environment you
have to be able to sense andreact to. But it's still hard.
Like the best example issomething you wouldn't even
(15:47):
think twice about, right, as ahuman, your job is to clean up
after dinner, and you have acupboard full of dishes of
various shapes and sizes, andyou have a sink, and you have to
find a dish, and you have topick it up, and you have to put
it under the water, and you haveto wash it, and then you have to
(16:09):
rinse it, and then you have todry it, and then you have to put
it away. No one's been able tobuild a robot that can wash
dishes. We don't even thinktwice about it. Doing it as a
task, but still to this day,it's an unsolved problem. They
break dishes all the time. Theythey're not smart enough to do a
simple, mechanical task likethat.
DeAnn Knighton (16:31):
This is a little bit off track, but I still think
it plays into some of our largerthemes around this topic, around
the skepticism. But I can't notthink about our mom when you are
talking about this, because sheI just remember this whole
situation when we got them aRoomba, our mom and dad as
(16:52):
present, oh yeah, and how it wasthe most fascinating thing to
watch. You know, she had spenther life being the vacuumer of
the home, right, and the one whomade sure that things were in
the right place. And there wasthe level of, not only the level
of skepticism, but maybe even alittle bit of jealousy that this
(17:13):
thing, this would actually beable to do, the thing that she
knows how to do, right? Waslike, felt very threatening,
right? And she was like, very Ittook her a while to adjust to
this thing. And our dad, who hasthis very mechanical brain, was
so into it. He was like, allabout the things you were just
talking about, like, how doesthis work, and what's, what's
(17:35):
the science behind it, and howit moves through the world. And
it was really funny to watch thetwo of them and the way they
reacted to the same thing. Yeah,
Craig Knighton (17:44):
anything that strikes too close at your sense
of identity or value or worth,right? This is what I do, and
this is why the world values meis going to be threatening.
There's just no doubt about it.
That's
DeAnn Knighton (17:59):
right, including a room back. Okay, well, let's
maybe dive now into a little bitmore of your essay. Okay, humans
Craig Knighton (18:09):
are remarkably complex, so much so that it is
almost impossible to understandcause and effect in our minds
and bodies. We want tounderstand why some people bend
and others break, then we haveso many variables to manage that
it seems impossible. Our brainshave literally trillions of
neurons in them. How could youpossibly understand what's
(18:30):
happening? However, if youwanted to study the processes
involved in a simple animal likea nematode with only 300
neurons, then we might be ableto understand what happens there
and whether these mechanisms arealso part of how our more
complex nervous systems work.
Armed with that new knowledge,perhaps we can develop new
treatments as well. There'ssomething else that's
(18:52):
interesting and noble about anematode with substance use
disorder. No one would accusethem of having a moral lapse or
character failure or a lack ofwillpower or mental illness, as
I said, they don't even have abrain. They don't choose to do
anything. They just are and theyexist to survive. This behavior
is simply a product of theirenvironment, their biology
(19:16):
conditioning and their bodychemistry and the neural
adaptation that tips there,what's called an effective
valence. This is even thoughthey don't have a brain, they do
have a nervous system, and thatnervous system is part of how
they seek. So that effectiveValence is this, am I sitting
still? Am uncomfortable? Am Ifull? Or am I moving? Because
(19:38):
I'm seeking, and I'm seeking, ofcourse, food nematodes also
experience their own form ofwithdrawal when the substance is
removed, and behave differentlyuntil time allows them to
recover and return to a normalor naive state. So what if we
could understand what happens ina nematodes body chemistry? And
neural pathways during the onsetof addiction. What if we could
(20:02):
understand the source ofwithdrawal symptoms and how to
relieve them. Would that notonly ease the difficult first 30
days, but even make it lesslikely that someone would
relapse? Could we preventcravings altogether? What if
abstinence was not the only wayto cure substance use disorder.
I don't know about you, but I'dlike to know. Yeah,
DeAnn Knighton (20:24):
it's so interesting for me to hear all
of this. And the one thing Ikeep thinking about is, and I
haven't thought of it before,until today. So thanks for
opening up some differentchannels of thought. But I'm
thinking about the fact that weconsume alcohol even though it
doesn't have any value to ourbody. Obviously, there's a drive
to it, we know, and it impactsour brain in a different way,
(20:47):
but it's not because of tryingto meet any of our physiological
needs. And so I'm wondering howthis translates, in this case,
with a more simpler life formlike this, and how that shows
up. Yeah,
Craig Knighton (21:01):
so what I found myself thinking about was how
clever addiction is in hijackingthe literally the most important
circuit in life finding food,right? There is no more
important thing to survival foran animal with our body plan
than to be able to move towardsfood. And yet, this is exactly
(21:24):
the thing that gets hijacked bysubstance use disorder, right?
You begin to seek thatsubstance, perhaps to the
exclusion of food, you have apreference towards finding it.
Actually, I'll push back alittle bit at DeAnn. Alcohol has
calories. It is food, right? Andso moving towards alcohol is a
(21:47):
way of getting calories. And ifyou were in a really sparse
environment that had no caloriesanywhere except for alcohol, you
could survive on alcohol for aperiod of time. So it, it, it's
subtle, right? In fact, I thinkit's true that all of these
substances represent one of twothings being hijacked, either
(22:10):
the food circuit, right, as asurvival mechanism, or the
pleasure circuit, which isclosely related to food, right?
There is a lot of what you'redoing when you're pleasure
seeking as well, is just tryingto get sated again. You You have
become uncomfortable, and youwant to get comfortable again.
And so you move to work, move inthe world, to go get something
(22:33):
that's going to regulate you andmake you sated again. And that
might be food or it might be asubstance. Yeah,
DeAnn Knighton (22:42):
you know, I was having dinner with a nine year
old this week, and this is justmy favorite moment of the week
to share. So I'm glad that wehave a reason I get to share it.
But we were waiting for ourfood, and it was taking a really
long time. And I've never heardher say anything like this
before, so it just felt veryauthentic, you know? And she
just looked at me and she said,I can't tell if I'm hungry or
(23:06):
bored. I loved it so much,right? Because for all of this
work I've done on this topic, wego into Wait what is really
happening with the entirety ofour system, including our
emotional system as well, andhow we're feeling. I
Craig Knighton (23:22):
love that story, because, in a way, that is one
of the things that makes usdifferent than the nematode,
right? A nematode would nevermove because it was bored. It
would never try to entertainitself by moving because that
would just be a waste of energy.
But our rich, complex brainsabsolutely would do that. We
would just be bored sittinglike, Okay, I'm full. I don't
(23:44):
need anything. I'm just gonnasit here. I can't imagine how
boring that would be. And if youthink about it, what if most
people do in that situation,they get up and move. They get
up and move to escape theboredom, right?
DeAnn Knighton (24:01):
When you think of what you've learned from this
and where you would want to takeit next, what does it open up
for you in your mind, in termsof areas you would want to
continue to explore?
Craig Knighton (24:12):
Right? Yeah, a couple of things. The first is
just, I'm struck with the ideathat if someone isn't studying
addiction and nematodes, theyshould be right. Somebody should
be trying to figure out exactlywhat is happening with those 302
neurons, and how does this ideaof a valence in the thing that
doesn't even have a brain, butwhere you can think of it as
(24:35):
like just their world is tippedtowards wherever that substance
is, and when they move, they'regoing to move to that substance
in the world. That's so similarto what it would look like if
you were an alien, watching ahuman from space, a human who is
addicted to a substance, andwatching them move around in the
(24:56):
world, it would look like, holycow, that that. Thing down there
just can't get away from thatstuff. It is going to find it,
no matter how well hidden it isor how hard it is to get to in
the world. So that's the firstthing, this. The second thing, I
think is interesting, is to nowtry to map what you understand
(25:20):
is happening at a physicallevel, around steering into our
complicated brains in humans,and trying to understand how
this becomes behavior in adifferent way. And that's
actually one of the topics I'lldive into in a in a later
conversation with you. I I'verealized that there's something
(25:44):
kind of funny that I do thatdefinitely represents me moving
through the world in order toseek a substance that I'm very
fond of, sugar. And so I wantto, next time we talk about
this, I want to tell you moreabout how I've realized I am
behaving and how clever My mindis in fooling me into thinking
(26:07):
that I have legitimate andhonest reasons to end up in a
place that has wonderful sugaravailable to me,
DeAnn Knighton (26:16):
right? And how the brain can focus on trying to
find that one reason, and thenthat becomes like the priority,
in a way, when I think of thenine year old statement of, Am I
hungry or am I bored, right?
This is what all of this boilsdown to, in terms of counseling
and therapy and working withpeople on this topic. Is that
dialectical thinking of both,right? Maybe it's both. Maybe
(26:39):
you are hungry, maybe you arebored. Do we know how much one
is driving your behavior morethan the other is, is there a
percentage on all of thedifferent reasons, you know? Or
if we're thinking aboutaddiction, biological component,
environmental component, access,right? It's almost like if you
look at it like a pie and tryingto figure out how much of each
(27:02):
thing is contributing, it reallybecomes almost impossible to do
on an individual level, and wework to control as many of the
Levers as we can to create theoutcome that is going to
hopefully drive that persontowards health and well Being
and whatever works best forthem. But there's there. It's
difficult to really get at thescience of of how to balance
(27:24):
those things. Well,
Craig Knighton (27:28):
let me end with this quick analogy, because you
use the word balance severaltimes there, and that's exactly
what a valence is about, right?
Or a bias or a balance, right?
So wouldn't it be great if whenwe didn't need anything, our
balance was to be content andand I would just sit here and be
(27:50):
happy? Wouldn't that besomething, right? And in a lot
of ways, I think we all try toseek that. People who meditate
are trying to accomplish thatstate, right? They don't need to
move in order to try to scratchsome itch. So the metaphor I'm
left with, all the way back tothe nematode right, is, what if
(28:11):
your brain, if you think of yourbrain as this flat surface and
there's a ball on top of it, andif you tip that just a little
bit in a direction that thing'sgoing to start to move right,
and it's going to pick up speed,and it's going to actually move
in the world towards whateverit's tipped towards right. So I
(28:33):
think that's a great metaphorfor addiction that and it's tied
to moving. I don't think youcould become addicted if you
couldn't move, okay? I You haveto be able to move towards a
substance. And then once youbecome acclimated to or adjust
accustomed to that substancebeing present, and it becomes
(28:53):
part of your reward system, nowyou're going to more actively
seek it. And that that tippedboard right is the addiction
metaphor. For me, it'severything about your mental
state being unfortunately tippedin the direction of I bet you
(29:16):
could think of 1000 differentreasons why you would get up and
move right now. But if you do,you're going to move towards the
substance. Oh,
DeAnn Knighton (29:23):
wow, yeah, wow, that's really interesting.
Thanks so much for bringing thisMy pleasure. We'll definitely
continue to have more on relatedto some of these topics as we go
as for now, I hope you have agreat
Craig Knighton (29:37):
day. Thanks, Dean. Thanks everyone. You.
Hi. Welcome back to the recovery discovery
(00:03):
podcast. I'm your host, deannn,and I'm also here with my co
host Craig. Hey, DeAnn, todaywe're going to talk about some
of the research and things thatwe have been exploring. In
particular, Craig has been doinga lot of deep dives into some
subjects related to some of theguests that we want to have on
(00:24):
this show moving forward, and wethought it would be great to
hear a little bit more aboutwhat he has in the works. So
Craig, why don't you start usoff with, what is it that you
have been reading
Craig Knighton (00:34):
this week? Well, I can't claim that it's this
week that I'm reading this,because this is actually
something I read earlier in myretirement, not long after the
start of the year, but it reallystuck with me. It stuck with me
enough that I decided to startreally inspired writing what I
(00:56):
think will become a series ofessays or articles about where
addiction comes from and and howit came about. But the the book
I read is, is a book called TheA Brief History of intelligence.
The author is max Bennett, andit's described by him as
evolution AI, and the fivebreakthroughs that made our
(01:18):
brains. So I didn't actually,when reading this, think that I
was going to learn anythingabout addiction at all, right, I
figured that this would just bea book about AI, another topic
that I have more than casualinterest in. But what I learned,
and this is a clever way that heconstructed the book, the really
(01:38):
big jumps in AI technology thathave occurred over the last 40
or 50 years really correspond tomoments in time when we learned
more about biologicalintelligence, right? That we
that some of the research andinvestigation and evolutionary
biology was teaching us more,not only about how our brains
(02:02):
work today, but how some of thesimplest, earliest brains work
and and how those brainsevolved, literally over millions
of years of time, in order tobecome more and more capable,
but in doing So, also how ourunderstanding of how
intelligence works evolved.
Yeah,
DeAnn Knighton (02:24):
that's really interesting. I hadn't even
thought about the connectionbetween those two things, and
it's one of the things that's sointeresting about like substance
use disorder work and how muchhas changed in the last 10 years
as a result of neuroscience andsome of those developments, and
what a difference it has made inthe way we think about that
(02:45):
particular issue. But I didn'teven think about how much that
would inform the technology sideas well. That's really
interesting. So what kind ofstood out to you as having a
connection to the substance usedisorder world. Yeah,
Craig Knighton (03:02):
it probably makes sense for me to jump in to
the essay itself and kind ofintroduce this to you, but, but
what I learned is about some ofthe earliest and most primitive
forms of life and how theproblem that needed to be
solved. Really, actually, it'sit's fascinating. In some cases,
(03:28):
animal species evolved in anenvironment that was rich in
food, and those kinds of animalshave a very specific shape. They
don't have a body plan likeours, where it's sort of a left
side, right side, and somesymmetrical, but they tend to be
round and and they have a mouth,and the food just sort of falls
(03:50):
in the mouth, right? And a lotof these animals are actually in
water. They evolved in oceans,and as long as they are in a
food rich environment, they canbe fixed in place, right? And
the food just comes to them. Ifyou want to be able to survive
where food is scarce, though,life had to come up with a
different way of going to thefood, right? You couldn't just
(04:14):
survive by sitting there andwaiting for food to come to you,
especially if you want tosurvive on land instead of in
the water. So even though thatthis, this body plan had already
evolved in the water, this sortof left side, right side, and if
you think of it, almost like atube right a body that has a
mouth at one end and an exit atthe other, and the food moves
(04:39):
through. And the thing movestowards the food, and the food
comes into the mouth the basicworm, right? So what's cool is
that some of those extremelyprimitive life forms still exist
today, so we don't have towonder what they were like and
and try to learn from fossils.
How they functioned, we canexperiment with actual living
(05:02):
organisms that still work thatway today. Wow.
DeAnn Knighton (05:06):
Yeah, that's cool. Let's get to the meat of
your takeaways from that, andthen we'll go from there.
Craig Knighton (05:13):
The noble nematode being retired means
more time to read. And thisspring, I read a brief history
of intelligence by Max Bennett.
I can honestly say that it is myfavorite non fiction book ever,
and I can't wait to read itagain. In it, Max weaves a
remarkably elegant narrative,although I have to admit, at
times it's quite dense even forme, about how our brains evolved
(05:36):
to become what they are today,while at the end of the story,
the human mind is, of course,the dramatic climax. That's not
what caught my interest.
Instead, it was the earlyevolution of one of the simplest
forms of nervous systems, beforethere were even brains, that
sparked my imagination. Weunderstand today that there are
(05:57):
lots of reasons why substanceuse disorders are increasingly
common. Access is easier thanever. Life is stressful, and we
all look for ways to regulate.
Some are predisposed to anxietyor have experienced physical or
emotional trauma, and they'rejust trying to cope. The list is
long. Our environment minds andbodies are full of traps, and at
(06:18):
times, it seems more appropriateto wonder, do any of us not use
something now enter thenematode. This tiny living
fossil doesn't even have abrain. In fact, its entire
nervous system is made up ofonly 302 neurons spread
throughout its body and along aspinal cord, some of these
(06:40):
neurons are used to sense theirenvironment, and together, they
allow the nematode to accomplishthe first form of intelligence
that was needed in animals, theability to move and to steer
towards food. I'm looking at apicture of a nematode right now.
It's zoomed way in, but a realnematode, and these still exist
(07:00):
today. Are about a millimeterlong, small enough that you
wouldn't even notice it if yousaw one. And they're kind of
transparent, so you can seethrough their bodies. And as I
look at this picture, I can tellthat there's sort of a spinal
cord moving through it, and Ican see what looks like a gut,
because I'm sure that, like allother worms, it eats food at its
(07:22):
mouth, and then it passes alongthrough its body and out the
tail end. So why is somethinglike this so primitive and so
interesting to me? Because ofsomething that I didn't know
that really surprised me.
Nematodes are addicts, too,
DeAnn Knighton (07:41):
in thinking about this, in this life form,
I'm trying to picture thislittle creature. How do How does
one determine if something likethat is drunk or impaired in
some way?
Craig Knighton (07:52):
Right? Well, so ironically, it's not much
different than the earliesttests for whether or not you
were driving while drunk.
Literally, what they can do isobserve how the nematode is
moving right. They can watch andwatch its motion, watch how
it's, I guess, sort of wrigglingright as it tries to move. And
(08:14):
you can see that it changeswalking. It's like walking, Yep,
yeah, literally can't drive in astraight line, huh? So what,
what's interesting about howthis relates to intelligence is,
if is that substance seekingright or food seeking, being
able to get to food reallyinvolves two kinds of
(08:36):
intelligence. If you will,interacting right you? You need
to be able to sense that food ispresent in your environment and
have some idea of its direction.
And that's that's why our bodieshave a left and right symmetry.
It's because we might need toturn left to go to food, or we
might need to turn right to goto food, or the food might be
(08:59):
right in front of us. And so ifwe have neurons, like a nematode
does, that are very close to inits head and close to its skin,
if you will, the outside of itsbody, it can tell whether
there's food to the left, foodin front, or food to the right,
and its steering is as simple asdo. I just keep going straight
(09:22):
forward because there's food infront of me? Oh, well, actually,
it's even simpler. It startswith this, am I full? The first
thing animals need to know is ifthey're satiated or not, and so
if I'm full, if I'm not hungry,they just sit. They don't waste
energy by moving. Then when theyrealize that they're hungry, so
(09:43):
they have to have a hungersignal, they start to move
towards the food, either sensingthat it's to my left, to my
right, or right in front of me.
And they'll move towards thefood until they get blocked by
something, and then they'll turnone way or the other, depending.
Depending on which side istelling them has more food. Is
there more food to the left ormore food to the right? And I'll
(10:04):
turn in that direction. And sothat you can observe them moving
this way. You can put food intheir environment. You can watch
them move towards the food. Andyou can introduce substances
like alcohol into theenvironment and see how that
first appears to be food tothem, they move towards the
alcohol, but then see that theirsteering changes once they get
(10:26):
into an environment that's richin alcohol. So just like with
humans, right, the first thingyou have to do to get addicted
to a substance is it has to bein your environment. It has to
be around you.
DeAnn Knighton (10:42):
Yeah, so how, how does that play into their
ability at that point? Do theyhave, I guess, what you would
call the discernment. I know yousaid that they can sense volume
like they can sense if there'smore food one way or the other.
But what about if there'schoices of two types of things?
There
Craig Knighton (10:59):
are some things that are the opposite of food,
that are repellent to them. Andso they're able to sense some of
those things and move away fromsomething that's dangerous or
harmful to them. So maybe it'sacidic, maybe I don't remember
in the book what the substancewas that's negative that they
move away from, but they have apositive or negative
(11:22):
discernment, that's for sure,and that's what now we're
getting at the idea The bookdescribes as valence right this
balance the tips to the left orthe right. I can't even say in
their brain, because they don'thave a brain, but there's
definitely a bias in theirsystem to I'm going to move to
the left or to the right orforward or not at all, depending
(11:46):
on all of these neurons and whatthey're sensing about the
environment. And what is justcrazy is in the very middle,
earliest, oldest parts of ourbrains that sit right on top of
the spinal cord. It worksexactly the same way. So
DeAnn Knighton (12:04):
these concepts, how did they translate into AI
or artificial intelligence?
Yeah,
Craig Knighton (12:11):
it turns out that this won't surprise you,
that it's we don't have to worryabout the robot revolution in
which the robots take over theworld anytime soon, because the
problem of thinking or appearingto be thinking, is actually
easier than the problem ofmoving around in the world and
(12:32):
building a robot that can senseand understand everything about
its environment, and not justthink like a human, but act like
A human, move like a human,behave like a human in the
world. That's a much harderproblem to solve. But back to
the nematode, right? If youthink about that really simple
steering mechanism of I gostraight until I can't and then
(12:55):
I turn one way or the other,depending on which way I think I
can sense food. Engineers thatwere developing and designing
some of the first roboticsystems that we all know and
love, these robots that vacuumour floor for us, right, that
move around in a room that theycan't even see, that all they
(13:17):
can do is vacuum and go forwarduntil they bump into a wall, and
then they turn some randomamount one way, randomly left or
right, and try again and tryagain until they get out of that
that world and continue on in apath that isn't blocked. It
(13:39):
turns out that was like thefirst generations worked that
way. But the problem they hadwas they would eventually run
out of power and stop, and juststop running wherever they were
because their batteries ran dry.
They would run out of food,right? So then they had to solve
the problem of, how does it getback to its power station,
right, which a nematode doesn'thave to do that. It just keeps
(14:02):
doesn't have a home that itneeds to return to, so it
doesn't need to know where it isin the world. So in that case,
the these robots, simple robots,have to have a way of finding
where the home is. And sothey're, they have sensors, and
they're, I think they useinfrared to be able to find
where the battery charger is soit can return to home when it's
(14:27):
done heating on the room and gonest and get its battery charged
again. And all of this is thesame way these simple organisms
worked, right? We copied thebody plan and the steering
mechanism of simple worms likethe nematode to develop these
vacuum cleaners that run in thissemi automated way.
DeAnn Knighton (14:53):
So then, how does that translate when you
don't have the actual form orthe movement in the world, when
we're talking. Just aboutartificial intelligence within
our computers. What is thedifference there? There
Craig Knighton (15:06):
really isn't a difference in how those brains
need to function, but they dohave to have more perception,
right? They have to be able tosense more about the
environment. If you think aboutit, we have five senses. Robots
are getting to the point wherethey can now effectively use
(15:26):
listen to sound and see thingswith cameras, and that's how we
can have robots that can doadvanced things, like driving
cars, where you have all thesethings in your environment you
have to be able to sense andreact to. But it's still hard.
Like the best example issomething you wouldn't even
(15:47):
think twice about, right, as ahuman, your job is to clean up
after dinner, and you have acupboard full of dishes of
various shapes and sizes, andyou have a sink, and you have to
find a dish, and you have topick it up, and you have to put
it under the water, and you haveto wash it, and then you have to
(16:09):
rinse it, and then you have todry it, and then you have to put
it away. No one's been able tobuild a robot that can wash
dishes. We don't even thinktwice about it. Doing it as a
task, but still to this day,it's an unsolved problem. They
break dishes all the time. Theythey're not smart enough to do a
simple, mechanical task likethat.
DeAnn Knighton (16:31):
This is a little bit off track, but I still think
it plays into some of our largerthemes around this topic, around
the skepticism. But I can't notthink about our mom when you are
talking about this, because sheI just remember this whole
situation when we got them aRoomba, our mom and dad as
(16:52):
present, oh yeah, and how it wasthe most fascinating thing to
watch. You know, she had spenther life being the vacuumer of
the home, right, and the one whomade sure that things were in
the right place. And there wasthe level of, not only the level
of skepticism, but maybe even alittle bit of jealousy that this
(17:13):
thing, this would actually beable to do, the thing that she
knows how to do, right? Waslike, felt very threatening,
right? And she was like, very Ittook her a while to adjust to
this thing. And our dad, who hasthis very mechanical brain, was
so into it. He was like, allabout the things you were just
talking about, like, how doesthis work, and what's, what's
(17:35):
the science behind it, and howit moves through the world. And
it was really funny to watch thetwo of them and the way they
reacted to the same thing. Yeah,
Craig Knighton (17:44):
anything that strikes too close at your sense
of identity or value or worth,right? This is what I do, and
this is why the world values meis going to be threatening.
There's just no doubt about it.
That's
DeAnn Knighton (17:59):
right, including a room back. Okay, well, let's
maybe dive now into a little bitmore of your essay. Okay, humans
Craig Knighton (18:09):
are remarkably complex, so much so that it is
almost impossible to understandcause and effect in our minds
and bodies. We want tounderstand why some people bend
and others break, then we haveso many variables to manage that
it seems impossible. Our brainshave literally trillions of
neurons in them. How could youpossibly understand what's
(18:30):
happening? However, if youwanted to study the processes
involved in a simple animal likea nematode with only 300
neurons, then we might be ableto understand what happens there
and whether these mechanisms arealso part of how our more
complex nervous systems work.
Armed with that new knowledge,perhaps we can develop new
treatments as well. There'ssomething else that's
(18:52):
interesting and noble about anematode with substance use
disorder. No one would accusethem of having a moral lapse or
character failure or a lack ofwillpower or mental illness, as
I said, they don't even have abrain. They don't choose to do
anything. They just are and theyexist to survive. This behavior
is simply a product of theirenvironment, their biology
(19:16):
conditioning and their bodychemistry and the neural
adaptation that tips there,what's called an effective
valence. This is even thoughthey don't have a brain, they do
have a nervous system, and thatnervous system is part of how
they seek. So that effectiveValence is this, am I sitting
still? Am uncomfortable? Am Ifull? Or am I moving? Because
(19:38):
I'm seeking, and I'm seeking, ofcourse, food nematodes also
experience their own form ofwithdrawal when the substance is
removed, and behave differentlyuntil time allows them to
recover and return to a normalor naive state. So what if we
could understand what happens ina nematodes body chemistry? And
neural pathways during the onsetof addiction. What if we could
(20:02):
understand the source ofwithdrawal symptoms and how to
relieve them. Would that notonly ease the difficult first 30
days, but even make it lesslikely that someone would
relapse? Could we preventcravings altogether? What if
abstinence was not the only wayto cure substance use disorder.
I don't know about you, but I'dlike to know. Yeah,
DeAnn Knighton (20:24):
it's so interesting for me to hear all
of this. And the one thing Ikeep thinking about is, and I
haven't thought of it before,until today. So thanks for
opening up some differentchannels of thought. But I'm
thinking about the fact that weconsume alcohol even though it
doesn't have any value to ourbody. Obviously, there's a drive
to it, we know, and it impactsour brain in a different way,
(20:47):
but it's not because of tryingto meet any of our physiological
needs. And so I'm wondering howthis translates, in this case,
with a more simpler life formlike this, and how that shows
up. Yeah,
Craig Knighton (21:01):
so what I found myself thinking about was how
clever addiction is in hijackingthe literally the most important
circuit in life finding food,right? There is no more
important thing to survival foran animal with our body plan
than to be able to move towardsfood. And yet, this is exactly
(21:24):
the thing that gets hijacked bysubstance use disorder, right?
You begin to seek thatsubstance, perhaps to the
exclusion of food, you have apreference towards finding it.
Actually, I'll push back alittle bit at DeAnn. Alcohol has
calories. It is food, right? Andso moving towards alcohol is a
(21:47):
way of getting calories. And ifyou were in a really sparse
environment that had no caloriesanywhere except for alcohol, you
could survive on alcohol for aperiod of time. So it, it, it's
subtle, right? In fact, I thinkit's true that all of these
substances represent one of twothings being hijacked, either
(22:10):
the food circuit, right, as asurvival mechanism, or the
pleasure circuit, which isclosely related to food, right?
There is a lot of what you'redoing when you're pleasure
seeking as well, is just tryingto get sated again. You You have
become uncomfortable, and youwant to get comfortable again.
And so you move to work, move inthe world, to go get something
(22:33):
that's going to regulate you andmake you sated again. And that
might be food or it might be asubstance. Yeah,
DeAnn Knighton (22:42):
you know, I was having dinner with a nine year
old this week, and this is justmy favorite moment of the week
to share. So I'm glad that wehave a reason I get to share it.
But we were waiting for ourfood, and it was taking a really
long time. And I've never heardher say anything like this
before, so it just felt veryauthentic, you know? And she
just looked at me and she said,I can't tell if I'm hungry or
(23:06):
bored. I loved it so much,right? Because for all of this
work I've done on this topic, wego into Wait what is really
happening with the entirety ofour system, including our
emotional system as well, andhow we're feeling. I
Craig Knighton (23:22):
love that story, because, in a way, that is one
of the things that makes usdifferent than the nematode,
right? A nematode would nevermove because it was bored. It
would never try to entertainitself by moving because that
would just be a waste of energy.
But our rich, complex brainsabsolutely would do that. We
would just be bored sittinglike, Okay, I'm full. I don't
(23:44):
need anything. I'm just gonnasit here. I can't imagine how
boring that would be. And if youthink about it, what if most
people do in that situation,they get up and move. They get
up and move to escape theboredom, right?
DeAnn Knighton (24:01):
When you think of what you've learned from this
and where you would want to takeit next, what does it open up
for you in your mind, in termsof areas you would want to
continue to explore?
Craig Knighton (24:12):
Right? Yeah, a couple of things. The first is
just, I'm struck with the ideathat if someone isn't studying
addiction and nematodes, theyshould be right. Somebody should
be trying to figure out exactlywhat is happening with those 302
neurons, and how does this ideaof a valence in the thing that
doesn't even have a brain, butwhere you can think of it as
(24:35):
like just their world is tippedtowards wherever that substance
is, and when they move, they'regoing to move to that substance
in the world. That's so similarto what it would look like if
you were an alien, watching ahuman from space, a human who is
addicted to a substance, andwatching them move around in the
(24:56):
world, it would look like, holycow, that that. Thing down there
just can't get away from thatstuff. It is going to find it,
no matter how well hidden it isor how hard it is to get to in
the world. So that's the firstthing, this. The second thing, I
think is interesting, is to nowtry to map what you understand
(25:20):
is happening at a physicallevel, around steering into our
complicated brains in humans,and trying to understand how
this becomes behavior in adifferent way. And that's
actually one of the topics I'lldive into in a in a later
conversation with you. I I'verealized that there's something
(25:44):
kind of funny that I do thatdefinitely represents me moving
through the world in order toseek a substance that I'm very
fond of, sugar. And so I wantto, next time we talk about
this, I want to tell you moreabout how I've realized I am
behaving and how clever My mindis in fooling me into thinking
(26:07):
that I have legitimate andhonest reasons to end up in a
place that has wonderful sugaravailable to me,
DeAnn Knighton (26:16):
right? And how the brain can focus on trying to
find that one reason, and thenthat becomes like the priority,
in a way, when I think of thenine year old statement of, Am I
hungry or am I bored, right?
This is what all of this boilsdown to, in terms of counseling
and therapy and working withpeople on this topic. Is that
dialectical thinking of both,right? Maybe it's both. Maybe
(26:39):
you are hungry, maybe you arebored. Do we know how much one
is driving your behavior morethan the other is, is there a
percentage on all of thedifferent reasons, you know? Or
if we're thinking aboutaddiction, biological component,
environmental component, access,right? It's almost like if you
look at it like a pie and tryingto figure out how much of each
(27:02):
thing is contributing, it reallybecomes almost impossible to do
on an individual level, and wework to control as many of the
Levers as we can to create theoutcome that is going to
hopefully drive that persontowards health and well Being
and whatever works best forthem. But there's there. It's
difficult to really get at thescience of of how to balance
(27:24):
those things. Well,
Craig Knighton (27:28):
let me end with this quick analogy, because you
use the word balance severaltimes there, and that's exactly
what a valence is about, right?
Or a bias or a balance, right?
So wouldn't it be great if whenwe didn't need anything, our
balance was to be content andand I would just sit here and be
(27:50):
happy? Wouldn't that besomething, right? And in a lot
of ways, I think we all try toseek that. People who meditate
are trying to accomplish thatstate, right? They don't need to
move in order to try to scratchsome itch. So the metaphor I'm
left with, all the way back tothe nematode right, is, what if
(28:11):
your brain, if you think of yourbrain as this flat surface and
there's a ball on top of it, andif you tip that just a little
bit in a direction that thing'sgoing to start to move right,
and it's going to pick up speed,and it's going to actually move
in the world towards whateverit's tipped towards right. So I
(28:33):
think that's a great metaphorfor addiction that and it's tied
to moving. I don't think youcould become addicted if you
couldn't move, okay? I You haveto be able to move towards a
substance. And then once youbecome acclimated to or adjust
accustomed to that substancebeing present, and it becomes
(28:53):
part of your reward system, nowyou're going to more actively
seek it. And that that tippedboard right is the addiction
metaphor. For me, it'severything about your mental
state being unfortunately tippedin the direction of I bet you
(29:16):
could think of 1000 differentreasons why you would get up and
move right now. But if you do,you're going to move towards the
substance. Oh,
DeAnn Knighton (29:23):
wow, yeah, wow, that's really interesting.
Thanks so much for bringing thisMy pleasure. We'll definitely
continue to have more on relatedto some of these topics as we go
as for now, I hope you have agreat
Craig Knighton (29:37):
day. Thanks, Dean. Thanks everyone. You.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.