WEBVTT

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It's great to be here. I see many old friends and lots of new friends, and I want to thank Stephen and the staff of this conference and also False Prophet for making this space available to have this event.

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This is really great, and when I come here to these things and see that we're all still kicking after so long, and so many young people as well, I have hope for humanity.

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And we're living in an age when I think we can use all the hope we can get. So it's a pleasure to be here, very much.

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I wasn't sure exactly of the context of this thing. I'm more used to talking to small classrooms with my PowerPoint and all that.

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So I have a PowerPoint projector, and I spent a lot of time kind of, I'm not really an expert on this topic.

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The topic is neuroscience and spirituality, and when it comes to neuroscience, I'm a poseur.

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There are actual real neuroscientists in this audience, and they will probably think this is a pretty shallow kind of presentation.

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But this is really just a quick overview, and if I've made really egregious mistakes, by all means, correct me.

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This is kind of new. I'm really just an ethnobotanist, and I've sort of dabbled in the neurosciences.

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Because of our common interests. And so I'm going to talk a little bit about that, and hopefully there'll be some time for discussions and so on.

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And I'm hoping and praying that the technology will cooperate, and if it doesn't, I have my faithful AV guy there who may have to replace this wireless mouse.

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But we'll go with this for the moment.

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So as you may know, I'm kind of loosely affiliated with a lot of organizations, and a couple of them are up here.

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The Hefter Research Institute, which most of you are familiar with.

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It's a non-profit organization interested in research into psychedelics and development of psychedelics as medicines.

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We just had our...

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Our annual or our semi-annual board meeting last weekend, and we had a fundraiser at one of our board members' house, and we're making progress.

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We have a couple of studies involving psilocybin in terminal cancer patients.

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I don't really need to belabor this, because I think you probably all are fairly informed on this, but it's working.

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I mean, what started out as kind of a wild and crazy...

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Vision, a decade ago, is now actually a semi-respectable, if not respectable, organization, and we're making progress.

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We've had great fortune both in getting support within the community and also kind of navigating the very tricky regulatory waters that you need to navigate to do legitimate medical work with these substances.

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So we're hopeful for the future.

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And the other organization that is kind of my real job, my day job, I guess you could say, is the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota.

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And it is not a New Age cult.

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It just sounds like one.

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And what it really is is the Alternative and Complementary Medicine Program within the medical school at the University of Minnesota.

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And it's a great bunch of people.

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Mostly because...

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They let me teach my courses and do pretty much whatever else I want to do.

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You can get away with a lot in the context of such an organization.

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So I teach ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology there.

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And if anybody wants to know a little more about what they're all about, you can go to www.csh.umn.edu.

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They've got a lot of things going on in the complementary medicine field.

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So anyway.

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All right.

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So this is what's been called...

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I can't really even see that.

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So I'm not...

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Maybe...

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Hmm?

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I was just...

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It's nice if you can sort of see what you're showing.

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All right.

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Well, anyway.

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Put the microphone up and sit over here.

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That's a good...

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Huh?

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Huh?

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People hear that?

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More or less?

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I don't probably even need the microphone.

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I've got a strong voice.

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But, well, there it is.

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And what is it?

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It is both sort of the inside and the outside of the universe that we experience.

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Experience itself, consciousness, spirituality, mind, whatever you want to term it.

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All sort of comes and is filtered through this three-pound piece of gelatin and protein.

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And it's a remarkable structure.

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And it's a very hard structure to understand.

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But, you know, in the course of history, it wasn't always that we thought that mind or consciousness was localized in the brain.

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And I'm not even sure we understand that now.

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But there...

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There is a sort of emerging consensus that whether or not it's localized in the brain,

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the brain certainly has a great deal to do with consciousness and with mind.

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So, perhaps by looking at the brain in more detail,

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we can understand more about what is this phenomenon called consciousness that we all experience,

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that consciousness are us in a certain sense.

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I guess one of the other things that might be worth remarking about when you think about the brain,

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it's probably one of the most complex structures,

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one of the most highly organized structures in the known universe.

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Certainly in our universe, there is nothing more complex or more highly organized.

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And there has been one of my kind of interesting speculations about consciousness.

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Consciousness is that perhaps it is that consciousness is a function of order,

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highly organized systems,

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in the same way, perhaps, that gravity is a function of mass.

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And just as when you accumulate a lot of mass in a small space, in a small enough space,

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you get the black hole phenomenon.

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It wraps space-time around itself and it plunges into...

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It becomes the singularity.

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And the interesting thing about the singularity is we can put a label on it, singularity.

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But what that means is that we can't say anything about it.

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Because within the boundaries of that singularity, all the laws of physics are abrogated.

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Or we don't even know that.

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We don't know what is going on inside the singularity.

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And so, perhaps consciousness, as we experience it, is the same way.

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When you accumulate enough order in a small enough space,

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when you accumulate enough order in a small enough space,

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when you accumulate enough order in a small enough space,

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maybe consciousness emerges as a property of that ordered system.

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And if you look at the human brain, that's kind of the ultimate expression of this highly ordered system

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and why it seems to partake of a level that's a little different from other forms of consciousness.

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But to some extent, everything that's ordered has consciousness or mind as a property of it.

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Well, who knows?

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But that's just an idea, you know.

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I mean, this sort of, you know, goes back to the notion, as far as Aristotle and even earlier,

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that the brain and the mind are intimately related.

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His notion that the brain was the place where all senses met in common,

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from which our term common sense arises, sort of articulates this idea.

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But it's difficult for us to step outside of our head.

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How are we going to understand the brain and understand consciousness if we're within the cage?

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How can you understand experience and the parameters of experience and the physical substrate,

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if there is such, or the metaphysical substrates that give rise to it, if you can't get outside of it?

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You know, so we have the classic situation that a fish,

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might face in trying to understand water.

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How can he or she, whatever the fish is, step out of the environment and look at it from the outside?

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This is very difficult.

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The brain is the filter that filters everything.

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So how do you, how do you understand the filter?

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And that's why it's difficult to study this kind of thing.

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And not just we can study it, but understanding is,

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elusive.

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And we've seen historically the way that the concept of consciousness,

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the mind, and its relationship to the brain and the body has evolved over time.

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Descartes, the guy who came up with the,

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I think therefore I am, cliche, good place to start.

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He was preoccupied with the pineal gland,

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which is now historically,

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re-emerged to become, again, very important, possibly,

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in understanding the basis of consciousness.

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But he, he postulated that the pineal gland,

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which is a tiny endocrine gland in the middle of the brain,

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in the absolute middle of the brain,

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sometimes made analogous to the third eye.

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And it is in the right spot.

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If you drilled a hole right there and right there in the middle of the skull,

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you would be very close.

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Very close to the pineal gland.

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And it does have eye-like properties in some ways.

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But he claimed that the pineal gland was the receptor of all sensory input.

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And then through a series of strings,

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it was connected to muscles.

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It was connected to the ability to respond to the environment.

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And so it was sort of like the puppet theory of consciousness.

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All mediated by this, by this controlling center,

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which he equated to the pineal gland.

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Steven, does anybody have any water?

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I knew I was going to...

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So as we've looked at the way the understanding of the brain has evolved over time,

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it gets sort of progressively more, more complicated,

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which you would expect as empiricism.

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And actually, as in the second slide I showed,

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people became enthusiastic about describing what is actually out there in nature.

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And the naturalist cadavers willingly or unwillingly,

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devoted their body parts and their brains to the early anatomists,

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who didn't really think of themselves as scientists.

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I mean, science emerged later as even under that term.

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They were more, they thought of themselves as natural philosophers.

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People who were trying to learn from nature.

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And as people, as models of the brain,

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it kind of, the perception of it changed as a place where there was a repository for the spirit.

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And that's kind of on the upper slide, this early notion of da Vinci's drawing.

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There was an early notion that the mind-body is run by humors,

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which were sort of variously conceived as gases or liquids.

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It wasn't quite clear.

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You find very much the same sort of notions in Chinese medicine and other traditional medical traditions.

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But in the West, it came out of Galen's notion that, you know,

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everything is controlled by these vapors or these fluids kind of floating around the body.

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And there was this idea that within the brain, the brain, there wasn't much happening in the brain.

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It was mostly empty inside your head, but it was a repository for,

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for these gaseous vapors that occasionally had to escape out into the world.

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Well, as people started looking more at the empirical structure of the brain,

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the picture got considerably more complicated, as you can see by the picture below.

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And in the 19th century, there came to be this understanding that,

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now,

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only was the brain a very complicated structure but there was an effort made

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to segment the brain and to kind of map brain structures onto functions. What

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part of the brain controlled memory, what part of the brain controlled you know

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love or lust or what part of the brain controlled you know all of the

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behavioral and spiritual aspects that goes into complex human behavior. So one

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early example of that was phrenology which was really a kind of a 19th

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century pseudoscience but that postulated that by essentially by

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measuring the bumps on your head you could determine personality type and

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they had you know all of these complex maps about where on the skull

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corresponding to places within the brain these different functions were located.

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So I think it's really important to think about that.

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So I think it's really important to think about that.

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So I think it's really important to think about that.

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So this was really kind of a attempt to kind of a stepping stone along the way

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toward what eventually emerged as modern neuroanatomy which plays much the same

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types of games but hopefully is a little more empirically based. I mean if

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you contrast this three-dimensional figure here with the cross-section of

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brain structures with da Vinci's drawing.

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In back of it you can see how much our concepts have changed over time.

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So now we have we're still a long way from figuring it out I don't want anyone

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to get the impression that we have it figured out we don't and any time.

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In just about any discipline or any tradition when someone tells you they've

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got it figured out that's pretty much when I walk away because.

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There's a lot left but we do know.

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A few things we have succeeded in localizing in sort of defining anatomically different

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parts of the brain.

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And sort of mapping in a crude way certain functions onto these different parts.

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And this just shows some of the main parts like Wernicke's area has to do very much with

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language.

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Production and process.

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Processing.

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The visual cortex the part of the brain that processes visual information shows up at the

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back of the brain.

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The temporal lobe the temporal temporal meaning it's located in the temporal area turns out

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to be maybe a key area in certain functions related to consciousness.

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And so on.

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So we're getting a progressively more complete.

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Sort of.

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Map of of these different parts of the brain and and through neurophysiology and other

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techniques and toys that we're inventing we can look at these.

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The functions of these areas and progressively more detailed way so we are learning.

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Slowly.

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And what one of the things we're learning and here I have to refer to my notes because

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I I can't memorize all this stuff.

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But.

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One of the things that we're learning is that where is that the the human brain.

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And to a certain sense all mammalian brains are are at least three brains and they work

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together and they are evolutionarily related as well in that the lower brains the so-called

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brain stem.

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And the midbrain are evolutionarily lower.

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Evolutionarily lower.

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And so.

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So.

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So.

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So.

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So.

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And they were.

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They were more complex.

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They were more complex.

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They were more complex.

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And they they were more complex as well.

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They were more complex.

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They were more complex.

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They were more complex.

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So the human brain is more ancient than this kind of over expressed them and hypertrophy

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for brain.

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Which is kind of that characteristic both curse and blessing of the human condition.

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And in some sense and evolutionary accident I mean we could go on all day about how this

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how this happens.

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But it is really the kind of.

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It's really.

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Evolutionarily what sets our species aside.

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from everyone, from other species.

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I mean, it's an evolutionary accident in that it happened very quickly in evolution.

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There's just this explosive, almost literally overexpression of the cortex,

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of the forebrain in evolutionary time over a couple of million years.

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And what triggered that, we don't know,

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or what led to it, probably a variety of factors.

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I don't think it's as simple as we started eating mushrooms

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and suddenly got smart.

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But I think that these psychedelic molecules were out in the environment,

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and I think that they did play probably some kind of role.

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I'm not really here to convince you one way or the other of that.

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But how this came about, we don't know.

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But that it came about has made all the difference

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in the sense that, as a result,

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a species emerged on the planet that is kind of the chaos factor

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in kind of the evolutionary unfolding of life on this planet.

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I mean, it's pretty clear we're either going to wreck it

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or we're going to sustain it.

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And it's still up for grabs.

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But I just wanted to mention some of these structures.

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To give you an idea, I'm going to give you an idea.

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I'm going to give you an idea.

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I'm going to give you an idea of where the state of the art is

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or where the current understanding is

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in trying to localize these parts of the brain

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and map functions onto parts.

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So I'm just going to kind of read this out.

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And I don't have a pointer, so it would be easier.

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But this part here, you've got the forebrain,

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the midbrain, and the hindbrain.

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And the hindbrain at the bottom there

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is the forebrain.

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It's the oldest part of the brain evolutionarily.

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And it includes these three main structures,

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the medulla oblongata, the pons, and the cerebellum.

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And sorry that these words are so confusing.

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This all came out of the Greek and Latin

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when that's what neuroanatomists at the time used.

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But the medulla oblongata is kind of the motor control center of the brain.

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It controls autonomic functions such as our breathing

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and our heartbeat, our salivation,

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it's pretty much independent of conscious control.

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Although indirectly, we can of course control some of those things.

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But the medulla oblongata is like an autonomic control system

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that makes sure all systems are functional more or less.

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And when its function is interrupted,

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you're in big trouble because you're dying.

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The pons contains a duct through which the cerebral cortex communicates

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to the cerebellum.

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So this is the pons.

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This contains also the motor neurons that control things like your facial expression

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and your mastication, ability to chew, and things like that.

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And you'd be surprised how much of the brain is controlled,

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is devoted to controlling things like the facial muscles.

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And not too surprising because that's intimately tied into language.

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The cerebellum, which is located on the dorsal surface,

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that is the hind surface of the hind brain,

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controls things like posture balance and autonomic muscle contraction.

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So that's kind of like your balance center.

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Now when we go to the next evolutionary part of the brain, the midbrain,

24:07.210 --> 24:12.750
we can look at substructures there too.

24:12.750 --> 24:16.290
And it contains centers for receiving and integrating,

24:16.610 --> 24:19.090
a lot of different types of sensory information.

24:19.090 --> 24:24.150
It's kind of the auditory, visual, integration and relay station.

24:24.770 --> 24:27.390
And if you look at a lot of these different brain structures,

24:27.390 --> 24:32.150
you find that they're, you know, roughly you can say many of them are involved

24:32.150 --> 24:36.170
with receiving signals and sending signals out.

24:36.290 --> 24:39.570
But then where the really important action is going on is

24:39.570 --> 24:45.290
where these signals are integrated and kind of synthesized into something that makes sense,

24:45.290 --> 24:48.430
i.e. our experience.

24:49.150 --> 24:55.990
So the midbrain and the hindbrain together constitute this thing called the brain stem.

24:55.990 --> 25:00.010
And that's basically where all messages, or most messages,

25:00.010 --> 25:02.850
enter and leave the body through the spinal cord.

25:03.490 --> 25:08.430
Controls involuntary reflexes, autonomic body functions like breathing.

25:09.210 --> 25:13.070
It also helps to maintain alertness.

25:13.070 --> 25:14.930
It has functions in whether we're,

25:15.290 --> 25:18.350
you know, a little bit more dozy or more awake.

25:18.350 --> 25:20.330
Hopefully, most of you are not dozy.

25:20.330 --> 25:22.830
We haven't had lunch yet.

25:24.090 --> 25:28.650
But the forebrain is where it begins to get more interesting

25:28.650 --> 25:31.130
and more pertinent to conscious functions.

25:31.790 --> 25:40.010
It's involved in things like pattern recognition and image formation, memory, association,

25:40.010 --> 25:44.010
our ability to learn, emotional expression, that kind of action,

25:44.490 --> 25:45.050
which we experience.

25:45.050 --> 25:45.190
.

25:45.190 --> 25:52.890
You know, inseparable and intimately linked to our experience of being human

25:52.890 --> 25:59.390
and interacting with other humans is pretty much mediated by the forebrain.

26:00.350 --> 26:04.590
And the forebrain is made up of the diencephalon and the telencephalon.

26:04.590 --> 26:06.690
Again, these older Greek words.

26:07.190 --> 26:13.750
And the diencephalon contains two integrating centers, the thalamus and the hypothalamus.

26:13.750 --> 26:14.950
I hope you can see this.

26:14.950 --> 26:17.890
I hope you can see this chart because I can't keep, see it that seriously.

26:17.890 --> 26:23.110
But the thalamus is kind of important for maintaining the body's internal environment.

26:23.110 --> 26:28.350
Another homeostatic mechanism controls a lot about body temperature.

26:28.350 --> 26:36.470
For example, it helps process sensory signals except olfactory signals,

26:36.470 --> 26:37.990
which are processed somewhere else.

26:38.650 --> 26:44.470
Controls blood pressure, controls, so it has to do a lot with our wake-sleep cycle.

26:44.950 --> 26:51.550
And controls the pituitary gland, which is another master gland in the body,

26:51.550 --> 26:59.550
which is shown up here, kind of a teardrop-shaped gland that hangs down from the thalamus.

26:59.550 --> 27:04.010
And the pituitary gland is always prominently shown in these diagrams

27:04.010 --> 27:06.890
and the pineal gland is almost never shown.

27:06.890 --> 27:09.910
So it sort of gets short shrift.

27:09.910 --> 27:14.710
That's part of the reason is we know a lot less, but it's also deeper in the brain.

27:14.710 --> 27:21.410
So it's harder to depict it.

27:21.410 --> 27:25.590
And the hypothalamus below the thalamus is located at the base of the brain.

27:25.590 --> 27:31.730
And this has to do with our body temperature again, with our osmotic balance,

27:31.730 --> 27:36.270
with regulating electrolyte balance in our body.

27:36.270 --> 27:42.270
The tail encephalon contains the cerebral cortex.

27:42.270 --> 27:44.150
And this is this enormous,

27:44.710 --> 27:52.590
over-expressed hypertrophied structure that we think of as, you know, mediating much of

27:52.590 --> 27:59.770
consciousness, and it does, but it works very closely with many of these structures in the

27:59.770 --> 28:07.610
midbrain as well. The frontal cortex is bilaterally symmetrical. It's divided into two hemispheres,

28:07.610 --> 28:16.090
as you know. It's about 85% of the mass of the brain, so the brain in humans is roughly 1,500

28:16.090 --> 28:27.470
grams, and the cerebral cortex is most of that. And then the two hemispheres are connected by this

28:27.470 --> 28:34.630
band, very dense, broad band of fibers called the corpus callosum, and they're like a switching

28:34.630 --> 28:36.830
system.

28:36.830 --> 28:37.590
So the two hemispheres are connected by this band of fibers called the corpus callosum, and they're

28:37.590 --> 28:43.370
two hemispheres can communicate with each other. And as you probably know, in some cases of

28:43.370 --> 28:52.710
epilepsy, sometimes they surgically separate those things. They actually will sever the

28:52.710 --> 28:58.590
connection between the hemispheres, and it does dampen down some of the epileptic behaviors,

28:58.770 --> 29:06.790
but it leads to some very strange effects, too, in terms of perception and ability to

29:06.790 --> 29:15.190
by looking at things like that. In other words, you can recognize objects. You can for example, hold

29:15.190 --> 29:18.570
a ball or a block of wood in your hand. You can not only know what it is, you can draw a picture of it,

29:23.570 --> 29:25.970
but you can't name it and things like that. So by looking at things like that, this is how we partly learn more

29:25.970 --> 29:31.990
about what is going on in the brain and how brain structures and functions do relate to consciousness,

29:31.990 --> 29:34.330
sadly, I guess, or in some ways, fortunately, a lot of people have farther across the person they know and

29:34.330 --> 29:35.710
look closer to the person they know. When I look closer it's very empiezaehandic. The mental system in yourself is very, very sure to recognize a

29:35.710 --> 29:41.670
Fortunately, a lot of what we know about the brain comes from looking at brain injuries

29:41.670 --> 29:46.990
and what happens to people's perceptions and behaviors and so on

29:46.990 --> 29:52.690
when they get odd and exotic brain injuries of various types.

29:54.610 --> 30:00.090
So the cerebral cortex, these two hemispheres,

30:00.090 --> 30:06.090
contain sensory and motor areas involved in processing of information

30:06.090 --> 30:08.490
and the integration of information, as we said.

30:09.010 --> 30:16.510
And the cerebral cortex controls sensations, reasoning, memory, problem-solving, and voluntary actions,

30:16.830 --> 30:25.370
at least to the extent that we have been able to localize those functions to different parts of the brain.

30:25.790 --> 30:29.150
So if we look closer at these hemispheres,

30:29.290 --> 30:30.070
where a lot of the activity is done by the brain,

30:30.070 --> 30:35.830
where the action is, you can subdivide these into basically five lobes.

30:36.070 --> 30:38.310
This is classically how it's done.

30:38.910 --> 30:42.950
The frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital lobes.

30:45.330 --> 30:54.150
The frontal lobe is the largest, and it controls speech, thought, consciousness, and voluntary body movements.

30:54.350 --> 30:56.510
Well, that's a big statement.

30:56.510 --> 30:59.010
I'm not sure it does control consciousness,

30:59.010 --> 31:03.730
but it controls some important functions related to consciousness.

31:04.490 --> 31:12.130
The parietal lobe controls sensations such as touch, pressure and pain, texture, and position.

31:13.070 --> 31:19.050
And also within the parietal lobe is a neural map of our motor functions,

31:19.290 --> 31:24.590
the so-called, sometimes called the cortical homunculus,

31:24.590 --> 31:28.990
essentially a representation within the brain of the structure,

31:29.010 --> 31:30.610
of our body.

31:30.610 --> 31:33.290
And if you've looked at neuroanatomy text,

31:33.290 --> 31:38.810
you've probably seen this odd representation of the body,

31:38.810 --> 31:44.750
where the lips and the face are 90% of the cortical homunculus,

31:44.750 --> 31:48.750
and the rest of it is kind of like an atrophied,

31:50.390 --> 31:54.610
withered part of the brain controlling the rest of the body.

31:54.610 --> 31:57.610
So much of the parietal cortex is devoted to the body.

31:57.610 --> 31:58.570
So much of the parietal cortex is devoted to the body.

31:58.570 --> 31:58.990
So much of the parietal cortex is devoted to the body.

31:58.990 --> 32:03.990
So much of the parietal cortex is devoted to controlling our facial muscles.

32:03.990 --> 32:07.130
And the occipital lobe is located at the back of the head,

32:07.130 --> 32:11.270
and is involved in things like vision and hearing,

32:11.270 --> 32:13.150
also in reading.

32:13.150 --> 32:15.990
Sorry, vision and reading.

32:15.990 --> 32:19.910
The temporal lobe is involved in things like hearing, speech memory,

32:19.910 --> 32:22.750
sight memory, and music memory.

32:22.750 --> 32:26.050
Also, I dare say mathematical functions,

32:26.050 --> 32:28.750
because there is a lot of overlap between that,

32:28.750 --> 32:34.030
and things like music.

32:34.030 --> 32:39.230
Each temporal lobe now also has neuronal connections to the ears,

32:39.230 --> 32:41.030
which you would expect.

32:41.030 --> 32:43.070
And then there's a structure called the insula,

32:43.070 --> 32:44.270
which is not shown,

32:44.270 --> 32:47.750
which is located deep within this sylvan fissure,

32:47.750 --> 32:50.510
these cracks between the lobes,

32:50.510 --> 32:56.450
and that is where smell, olfactory input is thought to be controlled.

32:56.450 --> 32:58.610
Don't worry, this is the end of the anatomy.

32:58.610 --> 33:02.930
I'm not going to, it's not going to be like that all the way.

33:02.930 --> 33:06.090
But I thought since we're talking about the brain,

33:06.090 --> 33:11.090
it might make sense to kind of chart the territory and get some idea.

33:11.090 --> 33:16.370
And again, I'm saying I'm not by any means an expert on this.

33:16.370 --> 33:21.850
So here's another sort of way to look at it,

33:21.850 --> 33:25.930
a more tabular sort of accounting for it,

33:25.930 --> 33:28.610
where you can map functions.

33:28.610 --> 33:31.170
Which are shown on the right there,

33:31.170 --> 33:42.890
two particular functional areas of the cortex and particular lobes of the cerebrum.

33:42.890 --> 33:47.830
So you have things like the language areas.

33:47.830 --> 33:52.310
Two areas of the brain emerges very important there.

33:52.310 --> 33:56.030
One is Broca's area, the so-called speech center,

33:56.030 --> 33:57.650
which has to do with our ability

33:57.650 --> 34:02.210
to produce speech, to articulate,

34:02.210 --> 34:06.170
to make our mouths move in speech,

34:06.170 --> 34:14.010
to utter these small mouth noises that my brother was fond of talking about.

34:14.010 --> 34:18.890
These inherently meaningless expostulations of air,

34:18.890 --> 34:23.410
and yet from that we get meaning.

34:23.410 --> 34:27.250
And part of that has to do with the other area,

34:27.250 --> 34:28.410
Wernicke's area,

34:28.410 --> 34:30.490
which can take these signals,

34:30.490 --> 34:31.690
process them,

34:31.690 --> 34:38.710
and translate them into something more or less corresponding hopefully to what I just said.

34:38.710 --> 34:43.870
Your brain will translate into some model that's more or less close to that,

34:43.870 --> 34:46.370
so that we understand each other.

34:46.370 --> 34:50.090
And then these different areas involve speech production,

34:50.090 --> 34:52.730
involve voluntary actions.

34:52.730 --> 34:54.290
I don't really have to go through it.

34:54.290 --> 34:56.850
You can see for yourself.

34:56.850 --> 34:59.390
So there's been progress,

34:59.390 --> 35:09.210
especially within the last few decades of the 20th century in understanding the brain.

35:09.210 --> 35:12.170
So do we know where the soul is now?

35:12.170 --> 35:17.810
Do we know where consciousness is or where is mind?

35:17.810 --> 35:21.610
Which one of these lobes contains the soul?

35:21.610 --> 35:26.010
I don't think we can really answer that question.

35:26.010 --> 35:28.770
Even at this point.

35:28.770 --> 35:35.130
There's really no better artist than Alex Gray to kind of illustrate the conundrum here.

35:35.130 --> 35:38.230
Where does the brain stop and consciousness begin,

35:38.230 --> 35:43.750
or does consciousness kind of fan out into the continuum?

35:43.750 --> 35:48.850
We don't really know the answer where the soul is.

35:48.850 --> 35:53.170
We have a much better understanding of the structures of the brain.

35:53.170 --> 35:54.650
We can map functions of the brain.

35:54.650 --> 35:55.570
We can map functions of the brain.

35:55.570 --> 35:55.590
We can map functions of the brain.

35:55.590 --> 35:55.890
We can map functions of the brain.

35:55.890 --> 35:56.010
We can map functions of the brain.

35:56.010 --> 35:56.510
We can map functions of the brain.

35:56.510 --> 35:57.010
We can map functions of the brain.

35:57.010 --> 35:57.510
We can map functions of the brain.

35:57.510 --> 35:58.710
We can map functions of the brain.

35:58.710 --> 35:59.330
We can map functions of the brain.

35:59.330 --> 36:02.130
But do we know where the soul is?

36:02.130 --> 36:04.930
Not really.

36:04.930 --> 36:09.210
All we can do is sort of make some guesses.

36:09.210 --> 36:12.070
We've got some good guesses.

36:12.070 --> 36:13.470
We're beginning to understand it.

36:13.470 --> 36:18.050
And we have some marvelous new toys.

36:18.050 --> 36:23.890
Human beings are very good at sort of probing the universe and inventing toys.

36:23.890 --> 36:25.890
And if we can probe the universe using gadgets,

36:25.890 --> 36:34.830
gadgets, then we're really happy. And so, you know, clever people have developed different

36:34.830 --> 36:40.770
toys, different technologies, if you want to call them, for probing the brain. One of

36:40.770 --> 36:45.350
the questions we really, this isn't one of them, by the way, this is an artist's conception,

36:45.650 --> 36:51.610
but I put it in there because I thought it well illustrated the idea of, to my mind,

36:51.610 --> 37:00.190
a question that remains unanswered. But with our sort of pantheist animist bias, if you will,

37:00.530 --> 37:07.750
it's a question worth pondering, which is, is the brain a generator of mind? Is it a generator of

37:07.750 --> 37:14.290
consciousness? Or is it more like a receiver of consciousness? Is consciousness, maybe mind or

37:14.290 --> 37:21.530
consciousness, is something like radio waves. It just kind of permeates the continuum. But if you

37:21.530 --> 37:21.590
have a question that remains unanswered, it's a question worth pondering, which is, is the brain

37:21.590 --> 37:29.410
have a sufficiently sophisticated receiver, if you have a Bose stereo system or whatever,

37:29.410 --> 37:33.350
you can tune in to the right wavelengths.

37:33.350 --> 37:35.690
So that's a different way of looking at the brain.

37:35.690 --> 37:41.210
I think neuroanatomists and people with that sort of perspective think of the brain as

37:41.210 --> 37:45.570
something that generates consciousness, but maybe that's not what it is at all.

37:45.570 --> 37:56.030
Maybe it's just a way to tune in to something that is kind of inherent in the universe.

37:56.030 --> 38:03.850
Certainly a lot of the pantheist and animist traditions have this intuition, that mind

38:03.850 --> 38:09.850
is everywhere, that everything is conscious, that the smallest sand grain or even electron

38:09.850 --> 38:14.690
has a certain quality of consciousness to it.

38:14.690 --> 38:15.550
Okay.

38:15.550 --> 38:22.270
So we have developed lots of different, what you might call, neurotechnologies, different

38:22.270 --> 38:32.050
ways to image the brain and probe the brain and try to get some answers out of it and

38:32.050 --> 38:37.150
try to figure out, try to, in a sense, look, it's, again, we're faced with this conundrum

38:37.150 --> 38:45.710
of the filter, looking at the filter.

38:45.710 --> 38:47.710
What's my limit on time?

38:47.710 --> 38:47.810
Okay.

38:47.810 --> 38:47.850
Okay.

38:47.850 --> 38:48.850
So what's the limit on time?

38:48.850 --> 38:49.850
One fifty.

38:49.850 --> 38:50.850
One fifty.

38:50.850 --> 38:51.850
You're done?

38:51.850 --> 38:52.850
Hmm?

38:52.850 --> 38:53.850
Oh.

38:53.850 --> 38:54.850
Lots of time.

38:54.850 --> 38:55.850
One fifty, not one fifty.

38:55.850 --> 38:56.850
Oh, well.

38:56.850 --> 38:57.850
No problem.

38:57.850 --> 38:58.850
Okay.

38:58.850 --> 39:06.670
So if we look at what we might call neurotechnologies, we can actually kind of divide them into

39:06.670 --> 39:08.370
a couple of categories.

39:08.370 --> 39:14.290
One is all the toys, the gee whiz gadgets that we've developed within the 20th century

39:14.290 --> 39:17.810
for kind of monitoring brain functions and examining them.

39:17.810 --> 39:26.810
Things like electroencephalography, computerized axial tomography, PET, positron emission tomography,

39:26.810 --> 39:32.810
and all these different, very often ways of imaging what's going on in the brain and

39:32.810 --> 39:36.810
imaging either brain structures or functions or both.

39:36.810 --> 39:41.810
But then coupled with that, we have what are very ancient technologies that have been around

39:41.810 --> 39:46.810
for a long time, what you might call altered state technologies.

39:46.810 --> 39:50.810
And these are not gadget-oriented generally at all.

39:50.810 --> 39:56.650
I mean, the most complex gadget that you might use to practice this is perhaps a psychoactive

39:56.650 --> 40:03.910
plant or a psychoactive molecule, although they don't all certainly involve those things.

40:03.910 --> 40:10.730
You have things like psychedelics, which is not at the top of the list, well, not

40:10.730 --> 40:11.730
by design.

40:11.730 --> 40:16.770
It's just that you have shamanism, you have meditation, you have prayer.

40:16.770 --> 40:23.250
But these are kind of techniques that people have developed over centuries to alter states

40:23.250 --> 40:24.790
of consciousness.

40:24.790 --> 40:26.250
So we can put these together.

40:26.250 --> 40:33.390
We can say, practice these sacred technologies or these altered state technologies, and

40:33.390 --> 40:38.610
then we can put the helmets on or put you in the MRI and see what is going on in the

40:38.610 --> 40:39.610
brain.

40:39.610 --> 40:44.530
What is it doing when you're meditating or when you're on a psychedelic and so on?

40:44.530 --> 40:46.770
So we can hopefully learn from some of that.

40:46.770 --> 40:48.690
Here's one example.

40:48.690 --> 40:55.690
This is electroencephalography, which has gotten much more sophisticated in the last

40:55.690 --> 40:56.690
few years.

40:56.690 --> 41:00.930
A lot of brain activity, as we know, is electrical activity.

41:00.930 --> 41:07.970
And what electroencephalography does is basically measure these waves of electrical polarization

41:07.970 --> 41:15.210
and depolarization that kind of constantly travel across the brain.

41:15.210 --> 41:16.770
And the way you do that is by doing this.

41:16.770 --> 41:23.750
By just putting a lot of electrodes in different spots on the skull, the systems we have now

41:23.750 --> 41:25.990
are a lot more sophisticated.

41:25.990 --> 41:30.530
We can measure many channels at the same time.

41:30.530 --> 41:38.630
And we can, by studying the patterns of brain waves with different states such as sleep,

41:38.630 --> 41:44.690
deep meditation, excitement, and so on, we can make correlations that may help us there.

41:44.690 --> 41:45.690
So that's one example.

41:45.690 --> 41:46.690
Thank you.

41:46.690 --> 41:48.550
Another example is the use of telemetry.

41:48.550 --> 41:54.230
And telemetry, as I said before, is the use of telemetry to define certain states of consciousness,

41:54.230 --> 41:58.850
states of mind, or correlated with certain electrical states in the brain.

41:58.850 --> 41:59.850
Not surprising.

41:59.850 --> 42:03.630
Electroencephalography's been around for a long time.

42:03.630 --> 42:06.110
It's old, but it's been used.

42:06.110 --> 42:12.830
Here's another older technology that's becoming kind of supplanted now.

42:12.830 --> 42:15.610
This is computerized axial tomography.

42:15.610 --> 42:23.430
build up an image of brain structures by taking x-ray pictures of slices of the brain and

42:23.430 --> 42:29.470
thin slices, that is the computer slices it up and then builds up a three-dimensional

42:29.470 --> 42:33.930
image by looking at x-ray images.

42:33.930 --> 42:41.870
It's not used so much anymore, I mean it is still used medically but many newer techniques

42:41.870 --> 42:48.290
are preferable to it because the problem with this is you have to put x-rays on your

42:48.290 --> 42:50.270
brain and that's not such a good idea.

42:50.270 --> 42:55.950
It's very useful for as a preliminary way to for instance look at brain tumors or to

42:55.950 --> 43:02.010
detect brain tumors which you can see there in that picture on the right that mass down

43:02.010 --> 43:06.610
there is a rather large brain tumor.

43:06.610 --> 43:11.850
Interestingly enough the current most kind of common practice is to look at x-ray images

43:11.850 --> 43:12.850
of the brain.

43:12.850 --> 43:18.170
The common application of CAT is not so much in neuroscience but actually in homeland security.

43:18.170 --> 43:25.650
Those people putting these bags through that machine, that's a CAT scanner and so when

43:25.650 --> 43:32.010
you go to the airport your luggage will not be CAT scanned.

43:32.010 --> 43:38.430
I hope that we do not live to see a day when your brain will be CAT scanned when you go

43:38.430 --> 43:40.730
to the airport but I'm not so sure.

43:40.730 --> 43:41.730
.

43:41.730 --> 43:48.670
Given the way things are going hopefully they will have at least a less invasive technique.

43:48.670 --> 43:55.730
Something perhaps like this I can imagine having to have an MRI when you step up to

43:55.730 --> 44:02.630
the security gate at the airport that will in 10 or 20 years be able to tell you or even

44:02.630 --> 44:10.730
less than that be able to give our intrepid homeland security agents kind of an idea

44:10.730 --> 44:11.730
of what you're thinking.

44:11.730 --> 44:12.730
.

44:12.730 --> 44:13.730
.

44:13.730 --> 44:14.730
.

44:14.730 --> 44:15.730
.

44:15.730 --> 44:16.730
.

44:16.730 --> 44:17.730
.

44:17.730 --> 44:18.730
.

44:18.730 --> 44:19.730
.

44:19.730 --> 44:20.730
.

44:20.730 --> 44:21.730
.

44:21.730 --> 44:22.730
.

44:22.730 --> 44:23.730
.

44:23.730 --> 44:24.730
.

44:24.730 --> 44:25.730
.

44:25.730 --> 44:26.730
.

44:26.730 --> 44:27.730
.

44:27.730 --> 44:28.730
.

44:28.730 --> 44:29.730
.

44:29.730 --> 44:30.730
.

44:30.730 --> 44:31.730
.

44:31.730 --> 44:32.730
.

44:32.730 --> 44:33.730
.

44:33.730 --> 44:34.730
.

44:34.730 --> 44:35.730
.

44:35.730 --> 44:36.730
.

44:36.730 --> 44:37.730
.

44:37.730 --> 44:38.730
.

44:38.730 --> 44:39.730
.

44:39.730 --> 44:48.790
I'm not sure we want machines to read our minds and so this is another exam I don't mean to scare

44:48.790 --> 44:54.250
you we're all scared enough but I think it's something that we have to think about we have

44:54.250 --> 45:00.790
to think about the applications of this technology because one of the things I mean wonderfully of

45:00.790 --> 45:07.450
medical applications and as a tool in basic neuroscience who could argue with that but then

45:07.450 --> 45:16.210
we we humans have this you know perverse ability to take a good thing and and perverted into a bad

45:16.210 --> 45:23.770
thing or a you know more sort of morally and ethically ambiguous type of thing but anyway

45:23.770 --> 45:32.650
MRI magnetic resonance imagery and the variation of it called functional MRI which is essentially

45:32.650 --> 45:37.270
a movie version a real-time version of brain function

45:37.450 --> 45:45.970
has kind of supplanted cat scanning and other types of techniques because it gives you such

45:45.970 --> 45:54.130
detailed resolution of brain structures and to a certain degree of brain functions it's based

45:54.130 --> 46:02.850
on a magnetic technology so it's not so dangerous as x-rays and basically based on measuring the

46:02.850 --> 46:07.450
magnetic signal from protons in primarily in water

46:07.450 --> 46:17.530
in brain structures so this this particular drawing here shows the activation of certain

46:17.530 --> 46:25.030
brain areas in a patient that's been treated with antidepressants after several weeks of treatment

46:25.030 --> 46:31.090
and of course it can all be computer process to highlight those and that's that's what this shows

46:31.090 --> 46:37.430
these those red areas are the areas that supposedly are activated so this is a

46:37.430 --> 46:46.850
really quite useful window onto structure and function of the brain another another gee whiz

46:46.850 --> 46:53.810
technology is pet positron emission spectroscopy as you can see it has a

46:53.810 --> 46:59.570
much lower resolution than MRI but it tells you different things it can tell

46:59.570 --> 47:06.890
you basically by putting a molecule into by injecting a molecule into the

47:06.890 --> 47:07.410
brain which is the brain which is the brain which is the brain which is the brain which is the brain which is the brain

47:07.430 --> 47:17.250
which is usually glucose which has been tagged with an atom that emits positrons those strange

47:17.250 --> 47:26.190
quantum things that are the opposite of electrons as it decays these are very short-lived isotopes

47:26.190 --> 47:35.050
short-lived radio isotopes and as you all probably know glucose is the food of the brain it

47:35.050 --> 47:37.050
does not feed on anything else

47:37.430 --> 47:44.010
and so what pet basically measures it will measure those areas of the brain

47:44.010 --> 47:49.110
where the most glucose is being consumed which corresponds to metabolic

47:49.110 --> 47:56.450
activity so if you want to know you know I'm thinking about buying an SUV

47:56.450 --> 48:02.750
for example you can put me in a cat scan and say oh what part of his brain

48:02.750 --> 48:07.770
lights up when he thinks about buying an SUV or what part lights up when he

48:07.770 --> 48:08.630
thinks about

48:08.630 --> 48:12.830
chocolate cake or other things.

48:13.350 --> 48:18.230
And so you can actually correlate brain activity

48:18.230 --> 48:22.090
to the consumption of glucose in different parts of the brain.

48:22.350 --> 48:24.010
So this is useful.

48:24.310 --> 48:28.610
And again, you get these kind of morally questionable technologies.

48:28.970 --> 48:33.970
There's a whole technology called neural imprinting now

48:33.970 --> 48:36.550
or neural fingerprinting, I think it's called,

48:36.550 --> 48:39.090
which would be the kind of thing they might apply

48:39.090 --> 48:41.430
at airport security gates.

48:41.590 --> 48:44.370
But of course, the advertising industry is way ahead.

48:45.050 --> 48:50.450
They're already developed this thing called neural marketing

48:50.450 --> 48:54.550
where they can take focus groups, show them products,

48:54.970 --> 48:57.350
and monitor their brain functions.

48:57.350 --> 49:02.610
And then they can figure out how to more efficiently tweak

49:02.610 --> 49:05.410
those parts of the brains that react.

49:06.250 --> 49:06.530
Okay.

49:06.530 --> 49:08.850
Another important technology is SPECT,

49:09.090 --> 49:11.990
which is, I didn't have an animated version of that.

49:12.170 --> 49:13.250
I couldn't find one.

49:13.390 --> 49:19.050
But SPECT is similar to PET in that it involves putting radioactive molecules

49:19.050 --> 49:23.990
into the brain, and then as those things decay, you get an image.

49:23.990 --> 49:30.130
Unlike PET, which usually involves glucose, although not always,

49:30.510 --> 49:33.890
you can do interesting things with pharmaceuticals.

49:33.970 --> 49:35.990
You could, for example, put LSD.

49:36.530 --> 49:40.730
Or some other molecule, Prozac.

49:40.730 --> 49:45.290
Or some other molecule with the right label into the brain.

49:45.290 --> 49:50.770
And then do a SPECT scan and see where that molecule is distributed.

49:50.770 --> 49:52.150
Where does it go in the brain?

49:52.150 --> 49:53.330
Where does it bind?

49:53.330 --> 49:58.590
How long does it take to be metabolized and excreted and so on?

49:59.390 --> 50:04.590
And here, the detector, the signal that is detected is gamma rays.

50:04.590 --> 50:06.090
So that's the other thing.

50:06.090 --> 50:06.230
Okay.

50:06.230 --> 50:08.390
The other one detected positrons.

50:08.390 --> 50:10.510
The PET scan detects positrons.

50:10.510 --> 50:14.490
This detects gamma rays, which are even worse than X-rays.

50:14.490 --> 50:18.490
Even more powerful and destructive to tissues than X-rays.

50:18.490 --> 50:21.190
Of course, the amounts that are actually put

50:21.190 --> 50:24.190
into the brain are infinitesimally tiny.

50:24.770 --> 50:27.350
And it's not something that you do every day.

50:27.350 --> 50:31.770
It's something you do for hopefully a medical reason.

50:32.630 --> 50:35.930
So these things give us essentially windows

50:35.930 --> 50:41.810
on the brain, ways to poke and probe the brain to watch what the brain does

50:41.810 --> 50:49.430
when it's doing various things, whether that be meditating or sleeping or thinking or,

50:49.430 --> 50:51.830
you know, whatever it might be.

50:51.830 --> 50:56.430
So they can then link these things to these altered state technologies,

50:56.430 --> 51:04.830
these by and large very ancient technologies, and perhaps get a more complete picture

51:04.830 --> 51:05.930
of what's going on.

51:05.930 --> 51:11.830
Well, of course, psychedelics are, you know, really useful in this respect.

51:11.830 --> 51:20.790
Molecules like LSD and the whole gamut of psychedelic molecules,

51:20.790 --> 51:25.430
in some sense, are molecular probes of consciousness.

51:25.430 --> 51:30.230
We can design variations on these molecules,

51:30.230 --> 51:35.930
and then we can see how do these variations change the subjective effect.

51:35.930 --> 51:40.830
And we can also look at how they interact with brain receptors.

51:40.830 --> 51:49.310
Most brains, a lot of brain activity, as you know, has to do with receptors.

51:49.310 --> 51:54.810
And a lot of how drugs work has to do with the fact that they bind to specific receptors

51:54.810 --> 51:58.490
in the brain, and then they elicit effects that way.

51:58.490 --> 52:01.930
So that's what this thing on the right shows.

52:01.930 --> 52:05.830
It shows an LSD molecule nestled.

52:05.830 --> 52:12.050
It's nestled within the receptive pocket of this protein.

52:12.050 --> 52:16.050
These are conceptualizations, mathematical reconstructions.

52:16.050 --> 52:21.490
This protein is located in the surface of the nerve cell at the synapse.

52:21.490 --> 52:25.610
And so it can only fit in certain ways.

52:25.610 --> 52:30.530
These molecules have a kind of a lock and key relationship to their receptors.

52:30.530 --> 52:33.150
They'll only fit certain ways.

52:33.150 --> 52:35.830
And so you can study a lot about how,

52:35.830 --> 52:37.770
how to use these things.

52:37.770 --> 52:41.610
And so this is a very interesting example.

52:41.610 --> 52:43.730
Meditation is another sacred technology.

52:43.730 --> 52:46.490
Sacred altered state technology.

52:46.490 --> 52:50.550
A way to communicate with your deeper self.

52:50.550 --> 52:54.330
I don't have to belabor that with this audience.

52:54.330 --> 52:58.150
I like Alex Gray's sort of representations.

52:58.150 --> 53:02.330
I tend to use his images a lot.

53:02.330 --> 53:04.050
With his permission, by the way.

53:04.050 --> 53:05.250
Because he really, really likes to use images.

53:05.250 --> 53:05.830
He likes to use images.

53:05.830 --> 53:12.870
sort of gets how intimately these conscious and super conscious processes are related

53:12.870 --> 53:22.030
fundamentally to biology. Biology is the ground of our being. So we can use meditation. We can

53:22.030 --> 53:30.430
use prayer. And prayer is not unlike meditation. That's another sacred technology. Another

53:30.430 --> 53:35.870
technology that focuses on inner states and the kind of communication with the transcendental

53:35.870 --> 53:43.770
aspect of the self. But where meditation often is an inner focusing, prayer almost always or

53:43.770 --> 53:51.610
very often presupposes a communication with something outside the self. But they have in

53:51.610 --> 53:59.870
conscious that there's a transcendence of the self, a suppression of the ego, and a communication or

53:59.870 --> 54:00.410
a

54:00.410 --> 54:00.430
a

54:00.430 --> 54:07.910
, a relationship with something perceived to be larger than the self. And at this point, I think maybe

54:07.910 --> 54:13.270
it's good to remind you that all of this is still going on in the brain. I mean, this is the brain that's

54:13.270 --> 54:20.710
doing all this. So in some sense, none of it's really outside the self, or maybe it is. But, you know,

54:20.710 --> 54:28.210
this is the filter. And we have various ways to modulate the filter. So we can ask, you know, big

54:28.210 --> 54:30.410
questions. What is consciousness?

54:30.410 --> 54:40.150
Is consciousness in the brain, or does the brain merely detect it? What is the self? And where is the self located? Is it

54:40.150 --> 54:48.290
located in the brain? Is it located somewhere else in the universe, a few feet in front of me? Who knows? Big

54:48.290 --> 55:00.390
questions. Nobody has the answers. So we're free to speculate. And we're good at that. I want to talk a little bit about some of the research,

55:00.390 --> 55:09.450
on this. This is an interesting fellow, a neurologist at the brain cognition lab at

55:09.450 --> 55:14.970
UCSD, University of California at San Diego. And if any of you are familiar with his book

55:14.970 --> 55:20.390
Phantoms in the Brain, you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, I highly recommend

55:20.390 --> 55:25.890
it. He has learned a great deal about the brain by studying people with different types

55:25.890 --> 55:36.590
of brain injuries. He's kind of an Oliver Sacks type character. And he talks about consciousness

55:36.590 --> 55:44.390
and what he calls qualia. Qualia is kind of our subject experience of self, our experience

55:44.390 --> 55:52.930
of being in the world, if you will. And he's been fascinated by what kind of brain processes

55:52.930 --> 55:55.870
have to integrate together and work together to create.

55:55.890 --> 56:06.830
This sense that we have of being localized in space and time, most of the time, and pretty

56:06.830 --> 56:15.490
much a coherent entity, our subjective point of view. So that's really what he is trying

56:15.490 --> 56:24.130
to get a handle on by looking at these different types of brain injuries where qualia is seriously

56:24.130 --> 56:25.530
disrupted in some ways.

56:25.670 --> 56:25.870
Okay.

56:25.870 --> 56:32.910
People who have lost limbs, for example. Or people, you know, if you look into the

56:32.910 --> 56:39.050
literature of neurology, you find there are all sorts of really unusual conditions. You

56:39.050 --> 56:44.210
know, conditions, for example, where people are absolutely convinced that they're dead.

56:45.310 --> 56:51.350
You know, or that, you know, they didn't lose an arm. Their arm is over there lying

56:51.350 --> 56:55.410
on the bed across the room from them. But it's still their arm.

56:55.410 --> 57:04.270
Just wild stuff that he talks about. But in trying to understand this, he's kind of put together

57:04.270 --> 57:12.550
this notion that the brain, our subjective self, is not really one self. It's many selves.

57:12.550 --> 57:20.590
About seven, in fact. And they work together. And they crosstalk and communicate with each other.

57:20.590 --> 57:25.190
So that the whole is kind of synthesized into this whole.

57:25.190 --> 57:31.130
To this delusion of being a coherent self. Different parts of the brain handle different

57:31.130 --> 57:37.970
aspects of the self-function. And the whole thing, by our ability to synthesize all this

57:37.970 --> 57:45.550
input and output together, is synthesized into a coherent whole. You know, much like

57:45.550 --> 57:50.790
a film, for example. I mean, a film is just a series of still pictures. But if we run

57:50.790 --> 57:54.970
it at the right speed, we have an illusion that it's all running smoothly.

57:54.970 --> 58:04.970
And that's really what it is. They essentially, these different parts of the self, create a

58:04.970 --> 58:11.690
simulation of subjective experience. They create a simulation of reality. And that's

58:11.690 --> 58:19.350
what we experience. One of his findings that's very interesting to me is how little of the

58:19.350 --> 58:24.970
brain has to do with creating this illusion or this hallucination.

58:24.970 --> 58:31.970
If you will. That we call consciousness. Most of the brain, we're never aware of its function.

58:31.970 --> 58:39.790
It's just kind of doing housekeeping things. And only a few structures of the brain really

58:39.790 --> 58:47.050
participate in sort of creating this ongoing process that we experience as the self. More

58:47.050 --> 58:54.010
like a symphony than anything else. Or the ongoing movie that we're each living through

58:54.010 --> 58:54.930
that we call...

58:54.970 --> 59:02.250
Our conscious experience that we call subjective experience. So he's kind of, you know, all

59:02.250 --> 59:09.050
this model building, he's kind of broken it down into these seven types of self. One

59:09.050 --> 59:15.910
is the embodied self that's responsible for your body image, your sense of boundaries

59:15.910 --> 59:21.730
between you and the outside world. And that is pretty much mappable to the parietal lobes

59:21.730 --> 59:24.970
and the projections into the frontal lobes.

59:24.970 --> 59:28.810
The second type of self is the self of the brain. The passionate self governs personality

59:28.810 --> 59:34.970
and emotions and those types of functions. And that has been traced or is largely controlled

59:34.970 --> 59:41.530
by the temporal lobes and a structure within the limbic system called the amygdala. And

59:41.530 --> 59:48.090
the executive self is the self that is kind of the eye function or not the eye function

59:48.090 --> 59:54.970
but more the decider, the thing that makes decisions and acts on things. And that has

59:54.970 --> 01:00:02.290
been mapped to the cingulate gyrus and projections to the motor cortex. Never mind these terms.

01:00:02.290 --> 01:00:08.010
It's just that there are, you know, certain functions that he's been able to correlate

01:00:08.010 --> 01:00:15.810
with these different functions. There's the mnemonic self, our story, our sense of space

01:00:15.810 --> 01:00:24.210
and time, our personal history. And that is linked intimately as memory is to the hippocampus,

01:00:24.210 --> 01:00:31.390
that part of the brain that, part of the midbrain that is involved in the encoding

01:00:31.390 --> 01:00:36.990
of memories and to the amygdala and to the temporal lobes. You see that these structures

01:00:36.990 --> 01:00:44.330
keep coming up in different contexts. There are relatively few of them. There's the unified

01:00:44.330 --> 01:00:51.250
self, which is responsible for the filling in the gaps, the telling essentially ourselves

01:00:51.250 --> 01:00:54.210
the fairy story that is our life.

01:00:54.210 --> 01:01:01.270
The story that narrates what's going on so that we can make sense of what's going on.

01:01:01.270 --> 01:01:07.470
And the amygdala and the anterior cingulate gyrus participate in that. There's the visual

01:01:07.470 --> 01:01:15.610
self, the self that tracks things in the environment, tracks responses, has, modulates

01:01:15.610 --> 01:01:21.550
perception and that sort of a thing. We can thank the anterior cingulate gyrus, the thalamic

01:01:21.550 --> 01:01:23.830
nuclei in the brain stem for all this.

01:01:24.210 --> 01:01:28.870
This is the part that keeps us from sort of wandering off and, you know, stepping in

01:01:28.870 --> 01:01:36.930
front of buses and things like that. Very evolutionarily useful not to do that. And

01:01:36.930 --> 01:01:42.810
then finally there's this conceptual and social self, the sort of I function, our

01:01:42.810 --> 01:01:49.890
self in relation to our fellow beings. And those functions are mediated by the cerebral

01:01:49.890 --> 01:01:50.890
hemispheres.

01:01:50.890 --> 01:01:54.210
Well, I'm not laying this out to you as, you know, this is a, you know, this is a

01:01:54.210 --> 01:02:00.670
model. This is the model of consciousness because I think all models are provisional.

01:02:00.670 --> 01:02:06.510
But models can be useful in terms of kind of articulating and understanding. And all

01:02:06.510 --> 01:02:12.010
models are working models until something better comes along. So this is an interesting

01:02:12.010 --> 01:02:20.510
way to kind of understand this, how we construct this hallucination that is reality, which of

01:02:20.510 --> 01:02:24.050
course, as Lily Tomlin says, reality is a crutch.

01:02:24.050 --> 01:02:29.830
It's a crutch for people who can't handle drugs. There's some truth to that because

01:02:29.830 --> 01:02:36.970
we are drugs if you think about it. Our brain is full of drugs and our bodies are, too.

01:02:36.970 --> 01:02:43.010
And so, you know, when we're more or less in consensus reality or in our own reality,

01:02:43.010 --> 01:02:49.650
we kind of have this sensory neural interface, I call it. You're getting data of all kinds

01:02:49.650 --> 01:02:54.050
from the environment, most of which we're not aware of. We're aware of a particular

01:02:54.050 --> 01:03:00.550
tiny fraction of it. We're aware of the part that we need to process consciously in order

01:03:00.550 --> 01:03:07.990
to survive. The part, again, that keeps us from stepping off the curb in front of buses.

01:03:07.990 --> 01:03:13.110
And based on that, we have different types of output with we interact with the real world

01:03:13.110 --> 01:03:18.090
with other people in several ways. We don't know what the real world looks like. You know,

01:03:18.090 --> 01:03:23.230
we don't, we, you know, what we know is that we have a model of the real world that we're

01:03:23.230 --> 01:03:24.030
dealing with.

01:03:24.050 --> 01:03:31.850
And that's the internally created model. Fortunately, we're pretty sure that the model of the real

01:03:31.850 --> 01:03:37.330
world corresponds closely enough to the real world that we're able to survive, interact

01:03:37.330 --> 01:03:43.710
with physical things, and not step off cliffs and things like that. But the degree to which

01:03:43.710 --> 01:03:49.810
the model and the real world, I mean, I suspect, and I think many physicists and others suspect,

01:03:49.810 --> 01:03:52.970
the actual real world is pretty unknowable.

01:03:52.970 --> 01:03:54.050
We really have no idea what the real world is.

01:03:54.050 --> 01:04:01.050
We don't know what it looks like. So then we can change the signal in a certain sense.

01:04:01.990 --> 01:04:06.610
And the model of the real world changes, sometimes a lot, sometimes just a little.

01:04:06.610 --> 01:04:13.610
We can take drugs, for example. We can substitute, you know, a different neurotransmitter-like

01:04:13.730 --> 01:04:18.910
molecule in our brain. The perception of the real world changes quite drastically. The

01:04:18.910 --> 01:04:24.050
real world, presumably, doesn't really change. But our perception, our modeling, our perception,

01:04:24.210 --> 01:04:31.310
changes. We can take drugs. We can meditate. We can have genetic problems. Is that ten?

01:04:31.970 --> 01:04:37.450
Okay. We can have genetic, I don't know if they're problems, but we can have genetic

01:04:37.450 --> 01:04:46.050
endowments such as synesthesia, ability to translate one sense into another, which some

01:04:46.050 --> 01:04:51.070
might think of as an enhancement of perception and perhaps it is. Or we can have color blindness

01:04:51.070 --> 01:04:53.430
or we could be like an insect.

01:04:54.050 --> 01:05:01.290
able to see in the ultraviolet spectrum. Depending on our sensory, the modulation of this sensory

01:05:01.290 --> 01:05:08.830
neural input, our model of the world changes quite radically. So another question is, you know,

01:05:08.910 --> 01:05:15.430
where is God? Why do we have this sense of some higher power outside of us? Is that a brain

01:05:15.430 --> 01:05:22.930
function? Do we have a God detector built into our brain, or is it more like a God generator?

01:05:24.050 --> 01:05:33.010
We can actually get a handle on this in some sense. You can take the sort of radical

01:05:33.010 --> 01:05:39.390
reductionist position that Bertrand Russell took, who was a famous philosopher and mathematician

01:05:39.390 --> 01:05:48.690
and atheist, and I suspect a major curmudgeon as well, who said there is no difference between

01:05:48.690 --> 01:05:53.730
someone who eats too little and sees heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees

01:05:53.730 --> 01:05:54.030
snakes.

01:05:54.050 --> 01:05:59.890
So that's kind of like, I mean, he wasn't buying any of it. He just thought it was all

01:05:59.890 --> 01:06:06.390
based. You could also look at Andy Newberg's work, some of you are familiar with. Very

01:06:06.390 --> 01:06:11.670
interesting. He is looking at using these different imaging technologies to look at

01:06:11.670 --> 01:06:19.210
different types of spiritual experience. As in meditation, looking at using SPECT, he

01:06:19.210 --> 01:06:23.970
has shown that people in states of deep meditation,

01:06:24.050 --> 01:06:33.990
though it's a little bit more common, in a couple of states, the amount of time that

01:06:33.990 --> 01:06:39.170
people spend on meditation is half the time, the total amount of time that we spend in

01:06:39.170 --> 01:06:39.970
meditation.

01:06:39.970 --> 01:06:46.790
They have a mind that is kind of like a good thing, as opposed to the mind that is kind

01:06:46.790 --> 01:06:48.350
of like a little thing.

01:06:48.350 --> 01:06:52.010
So don't be surprised if something happens to you and you work with a kind of nervous

01:06:52.010 --> 01:06:53.730
phenomenon, some kind of physical activity, I guess.

01:06:53.730 --> 01:06:59.290
those functions are dabbed down in states of deep meditation.

01:06:59.650 --> 01:07:04.650
So it helps perhaps to contribute to this sense of infinite boundlessness,

01:07:04.650 --> 01:07:09.950
you know, the ocean of mind that is characteristic of meditation.

01:07:10.490 --> 01:07:15.650
Another group of researchers in Montreal is looking at the so-called unio mystica,

01:07:16.470 --> 01:07:21.670
the sense that, which comes usually after years of meditation,

01:07:21.670 --> 01:07:26.010
of being, kind of having a union with God.

01:07:26.350 --> 01:07:32.350
It's Carmelite nuns practice this or strive for it for much of their lives,

01:07:32.350 --> 01:07:38.170
and it's almost like an orgasmic, you know, sense of union with God.

01:07:38.270 --> 01:07:44.530
It's something that they will spend years trying to achieve and may never achieve.

01:07:45.170 --> 01:07:51.410
But what they, this group has found is that much the same areas in the parietal lobes,

01:07:51.410 --> 01:07:56.030
in the temporal cortex, are involved in this experience.

01:07:56.910 --> 01:08:04.850
They put these nuns into an MRI and say, okay, have the unio mystica.

01:08:05.070 --> 01:08:09.910
Well, it's not quite that simple because you can't just call that forward, you know.

01:08:10.310 --> 01:08:14.910
And I don't know how many of you have ever been in an MRI, but I hear that they're quite noisy.

01:08:15.890 --> 01:08:17.170
So I don't know.

01:08:17.450 --> 01:08:21.090
So a lot of people have said this research is bunk, potentially,

01:08:21.090 --> 01:08:24.390
because you can't just call this up at will.

01:08:25.190 --> 01:08:32.870
Another interesting guy, Michael Persinger at Laurentian University has gone sort

01:08:32.870 --> 01:08:37.890
of the one step beyond this, where instead of measuring these states,

01:08:37.890 --> 01:08:41.750
he actually says you apply the right kind of electromagnetic

01:08:41.750 --> 01:08:43.330
and other energies to the brain.

01:08:43.410 --> 01:08:46.790
You can create, you can create these experiences.

01:08:46.790 --> 01:08:49.250
It's all electromagnetic energy.

01:08:49.250 --> 01:08:51.070
So he's created this thing called, you know, the brain.

01:08:51.090 --> 01:08:54.550
It's called the God machine, or the God generator.

01:08:55.310 --> 01:09:01.850
And basically, it involves putting a very low level magnetic field across the cranium.

01:09:02.670 --> 01:09:08.030
And people have, people experience this in an isolation chamber.

01:09:08.590 --> 01:09:13.850
And he claims that you can have a sense what he, everything from alien abduction

01:09:14.510 --> 01:09:19.250
to seeing your ancestors, to being in the presence of God.

01:09:19.990 --> 01:09:21.070
And he claims that.

01:09:21.090 --> 01:09:24.470
And he claims that what it really is, is a sort of a disruption.

01:09:24.930 --> 01:09:29.650
Normally, we're, our two hemispheres work independently.

01:09:29.650 --> 01:09:33.350
And although there's communication between them, it's subliminal.

01:09:33.890 --> 01:09:34.910
We're not aware of it.

01:09:34.910 --> 01:09:36.970
But he says that sort of obviates that.

01:09:36.970 --> 01:09:43.390
And you get a much more sort of conscious sense of the function of your, of your right hemisphere.

01:09:43.390 --> 01:09:47.610
And most people, the subdominant hemisphere, where all these, you know,

01:09:47.810 --> 01:09:49.870
more metaphysical things go on.

01:09:50.110 --> 01:09:50.170
Okay.

01:09:50.170 --> 01:09:53.630
So, he has developed this thing.

01:09:53.630 --> 01:09:56.670
A lot of journalists have written about it.

01:09:56.670 --> 01:09:58.170
Some are not buying it.

01:09:58.170 --> 01:10:03.750
There's an interesting book by John Horgan, which I highly recommend to all

01:10:03.750 --> 01:10:08.230
of you called Rational Mysticism, that describes his experience.

01:10:08.230 --> 01:10:14.090
He had a transient spiritual experience.

01:10:14.970 --> 01:10:19.950
Persinger's work and construction of the God machine grew out of his,

01:10:20.170 --> 01:10:28.250
his interest in temporal lobe epilepsy, which is a really very interesting kind of effect.

01:10:28.250 --> 01:10:33.630
Most epileptics, we think, most, we think of epilepsy as something that affects the muscles.

01:10:33.630 --> 01:10:38.490
And you have a seizure and you're rolling around on the floor and all of these types of things.

01:10:38.490 --> 01:10:41.930
But temporal lobe epilepsy is really a different thing.

01:10:41.930 --> 01:10:49.670
It expresses itself in a different way where the effects of temporal lobe epilepsy can be very much

01:10:49.670 --> 01:10:52.910
like transcendent meditative states.

01:10:52.910 --> 01:10:57.430
Transcendent ecstatic states, senses of unboundedness.

01:10:57.430 --> 01:10:59.150
They can also be terrifying.

01:10:59.150 --> 01:11:03.310
They're not, not everybody is really equipped for that kind of thing.

01:11:03.310 --> 01:11:10.870
And depending on your sort of response to it, you can say this is wonderful or this is too much.

01:11:10.870 --> 01:11:14.630
Again, psychedelics are the analogy here.

01:11:14.630 --> 01:11:16.850
Five minutes.

01:11:16.850 --> 01:11:18.710
I'm not going to make it in five minutes.

01:11:18.710 --> 01:11:19.570
I should.

01:11:19.570 --> 01:11:21.670
We have lunch after this, right?

01:11:21.670 --> 01:11:22.130
Okay.

01:11:22.130 --> 01:11:30.970
Well, here's, temporal lobe patients have certain personality states.

01:11:30.970 --> 01:11:33.870
There are certain things characteristic of it.

01:11:33.870 --> 01:11:37.870
A sense of having a divine presence.

01:11:37.870 --> 01:11:42.250
A sense that everything has cosmic significance.

01:11:42.250 --> 01:11:47.450
These are kind of personality characteristics of TLE patients.

01:11:47.450 --> 01:11:49.570
And, as well, prophets.

01:11:49.570 --> 01:11:51.350
And, sages.

01:11:51.350 --> 01:11:57.530
And, probably 40% of the people in this room are temporal lobe epileptic.

01:11:57.530 --> 01:12:01.010
So it's a good thing, you know.

01:12:01.010 --> 01:12:06.430
They tend to be obsessed with theological and metaphysical issues.

01:12:06.430 --> 01:12:09.890
They have an inflated sense of self-important.

01:12:09.890 --> 01:12:15.570
They're egocentric and argumentative.

01:12:15.570 --> 01:12:18.950
They often write, you know, obsessively.

01:12:18.950 --> 01:12:31.130
obsessively, they write long screens on all sorts of things, and they have transient amnesia,

01:12:31.310 --> 01:12:41.530
or they recall minute details of events. And typical statements of transcendent patience.

01:12:42.270 --> 01:12:48.690
Suddenly it was all crystal clear to me, right? There is no longer any doubt anymore.

01:12:48.950 --> 01:12:58.550
This is the moment I've been waiting for all my life. And finally, I have true insight into the nature of the cosmos.

01:12:58.710 --> 01:13:09.190
So there's something going on, clearly. Here's some famous people in history that most likely had temporal lobe epilepsy.

01:13:09.350 --> 01:13:15.650
Because the other side of it was all these people were not only sort of famous for their transcendent visions,

01:13:15.810 --> 01:13:18.410
they were also famous for their tempers.

01:13:18.550 --> 01:13:18.910
And...

01:13:19.050 --> 01:13:25.710
Rage, uncontrollable rage is very much sort of a characteristic of that, too.

01:13:25.850 --> 01:13:35.810
So, here's another neural theology, shamanism, which we all know about the archaic techniques of ecstasy.

01:13:35.950 --> 01:13:37.710
Now I'm really having to hurry.

01:13:37.850 --> 01:13:48.550
A lot of common elements are found in shamanic practices the world over, this idea about soul loss, soul travel,

01:13:48.550 --> 01:13:54.550
contact with the spirit world, death and rebirth. You see this in all these traditions.

01:13:54.650 --> 01:14:00.050
And Michael Winkelmann, who is an anthropologist at the University of New Mexico,

01:14:00.150 --> 01:14:06.350
argues that these universals are really traceable to the commonality of brain structures.

01:14:06.450 --> 01:14:17.450
That is, sort of the neurochemical conditioning of experience that makes it possible for all these common threads to run through

01:14:17.550 --> 01:14:19.750
shamanic experience.

01:14:19.850 --> 01:14:27.750
It involves, again, activation of the limbic system, activation of certain neurotransmitters like the opiates.

01:14:27.850 --> 01:14:31.850
Well, now we get to serotonin and more into the psychedelic areas.

01:14:31.950 --> 01:14:37.850
There is serotonin on the right, what you might call the fundamental molecule of consciousness,

01:14:37.950 --> 01:14:43.850
the master neurotransmitter, not the only one by any means, but important.

01:14:43.950 --> 01:14:47.050
And it arises from...

01:14:47.050 --> 01:14:52.850
a group of neurons in the brain stem and pretty much arborizes all throughout the brain.

01:14:52.950 --> 01:15:00.450
And there have been some interesting studies lately on different serotonin subtypes.

01:15:00.550 --> 01:15:03.350
There are many types of serotonin receptors.

01:15:03.450 --> 01:15:09.650
Serotonin is the neurotransmitter, but it has many different types of receptors.

01:15:09.750 --> 01:15:16.450
And since I don't have any time, I'm not going to go into this, but this is just a schematic of the synapse.

01:15:16.450 --> 01:15:18.850
And there's a lot going on at the synapse.

01:15:18.950 --> 01:15:25.850
Basically, the thing at the top is the presynaptic neuron from which the serotonin is released,

01:15:25.950 --> 01:15:32.350
crosses that little gap and interacts with various types of receptors on the postsynaptic neuron.

01:15:32.450 --> 01:15:34.050
This is just a schematic.

01:15:34.150 --> 01:15:39.850
And then that pipe there is the reuptake transporter where the serotonin...

01:15:39.950 --> 01:15:46.250
Think of it as a vacuum where the serotonin is sucked back up into the presynaptic neuron.

01:15:46.250 --> 01:15:52.050
And you can manipulate that to drugs like Prozac, as we all know.

01:15:52.150 --> 01:15:58.450
The so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are like monkey wrenches for that.

01:15:58.550 --> 01:16:03.350
You throw a monkey wrench in there and the serotonin doesn't get taken back up.

01:16:03.450 --> 01:16:13.250
Well, there's been an interesting study on serotonin with respect to serotonin 1A receptors, one of these subtypes.

01:16:13.350 --> 01:16:16.150
A group has found that people with...

01:16:16.350 --> 01:16:25.150
religious or spiritual inclinations have a lower density of the 1A receptors.

01:16:25.250 --> 01:16:32.150
So there has been an attempt to link spiritual experience to serotonin receptors.

01:16:32.250 --> 01:16:35.150
Okay. Should I just stop?

01:16:35.250 --> 01:16:38.150
Should I keep going? Who wants me to stop?

01:16:38.250 --> 01:16:40.850
There's a word pop-up thing that...

01:16:40.950 --> 01:16:44.150
Oh, if people... What should we do? Should I...

01:16:44.250 --> 01:16:46.050
I'm actually not too far from the end.

01:16:46.050 --> 01:16:53.950
Anyone who wants to go to the workshop, maybe we should just let them do that or what?

01:16:54.050 --> 01:16:56.950
Three?

01:16:57.050 --> 01:16:59.950
Boy, how about five?

01:17:00.050 --> 01:17:01.950
Okay, here we go.

01:17:02.050 --> 01:17:04.950
I'll just go as fast as I can.

01:17:05.050 --> 01:17:12.950
Of course, we know that psychedelics interact primarily with serotonin receptors.

01:17:13.050 --> 01:17:15.950
And so these are these molecular probes that let us...

01:17:16.050 --> 01:17:17.950
look into consciousness.

01:17:18.050 --> 01:17:22.950
Here is psilocybin using PET scans.

01:17:23.050 --> 01:17:25.950
And interestingly enough, I'm not going to read all this.

01:17:26.050 --> 01:17:26.950
That would take too long.

01:17:27.050 --> 01:17:30.950
But the take-home lesson is that psilocybin and many other psychedelics

01:17:31.050 --> 01:17:35.950
essentially activate these same areas in the temporal lobe and the limbic system

01:17:36.050 --> 01:17:40.950
that meditation, prayer, and so on activate.

01:17:41.050 --> 01:17:44.950
So there's definite involvement of these temporal systems.

01:17:44.950 --> 01:17:49.850
Here is Dr. Sascha Shulgin, who you all probably know is...

01:17:49.950 --> 01:17:51.850
The Shulgin's here.

01:17:51.950 --> 01:17:57.770
Well, that's too bad because I wanted to personally thank him.

01:17:57.870 --> 01:18:02.770
And I think we can all thank him for the work that he's done over decades.

01:18:02.870 --> 01:18:04.770
He is really a pioneer.

01:18:04.870 --> 01:18:10.770
Why he has not gotten the Nobel Prize for this work, I have no idea.

01:18:10.870 --> 01:18:13.770
Well, I have an idea, actually.

01:18:13.870 --> 01:18:15.770
It's too good.

01:18:15.770 --> 01:18:20.670
He has done more to kind of define the neurochemical basis of consciousness

01:18:20.770 --> 01:18:24.670
than all these PET researchers and all that.

01:18:24.770 --> 01:18:27.670
And whenever I think of him working in his little tiny laboratory

01:18:27.770 --> 01:18:32.670
with the spiders in the corner and the leaves blowing under the window,

01:18:32.770 --> 01:18:37.670
I am really cheered by that notion because he is a pioneer.

01:18:37.770 --> 01:18:42.670
And his pioneering work was structure-activity relationships,

01:18:42.770 --> 01:18:45.670
defining the relationships between the structure

01:18:45.670 --> 01:18:51.570
of these molecules and our own experience of these molecules.

01:18:51.670 --> 01:18:56.570
Structure-activity relationships, a simple compound like mescaline, for example,

01:18:56.670 --> 01:18:59.570
can be tweaked in various ways.

01:18:59.670 --> 01:19:02.570
And this is what Shulgin did over many decades,

01:19:02.670 --> 01:19:06.570
develop hundreds of these compounds and test them

01:19:06.670 --> 01:19:10.570
with a trusted group of very experienced psychonauts.

01:19:10.670 --> 01:19:15.570
And what he found was that very...

01:19:15.570 --> 01:19:17.470
I mean, he found many things,

01:19:17.570 --> 01:19:20.470
and he's documented all this quite extensively, as you know.

01:19:20.570 --> 01:19:23.470
But take-home lesson is that trivial changes

01:19:23.570 --> 01:19:25.470
in the molecular structure of these compounds

01:19:25.570 --> 01:19:30.470
can have enormous effects on their subjective effects,

01:19:30.570 --> 01:19:35.470
ranging from being completely inactive to being a mega-hallucinogen.

01:19:35.570 --> 01:19:41.470
You can take a relatively small, relatively weak compound like mescaline

01:19:41.570 --> 01:19:45.470
and turn it into something like DOM, which is much more potent.

01:19:45.670 --> 01:19:47.470
Much more long-lasting.

01:19:47.570 --> 01:19:50.470
And he's done this for a whole series of things.

01:19:50.570 --> 01:19:55.470
And I just have enormous admiration for what he's done.

01:19:55.570 --> 01:20:00.470
DMT is another compound that you're all aware of.

01:20:00.570 --> 01:20:02.470
And it's very interesting.

01:20:02.570 --> 01:20:07.470
It's the simplest, one of the simplest hallucinogens, structurally speaking.

01:20:07.570 --> 01:20:12.470
And it's only a couple steps away from tryptophan, an essential amino acid,

01:20:12.570 --> 01:20:15.470
which means that it's everywhere.

01:20:15.470 --> 01:20:20.370
It's in nature, it's in hundreds of plants, probably thousands of plants.

01:20:20.470 --> 01:20:26.370
It's in the human brain, it's in the pineal gland, it's in the spinal fluid.

01:20:26.470 --> 01:20:29.370
And it's a big headache to the DEA,

01:20:29.470 --> 01:20:33.370
who would like to define this as a controlled substance.

01:20:33.470 --> 01:20:38.370
I don't know how you're going to control a substance that permeates all of nature.

01:20:38.470 --> 01:20:42.370
But that won't stop them from trying.

01:20:42.470 --> 01:20:44.370
And the DMT experience

01:20:44.370 --> 01:20:49.270
has been likened to the near-death experience.

01:20:49.370 --> 01:20:55.270
Very much elements of death and rebirth when you smoke it.

01:20:55.370 --> 01:21:01.270
It produces a very short-acting, intense kind of experience.

01:21:01.370 --> 01:21:07.270
And it has even been suggested that secretion of DMT from the pineal at the moment of death

01:21:07.370 --> 01:21:11.270
may mediate the near-death experience.

01:21:11.370 --> 01:21:13.270
Hmm?

01:21:13.370 --> 01:21:14.270
Okay.

01:21:14.370 --> 01:21:15.270
Let me see.

01:21:15.370 --> 01:21:16.270
Where do I want to...

01:21:16.370 --> 01:21:17.270
All right.

01:21:17.370 --> 01:21:18.270
That's it.

01:21:18.370 --> 01:21:19.270
Sorry.

01:21:19.370 --> 01:21:21.270
I was too long.

01:21:21.370 --> 01:21:27.810
Thanks.

01:21:27.910 --> 01:21:32.730
I'm sorry I get...

01:21:32.830 --> 01:21:34.730
I just can't shut up, you know?

01:21:34.830 --> 01:21:36.730
Thank you very much, Dennis.

01:21:36.830 --> 01:21:38.730
Before we break for lunch, I have a couple of announcements.