Consciousness Live! with Heather Berlin (S3 E24)

0:00 You ready? You're ready? Yeah. Okay, so here we go. All right, we are live. Uh joining me today an extra special guest uh Heather Berlin. Um Heather, for those who don't know you, I wonder if you could say a little bit about who you are and what you do. I am a neuroscientist and clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, New York. Um I am interested in general in the relationship between the human brain and

0:33 mind. Um and ultimately two major areas I'm interested in. One is understanding the neural basis of consciousness, but also neural basis of unconscious processes. Um and trying to sort of dissect the neural circuitry related to impulsive and compulsive psychiatric disorders to maybe come up with more novel treatments uh for these disorders. Uh so, this is a general overview of the things I'm interested in. Yeah, that's quite a lot there. Um and you know, I I've noticed uh in your work and in your

1:06 discussions and so forth, you also are very knowledgeable about philosophy. So, I wonder have you studied philosophy or are you just is this something you just picked up hanging around New York or Yes, as New Yorkers growing up in New York, we just sit around coffee shops and philosophize all day. No, I mean actually, you know, I think we all the reason I actually even got interested in the brain and understanding neuroscience was because I I I naturally as a child just asked these kind of like big questions. I guess you know, philosophical questions like where do my thoughts come from and how can I keep them when I die? And that

1:40 was kind of where it started for me. And then, you know, my dad said they come from your brain and I said how? And he said we don't know. And I'm like, "Well, I really want to figure that out." And you know, it's just got as I was navigating through the you know, my my education, I it was like there was these different silos. It was like you had the people studying the brain, and they were like it was neurologists, your psychiatrists, and it was just studying the hardware. Um and then you had people who were kind of just studying the software, like the mind, you know, psychologists. But I was always fascinated by the the the where they come together. Um and there and as I was coming up like the field of

2:13 cognitive neuroscience was starting to develop, but it wasn't really like a full-blown field yet. There wasn't like oh, you can just do your PhD as a cognitive neuroscientist. Um you know, I was like finding my way, and so so I I was very interdisciplinary, you know, I was I was like pre-med, but I was a psychology major, but I took some classes that were, you know, philosophy classes, but mostly philosophy of mind. Um but really just cuz I was interested in that intersection between, you know, the physical brain, what's happening in the physical brain, and the mind, and how they're interrelated. So naturally I

2:47 kind of was drawn to philosophy, but I wasn't a, you know, like a philosophy minor or anything like that. Actually I was a fine arts minor. I did like painting and theater. Oh, cool. just yeah, just cuz I enjoyed that. Um but I always was I'm always interested in the big questions. So like I'm while I'm very data-driven, I'm always looking at the data, but I I I'm always thinking about how does that fit into these larger, you know, questions of like but why and um you know, so I want to see the bigger picture, and I think philosophy can help you do that. Yeah.

3:19 So yeah, I think it's just a natural interest, I guess. Um and the other thing is that Descartes was an inspiration. I was like and I remember I read the um Discourse on Method, and it was, you know, right, like that was like blew me away, and and, you know, just again asking those questions of, like, you know, where it about thinking about thinking, you know? That's kind of where it also began for me. Wow. Yeah, well, that's something that I greatly admire, and it's something I think we need more of, by the way, kind of inter-disciplin- interdisciplinary attitude. People with one foot in the data and the sciences, but also with an

3:52 eye towards the bigger questions. So, that's something I think is very cool about you and your work. Um So, I guess uh I wanted I was going to I mean, you just I was going to ask you something but you just reminded me when you were saying like where do my thoughts come from? I saw you just had a discussion with the What who What's her name? Sophia, the robot? Oh, yes. Yes, Sophia. asked you that question. Yes, she did. Oh, that was fun having an interview with an AI Well, I don't know what you'd call her but um So, she said where do where do my

4:25 thoughts come from? To me, right? And it's sort of, you know, they come from these, you know, circuits that are, you know, or whatever, the computer. Um but I think that's obviously that's like one of the biggest questions is what makes us different? Like why do we have subjective states and why wouldn't another like if the same kind of information processing in a different substance you know, in her case like silicon even though it's she's not quite at the same processing power as we are but if theoretically you can build one like

4:57 that you know, why wouldn't it be conscious? And and how would we know? And that therefore we need an overarching theory of consciousness which we don't have yet and um but there's this big project that I was in involved in in the early stages this Templeton Foundation research project where they're actually pitting the big theories of the neural basis of consciousness against each other um in a very kind of structured way to see if we can maybe get some better insight into one versus the other.

5:30 I'm assuming it's probably a a mixture of a few things that maybe not any one of them has it completely right. But until we have some real like sort of prove it like we can prove the theory really with at least, you know, a bit of certainty, will we even know if these systems are conscious or not, right? Cuz I think the Turing test is just, you know, a red herring at this point. Like, a lot of things can pass the Turing test which aren't necessarily having subjective states. Interesting. So, when you say they can pass the Turing

6:03 test, um Yeah. you mean that people will be fooled into thinking that they're human or just that they can sort of passively do various things that we think humans can do? Yeah, I think that they will be fooled enough that that they will ascribe consciousness to them because that's also our, you know, the way our brains work is that we tend to, um, you know, if something acts as if it's it's having conscious needs, we'll start to believe that it has them. And so, the more it can act like that,

6:35 Right. the more we'll be fooled. And then, but the bigger question is, so so I think that that litmus test, you know, whatever you want to call it, it's not enough to actually know if the the the machine or whatever it is is conscious or not because I think we humans can be easily fooled because we're prone to that because, you know, we make assumptions. And like, we assume that things that act like as if they're conscious cuz our whole experience in our life is that if something acts as if it is having subje- or it says it's having subjective states, like we tend to believe it is cuz usually it is. But, therefore, we're vulnerable. Um, so

7:10 I I don't trust our judgment per se. Like, I think I I need to There needs to be something more objective to know whether that system, let's call it, has subjective states or not. I mean, there is that famous case I remember from the, I guess, the '80s '80s where someone thought Eliza, you remember Eliza, the psychoanalytic program? Um, it sort of basically was very simple and it would say things like, "Tell me about your mother." And "How does that make you feel?" And, you know, very very simple Freudian stuff. But, someone actually really thought they were were to a therapist, uh, um, not not like verbally, but through

7:44 written communication. It was really fooled by it. So, it's like Or or, you know, they have these things now where they can take somebody's sort of electronic footprint like after they pass away. All right. You know, like look at how they tend to respond to texts and things and on Facebook and then like basically create this avatar of the person which can fool people cuz it's responding in the same kind of way like with the same sort of jokes that the person then it's just based on an algorithm and on the data they've collected. So, if they collect all the data, every, you know, text and message and email that you've ever sent in your life,

8:16 I think it it, you know, it's pretty easy to create a kind of electronic you version of you that can just respond in ways that you tend to respond and I I think, you know, people will easily be fooled. Do you know have you been following this GPT-3 thing that's out and about nowadays, this uh No, I haven't. It's like this uh text word processor. Um I don't know if I'd call it artificial intelligence, but it's basically like a uh a text generator thing that's been making a lot of kind of interesting It wrote an op-ed piece actually

8:51 trying to reassure people that it did Yeah, that it didn't want to take over the human race and um Uh I mean, I interacted with it only because they put out a kernel of it in that you can play this like text adventure game um called AI Dungeon. If anyone has If you ever have the time to kill, uh you want to play it. It's like the AI is in control. I don't know if you remember these old games from back in the day that are just text. Um like Zork was one that was really well known. Uh but you just say like, "Go north." And it's like, "Oh, you're in a big room." So, this guy this uh computer program just like, you know, makes up stuff for you

9:22 basically. And you can do anything you can say anything you want to it and it'll basically spin a story. It's It's really good at it. But it it's getting quite scary how good we are at doing this. So, I think it's interesting that you brought that up that the Turing test is kind of not enough because we're we're getting to the point where it's almost it's easy to produce these kinds of things, but it's not clear that that's going to be leading us to determining whether they're conscious or not. Um so, do you Oh, I mean, I guess I wonder generally, do do you ultimately think that these that machines could be conscious? Are you skeptical of that? Or do you think it it is possible? So,

9:55 I'm skeptical. I'm I get I'm in the camp of um that there's something about the substrate that consciousness is instantiated in and that it it you know it evolved over time in like biological organisms and I and you know, I I obviously I don't have evidence per se that I can really, you know, prove that. So, it's more of in many ways a feeling, I hate to say, but you know, if you look at I think the

10:31 only way um it can be instantiated in other So, I'm not like, you know, I I you know, in the theory of IIT and you know, basically information processing that which means it could be in anything that has a a certain amount of, you know, integrated differentiated information. Um but I think you have to you would have to build something almost like build an a brain something that acts and responds just in the way of a brain like a neuromorphic computer that somehow maybe that will have something like

11:02 consciousness. I mean, I have more I want to say faith in, but um I I I think like these these little brain organoids The organoids, yeah. Yeah, like growing them in a petri dish. I feel like that I I have that's more likely to have conscious states because it's something about it's in the same biological matter that um it developed in for an evolutionary purpose and um rather than I you know, I just don't know if mimicking it in in another substance will make that have subjective states. But it's it's an open question. And then I think it's really more of a

11:36 you know, I can't there's not enough data to prove it one way or the other. But, I just I tend to be in the more biological camp, let's call it. Um and not so much that that just about the information processing or just about the function. Um and and excuse me if I'm not using the right philosophical terms because I probably am not, but No, you are. Okay. I always cuz sometimes, you know, the nuances in philosophy get very like um but I don't Nuanced, yeah. Nuanced. Exactly. Like there's a lot of nuance there that I hope I'm not like

12:09 glossing over, but yeah. Yeah, well, we'll hear about it in the comments section. People will be letting us know. But, I don't think you're in trouble yet. neuroscientist and not a philosopher. I dabble in philosophy, that's all, okay. Exactly. Hey, and that's good. But, you I'm I'm glad that you say that because I'm in the same camp. So, I I I have this tendency to think that there's got to be something important about the substrate, about the bio about something biological that's important for consciousness. It's a minority view, I think. And in fact, a lot of people that I talk to say, "Well, you know, that it's like akin to magic or something

12:41 because what else is there? Why why would they, you know, the it being neurons matter? You know, this thought experiment where you replace the neurons with these like, you know, silicon chips that do exactly the same job. And it's interesting. John Searle, the philosopher, he actually introduced that idea as a way to try to show the brain was important. And then Chalmers and David and those guys took it and actually argued that it was a way to show that the substrate is not important. Yeah. So, it is interesting, I think, that Well, I don't know. So, what would convince you? Like if your grandma came home with a silicon auditory cortex and says, "Nice to hear your voice." Would

13:15 that be some evidence for you? Or what what would count as what would push you one way or the other? Well, the thing is this. Like even with the um neural implants that we have now, whether it's a cochlear implant or retinal implant. Um I still think that the actual consciousness part, the subjective state, it's about you know, it those things are sending the sensory signals in, but the processing is happening in still our organic brain matter.

13:49 Right. And I would really, you know, I would really love to see, you know, maybe within our lifetime we'll get to this point where maybe they implant the whole like auditory cortex, you know? And if they're still having conscious hearing then, like that would be very That would be impressive. So, that might change my mind. But I do think that as you get further inside the cortex, that replacing brain parts with um whatever you want to call it, silicon

14:22 chips, um you're going to have less and less of a chance of it being conscious. So, right now you're just replacing the signals coming in, but it's still the processing is happening in the in the cortex. Um and with the implants that we, you know, I'm involved in some research with deep brain stimulation where we implant electrodes to treat psychiatric or neurological illnesses. And um but still with the certain with those implants you're doing is they're not doing the processing. They're just interfering with certain circuits of the organic biological brain matter. So, I have not seen yet really an implant like

14:56 I want to see an implant that replaces the like, you know, like an artificial heart or something where you actually replace a whole like part of the cortex. Let's say the visual cortex, the auditory cortex. Let's just start with the sensory areas and see if that person still has subjective states of that sensation. And if they can say that they do and they still can say that with their organic biological, you know, linguistic areas saying it, then I'll start to believe it. But I haven't seen that yet. So Yeah, are you aware of this like artificial hippocampus, the work that

15:29 they're doing? It's only been been done in rats so far, but they're uh they they they basically have the rat like run the maze, and and then but the hippocampus is damaged, so the information stored on an external hard drive, basically. And they have it hooked up so that it can access the information. Um so that doesn't have anything to do with consciousness, I guess I would say, but it is kind of a proof of principle that the brain can like access information that's stored in an artificial environment. just like a computer, right? Like the computer memory is basically like a hippocampus. It can access that memory. Right.

15:59 But it doesn't mean that it's I mean, if the consciousness is the thing that we're really concerned about, right? And if it's aware of those memories, that we just don't know, right? Right. Um but but I that doesn't surprise me that you can access the information like if it's just about information processing, but I don't think information processing alone necessarily gives you that subjective experience. Yeah. Yeah, I again, I keep going back to like there's something that it evolved within these creatures, within biological beings. Um and there is something maybe just about

16:32 the the particular molecules, the salts and the you know, so like if you could rebuild the brain within the same substances, which is basically growing neurons in a Petri dish, you know, then I think that does have the potential to be conscious. Yeah, so so you don't you're not worried about having to uh treat artificial agents like psychiatrically? There's not going to be any uh psychiatry of uh AI in the near future. Oh, so interesting. I mean, you know, there very well could be in just the

17:05 sense of um if we create these agents that are capable of change, you know, like you basically they they evolve these AI systems that that our input can affect how they evolve, let's say. You know, then maybe, you know, then maybe you have to the way to go in and adjust one of these systems is not to go in physically with a, you know, screwdriver but to actually feed it information verbally, which is

17:39 kind of what I mean, the other thing that's also interesting is that and I, you know, I talk about this a lot because it's that we think we are so special or whatever because we have consciousness, but that's really only a tiny bit of what we have and a lot of like the therapy I do with people is about, it's like behavioral therapy or it's basically reprogramming people at an unconscious level. Like consciousness often doesn't even have much to do with it. So, so that's what I was sort of thinking is that reprogramming you could also do with like a computer. Like it doesn't

18:12 many times you don't need the conscious part of it to affect behavior, a behavioral change. Right. So, you may well have the best reprogramming may be some kind of uh coming into your office. Talk therapy like this robot company. Like sit on my couch and Um the thing I do think engine is just feeling very neurotic lately, you know, it's Well, this thing is repeating the same thing over and over again. We got to like break the cycle. BUT BUT I BUT I DO THINK THE one thing that, you know, I often think about, well, what

18:45 make then what makes us different from these things? Like if most of what we're doing is is unconscious anyway, that's make our decisions were being made and whatever. But but I do think one of the distinguishing factors why maybe consciousness matters in humans and maybe AI systems don't have is the is like empathy or um you know, maybe wisdom, like certain but empathy is a big one and I so I once had this sort of debate which was scary with um um Larry Page who is one of the co-founders of Google. So, you know,

19:19 they're like running the world, right? Yeah. Um like Sergey Brin and and Larry Page founded Google. And so, I had this I I gave a I gave a talk with um with another neuroscientist Ed Boyden who does fantastic work and is like one of the people who just helped discover um optogenetics and Oh, yeah. Okay. He's at MIT and does amazing work. And we gave this talk at Google on on consciousness and the neural basis of consciousness. Larry Page came. It was a small like seminar. And then afterwards I got in this at Google thing? It was no, it was a um they have this

19:51 thing called SciFoo Camp which is we get invited for like a weekend and but like scientists and tech people. It's It's a lot of fun. Um we all get to interact and so we gave this little seminar and Larry came and afterwards I ended up talking with him and he was just like, well, and he had said the same thing to me like 10 years prior, I remember. And I asked him like, did has anything changed in your thinking? And he said, no. And so, basically what he said is that con- consciousness doesn't matter. Cuz I was getting this whole thing like, will this system, like Google, you know, it's a very complex like they have a lot of

20:24 information. They're working on a lot of AI stuff. Will it ever be conscious? And he said, well, why I don't care. Why would I care? And it's like, well, he's like, I just care that it's a really good like AI system that it can do all the things that I want it to do. Like, why do I care if it's conscious or not? Well, like, well, like sort of the the argument like, well, if your refrigerator like you can kick it but and it's fine, but if it actually felt pain, subjective state, it's like that would be unethical, right? So, like I tried I was giving these like examples of So, he's like, so, what do you mean by this thing, consciousness? I don't understand. Like we I was like, well,

20:56 emotion. He's like, well, we could just compute. Like, that's a certain like, you know, algorithm that we could just throw into the AI system. Like, he was being very like He was um and I was like, but the actual subjectiveness state like the badness of the pain. And he I went on and on like this, but he just kept saying, I just don't understand. I don't think It was almost like a Dennett like like this doesn't exist, right? Like there is no such thing as consciousness. And so we could just we could just program it in. And so like at some point we went on for a while like back and forth, but at

21:28 some point it was just like, okay, he just doesn't get it. He's like, I just don't think there's any such thing. There's no problem. We don't have to worry about it. We're just going to create this AI system. Which for me felt very worrisome somehow. Um, but empathy, you know, really feeling with other people cuz that changes our morality, that changes how we treat other things. And in all these sci-fi AI movies, it's always like like there's this one and stop me from going on tangent, but I think there's this one called Transcendence where Oh, yeah, that's the worst movie ever, but yes, it's love that saves them,

21:59 right? Right, but wasn't that the AI one or is that the one Maybe I'm thinking or maybe it's the AI the film is actually called AI, but where the the big computer mastermind is like, I have to kill all all humanity because I made a calculation and it's like the most like it's the best thing to do like cuz humans are like the worst thing for I that's like I, Robot maybe? Oh, maybe that's it. The I, Robot one. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Transcendence is the one where I think it's Johnny Depp like uploads his brain into the and then you know, it's all the quantum computers and he tries to take over the world, too, but uh Yeah, they always try to take over the

22:32 world. Like it always ends up not good. But like, you know, if they make a very benign calculation or like, well, I was programmed I think they had all the what's-his-names um, Asimov like Yeah, and it was like one of them was whatever. It was like to do the it was programmed to basically do the best things for humanity and it turned out like the calculation was that humans are actually destructive and they're going to destroy everything on the Earth, so it's better to kill all of them. Like that was actually the most logical thing, right? Because that was just following the rules with lack of empathy basically was the idea. So,

23:07 that concerns me. You know, if these things can do very complex things, but if they don't have subjective states, particularly some sort of empathy or real emotion, they might end up doing amoral things even though they think they're logically correct. Yeah. I mean, I I I think that's a real problem that uh So, I I think the the person you were arguing with, I forgot his name already, but Larry Page. Yeah, Larry Page. I think one of the things that he's saying is very important, which is that in a certain sense um it doesn't really matter whether these things have consciousness in the

23:39 following sense. Um not in the moral sense, obviously. I agree with you. But, if they can act in the world and if they can form goals and devise plans for following out on carrying out those goals, then the question of whether they're aware or conscious is sort of moot. That the they're agents. They're doing things and they can be dangerous. And so, if they especially if they lack consciousness and if especially if that's important for like moral assessment, then we may be in deep trouble trouble, which I think is kind of what you're ultimate point you're getting at here is. So, if they if they can be intelligent but lack empathy,

24:12 then woe betide us. Then they're sociopaths, basically. Yeah, basically they're sociopaths. definition of a sociopath. But, I mean, the other and the other thing is that it affects is is how we treat them, right? Because if they say, "Wait, I don't want you to like If your computer says, "I don't want you to shut me off right now. Like, I want to stay on. I've played this video game." If it if if it doesn't have a subjective state, it's like, "Well, I don't care. I'm shutting you off." But, if what if you start to shut off and it says, "Ow, like that hurts or I'm sad." You know, and if you know, so it does matter in some sense whether they

24:44 actually have these states because you know, maybe the the the Roomba doesn't want to be your slave. Like, maybe it doesn't want to clean your floor and it has every right to say that, right? So, so that like how we treat them matters as well whether they have consciousness or not. It reminds me of Did you ever watch The Good Place? I don't know if you saw that show, but uh No, I never saw that. It's a pretty decent show for like philosophy and ethical issues, but uh yeah, one of one of the beings in there is kind of like I don't know if it's an AI exactly, but it's kind of like an AI, but it's programmed like whenever you go

25:17 to shut it off, it's programmed to like plead for its life and say, "No, don't do it, please." And it gets really But it's all fake, you know, it's it's No, there's no real Or I guess it's not clear in the show, but one can one assumes that there's no actual conscious experience there, but it's just like, you know, that's its defense mechanism cuz basically it knows humans can be manipulated in this way. Um and that's another real danger is that we we are easily manipulated in this way. And um if they figure that out and don't share us, then of course they're a perfect sociopath. They can mimic these states. Um

25:49 and I I guess in another way that's the the plot of the um Oh, now I'm blinking on the name of that movie. What's the name of that movie that uh What is it about? It's about AI and uh It's got the kind of googly character in it. Ex Machina. Yeah, Ex Machina. Exactly. So, that In a sense, that's sort of what the plot premise of that is is that that AI learns to manipulate the emotions of the person as a way of getting of getting out, basically. Just to go see the stoplight or whatever. Spoiler alert. Right.

26:21 Crosswalk, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, so that's the real danger and I don't think we're prepared for for these sorts of uh things at the level at which they're at the rate they're approaching us. I don't think we as a society are ready for this. I I totally agree. Yeah. Yeah, we're just kind of like dillydallying along like, "Oh, that thing can, you know, do a cool trick for me." And not really thinking I don't think most people are thinking about these like larger big, you know, philosophical or issues that are, you know, I think it in in mind it would be very important if we could if we could

26:53 figure it out to give them to for them to have conscious states. I think that would actually although you know, again, you get into the whole another like possible dystopia with you know, that like things like Blade Runner and whatever where you know, they take over but but but I just think that they have them having conscious states could maybe make them more humane and make us think more about how we're going to be treating them. Um Yeah. rather than yeah, rather than the sort of psychopathic kind.

27:27 I mean, we already don't have bad very good track record treating other conscious agents very well. Correct. This is correct. I mean, in some sense maybe obviously it's like the natural evolution. Like maybe they'll just be better you know, things than we are and and we just kind of evolve out of the system. Well, that I was going to ask you about that cuz I wonder what your feeling about transhumanism in general is uh Yeah. about what So, I know you're involved with deep brain stimulation, which is you know, right now it's only used for persons in dire straits, right? You You don't get these things implanted unless

28:00 you've resisted to medication and therapy and they've tried everything and this is like the only alternative instead of surgery, I guess is as far as I understand it. Um but so but the effects are amazing. I mean, you I've seen you talk about one of these patients who just like lit up when you turn on the electrode and this is for depression, right? Yeah. But one one sort of can see it's not too far of a bridge from there to doing it for you know, neurotypical persons who may have you know, um low motivation or just want to be happier. I mean, you know, why why go to

28:33 a rave and take ecstasy when you can have one of these things. Yeah. So, the cognitive enhancement and Yeah. Um no, I definitely well, I definitely see us going there. We're going to we're definitely going to go in that direction cuz that's what humans do. Um but I think that Sorry, there was a huge thing that just knocked on my Hopefully it wasn't a tree. We're in a middle of a storm right now, but yeah, I think it's fine. The AI's are angry, Heather. I know.

29:06 It's Alexa. It came up from like the skylight. It was like this huge bang. I'm like, oh. But no, I do think that we are going to um evolve in that direction and people are already starting to either do that or think about that. I mean, Elon Musk's whole like Neuralink or Neuralace whatever, he that's ultimately what he wants to do is is use these to make them sort of thinner and more able to just kind of be enmeshed with the neurons and and easy to you know, cuz right now you have to neurosurgery. So, this is the

29:39 big like rate-limiting step is that you know, it's I mean, we call it like like minimally invasive surgery, but you have to take a burr hole and like drill, you know, drill into the skull and it's it's not a There are some risks. Um and so take like anti-epileptic medication for the anti-epileptic medication once you uh Well, once you I I thought that once you like breach the skull, there was like a depressurization or I don't know, something that uh Yeah, it's a Well, we have um not necessarily, not necessarily. Some

30:14 sometimes I mean, like I've been we cuz we do like neural mapping. Like sometimes with the patient who's coming in for um to get like a tumor removed or something and we have to make sure that they don't take out, let's say, like the language area of the brain. We will kind of slowly stimulate piece by piece and wake them up during surgery and have them talk and um sometimes they have little um epileptic seizures when we do that because you're actually inducing, you know, you're giving them electrical stimulation directly to the cortex. but um but usually, you know, you wake up a person during the surgery, you can talk

30:47 to them, you can test out where the electrodes are implanted. Um but I don't I think, you know, the average person maybe that's a bridge too far, right? To get the the neurosurgery, but I mean, especially Elon, he's like, "Here, put this in and you can check your email." It's like I it's like, yeah, I'm going to like risk, you know, And yes, you could have seizures, you could have an infection, you could I mean, there are risks. Like, do you really want that so you can just check your email on your head, which I don't even think you can do at this point, but you know, they will get smaller and smaller, and perhaps they will figure out a way where you can implant it, maybe it's through, you know,

31:20 a vascular system or some other way. So, let's say that we get to that step. Um I still think the other rate-limiting factors is our understanding of the brain and how it works. So, like even with the deep brain stimulation, we can only really treat things where we really know the specific circuit that's involved in the disorder, like certain movement disorders, like Parkinson's, um or like with depression, we really studied that and understood that circuit, and then we intervened within that circuit. But other disorders, say for example, um autism, where it

31:53 involves like many sort of your brain is wired slightly differently, or you know, genetic um um certain, you know, genetic or neurodegenerative diseases, there's no one place where you can intervene in a particular circuit that's going to affect that, let's say um dementia or something. So, so, the same way we're limited with like, let's say, I don't know, intelligence in general. Like, where is intelligence in the brain? What's the intelligence circuitry? Like, there it's, you know, it's distributed, it's information distributed throughout the cortex. So, where would you actually

32:26 intervene? So, I think we're only limited in so far as we understand the brain or in so far as it's possible to intervene in a particular circuit. So, I think things like maybe like um maybe attention, you know, we could probably like wakefulness, you know, we can we know it's the circuit. Working memory, like certain things, yes, where we understand the circuitry and we know where to intervene, but it'll be a lot of playing around, but we could probably hit a spot where maybe yes, we can increase your working memory. We can increase your um you know, wakefulness, like your attention.

32:59 Um maybe like decrease your need for sleep, even though that has some negative consequences, too. But so I do think there are certain things we can we can do to intervene. Maybe we can work to shut down your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and like increase your creativity momentarily, or you can turn it on and off, right? Cuz we've talked about like getting into these flow states and the more we understand the neuro circuitry of that, like maybe we shut it down the the certain the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, you can be creative for an hour and then you turn it back up up again, you know. Um you know, there are certain things we can maybe do, but then of course all the

33:31 ethical questions, like who can afford those implants? They're going to have such advantage over everyone else. Maybe nobody had gets to have them like performance-enhancing drugs. Um Or even worse, you could imagine like you know, workers like in China in a sweatshop having their need for sleep reduced against their will or something like that and working, you know, 20 hours a day. So you can you can imagine horrible abuses as well as, you know, that this two-level society thing you're talking about as well. Yeah, and also by the way, I mean a huge funder of this kind of research is DARPA, right? Which is the Defense Department, and I've talked to, you

34:04 know, people there working on stuff with implants with soldiers, like maybe they can be more accurate in um targeting things like missiles, like if they can just skip the actual hand movement and just use it with their minds control, you know? And so maybe we have these, you know, transhuman soldiers that are fighting our wars for us. I mean, there's definitely with all of this there's always going to be a nefarious purpose. I mean, it always starts out with like we're developing this thing to like help people who are disabled or you know, to treat a disease and then it starts to morph into

34:37 whatever, you know, people using it for their own purposes. So So while I think I think cognitive enhancement will be in certain domains will probably be possible. The question is are we do we want to be able to do that? Just like the you know, the designer babies. Like do we want it? We can use CRISPR and start playing with the genome and creating superhumans, but is that something we really want to be doing? And there's laws against that. So I think it'll be in that realm of yeah. I you don't envision like you know, I know you do work on like schizotypal

35:11 personality disorder and you know, antisocial personality disorder. You don't ever see a day where we can intervene on those sorts of cases directly, do you? Or that's always going to be like a medication / therapy situation. Yeah, I think the Well, the personality disorders tend to be pervasive and they're really like lifelong. So even the treatments we have now, the medication and the therapy, it's just to mitigate the symptoms, but you don't fundamentally change the person's personality, you know. Borderline personality disorder antisocial personality disorder, it's pretty much a lifelong thing where the symptoms might

35:43 get a little bit better, but they never completely go away. Narcissistic personality disorder is another one. And that's one of those things where I don't think that there is a particular like we wouldn't even know where to intervene. I mean, maybe with certain ones like okay, let's say antisocial personality disorder like or psychopathy, you know, maybe we can turn up there and make them less responsive so they have some more like emotional or like we can intervene in the empathy circuit and try to maybe turn that up a bit and and see if that helps. You know, there there is definitely things like there would be interesting experiments we could do. Right.

36:15 But I thought some of your work was sort of showing that there's some commonalities between these kinds of diseases and sort of focusing on the prefrontal cortex as maybe So you could intervene there possibly. I mean, given some of the things you've you've looked at. Absolutely. Like so I I you know, talked about where like for example, um borderline personality disorder which you know, I looked specifically at the impulse control controller emotional dysregulation aspect of it and it has to do with um decreased activation in the orbital prefrontal cortex which is kind of like our brake system. Um and that and that mostly it tends to be more

36:48 females are borderline. It's about 75% female. But that um but you know, so there can be men borderlines, but it's it's less common. But then that the the male kind of version of that might be antisocial personality disorder because so the females, they tend to harm themselves. They're like aggressive to themselves, the self-harming and um whereas if you take that impulsive or emotional dysregulation and you harm others, then you get diagnosed as like antisocial, right? Cuz you're you're acting out or you have conduct disorder. So depending on the behavioral

37:20 manifestation of the symptoms, you might get diagnosed as one of the other, but fundamentally they both have dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex and the orbital prefrontal cortex. Anyway, if you intervene in there, perhaps. But again, with these target with these implants even now, we don't know exactly what they're doing. Are they knocking out a faulty circuit? Are they turning on, you know, one that was turned off? Like we are still not even quite clear exactly the mechanics of it. It's sort of like with ECT, you just sort of like did it and you knew it worked and it was like, okay. It's like, you know, you're just turning your computer off and on

37:52 when something Exactly. Hard reboot. Hard reboot. Boom. Like I don't know what it did. I don't know the specific mechanism, but something happened. And so that's kind of this is like a more targeted ECT that's constantly on. But so we still we know a lot more about it than just the more generalized ECT, but it's still there's a lot we don't know. And so is like the horse and buggy uh stage that we're at. We're not even Yeah. At the point where we really know what we're doing. But one can imagine, I mean, if we could target the kind of electrical activity to mimic the kind of

38:25 patterns that you would find. So if like for instance prefrontal cortex, if it's diminished activity there in these kind of psychopathic features and stuff, then one could imagine one could just kind of amp up that activity or or somehow uh give it a give it a a boost up and you should see something going on. I know there's some some sort of you know stuff out there that suggests that um or training it, like kind of training the neuro circuits to like whenever they see, let's say like a scene that's like I don't know, a crying baby or like like a death scene or whatever, something they should feel empathy for

38:58 that like you activate those circuits and then over time maybe they learn how to respond, you know? There might be some of that kind of being being used for for learning um and to kind of rewire the brain somehow. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah, that's a good point. Uh a kind of um internal modeling of the right response. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And then you like give them a maybe like add in a little hit of dopamine like you for reward and you just like simultaneously like dopamine like hit the nucleus accumbens while you hit the

39:32 empathy circuits so they learn to like enjoy the empathy. Something, you know, I'm sure we can We'll try it in animals first. That sounds wild. I don't do any animal research but um you know, we'll have to do with some experiments first before we get to that point. Yeah, I know. I I had to work with animals when I was in grad school and I didn't enjoy it but uh um it's rough but important. But it's so uh I wanted to cuz this kind of segues to the next thing I want to ask you about and I realize you have to go in about uh 15 20 minutes so I don't want to keep it uh uh uh get to this before we leave but so

40:05 you you work a lot not only on the aspects of consciousness but unconsciousness. And one of the things that I was kind of surprised at when I was looking into your stuff was I knew about the cognitive unconscious um but uh the kind of Freudian unconscious, um, which I guess I didn't realize was as respectable as as you make it out to be. I sort of thought that it was that repression in particular I thought was kind of a uh, an idea that we hadn't that hadn't been verified. But you give some interesting reasons for thinking that it is important and part of a our

40:39 thinking about the mind. So I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that notion of the unconscious, how it's different from the other one, and why why we should keep it around. Yeah. So, the kind of let's call it like the cold unconscious, um, the cognitive unconscious unconscious is that, you know, more of like more or less is like whether you see it or you don't, you know, like these experiments where like you present the stimuli and then you ask the person like did you see it or not? And maybe they didn't, they said they didn't, but it still got in there and affected their, you know, then they're primed for for let's say

41:13 the next um, test you give them, right? So some of the information did get in outside of awareness, they processed it in some way, and it goes on to affect their behavior. Um, but it's not a sort of deep emotive um, unconscious. The kind of unconscious that Freud was talking about, this dynamic unconscious. Uh, and I was really interested in that, and so but I came at it very objectively. Like I don't you know, there's some people who are like Freudian, like I I was you know, involved a bit in that psychoanalytic

41:45 world, like and and and they are some people are like it's almost like gospel, you know, like Freud's word is gospel. Like they cite Freud like according to Freud like section blah blah blah he said and it's like the word of God. So, you know, I I I'm not one of those kinds of people. I was very agnostic, let's say, to Freud. I'm a Freudian agnostic, um, but I I said let me go through the um, the neuroscience research, like do kind of a lit review, and look for studies that didn't necessarily set out to like

42:19 prove or disprove a psychoanalytic concept, but that inherently might have given us some information about that. And so, that's kind of how I went about it. I was just like, "I'm going to look purely at the data and see if any of this data makes sense as it relates to psychoanalytic concepts." And and what I found is that yeah, I mean there is some evidence for um these these defense mechanisms that Freud talked about, things like dissociation and um suppression and repression. Repression is harder to measure because it happens

42:51 automatically, so you can't really set it up in a lab. So, you have to be very creative in how people kind of look at those things. But is the conscious Right. It's a conscious putting pushing away of something that's like, let's say emotionally disturbing. Like, "Oh, I had a fight with my significant other today, but I need to work. I'm going to like not think about that now." Right. Repress it. Whereas repression kind of happens automatically. You have some sort of trauma, and then it automatically gets relegated to the unconscious. Um without you kind of being aware of that process. Cuz I I thought like the notion of like a flashbulb memory was kind of evidence against that. So, if there that when you

43:24 have trauma, it usually is not like something that gets repressed. It's something that you can't escape. And It depends, you know, it depends on the trauma, and it depends on how it was encoded in the first place. So, I do think, you know, when we talk about repression, it's kind of like it doesn't have to be some major like like, you know, you were raped and it was a big or whatever, very very traumatic. Um because if you think about it, our brain is taking in information. It's an information processing machine. It's taking in information all the time, all day long. But most of that information is you don't really need to retain it,

43:58 you know? But some of it, if it's let's say emotionally salient or particularly meaningful for you, the brain will say, "Maybe I'm going to hold on to that." But you don't necessarily have to be conscious of it, you know? And sometimes it's just held on to because it is maybe anxiety-provoking that it you have mechanisms that it's adaptive to prevent that information from bubbling up all the time because that would be maladaptive and that's where you see these flashbulb memories or like people with PTSD where they can't stop the intrusive thoughts. So, I mean, they're you know, not all trauma affects people the same way and people have different defense mechanisms depending on how

44:31 their brain works and depending on their personality type. Right. So, like certain people, like I tend to use my go-to defense mechanism is intellectualization. Like, I will like, you know, try to like read all about the issue and think about, you know, like that's my way to kind of distance myself from it. Other people have different things like projection. So, but I I you know, evidence suggests that there are these neural mechanisms that can overlap with something that we might call repression, definitely, you know, suppression. Um, that I I don't think Freud had it all

45:03 wrong. I don't think he was all right, either. Um, but I do He was a weird guy, that's for sure. a strange guy, yeah. And he was fueled by a lot of like cocaine and stuff, but but Listen, like for the time he lived in, he really was pretty insightful in, you know, a lot of things and shifted the perspective of like what it means, you know, to have a psychological illness and how to treat it and I think it was really important for that. But, he got something I mean, some things were far out, you know, like a lot of things were far out, but there were certain things

45:35 that I do think he had right. And some of the defense mechanisms and the way he thought about the unconscious, um, I think was some of it was spot-on at least according to neuroscience backing a lot of it. So, yeah, cuz I thought it was interesting. One of the I mean, studies that I knew about independently of this, but then hadn't thought about it in the way that you presented it was this one where they presented subliminal images of nudes, um, to people, right? And so, uh, they they present the nude female to the heterosexual male and it's like the attention is drawn there.

46:08 But there are some cases where they present the nude male and the attention is like repelled from that side of the street. Yeah, it's diverted. And and I hadn't realized I took that as evidence that there's unconscious perception because they were categorizing it in terms of like whether it's male or female. But but you you were arguing that this actually kind of evidence for the idea of repression. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the the idea of like like in that case it's So so the images were were presented unconsciously. Everything was presented unconsciously. And then they then they did a test to see where their attention

46:42 was and if it was looking at the image or not. And so the the heterosexual men, right, their attention went towards the females. Heterosexual women, their attention, unconscious attention I would say, went towards the males. I mean basically they knew that because afterwards they put something there and they were slower to name it or quicker to look at it or right to decide. Right. It was like a little like a patch of like like stripes that was either like directed in like tilted one way or the other and you had to say which way it was tilted. And if you were already attending to that area, then you were more quick to say which way that little patch was tilted. Um

47:16 so it was looking at just you know your visual in the visual domain, but homosexual women, this was interesting, paid more attention to cuz they would present a male and a female at the same time. So homosexual women paid more attention to the and they were naked, right? So they paid more attention to the naked woman. Um but heterosexual male paid more attention to the naked women as well, but they when there was a naked man, they paid less attention. They diverted their attention unconsciously away. And the idea that I suggest is that that it might be that they have that

47:52 produces anxiety in them, this idea like a naked man and that they, you know, need to repress, so to speak, and kind of look away or keep it out of awareness. Um so, you know, it's a it's obviously it's a hard it's again hard to get to these processes, but I thought that was an interesting study that might begin to get there. Um you know, so and theoretically I mean like if there we there's a lot of evidence to show that suppression exists that you can push something out of your mind and if there is a mechanism for that, it's not that huge of a stretch to

48:26 say well that process can also occur outside of awareness as well. Right. I mean I guess it's a little it's it's not exactly Freud's notion of repression. Uh cuz first of all, he thought that the kinds of things that were being repressed were these really weird like, you know, desires for you know, sex with your mother or with your dad or weird stuff like that. Um but so and also um well, so this looks like it looks like what you're suggesting is that there's something that they're have anxiety about so that the mind kind of keeps it away from your conscious mind. So, these

49:00 people may be having latent homosexual desires something and not even really consciously be aware of it. That's kind of the idea. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. be interesting. I mean, I would love to do a follow-up study which they obviously didn't do in this study cuz this was just really looking at like unconscious attention. They weren't looking at Freud or things that they That wasn't their intent. But I would love to um follow up and give those people questionnaires about, you know, how much how consciously how let's say homophobic they are. Right.

49:30 I would predict that the more homophobic people are the ones who had their attention diverted away the most, basically. Um I would suspect there would be a correlation there. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, and that was first put a new light on that whole concept because I thought like things like reaction formation I thought we that that was something we thought was like a legit like legitimate Um that you you you know you you have this uh that might explain why you become homophobic because you have this um but you react towards the opposite to sort

50:04 of deal with the fact that you have these kinds of things. But the idea that there's something in there patrolling so to speak and keeping these things out of your conscious mind um that's a that's a little bit disturbing I guess uh but but I I but it was interesting to see this evidence cuz I hadn't thought about that in that way before so I thought that was really interesting. Well the other thing the reason the other interesting thing is just like why would it be that these processes only occur at the conscious level and not at the unconscious level right? Like when so little of what we do happens at

50:38 the conscious level most of it's happening unconsciously so some if some things that we that seep up into consciousness then those are the things that are probably the most likely to also have an unconscious correlate you know? Because they they are probably happening all the time under the surface and occasionally it pops up and most of the time it's happening under the surface. It's it's higher probability. Like like let's say you know biases like unconscious biases and things that are right? You normally we're not even aware of them but we can pick them out when we give them people certain tests like an

51:10 implicit association task. Um but we're not normally not even consciously aware of it. So I don't think consciousness is the end all and be all. I think most of it's unconscious and occasionally we get conscious access to these processes. Occasionally when the guard when we let our guard down. Exactly. Exactly. Usually the conscious is like this ego the protector you know it only tells us like a few of the things that we can handle. Yeah. Sorry go on. Uh that's okay. Do the things that are unconscious on on the way you understand them do do they have a phenomenal aspect

51:43 to them or so I'm wondering what your feeling is about like people like Ned Block and his overflow argument where they say these things you cannot be aware of them but they still feel like something from your point of view. They're still a you know subjective aspect you're just not aware of. I wonder what your take on that is. Yeah, I you know I've had like I debated um I was thinking it was Jaak Panksepp. Oh yeah. On this actually at the at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. It was it was he and Mark Solms against me. Oh okay. And I I won the debate. Thank you very much. I had neuroscience on my side. But

52:16 you know what they were arguing too is that and Jaak in particular was that yeah, there is there is these unconscious emotions, feelings but in a way and I just didn't that in my mind is counterintuitive because the definition is that as soon as there is a certain feeling whatever then that automatically there is it is conscious. So I might this might be like a kind of philosophical like splitting hairs thing but

52:50 I think that inherently like I don't think you can have unconscious feelings if that makes sense. Right. Um the second you feel any inclination of anything then it is conscious. Like an intuition, a gut feeling, whatever that is. Like the second you actually are aware of that feeling then yeah, I it's not unconscious anymore. I don't know if is that answering the question? Yeah, it is because I mean one way to get at this is when you talk about so um subliminal face perception. You show people like threatening faces versus

53:24 smiling faces, excuse me. They say they don't see the faces uh but then you can sort of show that their you know heart rate is increased or their galvanic Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um they're liable to judge something afterwards as as threatening or distasteful. They don't like it for some reason. If you show them a mean face, they like it better if you show them a happy face. So, these are all presented unconsciously though, and so some people like the Yocum Spence keeps of the world want to say, "Well, you felt the fear, you just didn't know it." And then there are other people want to say, "No, you didn't feel the fear you fear, you just represented that there was a threat, but it didn't feel like there is fear

53:57 there." So, I was you sound like you're saying the second one, but I'm not sure. Yeah, I I think yeah, I I I've noticed this too, like they're um cuz I was once going to try to do these studies with looking at um you know, like binocular rivalry and how let's say you can put an angry face in one eye and a neutral face in the other and people will you can't see both at the same time, so people will tend to see the angry face and it'll supersede the neutral face. But that that the idea is that people who tend to um suppress or dissociate might actually they might spend less time on the angry

54:31 face cuz they're pushing it outside of awareness and automatically just keep the neutral face into in awareness. Um but but looking at them, they do have a physiologic reaction to the faces even though they say they don't feel any reaction. Like somebody also like with um dissociative identity disorder is really interesting. These are people who can go into these different identity states. Used to be called multiple personality disorder. But in one state they say they don't they say they have no access to this

55:04 traumatic memory happening to them and they actually don't have the physiologic reaction to it. And another state they say that did happen to me and they do have the physiologic reaction. So, that's an interesting separate case. But but in certain people where they say they don't see it and they get some let's say increase in physiologic um responsive responses, um they could be having unconscious, you know, reactions to things like we all have. Um and that could be affecting their behavior, but I still think it's happening outside of awareness. I don't think it's unless they they notice the

55:38 feelings and become aware of that. Yeah. So you would say that there's nothing that it's like for them. There's no phenomenal aspect as long as it's outside of awareness. Right. And as soon as it is like something or it feels like something then it's no longer outside of awareness. But but I do think those those signals like like Larry Page was saying like oh we can just program the emotions in. I think that's probably likely what it is when we have these unconscious quote unquote emotions. It's just information that's pushing us in one way or another but we're not we don't we don't have subjective states about those those responses.

56:11 Cool. Yeah, we agree a lot on this area. So that's awesome. I like it when I find people that think about these issues in the same way. I I want to ask you really quickly about DID because I I know I read a about a really interesting case about a woman I think it was a woman who was like one of her alters was blind. And when they put her in the fMRI she didn't have like visual activity in in the cortex and then when she could see it was so I'm wondering first of all so you think this is a real Are there really two strings of consciousness in that brain? And then secondly I wonder do we know what

56:44 happens to the other one when one of the alters is are they unconscious in the sense we're talking about or are they still hanging around somewhere? Yeah. So that that actually blankie was interesting case I came upon. It was a case study that was done in Germany and it wasn't even the article was not in English just the abstract was. So I sent it to my colleague Kristoff Koch who's a well-known consciousness researcher and asked him to translate it because he speaks German. And um Um so then we actually incorporated into a piece we wrote together for Scientific

57:18 American but it was fascinating because yeah I mean basically when she was in the blind state where she said she couldn't see they did a visual EEG over her visual cortex and gave her this like flashing checkerboard image and her brain didn't her primary visual cortex did not respond to that. So, that's like keeping your eyes open and trying not to see, like not having actual activation in primary visual cortex. Very difficult, which means that the suppression of the information has to be coming at a place higher up in the chain, perhaps even at the thalamus, like where So, information first comes from your retina, goes to the thalamus,

57:51 and then it goes to the cortex. So, maybe somewhere in that chain before it even gets to the cortex, it's being suppressed. Which is an amazing automatic, you know, if that really is happening in the brain, like how it's happening. So, what they're doing is then they re- they they We wanted to test her, but they re-integrated her personalities, per se, and she got better. She got better. So, I couldn't get her. But no, I do think that we can be in different brain states. I don't think it's that you are necessarily So, they it used to be called multiple personality disorder because they thought they were like different personalities, different people. It's not so much that. Now, it's called dissociative identity disorder

58:24 because the idea is that you have one identity that's been fragmented. Uh-huh. And the whole idea of therapy is to bring your it the these pieces back into one whole cohesive um um person, let's say, or memory. Like basically, what it is is a fragmentation of certain memories that are you only have access to in one brain state versus another. It's not so much a whole personality, per se, but I would say a different brain state. And so, there is somewhere in the brain a switch that can kind of push us in one state or the other. The other thing we find with this is that when they are in the um neutral identity state. So, usually, there's a traumatic

58:57 identity state where they do have access to the trauma, and the neutral identity state where they don't. And that actually takes more brain activation. They have more prefrontal cortex activation because you need that in order to suppress the memories. Um interesting. But I do think you can be in these different brain states. And sometimes, in some cases, in one state, they have allergic reactions to certain things, and in another state, they don't. I mean, it really gets at these very basic, like physiological responses. So, there's still a lot about the brain we don't understand, we don't know. Um and we have to look at both the human phenomena, like when we see things occurring and then, you know, try to

59:29 understand it. Um we used to not even believe that that was a real disorder, but now that we're seeing that the neural underpinnings, we see there is really differences in the way their brain is working. So, I think we need to Yeah, believe the clinical phenomena. If you would say that it's not two personalities, would you is it two streams of consciousness though or is it again just one stream of consciousness that's fragmented or how do we in terms of consciousness how do we talk about it? Yeah, I would say they're both they're they're the same brain and the same um consciousness, let's say. I wouldn't say

1:00:01 they're two different streams of consciousness. I just would say that it is You know what a good analogy is? It's like if you're running a um like you have a Mac and you're running Windows on your Mac. A hackintosh. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's like the same operating system. Right. But sometimes you're in like one state and you're operating in one way and then you're in another state and you're operating in another way. It's still you, but in one state you only have access cuz actually, you know, I'm working on this

1:00:33 book now that's about impulse control. It's it's going to be due out probably later next year in 2021 or early 2022, but so it's still in the early stages, but one thing I'm working on is the idea of um self-control and what is the self and there really is no self and, you know, the self is a construct of the brain and it's a lot of it is based on a narrative, on our memories. And so if you're in one brain state and you only have access to certain memories, you're in a sense you are a certain identity, right? You are a certain person because we construct this narrative. It's made up by our brain. So, in one state we

1:01:06 have a certain memories and we're a certain person in our narrative and another state we have different memories and we're a different person. So, I don't know if I'd call them two streams of consciousness, but I'd call them two brain states that have access to different contents of consciousness and therefore create different narratives. Yeah, interesting. Um All right. Well, I know I see we're getting on time here. I know you have like a real job you actually have to do. So, I'm going to have to let you go. I have real patients going coming up straight after this. Now, I'm really good and primed to to treat them. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Don't let them watch this

1:01:39 until after. But uh well, hopefully with someday when that book is finished maybe you'll come back and we can talk about the book cuz it sounds really interesting. that. Yeah, I would love to come back on and yeah, closer to the publishing date and then we can have a whole conversation about that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool. Well, just as a final question then I wonder if there is anything that we were hoping would come up but that hasn't. And the answer can be no, but just checking. Um oh, that's a good question. Well, I don't know if I was hoping, but a whole new field. This is like for a to

1:02:12 be continued. This would be part two. But um something that I'm really excited about now in the in the in the realm of psychiatry is um the use of psychedelics uh for treatment. So, psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. I think it's really cool. It's like where psychiatry is moving towards like ketamine for depression, MDMA for PTSD, um psilocybin for anxiety and end-of-life issues. Um it's just really cool work happening in that area right now and I think it's a really burgeoning field and psychiatry

1:02:44 is going to shift in that direction because in the last 50 years we haven't really made any major breakthroughs. You know, a couple of little things, but I think this is kind of the way things are going. So, I'm really excited about that whole area of research and potential for treatment and really having a big impact on people who've been suffering. Awesome. Yeah, actually I'm going to be talking with someone on Monday, a philosopher who's working on the uh philosophical issues related to this exact uh cuz philosophy of uh psychedelics psychedelic therapy and all of that kind of stuff. So, this is something I'm also really excited about. It's It's cool to

1:03:15 see that this is getting some recognition cuz for a long time these were these drugs have been maligned, but actually they're quite useful if used correctly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, so it's I think that's a good thing. is breaking and it's becoming mainstream. Even Mount Sinai where I'm at, they're starting to develop a whole center that's going to be dedicated towards that. So it's really becoming more legit again. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. It's not like it's we're not saying go and trip in the woods and you'll be you'll be a better person. It's really it's really targeted and under guidance of a therapist therapist and yeah. Exactly. It's a controlled situation. It's not like you just go to the club

1:03:48 and then you're going to be like healed. It's you know No, actually you have a lot of these that are like IV. They give them intravenous suicide. I was like, well, that sounds scary to me. Intravenous ketamine and I have patients who've done it and it's been phenomenal. So yeah, it's amazing. But it's a controlled environment and very specific dosing and guided and all the rest. So yeah. Cool. Well, yeah, definitely we'll have to come back and talk about that at some point. But I I don't want to make you late. So let's go ahead and let me thank you for joining me today. It was a wonderful discussion. And I'll just hang around for a second. I'll say bye off

1:04:19 the air. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Okay, we're clear.