Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas - 23 | Lisa Aziz-Zadeh on Embodied Cognition, Mirror Neurons, and Empathy

Episode Date: November 19, 2018

Brains are important things; they're where thinking happens. Or are they? The theory of "embodied cognition" posits that it's better to think of thinking as something that takes place in the body as a whole, not just in the cells of the brain. In some sense this is trivially true; our brains interact with the rest of our bodies, taking in signals and giving back instructions. But it seems bold to situate important elements of cognition itself in the actual non-brain parts of the body. Lisa Aziz-Zadeh is a psychologist and neuroscientist who uses imaging technologies to study how different parts of the brain and body are involved in different cognitive tasks. We talk a lot about mirror neurons, those brain cells that light up both when we perform an action ourselves and when we see someone else performing the action. Understanding how these cells work could be key to a better view of empathy and interpersonal interactions. Lisa Aziz-Zadeh is an Associate Professor in the Brain and Creativity Institute and the Department of Occupational Science at the University of Southern California. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA, and has also done research at the University of Parma and the University of California, Berkeley. Home page USC profile Lab home page Google Scholar Talk on Brain and Body

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Hello everyone and welcome to the Mindscape podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. For a long time, people very naturally assumed that there was the mind, the sort of disembodied essence of what we were as people and where the thinking happened. And then there was the body and the mind talked to the body. They weren't part of the same thing. They were two separate entities that could somehow communicate. Famously, of course, the philosopher and scientist,

Renee Descartes really formalized this idea of mind-body dualism. You can read a little bit about that in my book The Big Picture, where I try to bring to the historical foreground the figure of Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, who criticized Descartes for what we would now call the interaction problem. How in the world is this disembodied mind supposed to be talking to our actual body? Of course, with the progress of science and our understanding of how neurons in the brain work, we see increasingly the mind is just a reflection of what the brain is doing. These days, most working neuroscientists are not dualists when it comes to the mind and the brain. They study the brain to think about how the mind is working. In fact, you can go farther than that. If the brain is

where thinking happens, what about the rest of the body? There are nerves in the rest of the body. In fact, there are cells and organs and so forth that clearly influence what's going on in the brain, might it not be more appropriate to think of the whole body as doing cognition in some sense? That's the thesis of a movement in neuroscience called embodied cognition, the idea that where we are thinking includes our whole bodies, not just the little brain inside our skull. There's even something called embedded cognition, which if I understand it correctly, goes and says, actually, it's the whole world where we start doing our thinking. When you're writing on a notepad, that notepad should be counted as part of your cognitive apparatus, just

like your brain. So I'm not so sure about that, but the embodied cognition at least makes a lot of sense. So today's guest, Lisa Aziza Day, is a psychologist and neuroscientist at the University of Southern California here in Los Angeles, and she studies how exactly cognition happens in the brain and in the body. For example, by putting people in functional MRI machines, giving them different tasks, watching how blood flows the different parts of the brain. And Lisa is an expert in mirror neurons. These are the hypothesized neurons. There's a lot of evidence that they're there. Certainly a lot of evidence that they're in monkeys, but even in human beings, we have neurons in our brain that fire both when we do something and when we see somebody else do the same thing. They mirror

in our brains what we see someone else doing. And these mirror neurons, the theory goes, play a crucial role in not just cognition, but empathy, how we understand the motivations and the thoughts of other people, and maybe even in some neurological diseases. This is cutting-edge stuff. It's controversial. We're not exactly sure what's happening, but we'll learn a lot about it in today's conversation. We'll talk about mirror neurons, embodied cognition more generally, and a little bit about what neuroscience has to teach us about the process of human creativity. So let's go. America's first pledge was freedom. Jeep still carries that fighting spirit. With the Jeep declaration of deals, we're pledging our allegiance to the

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under the world's largest overhead screen, the neon's on, the night's wide open, and you're right in the middle of it. Downtown Rocks at Fremont Street Experience. All summer. All welcome. All free. Search Fremont Street Experience for the full lineup and dates. All right, Lisa Azizadee. Welcome to the Mindscape podcast. Thank you. It's great to be here. So we're talking about, embodied cognition, right? I mean, there's a lot of words that are near here, like embedded cognition and things like that. So we'll get to all that. Let's just take a step back and contextualize this, right? So cognition is not exactly the same as thinking. Is that right? Cognition is not the same as thinking. So, no, I would say cognition is larger and broader than thinking. So it encompasses

also emotions, also subconscious processing, and so forth. And we have this, you know, in intuitive way of thinking about how we think. Like, I think, I have the feeling that people are intuitive dualists, right? They're Renee Descartes, right? You know, they think of their mind as something almost separate from the body, affected by it. Right. And your thing is sort of going in the, more or less the opposite direction and, you know,

putting the mind more and more into the body. Is that right? Right. So the more we learn about neuroscience, the more we learn that the body is part of the brain. You know, so all the neurons are interacting with the body, all the time. And so from your gut to the senses on your fingers to hearing and even the eye, I mean, the eye is probably the most relevant because it's so attached to the brain actually. But all of this interacts with the brain so largely that it's really impossible to separate

processing in the brain from processing in the body. Right. And so that's the philosophy behind embedded cognition. And so where did this come from? Who started thinking this way? So psychologists have been thinking about this for a long time. So there's Chomers, there's Goldstein. Yes, that's right. George Lakoff is a linguist who has been thinking about this also for a long time in terms of language processing. So he talks about embodied metaphors, so how we speak with our metaphors of the body and actions. So sorry, what does that mean?

Yeah, so things like grasping the situation. situation, handling the truth, right? So these are all embodied ways of talking about very abstract things. Okay, so as a linguist, that makes sense. He's trying to think about why we use certain visual metaphor, I guess, embodied metaphors. Embodied metaphors, exactly. And, you know, there's the neuroscience behind it. So there was the discovery of mirror neurons, which I think we'll talk about in a little bit.

but mirror neurons were found to be neurons that are active both when I do something and just when I watch someone do something. So I'm not doing anything at all. But they're active in my motor cortex as if I'm doing something. So this kind of simulating other people's actions. And then this actually supported a lot of George Lakoff's works in linguistics where we found that when people set words like grasping the situation or handling the truth, you would find activity in the motor cortex. Okay. And so this is more or less, this is where you come in, right?

Because my impression, you should tell me, but my impression is that your scientific work involves poking inside people's brains and seeing what's going on when they're doing different things. Right. How do you do that? So I don't actually physically poke in their brain. That's too bad. So we use MRI and we use functional MRI.

So we put people inside the MRI scanner, and we have them do something while they're in there, and we look at the activity in different parts of the brain. So this MRI is a gigantic thing, right, in someone's lab, and so they're not strapped down, maybe, but they're lying down and their head is in the big donut. Exactly, right. And hasn't there been some controversy over how reliable if MRI are?

Sure. I mean, so, you know, every scientific method has as problems, and MRI is a pretty gross scientific method. So you can't capture an individual neuron. You're really getting indirect measures of deoxygenated blood flow. So the parts of the brain that use the more oxygen are the ones that are working, and that's what you're measuring. My impression is it's good at sort of locating things in the brain is less good at time resolution or something.

Exactly, right. So it has a lag. Right. So it doesn't give you precise timing and localization. it's about, you know, you can get by two by two cubic centimeters. Okay, and that's a lot of neurons. That's a lot of neurons, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. All right, so let's get back to the embedded. Could you help me understand embedded cognition versus embodied versus situated. There's also, right? These are all things you can talk about? They overlap largely. Embodied cognition is the idea that the way that we think is, inherently rooted in our body systems. So, you know, if you are anxious or nervous, that's actually

activity from your internal organs that your brain is processing. Okay, I'm sorry. So it's literally because of your organs doing something. Exactly. That you were feeling anxious. Right. It's not just because a certain neuron in your brain sent a little signal to a nearby neuron. No. So we know from the sympathetic and parasympathic systems that you're feeling. you have this large interaction with the body. And the brain is constantly picking up information from the body. And so let's just talk about being nervous. So if you feel like you have butterflies in your stomach and you're anxious,

that's actually because your internal organs are being primed by your sympathetic nervous system. And then that information is going to the brain, and it's being interpreted as being nervous. Okay, so, I mean, I'm trying to understand, you know, I've read a little bit about I guess where, and I think it's still controversial, right? The whole thing, I mean, this is science at the cutting edge, right? We don't agree on everything yet. Yeah.

It's a theory. It's a theory. So there are curmudgians and there's enthusiasts and the whole bit. So, I mean, there's kind of a trivial sense in which, sure, my body, my brain, talk to each other. Yeah. But you're trying to be a little bit more dramatic than that. Is that right?

Right. So the idea is if you had a brain outside of a body, could it actually process things the way we do? Right. And so if you believe in this theory of embodied cognition, then you would say no. So what would it be like? I mean, the brain in the vat experiment, right? You could put a brain in a vat and poke electrical signals at it. And you're saying that would not be a human-like cognition going on.

No, I don't think so. So I think the way that we inherently think and the way we process information has to do with interaction with a body. And the brain in the vat wouldn't be able to do it the same way. Couldn't we somehow very cleverly mimic the signals it's getting from a body? You know, this is completely... Oh, yeah, I know. You're a serious scientist, and I'm playing fun philosophical games. Right.

You know, so the question is, could you make a computer program that could have enough information in it that it could simulate a body? Right. I guess the question, the answer is we don't know. theoretically probably possible but seems a little bit far-fetched. It does, I mean, it sort of makes sense biologically, right? You know, I always say this one when I have biologists or neuroscientists on the podcast, but we were not intelligently designed, right? So there's not, you know, a team designing the brain and a separate team designing the body that had to work well together. The whole thing grew up kind of organically. So in some sense,

why should cognition end at the boundary of the brain, right? I mean, the nervous system fills our whole body. Exactly. Right, exactly. And so how do we test the extent to which that's true? How do we figure out? Right. So a lot of the experiments that we run look at parts of the brain that are thought to be purely sensory motor.

And we see if those regions are involved in this kind of higher cognitive processing. Okay. Okay. So explain what sensory motor means in this context and higher cognitive process. Okay. So there's parts of the brain that are involved in motor control. So making the body do things. And it was theoretically thought before that those regions really just only do that.

They don't do much more than that. Maybe they have some sensory functions as well, but not much more beyond that. And more and more we find that they're involved in social cognition, understanding other people's intentions, understanding their actions, They're involved in linguistic processing of actions. Okay, so language, something else that we thought was higher cognition, right? And then they also might be involved in things like empathic processing, things that we thought were really like the highest level of cognition.

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So, yeah, so the higher levels of cognition, we're thinking more abstract thought, emotions, things like that. Exactly. As opposed to more of sort of uncommon. things that are going on, right? That's right. And didn't I read in one of these Wikipedia articles I was looking at that it was sort of a starting realization when we figured out that most of the computing power in the brain is spent on our unconscious processes, what we think of as automatic, and the higher cognitive

capacity is a relatively tiny amount of our brainwork? Yes, except that, you know, like that's division between higher and lower is a tough one, right? It's a fuzzy one. And so I'm not sure really where you draw the line. Also, like, something really interesting that's coming out more and more now is the idea of predictive modeling. Okay. So the idea is that, you know, so there's two types of processing.

There's what we call bottom up. So it goes from your sensory systems, your eyes, your nose, your mouth, your somatosensory, to the brain. And then there's top down. So that's things that we predict will happen, that we start. to already process as if they're happening, right? So it's driven by the brain and goes back down to the primary areas. Okay.

Okay. And so it used to be that maybe, you know, this comes actually from robotics. So what we found in robotics was that if everything was bottom up, it would be too slow. Ah. Okay. So the robot would be way too slow to do anything. And so we started to do what we called forward modeling for robots. And so in there, you start to have some kind of predictive model,

and the bottom-up model also sees if it can match it, and then you do some more robust processing that way, and it increases speed. Okay, and so we realize the brain probably also works like that, but people pretty much thought it was about 50-50, bottom-up and top-down. And now more and more research is coming out saying that the percentages are much more toward the top-down, than the bottom up.

And so we process things with this kind of prediction of what we expect to see. People are giving numbers like 90%. All right. So you can quantify this. This is, I don't know what that means, 90% of what. It's very difficult.

It's very difficult to quantify. But you're looking basically at information coming from sensory systems versus information going down from prefrontal cortex and things like that. And this is like the classic problem of how in the world can people catch a baseball? We're not doing calculus in our head, obviously, right?

But somehow our brains are predicting things. And we're judging the reality that we measure any one time versus those predictions. Is that right? Exactly. Right. And so you're saying that this just goes, this is the paradigm for how we do everything in the world? It seems like it. And it's, you know, it's a little surprising if it is actually something like 90%, right? But, yeah, it does seem, most of the work seems to be supporting that.

And I think this has something to do, again, I get philosophical about these things with our perception of the flow of time, right? Because we're constantly, so you're saying that, and maybe we can get into the details here a little bit because this is interesting. But you're saying that we have models of both ourselves and the environment that we project in the future and then we're updating them all the time. Exactly, right. I think that I've heard people claim this is why we feel that. that we're moving through time because of this constant give and take, right? That's interesting. I mean, I think that this is also where, you know,

the interaction of neuroscience with physics comes in, which is super interesting. And what we call the present moment is actually a few milliseconds in the past because it takes us time to process it. To process everything, right, yeah. So is it one kind of map of our body that is in our brain, one little homunculus, or are there different little parts doing different things. There's a lot of different parts doing a lot of different things. So, for example?

So you have the motor areas, you have the somatosensory areas, you have auditory processing regions. Even in the motor areas, you have multiple, multiple maps. In somatosensory areas, you have multiple maps for your internal organs. You have several maps in different parts. One per organ or several maps of each organ? No. So several maps. of integrated information from the organs, yeah. Okay. So we're getting information from our heart and our liver and our lungs, and that's going to different parts of the brain that are predicting different things?

Is that the way you think of that? Yeah, processing it and predicting it and, you know, so forth. And so you begin to see why embodied cognition would sound like a good idea because... Right, right. The more you study it, you find that there really isn't parts of the brain that are don't get information from the body. Right. Okay. And so you can see this happening in your fMRIs?

Yes. Or you can see something happening. You can see something, indirect evidence, we would call it. And how do you tell, what is a very specific thing that you would ask someone to do when they're in that fMRI? Okay. So, you know, so the original studies in mirror neurons were done in monkeys, so they put electrodes inside a specific motor neuron. and they watch the monkey do something and they see what happens when the monkey observes

someone else make the same action. What we do, that's the analog of that in humans, is we put them in the scanner and we have them perform an action like reach for a cup or a ball or something like that, and then have them watch someone else do the same action. Okay. And then we can go further

and have them think about the intentions of that person or think about what that person might be feeling when they're doing that action. This is something you do with a human. You can't do with a monkey. Exactly, right. And then you could do facial expressions. You can have them imitate facial expressions and things like that. And what we're learning is that, you know, the evolution is very good at recycling, right?

So it's using the same part of the brain to do what we might think of as very different tasks. Exactly, right. So it makes sense that through evolution, you first probably had ed. action, right? So the brain had to do something, and then sensory perception, right? And that basically took up the whole brain. And as evolution progressed, then you start to use these areas for cognition. Right. You mentioned mirror neurons a couple of times. Let's just admit that we should talk about what these are. So tell us what a mirror neuron is, is like how many of them are, is the particular place in the brain where we find them? Yeah. So mirror neurons were discovered in monkeys. They were

discovered in monkey area F5, which is equivalent to the premotor cortex in humans, and then inferior frontal gyres as well. And they were found to be active, so using single cell electrodes that were inserted into this area of the monkey brain. They were, they found that these neurons are active when the monkey does something, as well as when the monkey sees someone making the same action. Okay. And this was When are we talking about? 96. Oh, that recently?

Yes. And this was by Ritzalati's lab in Parma, Italy. Uh-huh. And so the same neurons, I mean, again, is it even possible to ask how many neurons we're talking about here? Is it like four neurons? No, no, no. It's quite a lot. And it's, you know, the same brain region.

So this F5 brain region has, it's a mosaic. So there's some mirror neurons there. There's other kinds of neurons there and so forth. and there's like 85 billion neurons in the brain. So there's probably a whole bunch that are doing this. Yes. But it really is. But, you know, how specialized are neurons?

I mean, they're localized in different parts of the brain, but are the actual neurons in one part of the brain different than neurons and other parts of the brain? Yes. So mirror neurons are specifically motor neurons. So they're really only in motor area. So they've been found now in the parietal cortex as well as in this premotor area. And then you'll find, you know, visual neurons and other parts and so forth. Right.

So we discover them in monkeys. There's a little neuron that does the same thing if the monkey's doing something and see someone else do it. Right. And we're not allowed to cut open human being skulls and put electric signals in there. So it's harder to test this for human beings, but it would make sense, right? Right. So the way that we do it is by using something like fMRI, you could also use EEG. TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation has also been used.

So there's all these indirect measures. And this is something that we think has to do with not, I mean, okay, what is the point? Why do these mirror neurons do this? So fine, I see, you know, I pick up a cup, some neurons fire. I see you pick up a cup, the same neurons fire in my brain. What's up with that? Okay, so then this is where the theory comes in, right? Good, yes.

Okay, so there's a bunch of different theories. So one very basic one is that it's involved in processing other people's actions. That's the most simple one, right? And then there's theories of simulation that the way I understand you, the way I understand what you're doing, the way I understand when you reach for a cup that means that you're probably thirsty, is by simulating. I know that when I reach for a cup, that's because I'm thirsty.

And so if my motor regions are simulating unconsciously what you're doing at every moment, then I have an understanding of your experience. So it helps me have a theory of your mind if I can sort of simulate it. Exactly. So it's like the simulation hypothesis. It's like everything is just a little simulation in my brain. Exactly. Right, right.

And you're doing this constantly with, because there's not just one person in front of you, but there's a lot of people doing a lot of things. So there's a lot to keep track of. Right. And is that, so I keep going back and forth between this, but so we do an experiment and learn that the neurons are mirroring, and then we invent a theory that says this helps us understand other people's brains. So how do we test that theory?

Right. So there's different ways. So you just design clever experiments to try to get at what's the difference between understanding someone's intention versus understanding the context of a scene versus understanding reaching without actually picking up a cup, right? And you could look at brain differences for mirror neurons or what you think are mere neurons for each of those scenarios and compare activity levels. Is there an example of a clever experiment you can think of?

Yeah. So actually one of them comes from Rizzolati's lab where he's actually doing this in the monkey. And so he has the monkey reach for an apple. Okay. And then he has the monkey watch and experimenter reach for the apple. And then he has an occluded scenario where he, at the moment where the grasp to the apple is going to happen, there's a screen put on that the monkey can no longer see if the apple was there or not. Okay.

And so now there's just a grasp, but there's no object that the monkey sees. But the monkey saw previously that the apple was there. So he has to infer, right? And so you find that the mirror in your own. are still active. Okay. Okay. But if the apple was not there and the person grasped for it, then the mirror neurons no longer

activate. Oh, okay. So even though the person is doing the same thing. Same exact action. Because it has a different meaning. Yes. Because they're not grasping for something. Yes.

These neurons don't fire. Right. And so from this, the Ritzelotti group infers that the intention of the goal is very important for these neurons. Right. And so you're actually processing intentions. Good. So yet another reminder that, you know, the way that the neurons represent the world is not just it's a picture of the world. It's this complicated thing where there's meanings and intentions and goals and purposes and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Does this teach us much about human psychology, do you think? Sure. So I think, you know, so I think that we're always trying to understand other people's intentions and trying to understand the, underlying meaning of their actions. And so it could be that these neurons and humans are also involved in doing that. So that's where empathy comes in, for example. So do you study empathy for this reason? I do. So we also find that people who score high on trait empathy, measures of empathy,

they actually show more activity in these mirror regions. Okay. Is it something to be said about people who don't show any activity in this region? Yes, so, you know, we find that, so I also study individuals with autism. Okay. And so we actually show that they have less activity in these regions. And some people with autism also have lower empathic processing and difficulty with social processing in general is the key dysfunction in autism.

You also find this, you know, there's, so empathy is complicated. There's different kinds of empathy. So psychologists generally divide empathy into three components. Okay. So there's sympathy, which is kind of mentalizing is what we would call it, where you're thinking about someone's actions and intentions and feelings, but in a very abstract way. Right.

Okay. Okay. So I'm not like identifying with you as a person, but I'm sort of getting this idea of what you're thinking. Yeah, I mean, the best example I can give of this is if you're in a relationship and your partner is really upset with you and you're having a really hard time getting it. That's never happened to me, but sure. But they explain it more and more and you're kind of like in this abstract realm.

You're like, okay, I kind of understand why you're upset with me. Intellectually. Intellectually, I would never respond that way myself. Right. Right. But I can... That's called sympathy. That's a weird...

That's called sympathy. That sounds like a weird use of the word sympathy. So it's a very cognitive form of empathy and very abstract. Okay. Okay. Then we have empathy, which is sharing someone's feelings. So here I feel exactly what you feel. So if you're in pain, I actually feel that pain myself.

Literally feel it. Yeah, literally feel it. Okay. And then there's compassion. And compassion. is proactive behavior where you actually want to do something to help the person.

So not only do you feel, but you feel compassion for them and you want to do something to help them. And in principle... You have a feeling of warmth for the other person. I guess all three of these are separate, right? Like I have compassion even if I don't feel... Exactly, exactly.

So first of all, there are three different networks in the brain. Oh, okay, so we can map these out. Mm-hmm. And then there's different disorders that, you know, So someone could, so for example, psychopaths are very good with this abstract sympathy, but very bad with empathy. They don't actually feel the other person's pain. But they're very good at manipulating people because they have this kind of mentalizing

and sympathy where they can abstractly understand people. Right. And then people with autism tend to be just the opposite. So, sorry. So they... They're not going to be... good at sympathy. They're not good at sympathy, but they're okay with affect sharing. Oh, okay, interesting. And this is, I mean, it's very interesting the idea there are networks in the brain that sort of do these

different functions. Are they quite discreet and obviously separate? I mean, is there some fixed number? We're going to discover 20 years from now. Yes, there are 35 networks in the brain that do these sort of different emotional things, or is it kind of, they blend into each other? You mean like empathic processing, or are we talking about it? Just more generally. Just embodied. Yeah. Yeah.

So, okay, so we talked about mirror neurons, but since the discovery of mirror neurons, a lot of different kinds of shared circuits, we call them, have been found. So for example, in the somatosensory areas, so areas that are active when I'm touched, we find that they're also active when I watch you being touched. Okay. We find that also with disgust regions, so regions that are active when I feel disgusted. When I see you experiencing disgust, they're also active. Most concerts, you're in a seat. You're watching. Downtown Rocks at Fremont Street Experience is something else entirely. Three stages. Live music spilling into the street, into the crowd, under the world's largest overhead screen. The neon's on, the night's wide open, and you're right in the middle of it. Downtown Rocks at Fremont Street Experience. All summer. All welcome. All free. Search Fremont Street Experience for the full lineup and date.

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Toyota, let's go places. I read that husbands have these reactions when their wives are pregnant. They get sort of fake pregnancies. They get morning sickness. Oh, that's interesting. I haven't heard of that. Well, so I say I heard of it. I literally watched it on Castle Rock last night.

There is this TV show, Stephen King-based TV show. And honestly, they were all about mirror neurons. Oh, that's so cool. The slightly crazy character was convinced that her mirror neurons were reaching out and touching other people. They actually used that term? Oh, yeah. They did. Oh, wow.

And so I think that was an addendum. That was not in the original Stephen King stories, but they... That's funny. Because for him it was just psychic powers, but now it's mirror neurons. Oh, wow. So maybe it's not true. The pregnancy I think I learned, I shouldn't trust, you know, Hulu Originals as my source material for psychological insight. But it makes sense, right?

I mean, it is part of... And it's adaptive, right? Understanding how other people are feeling things, but we don't want to go too far, right? Because we're not the same as them. Right. So you find actually for people in the medical world, they activate these shared circuits for empathy, affect sharing, much less than other people. I was going to say, and also maybe like homicide detectives, right? There's all these dead people and they have to be clinical and cognitive about it.

They can't feel like, oh, my God, this is a terrible tragedy. Right, exactly. And so for people who are lacking empathy, you probably want to work on. on that. But in the typical population, which you probably want to focus your time working on is compassion instead. So you don't want people to be stuck feeling someone's pain to the point that they can't do anything about it, right? But you want them instead to try to focus on compassion to actually do something. Are there generally therapeutic implications for the kind of discoveries you make? So, you know, right now our work is focused on autism. So we're trying to figure out

the difficulty with autism is that there's so many different subtypes. And so we're working on different subtypes of autism and trying to categorize them so that we can focus interventions, not just everyone with autism gets to do this one intervention, but maybe if you have this particular subtype, this would help you more. I mean, I know it's very complicated and controversial, and it's, you know, I have friends who have autistic kids

and it's very emotional. How would you just explain what autism is to someone who didn't know what it was. Yeah, so autism is defined by a deficit in social interaction. So the social piece of it, not being able to think about other people's emotions and understand their intentions is probably the biggest disorder in autism. And then there's also repetitive

actions that are made and also communication deficits. So it's something like you don't know when other people are upset or you don't know why they're upset or why they're happy. You sort of don't get those cues, right, right, right. So processing other people's social information. And this goes back to the idea that one of the roles of the mirror neurons is when we see somebody looking happy or looking sad or whatever. There's something goes off in our brain that is related to what happens when we're happy

and sad that helps us understand. Is that right? Exactly. So this kind of simulating other people from a neurological perspective. Right. Right. And I seem to recall that in the very earliest days when mirror neurons were being talked about, this connection with autism was made and people pushed back on it and other people hyped it up.

And so what is the state of play right now? Yeah. So what we think is that autism is very heterogeneous. And there's probably types of autism where mirror neurons are more involved than other types. And so we're actually looking at autism that's comorbid with dyspraxia. Dispraxia is a developmental disorder of coordination. Okay. And a lot of kids with autism have it.

So they're less coordinated. Right. But it's particularly a motor deficit, right? And so since it's a motor deficit, we thought that maybe these kids with autism who have dyspraxia are more likely to have this kind of broken. and mirror hypothesis, if you will. Okay. And the data do seem to support that.

And so the idea is that maybe the reason some people find mirror neurons are less active in autism and other people haven't is that autism is so heterogeneous and you're not looking at the same group. Yeah. So someday, again, in the future we'll realize there's really 12 different things going on that we lumped them all under the label of autism. Exactly. And so you're pretty convinced that at least some of them have a had,

involvement with... Not to say that's the only thing going on. Sure. Right. So we do find a lot of other brain regions that are also different in these kids, but that this might be one component. Okay. And does that have any therapeutic implications? Like, so we learn something about where in the brain something is happening, but we're not going to go in there and poke it with an electrode. So what can we do? Yeah. So it's complicated. So especially given that this is just probably one piece of the story. But we're not going to go in there and poke it. Yeah. So it's, it's complicated. So, it's complicated. So especially given that this is just probably one piece of the story. But one kind of therapy that has been done with kids with autism with some success is called imitation therapy, where you teach kids with autism to imitate. And by imitating, they're not only

working the motor pathways that they need to, but also trying to understand the social implications. Is it almost like they're training their neurons to be mirror neurons? Exactly. Yeah. And so, you know, this again needs to be further tested, but the idea is that maybe this kind of therapy would be most effective with these kids who have the additional dyspraxia. And maybe it's not a common therapy to just throw on every kid with autism. Because the hypothesis is not that they lack the mirror neurons, but that the neurons in their brain just aren't mirroring the right way? Right, that they might not be working the same way. Okay. So that in some sense it provides hope in the sense that you can train them to do something that maybe isn't automatic, but you can teach them.

Right, right. My understanding is a lot of autistic kids, just at the sort of crudest level, train themselves to recognize social cues and emotional things on faces just in a kind of wrote way, even if they don't feel it themselves. Exactly. So it's very abstract. Right. So this is maybe a more visceral version of that? Is that fair? Exactly.

Yeah. That's the idea. An embodied version. An embodied version, yes. Very good. And beyond autistic kids, so are there wider psychological? So we did a bunch of studies on stroke patients. Oh, okay.

So after stroke, you know, the main common, if you have a motor impairment following stroke, the most common thing that you do is physical therapy or occupational therapy. Right. But the problem is there's only so many hours a day you could do that, and people get tired, right? It's a lot of work. Yes. Right? And insurance companies only pay for that for the first three months.

Okay. And so one idea is if we know that watching other people activates your own motor system, what about creating these videos of therapeutic things that you're watching someone else do, right? And you can think of it kind of like homework. You give it to a patient before they come into their PT or OT. And the night before and they're watching these over and over again, and the brain is getting primed. And so the idea is that when they go to do that the next day,

they should actually be better. Right, right. And so we do find some support for that as well. So when you have a stroke is, since I know nothing about this, is most of the damage in your brain or is it throughout your body? No, so stroke is specific to the brain. Specific to the brain. And is it it's mostly physical damage to the neurons or is it just sort of rewiring?

Yes, yeah. So in some sense, physical... It's a lesion. A lesion in the brain, okay. So occupational physical therapy, you're stretching and trying new motor skills. Right, so you're hoping that would rewire the brain. But you're saying it is the brain after all so we can try to rewire the brain in more directly brain-centered ways. Well, or, you know, by thinking, exactly, right?

And if we believe in this embodied cognition, then there's other ways to activate these motor systems beyond just moving parts of the body. Do we try virtual reality? Virtual reality could be very helpful. It's a little more difficult with people with stroke because they can get dizzy and fall down and, you know. Right, okay. Right. So you want to be careful when you do that. But, you know, just having them watch these movies seems to be pretty effective also.

Okay. Very good. And what about just people who don't seem that empathetic? What about people who don't have an obvious physiological issue? But you mean like a psychopath? Yeah, or just, you know, just, you know, a couple's therapy, you know, someone is not sharing their partner's desires as much as a life. Yeah, so, you know, the most comprehensive study of this being done is actually being done by Tanya Singer's lab. And what she finds is she has people do mindful meditation and different kinds of mindful meditation for a long term.

I don't know exactly the details of how long they're doing it for. But she has them either do sympathy. Okay. Compassion training, mindful meditation. It's something called loving kindness, right? Mindful meditation or, you know, some kind of control task. Right. And what she finds is that actually doing this kind of meditation increases structural changes in these networks.

In the brain. In the brain? See the brain wiring itself differently because you're doing meditation. Exactly. And also functional changes and also behavioral changes as well. Interesting. I think that people get a little bit scared or overly impressed by the phrase, you know, rewiring the brain. Like this rewires the brain.

But in fact, everything we do at any moment in time is always rewiring our brain, right? Every memory we take is every memory we remember is rewiring our brain. Yeah. So the interesting thing for her is that she sees the. in these like either the compassion network or the sympathy network or the empathy network, depending on which one you're focusing on in your meditation. And I think you've said this already, but it's still remarkable to me. So we can take an fMRI and see a place light up and go, oh, that's the sympathy network?

Mm-hmm. Right. So, again, the empathy network, the emotion resonance ones, seems to be in these emotion regions, mere neuron regions and so forth. The sympathy regions tend to be prefrontal cortex. temporal parietal junction and the precunius. It does become harder and harder to be a mind-body dualist when you see. This part of the brain is responsible for this emotional reaction, right?

Right, right. So, yeah. I mean, so there are people who would argue, and I'm not sure they're wrong, that there is this embodied cognition, but the sympathy network might be different than that. And it might be more abstract. Right. it's complicated because the prefrontal cortex also still gets a lot of information from the body,

as do all these regions. Yeah. But, yeah. My default at this stage of scientific progress is to think that we don't know anything about neuroscience at all, right? We have some good ideas, and some of them will turn out to be right, but we have no right to be confident in some ideas versus others. Because, like you say, it's really, it's way more complicated than physics is. It's way more complicated. So actually, just to embody this even more, one of the things that we're now got some funding to do is to,

to add a microbiota component. Okay. So explain what that means. Yeah. So you have these bacteria in your gut, and they actually interact with neurons in your gut. Neurons in your gut? Yes, and with your different systems in the brain and different systems in the body, so your immune systems and so forth, and those interact with the brain. And so going back to autism, we know. that a lot of kids with autism have stomach problems.

And it has been found that they also have different microbiota than the typical population. And given that we also know that the microbiota are now interacting, not directly, indirectly, with either visceral neurons in the stomach or through metabolites that can travel to the brain, they interact with the brain, so these microbiota, then the question is, how does this all fit together? Right. So how do what's going on in your stomach with these bacteria interact with brain functioning and with behavior? So you're saying when people claim that they make decisions with their gut, they might be literally doing that. Exactly. Exactly. That's scary. And I know some people like that.

I talked about this on a podcast with Carl Zimmer, the microbiome. We have all these microbes living in approximately the same number of cells. in the microbiomas there are human cells in our body. And that gets back to, you know, I just keep wanting to go to these bigger philosophical questions. That's embodied cognition. And it kind of makes sense that our body is important. So one of the things that is going to be a challenge when people try to construct artificial intelligences

is that they don't have not just bodies, but the motivations that the body gives us, right? hunger and sleepiness and things like that. Are we learning about the prospects for artificial intelligence by studying embodied cognition? I think we're just mainly understanding how complicated it would be to create a system. And then especially when you introduce the interaction of the body with these like bacteria, right? And so how is that influencing our cognition and how we think and so forth? Yeah, I mean, I think that there are books about,

uploading our brains, right, into the matrix and just letting us live in the simulated reality. So that will be, basically your point is just that's even harder than you think because you don't have a body once you're up there. Exactly. And everything that goes with it. Free is great, but only if it's useful. Free credit scores from some apps can differ by as much as 100 points from your actual FICO score that 90% of top lenders use when you apply for a credit card, personal loan,

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All welcome. All free. Search Fremont Street Experience for the full lineup and dates. Right. I mean, I've long thought that it just wouldn't be, even if you could copy piece by piece all of your neurons and all their connections into the computer, it wouldn't be a copy of you exactly. because of these things, because your inputs are different. And it's just, it's just going to be, I mean, maybe it'll be conscious, maybe it'll be intelligent, but it won't have the motivation.

It'll be different. It'll be different. It won't be you. Yeah. And, yeah, somehow it doesn't count as immortality if you upload our brain in that way, right? No, unfortunately. But then there's also, I forget what the word is, but there's the idea extended cognition, the idea that we use our environment around us as part of our cognitive capacities, right?

That goes beyond embodied cognition. Right. So the context of the situation, right, and the environment that you're in also is extremely important. So if I take notes to remember something, I should count that notepad as part of my cognitive system. Right, right. Do you think this is a good idea? Do you have feelings about this?

Well, so, you know, there's that saying, the medium is larger than the message, right? I've never heard it put that way before. Yes. That's right. So in that sense, yes, right? I think definitely the environment and non-biological systems are an important part of our cognitive processes. I mean, certainly as a physicist, if I'm standing at the blackboard, writing some equations and solving them. In some sense, I can think of the blackboard and the chalk as part of my cognitive system just like my brain.

Right. But in some sense, it's clearly different, right? I mean, so is there quasi-philosophical or does it become a scientific question, where is the useful place to draw the distinctions between these different things? Right. So there's actually these neurons where if you work with a tool long enough, that tool becomes embedded as part of your body representation. Okay, because we have these maps in our brain,

different parts of our body. And so, for example, when people have prostheses or even just a can, right that can be mapped on by our brain right exactly and it actually doesn't even take that long so in these monkey studies where they're using a rake to reach for a piece of food um within a matter of minutes that rake becomes part of their body representation minutes yeah so how do we know that is that that's actually by looking at single electrodes by single single so they're looking at the you know the representation of the reaching movement and then they start to see that it's it fills up to the periphery to just where the rate goes.

And this helps also explain things like phantom limb syndrome? Phantom limb is a little bit different. So that's when you lose a body part, right? Right. Right. But you feel like it's still there. And we think that that's more due to rewiring where if you look at the homunculus, the body map in the brain in somatosensory regions.

for example, the face and the hand are very close together. Okay. Okay. So now if you've lost a hand, the face area takes over the cortex that used to belong to the hand. Okay. And so now if you touch the face of a person who's lost a hand, they often feel it in their phantom hand. Oh, I see. Okay.

Right. But that's because the cortex just, it's not going to leave that real estate alone. and it's going to use it for something else. And the face was the closest thing, so it took it over. Free CPU cycles, as far as the brain is concerned, right? Exactly, right. Interesting. And does that have implications when we do get into virtual reality,

you know, our virtual bodies? So, like, you know, we can look different in virtual reality than we do in regular reality. So if we have an avatar, does our avatar, I mean, it depends on the quality of the virtual reality experience, but does our avatar get a map of representation in the brain? Oh, that's an interesting question. I don't know if anyone's actually looked at that,

but I could imagine that it could happen, yeah. Because usually, you know, we pick avatars that are better-looking versions of ourselves, right? But I can imagine avatars that look completely different, different numbers of arms and legs. Right. And I can imagine really good VR controllers that would let us control all those things separately. Right. And I'm thinking of, like, if you watch little kids playing video games

and they make the avatar jump, they actually jump themselves a little bit, right? They do like a little hop, so it's this kind of embodiment of the avatar. That makes perfect sense. And I know one of the other things you've worked on is related to this, you know, how we relate to people different than us, right? You know, part of it, of course, we see people like us. It's the same part of our brain reacting is when we react ourselves as people become more and more different.

Right. Differences in age or ethnicity or gender or sickness or whatever. Right. Does that make harder to empathize? Yeah. So, okay, so if you think about this embodied cognition, it's very easy to understand why you would want to embody and simulate people that you like and people you want to be like.

And there's actually, you know, the chameleon effect in psychology where it's been found over and over again that you implicitly imitate people who are similar to you and people you want to be like and people you admire. So if I'm having a conversation with you and you lean forward, I lean forward. Right. You know, and this is all implicit. We're not thinking about it.

It's called mirroring, right? Yeah, yeah. It's also called the chameleon effect. Okay. Okay, and then we do this less and less with people we don't want to be like. Right. So if you don't like someone, you tend to just have less of this chameleon effect. So the question that we wanted to ask in a bunch of our studies,

was how do you then process people who are very different from you? And perhaps the most dramatic difference that you can have is having a different body than someone else. So we looked at a person who was born without arms and legs. Okay. And we were curious how she processes body parts that she doesn't have and how she understands them. So if you take the theory of embodied cognition seriously,

you use your body representations to understand other people's bodies. but if you don't have those body representations, then what do you do? Right. Right. Nothing for your neurons to mirror. Right. So we put her in the scanner, and we had her watch different kinds of actions. Some actions were possible for her, even with a different body part.

So, for example, picking up a pen she does with her mouth. Okay. And some things are completely impossible for her. So like going on tiptoe or using scissors, she can't do that. Right. And basically what we found is that even for things that she can't do, she still tries to use her motor representations to understand other people. But for things that she are impossible for her,

she additionally uses these sympathy regions. Oh, okay. So she's sort of offloading that task to a different part of the brain. Exactly, exactly. So she tries to simulate it, and when that doesn't work, she also uses the sympathy regions, these men. centralizing regions. However, she has like a lifetime of experience looking at people with full bodies, right?

And so we also did the opposite. We brought typical people watching her residual limb doing actions. So for us, that's a weird body part. We don't often see that, right? And what we found is that when we get people more familiar with her, they start to see it as if it's a hand or like, very, you know, like a normal body part, but in the beginning you see a lot of activity that's different. Okay.

And so the idea is that with more exposure to people who are different from us, then we start to see them very similarly. We normalize them in some sense. Exactly. And we embody them very similarly. But it's a weird thing because we're, I mean, is it, I don't know, I don't want to say worry, but is it that, that we're not treating them as they are.

We're fitting them into a box meant for us, and they're really kind of different? Yeah, so in the beginning, what we see when they're not familiar with a person, is a lot of activity in visual areas. So they're using visual processing to understand this person, but not this kind of more embodied processing.

And so the idea is, if we think that the embodied processing is important, then we would want to have that be similar. to watching other people. Right. Right. And so the more familiar we get them with a person, then the more of that they have.

What about for animals? Can you do the same thing for watching centipedes? Yeah. Okay, so an interesting study was when they brought in, when they had a human watch a monkey, a dog, or a human make actions. And they found that for all of those, if you were watching the person or animal eat,

you activated your mirror neurons. Okay? Okay. Because that's common to everything. Because that's common. We can do that. But if it was something like the human speaking versus the monkey making vocalizations

versus the dog barking, you would activate your mirror neuron system for the first two, but not for the dog barking. Not for the barking. Yeah, because that's just so different. Huh. Something we can't do. But do you think we could train ourselves?

Yes. So crazy cat ladies have systems in their brains that, you know, tract them yelling and things like that. Yes. So I actually gave a talk on this at Disney animation, and people were shocked. They were like, what do you mean? We know how to do that all. And they started showing me how they can actually bark exactly like a dog. Wow.

Okay. But they're experts. They're trained in this. Exactly. That's right. But it probably still has its limits. So, for example, there is this theory about the snake. If you've heard about this, I think it's an interesting theory.

So the snake is the extreme other. It moves in a way that we can probably never replicate, right? And so probably we don't embody it the same way. And so the theory is that that's why in many cultures around the world, the snake becomes either the deity or the devil. I've not heard of that theory. Okay. So yeah, so these powerful cosmic figures are ones that don't map onto our representation.

patients of our bodies. Right. Yeah. What about, isn't the octopus the extreme other in some sense? Oh, right. It has a very different neural system than we do. Yeah, that's true. But it's less seen, right?

I mean, how many times you see it? No, that's true. But have people thought of putting the octopus in an fMRI and trying to? It sounds hard, but. Not that I've heard of. But you do also have, like, you know, Ursula from. Sure. Right, where it's also kind of the meaning.

They put her eyes on her, you know. It's not a very realistic representation. And, okay, the other thing I remember is that you've also done work on creativity and human creativity. And is this an outgrowth of the work on embodied cognition? No, it's very separate, actually. Okay. Lay it on us. What have you thought about creativity?

Okay. So this work is basically looking at the interactions between the left hemisphere and right hemisphere. So you've probably heard that the right hemisphere, is, you know, the emotional, artistic hemisphere, right? That's what a lot of people attribute to the right hemisphere. And the left hemisphere just kind of sucks, right? It's your mathematical, your verbal, your... I can be using it.

It's not art. But if someone asked you, are you a right hemisphere, left hemisphere person, you would rather say you're right, right, that's the cool hemisphere, right? The cool hemisphere, yes, certainly. The nerdy hemisphere and the cool hemisphere. Right, exactly, right. So, however, so in popular culture, the right hemisphere is your creative brain, right? However, in the 70s, Joe Bogan had this theory that creativity comes not just from the right hemisphere,

but an interaction between left hemisphere processing, which is this more serial, more localized, more fast processing. And so an interaction between the left hemisphere with the right hemisphere. hemisphere, which is this more visual spatial, this more drawn out, long-term processing, gestalt processing. And it's that interaction of having both of those processing going on at the same time that leads to creativity, not just one versus the other. That makes sense. So we did a series of studies to test that, and basically we supported that hypothesis.

I mean, how much does that help us understand where ideas come from, right? I mean, it's a, it's a, it's an interaction between things. Is there something about that interaction that we can pinpoint? Yeah, I mean, that's the more difficult question, right? So we do know from a bunch of psychology studies that, you know, thinking about a problem from different perspectives is really important. Thinking about a problem for a long time with a lot of focus and then taking a break. Okay.

Is really important, right? And can we attribute that to our subconscious? still chugging along at it? Exactly. And we know that the aha moment, these kinds of creative moments, come from a lot of subconscious processing. So oftentimes when you're doing this non-creative processing,

you'll know exactly where you are in the problem-solving. You'll say, I need five more minutes, and then I'll have the answer. Whereas with these creative aha moments, someone will ask you, how close are you to the solution? And you'll say, I have no idea. Wait a second. I got it.

Right. And so, yeah, it's a lot of, it's a lot more of this unconscious processing along with the conscious processing. So do people from Silicon Valley come and ask your advice on how to become more creative and things like that? I mean, we, we have some steps that, like, when I teach a class and we do like this workshop on creative ways to solve problems. But no one from Silicon Valley is. Not yet. Yeah. You need a better agent, probably. All right, so to sort of wrap things up, let's think about the broader picture here.

I mean, I half casually said, you know, neuroscience is still in a state where we're not really sure about anything. But you're the expert. What do you think about our current understanding of how the brain works and how it connects to the body overall and the prospects? You know, how long will it take before we really nail some of these things? down and what is what is most exciting things that we should be looking forward to in the future? Yeah, I mean, I think what it means by what you mean by nailing it down. I think we're getting closer and closer to understanding enough to be able to help people in different situations, understanding enough to know what kinds of cognitive processing are useful

and helpful to society and the self versus ones that are probably not. I mean, that's pretty good. That's pretty good, right? I think, you know, the goal for any neuroscientist is to have a comprehensive understanding of the brain. I think we're a long way off from that. But, you know, I don't know if that's absolutely necessary to do all the other stuff that we need to do to just help move society forward. Right. And to help people with problems get better.

There is the human brain initiative, right? And that's just, is that mostly concerned with mapping the connections between the neurons? Yes, for the most part it is, which is not what we really do here. Would it even be helpful for you to have such a map? Without an understanding of the algorithm, it's difficult to do much without it. I think knowing the algorithm is more important than the map. I've heard people analogize it to like it's literally like having a map of the city, but not knowing why anyone is going down a road for one reason or another.

So you don't understand the economic life of the city. Right. Sure. I mean, it's good knowledge to have, right? It's helpful. Yeah. Just like the DNA sequence is good to know, right? But it's not enough.

Are there tools that are better than fMRI that are hopefully coming down the pike? Yeah, I mean, so MRI has its limits, so you can't move your head while you're inside the scanner. Okay. That's a limit, yes. A huge limit. It's loud and scary for some people, right? If you have any kind of metallic thing in your body. you can't do it.

So is there anything better? Not yet. What do you think about brain computer interfaces? Yeah. I mean, I think they're great for people who, you know, have lost parts of their body and who need some kind of prosthetic to do something for them. I think they're amazing. Are you thinking about like robot soldiers and stuff?

No, I'm thinking about implants into our heads that will let us access our emails without us smartphone. That's what I want to have Sunday. You want to have that? I do. Really? I think it's kind of inevitable, so I'm just planning for it. I think most people are hoping ways to unplug. Well, I would hope that I'd be able to unplug. Yeah, I guess maybe that's the downside. Like, what if there's no off switch to it? Right, right, right. You're getting every single like advertisement come at you. I know that there are companies now that will, you know, put gear on your head, a rig, right, that will try to read some of the activity in your brain, it's very crude because it's outside your skull.

There's a big layer in between. And that's a long way. I'm not trying to give the impression that I overhyped the idea of literally implanting something into your skull. That sounds much harder. Maybe it'll never work. Well, but they are starting to do that with people who have prosthetics, right? Uh-huh.

I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So that's, it is being done, and that's a very good reason to do it. For downloading email, I'm not sure. That's great. I mean, there's just so much bacteria you can get from life. But there's also, I mean, the work that you're doing in embodied cognition, is that going to be helpful to that kind of thing?

If you're really, I mean, at some level, someday we'll try to, presumably if you have prosthetics, you want to make them more and more like parts of your body. Right. And ideally, you'll have sensory signals that are going to your brain, so you can embody that, right? Right. Yeah. So I think that having that kind of system where you also are getting feet,

from the prosthetic is also going to be very important. It seems like there's going to be, I mean, I'm a physicist, so I still like physics, but there's a lot of exciting things going on in neuroscience. Yeah, for sure. The year-by-year changes are quite impressive. Yeah, I would agree. And, you know, it's kind of nice because I think as a physicist you're also feeling this, but there's part of neuroscience that's becoming kind of like a humanity, right?

Which is very philosophical and, you know, interacting with linguistics and with, psychology and with people processing, right? And I think there's parts of physics that have become like this as well. And it's beautiful to be in a field like that. I totally agree. And I was trying to refrain from asking you to define consciousness or anything like that. That's not your thing, right? Not so much, but I mean, that's a whole other hour. Right. I mean, many working neuroscientists, I think that people on the street maybe get the misimpression that that's what neuroscientists do. They sit around arguing about what consciousness is. But there's a lot still to be done in what Chalmers called the easy problem of consciousness, right? Which is like just how the brain

gets through the day. Forget about, you know, thinking of itself and getting experiences of the redness of red, but, you know, how we see things and react to them. And that's probably part of where the embodied cognition paradigm is trying to figure things out. Yes, I think so. That's the goal. Lisa Ziza. Thank you. Thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you. Thank you.