Modern WisdomConsidering Consciousness | Dr Heather Berlin | Modern Wisdom Podcast 146
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
130 min read · 25,691 words- 0:00 – 0:48
Cold open: Why believing in free will changes your behavior
- HBHeather Berlin
But, you know, the studies show that when you tell people they don't have free will, like when you tell them about these neuroscience studies and then you test them after, they're more likely to behave unethically and to cheat on an exam.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- HBHeather Berlin
So, the illusion of free will is actually very adaptive. We've evolved to have this very strong sense of our control over our own agency for a reason. Because it helps us interact in social environments, right? If we know that we have control, if we think we have control of our actions and we are responsible for our actions, then we're going to behave in ways that are socially appropriate. If your, you know, if you think, "Well, it doesn't matter anyway. My brain's deciding." You know, I could just, like, kill this person and say, "My brain made me do it," right? So, the strong illusion of free will, it, it evolved for... It has a purpose.
- 0:48 – 2:36
Meet Heather Berlin: mapping consciousness and the unconscious mind
- CWChris Williamson
I'm joined by the lovely Heather Berlin. Heather, welcome to the show.
- HBHeather Berlin
Hi. Thanks for having me.
- CWChris Williamson
Pleasure to have you on today, talking about your daughter's stickers just behind you.
- HBHeather Berlin
(laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
They look good. I think they, they really-
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... they really add something to the room.
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah. It's kind of like those cool tattoos that are, like, the little ones that are randomly, you know, dispersed, and it's just, it's that cool kind of look. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Is that the same thing that happens when you have a child? They just start adding little flavor of personality into all of the rooms all over the house?
- HBHeather Berlin
Pretty much. Pretty much, yeah. They slowly take over your life, and that's symbolic of that.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- HBHeather Berlin
So, yeah. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I love it. Um, so why don't you tell us what it is that you do? What do you spend your days thinking about and, and working on?
- HBHeather Berlin
Okay. So, uh, I am a cognitive neuroscientist and psychologist, um, and I'm... I mean, fundamentally, the kind of driving force in my career has been trying to understand the fundamental question of how the physical brain creates our subjective awareness, so basically the neural basis of consciousness. Um, but, but I also got really interested in the neural basis of all of these unconscious processes that are motivating our behavior, because much of what we do, the decisions we make, our behaviors are being dictated by things that are happening outside of our awareness, and we're only consciously aware of a very small bit of what's actually happening. We often make up these, like, post hoc explanations about why we do things, but these are not necessarily the real reasons, so, you know, we have a narrative that we tell ourselves. Um, so I'm interested in both the kind of, how the physical brain creates our conscious experience and our subjective states as well as the unconscious processes that are, that are motivating us and explaining how we behave.
- 2:36 – 4:44
Defining consciousness: subjective experience and the limits of measurement
- CWChris Williamson
Wow. So, we've got a lot that we can delve into today. We've had a lot of discussions recently about sort of purpose and meaning in life and, and things like that, but I guess at an even more base level, the fact that we are able to be conscious, the fact that we're beings that can kind of consider our own existence sits before all of that, right?
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah. I mean, you know, I think it was Carl Sagan who said, like, we are a way for the, you know, universe, for matter to know itself, right? Because it's basically matter that's organized itself in such a way that it, it can, you know, have subjective states. It can try to understand itself and its place in the universe. It's pretty amazing. Um, but it's very fundamental. I mean, when we talk about consciousness, we don't need language for it. We don't need a sense of self. Um, it's really just pure subjective experience, so like, you know, um, tasting something sweet or, you know, seeing the color red or, or smelling a rose. Um, and other animals have it. We, you know, assume they do, because they have similar hardware than we, that we have. They act as if, you know, they... For example, if you step on a cat's paw, it'll pull away and maybe yell. It acts like it's experiencing pain. We'll never know 100% for sure, but then again, I don't know that you're conscious, right? I mean, I assume you are. But, um, so we just define it... Basically, consciousness is first person subjective experience. You know, I just know that I have it. And even when we do experiments, I mean, the only way to really tell is the person has to report. Like, did you see it or not? You know, were you consciously aware of that stimuli or not? They have to self-report. Um, and we can make some predictions, like with babies, you know, where they look might be what they're attending to or what they're conscious of. But again, it's really, um, this first person's subjective experience that we're trying to understand.
- CWChris Williamson
So, that's our definition of consciousness that we're working with today?
- HBHeather Berlin
Right. Yeah, it's pretty, that's pretty much it.
- CWChris Williamson
Good.
- HBHeather Berlin
Um, and then there's different levels, you know. Then there's like... Then you add in language or self-awareness, and there are ways to sort of elaborate this subjective experience. But fundamentally, what we're trying to explain is just how a physical piece of matter could, um, produce this sort of subjectivity, these feelings.
- 4:44 – 8:58
Animal consciousness and Integrated Information Theory (IIT)
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So, how low down the animal kingdom does this go? Do we presume that insects are conscious? Is there a, a line somewhere that we hit?
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah. So, there's been a lot of debate and discussion about this, um, topic. I was... It was a year or two ago, I was at a meeting which was all about animal consciousness. You know, what, what do we know? And so, look, we can take it down to, you know, a fish. A fish, for example, if you give it, like, a noxious stimuli, you know, something that might cause them pain or that's, you know, offensive, you'll see they might go towards the stimuli, then they get a sense of it and they'll move away, right? Something that, say, causes pain. But then if you give them something like a type of anesthesia that kind of blocks their pain receptors, then they don't move away from the, the noxious stimuli. So, the idea with this is that they were feeling something, right? Because when you block their... You give them kind of anesthesia, then they no longer retract from that stimuli, right? So, we assume there's some sort of feeling there. Um, and now how far down the animal kingdom, it's hard to say. For this, we really need a, sort of a fundamental, overarching theory of consciousness. So, for example, one theory that is pretty popular is called the integrated information theory of consciousness, which basically says that any system that has a high degree of, degree of integrated differentiated information will have the property of consciousness. It's like a fundamental property of the universe, like gravity. So, the brain happens to be one of those systems where when we say integrated, it means, like, if one neuron fires, it will directly affect whether the neuron next to it fires, right? There's integration of information rather than-... say, a pixel in your phone goes out, like it's not gonna affect the one next to it, right? So that's not integrated. So we talk about high degree of integrated information. Um, and so the brain happens to be one of those systems, and then basically there's a, a, a mathematical calculation called phi which you can calculate the amount of differentiated integrated information of a system, and that predicts how conscious it is. So if we go along with that through your consciousness, we can look at like a, a bee or, you know, a fetus and try to make a measure of how much phi it has, um, and see. But Aldroo- this theory basically, it's kind of pan-psychic. It means anything. Like a light switch has a bit of information, right? It's either on or off, so in some sense it would have a degree- a bit of phi.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh.
- HBHeather Berlin
So it gets very like philosophical. Um, so that's just one theory. You know, so again, it depends on the theory. Um, you know, I think you have to have some sort of nervous system to have consciousness. Like, you know, some people talk about plant consciousness and things like that, and I just don't think that they have necessarily subjective states or any kind of feeling. But I mean, I could be wrong. It might feel like something to be a plant that like responds to light and starts growing towards it, you know? Um...
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. I think the (clears throat) sort of the anecdotal quote that I've heard from Sam Harris is that-
- HBHeather Berlin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... consciousness within any being is if there is something that it is like to be that being, if there is something that it is like to be a plant or if there is something that it is like-
- HBHeather Berlin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... to be a bee. Because we know with pretty good certainty that there is nothing that it is like to be a rock, or like there's nothing really-
- HBHeather Berlin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... that it is like to be this table, apart from maybe when it was still alive when it was a tree. Um, but yeah-
- HBHeather Berlin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) So is that, is that kind of touching on, on what we're talking about there? Or is that, is that coming from a different...
- HBHeather Berlin
(sighs) I mean, that's one way you could look at it, but you know, some might argue that, say, the interactions, you know, between, um, you know, the molecules within the rock or have some level of, you know, phi. I mean, there's different, you know, levels of this argument.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- HBHeather Berlin
And what does it mean to be like something? I mean, how would we ever know if it is like anything to be, let's say, a, a plant, right? So we don't know because it responds to its environment. It might just respond reflexively, and we don't know that there's anything t- it's like to be that. So it's a, it's an interesting definition, but it's very hard to then test it, to then, you know, prove like, well, is it like something to be a bee? I don't know.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- HBHeather Berlin
How do we know? You know?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. How much of your work is-
- 8:58 – 12:30
Theory vs experiment: studying disorders to understand brain mechanisms
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... sort of theoretical and how much of it is experimental?
- HBHeather Berlin
Um, well, I mean, all the experiments are based on some theory, right? So you have like a theory and then you have a hypothesis and you do the experiment, so, so much of it is, is trying to understand. I mean, I, I like to ask these big questions. When it comes to doing research, you know, it's much more practical endeavor. And especially working most of my career at, um, a medical school in department of psychiatry, you know, a lot of it is... So, so as I said, some of my research is interested in that overarching question, but a lot of it is more practical in the sense of what's the neural basis of, um, different psychiatric disorders or in particular symptoms within psychiatric disorders, and how can we come up with novel treatments, um, for those symptoms, whether it's impulsivity or compulsive behavior? Um, so it's mapping out, um, doing sort of these correlations between underlying brain mechanisms and dysfunction and then trying to kind of fix that either with drugs or cognitive, um, treatments and, and the like. Um, so that's more practical aspects of my research. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That's so fascinating that you've got this subjective experience which is anxiety or happiness or depression or a thought pattern or whatever it might be. And (clears throat) the thing that kind of blows my mind is that the way that we feel something inside of our heads is, is one particular experience, but that actually manifests as something physically happening within the brain, right? It's a particular series of neurons firing-
- HBHeather Berlin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... but we don't feel it like as series of neurons firing. We see a elephant when we think of an elephant, or we imagine-
- HBHeather Berlin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... a smell when we think of a smell, or we can change our, you know, our s- emotional state when we think of that. That, that sort of the, the place where those two things meet to me seems so crazy.
- HBHeather Berlin
Well, I mean, I think that's also why there's m- so much stigma around mental illness because, you know, let's say you, um, I don't know, you have like a bacterial infection. You're like, "Oh, there's this bacter. I'll take this antibiotic, and that will help it." Or you break a bone and, you know, you take whatever to fix the bone. But when the brain is sort of broken or not working properly, um, we just don't see it as like an, a dysfunction of an organ. We see it as a dysfunction of a human being, right? And because it's just these subjective states, and people often forget that it's really, it's tied to a physical mechanism, right? So if there's a dysfunction in, let's say, your way of thinking, it's a problem related to the brain somehow. And we don't always know exactly how, but, but, you know, with enough time and research, we can figure that out, and then ultimately treatment can be targeted at the brain itself. Um, you know, talk- I think talk therapy like cognitive behavioral therapy and the like does work because our thoughts can also work to change our brain, you know? It's this interactive system. So you can either work sort of from the bottom up or the top down. Um, but either way it's both, you know? It's just two sides of the s- same coin.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. So can you talk about some of the particular conditions that you, uh, think there's good for like good opportunities to, um, to make inroads on treating people?
- 12:30 – 14:33
Psychedelic medicine’s resurgence: what’s new and why it’s promising
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah. Um, well, I mean, with, I think any disorder, whether neurological or psychiatric, there's always some room for improvement or, you know, people can change themselves. They can change their, their brain. Some disorders are a little bit more amenable to treatment than others, right? And it, and it varies their individual differences. So for example, personality disorders are a little bit harder to treat. In, in fact, much harder to treat than some other disorders, because they seem to be very, um, fundamental and like very much, you know, children who are born with a certain temperament tend to... You can predict kind of how their personality is going to be the rest of their life. And it's pretty sort of hardwired in, um, and much harder to change than, say, treatment for a phobia, for example. Um, you know, if you have, let's say if you're flying, there are certain, like, behavioral and cognitive techniques we can use to help treat that. Um, and it's going to be pretty amenable to treatment in many cases. Whereas treating, say, um, like a narcissistic personality disorder is much harder to treat, uh, because it's just sort of part of your DNA. It's part of the way you're wired. Um, but I do see a lot of potential right now in terms of novel treatments, um, in the use of psychedelics, um, like psychedelic medicine, to treat. So, for example, MDMA or, like, ecstasy to treat PTSD and other anxiety disorders, um, ketamine to treat depression, um, psilocybin or mushrooms to treat certain types of anxiety. Um, and we're looking at other disorders as well, so including depression. So I think a lot of these novel treatments are pretty exciting. I mean, there hasn't been a lot of movement in the world of psychiatry for, you know, I would say half a century. But we're starting to make some... you know, except for, like, minor tweaks and things, you know, SSRI. Okay, this is a little bit more selective serotonin, one, this is slightly more selective, but, you know, nothing really major breakthroughs. So I think we're, we're at the precipice of making those big breakthroughs now.
- 14:33 – 17:00
What psychedelics do in the brain: ego, rumination, and network ‘openness’
- CWChris Williamson
I get you. So that would be really interesting to get your stance on psychedelics and how or why they work. Because from a subjective-
- HBHeather Berlin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... experience, you take a particularly strong psychedelic, you have a subjective experience of seeing something, being somewhere, but what's happening neurologically at the level of the brain must be completely different. I don't know what's actually happening. So can you take us through what happens if I take a therapeutic dose of MDMA or if I take a therapeutic-
- HBHeather Berlin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... dose of psilocybin?
- HBHeather Berlin
So it's different for the different drugs. So each drug has a different mechanism, um, and we're still in the very early stages. So there are different theories about why the different drugs work. Um, one, let's say I'll take, um, a psilocybin, which works on the serotonin receptors in the brain. Um, but one thing that it does, as well as like LSD and other psychedelics, is it tends to, in a very general sense, um, open you up in many ways. So parts of the brain that are involved in your sense of self and your ego, um, you... tend to kind of decrease in activation. So you tend to feel like one with everything, right? You kind of get this disillusion of your sense, of your ego. And a lot of these parts of brain, like the prefrontal cortex, when they're really highly active or involved in like rumination and anxiety, or like when you're depressed and you have these thoughts that you just can't get out of your head, these negative thoughts, and it's kind of helped break that cycle. Um, it also helps you kind of make the... We see a lot of novel activation across these long-range networks in the brain where a lot of the time there's a lot of local communication, whereas now it kind of opens things up. So you're thinking in a completely different way. But... So there's a lot of, you know, we look at what's happening at the hardware in the brain, but, but I think a lot of the therapeutic effects of this kind of, these kind of drugs is, is the psychological effect. Because you only need to take it one or two times, like with a gu- guided with a therapist, for it to have this long-lasting effect. Whereas other drugs, let's say an SSRI that you take for depression or sero- selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, you ha- it always has to be in your system. Like it only works while it's in your system, and as soon as it wears off, that's why you have to take it every day, right? So they're saying, okay, it's clearly the effect of the drug itself, whereas with the psychedelics, it seems to be the psychological experience that's profoundly, like shifts your consciousness or your perspective and has these long-term, um, long-term impact.
- 17:00 – 19:54
Why one session can matter: one-trial learning and lasting perspective shifts
- CWChris Williamson
How do you, as a neuroscientist, look at that situation? I have a particular experience. I've not drilled or greased a particular thought groove a lot. I've not wrapped tons of myelin around one particular way of being, and yet-
- HBHeather Berlin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... this particular experience has been so profound or changing that it's caused everything downstream to, to alter. What's that, what's that mean?
- HBHeather Berlin
(laughs) Well, what happen... Okay, so like when you have, when you're talking about, you know, actual changes in the figi- physical structure of the brain, you're talking about things like long-term potentiation, or like when you're learning something and you develop a new pathway in the brain, you know, by like rehearsing it over and over again, right? And that doesn't seem to happen with this. Um, but there is also something, you know, called one-trial learning. So like often this happens with something like a very negative experience, and it's an adapt-, it's adaptive because let's say, you know, back in the caveman days, you know, you're foraging through the forest, you get really violently ill by eating a particular berry, right? So for survival, it makes sense to like really remember that berry and that experience and never go near it again.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
So basically, you know, you get sick from it one time, and that's all it takes for you to, like, avoid it. And, you know, and we know that from now. Like if you ever get food poisoning from something, you know, you won't touch that food for a while-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- HBHeather Berlin
... and that's adaptive, right? So you learn it, um, and, and so with the drugs, it seems like it's a very profound one-time experience, right?... that might shift the way that you think about things. And then over time, that shift in your thought process will start to develop new pathways and new ways of thinking, right? But it's such a profound, you know, it has to be li- such a heightened level of experience, whether positive or negative, that it can really shift how you think, which then can go on to create these new long-term pathways.
- CWChris Williamson
That's so fascinating, the evolutionary basis for it as well, and it makes total sense. You've got this very, very intense experience. Like, you either want to have it happen again, you find this unbelievable kill, or you, you come up with a new way of taking down a, a particular prey or whatever it might be, or, you know, the negative side, you do something that you don't ever, ever, ever want to do again.
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That's so cool.
- HBHeather Berlin
I mean, it works. And so we're kind of like hacking into the sort of, you know, caveman brain in a sense. Um, and again, it can work, I guess, li- like when, when people have a traumatic experience, right, that also can stick with them, right? Something very negative happens, it's, you know, in ... A soldier in war and they see, like, their friend almost dies or, or does die, you know, that can have such a profound effect that it causes all these negative psychological effects after. So, I think with the psychedelics, it's trying to take that and having a very, something very intense positive, you know, experience that then sticks with you over time and helps change your brain in a positive way rather than a negative way, say, with like PTSD.
- 19:54 – 23:14
MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD: accessing and reconsolidating trauma
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. So, uh, what about MDMA? What's the ... Do you have an understanding of the reasoning for that?
- HBHeather Berlin
So with MDMA, it's more about, um, and with the psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, which it's called, it's a, uh, it's about ... So often there's this sort of traumatic experience, like let's say with PTSD. And then our brain, we put up these kind of protective mechanisms because if it kept coming to the surface and we had to think about it all the time, it would be maladaptive. It interferes with our daily life. So we suppress it. But yet, it goes on to affect our behavior, right? So, you know, we're, we're anxious or hypervigilant or having nightmares, right? And one way to, to sort of resolve that is to gain conscious access of that unconscious memory that might be suppressed, let's say, and reintegrate it into the brain in a more neutral way so it's not intimately connected with the negative emotion. So, you know, for instance, I don't know, let's say it's a ... I mean, somebody was like sexually assaulted, you know? You could be able to like think about that assault and really think about it in your mind, but kind of separate it from the terrible emotions that it, it brings up. So with the MDMA, it's a way to allow people to re-remember these traumatic experiences, um, in a neutral way, and in fact in a way where they're feeling very calm and, and p- pleasurable so that it can kind of re-associate these, these memories with, with more at least neutral emotions so that they're not constantly, every time they're triggered, it triggers a negative emotion, right? So, it's, it's about kind of restructuring the brain and also allowing you to access unconscious processes that when you're in your sort of normal defensive h- state, you're not even allow- they don't even come to the surface, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- HBHeather Berlin
So it's sort of a way to access the unconscious and then reintegrate the memories, um, in a more neutral way. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I keep on seeing so much about psilocybin, MDMA, and Tim Ferriss is donating tons and tons of money to MDMA therapy and, and psilocybin therapy because that's how much he ... How, how much sort of future and how much, uh, efficacy he thinks is in these treatments. So, it's so mad that something that's a party drug that's seen as people as this kind of raver's drug from Woodstock or Creamfields or whatever it might be-
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... to now be something that's potentially changing the lives of soldiers with PTSD or, uh, people that are addic- have got addictions and dependencies or people that have had traumatic childhoods. It's so crazy.
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Again, but it's not just, you know, it's, it's with, doing it with somebody who's trained to help you, let's say, gain access to these memories, um. I think just doing the drug itself without having that guided psychological experience doesn't have the same impact.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) You know the ...
- HBHeather Berlin
So we're kind of using it in conjunction, you know, with the therapy.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Or, or else everyone that was walking out of Creamfields or Ultra Festival in Miami would just be complete zen-
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... like absolute no, no, um, inhibitions left. Everything would be working fine, right?
- HBHeather Berlin
Everything great, Kumbaya and everything, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Come to a music festival, get a brain MOT, come out and you're working, everything's working brilliant.
- HBHeather Berlin
Everything's great. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
So, um, I want to kind of really try and-
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... dig into what it means that we have conscious experience.
- HBHeather Berlin
Mm-hmm.
- 23:14 – 30:31
How perception becomes conscious: visual pathways, feedback loops, and hallucinations
- CWChris Williamson
What it means that we can think of things and that we can remember things and that they appear in our consciousness. Can you, can you kind of try and take us through how that is occurring within the brain?
- HBHeather Berlin
So what, what it means to have, to be e- conscious or what ...
- CWChris Williamson
So I am, I'm able to picture something else. I'm able to picture an elephant on my desk in front of me, and in my mind I can think of an elephant on the desk. Like I, I don't understand how my brain is able to make that elephant appear in my mind or when I close my mind, I can think of something which is m- a past memory. I don't understand how it, these particular processes, a bunch of synapses firing, actually creates a landscape or a sense of a smell or any of this sort of stuff.
- HBHeather Berlin
I mean, hon- to be honest, that is the big question, is why is it that these sort of neurochemicals slushing around and electrical impulses happening in these neurons can create these subjective experiences, like the image of an elephant. We kn- we do know that, for example, when you ... So there's been a lot of work on, in the visual system in the brain, right, how we see something. And for example when you see, say, a sunset, you know, we see a particular pattern of activation in the visual cortex of your brain. There's parts of the visual cortex that are involved in, um, color perception and movement, um, um, and each like aspect of let's say a, a visual scene you're seeing, we can divide it up...... um, into different sort of segments within, let's say, the visual cortex or the visual stream, let's say, str- stream of information.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
Um, and we see ... And the reason I study, for example, people with psychiatric or neurological disorders is because it helps us get, gives us insight, like when something's broken, into actually how it actually works. Like, you know, when your car is running fine, you don't really know. But when there's a problem, you're right, then you're trying to figure out, okay, is it the carburetor? Whatever. I don't know a lot about cars, but-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- HBHeather Berlin
... you know, like when something is broken, you can understand how it works a little bit better.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
So like with the visual system, for example, some people get a brain lesion, um, and they can no longer, like, see color, right? So they can see movement and, and, and, you know, but they just, things are in black and white. Or there's another part of the visual cortex, if you get damage, like, um, movement is taken away. So they see everything in kind of like staccato. So like, like film, um, you know, kind of like cuts.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
Right? And so that helps us understand how it's all working. So we understand a bit about like when information comes into the ... So, you know, you get your, your, your retina stimulated. Then we know it goes to like the, the, the thalamus, which is kind of a relay station in the brain, which then sends the information to the visual cortex. And then it's not conscious yet. Then it has to come back up through to the prefrontal cortex, and you need these kind of feedback loops until it comes into conscious perception. Um, so we're learning about like what is happening in the brain when thing, when something, when a certain stimuli becomes conscious at the moment we're consciously aware of it, what needs to be in place. So we're looking at for the, the minimal what's, um, sufficient, you know, necessary amount of activation for any conscious events to occur.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
What's interesting is that when you imagine, say, a sunset, you get the- the same areas of brain activation in those vis- visual cortices as when you're actually seeing it.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
Um, and there's only, there's other sort of circuits in our brain that signal to us whether that is coming in externally or being generated internally.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
So we understand the difference between imagining something or not. But certain people, let's say, with schizophrenia, they lose that distinction. So they think, for example, the voices which are really coming internally, you know, you have that little voice in your head, but you know it's you, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
But they lose that distinction. So they think, "Somebody's talking to me." You know, it's coming from externally or, you know, hallucinations, it's really ... Normally, you know it's just my imagination. But when you lose that distinction, let's say you're on a hallucinogenic drug or you have schizophrenia, you think it's really out there, right? So our brain, it's all happening in our head, really. I mean, you know, and, and what we perceive in our head doesn't necessarily correlate to reality. You know, we're, we're making these approximations all the time. Some of it, you know, is better correlated than others. Um, but it's all in our imagination, really.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- HBHeather Berlin
You know, some of it, it gets primed by stimuli coming in, but it's still a recreation of what, you know, we think is happening. Um ...
- CWChris Williamson
I re- I'm reminded-
- HBHeather Berlin
So it's
- 30:31 – 39:06
Thoughts, suppression, and impulse control: OCD, meditation, and ‘leaning in’
- HBHeather Berlin
...First of all, there are different circuits in the brain. No, I, I've, I'm actually writing a book now about impulse control. You know, how to control our, our impulses, our urges, our behaviors, right? So somebody who... There are people out there who, for example, can't control body movements. People with tics, right? Tic disorder, where they have these uncontrollable urges to move, let's say, you know, a body part, and they just can't seem to suppress that. So there are times when we have an urge to do something physically, but we are able to then suppress it. Um, the thing, the brain is always active. It's always on, right? It's always humming away in the background. And, you know, at certain points, thoughts pop up, right? And we can either kind of suppress them or, but we can't stop them from just popping up. And so the way the motor system works is slightly different, right? So it's not like randomly, like the arm will start to move, or, you know. Um, we have more, it's sort of called like conscious volition, you know, over the, that, um. But our thoughts are, are different, and so we can't... Like I often say to people with, say, OCD, uh, obsessive-compulsive disorder, they have these obsessive thoughts they can't stop. Now, you might not be able to stop the thoughts themselves, but you can, you can control the behavior. So usually, you have an obsession, like, I'm gonna catch. Like right now, I don't know, there's the coronavirus, right? That's really scary. And somebody might just be constantly thinking about it and anxious about it. And in order to relieve the anxiety, they wash their hands, but then they're washing their hands, you know, 10 times a day. So part of the treatment is, well, you can control the behavior. You can't control the thought from coming. So when you have the thought, we have to not do the behavior, and over time, the thought will eventually start to subside because basically what you wanna do is habituate to the anxiety. So, um, when you wash your hands, you're basically getting rid of the anxiety and not, and not... And so the cycle keeps happening. But if you force yourself to sit with the anxiety, not wash your hands, eventually the thoughts will start to subside.
- CWChris Williamson
Ah.
- HBHeather Berlin
So yeah, we have more control over our physical behavior, in most cases, than we do our thoughts, but we can control how we respond or react to our thoughts, and we can reframe our thoughts and, you know, contextualize them and things. But it's very hard to just stop them from naturally coming up. And that's a lot of what meditation is. It's like allowing the thoughts to come up and just observe them and kind of be separated from them or a bit distant and not having to, like emotionally react to them.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Yeah, the, I've had a number of discussions recently, one being with Aubrey Marcus about not fixating or suppressing when something arises. So that equanimity, right? That just allowance that it is, and then it goes, and then it is, and it goes, um.
- HBHeather Berlin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And that's certainly something that I know my friends who are significantly more experienced meditators than me sort of talk about, uh, enjoying on a day-to-day basis. What, when-
- HBHeather Berlin
Um, oh, and one other thing. Oh, I was just gonna say one other thing about that.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- HBHeather Berlin
The more... Counterintuitively, so the more you try to suppress it, the more it's likely to come up. So like with the elephant-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
... if I'm like, "Don't think about an elephant. Don't think about it."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- HBHeather Berlin
All you're gonna do is think about an elephant. So the idea is to kind of, in a way, go into it. Be like, if you're afraid of something, like, and s- or, or you're getting anxious, like if you're about to have a panic attack, be like, "Okay, let's see, how anxious can I get?" You know, "Let's... Is that all you have? Like, let's make it more."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
Because the more you try to not be anxious, the more anxious you're gonna get. The more you try to not think of an elephant, the more you'll think of it. So it's like, let's go, let's move into it. You know, be like, "Hey, let's think about the best elephant you could possibly think of."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
And all sorts of, you know, ways to think of it. And after a while, you're just gonna get so sick of thinking of an elephant, you're not gonna wanna think of it anymore.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- HBHeather Berlin
So it's like kind of counterintuitive how you have to stop suppressing in order to get rid of something.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think that that's reflected when people have challenging experiences in psychedelic trips? So a lot of the time-
- HBHeather Berlin
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... people will say, "If you see a big snake or something scary, don't run away from it, run toward it." Is that a symbolic version of what we're talking about here?
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah, pretty similar. Exactly, 'cause the more you try to run away, the worse it's gonna get. So you should just go into it, and then eventually it'll dissipate. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
It's so hilarious that you've got a, a symbolic representation in a psychedelic state of something which is much more common and usually traveled by people in a normal day-to-day state, right? You've got the thought that's coming up-
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... and you're running away from it, and that's actually making it worse. And now that manifests as a dragon or a snake or a guy in a hooded jacket or whatever it might be.
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah, that's often what we do with kids, like with OCD. We call, we kind of make a metaphor. Like, we'll call it the OCD monster, and you know, like, that thought is just the OCD monster coming, and you know, you can't be scared of it. You just have to, like, confront it. And so it's kind of similar. I guess therapy with children is like dealing with adults on a psychedelic trip.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- HBHeather Berlin
Although they do say (laughs) , they do say that, actually, there's this great work by Alison Gopnik who's a child psychologist at Berkeley and talks about the, um, baby's brain because the prefrontal cortex doesn't simply develop until like you're 25. But that's normally what filters all the sort of random stimuli coming in 'cause the brain's trying to make sense of it. But that, being a baby, the, the kind of conscious experience of a baby is, is kind of like a psychedelic trip. It's very similar to that. Everything is just like, you know, cool and moving. I don't... You know, I had, you know, kids, and so I see it. Like, they look like they're tripping.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- 39:06 – 49:09
Free will, determinism, and the adaptive illusion of agency
- CWChris Williamson
That was precisely my next question, how much control over our thoughts do we have?
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah. (sighs) It's a hard one. I mean, I...
- CWChris Williamson
I'm asking all the big questions today, Heather.
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
I'm really sorry.
- HBHeather Berlin
Oh, God. Yeah, I know you're gonna push me this hard. No. Um, you know, I, I'm a, I'm of two minds on this, because a lot of the research and the things that I'm interested in are like related to free will, right, and, you know, how much control do we really have. Um, according to neuroscience, you know, basically the brain decides for us and we become consciously aware of that after the fact, right? We can see a build up of brain activation. This goes all the way back to classic experiments by Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, where, you know, he said like, "Press this button whenever you get the urge," and then, um, measured brain activation, and then you could see a build up of brain activation about 350 milliseconds before the person was even consciously aware of their intention to move, right? And so... And now with more modern neuroscience, we can see it up to 10 seconds before a person is even consciously aware, like, for example, whether they're gonna go left or right. You know, if they're gonna make a decision on their own. So, you know, I often say the brain... We don't have free will, but maybe our unconscious does. You know, the brain is deciding, but you are your brain, um, and we're just the last to know about it. So in that sense, I don't think we have a huge amount of control. However, we have evolved the capacity to have self-control. So this prefrontal cortex, like the brake system in the brain. So we have this like urge to do something, and then maybe we have some for- forethought, like, "Maybe that's not the best thing, you know, to do right now." You know, like, I don't know, "I wanna like get naked in the middle of the street." Like, maybe not a good idea, right? So then... (laughs) Not that I've ever had that urge, but, you know, other people often-
- CWChris Williamson
Heather, you're among friends here, it's fine.
- HBHeather Berlin
Okay. (laughs) I can, I can let it all out.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- HBHeather Berlin
It's private, just... This won't go beyond our conversation, um... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- HBHeather Berlin
So... But then, you know, you, you have this, "Okay, maybe I shouldn't do that," and you'll suppress it. But some people, whether they have a brain lesion in the prefrontal cortex, or under-activation, or other kinds of psychiatric illness where they can't control that. So, so I do think that we have evolved the capacity to have self-control, even if we don't have like free will in the classic kind of philosophical sense in that like if everything was happening exactly the same way in your brain, you could've done otherwise, which would mean there's sort of a ghost in the machine controlling things.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
But like, no, I think the machine is controlling things, but the machine has evolved the capacity to have a bit of control over itself. So we do have some control-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- HBHeather Berlin
... within limits. And like also for people in therapy, you know, let's say you, you're a really anxious kind of personality type. With therapy, I can get you to be a little bit less anxious, but you're never gonna be the most relaxed person in the room. It's just, you know. So there's movement within certain biological constraints.
- CWChris Williamson
That's so interesting. I've been... (laughs) Luke, who is a friend that will be listening, I sent him Sam Harris talking about free will on Joe Rogan. I sent him this probably about a year ago from now.
- HBHeather Berlin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And it sent him into a two-week spiral of depression.
- HBHeather Berlin
Oh, wow.
- CWChris Williamson
Because, because he thought that life was essentially meaningless. Um, and I've never felt so bad. I was thinking about it last night. I messaged him today saying, "Hey man, how are you doing? Like, you in work tonight?" Turns out, he isn't. And I was thinking about-
- HBHeather Berlin
Hm.
- CWChris Williamson
... it last night, and I was like, I sent someone one video. It's 40 minutes. Sam Harris really shoves the red pill down everyone's throat about his view on free will. And, um-
- HBHeather Berlin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... it spiraled him into two weeks of depression. I was like, man-
- HBHeather Berlin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... I am, I am so fucking sorry. (laughs)
- HBHeather Berlin
It's powerful, man. You got a powerful tool there, w- tool when you're dealing with people's thoughts and emotions. I mean, it's like planting the seed, and then, you know-... um, but, you know, the studies show that when you tell people they don't have free will, like when you tell them about these neuroscience studies and then you test them after, they're more likely to behave unethically and to cheat on an exam.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- HBHeather Berlin
So, the illusion of free will is actually very adaptive. We've evolved to have this very strong sense of our control over our own agency for a reason. Because it helps us interact in social environments, right? If we know that we have control, if we think we have control of our actions and we are responsible for our actions, then we're going to behave in ways that are socially appropriate. If you're, you know, if you think, "Well, it doesn't matter anyway. My brain's deciding." You know, I could just, like, kill this person and say, "My brain made me do it," right? So, the strong illusion of free will, it, it evolved for ... It has a purpose. And when you break it, you know, it can, it can affect people. Although, listen. This ... A philosopher once said this to me. I think it was John Searle, who's this well-known philosopher. Like, even if you ... If I tell you you don't have free will, you know, is it really gonna change any of your behavior? It's not, because fundamentally the illusion is still existing, right? You know, if I say, like, "Okay, when you see something, you're not really seeing it. It's just, like, these neurons firing in your visual cortex or whatever." You're still getting the perception of seeing the thing, right? So it doesn't change. So the illusion is still there, even if I tell you about it. You get a momentarily, like, you know, there's a crack in your illusion, right? You, like, break the, what is it, the third wall? The fourth wall.
- 49:09 – 1:03:22
Self as a construct: continuity, memory, and ego dissolution
- HBHeather Berlin
... exactly. It's like, the, the example is like if you're in a restaurant, and like, you, the cook, "What do you want to order?" And you just sit there like, "I don't know. There's no free will, like, I can't..." You know? Like ultimately, at some point, the brain just does what it does and it decides. And it's also like telling people like their sense of self, like self is an illusion. Like, it's a construct of the brain. There is no self. Like, it's basically, like your brain when you were three is different than what your brain is now, but you still have this continuity like, "Oh, that was me," right? That person at, whatever, five was me. But really, your sense of self is a construct. It's another perception in the brain that cre- it's created by your memories and things. Like, people who lose their memories lose their sense of self. They don't even know who they are anymore, right? And there's all different sorts of disorders where people have, um, you know, changes in their sense of self. So it's just another process of the brain that's also an illusion. But again, it's so strong that we can't get away from it. There are moments like on psychedelics where you lose your sense of self and you feel this connectedness and it's a very powerful, very positive emotion, um, because a lot of our sense of self has to do with self-consciousness and worrying what other people are thinking and all of that. Um, whereas if you can let go of that, it can be very therapeutic. But-
- CWChris Williamson
What does-
- HBHeather Berlin
... yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
What does a prolonged sense of self look like in the brain? Is that particular neurons wired together? Is that kind of what it actually manifests as? It's a particular route of, of, of neurons that, uh, that tend to f- wire together and fire together?
- HBHeather Berlin
No, I wouldn't say that we found in the brain like a particular, you know, pathway or, you know, of, of that, like, that's where the self is instantiated.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- HBHeather Berlin
There are a couple of key areas in the brain where we think our sense of self, and one has to do with our body awareness, like our sense... 'Cause it's our sense of self and also being a part of this body, right? And those are real- inter-related. So there's certain like key sort of hotspots in the brain where, that help us form our sense of self. Um, there's no kind of one place or one pathway. It's a lot of interconnected pathways-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- HBHeather Berlin
... that give us our sense of, of self. Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
There's a very, there's a very famous, uh, British comedy show, and in it, one of the guys is talking about the fact he's had this broom for 20 years. "I've had this broom for 20 years." And they said, "20 years? I can't believe it. Like how have you, how have you managed to keep it for so long?" And he says, "Yeah, yeah, well it's had 14 new handles and 13 new heads, but I've had this broom for the last 20 years." And that always makes me think about the way that our bodies refresh, right? I think is it seven years? Within the space of seven years, every cell in our body is going to have changed. So it will have been, it'll have died and been replaced and then come back.
- HBHeather Berlin
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
And yet we are the same p- unlike the, unlike the broom for which that was definitely not the case, we are the same person.
- HBHeather Berlin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Which is so wild.
- HBHeather Berlin
But are we? I mean, but are we? (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Well, yeah, are we? Are we? I mean, I'm asking you. Heather, you are the, you are the person that is here to tell us whether or not I'm the same person I was seven years ago.
- HBHeather Berlin
(laughs) You're, there are parts of you that are, there are parts of you that, that, that is the, that is the same person, but much of you is different. And so, you know, in terms of neuroplasticity, in terms of the way your brain is changing, you know, there are certain things that stay fundamental and stable, but who you are is, is really developing and evolving throughout your entire life until your very last day. Like I, I've said this, I said this in my TED Talk as well, like you're a work in progress until your very last breath. You're always changing, you're always evolving, you're always kind of redefining yourself and trying to figure out your identity. You know, like in psychology they talk about all these different stages of development of your identity, but there's never really a point where it's like, "Okay, that's it. Like, we're done."
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- HBHeather Berlin
You know? It's never, okay, it's like evolution. You know, we're all evolving as a species and we're still evolving, right? We haven't just stopped evolving. Like, maybe in, you know, 1,000 years, we're going to be a slightly different species, or 2,000 or 10,000, however slow it's going, but we're still evolving. And that's just like within our own individual lives, we're still changing. You know, if we meet again on this podcast in 20 years, which I'm sure you'll still be doing it in 20 years from now-
- CWChris Williamson
I might.
- HBHeather Berlin
... we will, um, you know, you'll be a bit of a different kind of a person. You'll have had different experiences, your brain will have changed. Um, so again, you'll have a perception of continuity, but, but you, but how much are you really the same? I mean, it's an open-ended question.
- CWChris Williamson
It really is-
- HBHeather Berlin
You won't change.
- CWChris Williamson
... because y- you know, especially a lot of people that go through big life changes and you think, "Well, the person that I am now versus the person that I was seven years ago is so different that the only thing we both have in common is that we've both been in exactly the same spatial location between then and now-
- HBHeather Berlin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... and we have memories from before that point." And that's it, that's all that you share-
- HBHeather Berlin
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... with this person that used to be you.
- HBHeather Berlin
Basically, it's a collection of memories, you know? It's these me- it's this memory storage. I mean, you should have seen me as a teenager. I mean, I (laughs) have no idea who that person was. But, you know, I think it's still me because that's a memory set that I've carried with me. You know? And okay, I've just-
- CWChris Williamson
But it could quite easily have just been someone else, right? It could have been-
- 1:03:22 – 1:05:42
Closing reflections: embracing consciousness + Heather’s upcoming book on control
- HBHeather Berlin
Yep. No, I like that, lean into it. And the other, I mean, the other thing I'll say just about that is that, you know, if, I don't know what your beliefs are or whatever, but this is, you know, the one chance we get of, like, being conscious, like sandwiched between two eternities of nothingness, right? Like, let's try to get as much as we can get out of this experience. All right, you know, we have this limited, this little piece of matter, this brain that limits our ability to sort of understand the world around us. Like, we're seeing it all through this one organ. But whatever it allows us to see or think or contemplate, like, like I wanna experience as much of it as I can, you know, with the good and the bad, right? The further, the greater depth of experience I can have, I mean, if this is my one and only chance to just be conscious and experience things, then I want, like, the fullest gamut of it all. So I choose, you know, non-i- ignorance, and w- with whatever that may come with, um, 'cause that's the fullness of life.
- CWChris Williamson
That's really beautiful. What a wonderful way to finish.
- HBHeather Berlin
Thanks.
- CWChris Williamson
Heather, thank you so much.
- HBHeather Berlin
Thank you.
- CWChris Williamson
Um-
- HBHeather Berlin
Thank you, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... when's your book gonna be done?
- HBHeather Berlin
Oh, that's a good question. Um, so I'm writing it now, and it's due, um, next year. So I'm, I'm hoping, optimistically, it's gonna be the end of next year. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
Amazing.
- HBHeather Berlin
... the working title is The Fine Art of Losing Control.
- CWChris Williamson
That's cool.
- HBHeather Berlin
So-
- CWChris Williamson
I like that.
- HBHeather Berlin
... yeah, it's about sort of impulse control, when to rein it in, how to rein it in. Is there any control really? And then when to let it go, and how letting go in a controlled way can counterintuitively allow you to gain more control.
- CWChris Williamson
That's cool. I look forward to it.
- HBHeather Berlin
Thank you. Thank you, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Awesome. Um, people who wanna hustle you online, people who wanna find you, where should they go?
- HBHeather Berlin
Um, heatherberlin.com, and I'm on, um, Twitter and Instagram @heather_berlin.
- CWChris Williamson
Lovely.
- HBHeather Berlin
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Links will be in the show notes below. As always, if you've enjoyed it, like, share, subscribe, you know what to do. Any questions, comments, or feedback, just leave them in the comments on YouTube and I'll, I'll send them over to Heather and she can come and, uh, she can come and, uh, pop by and say hi or whatever it might be. But Heather-
- HBHeather Berlin
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... it's been awesome. Thank you so much.
- HBHeather Berlin
Thank you so much.
- NANarrator
(music)
Episode duration: 1:05:42
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Transcript of episode YZ7-XQjRgL0
