I had brain surgery 18 years ago, and since that time, brain science has become a personal passion of mine. I'm actually an engineer. And first let me say, I recently joined Google's Moonshot group, where I had a division, the display division in Google X, and the brain science work I'm speaking about today is work I did before I joined Google and on the side outside of Google.
我18年前做过脑部手术, 从那时起, 我就非常热衷于脑科学研究。 我的本职其实是工程师。 首先我要声明,我最近参加了 谷歌的登月组, 我在谷歌X 负责那里的显示部门。 但是今天我要谈到的脑科学方面的研究, 是我加入谷歌之前做的, 在谷歌之外做的。
So that said, there's a stigma when you have brain surgery. Are you still smart or not? And if not, can you make yourself smart again?
现在说正题。¶ 做过脑手术之后就出现这样一个问题: 你还和以前一样聪明吗? 如果不是,你还能重新变聪明吗?
After my neurosurgery, part of my brain was missing, and I had to deal with that. It wasn't the grey matter, but it was the gooey part dead center that makes key hormones and neurotransmitters. Immediately after my surgery, I had to decide what amounts of each of over a dozen powerful chemicals to take each day, because if I just took nothing, I would die within hours. Every day now for 18 years -- every single day -- I've had to try to decide the combinations and mixtures of chemicals, and try to get them, to stay alive. There have been several close calls.
我做了神经手术之后, 大脑少了一部分, 而我得接受这个事实。 不是灰质部分,而是正中间黏糊糊的部分, 那里是产生关键的激素和神经递质的地方。 在手术刚刚结束之后, 我就得决定每天要吃的十几种强力药物里, 每一种吃多少。 如果什么药都不吃, 几个小时内我就会死掉。 18年来每天,每一天, 我都得决定我需要吃什么样的 药以及如何搭配它们, 把这些药找来吃,让自己活下去。 有几次都差点没命。
But luckily, I'm an experimentalist at heart, so I decided I would experiment to try to find more optimal dosages because there really isn't a clear road map on this that's detailed. I began to try different mixtures, and I was blown away by how tiny changes in dosages dramatically changed my sense of self, my sense of who I was, my thinking, my behavior towards people. One particularly dramatic case: for a couple months I actually tried dosages and chemicals typical of a man in his early 20s, and I was blown away by how my thoughts changed. (Laughter) I was angry all the time, I thought about sex constantly, and I thought I was the smartest person in the entire world, and —(Laughter)— of course over the years I'd met guys kind of like that, or maybe kind of toned-down versions of that. I was kind of extreme. But to me, the surprise was, I wasn't trying to be arrogant. I was actually trying, with a little bit of insecurity, to actually fix a problem in front of me, and it just didn't come out that way.
不过幸好我打心底里是个实验科学家, 所以我觉得我要试验一下, 找到更合适的剂量, 因为这方面实在是没有个详细的 路线图可参考。 我开始尝试不同的药物搭配, 而我完全没有想到的是, 剂量上的微小改变 竟然会剧烈地改变我的自我感觉, 我认为自己是谁,我的想法, 我对待他人的行为。 一个非常极端的例子: 有几个月我尝试的药物和剂量 正常是用于20出头的男性的。 让我非常惊讶的是我的想法完全改变了。 (笑声) 我总是非常生气, 我不停地想到性, 而且我觉得自己是 世界上最聪明的人, (笑声) 当然这些年来我遇到过这样的男人, 或者是没这么夸张但也类似的男人。 我那样的比较极端。 对我来说,让我惊讶的是, 我并不是想要做个傲慢的人, 我实际上是想, 虽然不是很确定, 要解决摆在我面前的一个问题, 可结果却不是那样的。
So I couldn't handle it. I changed my dosages. But that experience, I think, gave me a new appreciation for men and what they might walk through, and I've gotten along with men a lot better since then.
我受不了了, 于是改了药的剂量。 不过那段经历,我觉得, 让我对男性有了新的认识, 包括他们可能的感受。 而且从那以后 我和男性之间相处得也更好了。
What I was trying to do with tuning these hormones and neurotransmitters and so forth was to try to get my intelligence back after my illness and surgery, my creative thought, my idea flow. And I think mostly in images, and so for me that became a key metric -- how to get these mental images that I use as a way of rapid prototyping, if you will, my ideas, trying on different new ideas for size, playing out scenarios. This kind of thinking isn't new. Philiosophers like Hume and Descartes and Hobbes saw things similarly. They thought that mental images and ideas were actually the same thing. There are those today that dispute that, and lots of debates about how the mind works, but for me it's simple: Mental images, for most of us, are central in inventive and creative thinking.
我当时试图 调节这些激素 和神经递质等的剂量, 我想要做的是 在生病和手术之后,重新找回我的智慧, 我的创造性思维,我的思考能力。 我主要是通过图像来思考的, 所以对我来说最关键的, 就是如何找回这些大脑中的图像, 因为我是用图像来快速地构建原型想法的。 只要我愿意,我的想法, 会尝试不同规模的新想法, 设想各种场景。 这种思维方式并不罕见。 哲学家们,像休谟、笛卡儿、霍布斯 也是这样看事情的。 他们认为脑中的图像和思想 是一回事。 现在有很多人质疑这一点, 也有很多关于大脑如何思考的争论, 但对我来说很简单: 对大多数人来说,大脑中的图像 是在创造性思考中处于核心地位。
So after several years, I tuned myself up and I have lots of great, really vivid mental images with a lot of sophistication and the analytical backbone behind them. And so now I'm working on, how can I get these mental images in my mind out to my computer screen faster? Can you imagine, if you will, a movie director being able to use her imagination alone to direct the world in front of her? Or a musician to get the music out of his head? There are incredible possibilities with this as a way for creative people to share at light speed. And the truth is, the remaining bottleneck in being able to do this is just upping the resolution of brain scan systems.
在我试验了几年之后, 我找到了合适的药物剂量, 我脑中开始出现了很多栩栩如生 又非常复杂的图像, 还有图像中包含的思路。 现在我在做的, 就是如何把我脑子中的这些图像 更快地传到我的电脑屏幕上? 想像一下, 如果一个电影导演仅靠她的想象力 就可以导演她眼前的世界? 或者一个音乐家这样就能把他脑子里的音乐传出来? 这件事有不可思议的可能性, 它可以让有创造性的人们 以闪电般的速度来分享想法。 事实上,要实现这一点 现在剩下的瓶颈仅仅在于 提高大脑扫描系统的分辨率。
So let me show you why I think we're pretty close to getting there by sharing with you two recent experiments from two top neuroscience groups. Both used fMRI technology -- functional magnetic resonance imaging technology -- to image the brain, and here is a brain scan set from Giorgio Ganis and his colleagues at Harvard. And the left-hand column shows a brain scan of a person looking at an image. The middle column shows the brainscan of that same individual imagining, seeing that same image. And the right column was created by subtracting the middle column from the left column, showing the difference to be nearly zero. This was repeated on lots of different individuals with lots of different images, always with a similar result. The difference between seeing an image and imagining seeing that same image is next to nothing.
现在我要给大家看看, 为什么我觉得我们已经接近成功了, 我要展示两个近期的实验, 分别是在两个顶级的脑科学研究组做的。 他们都用了fMRI技术 也就是功能性核磁共振成像技术 来对大脑进行造影。 这套大脑扫描图是 哈佛的吉奥吉欧•加尼斯和他的同事们做的。 左边一列扫描的 是一个正看着一张图的人的大脑。 中间一列 是同一个人的大脑扫描图, 但他只是在想像看刚才那张图片, 右边一列是将 中间的图从左边的图减去后得到的 可以看出来差别几乎为零。 这个实验在很多不同的人身上重复过, 而且用了很多不同的图片, 结果几乎总是一样。 真正看一张图片 和想像看同一张图片 之间几乎没有差别。
Next let me share with you one other experiment, this from Jack Gallant's lab at Cal Berkeley. They've been able to decode brainwaves into recognizable visual fields. So let me set this up for you. In this experiment, individuals were shown hundreds of hours of YouTube videos while scans were made of their brains to create a large library of their brain reacting to video sequences. Then a new movie was shown with new images, new people, new animals in it, and a new scan set was recorded. The computer, using brain scan data alone, decoded that new brain scan to show what it thought the individual was actually seeing. On the right-hand side, you see the computer's guess, and on the left-hand side, the presented clip. This is the jaw-dropper. We are so close to being able to do this. We just need to up the resolution. And now remember that when you see an image versus when you imagine that same image, it creates the same brain scan.
下面我再给你们看一个实验, 是在加州大学伯克利分校 杰克•加蓝特的实验室做的。 他们有办法将脑电波 转换成可识别的视图。 我来演示一下。 在这个实验里,受试者 要看几百小时的youtube视频, 看的时候他们的大脑会被扫描, 这样就建立了一个巨大的数据库,里面纪录下了 他们的大脑对一系列视频的反应, 然后给他们看一段新视频,里面有新的图像, 新的人物,新的动物, 并且新的大脑扫描图也被纪录下来。 电脑仅仅通过大脑扫描数据 就可以解析新的扫描图, 推测出受试者实际看到的是什么图像。 右边是电脑的猜测, 而左边是给受试者看的片段。 这真是让人印象极为深刻。 我们离真正实现这一点已经不远了, 只是需要提高分辨率。 请记住当你看一副图片 或者你想同一副图片时, 大脑扫描的结果是一样的。
So this was done with the highest-resolution brain scan systems available today, and their resolution has increased really about a thousandfold in the last several years. Next we need to increase the resolution another thousandfold to get a deeper glimpse. How do we do that? There's a lot of techniques in this approach. One way is to crack open your skull and put in electrodes. I'm not for that. There's a lot of new imaging techniques being proposed, some even by me, but given the recent success of MRI, first we need to ask the question, is it the end of the road with this technology? Conventional wisdom says the only way to get higher resolution is with bigger magnets, but at this point bigger magnets only offer incremental resolution improvements, not the thousandfold we need. I'm putting forward an idea: instead of bigger magnets, let's make better magnets. There's some new technology breakthroughs in nanoscience when applied to magnetic structures that have created a whole new class of magnets, and with these magnets, we can lay down very fine detailed magnetic field patterns throughout the brain, and using those, we can actually create holographic-like interference structures to get precision control over many patterns, as is shown here by shifting things. We can create much more complicated structures with slightly different arrangements, kind of like making Spirograph.
这是用当今分辨率最高的 大脑扫描系统做的。 这个系统的分辨率在近几年里 提高了将近一千倍。 下一步我们需要将分辨率 再提高一千倍, 才能看得更深。 我们怎样实现呢? 这方面有很多技术可用。 一种方法是把头骨撬开把电极放进去, 我不做这个。 还有很多新的成像技术被提出来, 有些还是我提出来的, 不过考虑到最近在核磁共振上的成功, 我们首先应该问的问题是, 这项技术已经发展到尽头了吗? 传统的观点认为 提高分辨率的唯一方法是用更大的磁铁, 但是现在更大的磁铁只能 带来分辨率的提升只是固定增量的, 不是我们想要的一千倍。 我提出了一个想法: 不用更大的磁铁, 我们来做更好的磁铁。 纳米科学方面现在有些技术突破, 而用在磁铁结构上 已经制造出了一种全新类型的磁铁。 用这些磁铁,我们可以 在整个大脑里布置出结构非常细致的磁场模式, 在整个大脑里布置出结构非常细致的磁场模式, 这样我们就能造出 类似于全息的干扰结构, 可以对很多模式进行精确控制, 只要像这样移动一些东西就行了。 我们还可以造出更复杂的结构, 只要使用稍微不同的排列就可以了。 有点儿像画螺旋图。
So why does that matter? A lot of effort in MRI over the years has gone into making really big, really huge magnets, right? But yet most of the recent advances in resolution have actually come from ingeniously clever encoding and decoding solutions in the F.M. radio frequency transmitters and receivers in the MRI systems. Let's also, instead of a uniform magnetic field, put down structured magnetic patterns in addition to the F.M. radio frequencies. So by combining the magnetics patterns with the patterns in the F.M. radio frequencies processing which can massively increase the information that we can extract in a single scan. And on top of that, we can then layer our ever-growing knowledge of brain structure and memory to create a thousandfold increase that we need. And using fMRI, we should be able to measure not just oxygenated blood flow, but the hormones and neurotransmitters I've talked about and maybe even the direct neural activity, which is the dream.
这有什么用呢? 这些年来MRI领域很多人 不是在试图做出 非常非常大的磁铁吗? 但是最近分辨率领域的进步, 实际上是源于 MRI系统中 调频电波频率发射和接收器 极为精巧的编码解码方法。 另外,我们可以不再使用总是一样的磁场, 而是用有一定结构的磁场模式, 再加上调频电波频率。 这样就将磁场模式 与调频电波频率模式相结合, 可以极大地增加 我们在一次扫描中所提取的信息。 除此之外, 我们在大脑结构和记忆方面的知识也在不断增加, 我们可以把这些知识整合进去, 就能得到我们想要的1000倍的增长了。 运用fMRI,我们不仅可以 测量携氧的血液流动, 还可以测量我刚才说的激素和神经递质, 甚至有可能直接测量神经活动, 那就是梦。 那样我们就可以把我们的想法
We're going to be able to dump our ideas directly to digital media. Could you imagine if we could leapfrog language and communicate directly with human thought? What would we be capable of then? And how will we learn to deal with the truths of unfiltered human thought? You think the Internet was big. These are huge questions. It might be irresistible as a tool to amplify our thinking and communication skills. And indeed, this very same tool may prove to lead to the cure for Alzheimer's and similar diseases.
直接下载到数字媒体上。 想像一下,如果我们可以不借助语言 而直接交流思想? 那时候我们能有什么样的成就呢? 我们要怎样学会面对 未加修饰的,完全真实的人类思想呢? 你觉得互联网很大, 那这些问题就是巨大了。 把它作为一种工具来放大我们的思考和沟通能力, 这个想法可能让人难以抗拒。 确实,这个方法有可能会带来治疗 阿尔兹海默式症或其它疾病的方法。 除了开启这扇门之外,我们别无选择。
We have little option but to open this door. Regardless, pick a year -- will it happen in five years or 15 years? It's hard to imagine it taking much longer. We need to learn how to take this step together.
不管怎样,预测一下, 五年还是十五年之后能实现呢? 很难想像要花更久的时间。 我们要一起学习如何一起迈出这一步。
Thank you.
谢谢大家。
(Applause)
(掌声)