Imagine that you invented a device that can record my memories, my dreams, my ideas, and transmit them to your brain. That would be a game-changing technology, right? But in fact, we already possess this device, and it's called human communication system and effective storytelling. To understand how this device works, we have to look into our brains. And we have to formulate the question in a slightly different manner.
Zamislite da ste izmislili napravu koja može da zabeleži moja sećanja, moje snove, moje ideje i prenese ih u vaš mozak. To bi bila tehnologija koja bi znatno promenila stvari, zar ne? Zapravo, mi već posedujemo tu napravu, a ona se zove sistem ljudske komunikacije i efikasno pripovedanje. Da bismo razumeli kako ova naprava funkcioniše, moramo da pogledamo unutar našeg mozga. Moramo i da formulišemo pitanje na malo drugačiji način.
Now we have to ask how these neuron patterns in my brain that are associated with my memories and ideas are transmitted into your brains. And we think there are two factors that enable us to communicate. First, your brain is now physically coupled to the sound wave that I'm transmitting to your brain. And second, we developed a common neural protocol that enabled us to communicate.
Moramo da se zapitamo kako se neuralni obrasci u mom mozgu koji su u vezi sa mojim sećanjima i idejama prenose u vaše mozgove. Mislimo da postoje dva faktora koja nam omogućavaju da komuniciramo. Prvi - vaši mozgovi se sada nalaze u fizičkoj vezi sa zvučnim talasom koji prenosim u vaše mozgove. Drugi - razvili smo zajednički nervni protokol koji nam omogućava da komuniciramo.
So how do we know that? In my lab in Princeton, we bring people to the fMRI scanner and we scan their brains while they are either telling or listening to real-life stories. And to give you a sense of the stimulus we are using, let me play 20 seconds from a story that we used, told by a very talented storyteller, Jim O'Grady.
Kako to znamo? U mojoj laboratoriji na Prinstonu stavljamo ljude pod MR skener i skeniramo njihov mozak dok pričaju ili slušaju priče iz stvarnog života. Da bi vam dao predstavu o stimulusima koje koristimo, dopustite da vam pustim 20 sekundi iz priče koju smo koristili, koju je ispričao veoma talentovani pripovedač, Džim O'Grejdi.
(Audio) Jim O'Grady: So I'm banging out my story and I know it's good, and then I start to make it better --
(Audio zapis) Džim O'Grejdi: Razbijam tako sa pričom i znam da je dobra, a onda krenem da je poboljšavam -
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
by adding an element of embellishment. Reporters call this "making shit up."
dodavanjem ukrasnog elementa. Novinari to nazivaju stvaranjem izmišljotina.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
And they recommend against crossing that line. But I had just seen the line crossed between a high-powered dean and assault with a pastry. And I kinda liked it."
Ne preporučuju prelaženje te linije, ali sam upravo video da se ta linija prelazi u slučaju moćnog dekana i napada sa pecivom, a to mi se nekako svidelo.
Uri Hasson: OK, so now let's look into your brain and see what's happening when you listen to these kinds of stories. And let's start simple -- let's start with one listener and one brain area: the auditory cortex that processes the sounds that come from the ear. And as you can see, in this particular brain area, the responses are going up and down as the story is unfolding. Now we can take these responses and compare them to the responses in other listeners in the same brain area. And we can ask: How similar are the responses across all listeners?
Uri Hason: U redu, hajde da sada pogledamo unutar vašeg mozga i vidimo šta se dešava kada slušate ovakve priče. Započnimo jednostavno - započnimo sa jednim slušaocem i jednom oblašću mozga, auditivnim korteksom koji obrađuje zvuke koji dolaze iz uha. Kao što možete videti, u ovoj specifičnoj oblasti mozga reakcije idu gore i dole dok se priča odvija. Sada možemo da te reakcije uporedimo sa reakcijama drugih slušalaca u istoj oblasti mozga. Možemo da postavimo pitanje koliko su slične reakcije među svim slušaocima.
So here you can see five listeners. And we start to scan their brains before the story starts, when they're simply lying in the dark and waiting for the story to begin. As you can see, the brain area is going up and down in each one of them, but the responses are very different, and not in sync. However, immediately as the story is starting, something amazing is happening.
Ovde imate pet slušalaca. Počinjemo da im skeniramo mozak pre početka priče, kada samo leže u mraku i čekaju da priča počne. Kao što možete videti, oblast mozga ima reakcije koje se kreću gore-dole kod svakog od njih, ali su one veoma različite, a ne sinhronizovane. Međutim, u trenutku kada priča počinje, nešto neverovatno se dešava.
(Audio) JO: So I'm banging out my story and I know it's good, and then I start to make it --
DO: Razbijam tako sa pričom i znam da je dobra, a onda krenem da je poboljšavam...
UH: Suddenly, you can see that the responses in all of the subjects lock to the story, and now they are going up and down in a very similar way across all listeners. And in fact, this is exactly what is happening now in your brains when you listen to my sound speaking. We call this effect "neural entrainment." And to explain to you what is neural entrainment, let me first explain what is physical entrainment.
UH: Odjednom možete videti da se reakcije svih subjekata vezuju za priču i da se sada kreću gore-dole na veoma sličan način kod svih slušalaca. Zapravo, upravo to se sada dešava u vašim mozgovima dok slušate zvuk mog govora. Ovaj efekat nazivamo „nervna usaglašenost“. Da bih vam objasnio šta je nervna usaglašenost, dopustite da najpre objasnim šta je fizička usaglašenost.
So, we'll look and see five metronomes. Think of these five metronomes as five brains. And similar to the listeners before the story starts, these metronomes are going to click, but they're going to click out of phase.
Pogledajmo i videćemo pet metronoma. Zamislite da ti metronomi predstavljaju pet mozgova. Slično slušaocima pre nego što priča započne, metronomi će kliknuti, ali će kliknuti van faze.
(Clicking)
(Kliktanje)
Now see what will happen when I connect them together by placing them on these two cylinders.
Sada pogledajte šta će se dogoditi kada ih povežem tako što ću ih staviti na ova dva cilindra.
(Clicking)
(Kliktanje)
Now these two cylinders start to rotate. This rotation vibration is going through the wood and is going to couple all the metronomes together. And now listen to the click.
Sada ova dva cilindra počinju da se okreću. Ovo kružno okretanje ide kroz drvo i međusobno će uskladiti metronome. Sada slušajte kliktanje.
(Synchronized clicking)
(Sinhronizovano kliktanje)
This is what you call physical entrainment. Now let's go back to the brain and ask: What's driving this neural entrainment? Is it simply the sounds that the speaker is producing? Or maybe it's the words. Or maybe it's the meaning that the speaker is trying to convey.
To je ono što biste nazvali fizička usaglašenost. Hajde da se sada vratimo na mozak i zapitamo se: šta pokreće nervnu usaglašenost? Da li su to jednostavno zvuci koje proizvodi onaj ko govori? Možda su u pitanju reči. Možda je to značenje koje govornik pokušava da prenese.
So to test it, we did the following experiment. First, we took the story and played it backwards. And that preserved many of the original auditory features, but removed the meaning. And it sounds something like that.
Da bismo to proverili, sproveli smo sledeći eksperiment. Najpre smo uzeli priču i pustili je unazad. To je očuvalo mnogo prvobitnih osobina zvuka, ali je uklonilo značenje. Zvučalo je ovako nekako.
(Audio) JO: (Unintelligible)
(Audio zapis) DžO: (Nerazumljiv govor)
And we flashed colors in the two brains to indicate brain areas that respond very similarly across people. And as you can see, this incoming sound induced entrainment or alignment in all of the brains in auditory cortices that process the sounds, but it didn't spread deeper into the brain.
Označili smo bojama dva mozga da bismo ukazali na oblasti mozga u kojima ljudi imaju vrlo slične reakcije. Kao što možete videti, dolazeći zvuk je proizveo usaglašenost ili usklađenost u svim mogovima u auditivnom korteksu koji obrađuje zvuk, ali se nije proširio dublje u mozak.
Now we can take these sounds and build words out of it. So if we take Jim O'Grady and scramble the words, we'll get a list of words.
Možemo da uzmemo te zvukove i napravimo reči od njih. Dakle, ako uzmemo priču Džima O'Grejdija i ispremeštamo reči, dobićemo spisak reči. (Audio zapis) DžO: ... životinja... odabrane činjenice...
(Audio) JO: ... an animal ... assorted facts ... and right on ... pie man ... potentially ... my stories
i upravo... čovek-pita... potencijalno... moje priče.
UH: And you can see that these words start to induce alignment in early language areas, but not more than that. Now we can take the words and start to build sentences out of them.
UH: Možete vidite da ove reči počinju da proizvode sklad u ranim oblastima za jezik, ali ne i izvan toga. Sada možemo da uzmemo reči i počnemo da pravimo rečenice od njih.
(Audio) JO: And they recommend against crossing that line. He says: "Dear Jim, Good story. Nice details. Didn't she only know about him through me?"
(Audio zapis) DžO: Ne preporučuju prelaženje te linije. On kaže: „Dragi Džim, dobra priča, fini detalji. Zar ona nije znala za njega samo preko mene?“
UH: Now you can see that the responses in all the language areas that process the incoming language become aligned or similar across all listeners. However, only when we use the full, engaging, coherent story do the responses spread deeper into the brain into higher-order areas, which include the frontal cortex and the parietal cortex, and make all of them respond very similarly. And we believe that these responses in higher-order areas are induced or become similar across listeners because of the meaning conveyed by the speaker, and not by words or sound. And if we are right, there's a strong prediction over here if I tell you the exact same ideas using two very different sets of words, your brain responses will still be similar.
UH: Sada možete videti da reakcije u svim oblastima za jezik koje obrađuju dolazeći jezik postaju usklađene ili slične kod svih slušalaca. Međutim, samo kada koristimo celu, zanimljivu, povezanu priču, reakcije počinju da se šire dublje unutar mozga u oblasti višeg reda, koje obuhvataju frontalni korteks i parijetalni korteks i dovode do toga da sve one vrlo slično reaguju. Smatramo da te reakcije u oblastima višeg reda nastaju ili postaju slične kod različitih slušalaca zbog značenja koje govornik prenosi, a ne zbog reči ili zvuka. Ako smo u pravu, postoji snažno predviđanje da, ako vam iznesem potpuno iste ideje koristeći dva veoma različita skupa reči, reakcije vašeg mozga i dalje će biti slične.
And to test it, we did the following experiment in my lab. We took the English story and translated it to Russian. Now you have two different sounds and linguistic systems that convey the exact same meaning. And you play the English story to the English listeners and the Russian story to the Russian listeners, and we can compare their responses across the groups. And when we did that, we didn't see responses that are similar in auditory cortices in language, because the language and sound are very different. However, you can see that the responses in high-order areas were still similar across these two groups. We believe this is because they understood the story in a very similar way, as we confirmed, using a test after the story ended.
Da bismo to proverili, sproveli smo sledeći eksperiment u mojoj laboratoriji. Uzeli smo priču na engleskom i preveli je na ruski. Sada imate dva različita skupa zvukova i lingvistička sistema koji prenose potpuno isto značenje. Pustite priču na engleskom slušaocu koji govori engleski, a priču na ruskom slušaocu koji govori ruski i možemo da uporedimo njihove reakcije između grupa. Kada smo to uradili, nismo videli slične reakcije u auditivnom korteksu u pogledu jezika, jer se jezik i zvukovi veoma razlikuju. Međutim, možete videti da su reakcije u oblastima višeg reda bili prilično slični između ove dve grupe. Mislimo da je to zato što su razumeli priču na vrlo sličan način, što smo potvrdili pomoću testa nakon što se priča završila.
And we think that this alignment is necessary for communication. For example, as you can tell, I am not a native English speaker. I grew up with another language, and the same might be for many of you in the audience. And still, we can communicate. How come? We think we can communicate because we have this common code that presents meaning.
Smatramo da je ovo slaganje neophodno za komunikaciju. Na primer, kao što možete primetiti, engleski nije moj maternji jezik. Odrastao sam uz drugi jezik, a verovatno isto važi za mnoge među vama u publici. Ipak, možemo da komuniciramo. Kako to? Mislimo da možemo da komuniciramo jer imamo zajednički kod koji predstavlja značenje.
So far, I've only talked about what's happening in the listener's brain, in your brain, when you're listening to talks. But what's happening in the speaker's brain, in my brain, when I'm speaking to you? To look in the speaker's brain, we asked the speaker to go into the scanner, we scan his brain and then compare his brain responses to the brain responses of the listeners listening to the story. You have to remember that producing speech and comprehending speech are very different processes. Here we're asking: How similar are they? To our surprise, we saw that all these complex patterns within the listeners actually came from the speaker brain. So production and comprehension rely on very similar processes. And we also found the stronger the similarity between the listener's brain and the speaker's brain, the better the communication. So I know that if you are completely confused now, and I do hope that this is not the case, your brain responses are very different than mine. But I also know that if you really understand me now, then your brain ... and your brain ... and your brain are really similar to mine.
Do sada sam samo govorio o tome šta se dešava u mozgu slušaoca, u vašem mozgu, dok slušate govore. Međutim, šta se dešava u mozgu govornika, u mom mozgu, dok govorim pred vama? Da bismo pogledali u mozak govornika, zatražili smo od njega da dođe pod skener, skenirali smo mu mozak i zatim uporedili reakcije njegovog mozga sa reakcijama mozga slušalaca dok slušaju priču. Morate se prisetiti da su proizvodnja i razumevanje govora veoma različiti procesi. Ovde postavljamo pitanje koliko su slični. Na naše iznenađenje, videli smo da su svi ti složeni obrasci unutar mozga slušalaca zapravo proizašli iz mozga govornika. Dakle, proizvodnja i razumevanje počivaju na veoma sličnim procesima. Takođe smo otkrili da, što je veća sličnost između mozga slušaoca i mozga govornika, utoliko je bolja komunikacija. Dakle, znam da, ako ste sada sasvim zbunjeni, a nadam se da niste, reakcije vašeg mozga su veoma različite u odnosu na moje. Takođe znam da, ako me sada zaista razumete, tada su vaš mozak, vaš mozak i vaš mozak veoma slični mom.
Now, let's take all this information together and ask: How can we use it to transmit a memory that I have from my brain to your brains? So we did the following experiment. We let people watch, for the first time in their life, a TV episode from the BBC series "Sherlock," while we scanned their brains. And then we asked them to go back to the scanner and tell the story to another person that never watched the movie. So let's be specific. Think about this exact scene, when Sherlock is entering the cab in London driven by the murderer he is looking for.
Hajde da sada saberemo te informacije i postavimo pitanje kako možemo ovo koristiti da bismo preneli sećanja koje ja imam iz mog mozga u vaše. Stoga smo sproveli sledeći eksperiment. Dali smo ljudima da gledaju, po prvi put u svom životu, epizodu iz Bi-Bi-Sijeve serije „Šerlok“ dok smo im skenirali mozak. Zatim smo zatražili od njih da se vrate pod skener i ispričaju priču drugoj osobi koja nikada nije gledala film. Hajde da budemo konkretni. Uzmite ovu određenu scenu kada Šerlok ulazi u taksi u Londonu koji vozi ubica kojeg traži.
With me, as a viewer, there is a specific brain pattern in my brain when I watch it. Now, the exact same pattern, I can reactivate in my brain again by telling the word: Sherlock, London, murderer. And when I'm transmitting these words to your brains now, you have to reconstruct it in your mind. In fact, we see that pattern emerging now in your brains. And we were really surprised to see that the pattern you have now in your brains when I'm describing to you these scenes would be very similar to the pattern I had when I watched this movie a few months ago in the scanner. This starts to tell you about the mechanism by which we can tell stories and transmit information. Because, for example, now you're listening really hard and trying to understand what I'm saying. And I know that it's not easy. But I hope that at one point in the talk we clicked, and you got me. And I think that in a few hours, a few days, a few months, you're going to meet someone at a party, and you're going to tell him about this lecture, and suddenly it will be as if he is standing now here with us. Now you can see how we can take this mechanism and try to transmit memories and knowledge across people, which is wonderful, right?
Kod mene, kao gledaoca, javlja se određeni obrazac u mozgu dok to gledam. Isti taj obrazac mogu iznova da aktiviram u svom mozgu izgovaranjem reči „Šerlok“, „London“, „ubica“. Kada te reči sada prenosim u vaše mozgove, morate to da rekonstruišete u svom umu. Zapravo, vidimo da se taj obrazac sada javlja u vašim mozgovima. Zaista smo se iznenadili kada smo videli da će obrasci koje sada imate u svojim mozgovima kada vam opisujem te scene biti veoma slični obrascima koji sam imao pri gledanju filma pre nekoliko meseci pod skenerom. Ovo počinje da vam govori o mehanizmu pomoću kojeg možemo da pričamo priče i prenosimo informacije. Jer, na primer, sada me slušate vrlo intenzivno i pokušavate da razumete šta govorim. Znam da to nije lako, ali se nadam da smo u jednom trenutku govora kliknuli i da ste me shvatili. Mislim da ćete za nekoliko sati, nekoliko dana ili meseci upoznati nekoga na žurci, da ćete mu ispričati o ovom predavanju i da će iznenada biti kao da se sada nalazi ovde sa nama. Sada možete videti kako možemo upotrebiti ovaj mehanizam da pokušamo da prenesemo sećanja i znanje među ljudima, što je sjajno, zar ne?
But our ability to communicate relies on our ability to have common ground. Because, for example, if I'm going to use the British synonym "hackney carriage" instead of "cab," I know that I'm going to be misaligned with most of you in the audience. This alignment depends not only on our ability to understand the basic concept; it also depends on our ability to develop common ground and understanding and shared belief systems. Because we know that in many cases, people understand the exact same story in very different ways.
Međutim, naša sposobnost komunikacije počiva na našoj sposobnosti da imamo zajedničko tle. Na primer, ako upotrebim britanski sinonim „najamna kola“ umesto „taksija“, znam da se neću poklopiti sa većinom vas u publici. To usklađivanje zavisi ne samo od naše sposobnosti da razumemo osnovne koncepte; ono zavisi i od naše sposobnosti da razvijemo zajedničko tle, razumevanje i zajednički sistem uverenja. Jer svi znamo da u mnogim slučajevima ljudi razumeju potpuno istu priču na veoma različite načine.
So to test it in the lab, we did the following experiment. We took a story by J.D. Salinger, in which a husband lost track of his wife in the middle of a party, and he's calling his best friend, asking, "Did you see my wife?" For half of the subjects, we said that the wife was having an affair with the best friend. For the other half, we said that the wife is loyal and the husband is very jealous. This one sentence before the story started was enough to make the brain responses of all the people that believed the wife was having an affair be very similar in these high-order areas and different than the other group. And if one sentence is enough to make your brain similar to people that think like you and very different than people that think differently than you, think how this effect is going to be amplified in real life, when we are all listening to the exact same news item after being exposed day after day after day to different media channels, like Fox News or The New York Times, that give us very different perspectives on reality.
Da bismo ovo proverili u laboratoriji, sproveli smo sledeći eksperiment. Uzeli smo priču Dž. D. Selindžera, u kojoj je muž izgubio ženu usred zabave i zove svog najboljeg prijatelja da pita: „Jesi li video moju ženu?“ Polovini subjekata rekli smo da žena ima aferu sa najboljim prijateljem. Drugoj polovini smo rekli da je žena verna i da je muž vrlo ljubomoran. Ta jedna rečenica pre početka priče bila je dovoljna da učini da reakcije mozga svih ljudi koji su verovali da žena ima aferu budu veoma slične u ovim oblastima višeg reda i različite u odnosu na drugu grupu. Ako je jedna rečenica dovoljna da učini vaš mozak sličnim kao i kod ljudi koji misle kao vi i vrlo različitim u odnosu na ljude koji misle različito u odnosu na vas, pomislite koliko će taj efekat biti pojačan u stvarnom životu, kada svi slušamo potpuno iste teme u vestima nakon što se one dan za danom iznose na različitim medijskim kanalima, poput Foks njuza ili Njujork tajmsa, koji nam daju vrlo različita sagledavanja stvarnosti.
So let me summarize. If everything worked as planned tonight, I used my ability to vocalize sound to be coupled to your brains. And I used this coupling to transmit my brain patterns associated with my memories and ideas into your brains. In this, I start to reveal the hidden neural mechanism by which we communicate. And we know that in the future it will enable us to improve and facilitate communication. But these studies also reveal that communication relies on a common ground. And we have to be really worried as a society if we lose this common ground and our ability to speak with people that are slightly different than us because we let a few very strong media channels take control of the mic, and manipulate and control the way we all think. And I'm not sure how to fix it because I'm only a scientist. But maybe one way to do it is to go back to the more natural way of communication, which is a dialogue, in which it's not only me speaking to you now, but a more natural way of talking, in which I am speaking and I am listening, and together we are trying to come to a common ground and new ideas. Because after all, the people we are coupled to define who we are. And our desire to be coupled to another brain is something very basic that starts at a very early age.
Dakle, dozvolite da rezimiram. Ako je večeras sve proteklo po planu, koristio sam svoju sposobnost izgovaranja zvukova za povezivanje sa vašim mozgovima i koristio sam to spajanje da bih preneo svoje moždane obrasce povezane sa svojim sećanjima i idejama u vaše mozgove. Ovim počinjem da razotkrivam skriveni nervni mehanizam pomoću kojeg komuniciramo. Znamo da će nam on u budućnosti omogućiti da unapredimo i olakšamo komunikaciju. Međutim, ova istraživanja takođe otkrivaju da komunikacija počiva na zajedničkom tlu. Moramo da se zaista zabrinemo kao društvo ako izgubimo to zajedničko tle i našu sposobnost da govorimo sa ljudima koji su malo drugačiji od nas jer smo dopustili da nekoliko vrlo jakih medijskih kanala preuzmu kontrolu nad mikrofonom, da manipulišu i kontrolišu način na koji svi mi razmišljamo. Nisam siguran kako to da popravim jer sam samo naučnik. Možda je jedan od načina za to da se vratimo na prirodnije načine komunikacije, a to je dijalog, u kome sada ne govorim samo ja pred vama, već prirodniji način razgovaranja u kojem govorim i slušam, a zajedno pokušavamo da stvorimo zajedničko tle i nove ideje. Jer, na kraju krajeva, ljudi sa kojima smo povezani definišu ono što jesmo. Naša želja da se povežemo sa drugim mozgom predstavlja nešto vrlo bazično što počinje u vrlo ranom uzrastu.
So let me finish with an example from my own private life that I think is a good example of how coupling to other people is really going to define who we are.
Dozvolite da završim primerom iz svog privatnog života za koji smatram da je dobar primer za to kako povezivanje sa drugim ljudima zaista definiše ono što jesmo.
This my son Jonathan at a very early age. See how he developed a vocal game together with my wife, only from the desire and pure joy of being coupled to another human being.
Ovo je moj sin Jonatan u vrlo ranom uzrastu. Vidite kako je razvio igru glasova sa mojom ženom, samo iz želje i čiste radosti povezivanja sa drugim ljudskim bićem.
(Both vocalizing)
(Oboje vokalizuju)
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Now, think how the ability of my son to be coupled to us and other people in his life is going to shape the man he is going to become. And think how you change on a daily basis from the interaction and coupling to other people in your life.
Razmislite o tome kako će sposobnost mog sina da se poveže sa nama i drugim ljudima u svom životu oblikovati čoveka koji će on postati. Razmislite i o tome koliko se vi menjate iz dana u dan usled interakcije i povezivanja sa drugim ljudima u svom životu.
So keep being coupled to other people. Keep spreading your ideas, because the sum of all of us together, coupled, is greater than our parts.
Stoga nastavite da se povezujete sa drugima. Nastavite da širite svoje ideje, jer je skup svih nas zajedno, povezanih, veći od naših delova.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)