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.
想像你發明了一種設備 能記錄我的記憶、 我的夢想、我的想法, 並且傳到你的大腦。 那將是改變世界的新科技,對吧? 但事實上,我們已擁有這樣的設備, 它被稱為「人類溝通系統」 和「有效率的說故事方式」。 為瞭解這系統如何運作, 我們得先瞭解大腦, 並且稍稍改變提問的方向。
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.
我們改問: 我大腦中跟記憶、 想法相關的神經元圖像, 是如何被傳輸到你的腦裡呢? 我們認為人能溝通須有兩大因素。 首先,你的大腦必須在物理上 和我正在對你講話的聲波耦合。 其次,我們有共通的神經通訊協定 使我們能夠溝通。
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.
我們何以得知的呢? 在普林斯頓的研究室裡 我們對受測者進行 功能性核磁共振儀掃描, 就在他們講述或聆聽真實故事時, 掃描他們的大腦。 為讓各位了解我們使用的刺激物, 我從一段故事中 截取了20秒來播放, 由非常有才華的說故事人 吉姆·奧格雷迪來向我們講故事。
(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 --
(吉姆·奧格雷迪的聲音) 我要 大聲地說出我的故事,我知道很好笑 為了讓故事......更生動
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
by adding an element of embellishment. Reporters call this "making shit up."
我會加點油、添點醋, 記者們稱之為「瞎掰」。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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."
他們建議不要逾越那條線, 但我剛看見糕點飛過那條線, 砸在院長大人的臉上。 我還挺開心的。
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?
(烏里·哈森:) 好,我們接下來看看 當大腦聽到這類故事, 會怎樣反應。 先從簡單的開始,一位聆聽者 和他大腦的一塊區域:也就是 處理耳朵接收聲音的聽覺皮層區塊。 如你所見,這特定區域的腦波 會隨著故事的進展而上下波動。 接下來,我們拿此波形 與其他受測者同區的腦波做比較。 我們會問: 所有受測聽眾的反應有多相似呢?
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.
各位可以看到這五位受測者的腦波。 故事開講前,我們已經 開始掃描他們的大腦, 當時他們正坐在黑暗中, 等待故事開講。 如你所見, 此時五人的腦波上上下下, 各不相同,毫不同步。 然而,就在故事開始後, 奇妙的事情就發生了。
(Audio) JO: So I'm banging out my story and I know it's good, and then I start to make it --
(吉姆·奧格雷迪的聲音) 我 大聲說出我的故事,我知道很好笑, 為了讓故事......
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.
(烏里·哈森) 突然間,所有人的腦波回應 都隨著故事的進展而上上下下, 波型都很類似。 事實上,各位聽我講話的時候 這種現象也正在你的大腦裏發生; 我們把這種現象稱為 「神經震盪同步化」效應。 為了要解釋什麼是 神經震盪同步化, 讓我先解釋什麼是 「物理震盪同步化」。
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.
我們來看看這五個節拍器, 把這五個節拍器想像成五個大腦。 如同故事開始前的五位聽者一樣, 這五個節拍器會開始打拍子, 但並不同步。
(Clicking)
(滴答聲)
Now see what will happen when I connect them together by placing them on these two cylinders.
現在來看一下, 當我把它們放在這兩個圓筒上, 會發生甚麼事,
(Clicking)
(滴答聲)
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.
兩個圓筒開始滾動了。 圓筒滾動的振動,透過木板, 把所有節拍器同步在一起, 聽聽看現在的滴答聲。
(Synchronized clicking)
(同步的滴答聲)
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.
這就是物理震盪同步化。 現在讓我們回到大腦,問一個問題: 是什麽在驅動神經震盪同步化呢? 是講者發出的聲音? 還是所說的字彙? 還是講者想要表達的意思呢?
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.
我們用以下的實驗來測試。 我們先將故事倒過來播放, 這保留了很多原有的聽覺特徵, 但是故事不再具有意義。 聽起來像這樣:
(Audio) JO: (Unintelligible)
(吉姆·奧格雷迪不知所云的聲音)
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.
在兩個大腦裡,我們用閃現的顏色 來顯示相似腦區塊的回應。 如你所見,進入耳朵的聲音, 誘使所有受測者大腦內 處理聲音的聽覺皮層,全都同步了; 但同步的現象並未深入大腦。
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.
然後我們把字彙加到聲音上。 若拼湊重組吉姆·奧格雷迪的用字, 我們會得到一長串詞彙。
(Audio) JO: ... an animal ... assorted facts ... and right on ... pie man ... potentially ... my stories
(吉姆·奧格雷迪的聲音) ...動物...事實上... 就在......餡餅人... 可能......我的故事
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.
(烏里·哈森:) 大家看到這些字開始對準了, 但只發生在前期的語言區, 別的區沒對準。 我們把這些字彙排成句子。
(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?"
(吉姆·雷迪的聲音) 他們建議不要逾越那條線。 他說,「親愛的吉姆, 好故事。很詳細。」 「你不知道她是經由我 才認識他的嗎?」
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.
(烏里·哈森):如同你們看到的 所有的人、 所有接收語言處理區 的回應都一致,或者很相似。 然而,只有當我們使用完整、 引人入勝、連貫的故事時, 反應才會進入大腦的深層區域, 包括額葉皮層和部分頂葉皮層, 從而令所有人 都出現非常相似的反應。 我們認為,聽眾這些相似的 大腦高層次區塊反應 是由講者的語意所觸發, 並非文字或聲音本身。 倘若推論正確, 那麼我們相當有把握, 若以兩種截然不同的語言 講述同樣的想法, 大腦的反應仍然會近似。
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.
為了測試,我們在實驗室裏 做了以下實驗。 我們把這個英語故事 翻譯成俄語。 現在有了兩組不同的聲音 和語言系統 傳達完全相同的意思。 讓英語聽眾聽英語故事, 俄語聽眾聽俄語的, 比較兩組人的反應。 當這樣做的時候,我們並沒有在 語言的聽覺皮層看到相似的反應, 因為語言和聲音迥異。 但是,兩組的高階區域 的反應仍然相似。 我們認為,這是因為他們都以 相當類似的方式來明瞭故事內容。 故事結束後的測驗 證實了這一推論。
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.
我們認為有效溝通 必須有這樣的校準。 舉個例子,你們都聽得出來 英語並不是我的母語。 我在另一種語言環境中長大, 你們當中很多人可能也是如此。 儘管如此,我們依然可以溝通, 為什麼呢? 我們認為,能溝通是因為 我們有表達語意的共通代碼。
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.
到目前為止,我只談到 聽者大腦裡發生的情況, 以及你聆聽時大腦內的情況。 但,講者腦內的情況, 在我對你們說話時, 我的腦內是什麼情況呢? 為了觀察講者的大腦, 我們請求講者 進入儀器接受掃描, 然後比較他的大腦 和聽者聽故事時的大腦反應。 要記得,發言和理解話語 的過程是大不相同的。 我們可能會問:它們有多相似呢? 令我們驚訝的是, 我們看到,聽者之間的 所有這些複雜波形, 實際上都源自演講者的大腦。 所以,講話和理解 倚賴非常類似的過程。 我們也發現 聽者和講者的大腦越是近似, 他們的溝通就越順暢。 所以我知道,如果你們 現在完全聽不懂我的話, 我希望不會出現這種情況, 那麼,你們的大腦反應 就會與我的非常不同。 但我也知道,若你此刻 真正理解我所說的, 那麼,你的腦、你的腦,和你的腦, 就會與我的非常相似。
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.
現在,綜合以上所有資訊 我們要問一個問題: 我們該如何利用它, 把我大腦中的記憶 傳送到你們的大腦中呢? 我們做了下列實驗。 我們在受測者首次觀看 英國國家廣播公司的 「新世紀福爾摩斯」電視節目時, 掃描他們的腦部。 然後我們讓他們回到掃描儀前 把故事講給另一個 從沒看過這部電影的人聽。 具體來說, 想象一下這個場景: 福爾摩斯坐進了 倫敦的一輛計程車, 而司機正是他尋找的兇手。
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?
對我而言,做為一個觀眾, 當我觀看時,腦中有種特定的圖像。 現在,透過講述下列幾個詞語, 我的腦中再度激發出同樣的圖像: 福爾摩斯、倫敦、兇手。 當我把這些字彙傳至你的大腦時, 你必須在你的大腦裡重建圖像。 事實上,我們看到那些圖像 正在你腦中湧現。 我們當時相當驚訝, 在我描述的時候,你的腦波 跟我幾個月前看那部片子時 被掃描機掃到的腦波非常相似。 這正是我們說故事 和傳遞資訊時的機制。 因為,舉個例子來說, 此刻,你們聽得很辛苦, 嘗試想要理解我所說的話, 我知道,那並不容易。 但我希望在某個頓悟點, 我們同步了,你理解我所說的話了。 我認為,過幾個小時、 幾天,或幾個月後, 你在派對中遇見某人, 跟他說起這個演講, 突然間,你會覺得,彷彿就像 他和我們一起站在這裏一樣。 現在你明白了, 我們如何用這個機制 來傳達人與人之間的記憶、知識, 很棒,對吧?
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.
但我們之間的溝通 仰賴於我們之間的共通點。 因為,舉例來說, 如果我用英國的同義詞 「出租馬車」取代「計程車」, 大部分的聽眾就會無法與我同步, 矇了、茫然了。 溝通的同步不僅取決於 我們對基本概念的理解能力, 也倚賴我們有建立 共通點和理解的能力, 及相同的信仰體系。 因為我們知道,在許多情況下, 人們以非常不同的方式, 來解讀完全同樣的故事。
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.
因此,我們在實驗室裡 做下列的測試。 我們採用法學博士塞林格 的一個故事, 故事中,一個丈夫 在派對中與妻子失聯, 他打電話給最要好的朋友,問: 「你見到我太太了嗎?」 半數的受測者被告知: 那個人的妻子與好友有染; 而另外一半則被告知: 妻子很忠誠, 是丈夫的忌妒心太重。 故事開始前的一句話 就足以決定大腦的反應, 所有相信妻子不忠的人, 大腦高階區的反應非常相似, 但與另一組人不同。 如果一個句子足以讓你的大腦 與持相同看法的人相似 與持不同看法的人相異, 那麼想想看,在現實生活中 這種效應會被放大到甚麼樣的程度? 當我們日復一日聽著由不同媒體 所報導的相同新聞, 例如《福斯新聞》或《紐約時報》, 造成我們對事實的觀點 有截然不同的看法。
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.
因此,讓我總結一下。 如果今晚一切按計劃進行, 我可以用我的聲音 與你的大腦產生共鳴。 然後利用這種共鳴, 把我大腦裡的記憶、想法圖像 傳至你的大腦。 在此,我向各位揭露了 我們神經溝通機制的秘密, 我們知道它可以改善 我們的溝通方式。 這些研究也表明,溝通依賴共同點, 身為社會一分子的我們必須得擔心, 我們是否已失去了這種共同點, 是否失去了與他人溝通的能力, 因為我們放任少數的強勢媒體 控制了麥克風, 操縱了我們的想法。 我只是個科學家, 不知如何解決這個問題。 但或許有個可行的方法, 就是回復到自然的溝通方式, 也就是對話: 在談話中不是只有我對你講話, 而是更自然的談話方式, 當我在說的時候,我同時也在聆聽, 我們一起試著達成共識和新想法。 因為,畢竟, 能與我們產生共鳴的人 定義了我們是什麼樣的人。 我們對另一個大腦 產生共鳴的基本渴望 在年齡很小的時候就已經開始了。
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.
最後,我用自己生活中的 一個例子作為結束, 我覺得這是一個很好的例子 說明了「共鳴」定義了我們是誰。
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.
這是我兒子喬納森 非常年幼的時候。 看他與內人一起玩聲音的遊戲, 僅僅源自渴望與他人 產生共鳴的單純喜悅。
(Both vocalizing)
(兩個人發聲)
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
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.
想想看,我的兒子與他生命中 其他人共鳴的能力, 將會如何形塑出他未來的人格。 也想想看, 你平日與生命中其他人的互動, 如何改變了你。
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.
所以持續跟其他人產生共鳴。 持續分享你的想法, 因為我們共鳴起來的總力量, 遠遠勝過我們分開的個別力量。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)