April 22, 2010 • 35 mins
People with a condition known as mirror-touch synesthesia literally feel the pain of others -- but why? Josh and Chuck trace the cause of this condition to one culprit: the mirror neuron. Tune in to learn more about mirror neurons and neuroscience.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
which makes this Stuff you should Know very nice. How
(00:25):
are you doing? Oh, I'm great. You look like you're
doing great. Chow, you look like you're doing great, Josh.
Jerry looks like she's doing about like we're doing. We're
all doing the same. That's what we're doing. So Chuckers,
I got, as I said right before we started recording,
I've I've got no intro for this, but this is
(00:46):
a listener request times infinity or so yeah, I gotta
I got an intro. Okay, let's hear. It just came
to me. Okay, Josh, remember years ago when you were
a young child watching NFL football, All in the quarterback
for the Washington Redskins, Joe. Thisman horrifically broke his leg.
(01:06):
Lawrence Taylor broke his leg. It's one of the great
tragedies of my life that I missed that you did.
I never saw it. You know, when you were watching
any sporting event and you see a knee go in
a direction it shouldn't go in Willis Mcgahey, okay, there
you go exactly when it was flopping around. Uh did
you feel a pain in your leg when that happened? Yeah? Yeah,
(01:28):
I felt some sort of discomfort. Okay, I feel a
shooting pain when I see it's it's usually a bone
or a leg going away. It's not supposed to go
like a knife wound. Wouldn't bother me, it wouldn't make
me grab my chest. But that always sends a shooting
pain through my leg. And that, buddy, maybe a mild
form of synaesthesia. Yes, it might be. It's my first intro.
(01:51):
That's very good, Chuck. I think we should, uh, we
should appropriately clap for that, Jerry. Yes, I cut for myself,
so just be a two person lame slow clap. It
was a good clap. It's a good intro, Chuck. And
this is news to me. I had no idea that
you were a synistet. Well, I don't know if that
really counts. I kind of thought everyone felt a shooting
(02:12):
pain when that kind of thing happened. But you know,
but you sound like a developmental synistet born with it people. Yeah,
people who are born with synesthesia tend to think that
this is a very normal occurrence that everybody feels as well. Yeah. Yeah,
that's the only time it happens though. It's just with
leg injuries, well breaks and things like when limbs just
(02:34):
do things that aren't supposed to they're not supposed to do.
I don't see the number three is orange. We'll get
to that later, but we definitely what but what you're
talking about is mirror touch synesthesia. Yeah, the first one, Yeah, yes, okay,
do you want to go into it? Yeah? Why not?
What are you waiting for? That's one of that I
just did the intro. I thought when you hand it over,
(02:56):
so I'm handing it over. Yeah, this is all reverse
and it's not like mirror reverse. It's all just confusing. Um,
all right, Well, mirror touch synaesthesia is a I don't
know if you could call it a disorder, maybe a condition,
we'll say conditions. It's a condition where a person actually
experiences a touch or an injury, uh, that they're observing
(03:19):
on someone else. And because it's mirror touch, if saying
I'm facing you right, which you are right, and your
left arm gets touched, I would feel it in my
right arm right. And if I were standing next to
you and your left arm were touched, I would feel
it in my left arm too. This is not supposed
(03:40):
to happen normally. No, pretty weird it is, And apparently
for the the I guess, truly advanced mirror touch synisthts
like you can't watch a horror movie because the the
empathy involved is so extreme that they it's unbearable to watch.
Like you feel like these things are happening to you,
(04:02):
And there's no There's a lot of stuff we need
to point out, but chief among them is there's no
confusion here. These people aren't confused. They don't think they're
really you know, Jack Nicholson getting hit in the head
with a baseball bat by Shelley Duval, right, They don't
think that's happening to them, but they still experience this, right.
That's number one. Number two is this is not imagination, right, right, Like,
(04:28):
these people aren't deluded, No, no, anymore than than say
a person with mirror touch synesthesia feeling themselves being pinched
when they want someone else being pinched. That's no more
a delusion than you or I being pinched that experience, right, Yeah,
they're they're considered uh neurologically normal quote unquote, right. And
(04:51):
we also know that they are having these real experiences
because of our friend the Wonder Machine, which has been
employed to UM investigate synesthesia in all forms, and it
shows UM that the for example, I don't I can't
come up with one from you or touching neuruns, but
(05:11):
we'll we'll use the color grapheme. No, we'll use the
sound color synesthesia. Okay, Yeah, there's all different types and
and this is another one. Sound color is when you
associate sound with color. Right. So if you have somebody
who has sound color synesthesia and the m r I
all right, and you play a musical note for them,
(05:33):
the region of the brain that uh that that experiences
or governs our understanding of musical notes is activated, as
is the region of the brain that's associated with colors.
So these people are experiencing both. There's no way to
separate them, and it's not an association like, um, you
(05:54):
were wearing a blue Evil Kinevel jumpsuit the first time
you heard, you know, a particular box concerto, right, although
it was you work and you may associate that, so
you may have a visual image in your mind of
that blue jump suit or even that shade of blue
whenever you hear that concerto. This is not what we're
talking about. This is a mixture of the senses in
(06:16):
its most definitive form. Yeah. Oftentimes they say they will
even be a projection of that color, a literal projection
that they see. And it sounds cookie if you've never
experienced it, but to them it seems completely normal. Well yeah, um,
I think once that once they realize that they're cinis
seats and that this isn't normal, Uh, it becomes tiresome,
(06:37):
from what I understand. I was reading an interview with
Dr Oliver Sacks, the Awakenings guy. He's been hanging with
cinis seats for many decades now, so he's some something
of an authority on it, and he was saying that
a lot of them get kind of tired of it,
like I really wish I could just listen to music
without seeing all the colors. Well, a lot of people
(06:57):
use it too, though, well yeah, cre creatively sure. Sure.
Famous sinnisthetes have have remarked that it has helped them
with their memory. I gotta study on that, which we'll
get too later. But we're talking about Duke Ellington. Yeah, no,
slouch no, uh frowns Franz list YEP composer Nabokov, writer
(07:18):
actually Nabokov. In his autobiography, he talks about how he
started to um realize that he was syn aesthetic when
he was a little kid. Um he was pointing to these, uh,
I guess the alphabet and they were just colorless um letters.
But he was talking about the colors of the letters,
and his mother came over and agreed with them that
(07:39):
the letters were indeed colored, but um, she disagreed with
what colors the letters were. So he came to realize
as he grew older that he and his mother were
syn aesthetic, and actually, strangely enough, his wife turned out
to be a synisty too. Well they do think it's hereditary,
for sure, but get this. He also couldn't hear music,
(08:03):
Like he could hear set the sound, but he couldn't
hear music, so he couldn't hear a high or a
low pitch, and he couldn't hear discordant. What we see now,
he was a color graphyme synasty all right, so that's two.
We'll go ahead and say the other two word taste,
words associated with taste and taste, touch, And there's all
(08:25):
kinds of groupings of these. It's not just those. Apparently,
they can be paired in all sorts of ways. And
I think they said it's rare, but some people even have, uh,
involve three or more of their senses. Yes, I mean crazy, right,
And there's no besides, you know, color graphemes synesthesia. It's
not like you just have that. You can have different
(08:45):
types of synesthesia, and you can also have them to
different degrees, so much so that um researchers are are
coming to believe that one out of it, every one
dred or two hundred people have synesthesia, Yeah, to some
to some degree, like you, right, And it's also specific
to the person, so everyone's is their own, right, which
is why three isn't always blue for every synasty, which
(09:07):
is why Nabokov and his mother were arguing about why
you know what colors were? What? Uh, there's another one
I found too, called time space synesthesia. Did you see
this this? Uh? They kind of referenced it in the article.
As far as some people even see certain months and
days as shapes. But this there's a psychologist named David
Brang who his theory is that people can literally see
(09:30):
time as a space. They see it as a spatial construct.
So he found this one woman in a study who
was able to see the year as a circular ring
surrounding her body, and it rotated clockwise throughout the year,
and the current month resided inside of her chest, in
the past month resided on the front of her chest.
(09:53):
Isn't that crazy? And when I say crazy, I'm not
being derogatory. Fascinating? Yes, right, well, yeah, of course we
use those interchangeably around here, don't we. Well, um, that
woman can probably tell you exactly what happened on a
certain day of a given year, because one of the
(10:14):
one of the benefits that the researchers believe um synists
are bestowed with is uh better working memory. There's different associations.
It's not just one association. It's you're using two regions
of the brain to form memories or that are elicited
as a response to music or a letter or something
(10:37):
like that. While he died, he did two studies. You
want to hear that I do. He took the same
people the time space. Uh is it sin a sinists,
sinists synist synistates. Yeah, he took the time space synist
eats and he did a He asked him to memorize
an unfamiliar spatial calendar and then reproduce it. And he
(10:58):
then he got you know, normal people to do it,
and the results showed that they could recall events in
time like light years beyond the non synistates. And they
found on average that they synistates have about a hundred
and twenty three different facts that they can call up
(11:18):
about a specific event in our lives in their life,
compared to thirty nine for your average Joe. So it's
it's definitely doubling your pleasure with the memory. You're fun
with synesthesia, Chuck. Um, you were talking about studies and tests. Uh.
Dr Sax mentioned a pretty simple test for somebody with
(11:39):
color grapheme synesthesia. Um, and it's brilliant and it's simplicity.
But you just put a piece of paper in front
of them with a scattering a random scattering of fives
and ss and say pick out five siness is as
fast as you can and for a synist because remember
this isn't an association like they literally five it looks red,
(12:01):
s looks with other numbers and letters. No, just five
sinesses because they look similar. So the Cyneses should be
able to pick out the five Sinesses and no time
flat like because blue and red, because it's not just
a black printed number letter that looks similar to want
to know, it will clearly look like this one's red,
this one's green, this one's red, this one's green, green, green, red,
(12:24):
like a human highlighter pretty much, you know, that's why
you use a highlighter so it stands out. But think
about this. Can you imagine trying to study if do
you remember back in like seventh grade, those fat pens
that have four different color inks in them, and the
girls with love notes with one letter for and when
they really really liked you, like each letter would be
(12:47):
a different um, a different color, and it was just
a headache and nightmare and you're like, I don't like you,
you know you with that that puffy bang thing that's
all hairsprayed going on. Ye much later for me, seventh
grade for me was that was still uh oh yeah,
everybody j everybody's keeping on trucking, spiky jone jet hair.
(13:09):
That's what was going on. Nice Chuck, this is appears
to be genetic in origin. Yeah, that's what they think
because usually more than one person your family has it
at a time. Yeah. Old Jacob Silverman not to be
confused with old Kirk Christiansen. Uh he uh. He wrote
about UM a researcher named Sarah Jane Blake Moore who
(13:31):
was delivering a lecture and mentioned, uh that she had
heard of people who confused UM other people's touches for
their own, right, she's talking about mirror touch synistats. And
a woman in the audience, I guess during the Q
and A session said, wait, I thought everybody felt that
it was like, what is going on here? Sarah Jane
Blakemore is like, let's go to your home, and they did,
(13:54):
and she found out that eleven of her family members
had some form of synis teach. So if they think
it it does have a genetic basis, but check up.
Writing an article on a skin condition called epidermal lisis belosa, okay,
basically you get blisters really easy. Okay. Researchers have determined
(14:16):
that ten genes are in order, are in play or
mutated to have epidermalos epidermal lisis belosa. And that's just
for a blister. Can you imagine the number of genes
and have to be mutated in the specific combinations to
form synesthesia? Crazy amounts? It is crazy and we mean fascinating. Uh,
(14:39):
where should we go here? We got a mirror neurons? Well,
hold on, let's talk about one other thing first. Um,
we with synesthesia, there's two types. We talked about developmental
synesthes who think that this everybody experiences this because they're
born with it. Sure, um. And then there's acquired synesthesia.
And this is most predominantly seen in people who lose
(15:00):
their sight after a certain age, right, or if you
have a brain injury or do lots of drugs. Yeah,
drug use can can lead to I guess a kind
of temporary synesthesia from what I've read. But like if
you go blind, Um, apparently your your brain's visual center,
after it's been trained to take in visual information, it's
(15:22):
still hungry for it, so it starts. Apparently your synesthesia
can just come in like gang Busters after you lose
your site, even when you didn't have it before. And
you remember that movie Mask who could forget? Of course
you remember the part where Rocky Dennis is teaching his
blind girlfriend what colors the coldest blue, hotest red? Right,
(15:42):
he puts her hand under some cold water and this
is blue and what he heated like a rock up
in a camp fire and gave it to her to
teach her red and teach her a lesson. And he
smacked her in the face and said that's orange, right,
get it right? O pain? Yeah, I think that's the
I can't tell, and I don't know that a neurologist
(16:02):
could tell you whether that was actually developing synesthesia? Right.
That was Laura Dern, wasn't it. I think it was, yeah,
a young Laura Dern. Yeah, and Rocky Dennis was Eric
Stoltz and share with share Eric stolts in a lot
of prosthetic makeup. Yeah, good move, great movie. I love
that Sam Elliott too. Everybody was in that. John Travolta,
Tom Cruise, Beck Beck was in it. Yeah. Well, and
(16:26):
who can forget the cameo by Liberaci. I know it
was blew me away. He was the mask he turned
out to be, not even metaphorically like Rocky Dennis took
his mask off and it was Liberaci. Yeah, what a classic.
Are we a mirror neurons? We definitely if we're not
wearing Big Trouble Buddy. Oh wait show No really? Yeah okay.
(16:50):
Another pop culture references Uman Fantasia is commonly pointed to
as about the closest a non SYNISTI could come to
experire encing synesthesia short hallucinating. Interesting, Yeah, because the almost
every motion and color and change in lighting is associated
with Yeah that I can't get through that thing anymore.
(17:14):
I can't think. When I was a little kid, I
thought it was neat, but now it's just unsettling. Yeah,
it's boring, alright, Chuck, I believe we have arrived at
mirror neurons. So mirror neurons, Josh, I didn't realize this,
but they were discovered only in in Maccaque monkeys by accident. Yeah. Uh.
(17:34):
There were these dudes in Italy, the neuroscientists at the
University of Parma, and I will read their names because
I love Italians. It was a Giacomo Rizzolatti was the
first one, and Vittorio Galsi it's the second one. And
the third one was Leonardo Foghassi. I like the last
guy's name the most. Fagassi Yeah, he's good. So they
(17:57):
make a mean pasta sauce too. So they were doing
a little study on the premotor neuron dynamics. So they
ran some electrodes into a macaque monkey, like you said,
to the premotor cortex to monitor neural activity when the
monkey like would reach for something. It's all going fine.
They were learning whatever they were learning, eating some spaghetti,
(18:19):
and all of a sudden, one of the guys, is
how the story goes, at least, came into the room
and like reached for a raisin I think they said
it was. And the monkey was still hooked up, and
they saw that his brain started firing the same as
it did when he had actually reached for it, and
they all went say, it's it's a punsy nice And
(18:40):
all of a sudden they had stumbled upon what one
of them calls the biggest neuroscientific discovery of the decade.
And he went on to say that mere neurons will
do for psychology what DNA has done for biology. It's
very funny, you know, provide a unifying framework. That's funny
that he said that, because that that's a lot of
foresight for that one single guy. Because that's exactly what
(19:03):
it's done. Oh yeah, big time. I mean that basically,
mirror neurons are how we learn to do everything right,
Think about swinging a baseball back. You don't just walk
up and go, oh, there you go. You learn it
by observing other people. At the same time, you can
make the case that culture, UM other kinds of acquired
(19:24):
learning aside from swinging baseball batch um. The theory of
the mind, where we can put ourselves in other people's
situations to predict their behavior. All of this is accounted
for by mirror neurons. A biological basis for empathy. Yes, crazy,
it is crazy, UM. And I think also, uh, empaths,
(19:44):
people who have severe empathy real empathy, UM, tend to
have more active mirror neurons. And uh people with autism
tend to not display any motor mirror neuron activities. You
understand one and you might explain the other is what
are thinking? Um? Also, chuck, the that was just mirror
(20:05):
neurons were just observed in humans for the first time
this year. Yeah U c l A. Yeah, and apparently
there were have much more robust than even the monkeys do. Right,
So they are you talking about? The study where they
had brain electrodes already implanted in epilepsy patients awaiting surgery.
That one. Okay, um, these are the guys who showed
(20:26):
it directly before I'd been observed. Its activity had been
observed like the m R I. But m R has
falling a little out of favor these days, and rightly,
so we just didn't Yeah, right, um. These guys had
brain electrodes hooked up to the brains of epilepsy patients already,
and they're like, hey, let's test this out. So they
had people watch others do grasping motions, and then they
(20:51):
had the people do grasping motions themselves. Some neurons were
fired when the person to the grasp grasping motion himself,
and other urons fired when they watched it, but eight
percent fired both times. Those are the mirror neurons. It
was the first time, the first time they were ever
directly observed in humans. And those are the sine sinist
(21:13):
you know, they're just they're just regular everyday people. Let's
go back to that sports metaphor. Okay, okay, all right, Chuck,
have you ever seen somebody get hit by a pitch? Yeah,
And did you recoil in your chair even though you're
in no way in the line of that pitch a
little bit. But have you seen other people do it?
It's like, oh yeah, Like that's that's mirror neurons at work.
(21:36):
You're anticipating that this other person is going to feel pain.
You don't necessarily have to be a sinist for to
have mirror neurons. You see what I'm saying. Yeah, although
in sinist it's just tightened. It's they're much more active, right,
And that's the theory. Uh. They also found through that
and I love this. This is like brand new stuff
here in the past couple of years, which I really love.
(21:58):
They found that it's you don't actually even have to
see it. You can hear it, like a piece of
paper being torn, and they'll start firing like that. And
when a Galassian Rizzolatti found that when they actually describe
something happening in a sentence, the same mirror neurons are
firing as if they are actually performing the action. So
(22:21):
that's I don't know if that's getting through to people.
The neurons at fire. If you would actually tear a
piece of paper happened when you hear it being torn crazy.
It is crazy. Um. And you were talking about the
what was the Italian guy's name who made the prediction
that it was going to be the biggest thing since
the Beatles? Uh Ravioli, Okay Ravioli. When he said, um,
(22:43):
that it was gonna be huge, he was absolutely right, Chuck. Yes,
mirror neurons are at the center of what's being called
the Fifth Revolution and humanity. I believe it. Will you
will you allow me? Will you indulge me a moment?
So there's has been four so far, and we're at
(23:03):
the beginning of the fifth Revolution. The first revolution was
Copernicus saying Earth is in at the center of the universe.
The second revolution was Darwin saying men are just clever monkeys,
even though he was seventy five years after what's his face? Yeah,
what's his face? I know you're talking about. Oh yeah, um.
(23:26):
And then the third revolution was Freudian who suggested that
we were nothing but a bunch of drives and desires
that we were unconscious of and could control. The fourth
was the genetic revolution, the d n A. Krick and
Watson who showed like, hey, we're actually a bunch of
genes and all that that implies, and Watson put it
(23:46):
like there are only molecules. Everything else's sociology, and his
his partner Francis Crick, said, huh, you know, that's really
interesting that we came up with that. I'm gonna go
ahead and predict the fifth wave and the fifth Revolution
is neuroscience and that's where we're at now, that we
are nothing. But uh, this is how Crick put it
(24:09):
in his book Astonishing Hypothesis. Even our loftiest thoughts and
aspirations are mere byproducts of neural activity and mirror neurons
are revealing that synesthesia reveals that. Because think about it, Chuck.
If I watch you get pinched and I experienced the
pinching just like I'm being pinched, that's my reality. But
it's not reality. Is everybody sees reality or agrees that
(24:33):
reality is, but it's still just as real. So it
kind of, um, it kind of underscores just how feeble
reality actually is. And this is well, this is what
neuroscience is. This fifth Revolution is undermining our conceptions and
our perceptions of reality. Wow, I have a question for you.
(24:57):
There's a neuroscientist named vs. Ramash Chandron that's Okay, he
has a question that he liked supposed to people, it's
not his, but he bandies it about a lot. Chuck. Yes,
if a neuroscientist could keep your brain in a vat
of liquid and maintain your consciousness, so you had no idea.
(25:23):
You were just a brain and a vat of liquid,
apply electrical impulses, so that could make you the happiest
form of yourself, combined with Gandhi, Hugh Hefner, Um Einstein,
and Bill Gates, and you were just as happy as
you could be. And then one day the neuroscientist says
to you, Hey, I'm gonna give you a choice. First
of all, your brain in a vat of liquid, and
(25:46):
all of your experiences are just me applying electrical impulses
like Futurama or like the matrix, or like the matrix,
which was actually based on this this thought experiment. So
you can either remain this happy eluded brain in this
vet of liquid, or you can be your regular self,
what you consider to be yourself, what you consider to
(26:08):
be yourself right now, what would you choose? Blue pill
or red pill? Basically, uh, I'd want to beat myself.
What's the difference? No, but really it's true. And this
was around before the Warshinski brothers, you know, cinema whatever Lebaski,
(26:28):
before they cinematized it as the basis for the matrix systems.
This is a philosophical experiment and it well, if you
would never know, you're right, what's the difference, right? But
it's not. It's not never knowing, Chuck. The point is,
that's what's going on with us right now. That's our
conception of reality. It's just a it's a neurological response
to external stimuli. But that's that. None of it's real,
(26:51):
And mirror neurons are kind of pointing that out as
a big flashing light, like buddy, If somebody can feel
someone else being hinched and you can actually see the
brain activity going, they're not amaging it, then reality isn't real, right,
And we're here to show you. Wow, I know I'm depressed.
See I'm inspired. What does that say about us? I
(27:13):
don't know. Yeah, that means we compliment each other. That
you blew my mind literally into next Wednesday. I got
a couple of more things. I want to hear them. Uh,
you know how I was talking about the biological basis
for empathy. They're also thinking that this is why yawns
are contagious, laughter contagious and moods or contagious good and bad.
(27:35):
We didn't do that when the yawning contagious doesn't make
you empathetic. I don't think they knew as much even
when we recorded that as they do now about me
or her. Yeah, like you were saying, like this is
cutting edge stuff. It's been advancing leaps and bounds, like
over the last two years, right, leaps and bounds. And
I got one more thing for you, speaking of that,
have you seen that cute little lamb where's be the
(27:56):
Confused Little Lamb on YouTube? No, but Cherry's like nodding
like a year old adorable You mean, I just sit
there and watch it like that. You'll you'll watch it
ten times if that. As long as a little be
the lambs around, I don't care what's real. Yeah, I
don't know if I could ever watch anything as much
as I watched the Surprise cat kitten or the uh yeah,
(28:18):
or the the shocked gopher groundhog or whatever they are
around dramatic. Yeah, I can't remember what it's called. What
about the weather guy? Pretty much everywhere. Arthur Arthur, Yeah,
he was good too. Boy, that was a nice little sidebar.
Have you seen Keyboard Kitty? We should just do a
(28:39):
whole show on YouTube stuff. I haven't seen keyboard Kitty.
Uh Josh. Here's one of the one last thing. The
mirror neurons. They think a more complex mirror neuron system
developed in humans about five to ten thousand years ago. Yeah,
I remember. You know what else happened around five to
ten tho years ago. We I've got everything I want
(29:03):
to say. I can't say. It emerged roughly at the
same time as modern communication and language beauty. So they
think the mirror neurons, once they developed to that extent
in early man, that crude pantomime gestures became more elaborate gestures, gestures.
(29:23):
I'd like that. It's like a nod to just right.
And then that became rudimentary language, and then it just
snowballed from there. So we'll chuck think about this. We've
talked about Mesopotamia being the cradle of civilization. We started
living in cities around that time too. Yeah, and mirror
neurons make us more empathetic, which is pretty much the
glue that holds society together truly. The Fifth Revolution so interesting. Um,
(29:48):
we should give a shout out just so we don't
get a thousand million emails about Richard Psytowick. He yeah, yeah,
he kind of says that he's the man. He wrote
a book in You noticed Oliver Sex nodding to this
guy too, Yeah, he, I mean he seems like the
real deal. All that his website is m crude. Well,
(30:11):
it's just you go to it and you're like, oh man,
I thought you're all like it's professional and it's not
dot org is it? But no, I don't think so.
But he hasn't he he does have some books once
called The Man Who Tasted Shapes. Yeah, that's I think
that's the one from And then Wednesday is Intogo Blue
discovering the Brain of Synaesthesia, and he proposes that it's well,
(30:33):
we should say, there was another hypothesis that it's just
crossed wires, and that we're born like that with our
neurons cross and that almost all humans get it straightened
out and becomes more complex around twelve months of age. Yeah,
but that it's just just wires across. That's why, baby,
if you stick your tongue out of a baby. They
might stick their tongue out back. One other one, Yeah,
(30:56):
we're talking about exo echo praxia in um the Turette's episode,
and that apparently it has to do with mere neurons
as well. Um. And then one other school of thought
for synesthesia is that synists are picking up on something
that's actually there, So, like the wavelength of a piece
of music also has some sort of light wavelength. Interesting,
(31:20):
I'm going with the mere neurons. Well, I don't think
we have any choice. Man, It's like evolution Freud. I
don't know if I accept him as a revolution, but
it's like evolution Copernicus. But don't you feel, Chuck that
we are at this point where all the information is
on the table, but we're just now starting to be
(31:42):
able to put it together. So it's a really depressing
point right now because our place in the universe is
up in the airs. It's ever been, We've been, we're were,
We've never been less sure about our importance or the
meaning of our lives. It's entirely possible that once we
put it all together, the meaning will be even bleaker,
the reality will be even bleaker. But then we'll be
(32:04):
able to grow from there. I think that we exist
right now in one of the bleakest periods of humankind. Wow,
that's a nice way to leave things. Well, let's sit
for a synesthesia. I think we've got more than just
this one article on the site, but the one we
were basing this off of is can people feel the
pain of others? I think if you type synesthesia s
(32:26):
y N E S T h E S I A
into the handy search bar how stuff works dot Com,
you're gonna get something pal something, maybe d L hugely.
We never can talk, so chuck. It means it's time
for listener mail, right well, Josha Wood those listener mail,
But I didn't prepare a listener mail today because we
have just some things to talk about. T shirt submissions. Yeah,
(32:48):
we've gotten some pretty cool ones. We've gotten some really
cool ones and something aren't so great. But but we
appreciate the effort, yes we do, but keep them coming.
We don't have the details. Yeah, we just wanted to
say that we archive all emails. We archive all the emails.
I have a little folder called t shirts and I'm
throwing all the all the ones in there. That people
send in. That's so crazy. I thought of making a
(33:10):
folder called t shirt leave it to me. Uh, it's
that we're really getting some great ones though. I would
want these t shirts. Oh there's one that I know
we definitely can't produce that. I really want the magnum
Pi one. Yeah. That was pretty dep Oh my goodness,
pretty cool. All right? Well yeah, so that okay, that's coming,
(33:31):
and then we should we should plug Facebook and Twitter too,
because there we're up and running. Now. There's a social
media site called Facebook that you should check out, and
then there's another thing called Twitter that people should check
out too. And you can find us at stuff you
should Know on the Facebook. You want to talk about
our Facebook and Twitters and you can find us at
s y ESK podcast on Twitter. Yeah, and you know,
(33:54):
follow us and sign up and become a fan. And
I'm kind of digging being involved. We should put a
subliminal obey and right here despair Yeah, oh yeah, thanks
for the despair Pennant, you know who you are, right,
thanks for everything we've gotten recently. Yeah, we got a
six pack of micro brew from a guy that was
really nice. And the people send us things. Uh about
(34:16):
that work at sers we've got like hats and T shirts.
Turns out nine one one isn't a joke. No, it's not. Well.
Thank you everybody for listening, at least those of you
send an emails double thanks, and those of you who
send an actual physical stuff triple thanks. Uh. If you
want to contact Chuck or me or both of us
(34:37):
and Jerry too, you can send us an email including
T shirt submissions to stuff podcast at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
is it how stuff works dot com. Want more how
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
(34:58):
works dot com home page. MM brought to you by
the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
which makes this Stuff you should Know very nice. How
(00:25):
are you doing? Oh, I'm great. You look like you're
doing great. Chow, you look like you're doing great, Josh.
Jerry looks like she's doing about like we're doing. We're
all doing the same. That's what we're doing. So Chuckers,
I got, as I said right before we started recording,
I've I've got no intro for this, but this is
(00:46):
a listener request times infinity or so yeah, I gotta
I got an intro. Okay, let's hear. It just came
to me. Okay, Josh, remember years ago when you were
a young child watching NFL football, All in the quarterback
for the Washington Redskins, Joe. Thisman horrifically broke his leg.
(01:06):
Lawrence Taylor broke his leg. It's one of the great
tragedies of my life that I missed that you did.
I never saw it. You know, when you were watching
any sporting event and you see a knee go in
a direction it shouldn't go in Willis Mcgahey, okay, there
you go exactly when it was flopping around. Uh did
you feel a pain in your leg when that happened? Yeah? Yeah,
(01:28):
I felt some sort of discomfort. Okay, I feel a
shooting pain when I see it's it's usually a bone
or a leg going away. It's not supposed to go
like a knife wound. Wouldn't bother me, it wouldn't make
me grab my chest. But that always sends a shooting
pain through my leg. And that, buddy, maybe a mild
form of synaesthesia. Yes, it might be. It's my first intro.
(01:51):
That's very good, Chuck. I think we should, uh, we
should appropriately clap for that, Jerry. Yes, I cut for myself,
so just be a two person lame slow clap. It
was a good clap. It's a good intro, Chuck. And
this is news to me. I had no idea that
you were a synistet. Well, I don't know if that
really counts. I kind of thought everyone felt a shooting
(02:12):
pain when that kind of thing happened. But you know,
but you sound like a developmental synistet born with it people. Yeah,
people who are born with synesthesia tend to think that
this is a very normal occurrence that everybody feels as well. Yeah. Yeah,
that's the only time it happens though. It's just with
leg injuries, well breaks and things like when limbs just
(02:34):
do things that aren't supposed to they're not supposed to do.
I don't see the number three is orange. We'll get
to that later, but we definitely what but what you're
talking about is mirror touch synesthesia. Yeah, the first one, Yeah, yes, okay,
do you want to go into it? Yeah? Why not?
What are you waiting for? That's one of that I
just did the intro. I thought when you hand it over,
(02:56):
so I'm handing it over. Yeah, this is all reverse
and it's not like mirror reverse. It's all just confusing. Um,
all right, Well, mirror touch synaesthesia is a I don't
know if you could call it a disorder, maybe a condition,
we'll say conditions. It's a condition where a person actually
experiences a touch or an injury, uh, that they're observing
(03:19):
on someone else. And because it's mirror touch, if saying
I'm facing you right, which you are right, and your
left arm gets touched, I would feel it in my
right arm right. And if I were standing next to
you and your left arm were touched, I would feel
it in my left arm too. This is not supposed
(03:40):
to happen normally. No, pretty weird it is, And apparently
for the the I guess, truly advanced mirror touch synisthts
like you can't watch a horror movie because the the
empathy involved is so extreme that they it's unbearable to watch.
Like you feel like these things are happening to you,
(04:02):
And there's no There's a lot of stuff we need
to point out, but chief among them is there's no
confusion here. These people aren't confused. They don't think they're
really you know, Jack Nicholson getting hit in the head
with a baseball bat by Shelley Duval, right, They don't
think that's happening to them, but they still experience this, right.
That's number one. Number two is this is not imagination, right, right, Like,
(04:28):
these people aren't deluded, No, no, anymore than than say
a person with mirror touch synesthesia feeling themselves being pinched
when they want someone else being pinched. That's no more
a delusion than you or I being pinched that experience, right, Yeah,
they're they're considered uh neurologically normal quote unquote, right. And
(04:51):
we also know that they are having these real experiences
because of our friend the Wonder Machine, which has been
employed to UM investigate synesthesia in all forms, and it
shows UM that the for example, I don't I can't
come up with one from you or touching neuruns, but
(05:11):
we'll we'll use the color grapheme. No, we'll use the
sound color synesthesia. Okay, Yeah, there's all different types and
and this is another one. Sound color is when you
associate sound with color. Right. So if you have somebody
who has sound color synesthesia and the m r I
all right, and you play a musical note for them,
(05:33):
the region of the brain that uh that that experiences
or governs our understanding of musical notes is activated, as
is the region of the brain that's associated with colors.
So these people are experiencing both. There's no way to
separate them, and it's not an association like, um, you
(05:54):
were wearing a blue Evil Kinevel jumpsuit the first time
you heard, you know, a particular box concerto, right, although
it was you work and you may associate that, so
you may have a visual image in your mind of
that blue jump suit or even that shade of blue
whenever you hear that concerto. This is not what we're
talking about. This is a mixture of the senses in
(06:16):
its most definitive form. Yeah. Oftentimes they say they will
even be a projection of that color, a literal projection
that they see. And it sounds cookie if you've never
experienced it, but to them it seems completely normal. Well yeah, um,
I think once that once they realize that they're cinis
seats and that this isn't normal, Uh, it becomes tiresome,
(06:37):
from what I understand. I was reading an interview with
Dr Oliver Sacks, the Awakenings guy. He's been hanging with
cinis seats for many decades now, so he's some something
of an authority on it, and he was saying that
a lot of them get kind of tired of it,
like I really wish I could just listen to music
without seeing all the colors. Well, a lot of people
(06:57):
use it too, though, well yeah, cre creatively sure. Sure.
Famous sinnisthetes have have remarked that it has helped them
with their memory. I gotta study on that, which we'll
get too later. But we're talking about Duke Ellington. Yeah, no,
slouch no, uh frowns Franz list YEP composer Nabokov, writer
(07:18):
actually Nabokov. In his autobiography, he talks about how he
started to um realize that he was syn aesthetic when
he was a little kid. Um he was pointing to these, uh,
I guess the alphabet and they were just colorless um letters.
But he was talking about the colors of the letters,
and his mother came over and agreed with them that
(07:39):
the letters were indeed colored, but um, she disagreed with
what colors the letters were. So he came to realize
as he grew older that he and his mother were
syn aesthetic, and actually, strangely enough, his wife turned out
to be a synisty too. Well they do think it's hereditary,
for sure, but get this. He also couldn't hear music,
(08:03):
Like he could hear set the sound, but he couldn't
hear music, so he couldn't hear a high or a
low pitch, and he couldn't hear discordant. What we see now,
he was a color graphyme synasty all right, so that's two.
We'll go ahead and say the other two word taste,
words associated with taste and taste, touch, And there's all
(08:25):
kinds of groupings of these. It's not just those. Apparently,
they can be paired in all sorts of ways. And
I think they said it's rare, but some people even have, uh,
involve three or more of their senses. Yes, I mean crazy, right,
And there's no besides, you know, color graphemes synesthesia. It's
not like you just have that. You can have different
(08:45):
types of synesthesia, and you can also have them to
different degrees, so much so that um researchers are are
coming to believe that one out of it, every one
dred or two hundred people have synesthesia, Yeah, to some
to some degree, like you, right, And it's also specific
to the person, so everyone's is their own, right, which
is why three isn't always blue for every synasty, which
(09:07):
is why Nabokov and his mother were arguing about why
you know what colors were? What? Uh, there's another one
I found too, called time space synesthesia. Did you see
this this? Uh? They kind of referenced it in the article.
As far as some people even see certain months and
days as shapes. But this there's a psychologist named David
Brang who his theory is that people can literally see
(09:30):
time as a space. They see it as a spatial construct.
So he found this one woman in a study who
was able to see the year as a circular ring
surrounding her body, and it rotated clockwise throughout the year,
and the current month resided inside of her chest, in
the past month resided on the front of her chest.
(09:53):
Isn't that crazy? And when I say crazy, I'm not
being derogatory. Fascinating? Yes, right, well, yeah, of course we
use those interchangeably around here, don't we. Well, um, that
woman can probably tell you exactly what happened on a
certain day of a given year, because one of the
(10:14):
one of the benefits that the researchers believe um synists
are bestowed with is uh better working memory. There's different associations.
It's not just one association. It's you're using two regions
of the brain to form memories or that are elicited
as a response to music or a letter or something
(10:37):
like that. While he died, he did two studies. You
want to hear that I do. He took the same
people the time space. Uh is it sin a sinists,
sinists synist synistates. Yeah, he took the time space synist
eats and he did a He asked him to memorize
an unfamiliar spatial calendar and then reproduce it. And he
(10:58):
then he got you know, normal people to do it,
and the results showed that they could recall events in
time like light years beyond the non synistates. And they
found on average that they synistates have about a hundred
and twenty three different facts that they can call up
(11:18):
about a specific event in our lives in their life,
compared to thirty nine for your average Joe. So it's
it's definitely doubling your pleasure with the memory. You're fun
with synesthesia, Chuck. Um, you were talking about studies and tests. Uh.
Dr Sax mentioned a pretty simple test for somebody with
(11:39):
color grapheme synesthesia. Um, and it's brilliant and it's simplicity.
But you just put a piece of paper in front
of them with a scattering a random scattering of fives
and ss and say pick out five siness is as
fast as you can and for a synist because remember
this isn't an association like they literally five it looks red,
(12:01):
s looks with other numbers and letters. No, just five
sinesses because they look similar. So the Cyneses should be
able to pick out the five Sinesses and no time
flat like because blue and red, because it's not just
a black printed number letter that looks similar to want
to know, it will clearly look like this one's red,
this one's green, this one's red, this one's green, green, green, red,
(12:24):
like a human highlighter pretty much, you know, that's why
you use a highlighter so it stands out. But think
about this. Can you imagine trying to study if do
you remember back in like seventh grade, those fat pens
that have four different color inks in them, and the
girls with love notes with one letter for and when
they really really liked you, like each letter would be
(12:47):
a different um, a different color, and it was just
a headache and nightmare and you're like, I don't like you,
you know you with that that puffy bang thing that's
all hairsprayed going on. Ye much later for me, seventh
grade for me was that was still uh oh yeah,
everybody j everybody's keeping on trucking, spiky jone jet hair.
(13:09):
That's what was going on. Nice Chuck, this is appears
to be genetic in origin. Yeah, that's what they think
because usually more than one person your family has it
at a time. Yeah. Old Jacob Silverman not to be
confused with old Kirk Christiansen. Uh he uh. He wrote
about UM a researcher named Sarah Jane Blake Moore who
(13:31):
was delivering a lecture and mentioned, uh that she had
heard of people who confused UM other people's touches for
their own, right, she's talking about mirror touch synistats. And
a woman in the audience, I guess during the Q
and A session said, wait, I thought everybody felt that
it was like, what is going on here? Sarah Jane
Blakemore is like, let's go to your home, and they did,
(13:54):
and she found out that eleven of her family members
had some form of synis teach. So if they think
it it does have a genetic basis, but check up.
Writing an article on a skin condition called epidermal lisis belosa, okay,
basically you get blisters really easy. Okay. Researchers have determined
(14:16):
that ten genes are in order, are in play or
mutated to have epidermalos epidermal lisis belosa. And that's just
for a blister. Can you imagine the number of genes
and have to be mutated in the specific combinations to
form synesthesia? Crazy amounts? It is crazy and we mean fascinating. Uh,
(14:39):
where should we go here? We got a mirror neurons? Well,
hold on, let's talk about one other thing first. Um,
we with synesthesia, there's two types. We talked about developmental
synesthes who think that this everybody experiences this because they're
born with it. Sure, um. And then there's acquired synesthesia.
And this is most predominantly seen in people who lose
(15:00):
their sight after a certain age, right, or if you
have a brain injury or do lots of drugs. Yeah,
drug use can can lead to I guess a kind
of temporary synesthesia from what I've read. But like if
you go blind, Um, apparently your your brain's visual center,
after it's been trained to take in visual information, it's
(15:22):
still hungry for it, so it starts. Apparently your synesthesia
can just come in like gang Busters after you lose
your site, even when you didn't have it before. And
you remember that movie Mask who could forget? Of course
you remember the part where Rocky Dennis is teaching his
blind girlfriend what colors the coldest blue, hotest red? Right,
(15:42):
he puts her hand under some cold water and this
is blue and what he heated like a rock up
in a camp fire and gave it to her to
teach her red and teach her a lesson. And he
smacked her in the face and said that's orange, right,
get it right? O pain? Yeah, I think that's the
I can't tell, and I don't know that a neurologist
(16:02):
could tell you whether that was actually developing synesthesia? Right.
That was Laura Dern, wasn't it. I think it was, yeah,
a young Laura Dern. Yeah, and Rocky Dennis was Eric
Stoltz and share with share Eric stolts in a lot
of prosthetic makeup. Yeah, good move, great movie. I love
that Sam Elliott too. Everybody was in that. John Travolta,
Tom Cruise, Beck Beck was in it. Yeah. Well, and
(16:26):
who can forget the cameo by Liberaci. I know it
was blew me away. He was the mask he turned
out to be, not even metaphorically like Rocky Dennis took
his mask off and it was Liberaci. Yeah, what a classic.
Are we a mirror neurons? We definitely if we're not
wearing Big Trouble Buddy. Oh wait show No really? Yeah okay.
(16:50):
Another pop culture references Uman Fantasia is commonly pointed to
as about the closest a non SYNISTI could come to
experire encing synesthesia short hallucinating. Interesting, Yeah, because the almost
every motion and color and change in lighting is associated
with Yeah that I can't get through that thing anymore.
(17:14):
I can't think. When I was a little kid, I
thought it was neat, but now it's just unsettling. Yeah,
it's boring, alright, Chuck, I believe we have arrived at
mirror neurons. So mirror neurons, Josh, I didn't realize this,
but they were discovered only in in Maccaque monkeys by accident. Yeah. Uh.
(17:34):
There were these dudes in Italy, the neuroscientists at the
University of Parma, and I will read their names because
I love Italians. It was a Giacomo Rizzolatti was the
first one, and Vittorio Galsi it's the second one. And
the third one was Leonardo Foghassi. I like the last
guy's name the most. Fagassi Yeah, he's good. So they
(17:57):
make a mean pasta sauce too. So they were doing
a little study on the premotor neuron dynamics. So they
ran some electrodes into a macaque monkey, like you said,
to the premotor cortex to monitor neural activity when the
monkey like would reach for something. It's all going fine.
They were learning whatever they were learning, eating some spaghetti,
(18:19):
and all of a sudden, one of the guys, is
how the story goes, at least, came into the room
and like reached for a raisin I think they said
it was. And the monkey was still hooked up, and
they saw that his brain started firing the same as
it did when he had actually reached for it, and
they all went say, it's it's a punsy nice And
(18:40):
all of a sudden they had stumbled upon what one
of them calls the biggest neuroscientific discovery of the decade.
And he went on to say that mere neurons will
do for psychology what DNA has done for biology. It's
very funny, you know, provide a unifying framework. That's funny
that he said that, because that that's a lot of
foresight for that one single guy. Because that's exactly what
(19:03):
it's done. Oh yeah, big time. I mean that basically,
mirror neurons are how we learn to do everything right,
Think about swinging a baseball back. You don't just walk
up and go, oh, there you go. You learn it
by observing other people. At the same time, you can
make the case that culture, UM other kinds of acquired
(19:24):
learning aside from swinging baseball batch um. The theory of
the mind, where we can put ourselves in other people's
situations to predict their behavior. All of this is accounted
for by mirror neurons. A biological basis for empathy. Yes, crazy,
it is crazy, UM. And I think also, uh, empaths,
(19:44):
people who have severe empathy real empathy, UM, tend to
have more active mirror neurons. And uh people with autism
tend to not display any motor mirror neuron activities. You
understand one and you might explain the other is what
are thinking? Um? Also, chuck, the that was just mirror
(20:05):
neurons were just observed in humans for the first time
this year. Yeah U c l A. Yeah, and apparently
there were have much more robust than even the monkeys do. Right,
So they are you talking about? The study where they
had brain electrodes already implanted in epilepsy patients awaiting surgery.
That one. Okay, um, these are the guys who showed
(20:26):
it directly before I'd been observed. Its activity had been
observed like the m R I. But m R has
falling a little out of favor these days, and rightly,
so we just didn't Yeah, right, um. These guys had
brain electrodes hooked up to the brains of epilepsy patients already,
and they're like, hey, let's test this out. So they
had people watch others do grasping motions, and then they
(20:51):
had the people do grasping motions themselves. Some neurons were
fired when the person to the grasp grasping motion himself,
and other urons fired when they watched it, but eight
percent fired both times. Those are the mirror neurons. It
was the first time, the first time they were ever
directly observed in humans. And those are the sine sinist
(21:13):
you know, they're just they're just regular everyday people. Let's
go back to that sports metaphor. Okay, okay, all right, Chuck,
have you ever seen somebody get hit by a pitch? Yeah,
And did you recoil in your chair even though you're
in no way in the line of that pitch a
little bit. But have you seen other people do it?
It's like, oh yeah, Like that's that's mirror neurons at work.
(21:36):
You're anticipating that this other person is going to feel pain.
You don't necessarily have to be a sinist for to
have mirror neurons. You see what I'm saying. Yeah, although
in sinist it's just tightened. It's they're much more active, right,
And that's the theory. Uh. They also found through that
and I love this. This is like brand new stuff
here in the past couple of years, which I really love.
(21:58):
They found that it's you don't actually even have to
see it. You can hear it, like a piece of
paper being torn, and they'll start firing like that. And
when a Galassian Rizzolatti found that when they actually describe
something happening in a sentence, the same mirror neurons are
firing as if they are actually performing the action. So
(22:21):
that's I don't know if that's getting through to people.
The neurons at fire. If you would actually tear a
piece of paper happened when you hear it being torn crazy.
It is crazy. Um. And you were talking about the
what was the Italian guy's name who made the prediction
that it was going to be the biggest thing since
the Beatles? Uh Ravioli, Okay Ravioli. When he said, um,
(22:43):
that it was gonna be huge, he was absolutely right, Chuck. Yes,
mirror neurons are at the center of what's being called
the Fifth Revolution and humanity. I believe it. Will you
will you allow me? Will you indulge me a moment?
So there's has been four so far, and we're at
(23:03):
the beginning of the fifth Revolution. The first revolution was
Copernicus saying Earth is in at the center of the universe.
The second revolution was Darwin saying men are just clever monkeys,
even though he was seventy five years after what's his face? Yeah,
what's his face? I know you're talking about. Oh yeah, um.
(23:26):
And then the third revolution was Freudian who suggested that
we were nothing but a bunch of drives and desires
that we were unconscious of and could control. The fourth
was the genetic revolution, the d n A. Krick and
Watson who showed like, hey, we're actually a bunch of
genes and all that that implies, and Watson put it
(23:46):
like there are only molecules. Everything else's sociology, and his
his partner Francis Crick, said, huh, you know, that's really
interesting that we came up with that. I'm gonna go
ahead and predict the fifth wave and the fifth Revolution
is neuroscience and that's where we're at now, that we
are nothing. But uh, this is how Crick put it
(24:09):
in his book Astonishing Hypothesis. Even our loftiest thoughts and
aspirations are mere byproducts of neural activity and mirror neurons
are revealing that synesthesia reveals that. Because think about it, Chuck.
If I watch you get pinched and I experienced the
pinching just like I'm being pinched, that's my reality. But
it's not reality. Is everybody sees reality or agrees that
(24:33):
reality is, but it's still just as real. So it
kind of, um, it kind of underscores just how feeble
reality actually is. And this is well, this is what
neuroscience is. This fifth Revolution is undermining our conceptions and
our perceptions of reality. Wow, I have a question for you.
(24:57):
There's a neuroscientist named vs. Ramash Chandron that's Okay, he
has a question that he liked supposed to people, it's
not his, but he bandies it about a lot. Chuck. Yes,
if a neuroscientist could keep your brain in a vat
of liquid and maintain your consciousness, so you had no idea.
(25:23):
You were just a brain and a vat of liquid,
apply electrical impulses, so that could make you the happiest
form of yourself, combined with Gandhi, Hugh Hefner, Um Einstein,
and Bill Gates, and you were just as happy as
you could be. And then one day the neuroscientist says
to you, Hey, I'm gonna give you a choice. First
of all, your brain in a vat of liquid, and
(25:46):
all of your experiences are just me applying electrical impulses
like Futurama or like the matrix, or like the matrix,
which was actually based on this this thought experiment. So
you can either remain this happy eluded brain in this
vet of liquid, or you can be your regular self,
what you consider to be yourself, what you consider to
(26:08):
be yourself right now, what would you choose? Blue pill
or red pill? Basically, uh, I'd want to beat myself.
What's the difference? No, but really it's true. And this
was around before the Warshinski brothers, you know, cinema whatever Lebaski,
(26:28):
before they cinematized it as the basis for the matrix systems.
This is a philosophical experiment and it well, if you
would never know, you're right, what's the difference, right? But
it's not. It's not never knowing, Chuck. The point is,
that's what's going on with us right now. That's our
conception of reality. It's just a it's a neurological response
to external stimuli. But that's that. None of it's real,
(26:51):
And mirror neurons are kind of pointing that out as
a big flashing light, like buddy, If somebody can feel
someone else being hinched and you can actually see the
brain activity going, they're not amaging it, then reality isn't real, right,
And we're here to show you. Wow, I know I'm depressed.
See I'm inspired. What does that say about us? I
(27:13):
don't know. Yeah, that means we compliment each other. That
you blew my mind literally into next Wednesday. I got
a couple of more things. I want to hear them. Uh,
you know how I was talking about the biological basis
for empathy. They're also thinking that this is why yawns
are contagious, laughter contagious and moods or contagious good and bad.
(27:35):
We didn't do that when the yawning contagious doesn't make
you empathetic. I don't think they knew as much even
when we recorded that as they do now about me
or her. Yeah, like you were saying, like this is
cutting edge stuff. It's been advancing leaps and bounds, like
over the last two years, right, leaps and bounds. And
I got one more thing for you, speaking of that,
have you seen that cute little lamb where's be the
(27:56):
Confused Little Lamb on YouTube? No, but Cherry's like nodding
like a year old adorable You mean, I just sit
there and watch it like that. You'll you'll watch it
ten times if that. As long as a little be
the lambs around, I don't care what's real. Yeah, I
don't know if I could ever watch anything as much
as I watched the Surprise cat kitten or the uh yeah,
(28:18):
or the the shocked gopher groundhog or whatever they are
around dramatic. Yeah, I can't remember what it's called. What
about the weather guy? Pretty much everywhere. Arthur Arthur, Yeah,
he was good too. Boy, that was a nice little sidebar.
Have you seen Keyboard Kitty? We should just do a
(28:39):
whole show on YouTube stuff. I haven't seen keyboard Kitty.
Uh Josh. Here's one of the one last thing. The
mirror neurons. They think a more complex mirror neuron system
developed in humans about five to ten thousand years ago. Yeah,
I remember. You know what else happened around five to
ten tho years ago. We I've got everything I want
(29:03):
to say. I can't say. It emerged roughly at the
same time as modern communication and language beauty. So they
think the mirror neurons, once they developed to that extent
in early man, that crude pantomime gestures became more elaborate gestures, gestures.
(29:23):
I'd like that. It's like a nod to just right.
And then that became rudimentary language, and then it just
snowballed from there. So we'll chuck think about this. We've
talked about Mesopotamia being the cradle of civilization. We started
living in cities around that time too. Yeah, and mirror
neurons make us more empathetic, which is pretty much the
glue that holds society together truly. The Fifth Revolution so interesting. Um,
(29:48):
we should give a shout out just so we don't
get a thousand million emails about Richard Psytowick. He yeah, yeah,
he kind of says that he's the man. He wrote
a book in You noticed Oliver Sex nodding to this
guy too, Yeah, he, I mean he seems like the
real deal. All that his website is m crude. Well,
(30:11):
it's just you go to it and you're like, oh man,
I thought you're all like it's professional and it's not
dot org is it? But no, I don't think so.
But he hasn't he he does have some books once
called The Man Who Tasted Shapes. Yeah, that's I think
that's the one from And then Wednesday is Intogo Blue
discovering the Brain of Synaesthesia, and he proposes that it's well,
(30:33):
we should say, there was another hypothesis that it's just
crossed wires, and that we're born like that with our
neurons cross and that almost all humans get it straightened
out and becomes more complex around twelve months of age. Yeah,
but that it's just just wires across. That's why, baby,
if you stick your tongue out of a baby. They
might stick their tongue out back. One other one, Yeah,
(30:56):
we're talking about exo echo praxia in um the Turette's episode,
and that apparently it has to do with mere neurons
as well. Um. And then one other school of thought
for synesthesia is that synists are picking up on something
that's actually there, So, like the wavelength of a piece
of music also has some sort of light wavelength. Interesting,
(31:20):
I'm going with the mere neurons. Well, I don't think
we have any choice. Man, It's like evolution Freud. I
don't know if I accept him as a revolution, but
it's like evolution Copernicus. But don't you feel, Chuck that
we are at this point where all the information is
on the table, but we're just now starting to be
(31:42):
able to put it together. So it's a really depressing
point right now because our place in the universe is
up in the airs. It's ever been, We've been, we're were,
We've never been less sure about our importance or the
meaning of our lives. It's entirely possible that once we
put it all together, the meaning will be even bleaker,
the reality will be even bleaker. But then we'll be
(32:04):
able to grow from there. I think that we exist
right now in one of the bleakest periods of humankind. Wow,
that's a nice way to leave things. Well, let's sit
for a synesthesia. I think we've got more than just
this one article on the site, but the one we
were basing this off of is can people feel the
pain of others? I think if you type synesthesia s
(32:26):
y N E S T h E S I A
into the handy search bar how stuff works dot Com,
you're gonna get something pal something, maybe d L hugely.
We never can talk, so chuck. It means it's time
for listener mail, right well, Josha Wood those listener mail,
But I didn't prepare a listener mail today because we
have just some things to talk about. T shirt submissions. Yeah,
(32:48):
we've gotten some pretty cool ones. We've gotten some really
cool ones and something aren't so great. But but we
appreciate the effort, yes we do, but keep them coming.
We don't have the details. Yeah, we just wanted to
say that we archive all emails. We archive all the emails.
I have a little folder called t shirts and I'm
throwing all the all the ones in there. That people
send in. That's so crazy. I thought of making a
(33:10):
folder called t shirt leave it to me. Uh, it's
that we're really getting some great ones though. I would
want these t shirts. Oh there's one that I know
we definitely can't produce that. I really want the magnum
Pi one. Yeah. That was pretty dep Oh my goodness,
pretty cool. All right? Well yeah, so that okay, that's coming,
(33:31):
and then we should we should plug Facebook and Twitter too,
because there we're up and running. Now. There's a social
media site called Facebook that you should check out, and
then there's another thing called Twitter that people should check
out too. And you can find us at stuff you
should Know on the Facebook. You want to talk about
our Facebook and Twitters and you can find us at
s y ESK podcast on Twitter. Yeah, and you know,
(33:54):
follow us and sign up and become a fan. And
I'm kind of digging being involved. We should put a
subliminal obey and right here despair Yeah, oh yeah, thanks
for the despair Pennant, you know who you are, right,
thanks for everything we've gotten recently. Yeah, we got a
six pack of micro brew from a guy that was
really nice. And the people send us things. Uh about
(34:16):
that work at sers we've got like hats and T shirts.
Turns out nine one one isn't a joke. No, it's not. Well.
Thank you everybody for listening, at least those of you
send an emails double thanks, and those of you who
send an actual physical stuff triple thanks. Uh. If you
want to contact Chuck or me or both of us
(34:37):
and Jerry too, you can send us an email including
T shirt submissions to stuff podcast at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
is it how stuff works dot com. Want more how
stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff
(34:58):
works dot com home page. MM brought to you by
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