Dr. Eddie Chang: The Science of Learning & Speaking Languages
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and i'm a professor of neurobiology and opened ology at stanford school of medicine today. My guest is doctor edy chain.

Doctor edy chain is the chair of the neurosurgery department at the university of california. At sentences go, doctor changed clinical group focuses on the treatment of movement disorders, including epilepsy. He is also a world expert in the treatment of speech disorders and relieving paralysis that prevents speech and other forms of movement and communication.

Indeed, his laboratory is credited with discovering ways to allow people who have fully locked in synthetic, that is, who cannot speak or move to communicate through computers and AI devices in order to be able to speak to others in their world and understand what others are saying to them. IT is a truly remarkable achievement that we discuss today, in addition to his discoveries about critical periods, which are periods of time during one's life, when one can learn things, in particular languages, with great ease, as supposed to later in life. And we talk about the basis of things like bilingualism and try lingual ism.

We talk about how the brain controls movement of the very muscles that allow for speech and language, and how those can be modified over time. We also talk about stuff, and we talk about a number of aspects of speech and language that give insight into not just how we create this incredible thing called speech, or how we understand speech and language, but how the brain works more generally. Thought or change is also one of the world leaders in bioengineering, that is, the creation of devices that allow the brain to function at super physiological levels, and that can allow people with very syndromes and disorders to overcome their deficits.

So if you are somebody who is interested in how the brain works Normally, how IT breaks down and how IT can be repaired, and if you are interested in speech and language reading and comprehension of information of any kind, today's epo de ought to include in some information of deep interest to you. Doctor chain is indeed the top of his field in terms of understanding these issues, of how the brain in code, speech and language and create speech language. And as I mention movement disorders and epilepsy, we even talk about things such as the key to gene diet, the future of companies like neural link, which are interested in bioengineering and augmenting the human brain, and much more.

One thing that I would like to note is that in addition to being a world class neuroscience researcher and world class clinic neurosurgeon and chair of neurosurgery doctor, edi chain has also been a close personal friend of mind since we were nine years old. We attended elementary school together when we actually had a science club, when we were nine years old. Forest, on a very particular topic you ve left to listen to today's episode to discover what that topic was and what membership to that club required.

That aside, doctor chain is an absolute phenomenon, respect to his scientific process, that is both his research and his clinical abilities. And he's one of these rare individuals that whenever he opens his mouth, we learned. Before we begin, i'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and researchers at stanford.

IT is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, i'd like to thank k sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is element.

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I started using the waking up up a few years ago because even though i've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I started doing yoga eja about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an APP turned out to be the waking up APP, which could teach you meditations of different durations, and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the bringing body into different states. And that he liked IT very much. So I gave the waking up up a try, and I too found IT to be extremely useful, because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate.

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If you'd like to try the waking up up, you can go to waking up dot com slash huberman and access a free thirty day trial. Again, that's waking up dot com slash huberman to access a free thirty day trial. And now for my discussion with doctor ed chain edi, welcome.

hi. I enter.

Great to be here with you. There has been a long time coming. Just do you come clean. We've known each other since we were nine years old, but then there was a long gap in which we didn't talk to one another.

I heard things about you, and presently you heard a thing too about me, for Better, for worse. And then we reconnected years later, when I was A P. H.

D. Student and you were a medical student, we literally ran into each other in the halls of university california school where you're now the chair of your surgery. So that all comes full circle. When you are at usf, you are working with might mersin ic.

And I know that name might not be familiar to a lot of people, but he's a sort SONY mous with neural plasticity, the ability of the brain and nervous system to change in response to experience. So for our listeners, I would just love for you to give a brief overview of what you were doing at that time, because I find that work so fascinating. And IT really points to some of the things that can promote and maybe hinder our brain's ability to change.

Oh, wow, that's fantastic. So we did bump in to each other, surrender ously back then. And at the time I was a medical student, U C S F, studying with mike mersin particular, I was studying how the brain, uh, organizes when you have patterns of sound. And in particularly we were studying the the brain of rodents and trying to understand how different sound pattern to organize the frequency representation from low, middle of high frequency maps in the brains of baby rodents. And, well, thinks that I was very interesting, was trying to stand out the patterns of the natural environment, let's say, the vocalizations of the environment that the red pups were raised in, or just natural sounds of the year, how that shapes the structure of the Brown of the brain in. One of things we did was to try experiment where we raised some of these red pops in White noise continues, White noise that was essentially massin of those environmental sounds.

And what was the consequence of animals being raised in White noise environment?

Well, what I think that we didn't expect, but we found, which is quite striking, is that there's this early period in brain development. We were very suspect to the patterns that we hear or see in neuroscience. We call this a critical period or a sensitive period and we have this for our eyes, but we also have IT for our ears.

And ah one of the most striking examples of this is that any human can essentials w in a culture where they hear different speech sounds from one language to another. And it's like after a couple of years, you lose sensitivity that sounds that are not part of your native language and you have high sense do for for the language of your native culture. And um that's pretty, pretty extraordinary.

The human brain has that flexibility yet at the same time has that specialization for language. And so we were trying to think about how do we model this, for example, in in rodent, who obviously don't speak, but we're just understanding how sounds and environmental sounds modulate and organize the auditory cortex. And one of things that we found that was quite striking was that if you basically mask environmental sounds from these red pops, the critical period is sensitive period where is open to plasticity, is open to change, is open to reorganization, that actually that window can stay open much, much longer in the.

And in one way, that sounds like that good thing, but on the other hand is is also A A retardation is actually, uh, slow the maturation of the auditor cortex. IT was ready to close when these ramps were really Young. But by raising them and White noise, we found out that you could keep IT open for months beyond the time period that is Normally closes. And so I think one of the things that Tommy was that it's not just about the genetic programing that specifies some of the sensitive period, but is also little bit about the nature of the sounds that we hear that help keep the window for the critical period open and closed.

It's fascinating. And I know it's difficult to make a direct leap from animal research to a human research, but if we could speculate a little bit, I can imagine that some people grow up in homes where there's a lot of shouting and a lot of inflection. Maybe people are very, very boss.

Maybe others group in a home where it's quieter and more peaceful. Some people we're going to grow up in cities. We just came back from new york cities is like all night long, there's honking and sirens and just nonstop. And then I return here where it's quite quiet at night.

Can we imagine that the human brain is going to be shaped differently depending on whether not want to grow up in one environment or another? And would that impact their tendency to speak in a certain way as well as here in a certain way? What do we know about that?

Well, I I think that it's from my perspective, it's really clear that those sounds that we are exposed to from the very, very earliest time, even in utero, in the whom where the sound is hearing the mother or father or friends around, while in the whom actually influence how these things organize and um and so there's no question that the sounds that we hear going to have some influence and those sounds are gonna structure the way that those neural networks actually lay down and will forever influence how you hear sounds and speech and languages is probably one of the most profound examples of that.

I get a lot of questions about the use of White noise during sleep. In particular, people want to know whether not using a White noise shine or a machine or programme that makes the sound of waves. For instance, if IT assist their infant and sleeping is IT going to be bad for them because it's flooding the auditory system with a bunch of essentially White noise or disorganized noise.

Do we have an answer to that question? Not yet. I think that what you're asking is really important question, because parents are using White noise generators almost univerSally now and for good reasons. You know, IT is hard to have kids up at night.

I've got three kids of my own and uh, was very tempted to think about how to use some of these tools to just sue them and get them to bed and especially when I was like so tired and exhaust. Um but I think that there is a cost you know to think a little bit about you know we don't we're not exposed to continue as White noise naturally. Um there is a value to having really silent structured sounds that are part of our natural environment to actually the brain developed Normally.

So um whether or not that has an impact, you know why you're sleeping? It's not clear. I don't I don't think that those studies have been done. What was really clear was that if you raise these baby rats and continues White noise, not super loud, but just enough to mask the environmental sounds that that was enough to keep, you know, the auditory cortex, the part of the brain that here's, uh, in this really delayed state, which could essentially slow down the development and maturation of the brain.

and one probably assume that slowing the maturation of various of the brain they're responsible for hearing might understand, might impact one ability to speak right. Because isn't the case that if people can't hear, they actually have a harder time in unseating in in particular way. If not be able to hear my own voice. I would my speech patterns change.

Well I think part of IT is that a over time we develop sensitivity to the very specific speech sounds on a given language and um the sensitivity improves is we hear more and more and more of IT and then on the other hand we lose and study to other the speech on to the same time but is part of that process we also have um a selectivity, uh again a specialization even for those sounds uh even relative to noise, noisy backgrounds and things like that.

I I tend to think about IT like what is the signal to noise ratio? And so the brain has its own ways of trying to increase that signal to noise ratio in order make IT more clear. Part of that is how we hear and how IT lays down a foundation for that signal noise ratio.

And so you can imagine a child that that raised continuously and White noise would be really deprived of those kind of sounds that are really necessary for develop properly. So I think with regard to um those tools for babies, I think we we should study we should try to understand this definitively. I think what we saw would tell us that there is potential, you know things that we should be concerned about. But again, it's not really clear if you're just using at night whether as those effects.

It's the critical question that a number of people are going to be asking is did you decide to use a White noise machine or not to help keep your any of your three children asleep?

Well, um I think the shorter answer is no. I mean, I I obviously did a lot of work thinking him and work on this and thought about IT carefully. But there are other kinds of noise or I I need you call a noise, other sounds that you can use that can be equally suited to a baby.

Um it's just that White noise has no structure. And what is doing is essentially masking out all of the natural sounds. I think the goal should really be about how do we replace that with other more natural sounds, that structure the brain in the way that we want to be more healthy.

Well, I know that after you finished your medical training, you went on to or specialized in your surgery. And last I checked, you spend you most of your days either running your laboratory, you're in the clinic or running the department and your clinical work, and your laboratory work involves often removing pieces of the skull of humans and going in and either removing things or stimulating neons, treating various elements of different kinds. But your main focus these days, of course, the nearby ology of speeches and language.

And so for those that aren't familiar, could you please distinguish for us speech versus language in terms of whether not different brain areas control them? And I know that there's a lot of interest and how speech and language and hearing all relate to one another yeah and then we'll talk a bit about, for instance, emotions and how facial expressions could play into this or his hand gestures that said about for the the uninformed person in, for me to be quite direct, what are the brain areas that control speech in language? what? What are they really in in especially in humans? How are they different? And we have such a sophisticated language compared to a number of other species. What does all this landscape look like in there?

Yeah, well, that's a fascinating question. And i'm going to just try to connect a couple of the dots here, which is that in that earlier work during medical school, I was doing a lot of what we call neurophysiology, putting electoral atos into the auditory cortex and understanding how the brain responds to sounds and that's how we actually mapped out these things about the sensitivity to sensitive periods that experience, uh, with mike mersin a can thinking about how pass to see is regularly in brain, in particularly about how sound is represented by brain activity, was something that he was really formed to for me. And because I was a medical soon, I was going back to my medical studies um IT, was that in combination with seeing some awake brain surgeries that our department is really well known for one of my mentors, which burgers really pioneer these methods for ten care patients with brain tumor and be able to do these surgeries safely by keeping patients away and by mapping out language. So they're talking .

and listening and your heart essentially in conversation with these patients. Well, there's a portion their school removed and you are stimulating, in some cases, removing areas of their brain. Is that right?

That's that's exactly right. And the only thing off there is it's not essentially it's IT is just that the only difference between the conversation that I might have with my patient who is undergoing awake brain surgery is that I can't see their face and they can see my face. We actually have a steel um drape that actually separates the Operating field and they're looking in interacting with our newport's logic. But I can talk to them and they can hear my voice and vice vera, and it's a really, really important way of how we can protect some of those areas are really critical for language at the same time, uh, accomplish the mission of getting the seizure under controller, are getting a brain to move, move.

And is that because occasionally you'll encounter a brain area, may be you're stimulating your considering removing that brain area and suddenly the the a patient will start starter ing or will have a hard time formulating a sentence. Is that is that essentially what you're looking for? You looking for um regions in which IT is okay or not okay to probe exactly.

So the first thing that we do is that we use a small electrical stimulator to probe different parts of the areas that we think might be related in important for language or talking, or even movements of your army leg. That's what we call brain mapping. And we use a small electrical current that delivered through a probe that we can disputed each spite.

And the areas that were really interested, of course, the areas that are right around the part that is pathological, the part that's injured of the path that has a brain tumor that we want to remove. So we can apply that probe in transiently, meaning temporarily activated. So if your stimulating the part of brain that controls the hand, the hand move, uh, IT will jerk.

Sometimes office will be made something like that. Uh, other times wap, someone is counting or just saying the days, the week been stimulated, a different area that stops their speech altogether. That's what we cause speech arrest.

Or if someone is looking at pictures and they're describing the pictures and you stimulate ticula area, they stop speaking or the words are coming out, slid, or they can't remember that the name of the object that they are seen in the picture. These are all things that we're listen really carefully while we apply that a focus stimulation. That's what we call brain mapping.

What are some of the more surprising or maybe even if you want to offer one of the more outrageous examples, things that people have suddenly done or fail to be able to do as a consequence of this brain mapping?

Well, I think the thing to me that has been the most striking is that, you know, some of these areas you stimulate, and altogether you can shut down someone's talking. So person says, I wanted to say IT, but I couldn't get the words out. And even though i've seen this thousands of times now, it's still exciting every time that I see IT because it's.

It's exciting because you're seeing the brain, it's a physical organ is part of the body um outside the vans on top of IT doesn't look like um a machine. But when you do something like that, you folk you change the way IT works and you see that because a person can talk anymore, and they said, I know what I want to say, but I could not get the words out. You're confronted with this idea that the that organ is the basis of speech and language. And way beyond that, obviously, you know for all the other functions that we have for thinking and in feeling and emotions, everything so that to me is a constant reminder of you know um this really special thing that the brain does was compute uh, so many other things that we do in a particular in the area around speech and language generating words, something that is really unique to our species. Um is is just extraordinary to see again, even though i've seen at thousands of times it's just having that connection because IT doesn't look like machine, but IT is doing something that is quite complicated, precise and remarkable.

Do you ever see emotional responses from stimulation in particular areas? And do you ever here or see emotional responses that are associated with particular types of speech? Because for I I would for is this curse words are known to that people to ATS off and will curse, not always, but I used to have text rather than said.

But um what I learned from colleague of hours is that course would have a certain structure to them. There's usually a heavy or kind of a sharp content top front, right that allows people at this, as I was described to me, to have some sort of emotional release. It's not A A world like murder, which is has a kind of a soft entry here. I'm not using the technical language and pick your favorite curse word out there, folks and not about any now or say now, but that certain words have a have a structure to them that because of the motor pattern that are involved in in saying that word, yeah, you could imagine has an emotional response unto itself. So when stimulating or when blocking these different brain areas, you ever see people get angry or sad or happy or more relaxed.

Oh well, um definitely i've seen cases where you can invoke anxiety, stress. And I think that there are also areas that you can in stimulate. You can also evoke the opposite of that. So like a calm stay.

I think that brain areas is slightly hyperactive in you, or at least more than than me. And all the years i've known you, you, you've always been, at least externally, a very calm person. I've always find IT using that. You work on speech, language, and you have a very calming voice, right um and i'm being really serious. I think that there is a huge variation that right in terms of how people speak .

in the healthy accident were so there are areas, for example, um the orbital frontal cortex that we showed. But if you stimulate there, the orbital front cortex is a part of the brain that's above the eyes as why they call IT orbital front, uh, meaning is above the eye or the orbit. And in the front lobe in a cea right in here, uh, IT has really complex functions.

It's really important for learning and memory. But one of things that we observed when you stimulate their people tended to have um a reduction in their stress and IT was very much related to the state of being, meaning that if someone was already kind of feeling Normal and you stimulate or didn't do much, but if someone was in a very anxious day, did actually relieved that. And then we've seen the corner of that, which is true to which is that the other areas like the middle a or a part of the insulation that if you stimulate, you can cause acute temporary anxiety, a nervous feeling, or if you similar into people, can have an a cuffing of disgust.

So um you know the brain has different functions in these different notes that help process the way we feel. Certainly I think that to some degree in a psychiatric conditions reflect the ambiance of the electrical activities in these areas。 Um one of the things that was something I will never forget was taking care of Young women with uncontrolled seizure.

Uh, we call that apple etsy. It's a medical condition where someone has uncontrolled electrical activity in the brain. Sometimes you can see that is convultions, where people are shaking and lose consciousness. There are other kinds, seizures, that people can help where they don't lose consciousness, but they can have experiences that just come out of nowhere. And just as a result of electrical activity coming from the brain and um about six years ago, I took care of Young woman who was diagnosed psychiatrically with anxiety disorder for several years IT turns out that IT wasn't really an anxiety disorder was actually that sheet underlying seizure and epytus y activating a part of our brain that evokes, you know exist feelings.

How did how was that discovered because I know a lot of people out there are having aniele in the absence of a brain scan. How would or why would one suspect that maybe they have A A tumor or some other um condition that was causing those neurons to become hy yeah that's .

really important because so many people have anxiety in the vast fast majority or not having that because they're having seizure in the brain. I think one of the the ways that this was diagnosed was that um the nature of when he was having this panic attacks was not trigger by anything. They would just happen spontini.

And that's what can happen with issues. Sometimes they just come out of nowhere. We don't fully understand what can trigger them, but they weren't things that were typically anxiety provoking.

This is something that just happened of a sudden. And because you brought IT up, this is not something that you can see on a memri. We could not see and look at the structure of her brain with mi, that he was having seizure. The only way that we could actually leave proof this was actually putting electrode ATS into her brain and proving the these attacks SHE were SHE was having were localized to part called the middle a it's a media part of the temper which is here and um associating the electrical activity that we were seeing on those like words with the symptoms of SHE SHE had and SHE ultimately needed a kind of surgical where he was awake in order to remove this safely.

Speaking of epytus Y, A number of people out there have epp, sy or no people who do are the drugs for apple psy satisfactory? You know, I think about things like depo t know, adJusting the exciting and innovation of the brain.

Mean, are there good drugs for epilepsy? We know there are had great drugs for a lot of other conditions, but and how often does one need neurosurgery in order to treat up laps? You are won't be treated most often just using pharma logy.

Yeah great question. Well, um a lot of people have seizure that can be completely controlled by their medications a lot. But there's about a one third of people who have epilepsy, which we define as anyone who had three or more seizure um that you know about a third of them actually don't have control with all of the modern medications that we have nowadays.

And some of the data suggest that if you have two or three medications that actually doesn't matter necessarily which of the anti ia medications that is. But there is data suggest if you have just tried two or three, the fourth, fifth, six and beyond is not likely to help control IT. So um we are in a situation unfortunate where a lot of the medications are great for some people, but for another subset they can control IT.

And IT comes from a particular part of the brain. Unfortunately in that subset there's another part of that that group that can benefit from a surgery that actually there were moved apart. The brain and nowaday will use stimulators now the um sometimes put electrical stimulation in that part of the brain to help produce decisions.

And you said a third of people with a apple aby might need neurosurgery.

Well what I what I mean by that is like they continue to have seizure that are not controlled by all medications and there can be another subset of those that may benefit from a surgery. It's probably not that whole third is a subset of that. It's just to say that epytus, he can be really hard to get fixed.

And uh, for people where the seizure come from one spot or you know any area, then surgery can do great. If IT coming from, if IT comes from multiple areas, ever comes from the whole brain, then we have to think about other methods to control IT. Fortunately nowadays actually other ways um surgery now us doesn't just mean we're moving part of the brain um half of what we do now is use stimulators and modulate state of the brain that can help produce seasons.

I've heard before that the keo generic diet was originally formulated in order to treat epilepsy in particularly kids. Is that true? And why would being in a kidgin ic state with low blood blue coast reduce seizure?

That's a great question in um to be onest. I don't know actually if I was originally designed to tree season res, but I can tell you for sure that for some people, just like with some medications, IT can be a life changing thing. IT can completely change the way that the brain works.

And it's not something that's for everybody. But for some people, there's no question that has some very beneficial effects. I think it's to be determined still like why why and how that works.

I've heard some more things about the kito genetic eye for people with a alzheimer's dementia that um there's nothin particularly relevant about kitto sis two alzheimer's pursue but because alzheimer's changes the way that news meta lizer energy that shifting to an alternate fuel source can sometimes is make people feel Better.

And so a number people now trying IT, but it's not as if blood blue coast and having carbo hydrates tes is causing alzheimer and people get confused off. And just because something uh can help doesn't mean that the opposite is is harming somebody. So I find this really interesting a sometime i'll check back with you about what's happening in terms of a kito generic diet and epilepsy. But IT, you said that in some cases that can help as that observation been made both for children in for adults because I thought that originally the key to gene diet for epilepsy was really for pediatric epytus.

Y yeah that's right. So a lot of its this has really been on kids um without luxury, but certainly it's a safe thing to try. So a lot of adults, you, we will try as well. interesting.

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I'm curious about epl psy. For another reason, I was taught that epilogue is an imbaLance in the exciting and an ambition in the brain seeing about these electrical storms that give people other grand mall, you know shaking and kind of in convultions. But uh years ago I was reading a book, a wonderful book actually on the einstein in love by Dennis over be is about einstein and his more um I guess his personal life when people who knew him claim that he would sometimes walk along and then every once a while I would just stop you can to stir off in the space for anywhere from a minute to three to five minutes.

And IT was speculated that he had absence seizure. What is an absence seizure? And the reason I asked, as I occasion, will be walking along and I be thinking about something and all stop. But I in my mind, I think I am thinking during that time. But I realized that if I were to see myself from in the outside, IT might appear that I was just absent what is an absence seizure because it's so strikingly different in its description from, say, a grand more convulsive .

season sure well um like I mentioned before, depending on how the seizure activity spreads in the brain or how IT actually propagate, if IT stays in one particular spot and doesn't spread to the entire brain, you can have really different manifestation and IT can represent really differently. So axon seizures just one category of different kind of seasons res where um you can lose consciousness. Basic in what I mean by that is that you're not fully aware of what's going on an environment OK. So you're so you're taken off line temporary from consciousness, but you could still be IT, for example, standing and to people who are not paying attention, they may not even be aware that that's happening.

What are some other types of seizure?

Well um you know I think some of the other kinds are the classic ones are temporal lobe seizure. So these are ones that come from the media structures like the mega and hippo campus. Uh often times people when they have seizure coming from that, they may taste something very uh unusual like or smell something like the smell burning toast, something like that um there are some people will uh with temporary sires will have day of you.

They will have that experience that you've been somewhere before. But um that's just a precise to the seizure. And I just highlights that when people have seizure coming from these areas, this sometimes, hi jack, what that part of the brain is really for.

So the Michelle and hip campus forks and are really import for learning and memory is not surprising that when people have seizure there that I can invoke a feeling of this or that you can evoke a feeling of anxiety. Um and um and the areas that are right next to IT, for example, um these areas are really important for processing, uh, smell. So uh these areas are right next to other so you can have this kind of complex set of symptoms, the wear, taste, the smell of toast and an a feeling days of that's classic for temporary ization. And it's because those parts and process, these functions are right next to each other.

I'm told that i've had not internal seizure and i've woken up sometimes from sleep, having felt as if I was having a convulsion center of buzzing in the back of the head. Um happened to me two or three times in college. My girlfriend, well, I woke up and my girl end was very distraught, like you were having a seizures and full convolution in my sleep.

What air is that correct? Are there? Is there such a thing as not ternate seizures? What do they reflect? They eventually stopped happening, and I couldn't tether them to any kind of life event.

I wasn't doing any combats, board or anything at the time I wasn't drinking alcohol much is never really been my thing. What are not internal seizures about? Oh, well, and do I need brain server? Uh.

now, turtle season res are just another form like, again, apple epsilon. You can have so many different forms and uh not just like where in the brain but also when they happen. And there are some people who uh for whatever reason, it's very time to the circular rythm.

There's actually not just happening at night but a certain period at night when people in a certain stage of sleep that the brain is in a state that it's vulnerable to, to having a season. And so that's basically just one form of that. Again, it's not just about where it's coming from, but also when it's happening, how that's time with other things that are happening with the .

body will IT eventually stopped happening. So I have stopped worry about IT, but haven't had seasons since returning to speech and language. When I was getting weed in neuroscience, I learned that we have an area of the brain for producing speech, and we have an area, the brain, for comprehending speech.

What's the story there is is still true that we have a brokers and avernian SE area. Those are names of neurologist, presumed ly or surgeons to discover these different brain areas. Maybe you can familiarize ze us with some of the the ort textbook version of how speech and language organized ed in the brain, maybe sure with us a little bit of the legion studies that LED to that understanding. And then I would love to hear a bit about what your laboratory is discovering, about how things are actually organized because from some discussions you and I have had over the last year or so IT seems like, well, let's just be blunted IT seems that much of what we know from .

the text books could be wrong well um I I love that question because for me, it's very central to the research we do and it's where the intersection between what we do in laboratory, in our research interfaces with what I see in patients. And one of things that fascinated me early on in my medical train was in doing some of these brain mapping, are watching them with my mentor, or taking care of patients that had in a brain to merson. Some part of the brain, was that a lot of times what I was seeing, a patient did not correct with what I was in medical school.

And you know some people would think, well, um this might be an exception but if you see IT for a couple times and you're kind of interested in this problem, IT poses a you know IT IT poses a serious chAllenge to what you ve learned and how you think about how these things um Operate and that actually got me really interested in trying to figure this out because earlier we talked about just this extraordinary thing that the brain is doing to create words in sentences and that's the process by which i'm getting ideas out from my mind into yours. It's incredible thing, right? It's the basis of communication um um high high information communication between two individuals that's really unique to humans.

so. In in historical times how this works has been very controversial from day one of neuroscience um long time ago, people thought the bumps on your head corresponded to the different faculties of the mind. So for example, if you had a bump here might be corresponding to intelligence or another one over here, you know, to vision and these kind of things.

Um that's what we nowa ys call phonology. And um that was kind of the starting point. A lot of that has been, of course, the bunk. But when you see those statues of different brain petitions on somebody, and that's essentially what how people were thinking about how the brain work back then um couple hundred years ago, modern nerve science began when actually IT was very much related to the discovery of language. So modern neuroscience, meaning moving beyond this idea that the bombs on the scalp correspondence to the faculty of the mind.

But there were things that actually were in the brain themselves and they weren't corresponding to things that you could see superficially, like on the school board um externally, that there was something about the brain itself. I mean, IT seems so obvious. Now back then this was the big academic you know debate.

And the first observation that I think really was really impacting and in the area of language, was not observation by a nurse, surgeon french or surgeon pure broker. And what he observed was that in a patient, not that he did surgery, but that he had seen in tinking care of the, the person can talk. And in particularly, they called this individual ten, because the only words he could produce was ten, ten.

For the most part, he could generally understand the kind of things that people are asking him about. But the only thing that he could utter from his mouth, where these words, ten, ten. And what eventually had happened was this individual passed away.

And the way that no science was done back then was basically to wait until that happened, and then to remove the brain into sea. What part of the brain was affected in this patient that they called ten? And what broker found was that there was a part in the left frontal logue.

So the front low is this area like I described earlier, which is you know behind her forehead up here and. In the back of that front of lob, he claimed that this was the seat of articulation in the brain. He literally something like that in france, the seat of articulation, meaning that this is the part of the brain that is responsible for us to generate words.

About fifty years later, the story becomes more complicated with a german neurologist name called Warner ky. And what Warner key described was a different set of symptoms in patients, said he observed a different phenomenon where people could produce words, but a lot of the world, and they were fluent in the sense that they had like um that sounds like they could be real words but from a different language, for example and some of us call that like word salad or dragon. It's essentially they were essentially making up words but he was not intentional, is just the way that the words came out.

But in addition to that, he observed that these people also cannot understand what was being said to them. So, uh, you, we could be having conversation. I be asking you A M, I woman, and you might not your head, you know, just because you're not processing the question you know and so um here are two observations.

One is that the frontal lobe is important for articulating speech, creating the words and expressing them fluently and then a different part of the brain called the left temporal lobe, which is this area right above my ear. That is an area that I think was um claim to be really important for understanding. So the two major functions in language to speak and to understand what kind of pint down to that. And we've had that basic idea in the textbooks for you know, over two hundred years.

Certainly what I was taught is right. Oh, every yeah certainly what we still, we still teach graduates, graduates into medical students that.

well, that's what I learned to a medical school. And what I saw on reality when I started taking care of patients was that it's not so simple um in fact, part of IT is fundamental wrong so just in a nutshell, wadys uh after now looking at this very carefully over hundreds of patients, we've shown that surgeries, for example, in the post here part of the front lobe, a lot times people have no problem talking all at all.

What's however, after those kind of surgeries? And that is a different part of the brain we call the present central jesus. Um the present central gyrus is a part of the brain that uh is intimately associated ated with the motor cortex. The motor cortex is the part the brain has a map of your entire body so that has a part that responds your feet, has a part that corresponds your hands but then there's another part that comes out more laterally on the side of the brain that corresponds to your lips, your jaw, your learnings.

And we have seen that when patients have surgery, ies or injuries to that part of the brain and actually can really interpret language, it's not as simple as just moving the muscles of the vocal trip, but is also important for formulating and expressing words. So that's brokers area that I think the field now recognize, not just because of our work, but many other people that are studying this and stroke and beyond. Is that the idea that that is the the basis of speaking in broken area is fundamental wrong right now.

And we have to figure out how to correct the textbooks that we can understand that so that we can continue to to make progress. Now in terms of the other major area that we call warning keys area in the post temporal lobe um that has health. Health um I think quite legitimately for some time. So that is an area that you have to be super careful when you do surgery there. That's an area.

Well, if you have a mistake there and you cause a stroke or you move too much of the tumor, there you go too far beyond IT, then the person can be really, really hurt, like we'll have a condition that we call facial, where they may not able to understand words, they may not be able to a remember the word that there that they're trying to say. They they know what they're trying to say, but they can remember the precise where that goes with the object they're trying to think of. They may even produce words that I describe before, like word salad, are very jargoning. So and you know, they might say something like to me and I that's not a reward, but IT sounds like I could be, you know and that's just because that part of the brain has some role, not just an understanding what we hear, but also actually has a really important role in sending the commands to different people to bring, to control what we say.

Not long ago, you and me and my good friend, rick rubin, were having a conversation about medicine and science. And rick asked the question, what percentage of what you learned in graduate and or medical school do you think is correct? And you had a very interesting answer. Would you share with us?

Um I don't know I don't remember the exact but I I would say that um with regard to the brain in particular, I would say about fifty percent gets IT right and accurate and is helpful. But another fifty percent is just the approximation and over simplification of what's going on.

The example that we talked about language, just an example of that it's just um there are things that make IT easier to learn and easier to teach and easier to even think about and that's probably why we continue tissue in the way that we do. But I think this time goes on. The complexity of of reality of how the brain works is um well, first vote, we're still trying to figure that out. And second of all, IT IT is complex and IT is is still in complete .

story really days. We get into some of the technical advances that are allowing some correction of the errors that the field has made. And look, no disrespect to the brain explores that came before us and the ones that come after us will correct us, right? That's the way the game is played.

But um what i'm hearing is that there are certain truth that people accept. And then there's um about half of the information that is still open for debate and may be even for complete revision. One thing that I learned about language, and the neural circuits underlying language, is that is heavily lateralization, that these structures, brokers in verney's and other structures in the brain, responsible for speech and comprehensive of speech, sit mainly on one side of the brain.

But they do not have a mirror representation or air equivalent tary on the opposite side of the brain. And for those that haven't poked around in a lot of brains, certainly you e've done far more of that than I have. But I ve done my fair share in nonhuman species, and a little bit in humans, almost every structure, almost every structure, has a matching structure on the other side of the brain.

So when we say the hip campus, as we really mean two hippo camp, a one on each side of the brain. But language I was taught is heavily lateralization. That is, there's only one. So that raises two questions. One is that true? And if IT is true, then what is the equivalent real estate on the opposite side of the brain doing yeah if it's not doing the same function that the one on the left side is performing well.

that's one of those things that is again like mostly true, not one hundred percent. And what I mean by that is that um it's complicated. So for people who are right handed, ninety nine percent of the time the language part of the brain is on on the left side.

And what is the equivalent brain area on the right side doing if it's not doing language well.

you know, the thing that's incredible as if you look at the right side and you look at a very carefully, either under an M R. I, or you actually look at the brain under slides at a micro scope. IT looks very, very similar.

It's not identical, but IT looks very, very similar. All the jy, which are the the bombs on the brain that you have, the different contours and the value, we all those all look basically the same, like there is a mere anatomy on the left and right side. And so it's not been so clear what's so special actually about the left side to um to house language. But what we do know and this is what we use all the time in assessing and figuring out, you know, this before surgery, is if you're bright handed, ninety nine percent, the time the language is going to be on the left side .

of the brain is handed. I go up by a penner. A pencil or crayon was placed into my hand person tly.

Er, I started using my my father was left hand and then where he grew up in south america, they they forced him to to force himself to become right handed if he used to restrict the movement of his left hands so he was forced to write so um and then you have hook, hook lefties and hook rides. I know this is a deep dive and we probably don't want to go into every derivation of this. But so far somebody who is left handed naturally just starts writing with the left hand. There's some genetic pretty position to being left handed.

Absolutely no question about a handiness is is not entirely, but strongly genetic. So, uh, there is something about the ties, all of this.

And what does handlin ss forks simply have to do with where the part of your brain that controlled the language? Well, turns out that the parts that control the hand are very close, the areas that really are responsible for the vocal track um again part of the motor cortex and part of the sprain area called the present central gyrus and there are some theories that because of their proximity um that these parts of the brain might develop together early in etr o and they might have a head start compares of right style and because they have a head start that things solidify there this is one theory of why this happens in people who are left handed IT still turns out that the vast majority people have a language on the left side. But it's not ninety nine percent.

It's more like seventy percent. So if you're left handed, it's still more likely the language part of the european is gonna on the left side. But there is gonna be a greater proportion, maybe twenty thirty percent, what's either in both hemisphere or on the right side.

And just to make this a little bit more interesting is that when people have strokes on the left side and if they're luck enough to recover from the strokes, sometimes that involves reorganization this term that we call plasticity earlier, where the areas around where the stroke take on that new function away that they didn't have before. That can certainly happen in left hemisphere here. But there are also instances where the right hemisphere can also start to take on the function of language, where when in was once left and then transfers to the right.

So the thing that I I think about a lot is that the the machinery probably exists on both sides, but we don't use them together all the time. In fact, we may strongly bias. One side or the other are just like we use our two hands in very, very different ways.

It's a little bit the same with the brain. Oh, it's because of what we do with the brain. That actually is why we use the hands.

Different ways in the same thing goes for language, which is that, again, the sub streets, the organ, the language organ, the part of the brand, the process is probably has very similar machinery. On the left side is the right, and the right may have the capability to do IT. But in real everyday use, the brain specializes one of the sides in order for us to use IT functionally. That's that's a theory.

You're bilingual, correct? Yeah you speak english and chinese yeah. For people that are bilingual and that learn two or more billing was too obviously but learn both languages where, let's say, more languages from an early time in life, do they use the same brain area to generate that language? Or perhaps they use the left side to speak english in the right side to speak chinese. Do we know anything about bilingualism in the brain?

I think we know a lot about billings, ual ism, the brain, the answers that are still out there, the final answers on IT. And part of the answer is yes, absolutely.

We use some parts of the brain um very similarly, we achieve a study, the library right now, what we're looking at this where people we speak one language or another or bite lingual and we're looking at how the brain activity patterns a occur when they are hearing one language forces the other and what's striking to see actually is how overlapping they really can be even though the person may have no idea of the language that they're hearing on the english part of the brain. Stop processing that and maybe trying to interpret IT through, uh, an english lands, for example. So the shorter answer is that with bilingual m, there are shared circuitry there.

There is a shared machinery and the brain that allows us to process both um but it's not identical um it's it's the same part of the brain. But what is doing with the signals can be very, very different and what I mean that precisely is not the instantaneous detecting of one sound to the next, but the memory of the sequences of those particular sounds that give rights of things like words and meaning that can be highly variable from one individual to the next. In those norms are very, very sensitive to the sequences of the sound, even though the sounds themselves might have some overlap between languages.

because. So we talked about brain areas and a little bit about lateralization. I want to get back to the hands, and some things relies to emotion, and a little bit.

But maybe now we could go into those brain areas and start to ask the question, what exactly is represented a map to there? And for people who perhaps aren't familiar with brain mapping and representation and receptive fields, perhaps the simplest analogy might be the visual system, where I look at your face, I know you are recognized. You, and certainly there are brain areas that are responsible for face recognition.

But the fact that I know that your face and for those listening and looking at ed face. The back, I know that that's your face at all, is because we are well aware that there are cells that represent edges and that represent dark and light. And there's all combine in what we call a higher structure.

They are built up from basic elements as simple as little darts, but their lines and things that move, it's set to give a coherent representation of the face. When I think about language, I think about words and just talking. If I sit down to do a long pod caster, I think about asking a question.

I don't even think about the words I want to say very much. I mean, I have to think about them a little bit, one would hope. But I don't think about individual syllables unless i'm trying to, you know, access something is a word that I have a particular difficulty saying where I want to change the cat, etta.

So what's represented in the in the neurons, the nerve cells in these areas, are they representing valles consents? And how do things like inflection, like I occasionally will book on IT up speak? But there's A I think a healthy a Normal version of our speaker.

Somebody he's asking a question like, for instance, ince, what is that? That's an appropriate use of up speak. I supposed to saying something that is not a question and putting a little at the end of the sense then we call that up speak, which IT doesn't fit with what the person is saying.

So what in the world is contained in these brain areas? What is represented to me is, is person the most interesting questions? And I know this lands square .

in your White house. sure. Let's get into this, uh, Andrew, because this is one of the most exciting stuff that happening right now is understanding how the brain processes these exact questions.

And you ask me earlier, you know what is different to in speech and language? A speech corresponds to um the communication signal IT corresponds to me moving my mouth in my vocal track to generate words and you're hearing this is an auditories signal. Language is um something much broader so IT refers to uh, what you're tracking from the words and i'm saying we call that pragmatics.

And sorry, are you getting the gist of what i'm saying? There's another aspect of IT that we call semantics. Do you understand the meaning of these words and the sentences? There's another part that we called syntax, which refers to how the words are assembled in a grammatical form.

So those are all really critical parts of language. And speech is just one form of language, is many other forms like sign language, uh, reading, those are all important modalities for reading. Our research really focuses on on this this area.

The were calling speech again, the production of this audio signal, which you can see, but your microphones are picking up there are these vibrations in the air that are created by my vocal track that are picked up by the microphone uh in the in the case of this recording but also picked up by the sensors in your year, the very tiny vibrations near uh here are picking that up and translating that into electrical activity. And what the ear does at the periphery is translates all sounds in two different frequencies. So its mean thing to do is to take uh, a speech signal or any other kind of sound and the composer meaning separate that sound into different kind of signals.

And in the case of hearing, what is doing is separating IT out into low, middle, high frequencies in a very, very high resolution is doing IT very quickly. And it's doing a really fine way to separate all of those different sounds. So if you look at the proof y near the nerve that goes to your year, those north fibers, some of them are tuned to low frequency.

Some of them are tuned to high frequency. Some of them are turn to the medal frequencies. And that is what your ear is doing, is taking these words and splitting them up into different frequencies.

And for those of out there that are familiar, were thinking about things in the so called frequency space, base tones would be lower frequencies and hypo ch tones would be higher frequencies just to to make sure everyone is on the same page.

So the sound of my voice, the sound of your voice or any sound in the environment being broken down into these frequencies, are they being broken down into very narrow channels of frequency or they um one avoided Normal nature here um or they are they being been as fairly broad frequencies because we know low, medium and high. But now for instance, I can detect whether not something approaching me or or moving away for me, depending on whether not IT sweeps louder or right towards our way. It's subtle, but, and of course, it's combined with what I see in my own movement. But how finally sliced ed is our perception of the auditory world.

Oh, extraordinary. Ily precise. I mean, we take these millisecond cues, the millisecond differences between the sound coming to one year, let's radio verse you left to understand what direction that sound came from.

Those are only millisecond differences, and that's how precise this works. But on the other hand, um IT does a lot of computation on this. IT does a lot of analysis as you go up and a lot of our work is focused on the the part of the brain that we call the cortex.

The cortex is the the outermost part brain, where we believe that sounds are actually converted into words and language. So there is a transformation where at the year, words are decomposed, you know, turn into this elemental frequency channels, and then as he goes up through the auditory system, hits the cortex. There are some things that happen obviously before gets the cortex.

But when he gets to cortex, there's something special going on, which is the that part of the brain is looking for specific sounds. And specifically, what I mean by that is the sounds of human language. So the ones that are the different conscience and balls in a different language.

One of the ways that we have studied this is looking in patients who have py, and in one of these cases where the M R I looks completely Normal, we have to put electrodes surgically on a part of the brain. Uh, the temporary is a very, very common place. So we've done a lot of our work looking at how the temporal lobe processes speed sounds because we're looking for, uh, where the season start.

But then we're also doing brain mapping for language and speech so we can protect those areas. We want to identify the areas that we want to remove to cure someones seizure, but we also want to figure out the areas that are important for speech and language to protect those, so that we can do as a surgeon that's effective and safe. And so in our research, and Whites become a really important addition to our knowledge, is that we have electrodes directly recording from the human brain surface.

A lot of technology we work with right now is recording on the mail, on the order of millimeters, and they can order, they can record millisecond timer resolution of neural activity. And what we see is extraordinary patterns of activity when people hear words and sentences. If you look at that part of the brain that we call warn key area in this part of the temporary low, this whole area lights up when you hear words or speech.

And IT is not in a way that is like a general life, bob warming up. And it's generally lineup. But what you actually is something much, much more complicated, which is a pattern of activity. And what we've done in the last ten years is to try to understand what does that pattern come from.

And if we were to look at each individual site from that part of the brain, what would we see? What parts of words are being coded by electrical activity in those parts? Remember, the cortex is using electrical activity to transmit information and due analysis. And what we're doing is we're eve dropping on this part of the brain as its processing speech to try to understand what each individual site is doing and .

what are those sites doing? Or could you give us some examples? What those sites are doing suffered intense are the sites that are specific for where we could say, even listening for concerts or for value or for a inflection or for emotionality.

What's in there? okay. Well, what what makes these? What what makes these cells fire? Yeah.

what gets them excited? What gets them going is hearing speech. In particular, there are some of these really focus sites, again, just on the order millimeter, or at some level, single neurons, that are tuned to concerns.

Some are tuned to valls, some are tuned to particular features of concerns. What I am by that are different categories of, uh, continent. There is a class of contents that we call closure ve continent. This is a little bit of link to seek jargon, but I am going to make a point here with that, is that certain classes of sounds, when you make them IT, requires you to actually close your mouth temporarily. 嗯。

now might be thinking about this. So positive, like positive, like saying the word positive does require that exactly.

So what's cool about that is that we actually have no idea was going on in our mouth when we speak. We really have no idea.

Some people definitely have no idea.

Well, not just like in terms of what you're saying sometimes, but actually like how you're actually moving, right? You know, the different parts of all track. And I was feeling if we actually required understanding, we would never be able to speak because is so complex, it's such a complex feet. Some people would say it's the most complex motoring thing that we do as a species. Is, is this speaking not, you know, the extreme feats of acrobat tics or athleticism.

but a big speaking you, especially when one observes you Opera or people who you know freestyle rappers. And of course, it's not just the lips, it's the tongue. yes. And and you've mentioned two um other structures. Ferrand lerrys are the main ones that did he tells just just educated at at a superficial level what ferrings and lay rings do differentially because I think most people are .

aren't going to be so um i'll talk primarily about the lyrics here for a second, which is that if you think about when we're speaking, um really what we're going is for shaping the breath. So even before you get to learn, you've gotta start with the exploration. So we fill up our lungs and then we pushed the air out.

That's a Normal part of breathing. And what is really amazing about official languages that we evolved to take advantage of that Normal physiologic thing adelais. And what the layering does is that when you're exhaling, IT brings the vocal fault together.

Some people call them vocal cords. They're not really words. They're really vocal falls. They're two pieces of t sue that come together and a muscle brings them together.

And then what happens is when the air comes through the vocal fault, when they're together, they vibrate. Ah IT really high frequencies like a hundred to two hundred horse, yours is probably about one hundred years, is two hundred? No no. A R S most male voice is are around one hundred, okay? And .

the average free folks, my voice never changed. I always had the same voice. This is a discussion .

for another time yeah well it's a great voice you know a great bar tom voice. But I know in your voice is a low frequency voice. In the reason why men and women generally have different um voice qualities is IT has to do with the size of the learnings in the shape of IT.

okay? So in general men have a larger voice box or layerings and the vibrating frequency the recent frequency of the vocal fault when the air comes through them is about one hundred hours for men and about two hundred for women. So what happens is, okay, so you're taking, you take a breath, breath, then, and then as the air is coming out, the vocal falls come together and the air goes through.

That creates the sound of the voice that we call voicing. And that's the energy of your voice, is not just your voice characteristic, is the energy of your voice is coming from the lyrical there. It's a noise, and then it's the source of the voice.

And then what happens is that energy, that sound, goes up through the parts of the vocal track, like the firings, into the all cavity, which is your mouth and your tongue in your lips. And what those things are doing is that they're shaping this, the air in particular ways that create concerts and vows. So that's what I mean by shaping the breath. IT just starts with his, you generate the voice in the herrings, and then everything above the herrings is moving around, just like the way my mouth is doing right now, to shape that air into particular patterns that you can hear. These words .

fascinating and immediately makes me wonder about more primitive or non learned vocalizations, like crying or laughter. Babies will cry. Babies will show laugh. Are those sorts of vocalizations produced by the language areas like verney's? Or do they have their own unique neural structures?

Yeah, interesting question. So we we call those vocalizations. Um vocalizations is basically where someone can create a sound like a cry or a moon um that kind of sound.

And IT also involves the acceleration of air IT also involves some phonation at level learning where the vocals tes come together to create that audible sound. But IT turns out that those are actually different areas. So people who have injuries in the speech and language is often times can still want.

They can still vocalize. And IT is a different part of the brain, I would say, an area that, uh even non human primates have that can be specialized. You know, for vocalization, it's a different form of communication than words. For example.

the intricacy of these circuits in the brain in their connections to the ferrings lyrics is just it's almost overwhelming in terms of thinking about just how complicated IT must be and yet some general features and principles are starting to emerge from your work and from the work of others.

If we think about that work, and we think about prinsloo's very key area, if I were to record from neurons in verney's area at different locations, would I find that there is any any systematic layout? For instance, in terms of you touch about sound frequency, we know that low frequencies are represented at one end of a structure and high frequencies at the other. This is true actually, at least from my earlier training within the within the year itself, within the cola, the early work of fun, backache and from kivers, right? They actually figure this out from dead people, which is incredible.

Uh, a fascinating literature. People should look up. And in the visual system we know that, for instance, you know, visual position, where things are map systematically? no. In other words, neurons that sit next to each other in the brain represent portions of visual space that are next to each other in the real world.

What is the organization of language in areas like verney's and brokers, for instance? Um I think of the balls A I O U A as a kind of a coherent unit, but do I find the a neons or next to the e neons or next to the uh or the the A E I O U? Is that value representation also laid out in order? Or is IT consult in pepper is at random?

That's been one of the like most important questions we've been trying answer for the past decade. So uh, there is a part of the brain that we call the primary auditor record tax and the primary auditor record tex is deep in the temporal be. And if you looked at that part of the brain, there is a map of different sound frequencies.

So if you look at the front of that primary auditory cortex, you'll find low frequency sounds. And then is you march backwards and that that cortex IT goes from low to medium thai frequency. It's organized in this really nice, nice an orderly way.

And that turns out there just not just one. There's seg mirrors of that um tonn frequency map in the primary auditory cortex. The areas that are really important for speech uh are on the side of that. And we now think that speech can go straight to the speech cortex without having to go through the primary auditory cortex, said IT has its own pathway to get to the part of the brain on the processes speech.

And when we've looked that question about is there a map? The short answer is yes, there is a map and IT is um but IT is not structured uh university across all people on the way that we can clearly see right now. IT is like a song pepper map of the different features in speech.

So before we talked about the sounds that are called plosive, you make a positive when the mouth or something in the world all closes temporarily and when IT opens that creates that fast positive sound. So when you say um dad um or um you know the ball like the b and ball, I kind of think you will notice that your lips actually close. And then it's the release of that, that creates that particular sounds OK.

So those are the sounds that we call positive. Those are like boga partaker. Those are a certain class of concerns we call police sounds. There's another class sounds that we call freak atis in language tics, freaks, ves are created by turbulence in the the air stream as IT comes out through the mouth.

And the and the the way that we make that turbulence is getting the mouth in the lips to close almost until they completely shut, or putting the tongue to near the teeth to almost get IT completely shut, but just have a narrow apache that creates a turbulence in the air flow that we perceive as a high frequency sounds. So those sounds like shah and tha those kind of things. Those are, if you look at the frequently are half frequencies, and those are created by specific movements that you can strict the air flow to create turbulence. And we hear IT as shah sar sar.

So if I say that exactly and as supposed to explosive, where i'd say explosive, i'm now, of course i'm emphasizing here, yeah, well, this explains an h something insults a mystery, which is recently i've been passing by the work of a physician, scientist, backy doctor, shana swan, who's done a lot of work on things that are contained in pesticides and foods that are changing hormonal levels. And SHE refers to salts, which just built peat.

So it's both a plosive and thur. So it's combining the two and it's one of the most difficult ds in the english language to pronounce second only perhaps to the correct principle of automotive gy. So it's a combination of of of explosive and one of these sounds, and that's probably why it's difficult.

That's exactly right. In fact, um we have a turn for that, that's called a concern cluster.

So sometimes sylvans will just have one, but when we start stacking certain symbols s in a sequence and there's rules that actually govern which continent can be in a particular sequence for a given language um that big that makes them more complicated and certain languages have a lot more concerning clusters than other s so for stance so far instance russian, for example has a lot of constant class is english has a lot of them the other languages um that have very, very few uh for example, a hawaii haien has an inventory of about twelve to fourteen different phones. Fourteen different confidence and vows. English, on contrast, is about forty, uh, different continent and vows.

So languages have different inventories. They can overlap for sure. But different languages use different sound elements, combine and recombine those elements to give us to different words and meanings.

Can we say that there is a most complicated language out there? Or among the most completely.

would IT be russian? I'd definitely high up there. English is up there too, actually. Yeah, german as well.

And in terms of learning multiple languages during development, my understanding is that if one wants to become by lingual, try lingual. Best to learn those language is simultaneously during development, ideally before age twelve, if one hopes to not have an accent tent speaking them later. That corrector do you want to revise that?

Basically the earlier and the earlier Better. The more intensities and the more immersive IT is, uh, the longer you know that you can be exposed that is really important. A lot of people can get exposed early and basically loser IT even though it's concrete in that sensitive period.

Unless it's maintained, IT can be very easily lost. Then I think another aspect of IT that's very interesting is um some of the social requirements for two. It's pretty clear that you can only go so far um just listening to the sounds from a table recording or something like that. There's something extra about real human interaction that activites the brain. Sensitivity to different species allows us to become specialized for them, for a given language.

So returning to the what's mapped, what what the representations are in the brain, i'm starting to get a picture now based on these plosive and these sounds. And what I find so interesting and logical about that is IT maps to the motor structures and the actual pronunciation of the sounds, not necessarily to the meaning of the individual words. Now, of course, is related to the meaning of the individual words.

But IT makes good sense to me why something as complex as language, both to understand and to generate, would map to something that is essentially moder in design. Because this you point out, I have to generate these sounds, and I have to hear them generated from others. However, there's reading and there's writing and writing a certainly motor reading involves motor commands of the ison IT said.

A where do reading and writing come into this picture? Are they in parallel with, as we would say, in their science or are they embedded within the same structures? Are they um part part of the same series of competitions?

Yeah so um to just the first part. Is that we've got this map of these different parts of concerns and balls. And when we look at how they layout in this this part of the render we call warn, actually, we have spent a lot of time really just dissecting this millimeter by millimeter.

The term that use is very a propose. Its sam pepper. It's not random. There is this kind of selectivity to these individual speed sounds. And one point I want to make about IT is this is that um in english, for example, they're about forty different phones, phones or just constants or voser individual speech segments.

But these articulator features that you referred to, for example, the characters that sounds that are generated by specific movements in the mouth, you can more less reduce that to about twelve different features. Okay, these are specific movements of the tongue, the jaw, the lips, the earrings. They're about twelve of these movements.

And just like you said, Andrew, by themselves, they have no meaning. They're just movements. But what's incredible about IT is that you take these twelve movements and you put him in combinations, and you have supporting them in sequence.

We, as humans, use those twelve that features to generate all words. And because we can generate nearly infinite number of words with that code of just twelve features, we have something that generates essentially all possible meaning, because that's what we do as humans. We generate meaning, some trying to communicate one idea to another, which to me is extraordinary.

A parallel would be, for example, D, N A. There's four base pairs in D N A. But with those for based pairs in a specific sequence can generate an entire code for life.

And speeches is the same way. It's like you've got this fundamental elements. They buy themselves, have no meaning, but when you put them together, give rise every possible meaning.

So with regard to your second point about reading, writing is a fascinating question. Speech language is part of who we are as humans. That's part of how we evolved.

And it's hardwired and you know, molded by experience. Reading and writing are human invention. It's something that was added on to the architecture of the brain. And because reading and writing are fairly reason in human evolution, it's essentially too quick for anything to like have a dramatic change in, lets take a new brain area or some kind of specialization instead what happens is that whenever any kind of behavior becomes ulto specialize um in any other any organism, we we can sort of take some areas that are Normally involved with vision, for example, and specialize IT for the purpose of reading.

So all of us have a part of our brain in the back of the temporary the interface with the spital visual cortex that we call a visual word form area. There's actually a part of the brain that is very sensitive to seeing words like either typed or handling. There's a part of the brain that also sensitive to sing things like faces um so these are things that are all conditioned on what's important you know, to survive um so reading and writing are invention and there are things that have mapped two functions of the brain already has.

And one of the really important things about reading writing is that when we learn to reading right, specially with reading part IT maps to the party brain that we've been talking about, which is the part of processing speech sounds. So some of us kind of think about, these are two different things. One is hearing sounds three years.

The other is reading, where you actually seeing things through your eyes and then getting into language ism. Well, IT turns out that the auditory speech cortex is there, primal and primitive fundamental area that's really important for speech. And what happens with the reading is want to gets through that visual cortex.

It's gonna to map those reading signals to the part of the brain that's trying to make sense of sounds, the sounds of words, or we call phonology. Now, why is this important? IT IT.

IT has a lot of relevance to how we learn to write. And in some kids with lexi as uh, neurological condition, where am a child in sank in adult has trouble reading, for example. And in many of those cases, it's because that mapping between how we see the words to the way that the brain processes the sounds is something different. It's a little bit different than people who can read really well. So when you're reading a lot of times, you're actually activating the part of the brain that is processing the words you hear.

What is the current treatment for the dislikes? A I i've heard that it's a deficit in some of the motion processing systems of the visual system. You know, people are their eyes are jumping and supposed to more linear reading, cross or expose of were chinese to be, you know, to pressure. People are always reading english or expose if it's sea, the growing from the opposite side of the page. Um what can be done for this lexie, and do any of the modern treatments for just like involved changing things from the speech side as opposed to just the current court reading side, given that speech in reading are interconnected?

Yeah absolutely. So again, I think in the beginning, people might have thought this was a purely a visual abstraction or something really just about the visual system. But there's been more recognition that IT could be both or could be either depending on the particular instance. Um it's very clear that there are many kids with slack ia well the problem is the problem of psychological wireless.

So um you know IT can be very hard to detect because they may understand the words you are saying but because the brain is so good at pattern recognition, sometimes even if the individual species are not Crystal clear, IT can compensate that so that you can have an individual who can hear the words but not be able to essentially um hear them when they're reading those same words. And so what can happen with that is that you can have this disconnection between um what they're seeing and what they need in order to hear IT as words and process, that is language. And so skilled readers um usually need that route first.

They've gotten map the vision to the sound nor to get that sort of like foundation. But then over time, the reading has its direct connection to the language parts of the brain. And we don't necessarily always need to map to sounds. You know, you can basically develop a parallel route, and we, as readers actually use both all the time.

So for example, if it's a new word that you've never seen before, sometimes you try to like pronounce IT in your mind, you know and try to hear what that word is even though you're not actually saying your trend is generate what those sounds might might be like. And that's the part where we're kind of relying on how we learn to read in the first place, which is mapping those word images to the sounds that you know go along with them. But in other times, if you're really proficient reader, you're just seeing the words and you can map them directly the meaning without having to go through that um go through that process.

Yeah i'm a big fan of listening to audio books and of course, I also listen to podcast quite a lot, but I also a strong belief are based on the research that i've seen that reading box, physical box, could be on kindle ice pose. But reading a physical book is useful for being able to articulate well in structure sentences and build what are essentially paragraphs, which is what I ve required to do when I do solo epo des of the podcast.

I've noticed over the years, as text messaging has become more popular and there is a essentially an erosion of puntuated or the need to have complete sentences, and now that sort transfer to email as well, it's become acceptable to just say fragmented sentences in email and IT IT seems likely that it's starting to impact the way that people speak as well. And I don't think this has anything to do with intelligence or education level. But are you aware of any evidence that how we read and what we read and whether or not we consume information purely through reading or mainly through auditory sources, does IT change the way that we speak. Because, after all, verney's in brokers area and the other auditory and speech production areas are heavily intermixed. And so we would make perfect sense to me that what we hear and the patterns of sound that are being communicated to .

us would also change the way that we speak. Yeah that's a really fascinating point. Um there's this idea that there's like this proper way to speak like that there's the right way, for example um what are appropriate you know like for example in school um you often times told like you should say like this, not say like that, you know and every language kind of has that IT turns out that that's really unnatural languages in speech particular change over time IT evolves. Um and I can I can happen very quickly.

You know the things that we call dialogue, for example, are just different ways of speaking. And someone can just be in one environment and change from one dialect to the other in some people are kind of is is really fixed. And there is this idea that you know, like in school that but I told that there's this right way, but in reality, that's not true.

Like language change and speech change, change is completely Normal and happens all the time. And IT can be really dramatic. Like certain cultures and communities, if they are isolated, they can develop a whole new language, a whole new set of words, for example, a new ways and dialects that are independent from people to the point where it's unintelligible even to to to others. And so um the basic idea is that sound change is part of the way IT works, and the brain is very sensitive to those kind of changes.

Speak of learning new languages. I'm assuming it's possible to learn new languages throughout the lifespan, correct? Yeah i've also heard these kind of fantastical stories of somebody has a stroke and then suddenly, spontaneously, can speak french fluently, whether prior to the stroke they could not.

Is there any merit to those stories? What so ever? I I find IT very hard to believe that there was a complete map of presentation of a language in somebody who's brain that they were completely unaware of.

And then because of damage to a brain area that capacity speak, that language will somehow unveiled. IT just seems too wild. And I wants is good to be true, because nobody wants a stroke, but IT just seems outrageously implausible.

Well, there are aspects of that that certainly are not imposible. So I I don't know any true case that i've ever seen or experience myself and or even read about where, for example, there was an entry to the brain that um result in loss of um well essentially again, a functioning ing like art of just all of the sun starts speaking another language so for example, if you had a stroke and you never spoke french and then you had IT and then always some you're speaking that I i've never heard of, never seen.

However, there is a condition that is well acknowledge, and I have seen one case of this called a foreign accent syndrome, which kana um is peculiar because our people who have an entries of the par of the brain where IT sounds like they're starting to speak this other language, but they're not actually speaking the language, which is sounds like IT. And this goes back to what we are talking about earlier about these areas that are really important for speech control of the the vocal track. This year in the Price central hours, people have documented where our patients have had strokes there.

And after that, IT sounds like they're speaking spanish, I supposed to english IT sounds like they have the international properties of french or russian as compared to their original native language. They're not learning all the rules py like the meaning in the grammar and seta. They're adopting some the phonology in part of that is just because um it's not working the way and Normally does. So there is something actually called a foreign accent syndrome that people can have after a stroke.

interesting. I'm curious about auditory memory. When I was a kid, I used to get into bed at night and IT close my eyes, and I would replay conversations that i'd heard during the day, or people's voices, as you can remember, calling your house when we were Young kids.

And because I want to speak any chinese, but I D have to ask for you, I say, I think IT was a cyber yeah, yeah, yeah and then someone who ever answered the phone would say, we go get you that suit, which I believe means, thank you, right? That's the total of the chinese that I speak, by the way. But I will never forget that.

I'll just never forget that. I hope I suppose if I have a stroke or something in that. So at some point, I forget that I won't know that I forgotten IT. But in all seriousness, I I remember that to this day I couldn't spell that out.

I wouldn't how certainly not in chinese but um even a transliteration I could not I couldn't do using english letters where our memories of sounds stored because within our days and across our lives we have a an infinite number of auditory experiences, just like we have an infinite number of visual experiences where they stored and and what is the structure of their storage what am I calling upon besides of course, the motor commands that are required to say what I just said in chinese, which I won't repeat again somehow, when you get right the first time, at least not terribly wrong, then I don't want to botch at the second time, where's that stored and how does that work? And more importantly, as I speak my native language, english, am I pulling from a memory bank? Because IT doesn't feel like IT, i'm just telling you what I want to say.

I'm doing my best to communicate clearly. Instinctly usually not going to the inc. Part, but where is the bank of information on my keyboard, on my computer? I have the letters, and I have certain elements of punctuation in the space.

What am I pulling from? Am I pulling from those explosives? But if so, how can I do IT so quickly? You know, for people that speak slowly, IT IT appears more less fluid. This, to me, is overwhelmingly impressive that the brain can do that. How does he do that?

Well, first of all, I I am impressed. Thirty five years later.

I had to get a hold of you.

yeah. So I I am impressed thirty five years later that you can still remember .

that but only that .

that's fine but i'm still very impressed um but IT clearly is something important to you. And um so the short answer is that memory is very distributed. So it's almost like the question that you ask me is um your post because you ask me where well, it's not one specific area. It's actually really distributed. It's not just one particularly.

In fact, i'm fairly certain that if we were to enter that part of the brain called the warn the keys area, you may still even have memories of that people can not have injuries of brokers areas certain ly the presentation al jesus and be able to um sing happy birthday, for example, when it's embedded in Melody or highly rehearse things like counting despite not being able to speak, which is incredible, right it's like you you can see a patient, for example, who can really put together sentence. You ask them how you're feeling today. They can anyone get other award, but then you ask them to count sometimes in the get up to any number, really.

And so there are some things that are really built to our modern memory and is distributed. It's not one particular or part of the brain is actually multiple areas where that memory is distributed. And think, god, that's the way IT is because.

It's very rare in the kind of surgeries that I do where you go on your remove part of piece the brain that someone forgets. This kind of long term memories are this long term motor skills that they have. That's very, very rare.

It's the number one question the patient asked me, like, am I gonna the same? And I am. I gona remember, you know, my wife, oh, I may have.

I remember, you know, these thoughts of my birthday when I was ten years old. And i've never really seen that kind of severe in a unless it's a very, very severe enery that involves almost entire brain. And thank god. So a lot of that information is really distributed across the entire brain.

Speaking of storage of an ability to speak, you are i'm doing some amazing work and achieved some pretty incredible, well, deserve recognition for you work in bringing language out of paralyzed people, essentially allowing people who are locked in to a paralyzed state or otherwise unable to articulate speech, using brain machine interface, essentially translating the neural activity of areas of the brain that would produce speech into hardware wires and things of that sort are official nonbiological tools in order to allow, paralyse people to communicate.

We will provide a link to some of the popular press coverage to that work in the original papers. But if you would be so kind das to tell us what those experiments look like, who these people are, who are locked in and that you allowed to communicate. And then especially interesting to me, some of the directions that you're taking this now, which is beyond just, you know, people being able to think about what they want to say in words coming out on a screening or through a microphone, but actually making the interaction to between these people in the real world more elaborate in more real. If that seems mysterious to people, i'm going to let add tell you what they're doing with this rather than put anymore and detail on IT.

哦， okay. Well, thanks for asking about this has really been some of the exciting recent work from the lab. So for last decade, we've really been focusing on the basic science meaning, trying to understand how the brain extracts and produces speed, sounds and words.

We've done a lot of work trying to figure out how these parts of the brain um control these individual elements that give us all words and and meanings. And so he was about six years ago where we realized we actually have a pretty good idea of how this code works. We had identified all these different elements that we could decode in apps y patients.

For example, when the electrode s on the brain as part of their surgeries, we could decode all of the different things in value of english. I was about six years ago. So a natural question was this, which is if we understand that electrical code, can we use that to help someone who is paralyzed and can't get those signals out of the brain to speak Normally? And that's in the setting of people who are paralyzed.

So there are series of conditions um they include things like brain stem stroke. The brain stem is the part of the brain that connects the server room, which is the top part that are thinking and lot of the motor control, speech, language, everything. And the brain stem is will connect that to the spinal cord and the nerves to go out to the face and bocal track.

So if you have a stroke there, basically you could be thinking all the wild, creative, intelligent thoughts you have in the mind and three bra, but you can't get them out into words, or you can get them out to your hand to write them down. So that's a very severe former problem as culturing stem stroke. There is another kind of conditions that we call nerves age generation where the nerve cells uh die basically or atrophy in a condition called uh elless.

And that's a very severe form of policies. Its extreme form. People essentially lose all voluntary movement.

So Stephen hawking would be a good example of someone .

with a lugar's. Dic is an example of someone who had A S but not a great example of what typical course varia. So for reasons not clear, the progression of disease largely stabilized the point where he could twitch you know as a cheek muscle lower move. As I S say in most people it's very rapid and many people they die from and actually you within a couple years of diagnosis.

So ah he lived a long .

time and that .

he lived a long time and state .

and exactly and but he wasn't breathing you know through a two in his throat, for example, because people with severe the muscles to their to their dire um and their lungs essentially give out as well. They get weaknesses than the camper AA anymore. So that's another form of practices.

And so in our field, these are kind of like the most devastating things that can happen. I'm not gonna really try to compare IT, like what's worse, you know, having brain to more struck, it's all bad. But this condition of what we coping locked in refers to this idea that you can have completely intact cognition and awareness, but have no way to express that.

No voluntary movement, no ability to speak. And that is devastating because, uh, psychologically and socially, you know you're completely isolated. That's what we call a locked in syndrome and it's devastating.

I've seen that throughout my career and it's really heart breaking because. You know that the person is there, but you can't see they can't communicate. So we've been studying this pattern of electronic activity for concerts and balls and SHE.

Once we figured out a lot of these codes for the individual fanatic elements, we took a little bit of a detail, or at least part of labs started to focus on this very specific question for people who have these kind of Prices, could we intercept those signals from the brain, the three o cortex, if someone is trying to say those words? And then can we intercept them and then have them taken out of the brain through wires to a computer that are going to interpret those signals and translate them into words? So about three years ago, we started to clinical trial call.

The bravo trial is still underway in the first participant in the brave trial was a man who'd been paralyzed for fifteen years when he had twenty. When he was about twenty years old, he came to united states, was actually working in to know my area, and he was in a car accident, and he actually walked out the hospital day after that correspondent. But the next day had a complication related to IT, where he had a very large stroke in the brain stem.

And that turned out to be devastating. He didn't wake up from that stroke for about a week. He was in a coma for about a week, and when he woke up from that coma, he realized that he couldn't speak or move his arms or legs. And as he told me or communicated to us, that was absolutely delvin, stating he wanted really to die at that time.

Could he blink his eyes or move his mouth in anyway.

he could blink his eyes, yet some limited mouth movements, but couldn't produce any intelligence. Les, which was, like, completely slud and incomprehensible. And he survived this injury. A lot of people who have that kind of stroke just don't survive. But he survived.

And I also realized that he's just an incredible person, like a force of nature, in terms of his optimism, in terms of his ability, make friends despite this condition, the way he actually communicates, because he has a little bit of residual neck movement, says that he improvised and had his friends basically put a stick attached to his baseball cap because he can move his neck. He would essentially type out letters on a keyboard screen to get at words. In fact, this is how he communicated, was through a device that he would send you pack out letters one by one by moving his neck to control the stick attached to his baseball cap.

How many years did he use that method of communication?

Until for about fifteen years, he had really spoken for about fifteen years. Oh yeah. So IT was a devastating injury. But you know there's something be sad about um the human spirit and if there's anyone who body said that is punch you that his nickname the first participant in our trial um he has a human spirit.

He persevered in fact you know could thrive in this community basically in france, be able to communicate in this very slow and inefficient way. Um maybe part of that spirit is why he volunteered to be the first person in this trial. He was a clinical trial, an experiment, was a study. This is not an approved therapy by any means.

This was really something that had not been done before and was we had a lot of ideas about IT um but we didn't know you know we had proven a lot of this could be true and some people who are Normally speaking but to actually put into someone who's paralyzed number one or we don't know the code is the same number two is someone who's not been being for fifteen years, whether the signals are actually still there or not. So he was part of a clinical trial that was, you know something that are hospital and also the F D. A, you know how to approve and look at ver carefully.

But given a lot of the work the way have done, there are some basis for for why this might work. And so um about two hundred half years ago, we did a surgery where we planted electoral ATS onto the parts of the brain that we ve been talking about, these areas that control the vocal track, the areas that control the learning, the areas that control the lips in tune and jaw movements when we Normally speak. These are areas that presumable may be active.

That was our hope in his brain, but he just couldn't get those out to a control his, his mouths and Normal way. And he underwent a surgery, a brain surgery. We put elector array, and we connected IT to a port that was skilled to a screw to his call, the port he goes through his scalp and he's lived with this now for last three years.

Um IT is at risk of infection. These ports eventually have to become wireless in the future. But we figured out way to keep that port there where we can essentially connect him to a computer through that port.

So here's an electrode ray that's implanted over the part of the sprain that's important for speech is connected to a port. And then we connect a wire to that point that translates those, uh, well, we come analogue, you know, brain waves in converted digital signals. And then a computer takes those digital signals from those individual sites, from the speech cortex, and translate those into words.

Can you describe us the first time that pongo spoke through this engineered device? What was that experience like for you? And at least from what he conveyed to you, what was that experience like for him? This is somebody who is essentially locked in, except for this you know rather crude pecking device toughly impressed by how adaptive, more adaptable poncho wasn't his friends. Engineering that device forum was is really nothing short of of clever and um because otherwise he would be truly locked in yeah right but what was that moment like I can only imagine that .

moment was incredible. He was truly incredible um to be able to see him try to get outer ward d that was h for practical purposes unintelligible, but to be able to take the brain activity into translated into text on the screen. That's what we did.

We took those brain waves. We put them through a machine learning our artificial intelligence algorithm that can pick up this very, very subtlety patterns. You can actually see them with your eye in in the brain activity and translate those into words.

And I remember seeing this happening for the first time. You know IT doesn't happen like immediately. This is something that took weeks to train the algorithm to interpreted correctly.

Um but what was incredible about IT was to see how he reacted and um he would be prompted to say a given word like um you know outside for example and then you would think about IT, try to say IT and finally those words would appear on the screen and what was really amazing about IT was you could really tell that he had got a kick out of them because he would start to gago. You know his his body would shaken away and his head was shaken away that he had to get go and that was called to see. But then I also realized that when he was giggling, a kind of screwed up. The next words decoding.

is that a bove since fixed? No.

we haven't fixed that and we haven't fixed that. So it's easier just to tell him to stop, get going.

So what was the first word that he said? Well.

I think one of the first sentences that he put together was, you know, can you get my family outside and .

you can get them out of the room? No, no. All these years you want to yeah, family?

no. I think what that was can you get to bring them bring and so the way this worked was we trained uh this computer to recognize fifty words. We started with a very small vocabulary um that's expanding as we speak.

I think that this is just a matter of time before this vocabulary become much, much larger. But we started with the fifty set of words. We created essentially other possible sentences you can generate from those fifty words.

Why that was important was you can use those, all those possible scientists to create a computational model, computer model, of all the different word combinations to give different sentences, are giving those fifty words. And then you can essentially do what we call auto create. It's the same kind of thing that we do when you're texting.

For example, you get the right, the wrong letter and there, but your phone actually knows, you know, because that is context, what corrected. So because the decoding is not one hundred percent correct all the time, in fact, is far from that, it's really helpful to have these other features, like autocrat, this stuff that we use routinely now with texting that makes IT correct and then updates IT. So it's a combination of a lot of things. It's the A I that is translating those brain activity patterns, uh, but it's also things that we've learned from the speech and speech technologies that you know you put all together and then always and starts to work. And so um we were really excited because that was the first time that someone was paralyzed and could create words in sentences, uh that was just decoded from the brain activity.

incredible. And am I know you're very humble and but i'm not embarrassed, but I think I always know you were destiny for great things and the really age of nine when we first became friends.

But when I read that the news coverage of your work with poncho in the release of this language from this locked, impatient IT, literally, you know, I brought tears to my eyes because it's, you know, it's an interesting thing as as fellow newer scientists, where we explore the brain and we try and find mechanisms, and we trying to compare those to what other people find and find truth in principles and build up from those. But pretty rarely is a case where that out of exploration leads to something of clinical significance within one's own lifetime. I mean, that's the reality of science. And often times, it's a very distributed process. And but in this case, it's been a it's been a magnificent thing to see you move along this trajectory, parsing these language and speech ias and then to also do the clinical work in parallel.

Speaking of which.

these days we hear a lot about neural link elon mosques company. No, a surgeon that came up briefly through my lab, but I I can't take any credit for what he knows there does, which is magic. Google is the neurosurgeon neural link.

There's some other excEllent scientist there and engineers there. We hear a lot about neural link because while bring machine interface of the sort that you do in the other laboratories, due has been going on for a long time. Um there has been some press around neural link about the promise of what brain machine interface could do. For instance, early in our discussion you talked about how you know languages constrained by the sound waves and typically it's a few people. Communicating a one person with many people through a podcast, for instance, or a speech.

But the idea has been thrown out there that through the use of stimulating chips sore through other brain machine device, that perhaps one could internalize fifty conversations in fifty x communication, or that the memory systems could be augmented to remember ten times as much information and even twice as much information in a given period of time. My understanding of what they're doing at neural link, which is admittedly crude, and from the outside few discussions with people there, is that they two are going to pursue clinical goals first, things like trying to generate smooth movement in a parkinson I in patient, trying to a adjust movement patterns in someone with huntington disease, for instance, things of that sort, before they embark on the more sigh. I like explorations of fifty axing communication or doubling memory capacity in these things things, although I don't know they may be doing all of those things in parallel.

What are your thoughts about super capabilities of the brain or or your super? I don't even know what word to use charging the brain, you know, giving the brain functions for which we've never observed before in human history, where we have our einsteins and our finest in our mersin ics and the, you know, it's unclear who to put in along that line. I side by side, but with there some their Michael Jordans and eat a, but we've never heard of seen somebody who can jump twenty feet in there, or we further people who have photographic memories.

But I don't know that we are aware of any human being in history who could memorize the entire library of congress or all the works within the vatican within an hour. Anyway, you get the idea, what are your thoughts about manipulating neural circuitry to achieve super human or superhuman or super physiological functions? Are we there? Should we even be thinking about that? Is IT possible, given that neurons simply communicate through electrical activity, and electric activity can be engineered outside of the brain. How do you think about that? And here we don't even have to think about neural link in particular is just about one example of companies and people in laboratories that are quite urgently considering all this.

Well, it's a really interesting time right now. The science has been going on for decades. The work that we've done in this field that you got brain machine in surface, it's been going on for a while.

And a lot of the early work was just trying to restore things like our movement or having people are monkeys controller computer pressure, for example, on the screen that's been going on for a um what's been really new is that industry is now involved in some some of this now becoming commercialized, and we're starting to see as now cross over to this field where is no longer just research that we're talking about medical products um that are designed to be you know surgically planned in some cases. You know there's people doing this kind of work, not invasively as well. They don't require surgery.

Um the specific question that you are asking about is an area that we call augmentation. So can you build a device um that essentially enhances someone's ability beyond superNormal, super memory, super communication speeds, beyond speech, for example um I guess superior precision athletic abilities. I think that these are very serious kind of questions to be asking now because as you mention the pathway so far really to focus on these medical applications, I personally don't think that we ve thought enough actually about what these kind of scenario are going to look like.

And I don't think we've thought through all the ethical implications of what this means for augmentation in particular. There's part of this that is not new at all. Humans throughout history have been doing things to augment our function, coffee, negative, all kinds of things, all kinds of medications that cross over from medical to consumer, that is everywhere.

So the pursuit of augmentation or performance or enhancement is really not a new thing. Um the questions really, as they relate to neurotechnology es, for example, have to do with the invasive of nature. For example, if these technologies require surgery, for example, to do something that is not for a medical application, again, there that is not exactly new territory either. People do that routinely for cosmetic kind of procedures for physical appearance, not necessary cogit. So I do think that provided the technology continues to emerge the way that IT does that it's gonna around the corner and IT probably not to be in ways that are super obvious.

I don't think it's gonna be like can we easily memorize every fact in the world but informs that are gna be much more incremental, maybe more subtle um in many ways we really have that now like for example, you don't have to have a neural interface in bedded in your brain to get information, essentially access to all information in the world. You just have to have, you know your iphone whether you could do IT faster through a brining surface, I definitely won't rule that out. But think about this, that the systems that we have already to speak to communicate have evolved over you know, thousands, millions of years.

And they're supported by neural structures that have done with of millions of neurons. There's no technology that exists right now that people are thinking about that are in commercial forms, certainly not even in research labs that come anywhere close to what has been evolved for those natural purposes. So i'm essentially saying two sides of this, which is we're already getting into this now.

This is not new territory. This topic of augmentation, both physical and cognitive, we've already surpassed that. That's part of what humans do in general um but we are entering this area of like enhance cognition um these areas that I think the technologies going to be the right limiting step in how far can go? We haven't had the full conversations about.

Number one, is this what we actually won? Uh, is this can be good for society who gets access to this technology? These are all things that are going to become real .

world problems. Certainly a lot to consider in thinking about augmentation in another theme that have yet to ask you about, but i'm extremely curious about which is facial expressions. Before we talk about the relationship between the mosquito of the face and language and the communication of emotion, i'd love for you do if you would touch on a little bit of what you're doing with patients like poncho to move beyond somebody who's locked in being able to type out words on a screen with their thoughts. There's a ricara information contain within the face and facial expression.

And while somebody like punch you going from having to, you be completely locked in to being able to pick out letters on a keyboard, to being able to just think of those letters in having them spelled out, that A A tremendous set of leap forward towards Normalcy. It's still far away different than punch of speaking with his mouth which I think knowing some people who are restricted um who are quite a pledge c you know a lot of what they struggle within the reward is actually actually hit different sometimes because they're seeded while other people are standing. It's actually we we don't often think about this but to always have to look up to communicate with peels of very different interface in the world. They managed quite well, of course but um could he tells what you're doing in terms of merging the brain machine interface with extraction of speech signals from people who are locked in like ponch with facial expressions?

sure. Yeah well, like we describe before, progress is being made. Um the proof of principal is out there that you can decode speech. That will continue to optimize.

And i'm very confident that, that's onna improve very, very quickly in the coming years to the point where it's like not just a small vocabulary but a large vocabulary in at reasonable rates IT at a level that can be really helpful and very optimistic about that. I think it's the right time to start really thinking about a broader vision of what communication really is. So for example, uh, i'm here with you in person, we could have done this virtually probably it's pretty easy to do that.

We could have recorded this really separate. But there is something about being able to actually see your expressions and understand um other forms of communication. So another really important one is not verbal the expressions that you're making you know uh for example, if you have a critical look on your face, if i'm saying something not clear that's assign to me that I need to rephrased IT or to send a different way or slow down for example or if there's something that really excites you, I want to continue to say more about IT and and talk more in detail you know essentially about uh given things.

So um facial expressions actually are really important part of the way we speak in there are two things um it's not just the expressions of like how you're feeling and perceiving what i'm saying but is also seen my mouth move in your eyes actually see my mouth move, my job move in a particular way that actually allows you to hear those sounds Better. So having both the visual information but also the sounds go into your brain is going to improve intelligence. They also make IT more natural .

in memory for what is spoken perhaps. So here's a call for people not just listening to podcast, but watching them and listening to them on youtube. I suppose if if we were to translate this .

to exactly real world, exactly, and the reason why were also very interested in this idea of not just having text on the screen, but essentially a fully computer animated face, like an avatar of the person's speech movements and the facial expression, it's gonna a more complete form of expression. Now you can imagine right now that might just be someone looking at a computer screen interpreting these signals.

But I think the way things are going in the next couple of years, a lot more of our social interactions, more than even now, are going to move into this digital virtual space. And of course, most people are thinking about what that means for most consumers. But he also has really important implications for people who are disabled, right in whether, how, how are they onna participate in that.

And so we are thinking really about four people like punch and other people who are paralyzed. What other forms of B, C, I can we do in order to help improve their ability? communicates? A one is, I sent you building out more holistic, avars know things that cannot essentially um decode you know essentially their their expressions or the movements associated mouth in jail when they actually speak to improve that communication.

So do you envision at time, not too long from nowhere, instead of tweet out something in text, my avar will, i'll type IT out, but my avatar will just say it'll be an image of my avatar saying, whatever does that happen to be tween at that?

That's all working on. yeah. So I don't think that that. That is gonna en and it's gonna en soon and there's lot of progress in that. And again, we're just trying to enrich um the the field of you of communication expression um to make you more Normal. And we actually think that having that kind of ava ata is a way of getting feedback to people learning how to speak through A A speech narrow prosthetic. That's the device that we call the speech narrow, pathetic that that is gonna the way that can help people learn how to do with the quickest, not necessarily like trying to say words and having to come on a screen, but actually have people embody, feel like it's part of themselves, or that they are directly controlling that, that illustration or animation.

This idea of an avatar AR speaking out what we would otherwise write. It's fascinating. And to me on instagram, I post videos, I don't filter them, but I know there's a lot of discussion out is about people using filter is to make their skin look different or the lighting look different.

A lot of filtering and also the use of captions so that essentially what you end up with is somewhere between an actual raw video of what was spoken in an avatar, a version of IT. I mean, if the mismatch between what spoken and what in the caption is too dramatic than IT doesn't quite work. But I watched these carefully when people use captions, and often times there's a smoothing of what was said into the caption.

So IT seems much more to sing in inaccurate of times that the reverse is also true where the caption is inaccurate. And then IT creates this kind of daring, this match. In any case, I think this this aspect in the clinical realm of using an avatar to allow people like ponto to essentially be a face that communicates through spoken language from an avatar that looks like them is fascinating um indeed important.

And I think how avatar's emerging social spaces is going to be really fascinating. I get a lot of questions about studying. I think that for people who have a studdy, IT is self anxious provoking, is studying related to anxiety.

If one has a studdy, what can they do? This study reflect some underlying neurologic phenomenon that my distinguish in one kind of stuff and another. What can people studying do if y'd like to relieve their studdy?

Yeah, great. Questioned starter is a condition where the words can't come out fluming. Ly, so you have all the ideas. You've got the language.

You member, we talk about this distinction CT betwen language, speech, stuttering, the problem of speech, right? So the ideas, the meaning, the grammar is all there, and people started, but they can get the words out fluently. So that's a speech condition.

And in particular, it's condition affects articulation, specifically about controlling the production of words in this really coordinated kind of movements that have to happen in the vocal track to produce fluent speech. And um startling ing is a condition where um people have a pretty position to IT. So there is an aspect of stuttering.

You are a starter or you're not a starter, right? But people who started don't starter all the time either. So you could be a setter whose starters is sometimes, but not others.

And really the the main link between such an anxiety is that xxi ty can provoke IT and make IT worse. That's certainly true, but it's unnecessarily caused by anxiety can essentially trigger IT or make IT worse, but it's not the cause of IT per say. So the cause of IT is still really not clear.

But IT does have to do with these kind of brain functions that we've been talking about earlier, which is that in order to produce Normal fluent speech, we're not even conscious of what is going on in our mouth, in our links. We're not conscious if we were we're not be able to speak because it's too complex, is too precise. It's something that we have really uh developed the abilities to do and we do and naturally, right, it's part of our programing and part of what we learn inherent and you know just through exposure.

So suddenly is essentially a breakdown at certain times in that machinery being able to work in a really coordinated way. You can think about, you know, the Operations of these areas are controlling the vocal tract, let's say, speeches like a symphony in order for to come out. Normally you've gotten have not just one part, the learning, but the lip s the job.

They can be doing their own thing. They have to be very, very precisely activated, very, very precisely controlled in way to actually create words. And so in daring, there's a breakdown of that coronation.

If somebody has a starter, is IT Better to address that early in life when there's still neuroplasticity? Is that is very robust? And if so, what's the typical route for treatment? I I have to imagine not brain surgery. Typically, i'm guessing there are speech therapies that that people can talk to and and and they can help them work out where they're getting stuck in the .

relationship to anxiety. Yeah exactly. I mean, part of IT is about that anxiety. But a lot of IT really has to do with um therapy to sort of like work through and think of tricks basically sometimes to create conditions where you can actually get the words to come out.

A lot of some forms of starting ing our really initiation problems um just getting started itself is is very hard. You want IT start with initial value or continent, but IT won't emit um and so a lot of the therapy is really just focusing on like how do you create the conditions you know for that to happen? There's another aspect to IT that I find very interesting is that um the feedback essentially what we hear ourselves say, for example, um in every time that I say word, i'm also hearing what i'm saying.

So that's what we call auditor, a feedback that turns out to be very important. And sometimes when you change that, you can actually change amount someone starters for Better, for worse. And it's giving us a clue that the brain is not just focused on sending the commands out, but it's also possibly interacting with the part that is hearing the sounds.

And there's something might be going on in that connection that, that breaks down when stuttering occurs. So there are individuals that are starters, but they don't start at all the time in those instances. There's something happening in those particular moments where this very, very precise coordination needs to happen in the brain north to get the words out flamingly.

We taught a little bit about caffeine and why you avoid IT because your work requires such precision and calm.

And Frankly, to me, IT seems like you're running a lot of Operations, no on intended in parallel when you are doing surgery, not just thinking about where to direct the instruments, but also thinking like a chess player several steps down the line, what could happen? What if if they type thinking and what are some of the other practices and tools that you use to put yourself into state for optimal neurosurgery or for um you know thinking about scientific problems for that matter? We keep threatening to go running together, but I know you run correct your yeah is do you find running to be an essential part of your um state regulation?

Absolutely yeah. So for me um most exercise that I do I really don't do for physical reasons. I do for mental reasons. I can tell, for example, if I don't go on a run or swim just after a day too, and can have translation, for example, in the way I feel the Operating room, even the way interact with other people so there is no question that those you know the mind and body are deeply connected in for me personally be able to um have opportunity to disconnect for a while IT turns out to be really, really important.

Now the Operating room for me is another space um kind like running or swimming where i'm disconnected from the rest of world. I don't bring my cell on into the obering room. Um i'm disconnected from the external world for that time that i'm in the surgery and all I am doing is just focusing.

Now that doesn't mean that i'm having complex thoughts or doing something very complicated. Sometimes IT is like that, but it's not always like that. Um there are things that we do in surgery that are like routine and road and are from muscle memory.

So for example, suturing skin or as doing certain kinda day section or drilling part of the bone for example. These are all things that become very route after time. So for me, even being in the Operating room actually can sometimes to feel that purpose.

So I really look forward to being in the Operating room because that intense focus allows media disconnect from all the other things are worrying about you know that um that are happening on the outside world. You know we all have those kind of things that happened and i'm certainly no exception to that. But strAngely, the party room for me as a sanctuary, i'd love being there um because we have some control over the environment.

Um I know what is there. I know the anatomy of the brain. Um my motions are going through routines and so for me that's not actually very different than going on run and let my minor legs move in specific ways. This is just the same thing for for my hands.

Do you listen to music or audio books when you run or you divorced from technology when you run?

Well, um music helps me like just stay motivated and distracted from being out of breath in and other things. And for me it's a way to just to catch up with like the world. So sometimes I do, but I do notice that I like I don't run as well.

For example, in the Operating room is a little different you know different surgeons have preferences. I'm more of uh the camp. I don't like any distraction what's ever i'd like people to be able to hear the words that i'm saying without having background noise.

Um I don't really think about relying on music or other things to try to put me in a state of mind. You know I think just being there alone and just, you know, try trying to treat IT the way IT is is a sacred moment where someone's life is really directly under your hands um bad enough kind of focuses me very quickly. And uh, i'd like that. I really detaches me from a lot of things that are preoccupy me. And for those couple of hours that we have a surgery, we're just focused on one thing .

only fantastic guy. Again, I think of in the range of brain explorer that the neurosurgeons, those of your profession are, to me, like the astronauts of neuroscience, because they're really going to the far this reach as possible in their testing, in pRobing, in really at the front page of discovering from the species a week arguably care about the most, which is humans.

If you have to say, from the first time we became friends thirty eight years ago, something, something like that. I'm almost reluctant to say, but so I only reveal IT in part that edi became friends because both he and I shared a love of birds. And we had a club at our school, of which there were only two members. I, small club, small club there was one honorary member and there were certain requirements for being in this club that we don't reveal.

We we took a packet of secrecy and we're going to obey that packed of secrecy but to be sitting here with you today um for me as an absolute thrill um not just because we've been friends for that longer that we've got reacquainted through the literally the halls of medicine and science, but because I really do see what you're doing as really representing that front absolute cutting edge of of exploration and application. I mean the story of punches about one of your many patients that um has dried tremendous benefit from your work and and now as a chair of department, you um of course um work alongside um individuals who are also doing incredible work in the spinal cord that said so on behalf of myself and and everyone, listen, I just really want to thank you for john y us. Today to share this information. We will certainly have you back because there's an entire list of other questions we didn't have time to get to. But also just for the work you do.

it's truly spectacular and IT thanks so much. Um you know I am very humble basically by what you just said and I feel that it's really extradition honor actually in privilege you know to be here with you and reconnect and talk about all these ideas uh it's probably not random you know that we ended up in similar spots and interests.

I think when we are kids, you know starts with some deep interest and and um kind of nursing out on on topics and it's probably not a coincident you know that that we have such deep interest in the sport. Now I just feel really lucky to be able to do what I do. It's fun every day, almost every day um be able to go to work and take your folks and learn at the same time and then just close the loop.

How do we apply the knowledge we learn one day to someone who comes in next week? It's it's really fun and um we don't know everything. We're not even close to do IT. But the journey to figure this out is is really extraordinary. I mean, it's it's um like you said, it's expLoring new lands literally in Operating room.

When i'm looking at the exposed cortex, trying to understand is is safe to walk down this part of the critical landscape or the other trail, you know which one is gonna the one that is going to be safe first is the other that results in paralyses and inability talk. Um well, maybe I shouted call fun, but it's very it's very important too, in addition to being really intellectually important for how we understand how the brain works. And so yeah, I feel just really lucky in that opportunity.

and we're lucky to have you been one of the people doing IT. Thank you ever so much.

thanks.

Thank you for joining me today for my discussion with doctor eddy chain. If you like to learn more about his research into the neuroscience of speech, language and bioengineering, his treatment of epoxy sy and other aspects, and diseases and disorders of the brain, please check out the links in our shown out captions.

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I cover topics and subject matter that are sometimes overlapping with the information covered on the huberman and lab podcast, but that's often distinct from information on the huberman lab podcast. Again, it's huberman in lab on all social media channels. Thank you once again for join me today for the discussion about the neuroscience of speech, language, epilepsy and much more with doctor eddy chain. And as always, thank you for .

your interesting science.