You and your brain-who cares who?

Title: 10 Thought Journey

Publishing: Taihai Publishing House

Produced by: Kuwei Culture

Speaker: Bruce Hood

Born in Canada (the exact time is unknown, he has never made it public himself), Ph.D. in Psychology, Cambridge University. Professor of developmental psychology, Bristol University. Inspired by his mentor and former Christmas speaker Richard Gregory, Hood became an effective science communicator and liked to communicate his work with performances. Several popular science books he wrote, including extrasensory perception, tell the natural origin of supernatural belief. He is the founder of Speakezee, the largest academic speech platform in the world. After the lecture was broadcast in Britain, Japan and Singapore were introduced.

How would you feel if you found that you actually "turned a blind eye" most of the time every day, that your memory was fabricated and what you saw was illusory?

The lecture site looks like a scene from a horror movie in the 1950s.

"I am Bruce Hood. In fact, I should say this is Bruce Hood, "Hood said, pointing to his head. "Because I am who I am, it all comes from my brain ... it is the brain that determines our identity."

As a developmental psychologist, Hood is interested in how the brain changes with age. In addition, his research focuses on how the human brain creates the illusion of human experience and why the working principle of the brain induces us to believe some incredible things.

Hood first talked about vision. He said: "Most people think that vision is like a camera." But from the research, we know that the brain only deals with the central part of our field of vision. If you stretch your arm horizontally, it is only the size of your thumb. According to this theory, the rest should be blurred, but in fact we don't live in a state where most of our eyesight is not clear. The reason is that our eyes are constantly moving, beating 4~5 times per second. Constantly sample and store the information of the surrounding environment to build a complete and complex picture of the surrounding world.

However, if our eyes keep moving, the world we see will keep changing, which will make you dizzy.

So the brain made some dramatic changes to solve this problem. Every time we do a slight saccade, we cut off the message sent at this moment, so we won't experience this kind of exercise at all. It's like going blind for an instant, and then the brain edits these small gaps to recreate a smooth visual experience.

Hood invited volunteer Amy to help. He asked her to look back and forth in front of a mirror, first her left eye and then her right eye. When the photographer zoomed in on Amy's face, we saw her eyes jumping from side to side on the big screen. But Amy said she didn't see her eyes moving in the mirror.

Hood explained, "No matter how hard you try, you can't see your eyes moving because your brain has blinded you." If you add up these hours, you will be blind for about 2 hours when you are awake. "Obviously, your mind is full of tricks to make the world look rich and meticulous."

Then Hood sprinkled a handful of coffee beans on the tray and asked the audience what image the coffee beans formed. Someone shouted, "Mouse!" "Then everyone shouted out their ideas. Hood explained that we look for meaning in random patterns because "our brains are always trying to construct structure and order". This is also the fundamental reason why some people believe in supernatural existence. To prove this, Hood used Kanisha's illusion to summon a ghost in front of our eyes.

The Kanisha illusion was discovered by Italian psychologist Gaitano caniza and named after him.

He put four circles on a board, each with a quarter cut (imagine that each circle looks like Pac-Man). When the cuts of these four figures are connected together, it suddenly looks as if there is a white square in the middle. The brain is filling in the missing information and rationalizing it. Hood said, "Your brain thinks that every circle has a missing piece, and the only possibility is that there must be a white square on it."

Although this square is a non-existent "ghost", the brain thinks it is real. If you test the visual area of the brain, neurons will send out the same information as if you saw a real square.

Illusion is not an insignificant game, but it can give us a powerful insight into how the brain interprets the world and creates experiences in daily life.

In his second speech, Hood talked about a controversial illusion that we dominate our own thoughts.

The brain is constantly bombarded with information from the senses. Imagine how many faces you will see in a day if you walk in a small town. But you don't pay attention to most faces intentionally, unless this person is outstanding in appearance-your brain will definitely filter out which faces are worthy of attention. So, from these massive information, how does the brain decide what to pay attention to and what information to keep?

In the experiment, the stage of the lecture hall was full of jugglers of the acrobatic troupe, and they began a dazzling performance. Hood asked the audience to count how many times the red juggling stick changed hands. After the performance, he asked the audience if they had noticed anything unusual.

Unexpectedly, it was only when some slow-motion acrobatic performances were replayed that most of the audience noticed for the first time that someone dressed as a gorilla crossed the stage among acrobats. Amid laughter and applause, Hood said, "This is a good proof that you didn't notice everything around you."

Therefore, under the condition of our unconscious, the brain is regulating behavior, including the object we pay attention to, the way we learn and the content of memory, which shows that "I am not the only one who controls everything".

This problem also involves memory. Memories can also be deceptive. In other words, they are not fixed, but more liquid. Memories are not like photographs. On the contrary, every time you remember something, you will reshape it according to other experiences stored in your brain.

Losing long-term memory can be devastating, such as when the brain is damaged. Hood said, "You don't know who you are, because in fact, the sum of our memories determines who we are."

★ Top scientific feast-the essence of the open class of the Royal Society.

The Royal Society Open Class (Christmas Lecture) 1825 was initiated by michael faraday. Mainly for teenagers, children and science lovers, we invite top figures in the scientific community to show all kinds of cutting-edge science with various humorous explanations and interesting props. Later, it became an annual traditional popular science festival in the scientific community, which also opened up an exciting new road for popular science. Become a model of all kinds of popular science programs around the world.

This book includes a series of lectures on thinking in particular. Speakers include Nobel Prize winner Archibald Vivian Hill, director of the Royal Society, Susan Greenfield, a leading figure in neuroscience research, and top scientists such as the world-famous Cyberberg and the pioneer of artificial intelligence Kevin Wallvik. Highly restore the scene and reproduce the grand occasion and essence of the Christmas lecture.

★ Psychology, Neurology, Biology-"Think" and think in a visible way.

Where does our thinking come from? What impact does it have on our life and the world? From 1926 to 2017; From biology, neurology to psychology; From sensory tracking, brain blind spots to human-computer communication, from ubiquitous hallucinations and lie detection to who we are ... 10 lectures on thinking, hundreds of scientific experiments, research spanning over a hundred years, take you into the depths of your brain, spread out a series of secret and complicated thinking maps, and trace the ins and outs of "thinking" in a visible way. Reveal the ultimate problems closely related to your brain, self, thoughts and future.

This book also supplements the speaker's letters, notes and other behind-the-scenes materials, which not only shows the rich research results and popular science spirit of top scholars, but also unexpectedly shows their humorous and rebellious mortal side.

What is thinking? What does thinking mean to us? Thinking is the most critical part of the concept of "being human". It determines who we are! What kind of people will we become! The thinking and exploration of thinking problems runs through almost every minute of human history. But even so, we still don't know it, only that it comes from the brain. How it works and why it works is still a mystery. This book is a collection of popular science lectures by the Royal Society, which brings together many top scholars, focusing on human thinking and brain operation, presenting cutting-edge research results in biology, neurology, psychology and other fields through interesting experiments and 10 lectures that condense the essence of a century of research. Let's "understand" this secret and complicated thinking world! Read yourself!

Catherine? De? Langer: Science journalist, editor and multimedia producer. Focus on physiology, genetics, neurology and psychology. Editor for many natural science magazines. His works have been published in Nature, Guardian, Washington post, New Scientist and other well-known media. He participated in the production of many TV, radio programs and documentaries, including the famous Christmas lecture of the Royal Society and the BBC documentary Dear Professor Hawking.

Li Yan: Master of English-Chinese Contrast and Interpretation, Xiamen University; Doctor of Translation, Associate Professor, Master Supervisor, Shanghai International Studies University. He passed the first-class translation qualification examination of the Ministry of Personnel, and won the second prize and the excellent prize in the inter-Korean translation competition. He has published Stylistic Elements, Psychological Training Manual, China City and Cultural Economics, and many other translated works, such as Foreign New Supply-side Economics.

Starting from 1825, the Christmas lecture sponsored by michael faraday opened up an interesting new way to show young people cutting-edge scientific achievements.

Royal society

If the ego is the sum of our thoughts and actions, it is undeniable that they all depend on the brain. In fact, we are our brains, or at least our brains are the key parts that determine who we are.

-British cognitive psychologist? Bruce hood

What is thinking? How does thinking come into being? These two problems may boil down to the same problem. If someone claims that he can answer this question, what should I expect him to show me? Rats that can perform? Brain scan? Or a formula? Even if it is highly speculative and far-sighted, it is impossible to grasp the essence of thinking, or its essence-subjectivity.

-Susan Greenfield, neuroscientist and director of the Royal Society.