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In an age of information overload, this is what happens to our brains · The Morning Edition

0:04
S1: For decades, neuroscientists have offered opposing theories for how our
0:08
S1: brains process the risks and rewards of daily life. Some
0:13
S1: thought our brains dedicate the most energy into managing everyday realities.
0:18
S1: Others thought our brains fire up when we are thrown.
0:21
S1: Something unexpected. Well, now we have an answer and it
0:25
S1: might make you rethink how you live. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris,
0:30
S1: and you're listening to Morning Edition from The Age and
0:33
S1: The Sydney Morning Herald. Today, science reporter Angus Dalton, on
0:38
S1: findings by researchers from the University of Sydney, published in
0:41
S1: the Journal of Neuroscience, which might help explain how our
0:45
S1: brains are functioning in this age of information overload. It's
0:49
S1: June the 29th. Angus, welcome back to the podcast.
0:54
S2: Thanks for having me, Sam.
0:55
S1: Okay. I can't wait to delve into this with you.
0:57
S1: You always have such fun stories. And for this latest one,
1:01
S1: people have got to go check out the photos on
1:04
S1: our mastheads because you had a cap on your head
1:06
S1: covered with electrode sensors. Uh, and then neuroscientists, they came
1:11
S1: at you. They filled these sensors with blue goo. What
1:15
S1: was going on, Angus?
1:16
S3: Well, yeah, like I basically just signed up to do
1:19
S3: this random brain experiment, which sounded kind of fun. I
1:23
S3: thought it would just be sort of like the cap
1:25
S3: and the wires. And then I walked into this sort
1:27
S3: of nondescript room at the University of Sydney at this lab,
1:31
S3: and saw these five massive syringes on the table filled
1:35
S3: with blue goo. And I was like, what are they?
1:38
S3: What are they for? They look terrifying. Like literally, it
1:41
S3: looked like a movie prop. But as you say, it
1:43
S3: was all good. It was just to actually inject kind
1:45
S3: of onto my scalp, this electro conductive gel, to help
1:50
S3: with all of those electrodes and wires. But the reason
1:52
S3: that I was getting hooked up to all of this
1:55
S3: vaguely terrifying equipment was. so the scientists could track my
2:00
S3: brainwaves to see what was happening during this very interesting experiment,
2:04
S3: in terms of what actually happens in our brains when
2:07
S3: we are surprised.
2:09
S1: Let's go through this because there are two camps. I
2:11
S1: didn't know this until reading your stories, but there are
2:13
S1: two camps that are divided over how our brains react
2:17
S1: to surprise. So what are the two opposing camps, I guess,
2:21
S1: as it were?
2:21
S3: Yeah, I had no idea either. But basically, I think
2:24
S3: the first thing to understand is that scientists, including the
2:28
S3: lead author of this study, Doctor Ruben Rideaux, they're very
2:32
S3: interested in how our brains operate efficiently, because our brains
2:37
S3: are the most extraordinary computing devices on earth. Right. They
2:40
S3: can compute the equivalent of 1,000,000,000 billion. I think that's
2:44
S3: called a hexa flop, the equivalent of 1,000,000,000 billion mathematical
2:48
S3: equations per second running on power, or equivalent to a
2:53
S3: dim light bulb, or like a little fish tank pump
2:56
S3: that you might have for like some goldfish on your desk.
2:59
S3: Tiny amount of input energy, but just this huge, huge
3:02
S3: amount of actual calculating that it does on a second
3:05
S3: to second basis, right? So scientists are really, really keen
3:08
S3: to dig into this one as a, as a sort
3:11
S3: of like it's the brain remains very, very mysterious organ.
3:15
S3: So we want to know as much about it as
3:16
S3: we can to understand ourselves, but also because it does
3:19
S3: have this exceptional efficiency, which could be extremely useful for
3:23
S3: us as we try and scale up our sort of
3:26
S3: computational ability as well. So they were looking at how
3:30
S3: we react to, yeah, as you say, the unexpected, which
3:33
S3: is obviously a really, really important thing that the brain
3:36
S3: does to keep us alive. We need to be able
3:38
S3: to handle threats back at, you know, 20,000 years ago,
3:41
S3: it might have been cave lines and avalanches, and now
3:43
S3: it's speeding ebikes, you know, zipping down the down the pathway.
3:46
S3: You need to be able to jump out of the way.
3:48
S3: So the big question was, what does the brain prioritize?
3:52
S3: And as you said, there are these two opposing camps.
3:55
S3: One group believes that the brain pours more mental energy,
3:59
S3: if you like, into reacting to predictable day to day events.
4:03
S3: And this makes sense, right? Because you are handling those
4:07
S3: events more frequently. So it makes sense that the brain
4:09
S3: would be tuned to respond to these events that it
4:13
S3: encounters all the time. That would be a very efficient
4:17
S3: use of the brain's energy. An opposing camp finds it
4:21
S3: that the brain actually really, really fires up when there's
4:24
S3: a surprise. So it can capture more information, so it
4:27
S3: can respond to those surprising events. Because if something's taking
4:31
S3: you by surprise, it's probably really important whether that's you've
4:34
S3: just walked across like a big pile of berries or cash,
4:38
S3: you know what I mean? You need to be able
4:39
S3: to react quickly to that, to capitalize on that windfall.
4:42
S3: But then also, if it's a predator or the speeding
4:45
S3: e-bike or some other threat, you also need to respond
4:47
S3: really quickly. So these two opposing ideas about how we
4:51
S3: might respond to the unexpected versus the expected.
4:55
S1: Okay, I love this so much because I'm very interested
4:57
S1: in the real world and I think even political ramifications
5:01
S1: of this. But we'll get into that in a minute
5:02
S1: because first of all, just tell us really briefly how
5:05
S1: your brain was actually put to the test and then
5:08
S1: what scientists have actually found, because of course, they have
5:11
S1: also tested this on 40 other participants, I believe.
5:14
S3: Yes. Yes, indeed. So yeah, so they hooked me up
5:18
S3: with all of these electrodes, put the conductive gel onto
5:21
S3: my head. I went into a room. I sat my
5:24
S3: head into kind of this brace. I rested my chin
5:28
S3: and there was like a forehead rest to make sure
5:29
S3: that my head stayed still. There was a screen in
5:32
S3: front of me, and basically the first thing that happened
5:34
S3: was this little donut appeared on the screen, and I
5:36
S3: had to follow it around the screen with my eyeballs.
5:38
S3: And the scientists wanted to see when my pupils were
5:40
S3: dilating and when I was surprised. And also sort of,
5:42
S3: I guess, where the movements of my eyes across the screen.
5:45
S3: And they presented me with this game, which appeared very simple,
5:50
S3: but actually to be able to test surprise is actually
5:55
S3: a really difficult thing. So this game was actually really
5:58
S3: sophisticated because what it was doing was finding ways to
6:02
S3: teach my brain to expect something and then to undercut
6:05
S3: that or surprise it, which is actually a really hard
6:07
S3: thing to do in sort of, you know, the 30
6:09
S3: to 45 minutes that they had with participants in this study.
6:11
S3: But what they were doing there was actually teaching. They
6:14
S3: had these patterns that the dots would appear in. And
6:17
S3: to me, they seemed random. But subconsciously, my brain started
6:21
S3: to learn where these dots were more likely to appear,
6:24
S3: so I could actually react faster to the ones that
6:27
S3: I predicted, but then they'd send me up. And with
6:29
S3: that location game, they were testing whether I was better
6:33
S3: at remembering the location of the dots I expected, or
6:37
S3: was I better at remembering the location of the surprise dots?
6:41
S3: And what they discovered was that, as you might expect,
6:45
S3: you do react a lot quicker to expected events. But
6:49
S3: I was a lot better at remembering me, and the
6:51
S3: other 40 participants were all better at remembering and identifying
6:55
S3: exactly where the surprise dots landed. And you can actually
7:00
S3: see this in the data. It's really interesting. So you
7:02
S3: can sort of see with the expected dots, my brainwaves
7:05
S3: spike to a certain level. And I also was doing
7:08
S3: in a few milliseconds, I was doing that a lot quicker.
7:10
S3: But when I was surprised, the the brain spike and
7:13
S3: you can see it on the graph, there's this brain
7:15
S3: spike that goes a lot higher when it's a surprise dot,
7:18
S3: which kind of shows that the brain is slowing down,
7:21
S3: kind of like the the researchers say, almost like making
7:25
S3: a software update to the brain to be like, hang on,
7:27
S3: that's not what we expected. We're going to stop for
7:28
S3: a second, we're going to widen the aperture, and we're
7:31
S3: going to take in more information so we can better
7:34
S3: possibly respond to things in the future, which was really,
7:37
S3: really interesting. So it is a little bit slower, but
7:40
S3: you do take in more information, and I think you
7:42
S3: can sort of picture this in your day to day life, right?
7:45
S3: Like I use the example of it made me think
7:47
S3: of sometimes you drive home from work or something, or
7:49
S3: a route that you've done a million times, and you
7:51
S3: get home and you're like, oh my God, I don't
7:53
S3: remember the last 15 minutes. Like I was totally on autopilot, right?
7:56
S3: Like your brain is just really efficiently reacting to the
8:00
S3: turns of the road and the stop signs that you've
8:02
S3: done a million times. Right? But if you get rear
8:04
S3: ended by a Mr. Whippy van, you know that you're
8:06
S3: going to remember the side of that big, colorful ice
8:09
S3: cream truck smashing into the back of your Toyota Corolla forever, right?
8:13
S3: So it kind of makes sense. What was interesting though,
8:15
S3: is both of these processes, the auto mode and the
8:19
S3: kind of slower info gathering mode, they're both really, really
8:23
S3: efficient and using new high resolution sort of brain imaging.
8:28
S3: They were able to see that the brain makes the
8:32
S3: choice which mode it's going to operate in within 50
8:35
S3: to 100 milliseconds, which is just insanely fast. So the
8:38
S3: brain kind of has its cake and eat it too.
8:41
S3: We're actually really good at doing both things, Sam, which
8:43
S3: is another reason why neuroscientists and computational scientists really want
8:47
S3: to understand more about how our amazing brains work.
8:54
S1: After the break.
8:56
S3: There has been some neurological research into what happens when
9:01
S3: we are exposed to extreme content online. Very emotive content online.
9:10
S1: Okay, so you've walked us through both pathways or efficient
9:13
S1: for the brain. It just chooses whether to react quickly
9:16
S1: with less detail or more slowly, but with vivid detail
9:20
S1: and better memory of the vent. Do you think that
9:23
S1: this study, these findings have particular relevance now, I guess
9:28
S1: in an age of information overwhelm, particularly politically? You know,
9:32
S1: in the way that Donald Trump is famous for so-called
9:35
S1: flooding the zone with crazy stories. You know, it might
9:39
S1: be about immigrants eating their pets, which was untrue. And
9:44
S1: many believe that as a way of distracting American voters from, say,
9:49
S1: pressing matters that perhaps the president wants them to look
9:51
S1: away from, like inflation or the war. Does this perhaps
9:55
S1: explain why that flooding the zone works so well?
9:58
S3: I think that's a really interesting idea, because certainly there
10:02
S3: has been some neurological research into what happens when we
10:06
S3: are exposed to extreme content online, very emotive content online, like,
10:11
S3: you know, the Trump's claim that migrants are coming for
10:15
S3: the dogs and the cats, something that is very like
10:17
S3: emotional that some people might interpret as a threat. And
10:21
S3: my understanding is that what this kind of content can
10:25
S3: do is shift mental energy from the prefrontal cortex, which
10:29
S3: is part of the brain that is kind of handles
10:32
S3: upper reasoning. If you like planning, working memory, making sort
10:36
S3: of those more reasonable decisions, and it can fire up
10:40
S3: structures that are a bit more perhaps emotive or handle
10:44
S3: threats in the brain, like the amygdala. So what that does,
10:48
S3: I suppose, is it takes people from a state of
10:52
S3: mind where they're thinking about things calmly and rationally, and
10:57
S3: perhaps a bit more analytically, and it's engaging the parts
11:00
S3: of our brain that respond more emotionally. And I think
11:03
S3: it's pretty hard to argue against the observation that our
11:07
S3: political discourse has become a lot more emotional, particularly with
11:11
S3: social media. Everyone already knows as well that social media
11:14
S3: is geared towards the negative, the extreme, the angry, the
11:17
S3: fear mongering, and that sort of feeds into the brain
11:20
S3: as well. But like I said, when you're dealing with
11:22
S3: that kind of flooding the zone content that is designed
11:25
S3: to be distracting, extreme, surprising, you're possibly thinking a little
11:31
S3: bit more emotionally. And I think that maybe allows you
11:35
S3: to be a little bit more easily distracted, easily manipulated.
11:39
S3: And it also, yeah, overloads that, that prefrontal cortex. And
11:42
S3: the other interesting thing as well is I think part
11:44
S3: of the reason that we rally behind particular political parties
11:47
S3: particular political figures is because, you know, our brains can
11:52
S3: get really overwhelmed by trying to come up with our
11:54
S3: own opinions on every single political issue. And because of this,
11:57
S3: as you say, flooding the zone, there's always a million
12:00
S3: things being discussed at the same time, right? So if
12:03
S3: you have someone that you agree with, it's kind of
12:06
S3: maybe a little bit of like cognitive deloading, you know,
12:09
S3: if someone, someone say, oh, I'm starting to like what
12:12
S3: this Pauline Hanson person says because of this one thing
12:15
S3: that might have something to do with the workplace or something,
12:18
S3: maybe that leaves you more open to start adopting some
12:20
S3: of her other rhetoric on migrants, for example. Obviously, this is,
12:24
S3: you know, theoretical brain stuff, meeting theoretical political stuff, but
12:28
S3: it's certainly an area where a lot of sort of
12:31
S3: political scientists and neuroscientists are looking into.
12:35
S1: I realize this is absolutely not what the scientists that
12:38
S1: you have spoken to. This wasn't the focus of this study.
12:40
S1: They haven't looked at this. But I do wonder. Or
12:42
S1: maybe I hope, that this is perhaps on a to
12:45
S1: do list because just as a as a quick aside,
12:47
S1: I have seen analysis in the United States which says
12:50
S1: that our brains actually are not built to handle the
12:53
S1: amount of information that's now regularly thrown our way. And
12:57
S1: when there's so much misinformation, perhaps sometimes inaccurate information throwing
13:02
S1: around about, you know, institutions that are key to democracy,
13:05
S1: whether it's the justice system or the way government works
13:08
S1: or the way press is handled. And, you know, having
13:12
S1: a free press. It's just interesting that I've seen that
13:14
S1: some people think that this could even threaten American democracy,
13:17
S1: just this amount of information that people are flooded with.
13:20
S1: And then perhaps from a neurological perspective, just not equipped to,
13:25
S1: I guess, have their rational brain switched on the whole
13:27
S1: time and to process that information.
13:29
S3: You're totally right. Absolutely. And I've been thinking about this
13:32
S3: a lot when it comes to like AI as well,
13:34
S3: because we're seeing a lot of AI generated content and
13:36
S3: it's exactly what you're saying. AI is being used to
13:39
S3: generate a lot of this social media content, and it's
13:41
S3: obviously geared towards grabbing people's attention and surprising them. Like
13:45
S3: we've said from this study, you remember things better that
13:48
S3: you're surprised by. So if there's a political operative that
13:51
S3: wants you to take a message home, they're trying to
13:54
S3: surprise you with something. If you think about a lot
13:57
S3: of the cliches of AI, like it's not this, it's this,
14:01
S3: it's trying to surprise you. It's trying to make your
14:05
S3: brain think this is information that I have never come
14:07
S3: across before. I need to stop and pay attention and
14:10
S3: remember it. So there are certainly some thematic through lines
14:13
S3: between what we're talking about in this very fundamental study
14:16
S3: on surprise, I think.
14:17
S1: Angus, I really want to ask you about that. So
14:19
S1: is it built into AI to surprise us? Like and
14:22
S1: if so, who's building that into that?
14:25
S3: I don't think so. What I'm saying is, I think
14:27
S3: people are using AI to try and surprise people and
14:31
S3: grab attention online. And that's why you see this kind
14:33
S3: of cliche come up so often that it's not X,
14:37
S3: it's y kind of thing. And if you scroll through
14:39
S3: Instagram reels for half a second, most people's hook is
14:42
S3: something like, you're thinking about this completely wrong and like
14:46
S3: you spend half an hour on Instagram. It's like, well,
14:48
S3: I just don't know anything about anything because apparently I'm
14:50
S3: thinking about diet wrong and fitness and politics. And the
14:54
S3: reason is because people are in my mind, using these
14:56
S3: AI tools to surprise us and try and hook us
14:59
S3: and say, you don't know this thing, but I do.
15:00
S3: Come and pay attention to me.
15:02
S1: So, Angus, are you going to live any differently after
15:04
S1: this or. I'm just curious, is this going to impact
15:07
S1: the way. Yeah, you walk around in the world.
15:09
S3: Well, I think turning your brain off and trusting it
15:12
S3: sort of sounds like a good thing. I mean, the
15:14
S3: researchers were big fans of using sports metaphors to explain this.
15:17
S3: And one of the metaphors that they used was a
15:20
S3: tennis player. So if there's a tennis player sort of
15:22
S3: ready for this, you know, 200 kilometer serve, and she's
15:24
S3: standing at the other end and she's ready, she can
15:26
S3: sort of use her, I guess, preexisting data, if you like,
15:30
S3: for what, from what's happened in the game and what
15:31
S3: she knows about her opponent to try and predict where
15:34
S3: that ball will land in the square. So often you
15:36
S3: will see tennis players before the opponent has even hit
15:40
S3: that ball. Start to react so that they can return
15:42
S3: it really quickly. It's like this unthinking thing, and I
15:44
S3: was remembering, like when I played tennis and maybe other
15:47
S3: people when they've played very sports things as well. You
15:49
S3: do play better when you're not thinking right. And I think,
15:53
S3: you know, that's kind of what it made me think
15:56
S3: of the results of this study. And you can also
15:58
S3: sort of, you know, see that in the World Cup
15:59
S3: as well. Like a goalkeeper has to start reacting before
16:01
S3: that strike has even been made. Right. And maybe that's
16:04
S3: part of this brain process at play. But the counterpoint
16:07
S3: to that is that, you know, if this tennis player
16:10
S3: is standing there and the ball goes down the middle
16:12
S3: of the box instead of to the side, and she
16:14
S3: goes the wrong way, she's going to remember that ball
16:18
S3: and exactly where it landed in a lot better detail.
16:21
S3: And she's going to be like, oh, God, and crushed
16:23
S3: by it because that vivid memory capturing mode is activated,
16:27
S3: which I think is really interesting.
16:29
S1: Oh my God. Maybe this is why we, uh, when
16:31
S1: we look back to our childhood, you know, we often
16:33
S1: think about the really bad stuff. Is this why? No.
16:37
S3: Well, interesting question, Sam, because it's like they didn't look at,
16:39
S3: you know, whether whether this works particularly well for good
16:42
S3: and bad things. Like it was kind of like a
16:44
S3: neutral test, but yeah, but you're completely right. Like it's
16:47
S3: the bad big surprises that we remember the most vividly.
16:51
S3: And that's another thing that I think this study speaks to.
16:56
S1: Oh my gosh, Angus, it's always a good time with you.
16:59
S1: Thank you so much once again for your time.
17:02
S3: Anytime, Sam. Thank you.
17:13
S1: Today's episode was produced by Josh towers. Our executive producer
17:17
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17:21
S1: Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick. If you like our show, follow
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