Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / Science Series 3: Dr Lisa Gabel / Neurology / Dyslexia / Mind Controlled Drones / Music & the Brain

Transcript

Science Series 3: Dr Lisa Gabel / Neurology / Dyslexia / Mind Controlled Drones / Music & the Brain · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

• 0:01
  Welcome to another episode of Come Together.
• 0:15
  And we're live. Doctor Lisa Gabel, how are you?
• 0:17
  Welcome. So thank you so much.
• 0:18
  Oh my gosh, I ruined it already. Thank you so much for coming up.
• 0:21
  How are you? I'm good.
• 0:23
  Thank you for inviting me. Thank you so much for getting
• 0:27
  back to me so quickly and just hopping on and I'm really,
• 0:31
  really excited, excited to talk to you because you study two
• 0:34
  things that I think are absolutely some of the most
• 0:38
  fascinating aspects of people, which is psychology and
• 0:42
  neurology. And I actually didn't know
• 0:47
  really the difference between them for a little bit.
• 0:50
  I know that I'm sure neurology sounding has a little bit more
• 0:53
  of a scientific basis. I know that psychology tends to
• 0:57
  be a little bit more observation.
• 1:01
  I mean it's people described it as soft science, right?
• 1:03
  Or softer science? They do, although I think some
• 1:06
  of the colleagues in psychology would argue against.
• 1:11
  That. So, so think of psychology as
• 1:14
  like behavior, cognition and experience, right What is
• 1:19
  happening? And think of neuroscience or
• 1:22
  neurology as how something is happening.
• 1:27
  So brain structure, function, biology.
• 1:30
  Neuroscience is actually a culmination of the majority of
• 1:34
  the natural sciences. It requires an understanding of
• 1:36
  physics and chemistry and biology and psychology in order
• 1:40
  to try and understand the connection between behavior and
• 1:46
  neural function. Right, right.
• 1:48
  So you kind of as I imagine you get a little, you definitely get
• 1:50
  a little bit of everything when you study neurology, you get a
• 1:53
  little bit of the, you get a little bit of everything like
• 1:55
  you just said. And then you'd want to just have
• 1:59
  a little more of an intensive or more concentrated perspective on
• 2:02
  the psychology side, I guess, from your end.
• 2:05
  So from my end. So my PhD is actually in
• 2:08
  Physiology and neurobiology, and I have a master's in psychology
• 2:15
  and behavioral neuroscience. So I've really, you know, gone
• 2:18
  from one end to the other. So my interest actually is, is
• 2:24
  quite broad. And I tend to study a lot of
• 2:27
  different things in a lot of different ways because I tend to
• 2:30
  just follow whatever the question is and then learn what
• 2:34
  I need to learn in order to answer that question.
• 2:38
  So I think it's all important. I that sounds super cool.
• 2:41
  I love that, especially because I think that when you're
• 2:43
  starting with a question as opposed to starting with an
• 2:45
  answer, then it gives you a lot more space to be creative and to
• 2:48
  kind of play around with a lot more, with a lot more in the
• 2:52
  playground. You know, as opposed to just
• 2:54
  having to box yourself into trying to find one particular
• 2:56
  solution that you hope to get. Exactly.
• 2:59
  And there's, you know, there are good reasons to, you know, be an
• 3:02
  expert in one thing and focus on that because we need that.
• 3:07
  But a lot of science now is very collaborative and very
• 3:11
  interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary in order to
• 3:14
  answer like complex questions. So I like sort of jumping down
• 3:18
  different rabbit holes and seeing where it takes me.
• 3:21
  Yeah. So, so how'd you get?
• 3:22
  So what was the first one of the first issues that you're trying
• 3:24
  to kind of get answers to or trying to understand?
• 3:28
  So actually the the students in my lab, I have like 5 different
• 3:32
  research projects going on at any one time.
• 3:34
  Some of them are related, some of them are not related.
• 3:36
  So I study brain computer interface with another professor
• 3:40
  in electrical and computer engineering.
• 3:42
  His name is Yi Chung Yu. He's phenomenal.
• 3:45
  We built that research program from the ground up.
• 3:48
  Neither one of us had done it before, but we saw a need and is
• 3:52
  a great way to bring our students from engineering and
• 3:55
  neuroscience together toward a common goal.
• 3:58
  But then I also study neurodevelopmental disorders
• 4:01
  like seizure disorder or dyslexia or autism.
• 4:07
  Dyslexia research is a really big component of my lab right
• 4:10
  now. We do both animal and human
• 4:12
  studies. How does dyslexia manifest in an
• 4:15
  animal? Answers that question a lot, and
• 4:20
  it's a great question because mice don't read, you know?
• 4:22
  So how, how how? Dyslexia and it is, you know,
• 4:26
  sort of a human feature. But so if you take reading and
• 4:32
  you break it down into it's very complex.
• 4:35
  Reading is very complex. It requires phonological
• 4:37
  processing, visual processing, auditory processing, working
• 4:40
  memory, so on and so forth. Well, I can study each one of
• 4:42
  those things in an animal. And there are different models
• 4:47
  of dyslexia based on, from a neural perspective, either
• 4:51
  malformations in the brain that are identified in humans,
• 4:54
  animals that have those spontaneously developing, or
• 4:58
  more commonly genetics. So there are certain genes
• 5:01
  associated with dyslexia. We can modify those genes in an
• 5:04
  animal. And then if you say you modify a
• 5:08
  gene and check the behaviors between an animal that has the
• 5:11
  gene modified and that an animal that doesn't, the behavior that
• 5:15
  is altered in the animal that has the gene modified, then you
• 5:19
  start to look at the connection between that gene and that
• 5:22
  behavior or that process. And then we can translate what
• 5:25
  we see in the animal to humans. So I also work with kids.
• 5:30
  Wow. Yeah.
• 5:32
  How how comfortable or how often or how many studies you have to
• 5:36
  do in an animal before you feel like you're ready to take, you
• 5:38
  know, to observe a kid or do take it to the next level.
• 5:42
  That isn't, that's an excellent question, and it probably
• 5:46
  depends on whatever your line of research is and and what you're
• 5:49
  doing. I've been studying dyslexia in
• 5:51
  some form with an animal model since I was a graduate student.
• 5:55
  So I've been at Lafayette College now for 20 years.
• 5:59
  So I've been doing this for quite some time.
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  I won't tell you exactly how old.
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  Yeah. So in my case there, I used a
• 6:10
  particular model of the disorder.
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  It was a particular disruption in a gene called DCDC 2 in an
• 6:16
  animal. And one of the tasks that I did,
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  I described it to people as, you know, on the back of the cereal
• 6:22
  boxes where they have the maze and you have to get the mouse to
• 6:25
  the cheek. It's very much like that.
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  So we saw this really interesting finding, whereas if
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  you altered the gene, that particular gene, the animal
• 6:37
  couldn't learn the task. Wow, remember it?
• 6:41
  Or would it be able to actually carry out the function?
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  It could carry out the function, but it wouldn't is behavior
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  would sort of stay stable over time.
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  So if I put you in a maze, you would probably take a
• 6:52
  considerable amount of time and you would probably make some
• 6:55
  errors because you've never been in it before, right?
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  But then the second time you were in the maze, you're like,
• 6:59
  OK, I've been here before and you'll be a little bit faster
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  and you'll make fewer errors, and you get this nice little
• 7:04
  learning curve. So the mice that had this
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  genetic mutation, it was flat. They never really learned the
• 7:10
  task. So people would always ask me
• 7:13
  the question that you just asked me.
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  When I'd go to give talks, they'd be like, well, how can
• 7:18
  you really say that? You know, this is like human?
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  And it's a fair enough question. So I read a paper by a
• 7:26
  scientist's name. I forgetting his first name.
• 7:29
  His last name is Shore. So Professor Shore had created a
• 7:32
  virtual version of this particular task, and he compared
• 7:35
  mice to humans, both males and females.
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  And I'm like, oh, that's really interesting.
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  So we created a virtual version and we compared our college
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  kids, 18 to 22 year olds with mice and they had similar
• 7:50
  behaviors. And I'm like, oh, OK.
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  So then I went a little younger and I did 8 to 12.
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  And then Long story short, after years of going back and forth, I
• 7:59
  started testing kids with and without reading impairment to
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  see whether or not kids with reading impairment were impaired
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  at this task. And they are, which was
• 8:09
  interesting, especially since, you know, in mice we control
• 8:12
  everything about their environment, where they live,
• 8:15
  their genetics, everything. Humans are not, you know that
• 8:19
  restricted, right? They have a lot of experiences
• 8:22
  different, there are different genes associated with dyslexia.
• 8:24
  So it could be a whole mix. So I didn't actually expect to
• 8:27
  see anything. And the fact that I did.
• 8:31
  Hey everyone real quick if you're enjoying the show, click
• 8:34
  subscribe and rate the show. 5 stars helps a ton.
• 8:37
  Thanks so much. And I consistently do.
• 8:40
  I even went to Germany and I tested native German speaking
• 8:43
  children and children who are multilingual at an International
• 8:46
  School and I always do the same thing.
• 8:48
  If you have an impairment with reading or impaired at this
• 8:51
  particular task, now we're actually using it to identify
• 8:55
  kids with dyslexia before they can read.
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  That's really cool. And I would imagine so are we
• 9:04
  misdiagnosing dyslexia as being a reading disorder and it's
• 9:07
  really ability to retain this kind of or at least from that
• 9:11
  gene, right, that like that mouse gene that you described
• 9:13
  earlier where it wouldn't be able to process the learning and
• 9:16
  have that learning curve, is that not?
• 9:18
  Not necessarily reading. So as a like I was saying
• 9:21
  before, reading is very complex, right?
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  So there's lots of processes that underlie it.
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  So you can have a child with reading impairment and they have
• 9:31
  this set of challenges and you could have another child's
• 9:35
  completely different set of challenges.
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  So it's not it, it's not that it's not a reading disorder,
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  it's that we were able to create a task or use a task that could
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  tap into the same neural circuitry that is used for
• 9:52
  reading. And then see whether see how
• 9:55
  that's operating. Exactly.
• 9:57
  I see so cool. Then what do you do if it's not?
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  And what are some, what are some potential treatments or some
• 10:03
  kind of breakthroughs that could respond or, or if there aren't,
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  then how do you recommend someone with dyslexia learn, you
• 10:11
  know? That's, that's a great question
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  because so with my, with the task that we do, we can identify
• 10:19
  kids who have a reading pair, but I still can't tell you what
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  the specific impairment is, just that they haven't.
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  So it's a nice way of identifying kids early so that
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  they can go and get the additional testing, particularly
• 10:32
  if you are a non-native speaker. So a lot of our trouble is when
• 10:37
  you have somebody who is an English language learner, are
• 10:39
  they impaired at the task because of the language barrier
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  or are they paired at the task because there's a reading
• 10:45
  deficit? So if you can take that factor
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  out of the equation, it can be helpful.
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  But there are lots of interventions that have been
• 10:54
  developed that are quite successful.
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  The the challenge seems to be getting the child help as soon
• 11:01
  as possible because the earlier that the interventions are
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  applied, the greater the success rate.
• 11:06
  Sure, I imagine that'd be the case.
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  That makes a lot of sense. I'm curious.
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  And I mean, I don't expect to know the answer.
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  I'm just, I'm just thinking off the cuff.
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  But you know, I, I'm, I'm Orthodox Jewish and so I am, I'm
• 11:19
  fluent in reading English, obviously, and Hebrew.
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  And the difference between English and Hebrew from a
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  reading perspective is enormous, right.
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  And I think there's a couple other languages that go English
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  is, I think left to right and then Hebrews right to left and
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  enormously context driven. And so a lot of times I don't
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  want no definitions of words until I I'm able to identify the
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  root or the context in which, you know, it's, you know, it's
• 11:49
  just placed and the words around it.
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  And then and then I get it and, and I may never even see the
• 11:56
  word again after that, you know, like it might even be like a one
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  time use or something weird like that, as opposed to the English
• 12:00
  language, which I think requires a different part of our brain.
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  Have you noticed any difference in terms of like you know,
• 12:06
  different languages that dyslexia manifests?
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  Yeah, so, you know, it's really interesting and the the so in
• 12:16
  the United States we have a very non term transparent language.
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  English is very non transparent, right.
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  So there are exceptions to rules.
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  And this letter has this sound in this condition, but not in
• 12:27
  that condition. But there are other languages
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  which are are completely transparent.
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  So Finnish is apparently not that I know or speak Finnish.
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  It's a very transparent language.
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  So the letter always has the sound regardless of the context.
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  Hopefully I am picking the right language to describe that
• 12:45
  theory, but there. So there's a continuum and then
• 12:47
  there's also Lobo graphic languages which require images
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  as opposed to let alphabetic languages which are letters and
• 12:54
  sounds. So that is actually one of the
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  things that I was really curious about because depending on the
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  type of language too also correlates with the incidence of
• 13:04
  reading impairment. So and so try so when I'm
• 13:12
  studying this, one of the things that I've really wanted to do is
• 13:15
  see how that type of language. So whether you're Lobo graphic
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  or whether you're very transparent or non transparent
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  language has any influence on the outcome of our study as and
• 13:27
  what influence that has on on reading, which is why I went to
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  well, not the reason I went to Germany, but why I did the study
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  in Germany, because their language is more transparent
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  than English. And then I wanted to look at
• 13:39
  children who come from different language backgrounds.
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  So, you know, multilingual children who might speak their
• 13:45
  primary language might be transparent and their and the
• 13:49
  another language that they speak might be non transparent and how
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  that impacts Long story short, the the the task, the
• 13:59
  performance associated with reading still holds regardless
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  of the, you know, the level of transparency of the language,
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  which is interesting. But I'm, I'm really curious
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  whether or not logo graphic languages which are more visual
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  spatially needed would if the outcomes would be different
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  because the task IU news absolutely requires visual
• 14:20
  spatial processing, right? So I'm wondering if the degree
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  of that and the degree in which the language requires visual
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  spatial processing, if they would correlate highly in terms
• 14:31
  of performance. So I don't have that answer yet.
• 14:34
  That's cool. Well, when you do, we'll get
• 14:36
  back on another podcast, talk about it because yeah, I love
• 14:40
  this stuff. And, you know, and I'm always
• 14:43
  thinking about this. I grew up, you know, I might,
• 14:45
  my, my grandfather taught my mom Hebrew.
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  My mom spoke to us, but a little bit less profusely.
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  And we're, you know, we're a little bit less fluent and
• 14:53
  naturally really, as things kind of go.
• 14:55
  And then my kids, you know, in particular, like I'm really not
• 14:59
  speaking a lot of Hebrew to them at all.
• 15:00
  And, you know, and my wife and I went on our honeymoon to Italy
• 15:08
  or Greece. We went to both.
• 15:09
  But in Greece, they told that everyone speaks every, you know,
• 15:12
  several languages when you, when you travel.
• 15:14
  And so we're, you know, we're hanging out talking a couple of,
• 15:17
  of local business owners just at a regular cafe or whatever, and
• 15:21
  they tell us a joke. What do you speak?
• 15:23
  Someone speaks three language, trilingual, Someone speaks 2
• 15:26
  languages, bilingual. And someone that speaks one
• 15:27
  language is American, you know, and there has to be something
• 15:33
  to, to speaking more than one language.
• 15:36
  My brother-in-law is from Brazil.
• 15:38
  He speaks Spanish, Portuguese, English, Hebrew.
• 15:41
  The way he thinks you could see is so different than I am.
• 15:45
  And, and I'm sure that it's because your brain is working
• 15:49
  and expanding to, to, to encompass all sorts of different
• 15:53
  contexts that's required for those different skills, right?
• 15:57
  Yeah, it's really my husband's actually.
• 15:59
  He's a native German speaker, but he also speaks English and
• 16:03
  Italian and he knows Latin and, you know, so I've and I always
• 16:08
  feel incredibly unintelligent when I go and meet all of his
• 16:12
  friends from Europe because they all speak multiple languages.
• 16:14
  It just seems to be and nothing gets Americans.
• 16:17
  I love America, but we not to, you know, push that as much.
• 16:21
  Ours are. I have 3 kids and they all take
• 16:24
  a language in in school. But it's not something and not
• 16:28
  in the same way it appears as in other countries.
• 16:32
  But yeah, it's it's really interesting to see.
• 16:36
  That was one of the reasons why I was curious about kids who are
• 16:38
  multilingual. They're living in Germany, but
• 16:43
  they're attending the school that's taught in English, and I
• 16:47
  was wondering how they would perform on these particular
• 16:51
  tasks. And although the performance was
• 16:54
  the same, there's still probably a great deal of difference in
• 16:58
  how they're processing the information as opposed to
• 17:02
  somebody who is monolingual. But unfortunately that that's
• 17:06
  one area that I haven't studied in a great.
• 17:08
  Yeah. And I imagine that there's so
• 17:11
  it's got to be such a dense study because there's so many
• 17:16
  factors to consider and there's so many different.
• 17:18
  And again, I guess you almost need your, your neurology, you
• 17:22
  know, I guess the neurological aspect where you kind of able to
• 17:25
  understand everything from a different part, you know, piece
• 17:29
  of the playing field. And then, and then you have to
• 17:31
  collect the, the data and kind of figure out what everything
• 17:34
  has in common. And I mean, that's got to be an
• 17:37
  enormous, it's got to be an enormous amount of research.
• 17:39
  Yes, absolutely. And fascinating.
• 17:42
  Yeah, for sure. It's got to be fun, you know,
• 17:44
  but I, but I imagine, you know, I can't imagine it's going to be
• 17:46
  like a 9 or 100 person study and you're like, Oh well, we figured
• 17:49
  it out, you know, like, I mean. Anecdotally, when, you know, I
• 17:52
  took French when I was in high school and when, you know, I was
• 17:56
  living in Germany and trying to remember German words, for
• 17:58
  whatever reason, the, the word, you know, in French, French
• 18:02
  would come out before the word in and, you know, So I'm very
• 18:04
  interested in how, you know, the circuitry behind that.
• 18:08
  I just haven't had the opportunity.
• 18:10
  I do that too, by the way, my, my, my most of the most of my Co
• 18:13
  workers for my sales job are they speak Spanish and they're,
• 18:16
  they're Dominican and I'll end up speaking instead of broken
• 18:20
  Spanish. I'll throw in a couple of Hebrew
• 18:22
  words every now because I'm not even saying the right thing and
• 18:24
  they, they look as confused as I am.
• 18:26
  But I mean, I, I, I, I'm just pulling from the right.
• 18:28
  I guess I'm just pulling from the wrong place.
• 18:30
  What are some other, what are some other, I guess reading or
• 18:34
  developmental diseases that or or yeah, I mean, do you call
• 18:37
  them diseases? How do you refer to them?
• 18:39
  Disorders? So there's actually a lot of
• 18:43
  debate about whether it should be considered a disorder or not.
• 18:46
  It's just, you know, we all have strengths and.
• 18:48
  Weakness. Right.
• 18:50
  And you know, I believe at least because I'm a neuroscientist
• 18:54
  that it all comes down to wiring and function.
• 18:57
  But just because you have a challenge in one area does not
• 19:00
  mean that you have challenge in all areas.
• 19:02
  And I know that, you know, people.
• 19:05
  So I have three children and they all have dyslexia, you
• 19:09
  know, they've had, I know, which is really unusual.
• 19:11
  What are the odds? It's crazy.
• 19:13
  The odds are so ridiculously low, you know, and they as much
• 19:19
  as many kids went through the the same issues in school where
• 19:23
  they were. You know, you sort of doubt your
• 19:24
  intelligence when you have a learning disability, regardless
• 19:27
  of what that learning disability is.
• 19:30
  You know, hearing it from their friends or expectations, even
• 19:33
  sometimes of teachers, although they've had phenomenal teachers,
• 19:37
  you know, and it, it, it can make you so in that I don't like
• 19:41
  to think of it as a disorder as much as it is a challenge.
• 19:44
  They have certain difficulties with learning certain types of
• 19:47
  things, but they are really exceptional in other areas.
• 19:50
  Being able to put connect different concepts together with
• 19:55
  something they could always do really rapidly and something
• 19:57
  that's very hard to teach. So, but we all have different
• 20:00
  strengths and weaknesses in different areas.
• 20:03
  Yeah, it's a great way to put it.
• 20:04
  But I have, Yeah, it's a great way to put it.
• 20:05
  I have a student of mine that he I teach high school and 9th this
• 20:09
  year is 9th, 10th and 12th, which is really fun spectrum of
• 20:15
  teenagehood. And one of my students was
• 20:19
  having a really hard time in the classroom and I always had a
• 20:21
  hard time in the classroom too. I was not a great student by any
• 20:23
  means and I put a lot of pressure on myself and whenever
• 20:27
  I take tests, my mind would just go blank no matter how much time
• 20:30
  I spent studying. What do you what do you, what do
• 20:33
  you think about that immediately?
• 20:35
  What was that thought I? Can't diagnose so to go on, but
• 20:42
  you know, I see kids struggling because of the area that I, I
• 20:46
  work in and because I work with kids and I often talk with
• 20:49
  parents, you know, I, I have these conversations with, with
• 20:54
  parents all the time. And I have, you know, college
• 20:57
  kids who are struggling with different difficulties.
• 20:59
  And it can, you know, it can be a number of things.
• 21:02
  And I really encourage people to, you know, go and seek help
• 21:05
  and find out, you know, what are your challenges and what are
• 21:08
  your strengths and, you know, build upon those strengths as
• 21:12
  you're trying to use interventions to improve where
• 21:16
  you have challenges. And a lot of times, I think
• 21:20
  people feel shame. Parents feel shame if they feel
• 21:23
  that they're, you know, somehow their child is at a disadvantage
• 21:26
  or a child feels shame because they have a learning disability
• 21:30
  and, you know, they think that says something about their
• 21:32
  intelligence, which it doesn't. I used to argue with my mom and
• 21:38
  my mom would be like, you're smart, like Emma, I love you.
• 21:41
  I'm your oldest son. Of course you're going to say
• 21:43
  I'm smart. There's no smart, but I don't
• 21:47
  think I'm that smart. I'm studying for bio for five
• 21:49
  hours and taking notes and I'm getting X and I don't know what
• 21:51
  to tell you. Like maybe I'm not smart, you
• 21:53
  know, And I really, and I really, really until I, until I
• 21:56
  got to college, I thought I was dumb as a doorknob.
• 21:58
  And I was like, I guess I happen to be nice and I guess I happen
• 22:00
  to like reading. But like, if I can't do these
• 22:03
  tests, I'm obviously not a smart dude, you know?
• 22:06
  Yeah. But there's there we're become
• 22:08
  sort of very rigid in, in how we assess a person, not even just
• 22:13
  yes, definitely intelligence, but just how we assess content
• 22:17
  knowledge, right? And you know, I've even done it
• 22:21
  myself where, you know, you teach a certain amount of of the
• 22:25
  topic of the content and then you give them a written test and
• 22:29
  you have so much time to complete the test.
• 22:31
  And you know, that's a challenge there.
• 22:34
  I mean, sometimes we absolutely have to do that.
• 22:37
  But there are other ways to get at that knowledge that a person
• 22:42
  might have, you know, and test anxiety is a real thing, right?
• 22:47
  And if you're really anxious about taking that test, you
• 22:50
  might not be able to focus on what's in front of you.
• 22:52
  And in actuality, you're not really taking anything in.
• 22:55
  So then it's hard to let somebody know, you know, your
• 22:59
  level of knowledge on that particular topic.
• 23:04
  So yeah, it, it is a challenge. And that doesn't mean, you know,
• 23:08
  having anxiety and doesn't on a test doesn't mean that you're
• 23:11
  anxious. It could just be the situation.
• 23:13
  It doesn't mean you have a learning disability.
• 23:16
  I mean, it could be anything. So the only way to really know
• 23:19
  is to to go and seek support. And yeah.
• 23:22
  Definitely. The professionals help you sort
• 23:24
  it out. Yeah, so when I so, so to that
• 23:28
  point. Exactly.
• 23:29
  So this student that I had that was having a hard time, I could
• 23:32
  see that he was brilliant. I could see, you could see when
• 23:34
  you're talking to someone with their eyes and how quickly
• 23:36
  they're processing what you're saying, that they're thinking
• 23:38
  and responding. And he just could not deal with
• 23:40
  school. You could see he was not one of
• 23:42
  these kids that sits behind a desk from from, you know, 8:00
• 23:45
  AM to 5:00 to 6:00 PM, which is really what the hours are.
• 23:49
  And so he actually ended up leaving the school and I ran
• 23:52
  into him at a local synagogue and I said, you know, and I, and
• 23:56
  I said hi and I and I went, went up to after, after, after the
• 23:59
  services. And I said, I just want to tell
• 24:01
  you, I was like, not everyone is meant to in the classroom.
• 24:06
  And that does not make you stupid by any means.
• 24:08
  I was like, you are clearly brilliant.
• 24:10
  I was like, and school is going to be hard for you.
• 24:13
  And then you're going to get past it and you're going to
• 24:15
  figure and you're going to realize that you have an entire
• 24:17
  world of ways that you can do things that are your method, You
• 24:20
  know, that you could figure out your way.
• 24:22
  Like, unfortunately, this system is old and unfortunately, it
• 24:26
  hasn't adapted at all to anyone that's kind of outside the box
• 24:30
  even a little bit. Because I don't think because
• 24:33
  you don't fit into a cookie cut space that you're not brilliant
• 24:36
  and keep learning, keep trying to figure out your way of
• 24:38
  learning. And you know, and I don't know
• 24:40
  whether he'll ever think about it again.
• 24:42
  And you know, I mean, maybe he will, maybe he won't.
• 24:44
  But we need, I think that we definitely need more
• 24:49
  encouragement in general. And I've found from teaching and
• 24:52
  I've only been doing it for four years now.
• 24:54
  But that when you said, when you make it clear to the people that
• 24:57
  you're that you're talking to, that you know they're capable
• 25:01
  and you expect good things from them because you know they're
• 25:03
  capable, they will So rise to the occasion.
• 25:06
  You know, the, the the undue pressure is kind of where they
• 25:09
  say, hey, I don't want to deal with this right now, but I'll
• 25:11
  say, hey, I know that you're smart, dude.
• 25:12
  You know you're smart, right? He's like, yeah, I'm like, you
• 25:14
  think this is the best you can do is like, I don't think it's
• 25:16
  the best thing. OK, give me, give me a little
• 25:18
  bit better, you know, like that's, that's the, that's the
• 25:20
  way that we should be encouraging people.
• 25:22
  Yeah, it, you know, it's really true whether I'm working with a
• 25:26
  little kid for the my research or working with 18 to 22 year
• 25:30
  old, You know, a lot of times you do, you just need that
• 25:32
  reassurance that you can do this.
• 25:34
  And one of the things, you know, trying to get kids over, I mean,
• 25:40
  they're not kids. If you're 18 to 22, you're an
• 25:41
  adult. But you know, I'm 52, so my
• 25:45
  kids. But to know it's OK to fail.
• 25:49
  So I've learned way more by my failures than I have from my
• 25:54
  successes. And it's necessary.
• 25:56
  And learning how to pick yourself up when you've had a
• 25:59
  failure. In high school, I didn't have to
• 26:03
  study. I could, you know, take the
• 26:05
  test. And I did really well and, and
• 26:07
  everything was fine. But my first year of college, I
• 26:10
  figured, oh, it's just the same, right?
• 26:12
  You know, you're already laughing.
• 26:13
  I could tell you already know where I'm going then.
• 26:15
  So, you know, I played soccer and I was in choir and, you
• 26:19
  know, I took my classes and I figured I didn't need to study.
• 26:24
  And I learned the hard way that that is not how I'm going to.
• 26:27
  And I did really terrible my first semester.
• 26:30
  And my father was even starting to question whether or not I was
• 26:33
  as smart as he thought I was, which is like a huge, you know.
• 26:39
  The pain there. And, you know, so I had to pick
• 26:44
  myself up and I had to figure out how to study.
• 26:46
  And, you know, and I did. And, you know, I had to fight
• 26:49
  hard to dig myself out of the hole I got myself into.
• 26:52
  But, you know, I learned a valuable lesson from that.
• 26:56
  And that's one of the things I'm, I'm always telling my kids.
• 26:59
  I said, you know, I know it was way more challenging for you
• 27:02
  than it was for some of your friends, you know, trying to get
• 27:07
  through school because, you know, at a certain point, you
• 27:09
  know, you go from learning to read to reading to learn.
• 27:12
  So if you're already behind on the reading, it gets really even
• 27:14
  that much more challenging to learn what everybody else is
• 27:17
  learning. You always feel like you're
• 27:18
  behind. But they learned how to work
• 27:21
  really hard and how to not give up.
• 27:23
  And that perseverance that's going to take them so much
• 27:27
  farther. Yeah.
• 27:28
  Definitely, definitely learning to learn is the most valuable
• 27:32
  skill that you could teach someone.
• 27:34
  I, you know, my students whenever they complain to me
• 27:35
  about what does history have to do with anything?
• 27:38
  What does bio have to do with anything?
• 27:39
  Like, you know what, I'm not even going to have this stupid
• 27:43
  argument with you guys. I was like, you're right.
• 27:44
  And what I'm going to do with you.
• 27:45
  I was like, accepted the fact that your brain is actually
• 27:49
  learning a new learning process and how to you know, retain and
• 27:53
  understand and breakdown different forms of information
• 27:56
  in different ways. And I was like, even if you
• 27:57
  remember nothing, you will walk away a smarter, better person
• 28:01
  because your brain has learned how to deal with different sets,
• 28:04
  different ways of thinking. So hot is it?
• 28:10
  I actually, I'm telling my students that all the time.
• 28:12
  It's I, it's that it's about, you know, taking something
• 28:15
  complex, learning how to break it down, understanding the
• 28:18
  pieces and then putting, being able to put them back together
• 28:21
  to make sense of it and. Then they all end up making and
• 28:24
  then all end up popping back up into your life again at
• 28:26
  different points, you know, which is also really, really fun
• 28:28
  and really interesting. You know, I always thought I was
• 28:30
  bad at science until I wasn't until I was an adult and I heard
• 28:34
  a podcast with a good professor. You know, I, I, I was exposed to
• 28:39
  Angie Huberman and I listened to his episode on alcohol, which
• 28:42
  scared the life out of me. And then you know it.
• 28:45
  But, but, but the, what I, what I realized was like when I was
• 28:50
  in high school, I don't know if I was, if my brain was ready to
• 28:53
  process that type of information.
• 28:54
  And like I am on, I'm, I'm prepared now and I'm more and
• 28:58
  I'm more ready. And I, and I, and I wrote it off
• 29:00
  for when I was 14 for the rest of my life or 15 because of the
• 29:03
  rejection for the rest of my life.
• 29:05
  And it's so stupid as a 30 year old father that, you know, I
• 29:08
  shouldn't be able to look at, by, I look at, you know, basic
• 29:11
  biology and be like, you know, how's the food that I'm eating
• 29:13
  impacting my body? What's the value of exercising,
• 29:17
  even if I, if I don't use it for anything other than be alive for
• 29:19
  longer, somebody I could see my kids grow up or my grandkids or
• 29:22
  anything like that. So everything ends up coming
• 29:24
  around full circle. You want to understand current
• 29:26
  events, learn some history, you know, like anything ends up
• 29:29
  happening. And if you're, if you're too
• 29:31
  immature in high school to see that, that's fine.
• 29:33
  But you're learning and you're building those blocks.
• 29:36
  Yeah, absolutely. I teach statistics and you know,
• 29:41
  nobody wants to take an 8:00 AM stats class, right?
• 29:43
  It's it's usually a required course.
• 29:46
  It's not something you're choosing.
• 29:47
  Yes, how's giving the 8:00 AM is stat class?
• 29:49
  What's that? Your end?
• 29:51
  What? What's that like from your end
• 29:52
  giving the 8:00 AM stat class? Do you I?
• 29:54
  Love it. You know, can only go up, right?
• 29:58
  Nobody wants to be there. Everybody's exhausted.
• 30:01
  So if I can get them, you know, by the end of the class, if
• 30:04
  they're awake and they're taking in what I'm saying, then I have
• 30:07
  done my job. I love it.
• 30:12
  But I'm always just pointing out to them.
• 30:13
  So if you take anything away from this, I want you to be
• 30:16
  better evaluators of what you're consuming, whether you know what
• 30:20
  you're consuming in the media, what you're, you know you're
• 30:23
  purchasing, what you know statistical significance
• 30:27
  actually means. So yeah, I absolutely agree.
• 30:29
  Even if they never use it again in the particular context in
• 30:33
  which they're learning, they will use aspects of it again
• 30:36
  later in their life. Yeah, definitely.
• 30:38
  Can you tell me? I'm curious about this the new
• 30:43
  the lab you mentioned in passing earlier that you started from
• 30:46
  the ground up about and I and I wrote down notes that I don't
• 30:49
  know if makes any sense, but the EEG and chips interface devices.
• 30:54
  A professor in engineering, Yi Chen Yu, and I started years ago
• 30:59
  now, Brain Computer Interface lab.
• 31:02
  OK. There was a call for what they
• 31:06
  had called a think tank grant and trying to connect
• 31:10
  engineering with other areas of the college.
• 31:14
  And I had been teaching a class on brain computer interface just
• 31:19
  as part of a values in science and technology class, like a
• 31:22
  sophomore level class. And I was just thinking, you
• 31:27
  know, I think we could do this here.
• 31:29
  And I think it would be valuable.
• 31:30
  And I didn't know Yi Chiang at that point.
• 31:33
  And he got connected with me. And we're like, you know what?
• 31:37
  Let's just, let's just go for it.
• 31:39
  And then we reached out to Jonathan Walpole, who was at the
• 31:43
  Wadsworth Center at the time. And now he's at NCAN in Albany.
• 31:47
  And we said, you know, we're interested in doing this.
• 31:49
  Can you teach us? And it is so shocking.
• 31:53
  I'm always telling people, you know, just just call somebody,
• 31:57
  just ask, send an e-mail. I mean, the worst they can do is
• 32:00
  say no or ignore you. But you have, you know, you're
• 32:02
  no worse off now than you were before.
• 32:05
  And he was the greatest guy he had, he had us up there.
• 32:10
  We brought some students with us, taught us the basics.
• 32:13
  We went down and we built our own system.
• 32:16
  We got some data and we got an NSF grant to purchase more
• 32:19
  equipment and been, we've been doing this ever since.
• 32:22
  So with that, we use EEG electrons, cyclography to detect
• 32:28
  neural activity, electrical activity from the the neurons
• 32:33
  that are inactivated in the brain.
• 32:36
  And we use it actually as a trigger rather than detecting
• 32:38
  the signals to tell us something about brain function.
• 32:41
  We use the brain function to trigger an external device to
• 32:45
  sort of bypass your motor system.
• 32:50
  So. I'm sorry to just to clarify
• 32:51
  before you continue, just to in case it's confusing at all.
• 32:56
  Of course, just in case of why what you're saying is the
• 33:01
  opposite, how does it typically work?
• 33:03
  For example that it would be going vice versa, from your
• 33:07
  brain to the neuro to the neuro to the EEG.
• 33:10
  So do you remember how we were talking before about, you know,
• 33:13
  what something is versus how something works, right.
• 33:16
  So if I wanted to look at sort of neural function, I might use
• 33:22
  EEG to see the way the brain behaves, right?
• 33:26
  To see, you know, you might give a problem to two people, they
• 33:30
  might both get to the answer, but perhaps one has to work
• 33:34
  harder at it than the other, right?
• 33:36
  The differences and the neural activation patterns in different
• 33:39
  areas of the brain. Another way to use it is knowing
• 33:44
  what types of neural activity occurs in response to specific
• 33:48
  behaviors or thoughts or processes.
• 33:51
  We can then detect those signals and every time a signal occurs,
• 33:54
  it's kind of like turning the light switch on and off.
• 33:56
  Every time a signal occurs or goes up to a certain level, it
• 33:59
  triggers a device. So we ultimately we've used the
• 34:04
  EEG signals to fly a drone or yeah, it's really cool.
• 34:09
  We have it on. We have like a little YouTube
• 34:12
  video. Someone's brain.
• 34:14
  Yeah. So it's just an EEG electrode
• 34:19
  cap and they're basically using, we're using the neural signals
• 34:24
  to operate the drone and they're basically flying it around the
• 34:28
  gym. Get out of here.
• 34:30
  Yeah, that's pretty. What?
• 34:32
  How long you been doing this for?
• 34:35
  Like quite some time, I think 2010.
• 34:37
  So our big thing is trying to develop an EG system that's easy
• 34:42
  to use and affordable so it can be used outside of the lab,
• 34:45
  which is actually really challenging.
• 34:47
  Like if you have all the money in the world and all the
• 34:48
  equipment in the world, you can make some really cool things,
• 34:51
  but don't use it. So wow, you've been, you've been
• 34:58
  since 2010, you guys have been using neural networks to fly
• 35:06
  drones, to direct drones. Yeah, it's actually one of the
• 35:09
  things we really want to do is operate a wheelchair, yeah,
• 35:13
  which is harder than the drone because the drone, you know, is
• 35:16
  flying through the air, so there's not really a lot of
• 35:18
  obstacles to. Whereas when you're trying to
• 35:21
  navigate a hallway and into rooms and out of rooms, that's a
• 35:24
  little bit more challenging. So what we are aiming for is to
• 35:29
  create a device to operate a wheelchair for somebody who has
• 35:34
  a severe motor impairment, particular vigils with locked in
• 35:37
  syndrome, so that they can gain more independence.
• 35:41
  Definitely. Well, definitely.
• 35:43
  And I mean, I was thinking, so I guess that it's something, I
• 35:46
  mean, I hate to say it like this, but Neuralink kind of
• 35:49
  sounds trivial relative to to that, right?
• 35:52
  Oh, no, no, I mean, not at all. I mean, he's doing some really
• 35:54
  cool things with that, that, you know, the brain is really, it's
• 35:57
  fascinating. I'm sorry, you're right.
• 35:58
  So the context that I meant to say it in is the people that the
• 36:02
  the guys that I've seen that you guys went on different podcasts
• 36:05
  that use that use their eyes to play a video game like.
• 36:09
  It's. Like this operating a drone to
• 36:12
  me sounds far more real world useful and applicable and
• 36:17
  helpful. I would almost imagine then
• 36:20
  playing. I mean, not to say that one's
• 36:22
  not useful, the other by getting one manifests itself
• 36:24
  differently. And I never even I never even
• 36:26
  heard people talking about it before.
• 36:27
  I mean, how come there aren't things being commercialized in
• 36:30
  this sense? Oh, I'm sure they are.
• 36:36
  So if you're using, you know, these types of systems to play a
• 36:41
  video game, it's not that actually hard to actually take
• 36:45
  it from video game to an actual thing.
• 36:46
  So when we were training the student to operate the device to
• 36:51
  then end up flying the drone in the gym, we created essentially
• 36:56
  a video game to train how to do it in a virtual setting.
• 36:59
  And then, you know, we let them loose.
• 37:01
  I will say though, we tried first to fly the drone out on
• 37:05
  the the field, the football field, but we lost the
• 37:09
  connectivity, the Bluetooth right.
• 37:13
  So in the gym it was a more controlled environment, so it
• 37:16
  was easier to do. So I'm making it sound like it's
• 37:19
  it's easier than it probably. But that almost sounds like a
• 37:23
  relatively trivial problem to resolve.
• 37:26
  Like we're working on that could be something with Bluetooth,
• 37:28
  that could be something, you know, I mean, like we, we that
• 37:30
  that those are issues that are advancing because that's how
• 37:33
  society advances regardless that you can kind of just take that
• 37:36
  technology and reapply it to this issue, right?
• 37:38
  Yeah, absolutely. How much would you dedicate to
• 37:41
  this to this project? Well, so all my different
• 37:46
  research projects are sort of going on all the time.
• 37:50
  We always have a team of neuroscience and engineering
• 37:53
  students working together on this project.
• 37:56
  That's one of the reasons I like it so much, because it does
• 37:59
  bring students from different areas together to solve a
• 38:02
  problem. So one of the the cool, the
• 38:05
  coolest things, I mean, other than technology.
• 38:07
  Technology is awesome, but it requires the students to learn
• 38:10
  how to speak to each other in a way that they wouldn't normally.
• 38:14
  So you tend to create your own type of dialogue within your
• 38:19
  area of specialty, right? So you have to learn how to
• 38:22
  communicate with each other and explain things to somebody who
• 38:27
  might be a novice in one area whereas you're a novice in their
• 38:30
  area. So that's a huge learning
• 38:33
  opportunity. It actually took Yi Chung and IA
• 38:36
  while before we, you know, we're able to easily explain things to
• 38:40
  each other. Yeah, yeah, I, I picked up jiu
• 38:44
  jitsu about a year ago and have that exact issue and they're
• 38:47
  like do that I'm like, I don't know what I mean and I'm like, I
• 38:51
  understand and they're like, do that and I understand the words
• 38:54
  that are coming out of your mouth individually and put them
• 38:57
  together and how to translate that into doing something with
• 38:59
  my body. I'm like, you're going to have
• 39:02
  it's that it's that same issue. Yeah, that's why one thing I, I
• 39:06
  hope to, I, I've been, I've been working on this for a long time
• 39:09
  because I've been, you know, I, I, my, my, my family has very
• 39:14
  strong opinions. All of us are pretty different
• 39:16
  and all of us have pretty strong opinions just in general.
• 39:19
  So one thing that we risk is fighting a lot, but one thing
• 39:24
  that we benefit or gain from is that we really do have, we have
• 39:27
  learned to see things from a lot of different perspectives over
• 39:29
  the years because all of us growing up under the same roof
• 39:32
  all saw things very differently. And one thing that I did realize
• 39:36
  is that 90 to 95% of fights or arguments that I've ever gone in
• 39:40
  was really just that we're speaking two different languages
• 39:42
  to each other and not understanding what the other
• 39:44
  person was saying instead of like actually disagreeing on an
• 39:48
  idea like. Well said.
• 39:50
  Absolutely. And in the beginning, you, Chung
• 39:54
  and IA lot of our confusion, we were both saying the exact same
• 39:57
  thing. We just didn't know it.
• 39:58
  Yeah. So, you know, it's a process.
• 40:01
  My oldest loves to push my buttons and loves to argue with
• 40:05
  me and, and, but in all honesty, as frustrating as it is in the
• 40:10
  moment, we really understand where each other is coming from.
• 40:13
  And oftentimes we are arguing the exact same thing.
• 40:16
  We're just coming at it from different ways.
• 40:18
  Yeah, yeah, definitely. That's really cool.
• 40:20
  That's awesome. I love that.
• 40:22
  So going a little bit down the sci-fi rabbit hole, does this
• 40:28
  open up the world of like cyborgs and like, I mean, this
• 40:32
  almost sounds and you know, I was kind of freaking out about a
• 40:37
  year ago. It's probably has to do with
• 40:40
  some marijuana ingestion, but I was freaking out about the
• 40:43
  drone. Now we're in New Jersey that
• 40:45
  everyone was seeing and and then and one thing that was freaking
• 40:50
  me out again was, you know, the size and it didn't look like
• 40:52
  anyone was like, you know, they're small.
• 40:53
  It didn't look like anyone is was moving them around.
• 40:55
  And I'm like, we don't even know what that means.
• 40:57
  But I mean, if what you're saying is true and the science
• 41:01
  of this kind of stuff has been going on that we've been trying
• 41:03
  to work on this neural to neural to physical object connection
• 41:08
  for since the 2010, since the early 2 thousand 2010.
• 41:12
  I would imagine that the government and military could be
• 41:15
  developing some serious stuff with this, with this capacity,
• 41:19
  right? Yeah, as as scientists, we
• 41:22
  always have to consider, you know, what the next steps are,
• 41:26
  not just can we do it, should we do it, what the guard where
• 41:30
  rails should be. And you know, and oftentimes we
• 41:34
  don't always have control of all the aspects of that.
• 41:37
  So, yeah, I mean, it's it's always a potential problem of,
• 41:42
  you know, how something is going to be used and why it's used and
• 41:46
  being responsible and ethical use of not only the research
• 41:52
  you're conducting, but the tools that you're making.
• 41:54
  And I completely hear you. Right, right, right.
• 41:58
  Yeah. And I, you know, because I was
• 41:59
  thinking a lot about this with, with, I don't know if you were
• 42:02
  aware of this Anthropic and Department of War feud, but
• 42:08
  anthropic was looking, you know, they basically wanted to keep
• 42:10
  the AI safeguards on. And, and the government was
• 42:13
  like, Hey, like we got to do this, to do what we got to do
• 42:15
  with this and, and topics like we're really not comfortable
• 42:18
  with that. And then ChatGPT is like, you
• 42:20
  can do it. And are you, listen, I, I'm sure
• 42:26
  you can make a case, you know what you know for both ways, But
• 42:30
  you know, these are, these are rabbit holes that are a little
• 42:33
  concerning and we can't put the genie back in the bottle, as
• 42:38
  we've learned so many times in history.
• 42:40
  Yeah, that that's the big thing. You, you can't, you can't put it
• 42:43
  back in the bottle once you've let it out.
• 42:46
  And watching that whole discussion on unfold between
• 42:50
  anthropic and the government and, you know, and ChatGPT was
• 42:53
  kind of surreal because we don't, we don't often do our due
• 42:59
  diligence of figuring out where those safeguards need to be in
• 43:02
  place and holding to them when we're developing something.
• 43:06
  It's usually, oh, geez, we, you know, we didn't think about
• 43:09
  this. And it's not because, you know,
• 43:12
  people are inherently, you know, they're not doing their due
• 43:16
  diligence, but, you know, new thinking about every possible
• 43:21
  aspect is, you know, is a bit of a challenge.
• 43:23
  But once we are faced with the information and the
• 43:26
  possibilities, it's our responsibility to take action.
• 43:32
  And the regulators, and almost by definition, regulation has to
• 43:36
  be a step behind because you need something to regulate.
• 43:39
  Like, you know, there's like without Avengers used to say,
• 43:41
  like if there's no, like if we didn't lose to begin with,
• 43:43
  there'd be nothing to avenge. You know, like there's like, if
• 43:45
  we don't have a problem, then there's nothing, then we
• 43:47
  wouldn't need the government to regulate it.
• 43:50
  Yeah, I absolutely agree. But I think we can also
• 43:54
  preemptively say, you know, if we keep going in this direction,
• 43:59
  this is what's going to happen. And you can see a few steps
• 44:04
  down, you may not have realized it was going to be used for X,
• 44:07
  but, you know, we need to be a little bit more anticipatory and
• 44:13
  in terms of how we regulate ourselves and, and what are the
• 44:17
  potential misuses of what we're developing.
• 44:20
  But again, that's all that's easier said than done.
• 44:23
  It's easier to look back and say, oh, yeah, we should have
• 44:25
  noticed that it was going, you know, to go in this particular
• 44:28
  direction. But, you know, hindsight.
• 44:31
  Yeah. And the other problem is that
• 44:33
  people are so limited. We only look at things to the
• 44:35
  scope that we're used to looking at things at.
• 44:37
  Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
• 44:40
  And we, you know, so I might look at it, I might look at the
• 44:43
  issue from a teaching perspective and as a dad and as
• 44:46
  a salesman and be like, oh, this is going to have a problem for
• 44:48
  me. But you're looking at it from a
• 44:50
  neuroscience perspective and being like, hey, like this is a
• 44:54
  whole nother world that we're looking at things from.
• 44:56
  And like, you didn't even realize what's even look out
• 44:59
  for. You even know what the potential
• 45:00
  consequences could be. Exactly.
• 45:02
  I, I, I hear, and that's it's always got to be a dance.
• 45:05
  I mean, we've seen it's a dance and it's a given play.
• 45:07
  It's a give and take. And it just, and I mean, I think
• 45:12
  that as long as we just keep, encourage good minds to that
• 45:15
  want to solve problems, to keep at it, we'll be, you know, I, I
• 45:20
  hope I'm optimistic, I'm hopeful and I have to be because I have
• 45:23
  kids. But you know, I mean, we got to
• 45:26
  do, we got to do the best we can.
• 45:28
  Yeah, I mean, absolutely. This is why we need to work
• 45:31
  together across, you know, divisional boundaries.
• 45:34
  We have to talk to people about what we're doing.
• 45:37
  We have to present our research. We have to engage people in
• 45:43
  conversation because others are going to see things that we
• 45:46
  missed. Yeah, When did you say that?
• 45:49
  And I noticed this too, but that people have become a little bit
• 45:53
  more interdisciplinary. And I've been hearing the
• 45:56
  sentiment these days, especially because this is really
• 45:59
  interesting with AI and a really interesting consequence.
• 46:02
  Anyone that used to be an expert on something, it's much better
• 46:07
  to be a generalized, you know, it's better to be a master.
• 46:10
  What was it? Jack of all trades, master of
• 46:13
  none. And I is the master of whatever
• 46:16
  thing that you want to dive into as deeply as you want to.
• 46:19
  If you want to be a very particular type of doctor, you
• 46:21
  want to study a very particular type of research.
• 46:25
  AI can help you gather and understand and understand
• 46:30
  information on a level that we've never had access to
• 46:34
  before. The example I'd like to give
• 46:35
  actually with recent government use was with Venezuela.
• 46:38
  When they, when we, when we kidnapped or took Maduro,
• 46:41
  whatever, whatever, whatever. What do you want to use for it?
• 46:44
  One thing that did that they that the government said they
• 46:46
  used AI for was hey, we have didn't have access to classified
• 46:50
  information. We gave it a stack of, you know,
• 46:53
  someone said, hey, give me everything we have on Venezuela
• 46:55
  and someone gives you and someone drops 30 billion files
• 46:57
  into a room and says, good luck sorting through this.
• 47:00
  You know that it used to be that you get a bunch of staffers, you
• 47:03
  get a bunch of aids, you get a bunch of people to or grad
• 47:05
  students or whatever it is to sit through, get them a bunch of
• 47:08
  pizza and have them work for a week and try to figure out the
• 47:10
  best plan. Now you sift through that
• 47:12
  information in just a matter of seconds and gather the best, the
• 47:16
  best Intel. And So what we're going to have,
• 47:19
  I think what people are going to have to learn how to do is be
• 47:21
  really good adept at being general thinkers, is able to hop
• 47:28
  around from one area to the next to the next to the next, and
• 47:30
  kind of be conversational across industries and across fields in
• 47:36
  order to really be able to keep up.
• 47:37
  Because AI has kind of taken all the specific oriented jobs and
• 47:41
  research I feel like or will be. Yeah, I mean, it's really good.
• 47:45
  So that wasn't a really good example where, you know, you
• 47:49
  have all this information and you have to coalesce this
• 47:51
  information and connect it. And it's a lot faster definitely
• 47:55
  to upload all that information into an AI engine and say here,
• 48:00
  I need you to sort this for X, summarize this for me or edit
• 48:05
  this for me. But we we definitely don't want
• 48:10
  to dismiss the ability of an individual and processing that
• 48:16
  information and finding certain keys.
• 48:20
  Overlook it you're. Saying yes, that, you know, AI
• 48:24
  might not be able to do. And I have found that it's what
• 48:28
  you ask and how you ask it. And, you know, you have to
• 48:31
  challenge the information you're getting.
• 48:33
  And it works really well in an area that you are already an
• 48:37
  expert in so that you can evaluate the information that's
• 48:40
  coming back. But that would be a lot harder
• 48:43
  to do if you were a novice in in a particular area.
• 48:47
  You would get that information back and you would assume it's
• 48:49
  right because it knows more than you do at this point, so.
• 48:53
  You know, that's, that's a really cool point.
• 48:55
  That's a really cool point. Yeah, you're right.
• 48:58
  I, so I use, I use Grok to help me find podcast guests, right?
• 49:02
  And I, I have it, I say, hey, check out my show.
• 49:05
  I have 100 and whatever amount of episodes and tell me I want
• 49:09
  to find 5 people that study history of New Mexico, right.
• 49:13
  And please only include people online who have their e-mail
• 49:16
  addresses available and it'll spit out five names for me.
• 49:18
  And here's some guests based on what you, what your, what your
• 49:21
  tone is like. And went, and then I've gone to
• 49:25
  and I've, and I always make a point now to Google the guests
• 49:27
  because sometimes they're dead, sometimes they're, sometimes
• 49:31
  they're convicted. Sometimes, you know, yeah, he's
• 49:33
  going to give me all this, all this context.
• 49:35
  And I'm like, I find out that this guy that it's recommending
• 49:37
  for me to, to interview is in jail for, you know, XY and Z.
• 49:41
  And I'm like, OK, well, you know, I've and, and I would have
• 49:46
  just given up. I would have just said, oh,
• 49:47
  well, you know more than I do. And I wanted five
• 49:49
  recommendations, so I'll take your word for it.
• 49:51
  So that's a good, that's a good point.
• 49:53
  That's a good way of thinking of it.
• 49:54
  I didn't think about it like. That yeah, I mean, there are
• 49:57
  definite advantages to using it, but knowing what the limitations
• 50:00
  are are key. And humans have a level of
• 50:03
  creativity that I think is unmatched at this point.
• 50:06
  Yeah, well, for now. Forever.
• 50:10
  I would I would love to and and it's and and I'm curious and you
• 50:14
  know, I mean going down the sci-fi world, brave new world
• 50:17
  and you know, whatever it is. I mean, if we end up, I don't
• 50:24
  know what, I don't know what world our kids are going to grow
• 50:27
  up in. I don't know what's going to be
• 50:28
  normal. I don't know what right now we
• 50:30
  have our phone that I'm at that I'm addicted to.
• 50:32
  I don't know what I don't know what happens if I never get my
• 50:35
  to turn my phone off. And it's just in my head.
• 50:37
  And I don't know how to, you know, and I and I can't separate
• 50:40
  the two. And I mean, we know that not
• 50:43
  that this isn't that the phone isn't necessarily healthy and
• 50:46
  the best for, for development and for retaining information
• 50:49
  and for general use. So by mixing our technology with
• 50:56
  our brains, I'm afraid that we won't be able to ever kind of
• 50:58
  turn it off and we just turn into something else completely.
• 51:01
  Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that should we, I mean,
• 51:04
  can weigh and should weigh, right.
• 51:06
  So I worry about that too, because it's, you know, I have 3
• 51:11
  kids and they, they all have phones because, you know,
• 51:15
  sometimes they have after school activities and I need, and in
• 51:18
  this world, I kind of want to be able to get in touch with them.
• 51:23
  You know, processing information is very different for them now
• 51:28
  than it was for me growing up because, you know, we didn't
• 51:31
  have cell phones. I didn't, that wasn't a thing
• 51:33
  until I was really crushed with student.
• 51:37
  So that needing constant information and very short, it's
• 51:44
  seemingly very short attention spans.
• 51:46
  It's, you know, doom scrolling is not something that I had to
• 51:50
  contend with when I was younger. And a lot of people in my
• 51:55
  profession have talked about how they, you know, sort of banned
• 51:58
  phones from their classroom and they just, and put the computers
• 52:02
  away even just so that they can have a conversation and how
• 52:05
  great those conversations are. And it was really different
• 52:09
  after COVID. People sort of forgot how to
• 52:14
  actually have a conversation face to face with each other.
• 52:17
  They were still I had students sitting right next to each other
• 52:20
  in the lecture hall, texting each other.
• 52:24
  So we have to learn how to balance how to use the
• 52:28
  technology to our advantage without letting it take over our
• 52:32
  lives. Yeah.
• 52:33
  And losing all humanity. Yeah, for sure.
• 52:35
  And that was in, I mean, when I was in minutes and I was
• 52:37
  actually, so I was born in 95 and I was growing up just as
• 52:41
  cell phones were becoming pretty much ubiquitous.
• 52:44
  And, and I went to, I went to an all boys school for middle
• 52:51
  school and, but there were girls on campus just in different
• 52:54
  classrooms. And I found out I could text a
• 52:57
  girl instead of talking to her. And instead of being 10, I was
• 53:00
  terrified. I was terrified to look at a
• 53:02
  girl and talk to her. And I remember, you know, in the
• 53:04
  feeling of 6th, 7th, 8th grade, you know, praying and wishing to
• 53:08
  talk to a girl. And then I have a cell phone and
• 53:10
  all of a sudden it's so easy to strike up a conversation and I
• 53:13
  don't have to deal with any of the potential rejection and
• 53:15
  getting shut down. And I'm not, I would be, you
• 53:19
  know, socially a little bit nervous and would I would get my
• 53:22
  name wrong. Like I'd hesitate with my name.
• 53:24
  I'd stop there and you know, and I'd be like, oh, crap, I'm just
• 53:27
  going to give up and go home and like, I'll try again tomorrow.
• 53:30
  But I found out that I didn't have to deal with any of that
• 53:32
  discomfort. And why would why would I if I
• 53:34
  don't have to? And until I realized that I was
• 53:36
  losing out on a muscle that I really was really important to
• 53:39
  exercise. But I had to come to that
• 53:41
  conclusion myself. I had to say, I can't spend my
• 53:44
  whole life just texting girls what I'm going to do.
• 53:46
  I, you know, what am I ever going to do when it comes to
• 53:47
  having a real conversation or having a real confrontation or
• 53:51
  anything like that? Yeah, it's definitely a skill
• 53:55
  that, you know, people are starting to lose.
• 53:59
  And I also think, you know, the the anonymity of being behind
• 54:03
  the phone. And.
• 54:05
  People feel free to say things that they would never say to
• 54:09
  you, you know, and that's, that's problematic.
• 54:14
  You know, we, we don't talk to each other anymore and we
• 54:18
  sometimes lose the positive aspects of, of human connection.
• 54:24
  And I would love to see that come back a little bit more.
• 54:26
  I think it will. I think it will.
• 54:28
  I think that I think that there are certain indications that
• 54:31
  that it's going to and I think that this was, I think that
• 54:34
  whatever mass experiment social media was for the amount of time
• 54:37
  that it that it was this kind of experiment, people are realizing
• 54:41
  on the map. Like people are seeing how
• 54:42
  unhappy a lot of people have been in the last 10-15 years and
• 54:46
  they do want to change. Like one thing is like, that's
• 54:49
  amazing how humanity is that generations come and go fast.
• 54:53
  And I think we realize and we learn from each other.
• 54:56
  You know, like I learned from my parents things to and not things
• 55:00
  to do and not to do. And my kids will certainly learn
• 55:02
  from me things to do and not to do and we'll correct.
• 55:04
  And well, you know, and I think, and I really think that people
• 55:07
  see that relationships are at all time low.
• 55:09
  Loneliness is at all time high for everyone.
• 55:12
  You know, women don't, guys are afraid to ask girls out on dates
• 55:15
  and go, you know, and, and, and, and just, I mean, no one knows
• 55:18
  how to have relationships anymore.
• 55:20
  And, and then kids are saying, Hey, screw that.
• 55:23
  I don't want to be a part of that.
• 55:24
  And you know, if, if, if everyone says that this is
• 55:27
  social media doing it, then, you know, then I'll put it away for
• 55:30
  a day a week, you know, a couple of times a week, or I'll leave
• 55:33
  it at home instead of taking it to school or whatever it is.
• 55:36
  But I think I, I, I, I am hopeful in that in that sense, I
• 55:40
  do want to actually talk to you also.
• 55:42
  And hopefully you know, this will be the last fun part of the
• 55:45
  whole thing's been fun, but the last fun part of our
• 55:47
  conversation is music in the brain.
• 55:51
  I love music. Music means everything to me in
• 55:56
  so many different capacities. I love music for the music,
• 55:59
  which I've only learned to recently appreciate because I
• 56:02
  started playing guitar. I used to listen to music for
• 56:05
  the lyrics as opposed to, you know, as opposed to just for the
• 56:08
  music. So I'd focus more on the
• 56:10
  singer-songwriter and simple, simply simply musically
• 56:14
  structured music. And I found that they've
• 56:19
  actually served very different, as very different tools in my
• 56:23
  life depending on what I'm going through for different things to,
• 56:27
  you know, for me, you know, sometimes I need more lyric
• 56:29
  based, story oriented narrative to get me through whatever I'm
• 56:34
  experiencing. And sometimes I do need music,
• 56:36
  like just the music and just the sounds and just the melody and
• 56:39
  just the interplay between the, between the band members.
• 56:44
  What how'd you get started on this and what you know and and
• 56:47
  how do you go about studying and what do you study as far as
• 56:50
  music in the brain? Yeah, it's a really interesting
• 56:53
  question because again, it's it's really broad.
• 56:56
  And I started teaching a class called Music in the Brain with a
• 57:01
  music professor. Her name's Jennifer Kelly, and
• 57:04
  she and I really want to teach a class together.
• 57:06
  And so we decided that we would bring, you know, neuroscience
• 57:11
  and and music together. And there's so many different
• 57:14
  ways you'd come at it. And it's really interesting that
• 57:17
  you were talking about lyrics versus the melody and the tempo
• 57:20
  and what's more important to you at a particular time.
• 57:23
  And when we would talk about music, and again, we're both
• 57:25
  coming at it from really different directions, she was
• 57:27
  really adamant that when we were focusing on music, we were just
• 57:30
  focusing on the more instrumental component and not
• 57:34
  the lyrics and how the lyrics could interfere with your
• 57:38
  appreciation of of the music. And I didn't, I didn't see it
• 57:44
  that way because that's not how I was.
• 57:46
  I was coming at it and our class was very different.
• 57:51
  So she would teach, you know, about music and music
• 57:54
  appreciation, and I would teach about the brain.
• 57:57
  And then we would have to bring these two converging ideas
• 57:59
  together to meet the needs of both of our students, both the
• 58:03
  neuro students and the music majors.
• 58:05
  And one of the things that I was really fascinated about was this
• 58:11
  neuroscientist and musician. His name is Charles Lim and he
• 58:17
  found a way to study creativity. So studying creativity in the
• 58:20
  brain is a really hard thing to do because how do you define
• 58:23
  creativity? How to find it?
• 58:26
  How do you define it? Define it.
• 58:28
  I would say, I would say free flowing personalized
• 58:32
  associations. OK, great.
• 58:34
  So, you know, as a scientist, you really have to define all
• 58:37
  your parameters. You have to study, you know,
• 58:40
  something very specifically. So sometimes by defining the
• 58:44
  parameters, you can sort of take the creativity out of
• 58:46
  creativity. But he studied the changes in
• 58:53
  neural activation patterns using functional magnetic resonance
• 58:56
  imaging and jazz so had. Improv music for the most.
• 59:02
  Yeah. So we had them play a structured
• 59:05
  component and then a more free flowing component and looked at
• 59:09
  the the activation patterns in the brain.
• 59:11
  And I just thought that this was just that in itself was super
• 59:16
  creative and fascinating. And I was also really interested
• 59:21
  in the use of music at in therapy.
• 59:25
  Yeah, so using music and the tone and the pacing of music to
• 59:30
  help people with motor impairments or help people who
• 59:34
  had lost their ability to speak for whatever reason, to actually
• 59:38
  sing the lyrics even though they couldn't sing the words, as
• 59:41
  opposed to speaking the words and how that can be used to sort
• 59:45
  of bypassed areas of damage. So when we taught this class, we
• 59:51
  used music to express emotion. One of the things I find
• 59:57
  fascinating is I used an example of, you know, the Halloween
• 1:00:01
  movie where the pumpkins sort of getting closer and closer to
• 1:00:04
  you. Yeah, you turn the music off.
• 1:00:07
  Yeah. Totally not scary.
• 1:00:09
  Sit all the time. You have the music on, you know,
• 1:00:14
  your heart rate starts and your galvanic skin response and you
• 1:00:17
  know, your hands start sweating. The music is such a powerful
• 1:00:21
  influence over our emotions and our movement and you know.
• 1:00:26
  Breathing even and our breathing.
• 1:00:28
  I've noticed that with, with tense movies, I, I, I, my
• 1:00:31
  breathing slows down right before something really scary
• 1:00:34
  happens. And if I'm scared, I force
• 1:00:36
  myself to take deep breaths while while I watch the horror
• 1:00:39
  movie that I that I'm being forced to watch.
• 1:00:43
  But and then the music in that is like a whole nother character
• 1:00:47
  to the movie outside of the actors, right?
• 1:00:49
  It helps to elicit those emotions.
• 1:00:52
  And I find all of that really fascinating.
• 1:00:54
  So This is why we want to teach that class.
• 1:00:57
  Actually, I had some students I haven't been teaching the last
• 1:01:00
  couple years because I was Dean for a few years and I'm on
• 1:01:03
  sabbatical right now. And a student said that they
• 1:01:06
  were graduating next year and I really needed to teach that
• 1:01:09
  class. So I'm, I'm hoping to, but
• 1:01:13
  again, it's one of those classes that I think is better taught
• 1:01:16
  when you have people who are experts in two different fields
• 1:01:19
  and you're bringing those together rather me trying to
• 1:01:22
  just teach it all by myself. Totally.
• 1:01:24
  That's really, really cool. That's I never even heard of
• 1:01:27
  collaborative classes like that. I've never taken any in college
• 1:01:29
  at least It's really. Cool.
• 1:01:31
  They're the most challenging to teach from the side of a
• 1:01:34
  professor, but they're the most interesting.
• 1:01:37
  It's actually twice the amount of work as opposed to half the
• 1:01:40
  amount of work, but I think they're the most most
• 1:01:42
  interesting for students. I bet, I bet that's really, it's
• 1:01:45
  really awesome. I I'm also curious and there's
• 1:01:49
  so much to go into, at least from what we, the brief, the
• 1:01:52
  brief, the brief overview. But first of all, I'm also
• 1:01:57
  curious about the relationship between lights and music because
• 1:01:59
  I know that, for example, when and I've gone to some concerts
• 1:02:04
  where, you know, I've listened. So I'm actually much more
• 1:02:07
  nowadays into the improvisation improv provisional, thank you
• 1:02:15
  Grateful Dead and and strings and like that whole that whole
• 1:02:19
  genre of music. And one thing I didn't notice
• 1:02:22
  I've noticed is that when I've gone to see shows, cover shows
• 1:02:25
  or real shows, an enormous component Fish, which is a
• 1:02:28
  famous jam band from your neck of the woods to play around
• 1:02:31
  there. They they're they're light sky
• 1:02:35
  is known as a six member of the band because or the 5th member
• 1:02:37
  of the band because it the lights are so integral to the
• 1:02:40
  audience experience during the concert.
• 1:02:42
  And there's something about when music is playing that activates
• 1:02:45
  another part of your brain that and it's so interesting because
• 1:02:49
  songs almost feel like they take like they have color tones to
• 1:02:52
  them. So if like if you're playing a
• 1:02:54
  song and then the and then the and then the whole place flashes
• 1:02:57
  red. There's something about like the
• 1:02:59
  relationship between the tone of the music and the color that's
• 1:03:02
  being flashed, you know it across the room and it enhances
• 1:03:07
  the experience to a tremendous degree.
• 1:03:10
  I mean, I, I can't even compare listening to that kind of thing
• 1:03:13
  even on great speakers at home and then being there with the
• 1:03:15
  crowd with the lights flashing like that.
• 1:03:17
  I'm curious if there's if you if you've noticed any overlay
• 1:03:20
  between the two. You know, that's really
• 1:03:22
  interesting. And I've never studied the
• 1:03:24
  interplay between. So in this case, like your
• 1:03:28
  emotional connection to the music with, you know, what's
• 1:03:33
  being presented visually and what's going on in the brain.
• 1:03:37
  So I haven't actually studied that.
• 1:03:39
  And, you know, when we're studying something, the more
• 1:03:41
  variables we put into the mix, sometimes the more limit them.
• 1:03:47
  But now that you said that, now I'm actually curious and I I
• 1:03:51
  want to go look and you know. Get some, get some, get some
• 1:03:54
  funding and go to the sphere in Vegas.
• 1:03:56
  You can check out over there I mean.
• 1:03:59
  Experimental Lab. Real Life.
• 1:04:01
  Experimental Lab and you and there is no, there's no venue
• 1:04:05
  like this fear and it's, and it's so immersive.
• 1:04:07
  And I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen any videos of
• 1:04:09
  it, but oh, man. I mean, and I mean, I don't know
• 1:04:13
  what kind of music you listen to, but just about most great
• 1:04:18
  bands have, you know, like a band that you will certainly
• 1:04:21
  appreciate has played there where you can kind of see the
• 1:04:23
  way they make use of, of, of everything.
• 1:04:25
  And you know, we know that music also turns on the, the visual
• 1:04:29
  aspect of our brain too. I I do a creative writing
• 1:04:32
  assignment with my students who I'll play a well play a score,
• 1:04:36
  I'll play an instrumental piece and have them write the image
• 1:04:39
  that pops up in their head from the music.
• 1:04:42
  Yeah. And there's sometimes where it's
• 1:04:44
  remarkable how 10 students or 15 students can all come up with
• 1:04:49
  extremely similar themes from music.
• 1:04:51
  And you wonder, you know, is it is that just association wiring?
• 1:04:55
  Like, you know, the pirates type of fat pirates in the Caribbean
• 1:04:57
  theme? Like everyone recognizes that
• 1:05:00
  that's going to be pirate music, right?
• 1:05:01
  But what if there's music that's a little bit less well known?
• 1:05:04
  And then one person thinks it reminds them of a field, another
• 1:05:06
  person thinks reminds them of an old French villa.
• 1:05:09
  You know, I mean you, you, you know, So I've had a lot, a lot
• 1:05:12
  of fun tinkering around students perception of music too, and
• 1:05:14
  it's really cool. Yeah, usually, you know, so when
• 1:05:17
  I teach introduction to neuroscience class, I'll take a
• 1:05:21
  song that was, you know, very popular over the summer,
• 1:05:25
  whatever song that may be, and I'll play a clip from it.
• 1:05:28
  And I just tell the students, just just free, right, right,
• 1:05:30
  whatever comes to your mind. And then we talk about all those
• 1:05:33
  different aspects, and it helps me to introduce the idea that
• 1:05:36
  although there are parts of your brain that are responsible for
• 1:05:39
  vision and auditory, your brain is all interconnected, right?
• 1:05:43
  So it's the circuitry that ultimately gives us this sense
• 1:05:48
  of connectedness between visual and auditory and, and movement
• 1:05:52
  and so on and so forth. And it's that part of the brain
• 1:05:55
  that really fascinates me. Yeah, I have a friend and maybe
• 1:06:00
  you could speak to this. I have a good friend of mine who
• 1:06:02
  has, I mean, he's very good about it, but he has a little
• 1:06:05
  bit of a stutter. And one of the ways that he
• 1:06:07
  deals with it is if he catches himself stuttering, he'll kind
• 1:06:11
  of slow down on that word. So if he was going to stutter on
• 1:06:14
  the West of the word, it's a, it's this herd that I'm having a
• 1:06:19
  hard time with. He does rap and he is an
• 1:06:23
  excellent rapper and he is incredibly creative and he has
• 1:06:27
  no problems just freestyling and coming up with that.
• 1:06:32
  Can you speak to the, you know, is it the beat that's doing it?
• 1:06:36
  What's happening with the stutter that is that that or I
• 1:06:39
  guess I don't know if you could speak about his particular case,
• 1:06:41
  but in general what happens? Yeah, you'll even hear about.
• 1:06:45
  So something about the beat and the music has been very helpful
• 1:06:51
  in a lot of different aspects. So somebody with movement
• 1:06:55
  disorder might use music and might dance fluidly, but then
• 1:06:58
  when the music stops, when they have, you know, when they lose
• 1:07:02
  that thing to attach to, to help preempt the next motion, now
• 1:07:09
  they might lose their ability to move as fluidly.
• 1:07:12
  Or somebody with Tourette's syndrome might use excuse.
• 1:07:17
  Me Billie Eilish has Tourette's syndrome, apparently.
• 1:07:19
  I didn't know about that. Yeah, and she and she's talked
• 1:07:22
  about how music has helped her, has helped her navigate her way
• 1:07:24
  through it. Yes, yes, there is an excellent
• 1:07:28
  movie. I think it's called The Tick
• 1:07:29
  Code with and it's about a little boy who has Tourette's
• 1:07:34
  and how he's a musician and he connects with another musician
• 1:07:38
  who also has Tourettes that he didn't know about.
• 1:07:40
  And and how music helps with their, you know, to control
• 1:07:47
  their motor ticks and help them, you know, connect with
• 1:07:50
  something. It's music is really powerful
• 1:07:54
  and we haven't even scratched the surface, I don't think.
• 1:07:57
  And all you know and the power it actually holds.
• 1:08:01
  I think we've written an oath as an art instead of looking at it
• 1:08:04
  at the science. Yes, I would absolutely agree
• 1:08:07
  with that. And yeah, it feels a little bit
• 1:08:10
  like a shame that we that we do that because we, I mean, we even
• 1:08:18
  know the impact of there have been so many times in my life
• 1:08:22
  where I felt the weight of the world, you know, when I was in
• 1:08:25
  my early 20s and I had no idea what I was going to do with
• 1:08:27
  myself. And I and everyone around me
• 1:08:29
  felt like they had everything worked out and were moving on
• 1:08:31
  with their lives. And I didn't.
• 1:08:32
  And then they were. And I would just RIP down the
• 1:08:35
  highway and listen to music and like, that was the only thing
• 1:08:38
  that was going to, you know, help me at that moment or set me
• 1:08:41
  free at that moment. Bruce Springsteen has saved my
• 1:08:43
  life, saved me many times throughout the years, you know,
• 1:08:47
  but but there's something about like, like there's something
• 1:08:52
  interesting about the fact that, hey, if I'm down, listening to
• 1:08:55
  happy music doesn't necessarily work to pick me up.
• 1:08:57
  Sometimes I have to listen to sad music when I'm down.
• 1:09:00
  And then I'm like, Oh, now I'm better, you know, and, and what
• 1:09:03
  is that and why and why do we feel that way?
• 1:09:05
  And that's a science too, you know, that that should be
• 1:09:07
  something that we should be employing and using.
• 1:09:09
  My first podcast, one of my first real guests, the quote UN
• 1:09:12
  quote that you could say was actually some, I believe she's a
• 1:09:17
  nurse or a therapist down here in South in University of Miami.
• 1:09:21
  And she's a music therapist and she uses the ukulele and the
• 1:09:26
  piano and she uses it to help student.
• 1:09:28
  She uses it to help in all sorts of fact faculties and with all
• 1:09:32
  sorts of patients. I think primarily with the youth
• 1:09:35
  with kids, but they've been expanding the program and she's
• 1:09:38
  like, we can't even hire enough music therapists is how popular
• 1:09:41
  and how useful it's been. So I hope that there's an
• 1:09:44
  industry that keeps on taking off.
• 1:09:45
  Me too. OK.
• 1:09:47
  What are so to wrap up, what are a couple of things that you're
• 1:09:50
  looking forward to that you're that you're I guess hopeful for,
• 1:09:53
  I guess or excited about and when some of the things that you
• 1:09:56
  were a little nervous about that you would like to at least
• 1:09:59
  people to bear in mind? In terms of science or just life
• 1:10:03
  or. Yeah, whatever you think is
• 1:10:06
  important. You know, so I always, I always
• 1:10:10
  go to my kids first. I'm, you know, curious what life
• 1:10:14
  is going to be like for them and whether I've prepared them
• 1:10:17
  enough to meet all of those challenges.
• 1:10:19
  And, you know, they're incredible people.
• 1:10:22
  And although they're all my kids, they're all, you know,
• 1:10:25
  very different. So, you know, I'm interested in
• 1:10:29
  in what the world is going to be like for them and how they are
• 1:10:33
  going to contribute to it. In my field.
• 1:10:38
  I would love if, you know, the tool that we developed through,
• 1:10:42
  you know, decades of science actually helps somebody what
• 1:10:47
  that be the BCI or whether we're able to detect reading
• 1:10:52
  impairment so that kids can get help as soon as possible.
• 1:10:56
  I would love to be able to, you know, give it forward to have a
• 1:11:01
  positive impact on others lives. Definitely, definitely.
• 1:11:04
  Well, Doctor Lisa Gable, thank you so, so much for coming.
• 1:11:08
  This is so much fun. I hope you had fun with the
• 1:11:10
  second podcast experience. You were excellent.
• 1:11:13
  And and I hope to do this again because this is so much fun.
• 1:11:16
  And when you have some exciting new things, you can let me know.
• 1:11:20
  I'll check back in. But I'm really, I think this is
• 1:11:23
  a lot of fun. I'm really excited.
• 1:11:24
  I hope to. I hope to stay in touch.
• 1:11:26
  Thank you for having me, I really appreciate it.
• 1:11:27
  It's a blast. Take care.
• 1:11:28
  Bye bye. OK.
• 1:11:30
  What do you think? That was fun.
• 1:11:33
  I just realized that I had like.