Your Brain: Who's in Control? | Full Documentary | NOVA | PBS

NOVA PBS Official

31 May 202353:33

EducationalLearning

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TLDRThis NOVA documentary explores the unconscious processes within our brains that influence our actions, perceptions, and sense of self. It reveals that we have little control over many facets of our behavior and that our brains construct illusions of control and agency. Through examining unusual brain conditions like split-brain patients and the impacts of anesthesia, emotions, trauma, and social influences, the film conveys that we are not fully aware of what drives us. It suggests embracing the reality that we cannot control everything about ourselves, but asserts we can still work towards awareness of internal unconscious forces.

Takeaways

😯 Your brain activity and consciousness happen in varying degrees, from being awake to asleep to unconscious under anesthesia.
🧠 Different parts of your brain control different functions like movement, emotions, decision-making.
👥 Social interactions and experiences can fundamentally change your brain wiring and biology.
😌 Letting go of conscious control can sometimes improve creativity and performance.
😲 You have limited awareness of the unconscious processes happening in your brain.
🎭 Simple tricks can manipulate your sense of control and agency over decisions.
🤯 People who have had their brain hemispheres surgically split seem to have two separate minds.
💡 Your emotions and senses like guilt can guide decision-making and cooperation with others.
🧬 Trauma and experiences can alter genes and brain biology across generations.
😀 The 'you' emerges from the unique neuronal connections and unconscious workings of your brain.

Q & A

What causes some people to sleepwalk?
-Sleepwalking is caused by a 'glitch in the system' where part of the brain stays asleep while other parts wake up. The prefrontal cortex, which controls deliberate choices and self-awareness, often stays asleep while regions controlling movement and vision can become active.
How does anesthesia make someone unconscious?
-Anesthesia drugs dramatically reduce the brain's wave activity from diverse and dynamic to dull, slow-rolling waves. This severely limits communication among brain regions, especially through the thalamus which acts as a central hub.
What happened after Phineas Gage's accident that changed his personality?
-After an iron rod destroyed part of his prefrontal cortex, Phineas Gage struggled to regulate his emotions and understand how others might react to his behavior. This showed the link between personality, morality, and the prefrontal cortex regions.
How can experiences get passed to future generations?
-Both positive and traumatic experiences can alter gene expression through chemical tags on DNA. These epigenetic changes can get passed down via the sperm and eggs to future generations.
What causes our sense of control and agency to break down?
-When there is misalignment between the brain signals controlling movement, the actual movement itself, and the feedback received after the movement, our sense of agency over that action can diminish or disappear.
What happens in the brain during musical improvisation?
-Brain scans show decreased activation in the prefrontal cortex during musical improvisation. Letting go of conscious control and self-monitoring seems critical for spontaneous creativity across many domains.
How are split-brain patients able to coordinate two hands?
-Though the two hemispheres can no longer directly communicate, split-brain patients learn to coordinate their disconnected halves to solve problems. The cooperation happens through the external action itself rather than inside the brain.
Why does the illusion of a unitary self persist?
-Despite being composed of many interconnected pieces, our billions of neurons can create the illusion of being a single, unified person. This provides a sense of control and meaning that aids survival.
How do emotions guide decision-making?
-Brain scans show a region called the insula detects 'gut feelings' about potential choices. This emotional information gets integrated in the prefrontal cortex to avoid harming others and influence behavior.
What causes the feeling that we're in control of our lives?
-Specialized brain regions provide the feeling of agency, authorship, and control over our actions. This helps create meaning and the sense that we're in charge, even when unconscious factors strongly influence our choices.

Outlines

00:00

😱 The mysteries of the unconscious brain

This paragraph introduces the video, stating that the brain is a mystery and is responsible for personality, thoughts, feelings, and identity. It poses questions about what controls behavior and decision making given that we have limited awareness of brain activity.

05:00

😴 Sleepwalking reveals the unconscious in action

This paragraph discusses sleepwalking as an example of unconscious complex behavior. It describes how different brain regions can become active without input from parts like the prefrontal cortex that control deliberation and self-awareness.

10:00

😶 Going under - tracking transitions in consciousness

This paragraph examines how anesthesia demonstrates transitions in levels of consciousness. It details how communication between brain regions breaks down, frequently involving changes in the thalamus, and how this is visible in brain wave patterns.

15:00

🧠 Two minds in one brain after split-brain surgery

This paragraph introduces split-brain patients whose corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres has been severed for treatment. It describes how the two halves can operate independently, exemplified by a patient able to draw objects only shown to one visual field.

20:02

🎯 Emotions and social factors influence decisions

This paragraph looks at how emotions and social considerations affect decision making. It focuses on a study showing how guilt signals from the insula modulate selfishness versus cooperation and relates this to Phineas Gage's infamous injury.

25:04

👪 Experiences leave biological traces across generations

This paragraph examines how ancestral trauma can alter biology across generations. It describes a mouse study linking shocks paired with odor to changes in odor receptors passed down from parents to offspring.

30:07

🎭 The illusion of unitary conscious control

This paragraph argues that while we feel we are unitary conscious agents, many unconscious interacting processes shape thoughts and behavior. It relates this to manipulations of choice and agency.

35:09

😌 Letting go allows creativity to emerge

This paragraph looks at improvisation and spontaneity in rapping and jazz. It shows deactivated prefrontal regions linked to control and monitoring when professional musicians improvise creatively.

40:12

🧠 You are the sum of the parts and pieces

This closing paragraph reflects on illusions of control and awareness given all the unconscious forces shaping personality and decisions. It concludes that by understanding these forces better, we can gain self-insight.

Mindmap

Keywords

💡consciousness

Consciousness refers to our awareness of ourselves and our environment. The video explores different states of consciousness like being awake, asleep, under anesthesia, etc. It shows how manipulating consciousness reveals insights into how the brain works, such as during sleepwalking when parts of the brain associated with movement and senses can remain active while prefrontal cortex stays 'asleep'.

💡agency

Sense of agency refers to the feeling of being in control over our actions and choices. The video investigates how this sense of control arises in the brain and how it can be manipulated to make people doubt their agency, like in the TMS experiment where external stimulation made the volunteer think the computer was controlling his finger movement.

💡emotion

Emotions are shown to play an important role in decision-making and behavior by influencing brain activity, especially in regions like the insula and prefrontal cortex. For example, the Trust Game experiment explores how guilt provides a mechanism for cooperative behavior.

💡trauma

Traumatic experiences can induce lasting changes in brain biology and behavior that persist across generations, as demonstrated by the Dutch famine and mice experiments. This shows how environments shape brains down to the genetic level.

💡creativity

Letting conscious control diminish can enhance creativity, as seen when jazz musicians improvise and deactivate their prefrontal cortex which is linked to self-monitoring. This suggests being over-self-conscious can hurt performance in unstructured situations.

💡social interaction

Human brains have specialized circuitry for understanding others' emotions/perspectives which shows how we are adapted for social living. Who we are and how we behave are powerfully shaped by those around us.

💡unconscious

A major theme is how most brain activity and processing occurs outside conscious awareness so we have incomplete access to all that determines our thoughts and actions. Even memories and sense of identity arise from unconscious machinery.

💡split-brain

Studies of split-brain patients who had their corpus callosum severed provide striking examples of how disconnecting the two hemispheres produces two separate spheres of consciousness with their own perceptions, learning, and intentions.

💡neuroplasticity

This refers to the brain's ability to change and reorganize itself in response to experiences. The video emphasizes how brains are altered by trauma, environment, social factors - nothing about their wiring is permanently fixed.

💡illusion of unity

Although we feel we are unified individuals, the video conveys how our brains consist of specialized modules performing different functions, which challenges our intuition that there is a unitary self or will guiding our actions and choices.

Highlights

Sleepwalking reveals that consciousness comes in degrees and our unconscious makes everyday decisions for us.

When sleepwalking, the prefrontal cortex stays asleep, so there's no decision maker or self-awareness.

With anesthesia, altering communication between brain regions sufficiently makes someone unconscious.

Split-brain patients reveal there can be two separated minds inside one brain system.

Social contact and expectations of others influence our personality, morality, and facets of who we are.

Trauma changes people and can impact future generations by altering gene activation.

Emotions like guilt shape decisions to avoid harming others.

Letting conscious control decrease can improve creativity and performance.

Our sense of agency over actions can be manipulated to make us feel out of control.

The unconscious you with inaccessible brain processes is still you.

We constantly learn by mimicking and interacting with other brains.

The feeling of a unitary self is an illusion - our minds have different components doing different things.

The brain looks at what the body did and figures out if it aligns with free will.

Filling in the blanks with meaning helps us survive by making sense of cause and effect.

Our experience, memories, and sensations originate in the brain.

Our pattern of neuronal connections creates each of our individual identities.

Transcripts

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