If scientists can figure out the brain, will it help cure all diseases, manage feelings, control memories, and generate ideas like a computer?
Neuroscientist Ed Boyden spoke about the prospects of brain research, what a person can achieve if he learns to control neurons, and why failed projects should be given a second or even a third chance. Theory and Practice publishes a translation of the interview.
“Constantly generate new ideas. Don't read it without thinking. Comment, formulate, reflect and generalize, even if you are reading the preface. So you will always strive to understand the essence of things, which is what is needed for creativity."
Ed Boyden once wrote a short instructional essay "How to Think," and the paragraph above became his rule number 1. He was 28 years old, he started his own neuroscience research group at MIT and has already published some of his research, which earned him the prestigious Brain Prize for helping to achieve “arguably the most important technical breakthrough in 40 years,” the chairman of the jury said. It was almost ten years ago. His idea generation system seems to have lived up to expectations. Boyden received a $ 3 million Breakthrough Prize last year, and he and his colleagues discovered a new method of observing an almost unimaginably tiny electrical circuit in the brain. This has produced some of the most accurate images of the brain.
- You often say that your goal is to "unravel the brain." What do you have in mind?
- I think the meaning of this phrase will change as new knowledge is gained, but now "unraveling the brain" for me means that, firstly, we can simulate (most likely using a computer) processes that will generate something like thoughts and feelings, and second, that we can understand how to treat brain disorders such as Alzheimer's or epilepsy. These are two goals that keep me moving forward. One focuses on understanding human nature, the other is more medical.
You can argue with me by noticing that there is a third question: what is consciousness? Why do we have memories, but bottles, pens and tables, as far as we know, do not? I am afraid that we do not yet have an exact definition of consciousness, so this issue is difficult to approach. We do not have a "measure of consciousness" that would indicate how conscious something is. I think we will get to that someday, but in the medium term, I would like to focus on the first two questions.
“Why do we know so much about the world? It's rather strange that we can understand the law of universal gravitation or quantum mechanics"
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When you won the Breakthrough Prize in 2016, you talked about your ongoing efforts at brain research: “If we succeed, then we can answer questions like 'Who am I? What is my personality? What should I do? Why am I here?". How can research help us answer the question "Who am I?"
- I'll give you an example. When the economic crisis hit in 2008, I talked to many about why people do what they do. Why are many of our decisions not the best decisions we could make? Of course, there is a whole field of science - behavioral economics, which tries to explain our actions on a psychological and cognitive level. For example, if you ask a person a lot of questions, and then he walks past a bowl of sweets, then he will probably take a few, because he is tired of answers and cannot resist.
Behavioral economics can explain some things, but it cannot explain the processes that underlie decision-making, and even less, some subconscious moments that we have no control at all. Notice that when we are aware of something, it is often the result of unconscious processes that happened right before it. So if we understood how brain cells are organized into a circuit (practically a computer circuit, if you will), and saw how information flows through these networks and changes, we would have a much clearer idea of why our brain accepts certain solutions. If we understand this, maybe we can overcome some of the limitations and at least understand why we do what we do.
You can imagine that in the very distant future (it will probably take many decades), we will be able to ask really difficult questions about why we relate to certain things in one way or another, or why we think of ourselves in a certain way - questions that are in the field of view of psychology, philosophy, but to which it is so difficult to get an answer with the help of the laws of physics.
- How does brain research help answer the question "Why am I here?"
- One of the reasons why I switched from physics to studying the brain was the question "Why do we know so much about the world?" It's strange enough that we can understand the law of gravity, or that we understand quantum mechanics - at least to the extent that computers can be made. It's amazing that the world is understandable in some way.
And I asked myself a question: if our brain understands some part of the structure of the Universe, but does not understand everything else, and everything that it understands is available thanks to the laws of physics, on which the work of our brain is also based, then it turns out something like a vicious circle, right? And I'm trying to figure out: how to break it? How to make the universe understandable? Suppose we don't understand something about the universe, but if we know how the human mind works and what kind of thinking capabilities we lack, maybe we can create a more developed artificial intelligence that will help strengthen our ability to think.
This concept I call at times a "brain coprocessor" - something that works with the brain and expands our understanding.
We still have a lot of questions for the universe, right? Einstein tried to find a connection between quantum mechanics and gravity, but he did not succeed in this matter, and to this day it is not completely clear how to solve this dilemma. Perhaps in order to understand some things, we need to increase our intellectual abilities. What happens if we expand them? Of course, there are no guarantees. But maybe we will learn more about the origin of the Universe, about what forces influenced it at the beginning of existence and which ones are affecting now.
- The last question on this topic. How does brain research help answer the question "What is my personality?"
“Right now we are trying to map the structure of the brain. It is quite difficult to see something in it. The brain itself is large enough - a human weighs several pounds - but the connections between neurons, known as synapses, are tiny. Here we are talking about nanoscale. Therefore, if you want to see how brain cells are connected in a network, you need to consider synapses. How can I do this? We have developed a special technique. We take a piece of brain tissue and inject a chemical into it, more precisely a polymer, which is in some way very similar to the substance in baby diapers. It is a polymer that swells when liquid is added.
If we place it inside the brain and add water, then we will be able to move the molecules that make up the brain apart from each other, and then we can see the tiny connections between cells. So, we reason: if we take a very small brain, for example a fish or a worm, can we study it in its entirety? Will we be able to depict the entire nervous system with an accuracy of individual jumpers? Now this is at the level of an idea, there are no necessary technologies for implementation yet, but if we managed to improve the technical part, it would be possible to draw up a sufficiently detailed map of the connections in the brain, according to which it can really be reproduced with the help of a computer. And will this copy function in the same way as the brain of the organism, which became the primary source?
Imagine that we had a worm with 302 neurons and we noted about 6 thousand connections between them, as well as molecules at the junctions. Is it possible to simulate the actions of this worm? Then, perhaps, it will be possible to do the same with a fish, then with a mouse, and then with a human brain - each of these brains is about a thousand times larger than the previous one. If you could map the human brain, the question would immediately arise: if you reproduced its activity on a computer, would it still be you? As noted earlier, we do not have an exact or at least a working definition of consciousness, so while we cannot judge this quality simply by looking at something, we cannot yet give an answer, I would say. But this raises an interesting question about the nature of personality.
"If we understood how brain cells are organized into circuits and saw how information flows through these networks, maybe we could understand why we do what we do."
- About a decade ago you wrote an essay "How to Think". Since then, have you had any amendments or additions to those rules?
“I wrote this essay pretty quickly when we started the research group at MIT and spent most of the time in an empty room waiting for the equipment to arrive. Since then, through experience, I have learned how to best follow these rules. For example, rule # 3 says: "Work backwards from your goal."
From that moment I realized that if you work starting from a problem that needs to be solved, and you meet people who have some skills and who proceed from their capabilities, then it will be very easy for you to work together, because all sides are in interested in this. Skill holders want more influence and problem-solving, and goal-setters want new tools to solve those problems. Therefore, rule # 3, "Work backwards, starting from your goal" naturally leads to rule # 6 - "Collaborate." I also learned to analyze the nature of problems. This year I gave a short lecture at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It was called Preparing a Revolution, and it was about how to learn to delve deeper into problems and make possible solutions. It was something like How to Think 2.0, but in the form of a video.
- What books have influenced your intellectual development the most?
- One of them is "Time, Love, Memory" by Jonathan Weiner. She talks about the times when people began to associate genes with characteristics of behavior. The author begins with the dawn of the era of genetics - when people discovered that X-rays change genes - and ends with modernity, when scientists figure out which genes are responsible, for example, for our sense of time or the ability to remember. I love this book because it shows science in motion - not like a textbook, “you have facts seven through forty-eighth, remember them” - it shows people suffering from uncertainty who overcome all kinds of difficulties, and it's very exciting. I used to reread it every year and it influenced me greatly.
The second book is called Thinking About Science. She talks about Max Delbrück, a physicist who also changed his field of activity to biology. He made a great contribution to the discovery of the structure of genes and helped to start a new era in molecular biology. The book tells a lot about his views, about how he contemplated his transition from physics to biology. This book has also greatly influenced my life, because I often think about how to explore complex systems like the brain, how to figure out the real state of affairs, how to get rid of approximation and not stop halfway.
- You mentioned that you constantly take notes. What is this system?
- When I talk to someone, I put paper on the table and make a summary of the conversation. At the end, I take pictures of the notes on my phone and give the sheet to my interlocutor. Every month I go through all of these synopses and label them with keywords. There are two reasons for this. First, since I've re-digested the conversation, it helps me remember it. Secondly, since I have chosen the keywords, it is easy to find it. To date, I have already completed tens of thousands of such notes.
- Your work suggests that you spend a lot of time thinking. How to achieve maximum results?
- There are three points, from pragmatic to abstract. I have been getting up very early for a long time. I try to get up at 4-5 in the morning, much earlier than other laboratory staff. Thanks to this, I have a few hours of silence to think and not be distracted by anything. I think this is important. Secondly, many good ideas are actually bad, because since they immediately sound so good, then everyone has already thought about them and strives to implement them. Therefore, I often think about things that at first glance seem like bad ideas, but suddenly, if you look at them from the right angle, they turn out to be good? I spend a lot of time trying to approach ideas from different angles.
Decades ago, astronomer Fritz Zwicky created many theories that are among the most burning in astrophysics today. The most relevant of the current ideas, like dark matter, he put forward in the 1930s. How did Zwicky do this? He just considered all possible options. Zwicky called his method "morphological analysis", but it seems to me that this is impossible to pronounce, so I call it "mosaic-tree scheme".
Finally - and this point is even more abstract - I believe in chance discoveries. I spend a lot of time looking through transcripts of old conversations. Many of them are about ideas that have failed, projects have failed. But you know what? That was five years ago, and now computers are working faster, new information has appeared, the world has changed. Therefore, we can restart the project. Many of our endeavors only become fully successful on the second or third try. An important part of my job is remembering failures and relaunching failed projects when the time comes.
- You received your main awards for research in optogenetics. Why has she become such an important achievement?
“When you talk about optogenetics, we must remember that“opto”means“light”, and“genetics”means that we use genes that do all the work. You introduce a gene that works like a small solar cell - essentially a molecule that converts light into electricity. Therefore, if you introduce it into a neuron and direct light at it, you can control the activity of the neuron.
Why is it important? Over the past hundred years of studying neurology, many people have tried to control neurons using all possible technologies: pharmacology (drugs), electrical impulses, and so on. But none of them guarantee accuracy. With optogenetics, we can direct light to a single cell or several cells and “turn on” or “turn off” these particular cells. So why is this important? If you can activate cells, then you can figure out what they are responsible for. Perhaps for a feeling, or a decision, or a movement. By "turning off" them, you understand what their function is: maybe you "turn off" certain cells, and a person will lose some kind of memory.
- Optogenetics is used today for brain research in laboratories around the world. What are the most promising areas related to it, do you highlight?
- Some researchers are conducting experiments that are quite challenging from a philosophical point of view. For example, a group of scientists at the California Institute of Technology discovered a small pooling of cells deep, deep within the brain. If you activate them with the help of light, for example, in mice (many work with them), then the animals will become aggressive, even cruel. They will attack any creature or object in the immediate vicinity, even some random things like a glove. This is very interesting because now you can ask questions from the series “What happens when you irritate these cells? Does this send a motor command to the muscles? In other words, does the mouse move to attack? Or is it a sensory command?
That is, the mouse is afraid and attacks in self-defense? You can ask really important questions about the meaning of the experiment when a part of the brain triggers a complex reaction like aggression or cruelty.
There are a number of researchers who are working on activating or silencing neural activity in different parts of the brain for medical purposes. For example, a group of scientists, which showed in mice suffering from epilepsy, that you can "turn off" seizures by acting on certain cells. There are other groups that have studied mice with Parkinson's disease and have been able to rid animals of the symptoms of the disease.
Scientists are also discovering a lot of interesting things in fundamental sciences. My MIT colleague Suzumi Tonegawa and his team of researchers did something very clever: they programmed the mice so that the neurons that are responsible for memory were activated by light. They found that if you reactivate these neurons with a pulse of light, the mouse will behave as if it is reliving a memory. In this way, it is possible to identify the groups of cells that make the memory pop up in the memory. Since then, researchers have conducted all sorts of experiments - for example, they can activate a happy memory, and a mouse will feel better, even if it is sick. And the list goes on and on.
"Many of our endeavors only become quite successful on the second or third try."
- Do you have any new thoughts on how to make life better?
“I realized that if I really want brain technologies to be applied all over the world, then I have to contribute as an entrepreneur, that is, start a business and help these inventions go beyond the academic circles. My laboratory has worked with various companies before, but this year I myself am participating in the launch of three. Hopefully we can figure out how these technologies can help people. I realized that I didn't want to just publish scientific papers; I want these technologies to be used in real life.
“One of these companies is into brain empowerment technology, isn't it?
-Exactly. We started a small company called Expansion Technologies to educate the world about these empowerment theories. Of course, people can independently study our publications on this topic, but if we can bring our ideas to the masses, then many scientific and medical problems will be much easier to solve.
I must say right away that all research data can be found online, we openly share all information. We have trained over a hundred groups of researchers. If desired, anyone can conduct a similar microscopic survey himself. But unlike optogenetics, where you can always turn to some non-profit organization to get DNA for free or for money, this research requires chemicals, so a company that makes kits of necessary reagents available to anyone saves time.
We're just always trying to increase the positive impact on the world. We often start a project by thinking, "What problem are thousands of researchers, companies and universities suffering from?" And then we try to create a tool that could help them. So if we succeed, then (practically by definition) there is no point in keeping it secret and to ourselves. We're just trying to share our tools with as many people as possible.