:00:00. > :00:00.Now it's time for Meet the Author, with Jim Naughtie.
:00:00. > :00:00.You can try to understand the brain in many ways,
:00:07. > :00:11.As a biological mechanism, maybe as some kind of philosophical
:00:12. > :00:14.machine or as the source of our emotions, but so many
:00:15. > :00:18.Well, Susan Greenfield, one of our best-known neuroscientists,
:00:19. > :00:21.and a celebrated guide to the complexities of the brain,
:00:22. > :00:25.is offering quite a novel way of looking at it.
:00:26. > :00:28.A Day In The Life Of The Brain is the title of her book
:00:29. > :00:31.and it explains how she has gone about her exploration.
:00:32. > :00:34.From dawn to dusk through sleep, She describes what is going
:00:35. > :00:38.on inside our heads and lays out a theory about how it all works.
:00:39. > :00:59.You are using the device of a day in the life of a brain,
:01:00. > :01:03.a human brain, to try to tell us a story about what's going on.
:01:04. > :01:14.OK, what I'm trying to do is explore something we all take for granted,
:01:15. > :01:18.and bring home to people how actually, it's no short
:01:19. > :01:21.of a miracle, and that is the subjective, in a world
:01:22. > :01:26.We call it consciousness, it's very hard to define but we all know
:01:27. > :01:30.It's what you lose at night and it's what you lose
:01:31. > :01:35.But I try and probe a little bit through the prism of neuroscience
:01:36. > :01:37.to share with the general reader just what we know,
:01:38. > :01:42.what we don't know, what kind of questions we ask.
:01:43. > :01:46.I think the reason I chose the day was because, carrying on from a book
:01:47. > :01:49.I wrote 15 years ago, but now backed up by experimental
:01:50. > :01:51.evidence, I suggest that consciousness isn't all or none,
:01:52. > :01:55.And as you go through the day, then things vary.
:01:56. > :01:57.Your depth of consciousness varies according to what you're doing
:01:58. > :02:05.I think we should get that that, that...
:02:06. > :02:07.Let's get that out on the table straightaway.
:02:08. > :02:11.What is a neuronal assembly and why does it matter?
:02:12. > :02:14.OK, let me answer the second part of the question first.
:02:15. > :02:20.The problem with consciousness is that either you have the subjective
:02:21. > :02:22.phenomenon that we can all appreciate and understand,
:02:23. > :02:25.and then we have the bump and grind of the brain cells,
:02:26. > :02:31.And how the two relate is very hard and until now,
:02:32. > :02:33.people have struggled to relate the subjectivity of conscious
:02:34. > :02:39.experience to the objectivity of how the brain works.
:02:40. > :02:44.Now what we need is a Rosetta Stone, after the famous stone
:02:45. > :02:48.where you have the two languages so you could actually see how the two
:02:49. > :02:52.If we had a way of describing how you feel, that also could translate
:02:53. > :02:54.into a way of describing brain events,
:02:55. > :02:58.and these neuronal assemblies do just that.
:02:59. > :03:02.So what they are, are large-scale coalitions or groups of brain cells.
:03:03. > :03:07.Now, that doesn't sound very exciting but they're very large
:03:08. > :03:09.scale, so they're much bigger than the average network
:03:10. > :03:12.They're much smaller than a brain region,
:03:13. > :03:16.the sort of things you see in brain scans.
:03:17. > :03:18.And they are very transient and sneaky which is why
:03:19. > :03:20.people haven't really studied them much before.
:03:21. > :03:23.They are corralled up and disbanded in less than a second and they vary
:03:24. > :03:31.And it's those that I think match up to degrees of consciousness.
:03:32. > :03:34.I think there's a lot of material in here which people
:03:35. > :03:36.will find fascinating, because you suggest
:03:37. > :03:38.explanations for particular states of consciousness.
:03:39. > :03:42.Things that affect us in a certain way.
:03:43. > :03:47.And it seems to me, one of the intriguing things
:03:48. > :03:49.about your experimental findings is that they tend to support
:03:50. > :03:55.It's always reassuring when that happens!
:03:56. > :03:57.So sort of walking in the countryside
:03:58. > :04:04.So for example, you might like to know that people
:04:05. > :04:07.who are exposed to rural environments are more creative
:04:08. > :04:09.than those who have been exposed for the same period of time
:04:10. > :04:13.Because of what it does to their state of consciousness?
:04:14. > :04:18.And if you're walking and putting one foot
:04:19. > :04:20.in front of another, in a funny way,
:04:21. > :04:23.that actually reflects a thought process.
:04:24. > :04:24.The man that developed the treatment for Parkinson's
:04:25. > :04:27.disease a long time ago, one of my favourite quotes
:04:28. > :04:29.he came up with was, "Thinking is movement
:04:30. > :04:38.Now if you think about it, to separate out a thought
:04:39. > :04:41.from a movement, sorry, a feeling from a thought, a thought always has
:04:42. > :04:45.You always end up in a different place to where you started.
:04:46. > :04:48.Whereas if you're just having a feeling, you're having a feeling.
:04:49. > :04:50.And how did you get to that new place?
:04:51. > :04:53.We talk about thinking straight, being on track.
:04:54. > :04:56.I think that therefore, and Nietzsche said this,
:04:57. > :04:58.by that thought process being amplified and echoed
:04:59. > :05:00.and reinforced by physical stepping, and the Greeks knew this
:05:01. > :05:05.when they debated and they had their dialogues, as you say,
:05:06. > :05:07.it makes absolutely intuitive sense, but perhaps people need
:05:08. > :05:15.Are you saying something about how easily we can live lives that
:05:16. > :05:19.will produce beneficial effects of which we are possibly not aware?
:05:20. > :05:23.Up to a point, but I should caution this is not a self-help book, so...
:05:24. > :05:26.No, and I should say to people, it's not written in that style at all.
:05:27. > :05:32.It's more what I wanted to do primarily was take
:05:33. > :05:33.forward my own fascination with consciousness
:05:34. > :05:38.Now, if along the way, people pick up some interesting
:05:39. > :05:41.snippets or something they didn't know, then that's really good.
:05:42. > :05:50.But it's not meant as a sort of manual on how to live your life.
:05:51. > :05:52.There is one aspect of this, finally, is very interesting,
:05:53. > :05:55.and it's about the exposure to, for example, video games,
:05:56. > :05:57.social media, that kind of thing, which is something that people
:05:58. > :06:00.are aware of, concerned about, want to think about.
:06:01. > :06:02.Now, you've been subjected to some criticism from people
:06:03. > :06:09.about banging on about this too much.
:06:10. > :06:10.I mean, what is your essential feeling
:06:11. > :06:14.about the danger that we should be aware of?
:06:15. > :06:17.OK, all I've ever said is that there's a debate to be had
:06:18. > :06:20.and if we want to go and have a certain type of society,
:06:21. > :06:23.then we should at least be aware of that and we should think
:06:24. > :06:25.of all the options and the possibilities.
:06:26. > :06:28.How would you describe the effects on the way our brain works
:06:29. > :06:30.and our consciousness of the kinds of activities, for example,
:06:31. > :06:33.that children are now exposed to at a young age?
:06:34. > :06:39.When you and I were young, a long time ago, do you remember
:06:40. > :06:42.you'd say to your friends, "Let's make up a game.
:06:43. > :06:45."You be this and you be that", and this glass of water would be
:06:46. > :06:48.the magic goblet and this chair would be a spaceship.
:06:49. > :06:54.What you were doing then and what I was doing
:06:55. > :06:56.was rehearsing our own little identities.
:06:57. > :07:01.We were rehearsing a little life story when we played
:07:02. > :07:04.the game, but it was coming from inside and it was dominated
:07:05. > :07:07.by inside, by the imagination, because the things were all pretty
:07:08. > :07:11.The drawing pad did not ask you to draw on it.
:07:12. > :07:13.The tree didn't ask you to climb it, you know?
:07:14. > :07:18.And I think that was very important for us growing up,
:07:19. > :07:20.as it is for every generation of kids because you rehearse
:07:21. > :07:23.identity and you learn to be proactive.
:07:24. > :07:27.You are in control of your story, your little life story.
:07:28. > :07:29.Now, poor little things, sitting in front of a screen,
:07:30. > :07:32.and this is my concern, where's the scope for imagination?
:07:33. > :07:35.By definition, a screen will be visual and auditory.
:07:36. > :07:37.So where is the scope to develop your own storyline,
:07:38. > :07:43.And above all, to be proactive in control, and above all,
:07:44. > :07:47.to have your little firewall of what you are and what I am?
:07:48. > :07:49.And the long-term effect of that, you can't say.
:07:50. > :07:54.Well, I think we should consider there might be a long-term effect.
:07:55. > :07:56.Susan Greenfield, thank you very much indeed.
:07:57. > :08:18.Good evening. It is going to be another mild start of the day on
:08:19. > :08:19.Friday. A rather murky one, because