WEBVTT

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This is the Convergent Science Network podcast. Leading researchers in the domain

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of neuroscience, brain theory and technology are interviewed by Paul Verschure and Tony Prescott.

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All right, this is Paul Verschure with the Convergent Science Network podcast

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and I'm here with the first speaker of our Barcelona Computer,

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Brain and Technology Summer School, Samir Zeki.

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So Samir, it was really great to hear you speak this morning about the work

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you've done over the last decades on the visual brain.

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Thank you. But before you delved into the science of it, you made some remarks

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on multidisciplinarity and your views on that.

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So why was it important to you to sort of highlight your perspective on multidisciplinarity

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before you went into the science of the visual brain?

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Well, it was important for me because you introduced the session today by talking

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about how your institute here, your university,

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is interested in engaging in the arts and in the sciences and is not a unimodal subject.

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Now, the idea of being interdisciplinary is very fashionable at the moment and

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they keep telling us how we should be interdisciplinary. disciplinary.

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But the reality is very different. The reality is that people are extremely hostile.

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Now, let me just explain to you why I think this does not work so well.

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Because when you go to research councils, you have to choose panels.

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Panels that judge, say, neurobiology will have no knowledge of art or physics or philosophy.

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And therefore, they say, well, we don't think this is sort of philosophical

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enough or artistic enough, and the others do the same.

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So doubts are raised, plus the university structures, with one honorable exception,

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I have to say, which is my college, University College London.

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The structure of universities also is not conducive.

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So in most universities now, you don't find a department of anatomy anymore,

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but you find a department of cell and developmental biology.

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So it includes things which are allied.

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But you would never get a department of, say, neurobiology and philosophy.

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They won't do it.

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And I think it's a great pity, because I think that the problems asked by philosophy.

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Well, let me put it this way.

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One of the functions of the brain, of the main function of the brain,

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is to acquire knowledge.

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To take action, for sure, but to try to acquire knowledge for it.

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And one of the main problems of philosophy as a discipline is the problem of

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knowledge, of how we acquire it, and how certain we are of what we know.

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Now, what could be more natural than to ally these things?

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But you try to get some money for that, and you will not get it,

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because the whole structure of universities is not conducive, and research councils.

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I just want to just end up by one thing which I said earlier on,

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which is that I am appalled by the advice given by one academy to young people

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who are interdisciplinary in tendency,

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that don't declare it.

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Go and master a field and then come out of the closet.

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Come out of the closet and declare yourself as you're interdisciplinary. disciplinarian.

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I think it's one of the most shocking bits of advice to give to a young aspirant

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researcher, when you should be asking them, settle on your problem and then

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use whatever approach you need to use and learn it.

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And young people are very enthusiastic and they're very inspired and they're very able to do that.

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But if you channel a person to spend 20 years to, or whatever they want to have

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in mind, to learn certain techniques and become masters before you will reach

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some interdisciplinarity, I think it's very poor advice.

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Well, then something might lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy of a unidisciplinary

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person. It will. It will. A highly specialized person.

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Absolutely. So in that context.

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You have linked your study of the visual brain also to the arts and to aesthetics,

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and we'll come to that later.

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Also, given your current position as professor of neuro-aesthetics,

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but the foundation on which you made that jump was your understanding of the visual brain.

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So now in your talk, you emphasized very much that you were advocating an alternative

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view on this visual brain. Yes.

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And this alternative view was very much going away from this rather sequential,

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linear processing structure that would go from retina to the left, to the right, to V1, etc.

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So what are the main outstanding differences between this traditional view and

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this new view that you now advocate?

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So there are three or four main differences, much of them rooted in new knowledge

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or not so new knowledge, which has been around for between 40 and 20 years,

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and some of it is accruing.

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One is that the common view that the sole input, visual input to the visual

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brain or to the rest of the brain is through the primary visible cortex is simply not true.

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There's a lot of anatomy to show this, and it's been there for 50 years.

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The second point is that the systems that feed directly into visual areas outside

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V1 are capable of eliciting a conscious visual experience.

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So, to experience a visual stimulus consciously, you don't need V1,

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either as a pre-processor or a post-processor, as so many people assume.

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Thirdly, the fact is that you do not see all the different attributes of the

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visual world at the same time in the micro-perceptual world,

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let's say below 150 milliseconds.

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We all assume that you did, but in fact you see color before you see form,

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before you see motion, with differences which are quite significant,

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say 80 millisecond between color and motion, color coming first.

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And finally, the principle which has been universally ignored,

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And I think it's a pity, really, which is the principle of asynchrony,

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that the brain undertakes asynchronous operations all the time.

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Now, if you factor the asynchronous operations all the time,

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then I would think that one would have to modify quite considerably the computational

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theories of how the visible brain functions.

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And in a way I'm a bit surprised maybe not a question of interdisciplinarity but the extreme of.

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Specialization I'm a bit surprised that there's no computational theory for

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example today that takes into account the fact that the operations of the visual

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brain are highly asynchronous because lots of things follow from that,

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so So I'm not advocating at all throwing out previous findings,

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which are very good and robust and solid, and there have been many, many exciting ones.

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I'm simply saying that these have got to be all integrated together.

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And if you do that, you get a different notion of how the visual brain functions

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than the one we currently have.

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But the examples that you provide are sort of questioning this notion of a single hierarchy. Yes.

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But does that imply that you believe that there are multiple hierarchies, and if so, how many?

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Yes, it certainly implies there are multiple hierarchies, and there are at least

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three with subdivisions within each.

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But I cannot tell you how many. I think there may be quite a few.

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In fact, there may be quite a few which use the same systems,

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the same hierarchical systems.

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The important thing is, one, is that the single hierarchy is an idea first put

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forward by Hewlin is not true, even for the form system.

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They base their whole theory on the form system, but even in the form system,

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that's not entirely true.

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And the notion that the hierarchies.

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Temporarily involve always activation of V1 first in the other areas is not true.

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And thirdly, that the perceptual hierarchies would obey the latency hierarchy is not true.

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So you've got to find a common denominator. What can that be?

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That denominator is that hierarchies, which of the systems, with our several

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hierarchical systems operating in parallel, Which of these has precedence and

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priority depends upon the task and the stimulus.

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To my knowledge, that explains it all as of the present time.

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But of course, you may have to change it if new facts come into light.

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But now, we could argue that there might be three perspectives on hierarchy, right?

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We might have anatomical hierarchies, physiological hierarchies,

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and functional hierarchies. Yes. And they're not necessarily identical.

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Well, exactly they're not. Right. But in terms of the anatomical hierarchy,

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what would you see as the key pathways when we talk about the visual brain?

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Right. See, there are two different kinds of anatomical hierarchies.

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One is the hierarchy through V1, retinal lateral geniculate nucleus V1 to other visual areas.

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Another hierarchy is, of course, retinal lateral geniculate to the specialized areas and to V1. on.

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But there are other hierarchies.

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I mean, within the anatomical system, people have defined hierarchical systems.

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This is started with Pandya and his colleagues.

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They defined find it as an area that projects to a higher cortical area,

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projects to layer 4 of that cortical area, and a area that recedes from a higher

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cortical area, recedes and puts it into the upper and lower layers.

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So you've got some kind of arrangement like that, which seems to be true everywhere.

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So you can classify areas into a hierarchy with respect to each other.

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But now look at it. Area V1.

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Projects to the lower four of area V5. Hence, you'd say that area V5 is a higher

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area compared to area V1.

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But actually, if you look at the arrival of signals in these areas with fast

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motion, you find that V5 receives them first.

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So that latency hierarchy does not obey the anatomical hierarchy.

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Now if you look at perceptual mechanisms, you find that if it is.

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The latency of arrival of signals into V5 with fast-moving stimuli is 28 to 32 milliseconds,

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it happens to be quite close to the latency of arrival of color signals into

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V4, which is in the sort of 30 to 40 millisecond range.

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Now you would assume that you see color and motion roughly about the same time,

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or if anything, you would see fast motion before you see color.

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Not true. You see color before you see motion by 80 milliseconds.

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So the perceptual hierarchy does not obey the physiological latency hierarchy.

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That is why I have sought to find a system that would that would explain all these hierarchies.

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And the only one I can find is a task and stimulus-dependent one.

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But automatically, what you've advanced was an idea that's actually a parallel

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feed-forward pathway that is not running over the LGN into V1,

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but it runs over the pulvinar directly to higher visual area,

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higher cortical visual area. Yes.

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So would that be then the foundation for the anatomical hierarchy?

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Well, they're all hierarchical. I mean, there are three, at least three.

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One is retina, LGN, V1, and then visual areas.

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One is retina, LGN, directly to the visual areas. One is retina,

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pulvinar, directly to all of these visual areas.

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I suspect that the pulvinar one, and I don't know much about it.

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I know that the anatomy exists. That's well known, it's been known for 50 years almost.

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But I suspect that the pulvinar system may be much more concerned with attentional

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mechanisms, which of course every area has them.

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I mean, attentional mechanisms are involved in every area. So I suspect it is partly that.

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I think there is reasonable evidence to show

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that the capacity of V5 to register consciously the direction of fast-moving

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stimuli is more dependent—in the absence of V1—is more dependent upon the LGN than the pulvinar.

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But now, if we go back to this anatomy and the notion of hierarchy.

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And we take also into account that anatomically, thalamus and cortex are strongly

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and recurrently coupled. Yes.

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This might make the notion of a hierarchy also more complicated,

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because it's not just that thalamus is the driving cortex, cortex in the journeys.

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Absolutely. It's obvious. Absolutely, absolutely.

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But you see, when you look at these, there are massive, massive connections

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from the cortex to the thalamus.

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When you do that, then you have to ask the same questions you asked about arrival

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of signals in the visual area.

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Do all the inputs to the thalamus from the visual areas arrive at the same time?

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And probably not, because these different visual areas complete their perceptual

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tasks at different times.

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So you're right, and this pushes things further still, but it can still be accommodated

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within in the context of what I was saying.

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Okay. So now Murray Sherwood, for instance, in how he describes these cortical-thalamic interactions.

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He's also talking about a very specific bias in how the recurrence between cortex

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and thalamus is defined,

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where lower, what they would call lower cortical areas, would already have collaterals

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projecting into the thalamic nuclei that serve higher-level cortical areas.

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So that might imply that there's an anatomical preference hierarchy,

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if you want, in terms of how signals are propagated through that system.

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Would that still fit your picture or would that be more problematic?

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Well, let me say that I haven't actually really thought about that,

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so I think I'd better not speculate on that. That's good. Okay.

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So here we have an anatomical picture, but in some sense we're not considering

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other subcortical visual areas like the superior colliculus.

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Can you really be sure that the superior colliculus is not another hub in this

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kind an anatomical arrangement. No, it is a hub. It is a hub.

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I mean, every single visible area projects the superior colliculus.

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Now, what it does is not so clear.

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It's a bit... Part of the input to the pulvinar probably comes from the superior

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colliculus, but the projections from the cortex of the superior colliculus may

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be very important guiding eye movements.

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They work one way or another. But you see, there you raise a question which

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was raised this morning up to a point.

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Given that each visible area projects to the superior calculus and projects

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to the LGN and projects to other areas, there must be some selective basis on what's being relayed.

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So how does that work is anyone's guess, but it's a general problem of great

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interest for all cortical things.

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What is the selective process that dictates if indeed there is one?

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Because an alternative would be that an area sends out signals to all the areas

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with which it's connected, and it's up to the receiving areas to sort it out. That's an alternative.

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Both may be working, but it's a major problem.

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Anatomically, imagine you wouldn't know anything about the physiology of this

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system If you would just follow the wires, you would be hard-pressed,

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I think, to identify unambiguously a hierarchical relation.

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Because in some sense, all these structures communicate with each other one way or the other.

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Yes, indeed you're right. And the reason why they did identify a hierarchy,

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this is one thing which has remained from the 1876 discoveries of Salman Hentron.

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The reason why they did come up with a hierarchical doctrine is that the retina

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projected to LGN projects to V1, and they couldn't trace it beyond V1.

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And so they said that this is the hierarchy. And it was entirely out of the picture.

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However, let me just say that when I described that there were multiple projections

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from each point in V1 to visual association cortex.

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I think almost nobody read into it that there must be a function of specialization.

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It's only when I did the physiological experiment.

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But then people may not have thought about it very much.

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But in some sense, so your proposal now was to say, well.

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There are multiple, but with a finite set of path, hierarchically organized

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pathways that structure the visual brain.

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And that would, two of them run over LGM and one run over Povilar.

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Yes, that's your proposal.

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But if you just look at the anatomy as we now discuss it, couldn't you argue

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that from an anatomical perspective, it's actually a non-hierarchical system,

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but it's a physical substrate that could accommodate many possible functional hierarchies?

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That's exactly what I am arguing.

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I mean, it's hierarchical formally in the sense that it includes sequential stages.

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So for all three systems, you've got retina, LGN cortex, or retina-povnar cortex.

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So it's formally that way.

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But functionally, it is as you described it.

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That's what I'm saying. Okay, good. Then I got it.

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So dynamically, okay, we have this idea now.

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We have this rather omnipotent substrate that can, dependent on task,

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as also I call it, configure itself dynamically for certain hierarchical process simulations.

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This is also confirmed by the very specific latencies that you observe,

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as you already described.

00:20:15.218 --> 00:20:17.958
Yes, yes. Like color before motion. Yes, yes, yes.

00:20:18.478 --> 00:20:24.138
But now you can argue, well, some of these latencies might be imposed dynamically

00:20:24.138 --> 00:20:27.078
and others might be really fixed given your substrate.

00:20:27.318 --> 00:20:30.838
I mean, if you have to cross more synapses, it will slow the signal down more

00:20:30.838 --> 00:20:32.818
if you cross less synapses.

00:20:32.838 --> 00:20:40.078
So of these latencies that you look at, which of these are indicating really

00:20:40.078 --> 00:20:41.978
physical limitations of that system?

00:20:42.058 --> 00:20:45.718
And which of those do you believe are more dynamically configured dependable tasks?

00:20:48.339 --> 00:20:54.559
Well, I mean, you have to assume that the latency, the physiological latency now,

00:20:55.259 --> 00:21:00.979
that when an impulse activates an area sufficiently for it to be detected,

00:21:01.219 --> 00:21:07.379
then that it is somehow inducing an activity in that area which does something.

00:21:07.499 --> 00:21:09.399
Now, what it does is not clear, of course not.

00:21:10.419 --> 00:21:13.219
But that's very different, of course, from the perceptual latency,

00:21:13.539 --> 00:21:18.439
and you cannot predict the two. I mean, you can't pick one from the other.

00:21:21.059 --> 00:21:25.599
So you have to factor in another issue here, which is,

00:21:26.259 --> 00:21:31.099
what are the computational requirements within an area, or what are the procedures

00:21:31.099 --> 00:21:36.139
or algorithms or programs or concepts within the area, which it has to go through

00:21:36.139 --> 00:21:39.839
to generate its construct?

00:21:40.099 --> 00:21:46.659
I mean, for generating colors, the brain has got to compare the wavelength composition

00:21:46.659 --> 00:21:48.499
of light coming from many different areas.

00:21:49.419 --> 00:21:54.219
All right? To generate motion, you've got to look at the signals coming from

00:21:54.219 --> 00:21:57.559
two successive points in time.

00:21:59.219 --> 00:22:03.879
And so you've got a variety of different tasks which have different computational

00:22:03.879 --> 00:22:05.739
requirements, which also must dictate.

00:22:06.659 --> 00:22:12.199
Now, there is another factor which compensates up to a point, which is,

00:22:12.259 --> 00:22:22.059
so you talk about the number of cells interposed between the stimulus and the area in the cortex.

00:22:22.299 --> 00:22:27.879
We know that it's quite limited in the retina. You know exactly what they are.

00:22:28.159 --> 00:22:32.499
They must all go through the rods and cones, then the bipolars,

00:22:32.519 --> 00:22:34.819
and then the ganglion with the amacrins in between.

00:22:35.399 --> 00:22:39.059
And the same is true of the LGN. But then you've got another factor,

00:22:39.099 --> 00:22:42.939
which is the diameter of the fibers, the speed with which they deliver their signals.

00:22:43.459 --> 00:22:53.299
And in a way, I would have thought that the fact that the motion system has

00:22:53.299 --> 00:22:56.179
got large diameter fibers, which deliver signals rapidly,

00:22:56.679 --> 00:23:01.099
is possibly, I'm not speculating, is possibly a compensation for the fact that

00:23:01.099 --> 00:23:05.079
the working out of motion is slower than that of color.

00:23:05.939 --> 00:23:09.939
So you've got to factor in that physiology and anatomy as well.

00:23:10.419 --> 00:23:16.359
If you talk about a dynamically defined hierarchical relation,

00:23:16.699 --> 00:23:22.139
let's say from feet forward and top down, you would expect that this would modulate

00:23:22.139 --> 00:23:24.599
the physiological latencies in that system.

00:23:24.899 --> 00:23:28.839
If I expect the stimulus, you would expect that also the physiological processing

00:23:28.839 --> 00:23:30.919
is more efficient, more rapid.

00:23:32.179 --> 00:23:37.259
So how big do you expect that modulation to be in let's say your standard visual detection tasks.

00:23:39.696 --> 00:23:46.096
Well, speculatively, it's got to be inferior to 40 milliseconds.

00:23:47.356 --> 00:23:52.396
Because that's really, below 30 milliseconds, one is very hesitant to talk about

00:23:52.396 --> 00:23:55.336
these odd things, but above 40 milliseconds.

00:23:57.756 --> 00:24:02.136
Because beyond 150 milliseconds, you see everything in good registration. It's finished.

00:24:02.336 --> 00:24:06.816
You're now in the macro-perceptual world. It's that world between 0 and 150

00:24:06.816 --> 00:24:09.616
milliseconds seconds, whereas there is interesting action.

00:24:09.876 --> 00:24:13.336
And so I think it falls somewhere in that range. Okay.

00:24:14.616 --> 00:24:18.716
But now in terms of these hierarchical relations, in some sense, what we're.

00:24:21.736 --> 00:24:26.656
Tacitly including in this description is that, and this also goes back to Hubel

00:24:26.656 --> 00:24:33.556
and Wiesel, is that hierarchy also implies that we integrate towards the visual

00:24:33.556 --> 00:24:36.416
object by combining its components.

00:24:37.296 --> 00:24:41.756
As long as we go from the details to the gestalt, to the overall person.

00:24:43.036 --> 00:24:46.616
Do you believe that that still is a guiding principle? No.

00:24:46.816 --> 00:24:53.656
Okay. I would say that that is only half true and therefore not true.

00:24:54.376 --> 00:25:00.876
So the gestalt people said that a complex object is other than the sum of its parts.

00:25:02.956 --> 00:25:09.716
So, a line is considered to be a building block of forms.

00:25:09.956 --> 00:25:15.536
It is as if lines cannot have an independent existence of their own as forms.

00:25:15.916 --> 00:25:20.476
It's as if a line is always going to be used to get somewhere, and that's not the case.

00:25:20.556 --> 00:25:24.796
As the artists will tell you, many artists, from Barnett Newman,

00:25:25.176 --> 00:25:30.596
Olga Ratanova, Kazimir and so many others, used the line as a principal element

00:25:30.596 --> 00:25:35.076
in their paintings, and these stood in their own right as forms.

00:25:35.876 --> 00:25:41.816
Secondly, I think that it is the assumption that it's a building block system

00:25:41.816 --> 00:25:48.956
does not take account of the fact that there may be other—a building block system starting in V1,

00:25:49.056 --> 00:25:52.636
which is what the assumption mainly is—that there may be other inputs which

00:25:52.636 --> 00:25:57.076
do not go through the orientational system at all.

00:25:58.088 --> 00:26:04.808
That maybe a face is not built up from oriented lines, although oriented lines may contribute to it.

00:26:05.848 --> 00:26:10.588
And thirdly, I think that if you look at orientation selective cells,

00:26:10.708 --> 00:26:15.508
you find them in V1, you find them in V2, you find them in V3, you find them in V3a.

00:26:16.048 --> 00:26:21.968
And if you look at V3 and V2 and V3a, apart from change in receptive field between

00:26:21.968 --> 00:26:26.108
V2 and V3 and V3a, their properties are fairly similar.

00:26:26.308 --> 00:26:30.088
You might find differences, but they're fairly similar to at least casual observation.

00:26:31.208 --> 00:26:36.488
Now, is it conceivable that the brain just keeps on repeating this?

00:26:36.568 --> 00:26:41.368
Is it conceivable that the input from the LGN may not contribute to the properties

00:26:41.368 --> 00:26:43.008
of these orientation-collective cells?

00:26:43.508 --> 00:26:48.388
See, it's not a question that we are getting the wrong answers.

00:26:48.468 --> 00:26:53.928
It's a question that we're not taking account of other inputs which may modulate things.

00:26:54.088 --> 00:26:59.368
I mean, there must be a reason for having a big input from the LGN to these areas.

00:27:00.148 --> 00:27:07.088
And it is possible that they build up orientation selectivity. In fact, they do.

00:27:07.428 --> 00:27:12.648
Because Nikos Logosites and his colleagues in Germany showed that if you ablate

00:27:12.648 --> 00:27:19.028
V1 completely in the macaque monkey, you still get very good orientation selective cells in V2 and V3.

00:27:19.268 --> 00:27:24.088
Now, they are more sluggish in their response, but they are very respectable.

00:27:25.608 --> 00:27:33.888
So it's a question of then asking, well, what role do these inputs play either in building up,

00:27:34.655 --> 00:27:39.455
differences in the orientation profiles, or in building up different shapes completely.

00:27:40.115 --> 00:27:43.175
But then you described one experiment where you looked explicitly,

00:27:43.655 --> 00:27:50.255
where you used its primitive shapes to either build a house as a stimulus or a face. Yes, yes.

00:27:50.435 --> 00:27:54.835
Right? You then compared the connection between these two classes of stimulus. Yes, yes.

00:27:54.995 --> 00:28:00.955
And that showed that you get the input into V1,

00:28:01.115 --> 00:28:05.755
an area specialized for faces and houses, such as the fusiform face area and

00:28:05.755 --> 00:28:10.215
the hippocampal place area, the latencies are identical.

00:28:10.495 --> 00:28:15.815
And the deflection in terms of strength around 50 femto-Teslas is also identical.

00:28:17.235 --> 00:28:24.155
So now unless you posit the notion that these are supernumerary ineffectual

00:28:24.155 --> 00:28:27.195
inputs, you have got to take into account what they do.

00:28:27.655 --> 00:28:32.115
And there are interesting things. For example, you can get patients who are

00:28:32.115 --> 00:28:38.415
able to recognize line drawings,

00:28:38.775 --> 00:28:42.915
but cannot recognize the combination that these line drawings produce.

00:28:43.935 --> 00:28:49.375
By the same time, you get patients who can recognize the photograph of a building

00:28:49.375 --> 00:28:51.515
or something, but can't recognize the line drawing.

00:28:52.735 --> 00:28:58.575
So, to me, the question is wide open at the moment.

00:28:59.115 --> 00:29:02.675
But now, let's speculate a bit on that, right?

00:29:02.755 --> 00:29:07.135
Because what's interesting here is that in this experiment where we do house

00:29:07.135 --> 00:29:13.155
versus face detection, we actually do a tiny manipulation of the elements in

00:29:13.155 --> 00:29:15.015
this indroid that makes a stimulus.

00:29:15.875 --> 00:29:21.515
If you now say, okay, this is a fusiform face area, we do see a significant

00:29:21.515 --> 00:29:24.375
response in fMRI, right? This is in humans.

00:29:25.235 --> 00:29:30.215
How many transformations have taken place if the detection of house or face

00:29:30.215 --> 00:29:32.115
or that distinction would happen in that area?

00:29:32.195 --> 00:29:35.875
How many transformations, as you mentioned, have been taking place if you go

00:29:35.875 --> 00:29:38.795
from the retina to this specific area? Okay.

00:29:39.275 --> 00:29:45.835
The minimum number of transformations in the system that goes directly from

00:29:45.835 --> 00:29:51.495
the LGN to these areas must be the retina plus the LGN plus one synapse.

00:29:53.655 --> 00:29:59.455
The minimum, if you take it as being routed through V1, is of course a lot more,

00:29:59.535 --> 00:30:04.055
because you go to V1 and V2 and V3 and then to the fusiform.

00:30:04.695 --> 00:30:09.515
By the way, I don't think anybody has actually seen a direct input from V1 or

00:30:09.515 --> 00:30:12.255
V2 to the fusiform face area, but I'm not so sure.

00:30:13.315 --> 00:30:17.455
So you've got a different number of synapses.

00:30:18.686 --> 00:30:26.006
And the typical signal for seeing faces is a negativity at 170 milliseconds

00:30:26.006 --> 00:30:27.686
after stimulus presentation.

00:30:29.046 --> 00:30:35.466
But this does not mean to say that you ignore the stimulus that comes at 100,

00:30:35.646 --> 00:30:38.646
the deflection that comes at 30 to 40 milliseconds.

00:30:39.166 --> 00:30:44.686
I mean, let us suppose that there is a certain configuration which primes the

00:30:44.686 --> 00:30:48.146
fusiform face area, saying that this is a face, right?

00:30:48.686 --> 00:30:51.766
Without working out the details, well, that's a very significant contribution.

00:30:52.406 --> 00:30:55.566
What I'm objecting to is that I have not read a single paper,

00:30:55.606 --> 00:31:02.106
I don't think, not a single paper on face physiology which does not assume that

00:31:02.106 --> 00:31:05.686
it all starts with the orientation selective cells of V1.

00:31:05.926 --> 00:31:09.926
Now, there's even more simple than that.

00:31:10.146 --> 00:31:18.526
People have supposed that cells in V4, There are cells in V4 which care about curvature.

00:31:18.646 --> 00:31:23.206
They also care about color, and they are separate from cells which are uninterested in color.

00:31:23.326 --> 00:31:31.426
Now, nobody has shown physiologically how you transform orientation-selective

00:31:31.426 --> 00:31:33.406
cells into curvature-detecting cells.

00:31:33.906 --> 00:31:37.306
They have shown it computationally, which is a different matter.

00:31:37.886 --> 00:31:43.606
But you see, so they call V4 a curvature detector.

00:31:44.846 --> 00:31:50.246
Is this justified? I would wonder. I mean, the acceptance angles of orientation

00:31:50.246 --> 00:31:53.746
selective cells in V4, I've measured them, and others have also done,

00:31:53.866 --> 00:31:59.806
is much wider than the acceptance angles of orientation selective cells in V1.

00:31:59.926 --> 00:32:04.906
And therefore, you can see that they could probably respond better to curvatures.

00:32:06.886 --> 00:32:10.946
Ultimately, I mean, you have to, if you are going to say that,

00:32:10.986 --> 00:32:13.786
look, it all depends upon the orientation selective cells of V1,

00:32:13.786 --> 00:32:18.486
you must be able to demonstrate convincingly, physiologically and functionally.

00:32:18.606 --> 00:32:21.426
And that is missing. All the rest, it's all an assumption.

00:32:21.746 --> 00:32:26.526
Right. So would you in some sense say that the visual brain.

00:32:28.102 --> 00:32:35.342
It's highly tuned to first respond to the gestalt of the stimulus as opposed to its detail.

00:32:35.602 --> 00:32:37.562
I think with faces it is, yes.

00:32:37.962 --> 00:32:42.842
And also with facial expressions. I mean, if you consider a medulla to be part

00:32:42.842 --> 00:32:49.882
of the visible brain, which in a sense it is, I mean, it responds very rapidly to fear on a face.

00:32:50.062 --> 00:32:54.902
And by all accounts, before you get any responses from view one.

00:32:54.902 --> 00:32:59.542
So yes, I would say that that is the correct way probably of putting it to the

00:32:59.542 --> 00:33:05.262
gestalt, but the gestalt being understood as being other than the sum of the parts.

00:33:05.802 --> 00:33:09.522
Absolutely. Yes. But then the encoding of that is still a mystery.

00:33:09.882 --> 00:33:15.182
The encoding of that is a big, big mystery, and what the further input from

00:33:15.182 --> 00:33:20.482
V1, V2 plays in building up the final profile is also a mystery.

00:33:20.862 --> 00:33:25.162
And no one's saying they do not contribute. but they do, but how is not known. Right.

00:33:25.962 --> 00:33:30.002
Well, we think we have a solution to that. It's called the temporal population code.

00:33:31.262 --> 00:33:35.922
But I can describe it to you outside of this interview, but the basic idea is

00:33:35.922 --> 00:33:39.082
basically that if you look at volumes of cortical cells,

00:33:40.082 --> 00:33:45.922
they perform space-to-time transformations, like you drive the cells locally,

00:33:46.062 --> 00:33:48.642
but they're all laterally coupled. It's like throwing a stone.

00:33:50.293 --> 00:33:54.033
No, we'll create these waves rippling through the pond. If you just take the

00:33:54.033 --> 00:33:56.433
spatial average of those waves, you get a temporal trace.

00:33:56.633 --> 00:34:00.113
And we have shown in this temporal trace can give you high quality,

00:34:00.353 --> 00:34:04.293
high resolution detection of complex stimuli including phases. I see.

00:34:04.853 --> 00:34:09.573
Okay, we can talk about this in more detail later. This is done in computational

00:34:09.573 --> 00:34:10.333
media? Yes, in computational.

00:34:12.253 --> 00:34:16.433
We need to look for physiological validation. But there are some hints coming

00:34:16.433 --> 00:34:21.093
now from the optical image literature that gives us the kind of dynamic signatures

00:34:21.093 --> 00:34:24.213
in these cortical maps that is consistent with the full concept.

00:34:25.053 --> 00:34:29.453
So this idea of gestalt encoding, I think, is key. Nationally,

00:34:29.453 --> 00:34:31.733
I think there are some roots into that.

00:34:32.573 --> 00:34:43.993
But are we agreed that the Gestalt encoding is not synonymous with bringing

00:34:43.993 --> 00:34:46.173
various bits of stimulus together?

00:34:46.393 --> 00:34:50.653
We're agreed on that, okay. Absolutely. So we may have to jump out of standard

00:34:50.653 --> 00:34:55.213
sequential hierarchical thinking and go back to the perceptron in the… Yes, yes.

00:34:55.433 --> 00:34:58.773
Or the pandemonium model of self-reference, right? Yes.

00:34:59.573 --> 00:35:03.653
So, okay, so we have an idea now of physical hierarchy.

00:35:03.833 --> 00:35:10.533
We have a view on how this supports a plurality of functional hierarchies in

00:35:10.533 --> 00:35:18.193
which latencies of the signal transduction feedforward or popdown can be actively regulated.

00:35:18.793 --> 00:35:21.613
Indeed, the important consequence, as you already pointed out,

00:35:21.793 --> 00:35:27.513
is now we have an asynchronous system that has also a highly variable expression. expression, right?

00:35:28.053 --> 00:35:31.933
So is the asynchrony a feature or a bug?

00:35:33.493 --> 00:35:36.553
No, it's a feature. It's a fundamental feature.

00:35:36.993 --> 00:35:40.253
How does it help the processing? How does it help in, let's say,

00:35:40.333 --> 00:35:45.173
the detection of a face or the emotional expression of a face or linking a name to that face?

00:35:46.313 --> 00:35:52.493
Well, I mean, I'm not sure that asynchrony itself helps the detection of a face,

00:35:52.493 --> 00:35:57.613
But the asynchronous perception of faces and facial expressions and colors and

00:35:57.613 --> 00:36:02.273
motion has got an advantage to it.

00:36:03.333 --> 00:36:11.073
You see, what is the current theory of how the visual brain works?

00:36:11.313 --> 00:36:15.193
The visual brain used to be thought to be hierarchical, and then they're accepted.

00:36:16.274 --> 00:36:21.574
Grudgingly at first that it was parallel, and now I think everything is combined

00:36:21.574 --> 00:36:23.694
together and then you get a recognition.

00:36:24.054 --> 00:36:27.354
No allowance has been made for the fact that maybe you recognize individual

00:36:27.354 --> 00:36:28.374
attributes separately.

00:36:29.754 --> 00:36:35.194
So the systems do not, if they're operating asynchronously, they do not wait

00:36:35.194 --> 00:36:36.674
for each other to finish their task.

00:36:36.894 --> 00:36:39.254
And what are the advantages of that? There are probabilistic advantages.

00:36:39.794 --> 00:36:44.494
If you can identify an object, which let's just take three attributes,

00:36:44.494 --> 00:36:45.554
with form, color, and motion.

00:36:46.694 --> 00:36:51.614
If I put a gun to your head and say, identify this for me as quickly as you

00:36:51.614 --> 00:36:57.014
can, you are at a great advantage if you can identify it by using one of the

00:36:57.014 --> 00:36:59.294
three attributes alone without waiting for them to be combined.

00:37:00.154 --> 00:37:04.474
If I compare you to another person also with a gun to his head,

00:37:04.574 --> 00:37:08.994
but who has to combine all three to identify it, then he's going to be the loser.

00:37:10.714 --> 00:37:18.754
So it is, And I suspect that this is why evolution tolerated an asynchronous

00:37:18.754 --> 00:37:22.254
system in which one system of the brain does not wait for the other.

00:37:23.094 --> 00:37:28.674
However, in the end, it has to come together in direction, in recognizing the face.

00:37:28.974 --> 00:37:32.014
In the end, it all has to come together.

00:37:32.194 --> 00:37:35.254
But in the end, what are we talking about? We're talking about the difference

00:37:35.254 --> 00:37:37.874
between, as I say, a micro world and a macro world.

00:37:37.914 --> 00:37:41.554
We're talking in the sub-second level.

00:37:41.874 --> 00:37:45.294
All right so um it has

00:37:45.294 --> 00:37:48.414
to come together and this is one of the big mysteries of how

00:37:48.414 --> 00:37:51.334
i've compared it today to the

00:37:51.334 --> 00:37:54.814
difference between the world of quantum mechanics and gravitational physics

00:37:54.814 --> 00:38:03.214
these two are separate worlds how do you bring them together and i don't know

00:38:03.214 --> 00:38:08.034
the answer to it okay but then so the one that we have these as you call these

00:38:08.034 --> 00:38:10.494
micro perceptual domains or work,

00:38:10.514 --> 00:38:13.394
let's talk about micro-conscious domains, right?

00:38:15.134 --> 00:38:19.734
These will all have their intrinsic time constants, which might be modulated in some way.

00:38:20.594 --> 00:38:22.774
And then this leads to their asynchronous

00:38:22.774 --> 00:38:26.574
operation. How many of these micro-domains would you distinguish?

00:38:28.472 --> 00:38:34.152
I think if you were to press me, I would say that there's almost an infinite number.

00:38:34.772 --> 00:38:43.732
I mean, certainly ones for color, for motion, for depths, and for faces and

00:38:43.732 --> 00:38:45.832
facial expressions, a number of different things.

00:38:46.232 --> 00:38:57.352
I think that the, by the way, if you have two percepts which you perceive at different times.

00:38:58.472 --> 00:39:05.512
You then are quite safe in concluding that they are processed by different groups of cells.

00:39:06.632 --> 00:39:10.152
But the converse is not true. If you perceive two different attributes at the

00:39:10.152 --> 00:39:13.612
same time, you cannot say they are processed by the same cell,

00:39:13.712 --> 00:39:17.392
because they could be the same, but two groups finish their processing at a different time.

00:39:17.552 --> 00:39:20.212
So I don't know the answer, but the answer is it could be many.

00:39:21.272 --> 00:39:25.492
Infinite is perhaps pushing it, but it could be quite few. This has an implication, right?

00:39:25.492 --> 00:39:30.192
Because that means that this conditional segmentation of the visual brain in,

00:39:30.252 --> 00:39:35.252
let's say, orientation, shape, motion, color, disparity,

00:39:35.892 --> 00:39:42.352
might be a bit of an optimistic fragmentation in just a few core domains,

00:39:42.532 --> 00:39:49.852
while below that you might have many micro segmentations of a visual stimulus.

00:39:50.012 --> 00:39:57.092
Yes, yes, yes, you can have, yes. Yes, I mean, if you, so you want to,

00:39:57.172 --> 00:40:00.692
one of the functions of the brain is to gain knowledge about the world in order

00:40:00.692 --> 00:40:02.372
to take action. Knowledge comes first.

00:40:03.872 --> 00:40:08.712
You would grasp at any item that gives you information, so you could,

00:40:08.812 --> 00:40:13.552
indeed, exactly as you say, you could, below that level, have a segmentation.

00:40:14.352 --> 00:40:20.552
But a segmentation must have a functional rationale. or rationale and the functional

00:40:20.552 --> 00:40:23.052
rationale is the identification of something,

00:40:24.079 --> 00:40:30.019
Right. But now, would you also allow that a microdomain could combine,

00:40:30.279 --> 00:40:31.319
let's say, color and motion?

00:40:31.539 --> 00:40:35.719
Could that also be a microdomain, a microprocessor domain? No, that would go macro.

00:40:36.079 --> 00:40:39.259
Okay. That would be macro for me. So it was within one of these?

00:40:39.779 --> 00:40:41.399
Yes, yes, yes. All right.

00:40:42.459 --> 00:40:47.259
But now, would you… But by the way, I think that there is something which is

00:40:47.259 --> 00:40:51.459
worth saying here, which if I may just divert into art for a second.

00:40:51.459 --> 00:40:57.579
And I don't know the solution to it, but you see, if you look at a work of art,

00:40:57.599 --> 00:40:59.639
let us take a very complicated work of art.

00:41:00.099 --> 00:41:04.239
Let us take the music lesson by Vermeer, something which I want to go with the

00:41:04.239 --> 00:41:05.839
pearl earring. Everybody's familiar with that.

00:41:06.939 --> 00:41:12.899
Now, there are certain, what you might call segments or details in that.

00:41:12.959 --> 00:41:16.139
There's the earring, there's the mouth, there's the eyes. There are very expressive

00:41:16.139 --> 00:41:18.059
eyes, very expressive lips and so on and so forth.

00:41:18.639 --> 00:41:21.199
And then the earring and the forehead head and the way she looks.

00:41:21.599 --> 00:41:23.459
But then there's the entire picture.

00:41:23.939 --> 00:41:28.059
And the entire picture is again, in Gestalt's sense, the entire picture is other

00:41:28.059 --> 00:41:29.139
than the sum of the parts.

00:41:29.879 --> 00:41:32.639
And so that's what I'm trying to say.

00:41:33.559 --> 00:41:38.919
Somebody asked me the other day in London last week.

00:41:39.079 --> 00:41:45.359
He said, well, you know, I see no ambiguity in the music lesson.

00:41:45.459 --> 00:41:48.939
I've painted it and I've studied it very carefully. I said, well, are you an artist?

00:41:49.219 --> 00:41:53.619
He said, yes. And what have you studied? He studied the tablecloth, you see.

00:41:54.279 --> 00:41:59.119
He's forgotten about the painting, which is something else. So there it is in

00:41:59.119 --> 00:42:03.539
another example for an artistic world in which you've got segmentation and subsegmentation.

00:42:04.799 --> 00:42:08.079
But now, to question this issue of asynchrony.

00:42:10.959 --> 00:42:14.719
Which, of course, from a computational perspective, is massively challenging,

00:42:14.719 --> 00:42:17.499
because we're not used to think in terms of asynchronous systems.

00:42:17.499 --> 00:42:18.599
Yes. As you also mentioned.

00:42:18.699 --> 00:42:22.639
Yes. So computers are strongly synchronized, and they're clocked,

00:42:22.639 --> 00:42:24.179
and we tightly control these things.

00:42:24.399 --> 00:42:26.899
Yes, yes. Now, you could argue that in the brain, you can,

00:42:27.680 --> 00:42:31.220
we have some sort of a hybrid synchronous asynchronous system because we have

00:42:31.220 --> 00:42:35.500
a lot of oscillatory patterns that seem to regulate the overall fiber rate of

00:42:35.500 --> 00:42:39.300
neurons right typical example would be let's say this data gamma coding you

00:42:39.300 --> 00:42:41.320
might see where tata gives you like a slow,

00:42:41.960 --> 00:42:46.500
oscillatory response that supports some sort of selection that not everything

00:42:46.500 --> 00:42:50.080
responds all the time but only your subset of cells that have the strongest

00:42:50.080 --> 00:42:55.480
drive right so would would that satisfy

00:42:55.740 --> 00:42:59.620
also your requirements of how am I going to integrate over these asynchronous.

00:43:01.400 --> 00:43:02.300
Microproceptual... Yes.

00:43:02.540 --> 00:43:07.220
Now, that is the most obvious way that I see at the moment. And actually,

00:43:07.260 --> 00:43:08.180
I don't see an alternative.

00:43:08.360 --> 00:43:11.900
Look, the fact is the binding problem has been studied for 35 years,

00:43:12.020 --> 00:43:18.420
and nobody today, and please contradict me if I'm wrong, nobody today can tell us how binding occurs.

00:43:19.240 --> 00:43:22.660
We don't know. so I think one

00:43:22.660 --> 00:43:27.760
possibility is exactly as you put it that two so let's say the hippocampus and

00:43:27.760 --> 00:43:31.340
the seter rhythms or gamma rhythms acts as a coincidence detector saying two

00:43:31.340 --> 00:43:34.620
events occur at the same time and it's extremely interesting from this point

00:43:34.620 --> 00:43:38.720
of view to realize that visual signals can reach the hippocampus as quickly

00:43:38.720 --> 00:43:41.880
as they reach the visual cortex now I did not know that until quite recently,

00:43:42.780 --> 00:43:49.480
so let us suppose that the color and the direction of motion occur within the

00:43:49.480 --> 00:43:55.720
same theta cycle, then the brain might accept it as being highly probable that they are linked.

00:43:56.460 --> 00:44:00.760
So that's the sort of way I'm thinking about it, but I'm not sure I've solved

00:44:00.760 --> 00:44:02.720
it or I've demonstrated it. Of course not.

00:44:03.160 --> 00:44:07.020
So are you in that sense suggesting that being with hippocampus is the top-level

00:44:07.020 --> 00:44:10.440
processing structure in the visual brain?

00:44:10.880 --> 00:44:14.840
No, I wouldn't call it top-level processing structure, but a top-level structure

00:44:15.120 --> 00:44:18.820
which aids in processing and perception of things coming together.

00:44:19.280 --> 00:44:26.260
At least in terms of generating, let's say, a memory-dependent painting, in this case.

00:44:28.095 --> 00:44:34.335
Okay, so now we have a view on the visual brain, which in some sense is also

00:44:34.335 --> 00:44:36.855
a very challenging view.

00:44:36.975 --> 00:44:40.615
Because you have now questioned a lot of these things we thought were set in

00:44:40.615 --> 00:44:42.095
stone almost, right? Yes, yes.

00:44:42.295 --> 00:44:46.495
This is definitely that. It's not been easy for me either. Right, exactly.

00:44:48.795 --> 00:44:52.295
But you came to this via the study of color.

00:44:52.635 --> 00:44:58.735
Yes. And now color in itself is also actually way more confusing and challenging

00:44:58.735 --> 00:45:01.035
than you might naively think it is,

00:45:01.115 --> 00:45:07.555
because color is actually one of the first elements of perceptual processing

00:45:07.555 --> 00:45:11.575
that really tells you where he constructs the percept. It's not given.

00:45:12.115 --> 00:45:15.555
Is that also why you went for the study of color? Was that the main consideration?

00:45:16.595 --> 00:45:20.195
If you want to know the history of that, it's not an uninteresting history.

00:45:20.195 --> 00:45:26.855
I was completely dazzled by the work and the papers of Huber and Wiesel.

00:45:27.855 --> 00:45:31.835
And they were studying primary visual cortex, as were most people.

00:45:32.035 --> 00:45:37.795
And I liked the space to myself, so I thought I'd look at the visual association cortex.

00:45:38.035 --> 00:45:43.695
And I thought that I would end up doing physiology to prove them right in this

00:45:43.695 --> 00:45:44.915
endless hierarchical process.

00:45:45.035 --> 00:45:48.695
But everything I did showed that it was a parallel processing system that looked

00:45:48.695 --> 00:45:49.515
at different attributes.

00:45:50.195 --> 00:45:58.255
Now, I had no idea at all that I would find something in an area which is specialized

00:45:58.255 --> 00:46:00.955
for color. Indeed, this was heartily contested at the beginning.

00:46:01.415 --> 00:46:07.855
But I nevertheless used stimuli of color, of motion, and form as being the three

00:46:07.855 --> 00:46:13.215
sort of attributes I could think about, and which showed up the specialization for color.

00:46:14.255 --> 00:46:17.755
Now, as I say, it was disputed at the beginning, but it's now confirmed.

00:46:17.755 --> 00:46:22.875
Confirmed, but the color you see takes you into a totally different world.

00:46:22.995 --> 00:46:29.135
First of all, the color does not exist in the world outside.

00:46:29.895 --> 00:46:34.055
Light electromagnetic radiation has got no color. It's constructed by the brain.

00:46:34.455 --> 00:46:40.235
But much of the study of color and color psychophysics in particular was in

00:46:40.235 --> 00:46:44.575
fact based on the Newtonian system, that there's a relationship between between

00:46:44.575 --> 00:46:47.015
the wavelength and composition of the light, a direct relationship,

00:46:47.235 --> 00:46:48.155
and the color perceived.

00:46:49.175 --> 00:46:52.075
Edwin Land came to me and convinced me that this was not the case.

00:46:52.215 --> 00:47:00.215
And the whole system of obtaining information about the color system and the

00:47:00.215 --> 00:47:03.495
whole way of studying it that I used since then changed.

00:47:03.695 --> 00:47:06.415
It was no longer just reduction streams, small spots of light,

00:47:06.495 --> 00:47:09.715
but complex natural scenes. And...

00:47:13.016 --> 00:47:18.896
I mean, when I first described the color specialization at Oxford in 1972,

00:47:19.636 --> 00:47:22.896
David Hubel came up to me and said, you discover the philosopher's stone.

00:47:23.216 --> 00:47:28.736
And in a way, that is what opened up, not that comment, but the study of color

00:47:28.736 --> 00:47:35.716
opened up for me the rest of my career in terms of my interest in philosophy

00:47:35.716 --> 00:47:37.736
and art and things like that.

00:47:37.796 --> 00:47:42.856
Because philosophy is the world of knowledge. I mean, many philosophers have

00:47:42.856 --> 00:47:47.756
actually concentrated on color and of how you get information about the world in color.

00:47:48.156 --> 00:47:51.296
And, of course, Schopenhauer wrote a book about it, you know.

00:47:52.276 --> 00:47:57.356
And then you, it is not a big jump from that to the world of art thing.

00:47:57.416 --> 00:47:59.516
What kind of knowledge do you get from the world of art?

00:47:59.796 --> 00:48:06.176
So it was, it had, for me in my career, a significance beyond its demonstration

00:48:06.176 --> 00:48:07.696
as a specialized system.

00:48:08.676 --> 00:48:14.276
And from the point of view of physiology, I think it convinced me,

00:48:14.356 --> 00:48:17.316
and it's convinced some, but I don't think enough people yet,

00:48:17.496 --> 00:48:24.296
that the operations used by the brain to construct colors are vastly different

00:48:24.296 --> 00:48:27.516
from what you would predict from the retinal mechanism. Vastly different.

00:48:27.856 --> 00:48:30.796
That you've got huge surrounds, you've got to work out ratios,

00:48:30.976 --> 00:48:34.996
that working out ratios is an inherited concept, that there's no appeal against it.

00:48:34.996 --> 00:48:40.636
That cognitively, you see, I mean, if you go to Hyde Park in London at dawn

00:48:40.636 --> 00:48:44.396
or at dusk and look at the leaves, they look green.

00:48:44.456 --> 00:48:48.296
Although I know, because I've measured it, they reflect more red light.

00:48:48.456 --> 00:48:53.076
Now, this knowledge does not make me see the leaves as green.

00:48:53.176 --> 00:48:57.616
So it introduces a host of interesting issues and opens up a vast new world,

00:48:57.676 --> 00:48:58.776
which is of enormous interest.

00:48:59.909 --> 00:49:04.529
In your opinion, this problem of color perception is solved.

00:49:04.849 --> 00:49:10.149
Can you say, look, we can really explain how color perception and the invariance

00:49:10.149 --> 00:49:11.289
of color perception works?

00:49:11.629 --> 00:49:17.329
I think we can explain it perceptually, but I don't think we can explain it physiologically.

00:49:17.509 --> 00:49:24.969
What can we say about it physiologically? We can say that it must involve at

00:49:24.969 --> 00:49:29.249
least two receptors which have got different spectral sensitivities,

00:49:29.909 --> 00:49:34.609
It certainly involves the projection from the retina to the LGN to the primary

00:49:34.609 --> 00:49:36.709
visceral cortex to V2 to V4.

00:49:37.849 --> 00:49:42.429
That some operation takes place in V4, which compares the wavelength composition

00:49:42.429 --> 00:49:46.889
of light coming from one area and that coming from surrounding areas to build up ratios.

00:49:47.109 --> 00:49:54.569
That if you damage V4, you end up with a patient who's got cerebral achromatopsia,

00:49:54.629 --> 00:49:56.129
in other words, cannot see the world in colors.

00:49:56.129 --> 00:50:02.829
But some of these patients can actually discriminate between objects on the

00:50:02.829 --> 00:50:04.729
basis of wavelength reflected.

00:50:05.009 --> 00:50:07.489
Therefore, they get a completely wrong impression about the world.

00:50:08.269 --> 00:50:10.249
That is the full stop.

00:50:11.129 --> 00:50:18.609
How the brain implements that, how the different cells collaborate to take ratios,

00:50:18.829 --> 00:50:20.709
etc., is not at all clear.

00:50:20.949 --> 00:50:24.729
There's one other thing you can say about this kind of system is that hues,

00:50:24.729 --> 00:50:29.289
as opposed to colors, the shades of color are almost strictly a function of V4.

00:50:31.549 --> 00:50:37.249
But to do that, you require quite an elaborate system, which I don't think anyone

00:50:37.249 --> 00:50:39.029
is yet competent enough to do.

00:50:39.129 --> 00:50:43.169
You require to record from a multitude of cells simultaneously, single cells.

00:50:43.509 --> 00:50:47.109
And I don't think ABT is up to the task yet. But that area is not known.

00:50:47.389 --> 00:50:52.089
Okay. But do you think you can understand color perception reception.

00:50:53.721 --> 00:50:57.701
Decoupled from form. Yes. Okay. Yes.

00:50:58.241 --> 00:51:05.681
I can understand it formally in the sense that color requires a comparison.

00:51:07.121 --> 00:51:10.781
Color is actually much simpler than form. People think form is the simplest,

00:51:10.901 --> 00:51:13.341
but color is the simplest. In fact, people think the motion is the simplest,

00:51:13.441 --> 00:51:14.641
but color is the simplest.

00:51:14.761 --> 00:51:16.921
You have got four degrees of

00:51:16.921 --> 00:51:22.981
freedom, three wave bands, but you could have two, 2, and the luminosity.

00:51:23.461 --> 00:51:28.241
So what you do, you simply look at the wavelength composition of light coming

00:51:28.241 --> 00:51:33.021
from one surface, or that coming from surrounding surfaces, and you work out a ratio.

00:51:33.141 --> 00:51:36.561
That ratio never changes given a certain situation.

00:51:36.781 --> 00:51:44.281
In other words, if I'm looking at a given scene from a given spot in Hyde Park in London,

00:51:44.541 --> 00:51:48.261
and I'm looking at a given leaf, which is stationary,

00:51:48.421 --> 00:51:55.521
so it's pushing it a bit, you work out, your brain works out the amount of long,

00:51:55.581 --> 00:52:00.701
middle, and short wave light reflected from that green leaf in relation to the

00:52:00.701 --> 00:52:02.981
amount of long, middle, and short wave light reflected from the surround.

00:52:04.361 --> 00:52:09.721
And you can carry on looking at that at dawn and at dusk and at noon when the

00:52:09.721 --> 00:52:12.961
wavelength composition changes all the time, but that ratio will never change.

00:52:13.381 --> 00:52:18.701
So color is one of the prime examples of how the brain stabilizes the world

00:52:18.701 --> 00:52:20.901
to obtain information about it.

00:52:21.821 --> 00:52:28.981
Of course, the hue changes, the shade of color changes, but the color category does not change.

00:52:29.381 --> 00:52:33.521
So that, I think, is fairly well evident.

00:52:33.661 --> 00:52:36.681
So what does this mean? It means that the brain has got to compare,

00:52:36.921 --> 00:52:41.361
simultaneously Simultaneously in time, characteristics in terms of wavelength

00:52:41.361 --> 00:52:45.341
composition deflected from two surfaces. Memory changes.

00:52:45.901 --> 00:52:51.341
Form is slightly different. Form, it has got to work out the relationship of

00:52:51.341 --> 00:52:53.161
individual parts to one another,

00:52:53.941 --> 00:53:00.181
which and then has got to work out how, if you view it from different angles

00:53:00.181 --> 00:53:02.141
and different distances,

00:53:02.641 --> 00:53:07.081
that maintains its constancy, which is, in fact, also the question that the

00:53:07.081 --> 00:53:09.681
cubists, early Antical cubists, were asking.

00:53:10.021 --> 00:53:14.861
So that becomes a much, much more difficult system. Now people have shown, actually,

00:53:15.041 --> 00:53:20.701
that there are sometimes situations in which objects can be viewed from different

00:53:20.701 --> 00:53:25.881
angles and lead to activity in the same part of the brain.

00:53:26.001 --> 00:53:29.681
I think some people in America have done that. But the detailed mechanisms are still not clear.

00:53:31.057 --> 00:53:35.277
So, here we have it, right? We have a picture of the visual brain.

00:53:35.377 --> 00:53:37.217
It's more complex than initially thought.

00:53:37.997 --> 00:53:41.517
But now, with that picture in mind, you then turn it all into art.

00:53:41.757 --> 00:53:44.437
Yes. Why did you make that step?

00:53:45.417 --> 00:53:51.937
Well, I made that step partly because I was always interested in going to art

00:53:51.937 --> 00:53:54.417
museums and looking at things which raised questions in my mind,

00:53:54.477 --> 00:53:59.137
partly because I also thought to myself, look, I've been paid a lot of money in grants.

00:54:00.877 --> 00:54:07.977
And what can I say about what happens in our brains when we look at some of

00:54:07.977 --> 00:54:13.017
the most prized things in our culture, namely works of art, which all societies have produced?

00:54:13.857 --> 00:54:20.677
And then when I looked more into this question, I began to discover that these people are my friends.

00:54:20.917 --> 00:54:24.417
I mean, the artists, they have been pursuing the same questions as me.

00:54:24.597 --> 00:54:27.717
They've looked at Joseph Albers. He got it all wrong, but he asked questions

00:54:27.717 --> 00:54:29.777
about color. as is Plato.

00:54:30.757 --> 00:54:36.437
And the Cubists ask about form, the kinetic artists ask questions about motion,

00:54:36.537 --> 00:54:39.877
and they reach conclusions, which we reach many years after them.

00:54:40.677 --> 00:54:46.057
And the question of modulation of form by color, which Cézanne asked.

00:54:46.277 --> 00:54:56.197
But then there are other things. I mean, my view is, I know that there's a definitional problem,

00:54:56.337 --> 00:54:59.877
but my view is that all art is an abstraction, because what you do is,

00:54:59.897 --> 00:55:04.317
for example, you take a face and you abstract an expression which then applies to all faces.

00:55:05.097 --> 00:55:11.997
So the question is, how does an artist obtain knowledge and how does he impart it?

00:55:12.337 --> 00:55:19.717
And it's a tremendous, tremendous talent. And, you know, there's one painting,

00:55:19.997 --> 00:55:26.437
the One de Perea by Velazquez, when it was first exhibited in Rome in the 17th century.

00:55:26.437 --> 00:55:33.657
Some art critics said, I have seen many paintings in this exhibition, but this alone is the.

00:55:35.280 --> 00:55:38.800
So it spoke to him something about—it was abstract in that sense.

00:55:39.260 --> 00:55:48.040
So if you look at the process of abstraction, the process of maintaining consciences,

00:55:49.600 --> 00:55:51.320
these are physiological problems.

00:55:51.480 --> 00:55:55.700
The process of modulation, the process of reduction.

00:55:56.520 --> 00:55:59.600
When you want to represent pure movement,

00:55:59.680 --> 00:56:03.800
as they called it—I wouldn't call it that, but that's what they called it— you

00:56:03.800 --> 00:56:11.220
then what they did is they removed forms and they removed color and precisely

00:56:11.220 --> 00:56:13.740
this is precisely what happens in V5 cells,

00:56:13.880 --> 00:56:18.120
they respond to motion but are indifferent to form and to color so you know

00:56:18.120 --> 00:56:23.680
it's profitable to the physiologist to inquire into these the artist.

00:56:25.440 --> 00:56:30.440
Intuit if you want principles of perception what kind of principles that you

00:56:30.440 --> 00:56:36.360
think stand out here as really having been discovered by the artists and maybe

00:56:36.360 --> 00:56:39.040
later on being further interpreted by science?

00:56:39.480 --> 00:56:46.480
Well, I think that there are several. One of them is the question of form constancy.

00:56:46.720 --> 00:56:53.860
Now, the analytic cubists did not solve the problem, but nor have the physiologists,

00:56:53.880 --> 00:56:55.980
who have taken up this problem much later.

00:56:56.140 --> 00:56:58.240
I mean, I'm talking physiologists, not gestaltists.

00:56:59.200 --> 00:57:04.580
The question of the modulation of form by color never occurred to us until it

00:57:04.580 --> 00:57:07.260
was demonstrated that form and color are separately mapped in the brain.

00:57:08.020 --> 00:57:12.700
The question of, again, the characteristics of a kinetic system never occurred.

00:57:12.880 --> 00:57:17.140
But then there are other things. For example, it is well known,

00:57:17.220 --> 00:57:20.280
apparently, in the artistic world that to convey the,

00:57:21.155 --> 00:57:25.775
regardless on whose face it is, to convey a degree of haughtiness and snobbery

00:57:25.775 --> 00:57:30.375
and indifference in 16th century Venice.

00:57:31.015 --> 00:57:35.375
What you did was to have someone whose head is turned away, but he's looking

00:57:35.375 --> 00:57:36.875
at you with his eyes alone.

00:57:37.775 --> 00:57:43.495
You see, they captured this very, very well. This is a physiological fact. out.

00:57:44.455 --> 00:57:55.415
The fact that so many people agree that this is a sign of aloofness is quite interesting.

00:57:57.835 --> 00:58:02.935
If I may pursue this, there is another question that comes to this,

00:58:03.015 --> 00:58:09.155
and this has now changed my life quite significantly, and that is the relationship of art and beauty.

00:58:12.215 --> 00:58:23.075
We are often attacked because people say, well, who are you to address beauty?

00:58:23.855 --> 00:58:28.475
What is beauty? Well, the question is we don't address what is beauty.

00:58:28.635 --> 00:58:32.735
We address the question of what are the neural mechanisms that are engaged when

00:58:32.735 --> 00:58:36.815
you experience beauty, which is actually a legitimate and a simple scientific

00:58:36.815 --> 00:58:40.375
question is asking what are the neural mechanisms that are engaged when you

00:58:40.375 --> 00:58:41.655
perceive faces or colours.

00:58:42.655 --> 00:58:44.895
But the.

00:58:46.056 --> 00:58:49.236
The question of beauty, I mean, it's an interesting thing,

00:58:49.416 --> 00:58:56.116
but when you address it and you find that the experience of visual beauty and

00:58:56.116 --> 00:59:00.436
musical beauty and moral beauty and mathematical beauty above all correlate

00:59:00.436 --> 00:59:02.696
with activity in the same part of the brain,

00:59:03.436 --> 00:59:06.976
then you begin, you are shaken quite a lot.

00:59:07.216 --> 00:59:12.656
And then you put down mathematical beauty into, because mathematical beauty

00:59:12.656 --> 00:59:16.096
was considered by Plato to be the highest form of beauty.

00:59:16.256 --> 00:59:19.936
And he said so because he thought it gave you something about the structure

00:59:19.936 --> 00:59:22.636
of the universe. It gave you information about the structure of the universe

00:59:22.636 --> 00:59:23.996
because something makes sense.

00:59:24.796 --> 00:59:28.756
Now, I put mathematical beauty in the biological category.

00:59:29.316 --> 00:59:34.216
Now, why do I do that? Because mathematical beauty is, in a sense,

00:59:34.236 --> 00:59:37.516
the most extreme example of the experience of beauty derived from knowledge

00:59:37.516 --> 00:59:42.456
and learning. because only someone who is a proficient mathematician can appreciate

00:59:42.456 --> 00:59:43.996
the beauty of a mathematical formula.

00:59:45.176 --> 00:59:50.276
However, if you take an Indian or a Japanese or an English or a German or a

00:59:50.276 --> 00:59:52.716
Latin American mathematician and they know the language of mathematics,

00:59:53.076 --> 00:59:55.816
they can appreciate the beauty of a mathematical formula.

00:59:56.416 --> 01:00:02.276
So what does it consist of? It consists of the fact that it makes sense. Oh, that makes sense.

01:00:03.276 --> 01:00:08.356
How would it be different from the experience of beauty that a car mechanic

01:00:08.356 --> 01:00:10.816
might have anywhere in the world when he opens an engine.

01:00:12.616 --> 01:00:19.216
Allow me. It makes sense to the logical deductive system of the brain, all right?

01:00:19.616 --> 01:00:25.956
Logical deductive system of the brain, and that is the same in people of different culture.

01:00:26.136 --> 01:00:30.576
And hence it was Paul Dirac who said that when you want to judge the truthfulness

01:00:30.576 --> 01:00:31.616
of a mathematical formula,

01:00:32.958 --> 01:00:36.318
Don't go by its simplicity first, but go by its beauty.

01:00:36.478 --> 01:00:40.038
And he says, and many others have told me that, I'm not a mathematician or a

01:00:40.038 --> 01:00:43.998
physicist myself, that the theory of relativity was first accepted because of

01:00:43.998 --> 01:00:45.418
the beauty of the mathematical formulations.

01:00:45.738 --> 01:00:48.938
Now, you ask me how does this differ with...

01:00:49.478 --> 01:00:52.858
With China or in Japan or UK. Well,

01:00:53.198 --> 01:01:02.318
it differs in this sense in that the car mechanic probably has not worked out

01:01:02.318 --> 01:01:06.718
how you design a car. He may know how it works.

01:01:07.458 --> 01:01:12.478
But let us be clear that a car mechanic whom you confront with a problem,

01:01:12.578 --> 01:01:17.338
which he is mystified by, but then finally solves it and is excited by,

01:01:17.418 --> 01:01:21.838
I am sure that he also will get activation in the media over the front of the

01:01:21.838 --> 01:01:23.038
cortex. So why do I say that?

01:01:23.418 --> 01:01:28.078
Because what is the experience of beauty? Well, there are lots of things you

01:01:28.078 --> 01:01:31.138
can say about it, but it certainly involves reward.

01:01:32.698 --> 01:01:43.078
And I think the sudden illumination in looking at a car gasket also is a rewarding

01:01:43.078 --> 01:01:45.238
experience. So I shouldn't be at all surprised.

01:01:45.758 --> 01:01:50.298
And there come interesting questions of what is beauty?

01:01:50.978 --> 01:01:57.158
Now you see, biologically speaking, please, because the art historians and philosophers

01:01:57.158 --> 01:02:00.698
are terribly excited if You address the question of beauty.

01:02:01.038 --> 01:02:04.418
But you see, moral beauty,

01:02:04.618 --> 01:02:10.738
by which I mean that, for example, if you were to be asked, you're hungry and

01:02:10.738 --> 01:02:16.418
you're in a scanner, you're to be asked, well, I can give you a very nice succulent steak,

01:02:17.498 --> 01:02:20.938
but you can give it up to a hungry child. It's up to you.

01:02:22.458 --> 01:02:27.658
If you take it to yourself, you are satisfied.

01:02:28.358 --> 01:02:31.738
If you give it up, you are morally satisfied.

01:02:32.318 --> 01:02:41.418
The moral satisfaction seems to connect with activity in the medial frontal cortex.

01:02:42.538 --> 01:02:47.358
Now if you look at sorrowful beauty, which I've just done, which is by the way

01:02:47.358 --> 01:02:53.938
a category that's not often talked about, but much of the beauty that we experience is sorrowful.

01:02:54.078 --> 01:03:00.158
I mean, the Mass in D minor of Bach is sorrowful, the Requiem of Mozart is sorrowful,

01:03:00.278 --> 01:03:04.698
much of Wagner is sorrowful, and many paintings of Titian, the Taking of Christ

01:03:04.698 --> 01:03:08.458
of Caravaggio, these are all sorrowful things. You don't smile and laugh in front of them.

01:03:08.978 --> 01:03:13.918
And that also correlates with activity in the medial orbital frontal cortex. So that, I mean, that.

01:03:14.773 --> 01:03:20.293
Brings you back to the question raised by Plato in Timaeus.

01:03:21.033 --> 01:03:27.833
What is beauty of the subject, of the object, length of the object,

01:03:27.973 --> 01:03:31.013
or is it none of these, but something detached from all of them?

01:03:31.433 --> 01:03:36.213
There's a question in philosophies of aesthetics. It's also a question for neurobiology,

01:03:36.313 --> 01:03:38.753
but in a different way, because we want to study it neurobiologically.

01:03:38.893 --> 01:03:42.233
They want to study it more philosophically. The other thing I want to add to

01:03:42.233 --> 01:03:46.813
you with the farm mechanic is that, like in the domain of musical aesthetics,

01:03:47.313 --> 01:03:51.913
first we talked about the epistemic emotion, right? It's an emotional state.

01:03:51.973 --> 01:03:54.513
It's a feeling. Absolutely. It relates to our knowledge structure.

01:03:54.813 --> 01:03:57.593
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. That's what we're talking about.

01:03:57.773 --> 01:04:02.413
Now, here on the domain of music, we'd say, well, aesthetic experience in music

01:04:02.413 --> 01:04:05.733
has everything to do with anticipation, right?

01:04:05.733 --> 01:04:13.693
So it is, to what extent does the music I'm perceiving match or mismatch with my anticipation?

01:04:14.193 --> 01:04:18.893
And then there you want to find some sort of balance between confirmation and surprise.

01:04:19.613 --> 01:04:24.393
So in some sense, you could argue then that independent of the domain,

01:04:24.513 --> 01:04:28.953
whether it's mathematics or cars, this is the commonality. The expectation.

01:04:29.213 --> 01:04:32.533
Balancing of confirmation and surprise.

01:04:32.913 --> 01:04:35.733
Would you go along with that? They want to define, let's say,

01:04:35.773 --> 01:04:39.673
a static experience as an epistemic emotion that actually reflects that specific

01:04:39.673 --> 01:04:42.733
balance between the two issues. Yes.

01:04:43.473 --> 01:04:47.113
Confirmation, but confirmation of what? Of your prediction, of expectations.

01:04:47.553 --> 01:04:53.933
Well, I'd like to go beyond that. I'd say that when I undertake a mathematical equation,

01:04:54.113 --> 01:04:58.993
let me assure you I do not, but when mathematicians do, and they hit a solution

01:04:58.993 --> 01:05:03.673
which satisfies them, they say, that's it, I've got the right solution.

01:05:04.353 --> 01:05:09.713
So what is that? It is an expectation which is satisfied. It satisfies the brain's

01:05:09.713 --> 01:05:10.793
logical deductive system.

01:05:12.496 --> 01:05:15.776
Does the brain have a logical deductive system? Absolutely it does.

01:05:16.896 --> 01:05:19.416
I mean, there's no logic in the world outside.

01:05:21.316 --> 01:05:25.696
The whole idea about the Godel's, you see people talk about Godel's incompleteness

01:05:25.696 --> 01:05:28.556
theorem, which is a study in mathematics.

01:05:28.796 --> 01:05:32.656
It's nothing of the sort. It's a study of the brain's logical system and the limits.

01:05:33.076 --> 01:05:36.756
Now, with phrases, if you, here in Barcelona, we love football,

01:05:36.956 --> 01:05:44.696
we love ideas like Messi, who do real-time problem-solving of the highest complexity and artfulness.

01:05:45.136 --> 01:05:51.096
And in some sense, you could also argue, well, he has to solve dynamical problems as well.

01:05:51.836 --> 01:05:56.816
And they have their intrinsic beauty the same way as the mathematician that solves his equation.

01:05:57.036 --> 01:06:01.596
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So that means that that experience is not necessarily

01:06:01.596 --> 01:06:06.676
a specialized logically deductive system, but a more generic problem-solving

01:06:06.676 --> 01:06:10.196
system that defeats also action systems or perceptual systems.

01:06:10.236 --> 01:06:15.756
Yes, but I mean, I perhaps mis-explained myself.

01:06:16.116 --> 01:06:21.556
I'm not saying that the beauty is… we were talking about expectation.

01:06:21.976 --> 01:06:27.376
Now, just giving you a mathematical system, it is satisfying the expectations

01:06:27.376 --> 01:06:32.476
of a logical deductive system that will only be satisfied with this answer answer, because that is true.

01:06:32.696 --> 01:06:38.276
But there is also, you're quite right, if you want to call it logical system,

01:06:38.476 --> 01:06:43.436
that's fine, but the progression of action in motor activity,

01:06:43.676 --> 01:06:45.496
which can be extremely beautiful.

01:06:45.616 --> 01:06:52.236
I was watching with amazement the other day a replay of the goal that Pele achieved

01:06:52.236 --> 01:06:54.836
in 1905. What a remarkable thing.

01:06:55.196 --> 01:07:01.216
And of course, it was absolutely right in terms of logic of action.

01:07:01.976 --> 01:07:06.556
In terms of logic of time, in terms of logic of distance, where he positions

01:07:06.556 --> 01:07:11.976
himself, and it satisfies the viewer.

01:07:12.156 --> 01:07:15.236
You say, my God, he's got absolutely right, and it is beautiful.

01:07:15.616 --> 01:07:20.916
So I do not mean to say that, I mean, I think that the logical deductive system of the brain.

01:07:21.922 --> 01:07:27.002
Is a biological system, which I think mathematicians have not understood.

01:07:27.682 --> 01:07:33.322
It is a biological system, and there are limits to it, and Gödel demonstrated that.

01:07:34.122 --> 01:07:38.942
But it's not the only system. Now, let me give you another example of expectation.

01:07:39.802 --> 01:07:46.402
Expectation, I mean, when I look at a beautiful face, that also satisfies certain expectations.

01:07:46.642 --> 01:07:50.802
And what are the expectations that I can talk about? I can say that it satisfies

01:07:50.802 --> 01:07:56.002
the fact that the eyes and the nose and the mouth are in the correct disposition

01:07:56.002 --> 01:07:57.122
with respect to each other,

01:07:57.842 --> 01:08:05.362
that they are the correct proportions, that there is nothing violently against my expectation.

01:08:06.122 --> 01:08:10.942
And then I get a man like Francis Bacon, who says, I want to give people a visible

01:08:10.942 --> 01:08:11.902
shock. That's what he said.

01:08:12.462 --> 01:08:17.262
My aim is to give a visible shock. What did he do? he subverted the brain's

01:08:17.262 --> 01:08:19.842
representation of the brain and therefore the expectation.

01:08:20.782 --> 01:08:24.842
So when you look at a Francis Bacon, you say, my God, this may have all sorts

01:08:24.842 --> 01:08:27.122
of pain to be quoted, but that's not what the face looked like,

01:08:27.122 --> 01:08:28.322
not mutilated like that.

01:08:29.802 --> 01:08:33.302
So there are all these different expectations. In some of this,

01:08:33.362 --> 01:08:37.542
this is what I was challenging you on, that I think that in the domain of aesthetics,

01:08:37.542 --> 01:08:41.922
Aesthetics, there's always this risk to sort of disconnect it from the biology,

01:08:42.042 --> 01:08:44.822
from real-world action.

01:08:45.362 --> 01:08:50.282
Absolutely. In everyday life. So I was just trying to see whether you subscribe

01:08:50.282 --> 01:08:54.962
to that or whether you see also that aesthetics as an everyday common phenomenon.

01:08:55.462 --> 01:09:00.782
I see it as an everyday common brain phenomenon, in my view, if it is.

01:09:01.182 --> 01:09:04.782
But don't tell that to the philosophers of aesthetics. They'll get very angry.

01:09:05.342 --> 01:09:07.062
We will not distribute this podcast.

01:09:09.582 --> 01:09:14.322
But then the other thing is, so if you look at art and the progression of art

01:09:14.322 --> 01:09:18.582
and their discovery of, let's say, principles of perception and principles of experience,

01:09:18.842 --> 01:09:25.262
if you want, way beyond where we are with our science, in which period in art

01:09:25.262 --> 01:09:26.082
history do you think that art history has changed?

01:09:26.702 --> 01:09:30.102
Do you think most of these discoveries were made?

01:09:31.442 --> 01:09:34.762
Well, I think they were made at various periods. But, I mean,

01:09:34.782 --> 01:09:39.882
let me give you one example which I'm especially interested in.

01:09:41.422 --> 01:09:45.062
And that is the period of Michelangelo.

01:09:46.282 --> 01:09:49.162
Now, you might say that Michelangelo made no discoveries at all.

01:09:49.442 --> 01:09:56.062
Michelangelo did make a huge discovery, which was to represent the human body.

01:09:56.702 --> 01:10:02.302
All right, as it should be. If you look at the drawings and paintings before

01:10:02.302 --> 01:10:05.422
him, they don't have this power, they don't have the sensuousness,

01:10:05.562 --> 01:10:07.962
and he did that, and he did that, by the way.

01:10:08.702 --> 01:10:13.182
I must say this because there was an article in London two days ago saying that

01:10:13.182 --> 01:10:17.782
people thought that Michelangelo used the golden ratio. Michelangelo never did anything of the kind.

01:10:18.462 --> 01:10:22.262
Michelangelo said, I don't need measuring instruments because all my measuring

01:10:22.262 --> 01:10:23.602
instruments are in my brain.

01:10:23.862 --> 01:10:29.682
The fact is that when you come to do a great representation of the human face

01:10:29.682 --> 01:10:33.202
or human body, the golden ratio is implicit in that.

01:10:33.762 --> 01:10:40.002
So that is one of the great new stages.

01:10:40.302 --> 01:10:48.502
I would say that the Cubism—well, before that, Cézanne, and now Cézanne and

01:10:48.502 --> 01:10:54.162
the Cubists who were inspired by Suzanne, were two of the great stages.

01:10:55.182 --> 01:10:56.862
There may be many, many others.

01:10:59.129 --> 01:11:06.389
I think I myself, there's one of small few periods,

01:11:07.309 --> 01:11:14.929
what he called my mature poesie, Titian, when he started drawing with his fingers,

01:11:15.309 --> 01:11:19.229
got rid of the brush and was trying to represent motion.

01:11:19.349 --> 01:11:21.789
It was very successful and very, very good.

01:11:21.929 --> 01:11:27.389
But there must be many others. But now, do you feel that contemporary art,

01:11:27.549 --> 01:11:33.009
in that sense, is more deconstructing these principles than necessarily discovering them?

01:11:34.229 --> 01:11:38.689
I have got a very unhealthy relationship with contemporary art because,

01:11:38.829 --> 01:11:45.729
you know, they tell me… So, I go to the Ludwig Museum in Cologne,

01:11:45.849 --> 01:11:48.989
and I see a filing cabinet in front of me.

01:11:49.649 --> 01:11:53.029
Now, this filing cabinet is not the filing cabinet of Bismarck.

01:11:53.609 --> 01:11:56.309
It's not the filing cabinet of Angela Merkel.

01:11:57.069 --> 01:12:01.669
It's a filing cabinet which could have been purchased possibly from IKEA.

01:12:02.349 --> 01:12:07.029
And I'm supposed to be sitting there to contemplate myself in relationship to

01:12:07.029 --> 01:12:09.569
this filing cabinet. This is not of great interest.

01:12:10.209 --> 01:12:13.229
Whatever knowledge I may get out of it, it's not of great interest because there

01:12:13.229 --> 01:12:14.609
are so many other things that I can do.

01:12:14.829 --> 01:12:19.669
So I go to a room in the same museum and I see an empty white room.

01:12:19.749 --> 01:12:23.989
So I ask the attendant, what's going on here? They don't know this is the exhibit.

01:12:24.689 --> 01:12:27.549
So I'm supposed to be contemplating that white room.

01:12:27.689 --> 01:12:32.569
It's not of great interest. And I really think that we should tell museum curators

01:12:32.569 --> 01:12:34.689
that the time has come to stop.

01:12:35.289 --> 01:12:38.749
But there are other things which I think I'm very interested in.

01:12:38.789 --> 01:12:45.749
For example, a famous installation art, contemporary art, Tracy Emin's The Bed.

01:12:47.589 --> 01:12:51.649
It is a depiction of a bed set.

01:12:52.589 --> 01:12:57.149
Unmade bed, cigarettes on the floor, a bottle of gin somewhere, whatnot.

01:12:57.669 --> 01:13:02.849
Now, I don't say this is beautiful, but it is representative of thousands of

01:13:02.849 --> 01:13:08.049
bedsits in London and elsewhere. So, in a sense, that gives you knowledge.

01:13:08.349 --> 01:13:13.009
And that's why I think that that is not, for me, in the same category as lots

01:13:13.009 --> 01:13:15.949
of things which I don't admire so much.

01:13:16.029 --> 01:13:18.229
I'll tell you an interesting story. At the Tate Gallery in London,

01:13:18.369 --> 01:13:22.929
some German artist had an installation. And,

01:13:23.912 --> 01:13:28.352
Part of this installation was a waste paper basket with lots of rubbish in it.

01:13:29.132 --> 01:13:33.132
Well, the day after the thing was installed, the cleaning woman next morning

01:13:33.132 --> 01:13:35.772
came to clean, so she emptied the waste paper basket.

01:13:36.112 --> 01:13:39.372
She had to be told never to touch it again because of this part.

01:13:39.552 --> 01:13:41.732
But in a sense, her action was logical.

01:13:42.952 --> 01:13:47.772
But you are using two definitions of the impact of art.

01:13:47.872 --> 01:13:53.032
One is an epistemic emotion or an emotional state. Another is to acquire knowledge.

01:13:53.912 --> 01:13:56.012
But to acquire knowledge seems to be a rather weak definition,

01:13:56.272 --> 01:14:01.012
right? Because reading a book or going to, let's say, read the manual of how

01:14:01.012 --> 01:14:03.512
to use my telephone is also a way

01:14:03.512 --> 01:14:07.092
to acquire knowledge, but it might not necessarily qualify as an artistic,

01:14:07.732 --> 01:14:10.032
form of doing that. No, no, no, no.

01:14:10.472 --> 01:14:14.332
Well, let me be more specific.

01:14:14.552 --> 01:14:19.332
I think the function of the brain is to acquire knowledge, and art is one means,

01:14:19.372 --> 01:14:20.412
but it's not the only means.

01:14:20.612 --> 01:14:23.312
Let me say it's one means of acquiring knowledge. If you speak to artists,

01:14:23.472 --> 01:14:26.972
they would say to you, yes, I acquire a great deal of knowledge about tables,

01:14:27.052 --> 01:14:28.212
about chairs, whatever I'm doing.

01:14:28.492 --> 01:14:31.292
And we also acquire a great deal of knowledge.

01:14:31.472 --> 01:14:36.392
I mean, one of the, for example, the Taking of Christ by Caravaggio,

01:14:36.552 --> 01:14:39.252
which is the National Gallery in Dublin.

01:14:39.472 --> 01:14:45.172
It gives you a great deal of knowledge about the state of a man who knows he's

01:14:45.172 --> 01:14:48.232
being betrayed, who accepts his betrayal, and who is in agony.

01:14:48.972 --> 01:14:51.252
You know, it's a remarkable piece of work.

01:14:52.352 --> 01:14:58.072
But what I was really trying, or maybe I did not say it, I don't think that

01:14:58.072 --> 01:15:04.092
suddenly during our evolution a part of the brain developed in some people to do art.

01:15:04.512 --> 01:15:09.432
I think art is a byproduct of the brain's knowledge-acquiring system.

01:15:10.072 --> 01:15:16.032
You have emphasized this now several times throughout the interview, this notion of.

01:15:17.278 --> 01:15:20.198
The acquisition of knowledge as being the key function of the brain.

01:15:20.658 --> 01:15:25.838
And in some sense, this is a very platonic notion that was also criticized by

01:15:25.838 --> 01:15:31.058
Dewey, for instance, who was saying, well, why for the Greek philosophers,

01:15:31.698 --> 01:15:36.558
knowledge was actually the core objective of their philosophy,

01:15:36.678 --> 01:15:40.318
it didn't talk about the brain necessarily, is that labor was so far removed

01:15:40.318 --> 01:15:45.078
from their everyday existence because labor was left to the slaves.

01:15:45.978 --> 01:15:49.518
Labor, physical activity in the work was something that was unfamiliar to them.

01:15:49.638 --> 01:15:55.518
So therefore, for them, the highest value in life could just be to contemplate and learn.

01:15:56.398 --> 01:15:59.218
While, and of course, Dewey was also a pragmatist, right? Well,

01:15:59.278 --> 01:16:00.918
actually, knowledge is anchored in action.

01:16:01.798 --> 01:16:06.798
So from that perspective, you could argue, well, isn't it fair to say that the

01:16:06.798 --> 01:16:09.258
main purpose and function of the brain is to generate action,

01:16:09.398 --> 01:16:10.838
but in order to do that, it needs knowledge?

01:16:11.058 --> 01:16:14.638
Yes, I think I would go along with that. Absolutely, yes. I don't think that

01:16:14.638 --> 01:16:19.878
knowledge is an end point in itself. I think you obtain knowledge to undertake action.

01:16:20.418 --> 01:16:23.118
But then sometimes you cannot undertake action. But you see,

01:16:23.198 --> 01:16:28.578
the important thing about obtaining knowledge, really, is that to obtain knowledge,

01:16:28.618 --> 01:16:32.178
you have to stabilize the world. You cannot do it without that.

01:16:32.638 --> 01:16:36.578
And to stabilize the world is a big, big problem. I mean, in color vision,

01:16:36.638 --> 01:16:39.098
you can see it's a major issue. you.

01:16:39.318 --> 01:16:48.098
But also, in a way, in these articles or work on black holes and dark matter

01:16:48.098 --> 01:16:50.758
and dark energy and quantum gravitation,

01:16:50.998 --> 01:16:57.398
these are all attempts to stabilize the world in order to be able to obtain knowledge about it.

01:16:57.438 --> 01:16:58.938
Because otherwise, there are

01:16:58.938 --> 01:17:01.898
too many signals reaching us, which I don't know what sense to make of it.

01:17:02.658 --> 01:17:10.158
Now, I'm a platonicist or a platonic in my approach because,

01:17:10.258 --> 01:17:20.278
in a sense, I think that Plato was right in saying that you can only obtain

01:17:20.278 --> 01:17:22.818
knowledge about things through a thought process.

01:17:23.038 --> 01:17:26.898
You cannot obtain this knowledge by simply looking at something.

01:17:26.998 --> 01:17:28.178
There you obtain an opinion.

01:17:28.758 --> 01:17:32.818
Or manipulating or experimenting with things physically. Yes,

01:17:32.838 --> 01:17:36.138
but if you're experimenting with it, you're employing a thought process.

01:17:37.718 --> 01:17:42.518
I don't think he thought… In fact, one of the weaknesses of Plato,

01:17:42.658 --> 01:17:46.278
I think, is that when he talked about forms, his theory of forms,

01:17:46.318 --> 01:17:48.538
was things like love and beauty and justice,

01:17:48.718 --> 01:17:52.898
and he only vaguely came to the idea that a house may constitute a form.

01:17:52.898 --> 01:17:57.778
But he did in the Republic say that if you want to obtain noise about a couch,

01:17:58.841 --> 01:18:02.681
you cannot obtain it from a single couch. You've got to think about it.

01:18:03.381 --> 01:18:08.061
And in a way, I think this is true. So you build up a concept unconsciously.

01:18:08.681 --> 01:18:14.861
So I think people have dismissed Plato perhaps unnecessarily for saying that

01:18:14.861 --> 01:18:16.981
you cannot obtain knowledge by just looking at something.

01:18:17.721 --> 01:18:22.801
So what do you see today as the main achievements of this field of neuroaesthetics?

01:18:24.001 --> 01:18:29.181
The field of neuroaesthetics has done quite a few things. It's only 15 years old.

01:18:29.361 --> 01:18:34.541
So let me summarize Fourier's achievements. First of all, it has shown that

01:18:34.541 --> 01:18:40.281
there are subjective mental states which you can study scientifically in the

01:18:40.281 --> 01:18:43.921
sense that you can localize the activity that relate to these.

01:18:44.761 --> 01:18:49.021
And secondly, and most importantly, you can quantify that activity and that

01:18:49.021 --> 01:18:53.461
activity is parametrically related to the intensity of the declared experience.

01:18:54.141 --> 01:18:58.001
But that in itself is generic. Eric, that's not specific to neuroaesthetics.

01:18:58.001 --> 01:19:01.561
This might be also, in general, it's a perceptual task.

01:19:02.001 --> 01:19:06.261
Well, yes, but I mean, just to have a neuroaesthetics attack these problems

01:19:06.261 --> 01:19:08.941
first, attack the question of beauty first.

01:19:11.121 --> 01:19:14.881
Secondly, neuroaesthetics has shown that in terms of not only of beauty,

01:19:14.981 --> 01:19:18.981
but allied experiences, such as those of desire and love,

01:19:20.201 --> 01:19:28.201
have the identical systems of localizable, possible, studyable, quantifiable things.

01:19:29.541 --> 01:19:36.481
Thirdly, it has answered the question which has eluded philosophers of aesthetics

01:19:36.481 --> 01:19:44.341
for centuries and the question was actually very well framed by Clive Bell, who was an art critic.

01:19:44.521 --> 01:19:48.981
He said, what do all things which we experience as beautiful have in common?

01:19:49.801 --> 01:19:52.181
Because unless they have something in common, we are gibbering.

01:19:52.821 --> 01:19:56.101
They have never been able to ask this question, but we can ask this question,

01:19:56.281 --> 01:20:02.481
which is that all things which we experience as beautiful have one thing in

01:20:02.481 --> 01:20:06.201
common, though only in the neurobiological world, we cannot speak about the world outside,

01:20:06.421 --> 01:20:09.561
which is that they correlate with activity in the same parts of the brain,

01:20:09.601 --> 01:20:11.801
and they correlate with activity there parametrically.

01:20:13.461 --> 01:20:16.421
Fourthly, or fifthly, it has attacked.

01:20:18.259 --> 01:20:21.679
One of the most extraordinary problems

01:20:21.679 --> 01:20:29.059
in philosophy and in knowledge which is the experience of mathematical beauty

01:20:29.059 --> 01:20:34.079
and opened up a whole Pandora's box about what the experience of mathematical

01:20:34.079 --> 01:20:39.619
beauty is and I think this is something which is going to develop more and more.

01:20:39.959 --> 01:20:43.379
Now there are a lot of these I'm giving you the main achievement there are lots

01:20:43.379 --> 01:20:48.059
of other things I mean it is inquiring into the role of experience in the generation of of beauty,

01:20:48.319 --> 01:20:52.099
which is a topic that interests me less personally, because I'm interested in

01:20:52.099 --> 01:20:57.279
what is the skeleton of the brain that is able to experience beauty, regardless of source.

01:20:58.039 --> 01:21:03.479
It is beginning to address questions about literary beauty and beauty in dance and movement.

01:21:03.619 --> 01:21:08.439
So they're doing quite a lot of things. But these seem to me to be the important issues.

01:21:08.699 --> 01:21:16.199
Can you couple that from questions around consciousness? Because beauty as such must be experienced.

01:21:16.979 --> 01:21:22.479
Absolutely. So how do you see that leak then between these epistemic static

01:21:22.479 --> 01:21:24.259
emotions and conscious experience?

01:21:24.959 --> 01:21:31.459
Well, I don't think you can uncouple it. I think you must address the question of consciousness.

01:21:31.619 --> 01:21:36.359
But you see, here you go again to the sort of….

01:21:38.470 --> 01:21:42.010
A dichotomy between quantum mechanics and gravitational physics.

01:21:43.190 --> 01:21:47.890
The knowledge that the two are contradictory does not stop you from pursuing

01:21:47.890 --> 01:21:51.390
good experiments in quantum mechanics, making huge advances in it,

01:21:51.490 --> 01:21:53.230
or in gravitational physics.

01:21:53.550 --> 01:21:58.990
Now, the knowledge that we do not have an answer to the problem of consciousness

01:21:58.990 --> 01:22:05.470
will not inhibit us from studying the brain's esthetic system.

01:22:05.670 --> 01:22:09.070
We just assume, we make the assumption, which is a fair assumption,

01:22:09.270 --> 01:22:11.850
and in fact you can't proceed without making that assumption,

01:22:12.110 --> 01:22:16.490
but you don't factor it into your experiment because it is there.

01:22:16.930 --> 01:22:23.650
You just assume that you are experiencing something because you're conscious.

01:22:23.830 --> 01:22:25.210
Now look at the opposite picture.

01:22:25.990 --> 01:22:34.270
Supposing we said, oh, I cannot study esthetics, I can't study the brain system

01:22:34.270 --> 01:22:38.890
for experiencing beauty unless I have a system of consciousness,

01:22:39.250 --> 01:22:41.510
then you'll probably end up not solving the problem for years.

01:22:41.590 --> 01:22:43.330
After all, what have the people who are studying consciousness,

01:22:43.550 --> 01:22:45.210
what have they really told us about consciousness?

01:22:45.690 --> 01:22:50.450
I think I perhaps go, I think that the important thing about consciousness is

01:22:50.450 --> 01:22:55.790
the studies which I sort of adhere to are the ones which have shown us the minimal

01:22:55.790 --> 01:22:57.590
conditions required for consciousness.

01:22:57.590 --> 01:23:03.330
But I also adhere to what Stuart Sutherland once said that not a single sentence

01:23:03.330 --> 01:23:08.630
written about consciousness is worth reading because we don't know really.

01:23:11.410 --> 01:23:16.310
It's fashionable I know but we don't know even at what level to address it we

01:23:16.310 --> 01:23:21.450
don't know whether it's localizable nothing I just wrote many sentences on it

01:23:21.450 --> 01:23:23.790
actually so maybe I shouldn't have done that,

01:23:25.550 --> 01:23:33.230
as long as you give credibility to what I've said exactly so,

01:23:35.184 --> 01:23:39.684
How many years before you think we will have a full-fledged neurobiological

01:23:39.684 --> 01:23:40.624
understanding of beauty?

01:23:43.384 --> 01:23:49.264
I think I'm not really able to tell.

01:23:49.384 --> 01:23:55.284
A full-fledged biological understanding of beauty requires, above all,

01:23:55.444 --> 01:23:58.144
to understand something extremely, extremely difficult,

01:23:58.564 --> 01:24:03.264
which is, is beauty a quality that's slapped onto situations,

01:24:03.524 --> 01:24:08.384
slapped onto objects, or is it a part of these situations, intrinsically part of them?

01:24:08.704 --> 01:24:15.384
Just as you say, is consciousness something which is slapped on the experience

01:24:15.384 --> 01:24:17.224
of beauty, or is it part and parcel of the same thing?

01:24:17.744 --> 01:24:20.964
So I'd be very reluctant to tell you how long it would take.

01:24:21.144 --> 01:24:24.564
That's a question that has been with us for 2,500 years.

01:24:25.524 --> 01:24:29.144
And probably more. And probably more. And probably more.

01:24:29.244 --> 01:24:34.704
I documented 2,500 years ago. So take the cave paintings, right? Absolutely.

01:24:34.964 --> 01:24:38.664
These are definitely experiments in a static experience, right? Without question.

01:24:38.844 --> 01:24:43.684
10,000 years old. Yes, without question. So I'd be very reluctant to decipher that.

01:24:44.204 --> 01:24:48.724
So we made quite a grand tour here. Yes. It's absolutely fantastic.

01:24:50.284 --> 01:24:54.864
So you also have, let's say,

01:24:54.944 --> 01:24:59.264
targeted visit touched on many issues using many different methodologies,

01:24:59.324 --> 01:25:05.644
many different preparations to understand the brain from the sort of multi-scale perspective,

01:25:06.064 --> 01:25:09.524
linking the quantum and the gravitational effect, if you want.

01:25:10.524 --> 01:25:14.104
So if we would follow in an approach that you have developed,

01:25:14.304 --> 01:25:19.324
the lines that you have set out for yourself, and now make progress on neuroaesthetics,

01:25:19.364 --> 01:25:22.844
what would be the law, Semyon's law, that we have to adhere to?

01:25:23.824 --> 01:25:25.244
The law? Yeah.

01:25:29.084 --> 01:25:30.684
Well, I mean...

01:25:32.762 --> 01:25:38.402
Such as the law of functional specialization, transported to… Would you just

01:25:38.402 --> 01:25:42.642
get a handle on how beauty is processed by the brain, for instance?

01:25:43.122 --> 01:25:49.802
I would say the law that I would like to be associated with me,

01:25:49.862 --> 01:25:58.642
but actually it's associated with Edmund Burke… I derive it from… The Zeki's Law is…,

01:26:00.282 --> 01:26:04.482
Okay, I'll tell you, Ezequiel's law is, and I'll tell you something which is

01:26:04.482 --> 01:26:05.922
generally original to Ezequiel,

01:26:06.082 --> 01:26:12.322
it's not found in Immanuel Kant either, that beauty can be firmly divided into

01:26:12.322 --> 01:26:15.922
two parts, biological beauty and artifactual beauty.

01:26:17.222 --> 01:26:20.762
That biological beauty is dependent upon inherited brain concepts,

01:26:20.782 --> 01:26:25.082
and artifactual beauty is dependent upon acquired brain concepts.

01:26:25.562 --> 01:26:32.142
That biological beauty being dependent upon inherited brain concepts is not easily modifiable.

01:26:32.382 --> 01:26:36.102
In other words, you can't have somebody with one eye here and one eye here being beautiful.

01:26:37.442 --> 01:26:43.182
Whereas, artifactual beauty is synthetic changes with time and with experience.

01:26:43.822 --> 01:26:48.422
These are the prerequisites for studying beauty.

01:26:49.642 --> 01:26:57.482
I think that all beauty, this is different from what Kant is saying,

01:26:57.682 --> 01:27:00.982
all beauty must be interfaced through a brain concept,

01:27:01.222 --> 01:27:04.782
either inherited brain concept or acquired brain concept.

01:27:05.682 --> 01:27:09.382
The one thing which I am not really… And finally,

01:27:09.562 --> 01:27:14.342
I can say that all experience of everything beautiful comes with activity in

01:27:14.342 --> 01:27:15.562
one same part of the brain,

01:27:15.662 --> 01:27:21.042
in addition to other parts but they differ between but the one big question

01:27:21.042 --> 01:27:25.422
which I would be prepared to spend a lot of time is to address the question

01:27:25.422 --> 01:27:28.262
of whether beauty is a separate,

01:27:28.962 --> 01:27:32.282
faculty and entity which is slapped onto things or not,

01:27:33.159 --> 01:27:37.899
So I've given you five laws now. Now, wait. If I want to print Zeki's law on

01:27:37.899 --> 01:27:38.899
a T-shirt, I'm in trouble.

01:27:39.299 --> 01:27:41.379
I need to see a big T-shirt.

01:27:41.799 --> 01:27:46.319
So how do we compress that down into a law? Because a law has to be normative, right?

01:27:46.659 --> 01:27:49.819
This is important now. It's a normative statement.

01:27:50.599 --> 01:27:55.679
Something that others will have to do or will have to follow in order to make progress. is.

01:27:56.419 --> 01:28:03.939
Beauty is a brain-generated concept which depends either on inherited or acquired concepts.

01:28:04.859 --> 01:28:07.839
Okay, there you go. That fits on a t-shirt. That fits on a t-shirt.

01:28:08.319 --> 01:28:16.099
The other thing is, despite Brexit, I think we will still visit this sort of

01:28:16.099 --> 01:28:20.879
deteriorating fire across the channel. It might get better.

01:28:21.919 --> 01:28:27.099
You never know. So three years from now, I'm going to visit your site,

01:28:27.159 --> 01:28:31.479
step into the lab and say, okay, Samir, three years ago you gave me a prediction

01:28:31.479 --> 01:28:33.679
and now I want to see whether you confirm it or not.

01:28:33.799 --> 01:28:38.419
So what's the main prediction you would like to share with me today that you

01:28:38.419 --> 01:28:40.979
will see confirmed and manifested three years from now?

01:28:45.399 --> 01:28:49.359
You are making it very difficult. I would say that the main prediction I would

01:28:49.359 --> 01:28:55.179
like to confirm in three years'

01:28:55.259 --> 01:29:06.359
time is that the system of physical and mathematical beauty is entirely biological

01:29:06.359 --> 01:29:12.159
and entirely dependent upon the brain's logical system. That's what I'd like to prove.

01:29:12.419 --> 01:29:15.379
Okay, good. I actually would retire if I did that.

01:29:15.879 --> 01:29:19.459
Common check. So, Samir Zeki, thank you very much for this conversation.

01:29:19.739 --> 01:29:29.659
Thank you. Thank you very much. The CSN Podcast was produced by the Convergent

01:29:29.659 --> 01:29:33.179
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01:29:33.539 --> 01:29:38.439
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01:29:39.919 --> 01:29:45.279
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01:29:52.080 --> 01:30:00.080
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