When a human is born, the human brain is really incomplete. It has all of its neurons but very few where you have new neurons being born. Largely what's going to change is the wiring. And so the brains are waiting for a set of wiring instructions from the world. Those wired instructions partially come from the physical world. The extent to which you make eye contact with the baby will wire that infant's brain and this continues more or less for about 25 years. Generally speaking it takes 25 years to fully bake an adult brain, human brain.
If you managed to stay awake during Bio 101, then you probably think you have a basic understanding of how your brain works. Not so, says neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett. In this cerebral yet highly entertaining conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator Daniel Pink, Lisa says our brains are made for budgeting, not thinking. She debunks the myth of the lizard brain. And she makes the far-out claim that everything you see and hear, including this podcast, is a hallucination.