What does the sense of self give humans over other animals, and how do our storytelling instincts set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom? What can be learned about humans and animals by training a dog to allow humans to scan its brain with an MRI machine?
Gregory Berns is a neuroscientist at Emory University and the author of several books, including Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently, The Self Delusion: The New Neuroscience of How We Invent—and Reinvent—Our Identities, and his most recent work, Cowpuppy: An Unexpected Friendship and a Scientist’s Journey into the Secret World of Cows.
Greg and Gregory discuss the complex interplay between self-perception, social influence, and animal behavior. Referring to his work in The Self Delusion, Gregory delves into how our brains construct and reconstruct our identities, influenced by both sensory information and social pressures. Gregory used brain imaging and machine learning to study conformity, the psychological impacts of social media, and the balancing act between primal instincts and modern life. They also dive into the evolution of human storytelling compared to animal communication, Gregory’s groundbreaking MRI research on dogs, and the deep connections formed through living on a farm and working with cows. This insightful episode also touches on the philosophical and theological questions around human behavior, aiming to provide a holistic understanding of the underlying neuroscience and psychology.
*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*
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Human life is telling stories
30:16: We're all storytellers, even if you write scientific papers. Ultimately, it's still a story where you do an experiment, you collect data, and yes, I guess at some level, we're testing hypotheses, but most scientific papers these days are not about that, to be honest. Most are more in the exploratory sense, where we're doing experiment because we want to understand something about the world. We might have an idea about it, but it's usually much more nuanced. And then you do the experiment, doesn't turn out the way you expect it. And then it's like, well, what happened? So you tell a story about what you think happened and what it means. And I think, ultimately, that is all that human life is. It is us telling stories, because if it weren't that, then we're not that much different than bees and all the other animals that I study, but we clearly are.
Stories go beyond the current state of the art in terms of predictive models
31:38: We tell stories to ourselves and to each other to have meaning in our lives. It's not the case that the machine is ever going to care about what's meaningful. So, I do think that meaning, in and of itself, has value to humans that has yet to be captured in any kind of computer model.
Are preferences endogenous or constructed?
07:36: I think we tend to fool ourselves a little bit in that our preferences are endogenous because it comes back to us thinking about us thinking. It’s like, okay, well, I prefer vanilla ice cream over chocolate ice cream. Well, has it always been that way? I don’t know. Or is it just something that I have come to believe out of habit, and it’s not necessarily the case—or that it even changes based on the circumstance?
Why the most meaningful experiences are often the most uncomfortable
20:52: I've written a bit about the ways that we might get around that, and one of the ways is novel experiences. The thing about novel experiences is that they're anxiety-provoking—unless, I mean, for the minority of people who thrive on that. For most people, they like the status quo; they like the comfort of things being predictable, and things being unpredictable causes a great deal of anxiety. Even though, if you ask pretty much everyone, the most memorable experiences in their life, the things they think most fondly of, are probably the things that were most difficult, and the things that initially did cause all that anxiety or were uncomfortable. The things that we, as humans, attach meaning to are the things that are meaningful because they're difficult.
