Charlie Rose

anion  12/14/2009 12:38 AM Report

At minute 339 he mentions that other animals do not laugh. I'm not steeped in the literature of this debate, but I'm not sure all investigators would agree with this statement. I recall an NPR broadcast from June 5, 2009 titled:

"Tickling Gorillas and the Evolution of Laughter"

http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200906054

and they seem to state evidence to the contrary

JimFergusson  12/03/2009 01:37 PM Report

Great update on Descartes, Principle CXCVI, 1644, "That the soul does not perceive excepting in as far as it is in the brain" and his use of the phantom limb to prove it. Could Searle comment on this comparison?

Diva2009  08/28/2009 06:18 PM Report

Please have Dr. Ramachandran on again!!!!

Ovais  08/10/2009 12:42 PM Report

I have made some corrections (IN CAPS) to the transcript.

Could someone confirm that I got this right ?

V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: The plasticity -- is to be believed that these connections in the brain, were talking about 100 billion nerve cells in the average human brain. In each nerve cell make something like 1000 to 10,000

contacts with other nerve cells. AND the context can be inhibitory, can be excitatory, can be on, can be off.

And someone CALCULATED the number of brain states, the number of

possible permutations of combinations, exceeds the number of elementary

particles in the known universe.

samitbarai  08/02/2009 02:46 PM Report

Too good, please have him back for an hour.

winter  07/24/2009 01:31 PM Report

Look at these posts Charlie et al, politics is so damn depressing in comparison. Especially as the game is so rigged towards the money.

loiskay  07/21/2009 12:39 AM Report

Dr. Ramachandran gives me hope that someday we will learn why it is some people refuse to accept logic and healthy reasoning in their everyday general topic person-to-person exchanges.

Dr. Ramachandran is clear with his presentation and prompts water cooler discussions. A rare talent. Please have him back soon.

bettinger  07/20/2009 11:08 AM Report

I watched it twice and learned more the second time. Simply fascinating and brilliant. Ramachandran explained everything clearly and was a pleasure to listen to.

Please book again soon and for the full hour. The discussion of brain disorders vs. the norm is greatly enlightening.

kevinecahill  07/19/2009 11:29 PM Report

This is a superb 29-minute interview of a leading neurologist.

I loved it.

rondeevous  07/18/2009 05:13 AM Report

If animals are not self-aware why do they get depressed? Or, why (in National Geographic) would a lioness takes care of her kill's offspring until it dies?

Invite him back please. Charlie you need two hour show take Travis :) spot. LOL. just kidding, kind of not! It nice to take a brake from politics...

NeuroNut  07/17/2009 02:42 AM Report

Thanks, Charlie!

This was a fantastic interview and guest! I would pay to see more content like this. Please bring him back.

Thanks to PBS for hosting Charlie Rose. Too bad this type of information is not on the major broadcast TV channels.

If you liked this interview, you would probably like Ramachandran's book, "Phantoms in the Brain.

Other great potential neuroscience guests would be Michael Merzenich, speaking on brain plasticity, John Medina, author of, "Brain Rules" and John Ratey, author of, SPARK."

Zereshk  07/17/2009 01:06 AM Report

Fascinating. Please do more of these! I already have a list of consciousness/neurologist/physicists in my mind: David Chalmers, Henry Stapp, Stuart Hameroff, Roger Penrose, Bernard Baars, Rupert Sheldrake, Christof Koch, Michael Tye, ...

typo  07/16/2009 09:34 PM Report

Second the request for getting this guy back on the show, like, tomorrow. One of the best interviews I've seen. Simply fascinating.

BrainTrust  07/16/2009 09:24 PM Report

Probably the best half hour of TV I've seen this year. Excellent stuff!!!

ajw228  07/16/2009 04:33 PM Report

get this guy back right away for the full hour.

ronnrobinson  07/16/2009 01:46 AM Report

What a fascinating and fabulous conversation you just had with V.S. Ramachandran. Absolutely one of your most intriguing shows in some time. Please have him back for a full hour sometime soon.

In the summer of 1959 I had surgery on my right index finger and thought I was going to loose it. Since I was a trumpet player and heading for Los Angeles in the Fall to attend college and begin a career in music, I was devastated. While laying on the couch for several days in great pain from the surgery, I began to try to play the trumpet using my left hand. It was very awkward, frustrating and almost impossible to do, but I kept at it for two or three weeks. Then one day it was like a switch flipped in my brain. The fingers on my left hand suddenly became swift, fluent and accurate. They were mirroring my right hand fingers on the three trumpet keys. I could hardly believe it. Since then I've always known something in the brain is way beyond our comprehension and understanding. Dr. Ramachandran and his colleagues appear to really be on to something, and it would be great to hear more from him or them.

By the way, my right hand finger improved and my music took off, but I ended up eventually ditching music for a career in business, education, government. Now I'm about to retire, and I'm going to find out how much music my brain remembers.

mrquartetman  07/16/2009 01:27 AM Report

The long-argued question about whether being human is something beyond chemical/electrical reactions in the brain has always hinged upon the hope that we are more than the sum of our parts and more than "just animals." As I learned more and more science, I more and more asked what was wrong with being "just animals," and wondered if the metaphysical debate wasn't a lot of energy being expended on the wrong question. Problem is, if it's the wrong question, what's the right one? But listening to Ramachandran's lucid disquisition, and thinking about the numbers he gave us, I was aatounded. To restate ("winter" gave us some of it) what Ramachandran said: the brain contains 100 billion nerve cells, each of which makes 1000 to 10,000 contacts with other nerve cells. The number of possible "brain states," or permutations and combinations of connections, exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe. From a purely physical persepctive, if no two humans can occupy the same space at the same time, no two can or will experience the world in the same way, nor can any two people think in the same way. The implications of the sheer size and complexity of any single one of these chemical and electrical constructs are beyond my comprehension - an amazing and most curious fact, since I'm saying this by using one of the damn things. What is even more interesting is to ask what it means for evolution that there are so many billions of these organs operating on the local universe like one teeming organism with billions more brain states than there are elementary particles in the known universe.

I think I need to rest now.

winter  07/15/2009 10:33 PM Report

More possible brain states than elementary particles in the Universe. Wow! That must include all the stars in the Universe which I"ve heard there are more of than grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth and it includes that? Really? The question then occurs to me how the debate re: artificial intelligence someday overtaking human brainpower could ever be relevant since human brain states would exceed any constructable artificial intelligences brain states; that is if we evolve to use all that potential.

I for one wouldn't mind seeing more science/philosophy oriented guests in lieu politics. Still, televisions best show.

ShivangiShrivastava  07/15/2009 08:55 PM Report

Charlie, this was absolutely fascinating! Please have him back again soon.

tartufe  07/15/2009 08:24 PM Report

Empathy neurons surely play a large 'titalating?' role in pornography. Or am I being more carnal than scientific? A lascivious, dirty ole man? Probably. Could this be a precursor death nell for Viagara et al? Sparing us from the come-on of the publicly exposed threat(?) of a 4-hr empathetic synapses looking for relief?

mwmson  07/15/2009 08:08 PM Report

Please have him back again, I would especially like to hear more about unconscious visual (and other) receptors in the brain. Also, regarding loss of function after a stroke - he referred to some losses as being the result of the brain "giving up" - Does this apply also to losses secondary to Multiple Sclerosis? Thank you, Charlie

azNephi  07/15/2009 07:37 PM Report

Very good. Please have him back on soon.

tartufe  07/15/2009 05:36 PM Report

Some great observations. laurag - interesting re health care 'rationing' scare by lobbyists.

Sanchez, your metaphysical concerns seemed a bit counter-productive, like studying the brain is bordering on dismissing / rejecting? god. It seems to conclude She exists. Presuming She does. Don't you insult her by thinking that she needs protection?

Surely She wants our knowledge to expand even more than some form of toady adulation at its expense.

lauraq  07/15/2009 05:20 PM Report

Fascinating show, especially regarding the significance of mirror/empathy neurons. I would love to see a show with a panel discussing the ramifications. Such neurons would seem to explain why role modeling and mentoring are such powerful ways for us to learn. A panel could explore the implications for everything from unhealthy eating habits to criminal behavior to learned helplessness (including dropout rate). It helps explain the power of advertising and television/movie "role models" over our behaviors. An interesting discussion (and/or study) could also explore the interaction of the mirror/empathy neurons with the amygdala's interaction with the recognition part of the brain (I forget what he called that section). Does the person who can affect us via role playing/mentoring need to be someone we recognize and have a positive emotional reaction to? How does this connect with "us versus them" perceptions? In our diverse society (let alone global community), can we empathize with those we view as "them"? For example, how can an understanding of our neurophysiology suggest how we can get to universal health care (in a fiscally responsible way) when our amygdala may be sending us threatening messages (especially with the help of fear tactics by politicians and advertising by lobbyists) over "rationing". If ours brains recognize individuals with a positive emotion, perhaps that rationing might be viewed more empathically. It might even be called "sharing".

taylorw  07/15/2009 04:41 PM Report

Rarely see Charlie in such a total absorption mode. This is another powerful and exciting example of how much we have yet to learn about our whole personal biopackage, blob of synapse-laden jelly included. His description of extending the feeling sensation to somebody across the room gets dangerously close to Eastern concepts of shared universal life forces and such. Who knows where those pesky synapses will lead? Thanks for having him on.

SamSanchez  07/15/2009 04:18 PM Report

Thought provoking, nonetheless I would be hesitant to abstract the world or meaning, significance, reference, self-identity to a specific scientific reductionist view of all that is conceptually possible to a "activity of little specs of jelly in the head, in the brain." With much respect I consider V.S. Ramachandran's conceptions of the radical reduction of 'consciousness' and all the manifolds we claim to know with-in this abstract conception of 'consciousness', to a few neuro-electrical-signals and synapses in the brain. Martin Heidegger since the 1920's has already traced out the impossibility of grafting out a purely scientific conception of the world, which would already be covering over a more intuitive engagement in the world (which the exclusion or removal of undeniably voids another way of thinking the world, our cognitive capacities in and of it). The reduction of consciousness (which is itself a whole undefined term in academia today) to a few mere physical processes vast mischaracterizes how we come to understand the world (a term which necessarily includes our position with-in it) from which the scientific theoretical has arisen from. That is, the scientific generation of conceptualizing the world as such and no more is also a spawning from the more original or originary understanding of the world. Before the purely objective stance and theoretical conception of the world we have an understanding based in familiarity which a purely-scientific reductionist easily dismisses as impressionary, sophomoric, replaceable. In short the purely theoretical highly reductive scientific conception of world (and all its constituents and components) is just as metaphysical as the metaphysics that scientists have tried to eradicate since the intellectual domination of Science. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason can also be read as an early account of cognitive science, yet his work which is intended to a pro-to-scientific account is highly metaphysical.

See Martin Heidegger's Being and Time... This text should also be a topic of conversation on this show. Overall through great broadcast.

doodahdaze  07/15/2009 04:02 PM Report

I beg your pardon if I am mistaken. Though, I don't believe that I am. Please do accept my most humble apology for my honest indiscretion if I am,.. mistaken, that is.

doodahdaze  07/15/2009 03:52 PM Report

I knew it. .. Mr. REMant, alias, TABS. <smile>

REMant  07/15/2009 03:23 PM Report

Interesting. The subject has come a long way since I started out in this stuff as an undergrad, tho finding that altho there was a lot to be discovered in this way, there was an even greater paucity of good questions, which could only be framed by observation, most of it necessarily historical and cross-cultural. Like economists and other social scientists I think psychologists and even physiological psychologists would be wise to read history and become familiar with other cultures, at least if they intend to explain things other than abnormalities.

deenastein  07/15/2009 02:58 PM Report

Outstanding program and promising work on limb loss and phantom work as well as specific to stroke patients. Good friend in SD area post hemorrhagic stroke with right side paralysis would be helped w this research while she is in rehab work. Thank you Charlie for your superb programs! more science and health always appreciated and of course the political programs are incredible.

sharonwander  07/15/2009 02:34 PM Report

Please, please have him back soon--for an hour! Mind-blowing. Thanks!

rtb  07/15/2009 02:29 PM Report

Dr. Ramachandran also made a presentation on TED. Fascinating.