If asked to describe what sets a cognitively complex species like humans apart from others, many would list specific behaviors, such as telling stories, creating art, planning for the future, or navigating complex social structures. Given that, you might expect that neuroscientists attempting to understand the advanced brain would study it in action, as a person or animal moves through the world. 

For much of its history, though, neuroscience has done the opposite. 

“When I was a graduate student, neuroscience was almost entirely about isolating specific circuits to test how the brain controls your senses and movement,” says Dr. Earl K. Miller, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT. “You’d show an animal a stimulus, observe how it responded, and record which neurons fired.” This research defined foundational principles of the field, but according to Miller, when you study the brain at this level, “you’re really only looking at its edges.”

“We know surprisingly little about how the brain manages more complex cognitive behaviors, like making a decision or socializing,” says Felipe Parodi, a PhD candidate in neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, co-advised by professors Michael Platt and Konrad Kording. “Studying primates and humans in the confines of the laboratory, where they can’t interact freely, won’t tell you what the brain is doing when a primate forms a bond, infers an intention, cooperates, or manages conflict.”

Classical neuroscience doesn’t fully capture how the brain operates in more natural, real-world contexts.

Parodi isn’t the first to identify this problem. Researchers have long argued that we need to measure brain activity as animals behave freely, but this type of research has only recently become possible thanks to advances in the tech needed to study freely moving animals and in the computational methods used to analyze the massive datasets created through these studies.

In 2025, Parodi co-authored a synthesis on primate neuroethology, an emerging field that blends neuroscience and ethology — the study of an animal’s natural behavior — to track brain activity under the messy, real-world conditions that brains like our own evolved to handle. Despite being in its infancy, the field is already proving its worth. Early studies show that freely moving primates display richer neural dynamics than restrained ones, for example, even when they are performing very similar tasks. 

That doesn’t mean results from classical neuroscience are wrong, but it does suggest they don’t fully capture how the brain operates in more natural, real-world contexts. For that, we may need a paradigm shift.

The limits of classical neuroscience and ethology

Neuroscientists have been studying more cognition-based questions — like how the brain recognizes patterns, remembers information, or learns rules to get a reward — for some time now. “Studying tasks that tapped into real cognition opened up whole sets of neural properties you simply don’t see in basic sensory tasks,” says Miller. But the experimental setup rarely changed, and the strengths of classical neuroscience — precision and control — limited the reach of these studies.

Ethology and related fields such as behavioral ecology have the opposite strengths and weaknesses. Primatologists can observe and track natural behavior in extraordinary detail and develop ecological theories about how certain behaviors impact survival. While classical neuroscience might reveal how the brain creates behavior, ethology reveals why a behavior might matter. 

One case offers a clear example of the kinds of questions that neither primate ethology nor neuroscience can answer on its own. 

In 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated Cayo Santiago, an island where researchers had spent decades tracking a population of rhesus macaques. The storm tore down the trees that once provided shade, pushing daily heat to punishing levels. Before the hurricane, the macaques kept tight, selective social circles and didn’t tolerate being in close proximity to monkeys outside of their social circle. Afterward, though, many monkeys shifted how they interacted. They tolerated one another more, spent more time near others, and formed broader social networks.

The monkeys who changed their behavior in response to the new conditions had a higher chance of surviving, whereas those who didn’t were much more likely to be exposed to extreme heat. Put another way, behavioral flexibility became a matter of life or death. 

Ethologists could track the shift in behavior, but they couldn’t see how the brain registered these new pressures or how it recalculated the costs and benefits of tolerance in a new environment. Why did some animals adapt faster? What cognitive processes made a primate decide to be tolerant, rather than aggressive? 

These are the kinds of questions that traditional lab neuroscience can’t address and that observational ethology doesn’t attempt to answer. Neuroethology aims to bridge that gap.

Studying the brain in motion

The key to neuroethology is studying animals as they perform “natural behaviors.” Taken literally, though, the term gets slippery fast. If an animal does something, isn’t it natural by definition? Everything we do is bounded by our biology — I can’t fly or echolocate no matter how hard I try.

In practice, researchers use “natural” to mean a behavior a species performs routinely in its normal environment. For primates, that includes foraging, grooming, climbing, and navigating social hierarchies. Memorizing arbitrary visual sequences or responding to abstract cues on a touchscreen are behaviors that fall outside the natural range.

Is doomscrolling on Instagram a natural behavior for humans? Miller argues that the line is fuzzy: “People ask me, ‘Isn’t it unnatural to have a person sit in front of a computer for months learning a task?’ Sure. But humans do tons of arbitrary things, like play an instrument for years or learn abstract rules, and our brains handle that just fine. Whether something is ‘unnatural’ depends on what you’re trying to study.”

Many neuroethology studies blend the experimental control of classical neuroscience with the behavioral richness of a more naturalistic environment.

And that is the point for neuroethologists. The distinction helps shape the questions they can ask and what types of conclusions they can make. For them, what matters is not only what the animal is doing but where and how it is doing it. Is the behavior one that the species typically performs? Does the setting, whether a lab, a semi-natural enclosure, or the wild, allow the behavior to unfold? Is the animal free to move? 

A primate foraging among groupmates in a large enclosure, for example, fits well within a neuroethological approach, even if the setting is not fully wild. A primate tapping a screen to “pretend” to forage for an arbitrary reward, like a sugar pellet, does not. The first can reveal how the brain works in real foraging situations. The second can be valuable, but only to answer different questions.

Many studies take the middle ground, blending the experimental control of classical neuroscience with the behavioral richness of a more naturalistic environment. This “stepping-stone” approach doesn’t recreate the wild, but it does relax the most restrictive conditions and allow animals to move and interact more freely. “You don’t need to jump straight into the wild, and right now, we couldn’t even if we wanted to,” says Parodi. 

Some research groups place primates in immersive virtual reality scenes that let them carry out tasks similar to those they would complete in the wild, such as searching for food or moving through a three-dimensional space. These setups produce brain activity that is far richer and more varied than what appears when the animals are limited to standard lab routines meant to mimic those same behaviors. Still, most primate neuroethology research happens in a pen or enclosure. These settings let primates roam more freely while minimizing confounding variables that would always be present in the wild, such as other animals. 

The social lives of primates

According to Parodi, a neuroethological study is most likely to yield meaningful insights when it focuses on a specialized behavior that an animal is exceptionally good at and that is very difficult, or impossible, to study under artificial conditions. Social activity is particularly rich for this kind of research. “Social interaction is central to primate life,” says Parodi. “You don’t get far as a primate unless your brain can track and navigate complex relationships.”

Miller agrees: “Social interactions are where naturalistic work has made the most progress and where it has the most potential to contribute to the field. You can’t study these behaviors in a stripped-down lab setting.”

One active area of research is how primates manage reciprocal exchanges, those subtle, give-and-take interactions that are fundamental to both human and nonhuman primate life. For a 2024 study, Parodi and his colleagues tracked the brain activity of a freely moving group of macaques while they were grooming one another. The results revealed a set of neural populations that maintained a “social ledger” of who had groomed whom, how often, and for how long. The internal accounting didn’t just store past interactions, either — it also forecasted likely future returns and may have influenced the formation of alliances in these communal societies.

“Primatologists already had a hunch that monkeys kept track of these types of interactions,” says Parodi. “The discovery is where in the brain it happens and how … When I, as a macaque monkey, interact with my mother or my father, what happens? And what happens when I’m no longer a neurotypical primate? If we understand how these circuits work, we can understand why and where they go wrong.”

While most neuroethological studies focus on social behaviors, some have explored how the brain handles complex decision-making, communication, memory formation, and more. A recent study that tracked how freely moving rhesus macaques make foraging decisions, for example, found that the monkeys’ neural signals were processing competing variables simultaneously to make decisions, including their physical environment, the presence of other primates, and trade-offs between trying something new and sticking to the usual choice. 

Neuroethology’s growing pains

Studying complex behavior in real-world environments brings real challenges. For most of neuroscience’s history, the field simply lacked the tools to monitor brain activity in freely moving animals, but today, researchers can equip primates with lightweight neurologgers that track brain signals without restricting movement. Importantly, the primates quickly habituate to the devices and return to their typical behavior.

Still, these tools need to be even more powerful and lightweight to push the field forward. To that end, researchers are now working on devices that can record high-quality signals from thousands of neurons across multiple brain regions without restricting an animal’s movement.

Real behavior is as complex as the brain gets.

Earl K. Miller

The biggest challenge, however, may not be technological, but computational. Neuroethology deliberately embraces the behavioral variability that classical neuroscience often controls away, and that variability is hard to analyze. “Traditional neuroscience mostly communicates averages: how a neuron fires on average to a stimulus, or how it responds on average across trials,” says Parodi. The trouble, he explains, is that real behavior isn’t an average: “Every human behavior is a distribution. To be ‘neurotypical’ is a spectrum, not one central value.”

That variability grows more daunting as the setting grows more natural. “Real behavior is as complex as the brain gets,” says Miller. “There are countless variables that can influence a single action, and today’s computational models can’t fully separate the signal from the noise. They’re not going to handle that anytime soon.”

The problem can surface in something as simple as a decision to approach or avoid another animal. That one choice could be shaped by hunger, prior conflict, stress, status, the presence of others, or even the weather. The neural signal the scientist captured is real, but how do they know what influenced it? 

That tension lies at the heart of neuroethology. While modeling tools are improving alongside the technology, they aren’t yet advanced enough to eliminate uncertainty. “We are conducting rigorous experiments, but I’m not afraid to admit that you do have to sacrifice a bit of statistical control to study this natural variability,” says Parodi.

What comes next?

The field of neuroethology is still in its infancy, but Parodi seems excited about its potential for growth: “In 10 years, we’ll probably look back and say we didn’t know what we were doing. Or maybe even in one year.” 

He is especially interested in scaling this work to full group dynamics. “I’d love to record from multiple primates at once,” he says. “I’m especially curious about how individuals change in social groups. What happens when one monkey is surrounded by five others? Do they act differently? Do they have a preferred partner, like a best friend? Does the brain reflect that?” 

The field has yet to extend into truly wild environments, relying instead on semi-natural settings, like enclosures, but that will soon change. One of the first wild neuroethology studies will launch on Cayo Santiago, the same island where researchers observed shifts in monkey social behavior after Hurricane Maria. This time, the goal is even more ambitious: to outfit individual primates with neurologgers and follow them continuously for a full year. “We expect that study to happen in the next five years, which is so, so exciting,” Parodi says through a grin.

This kind of long-term, real-world neural tracking could lead to new ways of understanding, and eventually treating, conditions like autism or schizophrenia by identifying what “typical” social processing looks like in complex settings. It could also shape how we build socially intelligent AI. “If we understand what it means to interact appropriately and inappropriately, we can train digital agents to do the same,” says Parodi.

Ultimately, though, the complex field of neuroethology is driven not by a desire to make machines more human, but to better understand our own minds — and with that, our humanity.

This article The next revolution in neuroscience is happening outside the lab is featured on Big Think.

This article very nearly didn’t exist. For several weeks, it made a conspicuous effort not to. It began, or rather did not begin, when I was invited to pitch a second article for Big Think about virtually any topic in neuroscience. 

Triumph. I had freedom and unlimited time. What could be easier? A lot, it turns out. Weeks went by, and I did not write. My inbox began to fill with cheerful nudges from Stephen, my editor. Still keen to write something?

The first time around had been cleaner. I’d been assigned a slot in Big Think’s consciousness issue on a tight deadline. That forced me to write about the neuroscience behind sleep, a relevant topic I knew well enough to write cold. There was no dithering, just a window of opportunity narrowing by the minute.

This time, the window was wide open. My brain was free to go anywhere, and so, of course, it went nowhere. I emailed Stephen with a counterproposal: Would he mind reducing the scope of “anything”? He sent over a handful of ideas, one of which centered on a strategy to spark creativity, coined by Scott Dikkers, founder of The Onion.

“The Clown and the Editor?” I had no idea what it meant, but it had a nice ring.

I opened a blank document titled Clownnotes_1 and resumed not-writing with renewed discipline. I researched several subjects I would not write about. Ideas were everywhere — some I lobbed at Stephen with excitable incoherence, the rest I dragged into private extinction under Clown_2, clown10, and the self-explanatory trash.docx.

I emailed Stephen: “What if I cough up a filthy draft? Something terrible. We’ll call it a starting point.” He agreed, and that afternoon, I deleted 12 of 13 documents, preserving any threads I thought showed potential. Eventually, I started looking into the Clown-Editor concept I was supposedly writing about. 

The two halves of the creative mind

The Clown, in Dikkers’ model, is the mind’s generator. The Clown rapidly throws all types of ideas against the wall, not caring about the audience, their judgment, or even basic feasibility. Those issues can wait for the Editor — the part of the mind that makes sure you’ve got something defensible to submit. An early interruption from the Editor, however, risks killing your idea before ink hits the page.

Without the Clown, there are no novel ideas; without the Editor, those ideas lack concision, coherence, and logical structure. 

Soon enough, my article began taking shape. The deleted drafts had achieved their purpose; I could see flickers of thought and phrasing that were clear descendants of their chaos. I realized that I’d been using this rhythm of reckless creation and careful revision throughout my writing life — I just hadn’t put a name to it.

The Clown–Editor framework is meant to be a simple, intuitive way to approach the writing process, not a scientific claim. Yet the two characters are mirrored by real, measurable neural networks, each playing a distinct role in the creative process. What sets proficient creatives apart is dexterity in switching between these modes.

The default mode network (DMN) is the Clown who shows up barefoot, eagerly blurting out hypotheses about what a frog might wear if invited to dinner (not unlike those early emails I lobbed at Stephen). The DMN is your brain’s internal daydream factory: It recruits cortical midline structures, like the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate, to let thoughts drift. 

The executive control network (ECN) is the pragmatic adult in the room, the Editor that marshals frontoparietal systems in pursuit of internal goals and strategic planning. 

These two systems tend to operate in opposition: When one is active, the other typically quiets. Creativity, at the network level, is about passing the baton at the right moment: letting the DMN meander, then handing over to the ECN for focused development. Functional MRI during divergent thinking has allowed us to observe this temporal handoff, typically characterized by a prolonged period of DMN activation, followed by ECN engagement. Highly creative thinkers seem to modulate these transitions more flexibly and fluently.

Because these two networks have incompatible priorities, they tend not to multitask well, and trying to engage both at once can lead to shutdown. In creative writing, we call this “blocking.”

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), loyal agent of the ECN, is great at vetoing weak ideas but terrible at offering alternatives. An early appearance from the Editor means premature evaluation — a mind interrupting itself just as the creative thoughts were getting fun.

This is why so many great writers swear by deliberately messy first passes. John McPhee describes his early creative process as “flinging mud at a wall.” If we’ve any hope of completing a first draft, he explains, we’ve got to “blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything.” This method works precisely for its arbitrariness; you’re tricking the DMN to hand you something — anything — tangible, then protecting that something from early prosecution by delaying the ECN. 

Anne Lamott’s “shitty first draft” strategy, Ernest Hemingway’s write drunk, edit sober mantra, Dikkers’ Clown and Editor. All of them, knowingly or not, have trained for neural timing: DMN first, ECN second. And me too, I suppose, given that “What if I cough up a filthy draft?” ended up being the “open sesame” to this article.

Your first ideas are almost certainly terrible

Premature evaluation aside, there’s another obstacle waiting in the wings: your first ideas. Mine were sent to die in a string of ecstatic emails and since-deleted documents, but could just as easily have trapped me into early resignation. The romance of inspiration would have us believe originality sprints from the starting gun, when actually, it more often catches up — if you keep going. 

Original ideas tend to arrive later, because the mind needs extra beats to exit well-worn associative paths. Ask your brain to dream up possible uses for a spoon, for example, and its immediate response will be things you’ve spent decades training it to associate spoons with. Once it has exhausted all the spoonable foods, it’ll start listing known uses for spoon-like objects, then whatever else is semantically nearby. 

This has a behavioral analog in what’s colloquially known as the streetlight effect, named after the allegory about a drunk searching for his lost keys under a streetlight. A policeman asks him if he’s certain this is where he lost them; the drunk says no, he’d lost them in the park. “Then why are you searching here?” the policeman asks. “Because this is where the light is.”

The brain mirrors this tendency, searching high-salience regions in semantic memory that are brightly lit by years of repeated exposure. It shows up as the order effect, where early ideas are plentiful and predictable, while later ideas are fewer but, on average, more original. A study of divergent thinking in children found that the originality of ideas peaked around the seventh or eighth idea, suggesting that good ideas might only come after most people would’ve settled or given up.

Originality, in that sense, is a function of search persistence. It comes not from inspiration, but from staying in the problem space longer than your neural heuristics want to. Slowing down helps too; longer latency between successive ideas can lead to more creative responses. 

Persistence has its limits, however. Sometimes, what’s needed is complete disengagement. Incubation is the performance boost that comes when you return to a creative task after taking a break from it. There are multiple versions of this: short delays, long ones, breaks filled with unrelated tasks — with sleep, or with nothing at all. But across dozens of studies, the effect holds: Stepping away helps, especially when your initial attempts have seduced you into the wrong corner of the solution space. Incubation gives your mind time to clear out bad ideas that were beginning to take root. 

Slowing down gives originality space to emerge, but while persistence and incubation help you stay in the game, they don’t guarantee progress. You still need the problem to start taking shape in the first place — if only so your brain knows where to send the next idea.

The tyranny of “anything”

In 1960, Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, was dared by his publisher to write a children’s book using no more than 50 unique words. The result was Green Eggs and Ham, a triumph that went on to sell over 200 million copies. Inspired by this, psychologist Catrinel Tromp formally proposed the “Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis,” which argues that creative output improves under imposed constraints.

Constraints give creative energy a direction to travel, shaping the search space while also confining it — just enough that exploration becomes deeper, weirder, and more productive. In cognitive terms, constraints funnel the search away from dominant semantic pathways, encouraging more remote associations. They lower the probability that the first answer — the one glowing under the streetlamp — will be the one we accept, forcing the Editor to sharpen their criteria, and the Clown to search less obvious terrain.

Constraints can also be the thing that gets you generating in the first place. Before idea generation can begin, the system has to decide how to search memory for material. When the brief is too open, retrieval policies compete. That’s where I was, given total freedom to write anything. My brain had nowhere specific to look, so it didn’t look at all. With too many possible paths through memory, competing features and priorities interfered, which meant no retrieval strategy gained control — none were selected — so the search couldn’t begin.

Stephen’s stray ideas gave me a starting condition, a concrete frame that specified features, relations, and relevance. A point from which associations could begin to form. In studies of semantic cognition, this is where the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) comes in. Under constraint — when the task is at least partially defined — the VLPFC begins to bias memory retrieval toward features that match the problem. It narrows the scope and sets a direction. Only then do other systems get involved.

When the task is internally focused and structured, two major networks begin a tag-teamed collaboration. The DMN, which supports associative and conceptual processing, couples with the ECN, which supplies top-down control and goal-directed planning. Clown-Editor coupling happens when the system has a starting point, which, in open-ended creative tasks, can be a constraint or an initial stimulus.

For me, the ignition cue that sparked creative Clown-Editor coupling was a passing mention of the Clown and the Editor — a concept that I did, eventually, sit down to research. Though only after a sufficient period of Clownly abandon.

This article Why your best ideas come after your worst is featured on Big Think.

It’s time for Macy to move home. She’s scored a promotion and she’s tired of hearing the man in the apartment above play his French horn. So, she books a few viewings with her real estate agent and starts looking at houses. After looking at three places, she falls in love: It’s a house with a huge backyard and a nice open-plan kitchen. What’s more, the school down the road has a great reputation. She’s all set to put in an offer.

But that night a question pops into her head: What if the next house is better? She can’t shake the thought. What if the next house has a bigger backyard, or maybe a double garage? What if it’s cheaper?!

We’ve all found ourselves in this situation, whether we’re considering job offers, buying a new car, or dating new people. When it comes to love, how many people should you date before settling down? It’s a problem that bridges mathematics and psychology, and it’s got a name: the optimal stopping problem.

The 37% rule

The mathematical question for Macy (or our would-be dater looking for love) concerns maximizing probabilities. It’s asking how long do you spend sampling options to give the optimum chances of a successful final decision? How many frogs must you kiss to secure your chances of getting a prince?

Mathematicians have given us an answer: 37%. The basic idea is that, if you need to make a decision from 100 different options, you should sample and discard (or hold off on) the first 37. The 37% rule is not some mindless, automatic thing. It’s a calibration period during which you identify what works and what does not. From the rejected 37%, we choose the best and keep that information in our heads moving forward. If any subsequent options beat that benchmark standard, then you should stick with that option to get the best ultimate outcome.

Let’s take an example. Imagine you find yourself single and wanting a relationship (imagination may not be required). You decide you’re going to go on 10 different dates over a few months. The 37% rule tells us you ought to enjoy yourself on the first three — have a laugh and a drink or two — but do not arrange a second date with any of them. You can do better. What the 37% rule tells us is that the next best date you have is the keeper. They are the ones you should try to settle down with.

Brian Christian in his book, Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions, uses the 37% rule to help Macy from our opening example. As he writes: “If you want the best odds of getting the best apartment, spend 37% of your apartment hunt (eleven days, if you’ve given yourself a month for the search) noncommittally exploring options. Leave the checkbook at home; you’re just calibrating. But after that point, be prepared to immediately commit—deposit and all—to the very first place you see that beats whatever you’ve already seen. This is not merely an intuitively satisfying compromise between looking and leaping. It is the provably optimal solution.”

Exploit or explore

Mathematics offers us the best answer to the “optimal stopping problem.” But there’s just one big issue with it: Humans are not rational probability-crunching machines. In fact, the opposite is usually true. We’re beautifully, infuriatingly, creatively, and messily chaotic. So, it falls on psychology to tell us about how we actually behave.

In psychology and economics, there is what’s known as a “explore/exploit” tradeoff. This asks whether you should go with a guaranteed “win” (the exploit) or risk going somewhere else for an unknown outcome (explore). The degree to which someone will explore or exploit will depend on a host of factors, and it ties in with how curious or risk-seeking we are.

According to research by Addicott et al., published in Nature, the extremes of being too explorative or too exploitative leave us disadvantaged. The person who exploits too much “could promote habit formation,” while the person who explores too much risks becoming a “jack of all trades, but master of none.” Over-exploiters become stuck in a rut, lacking motivation, and get bored. Over-explorers lack expertise and never fully experience anything in depth. What Addicott and his team concluded is “the most advantageous behaviors occurring around a point of balance between the two.”

Of course, different people are more explorative or exploitative at different times. Teenagers and entrepreneurs tend to explore more. Adults and managers exploit more. Try testing yourself with these three questions, to see where you fall:

• If you are visiting a city you know vaguely well, will you go to a restaurant you know is nice, or will you try somewhere new?
• If I tell you a gambling machine has a payout of $50, will you stay and play or explore to see if others have a bigger payout?
• When you’re playing a game, do you tend to stick to the same tactics or mix it up each time?

Relationships aren’t like that

The problem is that the world of interpersonal relations is hard to put a number on. Probabilities and game theory do funny things when you input the wobbly, fuzzy variables at play in human behavior.

(Credit: Studio Romantic / Adobe Stock)

Take the 37% rule, for instance. As a general principle, it makes sense to experience a variety of different dates and familiarize yourself with a range of personality types before you settle down. But who’s to say that date one isn’t the love of your life — the person you click with instantly and who could make you no happier? Who’s to say you won’t return to a past date or relationship, realizing later they were the best all along? And let’s not forget that it’s not just you deciding this — you have to be accepted in turn!

But the biggest problem with the 37% rule, or the idea of “exploring,” when applied to dating is that one date is never enough. Sometimes 10 or 100 dates is not enough to reveal someone’s true character.

As a general rule, though, 37% is a good one. When it comes to buying things or making life decisions, it’s a mathematically safe starting point. There’s a lot of wisdom to be had in sampling the field before settling down. It’s about doing research and calibrating expectations. It’s all about learning what makes something good or bad, and just what you want in a thing.

When will you use it first?

Jonny Thomson teaches philosophy in Oxford. He runs a popular account called Mini Philosophy. His first book is Mini Philosophy: A Small Book of Big Ideas.

This article The 37% rule: How many people should you date before settling down? is featured on Big Think.

Roughly 150 years ago, Harvard University’s William James became one of the first educators to offer a psychology course in the United States. Among other ideas, James put forth the notion of a “stream of consciousness” and encouraged his students to explore it, hoping the concept would lead to a spring of new ideas in the nascent discipline. 

To no avail. In 1913, psychologist John Watson proposed that legitimate psychology had to be based on what we objectively observe, not suppositions about someone’s mental state. By the 1930s, the reductionist, radical behaviorism of B.F. Skinner dominated the field. Living things (apart from humans) were viewed as automata, and thinking about subjective experience was de facto banned from experimental psychology. 

In his most recent book, The World Behind the World, the writer and neuroscientist Erik Hoel described this period — which lasted until the 1990s — as a “consciousness winter,” an artful phrase that captured the lack of new, groundbreaking ideas in the field. Since then, Hoel writes, we’ve seen a bevy of new ideas and scientific research about consciousness — a true spring if there ever was one. Among them: Integrated Information Theory. At its most basic level, IIT argues that consciousness arises from integrated information within a physical system, and it tries to understand the properties of experience within that system using math and neuroscience.

Hoel would know. He earned his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under Professor Giulio Tononi, the godfather of IIT. He later created causal emergence theory, which offers a framework for how causality can emerge within a large system when its constituent parts only appear weakly connected — how we are composed of atoms, for instance, and we are conscious, but atoms are not.

After a hiatus to write books — both fiction and nonfiction — and a popular Substack, The Intrinsic Perspective, which seeks to bridge the cultures of science and the humanities, Hoel returned to scientific research, publishing a paper on the math of emergence. I caught up with him to chat about the next generation of consciousness researchers, where he thinks his field is headed, and his fears that a new consciousness winter is coming. 

Consciousness is often portrayed as tricky to define, but you disagree. What is the accepted, honed definition within the field of consciousness research?

People act like the definition of consciousness is some great mystery, but what I think is actually tricky is coming up with a satisfactory theory of consciousness. Defining it is just something you do along the way, and it’s more about everyone “pointing” to the same thing. If I don’t know that water is H₂O, I can still point to water. I think this has happened in the last three or so decades in consciousness research. We’re mostly all pointing to the same thing. 

The working definition of consciousness is your personal stream of experience that begins when you wake up in the morning and vanishes when you enter a deep, dreamless sleep. It’s what it’s like to be you.

Is Integrated Information Theory still your preferred theory of consciousness?

It’s my preferred theory in that it’s far better than other theories. As in, it actually deserves the term “theory.” I’m not sure others really do. Currently, there is no theory I’m aware of that can actually operate as a theory of consciousness besides IIT. This is obvious once you get rigorous about it. Given any system, like a brain state, a theory should be able to map that to the set of all possible experiences — sensations, thoughts, etc. IIT can at least give you an answer, dealing with all the complexities involved. It can do that for any system you can think of, too. 

Other theories can’t even get close. For instance, what scale of description do you use in the mapping? I can describe your brain in terms of atoms, molecules, neurons, minicolumns, brain regions, and so on. Which do I use? Can any other theory answer that? Generally, no, of course not. They have no idea because they never get that far. IIT gives an answer. You may not agree with it, but it’s an answer, which is far better than no answer.

There’s now a well-funded effort in consciousness research in which scientists with opposing views or hypotheses work together to design and conduct experiments to resolve their disagreements through joint research and publication. Do you think this is productive?

I do, and I support this. But I also think we are not bottlenecked by empirical data. One day, people will realize that the empirical tools of neuroscience are simply not up to the task. You can’t go “data first” for that reason. The real bottleneck is good ideas. This is very rare for a field. Or any situation in general. 

If some rich donor actually wanted to have a 15% chance of changing the entire world, they’d sit down and give the two or three dozen young theorists working on consciousness a few years of funding to do whatever they like, as long as it’s on consciousness. I don’t think you could get that expected value for an investment anywhere else. It would be a lot cheaper than funding a ton of adversarial collaborations, too.

In 2023, in the wake of the first large adversarial collaboration pitting integrated information theory against global neuronal workspace theory, many leading scientists in the consciousness field signed a letter labeling IIT as pseudoscience. You publicly criticized that letter, saying you feared the result could be a new “consciousness winter.” What did you mean?

I was specifically worried about a repeat of what happened in the sciences for a major chunk of the 20^th century, where consciousness was a verboten word. In fact, if you just look up the frequency of the word “consciousness,” it has had a huge dip, beginning around the turn of the century, reaching its lowest point around 1940, and then slowly climbing upward again. Consciousness was simply thought of as too philosophical, too strange. But the issues never went away — they were just stuck in a box for decades. The second that box was opened up in the 60s, 70s, and all the way in the 1990s, all the old questions came roaring back.

What could a new winter look like?

Like funding drying up. Like interest drying up. A cultural and intellectual dismissiveness. I think internal criticism and feuding could drive it, but also AI could, too. If AI attains general intelligence [allowing it to perform tasks as well as humans], I think the median take will be that AI is not conscious, but is intelligent, rather than that AI is both conscious and intelligent. But that first opinion has an obvious implication, which is that our consciousness doesn’t matter much. Which may then further imply either consciousness is not even worth studying or it doesn’t even exist. I think that’s the most likely route to another consciousness winter.

You represent a new, younger generation of scientists now tackling the riddle of consciousness. How do you differ from prior generations?

There are a lot of ex-mathematicians and ex-physicists in the field now. They bring something new, which is the ability to have formal theories that make precise predictions, have exact, definable rules, and so on. For decades now, there’s been a lot of “theory slop” in consciousness research — a holdover, really, from neuroscience in general. Things like “maybe it’s a big workspace” or “maybe it’s thoughts thinking about other thoughts.” All that stuff sounds good — and I’m not saying it’s bad — but it’s absolutely something that should be moved beyond. Theories of consciousness that operate at a broad linguistic level were great in the 1980s. Now is the time to say specific things and propose a specific quantification.

For much of its past, consciousness research has always seemed rather antagonistic. Competing theories clash along with big egos. Do you think your generation of consciousness researchers is starting to eschew this status quo? 

I do think that there’s less competition. One reason is simply that you don’t have to be famous in another field anymore to actually be a consciousness researcher. A recipe for big egos is to require someone to be previously famous to give ideas. That strange requirement is gone now, and so the field is less antagonistic for the younger generation more broadly.

You wrote that you were repeatedly told philosophy is dangerous during your PhD. Do you agree?

Quite the opposite. There are a large number of neuroscientists who would benefit significantly from reading more philosophy. Too often, there’s naivety, and so you get ideas promoted that are extremely simple, almost childlike. But at the same time, philosophers tend not to respect scientists enough. Ultimately, it will be the scientists who make progress on consciousness, not philosophers. So we need more philosophy from scientists, and more science from philosophers.

Why is it so important to have a scientifically validated theory of consciousness? 

Advances could be almost unimaginable, since we don’t know the affordances a theory allows. For just table stakes, there are things like being able to make informed moral choices. Let’s say it turns out, with a theory of consciousness, that chickens are not conscious. They feel nothing. And certainly not pain. This radically changes the entire notion of vegetarianism. We can freely eat chickens the same way we eat corn. A small example, but the point is that a huge host of moral considerations will be impacted. Where do the boundaries of the moral circle begin and end? 

Beyond the table stakes, there are things like building a conscious AI. Perhaps those would have different capabilities compared to large language models, like being more trustworthy and legible. 

Things can get very wild depending on what the theory allows. There’s some nonzero probability it allows for extremely sci-fi possibilities like body swapping. I’m being serious. We simply have no idea until we have, at least, a very attractive draft theory, which we don’t.

This article was updated on September 9, 2025, to correct the title of Erik Hoel’s 2023 book, The World Behind the World.

This article Why the 21st century could bring a new “consciousness winter” is featured on Big Think.

Every night, without protest or panic, we cease to exist as subjects of experience. One moment, we’re here, sensing, and responding. The next, we’re gone. This phenomenon is so familiar that few of us stop to question it, but if you want to understand consciousness, there’s no better place to look than sleep and dreaming. 

In 1974, philosopher Thomas Nagel asked, “What is it like to be a bat?” That question became a landmark in the philosophy of mind, precisely because it defined consciousness by its most essential property: What it is like to be. If experience is present, so is consciousness.

The problem is that this formulation is tough to fathom and even harder to operationalize. It’s one thing to say experience lies at the heart of consciousness, but it’s quite another to actually study it. Bats, after all, aren’t answering questionnaires. 

Consciousness resists external analysis because its nature is interior. We may not know what it’s like to be a bat, but each night, we brush up against the more basic question: What is it like to be anything at all?

While we’re awake, conscious experience is shaped by sensation and action. Streams of sensory input flow in, motor output flows out, and this ongoing exchange with the environment anchors our subjective experience. But when we fall asleep, that architecture dissolves and rearranges itself. 

The stages of sleep are divided into two broad arenas: non-REM and REM. Neuroscientists can track these states and their distinct neural signatures using an electroencephalogram ( EEG), which records the collective electrical activity of cortical neurons. In deeper stages of non-REM sleep, these neurons fall into a slow, rhythmic oscillation of activity punctuated by stretches of silence. To be inside one of those slow waves, subjectively speaking, is to be nowhere at all. Studies using high-density EEG have shown that when posterior cortical regions are dominated by slow-wave activity, conscious experience is typically absent. 

We fall into non-REM sleep knowing what it’s like to be — and then, nothing. A total annihilation of is-ness.

Outwardly, REM sleep looks like rest. The brainstem’s motor command centers actively inhibit the muscles, rendering them temporarily paralyzed, and responsiveness to the external world falls away. But inside the brain, the lights blaze. Fast, desynchronized firing remerges in the posterior cortex, with activity levels in sensory and emotional circuits that match — and in some regions exceed — those seen during the day. Our eyes are closed, and yet the visual cortex shows similar activation patterns as it does when processing a real scene. 

What emerges are dreams — internally generated episodes of consciousness, constructed in a perceptual vacuum. The other missing component is metacognition — the awareness of awareness — and a sense of agency. In REM, we are conscious without question. Fully immersed, yet without the capacity to watch ourselves from outside the moment. Most dreamers don’t know they’re dreaming; they simply exist within the experience. Dreaming is being without knowing that you are.

Lucid dreaming provides a counterexample. In rare cases, sleepers gain insight into the unreality of their dreams from within the dream itself. In sleep labs, researchers train dreamers to signal lucidity through deliberate eye movements, which can be time-stamped using electrooculography (EOG). Functional MRI and EEG data show that the shift to lucidity coincides with a partial reactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and the precuneus — regions that support metacognition that are typically offline during REM sleep. When a dream becomes lucid, it’s not the experience that changes but the frame around it. The lights were on the whole time, and now, you know it. 

Ordinary dreams are, perhaps, the clearest articulation of what it is like to be. Rather than defining subjectivity from the outside, REM sleep allows us to map its loss and return from within, revealing its structure through its disassembly. Dreaming becomes a lived rehearsal of Nagel’s challenge: Consciousness is not something we perform nor a behavior we emit. It’s a condition of self-sustaining internal activity, defined by the felt quality of experience. 

What remains when our conscious experience is stripped of memory, agency, and self-reflection? What’s it like to be a creature without them? We may never know exactly, but we can step outside our dominant perspective to understand what it’s like to be someone —  or something — in the most basic sense. In sleep, we are as close to Nagel’s unreachable batness as we’ll likely ever get.

This article What the stages of sleep reveal about consciousness is featured on Big Think.

We land on time at Madrid-Barajas airport, but there’s a delay disembarking. Turns out a new artificial intelligence system operates the jet bridge here. No humans needed — until they are. Through the window, I see the AI jet bridge repeatedly approaching the plane, flailing gently in the morning air, and withdrawing, again and again, caught in an infinite loop. Eventually, we’re rescued by a worker, who instantly sees and solves the problem.

Humans don’t get stuck endlessly repeating the same behavior. AI sometimes does, whether it’s stalled on the tarmac or locked in the purgatory of an automated call center. These examples might seem like simple failures of intelligence, but I think they point to something deeper: a fundamental limitation that may forever leave even the smartest AI vulnerable to infinite loops, never noticing the problem, never escaping.  

Imagine a smarter jet bridge — a system that can monitor its performance and detect when it’s flailing and failing. Thanks to this internal model of its environment and its own behavior, it succeeds where today’s autonomous jet bridges fall short. Eventually, though, it will glitch too. So you add another higher-order feedback loop — a model within its model, monitoring its own monitoring. If that fails? Add another. And so on, with each new level of recursion adding intelligence of a kind, and with it, more robustness. But there’s always the chance of yet another glitch, an error in the self-self-self-monitoring system. Unless you build an infinite stack of recursive self-checking, the system would eventually spiral into an infinite loop, never meeting the conditions that allow it to stop, and everything would fall apart.

Computer scientists have wrestled with this problem for nearly a century. In 1936, Alan Turing proved that no algorithm can always determine whether another algorithm, given some input, will stop or run forever. Here’s an example to capture the intuition. Imagine you’re writing code telling a robot what to do. Some programs are simple — the robot completes the task, and the algorithm ends. But others are complex, with loops and conditions: “Keep moving until you see a red object.” If the robot never sees a red object, or if the logic is flawed, it may follow its instructions endlessly. And no matter how advanced your code, there might be no way to predict whether it will ever stop. 

Turing’s insight was abstract, but the limits of algorithms became more concrete in the so-called “frame problem.” Laid out by John McCarthy and Patrick J. Hayes in 1969, the frame problem broadly refers to the difficulty of teaching a machine to make smart decisions based on relevant information without having it explicitly consider every irrelevant detail. Because the list of irrelevant information in a given situation can be endless, it’s difficult for machines to know what not to take into account. And this opens the door for yet another kind of infinite loop.

These problems marked milestones in thinking about intelligence — both natural and artificial — but they’ve largely faded into the background as new waves of deep neural networks and generative models have swept through society. This doesn’t mean they’ve disappeared. As the jet bridge in Madrid illustrates, when the silicon meets the tarmac, there’s still plenty of room for things to go wrong. The reason AI systems may always be vulnerable to infinite loops isn’t that they lack processing power: It’s that there’s a deeper difference between these systems and our own embodied, biological brains.

Intelligence and consciousness are distinct concepts — even if some of our tech leaders mistakenly assume that more of the former will inevitably lead to the latter. Put simply, intelligence is all about doing things, while consciousness is about being or feeling. But they are still related, at least in humans and other animals. My hypothesis is that some forms of intelligence — specifically the intelligence needed to fully escape the spectre of infinite loops in an open-ended world — rely on the capabilities that come with a conscious mind deeply embedded in the flow of time. 

Anchored in time and entropy

While stacking levels of self-monitoring might be enough for a satisfactory jet bridge, this isn’t how humans handle complexity. Living, conscious creatures such as you and I survive and even thrive in environments far less predictable than airports without needing ever-stranger loops. In fact, human minds, marvelous as they are, struggle with recursion. About the most that most of us can handle are three levels: knowing that we know that we know. For example, I can sometimes feel confident in my ability to know when I’m correct or mistaken. Our impressive capability for adaptive behavior in an open-ended world must, it seems, be based on something else.

What could this “something else” be? One possibility is that our minds and brains — and our conscious experiences — are anchored in time, and in entropy, in ways that algorithms, by design, are not.  

We are human animals, sharing with other living creatures the need to continually fend off the descent into decay and disorder mandated by the second law of thermodynamics. This law says that the entropy of an isolated system can only ever increase (or remain the same), with entropy being a measure of disorder or randomness. A drop of ink will spread throughout a glass of water and never reform, and a broken egg never makes itself whole again. It is a fearsome law, as the physicist Arthur Eddington recognized: “If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”

A crucial point about the second law is that it applies to isolated systems, such as a sealed thermos, where there is no exchange of energy between the system and its surrounding environment. In open systems, where energy exchanges can happen between the system and its environment, it becomes possible to reduce entropy.. Living systems are canonical examples of open systems, using energy from their environments to maintain themselves in the statistically surprising condition of being alive.

This process unfolds in various ways and at different levels. The cells in our body continually regenerate the conditions for their own existence through the energetic flux of metabolism. According to some prominent ideas in neuroscience, notably the free energy principle, neural circuits continuously work to minimize the statistical surprise of sensory inputs, to reduce the entropy of these inputs, and in doing so, impose a kind of predictive control on the body’s physiological condition.

Conscious experiences, too, directly reflect this fundamental drive to stay alive. Every conscious experience brings together an enormous amount of survival-relevant information in ways that guide our behavior, whether voluntarily or not. And all those experiences arguably contain a tinge of valence, a dose, however small, of positive or negative feeling, which may nudge us to behave in certain ways. As I wrote in my book Being You, we experience the world around us, and ourselves within it, with, through, and because of our living bodies.

These multiscale processes are deeply intertwined, and each is intimately connected to time, though in different ways. Metabolic processes unfold in biochemical time, perhaps one billion reactions per second in each cell in our bodies. Neural time is slower but equally constrained by the limitations and adaptations of neurobiology: the myelin-accelerated exchange of action potentials and the slow diffusion of neurotransmitters. In the stream of consciousness, the passage of time is continuous, irresistible, and complex, encompassing not only succession but also flow, duration, and persistence. Time in our bodies, brains, and minds is rich, dynamic, multidimensional, and deeply interdependent at all levels, from biochemistry to personal identity. Our entire way of being is inescapably embedded in physical time, and physical time itself is, many physicists believe, anchored in the second law of thermodynamics.

AI’s insatiable appetite

The contrast between our brains and computers is stark and revealing. For a digital computer, time is thin, unidimensional, and abstracted away from its thermodynamic arrow. Computation is all about state transitions: A leads to B, zero to one. In Turing’s classical form of computation, only sequence matters, not the underlying dynamics of whatever material substrate lies underneath. Every algorithm is just one damn state after another. There could be a microsecond or a million years between two steps in an algorithm — between A and B — and it would still be the same algorithm, the same computation.

This disregard for time is costly. While computation, as Turing formalized it, exists out of time, computers themselves do not. The insatiable energy appetite of today’s AI is largely due to the demands of error correction — the need to keep ones as ones and zeros as zeros — since even the dead sand of silicon cannot escape the tendrils of entropy. Pretending that time doesn’t exist is an expensive business.

Here lies the key reason why I think algorithms can get stuck in infinite loops, while intelligent animals almost never do. For algorithms, frozen in sequence space and disconnected — at least in principle — from the pull of entropy, there will always be some unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstance in which time itself ends (or, more likely, the power runs out) before the computation concludes.

Unlike computers, we are beings in time — embodied, embedded, and entimed in our worlds. We can never be caught in infinite loops because we never exist out of time. The constant, time-pressured imperative to minimize statistical surprise and maintain physiological viability is, for living creatures like us, the ultimate relevance filter, the reason we almost always find a way through. 

I say “almost always” because there are many examples of behavioral repetitiveness that involve a kind of loopiness, even if it’s not infinite. These range from perseverative behavior after damage to the frontal lobes, obsessive-compulsive disorders, repetitive actions in severe autism and in Tourette’s syndrome, all the way to self-destructive forms of addiction. In a sense, these examples bolster my argument because they reflect disturbances in “normal” neurocognitive function. 

If these ideas are on track, then AI systems reliant on Turing computation will forever lack some forms of embodied and entimed intelligent behavior. And if this is true, then the prospect of artificial general intelligence — one that can match or surpass human performance in any cognitive task — becomes even more of a chimera than it already is. 

The myth of conscious AI

Could new forms of AI relate to the flow of time in richer ways than allowed by classical computation? There’s a long history here, and an exciting future. The earliest computers — such as the Antikythera mechanism, a 2,000-year-old device for making astronomical predictions— were analogue, operating in continuous time. At the other end of history, researchers are exploring methods such as mortal computation, where computational processes are allowed to depend on the specific hardware that implements them, so that when the hardware “dies,” the algorithm dies, too. This approach promises major gains in energy efficiency by embracing, rather than resisting, the vagaries of the second law of thermodynamics. There are also many flavors of neuromorphic computing, which, to varying extents, mimic how the human brain works and are more grounded in time, compared to Turing’s timeless benchmark.

Approaches to intelligence grounded in dynamical systems eschew computation altogether, focusing instead on concepts like attractors and phase spaces that have a much deeper respect for time. These approaches trace back to the early days of AI and the historically overlooked tradition of cybernetics, which focused on feedback and control rather than on algorithmic symbol processing.

There’s a great deal to be gained from these approaches and many new varieties of AI to be discovered. But still, I doubt that even entimed computation or cybernetic engineering will completely escape the shadow of infinite loops or fully deliver on the kind of open-ended, adaptive intelligence that biological systems achieve.

That type of intelligence, I believe, is intimately and perhaps necessarily tied up, not only with time, but also with consciousness. At least, if you conceptualize consciousness the way I do — as a process deeply linked to the drive to survive. In this view, conscious experiences integrate all the way from a metabolic resistance to entropy to perceptual opportunities for action and planning, always inextricably embedded in the flow of time. It is this multiscale integration that is the difference-maker, the reason why conscious experience could be the currency with the credit sufficient to escape almost any infinite loop and to reframe any frame problem.

Other proposals have linked consciousness with open-ended intelligence, though without focusing on time and entropy. Twenty years ago, the cognitive scientist Murray Shanahan — inspired by the global workspace theory of consciousness — proposed that consciousness provides the resources necessary to solve, or at least sidestep, the frame problem by combining elements of cognition and perception in different ways. Theoretical biologists Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg have argued that consciousness is associated with what they call unlimited associative learning, a particular form of learning that enables the open-ended discovery of novel solutions. Altogether, the picture emerging is one where some forms of intelligence — at least in living creatures and perhaps in any context — may require consciousness.

It’s also worth briefly flipping the perspective. If conscious experiences depend on being deeply embedded in time and on the metabolic imperative to stay alive in a universe governed by entropy, then this has serious implications for the future of AI. Specifically, the temporally thin nature of classical digital computation — one state after another, with the inter-state time interval being totally arbitrary — seems fundamentally incompatible with the nature of consciousness as a richly dynamical process. If consciousness is inextricable from physical time, as it seems to be, then it cannot be a matter of algorithms alone. This hammers one more nail into the coffin for the idea that “AI consciousness” is coming anytime soon — if another nail is needed. 

Toward the end of his life, the philosopher Daniel Dennett was fond of talking about the “hard questions” in consciousness science, in playful contrast to David Chalmers’ famous “hard problem” of how consciousness occurs at all. For Dennett, the hard questions are all about the functions of consciousness — not what it is, but what it does. As he put it, a conscious experience occurs — “and then what happens?”

Perhaps the answer lies in time. Consciousness may be nature’s way of allowing its intelligent creations to keep going, to (almost) always find a way.

I am grateful to Tim Bayne, Robert Chis-Ciure, Stephen Johnson, and Ishan Singhal for comments on a first draft of this article. Preparation of this essay was supported by the European Research Council through an Advanced Investigator Grant, number 101019254. I am an advisor to Conscium Ltd and AllJoined Inc.

This article Why AI gets stuck in infinite loops — but conscious minds don’t is featured on Big Think.

Holding a Sonoran Desert toad and squeezing the slimy glands on its head to extract its toxic secretions is a strange experience. Far stranger is what one of the compounds within that mixture can do to the human mind. 5-MeO-DMT, or simply 5MeO, is one of the world’s most powerful psychedelics, capable of shattering your sense of space, time, and self within seconds. 

Like its molecular cousin DMT, 5MeO occurs naturally in various plants, with effects that usually fade within an hour. But unlike other psychedelics, 5MeO doesn’t flood the mind with intricate hallucinations. Instead, it tends to erase everything except for awareness itself.

For some, the result is more than a mind-bending trip. It’s a complete deconstruction of subjective experience itself — a glimpse, perhaps, into what lies beneath all our thoughts, sensations, and stories. 

A minimal model of consciousness

Our minds are constantly buzzing with stuff: thoughts, feelings, body sensations, images, scents, sounds. Naive intuition suggests this is all there is to the mind. But what if there is some bedrock of conscious experience upon which it rests?

For millennia, Buddhist traditions have described experiences that reveal a minimal state of mind — one of pure awareness. Accessing these raw, unadorned states of consciousness is a central motivation for many meditators. From the perspective of consciousness science, it also represents an attractive avenue to study the underlying mechanisms of human experience. The philosopher Thomas Metzinger, for example, has argued that a minimal model of consciousness — that is, awareness without the residue of thoughts, emotions, and the self — can offer a deep scientific understanding of the essence of consciousness. By examining its most basic form, we might learn how more complex forms are built upon those foundations or what the minimum necessary components for consciousness really are.

But reaching these states through meditation is difficult, if not impossible, for most. Some meditators never get there, despite decades of practice. Even among those who do report such experiences, their descriptions are often tangled up with the language and imagery of Buddhist texts, making it hard to separate genuine experience from suggestion.

5-MeO-DMT may offer a more practical way to access and study these stripped-down states of mind. As a scientist interested in consciousness, most of my previous research has focused on understanding how psychedelics act on the human brain. Then I stumbled across reports of individuals ingesting 5-MeO-DMT (or simply 5MeO), describing effects that sounded similar to those reported by long-time meditators. 

That 5MeO could induce these experiences was counterintuitive. After all, psychedelics tend to add stuff to the mind, not empty it. Most induce a wide range of subjective experiences, including colourful visual hallucinations, bodily sensations, changes in cognition and thoughts, and feelings of unity or connectedness with the world or others. For example, DMT — the key ingredient of the Amazonian psychedelic brew called ayahuasca — can thrust your subjective awareness into immersive visual worlds, often described as highly geometric and colorful, and sometimes populated by seemingly intelligent beings. But with 5MeO, something completely different happens: It radically deconstructs all possible worlds, sparing only awareness.

It’s no wonder that 5MeO has been dubbed the “Mount Everest of psychedelics,” and fittingly, its experiences are often referred to as “whiteouts.” But beyond its ability to eliminate the sense of space and time, its most interesting effect lies in the way it dissolves the self. This is key. The question of whether the self is necessary for consciousness to occur has been debated by philosophers for thousands of years — and it remains unsettled. 

No limits, no objects, no dimensions

Driven by the idea that 5MeO might offer a unique window into consciousness, we set out to test whether it truly induces states of pure awareness — and might serve as an important tool for consciousness science. Rather than studying the effects of 5MeO in the artificial confines of the lab, we decided to first study its effects in the real world. We wanted to get a sense of the range of experiences the compound produces at different doses and in different settings. So we attended retreats where individuals were already planning to ingest 5MeO, then measured their brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG) caps. As a tool that measures brain rhythms, EEG helps neuroscientists characterize different states of consciousness, such as sleep, anaesthesia, and vegetative conditions. Understanding how these brain rhythms operate under 5MeO could provide a basic understanding of the mechanisms underlying pure awareness.

But first, we needed to confirm whether these experiences truly reflected a state of deconstructed consciousness with awareness still intact. To do that, we conducted detailed interviews with participants using a microphenomenological technique. This approach helps people vividly relive their experiences, rather than simply recalling them from memory. That distinction matters — naive recollection often blurs our actual lived experiences with our current interpretations, leading to distortions or confabulations. Microphenomenology helps reduce those biases, which is why it has become an increasingly popular tool in consciousness research.

Our results revealed that the 5MeO experience consisted of several stages. Just seconds after smoking the substance, individuals felt a rapid onset of effects, characterized by the body or the visual field crumbling, collapsing, or shattering. This was followed by an immersion stage, during which thoughts started to gradually disappear. At this point, many individuals felt that they were becoming the emotions rather than simply feeling them.

This was followed by the abstract stage, where participants began to feel that their bodies were dissolving entirely. All capacity for thought vanished. At this moment, participants described their experience in abstract terms.  “There were no limits or no objects. No dimensions even,” one participant said. “I had no thoughts. I had no senses … But I had some feeling of … like a pyramid or something … it was more kind of a feeling of the space.”

Only 29% of individuals reached the peak of the 5MeO experience — a stage we dubbed everything and nothing. These individuals experienced awareness without self, time, or space. There was no distinction between subject and object, or even the capacity for thought and reflection. But at the same time, the experience felt full, containing everything while also evoking a sense of void. “I was not there,” one participant said. “It was like I was accessing ‘whiteness’. Quiet, blissful, enormous whiteness … I was everything … There was no controller, or observer … It was not ‘me.’ I don’t know what happened. I somehow had a glimpse of … of … of the wholeness.” 

This description provided strong hints that we were onto something meaningful. A state of fully deconstructed consciousness that preserved awareness. A glimpse into the minimal model of consciousness outlined by Metzinger. It seemed that 5MeO could be a potential avenue for us to induce states of pure awareness without having to rely on the reports of advanced meditators with thousands of hours of practice. But the potential advantage goes even further. By understanding how 5MeO interacts with various receptors in the brain, we could gain a detailed understanding of how changes in brain activity give rise to these experiences. 

The EEG data we collected complemented these subjective reports, revealing a reduction of alpha and beta brain rhythms. These rhythms help coordinate signaling between higher and lower regions of the brain. High-level regions process abstract thoughts linked to our sense of self, which often become more prominent when we close our eyes and think about ourselves, our relationships, and our place in time. We also found a reduction in beta rhythms, a change that our previous research has linked to feelings of disembodiment during both psychedelic experiences and meditation. Together, these neural patterns seem to fit with what many participants described: the fading of bodily boundaries and the narrative sense of self.

Reductions in alpha brain rhythms reflect a state where neurons fire more freely. But how could a state of deconstructed consciousness — without any contents except for awareness itself — arise from a state of disinhibition? A closer look at our phenomenological results offers an intriguing possibility. Rather than reflecting an experience devoid of anything, the experience of everything and nothing reveals a state of consciousness that’s overflooded, overriding the capacity of attention to capture any meaningful information from the experience.

Still, these findings are preliminary, and the experiences did not take place in a controlled laboratory environment. Other researchers recently reported somewhat different brain results in a study also conducted in retreat settings. We are currently seeking to settle these potential differences in a controlled study where we will administer 5MeO while capturing brain activity in greater detail and with a wider range of participants.

Eliminating the burdens of the mind

One of the most striking elements of our findings was that experiences of deconstruction induced by 5MeO were commonly linked with feelings of bliss and well-being. Meditators have reported a similar phenomenon of intense feelings of pleasure once they’ve reached advanced stages in their practice. 

Why does pure awareness lead to bliss? We still don’t know, but it opens fascinating questions about the relationship between consciousness and mental health. It is possible that our everyday onslaught of thoughts, sensations, and feelings constrains and burdens the mind. Eliminating those burdens may free the mind to simply appreciate awareness itself, and in that simplicity, find refuge. Similar claims suggest that excessive self-focus can fuel psychological distress. Psychedelics offer unique ways to potentially relieve suffering by loosening that rigid self-focus. 

But while 5MeO may induce feelings of bliss, it can also trigger elevated states of anxiety during its effects, and we still don’t fully understand why this is the case for some people. It’s also possible that the compound reduces suffering through other means. Research suggests 5MeO can promote neuroplasticity in a rapid and enduring way, with recent findings showing it increased the number of spines (parts of neurons that enable connections with other neurons) in the medial prefrontal cortex of mice — an area that plays a crucial role in several mental health conditions and the sense of self.  

Future research will be key in clarifying exactly how 5MeO affects the brain and its potential benefits for mental health. What’s becoming clear is that this psychedelic may be a reliable gateway into models of consciousness that most people would otherwise never reach — experiences stripped of the thoughts, sensations, and feelings that normally flood the mind. It’s a glimpse into the bare awareness that lies quietly beneath every waking moment.

This article “Pure awareness”: Inside the psychedelic that erases space, time, and self is featured on Big Think.

Picture a calm, flat ocean dotted with countless buoys. A few start bobbing, rippling the glassy water. Suddenly, clusters of buoys begin jumping and splashing back down in unison, sending out waves. Others join in. Then more. The ocean becomes a torrent of rolling hills. Is there some sort of pattern? 

You notice the waves seem to be influencing the buoys’ frenzied activity. The waves the buoys created seem to move with purpose, a seemingly coordinated spectacle. But this is no chaotic ocean storm. What you’re witnessing is an improvisational, sapient dance.

Now, imagine the ocean is your brain. The buoys are neurons. The waves are electrical activity. And their mysterious, patterned movements? That’s consciousness.

To better understand consciousness, neuroscience has traditionally focused on neurons, considered the primary carriers of information in the brain. But neuroscientists like Earl K. Miller argue that the brain’s coordinated waves do the real work — carrying, combining, and transforming information — perhaps even creating consciousness.

Miller’s recent research explores that idea in a counterintuitive way — by studying how chemically distinct anesthetics alter the brain’s wave patterns in similar ways, leading to the same vanishing point: unconsciousness. The hope is that watching how consciousness unravels may reveal what holds it together.

A universal signature

One of science’s greatest mysteries is why we experience the world subjectively. It’s a grand, controversial, and intellectually seductive question. But it’s not what interests Miller, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at MIT and a member of the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. “That’s something for philosophers to consider,” he says. “I’m interested in how the brain produces consciousness — the mechanisms and fundamental principles.”

To study those, Miller and the members of his laboratory regularly probe unconsciousness. Examining unconsciousness enables researchers to explore the factors in the brain that permit consciousness to emerge in the first place. “You shut the whole thing off — now you can ask what has changed about the brain,” says Daniel Toker, a neuroscientist at UCLA, who is also researching consciousness via unconsciousness.

The most reliable way to do so is through anesthesia. Inhalable drugs such as sevoflurane, desflurane, and isoflurane — along with more powerful injectable ones like propofol, ketamine, and dexmedetomidine — disrupt brain activity to such a degree that the organ loses its ability to process and integrate information. Your subjective experience goes black.

Surprisingly, scientists only recently learned how anesthetics trigger unconsciousness. In a study published last year, Miller and his colleagues explained in detail how the leading drug propofol causes consciousness to vanish. “The brain has to operate on this knife’s edge between excitability and chaos,” Miller explained. “It’s got to be excitable enough for its neurons to influence one another, but if it gets too excitable, it spins off into chaos. Propofol seems to disrupt the mechanisms that keep the brain in that narrow operating range.”

Generalized seizures also tip the brain into unconsciousness, but in a different way than anesthesia. “When you’re anesthetized, you go into this unstable, chaotic regime,” Toker says. “Whereas in generalized seizures, the brain becomes this super predictable metronome.”

Miller and his team are having far more success probing unconsciousness via anesthesia. In a study published in May, he and Alexandra Bardon, a graduate student, administered two distinct anesthetics, ketamine and dexmedetomidine, to macaques while recording the animals’ brain activity. With both drugs, the alignment of brain waves shifted in similar ways as the animals’ consciousness waned and then winked out. 

This easily measurable shift may serve as a universal signature of unconsciousness: a neural pattern that reliably signals when consciousness disappears, no matter the cause. “Our study suggests that anesthetics are all triggering unconsciousness the same way,” Miller says. “They may arrive there by different routes, but … they’re altering your brain waves in very specific ways.”

Riding the (brain) wave

The results deepen Miller’s long-running metaphor of the brain as an ocean — waves of electrical activity rising and interacting across the cortex. These waves, he believes, may do more than reflect neural firing. They might help stitch consciousness together.

While the major theories of consciousness differ in many ways, most agree that consciousness arises when enough of the brain’s cortex — the outermost layer, responsible for high-level functions such as thought and memory — hums in coordinated harmony. “Brain waves are a great way to do that,” Miller says, “because how else do you coordinate millions of neurons across your cortex?”

Waves offer an elegant solution to that problem. As simple functions, they provide an efficient way to coordinate and structure patterns of activity across the brain. “It’s a great, tractable way for the brain to produce self-organization,” Miller says.

For much of the 20th century, neuroscientists believed that neurons performed the heavy lifting of producing conscious experience through a process called spiking, which involves transmitting a signal via an electrical impulse known as an action potential. Most neuroscientists considered it mystical to suggest that brain waves could be the drivers of consciousness. After all, it was unclear whether brain wave patterns were simply useful biomarkers or whether their alterations could reveal something deeper about consciousness itself. “Is consciousness going away because the brain waves are changing like this, or is this just some weird read-out that functionally means nothing?” Toker says.

But recent research has reignited interest in brain waves. In 2012, a Miller-led research team at MIT, along with a group at Boston University, correlated brain wave activity with different thoughts in monkeys’ brains. Six years later, scientists at Yale showed that at the precise moment of conscious awareness of stimuli, a wave of electrical activity flows from the visual cortex located at the rear of the brain to the frontal lobes. 

The result: Scientists have realized that neuron firing isn’t solely responsible for consciousness. In fact, researchers have discovered that neurons spend about 80% of their time not spiking. During these periods, they still communicate with other brain cells through subtle electrical influences. Those influences — waves — travel around the brain 5,000 times faster than the slower signaling of synaptic spikes, and they’re being sent out all the time.

Scientists have also discovered that astrocytes — star-shaped glial cells that comprise up to 40% of all cells in the brain — do more than just support neurons structurally, remove waste products, and provide nutrients. Like neurons, they also oscillate and spread electrical influences. In May, a team led by Thomas Papouin, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis, found that a brain chemical associated with alertness, attention, and learning alters brain connectivity and function by acting on astrocytes, not neurons. As he put it in a statement, “This is the type of discovery that profoundly reshapes our understanding of how the brain works.”

Your mind is not a MacBook

For decades, neuroscientists assumed the brain functioned like a digital computer, a living, breathing MacBook Pro. Spikes of neurons were seen as ones and zeros, and these were considered the carriers of information.

But Miller is nurturing another hypothesis that fits with the idea that brain waves, not neurons, drive consciousness: The mind actually functions more like an analog computer. These machines solve problems by representing quantities as models — think voltages or mechanical positions — rather than the ones and zeros used in digital computers.

In the analog brain, waves could easily serve as those models, Miller says. Computation could emerge from how waves interact, adding together or canceling out depending on their phases. And because these waves ripple across the brain’s layered, three-dimensional structure, they could support enormously complex computations. (Unlike digital ones and zeros, waves can take on all the values in between.)

Miller points to the human brain’s meager use of power — just 20 watts — as evidence that its computational approach must be vastly more efficient than today’s energy-hungry digital supercomputers. Although their demands reach into the tens of megawatts, supercomputers still don’t match the raw computing power of the human brain.

“Biology solves problems in an energy-efficient way,” says Miller. “Plus, your brain is constantly creating the raw materials for [analog computing] — these oscillating waves that are traveling in your cortex. If evolution didn’t take advantage of that — this obvious, powerful, highly efficient solution — [then] I don’t understand evolution.”

Automating anesthesia

For Miller, understanding the fundamental mechanism of consciousness via anesthesia isn’t just an abstract scientific goal. It’s one with real-world benefits. Along with his MIT colleague and practicing anesthesiologist Emery N. Brown, he hopes to bring them to mainstream clinical practice.

In most operating rooms today, anesthesiologists monitor a patient’s heart rate, blood pressure, and physical movements to ensure they aren’t feeling pain or regaining consciousness. They rarely track brain activity with electroencephalograms (EEGs). Miller and Brown argue that EEGs should become a standard tool because they offer a more direct and reliable window into the brain’s actual state under anesthesia. “It makes perfect sense to me that you should monitor the thing that’s going unconscious, and that’s the brain,” Miller says. “But to do that, you need to know what the neural signatures of consciousness are.”

Building on his recent study of macaques, Miller’s goal is to conclusively identify a brain wave signature of unconsciousness in humans. Knowing this key marker, anesthesiologists could deliver to patients the necessary amount of medication to reach unconsciousness and no more. Miller and his team have already built a prototype machine that automates the administration of anesthesia and works very well in animal models.

What would be the benefit of this sort of machine? For one, it could greatly reduce the number of patients who regain consciousness during major surgical procedures. It’s estimated that in roughly one or two of every 1,000 surgeries under general anesthesia, the patient regains consciousness. They likely don’t experience any pain, but the experience can be upsetting.

More importantly, an automated anesthesia machine based on a brain wave signature of consciousness could prevent surgery patients from being overmedicated with anesthesia. Anesthetics are powerful and can impart lasting deleterious effects, particularly on the very young and the elderly. The lower the amount, the better. For those over 65, anesthesia can cause short-term and long-term cognitive decline. Anesthesia also exacerbates dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and almost every mental illness, Miller says.

Toker also stresses the real-world benefits of probing unconsciousness. The ultimate aim of his research is to find ways to awaken people affected by disorders of consciousness. Many of these patients live in either a vegetative or barely conscious state, in which they are fully “awake” but unaware, or only minimally aware, of their surroundings. As many as 300,000 Americans are imprisoned in these gray zones of consciousness, often hidden away from public sight.

“Studying consciousness is interesting, but if we think about, ‘What is the point of doing this kind of research?’ then for me, it’s really about helping patients who can’t perceive anything consciously,” Toker says. “If we can study what’s going wrong in their brains, then it’s not only helpful for the general science of consciousness, but might also help wake some people up.”

This article Inside the search for a universal signature of unconsciousness is featured on Big Think.

I love books. If I go to the bookstore to browse, I walk out with three books I probably didn’t know existed beforehand. I buy second-hand books by the bagful at the Friends of the Library sale and can’t help but peek into any neighborhood book exchange I pass. Even the smell of old books grips me, that faint aroma of earthy vanilla that wafts up at you when you flip a page.

The only problem is that my book-collecting habit outpaces my ability to actually read them, leading to FOMO and the occasional pangs of guilt over the many unread volumes piling up on my shelves. Sound familiar?

However, it’s possible my guilt is entirely misplaced. According to statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, these unread volumes represent what he calls an “antilibrary,” and he believes our antilibraries aren’t signs of laziness or some intellectual failing. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Umberto Eco signs a book. You can see a portion of the author’s vast antilibrary in the background.

Living with an antilibrary

Taleb laid out the concept of the antilibrary in his best-selling book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. He starts with a discussion of the prolific author and scholar Umberto Eco, whose personal library housed a staggering 30,000 books.

When Eco had visitors over, they would marvel at the size of his library and assumed it represented their host’s collected knowledge — which, make no mistake, was expansive. But a few savvy visitors realized the truth: Eco’s library wasn’t voluminous because he had read so much; it was voluminous because he desired to read so much more.

Eco stated as much. Doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation, he found he could only read about 25,200 books if he read one book a day, every day, between the ages of ten and eighty. A “trifle,” he laments, compared to the million books housed in any university library.

Drawing from Eco’s example, Taleb deduces:

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. [Your] library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary. [Emphasis original]

Maria Popova, whose post at Brain Pickings summarizes Taleb’s argument beautifully, notes that our tendency is to overestimate the value of what we know, while underestimating the value of what we don’t know. Taleb’s concept flips this tendency on its head. An antilibrary’s value stems from how it challenges our self-estimation by providing a constant, niggling reminder of all we don’t know. The titles lining my own shelves remind me that I know little to nothing about cryptography, the Norman invasion, Italian folklore, illicit drug use in the Third Reich, and whatever entomophagy is. (Don’t spoil it; I want to be surprised.)

“We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended,” Taleb writes. “It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So this tendency to offend Eco’s library sensibility by focusing on the known is a human bias that extends to our mental operations.”

Shelves of unexplored ideas propel us to continue reading, continue learning, and never be comfortable that we know enough. They provide the foundation for a healthy and robust intellectual humility.

Those who lack intellectual humility may enjoy a sense of pride at having conquered their personal book collection, but such a library is no more alive or useful than a trophy mount. It becomes an “ego-booting appendage” for decoration alone. Not a living, growing resource we can learn from until we are 80 — and, if we are lucky, a few years beyond.

Book swap attendees will no doubt find their antilibrary/tsundoku grow.

(Photo from Flickr)

Tsundoku

I love Taleb’s concept, but I must admit I find the label “antilibrary” a bit lacking. For me, it sounds like a plot device in a knockoff Dan Brown novel. Kevin Mims also doesn’t care for Taleb’s label. His objection, however, is a bit more practical than mine: “I don’t really like Taleb’s term ‘antilibrary.’ A library is a collection of books, many of which remain unread for long periods of time. I don’t see how that differs from an antilibrary.”

His preferred label is tsundoku. Tsundoku is a loanword from Japanese for the stack — or, more honestly, stacks — of books you’ve purchased but haven’t yet read. Its morphology combines tsunde-oku (letting things pile up) and dokusho (reading books).

The word originated in the late 19^th century as a satirical jab at teachers who owned books but didn’t read them. While that is opposite of Taleb’s point, today the word carries no stigma in Japanese culture that I know of. It also differs from bibliomania, which is the obsessive collecting of books for the sake of the collection, not their eventual reading and enjoyment.

The value of tsundoku

While I’m sure there are some bibliomaniacs out there who own collections comparable to a small national library, yet rarely crack a cover, most people I know who own a lot of books also read them. In fact, studies have shown that book ownership and reading typically go hand in hand to great effect.

One such study found that children who grew up in homes with between 80 and 350 books showed improved literacy, numeracy, and information communication technology skills as adults. Exposure to books, the researchers suggested, boosts these cognitive abilities by making reading a part of life’s routines and habits.

And other studies have also shown that reading can provide a bevy of benefits. They suggest reading can reduce stress, satisfy social connection needs, bolster social skills and empathy, and boost certain cognitive skills. And that’s just fiction! Reading nonfiction is correlated with success and high achievement, helps us better understand ourselves and the world, and, most importantly, gives you a competitive edge at pub trivia.

In an article on the subject, Jessica Stillman ponders if unread books act as a kind of counter to the Dunning-Kruger effect, a cognitive bias that leads ignorant people to assume their knowledge or abilities are more proficient than they truly are. Since people are not prone to enjoying reminders of their ignorance, their unread books may push them toward, if not mastery, then at least an ever-expanding understanding of competence.

“All those books you haven’t read are indeed a sign of your ignorance. But if you know how ignorant you are, you’re way ahead of the vast majority of other people,” Stillman writes.

Whether you prefer the term antilibrary, tsundoku, or something else entirely, the value of an unread book is simply its power to get you to read it.

This article What our shelves of unread books teach us about ourselves is featured on Big Think.

A few years ago, in 2022, Google engineer Blake Lemoine was fired for claiming that the chatbot he was working on was sentient. He believed that it could feel things, potentially suffer, and that the moral status of large language models (LLMs) needed to be taken seriously. It turned out that it was Lemoine who was not taken seriously.

But a few weeks ago, Kyle Fish — who works as an “AI welfare researcher” for Anthropic — told the New York Times that there is a 15% chance that chatbots are already conscious. What’s changed?

One thing is that discussions about “AI consciousness” have moved from philosophical seminars (and pubs) to center-stage in academia, and out of the shadows in the tech industry, too. This transition, driven in large part by the astonishing progress in LLMs, is in one sense a good thing. If we did end up creating conscious machines, deliberately or not, we’d unleash an unprecedented moral crisis. We would introduce new potential for suffering in the world, at the click of a mouse, and of a kind we might not even recognize. 

I think the odds of real artificial consciousness — at least along current trajectories for AI — are much lower than most people think (and certainly much lower than 15%). In my work at the interface of neuroscience and AI, and in my book Being You, I lay out three reasons why we tend to overestimate the likelihood of sentient machines.

The first lies in our own psychological makeup. We tend to assume that “intelligence” and “consciousness” go together, so that something sufficiently smart would also be conscious. But just because intelligence and consciousness go together in us doesn’t mean they go together in general. The assumption that they do is a reflection of our psychological biases, not an insight into reality. Language exerts a particularly strong pull on these biases, which is why people wonder whether Anthropic’s Claude is conscious, but not DeepMind’s protein-folding AlphaFold.

The second reason is also an assumption: in this case, that the biological brain is a computer of some kind. If the brain really is a meat-based computer, then everything that depends on its activity — whether intelligence or consciousness —  should in principle be possible in a silicon alternative. But the closer you look at the brain, the less like a computer it seems. There is no clean division between “mindware” and “wetware” as there is between hardware and software in our silicon devices, and even a single neuron is a vastly complex biological factory. The brain-as-computer metaphor was only ever a metaphor, and we always get into trouble when we confuse a metaphor with the thing itself. If the brain isn’t actually a computer, there’s much less reason to think that consciousness could happen in silicon form.

The third reason is that we underestimate other possible explanations. Nobody knows how and why consciousness happens, but there are many other possibilities beyond it being an algorithm on the one hand, or immaterial magic on the other. One possibility I explore in my research is that consciousness arises from our nature as living creatures: that it is life, rather than “information processing,” that breathes fire into the equations of consciousness.

The ethics of all this matter. Even if real artificial consciousness is off the table with current forms of AI, emerging “neuromorphic” technologies, which are becoming ever-more brain-like, may yet move the needle. Even AI that merely seems to be conscious is ethically problematic, even if, under the hood, there is only subjective oblivion. Conscious-seeming AI can exploit our psychological vulnerabilities, distort our moral priorities, and — if we treat things that seem to have feelings as if they don’t (perhaps ignoring their pleas for help) — we risk brutalizing our minds. 

In the face of this uncertainty, what should we do? First, we should not deliberately try to create artificial consciousness. Even if we don’t know what it takes to create conscious AI, we also don’t know how to rule the possibility out altogether. Second, we should carefully distinguish the ethical implications of AI that actually is conscious from AI that irresistibly seems to be conscious. The existential uncertainties of the former should not distract us from the clear and present dangers of the latter.

Finally, we face similar uncertainties in many other contexts too: people with severe brain injuries, non-human animals (from bacteria to bats), human foetuses, and strange new creations in synthetic biology, such as “cerebral organoids” (brain cells in a dish that wire up together). In each case, there are ambiguities about whether consciousness is present, and in each case, our decisions carry moral weight. As science, technology, and medicine continue to advance, more of these scenarios will move from the fringes to the spotlight. What we need is nothing less than a satisfactory scientific understanding of consciousness itself. 

This article The illusion of conscious AI is featured on Big Think.

The study of consciousness is a field crowded with scientists, philosophers, and gurus. But neuroscientist Daniel Toker is focused on its shadow twin: unconsciousness.

His path to this research began with a tragedy — one he witnessed firsthand. While at a music festival, a young concertgoer near Toker dove headfirst into a shallow lake. He quickly surfaced, his body limp and still. Toker, along with others, rushed to help. He performed CPR, but it soon became apparent that the young person’s neck had snapped. There was nothing to be done.

“It was this very strange experience of watching his consciousness wink out of existence,” Toker tells Big Think. “I was very confused. Here was this person, this body, this brain, and something was lost.”

“It felt not only really mysterious what this thing was, but so ethically and medically important, because that’s the thing where we place all of our moral value; that was the personhood.”

Toker was in grad school at the time, already interested in consciousness and the neuroscience behind it. Unconsciousness was on his radar only as a means to further elucidate consciousness. It was something firm and measurable in a field that often waxes philosophical rather than empirical. But his firsthand brush with death catalyzed a new focus on unconsciousness itself — and a desire to move into medical and translational research. Toker couldn’t save this young man from permanent unconsciousness, but perhaps he could save others.

Hidden prisons

Now 33 years old, Toker is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Neurology at UCLA. Outside of the lab, he puts a lot of work into his physical and mental health, exercising regularly and gratitude journaling daily, pausing to reflect on the things he’s thankful for. Inside the lab, he focuses on the neurobiology of unconsciousness: What’s happening in the unconscious brain? In this quest, he probes brain organoids in petri dishes, analyzes information flow in the brain, and utilizes deep learning AI to explore the differences in electrical activity between the conscious and unconscious brain. 

Toker notes that the quests to understand consciousness and unconsciousness are deeply intertwined, but the latter rests on a more experimental foundation. 

“It’s more scientifically and medically tractable to think about unconsciousness,” Toker explains. “Consciousness is a really ill-defined concept. As someone who’s been thinking about this scientifically for a while, I still don’t know what it really means to be conscious. I can’t clearly describe it to you. It’s a lot easier for me to say what it is to be unconscious. And there’s clearly something that changes in the brain when we’re unconscious. It’s a common endpoint of a lot of different things, like deep sleep, generalized seizures, anesthesia, coma. So it’s not only easier to study scientifically, it’s also medically important.”

Daniel Toker

That medical importance is what’s driving Toker now. Perhaps his grandest aim is to cure coma and other disorders of consciousness, such as the vegetative state. Coma, a deep state of prolonged unconsciousness from which a person cannot be awakened, afflicts 258 out of every 100,000 Americans each year. Stroke, COVID-19, cardiac arrest, and a traumatic brain injury are common causes. Many of these people live in either a vegetative or minimally conscious state, in which they are fully “awake” but unaware, or only minimally aware, of their surroundings. As many as 300,000 Americans dwell in this gray area of consciousness. Those trapped in this haze are often referred to as “comatose.”

“Because vegetative patients are not really able to engage in the world, I think they’re kind of hidden,” Toker says. “I could just be driving past some of these people’s houses and I would never think that there’s this patient there who’s locked inside and basically tied to a bed and can’t move. Because they’re not visible. They can’t go outside and walk. They can’t advocate for themselves. You could be driving past them all the time, and you would have no idea.”

Disorders of consciousness can be devastating. They don’t just consume the lives of those directly affected, Toker says.

“They’re cared for by their loved ones. They need to be on a feeding tube. They can’t use the bathroom.”

Curing coma

So, how might medical research liberate those imprisoned by unconsciousness? Toker has several ideas.

One that’s in the very preliminary stages is modeling disorders of consciousness in brain organoids: small structures of brain cells grown in petri dishes from stem cells. If researchers can find a way to give them “comas” (as signified by neuronal activity), perhaps via simulated brain injuries, they could test various compounds in an attempt to revert that activity to one emblematic of consciousness.

Another route is through modeling coma “in silico” — in a computer. Toker recently led an effort to train deep neural networks to detect consciousness across multiple brain areas, resulting in a realistic simulation of conscious brain states and disorders of consciousness. This will allow him and his colleagues to test whether varying types of deep brain stimulation can switch an unconscious simulated brain to a conscious state. They could then try these types of stimulation on comatose patients.

Saxa-what?

Toker is perhaps most excited about a potential treatment derived from his own recently published research. He trained an AI model on relevant data from the scientific literature to predict whether a drug can “wake up” someone based on its 3D structure.

“The AI was really good at it,” he says. “It could pick up on bioactive structures in molecules that we might not even be thinking about or looking at.”

But when the AI model finished its work and returned a list of potential pharmaceutical treatments, Toker was flummoxed. A diabetes medication stood far above all others.

“I’m sitting here on my laptop and the AI spits out its top predictions, and I’m just like ‘What’s saxagliptin’?” he recalls.

Toker tweaked the algorithm’s parameters over and over, and it consistently returned the same answer: saxagliptin. Maybe the AI was onto something.

He found some preclinical work showing that the drug helps with Parkinson’s and stroke. He then educated himself on how the drug functions. Saxagliptin inhibits DPP-4, an enzyme that breaks down GLP-1, a hormone now widely known because the new wave of weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Mounjaro mimic it to promote satiety. However, DPP-4 also alters the levels of a group of other brain-modulating compounds. 

“What became clear is that they seem to address all the known pathophysiologies of disorders of consciousness,” Toker found.

So Toker had this promising result, but he still didn’t know if it meant anything. He and his colleagues then cross-referenced it with something much more concrete. He checked UCLA’s medical records of thousands of coma patients, and it became clear that people who were coincidentally on saxagliptin or other similar-acting drugs like Wegovy woke up from comas at significantly higher rates than coma patients who weren’t.

Scientists know of other drugs that can boost arousal and awareness in comatose patients, but they are minimally effective. Amantadine, an antiviral also used for Parkinson’s, is most frequently used. The sedative Ambien can also be weirdly effective. In rare instances, comatose patients regain awareness when the drug kicks in, but then lose awareness when it wears off.

Toker says that saxagliptin could be a new, more promising pharmaceutical tool. 

“What’s tantalizing about this class of medication — it’s acting through a completely different set of pathways that’s different from anything else that we’ve looked at for disorders of consciousness and coma.”

Trialing a promising treatment

Over video call, Toker was excited about the prospect of testing saxagliptin in a clinical trial on comatose patients.

“People want their loved ones back. Especially in these chronic cases, it’s so difficult, because they’re there. They’re alive. They’re breathing. They’re going to sleep. They’re waking up. But they’re not responding to anything.”

But sharply tempering his excitement is the bleak state of funding for research into disorders of consciousness. 

“This isn’t something that pharmaceutical companies really care about,” he says. Federal grants for this type of speculative research are also hard to come by, particularly for early-career scientists. And the cost of the ideal trial he envisions would easily exceed six figures. He would want at least 30 comatose patients to participate, so as not to miss a rare but meaningful effect: Someone might just regain awareness.

This article Inside a neuroscientist’s quest to cure coma is featured on Big Think.

Psychedelics can produce awe, insight, healing, and sometimes terror. What they rarely offer is predictability.

A U.S. biotech company wants to change that. Mindstate Design Labs, a Y Combinator startup, is combining machine learning with human expertise to map how psychedelic compounds shape conscious experience. By analyzing thousands of trip reports alongside pharmacological data, the company aims to design psychedelics that produce highly tailored states of mind — transforming unpredictable trips into precise, repeatable experiences that could help improve mental health treatments.

Beyond new treatments, the company also hopes its approach will shed light on consciousness itself.

“If we could figure out which differences in psychedelic pharmacology drive which differences in consciousness, we’d understand the mechanisms of consciousness in an entirely new way,” Mindstate CEO Dillan DiNardo wrote in 2024. “And we could begin using those mechanisms to design an innumerable variety of psychoactive effects — intentionally and with precision.”

At the heart of Mindstate’s platform is Osmanthus, a large language model trained to predict how psychedelic experiences unfold, drawing on thousands of trip reports and scientific texts. The company recently cleared a major hurdle: FDA approval to launch a Phase 1 clinical trial, which will take place in the Netherlands. The trial centers on “moxy” (5-MeO-MiPT), a compound the team hopes to use as the foundation for a new category of precision-designed psychedelics.

The main idea is to strategically combine moxy — a relatively mild and predictable psychedelic — with other drugs, psychedelic or not, to produce specific effects in mood, cognition, and perception. As DiNardo put it, moxy might prove to be a “blank canvas on which to paint infinite possibilities.”

Different drugs, different trips   

DiNardo started his career in finance before moving into biotech, working at a billion-dollar life sciences fund and holding operational roles in several early-stage drug development startups. But his interest in altered states runs deeper. He grew up in Pennsylvania in what he calls a “new religious movement centered on the group practice of altered states of consciousness,” where members frequently entered hyper-arousal, dissociative trance states. “That area of altered states of consciousness was very central to my life, from the time I was a pretty small child,” he told Big Think.

In his twenties, DiNardo was diagnosed with PTSD and depressive disorder, turning to psychedelic therapy for relief.

“There were various ways in which psychedelic therapy was being done legally in different jurisdictions, and so I always came to it from, you know, not the Burning Man angle, but more of the therapeutic or ceremonial angle.”

While he’s quick to note that “we need Phase 3 trials for proof that psychedelics work in this way,” DiNardo experienced their transformative power firsthand, noting that he hasn’t qualified on any rating scales for his previous disorders in years. But what truly gripped him wasn’t just the therapeutic benefit — it was the variation. “Why do different psychedelics do different things? Can we look at the biological basis of the difference in psychedelic effects in order to better navigate these types of states of consciousness, to be able to design specific states of consciousness?”

This question led him to connect with Mindstate’s scientific founder, Tom Ray, an evolutionary biologist who believed altered states arise when psychedelics activate receptors in the brain on specific “mental organs,” corresponding to functions like joy, consciousness, and reason. Together, they selected the compound moxy as a starting point for designing tailored psychedelic experiences.

Carrying on the Shulgin torch

Though you may never have heard of it, moxy is far from new. It was synthesized in 1985 in a lab in Lafayette, California, by medical chemists Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin and David B. Repke. Shulgin synthesized most of the world’s psychedelic drugs and tested many of them on himself and his wife Ann, documenting their effects in books like TiHKAL (Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved) and PiHKAL (Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved). 

Moxy stood out because it combined some effects of classical psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin with the entactogenic (or “empathy-promoting”) properties of MDMA: “a decreased sense of self-criticism, an increased ability to think about things that you normally avoid thinking about, and an additional sense of sympathetic warmth.”

Ray, who had collaborated with the Shulgins, helped identify the most qualitatively distinct compounds the couple had developed. DiNardo says:

“Tom had those [analyzed] against all of these sites across the human brain to be able to understand a bit better: How do these drugs interact differently with the brain, and how do those differences in biology correlate to the differences in consciousness?”

(Ann Shulgin was a co-owner of Mindstate Design Labs until her death in 2022.)

“What we found over the years is that there are a handful of psychedelic drugs Sasha Shulgin called ‘psychedelic tofu,’ which have a narrow pharmacological and phenomenological profile,” DiNardo says, explaining that the range of effects and receptors targeted is much narrower compared to most other psychedelics (only targeting the 5HT2A receptor). 

In other words, moxy’s mild effects might make it easy to build on — absorbing the character of other compounds without overpowering them.

“They don’t have as much flavor on their own. At standard clinical doses, moxy is not going to give you the ego loss of 25 milligrams of psilocybin. It’s not going to give you the entity interactions of DMT or some of these wilder and crazier effects of psychedelics.” 

In underground settings, however, moxy is often used as a “base ingredient” that, when combined with other drugs, can alter the altered state, so to speak, modulating the subjective effects of those drugs.  

“That’s similar to what we’re doing,” DiNardo says. “We’re taking this tofu — because it gives us a lot more modular control over the pharmacology — and determining […] the effect on consciousness that these molecules are going to have. We’re developing moxy not just by itself but as the base component for a series of combination drugs that are intended to induce different effects on consciousness.” 

How does Mindstate come up with the recipe for those combinations?

Training AI on human experience

Extending the Shulgins’ tradition of documenting altered states, Mindstate is applying machine learning to organize and analyze psychedelic experiences at a scale never before attempted. Using their LLM, Osmanthus, they can process hundreds of thousands of drug reports from internet sites like Reddit, books like the Shulgins’, and scientific papers to create a kind of psychedelic fortune-telling machine, which can connect biology, pharmacology, and phenomenology to minimize the guesswork in how a trip will unfold. 

Osmanthus’s diet includes two types of data sets: pharmacological and subjective. The platform’s core innovation is connecting those two layers — linking how a drug behaves in the body with how people describe its effects. Osmanthus maps subjective experiences using “semantic embedding models” (machine learning tools that extract meaning from language) trained on language from trip reports, while its pharmacological data includes thousands of receptor binding assays. Together, these datasets have allowed Mindstate to build what the company describes as a catalog of over 600 distinct psychedelic effects, each tied to the brain sites likely responsible. 

The goal isn’t just to predict how a given trip will unfold but to build a programmable framework for engineering entirely new experiences.

Their theory, based on the data so far, is that you tend to see increasingly unique effects as psychedelics interact with more receptors. For example, DMT, which has one of the broadest effects across various receptors, often causes powerful and bizarre psychedelic experiences, such as entity encounters. Drawing off the LLM’s predictions, Mindstate may someday be able to control those effects, using moxy as a buffer to safely engineer customized psychedelic states. 

For now, their foray into machine learning has provided surprising insights, some of which may be useful to psychedelic scientists. By analyzing the commonly reported “mystical experience” at a more nuanced level, for example, their model found that people often report experiencing ego death (loss of a sense of separation from environment) but not loss of contact with their environment. This observation isn’t captured by the Mystical Experience Questionnaire researchers typically use, DiNardo says. 

Other observations may be less useful. “Environmental Cubism,” for instance, is a rare effect marked by Picasso-like visuals (they haven’t nailed the drugs or receptors linked to that effect, he jokes, as it’s not particularly therapeutically relevant).

Eventually, Osmanthus may be able to tell them, at the most fine-grained level, what the structure of “all human experience” is when taking psychedelics. From there, he says, “you can map out the entire tree from the single node of any subjective effect to the categories to the individual words and phrases people use.” 

To that end, one of Mindstate’s core aims has been to crack the code of the ineffable. “If you can’t label something and talk about it, you can’t measure it.” 

It’s no easy feat — translating everyday, nonpsychedelic experiences into words is hard enough. As the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw famously quipped, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” 

The limits of language

One concern surrounding models such as ChatGPT has been “hallucinations” and other inaccurate interpretations of text, leading to misleading claims about the world. Considering psychedelic experiences are already trippy enough, Mindstate must ensure nothing gets lost in translation. A key question: Are trip reports enough to establish what psychedelic researchers call “ecological validity,” meaning accurate representation of how various drugs are experienced in various settings? What’s more, will these predictions carry over to a clinical setting, where mental health treatment is perhaps most relevant? Can an LLM pull data from Reddit to accurately inform the highly controlled environment of a clinical trial?

Mindstate isn’t claiming to be able to calculate the exact incidence of an effect, DiNardo says. 

“These are raw, unstructured reports. They’re in specific settings. People tend to report some things over other things. What these reports give us is a very close characterization of which pharmacologies contribute to which experiences across all settings, and then that points us to what to replicate in the clinic. Ultimately, the final answer always comes down to, when you are in the clinical setting where these drugs are going to be administered, how do the set and the setting and the pharmacology interact?”

When it comes to translating experience at scale, there are pros and cons to using LLMs.

“The large language models are definitely not perfect,” DiNardo says. “There have been huge improvements, even just over the past year, certainly. I would say, though, that it is essential to have a human in the loop.” 

One way to go about this is to start off with the model, run it across a bunch of trip reports, and then have human domain experts take a look. These are people who have undergone many psychedelic trips; understand psychonaut subculture; know the language and references, including common metaphors people use to describe their experiences; and can categorize what those people are talking about. 

“We fork the processes such that we’re using a human-created ontology of subjective effects that is very detailed — and, we think, the best in the world — and we’re using that human ontology and human feedback to train the model,” DiNardo says. “Then we have other models where it’s just the large language model, or whatever machine learning method there is, and it comes up with its own ontology and is a bit more objective.”

Both of those approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, he says. The human might be more accurate while the LLM might be more complete. 

“You absolutely cannot just dump trip reports in a machine learning pipeline and expect it to work. It takes a lot of human expertise in combination with AI.”

Mental health: More than the sum of its parts

DiNardo thinks we’ll likely come to understand human consciousness in tandem with a deeper understanding of artificial intelligence. Mindstate hopes to be the one to “break the clock apart and see the mechanisms within” in a targeted and safe way. Down the road, there could even be potential to combine psychedelics with brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). For the time being, the target is mental health, and models like Osmanthus could help nudge psychedelics into the realm of precision medicine.   

However, researchers still don’t know how psychedelics — or any altered state of consciousness (ASC), for that matter — help improve the symptoms of various disorders. So it would be fair to raise concerns that “designer ASCs” may be putting the cart before the horse. 

When pressed to comment on mental health research, DiNardo points to the complexity of factors involved and how little a diagnosis tells us about the root causes of a disorder. Psychedelics are similar in that way, he says.

“Most people would agree psychedelics have a multi-scale mechanism of action: pharmacological, cellular, neuroplasticity, brain networks, psychological. The question of ‘How do you extract one piece of that out?’ is not necessarily a question that’s interesting to me.” 

What’s much more interesting to him, he says, is the mapping between those things, adding that, when it comes to mental health treatment, “sometimes you may only be able to intervene at one level of that multiscale mechanism,” whether it’s with SSRIs or psychotherapy. 

Mindstate’s Phase 1 clinical trial aims to test the safety and efficacy of moxy on humans. The trial isn’t yet testing Mindstate’s full vision. It’s an early-stage study designed to evaluate moxy’s safety, how it behaves in the body, and how participants respond. But DiNardo already has his eye on the part where their research team is “decorating the psychedelic tofu” with various combinations of drugs to test how Osmanthus’s predictions hold up in a controlled clinical setting. 

“At that point, we will have validated that we can design states of consciousness and that there is a much wider world of psychedelic effects beyond the ones that we already know about,” he muses. “That’s coming immediately afterward. We hope to start those studies very shortly.” 

This article The next era of psychedelics may be precision-designed states of consciousness is featured on Big Think.

Imagine lounging in a hammock on a sunny beach, palm trees swaying in the breeze, the bright turquoise of the sea barely dimmed by your sunglasses. You glance up and down the beach: not a soul in sight. It’s the first day of your holiday, and your whole body feels so relaxed; you could dissolve into the sand and be swept out to sea. You take a lazy sip of your pina colada and take it all in. Out of nowhere, a voice whispers into your ear: “No, really, take it in.”

That inner voice? It’s echoing a simple but often overlooked idea: Good experiences don’t always stick unless we make an effort to let them. That’s the premise behind Hardwiring Happiness, a book by psychologist Rick Hanson, who explores how consciously lingering on positive moments can help counterbalance the brain’s built-in negativity bias. That bias might have served a useful evolutionary purpose ages ago when our survival was more frequently at stake, but in a relatively stable 21st-century environment, it often traps us in cycles of rumination. 

Hanson’s approach isn’t about forced optimism — it’s grounded in the idea of neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to change over time through repeated experience. Drawing on psychological theory and early research suggesting that “deliberately taking in the good” may help build resilience and emotional well-being, Hanson developed the HEAL method:

• Have a good experience
• Enrich it
• Absorb it
• Link it to other positive or negative experiences.

While Hanson’s HEAL method draws on established neuroscience concepts, it remains a clinical and contemplative approach rather than a rigorously validated scientific intervention. In a small exploratory study using pre-post self-report measures, Hanson and colleagues assessed the effects of this intervention on 21 healthy subjects and found statistically significant self-reported improvements in measures like savoring and self-compassion, though the small sample size and lack of a control group limit the strength of the conclusions. The participants also reported statistically borderline improvements in self-esteem, positive rumination (self-focus), pride, happiness, and satisfaction with life. Many of these effects persisted after two months. 

Change the mind, change the brain?

Can you really rewire your brain this way — simply by changing your mind? That’s the idea behind neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to adapt and reorganize in response to experience. Researchers investigate it through a combination of brain imaging and behavioral assessments. For example, if someone is able to learn a new skill more quickly following an intervention, scientists can correlate this with changes in brain activity, using what’s called “task-based fMRI.” But the details of cause-and-effect are far from simple, and the research methods far from perfect. Although there is considerable evidence for neuroplasticity as a phenomenon related to health and well-being, skeptics warn of “neuroplasticity hype,” and positive neuroplasticity itself has not been corroborated neuroscientifically in humans. 

Still, Hanson says, we’ve come a long way toward understanding the relationship between mind and brain. 

“As science has progressed in the last hundred to a hundred and fifty years with the study of the nervous system,” he told Big Think, “the correlations have become increasingly well understood and tight between ongoing mental activity — hearing, seeing, loving, hating, wanting, remembering — and the underlying neural activity that is their physical basis.” 

A number of brain imaging studies suggest that certain mental practices, such as mindfulness meditation, are associated with structural and functional brain changes, though questions remain about causality and long-term effects.

In the 1960s, researchers began using electroencephalogram (EEG) to study neural activity during meditation. In the 1970s came magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and by the 1990s — the so-called “decade of the brain” — scientists were increasingly able to associate specific mental experiences with distinct patterns of neural activity. For instance, one seminal study of nuns praying inside fMRI machines showed that their brains’ reward centers lit up in ways similar to people using cocaine.

“It doesn’t mean connecting with Christ consciousness is the same as taking cocaine,” Hanson notes, “but they were starting to find underlying neural correlates.” 

A growing body of research shows that meditation and other contemplative practices can promote neuroplasticity, encouraging the brain to form new connections and adapt over time. In the mid-2000s, as Hanson and his colleagues began combing through the research literature, they wondered whether they could flip things around and harness what scientists had gathered about the brain to use in contemplative and clinical practice, an investigation which ultimately became the basis for HEAL. 

Could they deliberately activate the brain to induce certain mental activities that would lead to lasting changes in the brain and, ultimately, support the development of optimal traits like a more positive outlook on life? As Hanson put it: “Could we use our mind to stimulate and change our brain to benefit our mind?” 

If so, harnessing brain science could, in theory, motivate people who wouldn’t otherwise think to take up a “mental hygiene” regime such as meditation. 

“When people realize this airy-fairy, woo-woo stuff is actually helping their own brain, they get much more motivated,” he said. Ruminating over the state of the world may not be helpful, but “when you slow down, take a moment to feel close to your friend or partner, and let that really land inside, that’s changing your brain for the better.” 

While the precise mechanisms remain uncertain, Hanson points to the role of the autonomic nervous system — particularly how social connection and safety cues can downregulate stress responses — as one pathway through which positive experiences may shape long-term well-being.

“If I want to calm myself down, it’s important to touch my partner, or my dog, because that social engagement is going to ripple down and calm my heart,” he said. 

Good experiences — whether through social bonding or swaying gently between two palm trees or meditating — can light up the brain’s reward centers in the same way. But according to Hanson, it’s when we become aware of the good, and hold onto it, that the real benefits kick in. This might already be an insight gleaned through contemplative practice, or simply common sense, but neuroscience can help us prioritize it further. In his many decades as a clinician and meditator, Hanson says combining brain science and contemplative practice — such as taking in the good — has helped him feel more empowered in improving daily life for himself and others. Neural correlates aside, the real proof is how you feel on a daily basis.

“When you go to bed, are you a little happier, wiser, and more loving than when you woke up? That’s under your power.”

This article “Taking in the good”: A simple way to offset your brain’s negativity bias is featured on Big Think.

We need creative solutions to society’s problems. What we don’t need is the anxiety that accompanies not having those solutions. Uncertainty about the future makes humans edgy enough. So, what can we do to better understand, accept, and manage such anxiety? 

Martha Beck, a Harvard-trained sociologist and New York Times-bestselling author, has thought long and hard to answer that question, which she presents in her latest book, Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose. Big Think caught up with Beck to discuss the book, why the modern world has made us so anxious, and what we can do to calm our nerves in the face of our fears.

Big Think: What was the journey from your last book, The Way of Integrity (2021), to writing this one? What was the thought process leading from the topic of integrity to anxiety? 

Beck: I write self-help because I desperately need it. I have had pretty much every ordinary psychological problem one can have, barring true mental illness, [so] I spent a long time meditating and figuring out how to make my life better. The combination of observing life as it unfolded and my inner life took me to The Way of Integrity. I noticed that I would suffer whenever my actions were out of line with my deepest sense of truth. When everything was in line, I would not suffer. I’d be happy, and things would work better. So that was that book.

Then people started coming to me and saying, “I really believe in what you’re saying, and I’m living as close to integrity as I possibly can, but I’m always scared. I am so anxious.” It puzzled me because that had not been my experience. Then I realized that it took — I don’t know — maybe 10,000 hours of sitting meditation before I noticed nothing I worried about was ever in the room with me.

I remember one time, terrible things were happening in the world, as they always are, and I was sitting in meditation. I thought, “How could I be expected to feel calm under these circumstances”? Another part of me said, “You mean the circumstances of your bedroom? Because my circumstances were all in my bedroom.” I started to see that most of my anxiety was based on things that were not true. 

That’s the link between the two books: The deepest lie we tell ourselves is that we should be afraid.

Big Think: Can you tell me more about that?

Beck: We live in perpetual fear despite being the safest people in history, by and large. This causes what I call the “anxiety spiral.” Due to the negativity bias, our attention preferentially goes to things that make us anxious. We pay more and more attention to things like the media or online algorithms. [These, in turn], feed back to us what gets the most attention, and it’s usually anxiety. 

You’ve got the brain doing it on one level, and you’ve got society doing it on a much bigger level. The result is the entire population spiraling into anxiety and not being able to get out.

Big Think: Are we suffering more these days than, say, 100 years ago, or is it that we’re able to have these conversations now because it’s relatively destigmatized to talk about anxiety? 

Beck: I think we’re experiencing more, and there are a few reasons for that. The first one is the sheer size of the population communicating frightening things across a huge expanse of space and different social situations. There are more of us on Earth now, and we’re communicating much more rapidly than ever. Again, we’re most interested in frightening things anywhere in the world. 

[Another reason is that] we live in this increasingly abnormal environment that we call normal. Before the Industrial Revolution, we would wake up to the sound of wind or rain, maybe the ocean or a river, each other’s voices, the sounds of animals, the songs of birds. I just read a study showing that just hearing bird songs improves mood and health indicators. (I got a recording of bird songs to listen to during the winter.)

Separated from nature, separated from the small physical tasks that are easier to wrap your head around, we live in an increasingly unnatural world for our evolutionary being and our physiology. We’re robbed of the things that would calm us and hyper-exposed to things that we would never have heard about without telecommunications.

So, yeah, we are more anxious.

Big Think: How would you define anxiety as opposed to, say, fear? 

For instance, Joesph LeDoux, the neuroscientist credited with discovering the “fear circuit,” wrote an article in 2015 lamenting that he used the wrong terminology. What he called the fear circuit is threat detection because the emotion of fear comes after and involves other circuits. He said, “Nothing gets in the way of truth — or science — more than language.”

Beck: Always. It gets in the way of the truth of our lived experience, as well.

Big Think: A lot of mental interpretation happens after the initial feeling, right? It’s how you appraise those bodily signals that become your reality.

Beck: Absolutely. I would sharply distinguish between fear — a healthy instinct that galvanizes us into action when there is actual danger — and anxiety —  the interpretation and language with which we dress our emotional impulses. 

It’s one thing to feel an emotional impulse and say, “Oh, I had an irrational thought that the economy would collapse. I’ve got no proof of it, so I will put that away.” But we don’t tend to recognize irrational fears as irrational. We read them as the real environment: “In the room with me right now, there is a predator called ‘the economy will collapse.’”

We are such brilliant verbal creatures who are highly sensitive to fear. We are storytellers. Anything that makes us afraid that does not from an event in the room, but from a mental depiction of that thought, I would call anxiety.

Big Think: What’s your take on the body’s role in anxiety?

Beck: I’ve noticed that when somebody’s in a life that is not working for them, one of their first reactions is to get emotionally tense. They also get physically tense. It’s like their body fights back against a circumstance it doesn’t feel is right — [for example] they are in the wrong job or the wrong relationship, 

Their body shuts down. They don’t want to be touched, and then they get sick. I think it’s because we’re the only species who will force ourselves to do something for years that we don’t enjoy by telling ourselves, “We have to do this.” The body keeps saying, “No.” 

Our body is always trying to get us back to the truth. When we don’t go back to the truth, the tension between the body and whatever we’re living, that comes up as anxiety as well.

Big Think: What would you say about the idea of “eradicating” or “getting rid of” anxiety? 

Beck: Anxiety is not bad. It’s just stupid. If you want to listen to it, fine. Just remember you’re talking to an animal [yourself], and it’s an animal connected to language. 

If I say, “I’m trying to eradicate you,” this would not be a calming thing for you to hear. I should say, “Can you calm and relax your anxiety?” The way I do that is with kindness. Because I can’t tell you to do a calm thing and have it calm you. But I can ask you to say a kind sentence to your fear. Even if you don’t feel it, you can do that.

Basically, the part of us that’s anxious is like a small, frightened animal. That kind, internal self-talk is something that you can force yourself to do, even if you don’t feel it. You can’t force yourself to feel calm or compassionate, but you can get yourself to do kind behaviors. 

Big Think: In your book, you also touch on life purpose, creativity, and curiosity as important for managing anxiety.

Beck: Your life’s purpose is to experience something that is its own excuse for being. [Ralph Waldo] Emerson wrote, “Then beauty is its own excuse for Being.” Joy, compassion, love, enlightenment, illumination, wisdom — [these are] the things that ultimately make life enjoyable in the moment.

If you follow what calms your anxiety, you will go toward sensations like compassion and connection. At that point, you will find enormous joy in healing things that hurt and magnifying things that help. You will find joy in something that affects others positively. I’ve never worked with a client — and this is after thousands of clients — who found that their purpose in life did not help other people. That just seems to be built into our biology.

Joy is our ultimate purpose for being. When we’re without anxiety, curiosity leads us toward our specific purpose. All of our curiosities are specific. I may be more curious about watercolors than you are. You may be more curious about journalism. But our curiosities serve our hearts and psyches. They serve others as well. Curiosity is the link that takes you to your unique way of serving.

Big Think: I see how that enables one to enter a flow state rather than an anxious state as well.

Beck: Nobody in a state of panic creates things out of that panic that can help others. A lot of people think they need panic to motivate them. They believe that, without anxiety, they wouldn’t be motivated. But the fact is that we’re far more motivated by things like love, fascination, and delight than we are by fear.

Big Think: I’m trying to think of an example where creativity comes out of anxiety, but they’re antithetical to each other.

Beck: Anxiety is a barren field. It doesn’t bring forth crops.

Big Think: Unless you end up writing a book about it. 

Beck: Exactly. When I got curious about it, I felt motivated to write.

This article Anxiety always lies: Martha Beck on overcoming fear and finding purpose is featured on Big Think.

One day in the 1940s, an inmate came to see Raymond Corsini, a psychologist at Auburn Prison in Upstate New York. The prisoner, a man in his thirties, was getting out on parole, and before he left, he just wanted to thank Corsini.

The inmate said that, before meeting Corsini, he had always hung out with “a bunch of thieves.” He had a dead-end job in the prison kitchen, and he had long ago lost touch with his family and faith. His prospects for successfully reentering society were probably poor.

But, he said, after an encounter with Corsini two years prior, he had left feeling like he was “walking on air.” That day in the yard, he started hanging out with a group of well-behaved guys instead of his usual crew. He began attending the prison high school, earned a diploma, and lined up a drafting job. He found religion and wrote to his family. “You have freed me,” the inmate said later. “I now have hope.” He said he felt like a new person.

Corsini wasn’t sure what he was being thanked for. Perhaps embarrassingly, he didn’t even remember talking to the man. His notes suggested he had once, very briefly, given the inmate an intelligence test. Corsini asked the inmate if he was sure it was him.

“It was you, all right,” the inmate said. “And I’ll never forget what you said to me. It changed my life.”

“What was that?” Corsini asked.

“You told me I had a high IQ,” the inmate said.

This experience, of course, is colored by the memory and interpretation of Corsini, who is deceased. But in the course of my research, I saw that this kind of sudden change does happen, however infrequently. Some people turn their lives around after a rushing realization—either one that’s handed down from a trusted figure, like a therapist, or one that comes from inside themselves. The inmate explained to Corsini that people had always told him he was stupid and crazy. Corsini’s offhand comment—“you have a high IQ”—thoroughly reshaped the man’s self-concept.

The psychologist William R. Miller has studied fifty-five people who had these types of “sudden and profound” epiphanies that reoriented their lives—a phenomenon he calls “quantum change.” A slight majority said they were in distress before the change, but many said nothing in particular was happening. One of Miller’s subjects was cleaning the toilet when the eureka moment struck; another was smoking pot.

Then something shifted. Some of them heard a voice speak out of nowhere. They realized an important truth; they were relieved of a mental burden; they felt a wave of unconditional love. It was a “one-way door” through which there was no return. Afterward, they got divorces or stopped drinking. They found happiness and took control of their lives. They developed meaning and a desire to live. While this tiny study is more anecdote than science, it’s worth noting that when Miller’s coauthor, Janet C’de Baca, interviewed the study participants again ten years later, she found the changes had endured.

This type of quick transformation is what the phrase “personality change” calls to mind for many people. Change, in popular culture, is often depicted as an abrupt about-face—a baptism, a close call, a rock bottom. (Once, someone asked me if I was writing a book about stroke victims.)

But while these examples are interesting, they’re also rare. They show that personality change can happen, but not how it usually happens. Typically, it takes months or years of concerted effort for someone’s personality to swerve so dramatically. While a few of us might have a life-altering experience like Corsini’s client or Miller’s interviewees, most people experience personality change much more prosaically, by performing behaviors associated with the new personality over and over again. Absent a whisper from the heavens, the way to change personality is, essentially, by faking it until you make it. Virtually all researchers agree that the key to changing personality is to alter your daily thoughts and actions. The best personality-change interventions help people figure out what they want to change, tell them how to change, and remind them to continue changing.

Personality change may sound like an eerie, out-of-body experience—and as the quantum change stories show, it can be. But the science behind it is remarkably simple: You just have to remember to act how you’d like to be, consistently. And this is true even of remarkable-seeming feats. Corsini’s inmate had to show up at the prison high school not just once, after all, but repeatedly. People who join Alcoholics Anonymous not only renounce drinking, they go to meetings for years. In journalism school, we learned that the best stories don’t start with a brilliant mind pumping out five thousand words in one sitting. They start with a ream of boring documents that someone gathered from an obscure government office and logged into a database. Most incredible things are built, bit by bit, through persistence and repetition.

For a 2019 study, Nathan Hudson and three other personality psychologists devised a tool that would help people perform these types of personality-altering new behaviors. He and his coauthors created a website that would serve up a list of “challenges” to students who wanted to change their personality traits. Some of the behaviors required the involvement of other people, but others did not: For, say, extroversion, one challenge was “Introduce yourself to someone new.”

To combat neuroticism, the website suggested, “When you wake up, spend at least five minutes meditating.” Those who completed the challenges associated with a given trait saw changes in that trait at the end of the fifteen-week study, Hudson found. The participants faked it, and then they made it: Merely behaving in a more extroverted way, for example, caused the participants to grow in extroversion.

Hudson’s study found that these challenges worked well to help participants change on the traits of extroversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism, but they didn’t really work for the traits of agreeableness and openness to experience. This could be because, as we’ll see, openness and agreeableness can be harder to change, and in his studies, fewer people elected to try to change those traits. But, as we’ll also see, there might be other ways to become a more agreeable or open person or to at least address facets of these traits.

Other researchers have produced findings similar to Hudson’s. Along with some colleagues, Mirjam Stieger, a lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, developed an app that reminded people to perform new behaviors to change their personalities. (An example for extroversion: “Let yourself be carried away by spontaneous ideas?” For conscientiousness: “Prepare a to-do list every morning?”) The app prompted the participants to learn from people who already possessed elements of their desired personalities and to create a “change team” of friends who could keep them accountable. Stieger found that the study participants’ personalities did, in fact, change, compared to a control group, and they stayed different for at least three months. Even the participants’ friends and families reported that they had changed. If personality is, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, “an unbroken series of successful gestures,” then apparently all you have to do is gesture in the right direction.

The idea behind these studies is that new behaviors eventually become new habits, and the habits grow entrenched. In the same way that you don’t think about brushing your teeth in the morning, you would no longer struggle to talk to strangers or to hit the gym after work. Eventually, you’ll break in the new personality like a stiff pair of loafers: What was once uncomfortable will become familiar.

These new habits then affect our attitudes about ourselves. When we see that we are acting a certain way—volunteering, joining a choir—we conclude that it must be because we just are that kind of person, a saint with a killer soprano. In that way, a new personality state can become a new personality trait.

In practice, this means that change requires doing things differently. You can’t just say you’ll start exercising or socializing; you have to commit. Personality isn’t based on what we say we’ll do. It’s rooted in what we actually do, which becomes what we think about. Even though personality was then a hazy concept, this is something even the ancients implicitly understood. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle noted that “we become builders by building and harpists by playing the harp. Similarly, it is by doing just acts that we become just, by doing temperate acts that we become temperate, by doing courageous acts that we become courageous.” By performing the acts of a different personality, you can change yours.

This article The Big 5 personality traits you can change with practice is featured on Big Think.

When we think about memory, we often assume that a superior memory means remembering more things for a longer time. That’s how we think of computer memory, too: the more, the better. But biologically speaking, memory did not evolve simply to store information. It selects what information to store and what to discard — a form of pattern recognition. So, superior memory means not just more information successfully stored but the most relevant information successfully selected.

I first confronted this tension a few years ago in the unlikeliest corner of science — while studying insulin-like hormones in Aplysia californica, a species of sea slug, in Tom Carew’s lab at New York University. The hormones were released after the slugs enjoyed a meal and did several things at the same time:

• They promoted sugar clearance, just like the hormone insulin does in humans.
• They enhanced neuroplasticity and neuronal growth. 
• They slowed the animals down.

The first effect is the canonical response to food, evidently preserved across the tree of life in a strikingly intact way. The insulin-like hormones told the cells of the sea slug to absorb the nutrients it had consumed. In the lab, we could even cause the release of these hormones in the sea slug with an anti-diabetic drug used in humans. It is one of those examples that exposes the unity of life on Earth.

The second effect is about memory enhancement, which fits with the first effect. Since food was successfully found, the sea slug presumably wanted to form a long-term memory, and the insulin-like hormones helped with that. The combination of these effects made sense.

The last effect was odd and a bit ironic given that sea slugs are already extremely slow. Still, the difference was clearly seen when they were recorded on camera for many hours. Watching and analyzing those videos, even at 20 times the original speed, was probably the most boring experiment of my life. And since we could block this effect by using inhibitors of insulin-like receptors, it wasn’t just about digestion or the meal physically weighing the sea slug down. It must be said that these creatures can consume an impressive amount of nori per body weight — but that was not the issue.

Instead, the effect was a coordinated food coma induced by dedicated hormones. Evolution had built the response into the slugs. But why did the animal need to become unresponsive, reduce its neuronal excitability, and stop moving after a meal? Why would the animals have evolved this seemingly counterproductive response to food?

The only explanation that I could think of was that memory is expensive. It takes energy — as does moving around and exploring your environment. However, once food is found and consumed, memory must be prioritized over active exploration. The sea slugs didn’t need to experience new things; they needed to preserve the preceding experience for future gain. And so they shifted energy away from motion to memory.

This was back in 2019 when we didn’t know about GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic — hormones related to insulin that cause food comas while also promoting neuroplasticity and memory. I wonder if the entire combination of effects would have made sense right away if we had done the study today.

When we were working on the study, we debated with my boss, Tom Carew, about this “expensive memory” explanation. He questioned the idea that learning requires so much energy as to syphon it from behavior. I saw his point: At least on the surface, it seems that tinkering with the fine configuration of neurons and synapses — that’s how learning creates memory — should cost exponentially less energy than, say, muscle movement, like how a computer uses less power than an electric car.

But computers can, in fact, consume copious amounts of energy. Similarly, there is reason to believe that biological memory can be “expensive” enough to require energy appropriation from other sources. For example, fruit flies have two forms of long-term memory: One is more stable, while the other is cheaper and requires less energy. If the first one wasn’t too expensive to use all the time, why have two?

We also know that organisms make trade-offs related to information processing based on energy use. Yeast, for example, balances their energy budget with the fidelity of cellular signaling. When they run low on food, their interpretation of environmental signals becomes “looser.” If information processing was cheap, there would be no need to scale it down in such situations.

Maybe memory is also a luxury, and reduced motion provides a way to afford memory when it matters most.

The mnemonic economy

The bizarre food coma in sea slugs really affected how I think of memory. Memory may prove so expensive that it requires, in certain situations, an organism-wide appropriation of energy. In that case, brains must face similar economic considerations in other, less extreme cases. The cost-benefit of forming a memory is constantly evaluated against an organism’s energy budget.

For us humans, the choice of some patterns over others is even more critical than for a sea slug. We process vastly more information per unit of time than a mollusk does. Too many things pass through our brains at any given moment, and to make sense of them, they must be generalized and abstracted, meaning other things must be forgotten. Remembering everything would not only be too expensive. It would be useless.

I think we forget about this because we don’t perceive that our memory is limited. We don’t run out of memory like computers do — suddenly, you can’t remember anything new. However, we do remember different things to a different extent, which is our brain’s way of triaging the endless flow of information. Even if we treat our memory as a limitless hard drive, our brains quietly sort our mental files into “to be memorized” and “to be forgotten.”

Is there anything practical to be gained from this insight?

The learning we usually attempt — like trying to cram an entire textbook the weekend before finals — is unnatural. The brain’s goal is to pick out a salient pattern, and the textbook is not what it considers salient. 

Instead, the best way to “improve memory” is to listen to yourself. Use your brain’s powers — curiosity, inspiration, even boredom — as tools. When curious, learn as much as you can. When inspired, drop other activities. When bored, change your focus to something else. And don’t forget to take breaks — just as in the sea slug, taking time to rest after a study session allows your mind to digest the new information, enhancing memory and slowing down forgetting.

On the other hand, if memory is expensive and selective, then perhaps we should think more about what we allow to enter our brains. I suspect that in the future, we will develop stricter societal standards for mental hygiene and learn to treat junk memory like junk food.

For example, at least a third of my memory is occupied by TV commercials from the 1990s. Could this space have been used for something else? I will never find out, and it may not matter much. But if someone back then told my parents the commercials would actually outcompete other information from my brain, I bet they would never let me see a TV again.

This article What food comas in sea slugs teach us about memory is featured on Big Think.

Once upon a time, in a small village in ancient China, a farmer’s horse ran away into the wild. The neighbors, wanting to show solidarity, came to see the farmer and offered: “We are very sorry to hear your horse has run away. What terrible fortune!” Looking off into the distance where his horse had disappeared, the farmer responded: “Maybe.” 

The following morning, the sun rose to a surprising sight: Not only had the farmer’s horse returned, but it had brought with it seven wild horses. Astonished by what they saw, the neighbors exclaimed, “You now have eight horses. What great luck!” The farmer again simply replied, “Maybe.” 

A day later, the farmer’s son attempted to break one of the wild horses. But the horse bucked, causing the son to fall and break his leg. The neighbors came around and said, “That’s such bad luck!” Again, the farmer said, “Maybe.” 

Then military officers arrived to draft young men for war. However, upon seeing the son’s broken leg, they left the farmer’s son behind. The neighbors shouted out: “Isn’t that fantastic!” The farmer looked at the departing officers and answered, “Maybe.” 

Many are familiar with this parable, and yet we often struggle to accept change without judgment. One notable exception is former software developer Michael Singer. Singer had set out on a path that, with diligence and discipline, would lead him to a successful career as an economics professor. However, his plans didn’t unfold as predicted. 

After experiencing his own version of the farmer’s “maybe” — several small crises yielding unexpected fruit —  Singer resolved to take life as it came, accepting difficulties and opportunities without judging them through the lens of his ego. This attitude of nimble resilience paved the way to unexpected success, such as founding a groundbreaking software company, establishing a communal living center, and authoring several bestselling books.

Eventually, Singer faced what would have been, for many, a devastating crisis when he was forced to resign as the CEO of his company following an FBI investigation that was ultimately dropped. During the investigation, he kept calm, navigating the lengthy legal process with grace and patience. When his name was cleared and still he had to hand over leadership of the company he had founded, he could have become bitter and fearful. Instead, he accepted the outcome, choosing to remain curious about the future rather than dwell on the past. 

If giving in to life’s whims without ever giving up can unlock doors we never knew existed, why do we struggle with remaining nimble in the face of disruption? 

When things break apart 

Every day, you’re confronted with unexpected ­events — ­ someone says something you didn’t see coming, you receive a phone call from a friend you don’t talk to very often, you find money in a coat pocket, or there’s a sudden change in weather. These gentle waves barely rock your boat; sometimes, they require minor adjustments or even bring a bit of joy. 

Disruptions, however, are a different beast. In Latin, disruptus means “to separate forcibly, to break apart.” This gives us an insight into why disruptions feel so painful: They create a jarring gap between what we expect will happen and what actually occurs. These are the storms that test our mettle and force us to face how fragile our plans really are. 

The stress caused by disruptions varies based on how much they force you to adapt. In other words, the degree to which you are forced to change defines the magnitude of a disruption. For this reason, even joyful occasions such as weddings and holidays can be experienced as ­disruptive — ­ because of how drastically they alter the ordinary. 

Disruptions may be especially upsetting when they interfere with important projects. The plans we lay and the roles we envision for ourselves give us a sense of control in the sea of chaos. Any disruption that derails these plans feels like more than just a change in direction: It’s a direct attack on who we are and our place in the world. And the effects of this attack can be painful. Disruptive life events and personal stressors are associated with both anxiety and depression. In fact, a growing number of psychologists believe that disruptive life events play more of a role in someone’s development of a mental illness than genetics do. 

That’s why, over thousands of years, philosophers and spiritual leaders have advocated for a healthy form of letting go. Buddhism teaches that suffering arises from attachment to desires, including the desire for control over outcomes. Taoism talks about wu wei, which can be translated as “effortless action.” This doesn’t mean inaction but rather acting in harmony with the flow of life, without force or resistance. Similarly, in Hindu philosophy, vairagya is the detachment that allows us to experience greater levels of tranquility. 

Western science is catching up to the Eastern spiritual teachings on the benefits of surrendering to the present moment and choosing to flow with the currents of life. Studies show that constantly trying to fight and fix the things that go wrong in life can lead to chronic stress and that one of the hallmarks of psychological ­ well-being is the ability to fluidly adapt to ­ change — not to resist chaos but embrace it. 

Researchers distinguish between active acceptance and resigning acceptance. In both cases, people abandon fruitless attempts to control what they can’t change. However, their mindset and outlook on life are different.

“Active acceptance means acknowledging a negative, difficult situation and dealing with it in a constructive way,” Yuka Maya Nakamura and Ulrich Orth from the University of Bern, Switzerland, explain. “Resigning acceptance also means abandoning outward directed actions; however, this behavior is combined with negative expectations about the future and a loss of hope.” Their research shows that only active acceptance is associated with better mental health, as people redirect their energy into more constructive actions to shape their lives. 

Navigating life’s disruptions isn’t about completely abandoning hope, nor is it about blind ­tenacity — the positive can-do attitude some recommend maintaining in all circumstances. Instead, it calls for an in-between ­approach — an active embrace of life’s inherent unpredictability. The key is to cultivate your own version of the farmer’s “maybe.” 

Times of disruption are an opportunity to relax your grip on the outcome while you keep on showing up. Even in the face of adversity, we can send a powerful message to ourselves: Our value isn’t contingent upon perfect conditions or outcomes, but on our commitment to ourselves and our journey. Your role is to stick to your pact and allow the world to provide you with data. Just showing ­ up — being an agent of change in a world that keeps on ­ changing — can help you feel more confident in your ability to cope and more prepared to handle future setbacks. 

As Vivian Greene puts it: “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” Accepting life’s disruptions doesn’t make you passive; it makes you agile. 

The two-step reset

Disruptions inevitably interrupt our choreographed routines, but we can learn to dance with them. Finding your footing again is a two-step process, much like the ­ two-step rhythmic pattern in various folk traditions. You must first explore the subjective experience with curiosity before calmly confronting the objective issues. 

Although these two steps are not necessarily formalized in the way I will describe them below, you will find them in many schools of thought. Stoicism advocates, first and foremost, cultivating a state of calm regardless of external circumstances. Only then can you analyze situations logically to determine what’s within your control and what’s not. Many modern forms of therapy consist of recognizing unhelpful emotional responses that distort our belief systems and then, in a second phase, using that awareness to alter the corresponding maladaptive behaviors. 

After years of inner work, Michael Singer arrived at the same conclusion: “I could see that the practice of surrender was actually done in two very distinct steps: First, you let go of the personal reactions of like and dislike that form inside your mind and heart; and second, with the resultant sense of clarity, you simply look to see what is being asked of you by the situation unfolding in front of you.”

Step One. Processing the subjective experience

Disruption, by its very nature, shakes our emotional core. The first step is to pause and lean into these emotions. A rapid heart rate, a clenched jaw, shallow breathing, increased sweating, a sinking feeling in your ­ stomach … Because the brain responds similarly to all threats, whether­ life-threatening or not, negative emotions that are not properly processed can impair our ability to evaluate situations, solve problems, and make decisions. 

Uncomfortable emotions are not inherently bad. In the words of Emily Willroth, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis: “Anxiety can help you to face a potential threat, anger can help you stand up for yourself, and sadness can signal to other people that you need their social support.” It’s how we interpret our emotions that can cause suffering. You want to translate these bodily responses into a language your mind can assimilate. 

For this, let’s use a technique psychologists call “affective labeling,” which helps you better manage your physiological responses by naming your emotional states. Research has found that labeling our emotions results in higher brain activity in our prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain in charge of executive functioning, which includes managing tasks, making decisions, and focusing attention. It also reduces activity in the amygdala, a region that plays an important role in emotional processing and the fight-or-flight response. 

Affective labeling is literally “putting feelings into words.” As you do this, vague anxieties crystallize into a clear set of solid emotions. The pioneer of writing therapy, James W. Pennebaker, explained that labeling our emotions relieves our brains of the burdensome task of processing them. Once you have those words, it’s much easier to investigate their cause and address the issues underlying those feelings. 

Suppose you’re throwing a work event, and one of your suppliers is late with a delivery. Perhaps a client’s last-minute cancellation causes your team to fall short of its quarterly quota. A workshop might have to be restructured because one of the speakers missed their flight. Maybe it’s your flight that’s canceled, and you cannot attend a conference to give a presentation. 

Just ask yourself: What am I feeling right now? You don’t even need to write complete sentences. Jotting down a list of adjectives that describe your emotions will do (for example, tense, worried, nervous, uneasy, concerned). You can do this in as little as five minutes. You can use a journal, a notes app, or a scrap of paper from the recycling bin. You can do it on walks by using the voice recorder on your phone, or through any medium that removes as much friction as possible between felt emotion and verbal expression. 

If you’re having trouble putting a name to a particular emotion, you can use a proxy to describe how you feel. For instance, a long history of research has demonstrated that emotional states are closely related to landscapes. Landscapes seen as safe and ­resource-rich tend to elicit positive emotions. On the other hand, dense forests or extremely open deserts are perceived negatively due to hidden dangers or a scarcity of resources. This effect is so strong that it persists in front of painted landscapes. You can leverage that primal connection to express your emotions in a more intuitive way. Maybe your feeling is a majestic but terrifying mountain, a vast and lonely ocean, a sandstorm over a desolate desert, or a big white cloud over the cliffs of a tiny beach town. 

It’s natural to experience some level of distress when faced with disruption. The best course of action is to process the emotion with curiosity and ­ self-compassion so you can calmly deal with the consequences. 

Step Two. Managing the objective consequences

Once you have managed the emotional impact of the disruption, you can proceed to confront its practical implications. The repercussions of any event are akin to ripples in water. The disruption is evident at the point of impact, but its effect becomes more subtle as the waves spread out. To gracefully navigate these challenges, you must see beyond the obvious impact and into the more nuanced, second-order consequences. 

Scientists who study the effects of chain ­reactions — such as the spread of an epidemic or the domino effect of a power ­outage — call this a “consequence cascade.” To unravel the potential consequences of an event, they use computational models that analyze many what-if scenarios. The good news is you don’t need to write complex programs. You can apply a simplified version of this method to deal with the objective problems that come up when something unexpected happens. 

First, pinpoint the direct impact of the disruption by zeroing in on the most noticeable effects. Then map out potential consequences. This can be a quick list or a visual map. Think of this as the next wave emanating from the point of disruption. Then evaluate each potential consequence. Is it significant? Is it positive, negative, or neutral? Can it resolve on its own, or must something be done? Based on your assessment, you can decide whether to take action. You may choose to do nothing if the repercussions are minor or the issue will go away on its own. But if the problem is serious enough, it’s worth putting some thought into how to fix it. 

In the majority of cases, we have more agency than we think and can make smart decisions about when to pull the many levers at our disposal. Assessing the significance of a stressor can not only help reduce feelings of uncertainty and anxiety but also enhance your ­problem-solving abilities. It’s a mental game of reacting but not overreacting, of defanging the fear and strategizing what response is required, if any. 

This process might take only a few minutes if you quickly realize the consequences are negligible. Because you’ve already labeled and accepted your emotions as a natural reaction, you can cope with the minor disturbance and move on. Or it could take a couple of hours if you are dealing with a thorny issue linked to multiple orders of consequences. Mapping all of these out will not necessarily solve all your problems, but it will help you go forward with more clarity and confidence in your ability to handle them or to surrender to the consequences.

This article Turn life’s disruptions into a path forward with this 2-step process is featured on Big Think.

When William Brahms’s anthology of last words, “Last Words of Notable People,” came out in 2010, he encountered readers who entertained themselves by speculating what their last words might be. Initially, Brahms said, they would propose something witty and profound. Later, they admitted that they’d likely express appreciation and love, or something spiritual — if they could even manage to speak, when lucidity and intelligibility become hurdles. Brahms witnessed this firsthand at the bedside of his dying mother. Even though she’d spent years helping him edit his book, they’d never discussed what they thought their last words would be.

It didn’t matter, because the reality was quite different.

“In her case, due to debilitating illness, it was not a clear punctuated statement,” Brahms told me in an email, with evident surprise. “It was more of a slow and fading dialogue.”

This dissonance between the idealized notion of dying speech, based on people’s expectations and cultural ideals, and the reality of final moments so often complicates our understanding of death. And when delirium enters the equation, the gap between expectation and reality widens even further.

What should we make of people who can speak and yet make no sense?

On one hand, there’s a very good chance that a dying person will be delirious at the end of life. In fact, in palliative care and hospice spaces, 58 to 88 percent of cancer patients are delirious in the last week to hours before death. In William Osler’s landmark study of dying, 28 patients out of the total 486 were described as delirious, with his observers using words like “irrational,” “mind wandering,” “demented,” and in one case “raging.”

“I don’t want to call it a nearly universal feature of the end-of-life experience,” David Wright, a Canadian medical ethnographer, told me, “but as you die, unless you die very suddenly in an instant, your various bodily systems start to work differently until they stop working at all. And that includes the way that you think, and that includes the way that you communicate.”

Ancient medical writers distinguished between two types of delirium: phrenitis, the restless variety, and lethargus, an inert, dull state. Modern researchers keep this distinction, describing delirium as either quiet, listless, apathetic, and “pseudo wakeful,” or as a restlessness in which patients are “muttering” and “talkative.” Delirium was one of the first medical conditions ever described by Greek and Roman writers almost 2,000 years ago. The Greek philosopher Celsus introduced the word delirium in the second century CE; the word came from the Latin delirare, which means to go out of the furrow (lira is Latin for “furrow”). The delirious plow leaves the furrow of sense. A modern person might think that leaving the planned track is a desirable thing, until they familiarize themselves with a single-bladed plow and realize the inconvenience of an errant ox-pulled plow skittering across the field’s surface.

Despite this pedigree, the exact biological mechanisms behind delirium aren’t well understood, but it appears to stem from neuronal dysfunction, probably due to neurotransmitter fluctuations. Neurons in the brain aren’t dying (which is why sometimes people can recover from delirium) but disconnecting from each other. Basically, delirium is the result of a neurochemical commotion. Now clinicians look for three types of delirium: a restless, hyperactive form, a listless form, and a mix of the two.

Delirium is very common among the dying, particularly in the later stages, where that lethargic type shows up often. As a diagnosis, it covers a complex of symptoms and isn’t a single thing. Despite its prevalence, doctors don’t reliably recognize delirium. It’s often mistaken for dementia, depression, or psychosis. In a study of 100 consecutive cases of delirium in a palliative care unit, researchers found that 33 percent of patients were classified with the hypoactive, lethargic form. They had the same impairment in cognitive functioning as patients with other variants, showing similar deficits in orientation, memory, and comprehension on cognitive test scores. This variegated presentation makes it hard to tell when someone is delirious. Though clinicians want to take it seriously, they don’t have a uniform method for recognizing delirium or dealing with it therapeutically.

On the other hand, delirium seems to outstrip people’s ability — and their willingness — to grasp a phenomenon as simultaneously biological, emotional, and social. It has what David Wright called a relational dimension, in the sense that any individual’s delirium impacts other people’s perceptions of the relationship. Some find it traumatizing and distressing, others less so. In either case, what seems to help is when delirium is described as a normal part of dying, in the same way that baby babbling is described as a normal feature of language acquisition. Some medical staff try to normalize the delirium as part of the natural process of dying, and they encourage family members to enter the hallucinatory world — or at least not to fight it. Many hospices recommend the latter as well: “Do not contradict, explain away, belittle or argue about what the person claims to have seen or heard,” reads a short text that a hospice provides about the dying process. “Just because you cannot see or hear it does not mean it is not real to your loved one. Affirm his or her experience. They are normal and common.”

By itself, the brain explanation isn’t soothing. What does help is taking advantage of the interaction window that remains. Or you open another window, as if that’s the one that the other person wants to operate with. You might respond, “So you say you’re going on a trip. Who do you think will be waiting for you?” Or, “Tell me some nice things you remember about your mother.” Family members might be told that the patient has already undergone a sort of social death; though their body is present, the previous person they is gone, so a new relationship is required. So while your father’s brain is the author of some insult, and his body its animator, your father as you knew him isn’t the principal of that offensive utterance.

Some families take it better than others — some want to deny what’s happening, while others roll with it (“Oh, you’re seeing bugs? What’s it look like?”). For other family members, some meaning needs to be made from the delirium. “It can be very meaningful for family members to say, ‘Oh, Dad’s now with Mom,’ who is dead. That can be a great source of comfort,” a doctor who often treats delirium told me.

I faced this with my own grandmother. I’d known my father’s mother, Norma, from childhood. A bright-faced, cheery woman, she’d fold me in her arms, say that she loved me, then laugh chirpingly and say that she prayed for me, that unmistakable Irish grandmother code for “I want you to go to Mass.” Now I was no longer a child, and now she was dying. The gray skies on our visit to the hospital will be forever seared in my memory. When my wife and I entered my grandmother’s room, I told her who I was. Her eyelids fluttered open, and her eyes focused on me, her gaunt face lit up, she reached out her arms, I hugged and kissed her. “Michael-Jean, you’re an angel!” she exclaimed. “You’re an angel!”

At first I was concerned — does she know it’s me, not an angel? Apparently so, she said my name, then repeated joyfully, “You’re an angel, you’re an angel.” Delirium? Maybe. But when your beloved grandmother calls you an angel, you reach for the interpretation that feels most loving. That has to be her talking, she’s still there. She said what she said; the words, they’re right there, her last ones, as far as I’m concerned. She became unresponsive shortly after and died two days later.

My father remembers this differently. He maintains that she roused to a saying of the Lord’s Prayer. But I won’t argue — from both of our stories, we end up with some morsels of closure, and that’s what feeds us.

From a linguistic perspective, delirious language is unhinged and incoherent. People who are delirious after surgery and then recover can sometimes relate their feelings of being briefly outside the furrow of sense, which reduced them to a state of abject terror.

Osler might have been surprised. “I remember that everything changed to me,” reported one patient. “Suddenly I was a prisoner in a Nazi camp, and I thought that the nurses were the Nazi camp guards . . . and I wondered whatever happened since the nurses had become so unkind to me although they were so nice before.” They reported seeing things that were beautiful, awe-inspiring, and pleasurable. They saw fragments of past events mixed up with the present. And they heard people talking to them but didn’t know what they wanted, nor could they communicate with them.

As with all these phenomena, delirium involves experiences at the edge of the interaction window, or far beyond it. In many instances, that window has been shut, perhaps not forever. In the case above, family members who knew the person in a “normal” state were also shocked at losing emotional and cognitive access to their loved one. They missed knowing about the other person’s interior life and struggled to figure out if the person with delirium was comfortable or distressed. To deal with this, the advice seems to be: Don’t engage in the main interaction window, because your loved one’s not there; instead, open another interaction window on their terms. That will allow you to be present without expectations or demands.

Of course, another option is to deny the existence of delirium altogether, as Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley’s 1992 book “Final Gifts” does. Their book proposed that dying people begin using a symbolic language particular to the end of life that must be carefully listened to, written down, and interpreted. “Health-care professionals and families may assume that what they’re hearing and seeing is confusion…unfortunately, dying people are often labeled ‘confused’ without adequate assessment,” Callanan and Kelley wrote. To those authors, the only reality is the special symbolic language of the dying, and the brain-based understandings of delirium diminish those messages or their meanings. (They don’t have a monopoly on this, by the way. Nearly 40 percent of Indian family members said that delirium was the cause of supernatural beliefs, emotional stress, or a failure of religious observance — and did not have biomedical origins.)

Given the documented prevalence of delirium, it was a bold position to take. However, in a 1998 interview, Callanan walked the rejection back. “I’m not here to say that everything a confused patient says has great significance. It’s often very hard, even paying close attention, to find exactly what the person is saying. Seventy percent of people dying of illness, at some point, have some confusion; that’s a lot of confusion. However, our point is to always listen specifically to the words.”

Several years later, on a speaking tour to Chicago, Callanan reversed again, telling the Chicago Tribune that delirious behaviors aren’t the product of mental confusion or drug mis-dosing. “The confusion is ours,” she said. “The patient knows what’s going on.”

The newspaper reporter also quoted, in contrast, the views of Joel Frader, a palliative care physician, who identified the source of hallucinations and other unusual behaviors as the failing brain. “There are some fairly characteristic changes in brain chemistry that people have documented as death occurs, whether it’s lack of oxygen or high levels of carbon dioxide or changes in nutrition getting to the brain,” he told the newspaper.

His take was not only frank and sharp, but it reiterated what Victorian doctors also warned: The existence of God or the afterlife won’t be proven with people’s dying words or their hallucinations, because they are “matters of faith.” The organic response of the brain to the body’s failure, on the other hand, is a matter of physiology. Implicit is the idea it works that way for everybody.

“I do understand people trying to get some meaning out of everything they witness, but delirium is real, and it happens a lot,” Romayne Gallagher, a palliative care physician in British Columbia told me. She didn’t recommend “Final Gifts” to people because of its unrealistic view of delirium. “Certainly the misperception of reality plays a role in delirium — people seeing ants on the ceiling (spotted ceiling tiles) and seeing a bowl of rice (a glowing white lamp globe) — but if delirium goes beyond that, it seems to empty the limbic system’s treasure trove of horrors, which doesn’t seem to relate to the person’s experience. By that I mean people seeing a train coming at them or seeing a loved one on fire just outside the window.”

My speculation is that the interpretive control promoted in “Final Gifts” reflects a cultural adaptation to dilemmas posed by delirium to a laissez parler approach to language at the end of life. That is, if no one gets a clear model about the language they should produce at the end, except for the vague sense that it should be pithy, poignant, and uniquely reflective of who they were, then it risks ending up delirious and nonsensical (if it exists at all). And if loved ones are directed to attend to all of the utterances, how should the non-sensical ones be interpreted? As if they contain some meaning.

Meanwhile, other religious practices keep dying people occupied, authoring for them what to utter, chant, or pray. Sharing linguistic agency in this way looks like a wise cultural adaptation to the prevalence of delirium. In those traditions, only the prescribed words matter — everything else becomes noise, harmless and inconsequential.

This article The hallucinatory thoughts of the dying mind is featured on Big Think.

In the 4th century A.D., Evagrius Ponticus escaped into the desert to contemplate salvation. An ascetic and philosopher, Evagrius came to believe that only by revoking the needs of the flesh could the spirit be united with God. And no emotions shackled the spirit more powerfully than lust, gluttony, sloth, greed, wrath, pride, vainglory, and despair.

Sound familiar? That’s because Evigarius’s writings represent the first appearance of what we now call the seven deadly sins*. His teachings would be passed down for two centuries before coming to the attention of Pope Gregory I, who, in 590 A.D., revised the litany into the standard seven. He cut despair, squeezed pride and vainglory together, tossed in envy, and voila — you have the cardinal sins.

What’s fascinating about the deadly sins is how enduring they are. Western Culture today is a far cry from Evagrius’s world. Yet, these sins continue to be warned against from the pulpit and regularly appear in art and stories to unnerve us or serve up Brothers Grimm-style moral lessons. This timelessness seems to stem from a deep concern shared by people across cultures and eras. 

That is: Some emotions don’t just feel bad or lead us to act uncharitably. No, some emotions can be deadly. Rather than risk them, we try to become emotional ascetics and divest ourselves from these feelings so that we might enjoy happy and fulfilling lives —  if not in the hereafter then at least in the here and now.

Ethan Kross, award-winning psychologist and expert on emotional regulation, has a different take: 

“If your goal is to lead a life bereft of [these] negative emotions, number one, you’re not going to be successful. They’re a part of how we operate. Number two, that is an undesirable goal because those negative emotions we experience serve a function. They’re really good for us when they’re experienced in the right proportions.”

I recently spoke with Kross about why it’s time we reevaluate our negative emotions. After our conversation, I came away with the sense that, in many respects, we finally have the knowledge and tools necessary to begin managing these emotions healthily and responsibly. That said, this understanding is not evenly distributed, and in its absence, myths, folklore, and misconceptions about our darker emotions continue to thrive.

A brief history of mixed emotions and split skulls

Kross opens his new book, Shift, by recounting some of the extremes humans have undergone to quell their darker emotions. For instance, skulls housing the telltale signs of trepanation — the practice of boring holes into the cranium — have been unearthed in places as distinct as China, Europe, and South America, with many dating back to the Neolithic period. This makes it one of the oldest known surgical procedures, and the locations of these boreholes suggest it was developed, in part, as a means of curing people of extreme negative emotions by — let’s say — giving the prefrontal cortex a nudge in the right direction.

“If you’re overcome with an out-of-character state of depression or anxiety, then clearly there has to be some spirit inside you pushing you in the wrong direction. So, let’s let it out,” Kross notes to explain our ancestors’ point of view.

And trepanation is just one such historical intervention cooked up to regulate disruptive emotions and behaviors. Kross adds exorcisms, bloodletting, witch burnings, and lobotomies to the list — the latter of which was a disturbingly common therapy as recently as the 1940s and 50s. In fact, lobotomies were so well-regarded that their inventor, Egas Moniz, won the Nobel Prize in 1949. Even more disturbing: The procedure was arguably the most humane option for many disorders given the available alternatives before neuroleptic drugs.

“Just think about that: At one point, poking holes in people’s frontal cortices was viewed as such an advancement to win the Nobel Prize. That puts into perspective how big a problem this has been historically and how far we’ve come,” Kross says.

Outside of physical interventions, societies have also devised all manner of rituals and practices that have kept our negative emotions in check or provided them an outlet (though, with mental health care more often an unintended consequence than stated goal). The result has been a vibrant panoply of feasts, festivals, ceremonies, celebrations, and forms of worship and prayer. Some of these we look back on with unease; others we still happily practice today.

“The emotions we experience in our inner worlds have likely always been of interest to us, but they have been shrouded with mystique because, until recently, we haven’t had the methods to really understand what is going on inside our minds and the physical tissue that underlies the mind, the brain,” Kross says.

Thanks to the monumental efforts of researchers, we have finally begun to unwrap the shroud of our inner worlds. Today, scientists have largely mapped the “loosely coordinated responses” that are our emotions unfolding within us. In short: A situation triggers an emotional response that prompts bodily reactions (such as releasing certain hormones), cognitive appraisals (how you feel about the situation), and outward behaviors (your facial expressions and body language).

The death of a loved one, for example, typically leads to the coordinated response we call sadness. Our bodies slow down, our minds retreat into a reflective mode, and our demeanor signals a desire for comfort. But, Kross points out, a situation prompting anger has a totally different response. Our bodies rev up, our minds enter action mode, and our body language signals, “Stay clear!”

Kross adds that these coordinated responses are considered “loose” because while they typically go together, that’s not true of everyone all of the time. They can be decoupled — as when an ace Texas Hold ‘em player hides an anxious bluff behind an unwavering poker face — and not everybody has the same response profile to the situations we face in life.

Scientists better appreciate the interpersonal and cultural dynamics that shape our emotions, as well. As Kross puts it, we are “consumers of other people’s emotions.” Humans are adept at reading others’ emotional states through tone, facial expression, and body language. We also find the fear, anger, sadness, and exhilaration of others virally contagious.

While emotions haven’t lost all their mystique, researchers are confident that they are an evolved capacity, shaped by culture, that helped us survive by making sense of our experiences, better cooperating with each other, and dealing with the situations we face. And that’s just as true for a negative emotion as any other.

“If you experience anger or anxiety or depression, there’s nothing wrong with you. Welcome to the human condition!” Kross says.

The bright side of dark emotions

As such, viewing negative emotions as barriers to happiness and fulfillment is about as accurate as believing them to be nefarious sprites that require a cranial exorcism. Instead, Kross advises that we see them for what they are: information. That information may not feel pleasant. Unchecked and unexamined, it may lead us to act poorly. But negative emotions are necessary for navigating our lives safely and well.

“We need to reevaluate the way we consider some emotions as dark because all emotions, when they’re experienced in the right proportions, have value,” Kross says.

Kross analogizes this value with physical pain. Like emotions, pain is an evolved response to a situation. Grab a hot cookie sheet without oven mitts, and you instinctively let go to prevent further harm. A cramp in your side while running is your body’s way to get you to ease up. That lasting backache tells you that it’s time to schedule a physical therapy appointment. We don’t recall such experiences with fondness, but each informs us something is wrong and pushes us to alleviate the problem.

To live without these pains may seem blissful but would, in fact, be a curse. That’s not a hypothetical, either. Kross points out that people who don’t feel pain — a condition called congenital insensitivity to pain (or CIP) — lead remarkably dangerous lives. Without an internal alarm system, they will unknowingly cut themselves, let infections fester, or walk around with broken bones. Many don’t live past 25. Those who do must be hyper-vigilant in examining their bodies or risk exacerbating even the mildest injury.

Similarly, negative emotions are our minds’ internal warnings that a situation is troublesome and demands our attention. Their purpose isn’t simply to make us feel miserable but to “motivate us behaviorally and cognitively to deal with it.”

Consider, for example, the deadly sin of envy. We all grew up being told not to compare ourselves to others, to the point that such advice feels common sense. However, recent research has suggested that comparing yourself to those you believe superior doesn’t have to be an exercise in self-loathing. It can have its benefits. Seeing such people as role models, for instance, can inspire and motivate you to work toward your goals.

“We de facto talk about social comparison in a negative light,” Kross says. “[But] we are a social species. Comparing ourselves to other people is a key way that we understand ourselves and the world around us. It’s built into the operating system of who we are.”

Without negative emotions, we would find ourselves in all sorts of trouble and sticky situations. Again, this is not a hypothetical. In a famous psychological case, a woman codenamed “S.M.” suffered brain damage that left her unable to feel fear. Researchers found she could handle snakes and spiders with ease, despite her claims to hate the creatures. However, they also discovered S.M. had a disturbing history of victimhood, having been the target of an unusually high number of crimes and life-threatening encounters. She simply didn’t hear the internal warning to not walk through dangerous neighborhoods or lock her doors at night.

“When you change your mental model to understand that experiencing [negative emotions] is your body doing what it’s supposed to do, you are radically transforming your experience in life,” Kross says. “You are exactly where you need to be when you’re experiencing those emotions.”

But as Kross warned, negative emotions need to be experienced in the right proportions, neither too intense nor for too long. When either is out of whack — too hot, too cold; too long, too short — the emotional information becomes more difficult to manage well. Not deadly, mind. But unnecessarily distressing and perhaps even disorderly.

Experimenting with emotions

Expanding the pain analogy further, sometimes the appropriate response is obvious. You burn your hand and run the blister under cold water. Other times, pain may have any number of potential causes and recommended remedies — as anyone who has ever consulted Dr. Google can attest. The same can be true for understanding how to manage our negative emotions.

“These are messy responses to some degree,” Kross says. “[But] the good news is that we didn’t just evolve the capacity to experience all these different negative emotional states. We also evolved this sophisticated apparatus to reign in those responses if we want to.”

This gets to the heart of Kross’s book Shift, in which he surveys the tools science has discovered for regulating the intensity and duration of our emotions. 

Now, if you’ve spent any time perusing the self-help section of your local bookstore, you’ll know there is no shortage of prescriptions for curing this or that negative emotion to live a happier life. Meditation, journaling, socializing, exercise, cold plunges, turmeric, nature walks, talk therapy, aromatherapy, hobby therapy, awe therapy, animal therapy, time therapy — all the therapies. The advice is endless.

These may have their place in one’s mental health routine, but they are “patchwork solutions.” Promoters often overpromise their effectiveness and oversell the strength of the scientific evidence, and the singsong language of their marketing can make it difficult to suss out the useful from the nostrum. Meanwhile, some of the most effective emotional shifters go underappreciated (and don’t require an app subscription to use).

For instance, switching up your environmental space from, say, a hectic office to a favorite cafe or park bench can help adjust your attitude about an anxiety-inducing project. Similarly, you can shift your emotions by leaning on your sensory experiences. Listening to a favorite song or the smells of your grandmother’s cookie recipe baking in the kitchen can offer a quick mood booster. Even avoidance — which is generally frowned upon in popular understandings of mental health — can be a useful tool when used wisely by deciding it is simply best to let the emotions go rather than continually dragging them out to be poked and prodded.

“The goal is not to run from negative emotions, or pursue only the feel-good ones, but to be able to shift: Experience all of them, learn from all of them, and, when needed, move easily from one emotional state to another,” Kross writes in Shift.

But even if an emotional shifter is backed by the evidence, Kross warns, none is universal. A tool that works well for one person may not work for another; a technique that served you well once may not serve you as well later on.

Consider reframing. This is the ability to change your cognitive appraisal of a situation by shifting where you place your attention. Instead of seeing failure as proof that you are no good, for example, you shift your mindset to see it as a learning opportunity and challenge to do better. For many people, this is a handy mental tool. But Kross points out that some people are so skilled at reframing that they can neutralize negative responses before considering them. This knee-jerk reaction helps them feel better about themselves immediately, but also dismisses an opportunity to learn from the situation that prompted the negative emotion. Missing that self-reflective step, they walk around with a distorted view of themselves and their place in the world.

And while we prefer pleasing emotions for obvious reasons, they aren’t always the answer to the situations we face. You don’t want to be the one laughing at a funeral, Kross says. That’s an appropriate moment to feel sadness and seek solace in the company of your fellows. Pleasure is also great, but if pursuing it leads you to ignore hard yet necessary work, then it’s time to temper the positivity a bit.

Understanding your emotional calculus

After our talk, one thing became clear: Kross is no Evigarius. For one, the University of Michigan lacks the deserts necessary for a proper hermitage. More importantly, he can’t provide anyone with a list of emotions or thoughts they must avoid to reach their goals. Science isn’t dogmatic like that. It’s a lively, ever-evolving, and self-correcting system of knowledge that substitutes absolute certainty for continual refinement.

While researchers have revealed much our ancestors did not know about emotions, they still have much to learn. Today, there is an ongoing debate over whether we evolved distinct, innate emotions (and how many there are) or whether they are constructed in the moment based on things like culture, personality, and past experiences. Researchers also need to better understand why specific interventions work better for some people than others and how to tell in advance for more accurate prescriptions.

“As a scientist, what I cannot do is tell you about how these tools combine to work for different people in different situations. I can’t tell you because that work simply has not been done,” Kross says. “What I can do is tell you about emotions, how they work, and the specific tools that have been studied.”

Kross can, however, offer two pieces of advice. First, familiarize yourself with the emotional tools available. Second, experiment to find the ones that work best for you. 

He adds that people rarely lean on only one tool or technique to manage their emotions. Most people use between three and four regularly and may need to swap them out as the edges dull over time. Maybe journaling was your thing a few years back, but now it feels less useful. If so, set it down and give meditation a try or experiment with reframing. If you feel the need, you can always return to journaling. 

The goal shouldn’t be to find that one feel-good therapy that solves all your problems. It should be to collect a bunch of strategies and mental tools that you can employ widely and regularly to manage your emotions and the situations that give rise to them.

“If you understand the calculus, if you understand the little switches or shifts that can push you in different directions, it gives you lots of opportunity to be more agentic about steering your emotions and yourself where you want them to be,” Kross says, adding, “Let’s not work against the machine that is who we are in terms of how our emotions are calibrated. Let’s work more skillfully with it.”

* Author’s Note: Earlier Judeo-Christian texts did warn against these thoughts — pride goes before destruction, after all — and earlier thinkers like Tertullian had composed their own tier lists of misdeeds, but Evagrius was the first to group together what we would later recognize as the deadly sins.

This article Embrace your dark side: A new perspective on negative emotions is featured on Big Think.

When Harrison Chow and Boris Heifets met up at a burger joint in Palo Alto in 2019 to talk about dreams, Heifets balked a little at what he was hearing. A giant hotdog chasing a man through San Francisco’s financial district? Blue Corvettes driving in endless loops around gas stations in Silicon Valley? Firefighters bow-hunting in Mexico? Like the intricately weird details of a psychedelic trip, tales of elaborate dreams usually just put listeners to sleep, interesting only to the dreamer herself.

But these weren’t just any dreams — they were hyper-vivid, anesthesia-induced dreams that Chow’s surgical patients had been reporting to him over the past decade, and they seemed to be helping these people heal.  

“I am generally skeptical,” Heifets, a neuroscientist and assistant professor of anesthesiology at Stanford Medical School, tells me. “It’s served me well to be skeptical of anything I hear.” 

But what Chow served up next blew his mind a little. Heifets, who studies psychedelics, had been wrestling with a question — one that he thought only applied to psychedelics: What makes them therapeutic for some people? Is it the expectation of feeling better? The biochemical effects of the drug? The subjective experience of the trip? He’d been leaning toward focusing on experience — perhaps the therapeutic value of psychedelics lies not in the drugs themselves but in the subjective state they produce.

Chow, a Stanford-trained anesthesiologist and medical doctor, launched into a story about an orthopedic patient who had come in with a chronic foot problem. She had also happened to have been diagnosed with agoraphobia. After dreaming under anesthetics, her PTSD symptoms seemed to improve.

“What he was describing to me — dreams induced by anesthetics — was so similar to what I’d been wondering about psychedelics,” Heifets says. “It fit with this idea that it doesn’t matter what the drug is; it’s the state. If you just induce a state where people can re-live prior experiences, project their priors onto the large blank screen of their dreams, work through trauma, whatever…” then you have a shot at a therapeutic effect.

The patient, who lived alone in a small house with a German shepherd, had dreamt during surgery that she escaped the sexual abuse she’d experienced as a child. The dream seemed to transform a nightmare into a happy ending, and she woke up feeling well. Not only that, but her foot appeared to be healed in the dream. She reverted to her old agoraphobic routine after a few days, Chow said, but the anesthesia-induced dream seemed to have conferred a big enough effect to help her leave the house and go to Starbucks. The anesthetic agent used was propofol, the most common induction agent for general anesthesia. But interestingly, Chow told Heifets he’d seen the same effect using various types of anesthetic drugs for different surgeries.

And it wasn’t just the odd patient here and there — it was hundreds.

Anesthesia dreams

Anesthesia dreams have likely been a common phenomenon since surgeons first started putting patients under in the 1840s, but there has never been sound reason to study, let alone prolong, them. In fact, early published reports of anesthesia dreams frame them as pesky side effects of an otherwise smooth medical procedure. Regarded as a mysterious feature of the brain, there was little reason to suspect that, under certain conditions, these dreams might have therapeutic value.

“Most anesthesiologists blow right past this,” Heifets says, adding that they pass off dreaming as a meaningless byproduct of surgery or wake up patients before they fall deeply enough into the dream state.

But the phenomenon piqued Chow’s interest. Since 2009, he’s collected observational data on many elaborate anesthesia dreams that seemed to help people manage anxieties that had nothing to do with the surgery itself.

Hearing the story of the woman resolving her abuse in one such dream, Heifets’ ears perked up.

“I’ve been very involved with MDMA both on the clinical and basic science side, and that’s the story that people tell: being able to touch the experience in a way that was far less traumatic.” 

Heifets agreed to set Chow up with an EEG monitor and a team to do psychiatric evaluations and formalize the observations Chow had been collecting over the years. Finishing their burgers and clinking their beers, the two were off to the races.

Into the dream world

This wasn’t the first time Chow and Heifets had crossed paths. Heifets had started as a resident at Stanford in 2010, when Chow was a clinical instructor. “I fondly remember Boris [Heifets] as a resident,” Chow tells me.

Chow, who grew up in nearby Saratoga and graduated from Stanford Medical School in the 1990s, recently left a 20-year career in private practice to return to Stanford. He couldn’t help spreading the word about what he was seeing. 

Around 2009, he started noticing patterns in his orthopedic and cancer patients. “People were dreaming about things that made them happy — especially in orthopedic situations, about things that seemed to be relieving their anxiety.”

First, there was Minivan Mom, who went in for breast cancer surgery and dreamt of overcoming the anxiety of getting her kids to school on time, driving them to school in a minivan “on time” for days in a perpetual state of punctuality. After the operation, she beamed at Chow: “I got my kids to school on time!” Then there was Corvette Man, who came in for hand surgery and dreamt of driving the beloved blue Corvette he’d anxiously sold years back, in a repeated loop around the 76 gas station in his town.

And finally, there was Déjà vu Man, a loan agent who had anxiety over all the backed-up loan applications he needed to process at work. His anesthesia dream was abruptly interrupted; he explosively woke up during his hernia surgery thinking there were “strangers in his office” (OR staff). The patient said he’d been processing files on his desk during the dream. When Chow called him for a follow-up days later, the man reported an odd experience upon returning to the office: He felt that he’d already processed the backed-up applications, in a déjà vu-like fashion that seemingly could only be explained by having “gone through the motions” during his anesthesia dream. The details of the applications were irrelevant; he just had a strong feeling that he’d already done what he was about to do.

But it wasn’t until a young man working in finance came in for a simple surgery that Chow started taking things more seriously. Before the operation, he mentioned to Chow that he was anxious about feeling hungry going into surgery. Chow didn’t think much of it. When the man woke up, he reported dreaming that he’d been chased by a giant hotdog down Market Street near his office in downtown San Francisco. When the hotdog finally caught him, wrapping him in its colossal buns, he woke up and said, “I feel great. I’m not hungry anymore.” It was like he’d projected his emotions onto the hotdog, Chow said. It didn’t last, as his hunger quickly returned, but for 20 or 30 minutes, “there was this clinical effect where his brain was being tricked into something else.”

Chow had already gathered some insights from the work of Australian researcher and anesthesiologist Kate Leslie, who characterized anesthesia dreams as “unstructured” and “random.” But that’s where Chow disagreed.

In his post-surgical observations, he’d found by chance that if he extended the dream state, patients experienced less postoperative nausea and vomiting, recovered more quickly, were unusually alert and conscious and ready to leave the OR, often claimed to have awoken from the “best sleep of their life,” and were discharged earlier from the post-anesthesia care unit.

But most intriguing of all the observations was that patients reported structured, non-random, and movie-like dreams with a beginning, middle, and end. He observed three dream types: perpetual (Minivan Mom), looping (Corvette Man), and interrupted (Déjà Vu Man). The content usually involved resolving emotional issues, most frequently anxiety, in hyper-vivid detail. Like turning a radio dial of consciousness to the right frequency, he seemed to have stumbled upon a sweet spot other clinicians hadn’t noticed.

Something else distinguished the dreams, which neither Leslie nor other anesthesia dream researchers had noted: Patients also dreamt of resolving physical issues, sometimes alongside emotional issues.

In 2021, a flurry of Chow’s patients started showing the same pattern. A hand surgery patient dreams of throwing dice at the Bellagio in Las Vegas with a repaired hand. Another hand surgery patient dreams of riding her motorcycle across the desert, where she broke her wrist before. An ankle surgery patient dreams she can walk and play with her grandchildren again. A wrist surgery patient dreams her wrist is healed and now she can shop for Thanksgiving dinner supplies at Safeway.

The pattern continued into 2022: One hand surgery patient, a local fire chief, dreams of completing a fire abatement plan for the city and travels to Mexico to bow-hunt with a healed wrist. Another hand surgery patient, himself a cardiac surgeon, dreams of preparing for a surgical procedure with his own hand repaired. An ankle surgery patient dreams of dancing in Santa Monica with her old boyfriend, while another hand surgery patient, an ex-Olympian hammer thrower, dreams of throwing again with a healed hand. (The Olympian, by the way, asks to be left alone to continue the dream.)  

At the time, Chow didn’t think to ask these patients whether they’d also dreamt of emotional repair, but he didn’t have to, because that’s when the moms started showing up. 

First, two moms from Palo Alto came in for breast cancer surgery and left having reunited with their dead sons in highly vivid and emotional dreams. 

Mare Lucas, who had a right-breast lumpectomy in 2020, tells me that even though everyone uses the word “dream” for this phenomenon, hers could more accurately be described as an experience. 

“I’m floating above the room where our youngest son was born,” she says. “I can see him in the bassinet. I can hear the older children’s voices. I’m not watching him be born. I’m watching the joy of his birth.” 

In a dream you are acting, you are first-person, she says. “This isn’t first-person. This is hovering above, and just sucking in the joy and the beauty.” 

Lucas, who suffered from PTSD and weekly nightmares for three years after her eldest son’s suicide in 2017, has not had nightmares since that first surgery in 2020. A year after her experience, she no longer met the criteria for PTSD. On the verge of tears, Lucas tells me she was so affected by the experience that she believes her son might still be alive today if he’d had access to the treatment himself.  

Another mom, Kelsey Newman, dreamt of being with her eight-year-old son — dreamt that he was safe. 

Newman, a schoolteacher whom Chow treated on four different breast cancer mastectomy surgeries over three years, starting in 2021, says the dream study was transformative. Leading up to each of her four surgeries, she was terrified of the operation and “going under.” That is, until she started dreaming. 

“I started looking forward to what I was going to dream about,” Newman told me. “I became curious instead of freaked out. Each dream I had offered some solace and gave me comfort that I was going to be okay.” 

“The fourth surgery and last dream study I had with Dr. Harrison Chow had the biggest impact on me because it resolved the breast cancer I had been fighting.” 

In the dream, she finished her book and traveled around Europe with her son on a book tour, cancer-free. She woke up calm and felt assured that everything would be alright. 

“Even though I have hoops to go through now and am still dealing with healing my body of cancer,” she told me, “I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and that last dream gave me hope, like a future-telling prophecy that all will be well.” 

By this point, the “dream team” had split into two fully operational teams, one consisting of clinical providers headed by Chow and one clinical research team headed by Heifets. On Chow’s side, a protocol had been perfected for surgical patients with the help of Miranda Shull, CRNA. Over on the Heifets side, team members were developing protocols for healthy volunteers. 

IDEA Lab, Stanford University School of Medicine. (Credit: Saga Briggs)

It was around this time that Marina came to them. Marina, 26, had been attacked by a family member at close range with a knife and needed reconstructive surgery for her right hand. While she didn’t meet the criteria for lifetime PTSD, she had symptoms, including a recurring nightmare that kept her from sleeping or doing much of anything for two weeks before she got to the OR, where Chow took care of her. Under surgical anesthesia, she dreamt of being attacked with a knife in her apartment, going to the emergency room, proceeding to the OR for surgical repair, looking at her repaired hand, and returning home and completing errands with her healed hand. Afterward, she was able to calmly speak about the attack, stopped having nightmares, and no longer met the criteria for acute stress disorder. 

Heifets picked up on the fact that, like Newman, the patient had had the same dream four times. They created a term for this: “looping.” The team “caught everything on film” with EEG and published the results in their first case study. 

The remarkable thing, to Heifets, was how similar this “dream therapy,” as they’d started calling it, was to a commonly used psychotherapy for PTSD: exposure therapy. Prolonged exposure therapy helps patients reduce their emotional responses to traumatic memories through habituation and extinction. Over about a dozen 90-minute sessions, a trained therapist guides the patient in safely revisiting their trauma through imaginal exposure. “It’s exposure-based: How can you get people to recall a memory in a way that’s safe and keeps them from shutting down or hyper-activating?”  

When Marina shared her report, Heifets thought it was “a truly wild narrative.” 

“Exactly the script you would expect for exposure therapy for PTSD or imagery rehearsal therapy — all of it.” He was flabbergasted. “How can you ignore this parallel?”

Even so, the team is in the beginning stages of testing whether anesthesia dreams do in fact have clinical, therapeutic value. They began in the OR in different patient populations. Now they’re moving outside the OR, which has excited their research colleagues at Stanford and elsewhere. 

“The baton goes to Boris now to turn a bunch of observations over 15 years into some form of science so that we can treat patients,” Chow says. “I’m on the other end of Boris’s lab, waiting for the product to come out so that we can actually treat patients.” 

Disconnecting consciousness

Heifets has been interested in the intersection of psychiatry and anesthesia for many years, with expertise in running psychiatric trials in anesthetic-type settings like the OR. Much of his work has focused on ketamine, an anesthetic that has been repurposed as a psychiatric agent. But he’s worked with MDMA, psilocybin, and other psychedelic drugs. What’s been interesting, in comparing all these agents, is how similar they are as a “new therapeutic class” (compared to SSRIs, for example, which are very different and still represent the gold standard in the pharmacological treatment of stress disorders), and yet how vastly unrelated their action is in the brain.

What links drugs like psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, and really any experiential therapy (unlike SRRIs) is three things: they’re psychoactive, rapid-acting, and durable. 

“One of the things that struck me, after doing this work for 15 years, is that they all have the same pattern of [points just mentioned] but no similarity in pharmacology. When you start using receptors to explain how these things work, it unravels immediately.” 

The way Heifets has been thinking about it — and where Chow’s work fits in, incidentally — is that the aim of his research, at this point, is to try to deconstruct the psychedelic experience: What is it about these transformational events that can lead to long-term therapeutic benefits? There’s the set and setting, the drug effect, and the trip. Trying to separate the drug and the trip has enormous consequences for how drugs and therapeutics are developed in the US and worldwide, he says.

“A focus on biochemistry irrespective of experience… that’s the model we’re used to. That’s what SSRIs do.” 

There have been efforts to engineer psychedelics to be non-hallucinogenic, where “we’ll just encode resilience into every dendrite of your brain and that’ll be the therapy.” Maybe it’ll work, he says, but that’s an empirical question that needs to be tested. The Heifets Lab is collaborating with a lab at UC Davis to do just that.

Credit: Pilleriin Sikka, PhD, a postdoc at the IDEA lab, surveys EEG recordings. (Credit: Saga Briggs)

One way of testing this is to “blank the experience.” For example, if people attribute the therapeutic effect of ketamine to the intensity of the dissociative psychedelic experience, what happens if you give it during anesthesia? “There is no experience; there’s just the drug.” 

The flip side: What if you could generate a psychedelic-like experience without a psychedelic drug at all? Ultimately, his lab is trying to determine whether it’s the expectation, biochemical effect, or experience that’s potentially therapeutic.

That’s where anesthesia dreams come in. 

“I think you can see the crossover between psychedelic medicine and dream therapy, and all the issues combined. This really feels like experiential medicine. It centers the role of human experience in transformation and mental health recovery — much more than drug-based solutions.”

Chow echoes: “It’s not really a propofol thing; it’s a brain-state thing.” 

But how does experiential medicine work exactly? No one knows. During a team meeting, where the researchers sat around offering possible explanations, psychiatrist Makoto Kawai speculated that dreams at a cellular level may cause selective cerebral neuron exhaustion of norepinephrine (a neurotransmitter that responds to stressors in the environment).

“That just kind of fit with what you see,” Chow said. “Basically, these patients have something anxious. They have this dream in surgery and they just stop caring about it. They feel really good about it.”

Heifets offered that dreaming may be an “epiphenomenon” (a byproduct of brain activity) stemming from an intrinsic neurological process rather than a standalone phenomenon. The bottom line is that if this is a truly unique state that clinicians and patients can access through anesthesia-induced dreaming, then our understanding of it is wide open. 

“We currently have no objective way to detect consciousness or its specific contents,” Dr. Pilleriin Sikka, a postdoc at the Heifets Lab with an impressive background in dream research, told me when I visited the lab in person. “Until such methods exist, subjective reports are our primary tool. We take these reports as valid and work to identify the neural or biological markers associated with the experiences people describe.” 

As we chatted in the cozy room of the lab, I noticed a simple reclining chair between us with a neatly folded drape and pillow on its seat, ready for the next round of dreamers. 

If anesthesia-induced dreams prove to have a transformative impact, she said, it will indicate not only neurobiological changes “but also — or perhaps, specifically — shifts in how individuals perceive and interpret the world and themselves.”

Again, the Stanford Dream Team is by no means the first to study anesthesia-induced dreams. There is an 80-year history of people reporting dreaming during anesthesia, where patients lose consciousness during surgery but retain some memory of dream content upon waking. There’s even a practice called “narcosynthesis,” where patients are given anesthetic drugs in psychiatric settings with the goal of disinhibition to elicit emotional content. 

That’s not what this is, Heifets says. 

“We’re talking about disconnected consciousness,” he says emphatically. “We’ve made it a more precise thing. It’s clearly internally generated. [The state] is between general anesthesia, which can be tracked with an EEG, and connected consciousness, where you’re awake and connected with the external environment.”

The researchers don’t know exactly where or what defines it, and Heifets says that EEG is not quite sufficient to describe it, since EEG is heavily biased toward activity on the surface of the brain and it’s “not just stuff going on in the cortex; there’s a lot of subcortical things happening.” 

Sikka adds that the team is in conversation with researchers who study epilepsy, using transcranial stimulation, to see if their methodology could be of use. 

That said, it’s more about designing a good intervention at this point than describing what’s happening at the neurological level. 

“We’re using EEG, but to say that we know how it works is a little early,” Heifets says. “It’s enough to do a trial. We don’t need to know how it works to help people get better.” To know more about mechanisms will require calling in neurosurgeons, imagers, people putting electrodes in various parts of the brain. “That’s how I see the evolution of this.”  

Is it propofol? Sure, Heifets concedes, but it depends on how you do it. No one is cured by a dose of propofol any more than they are by a dose of MDMA. People have been using propofol for decades and aren’t spontaneously remitting from all their problems. “It’s really about the state.” 

The art of medicine

After publishing several research articles on top of Marina’s case study, including a case report in the American Journal of Psychiatry and a journal article in Sleep, the team secured funding from the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation to develop the phenomenon into a well-characterized intervention that can be tested in PTSD, framed as a psychiatric trial. They have started a more comprehensive screen, systematically capturing this phenomenon. The IDEA lab, run by Heifets, Sikka, and resident Ben Deverret, will kick off a three-year experimental trial starting in early 2025.

It’s very unusual, Sikka tells me, referring to Chow and Heifets’ collaboration and how this research came about. “This never happens,” she says, noting the puzzling yet persistent divide between the medical field and brain science. “They don’t really talk to each other.” 

But the way Chow and Heifets relate to each other is clearly part of why this whole thing works. They correct each other’s mistakes without reservation at least as often as they commend each other’s work. Chow is the narrator, weaving together details and centering human experience. Heifets is the critic, careful to bring in skepticism when needed. In an email thread between the three of us, Chow dives into a detailed answer to my question, only to be curbed by Heifets: 

“I have no doubt the patients you take care of have excellent outcomes. I still would be careful about claiming this technique or style of doing anesthesia has perfect outcomes. Some people may believe you, but scientists will not and you will lose credibility.”

In nearly the same breath, Heifets says of Chow’s work, “It’s really the art of medicine,” making a detailed clinical observation and fine-tuning the protocol around it. That valuable slice of the dream world can go by in the blink of an eye, he says, so extending it is truly innovative. “Harrison has trained the OR to shut up when patients are waking up. ‘Don’t touch the patient; give the patient space.’ Really creating a therapeutic environment.”

Along with Sikka and the rest of the Dream Team, they are now focused on doing the work, going back and forth between basic science and clinical research, to get this treatment to clinics. “If we have a positive trial, which is not a foregone conclusion,” Heifets says, “then we go the FDA route. We can do it off-label. You’ll see it spread quickly. The amount of interest is enormous. People are dropping in and coming out of the woodwork, trying to understand how to do this.” 

This article Inside the emerging world of anesthesia “dream therapy” is featured on Big Think.

It’s trendy to be single. According to a 2023 data release from the U.S. Census Bureau, 46.4% of American adults were single, and the proportion of adults who had never been married reached record highs: 32% of women and 37% of men. Those rates were 22% and 30% in 1980.

The increasing share of single and never-married individuals can be attributed to several factors, including greater longevity and more women in the workforce. And the trend toward singlehood is here to stay if Gen Z is any indication. They’ve embraced a new style of in-between relationship: the “situationship.” Writing for CNN, recent college graduate Sara Forastieri Vicente described it as “more than a friendship but less than a committed relationship” involving “both emotional and physical intimacy.”

“We’ve created our own small world in this vast universe of romance and love, one that normalizes fluidity and casualness in romantic partners,” she wrote.

But is eschewing attachment a recipe for emotional fulfillment? If a recent study published in Psychological Science is any indication, perhaps not.

Personality traits and relationship status

An international team of researchers sampled more than 77,000 people over fifty years old living in 27 European countries and Israel. They sought to compare the Big Five personality traits of lifelong singles with people who have been in committed relationships. The Big Five personality traits are:

• Openness. Reflects how curious and receptive someone is to novel experiences.
• Conscientiousness. Describes how organized, responsible, and detail-oriented a person is.
• Extraversion. Indicates how outgoing and sociable someone is.
• Agreeableness. Represents how cooperative and empathetic someone is.
• Neuroticism. Measures how emotionally stable someone is.

The researchers found that lifelong singles reported lower levels of extraversion, openness, and conscientiousness. They also rated their life satisfaction as lower than ever-partnered people did. Individuals who simply never married reported nearly identical personality and life satisfaction scores to lifelong singles. They were slightly more extraverted, however.

Personality differences between single and partnered individuals were relatively small for conscientiousness and openness — about three points lower on a 100-point scale. But the divide was greater for extraversion and life satisfaction. Lifelong singles scored just under six points lower in extraversion and just over four points lower in life satisfaction.

In many respects, the findings conform to conventional stereotypes. Extraverted and open individuals are more likely to get out, meet people, and potentially find themselves in a relationship. Moreover, being partnered can also force individuals to try new things. Conscientiousness is often prized in a partner. Being organized and responsible facilitates dating and cohabitation. Relationships can also encourage individuals to develop these skills.

The authors specifically looked at older individuals because the data would be more likely to capture people who are single or partnered by choice. Greater age also allows more time for these relationship decisions to affect personality.

Should Gen Zers be concerned about these results? Will a life full of “situationships” ultimately be less satisfying and dull their personalities? It’s uncertain. Core aspects of an individual’s personality tend to be stable, but significant changes can occur over decades. Moreover, the present study can’t parse whether lifelong singles’ personalities and life satisfaction differ due to their relationship choices or if their personalities dictate their relationship style.

The researchers note that what it means to be single is changing, so the results don’t necessarily portend the future for today’s young people.

They write: “More recent cohorts likely differ from older cohorts in norms and acceptance of singlehood, given that the importance of marriage for well-being is declining, that more people choose to stay single, and that younger cohorts report lower importance of partnership for happiness.”

This article The Big 5 personality traits linked to lifelong singlehood is featured on Big Think.

I recently ate frog for the first time. If you haven’t had frogs before, the thought of eating them may cause you some revulsion. I felt some myself admittedly when I ordered the salt-roasted legs off the menu, but I had read reviews that said frog meat tastes like chicken, tender and buttery. They also look like fried chicken wings, except smaller, and picking a dish that showcased as little of the batrachian anatomy as possible definitely made it easier for me to overcome my initial hesitation.

After those first nervous bites, I enjoyed the dish, and yes, it did taste like chicken. However, if you cannot eat a particular food item, no matter how hard you try, it’s likely that your negative expectations, more than the taste itself, determine that outcome.

Scientists studying how the brain generates experiences typically examine how it combines different sensory inputs. That’s because, unlike expectations, sensory inputs are directly observable and quantifiable. It’s easy, say, to measure the sugar content in a beverage to determine if it is sweet. But our expectations of that same beverage — set by our beliefs, peers, cultures, and media representations — also shape how we experience the sweetness, and this perception is fiendishly difficult to measure. But thanks to clever new experiments, scientists are uncovering how expectations influence our subjective experience of food.

Finding pleasure and pain in hot sauce

One of the most notable ways expectations shape a culinary experience is through the placebo effect. Merely expecting a pill to work can alleviate pain even in the absence of any therapeutic entity; conversely, in a phenomenon termed nocebo, expecting a treatment to be painful can cause anxiety and pain. Something similar happens with food, and our expectations can elevate or diminish our enjoyment of what we eat.

In a recent study published in PLoS Biology, researchers investigated how expectations of pleasure or pain could cause the brain to interpret the same food differently. Study participants were split into two groups: those who liked hot sauce and those who did not. Both groups tasted samples of high- and low-intensity sauces while their brain activity was mapped with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). They were also shown brief images of either gray or colored peppers. This visual cue hinted at the spiciness level of the sauce they were about to taste, even though the participants weren’t explicitly told what the cues meant. 

“We wanted to understand how information that you’re given might modulate your expectations, how that would affect the experience that you have, how that might affect how your brain represents the stimulus that you experience,” Kenneth Kishida, a neuroscientist at Wake Forest School of Medicine and the study’s corresponding author, told Big Think.

After each tasting, the participants were asked to rate the sauce’s spiciness and how much they enjoyed it. When the group who liked hot sauce expected a mild sauce, thanks to the visual cues, their rating of the heat level was lower than when they tasted the same sauce without any such expectation. Conversely, expectations did not change the rating of the heat level in the group that disliked hot sauce, but they deepened their dislike regardless of whether they were expecting a low- or high-intensity sauce. This finding showed that the subjective taste of the sauce is a product of both the actual and expected spiciness.

The two groups also exhibited remarkably different neurobehavioral responses. Among those who liked hot sauce, expectations of hot sauce increased activity in the brain regions associated with the placebo response, which is also a pleasure signature. On the other hand, brain activity patterns related to pain saw an uptick in the dislike group. Both groups felt the sting of capsaicin, the compound in chilis that causes their burning sensation. However, the negative expectation heightened its intensity for the dislike group.

Why we like the foods we like

It’s not just peppers either. Studies looking at wine show that many factors modulate the drinker’s expectation of how it will taste. These include color gradations, price, label on the bottle, and even the glass a wine is served in.

In one wine-tasting experiment, tasters appraised the same wine differently based on the rating they were provided before they tasted it. Compared to a control group, tasters who were given a positive rating liked it better, while those given a negative rating disliked it more. The wine tasters weren’t merely conformational; the information they received about the wine translated into different sensory perceptions. Those who expected it to be bad were likely more perceptive to clues associated with bad wines.

Moreover, taste is only part of what makes the flavor. The oral cavity picks up smells, known as retronasal olfaction, that are perceived as tastes. The mucous membrane in the mouth can sense chemicals, which is why certain foods can feel cold or hot. Then there’s the texture of the food. These sensations combine to make a coherent and familiar experience; however, as with taste, they are perceived differently based on expectations.

When you bite something that has the texture of candy, you expect it to be sweet. If that doesn’t happen, the experience can be jarring. A 2008 study offered participants pink ice cream that they didn’t know tasted like salmon. Participants tasted what looked like ice cream, had the texture of ice cream, and was scooped out like ice cream but was presented to them labeled as either ice cream or frozen savory mousse. When it was labeled as ice cream, even people who liked salmon mousse abhorred the salmon-flavored ice cream.

As Putu Agus Khorisantono, a cognitive and behavioral neuroscientist at Karolinska Institute, said in an interview: “If you’re expecting ice cream and it suddenly becomes salmon mousse, that expectation is violated, which reduces the pleasantness and makes people perceive it as disgusting.” However, those who thought they were eating frozen savory mousse were better mentally prepared and, consequently, not as disappointed.

The human brain creates an internal model of the world based on past experiences. Expectations of how something should feel or taste create a cognitive shortcut, allowing quick processing of incoming stimuli. But when expectations don’t match the sensory input, like when something that looks like ice cream tastes like salmon mousse, the brain has to adapt its internal model.

Foods that evoke strong negative associations, including for cultural or social reasons, also present examples of expectation violations. Take durian, the fleshy fruit with a notable and often  detested smell. To Khorisantono, who grew up eating durian and loves it, the smell doesn’t elicit the expectation that it would taste in a particularly bad way.

“But people who didn’t grow up eating it associate it with the closest thing that it smells like, which a lot of people say is rotten fruits or vegetables or socks,” he said. They don’t expect fruit to smell like that and attach negative expectations that then make it taste worse.

Living up to one’s expectations

The hold of expectations on subjective experiences can be unyielding. Khorisantono admits that even though he researches this phenomenon, he isn’t immune to it. “I would think that bread I got from a nice bakery tastes better than bread I got from a supermarket, even if they were baked by the same baker and had the same ingredients, just because I paid less for it at the supermarket.” Likewise, many people equate expensive food with nutritious food or think expensive wines necessarily taste better.

This doesn’t mean we are bound by our preconceived notions, though. We can use expectations to our advantage. Expectation setting can help shape people’s attitudes towards things they need to do, like eating healthy or going to the gym. Kishida suggested that “if you think about what you plan to do and put those expectations in a positive light, you could put yourself into the right brain state when the moment comes.”

Consider, for instance, getting children to eat their vegetables. Most children hate vegetables, and there is a valid reason for this: Vegetables often taste bitter, and children are more sensitive to bitterness. But another reason why children dislike vegetables is that society expects them to. “There are lots of cartoons and comics where children just hate vegetables and children begin internalizing it,” Khorisantono said, calling it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Gradually increasing vegetable content in their meals could encourage children to eat more of them. As they eat vegetables along with foods they like, their brain will start associating flavors and textures of vegetables with positive expectations. 

In a new study published in the journal Food Quality and Preference, Khorisantono and colleagues showed that prior exposure and hunger make people more receptive to new food combinations and dislike food that they thought was disgusting less. “If we wait until the children are hungry to give them food, that encourages them to like this new aroma and flavor combination, or at least find it less aversive,” he noted.

Looking beyond the senses

The experience of eating any food is not just multisensory but so much more than that. A growing body of research shows that the brain takes into account more than the immediate sensory information in creating the experiences we have.

The neuroscience of expectations could be used to make foods more pleasurable — whether that’s through dietary interventions, like children eating vegetables, or even creating new foods. Imagine foods that tap into our love for fatty foods without the exorbitant fat content. “When we like food because it’s fatty, it’s mostly because of the texture and not because we can taste fat,” Khorisantono said. “If we’re able to develop something that mimics the texture of fat, people would enjoy it as much as they like fat, if they like fatty foods.”

“Your expectations and beliefs about what things are going to be like in the next moments, that’s feeding into it,” Kishida said, adding, “Exactly how that happens is a big open question.” If scientists figure that out, we might be able to leverage neuroscience to make food taste better and understand why we are able or unable to make the choices we do.

This article Your mind shapes how food tastes before the first bite is featured on Big Think.

Over time, economists and philosophers have held different views on greed. There are those who see it as a drive for self-preservation and as a force of economic growth at a societal level. Michael Douglas’s famous monologue in the movie Wall Street (2010) (in which he plays the role of the fictional financier Gordon Gekko), captures these views: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.” It has also been suggested that political systems designed to eliminate greedy behaviors have led to poverty and chaos.

Greed is innate and present not just in humans but in animals too. The desire to accumulate food/money is a survival strategy in part. Money is linked to our survival and the threat of not having enough evokes primitive anxieties. Evolutionary psychologists believe that greed serves our objective of perpetuating our genetic code because, by pushing us to amass status-signalling possessions, we increase our chances of attracting a mate.

However, many hold the opposing view. Economist and political theorist John Maynard Keynes saw love of money as a kind of madness. He called “money-motive” a way in which we turn something bad into something good. We turn ruthless greed into something morally impressive. Greed can be a destructive force both at a societal and at an individual level. It can turn into a harmful, immoral and exploitative force. Some say that we live in a social and economic system that promotes and even institutionalises greed, leading to societal problems such as inequality, corruption, financial crises, and even war.

Otto Fenichel was one of the first psychoanalysts to suggest, in 1938, that capitalism was one of the strong forces promoting the accumulation of wealth: “The capitalist, under penalty of his own destruction, must strive to accumulate wealth.” But, he says, we are driven by both internal and external forces in our pursuit of money. Internally, we have narcissistic needs that we seek to satisfy through money. He is referring to the fact that young children feel omnipotent and “that throughout their lives a certain memory of this omnipotence remains with a longing to attain it again.” Money becomes symbolic of a potential supply of power and of self-esteem because in our society, power and respect are based on the possession of money. This internal drive for power and self-esteem is reinforced by a societal perception.

He emphasized that it is the interplay of internal and external forces that shape our drive to amass wealth and that it would be limiting to consider one and not the other. The realities of money in society cannot be ignored. He wrote, “In our society the possessor of money is honored and truly powerful.”

Melanie Klein, whose groundbreaking work in child psychotherapy has greatly shaped psychoanalytic thinking, also saw the child as being shaped by a continuous interplay of both internal and external factors. But when speaking of external factors she emphasized the caregivers’ response to the infant’s greed. Greed is both an innate force but also something moderated or exacerbated by the responses we get from our caregivers when we express our desire for more. How does the world respond to us? Do we get more when we ask for more? Do we get told off or punished for being greedy/needy?

Adding to the external forces that shape our perception of greed is religion. Most religions condemn it. In Christianity, it is a cardinal sin (best demonstrated by Judas’s betrayal of Jesus for 30 pieces of silver). In Buddhism, it is one of three causes of human suffering (along with ignorance and anger). Examples abound from many different religions. In Dante [Alighieri]’s Inferno, the avaricious (or hoarders of money) and the prodigal (those who spent it lustfully) appear in the same circle of hell to indicate that both groups were guilty of the same sin — the inability to make use of their fortunes in moderation.

In Greek mythology, the story of King Midas ridicules the avid pursuit of wealth. Midas helped Dionysus (the god of wine and ecstasy) find his father and was rewarded with a wish. Midas wished for anything he touched to turn to gold. In his hastened choice of wish, he overlooked the fact that even his food would turn to gold and was therefore threatened with the prospect of starvation as a result of his foolish desire. In a later version of the story, even his daughter, whom he touched, turned to gold. Some versions of the mythical story have him reverse the curse of his gift, yet others see him die of starvation. Regardless of the version, it is a tale rich in meaning: Money doesn’t result in happiness and its pursuit can turn into a curse and become a destructive force. The god that had granted Midas’s wish, Dionysus, was in fact a two-faced god in that he represented happiness but could also deliver brutal rage as a result of overindulgence (echoing the dual nature of wine). With Midas too, excessive greed turned out to have a dark side.

Greed often has negative connotations and some of the people reading [this] might recognize themselves in some examples but be compelled to debate that “mine is not greed, it’s fear, it’s anxiety, it’s ….” However, only until we can face the fact that there are feelings within us — which could very well be fear, but often greed alongside it — that generate our desire for more, do we stand a chance to understand and change our behaviors. It is only when we can face the fact that we may be incessantly longing for more that we can stop and ask ourselves: Why isn’t what I have enough? What do I imagine more will actually give me? What am I afraid of?

And then there are those who, despite having accumulated more wealth than they ever imagined, still feel empty or unfulfilled. Money was supposed to deliver something, and it failed. For some it’s a sense of love, for others a sense of inner worthiness, and yet for others happiness. Imagine working tirelessly for an entire lifetime to end up in the same place where you started. It was all an illusion. Money was idealized, and we attributed all sorts of magical qualities to it, only to find out that what we were hoping to buy wasn’t up for sale.

This article Unmasking greed: The evolution of a complex and innate desire is featured on Big Think.

While Stephen Hawking’s ashes were being interred during a memorial service at Westminster Cathedral in 2018, the European Space Agency (ESA) beamed into space an original piece of music by the Greek composer Vangelis that featured Hawking’s voice. The Cebreros station outside of Madrid broadcast the transmission toward the nearest black hole to Earth.

In a press release, ESA’s director of science, Gunther Hasinger, is quoted as saying, “It is fascinating and at the same time moving to imagine that Stephen Hawking’s voice together with the music by Vangelis will reach the black hole in about 3500 years, where it will be frozen in by the event horizon.” The move was meant to honor Hawking’s primary contribution to astrophysics, his theory that thermal radiation is spontaneously emitted by black holes due to the steady conversion of quantum vacuum fluctuations into pairs of particles, one of which escapes at infinity while the other is trapped inside the black hole. Hawking radiation, and the related issue of whether information that falls into a black hole is lost or is somehow recoverable from the radiation, was a profound concept that still engenders controversy among theoretical physicists. Interestingly, Hasinger’s comments take for granted that the voice made of information, from the voice synthesizer Hawking had used to communicate for more than 30 years, was simply “Stephen Hawking’s voice.”

Upon his death, many notices in the press made more of Hawking’s voice than of Hawking radiation, suggesting he was famous in public for a persona that merged both. Reuters reported that Hawking’s synthesized voice “was his tool and his trademark,” describing it as a “robotic drawl that somehow enhanced the profound impact of the cosmological secrets he revealed.” Even an obituary for Hawking in Nature by longtime colleague Martin Rees referred to “the androidal accent that became his trademark” and also speculated that Hawking’s field of cosmology was part of what made his life story resonate with a worldwide public — that “the concept of an imprisoned mind roaming the cosmos grabbed people’s imagination.” Certainly the publishers of Hawking’s popular account of the universe, “A Brief History of Time,” must have thought so, as they chose to feature a photograph of a demure-looking Hawking sitting in his wheelchair in front of a night sky full of stars on the front cover of the first U.S. edition of the book. Even if only figuratively, Hawking was one of the world’s most famous living cyborgs, moving and speaking by electromechanical means because his flesh-and-blood body could not, traveling the universe in his mind.

Hawking, who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), lost his ability to speak after a trip to Switzerland in 1985 when pneumonia forced doctors to put him on a ventilator and, after being transferred back to the UK, performed a tracheotomy to help him breathe. After recovering from the near-fatal pneumonia, Hawking initially used a spelling card to communicate, indicating letters with a lift of his eyebrows, an interim solution with obvious constraints.

Hawking’s first voice synthesizer used an iteration of “Perfect Paul,” a synthesized voice created by MIT research scientist Dennis Klatt, and was run on an Apple II computer with modifications that made the system more mobile. It allowed Hawking to communicate at a rate of 15 spoken words per minute using a hand clicker to select words from a separate software program that displayed them on a screen. ALS is a degenerative nerve disease that affects muscle control, so Hawking’s need for an apparatus that allowed him to write was arguably much more critical than the voice synthesis component, but voice synthesis allowed Hawking an additional modality of communication.

Hawking’s public “voice” is certainly created differently than one from a human body’s vocal system, but even this voice generated from electricity, signal-processing algorithms, circuitry, software code, and the distant echo of the body of Dennis Klatt — Perfect Paul was synthesized from Klatt’s recordings of himself — became unique in its specific instantiation for Stephen Hawking, even in how it sounded. The synthesized voice became “his” through his body’s intimate interactions with and through it. Although the voice itself, as an electronic technology, lacked most of the expressive capabilities of a body’s, Hawking was known to use its affordances and constraints as expressions of his personality.

He gave his lectures by sending saved text to the speech synthesizer one sentence at a time, but he stated that he did “try out the lecture, and polish it, before I give it,” a statement implying that he was practicing for a performance that included revisions to the way that the lecture sounded to him as much as to its content. Known for his playfulness, Hawking appeared as himself in or recorded dialogue for numerous television shows, including “The Big Bang Theory” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” He recorded the dialogue for his own depiction in animated series “The Simpsons” for three separate episodes and was also made into a Simpsons action figure. He told reporters in 2014, “My ideal role would be a baddie in a James Bond film. I think the wheelchair and the computer voice would fit the part.”

Hawking’s synthesized voice was his “trademark,” as obituaries described it, though not literally trademarked by Hawking (it was not his intellectual property). On a web page that Hawking maintained during his lifetime, he credited David Mason of Cambridge Adaptive Communications of putting together the original Speech Plus system for him. “This company manufactures and supplies a variety of products to help people with communication problems express themselves,” wrote Hawking. As early as 1988, Speech Plus had offered Hawking a new synthesizer, a CallText 5010, with improved text-to-speech capabilities, but Hawking insisted that the company provide him with one that used the same voice as his previous unit. Of his version of Perfect Paul, Hawking stated, “I use a separate synthesizer, made by Speech Plus. It is the best I have heard, though it gives me an accent that has been described variously as Scandinavian, American, or Scottish.” He was known to joke to American audiences that it gave him an American accent.

Hawking famously refused “upgrades” to his communication apparatus, having come to accept the specific configuration of hardware and software, and the sound that it produced, as his own. As the technology that he used to speak became more obsolete, it became easier for Hawking to control other people’s use of the synthesized voice that had become so intimately associated with him. Hawking approved of a cut of the biographical film “The Theory of Everything” in 2014 before he let producers use his own synthesizer to rerecord dialogue. The identification of this specific synthesized voice with Hawking went both ways. Not only would many people hear it today and call it “Stephen Hawking’s voice” even after his death, but Hawking himself also insisted on keeping the very first synthesized voice he ever used for the remaining 32 years of his life, even as voice synthesis technologies improved.

Eventually, the 1980s-era hardware of Hawking’s synthesizer was failing, and other factors, from Hawking’s continuing nerve degeneration to the incompatibility of his specialized software and input devices with the latest computer systems, made it imperative to upgrade. Several people — graduate students, programmers, and a research team from Intel — were involved in getting a new system working to Hawking’s satisfaction.

One thing that Hawking insisted on was keeping the version of Perfect Paul that emerged from the specific hardware that he had started using in 1986. The programmer Peter Benie worked on a software emulator of the original microprocessor and digital signal processor of the CallText 5010, without the benefit of the original hardware schematics or software source code. The only thing he had was the machine code. The team struggled to find a copy of the original voice, especially as the company that was once Speech Plus had been sold or acquired four times since. A backup tape from 1986 was finally located by contacting Eric Dorsey, an engineer who had worked on the CallText 5010 and had fielded questions from the press about the synthesizer when Hawking visited California for a three-week lecture tour in 1988. When the team tracked down Dorsey in 2014, he was working for TiVo and was shocked to learn that Hawking was still using the CallText 5010. The new emulator was finally presented for Hawking’s approval in January 2018, only two months before he died. He never used the new system in public due to his failing health.

Since first adopting the CallText5010 with its version of Perfect Paul in the mid-1980s, Hawking had many opportunities to upgrade components of his communication system, but he refused because the voice produced by the original setup had become his. Only Klatt’s friends and colleagues heard the echo of someone else in Hawking’s speech. And they would have heard it all over the place in the late 1980s. Versions of Perfect Paul were a common default for text-to-speech systems, including many “audiotext” phone information systems, for a couple of decades. Even though Klatt’s system included other voices like “Beautiful Betty” and “Kit the Kid” (based on recorded samples from Klatt’s wife and daughter, respectively), Perfect Paul was perceived as the easiest to understand, although it had its limitations. The New York Times described Klatt’s synthesized voices as “usually understandable but that sound as if they have a foreign accent,” higher praise than another system, which the paper described somewhat offensively as sounding “like a scratchy recording of a person with a lisp.”

As hardware and voice synthesis software improved over time, the echo of Dennis Klatt grew fainter and the association between Hawking and his specific instantiation of Perfect Paul more solid. “I keep it because I have not heard a voice I like better and because I have identified with it,” Hawking explained in 2006. The desire to have a voice that was his own outweighed any benefit from upgrading his systems. In 2013, journalist Lucy Hawking, the daughter of Stephen, interviewed Klatt’s daughter, Dr. Laura Fine, on BBC Radio. Lucy was 15 when her father lost the ability to speak. Laura was 18 when her father died of cancer. Reflecting 25 years later, Lucy said, “[It] means that my father is actually speaking with your father’s voice.” Laura replied, “[My father] would be so, so thrilled.… I had never really thought before how my dad’s voice lives on.”

Hawking’s attachment to Perfect Paul shows how intimate our subjective experience of our own voice is, as well as the relationship that it affords us with the social world, which might reflect our society’s biases. Hawking’s use of Perfect Paul conveyed his sense of humor, his intellect, and also his physical disabilities. Even though it was the standard voice on equipment used by many people, it sounded unique as used by Hawking as an individual, to the point that he wouldn’t upgrade his equipment because it would have meant changing the sound of his voice. In this example of cyborg collaboration, the machine became an extension of Hawking’s body, but one as prone to aging and breakdown as our biological bodies are. Far from transhumanist dreams, Hawking’s example shows the experience of being human is a thoroughly embodied one.

Sarah A. Bell is a writer and professor who studies the impacts of information technologies on society. She is the author of “Vox ex Machina: A Cultural History of Talking Machines,” from which this article is adapted. An open access edition of the book is available for download here.

This article Stephen Hawking’s eternal voice is featured on Big Think.

When families get together over holidays, it’s usually a good opportunity to break out of our echo chambers. It’s one of the few times a year we’re forced to hang out with people who often have very different views. Auntie Olivia has some pretty extreme political opinions. Your cousin has joined a peculiar religious sect. And your sister has looked into 9/11 and discovered that “jet fuel doesn’t melt steel beams.” There’s no running away: Around the dinner table, and for several tense hours, you’re forced to either only swap pleasantries or strut full-on into the battleground of polarized debate.

A recent paper offers a way out, describing a strategy we can all use to push back against pseudoscience, conspiracy, and falsehoods. It’s called the “bypassing technique.”

Scientific headbutts

Here are three examples of false claims. These are commonly cited as true, and if you see them presented as true, that makes them misinformation.

1. GMOs cause allergies.
2. 5G technology kills birds.
3. Aluminum in vaccines causes bone problems.

The classic response to someone presenting misinformation is to present counterevidence. You could point them to any of the links presented above or get them to try and find any reputable scientific studies to support their claim. As the researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) put it, “The gold standard for tackling misinformation is [usually] a correction that factually contradicts the misinformation.” Suppose, for example, that your dad passes back the roast potatoes over a family dinner saying, “Are these GMOs? Nah, don’t want any more allergies.” You might then say, “Actually, the health bodies of all the G7 agree that GMOs do not cause allergies or rashes.”

But that likely won’t work. The APPC team conducted six experiments where they compared factually correcting someone with “bypassing” and found that using evidence and facts to disprove someone tends to be far less successful at changing attitudes.

Epistemological aikido

So, what is bypassing and why is it seemingly more effective? Bypassing is where, instead of providing some negative rebuttal to a claim, you instead provide positive counterclaims about the topic. For example, if someone says aluminum causes bone problems, you should reply, “Aluminium is one of the key elements in boosting our immune system and making the vaccine effective.” Or, if someone tells you that 5G kills birds, tell them that 5G adds trillions to the world economy.

Make no mention of the false claim. Do not attack the misinformation but override it with positive, true information.

Across the team’s six experiments, they measured participants’ attitudes toward six different misinformation claims. They used traditional fact-correcting with some, bypassing with others, and nothing at all with the rest. Across all six studies, bypassing was the best at improving attitudes toward accepting the topics, e.g., participants were okay with 5G technology expansion.

Bypassing means not meeting your misinformed opponent head-on. This is not a clash of arguments or a battle of the studies. You are maneuvering an argument into a different position. It’s a kind of epistemological aikido — using someone’s movements and logic against them.

Attitudes and not beliefs

There are limitations to what the team at APPC has concluded. Their study into bypassing was largely about attitudes to policies, not about belief change or belief correction. So, for example, your dad might still believe that GMOs cause allergies, but, thanks to your bypassing, be okay with their widespread use worldwide. “Fair play, son,” he’ll say, “I’m happy they’re helping prevent world hunger.”  Someone might still believe that 5G kills birds or that aluminium causes bone problems but admit that those are necessary evils set against the positive outcomes you present them with.

So, bypassing isn’t the only tool available, and it might not even be the best if your concern is belief change. Changing someone’s belief is a complicated psychological topic, and there is definitely no one-size-fits-all strategy. Big Think recently spoke to an expert on this topic, where we examined the many ways you can change someone’s beliefs. Over the course of the discussion, however, it became clear how complex the issue is. It’s even up for debate whether you should change someone’s belief.

When it comes to policy decisions and willingness to accept a certain technology or medicine, bypassing seems like a valuable tool to add to your kit. Don’t correct people. Don’t fact-check. Don’t fight the misinformed on their own ground. Make the case for the other side seem better.

This article Don’t waste time correcting misinformation. Instead, try the “bypassing technique” is featured on Big Think.

Seeing the striking magenta of bougainvillea. Tasting a rich morning latte. Feeling the sharp pain of a needle prick going into your arm. These subjective experiences are the stuff of the mind. What is “doing the experiencing,” the 3-pound chunk of meat in our head, is a tangible object that works on electrochemical signals—physics, essentially. How do the two—our mental experiences and physical brains—interact?

The puzzle of consciousness seems to be giving science a run for its money. The problem, to be clear, isn’t merely to pinpoint “where it all happens” in the brain (although this, too, is far from trivial). The real mystery is how to bridge the gap between the mental, first-person stuff of consciousness and the physical lump of matter inside the cranium.

Some think the gap is unbreachable. The philosopher David Chalmers, for instance, has argued that consciousness is something special and distinct from the physical world. If so, it may never be possible to explain consciousness in terms of physical brain processes. No matter how deeply scientists understand the brain, for Chalmers, this would never explain how our neurons produce consciousness. Why should a hunk of flesh, teeming with chemical signals and electrical charges, experience a point of view? There seems to be no conceivable reason why meaty matter would have this light of subjectivity “on the inside.” Consciousness, then, is a “hard problem”—as Chalmers has labeled it—indeed.

The possibility that consciousness itself isn’t anything physical raises burning questions about whether, for example, an AI can fall in love with its programmer. And since consciousness is a natural phenomenon, much like gravity or genes, these questions carry huge implications. Science explains the natural world by physical principles only. So if it turns out that one natural phenomenon transcends the laws of physics, then it is not only the science of consciousness that is in trouble—our entire understanding of the natural world would require serious revision.

But before we run off too fast and far, let us pause, take a breath, and reconsider. The mind is hard to explain in physical terms—this much is obvious. Why it is hard, however, is far from evident. In fact, this question is open to two competing explanations. The first explanation puts the blame on what consciousness is—that it is not physical, as Chalmers claims. Alternatively, this impression (that consciousness isn’t physical) could arise from within, as a result of human bias—a psychological delusion.

Psychological biases are relevant because philosophers and scientists heavily rely on their intuitions as they try to explain what consciousness is. Is it special—can it reveal more about the world than what I can infer from my reason alone? Does my conscious experience seem physical? Can a person lack conscious experience, even if their body looks and works just like mine?

In these mini-thought experiments, intuitions are data. Since consciousness generates intuitions, intuitions can speak to what consciousness is, at least in principle. The problem is that the “psychology of psychology” is a tricky business.

Human cognition, as we know, is laced with biases—we can readily recognize these distortions in visual illusions, auditory hallucinations, and logical fallacies. So, if our perception of the external world is distorted, why assume our internal perception is truthful? In fact, people are demonstrably plagued by multiple biases that cloud their reasoning about how their own psyche works.

Intuitive dualism is one such psychological bias. It suggests to us that the mind is ethereal, distinct from the body. My research suggests that intuitive dualism arises in humans naturally and spontaneously—it emerges from the two innate systems: One guides our understanding of the physical properties of objects; another helps us “read” the minds of others. So it is not the product of rationally analyzing what exists. It is a psychological delusion that arises from within the human mind itself.

However, intuitive dualism has been shown to give rise to various prejudices, ranging from the denial of human nature to our misguided fascination with neuroscience and the tendency to stigmatize people with psychiatric disorders. Our consciousness intuitions could arise from the same source as these biases.

So, if consciousness appears somehow distinct from physical reality, then this conclusion could well arise not from what consciousness really is, but rather from what our psyche is telling us, courtesy of intuitive dualism.

How can we tell, then, whether or not our intuitions (that consciousness is not physical) reflect what consciousness really is? It looks like we are at a stalemate. And that’s a problem for the “hard problem.”

Is consciousness physical? Look in the mirror. (Taylor Deas-Melesh / Unsplash)

Recent research helps us move forward. To see how, suppose you inspect yourself in the mirror: Your face has an unhealthy greenish hue. Before rushing to the ER, you step outside and reexamine your image in natural light. The greenish appearance changes, you are all clear; the strange color was likely an artifact of the lighting. Shifting intuitions are diagnostic—they can help us identify our own biases.

The same logic can help us sift consciousness fact from fiction. If our intuitions about consciousness faithfully reflect what consciousness is, and if the nature of consciousness is invariant—meaning it doesn’t change from being physical to non-physical—then our intuitions about the nature of consciousness should also not change. In other words, they should not vary by context. But if consciousness intuitions shift, such that, in some situations, consciousness seems ethereal, and in others, it seems physical, then it’s likely something about our psyche that explains these intuitions, not consciousness itself.

When such shifts are detected, it’s a telltale sign of a psychological delusion, just like the shifts of your greenish complexion above. And if we could further explain how these shifts arise from within—by spelling out their psychological causes, then our confidence in this psychological explanation would increase further. Such shifts in consciousness intuitions, then, suggest that our intuitions can’t be trusted to reveal reliable information about the nature of our minds. This is precisely what psychological experiments probing our intuitions about consciousness show.

Sometimes this involves asking people to consider the idea of a philosophical zombie. Philosophical zombies are hypothetical creatures that lack consciousness yet everything else physical about them—including their biology and brain chemistry—matches humans perfectly. The idea is that if someone believes consciousness is distinct from physical matter, then that person should think philosophical zombies could, in theory, exist. And if philosophical zombies are conceivable, then perhaps the possession of an intact human body does not guarantee consciousness. Consciousness, so the argument goes, is thus distinct from the physical.

When philosophers are surveyed, most respond that, indeed, zombies are conceivable. But what about most people—do they, too, share these intuitions?

In a 2021 paper published in the journal Cognition, researchers Eugen Fischer and Justin Sytsma had participants think about whether the idea of a “philosophical zombie” made sense. To find out, they asked people to rate whether philosophical zombies would be capable of having conscious experiences, feelings, and emotions. Responses hovered around the “neutral” midpoint of the seven-point rating scale (4, “neither agree nor disagree”). Few participants, to be sure, outright denied that zombies are conscious, and fewer yet denied that zombies are conscious while affirming that they have a functional, humanlike body (as the instructions to the experiment suggested). This last result could either indicate that most people cannot fully conceive of philosophical zombies or that participants are simply reluctant to respond “no” (e.g., No, zombies aren’t conscious!).

Indeed, in a 2022 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, my colleagues and I showed that when participants are forced to give a binary response (instead of a seven-point rating scale that allows them to “sit on the fence”), participants state that a perfect replica of a person’s body will not maintain their mental states—thoughts and beliefs. Insofar as consciousness is a mental state, this would imply that zombies do not seem possible.

Either way, participants in Fischer and Sytsma’s study certainly did not ascribe much conscious experience to zombies, even though the problem framing clearly established that these creatures have a human body. Consciousness, for them, seems to be at least partly distinct from the physical.

So far, then, it looks like most people intuit that consciousness is ethereal; at least, that is what they say about philosophical zombies. It is therefore tempting to conclude that what’s true for zombies could hold for the many other scenarios that philosophers have used to probe our consciousness intuitions. After all, if we assume that these scenarios shed light on what consciousness is—and for what we know, consciousness does not change—then what’s true in one case ought to be true in all.

The physicality case, it would seem, is closed; our intuitions tell us that consciousness isn’t physical. So strong is this tacit conviction that, to my knowledge, no one has bothered to check whether this is really the case. But it turns out that when most people are asked to consider a second famous case—the problem of Mary in the black and white room—people tend to view consciousness as squarely physical.

Mary, the thought experiment goes, is a neuroscientist who is an expert on color vision. Mary herself, however, has never seen color, as she lives in a black and white room. Now, suppose that Mary steps out of that room and sees a red rose for the first time. How significant is that conscious experience? Will it register or “show up” in Mary’s brain?

A series of experiments from my lab at Northeastern University presented participants with several versions of Mary’s case (a total of 180 people across four different experiments). Their task was to rate not only the significance of that new conscious experience (specifically, “How transformative is Mary’s experience seeing the color red? How much has her grasp of ‘red’ changed by seeing the red rose?”) but also its embodiment—whether it is likely to “show up” in Mary’s brain.

The philosophical literature leads us to expect that Mary’s new conscious experience is significant—it has utterly transformed her grasp of color, and participants agreed. In fact, their ratings in response to the “transformative” question (above) were significantly above the midpoint of the seven-point rating scale, so clearly, participants did view this experience as quite significant. But when asked whether Mary’s conscious experience will “show up” in a brain scan (i.e., in Mary’s physical body), they said it will!

Participants further believed that Mary’s first conscious experience of red is more likely to manifest in the brain scan than all of her “abstract” knowledge about color vision. In fact, the more likely participants were to state the “red” experience would “show up” in the brain, the more transformative it seemed. Thus, not only did participants consider Mary’s conscious experience as squarely embodied, but embodiment was also linked to the significance of this experience.

In another experiment (from the same study), participants were asked to assume that Mary’s first encounter with the red rose happens in one of two conditions (presented to Mary as part of a carefully controlled experiment). One condition has Mary looking at the red rose in full view for several seconds; when asked to report her experience, Mary confirms seeing it. In a second condition, the red rose is presented for just a fraction of a second. When asked about what she saw, Mary reports seeing nothing. Despite this, participants are told, seeing the red rose for just a fraction of a second is likely to have registered in Mary’s brain since research has shown that after such subliminal presentations, the word “rose” comes to mind more readily.

The two conditions (the subliminal and conscious), then, are identical except that one engenders consciousness and the other doesn’t. By comparing them, we can directly examine intuitions about consciousness (as opposed to “seeing color”). If responses to the two conditions differ, then, this difference will shed light on how consciousness is perceived—whether it is transformative and whether it is embodied in Mary’s brain.

Results showed that participants considered Mary’s conscious experience (in the first condition) as more transformative than her subliminal experience (in the second condition); this is only expected from the philosophical analysis. But, contrary to what might be expected given the “hard problem,” participants also considered the conscious experience to be more likely to “show up” in Mary’s brain compared to the subliminal experience. And once again, “transformative” ratings were positively linked with the brain registering the experience, such that the stronger the intuitions that Mary’s conscious experience registered in her brain, the more transformative it seemed.

These outcomes are striking for two reasons. First, the results show that, when people consider Mary’s case, consciousness seems to them squarely physical. This flies in the face of the common wisdom that consciousness seems not physical. Second, when compared with the zombie’s case, it appears that these psychological intuitions shift.

Are zombies conscious? (Henrik L. / Unsplash)

In the zombie’s case, consciousness seems ethereal; in Mary’s case, it seems physical. And if different thought experiments can produce such a radical shift in intuitions about the nature of consciousness, then our intuitions about subjective experience cannot possibly be trusted to reflect what consciousness really is like.  This means our intuitions about consciousness likely emerge from within—from psychological biases.

Our intuitions about consciousness are shaped by two competing psychological biases: intuitive dualism and essentialism.

A large body of literature suggests that people—adults and young children, across various societies and cultures—consider the mind distinct from the body. For intuitive dualists, philosophical zombies don’t seem so strange. Since dualists see the mind as ethereal, distinct from the body, they can readily imagine a creature that shares only our body, but not the inner light of conscious experience. From the outside, the creature seems just like any real person; but on the inside, there’s nobody home. They’re as conscious as a rock.

Had our intuitions about consciousness stemmed only from intuitive dualism, then consciousness should have always seemed ethereal, just as the case of zombies suggests. But psychological biases, such as intuitive dualism, do not operate in a vacuum; they often interact with conflicting biases. And when these interactions occur, a bias that was previously silent can suddenly become dominant. Critically, the “push and pull” dynamics between them can also be shaped by context. When context shifts—when people consider different thought experiments about consciousness—the role of dualism may be weakened. Consequently, intuitions about the link between consciousness and the brain shift, too.

Mary’s case invokes just that shift in intuitions. What’s different about Mary’s case (relative to zombies) is that it invites us to evaluate a change to Mary herself (her new experience with color), and as a result, we now focus on her body, more than her mind. This attenuates the effect of intuitive dualism and brings a second competing constraint into the forefront—intuitive essentialism.

Essentialism is the intuitive belief that living things are what they are because they possess some innate, immutable essence that lies within their bodies. Research has shown that when people evaluate a change to a protagonist, they assess whether the change pertains to the protagonist’s essence. And since that essence seems to lie within the body, it is the body that determines the significance of that change.

For example, young children believe that a change to a dog’s insides (like removing its blood and bones) amounts to changing the kind of thing that it is, whereas external changes (like removing its fur) will not, presumably because it is within the “insides” that the animal’s hidden essence lies.

Like the dog example, Mary’s case also features a change. So for an intuitive essentialist, Mary’s newly gained consciousness of the redness of the color red ought to be significant or transformative only if this change pertains to her bodily essence. It follows that, to engender a significant change, a new conscious experience must affect Mary’s body. Seeing color fits the bill, because “seeing” intuitively feels like an embodied affair that involves the eyes. Accordingly, participants viewed Mary’s conscious experience as “transformative.”

Moreover, seeing color is significant precisely because intuitively, this experience seems physically embodied. The results also showed that the more “embodied” Mary’s experience seemed, the more transformative it was. This link between “embodiment” and “transformativeness” is exactly what intuitive essentialism predicts.

Together, intuitive dualism and essentialism can both capture our conscious intuitions. The crucial point, however, isn’t just why and how consciousness intuitions shift. Rather, it is the fact a shift occurs that is critical. And since it does, you know you could be in trouble—your intuitions could well arise from your internal psychological biases. So, resist the temptation and do not blindly follow their delusional voice. Don’t trust your consciousness to tell you what consciousness really is.

This article Psychology has a consciousness problem is featured on Big Think.

During this Olympics, I was rooting for Kelleigh Ryan, who is on the women’s foil team. She’s from Ottawa, where I live. Whenever she scored a point, she’d emit a victory scream, probably feeling a rush of pleasure. Watching her on television, I did, too.

Getting better at something involves emotion. When we do well, we have good feelings—pride, pleasure, excitement—and these emotions help reinforce whatever behaviors we just engaged in. Similarly, the pain of failure makes recent behaviors less likely in the future. This is conditioning, and we’ve all experienced it—when we’re awake. But what about when we sleep?

Sleep reinforces memories. We know this because after half an hour of sleep, people can remember things better than when they spend half an hour doing something else, like watching TV. Studies of rats show that their brains rehearse running through mazes while they sleep, in a process known as sleep replay. Memory’s function is to store information that will be useful. Because of this, our mind prioritizes remembering some things over others. Studies have shown, for example, that it’s easier to remember things that are useful for survival. Might sleep similarly focus on things that are particularly good or bad for us, like food and dangerous animals, and ignore things that are irrelevant to our well-being, like the exact shape of a cloud?

A recent study by the University of Geneva’s Virginie Sterpenich and colleagues tried to find out. They had subjects play two computer games, which were designed to be engaging and to use two very different brain areas. One game involved picking a target face out of a set of 18, and the other game involved navigating through a Duke Nukem-derived 3D maze. The face game players use areas of the brain specializing in recognizing faces—the fusiform and occipital face areas. The maze game players use the parahippocampal place areas, grey matter regions that compute scene recognition and memory. The subjects did both of these tasks while Sterpenich and her team scanned their brains using both an electroencephalogram (EEG), which measures electrical activity over time, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which provides information about what parts of the brain are active by measuring the amount of blood flow happening all over the brain.

What the subjects didn’t know is that the games were rigged. The players only won one of the games, but thought that their winning and losing was a result of their performance. If our brains are more likely to rehearse things they are rewarded for, then, when sleeping, they should rehearse the game they won more often than the game they lost. After the games were over, the participants went to sleep in a brain scanner. The researchers used an AI trained on the EEG and fMRI data to recognize which game was being played while awake, to decode the sleeping players’ brain scans and see if they were thinking about one game or the other during sleep. (Once the AI learns how to identify a task in somebody who is awake—when scientists know what task they’re doing—they can apply it to the brain activity observed during sleep and see which task the players’ brain scans most resembles.)

It turned out that, yes, the participants’ brains revealed they were doing a kind of “neural replay” of the game they had been manipulated to win. If you had been one of the players who won the face game, then you would have been more likely to have replayed the face game during sleep (compared to the maze game that you lost). The reward you felt after “winning” the face game made a neural replay of it more likely to arise in your sleep. Not only did the detector identify this, but the brain areas associated with the rewarded games (face or space areas) were preferentially active.

This suggests that our minds are rehearsing things during sleep and that they preferentially feature things that are good for us over experiences that don’t matter to us. Does this have anything to do with dreaming? Well, none of the participants entered rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, which is when most dreams happen, during their time in the sleep lab. (REM tends to happen later in the night.) The neural replay happened only during slow-wave sleep, when dreams tend to be infrequent, dull, and go unremembered. The participants might not even have been aware of the rehearsal their brains were engaged in. These rehearsals might not even be conscious!

Other evidence suggests that dreaming during REM sleep tends to be more negative—bad dreams are more common than good ones. This leads to the interesting idea that positive experiences are rehearsed during non-REM sleep, and negative ones are rehearsed during REM sleep.

I can’t help but think that Keilleigh’s victory scream enhanced her pleasure at scoring her points. It’s interesting to think that it made her more likely to rehearse fencing that night, when her adrenaline calmed down and she was ready to sleep. She got beaten in the quarter final, by Larisa Korobeynikova, from Russia. She didn’t medal, but tonight her brain might be preparing for the next challenge.

This article Why your sleeping brain replays new rewarding experiences is featured on Big Think.

Daniel Kahneman was perhaps the world’s leading psychologist. He died in March of this year. A Nobel Prize winner and a professor emeritus at Princeton University, he may also be the field’s foremost educator. His book Thinking, Fast and Slow has either been on a bestseller list or not strayed far from one since it was published in 2011. And yet, despite his professorial standing, Kahneman has openly considered that teaching psychology may be a total waste of time.

What feeds this realization is not doubt or depression, but data. For Kahneman, it’s one classic experiment in particular. In 1975, social psychologists Richard Nisbett and Eugene Borgida of the University of Michigan told students about the famous (and slightly unethical) “helping experiment.” In that study, multiple subjects were led into individual opaque booths in close proximity to each other and told to talk to the other subjects about their lives and problems via an intercom. Each participant took a two-minute turn to share. Simple enough. Except the point of the experiment wasn’t just to give participants a forum to discuss their feelings, it was actually to see how people would react if they thought someone amongst them was dying. At one point, an actor who was involved in the experiment and stationed in one of the booths, faked having a seizure while speaking over the intercom, cried out for help, then apparently collapsed.

Seeing as how one of their compatriots seemed to be in mortal danger, you’d think the subjects in the other booths would have leapt to lend aid. Most of them didn’t.

“Only four of the fifteen participants responded immediately to the appeal for help. Six never got out of their booth, and five others came out only well after the ‘seizure victim’ apparently choked,” Kahneman described.

After detailing the procedure of the “helping experiment” to students, Nisbett and Borgida had them watch videos of two people who had allegedly taken part. The videos painted a benign, genial picture of the supposed participants. After viewing the videos, students were asked to guess whether or not the depicted individuals rushed to the aid of the seizure victim. Half the students were informed of the results of the “helping experiment” and half were not.

Now, you might think that the students who were apprised of the experiment’s gloomy results would have been more likely to guess that the individuals in the video didn’t rush to the aid of the seizure victim. But they weren’t. In defiance of the facts, both groups maintained their rosy outlook of human nature.

“For teachers of psychology, the implications of this study are disheartening,” Kahneman wrote. “When we teach our students about the behavior of people in the helping experiment, we expect them to learn something they had not known before; we wish to change how they think about people’s behavior in a particular situation. This goal was not accomplished in the Nisbett-Borgida study, and there is no reason to believe that the results would have been different if they had chosen another surprising psychological experiment.”

Interestingly, Nisbett and Borgida did find a way to get their students to absorb the take-home message from the “helping experiment”: Feed them convincing anecdotes. They told a third group of students the procedure of the “helping experiment,” showed them the videos, then said that the two people in the videos had not come to the aid of the seizure victim. With this information, the participants accurately predicted the low proportion of people who aided the seizure victim.

So it may not be that psychology is a waste of time, just that general facts and veritable statistics will never trump powerful anecdotes. In many ways, that’s even more depressing.

This article Is teaching psychology a waste of time? is featured on Big Think.

It’s like he died—except if somebody dies, they’re not going to show up at your doorstep one day.”

That’s how Lynn describes what it felt like when her ex—let’s call him Aidan—abruptly cut off all contact last year. The two had been dating for seven years, and shared a home in sunny California with their dogs and two kids from Lynn’s former relationship. They were planning to expand their family soon: setting up doctors’ appointments, looking into egg donors, meeting with potential surrogates. Aidan and Lynn had bought tickets for a cruise they’d enjoy when he got back from visiting his aunt in Hawaii.

But Aidan didn’t come back for the cruise. Instead, he told Lynn one last time, “Good night, I love you,” and then silently, inexplicably dropped out of her life. He “ghosted” her.

Ghosting—or ending a relationship by abruptly cutting off all communication—affects somewhere between 50 to 80 percent of people, depending on the study. It crops up in all sorts of relationships, including acquaintances and online dating connections, but also long-term partners, colleagues, family members, and close friends. Even psychotherapists have been known to ghost their patients, sometimes after months of working together. Ghosting has become such a common part of online dating that Tinder, a dating app, put out a fake job ad for a VP of Ghosting as an April Fools joke last spring.

I’ve become obsessed with these long-term ghosts.

Stories like Lynn’s are shocking, but they aren’t exactly rare. It’s not uncommon for people to ghost each other after months, sometimes years, together. In a 2024 study, involving about 200 adults in the United States, Yejin Park, a Ph.D. student at New York University, and Nadav Klein, a behavioral scientist at the business school INSEAD, found that the average age of a relationship in which someone got ghosted was as high as five years.

That finding resonates with what I discovered on the online discussion forum Reddit. The r/ghosting subreddit, which has 14,000 members, is in the top 6 percent by size on the platform. When I called on this vast community of “ghostees,” many shared stories of losing best friends, long-term partners, and, in one case, a fiancé.

I’ve become obsessed with these long-term ghosts—the lost friends, former partners, and estranged family members who stopped answering their loved ones’ texts, blocked their calls, smiled and told them they’d pick them up at 7 p.m. before quietly slipping away. In my mind was the same question Lynn asked herself again and again after Aidan left—the question ghostees everywhere seem unable to answer: Why do people ghost? Why not just tell the truth?

Gili Freedman is an associate professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland who has spent years studying the psychology of ghosting. “There’s a lot of reasons,” she says, when I asked her to weigh in on the causes of ghosting. “I could talk forever about this.”

Freedman explains that the motivations ghosters have for disappearing are highly diverse. There are obvious reasons, like losing interest in a partner, meeting someone new, or realizing that the two of you just weren’t as compatible as you’d thought—but these reasons apply to all sorts of breakups, not just ghosting. There are also practical reasons, like communication overload or lack of time—reasons that might be making ghosting more common as the lives of romantic interests become increasingly digitally connected.

Sometimes people ghost because the relationship is still so new that it doesn’t seem worth the effort or discomfort to have a difficult conversation. That is, the ghoster might not even consider themselves to be in a relationship yet, even if their ghostee feels differently. While researchers haven’t systematically compared the reasons people ghost in long- and short-term relationships, none of these seem to explain experiences like Lynn’s.

Sometimes ghosting can make perfect sense, like when someone in a deeper relationship has concerns about personal safety. These kinds of worries complicate the picture, showing that cutting off all communication can be an appropriate “out.” Some people also ghost out of desperation—a “last resort,” Freedman says—because they can’t think of another way to leave the ghostee. “Like, ‘I’ve tried everything else, I can’t get out of this relationship—I’m just going to cut it off,’” she explains.

But ghosting can also come from a place of confusion or uncertainty about how to end a relationship—as something we turn to when we have no clear “script” to guide us in letting someone go. 

Scripts help us navigate our social environment. They’re “certain things we say at certain times,” says Freedman. She gives the example of going to a restaurant: Follow the host to the table, give the server our order, and devour the breadsticks while we wait for our meal. This script is so ingrained that we don’t need to think about it. 

The problem is, we don’t really have a good script for rejection. “You could probably think of things you would say,” explains Freedman. “But you would never use them. ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ or ‘Alright, let’s just be friends’—those are scripts, but they’re unusable because they’re all so cliché.”

When we haven’t memorized our lines, some of us choose to improvise. Others, however, just sneak off the stage.

This last point hints at another possibility: that some of us might ghost because of how we think about relationships and approach connection with others. For example, a 2018 study by Freedman and her colleagues found that people with stronger “destiny beliefs”—i.e., beliefs that people are either meant to be together or not—are more likely to see ghosting as acceptable. These same people are also more likely to say they’ll use ghosting in the future, both in romantic relationships and friendships. “If you are someone who thinks, ‘Well this relationship is either destined to be or not,’ ghosting might make a lot of sense,” Freedman explains. For these individuals, it can make sense to “just cut and run,” rather than invest time and energy having a difficult conversation with someone they were never meant to be with anyway.

Whatever the reason, it’s clear that ghosting can take a toll on our well-being, causing anger, sadness, frustration, guilt, confusion, and hurt. Ghosting may even affect our attachment styles—patterns in how we think about and behave in our relationships. Whereas people with a secure style tend to be confident they will get support from others when they need it, people with a more anxious attachment style are less trusting in their relationships, craving intimacy while simultaneously fearing rejection. In a 2021 study, Freedman and her colleagues found that these more anxiously attached individuals are also more likely to say they’ve been ghosted. While it’s hard to be sure whether the ghosting causes the anxious attachment, or the other way around, the link to attachment makes sense. When a partner or friend leaves us without explanation, we might find it hard to trust others in the future. 

That’s what Leah LeFebvre, an associate professor at the University of Alabama and an expert on all things ghosting, has found in her research. In a 2020 paper she co-authored with her colleague Xiaoti Fan, she asked 358 Americans to describe the strategies they used to cope with being ghosted and how the experience had impacted them. Over two studies, about 18 percent of people said they’d become more cautious in how they communicated and built trust in their relationships, and 15 percent developed a pessimistic attitude about dating in general. As many as 5 percent of people said they had taken a break from dating—in some cases, for the foreseeable future.

However, these negative feelings do seem to get better over time, and can sometimes even lead to unexpected benefits. In the 2020 study, for instance, a small minority of participants (4 to 7 percent) said getting ghosted had made them more mindful of how they treat others and what they look for in a partner. Others described getting ghosted as part of their journey toward a different, happier relationship.

Similarly, in a 2022 study, Freedman and her colleagues surveyed 80 people who had been ghosted, to understand how these experiences made them feel. When reflecting on being ghosted, people reported that they had initially felt lonely, angry, sad, and hurt. However, these negative feelings seemed to fade over time, as the ghostees became less emotionally affected by what had transpired. 

He told her, “Good night, I love you,” and then silently dropped out of her life.

Still, it’s unclear how long these negative feelings tend to linger because scientists’ research about the long-term impacts of ghosting has yielded mixed results. In Freedman’s 2022 study, the length of time that had passed since being ghosted didn’t seem to impact how negative ghostees felt about their past experiences. Yet other studies suggest that ghosting can have deep-seated effects, impacting our self esteem, decreasing our sense of control and belonging, increasing our depressive tendencies, and, in some cases, encouraging self-harm. “I really sunk into a depressive state,” Lynn recalls. “I had thoughts of, ‘Do I want to even continue being here?’”

The problem is, ghosters don’t always recognize how their actions affect the people they leave behind. According to new research from Park and Klein, ghosters may even believe they’re doing their ghostee a favor by choosing to leave without explanation. “There’s this huge discrepancy in the experience of ghosting, based on the perspective,” says Park. Ghosters “might do this because they care.”

Over a series of three pilot tests and eight experiments conducted with over 2,000 people of different genders, ages, and cultures, Park and Klein found that people often say they ghost because they don’t want to hurt the ghostee’s feelings, by leaving them feeling rejected, for example. In one of the experiments, people were offered a small cash bonus to ghost a conversation partner, and almost half of them refused the money. They gave up this bonus even though they barely knew their potential ghostees, who were strangers they’d been randomly assigned to chat with online for up to three minutes. 

“So many people were willing to give up that money,” says Park. “It’s not just that they say that they care, but that they are willing to give up money to show that they care.” This, for her, was one of the most exciting and surprising findings of the research—that some people care enough about not hurting the person they are rejecting that they will make personal sacrifices to avoid doing so. 

Importantly, even those who chose to keep their bonus said they cared about the person they’d ghosted—significantly more than the ghostee believed they did. This finding recurred across the eight experiments, each of which used a slightly different method to assess how ghosters and ghostees interpret ghosting: as a careless rejection or an act of protection.

“Their methodology is definitely very thorough,” says LeFebvre, when I ask her what she thinks of the study. She explains that few studies about ghosting have used experiments like Park and Klein’s, with most opting for surveys or reflection exercises that rely on people’s ability to accurately remember how they felt during a ghosting experience. Park and Klein’s study is also one of relatively few to look at how ghosting affects those who initiate the breakup. “We know far more about the ghostee,” LeFebvre says, “[and] far less about ghosters.” 

By studying both ghosters and ghostees experimentally, the researchers were able to test how and why people might ghost in real time and how this impacts both parties. Beyond demonstrating that ghosting is motivated by more than self-preservation, the study found that providing a reason for cutting off contact changes how people experience rejection. When provided with a “why,” people interpreted the rejection as a more compassionate act, even when that “why” was hard to stomach. 

LeFebvre has hesitations about some of Park and Klein’s findings, noting that it’s not clear how well the study maps onto our real-world experiences of ghosting, which usually take place between people who already know each other at least a little. Still, she is excited about how the study “sheds light on more of the humanity” of ghosting—something that other studies, including LeFebvre’s own in-progress work, also hint at.

These studies suggest that ghosters often experience sadness and regret for what they’ve done. Some, according to a 2023 study, even report more negative emotional states—like feeling depressed or sad, or being bothered by things that don’t typically bother them—after ghosting their friends (but not their romantic interests). Even so, they may still choose to ghost.

Lynn tells me Aidan had reached out to her the Christmas after he ghosted to explain his actions. “His text said he stopped contacting me as he thought it would be easier for me,” she says. “I, of course, thought that was BS.” 

Lynn’s experience points to the fundamental paradox of ghosting. While we might choose to ghost to avoid hurting the people we once loved, or at least cared for, few of us interpret being rejected this way as an act of care. Instead, LeFebvre has found that ghostees often report assuming they are the problem—that they are too difficult, needy, or flawed in some way. Ghosting leaves us without a clear explanation for why the relationship broke down, she explains. Faced with this gaping hole in our understanding, some of us end up filling it with our own insecurities.

This can also make it difficult to move on after being ghosted, especially for those of us who have trouble with ambiguity. “We have different levels of tolerance for uncertainty,” says Nazanin Moghadami, a registered clinical counselor with expertise in interpersonal and relationship issues. “Depending on what’s going on and depending on the depth of the relationship, it can be quite devastating not to get closure,” she says. Lacking an understanding of why a relationship is ending can be “really hurtful, and make the person really spiral into a dark place.”

However, every expert I spoke with agreed that it is possible to move on when we haven’t been given the clarity we crave. Along with the usual mood-enhancing remedies—exercising, practicing gratitude, helping others, connecting with new people—LeFebvre says it’s important to recognize and accept that being ghosted is part and parcel of taking the risk of meeting new people. “Probably everyone will be ghosted in some capacity at some point,” she says. “There’s probably someone who thought they were ghosted by you.”

This outlook might be helpful if you’re actively dating and have been ghosted after seeing someone for a few months. But it’s hard to expect it to help someone like Lynn, whose relationship has clearly passed the point where ghosting is a somewhat common potential outcome. 

Yet when I ask Park what she thinks ghostees can take away from her own research, she offers a similar recommendation. “Sometimes, the perception defines the ultimate reality,” she says. Rather than interpreting ghosting as disrespectful or malicious, we can choose to see it in a more generous light. “I can make this intentional choice to interpret it as, ‘They might actually respect me and want to shield me from this information.’” Park thinks this change in perspective may make a big difference in how we experience ghosting and move on after the rejection.

Of course, shifting the way we think about ghosting—as something common, unintentional, and maybe even aiming at compassion—will never provide us the closure we desire. It won’t bring back the people who left us or erase our hurt and grief completely. But a small shift in mindset just might help us relate to our ghosts not as unwanted specters but as a new way to appreciate ourselves—reminders of the many ways we have made ourselves vulnerable, taken a chance, and opened ourselves to the possibility of connection. 

One year in, Lynn says she is still hurting from Aidan’s abrupt vanishing. But although she knows some of her questions will never be answered, she’s also started to see her experience differently—as a reflection of Aidan’s flaws, not her own. “My self-esteem—obviously I am still working on it—but that’s started to come back,” she says. “I’m making my own answers.”

This article Why we ghost is featured on Big Think.

It’s easy to accept that human disorders such as phenylketonuria or cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease have a wholly genetic basis. And you likely have no problem believing that your risk of being afflicted with an illness such as heart disease, diabetes, or colon cancer is influenced by your personal DNA code. The question of heredity becomes more complicated, however, when we consider complex behaviors.

Is your chance of having a sunny disposition affected by your genes? How about if you are a pessimist — is pessimism an inherited trait? What if you’re an early-morning or a late-night person, or compulsively neat, or emotionally unable to connect with others — could genetic differences contribute to those traits? How much of our temperament is due to our genes? How much of our intelligence — our ability to learn and remember, to acquire language, to read and spell — is a function of our DNA code? And what about psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression? Are those due to our circumstances, or to our genetic constitution?

The answer is: both. Nature and nurture, our genetic endowment and our life situation and experiences, determine our behavior. But we suspect that the contribution from genetics may be more than most of us imagine.

Consider, for example, Susan Middlebrook, of Colchester, Vermont. She usually gets seven or eight hours of sleep each night, but rather than going to bed at 11:30 p.m., after the late-night news, and getting up at around 7 a.m., Middlebrook goes to bed early, very early . . . like at 6:30 p.m. And between 1:30 and 3 a.m., just when you’re deep in your dreams, Middlebrook is raring to get up and go. “The net result is you can feel very isolated,” she told National Geographic News in 2005. “Who wants to party at three in the morning? Nobody I know, and I’m not headed to the local bar to see who’s there.” Instead, Middlebrook gets started on her morning chores long before your dreams are over.

Middlebrook suffers from familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS), the consequence of which is that her sleep patterns are way out of sync with the norm. To establish the norm, and the abnormal exceptions, sleep researchers ask people a series of questions about their sleep habits: At what time of day do you feel your best? How easy is it for you to get up in the morning? At what time would you go to bed if you were completely free to plan your day? At what time in the evening do you feel drowsy and begin to doze? Do you consider yourself a “morning” or an “evening” person? (The questionnaire was developed by a British scientist, James Horne, and a Swedish scientist, Olov Östberg.) Answers to these and other questions produce a score that lies on a scale running from extreme “eveningness” to extreme “morningness”; most of us fall somewhere in the middle of a broad bell-shaped curve of scores, but FASPS patients lie at the far “morningness” end of the scale, scoring higher than more than 99 percent of other respondents.

What makes Middlebrook’s syndrome so interesting is that it’s the result of an abnormality in her biological clock, known as the circadian rhythm; (“circadian” means, literally, the cycle of one complete day, from the Latin circa-, “cycle,” and dies, “day”). This circadian clock controls not just sleeping and waking but also metabolic, physiological and behavioral processes such as heart rate, hormone levels, blood pressure, mood, and alertness. Our biological clocks are reset each day by exposure to sunlight, thus keeping us in synchrony with our surroundings. But Middlebrook’s internal clock runs on a faster cycle, advanced by about four hours relative to most everyone else’s, so that she is ready for bed when her neighbors are ready to sit down to dinner.

Middlebrook’s sleep-wake cycle may seem unusual to you — it is far outside the statistical norm — but around the Middlebrook home it’s about as unusual as oatmeal for breakfast: two of her three sisters, one of her parents, and her own child all keep the same odd hours. This syndrome is clearly due to a variation present in the personal DNA code of these family members (the word “familial” in the name of the syndrome might have tipped you off to this), and not to any environmental cause.

Middlebrook’s sleep-wake cycle may seem unusual to you, but two of her three sisters, one of her parents, and her own child all keep the same odd hours.

Although FASPS affects only about three people in one thousand, its genetic basis was well worth deciphering. Findings about this syndrome may help to explain other more common sleeping disorders such as insomnia and narcolepsy, or lead to treatments for jet lag or seasonal affective disorder (SAD, in which the moods of sufferers are strongly affected by lack of sunlight in the winter), and they may provide health support and guidance for millions of workers who work the nightshift. Understanding human circadian rhythms may even enable drug treatments to be timed for better effect, or suggest ways to reduce nighttime auto accidents.

Now consider Jean, a 24-year old nurse who became obsessed with cleaning and washing. As related by Peter McGuffin and David Mawson, two psychiatrists in London to whom Jean was eventually referred, each day she would wash her hands 60 to 80 times and spend 12 hours disinfecting her house; she went through twenty liters of disinfectant a week. She made her husband stop his sports activity because it brought dirt into the house, and she gave up sexual activity because it could cause contamination. When Jean was admitted to the hospital, her hands were “roughened, red, cracked and bleeding” from the constant washing.

Jean’s identical twin, Jill, a social worker, lived apart from her sister and rarely saw her. Yet at the age of 22, Jill began displaying behavior similar to Jean’s. As soon as a meal was over she felt compelled to immediately wash the dishes and silverware, or else she would become severely anxious. Moreover, “the washing of the dishes and utensils had to proceed in a specific order, and failure to comply with the routine, or an attempt by others to relieve her of the task, provoked great discomfort.” Jill established other washing rituals, and despite her best efforts to stop carrying them out, she spent increasing amounts of time on them, to the detriment of her social life and her work.

Both twins had normal childhoods, had been outgoing children, and were academically accomplished. None of their family members had received treatment for a psychiatric disorder, although their father was “fastidiously neat and orderly in his habits.” The twins attended different universities; Jean obtained a degree in physics, Jill in history. Neither of them displayed any signs of mental illness before their obsessive-compulsive behaviors began. In fact, each of them learned of the other’s similar problem only after Jean began treatment with the drug clomipramine, which together with behavior therapy alleviated her symptoms enough to allow her to return to nursing. Jill was not treated, but experienced a spontaneous remission of her symptoms after more than a year.

What caused these identical twins to develop a similar disorder at a similar time in their lives? Was it something about the way their parents brought them up that led to their symptoms years later? Was it some food they ate, or some toxin they were exposed to as children? Or was it because their personal DNA code is identical, and some combination of variations in the genes they both inherited caused them to develop an obsessive-compulsive disorder in their early 20s? Or did the disorder develop because of a complex interplay of these factors?

Consider, finally, Lewis, the son of a well-to-do couple in Pittsburgh. Lewis looked perfect at birth and appeared to be developing normally. As detailed by his mother, at 18 months Lewis was almost saying words, but they weren’t the typical words that most toddlers begin with, such as “Mommy” and “Daddy.” Instead he babbled nonsensically. And he didn’t respond to the usual games that toddlers enjoy, such as peek-a-boo or ring-around-the-rosie. At two years of age, he had no interest in some toys but was obsessed with others, and when he played with these he was oblivious to everything going on around him. He loved to climb and to swing and to bounce on a trampoline, which he did without fear. Yet sometimes he was afraid to step off a rug onto a hardwood floor, reacting as if the next step would be off a cliff. At night, Lewis took off all his clothes and slept on the floor wrapped in a blanket and surrounded by toy soldiers and matchbox cars. Lewis also had tantrums, during which he lay on the floor screaming, unable to indicate his problem.

At three he had yet to acquire any language and had little interest in communicating with his family. He babbled only to his toy soldiers. His doctors were no longer able to dismiss his problems as simply those of a “difficult” child or one in the throes of the “terrible twos.” Lewis underwent a series of tests and the doctors concluded he had an autism spectrum disorder.

The diagnosis led to a variety of publicly and privately funded treatments, including speech and occupational therapy. Lewis made remarkable progress: He developed some language ability, and his behavior calmed down. He could hold his mother’s hand, play peek-a-boo with her and kiss her good night, and occasionally even make eye contact. When he read his favorite book, Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” he said every word at the right time and mimicked the slurping sound of the caterpillar eating. But he still could not carry on a conversation. Lewis entered a special-education preschool class, with the hope and expectation that in a few years he could be integrated into a typical school class.

Autism is a complex developmental disorder that appears within the first three years of life. Its symptoms, which can range from mild to severe, are characterized by a lack of emotional contact with others, difficulty with verbal and nonverbal communication, and a restricted range of activities and interests. Children are born with autism or with the potential to develop it; they do not acquire the condition because of bad parenting. A fascinating feature of the chromosomes of some autistic children is that large chunks of DNA — millions or tens of millions of base-pairs — are found duplicated in some children and lost altogether in others. These regions can contain dozens of genes. The analysis of the personal DNA codes of these children may help pinpoint the specific genetic changes responsible for this complex and debilitating disease.

When a human population is measured for any characteristic, say height or weight, or blood pressure or cholesterol level, the measurements reveal a continuous spectrum between two extremes.

It’s no different for a complex behavior, such as how we deal with stress. Even very young babies display a broad range of responses, from those who cry easily to those who seem unbothered by almost any challenge. Similar patterns are observed in the extent or degree to which children are active or sedentary, whether they persist at pursuing a task or lose their focus, or the extent of their introversion or extroversion. Among adults, the amounts of alcohol, nicotine, or drugs that are consumed show the same broad distributions. Some part of these traits is likely due to genetics, and some is surely due to environmental components. But how much is due to each?

The measure of the amount of the genetic effect is termed “heritability.” A trait or behavior that is wholly due to genetics has 100 percent heritability; one that is wholly due to the environment has zero heritability.

The environmental component could be due to factors shared among family members, such as the home environment, the food preferences of the family, or the level of pollution in the town where the family resides. Or it could be due to factors that are not shared, such as the specific set of friends or teachers of each family member, or unusual life events such as accidents, or diseases unique to each individual.

How do we measure, or quantify, heritability? It’s actually pretty easy. All that is needed is a set of individuals whose genetic relatedness is known, and a measurement of some trait or condition for each individual.

The easiest of these studies to understand exploits the genetic similarity of twins. The personal DNA codes of identical twins are identical, because they develop from a single fertilized egg. That is, the DNA sequence of each gene in one twin is identical to its sequence in the other twin. Fraternal twins also shared the same womb at the same time, but have the same version of only about half of their genes (like any siblings), so the genetic contribution to a trait is twice as great in identical twins as it is in fraternal twins. Thus, the more similar a trait is in identical twins as compared to fraternal ones, the greater the genetic contribution to it is likely to be.

A large number of studies suggest a heritability for intelligence of around 50 percent; some studies put this number at greater than 80 percent.

Another type of study compares siblings from the same parents (who have the same version of about half of their genes), to adopted siblings who are not genetically related but share the same surroundings. A genetic influence on a trait is apparent when biological siblings are more similar than adopted ones; an environmental influence is obvious when adopted and thus genetically unrelated siblings resemble each other more than they do other unrelated people who grew up in other families.

A third type of analysis uses family genetic studies that compare how often a disease occurs in a family in which one member is known to be affected to how often it occurs in the general population. Diseases with a genetic basis occur more frequently in members of a family that has one case — in other words, genetic diseases run in families.

With these ways to quantify heritability, let’s examine some human traits. We’ll start with intelligence — a particularly thorny issue. We’d like to believe that a roomful of books, Mozart playing in the background, and a nurturing set of parents will put any infant on the road to a Nobel Prize. Those conditions can’t hurt, but they can only do so much: A large number of studies suggest a heritability for intelligence of around 50 percent; some studies put this number at greater than 80 percent.

A Swedish twin registry has information on 25,000 same-sex twins born over a period of about 70 years. Nancy Pedersen and her colleagues at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm studied about 300 of these twin pairs, including identical twins reared apart, identical twins reared together, fraternal twins reared apart, and fraternal twins reared together. They found that intelligence scores of identical twins who grew up apart (most having been separated by the time they were two years old) correlated much more closely than the intelligence scores of fraternal twins who grew up in the same home.

Another study, the Texas Adoption Project, followed about 300 children who were adopted within a few days of birth and grew up entirely with their adopted families. John Loehlin and his coworkers at the University of Texas at Austin looked at results of intelligence tests given to the children at age seven and at age 17, to their adoptive parents, and to their biological mothers. The test scores of the biological mothers correlated significantly with those of their children who had been given away for adoption 17 years earlier, whereas there was no correlation between intelligence scores of the children and their adoptive parents. The researchers estimated that 78 percent of intelligence is inherited.

Addictive behavior, or the predilection to become addicted, is another trait whose heritability is controversial. Addiction includes physical dependence and symptoms of craving after chronic substance use, as well as behavioral dependence — the inability to stop an activity even though the consequences are severe. Alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug use is estimated to contribute to one in eight deaths worldwide.

Yet most people who try habit-forming substances do not become addicted. One study estimates that the probability that someone who tries a substance once will become dependent on it ranges from about one in three or four for tobacco and heroin to about one in six or seven for cocaine and alcohol to about one in 11 for marijuana. The effect of genetics on the vulnerability of individuals to becoming addicted to these substances varies widely. Studies of twins suggest that persistent smoking and nicotine dependence is about 70 percent heritable, alcohol dependence is 50 to 60 percent heritable, and addiction to most other substances is 20 to 35 percent heritable. These studies also indicate that other disorders such as antisocial personality disorder and conduct disorder are often associated with addictive behavior.

Studies of twins suggest that persistent smoking and nicotine dependence is about 70 percent heritable, alcohol dependence is 50 to 60 percent heritable, and addiction to most other substances is 20 to 35 percent heritable.

Psychiatric disorders often have a large — sometimes, surprisingly large — genetic component. Schizophrenia, for which the lifetime risk is approximately 1 percent, has a heritability estimated at around 85 percent. Bipolar disorder (also known as manic-depressive illness because it is characterized by episodes of extreme elation (mania) alternating with episodes of depression) also has an individual lifetime risk of about one percent. Twin, sibling, and family studies all point to a strong genetic basis of bipolar disorder: a heritability of 80 to 90 percent. Depression (also known as unipolar disorder), for which we have an individual lifetime risk of around 10 to 20 percent in the United States, undoubtedly has a genetic basis: Its heritability may be as high as 70 percent.

Susan Middlebrook’s unusual sleep-wake cycle is obviously heritable. This syndrome has revealed something striking about circadian rhythms. Much of what’s known about these rhythms was originally worked out in Drosophila melanogaster, the tiny fruit fly that buzzes about the bananas left on a kitchen counter. Remarkably, the fly’s clockwork mechanism, the proteins it uses to reset its timing each day, works much like ours does. The first mutations to be identified that affect these rhythms, which caused flies to have either a shorter or a longer cycle, or no rhythmic cycle at all, were in a gene given the name period.

In 2001, Louis Ptácek, Ying-Hui Fu, and their colleagues at the University of Utah identified a human mutation that causes FASPS. It turned out to be in a gene that encodes a protein with an amino acid sequence very similar to the fly period protein, so the human gene was dubbed Period2. This was extraordinary evidence of gene conservation over hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Even stronger evidence came from the finding that the single amino acid change in the Period2 protein that advanced Susan Middlebrook’s clock corresponds to a mutation in fruit flies that advances the clock of that simple organism.

What about the heritability of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the illness that struck Jean and Jill? This disease, affecting about 2 percent of the population, has remarkably diverse symptoms but generally includes four major ones: obsessions and checking behavior; a need for symmetry and order; excessive washing; and hoarding tendencies. Individuals differ in their age of onset, the duration of the illness, and the types of symptoms they display. Many sufferers have tics, and some also have depression, phobias, separation anxiety, or disruptive behavior. Some are troubled by harmful sexual or religious obsessions, or by trichotillomania, compulsive hair pulling. Others may exhibit grooming behaviors.

This diversity of symptoms suggests that obsessive-compulsive disorder may exist in different forms that have different genetic causes — in other words, there may be multiple genetic routes to a group of disorders that have all been given a single name. So it is not surprising that twin studies almost always point to a substantial heritable component for this illness, ranging from 25 percent to 80 percent. Thus, the most probable explanation for Jean and Jill’s similar illnesses at similar ages is the young women’s genetic similarity, although other factors may have contributed to their condition.

Autism is a heart-breaking diagnosis for a parent to receive, and so it was for Lewis’s parents. The prevalence of autism went up more than five-fold in the 1990s, and now may be as high as 1 percent of children. Much of the increase may be due to broader diagnostic criteria and increased physician and parent awareness.

Numerous studies indicate that genetic factors are the main cause of autism. For example, siblings of an autistic child have about 10 times the risk of having the syndrome as the general population. A twin study in the United Kingdom yielded a heritability estimate of more than 90 percent for a broad set of autistic symptoms. Many genes are suspected of being involved in the syndrome. They haven’t been identified yet, but when they are, the diagnosis of autism, which can be difficult and often confusing, will be easier and more precise. Accurate and early diagnosis will also enable earlier intervention, which will greatly improve the prognosis for these children.

Estimating the genetic component of human behaviors and psychiatric disorders may help to remove a lingering stigma attached to people with mental illness — a misplaced sense that these are character flaws — and it may inspire more people to seek treatment. In addition, these studies all point to environmental components — generally still to be teased out — that interact with the genetic ones. That’s good news, since we have some control over the environmental inputs to disease. It is notable that even for the most heritable illnesses, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, the heritability is never 100 percent, and even identical twins are never 100 percent concordant. Thus, even when genetics has a strong effect, it is not absolutely deterministic, so hope should never be abandoned. Finally, identification of the gene variants contributing to a disorder can assist and sharpen diagnosis, which will lead to earlier and possibly more effective treatments.

A high heritability does not imply that just a single gene is involved. In fact, for most of these disorders it is clear that many genes are involved, and no single gene is likely to explain most of the variability. By establishing a genetic basis for these disorders and identifying families that carry the causative changes in their DNA, geneticists can pinpoint the genes that are responsible.

Identification of such genes often leads to insight into the disease that can be tested in organisms suitable for experimentation, such as the fruit fly or the mouse. Analysis of those genes is sure to illuminate disease mechanisms. Just knowing what the relevant genes are will allow individuals to be tested for the gene variants that put them at risk of the disease, and, should they carry some of those variants in their personal DNA code, make them or their parents vigilant about early signs of the disease. And the genes and proteins that are implicated provide potential targets for new drugs that promise to improve the lives of people like Susan, Jean and Jill, Lewis, and many of the rest of us.

Stanley Fields is Professor of Genome Sciences and Medicine at the University of Washington and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Mark Johnston is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Genetics. Fields and Johnston are the authors of “Genetic Twists of Fate,” from which this article is excerpted.

This article Blaming our genes: The heritability of behavior is featured on Big Think.