“A lot of what you do is Zombie operationMechanisms that often elude us to understand why we do the things we do,” explains psychobiologist Manuel Martín-Loeches in this interview about his latest book: What good is it to us to be so smart? (Ed. Planeta) A book that I will give as gifts five times for Christmas this year, not because it soothes or soothes, but because it is an uncompromising revelation about humans, our brains, their uses and customs.
“It can’t be for nothing to be so smart. It is not possible that we have an organ, the brain, which is a miracle of evolution, that uses so much energy and is so large that it forces us to be born early (otherwise we would not fit through the birth canal ). nothing: making mistakes, believing lies, suffering unnecessarily and enduring wars of his own making. Something doesn’t add up. Or yes,” Martín-Loeches introduces in his book.
Manuel Martín-Loeches is Professor of Psychobiology and Head of the Division of Cognitive Neuroscience at the UCM-ISCIII Joint Center for Human Evolution and Behavior. He is co-author of more than 100 scientific articles on the topics of the brain and human cognition, language, religion, aesthetics and emotions. It is no extravagance to consider him one of the greatest experts on human behavior. I started this interview by comparing him to him.
Question: Although I know that you are a humble man, can we confirm that you are one of the people who best understands humanity?
Manuel Martin Loeches: Oh! Well, I have to stop being humble. I do believe that I am one of the people who understands people best. But it’s not just me, there are many of us. The scientific community already understands enough. In the book I looked to this understanding to gather what we know about how we feel.
Questions: And does that mean you are one of the people who understands yourself best?
Manuel: This is a psychoanalytic question.
Question: And what is the answer?
Manuel: Well no. I don’t think I understand myself better or better than other people.
Despite knowing how a brain works, you don’t understand yourself better than other people. Much of our behavior is zombie-like, unconscious, and has nothing to do with Freud’s unconscious, but it has to do with mechanisms that often elude us in understanding why we do the things we do. And maybe I miss a lot of myself. In this sense, I am on an equal footing with other people.
Question: So if knowledge is useless, are we lost?
Manuel: No, no, no, it has nothing to do with it. It is like that, but nothing happens, it’s not serious. When you deal with your own problems or your own solutions, you don’t really understand how you got to where you are, and it’s better if someone outside observes it and coldly analyzes it, because you get carried away by many impulses , emotions, prejudices and accumulated errors. And then you can’t see it well. It’s better if someone else sees it, even better several other people.
Question: So it’s not good to keep quiet about our dramas?
Manuel: It is difficult to understand yourself because you have to get out of the traps that you have built and built for yourself throughout your life. “Traps” have a pejorative meaning, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s still our narratives, or the stories we tell ourselves, that are, well, our own. So it’s better to see other points of view.
“My teenage children are very unpredictable and my brain, no matter how big it is, is from a different generation, it is a different age and the possible predictions I make about my children’s tastes, intentions, behavior etc can, are very low.” invalid”
Question: And when it comes to your children or your romantic relationships…does your knowledge help?
Manuel: Look, I have a problem with my children and they are teenagers. We are the most unpredictable species. This is one of the reasons why we have evolved such a large brain, to try to predict the behavior of others, to anticipate them and not be surprised. My children are very unpredictable and my brain, no matter how big it is, is from a different generation, it is a different age and the possible predictions I can make about my children’s tastes, intentions, behavior etc. are not valid.
“It is really crucial that the clinic does not have direct access to current research results in neuroscience and psychobiology.”
Question: If you go to a psychologist or psychiatrist, is the information about our behavior up to date?
Manuel: Those who work clinically usually do not do research. They are two worlds that are difficult to communicate. From the outside, or at least from my perspective, what is really crucial is that the clinic does not have direct access to current research in psychobiology, which includes neuroscience, hormones, etc.
Questions: We love, we hate… we feel. What is your understanding of emotions?
Manuel: We pulled the string and looked for brain circuits related to love, hate, jealousy, among other things… And in the end you realize that they are all shared. Almost all circuits in the brain that have to do with emotions also have to do with visceral reactions in the body.
Question: The entrails?
Manuel: Yes, they are circuits that monitor the state of the body. You are responsible for the reactions that occur in relation to events that have already occurred or are about to occur. The composition of emotions is more complete and accurate when the state of the body is taken into account, including the viscera, which, in fact, is perhaps the most important part for emotions. Based on this and what is happening, the brain makes a simplification and labels it. For example, he says what happens is love or fear. And this label is not the same for everyone. It depends a lot on our culture and experiences.
Questions: Is this why experiments on human behavior are so complex?
Manuel: More and more successful experiments are being carried out. But I’ll show you two very interesting examples. They showed that people in the experiment later walked more slowly when you worked with words that had to do with senescence, with age. They tried to study how the brain is affected by things without knowing that they affect us. Another experiment showed that judges signed more condemnatory judgments before meals and immediately afterward. The most interesting thing is that none of these experiments are reproducible. This means that if it is repeated, the same results will not be achieved.
Comment: How strange, because in both cases the conclusions seem to make sense to me
Manuel: Exactly. The interesting thing is that we think it is logical to sign sentences when you are hungry. These are examples that explain very well how powerful our belief system is. If what they tell you is consistent with your beliefs, it goes out to the masses.
If we can open the brain and put electrodes in it like the ones in it Neuralink by Elon Musk, which will give reason to further advance research.
Questions: Would it help to understand each other, to be able to read minds?
Manuel: Be finished. Experiments have already been carried out that allow you to hear thoughts, your inner voice. There is also great progress in the images.
There’s a small problem: we do all this using techniques that allow us to access the brain from the outside without opening it. If we could open it up and put electrodes in it like the ones from Neuralink by Elon Musk, that would lead one to go further and not see pre-programmed thoughts and images in detail that we are not even aware that we are thinking.
From the outside, the information we receive is very noisy because electrical activity propagates through a semi-liquid mass, the brain. It comes to us very relaxed, let’s say, on the surface.
Question: Would you open a human brain to find out all this?
Manuel: It was done then.
“Neuro improvements will be possible. The likelihood of this developing is very high. It’s like aesthetics when you touch up your face to remove wrinkles.”
Question: And could we voluntarily change our circuits?
Manuel: Neuro retouching will be possible. The likelihood of this developing is very high. It’s like aesthetics when you touch up your face to remove wrinkles. For example, we can have a sequence of stimuli that makes Monday mornings great, relieves depression, or stimulates the energy you need to complete a project. Now it’s done with pills, but with neurotweaks you can do very fine things. That’s the idea. And yes, why not? It will be possible, it will be possible.
“We live two realities, two parallel worlds, the one that leads us to solve practical things, and the world of myth, the one that everyone builds for themselves.”
Question: Is there another way to understand ourselves other than implanting a chip?
Manuel: Understanding each other means reconciling the two parallel worlds of reality and myth. There is something that comes up again and again in my book: the fear of death that our species has. The fear of nothingness, a fear that no other animal has, that pushes us to create worlds that entertain us, that fulfill us, that give us joy, that give meaning to life.
This is where myths, beliefs, religions and even science emerge. We live two realities, two parallel worlds, real life and the myth that everyone builds for themselves. This self-narrative allows us, among other things, to understand the death that awaits us all and even whether the things we do make sense or not. We are so smart that we consciously or unconsciously invented these parallel realities.
Question: And is there a connection between real life and myth?
Manuel: I believe that science makes this connection. We’ve finally found a useful scientific narrative to explain to people. Science allows us to connect the world we call real with the imaginary world, to give meaning to our lives, to give our brain answers, to give it some satisfaction and to believe that all is not lost . I think that’s where the shots fall.
