We will see how Neuroscience has given a fundamental role to the sensations of the body for decision-making, placing it as the origin of emotions.
[Music] [Sound] william james who is considered by many to be one of the fathers of modern psychology for has now come back to prominence in the world of neuroscience of neuroscience, and it is because he has already advanced because more than a century ago the importance of the body not for cognition but for psychology
said that we could not separate the body from the mind
mind that as such the studies of psychology were always going to remain incomplete and william james said a phrase that resonates a lot not that today in day he said I'm not crying because I'm sad I am sad because I cry with this phrase so strong what he intended was to put of relevance the importance of the sensations of the body so we need to cry we need the sensation of the body to have that moment of sadness to live the experience for william james and so many other researchers of today of the cutting-edge neuroscience without the sensations of the body any experience would be only an intellectual construct, i
e
a moment of sadness of sadness if it is not accompanied by bodily sensations of tearfulness of our body sensations of the contraction of some of the organs of our body
of the variation in the respiration and in the cardiac coordination cardiac coordination because they would be just ideas that we would have for william james if we used the body to make sense of notions that are so abstract as sadness is, today there is a vision in neuroscience that vision in neuroscience that I think is very beautiful
and worthy of highlighting and that is to live the experience versus memory when we think in something that is happening to us many times we hold on more to that moment of thought in thinking about something in building the memory that then we're going to retrieve the living experience in the present moment requires the body in the present moment because because when tomorrow we remember what we have lived today it will be the body of tomorrow that is remembering it
the situation of our body and how all my organs are my organs at this very moment I am living the experience will be unrepeatable therefore what that is so much talked about nowadays in meditation for example mindfulness is to live in the present it's living also from the body because because is present is being generated by the whole body it's not just an intellectual idea it's not just an intellectual idea it's not just a thought or a sensation it is all the sensations sensations that are accompanying my body in at this time then studying the sensations of the body for neuroscience has become a key research topic and in particular for what is decision making what is decision making what is decision making
decisions or free will as it lived in the last century as some eras are last century as some eras are both dark when the we were under as the great genome project free will as it was considered as only an illusion as creek was saying, not today when we are already we are already talking about that mind-body relationship
we can start to give a little bit more space to what is the conscious act conscious act what is what is living in the present and what is free will dilated but free will dilated but the decision making goes on being an absolutely mysterious subject for neuroscience and neuroscience and among other things because it came out of the an article that was very striking in the year 2008 that was published in the journal necho nerosaller which is the number one research journal in neuroscience in neuroscience and that was led by professor heinz at the university of berlin in this experiment what they showed was that when we took a decision as simple as our brain may be seems to have received or cooked an activity that has taken place up to eight seconds before we become aware of the decision that we have taken the experiment was very simple, we put people in a neuroimaging machine
and they were given a choice between different letters a very simple and neutral decision simply you have to choose between these four letters from outside the researchers were seeing that it was going on in their brain for up to eight seconds before the person was conscious of the letter the researchers based on their neural activity could predict their neural activity they could predict which letter person was going to choose before the person was aware of the letter they were was aware of which letter the person was going to choose
article was called unconscious determinants of decision making not this article because it was very polemic as I say because notice that two words are already determinants i
something that determines you that decides determinants unconscious decision making when we are going to make a decision as I say no matter how simple it is our brain processes it in seconds before and all that processing is unconscious for example one of the most famous experiments and historical within the decision making is the one performed by doctor live subjects the ability to move a hand at the time that he wanted what he observed the experiments through electrophysiology techniques where they were measuring the they measured the activity of the brain is that before the that we move our hand, there has been produced what is called preparatory potentials until two and three seconds before the brain has prepared when I'm going to choose when I'm going to consciously choose when I'm going to to make a decision this because of of began to see itself not to to see itself not to give importance to everything that it was forged unconsciously in the body today what we call nowadays what we called unconscious that it was a kind of a black box that we didn't know and we don't know what we don't know what it means the unconscious starts to take as a hypothesis that this unconscious is the interoception, that is to say the sensations
of our body we are not conscious of what is happening inside our body the interaction which is the priority sense that our brain receives is unconscious imagine if the interoception were conscious and we were sensing everything that's going on
inside our intestine of our stomach our heart the dilation of our lungs the kidneys the bloodstream we could not perceive any more information we would not be able to perceive any more information because we would have a collapse of information from the amount of activation of activity that is occurring within our body the interoception is unconscious it is unconscious it is only conscious when it reaches a certain threshold, one of the examples that is always used is always given is for example the desire to have that going to the bathroom our bladder is filling up it's filling up and I don't have any sensation that that volume is simply increasing when it has reached a certain threshold volume the information becomes conscious and I already know that I feel like emptying that I have the urge to empty my bladder and I have to to go to the bathroom but until then it's unconscious, the same thing same thing when we digest, imagine that if we had the sensation of everything in the amount of of movement that's going on in there it would be absolutely unfeasible from the computational computational point of view then our information inter-objective is unconscious and this is one of the tricks not of the tricks not told to us by neuroscience our body whispers when the body is screaming it is when it has already reached levels that already have passed many times to the noxious that is to say that the nociceptors that already those that is hurting us, the body is sending us information, it's sending us information through of the sensations of our body through the changes in our the changes in our posture through the changes in skin conductance through the changes in the rate and changes in the rate and variability of our skin conductance through changes in the rate and variability of our skin conductance
cardiac through the changes in our respiration rate respiration rate but the problem and what neuroscience says and among others the great researcher who is antonio damásio researcher that is antonio damásio who is also a very great thinker of neuroscience tells us that as the body whispers and we in our society we are usually not used to listen to the sensations of our body the precognitive signals that our body is sending us of where we are heading we don't listen to them that's why it's so important as neuroscience is showing neuroscience is demonstrating today to work in techniques that help us to increase our body awareness for example yoga for example chi kung no which coordinates to tai chi which are slow movements it has been demonstrated for example that the practice of chi kung favors the activation of the presence of alpha waves to our brain which are the ones that we makes us realize that they allow us to sustain attention favor the activity of the insula
that together with the cingulate cortex, which is also is also favored by the practice of the chi kung the one that allows us to account for our body's sensations of our body that allows us to account for the sensations of our body that allows us to account for the sensations of our body that allows us to account for of ourselves and this is the key for the decision making of decisions because because we know that second before making a decision all that process to the preparatory potentials of decision making decisions involve the body and during that time which is still precognitive we neither even know what we ourselves are going to decide during all that preparation time
a wide range of bodily sensations emerge that if we are not accustomed to perceiving the completely overlooked, this is what has been postulated as one of the postulated as one of the mechanisms of regulation emotional if in front of a discussion in front of any particular situation I am aware of how my body is doing I can know in what mental state what psychological state it is leading me to the situation and therefore I can anticipate the situation that is being the situation that is being generated as a state of mind
mental in the sensations of the body understand the body says antonio damásio it will be to understand the emotion the body provides the emotion to the experience that we are living and the emotion is absolutely inseparable absolutely influential in the decision making one of the experiments most important experiments that have been done on decision making and the decision making and the role of the body in decision making is what's called the iowa task which is called the iowa task which is called that because in that the principal investigator the leader of this project that antonio damasio project that antonio damásio was working in the university of iowa this experiment gave rise what is known as the marker theory
somatic, which is the theory that has been defended by antonio damasio has been defending for more than 30 years that has been defending the theory of the somatic marker the experiment was very simple imagine they would put a people, the volunteers to the experiment were given four were given four blocks of cards and they were blocks in which you could win a lot of money blocks where you could win or lose a lot of money blocks in which you could win or lose a lot of money at the end you had to choose which block of cards was the that you were going to choose which block of cards you were going to keep, well obviously with the one that is going to be the one that is going to make you earn more money then what you do is that people are going to pick up cards to try to get the rule out the algorithm of each block is block this one is making me lose a lot of money this one has made me win this one neither fú-nor fá so I'll keep this one I'll take this one here, because what the researchers was that we needed to mentally consciously we needed to lift up to 80 cards to know which was the good block after 80 cards you could say this is the block good because it's the one that makes me the most money
but what happens that those researchers put a bunch of electrodes on people's bodies and what they realized people's bodies and what they found out is that from the number 10 letter that they were lifting up the body already knew which one was the good block and the why they knew this because every time the hand approached towards the bad block it was increased the heart rate the body posture shrank skin conductance increased when the hand approached the good block without the person's consciously the person knew that the good block was block which block was the one that had chosen which block was his body was already reacting in a way the body posture changed, the cardiac variability increased the cardiac variability increased all of this without that the person at the moment was aware of which block was the right one this led him to to antonio damásio to say that the body knows what the mind hasn't yet realized but then from the implications here is where then a whole movement arose not because of the practical part that led was to say if we knew how to listen to our body we wouldn't need 80 cards our body we wouldn't need 80 cards to to know what the good block was by the tenth card
we could already intuit that I think it's this one but we didn't I know why and this thing that was taking us as well so also a little bit the amount of weight that we put on the thinking and reasoning to the arguments just because we decide we are not aware of to decide on the good block when we have put an argument but we do not give any weight to that intuition that tells us I think it's this one although all of them I don't know why and that's why we gives us food for thought like how important it is for the sensations of our body to increase the that is the proprioception to increase the body consciousness when we do body awareness when we do meditation for example before doing he meditation it is recommended to work on body awareness this is a study which was carried out at the university of texas led by professor tam and that I call him bodyfulness mes no bodyfulness meant that before doing meditation if a person practices though five minutes or ten minutes of some kind of body stretching of body stretching or some kind of bodyfulness
technique that favors the body awareness because the benefits that meditation already brings said the maintenance of the attention the memory the regulation of the emotions of organization of the I all these benefits are increased in particular what Dr
Tan was studying was the influence of doing certain chi kung exercises just before you start meditating Dr
tam who is one of the most prestigious researchers in the world of meditation neuroscience
and also of the neuroscience of attention the work with michael posner work with michael posner who is considered to be the great expert of the attention the doctor is at the university of texas university of texas and is doing a project very interesting which is to try to bring together traditional traditional chinese medicine with standard medicine western medicine our he is a doctor of Chinese origin although he has been trained as a physician in the United States in Texas
but he is trying to unite the two fields but his ampara for me his most important contribution was to say that we can't just then meditate by working on the mental states is sitting to meditate that is you have to take care of the posture because it's not the same to meditate it's not the same to meditate in a posture than to meditate in another one but it's not only a mental act of practice of attention of mindfulness it's also an act that involves the body and this for example it is very striking that in some experiments I've had some studies of research when you ask people where you are where are you everybody is located almost all the time
world is located on the forehead where you are on the forehead where you are on the forehead I'm here where would you say it is
your self your mind in the forehead normally what happens that we live from the forehead is to forget the sensations of the body is just living on a plane that is mental the sensations of the body is just living in a plane that is mental to forget the sensations of the body is as Dr
Damasio has been demonstrating for 20 years demonstrating makes our decision making is always so much more erratic that we consider rational decision making as something that so it has been seen that it is absolutely false that we need to include we need to include emotion but above all that it is once again revealing everything that is the unconscious what is the unconscious processing that today in day we could call interoceptive of the information it is the whole body which decides then when these experiments arise when we discuss about it one of the questions not that always arises at scientific congresses is then who decides me or my gut me or my heart me or my heart me or my position because what was put forth today the new paradigm is to say it's not that you are you are also your intestine you are also your posture you are also your heart you are also your heart so let's stop saying where you are here where you are the whole body you are everything the conscious the unconscious the the bodily and the mental the internal organic and the structure of your body and this then is which is now bringing about a lot of change in neuroscience which is in neuroscience, which is to dislocate a little bit what is what are the mental processes of the brain in order to to take them to what is the whole body because so something as complex as decision making has been seen and involves the decision making and it involves the whole body [Sound] [Music]
Audio:
Subtitules:
What is an unhappy brain like?
Gut microbiota
Why does the brain need to listen to the body?
Stress is an emotion. How does our brain manage it?
The gut: our first brain
The influence of breathing on the brain
What are stress and anxiety?
Do we make decisions with our body or with reason?
The influence of body posture on our mind
Neuroscience of meditation