Front edge of neurobiology

Scientists joke: "If you include a picture with the image of the brain in your presentation, your report is considered more scientific." This was also understood in show business when they began to invite specialists in the brain to television programs. Everyone wants to understand the reactions of their brain and now, but this is not so easy. What can scientists in the Hamburg account still cannot understand? The host of the Hamburg account program on the OTR Olga Orlova spoke with the director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuronac of the Higher School of Economics Vasily Klyucharyov .

Vasily Klyucharyov, neurobiologist, specialist in cognitive technologies. In 1994 he graduated from the Faculty of Biology of St. Petersburg State University with a degree in physiology. In 2000, he defended his thesis in neurobiology. From 2000 to 2013, he conducted scientific work at the Helsinki Technological University, Rotterdam University of Erasmus. He led research in the field of neuroeconomics at the University of Basel. Since 2013 - Vedas. scientific. sore. Center for Neuro -Economics and Cognitive Research of the Higher School of Economics. The deputy dealer on the science of behavior at the Faculty of Social Sciences also worked. Since 2017 - Director of the Institute of Cognitive Neuronauk of the Higher School of Economics.

- Vasily, you starred in the television program “Amazing People” for two seasons as a jury member, where the participants showed their incredible abilities, including intellectual ones. And all this in conditions of stress. So as a scientist, it was interesting?

- Yes, it was a curious task and a call for me personally. Because sometimes for the first time in your life you are faced with new situations and try to explain them from the point of view of the brain. Therefore, I had to read quite a lot and prepare for these events. Sometimes some of the tasks that I saw on the stage were at a dead end.

- It was that you did not immediately understand how a person does it, from the point of view of the brain?

- Yes. Moreover, in some cases I had to invite a participant, and we talked in the laboratory. There was an absolutely wonderful participant who was able to speak in the reverse order. He can invert speech. And he does it online. He talks to you, pronouncing the words in the reverse order. He can read the work before your eyes, in the reverse order, having sounds. At the same time, he really does this so masterfully that when you write down these words and lose in the reverse order, they look like a completely normal speech. It surprised me so much that I brought him to our laboratory for research.

- That is, the participants are not magicians, they really demonstrate what they can?

- In my opinion, these are people with remarkable abilities, sometimes outstanding, sometimes at the level of world records for memorizing information and so on. Most of them are ordinary people who developed quite unusual achievements. It may seem impossible for someone to remember tens of thousands of digits, but this can be done in a certain methodology. In fact, this was one of the most important discoveries for me. I did not expect a person to use the resources of his brain so cool.

In our laboratory, we study the decision -making processes in a stress situation and not only. And, apparently, stress triggers very serious fundamental biological processes in our brain, associated with mobilizing the body in a difficult situation and starting such a basic reaction to "fight this situation or run away." This situation very seriously affects our decisions, launching automatic decision -making processes. In such a situation, the brain triggers automatism. We either inclined to a chaotic reaction, or launch the first thing that comes to our minds.

If the human brain is “trained”, then in a stressful situation in the memory, the sequence of accurate solutions pops up. In the process of making decisions, we either use the so -called system 1 (emotional skills system), or use system 2, the so -called system of rational solutions, where we can think over our solution. In a stress situation, system 1 is launched - an emotional skills system.

Why is it so interesting to study? Because this is such a tiny area in our temporal sections called “tonsils”, or “amygdala”. It causes a surge of hormones in the blood, our adrenal glands emit cortisol or adrenaline, all this mobilizes the body. And he is mobilizing to fight this situation. And you have a glucose release into the blood, you have a heartbeat. You are mobilizing, but this has the opposite side. For example, your immune system is suppressed to mobilize all resources. Decisions begin to be made differently. In this situation, we are not prone to creative solutions. We tend to slide into skills. And if there are no skills, rather an ordinary person will make chaotic decisions using the fact that the first will occur to him.

-After all, on the set of that program, you were in an unusual situation: a scientist, the head of the laboratory is among representatives of show business. Filming lasted quite a long time. What influenced your decision?

- Yes, this is a difficult question - to participate in such a show. In principle, between us, among scientists, the reputation of television is soaked. Therefore, going on a large screen is actually ...

- This is a risk for your reputation.

- This is a risk for my reputation. To the honor of the creators of this program, they still try to involve a scientist with a good goal: in order to interpret some abilities that are shown on the screen. There were many reasons to take part in this program. The first - it was curious to look around the whole curtain. And I must say that for me it was a surprise that during the filming of the first season we were in the studio until five in the morning. And at 9:00 I appeared at the university, studied with my students. It was serious stress.

“Did you feel like a star?” So the stars live - they work until five in the morning.

- Yes, it was unexpected. When I was thinking about whether to accept an invitation to this program, I thought about this. Most scientists are also teachers. And we are involved in a number of programs (master and bachelors). We are trying to attract the most interesting, promising students. And it is quite difficult to reach out to parents, which very seriously affect the choice of future applicants. Once, a lady came up to me at a public scientific event and said: “My child wants to become a neurobiologist. What a horror! He will die of hunger. " And I had to talk with her about the fact that a modern scientist is far from a poor, hungry person who is engaged in an incomprehensible business that is not necessary for anyone. And the television audience is an opportunity to reach out to parents and little kids who have not yet gone online. This is an opportunity to talk to them directly about how interesting it is actually engaged in science.

- So that the parents have changed the idea of ​​scientists?

- Yes. There is a third important aspect, which, in principle, makes scientists in public talk about scientific discoveries. I spent 15 years at European universities. I was surprised how often European scientists communicate with the public: open days, when laboratories open to everyone. Once in Holland, I asked the director of the center why we spend so much time to talk with ordinary people. And he, with a very serious expression on his face, answered: “You see, Vasily, most of the money that we receive is the money of taxpayers. Most of our grants are state grants. We must tell people who give us money, what we do. ” And it sounded pathetic. But after 15 years of such experience, I came to the fact that we should talk about what we are doing. Our laboratory is quite open. We have many days of open doors. Once every two weeks, we drive people for one or another occasion to our laboratories, make lecture cycles and so on. We spend money of not such wealthy taxpayers. We must tell them about what is happening in modern science. So to participate in that program there were many reasons, including curiosity.

- How much that you saw is applicable or not applicable in the research of your laboratory?

- We study the decision -making process in a variety of hypostases - how these or other centers of the brain interact when making a decision. I already mentioned that there are two basic decision -making systems - emotional and rational. How do we see this process? These are such swings of activity in different centers of our brain. If the swing is inclined in favor of a rational decision, these areas are more active, we make a rational decision. If the swing is inclined in favor of emotional areas, evolutionarily ancient areas, we make an emotional, sometimes non -adaptive, decision. And many factors affect these swings. Stress affects the fact that we use the alcohol system can persuade the scales in one string. Self -control in another and so on. The brain notes even inconspicuous information keys to which we, it would seem, do not pay attention, changing the “weight” of emotional and rational factors in the decision -making system.

- And how do experiments go? How do you see processes in the brain?

- Sometimes we influence the brain. One of the most interesting topics that we are currently engaged in (my graduate students are doing this) is the process of making a decision to prove each other and help each other. In fact, this is a great riddle why people help, why a person is not a wolf.

-But altruism as a mechanism of evolution is a more or less known thing. There are situations when it is evolutionarily profitable to help each other.

- So we study this process, as the brain understands that it is beneficial to help. And moreover, we study the specific stage. This is our reaction to committing injustice. In the theory of decision -making, there are quite a lot of studies of how people react to injustice. For example, into an unfair division of money.

-And you can fix it according to the reactions of the brain, that in case of injustice, when someone was unfairly deprived of money, the brain reacts in a certain way? What happens at this time?

-You can scan the brain using a magnetic resonance scanner. Just in the dilemma that I mentioned, this is called the "game in the ultimatum." What happens in the brain of a person who is offered an unfair amount of money? Studies show that a number of very emotional areas react to an unfair proposal. And we can influence these areas. We do this using, for example, transcranial magnetic stimulation. We can temporarily suppress a particular area of ​​the brain and see how the decision -making process changes. That is, we can not only register brain activity with a scanner, but also affect this activity with stimulation.

Our colleagues in Zurich, for example, suppressed a certain area in the frontal lobes and showed that people begin to agree with unfair decisions. Here you can begin to study in detail what is happening in the brain. For example, if our brain is similar to the brain of other animals, it is found that the monkeys of the capucins have the same reaction to injustice. The monkeys, with whom we diverged 35 million years ago in evolution, also react to the unjust division of resources.

- That is, their brain reactions are the same as ours when they see injustice?

- Yes, and you can find interesting videos of how fiercely tiny monkeys react to the unjust division of resources.

In our laboratory, we are moving a little one step further. We are interested in how people react when they see that someone is behaving unfair with another person. That is, you are not directly involved. You are a witness. Why is it important to study? Because, apparently, in large groups it is very important that not only participants in events react to injustice, but also observers, witnesses. Many mathematical models show: in order to establish justice in a large group, you should not pass by those people who behave unfairly, and not even with you, but with someone else.

We study which areas of the brain are involved in what is called punishment by a third party, that is, a witness, an outsider. And very curious. My graduate student Oksana Zinchenko shows that by stimulating certain areas, we can influence the fact that people punish or do not punish the injustice that is not happening with them.

- That is, it turns out that we can cause the reaction we need for several witnesses?

- Yes, we now understand more and more how the brain programs this reaction. Apparently, there are three important networks in the brain related to reactions to the injustice that we have observed. The first reaction is associated with the scurvy bark. This is a very ancient area of ​​the brain between your hemispheres. She discovers this injustice. She “sees” that something is happening wrong. And signals to other areas of the brain: “So, you have to turn on. There there is a violation of our traditions, norms, justice, etc. ”

The second important area we study is turned on just at this moment. It is associated with empathy. If you do not sympathize with this person (a person not of our group, a bastard who is punished in the case, and so on), you will not punish in response to violation of cooperation standards. You mentally say to yourself: “Because he is a bastard. Because this is not our man, he is not from our tribe, I will not sympathize with him. ” For this, the region is responsible for the border between the occipital and parietal cortex, associated with empathy, with how much we sympathize with the person with whom injustice is happening. We are just studying it now. Indeed, by manipulating the activity of this area, one can influence whether a person punishes or does not punish. That is, this is the second important stage in the decision to punish (are there any sympathy for the victim of resentment).

And finally, there is a third area - these are frontal areas of the brain. They embody specific punishment. We study this cascade of processes in the brain, from the discovery that someone behaves unfairly, to sympathy and empathy to a person, in relation to which injustice is happening, and the embodiment of a specific punishment. And we can affect each of these processes with our tools. This is very curious. We better understand in many ways some kind of automatism of cooperation support in our group.

- If you understand this whole process thoroughly and learn how to manage it, hence the whole huge complex of ethical and technological consequences and problems immediately arises. Isn't it?

- The question of possible manipulations is the often arising question when I talk with students: "How can you manipulate people using these technologies?"

- Which border can you reach? Do students ask you such questions?

- Very often.

“Does it excite them?”

- Yes, and very serious. Fortunately or unfortunately, we have such massive tools that we cannot influence them on a large number of people. I say to my students at a lecture that if a strange person with a large magnetic coil approached you, put it to your head and begins to do something with your brain, just run away from it. You cannot but notice that I came up to you with a magnetic coil. Therefore, our modern methods do not allow manipulating a person.

We are more likely to find out fundamental mechanisms, including cooperation. This is actually an important point. When you discuss this problem with people who, for example, have some religious beliefs, then they sometimes have a shock from what our research should-people have a fundamental (evolutionarily determined) need for cooperation, that this is our fundamental property. And that there is no need to attract religious aspects in order to explain the need for mutual assistance.

- How could this be used in practice?

- We are quite seriously engaged in technological applications. Within the framework of Megagrant, we opened the laboratory for the brain-computer interfaces. We are engaged in a very interesting task. We invited a wonderful Russian scientist Mikhail Lebedev. He works for many years at the University of Duke in the USA. Michael is a real futurist and man of the future. Together with the outstanding Brazilian neurobiologist Miguel Nikolelis (Miguel Nicolelis), they “combine” the brain with a computer. And their idea, that maybe in the future we will develop through such technologies, first of all, of course, helping people who have health problems.

All their projects were aimed at helping paralyzed patients. After all, the brain in a paralyzed person loses its connection with the outside world. And their idea is to implant some chip into the brain and allow a person to communicate with the outside world, for example, an artificial limb. They did the first research on monkeys. And you can find fantastic examples of how monkeys control metal prostheses that allow the monkey to take a piece of apple. The monkey appears “third hand” directly connected to the brain.

Еще одно исследование позволило обезьяне использовать аватар на экране. Обезьяна приобретает виртуальную конечность и может с помощью этой конечности выполнять манипуляции уже в виртуальной среде компьютера. Это абсолютно футуристические исследования. Цель нашей новой лаборатории — создать такой интерфейс, который будет не только командовать внешними приборами, например вашим аватаром, и будет выполнять все ваши желания, но и получать обратную информацию, и, может быть, даже виртуальную информацию.

Представьте себе, что вы притрагиваетесь к виртуальной поверхности и ощущаете ее шероховатость. То есть ваш аватар путешествует по киберпространству, и вы чувствуете, к чему он прикасается. Это такой футуристический план. И первые исследования Михаила в США показали, что с обезьянами это получается. Обезьяна может погрузиться в виртуальное пространство. Дотрагиваясь аватаром до определенных поверхностей, она чувствует, получает виртуальные ощущения.

И то, что он делает, это, конечно, фантастично. Он объединяет мозги трех обезьян в сеть. И они вместе выполняют одну задачу. Одной обезьяне не объяснить, что им вместе нужно управлять электромобилем или двигать на экране какой-то объект, но три мозга вместе могут научиться это делать. В одном проекте, например, три мозга обезьян вместе предсказывали погоду. То есть идет работа по созданию гипермозга, гиперсети. Каждый раз, когда я узнаю про его новые исследования, я в некотором шоке. Это передний край нейротехнологий, нейробиологии. И мы попробуем развить такие технологии в России, в нашем институте.

Василий Ключарёв
Беседовала Ольга Орлова

Видеозапись передачи см. otr-online.ru/programmy/gamburgskii-schet/vasilii-klyucharev-kak-31744.html