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PROFESSOR: OK what I want to
do for the first couple of

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minutes of today's lecture,
well, I guess looking at the

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hand-out what I want to do is
play fill- in- the- blank with

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this great picture
of a neuron.

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I got to talk about the gross
structure of the brain last

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time, but I didn't get to say
anything about a neuron.

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Neurons are the, are
brain cells.

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Not all are brain
cells, right?

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This is going to be a neuron.

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At least half the cells in the
brain would be in the category

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of glia, that's a word that
comes from the word for glue.

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And all the years I was learning
about this stuff,

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glia kind of got shoved into the
category of like support

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staff, right?

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These were the guys who cleaned
up after the neurons

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who were doing all
the cool stuff.

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But it's becoming increasingly
clear that glia have many

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functions to play in brain
function beyond the merely

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vegetative, and if you go into
neuro-science, odds are that

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you'll end up learning a lot
more about glia than I did

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when I was taking the equivalent
of course.

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But the main units, if you like
computational units for

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the brain are neurons and so
here's a quick tour of a sort

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of a canonical typical neuron.

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A typical neuron would collect
information either from other

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neurons on from sense organs
through its dendrites, the

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word comes from tree-like,
because

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its branching structure.

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So all these little branches
making connections with lots

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of other neurons or with sense
organs in say the skin or

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something like that, and the
information that the dendrites

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collect you can think of as
being in the form of little

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pulses of excitation
or inhibition.

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They can be either positive
or negative in nature.

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They flow down towards
the cell body here.

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The neuron is a cell
like other cells.

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It does all those good cellular
sorts of things, but

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for the purposes, for our
purposes, its big job is to

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act as a sort of a summator and
to ask, how excited am I?

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Am I, you know, if I sum up all
these pluses and minuses,

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am I excited enough to want to
tell other neurons about my

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level of excitement here?

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If the excitement passes a
threshold, the neuron sends an

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action potential, a signal,
an action potential --

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no, that doesn't look
right, does it?

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Well, potential, there we go.

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This is why there's a handout,
right, because I can't spell

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under good circumstances, and
I can't spell online at all.

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Anyway, that should
say potential.

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It sends a signal down the axon,
the long wire of the

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neuron is the axon.

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That action potential has
a couple of important

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properties.

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Property one is that it's
of a single polarity.

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There aren't pluses and
minuses, there's

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just a single polarity.

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And it's a fixed size.

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A more excited neuron does
not produce bigger action

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potential, so how's a neuron
going to tell another neuron

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that it's more excited?

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Would you guess?

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It's going to say make more
action potential.

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So its frequency coating it's
level of excitement.

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But action potentials are fixed
size, and fixed sign

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electro chemical signals
powering their

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way down this axon.

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These bumps wrapping around
the axon are actually

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another cell type.

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They're a form of glia
known as myelin.

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They act as, it acts as
insulation, keeping the signal

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in one neuron separate from the
signal in others, and it

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also acts to speed
transmission.

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There are a number of
neurological diseases whose

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cause is not a problem with the
neuron, but a problem with

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the myelin.

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De-myelinating diseases, like
multiple sclerosis, for

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example, have their affect
because the insulation is

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breaking down, not because the
nerve cells themselves are

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breaking down.

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That signal reaches the
arborization of the axon.

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It then goes off and talks to
a bunch of other neurons.

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Or if this was a motor neuron,
it would be talking to muscle.

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Typically it does not make a
direct electrical contact.

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If you look at connections
between stuff in your

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computer, those are direct
electrical contacts.

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Not the way things work
in the nervous system.

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In the nervous system, there's a
small gap, called a synapse,

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and to signal from one neuron
to another, an electrical

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signal coming down the axon
causes chemicals to be

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released into the gap.

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They diffuse across the gap and
bind to receptors on the

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other side, and that binding
either produces a little plus

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or a little minus, depending on
the nature of the chemical,

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the nature of the receptor,
and then the whole process

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starts again.

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So you go from an essentially
electrical signal to a

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chemical signal then back to an

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essentially electrical signal.

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These neuro trans, so called
neurotransmitter chemicals are

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the targets of lots of the
drugs that are used to

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modulate mental states, like

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antidepressant drugs, for example.

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And not just drugs over- the-
counter, or not just

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prescription drugs.

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Let's see, what are you
drinking there?

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Oh that's just tea,
how boring.

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Well, I wasn't actually thinking
she was probably

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putting away a margarita,
but that drug would be

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working on a synapse.

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The caffeine that you are
pouring into your brain is

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working on neurotransmitter
and synaptic properties.

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That where you get your chance
to affect large numbers of

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neurons at one time.

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We'll talk more about
that later.

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Now if I look at my cute little
diagram, yes you should

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have been able by now to
fill in all the --

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I wonder what that interesting
thing is at the top, actually,

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the middle one at the top.

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What do you figure?

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Cell?

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It's not axon.

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It's not myelin.

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Those are the two at the bottom
right and center.

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The one on the top right
is pointing to synapse.

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The one at the top left is
pointing to dendrites, and the

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one at the bottom left is
pointing to the cell body.

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So --

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AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

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PROFESSOR: Well, the one on the
bottom left, I figure, is

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pointing to the soma,
or cell body.

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I think the one at the top
middle is pointing to the

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whole thing.

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AUDIENCE: Neuron.

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PROFESSOR: Neuron, yeah.

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AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

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PROFESSOR: Oh maybe,
ah, yes, thank you.

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Oh, somebody's been doing
their reading.

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Yes, OK, she, you are correct.

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So the top middle is almost
undoubtedly pointing to the

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axon, that whole long thing.

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And the bottom, what she's
pointing out is that the

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bottom middle one is pointing
to the valleys amongst the

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bumps, and those are called
the Nodes of Ranvier.

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Undoubtedly named after, you
know, Joe Ranvier, who I don't

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know anything about.

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But the way that myelin speeds
up transmission is it makes it

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possible for the action
potential, rather than just

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going down the axon in a nice
smooth fashion, it jumps from

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node to node.

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And so that's why the nodes
are interesting.

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OK, I'm glad we've
solved that.

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You would have thought I would
have thought about that before

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putting the thing
on the handout.

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OK, any other questions about
neurons or things, yes --

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AUDIENCE: So, soma, is that
boring cell stuff happening

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all over the place?

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PROFESSOR: I mean, well, there's
boring cell stuff

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happening all over the place.

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We shouldn't, of course call it
boring cell stuff, because

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then guys in like, course seven
come in and, well, you

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know, put a hit on
us and things.

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But yeah, neurons are cells like
other cells and they have

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to do all the, you know,
respiratory things that other

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cells have to do.

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But, you know, our interest in
them, of course, is as little

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communication and computational
units.

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Yes?

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AUDIENCE: What is the
myelin, exactly?

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PROFESSOR: It's another cell
type that wraps around the

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axon and acts as insulation
and speed bumps, I guess.

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You think of is these as the
speed bumps, except they speed

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things up rather than
slowing things down.

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Boy I bet that just
confused matters.

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OK that said, what I want to
today is to talk about why we

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do anything.

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It's the general topic
of motivation.

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But, you might, well, you might
ask a question like, why

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do you eat?

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And you say, well, you got to
eat because you need -- if you

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don't eat, you die.

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AUDIENCE: Prove it.

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PROFESSOR: Prove it, right.

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That's not a stupid point.

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He meant it as a stupid point,
but it's not a stupid point.

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Does a rat -- why
does a rat eat?

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Does it know it's
going to die?

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Is a rat sort of sitting
there, you know, with

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existential concerns
about it's --

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I don't think so,
particularly.

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And even if it were the case,
now, if you don't you you're

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going to die.

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Well, so what?

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YOu've got to answer --

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I mean is it why you do anything
is a question that

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requires some sort
of an answer.

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And I will give a three-
part answer.

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Part one of the answer will be
that you are a slave to, you

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do things as a slave
to the environment.

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Part two will be that you do
things, as a slave, in fact,

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to your own brain, and part
three will be to say well,

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parts one and two seemed a
little simple- minded, we'd

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better try and get to a somewhat
richer explanation

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that might explain why you're
sitting here in a classroom

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doing this rather complicated
activity, since what we'll be

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talking about is -- oh, one of
the things will be talking

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about is the reason that -- is
the obvious fact that I'm a

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psych professor and
not an artist.

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00:12:02,580 --> 00:12:06,560
So you will have to bear with
the fact that, for present

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purposes, that is a cat,
and that is a rat.

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You are neither, are the third
part of the lecture will be

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00:12:20,400 --> 00:12:27,310
devoted to trying to talk up
about the richer set of

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motivations that you might have,
and that even animals

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might have.

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Well, a good starting place,
even if it's a bad bit of art,

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00:12:37,210 --> 00:12:38,570
would be --

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00:12:38,570 --> 00:12:42,360
this is an unusually pathetic
cat, even for me.

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00:12:42,360 --> 00:12:48,340
Back in the --

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shortly before the turn of the
last century, Thorndike,

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00:12:53,520 --> 00:12:57,640
Edward Thorndike up at Harvard
was doing experiments of the

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00:12:57,640 --> 00:13:03,150
following form: he would take
cats, who were hungry cats,

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and he would throw them in a box
that looked sort of like a

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00:13:08,170 --> 00:13:13,830
packing crate kind of thing, you
know, slats all the place,

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and outside of the box is fish,
well, bit of fish, but

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if I drew a bit of fish, you'd
never know what it was.

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This at least looks sort
of like a fish.

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So there's a bit of fish.

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You got a hungry cat.

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You got the fish.

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Cat wants fish.

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What's the cat going to do?

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Well, the cat is of bouncing
off the walls being annoyed

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00:13:36,020 --> 00:13:42,230
and agitated and the way this
box is set up is, well,

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they're called puzzle boxes,
because in effect, er there's

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00:13:47,190 --> 00:13:48,230
a trick to getting out.

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00:13:48,230 --> 00:13:53,000
It might be that there's a
lever back here that's

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attached to some string and
pulley arrangement that lifts

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a gate over here, and if the
cat happens to bounce into

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00:14:02,750 --> 00:14:07,185
this lever, the gate goes
up, the cat goes

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00:14:07,185 --> 00:14:08,010
out, gets the fish.

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00:14:08,010 --> 00:14:10,310
Great, well it's a little piece
of fish, and he's a

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00:14:10,310 --> 00:14:11,230
hungry cat.

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00:14:11,230 --> 00:14:14,620
And what happens to the cat
immediately thereafter, is

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00:14:14,620 --> 00:14:18,700
Thorndike grabs the cat again,
throws him back in the box.

244
00:14:18,700 --> 00:14:19,630
What's the cat do?

245
00:14:19,630 --> 00:14:26,730
Well, whatever the cat is doing,
what Thorndike is doing

246
00:14:26,730 --> 00:14:33,500
is measuring the amount of time
that it takes for the cat

247
00:14:33,500 --> 00:14:36,800
to get out of the box.

248
00:14:36,800 --> 00:14:41,230
As a function of the number of
times that the cat has been

249
00:14:41,230 --> 00:14:42,890
chucked back in the box.

250
00:14:42,890 --> 00:14:49,040
So you've got time as a function
of -- we can call

251
00:14:49,040 --> 00:14:50,960
them trials, the number
of times the cat

252
00:14:50,960 --> 00:14:52,120
has been in the box.

253
00:14:52,120 --> 00:14:54,160
It initially takes the cat
some amount of time.

254
00:14:54,160 --> 00:14:57,980
The next time maybe it's a
little quicker, and you got

255
00:14:57,980 --> 00:15:02,150
some sort of a function that
eventually gets to some sort

256
00:15:02,150 --> 00:15:05,050
of asymptote where you chuck
the cat in the box.

257
00:15:05,050 --> 00:15:07,790
The cat looks at you in a
disgusted kind of way.

258
00:15:07,790 --> 00:15:10,860
Goes over to level, says
"plahtttt", eats the fish,

259
00:15:10,860 --> 00:15:14,560
says, OK, we gotta do
this again, fine.

260
00:15:14,560 --> 00:15:16,830
This is a learning curve.

261
00:15:16,830 --> 00:15:20,060
In fact, this is the original
use of the term learning

262
00:15:20,060 --> 00:15:21,910
curve, when you talk about going
up the learning curve

263
00:15:21,910 --> 00:15:26,020
and stuff like that, you
are invoking Thorndike.

264
00:15:26,020 --> 00:15:31,030
What is the cat learning?

265
00:15:31,030 --> 00:15:34,720
In the 19th century, and even
today if you go to, you know,

266
00:15:34,720 --> 00:15:37,010
the animal section of Borders or
something like that, there

267
00:15:37,010 --> 00:15:39,370
are lots of books that will tell
you about the, you know,

268
00:15:39,370 --> 00:15:44,400
the rich mental life of
your cat, and so on.

269
00:15:44,400 --> 00:15:46,010
Thorndike wasn't buying it.

270
00:15:46,010 --> 00:15:54,580
What Thorndike said was
that there are good

271
00:15:54,580 --> 00:15:56,530
things in the world.

272
00:15:56,530 --> 00:15:59,170
We'll call those reinforcers.

273
00:16:06,230 --> 00:16:08,670
They come in two forms.

274
00:16:08,670 --> 00:16:10,610
There are positive
reinforcers.

275
00:16:16,240 --> 00:16:21,240
Well here, as an example, if
you tell a joke and people

276
00:16:21,240 --> 00:16:24,840
laugh, that's a positive
reinforcer. you did something.

277
00:16:24,840 --> 00:16:26,960
Something good happened.

278
00:16:26,960 --> 00:16:29,200
There are also negative
reinforcers.

279
00:16:33,020 --> 00:16:34,990
Those are also good things.

280
00:16:34,990 --> 00:16:38,360
The jargon IS unfortunate, but
a negative reinforcer is a

281
00:16:38,360 --> 00:16:39,040
good thing.

282
00:16:39,040 --> 00:16:42,020
Focus on the reinforcement part
not the negative part.

283
00:16:42,020 --> 00:16:49,460
A negative reinforcer is the car
alarm is going off, right?

284
00:16:49,460 --> 00:16:54,760
You do something that makes
that noise stop.

285
00:16:54,760 --> 00:16:56,450
Right, that's a good thing.

286
00:16:56,450 --> 00:17:00,230
The sensation of something
unpleasant, like hunger, for

287
00:17:00,230 --> 00:17:02,190
example, is a negative
reinforcer.

288
00:17:02,190 --> 00:17:03,860
It's also a good thing.

289
00:17:03,860 --> 00:17:07,360
A bad thing in this jargon
is punishment, is called

290
00:17:07,360 --> 00:17:09,880
punishment, right?

291
00:17:09,880 --> 00:17:11,660
You tell a joke.

292
00:17:11,660 --> 00:17:14,420
The person you're telling the
joke to take offense and

293
00:17:14,420 --> 00:17:15,530
smacks you.

294
00:17:15,530 --> 00:17:17,280
That's punishment.

295
00:17:17,280 --> 00:17:21,260
What Thorndike said, what
Thorndike formulated, which is

296
00:17:21,260 --> 00:17:23,640
undoubtedly on the handout
somewhere,

297
00:17:23,640 --> 00:17:28,460
is th law of effect.

298
00:17:28,460 --> 00:17:30,000
Yes, top of the second page.

299
00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:33,990
He proposed what he called
the law of effect.

300
00:17:33,990 --> 00:17:38,840
And he said that something
that's followed by a

301
00:17:38,840 --> 00:17:42,220
reinforcer, a behavior that's
followed by a reinforcer, is

302
00:17:42,220 --> 00:17:44,100
more likely to recur.

303
00:17:44,100 --> 00:17:45,490
Take the job example.

304
00:17:45,490 --> 00:17:49,170
If you tell a joke and somebody,
and people laugh,

305
00:17:49,170 --> 00:17:52,240
the next time the opportunity
presents itself, you are more

306
00:17:52,240 --> 00:17:54,710
likely to tell that joke.

307
00:17:54,710 --> 00:17:59,090
The negative law of effect
is or is not

308
00:17:59,090 --> 00:18:00,140
on the handout somewhere.

309
00:18:00,140 --> 00:18:02,300
Well, yes, there it is, a little
further down under

310
00:18:02,300 --> 00:18:05,320
where it says punishment, the
negative law of effect says

311
00:18:05,320 --> 00:18:07,480
that you do something, and
something bad happens, you're

312
00:18:07,480 --> 00:18:09,010
less likely to do it again.

313
00:18:09,010 --> 00:18:10,490
You tell a joke.

314
00:18:10,490 --> 00:18:13,640
Somebody smacks you, the next
time the opportunity presents

315
00:18:13,640 --> 00:18:17,370
itself, unless you're a teenage
male, odds are that

316
00:18:17,370 --> 00:18:20,760
you won't tell that
joke again.

317
00:18:20,760 --> 00:18:24,520
Well, it is a separate
problem.

318
00:18:24,520 --> 00:18:28,950
This is the burping
problem, right?

319
00:18:28,950 --> 00:18:34,820
When you were like 12 maybe, you
discovered you could burp

320
00:18:34,820 --> 00:18:38,140
the alphabet or something, and
your twelve- year- old guy

321
00:18:38,140 --> 00:18:40,530
friends thought it
was really great.

322
00:18:40,530 --> 00:18:44,370
So the behavior got reinforced,
and unfortunately

323
00:18:44,370 --> 00:18:47,170
it takes a lot of smacks before
you unlearn that, but

324
00:18:47,170 --> 00:18:48,530
that's actually the
next lecture.

325
00:18:48,530 --> 00:18:50,450
We'll talk about
that next week.

326
00:18:53,100 --> 00:18:56,940
I'm looking at the handout and
realizing that I failed to

327
00:18:56,940 --> 00:19:01,470
give you the great
bunny example.

328
00:19:01,470 --> 00:19:05,150
And you're going to look at your
notes later and wonder

329
00:19:05,150 --> 00:19:06,030
what this is.

330
00:19:06,030 --> 00:19:09,490
But I can use that to illustrate
this same point.

331
00:19:09,490 --> 00:19:10,770
I have a rabbit.

332
00:19:10,770 --> 00:19:11,790
Anybody want a rabbit?

333
00:19:11,790 --> 00:19:12,660
We have a rabbit.

334
00:19:12,660 --> 00:19:13,470
It's an accident.

335
00:19:13,470 --> 00:19:14,790
You can have him.

336
00:19:14,790 --> 00:19:18,450
But anyway, this rabbit, when I
go down into the kitchen in

337
00:19:18,450 --> 00:19:20,090
the morning, goes berserk.

338
00:19:20,090 --> 00:19:23,260
He's thumping up and
down in his cage.

339
00:19:23,260 --> 00:19:24,450
Why is he?

340
00:19:24,450 --> 00:19:25,380
Well, what's he doing?

341
00:19:25,380 --> 00:19:31,490
Well basically, he's signaling
that it's time for breakfast.

342
00:19:31,490 --> 00:19:32,920
Not just any breakfast.

343
00:19:32,920 --> 00:19:35,130
If you give him rabbit chow,
he keeps thumping.

344
00:19:35,130 --> 00:19:38,430
He's addicted to Reese's pieces,
not Reese's pieces,

345
00:19:38,430 --> 00:19:40,210
the Reese's cereal.

346
00:19:40,210 --> 00:19:43,320
It's very sad.

347
00:19:43,320 --> 00:19:46,600
He's a sugar cereal junkie.

348
00:19:46,600 --> 00:19:53,150
And in these terms, what's
happened, the way, where his

349
00:19:53,150 --> 00:19:56,170
behavior is coming from, what's
driving his behavior,

350
00:19:56,170 --> 00:19:59,900
is he was making some sort of
arbitrary noise at some point

351
00:19:59,900 --> 00:20:03,870
when we fed him, and perhaps
when we fed him Reese's cereal

352
00:20:03,870 --> 00:20:05,770
the first time.

353
00:20:05,770 --> 00:20:07,090
It was really good.

354
00:20:07,090 --> 00:20:09,810
It was a positive reinforcer.

355
00:20:09,810 --> 00:20:12,560
It made more likely the
behavior that he

356
00:20:12,560 --> 00:20:13,960
had just been doing.

357
00:20:13,960 --> 00:20:17,110
So the next time the opportunity
presented himself

358
00:20:17,110 --> 00:20:19,850
you went thump, thump, thump,
being the right time of day

359
00:20:19,850 --> 00:20:22,050
anyway he got more
Reese's stuff.

360
00:20:22,050 --> 00:20:29,010
And now, by this law of effect
kind of training, he has

361
00:20:29,010 --> 00:20:34,280
learned that if he goes thump,
thump, thump, we'll remember

362
00:20:34,280 --> 00:20:36,500
that it's time for
the sweet cereal.

363
00:20:36,500 --> 00:20:39,590
And he gets very disappointed
when it turns out that, you

364
00:20:39,590 --> 00:20:42,470
know, that the sweet cereal
supply has run out and we're

365
00:20:42,470 --> 00:20:45,270
trying to feed him like some
health food stuff.

366
00:20:45,270 --> 00:20:48,900
He's not interested.

367
00:20:48,900 --> 00:20:52,120
Carrots are OK, but
only barely.

368
00:20:52,120 --> 00:20:56,290
So why is it that animals --

369
00:20:56,290 --> 00:20:59,420
well, how many of you
have cats and dogs?

370
00:20:59,420 --> 00:21:01,070
Cats or dogs, one or the
other, you don't

371
00:21:01,070 --> 00:21:02,140
have to have both.

372
00:21:02,140 --> 00:21:04,740
Almost all of you can probably
tell me something about the

373
00:21:04,740 --> 00:21:07,890
brilliant, intelligent behavior
of this dog that

374
00:21:07,890 --> 00:21:10,550
doesn't sound, or cat, that
doesn't sound like this sort

375
00:21:10,550 --> 00:21:14,230
of accidental learning of an
association between a behavior

376
00:21:14,230 --> 00:21:15,820
and it's consequences.

377
00:21:15,820 --> 00:21:18,180
This sort of association
learning, by the way, is what

378
00:21:18,180 --> 00:21:20,280
I'll talk about, the rules
of it I'll talk about

379
00:21:20,280 --> 00:21:22,390
extensively next week.

380
00:21:22,390 --> 00:21:26,470
But why is it that we're so
convinced that animals have a

381
00:21:26,470 --> 00:21:28,730
much richer intellectual life?

382
00:21:28,730 --> 00:21:30,900
Well, one possibility is that
they do have a richer

383
00:21:30,900 --> 00:21:32,070
intellectual life than this.

384
00:21:32,070 --> 00:21:36,170
The other, the one that
Thorndike thought he was

385
00:21:36,170 --> 00:21:40,570
seeing, was what really boils
down to selective reporting.

386
00:21:40,570 --> 00:21:42,630
Did I put the whole quote
on the handout?

387
00:21:42,630 --> 00:21:44,450
No.

388
00:21:44,450 --> 00:21:49,960
What Thorndike said is dogs get
lost hundreds of times,

389
00:21:49,960 --> 00:21:53,620
and nobody ever notices it
or sends an account to a

390
00:21:53,620 --> 00:21:58,520
scientific magazine, but let
one dog find his way from

391
00:21:58,520 --> 00:22:02,670
Brooklyn to Yonkers, and that
fact immediately becomes a

392
00:22:02,670 --> 00:22:04,370
circulating anecdote.

393
00:22:04,370 --> 00:22:10,330
Thousands of cats, he says, sit
on thousands of occasions

394
00:22:10,330 --> 00:22:14,860
helplessly yowling, and nobody
ever writes to his friend, the

395
00:22:14,860 --> 00:22:16,670
professor, about it.

396
00:22:16,670 --> 00:22:23,980
But let one cat claw at the
knob, seemingly in, supposedly

397
00:22:23,980 --> 00:22:27,590
as a signal to be let out, and
straight away, that cat

398
00:22:27,590 --> 00:22:30,300
becomes the representative
of the cat mind.

399
00:22:30,300 --> 00:22:34,190
What Thorndike thought was, that
you are, well at least

400
00:22:34,190 --> 00:22:37,350
the cat, and by extension,
you are, a slave to your

401
00:22:37,350 --> 00:22:38,490
environment.

402
00:22:38,490 --> 00:22:42,090
The contingencies in your
environment shape what you do.

403
00:22:42,090 --> 00:22:46,540
If the environment rewards you
for pushing this lever, you'll

404
00:22:46,540 --> 00:22:48,230
push this lever.

405
00:22:48,230 --> 00:22:53,840
And the cleverness, and the
content of that, the seeming

406
00:22:53,840 --> 00:22:57,060
content of that, is imposed
from the outside.

407
00:22:57,060 --> 00:22:57,830
It's not there.

408
00:22:57,830 --> 00:22:59,290
It's not necessary.

409
00:22:59,290 --> 00:23:02,880
You can explain it all, you can
explain why you do things

410
00:23:02,880 --> 00:23:08,100
purely in terms of these,
of this law of effect.

411
00:23:08,100 --> 00:23:09,370
Suitably elaborated.

412
00:23:09,370 --> 00:23:15,050
And as I say, the suitable
elaboration on that will come,

413
00:23:15,050 --> 00:23:19,060
will come next week.

414
00:23:19,060 --> 00:23:21,600
The elaboration, by the way,
is known as behaviorism and

415
00:23:21,600 --> 00:23:24,940
the school of scientific, of
psychological thought, that

416
00:23:24,940 --> 00:23:33,270
says that the explanation for
your behavior can be found in

417
00:23:33,270 --> 00:23:40,130
the contingencies that relate
your actions to their

418
00:23:40,130 --> 00:23:43,000
consequences in the world
and that relates, the

419
00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:47,340
relationships between stimulae
in the world.

420
00:23:47,340 --> 00:23:51,670
That gets you some distance, but
what is it that actually

421
00:23:51,670 --> 00:23:54,360
makes something reinforcing?

422
00:23:54,360 --> 00:23:58,140
Why should something be
reinforcing at all?

423
00:23:58,140 --> 00:24:03,190
What is it about say food that,
you know, why does the

424
00:24:03,190 --> 00:24:08,590
cat care that he gets out and
satisfies his hunger?

425
00:24:08,590 --> 00:24:14,500
For that, you want to switch to
the second form of slavery,

426
00:24:14,500 --> 00:24:19,780
which is this notion that
you are slave to your

427
00:24:19,780 --> 00:24:21,860
own brain in a sense.

428
00:24:21,860 --> 00:24:28,630
And the emblematic experiment
for that is done some 50 years

429
00:24:28,630 --> 00:24:31,940
after Thorndike is working
with his puzzle box.

430
00:24:31,940 --> 00:24:35,060
And that comes from an
experiment done by [? Olton ?]

431
00:24:35,060 --> 00:24:35,400
[? Milner ?].

432
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:38,490
It actually started as a mistake
done by [? Olton ?]

433
00:24:38,490 --> 00:24:38,790
[? Milner ?].

434
00:24:38,790 --> 00:24:42,000
Here's what they were doing.

435
00:24:42,000 --> 00:24:45,860
They were sticking electrodes
it's into the brain of rats,

436
00:24:45,860 --> 00:24:52,370
into the brains of rats, down
into the brain stem, because

437
00:24:52,370 --> 00:24:55,280
what they wanted to do
was to study arousal.

438
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:58,550
Centers down in the brain stem,
I mentioned last time,

439
00:24:58,550 --> 00:25:03,120
are intimately involved in
things like sleep and wake, so

440
00:25:03,120 --> 00:25:04,550
a general level of arousal.

441
00:25:04,550 --> 00:25:08,690
How do you know if a rat
is aroused or not?

442
00:25:08,690 --> 00:25:12,480
Well, one of the ways to measure
arousal in a rat is

443
00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:14,360
just to look at the
amount of activity

444
00:25:14,360 --> 00:25:16,170
that that rat is emitting.

445
00:25:16,170 --> 00:25:19,180
A rat that's just sort of
sitting there is not very

446
00:25:19,180 --> 00:25:20,580
aroused, and a rat that's
running around

447
00:25:20,580 --> 00:25:22,380
is presumably aroused.

448
00:25:22,380 --> 00:25:24,240
Great, so they're going to
stick an electrode into a

449
00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:28,750
rat's brain and look at general
levels of activity.

450
00:25:28,750 --> 00:25:30,620
There's a problem
that requires a

451
00:25:30,620 --> 00:25:33,650
control experiment first.

452
00:25:33,650 --> 00:25:38,050
What other than sort of
generalized arousal might get

453
00:25:38,050 --> 00:25:41,280
a rat to run around,
would you think?

454
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:42,650
AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

455
00:25:42,650 --> 00:25:44,970
PROFESSOR: Sticking an electrode
into their brain.

456
00:25:44,970 --> 00:25:49,350
Yeah, well, why might sticking
an elecrode in their brain

457
00:25:49,350 --> 00:25:50,520
make them run around?

458
00:25:50,520 --> 00:25:54,410
AUDIENCE: Pain.

459
00:25:54,410 --> 00:25:55,710
PROFESSOR: Pain, it
might hurt, right?

460
00:25:55,710 --> 00:26:03,130
You know, so suppose all that
happens when you turn on the

461
00:26:03,130 --> 00:26:05,870
electricity, you know, to
stimulate the brain of the rat

462
00:26:05,870 --> 00:26:07,250
is it hurts.

463
00:26:07,250 --> 00:26:09,250
The rat is going to run around,
but you wouldn't want

464
00:26:09,250 --> 00:26:14,580
to argue that this is a center
for generalized arousal.

465
00:26:14,580 --> 00:26:16,700
Plus, you might not really want
to be, you know, hurting

466
00:26:16,700 --> 00:26:17,390
your poor rat.

467
00:26:17,390 --> 00:26:20,300
So anyway, here's the experiment
that they did.

468
00:26:20,300 --> 00:26:25,550
What they did was they watched
the electrodes in the rat, and

469
00:26:25,550 --> 00:26:29,050
they're looking at the rat,
and they only turn the

470
00:26:29,050 --> 00:26:33,500
electricity on when the rat is
over in this part of the cage.

471
00:26:33,500 --> 00:26:35,650
So, turn on the electricity.

472
00:26:35,650 --> 00:26:39,380
If it hurts, what
does the rat do?

473
00:26:39,380 --> 00:26:41,710
AUDIENCE: Runs around.

474
00:26:41,710 --> 00:26:41,970
PROFESSOR: Runs around, but...

475
00:26:41,970 --> 00:26:42,330
AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

476
00:26:42,330 --> 00:26:45,600
PROFESSOR: To the other, but
hey, ooh, it stopped.

477
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:50,590
Now wander back over here,
oh, no, OK, right?

478
00:26:50,590 --> 00:26:52,170
Everybody knows rats
learn this.

479
00:26:52,170 --> 00:26:55,250
They knew that nobody
had done this with

480
00:26:55,250 --> 00:26:57,150
stimulation of the brain.

481
00:26:57,150 --> 00:27:02,260
This is so-called aversive
learning.

482
00:27:02,260 --> 00:27:04,560
One of the typical ways of doing
it is you electrify the

483
00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:07,210
floor of the cage, right?

484
00:27:07,210 --> 00:27:10,930
So, the rat goes over here,
discovers that when he puts

485
00:27:10,930 --> 00:27:14,880
his little rat toes on the cage
floor over here, there's

486
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:17,330
electric current running
through it and

487
00:27:17,330 --> 00:27:19,610
phew, he's over here.

488
00:27:19,610 --> 00:27:22,630
OK, so that's what they did, and
so the rat goes over here,

489
00:27:22,630 --> 00:27:27,860
and on comes the juice for
a little bit, and the rat

490
00:27:27,860 --> 00:27:30,484
doesn't go anywhere, and then
the juice goes off, and the

491
00:27:30,484 --> 00:27:34,180
rat is wandering around and then
the rat comes back over

492
00:27:34,180 --> 00:27:36,720
here, juice comes on
for a little bit.

493
00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:39,140
Rat doesn't go anywhere.

494
00:27:39,140 --> 00:27:42,220
In fact, the rat comes
back over here.

495
00:27:42,220 --> 00:27:46,710
The rat is sort of hanging
around over here, yeah, let's

496
00:27:46,710 --> 00:27:48,730
do that again.

497
00:27:48,730 --> 00:27:57,430
Turns out that the rat was
behaving as though the

498
00:27:57,430 --> 00:27:59,930
stimulation was reinforcing.

499
00:27:59,930 --> 00:28:05,680
We could say as though he wanted
to be stimulated, but

500
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:08,490
it's a little dicey to talk
about what a rat wants or

501
00:28:08,490 --> 00:28:09,100
doesn't want.

502
00:28:09,100 --> 00:28:11,160
So you can use this more
neutral language of

503
00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:11,920
reinforcement.

504
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:16,650
The rat was behaving as though
stimulation of the brain was

505
00:28:16,650 --> 00:28:17,290
reinforcing.

506
00:28:17,290 --> 00:28:19,530
This was a surprise
to [? Olton ?]

507
00:28:19,530 --> 00:28:20,490
[? Milner. ?]

508
00:28:20,490 --> 00:28:24,240
The next surprise came when they
actually looked at where

509
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:28,220
the electrode had gone in this
particular rat's brain.

510
00:28:28,220 --> 00:28:29,870
That's the mistake part.

511
00:28:29,870 --> 00:28:34,740
It turns out the electrode had
bent, and instead of being

512
00:28:34,740 --> 00:28:37,810
where they wanted it in the
brain stem, it was in the

513
00:28:37,810 --> 00:28:40,620
chunk of brain known as the
lateral hypothalamus.

514
00:28:40,620 --> 00:28:43,480
At least we think it was in
the lateral hypothalamus.

515
00:28:43,480 --> 00:28:46,460
Don't actually know, because
not only did the electrode

516
00:28:46,460 --> 00:28:50,060
bend, but then they
lost the brain.

517
00:28:50,060 --> 00:28:54,360
Subsequently, they did
very well for all the

518
00:28:54,360 --> 00:28:55,980
mistakes they made here.

519
00:28:55,980 --> 00:28:57,230
Hypothalamus.

520
00:29:00,420 --> 00:29:07,520
So, what they did that was to
deliberately stick electrodes

521
00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:11,750
into the hypothalamus and to
set the experiment up in a

522
00:29:11,750 --> 00:29:14,410
more formal fashion, beautifully
illustrated here

523
00:29:14,410 --> 00:29:16,770
by my rat, who's got an
electrode in his brain, and

524
00:29:16,770 --> 00:29:19,080
that's a battery up there.

525
00:29:19,080 --> 00:29:20,290
And that's a lever.

526
00:29:20,290 --> 00:29:24,630
Now the rat can go off
and self- stimulate.

527
00:29:24,630 --> 00:29:29,230
He can go and choose, if he
pushes on this lever, he gets

528
00:29:29,230 --> 00:29:33,030
a little pulse of electricity
to his brain.

529
00:29:33,030 --> 00:29:34,250
And what does he do?

530
00:29:34,250 --> 00:29:38,060
Indeed, rats with electrodes
implanted in the right bits of

531
00:29:38,060 --> 00:29:41,710
the lateral hypothalamus will
sit there and work for brain

532
00:29:41,710 --> 00:29:45,420
stimulation, the way another rat
might work for rat pellets

533
00:29:45,420 --> 00:29:49,330
water if it's thirsty or
something like that.

534
00:29:49,330 --> 00:29:51,050
And they'll work hard.

535
00:29:51,050 --> 00:29:56,620
The most dramatic version I can
recall reading is a rat

536
00:29:56,620 --> 00:30:02,160
that will work bar pressing
7,000 times an hour, I think,

537
00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:08,470
for to keep the brain
stimulated there.

538
00:30:08,470 --> 00:30:11,180
So this is apparently
good stuff.

539
00:30:11,180 --> 00:30:12,900
Not everything there
is good stuff.

540
00:30:12,900 --> 00:30:15,950
There are chunks of brain
where the rat will work

541
00:30:15,950 --> 00:30:18,780
actively to turn off
the stimulation.

542
00:30:18,780 --> 00:30:22,360
So again, so turning on the
stimulation would be a

543
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:23,620
positive reinforcer.

544
00:30:23,620 --> 00:30:26,920
Turning off an aversive
stimulation, whether it's

545
00:30:26,920 --> 00:30:29,800
electricity to your feet or
electricity to the wrong part

546
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:33,730
of your brain, that's a
negative reinforcer.

547
00:30:33,730 --> 00:30:35,790
So you know, there's current.

548
00:30:35,790 --> 00:30:38,410
If you push the button
the current stops.

549
00:30:38,410 --> 00:30:42,410
That's good from the rat's
point of view.

550
00:30:42,410 --> 00:30:45,490
In various surveys of rat brain,
it turns out there are

551
00:30:45,490 --> 00:30:48,150
more positive locations than
negative locations.

552
00:30:48,150 --> 00:30:49,910
I don't know.

553
00:30:49,910 --> 00:30:51,710
You know, we don't know if
that's true of humans, and we

554
00:30:51,710 --> 00:30:53,650
don't know if that means
anything -- actually the

555
00:30:53,650 --> 00:30:59,500
study, the study that I noticed
this morning that I

556
00:30:59,500 --> 00:31:02,250
was thinking of here says that
they're 60 percent, in this

557
00:31:02,250 --> 00:31:06,410
one study, 60 percent neutral
locations, 30 percent

558
00:31:06,410 --> 00:31:10,920
rewarding locations, and 5
percent aversive locations.

559
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:13,200
Now the mathematically
sophisticated among you will

560
00:31:13,200 --> 00:31:16,050
notice that adds up
to 95 percent.

561
00:31:16,050 --> 00:31:18,750
And neutral rewarding and
aversive would kind of seem to

562
00:31:18,750 --> 00:31:21,320
cover all the possibilities
here, so I have no idea what

563
00:31:21,320 --> 00:31:23,990
the other 5 percent of
neurons we're doing.

564
00:31:23,990 --> 00:31:26,200
That seems a lot for rounding
error or something.

565
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:32,240
Anyway more pleasant locations
then unpleasant locations.

566
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:37,820
Now, around this time, somebody
who is a science

567
00:31:37,820 --> 00:31:42,060
fiction buff should say, I've
heard this before, it shows up

568
00:31:42,060 --> 00:31:47,160
in one of several classic
science fiction stories.

569
00:31:47,160 --> 00:31:49,980
The world is full of science
fiction stories written by

570
00:31:49,980 --> 00:31:53,220
people just like you, which is
to say people who heard an

571
00:31:53,220 --> 00:31:57,050
introductory psych lecture
and thought I can make a

572
00:31:57,050 --> 00:31:58,240
story out of this.

573
00:31:58,240 --> 00:32:02,890
Memento, is perhaps the most
recent movie example of that.

574
00:32:02,890 --> 00:32:06,280
We'll get to that lecture
later on in the term.

575
00:32:06,280 --> 00:32:10,690
Anybody familiar with the
sci fi story that's

576
00:32:10,690 --> 00:32:13,450
related to the rats here?

577
00:32:13,450 --> 00:32:15,130
Any of the various
sci fi stories?

578
00:32:15,130 --> 00:32:16,690
AUDIENCE: Mrs. Frisbee?

579
00:32:16,690 --> 00:32:16,930
Is

580
00:32:16,930 --> 00:32:17,600
PROFESSOR: Oh, no.

581
00:32:17,600 --> 00:32:20,080
Mrs. Frisbee and the
rats of NIMH.

582
00:32:20,080 --> 00:32:26,140
What's -- no, apart from the
fact that NIMH is short for

583
00:32:26,140 --> 00:32:31,810
the National Institute of Mental
Health and they don't

584
00:32:31,810 --> 00:32:33,370
much care for that.

585
00:32:33,370 --> 00:32:36,070
But what are the rats
of NIMH doing?

586
00:32:36,070 --> 00:32:37,730
Oh no, they're busy
taking drugs and

587
00:32:37,730 --> 00:32:39,880
getting smart, right?

588
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:41,600
Na, Na. they're not sitting
there stimulating their little

589
00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:44,410
selves, yeah.

590
00:32:44,410 --> 00:32:44,830
AUDIENCE: Terminal Man?

591
00:32:44,830 --> 00:32:46,210
PROFESSOR: Yeah, Terminal
Man, that sounds right.

592
00:32:46,210 --> 00:32:47,590
What's Terminal Man's issue?

593
00:32:47,590 --> 00:32:54,100
AUDIENCE: He has epileptic
fits, [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

594
00:32:54,100 --> 00:32:55,470
PROFESSOR: And it does give
him pleasure, yes.

595
00:32:55,470 --> 00:32:56,780
OK that's -- yeah.

596
00:32:56,780 --> 00:33:00,730
AUDIENCE: Flowers
for Algernon?

597
00:33:00,730 --> 00:33:01,170
PROFESSOR: Flowers
for Algernon?

598
00:33:01,170 --> 00:33:03,100
No, what's he doing?

599
00:33:03,100 --> 00:33:04,120
Is he being stimulated?

600
00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:08,800
AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

601
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:12,830
PROFESSOR: Oh yeah, but he just
becomes a super smart rat

602
00:33:12,830 --> 00:33:15,830
like the rats of NIMH one.

603
00:33:15,830 --> 00:33:17,730
He's got a different --

604
00:33:17,730 --> 00:33:19,620
we don't know how to make super
smart rats, we just know

605
00:33:19,620 --> 00:33:23,530
how to make rats who will work
hard on pushing levers.

606
00:33:23,530 --> 00:33:27,700
The Terminal Man one is one of
the sci fi examples that I

607
00:33:27,700 --> 00:33:28,120
know about.

608
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:31,040
Anyway, look, the critical issue
that gets people writing

609
00:33:31,040 --> 00:33:33,630
science fiction stories is,
suppose we did this to a

610
00:33:33,630 --> 00:33:39,360
human, would that human, could
you killed somebody by hooking

611
00:33:39,360 --> 00:33:44,730
them up to self- stimulate their
pleasure center, and

612
00:33:44,730 --> 00:33:45,990
they would kill themselves.

613
00:33:45,990 --> 00:33:47,220
How would they kill
themselves?

614
00:33:47,220 --> 00:33:50,240
By, you know, sitting there, oh,
oh, oh, and forgetting to

615
00:33:50,240 --> 00:33:53,150
eat, right?

616
00:33:53,150 --> 00:33:54,880
Well nobody's ever done this
in humans of course.

617
00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:58,270
It's been done in rats.

618
00:33:58,270 --> 00:34:08,940
And if you put a lever a lever
that gives food next to a

619
00:34:08,940 --> 00:34:13,180
lever the gives stimulation in
a good spot in the rat's

620
00:34:13,180 --> 00:34:21,330
brain, the rat will sit there
and work away on the self-

621
00:34:21,330 --> 00:34:23,890
stimulation lever.

622
00:34:23,890 --> 00:34:28,310
And at least in some of these
studies, well, every now and

623
00:34:28,310 --> 00:34:34,140
then, sort of, say oh, get a
little food, OK, back over

624
00:34:34,140 --> 00:34:35,280
here to the video game stuff.

625
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:38,070
This is really good.

626
00:34:38,070 --> 00:34:40,720
This is what your parents
thought you were doing, right?

627
00:34:40,720 --> 00:34:42,850
Yeah, come on down
and eat dinner.

628
00:34:42,850 --> 00:34:45,280
Oh, Mom, I can't put
it on pause, yeah.

629
00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:46,950
Anyway, the --

630
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:53,320
would an animal actually
kill itself?

631
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:58,290
Gleitman says that hungry rats
will opt for self- stimulation

632
00:34:58,290 --> 00:35:00,670
even though it literally
brings starvation.

633
00:35:00,670 --> 00:35:06,450
And then he sites an article
that I went back and read, and

634
00:35:06,450 --> 00:35:09,710
the rats in that study didn't
starve themselves to death,

635
00:35:09,710 --> 00:35:12,820
because the researchers wouldn't
do it, presumably

636
00:35:12,820 --> 00:35:16,380
because it seemed unethical to
actually let a rat starve

637
00:35:16,380 --> 00:35:18,090
itself to death.

638
00:35:18,090 --> 00:35:20,640
But they will certainly reduce,
you know, they'll

639
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:24,170
certainly get themselves pretty
hungry while amusing

640
00:35:24,170 --> 00:35:27,160
themselves with the, by
stimulating their brain.

641
00:35:27,160 --> 00:35:28,990
There was a hand up, oh there
still is a hand up

642
00:35:28,990 --> 00:35:29,650
there, look at that.

643
00:35:29,650 --> 00:35:37,550
AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

644
00:35:37,550 --> 00:35:43,240
PROFESSOR: I don't know that the
truth or falsity -- so the

645
00:35:43,240 --> 00:35:47,390
story is a guy played video
games for, what was it, 74

646
00:35:47,390 --> 00:35:50,200
straight hours, 74
straight hours in

647
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:52,660
Korea, and then he died.

648
00:35:52,660 --> 00:35:58,610
Actually the Korea part is good
here, because I have no

649
00:35:58,610 --> 00:36:00,830
idea whether this is true
one way or the other.

650
00:36:00,830 --> 00:36:07,110
It has all the Hallmarks of
a so- called urban legend.

651
00:36:07,110 --> 00:36:10,630
It has a grain of plausability,
and is just sort

652
00:36:10,630 --> 00:36:13,810
of one step removed
from checkability.

653
00:36:13,810 --> 00:36:18,120
It's like the Kentucky Fried
breaded rat, right?

654
00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:22,640
Everybody knows somebody else
who knows that their cousin

655
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:25,790
got a breaded rat once.

656
00:36:25,790 --> 00:36:27,660
There are whole books of these
things, they're great.

657
00:36:27,660 --> 00:36:30,420
I don't know, maybe somebody
managed to play video games

658
00:36:30,420 --> 00:36:30,850
until they died.

659
00:36:30,850 --> 00:36:34,140
People do all sorts
of stupid things.

660
00:36:34,140 --> 00:36:38,400
I don't recommend trying
this yourself.

661
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:43,680
In any case, rats will work
very hard in order to

662
00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:45,720
stimulate different parts
of their brain.

663
00:36:45,720 --> 00:36:50,620
What is it that they're
working for?

664
00:36:50,620 --> 00:36:53,240
The evidence suggests that
they're not just working for

665
00:36:53,240 --> 00:36:57,720
some sort of disembodied
pleasure, but that they're

666
00:36:57,720 --> 00:37:01,480
working for the reward
associated with one or the

667
00:37:01,480 --> 00:37:09,750
other of sort of basic hard-
wired, innate reward systems,

668
00:37:09,750 --> 00:37:13,600
that you come with, but that
the rat comes with too.

669
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:20,830
The reason that in this aspect
of the slavery story, that

670
00:37:20,830 --> 00:37:26,410
you'll work to get the fish if
you're the cat is that you

671
00:37:26,410 --> 00:37:30,370
came predisposed to think
that hunger is

672
00:37:30,370 --> 00:37:32,380
bad and food is good.

673
00:37:32,380 --> 00:37:34,660
This, yeah, look, it doesn't
take very sophisticated

674
00:37:34,660 --> 00:37:37,110
evolutionary psychological
theory to think this might be

675
00:37:37,110 --> 00:37:37,840
a good idea.

676
00:37:37,840 --> 00:37:41,370
Organisms that went into the
world thinking that hunger is

677
00:37:41,370 --> 00:37:45,560
good and food is bad had many
fewer progeny than the ones

678
00:37:45,560 --> 00:37:48,280
who thought that hunger was
bad and food was good.

679
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:53,890
So it's not that surprising that
you've got circuitry that

680
00:37:53,890 --> 00:37:57,890
says if you're hungry you want
to go and eat something.

681
00:37:57,890 --> 00:38:01,940
And the centers that are being
stimulated are in chunks of

682
00:38:01,940 --> 00:38:05,940
brain that if you mess with
them, mess with the rat's

683
00:38:05,940 --> 00:38:08,080
ability to regulate
its eating.

684
00:38:08,080 --> 00:38:11,900
So there's a wonderful picture
in Gleitman of a rat with a

685
00:38:11,900 --> 00:38:14,530
hypothalamic lesion,
a lesions in this

686
00:38:14,530 --> 00:38:16,140
sort of chunk of brain.

687
00:38:16,140 --> 00:38:18,690
The specific lesion in this
particular rat is in a chunk

688
00:38:18,690 --> 00:38:20,720
of brains that seems to be
important in telling you when

689
00:38:20,720 --> 00:38:21,630
you're full.

690
00:38:21,630 --> 00:38:23,870
So this rat never knows
that he's full.

691
00:38:23,870 --> 00:38:25,930
With the result, he
just keeps eating.

692
00:38:25,930 --> 00:38:30,210
And so there's this picture in
chapter three of a rat on a --

693
00:38:30,210 --> 00:38:33,290
some of you may already have
seen it, of a rat on one of

694
00:38:33,290 --> 00:38:35,150
those diets scales.

695
00:38:35,150 --> 00:38:37,450
You know, and he looks
like a fury football.

696
00:38:37,450 --> 00:38:39,250
He's just sort of overflowing.

697
00:38:39,250 --> 00:38:43,210
that's And that's because he's
got a specific lesion in this

698
00:38:43,210 --> 00:38:45,110
little specific chunk
of brain.

699
00:38:45,110 --> 00:38:47,220
How do we know that's what's
going on here?

700
00:38:47,220 --> 00:38:51,140
Well, you got a rat who's
working a way to be stimulated

701
00:38:51,140 --> 00:38:53,880
in this little particular
chunk of brain.

702
00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:58,200
And if he, so let's take this
little chunk of brain, if he's

703
00:38:58,200 --> 00:39:01,960
a full rat, if you feed him up,
he doesn't work as hard.

704
00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:03,390
It's just not as interesting.

705
00:39:03,390 --> 00:39:05,420
You know this, in your own --

706
00:39:05,420 --> 00:39:08,800
so, you like M&Ms let's say.

707
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:11,440
You're willing to put, you know,
you're willing to push

708
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:13,900
the lever to get the
M&Ms, right?

709
00:39:13,900 --> 00:39:15,680
You're willing to put the
quarters in the machine.

710
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:17,760
Would you do that forever?

711
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:21,210
No, because eventually you get
full and the M&Ms kind of look

712
00:39:21,210 --> 00:39:22,910
disgusting.

713
00:39:22,910 --> 00:39:25,930
So the same thing
happens here.

714
00:39:25,930 --> 00:39:32,380
So the pleasure that the rat
is getting is modulated by

715
00:39:32,380 --> 00:39:36,870
satisfying, you know, the thing
about direct electrical

716
00:39:36,870 --> 00:39:39,860
stimulation is it gives the
sensation of the satisfaction

717
00:39:39,860 --> 00:39:41,400
without actually satisfying
anything.

718
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:44,740
So, if you're getting the oh,
the M&M is good thing without

719
00:39:44,740 --> 00:39:47,620
getting the M&M, you can sit
there, oh the M&M is good

720
00:39:47,620 --> 00:39:50,290
forever and ever, and
keep working on it.

721
00:39:50,290 --> 00:39:52,090
Okay, so that's this little
chunk of brain.

722
00:39:52,090 --> 00:39:54,270
You go over to this other chunk
of brain where the rat

723
00:39:54,270 --> 00:39:59,660
will also work hard, and that
rat doesn't care if he's full,

724
00:39:59,660 --> 00:40:03,660
that rat cares whether
he's mated recently.

725
00:40:03,660 --> 00:40:07,100
So you know, this one is part,
you know, this little chunk of

726
00:40:07,100 --> 00:40:13,030
brain is presumably related to
the reward systems having to

727
00:40:13,030 --> 00:40:14,440
do with sex and mating.

728
00:40:14,440 --> 00:40:17,600
Again, it doesn't take an
evolutionary psych genius to

729
00:40:17,600 --> 00:40:22,740
figure out that this would
be sensible stuff for a

730
00:40:22,740 --> 00:40:25,250
brain to come with.

731
00:40:25,250 --> 00:40:30,380
Organisms that didn't find
mating rewarding didn't leave

732
00:40:30,380 --> 00:40:31,390
many offspring.

733
00:40:31,390 --> 00:40:34,220
Yeah, just didn't work out
that well for them.

734
00:40:34,220 --> 00:40:36,580
And so, you know, there's
another reward system.

735
00:40:36,580 --> 00:40:42,170
Similarly, for thirst there are
separate reward systems.

736
00:40:42,170 --> 00:40:48,360
OK, so, in some sense you end
up doing stuff in order to

737
00:40:48,360 --> 00:40:51,240
light up little pieces of brain
or to turn off little

738
00:40:51,240 --> 00:40:52,270
pieces of brain.

739
00:40:52,270 --> 00:40:58,820
That's the sense in which you
are a slave to your brain.

740
00:40:58,820 --> 00:41:03,750
Now, you, know that only gets
you so far, because that's

741
00:41:03,750 --> 00:41:04,560
fairly simple.

742
00:41:04,560 --> 00:41:06,290
You know, eat food,
little hunk of

743
00:41:06,290 --> 00:41:08,440
brain says you're happy.

744
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:14,100
Your behavior is somewhat more
complicated than that.

745
00:41:14,100 --> 00:41:17,220
How do we get to that more
complicated behavior?

746
00:41:17,220 --> 00:41:19,010
Well, let's stick with
the M&M example.

747
00:41:19,010 --> 00:41:22,970
How did you get to the M&Ms?

748
00:41:22,970 --> 00:41:26,370
Well, you got to go down to the
vending machine and put

749
00:41:26,370 --> 00:41:27,790
the money in.

750
00:41:27,790 --> 00:41:29,670
And how do you learn
to do that?

751
00:41:29,670 --> 00:41:32,330
Well, maybe you learn to
do that by a chain of

752
00:41:32,330 --> 00:41:37,250
associations back to the M&Ms.
M&Ms, oh, they're good.

753
00:41:37,250 --> 00:41:40,550
Getting M&Ms becomes good
in its own right.

754
00:41:40,550 --> 00:41:44,330
Somebody gives me M&Ms, that
becomes rewarding by

755
00:41:44,330 --> 00:41:46,720
association, with the fact that
I will now get to eat the

756
00:41:46,720 --> 00:41:49,820
M&Ms. This machine will
give me M&Ms, but only

757
00:41:49,820 --> 00:41:51,110
if I give it quarters.

758
00:41:51,110 --> 00:41:53,680
So, I learn to give
it quarters.

759
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:54,700
That's an interesting ring.

760
00:41:54,700 --> 00:41:56,530
It sounded like a regular
old phone.

761
00:41:59,100 --> 00:42:00,190
Put them on vibrate.

762
00:42:00,190 --> 00:42:03,490
That's what I do, because let's
see, well, yeah, it's

763
00:42:03,490 --> 00:42:04,610
just about the right time.

764
00:42:04,610 --> 00:42:07,840
I should be vibrating any time,
woops, not that one.

765
00:42:07,840 --> 00:42:13,430
My tenth grader tends to phone
in after school which is

766
00:42:13,430 --> 00:42:16,470
great, the only thing is that
after school two days a week

767
00:42:16,470 --> 00:42:19,650
turns out to be here,
and it's not a good

768
00:42:19,650 --> 00:42:22,670
time to take a call.

769
00:42:22,670 --> 00:42:26,960
Anyway so ah well, so the tenth
grader, he likes M&Ms.

770
00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:28,870
He needs quarters.

771
00:42:28,870 --> 00:42:33,590
So, he's got to emit behavior
that I like so I'll give him

772
00:42:33,590 --> 00:42:35,140
quarters right?

773
00:42:35,140 --> 00:42:38,000
And so you can see how you
could build back from a

774
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:43,660
primary sort of reinforcer, like
food is good to something

775
00:42:43,660 --> 00:42:48,820
much more remote like cleaning
my room is good.

776
00:42:48,820 --> 00:42:51,730
Why is cleaning my room -- if
I clean my room, daddy gives

777
00:42:51,730 --> 00:42:52,260
me quarters.

778
00:42:52,260 --> 00:42:54,360
If daddy give me quarters,
me I take quarters.

779
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:55,250
I put them in machine.

780
00:42:55,250 --> 00:42:58,230
Machine gives me M&Ms
and all is good.

781
00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:06,580
That's OK, but it probably
doesn't do quite well.

782
00:43:06,580 --> 00:43:11,060
The brain suggests to us that
that isn't quite enough, for

783
00:43:11,060 --> 00:43:15,050
organizing even the feeding
behavior of a complex

784
00:43:15,050 --> 00:43:17,000
organism like us.

785
00:43:17,000 --> 00:43:21,060
Suppose that you are doing --

786
00:43:21,060 --> 00:43:25,000
that what gets you to do your
complicated sort of behavior

787
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:28,330
around feeding is the fact
that you're hungry -- oh,

788
00:43:28,330 --> 00:43:30,580
chapter three will tell you all
about how you know that

789
00:43:30,580 --> 00:43:32,880
you're hungry.

790
00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:34,620
It's lovely sort of
engineering work.

791
00:43:34,620 --> 00:43:38,200
You've got little detectors,
receptor is in the blood.

792
00:43:38,200 --> 00:43:39,550
They're doing things
like keeping track

793
00:43:39,550 --> 00:43:41,250
of blood sugar levels.

794
00:43:41,250 --> 00:43:44,280
When those levels drop, chunks
of brain become active.

795
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:48,730
Activity there is apparently
aversive, probably

796
00:43:48,730 --> 00:43:52,030
corresponding to what you
and I think is hunger.

797
00:43:52,030 --> 00:43:54,480
When you get sugar in,
activity there drops.

798
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:57,790
Lovely, beautiful sort
of control systems.

799
00:43:57,790 --> 00:44:00,505
Stuff worked out in great
detail and discussed in

800
00:44:00,505 --> 00:44:07,280
considerabe detail in chapter
three, but suppose you're not

801
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:10,590
living in your food, right?

802
00:44:10,590 --> 00:44:14,690
Suppose you're, well suppose
you're like out on the plains

803
00:44:14,690 --> 00:44:19,260
of Africa somewhere, and the
M&Ms aren't just sitting over

804
00:44:19,260 --> 00:44:20,520
there in the vending machine.

805
00:44:20,520 --> 00:44:22,480
They're running around, and
you're going to have to hunt

806
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:27,020
them down, right?

807
00:44:27,020 --> 00:44:31,930
If you are sitting around until
the blood sugar level

808
00:44:31,930 --> 00:44:34,930
gets low enough for unpleasant
things to happen in these

809
00:44:34,930 --> 00:44:41,100
hard-wired chunks of brain, to
make you think, OK, all right,

810
00:44:41,100 --> 00:44:45,080
I'll remember this, M&Ms or
wildebeest s, whichever it

811
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:46,920
was, they're good.

812
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:48,680
I can eat them.

813
00:44:48,680 --> 00:44:51,515
To get to wildebeest , I got to
go clean my room -- anyway,

814
00:44:51,515 --> 00:44:53,640
there's some complicated thing
that you gotta do.

815
00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:58,370
But if you wait long enough
before starting, you may not

816
00:44:58,370 --> 00:45:01,220
get it, the job done
in time, right?

817
00:45:01,220 --> 00:45:04,160
It's going to take you a while
to hunt down the wildebeest .

818
00:45:04,160 --> 00:45:08,290
If you wait till the gas tank is
almost empty, yeah you may

819
00:45:08,290 --> 00:45:11,780
find yourself flat out
on the plains with,

820
00:45:11,780 --> 00:45:13,840
you know, no food.

821
00:45:13,840 --> 00:45:19,670
So it would be useful if
something got you up and

822
00:45:19,670 --> 00:45:25,430
mobilized for activity before
you were actually hungry,

823
00:45:25,430 --> 00:45:28,830
before you actually were in some
sort of desperate need.

824
00:45:28,830 --> 00:45:34,760
And the distinction that gets
made, and I trust is bolded at

825
00:45:34,760 --> 00:45:40,250
the, yes, it's down there at the
bottom of page 2, is the

826
00:45:40,250 --> 00:45:45,020
distinction between consummatory
and appetitive

827
00:45:45,020 --> 00:45:48,970
behaviors, or consummatory and
appetitive pet motivations.

828
00:45:48,970 --> 00:45:51,220
consummatory ones, are the ones
we've been talking about

829
00:45:51,220 --> 00:45:53,770
so far, eating M&Ms,
that's good.

830
00:45:53,770 --> 00:45:59,220
Appetitive ones are ones where
the act of looking, if you'd

831
00:45:59,220 --> 00:46:02,230
like, or getting yourself
in a position to

832
00:46:02,230 --> 00:46:04,610
consume is itself rewarding.

833
00:46:04,610 --> 00:46:09,110
In that case of food, that might
be sort of the thrill of

834
00:46:09,110 --> 00:46:11,390
the hunt kind of thing.

835
00:46:11,390 --> 00:46:14,210
Think about cat, right, your
cat that likes to jump on

836
00:46:14,210 --> 00:46:15,120
anything that moves.

837
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:16,310
Why is that?

838
00:46:16,310 --> 00:46:22,070
It's because the cat is hard
wired to like hunting stuff.

839
00:46:22,070 --> 00:46:25,900
It's just fun to grab
stuff and kill it.

840
00:46:25,900 --> 00:46:30,810
Now that's a useful thing to
do if you are a cat-like

841
00:46:30,810 --> 00:46:33,520
animal because then there's
going to be something around

842
00:46:33,520 --> 00:46:35,950
to eat when those blood sugar
levels drop and you need to,

843
00:46:35,950 --> 00:46:37,810
you know, chew on a wildebeest
for a while.

844
00:46:37,810 --> 00:46:41,180
And it's pretty clear that we
have similar, actually, it's

845
00:46:41,180 --> 00:46:43,840
pretty clear that in yesterday's
political news

846
00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:53,190
that we have similar sorts of
circuitry in ourselves.

847
00:46:53,190 --> 00:46:55,980
Yesterday the assault
rifle, the

848
00:46:55,980 --> 00:46:58,550
assault weapon ban expired.

849
00:46:58,550 --> 00:47:01,100
Bush spent a lot of time
not talking about it.

850
00:47:01,100 --> 00:47:03,810
Kerry spent a lot of times
saying I'm a hunter.

851
00:47:03,810 --> 00:47:04,670
I love to hunt.

852
00:47:04,670 --> 00:47:06,870
I love to jump on moving things
and stuff like that,

853
00:47:06,870 --> 00:47:08,650
but I've never done it with
an assault weapon.

854
00:47:08,650 --> 00:47:10,330
You don't need to use an --

855
00:47:10,330 --> 00:47:11,760
he was on the --

856
00:47:11,760 --> 00:47:16,250
but he was very big on pointing
out that he loves to

857
00:47:16,250 --> 00:47:18,430
hunt, because apparently there's
lots of people who

858
00:47:18,430 --> 00:47:22,810
love to hunt and go out and
you know, shoot things and

859
00:47:22,810 --> 00:47:24,940
sometimes eat things.

860
00:47:24,940 --> 00:47:29,010
This is presumably related to,
this is presumably a form of

861
00:47:29,010 --> 00:47:32,160
appetitive behavior in humans.

862
00:47:32,160 --> 00:47:34,150
If you don't happen to love to
hunt it doesn't mean that

863
00:47:34,150 --> 00:47:37,160
you're missing a piece
of your brain.

864
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:44,320
Another realm where appetitive
behavior is important is in

865
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:48,840
the sex and romance
department, right?

866
00:47:48,840 --> 00:47:56,600
If it were not the case that
the act of looking up for a

867
00:47:56,600 --> 00:48:01,830
mate is motivating in its own
right, well, what are you

868
00:48:01,830 --> 00:48:06,240
going to do, you know, wait
around until all of a sudden,

869
00:48:06,240 --> 00:48:08,930
I don't know, whatever levels
it is drops low enough, ugh,

870
00:48:08,930 --> 00:48:12,020
it's time to mate?

871
00:48:12,020 --> 00:48:15,920
It's just not the way we
organize our, it's not the way

872
00:48:15,920 --> 00:48:19,100
we organize our behavior.

873
00:48:19,100 --> 00:48:24,470
Our social lives suggest that
we find a degree of pleasure

874
00:48:24,470 --> 00:48:30,270
in the appetitive aspects of
seeking a mate, not merely in

875
00:48:30,270 --> 00:48:33,410
the consummatory parts of it.

876
00:48:33,410 --> 00:48:43,040
So you come with a set of
motivations that get you

877
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:47,890
motivation, in the sense of
getting you to move, that seem

878
00:48:47,890 --> 00:48:49,710
to come with the systems.

879
00:48:49,710 --> 00:48:55,230
These can be quite specific --
by the way, that's the notion

880
00:48:55,230 --> 00:48:58,130
of preparedness that I see, what
is related to this notion

881
00:48:58,130 --> 00:49:00,740
of preparedness that I see is
actually above where it says

882
00:49:00,740 --> 00:49:09,640
consummatory and appetitive
behaviors on the handout.

883
00:49:09,640 --> 00:49:18,960
you are surprisingly fine tuned
by, presumably by the

884
00:49:18,960 --> 00:49:20,520
history of the species.

885
00:49:20,520 --> 00:49:28,810
So for instance, you are built
to get away from scary things

886
00:49:28,810 --> 00:49:33,980
that are going to hurt you and
that seems reasonable enough.

887
00:49:33,980 --> 00:49:36,420
And that can be specific enough
to the point that it's

888
00:49:36,420 --> 00:49:40,770
easier to get you to be scared
of spiders and snakes than it

889
00:49:40,770 --> 00:49:44,060
is to get you to be scared
of bunnies and chickens.

890
00:49:44,060 --> 00:49:46,800
That sounds kind of obvious, but
there's no obvious reason

891
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:48,990
why, in fact, one of the famous
experiments in the sort

892
00:49:48,990 --> 00:49:53,580
of behaviorists tradition has a
little baby known to history

893
00:49:53,580 --> 00:49:56,840
as Little Albert -- there's a
great film from the 20's of

894
00:49:56,840 --> 00:49:58,820
this Little Albert is sitting
there, he's playing with a

895
00:49:58,820 --> 00:50:00,630
little white bunny.

896
00:50:00,630 --> 00:50:03,260
John Watson, founder of American
behaviors, then

897
00:50:03,260 --> 00:50:07,310
sneaks up behind Little
Albert with a gong and

898
00:50:07,310 --> 00:50:09,310
pow, rings the gong.

899
00:50:09,310 --> 00:50:12,330
Little Albert goes, if it was
a cartoon, would go straight

900
00:50:12,330 --> 00:50:15,480
up in the air, and is you know,
scared out of his Little

901
00:50:15,480 --> 00:50:19,590
Albert gourd and is screaming
and crying and stuff like

902
00:50:19,590 --> 00:50:24,040
that, and you know, it's kind
of harsh for Little Albert,

903
00:50:24,040 --> 00:50:28,290
but then you bring Albert back
and show him the bunny again.

904
00:50:28,290 --> 00:50:30,220
Does he want to play
with the bunny?

905
00:50:30,220 --> 00:50:31,310
No.

906
00:50:31,310 --> 00:50:33,320
Does he want to play with
anything that's white and

907
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:36,470
furry, including Santa Claus,
apparently, I seem to recall.

908
00:50:36,470 --> 00:50:38,450
Guys with bushy white
beards --

909
00:50:38,450 --> 00:50:39,540
he recovered by the way.

910
00:50:39,540 --> 00:50:43,210
He didn't grow up to be a psycho
or anything, but you

911
00:50:43,210 --> 00:50:46,000
can train, so you can you can
train somebody to be scared of

912
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:50,870
rabbits, but it's easier to
train them to be scared of

913
00:50:50,870 --> 00:50:54,760
snakes, at if they were prepared
by the history of the

914
00:50:54,760 --> 00:51:05,410
species to be scared of things
like snakes and spiders.

915
00:51:05,410 --> 00:51:11,640
OK, so you're a slave to the
environment because your brain

916
00:51:11,640 --> 00:51:15,890
responds in rather specific ways
to the environment but

917
00:51:15,890 --> 00:51:24,000
you are a lot more complicated
than that, or at least you

918
00:51:24,000 --> 00:51:26,540
feel like you're a lot more
complicated than something

919
00:51:26,540 --> 00:51:30,370
that's just a bundle of sort
of engineering responses to

920
00:51:30,370 --> 00:51:35,510
glucose level low, must
go find wildebeest.

921
00:51:35,510 --> 00:51:38,150
And I want to spend the
remainder of the lecture

922
00:51:38,150 --> 00:51:42,790
talking about some of those
complexities, but first I want

923
00:51:42,790 --> 00:51:46,990
to give everybody a chance at
least to stand up and stretch

924
00:51:46,990 --> 00:51:49,080
a little bit and fan
themselves because

925
00:51:49,080 --> 00:51:50,330
it's warm in here.

926
00:51:57,490 --> 00:52:32,490
I Oh, yes, yes you want your
little form right now?

927
00:52:32,490 --> 00:52:33,600
AUDIENCE: Sure.

928
00:52:33,600 --> 00:52:37,870
PROFESSOR: Ok send this form
back, and I trust that means

929
00:52:37,870 --> 00:52:40,000
that you can be here at
like five of two --

930
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:40,820
AUDIENCE: [UNINTELLIGIBLE]

931
00:52:40,820 --> 00:52:44,370
PROFESSOR: Yes, well, it's
not useful after class.

932
00:52:44,370 --> 00:52:46,900
OK this is all the information
I have.

933
00:52:46,900 --> 00:52:48,700
If there's a problem
let me know.

934
00:52:48,700 --> 00:52:50,480
And your name is?

935
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:51,090
AUDIENCE: Jean.

936
00:52:51,090 --> 00:52:52,330
PROFESSOR: Jean, nice to meet
you, and I trust that you'll

937
00:52:52,330 --> 00:52:57,820
see happily erasing my boards.

938
00:52:57,820 --> 00:53:01,360
OK, let us reconvene here.

939
00:53:01,360 --> 00:53:07,590
Here's the deal.

940
00:53:07,590 --> 00:53:17,160
I will typically try to be good
and remember to give you

941
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:21,930
a chance to sort of stretch your
limbs a little bit, and,

942
00:53:21,930 --> 00:53:24,150
but it'll be a short stretch.

943
00:53:24,150 --> 00:53:27,470
So, you know, but why am
I telling you this?

944
00:53:27,470 --> 00:53:29,595
It's the guys who thought they
were off for ten minutes who

945
00:53:29,595 --> 00:53:31,980
are now halfway down the hall
to get the M&Ms who had the

946
00:53:31,980 --> 00:53:34,760
problem, but anyway.

947
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:36,880
Or the ones who are out looking
for wildebeest are

948
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:38,130
really in trouble.

949
00:53:40,360 --> 00:53:44,030
You might wonder what the
role of the emotion

950
00:53:44,030 --> 00:53:45,290
is in all of this.

951
00:53:45,290 --> 00:53:48,320
Clearly, motivation and emotion
are closely related.

952
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:52,870
They both talk about feeling a
lot, you know, that there's

953
00:53:52,870 --> 00:54:03,630
this feeling of hunger, but the
emotion part is well, one

954
00:54:03,630 --> 00:54:07,420
way to think of it would be as a
sort of a language, a symbol

955
00:54:07,420 --> 00:54:14,660
system, that's a short hand that
helps you mobilize you, a

956
00:54:14,660 --> 00:54:18,270
way of talking to yourself about
what resources you might

957
00:54:18,270 --> 00:54:18,830
want to mobilize.

958
00:54:18,830 --> 00:54:21,430
Oh, I feel fear.

959
00:54:21,430 --> 00:54:27,010
That means I should do the
following sorts of things.

960
00:54:27,010 --> 00:54:30,560
And it helps you generalize
from event to event.

961
00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:32,170
I feel fear now.

962
00:54:32,170 --> 00:54:34,290
I felt fear before.

963
00:54:34,290 --> 00:54:37,140
You know, maybe there's some
sort of relationship that I

964
00:54:37,140 --> 00:54:41,890
ought to be noticing.

965
00:54:41,890 --> 00:54:46,650
And perhaps, one of its most
important uses is as a form of

966
00:54:46,650 --> 00:54:50,300
communication between
people or between

967
00:54:50,300 --> 00:54:52,170
animals more generally.

968
00:54:52,170 --> 00:54:54,760
If I am afraid, let's go let's
go back to the plains of

969
00:54:54,760 --> 00:54:57,760
Africa and switch sides.

970
00:54:57,760 --> 00:55:02,150
If I'm a wildebeest, and I see
the leopard over there,

971
00:55:02,150 --> 00:55:07,230
stalking through the under
brush, I should be afraid.

972
00:55:07,230 --> 00:55:09,950
If you're not seeing the
leopard, but you're seeing me,

973
00:55:09,950 --> 00:55:12,650
I look afraid, and you're the
rest of the wildebeests, you

974
00:55:12,650 --> 00:55:14,420
should be afraid too.

975
00:55:14,420 --> 00:55:19,910
It's a good idea if you pick
up on the way that I feel.

976
00:55:19,910 --> 00:55:26,260
Now we tend to devalue that a
bit because we tend to use

977
00:55:26,260 --> 00:55:31,780
verbal communication a lot to
convey information back and

978
00:55:31,780 --> 00:55:33,820
forth, and for some things it's
obviously a much more

979
00:55:33,820 --> 00:55:36,540
useful technique.

980
00:55:36,540 --> 00:55:39,380
I mean trying to teach
psychology by a set of

981
00:55:39,380 --> 00:55:43,110
emotional expressions
would not --

982
00:55:43,110 --> 00:55:46,960
I can't even conceive of how I
would go about doing that.

983
00:55:46,960 --> 00:55:52,190
However, we probably over value
the straight, this sort

984
00:55:52,190 --> 00:55:54,790
of straight verbal nature
of communications,

985
00:55:54,790 --> 00:55:55,940
even between humans.

986
00:55:55,940 --> 00:55:58,840
Obviously, non-verbal animals
are going to have to use some

987
00:55:58,840 --> 00:56:02,180
other form of communication,
but even among humans, we

988
00:56:02,180 --> 00:56:09,310
underrate the value of this
current of emotion information

989
00:56:09,310 --> 00:56:10,740
transmission.

990
00:56:10,740 --> 00:56:19,600
Perhaps the clearest example of
this is email, where, how

991
00:56:19,600 --> 00:56:24,560
many of you at some point have
gotten into trouble on email,

992
00:56:24,560 --> 00:56:28,330
because email has the
characteristics of

993
00:56:28,330 --> 00:56:33,550
conversation without
the tone of voice.

994
00:56:33,550 --> 00:56:37,050
You said something that you
thought, that you meant

995
00:56:37,050 --> 00:56:41,050
sarcastically, or you thought
was funny, and somebody else

996
00:56:41,050 --> 00:56:46,880
read it as flat prose, and they
were not amused at all.

997
00:56:46,880 --> 00:56:53,020
And then you got -- actually
that's the root of all these

998
00:56:53,020 --> 00:56:55,620
little smiley faces and all
these symbols that I don't

999
00:56:55,620 --> 00:56:58,100
know from nothing.

1000
00:56:58,100 --> 00:56:59,120
You all know this.

1001
00:56:59,120 --> 00:57:01,760
There's some very elaborate
vocabulary of basically

1002
00:57:01,760 --> 00:57:09,030
emotional tokens for instant
messaging or for email because

1003
00:57:09,030 --> 00:57:13,260
it lacks that emotional tone
of voice, and without that,

1004
00:57:13,260 --> 00:57:18,520
the quality of the communication
goes down.

1005
00:57:21,070 --> 00:57:28,580
So you've got emotions at sort
of a super ordinate language

1006
00:57:28,580 --> 00:57:32,160
that allows you to talk about
motivational states, even in

1007
00:57:32,160 --> 00:57:34,370
the absence of any sort
of verbal language.

1008
00:57:34,370 --> 00:57:37,540
I think you could probably make
a convincing argument

1009
00:57:37,540 --> 00:57:42,860
that basic motivational
states exist in

1010
00:57:42,860 --> 00:57:44,560
very, very simple organisms.

1011
00:57:44,560 --> 00:57:49,200
I mean any organism has to
figure out, has to have in

1012
00:57:49,200 --> 00:57:53,650
some sense the motivation to
feed itself and to reproduce.

1013
00:57:53,650 --> 00:57:56,680
It's only when you get to more
elaborate organisms do you get

1014
00:57:56,680 --> 00:57:59,840
something that looks like the
sort of emotional life that

1015
00:57:59,840 --> 00:58:04,320
you and I might have, where it's
being used, as a sense, a

1016
00:58:04,320 --> 00:58:05,930
form of communication.

1017
00:58:05,930 --> 00:58:12,800
But look, so far, we're still
in pretty simple terms here.

1018
00:58:12,800 --> 00:58:15,760
You know, we've got, sex and
reproduction is good.

1019
00:58:15,760 --> 00:58:19,660
Getting eaten by the leopard,
that's bad, and so on.

1020
00:58:19,660 --> 00:58:24,230
Where we want to get, and
where the chapter on

1021
00:58:24,230 --> 00:58:28,605
motivation, for instance, never
gets, is you know, sex

1022
00:58:28,605 --> 00:58:32,050
and reproduction, good, eternal
damnation, bad.

1023
00:58:32,050 --> 00:58:33,200
Or something like that.

1024
00:58:33,200 --> 00:58:36,970
Or how do you get from, you
know, hunger drives and sex

1025
00:58:36,970 --> 00:58:41,290
drives to thou shall not murder
and you know, I want to

1026
00:58:41,290 --> 00:58:44,210
grow up to be a chemical
engineer, or

1027
00:58:44,210 --> 00:58:46,240
something like that.

1028
00:58:46,240 --> 00:58:51,850
It's those rather more
complicated motivations that

1029
00:58:51,850 --> 00:58:58,610
require more than just feedback
loops and the lateral

1030
00:58:58,610 --> 00:59:02,640
hypothalamus to make
a good story.

1031
00:59:02,640 --> 00:59:11,210
Now, one step to a richer
account of why we do anything

1032
00:59:11,210 --> 00:59:14,380
is to broaden the set
of motivations.

1033
00:59:14,380 --> 00:59:23,230
I have pointed already in the
direction of one act of

1034
00:59:23,230 --> 00:59:29,550
broadening that set, and that
is this notion that if I'm a

1035
00:59:29,550 --> 00:59:31,500
frightened wildebeest, you
should be a frightened

1036
00:59:31,500 --> 00:59:32,580
wildebeest.

1037
00:59:32,580 --> 00:59:35,740
This is the notion that emotions
are catching across

1038
00:59:35,740 --> 00:59:37,440
individuals.

1039
00:59:37,440 --> 00:59:41,890
We talk about, on the handout
I put it as empathy and

1040
00:59:41,890 --> 00:59:50,200
described it as a social
emotion, and it's a social

1041
00:59:50,200 --> 00:59:58,280
emotion in the sense that it
helps to organize social

1042
00:59:58,280 --> 01:00:01,480
behavior, interactions
between people.

1043
01:00:01,480 --> 01:00:07,950
So, for example, well let's
start with a bit of evidence

1044
01:00:07,950 --> 01:00:10,880
that this comes with the
system, that it's not

1045
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:13,280
something, I mean you spend a
fair amount of time trying to

1046
01:00:13,280 --> 01:00:16,500
teach people to be more
empathic, but the core of it

1047
01:00:16,500 --> 01:00:17,940
is there from the start.

1048
01:00:17,940 --> 01:00:19,810
So, how do you know it's
there from the start?

1049
01:00:19,810 --> 01:00:22,380
You take a baby, here's
a baby, here's a

1050
01:00:22,380 --> 01:00:23,350
bunch of other babies.

1051
01:00:23,350 --> 01:00:24,910
Poke this baby.

1052
01:00:24,910 --> 01:00:26,090
What's this baby do?

1053
01:00:26,090 --> 01:00:27,360
AUDIENCE: Cry.

1054
01:00:27,360 --> 01:00:27,570
PROFESSOR: Cry.

1055
01:00:27,570 --> 01:00:29,140
What do these babies do?

1056
01:00:29,140 --> 01:00:31,130
They also cry.

1057
01:00:31,130 --> 01:00:31,670
Why?

1058
01:00:31,670 --> 01:00:34,900
You haven't hurt those babies,
but those babies have, in a

1059
01:00:34,900 --> 01:00:41,040
sense, caught the emotional
state of the other baby.

1060
01:00:41,040 --> 01:00:45,800
Not only do babies catch their
emotional, each other's

1061
01:00:45,800 --> 01:00:55,470
emotional states, but you are
all here today because of the

1062
01:00:55,470 --> 01:00:57,540
same sort of empathic
reaction.

1063
01:00:57,540 --> 01:01:03,610
When you were a little
pre-verbal slug, and you were

1064
01:01:03,610 --> 01:01:07,600
hungry, what did you do?

1065
01:01:07,600 --> 01:01:07,870
AUDIENCE: Cried.

1066
01:01:07,870 --> 01:01:09,400
PROFESSOR: Yeah, right,
you cried, right, is

1067
01:01:09,400 --> 01:01:11,830
all you could do.

1068
01:01:11,830 --> 01:01:14,480
And how did that make
your parents feel?

1069
01:01:17,500 --> 01:01:20,670
Well, some of you are here today
because you were lucky

1070
01:01:20,670 --> 01:01:23,310
because apparently it made your
parents feel angry, and

1071
01:01:23,310 --> 01:01:28,400
then -- which it probably did,
particularly at weird hours --

1072
01:01:28,400 --> 01:01:30,570
Mara is looking at me.

1073
01:01:30,570 --> 01:01:31,650
How old is the kid?

1074
01:01:31,650 --> 01:01:33,280
AUDIENCE: Four-and-a-half
months.

1075
01:01:33,280 --> 01:01:33,670
PROFESSOR: Four-and-a-half
months.

1076
01:01:33,670 --> 01:01:37,150
We can check out -- if you
haven't met Mara, she's the

1077
01:01:37,150 --> 01:01:40,190
head TA, so she knows everything
about the course

1078
01:01:40,190 --> 01:01:42,970
and what recitation you're in,
and we can also use her

1079
01:01:42,970 --> 01:01:47,310
all-term as the official parent
person, or at least

1080
01:01:47,310 --> 01:01:52,220
parent of young child
type person.

1081
01:01:52,220 --> 01:01:56,720
She will confirm that when
you're baby cries, you want to

1082
01:01:56,720 --> 01:01:58,370
make that baby stop crying.

1083
01:01:58,370 --> 01:02:02,150
Fortunately, most parents, the
ones who want their genes to

1084
01:02:02,150 --> 01:02:06,380
make it into the next m make the
baby stop crying by doing

1085
01:02:06,380 --> 01:02:08,840
things like feeding
it and changing it

1086
01:02:08,840 --> 01:02:10,580
and stuff like that.

1087
01:02:10,580 --> 01:02:15,380
If it didn't make you feel bad,
if the crying baby wasn't

1088
01:02:15,380 --> 01:02:20,030
the car alarm of the
developmental world.

1089
01:02:20,030 --> 01:02:21,150
Hey, the baby is crying.

1090
01:02:21,150 --> 01:02:24,800
Oh, that's cool, you know?

1091
01:02:24,800 --> 01:02:26,650
Didn't know the baby could
make that noise.

1092
01:02:26,650 --> 01:02:30,540
Wonder what happens in a little
-- the baby cries, you

1093
01:02:30,540 --> 01:02:34,790
feel bad, and you doing
something about it.

1094
01:02:34,790 --> 01:02:41,320
And, you know, that's how you
end up getting there, getting

1095
01:02:41,320 --> 01:02:46,700
to the point where you can take
care of yourself, because

1096
01:02:46,700 --> 01:02:48,210
somebody else was willing
to take care

1097
01:02:48,210 --> 01:02:50,110
of you at that point.

1098
01:02:50,110 --> 01:02:54,220
And obviously, again, in
non-verbal animals, like the

1099
01:02:54,220 --> 01:03:01,290
rest of them, it's really useful
if, when your infant

1100
01:03:01,290 --> 01:03:04,260
animal is feeling uncomfortable,
you recognize

1101
01:03:04,260 --> 01:03:07,170
the need in some fashion
and you and you do

1102
01:03:07,170 --> 01:03:07,800
something about it.

1103
01:03:07,800 --> 01:03:11,020
So in a sense, emphathy is sort
of a prerequisite for

1104
01:03:11,020 --> 01:03:15,420
successful parenting.

1105
01:03:15,420 --> 01:03:20,550
And this empathic catching of
fear is a useful way to keep

1106
01:03:20,550 --> 01:03:21,460
yourself alive.

1107
01:03:21,460 --> 01:03:25,110
If you don't see the danger, but
somebody else does, that's

1108
01:03:25,110 --> 01:03:30,790
-- oh, and it's a good, it's
good for keeping you alive in

1109
01:03:30,790 --> 01:03:32,330
other ways too.

1110
01:03:32,330 --> 01:03:37,660
I won't do it, but if I were
to suddenly decide to make

1111
01:03:37,660 --> 01:03:41,710
myself throw-up, a bunch
of you would feel

1112
01:03:41,710 --> 01:03:43,490
really lousy, right?

1113
01:03:43,490 --> 01:03:44,330
You know this.

1114
01:03:44,330 --> 01:03:46,240
By the way, this is one
that goes away when

1115
01:03:46,240 --> 01:03:47,630
you become a parent.

1116
01:03:47,630 --> 01:03:49,670
You can modulate these
things over --

1117
01:03:49,670 --> 01:03:53,550
if you felt incapacitatedly
nauseous every time your child

1118
01:03:53,550 --> 01:03:57,350
threw-up, your child would never
make it, because -- you

1119
01:03:57,350 --> 01:03:59,370
just got to deal and clean up.

1120
01:03:59,370 --> 01:04:03,110
But at this point, if I throw
up, you're going to feel sick.

1121
01:04:03,110 --> 01:04:04,150
Some of you will throw up.

1122
01:04:04,150 --> 01:04:06,000
I shouldn't keep talking about
it because some of you will

1123
01:04:06,000 --> 01:04:09,380
start feeling gross just
thinking about it.

1124
01:04:09,380 --> 01:04:10,540
That's also useful.

1125
01:04:10,540 --> 01:04:11,290
Why?

1126
01:04:11,290 --> 01:04:14,270
Because if I ate the wildebeest,
and it was a bad

1127
01:04:14,270 --> 01:04:18,560
wildebeest, you know, and we're
all vultures on the same

1128
01:04:18,560 --> 01:04:21,810
wildebeest here, if I'm looking
kind of sick, you

1129
01:04:21,810 --> 01:04:24,230
might as well get rid of
wildebeest now, because it's

1130
01:04:24,230 --> 01:04:26,730
just not going to be
doing you any good.

1131
01:04:26,730 --> 01:04:32,380
So this catching businesses
has its utility.

1132
01:04:32,380 --> 01:04:35,170
Now it's not uniformly a good
thing, because you can catch

1133
01:04:35,170 --> 01:04:37,740
anti- social emotions
just the way you can

1134
01:04:37,740 --> 01:04:40,030
catch pro- social emotions.

1135
01:04:40,030 --> 01:04:44,090
So when you see seemingly
incomprehensible events, like

1136
01:04:44,090 --> 01:04:48,700
how in the world can you explain
something like gang

1137
01:04:48,700 --> 01:04:54,720
rape or a massacre
in a war zone?

1138
01:04:54,720 --> 01:04:59,410
Part of what's going on
there is the same sort

1139
01:04:59,410 --> 01:05:00,910
of emotional contagion.

1140
01:05:00,910 --> 01:05:06,120
If one person is in a murderous
rage, people around

1141
01:05:06,120 --> 01:05:09,970
them, around that person, can
catch the murderous rage, just

1142
01:05:09,970 --> 01:05:14,920
the way they can catch the
fear or catch the nausea.

1143
01:05:14,920 --> 01:05:23,790
It's not just sort of a pro
social motivation, but empathy

1144
01:05:23,790 --> 01:05:28,130
does serve the function of
organizing larger scale sorts

1145
01:05:28,130 --> 01:05:30,860
of behavior.

1146
01:05:30,860 --> 01:05:33,670
Oh, now, how does this contagion
actually work?

1147
01:05:33,670 --> 01:05:35,880
How does emotional contagion
actually work?

1148
01:05:35,880 --> 01:05:40,110
Interestingly, part of, the sort
of reflexive mechanism of

1149
01:05:40,110 --> 01:05:44,810
it seems to be that when you
read my emotion, you also

1150
01:05:44,810 --> 01:05:47,280
mimic my emotion.

1151
01:05:47,280 --> 01:05:49,770
It is most clearly seen with
facial expression.

1152
01:05:49,770 --> 01:05:53,470
If I smile at you,
you will smile.

1153
01:05:53,470 --> 01:05:56,450
You may not smile much, but I'd
be able to pick up, if I

1154
01:05:56,450 --> 01:06:00,500
was recording from your facial
muscles, I would be able to

1155
01:06:00,500 --> 01:06:06,040
pick up a transient smile
flitting across your face.

1156
01:06:06,040 --> 01:06:07,710
Why is that important?

1157
01:06:07,710 --> 01:06:12,750
Well how do you know
if you are happy?

1158
01:06:12,750 --> 01:06:17,620
Well, it turns out -- and this
is, one of the senses in which

1159
01:06:17,620 --> 01:06:21,540
feelings, emotions our feelings
is that you go out

1160
01:06:21,540 --> 01:06:27,430
and you feel yourself and ask
yourself, how do I feel?

1161
01:06:27,430 --> 01:06:30,470
Part of that is to feel
your face, in effect.

1162
01:06:30,470 --> 01:06:32,850
You know, how does
my face feel?

1163
01:06:32,850 --> 01:06:34,370
Well, I seem to be smiling.

1164
01:06:34,370 --> 01:06:35,820
Why would I be smiling?

1165
01:06:35,820 --> 01:06:39,320
I must be smiling because I feel
good because only dumb

1166
01:06:39,320 --> 01:06:41,850
people smile when they're
miserable, right.

1167
01:06:41,850 --> 01:06:44,990
You know, well, there are
various social circumstances

1168
01:06:44,990 --> 01:06:48,210
when you might do that, but
anyway, it's useful

1169
01:06:48,210 --> 01:06:49,650
information.

1170
01:06:49,650 --> 01:06:51,920
You can actually try to
demonstrate this --

1171
01:06:51,920 --> 01:06:55,900
here's an exercise for the
reader if you like, I've done

1172
01:06:55,900 --> 01:06:59,390
it as one of the writing
assignments for the course in

1173
01:06:59,390 --> 01:07:00,130
various years.

1174
01:07:00,130 --> 01:07:01,310
It's sort of fun.

1175
01:07:01,310 --> 01:07:05,350
Take say ten events of about
the same duration, say an

1176
01:07:05,350 --> 01:07:10,250
hour, because that works for a
lecture, for example, now a

1177
01:07:10,250 --> 01:07:15,860
lecture, recitation, dinner,
a few events, study break,

1178
01:07:15,860 --> 01:07:17,610
events that are going to
take about an hour.

1179
01:07:17,610 --> 01:07:18,500
Take ten of them.

1180
01:07:18,500 --> 01:07:19,290
Shuffle them around.

1181
01:07:19,290 --> 01:07:21,400
Put five of them in one pile
randomly, put five in the

1182
01:07:21,400 --> 01:07:23,350
other pile.

1183
01:07:23,350 --> 01:07:28,520
Then deliberately either try to
smile or frown through, you

1184
01:07:28,520 --> 01:07:33,370
know, smile through pile A and
frown through pile B. And ask

1185
01:07:33,370 --> 01:07:36,330
yourself, you can ask yourself
a variety of questions, the

1186
01:07:36,330 --> 01:07:40,290
most obvious being, how do I
feel, and what's the effect on

1187
01:07:40,290 --> 01:07:42,400
people around me?

1188
01:07:42,400 --> 01:07:49,730
If you frown like an idiot,
the effect may be to make

1189
01:07:49,730 --> 01:07:54,330
people smile, but if you, but
you know what you, you've done

1190
01:07:54,330 --> 01:07:55,080
the experiment.

1191
01:07:55,080 --> 01:07:58,200
You were doing it like when you
were early adolescences is

1192
01:07:58,200 --> 01:08:00,590
one of the best times to do this
particular experiment.

1193
01:08:00,590 --> 01:08:02,980
You show up at the
dinner table.

1194
01:08:02,980 --> 01:08:07,920
Everybody's in a pretty good
mood, but you're not.

1195
01:08:07,920 --> 01:08:11,750
By the end of the meal, you know
that nobody's in a good

1196
01:08:11,750 --> 01:08:13,770
mood anymore, right?

1197
01:08:13,770 --> 01:08:15,040
Well, you can still do this.

1198
01:08:15,040 --> 01:08:17,260
I mean I'm not sure how ethical
it is as an experiment

1199
01:08:17,260 --> 01:08:21,160
to try out on your friends at
dinner tonight, but it you go

1200
01:08:21,160 --> 01:08:26,340
to dinner feeling like junk and
acting that way, you can

1201
01:08:26,340 --> 01:08:29,540
make everybody else miserable
too, and isn't that great?

1202
01:08:29,540 --> 01:08:32,720
But more to the point, for
the present point, you

1203
01:08:32,720 --> 01:08:34,100
can make your --

1204
01:08:34,100 --> 01:08:38,380
all that's sappy garbage about
a smile is your umbrella turn

1205
01:08:38,380 --> 01:08:40,340
out to be sort of true.

1206
01:08:40,340 --> 01:08:43,120
And it doesn't even have
to be a real smile.

1207
01:08:43,120 --> 01:08:45,450
If you take, no that's
somebody else's pen.

1208
01:08:45,450 --> 01:08:47,090
I'm not going to do it with
somebody else's pen.

1209
01:08:47,090 --> 01:08:49,860
If you take a pen, this is an
experiment that was published

1210
01:08:49,860 --> 01:08:55,290
a few years ago, take a pen and
hold it like this, that

1211
01:08:55,290 --> 01:09:00,590
forces your face into sort of
an idiot smile, whereas

1212
01:09:00,590 --> 01:09:04,090
holding a pen like
this does not.

1213
01:09:04,090 --> 01:09:07,510
It forces, it actually forces
into a bit of a frown.

1214
01:09:07,510 --> 01:09:09,240
If you do this, and don't --

1215
01:09:09,240 --> 01:09:11,570
I'm already spoiling the
control aspect of the

1216
01:09:11,570 --> 01:09:11,650
experiment.

1217
01:09:11,650 --> 01:09:14,600
You don't tell people why
they're doing this.

1218
01:09:14,600 --> 01:09:16,220
You just make them
do it for awhile.

1219
01:09:16,220 --> 01:09:23,530
The people who do this feel
better than the people who do

1220
01:09:23,530 --> 01:09:25,660
this, because the chunks of your
brain that are saying,

1221
01:09:25,660 --> 01:09:30,740
how do I feel, are rolled up and
encapsulated enough that

1222
01:09:30,740 --> 01:09:33,920
they don't know, he's smiling,
he must feel good.

1223
01:09:33,920 --> 01:09:36,270
The fact that he's smiling
because he's got a pen in his

1224
01:09:36,270 --> 01:09:39,020
mouth turns out -- not that
it matters, but it

1225
01:09:39,020 --> 01:09:40,610
doesn't matter that much.

1226
01:09:40,610 --> 01:09:42,750
So if you're feeling down, bit
on a pen, you'll feel much

1227
01:09:42,750 --> 01:09:44,000
better about it.

1228
01:09:47,660 --> 01:09:52,130
OK, well look, so you can get a
certain amount of work done

1229
01:09:52,130 --> 01:09:58,310
by broadening the set of
available emotions, available

1230
01:09:58,310 --> 01:10:01,110
motivations that you
want to talk about.

1231
01:10:01,110 --> 01:10:04,150
Why isn't the world
a better place?

1232
01:10:04,150 --> 01:10:07,160
You've got this empathy
thing going on.

1233
01:10:07,160 --> 01:10:09,780
You've got this beautifully
wired up brain that you're a

1234
01:10:09,780 --> 01:10:13,360
slave to that's designed to make
you eat and mate and do

1235
01:10:13,360 --> 01:10:14,760
all those sort of good things.

1236
01:10:14,760 --> 01:10:16,330
Why isn't the world
a better place?

1237
01:10:16,330 --> 01:10:19,610
Why doesn't it work better?

1238
01:10:19,610 --> 01:10:21,820
I point, look, I can't solve
that in the remaining 12

1239
01:10:21,820 --> 01:10:22,660
minutes or so.

1240
01:10:22,660 --> 01:10:25,700
I pointed to part of the answer
just because you catch

1241
01:10:25,700 --> 01:10:28,490
emotions doesn't necessarily
mean you catch good ones.

1242
01:10:28,490 --> 01:10:32,880
It is also the case that not all
of your motivations may be

1243
01:10:32,880 --> 01:10:34,620
entirely benign.

1244
01:10:34,620 --> 01:10:37,890
So, for example, what's
it got on the handout?

1245
01:10:37,890 --> 01:10:43,900
It doesn't have on the handout,
but aggression seems

1246
01:10:43,900 --> 01:10:49,570
to be, there seems to have deep
biological roots to it.

1247
01:10:49,570 --> 01:10:55,340
It is a not unreasonable
reaction to a

1248
01:10:55,340 --> 01:10:57,120
world of limited resources.

1249
01:10:57,120 --> 01:10:59,500
It's not necessarily a nice
reaction to a world of limited

1250
01:10:59,500 --> 01:11:06,290
resources, but, you know, if you
are, if there's a limited

1251
01:11:06,290 --> 01:11:13,600
number of mates out there, and
you can punch out all the

1252
01:11:13,600 --> 01:11:20,320
other guys and grab all the
women, well, then you get the

1253
01:11:20,320 --> 01:11:24,250
have more progney than the
guys you punched out.

1254
01:11:24,250 --> 01:11:26,190
Fortunately human society
is not organized

1255
01:11:26,190 --> 01:11:27,350
particularly that way.

1256
01:11:27,350 --> 01:11:30,490
But there are plenty of animal
societies that seem to be,

1257
01:11:30,490 --> 01:11:35,430
elephant seals, you've seen
these guys on, you know, your

1258
01:11:35,430 --> 01:11:37,570
favorite cable channel, right?

1259
01:11:37,570 --> 01:11:41,970
They come up in thousands on
the beaches near Antarctica

1260
01:11:41,970 --> 01:11:45,600
and stuff, and, you know, these
huge male guy elephant

1261
01:11:45,600 --> 01:11:49,340
seals have like a thousand
women -- what is a woman

1262
01:11:49,340 --> 01:11:50,040
elephant seal?

1263
01:11:50,040 --> 01:11:50,890
I don't know.

1264
01:11:50,890 --> 01:11:54,590
Anyway, a thousand female
elephant seals in their harem,

1265
01:11:54,590 --> 01:11:57,786
and they have these huge fights
over who gets to have a

1266
01:11:57,786 --> 01:11:59,150
-- you know, they can't share.

1267
01:11:59,150 --> 01:12:01,630
They just never went to
preschool and learned how to

1268
01:12:01,630 --> 01:12:02,360
share properly.

1269
01:12:02,360 --> 01:12:05,810
But part of, there is certainly
enough aggression in

1270
01:12:05,810 --> 01:12:09,640
human behavior to make it clear
that that sort of a

1271
01:12:09,640 --> 01:12:13,310
motivational system is going to
lead to a certain amount of

1272
01:12:13,310 --> 01:12:16,580
conflict in the world, and it's
not all going to work out

1273
01:12:16,580 --> 01:12:18,040
as sweetness and light.

1274
01:12:18,040 --> 01:12:20,760
People like Freud proposed
that there was actually a

1275
01:12:20,760 --> 01:12:23,870
death wish motivation
out there.

1276
01:12:23,870 --> 01:12:29,070
Thanatos Freud's term.

1277
01:12:29,070 --> 01:12:33,030
I might talk about that more
later in the term.

1278
01:12:33,030 --> 01:12:36,990
So that's, the possibility that
there are motivations

1279
01:12:36,990 --> 01:12:40,000
that themselves are not
particularly nice, if you

1280
01:12:40,000 --> 01:12:45,270
like, is one possible reason
that the world is not a

1281
01:12:45,270 --> 01:12:46,370
perfect place.

1282
01:12:46,370 --> 01:12:51,450
But perhaps the most useful way
of understanding why the

1283
01:12:51,450 --> 01:12:55,570
world doesn't work out so well,
necessarily, given all

1284
01:12:55,570 --> 01:13:00,610
this marvelous motivational
hardware if you like that

1285
01:13:00,610 --> 01:13:05,880
you've got is that, look, most
of the time when we study

1286
01:13:05,880 --> 01:13:08,850
these things, we study a
motivation in isolation.

1287
01:13:08,850 --> 01:13:11,970
You want to study this cat's
ability to learn about the

1288
01:13:11,970 --> 01:13:16,050
puzzle box and the relation to
the motivation of hunger, you

1289
01:13:16,050 --> 01:13:17,370
take a hungry cat.

1290
01:13:17,370 --> 01:13:18,340
You put it in a box.

1291
01:13:18,340 --> 01:13:20,640
The only thing of any interest
here is how to get out of the

1292
01:13:20,640 --> 01:13:22,620
box and get to the fish.

1293
01:13:22,620 --> 01:13:26,310
You know, the only thing of
interest here is, you know,

1294
01:13:26,310 --> 01:13:28,380
there's a rat who is
maybe a hungry rat.

1295
01:13:28,380 --> 01:13:30,830
In this case, he's got an
electrode now in the feeding

1296
01:13:30,830 --> 01:13:32,650
centers of his brain.

1297
01:13:32,650 --> 01:13:35,700
And all the other things that
a rat might do are just not

1298
01:13:35,700 --> 01:13:37,000
relevant here.

1299
01:13:37,000 --> 01:13:39,270
You don't operate in the
world like that.

1300
01:13:39,270 --> 01:13:43,690
You operate in a much more
complicated space.

1301
01:13:43,690 --> 01:13:46,230
I mean we can cartoon
that here.

1302
01:13:46,230 --> 01:13:48,490
Here's you.

1303
01:13:48,490 --> 01:13:53,740
You know, if we got in the lab,
maybe we can just do an

1304
01:13:53,740 --> 01:13:57,320
experiment on when you do or
do not eat, but that's not

1305
01:13:57,320 --> 01:14:00,432
what you're dealing with out in
-- well, alright, here is a

1306
01:14:00,432 --> 01:14:02,480
way to get to this question.

1307
01:14:02,480 --> 01:14:07,120
How many of you have ever
eaten something when you

1308
01:14:07,120 --> 01:14:10,030
weren't hungry.

1309
01:14:10,030 --> 01:14:12,380
Well what's the matter
with you, right?

1310
01:14:12,380 --> 01:14:14,480
You know, I just told you,
you've got this elaborate

1311
01:14:14,480 --> 01:14:16,520
stuff I've already erased the
lateral hypothalamus.

1312
01:14:16,520 --> 01:14:20,190
You've got a brain full of
circuitry designed to make you

1313
01:14:20,190 --> 01:14:22,600
eat when you're hungry,
and not to eat

1314
01:14:22,600 --> 01:14:24,620
when you're not hungry.

1315
01:14:24,620 --> 01:14:29,380
And you don't look like that
fury football with a lesion in

1316
01:14:29,380 --> 01:14:30,740
your brain.

1317
01:14:30,740 --> 01:14:32,950
So what's your problem
that you're eating

1318
01:14:32,950 --> 01:14:36,930
when you're not hungry?

1319
01:14:36,930 --> 01:14:39,120
Well all right, let think
about this is sort of

1320
01:14:39,120 --> 01:14:40,220
metaphorical terms.

1321
01:14:40,220 --> 01:14:43,900
Let's imagine a situation
where there are lots of

1322
01:14:43,900 --> 01:14:45,710
different possibilities
pulling on you.

1323
01:14:45,710 --> 01:14:49,230
Suppose you're at some sort of
a social gathering of some

1324
01:14:49,230 --> 01:14:51,740
sort, there are lots of possible
things, lots of

1325
01:14:51,740 --> 01:14:55,300
motivational systems at
work at any one time.

1326
01:14:55,300 --> 01:14:59,220
I mean one of the things you
could probably do is eat.

1327
01:14:59,220 --> 01:15:01,100
Maybe there's the possibility
for fighting,

1328
01:15:01,100 --> 01:15:14,370
mating, sleep, study.

1329
01:15:14,370 --> 01:15:22,710
You know, you could do all
sorts of, you know, run.

1330
01:15:22,710 --> 01:15:25,310
You could do all
sorts of stuff.

1331
01:15:25,310 --> 01:15:28,310
And all of these things, each
of which may have it's own

1332
01:15:28,310 --> 01:15:34,320
beautiful hard- wired core and
it's an elaboration of a

1333
01:15:34,320 --> 01:15:37,490
lifetime of learning, all of
these things are pulling on

1334
01:15:37,490 --> 01:15:40,070
you at once.

1335
01:15:40,070 --> 01:15:42,250
And, well, you know, all right,
so maybe the sleep

1336
01:15:42,250 --> 01:15:45,770
motivation and the study
motivation are pretty weak at

1337
01:15:45,770 --> 01:15:47,930
any given moment, but you
know, let's suppose that

1338
01:15:47,930 --> 01:15:54,160
there's pretty strong drives
in this direction.

1339
01:15:54,160 --> 01:15:58,610
OK, so if you're sitting in this
exciting vector field,

1340
01:15:58,610 --> 01:15:59,520
where the resultant?

1341
01:15:59,520 --> 01:16:00,940
Right?

1342
01:16:00,940 --> 01:16:01,190
Right.

1343
01:16:01,190 --> 01:16:06,610
AUDIENCE: [Laughter]

1344
01:16:06,610 --> 01:16:10,710
PROFESSOR: Now, I'm not
proposing this as a serious

1345
01:16:10,710 --> 01:16:17,270
model of why you might
eat when, well I am

1346
01:16:17,270 --> 01:16:18,130
proposing it as --

1347
01:16:18,130 --> 01:16:21,520
I'm not proposing it as a
serious mathematical model of

1348
01:16:21,520 --> 01:16:24,550
why you might eat, but I'm
supposing it has a serious

1349
01:16:24,550 --> 01:16:29,510
metaphor, that you might engage,
and it's going to be

1350
01:16:29,510 --> 01:16:34,060
much more complicated than this,
right, I mean part of

1351
01:16:34,060 --> 01:16:36,350
the reason, it's not just
that there's, you

1352
01:16:36,350 --> 01:16:37,820
know, want to eat?

1353
01:16:37,820 --> 01:16:38,530
Want to fight?

1354
01:16:38,530 --> 01:16:41,950
Oh think I'll go eat instead.

1355
01:16:41,950 --> 01:16:44,900
But, want to mate,
you know, here?

1356
01:16:44,900 --> 01:16:46,960
Now?

1357
01:16:46,960 --> 01:16:50,120
Can't do that, but they're, you
know, there those brain

1358
01:16:50,120 --> 01:16:52,750
stem chunks of general arousal,
oh yeah, well, I've

1359
01:16:52,750 --> 01:16:54,830
sort of got a lot
of activity here

1360
01:16:54,830 --> 01:16:56,210
that I gotta do something.

1361
01:16:56,210 --> 01:16:58,630
So you end up with sort of
displacement activity.

1362
01:16:58,630 --> 01:17:07,560
The problem is that the world is
a complicated place, and if

1363
01:17:07,560 --> 01:17:10,742
you were ever going to reduce
this to map, it's going to

1364
01:17:10,742 --> 01:17:12,560
have a lot of variables.

1365
01:17:12,560 --> 01:17:15,330
It's going to end
up with a lot of

1366
01:17:15,330 --> 01:17:16,620
variables in the equation.

1367
01:17:16,620 --> 01:17:18,430
Most of us manage to do OK.

1368
01:17:18,430 --> 01:17:23,550
We eat when we don't want,
but that's all right.

1369
01:17:23,550 --> 01:17:26,360
Later on in the course, you
end up talking about, you

1370
01:17:26,360 --> 01:17:30,590
know, perhaps the people where
you find that they're fighting

1371
01:17:30,590 --> 01:17:32,090
too much or something
like that.

1372
01:17:35,570 --> 01:17:38,630
No lecture Thursday, just to
reiterate, I will sign all

1373
01:17:38,630 --> 01:17:40,240
those lovely add drop cards.

1374
01:17:40,240 --> 01:17:41,900
I'll see you next week.