How your brain hallucinates your conscious reality | Anil Seth

TED Talks Daily

TED

Creativity, Ted Podcast, Ted Talks Daily, Business, Design, Inspiration, Society & Culture, Science, Technology, Education, Tech Demo, Ted Talks, Ted, Entertainment, Tedtalks

4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2017

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience -- and not just any conscious experience, your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it. How does this happen? According to neuroscientist Anil Seth, we're all hallucinating all the time; when we agree about our hallucinations, we call it "reality." Join Seth for a delightfully disorienting talk that may leave you questioning the very nature of your existence.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This TED Talk features neuroscientist and Neil Seth,
0:04.0	recorded live at TED 2017.
0:07.0	So just over a year ago, for the third time in my life,
0:12.0	I ceased to exist. I was having a small operation.
0:15.0	My brain was filling with anesthetic.
0:18.0	I remember a sense of detachment and falling apart, a coldness.
0:23.8	And then I was back, drowsy and disoriented, but definitely there.
0:28.2	Now, when you wake from a deep sleep, you might feel confused about the time or anxious
0:32.2	about oversleeping, but there's always a basic sense of time having passed, of a continuity
0:36.8	between then and now.
0:38.3	And coming around from anesthesia is very different. I could have been under for five minutes,
0:41.9	five hours, five years, or even 50 years. I simply wasn't there as total oblivion.
0:48.3	Anesthesia, it's a modern kind of magic. It turns people into objects, and then we hope back again into people.
0:55.5	And in this process is one of the greatest remaining mysteries in science and philosophy.
1:00.3	How does consciousness happen?
1:02.1	Somehow, within each of our brains, the combined activity of many billions of neurons,
1:07.2	each one, a tiny biological machine, is generating a conscious experience.
1:11.6	And not just any conscious experience,
1:13.6	your conscious experience right here and right now.
1:16.6	How does this happen?
1:17.6	Well, answering this question is so important
1:20.6	because consciousness for each of us is all there is.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of TED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.