#18: Space x Brains
TRANSCRIPT
Moiya McTier
Welcome to pale blue pod, the astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe but want to be its friend.
Corinne Caputo
It's true. And I'm Corinne Caputo, writer, comedian and friend of the universe, for sure.
Moiya McTier
Hell yeah you are. I am Dr. Moiya McTier. I'm an astrophysicist and folklorist and yes, also a friend to the universe. Every once in a while I feel like I would call the universe if I were like drunk and stranded in Brooklyn or something.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah, the universe called me actually the other day and said you were friends.
Moiya McTier
Who's the universe complaining like who's this Moiya chick? She's always calling me asking me to put her in a cab.
Yeah, exactly.
Today, listeners is a very special episode. We have our first ever pale blue pod guess. We are joined today by Holy shit. I'm so sorry. What is your full name?
Morgan Johnston
It's okay. I tend not to go by my full name on the internet. My name is Morgan Johnston. I did want to give a quick shout out to your music person. Evan Johnston.
Corinne Caputo
Yes, I was just about to say
Morgan Johnston
we are not related in any way. But people constantly mispronounce my name. Even when I graduated from undergrad they called me Morgan Johnson as I walked across the stage and I was like always, but I wanted to shout you guys out for always including the T on his name. And now my name.
Corinne Caputo
Yes I love that. I'll have to tell him. As soon as you said it. I was like, Evan Johnston.
Moiya McTier
The connection but no but no relation. So Morgan Johnston is a neuroscientist. And we are going to be talking about the intersection between space and brains today, which is so exciting. But first Morgan, can you tell us where we're recording this episode?
Morgan Johnston
Yes, I am so excited to show you guys around the very first lab that I ever joined. So a lot of people don't think about a lab as like a happy inviting space. But for me, research came into my life. I had a very like vital time and the lab was sort of my happy place where I went to relax and hang out. So I just finished feeding some of my cells. I put some new media in, and the media kind of looks like red Gatorade and smells like bone broth, I know is very tempting to drink, but I've heard it tastes mostly like salt. I haven't drink it.
Corinne Caputo
I mean, does bone broth. Really? Right.
Moiya McTier
It'd be the first thing I did like as soon as I learned it was safe to consume I would have
Morgan Johnston
I don't think it is safe to consume.
Corinne Caputo
There are very brave scientists out there who are willing to risk at all yes,
Morgan Johnston
there are many stories of researchers drinking things we're very much not supposed to. That's what we do.
Moiya McTier
We're curious people.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Corinne Caputo
What you can't blame them.
Moiya McTier
Nice so what are some of the things we're seeing around this lab?
Morgan Johnston
So of course the lab has the very beautiful fluorescent lighting that all academic buildings do. Of course, there may or may not be a cockroach In the corner, but it's fine. I have spray I'll protect you guys. there's a lot of benches all around. And most importantly, one of our lab techs just heard a pot of coffee, but the coffee pot has not been cleaned in like 10 years. So I, you're more than welcome to cut bait, I would not recommend it. It's
Corinne Caputo
closer to sludge or like, exactly.
Moiya McTier
And this is such a great picture.
Morgan Johnston
This is all true facts from the very first one.
Moiya McTier
Even the cockroach in the corner, who I hope was like a collaborator on a paper or something.
Morgan Johnston
Oh, of course. Yeah, you'd have to give everyone full credit.
Moiya McTier
It's the right thing to do.
Morgan Johnston
I've never been in an academic building that doesn't have cockroaches. My there are so few Yeah, my current university actually just very recently built a new building and it already has cockroaches. So it's, it's not crazy.
Corinne Caputo
They're gonna outlive us all.
Moiya McTier
Is there something about what you're studying in those buildings? Because like I in physics buildings, I didn't really come across many cockroaches. But we weren't like we didn't have any thing for them to eat. You know, like, we just had had data on a computer screen. You have like, bone broth brains and stuff. Yeah. So
Morgan Johnston
this might be a little gross to start off with. But actually the main insect I've had a lot of encounters with is ants loved ones like they, they will. I've been in the process of like dissecting and like, just like, there won't be ants and then like a little line of ants will like
Moiya McTier
they're marching up. Ants are zombies.
Morgan Johnston
That's what scares me every time because I'm like, I don't know what you're gonna get from.
Moiya McTier
Yeah well, I'm sure that they're protein dense, right?
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, I'm sure
Corinne Caputo
brains are good. That's why zombies ate them.
Morgan Johnston
For part of our like sectioning process, we put them in sugar. So they are like, basically just jello with like extra sugar.
Corinne Caputo
Yum.
Moiya McTier
It's so delicious.
Corinne Caputo
It feels like the menu, like a weird thing that would have been in the menu.
Moiya McTier
Well, thank you for giving us a tour of your lab. Morgan. I'm gonna be keeping a watchful eye on that cockroach in the corner. And are there any brains out? Should we be aware? Be aware of any ants?
Morgan Johnston
No, we don't have to worry about any ants. I made sure all the brains are put up in the fridge. But if you'd like I can take you to my fridge full of brains. There's like that opening. You know, whenever you first open a fridge and there's like shelves on the side. There's yes full of things.
Corinne Caputo
How fun
Moiya McTier
Oh, yeah, they look, they look juicy.
Morgan Johnston
They are.
Moiya McTier
Alright, so now that we're in this lab, we're all acquainted, it is time to talk about the intersection of space and brains. And there are there are similarities or maybe extreme differences in the numbers that we have to deal with. I'm interested in how our fields have inspired each other. So let's let's start with the numbers like what types of numbers do you typically deal with as a neuroscientist?
Morgan Johnston
So in neuroscience, we're looking at very small numbers. So we're usually in like the millis, like millimeter, millilitter, like the three decimal places over so 0.001. Sometimes though, we get all the way down to the microns, which is 1/1000th of a millimeter. And that's normally like if we're sectioning brains. So if I'm trying to get like a good slice of a brain, I'm sectioning at about like 30 microns. So a very, very thin section
Moiya McTier
really like a slice.
Morgan Johnston
So the thing that we use to slice brains, I always compare it to like a deli slicer.
Moiya McTier
That's literally what I was picturing.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, sure is the exact same concept as a deli slicer. But frozen.
Corinne Caputo
Oh, wow.
Moiya McTier
Why do they have to be frozen?
Morgan Johnston
That just depends on which method you're using. So So sometimes the frozen to preserve them. Sometimes if you want to see some real gooey stuff. You can also use what's called a vibratome. And it basically vibrates the brain very quickly and vibrates the blade very quickly. And that's usually not present. So sir, just like we will really fast. Yeah. Well,
Corinne Caputo
I love that. You said in the Millie's? I'm still thinking about that. I love that. You everyone's I feel like neuroscientists do they have pets named Millie because of that? They should.
Morgan Johnston
That would be very cute. There's a lot. I've seen a lot of cats named Purkinje, which is a type of cell but it starts pu R like, oh, that's one of my favorites.
Corinne Caputo
That's really cute.
Morgan Johnston
That's like, one of the things that I think is really neat about like the intersection between neuroscience and like astrophysics, is that neuroscientists do like a shocking amount of physics. I was really confused because I physics was my worst grade in undergrad. I'm really not great at math. But the brain is an electrical organ. And so we have to do a lot of like electricity and magnetism stuff when we're learning about the brain.
Moiya McTier
And that's one of the worst physics classes to do.
Morgan Johnston
It was actually the only one that I did get in. So I think it makes it makes sense that I wouldn't.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah, you, you made a bad call.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, it kind of makes sense. I've seen a magnet before.
Moiya McTier
It was a, there wasn't a no brainer. It was an all-brainer. *long pause* I'll see myself out.
Morgan Johnston
But yeah, so one of the very first things that we learned like is how our neurons communicate and the voltage of a, of a neuron. So most of your neurons are sending out like negative 70 millivolts. And so you have to learn a lot of those like negative 70, negative 60, millivolts. And that's sort of like the range that we stick around.
Moiya McTier
So so when a an individual neuron is firing, that electrical signal that it sends is at the 70 millivolt range.
Morgan Johnston
So when your neurons just chilling, and nothing's happening, it's at the negative 70's. And then whenever it fires and has to pass a threshold, and the threshold is normally around negative 50. And then it can get up to positive 40. And all of this is in relation to like the outside of themselves. So whatever is going on in the goo sort of surrounding that or
Moiya McTier
Okay, yeah, I was wondering, like, how do you get negative voltage, but it's all relative to the surrounding environment?
Morgan Johnston
Exactly.
Moiya McTier
Cool. And like, how many neurons do we all have?
Morgan Johnston
A lot. So it's estimated, I, you get a variety of estimates you used to, we would say, like 100 billion neurons, but I saw a newer study that said, like 86 billion neurons,
Corinne Caputo
whoa,
Morgan Johnston
by in addition to the eye, so most people think like neuron is like the only type of cells in your brain, but there's actually neurons and then there's a separate category of brain cells called glia. And there's about 85 billion of those. So I'm not going to gather together you have around 200, Billion, yeah, I did see this whole talk recently about like, oh, scientists discovered a new layer of your brain and I lost my mind first, I was like, There's no way that we didn't know. But it's okay. They're just like renaming something that existed. So everything is fine.
Corinne Caputo
I know, I see tiktoks like that a lot. Or they're like, everything you knew is wrong. And this is correct. I can't keep changing this.
Morgan Johnston
Exactly. I was like, I'm a neuroscientist. Please don't make me change my field.
Moiya McTier
Please don't make me have an existential crisis. I doubt everything I've ever learned.
Corinne Caputo
I put a lot of time into this.
Morgan Johnston
But I saw something recently, I was watching this neurosurgeon talking about like, someone asked him the question, you know, like is rocket science or neurosurgery? Like harder, and neurosurgeons are a little full of themselves. I don't claim a nurse neuroscientists. But he got real sassy about, supposedly, there are more neurons than there are stars in the Milky Way. And so he was trying to make that an argument for like, why we're better and it was like, but rocket scientists aren't really concerned about stars.
Moiya McTier
rocket science is its own thing. It's more engineering and chemistry than astrophysics. But I was about to say, like the, I think it's really interesting that these numbers of neurons that we have, is on the same order of magnitude as the number of stars in the galaxy. So we we say that there are anywhere between 100 and like a few 100 billion stars in the Milky Way alone. So no, he was wrong. But there are also about 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. And I think it's really cool that this 100 billion number just keeps popping up.
Yeah, it all matches up really nice. I feel like that's an older like that trend in like competitive science fields. Not that these are competitive, but like to be like, I am better than that one. I feel like that is something I love about pale blue pod and this of like, we're like, No, everyone is doing great.
Morgan Johnston
something I say a lot is like I love neuroscience, I definitely think it's hard. But like, I could never do astrophysics. So there's no way that I'm better than that.
Moiya McTier
Yeah. And I could never, I could never do neuroscience. No, I would get too distracted by the ants by the zombie ants eating the brain.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, it's definitely a lot messier than people think.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah, this is already shocking. Me. I briefly worked kind of sort of in a lab. I did like data entry at a research hospital during college. And there would be times when I was in the lab, and I was always like, this is not for me. This is not my space.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah. I always get really concerned. Whenever we get undergrads in the lab. I'm just like, why I'm watching them like a hawk. I'm like, Are you going to be okay with what we're doing?
Moiya McTier
Yeah, they need the supervision for sure. When when they're new to a lab environment. I'm sure there's a lot of stuff you can accidentally mess with.
Morgan Johnston
Oh, for sure.
Moiya McTier
Yeah. What about the size of these neurons?
Morgan Johnston
So neurons can really range so the smallest neurons in a human brain are about four microns wide. So again, My friend is like a 1000s. So thousandths of a millimeter. And so it's for those wide. Oh, yeah, they're teeny teeny tiny. And they're called granules, because of like a grain like they're that small that we were just like, Oh, these cells are the ones that are tiny. So they're granules,
Moiya McTier
I like I like the way you're naming people think. Yeah, yeah.
Morgan Johnston
And then our the biggest one in the human body actually goes from the bottom of your spine all the way to the top of your big toe. And that's called your sciatic nerve. So that's one cell that's going all the way.
Corinne Caputo
Wow, that's one cell
Moiya McTier
Wow, that's one single cell?
Morgan Johnston
Yeah,
Moiya McTier
it's not like a string of cells.
Morgan Johnston
well like there's multiple cells that are like running side by side. but it's not like a chain of cells. It's just one.
Corinne Caputo
Wow. I feel like is that not that you need to know this? But I feel like that's an injury I hear a lot. Yeah. Or like that nerve getting damaged is like a pretty, you know, upsetting injury to have.
Morgan Johnston
Well what's really interesting about the way that like your spine and your nerves work is that all of the ones that are going down your spine, there's like one long axon of a neuron that's going down. So like, if you chop the spine at any point, any like injury that's gonna like ruthless firing, it hurts all of the ones that are down below it, because you're essentially like cutting the middle of a bunch of neurons
Corinne Caputo
Yeah, that makes sense.
Moiya McTier
This is so cool.
Corinne Caputo
Wow, I feel so fragile
Morgan Johnston
Yeah,
Corinne Caputo
I'm in this body. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, the human body is very fragile.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, even a lot of people get shocked whenever I say that the the skull can actually give you a brain injury. And a lot of people get confused by that. Because the brain is like, or the skull is supposed to protect the brain.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah.
Morgan Johnston
But if you think about it, like our brains just sort of floating around in the skull. And so if you get like, say like whiplash, your head flies forward. You don't technically. Yeah, you reach his guns life words and also hit the skull, and then it rounds and hits the back of the skull to get two brain injuries. Yeah, it's funny, but it's interesting.
Moiya McTier
As a formerly very concussed person. I can attest that the skull is not always doing good things to the brain. Yeah.
It's a big deal. I had two major concussions in college, one in high school, and I had those symptoms for a long time, I still get carsick. Like, yeah, my brain has changed. Yeah, isn't it? Yeah,
Morgan Johnston
the symptoms can stick around for a long time.
Corinne Caputo
if you guys are into watching like the Oscar movies this season, women talking by Sarah Polly wrote directed, it's based on a book, but she had taken a lot of time away from filmmaking, because she had a really serious brain injury, and was trying to recover and just like get to a place where she could function again. Nevermind, like write and direct a feature. Very interesting interview with her on script notes. If anyone listens.
Moiya McTier
Go in the research notes for this episode.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah that's a big deal. Those injuries can be really debilitating.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah. Good for her for taking the time she needed.
Corinne Caputo
she was really, in that interview, she talks about some of the best like work she did. A lot of doctors had said, like, Oh, if it starts to feel like too much stop, but the best intervention she had was being encouraged to keep going, like past that discomfort. And she was able to like work her tolerance up and yeah, she it's cool. And the movie is great. Sad, good.
Moiya McTier
Sad and good.
Corinne Caputo
it make your brain a little sad, but it's a risk. Yeah.
Moiya McTier
Speaking of things that can make your brain a little sad, one of the reasons that we made this podcast in the first place was to help people who feel some sort of dread or fear or anxiety around space, and especially the vastness of it. Can you talk about what's happening in the brain when people experience that?
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, 100% This is something I really wanted to look into. Because I'm very much one of those people who as soon as you throw a number over like 100, I'm going to be very overwhelmed by what's going on.
Moiya McTier
Right, because you work in the Millis.
Morgan Johnston
I was like I understand tiny, I don't understand big and scares me. But so this is just one theory of what's going on. We don't know for certain, but one of the theories that I think is really interesting is your brain has multiple ways of storing information. And the way that it stores factual information is separate from the way to store is more abstract information. And so if you ask someone to describe like the room that they're sitting in, they can describe what they're seeing what they're smelling, what they can touch, all that information is very factual to them. And so their brain is going to store it as a fact. But if you ask someone to describe, like, say, the entire continental US, that's very abstract, and they've likely not visited every place. And so even if you told them a fact about the continental US, their brain sort of now has is a decision to make between now that I'm thinking about this abstract place? Is this fact a fact? Or is it abstract? And so it might store it as fact, but it also might store it as abstract. So it gets even worse, like we're talking about the Milky Way. No one's ever been to every single corner. And so it's a very abstract thought in people's minds. And so their brain has to decide like, Okay, we know this is a fact to but, we don't know that the Milky Way is a fact the Milky Way is abstract. So do we store it as fact, or abstract. But what's really neat, and what's really neat about this podcast is one of the ways to sort of get around that that people have recommended is, the more that you're exposed to something, the more that you hear about it, the more factual it becomes to you and the more concrete so even if you've heard, yeah, so even if you hear something the first time and your brain decides to store this abstract information, maybe the 10th time, it'll be like, you know, I've heard this enough times, I'm pretty sure this is a fact.
Corinne Caputo
That's so cool.
Moiya McTier
I love that there's neuroscience to back up the whole motivation of the mission.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah, I mean, I can feel that change in me without your website. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like Moiya and I one thing I like is when we're recording a new episode, we're kind of referencing or episodes episodes we've already recorded. And it's just nice to have that information, like said again and again. And you're like, oh, yeah, that is, so that's real.
Morgan Johnston
Exactly. And it can like build on it and stuff.
Moiya McTier
That's nice. Because I often feel weird. Like, I sometimes feel guilty about saying things multiple times, because I'm like, Oh, well, I these people deserve new information. But now that you say it, you know, and I also know, as a communicator that repeating things is valuable, because people don't learn things the first time like, I don't learn things the first time. So yeah, this is this is just more reason to, for me to feel chill about repeating myself.
Corinne Caputo
Yes.
Morgan Johnston
to take away that fear, give them very concrete feelings, something that they can see and hold in their in their hearts.
Moiya McTier
Hey, awesome. Thank you for explaining that to us. I really like that dichotomy, I guess, between the way our brains store the abstract versus factual, the the dread or the anxiety, does it come from having to make that decision? I mean, I know it's not conscious, necessarily. But does it come from having to make the decision about which file folder the thought goes into? Essentially,
Morgan Johnston
I don't think it's that upfront in your head. I think it more comes from the things that we know less about are scary to us. And the things that are less concrete in our heads are scary. So yeah, yeah. Because we can't fully picture it and we can't fully know it. That scares people.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah, that makes total sense. I feel that way about just like getting people to understand things about the human condition. And it's like, oh, I just think you might not know enough about this. So your your opinion is like just uninformed. Exactly. Yeah.
Moiya McTier
That's like, everything, everything that people get exposed to.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah.
Moiya McTier
The unfamiliar is scary to a lot of people. I'm a little weirdo. And if I see something, I don't know, I'm gonna run towards it. As long as it's not like a horror movie, you know, I'm gonna run towards it.
Corinne Caputo
And that's what I'm here for, to recap, a scary movie for you.
Moiya McTier
That's why our friendship works, thank you Corinne. All right. So now, can we talk about some of the ways that astronomy and space have influenced your field of neuroscience? Because you mentioned in your email, some cell type that seemed very interesting,
Morgan Johnston
Yes, I would absolutely love to talk about this. So that very first lab that I was ever in, my whole job in the lab was I was given the set of cells and I had to feed them and look at them every day and count how many there were and then just like give them different things, to see how it affected their growing. And these guys are called astrocytes. And they're so beautiful. And so the first part of their name the Astro, is because the person who named them said, Hey, these guys really look like stars. And they truly do like that.
Moiya McTier
What does that even mean? Star is just a sphere of gas?
Corinne Caputo
stars look like the sun.
Moiya McTier
Which is a sphere of gas
Corinne Caputo
Haven't you looked directly at the sun and seen the perfectly shaped star inside
Moiya McTier
because I'm smart and I know not to look at the sun listeners do not look at the sun
Corinne Caputo
unless you really want to
Moiya McTier
Unless you're Donald Trump don't look at the sun
Corinne Caputo
one very famous man did
Moiya McTier
so Alright, so they and I'm using air quotes here will look like stars.
Morgan Johnston
This is actually a question I had for you. Because yes, the stars are these like round balls of gas. But you know, whenever we like look up in the night sky, or like wherever we draw a star they have like little spikes to them is what are the or do those have a name or is there something behind?
Moiya McTier
Yeah, so it's less when you look at them with your unaided eye, you might see the stars twinkle with your unaided eye, but you're not really going to see them have those those spikes or those spokes coming off of them. We do see that through telescope images. And, like you can you can see this really well with images taken with the JWST, whose full name I'm not going to say so the just wonderful space telescope.
Morgan Johnston
I've also heard the jelly Welly space telly.
Moiya McTier
I love that. Yes, really. So good.
Morgan Johnston
I want like a stuffed animal of that. Yes. Smile, it's a little jellyfish operating.
Moiya McTier
But those are like an artifact of the way that light comes in through the telescope almost like they're they're a diffraction effect. It is not what the star actually looks like. It's just how our telescope takes that image, especially when the star is on the edge of one of the pixels, it can bleed into the next pixel. And then you get these weird shapes
Corinne Caputo
when I don't have my glasses on or my contacts in. And I'm looking at like, there's always that like extra pieces to it.
Moiya McTier
Like if you have an astigmatism or something like I used to before I started wearing glasses. And before I knew I had an astigmatism, like the car lights or stoplights, they have those those weird spokes coming off.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah, that's my eyes, too.
Moiya McTier
But that's again, because of the way that your eye is processing the light. That's not an inherent feature of the light itself.
Morgan Johnston
Alrighty, so maybe an astrocyte doesn't look like a perfect, beautiful round ball. But it looks like what the telescopes perceive stars. So it's essentially a round ball in the middle. But then it has all of these spikes coming off a bit and the spikes go to other neurons to snoop and see what they're up to. So site's main role is to sort of see what's up and also to help clean up. So the actual sites will go over to work. Neurons are releasing neurotransmitter, which is just like a chemical they used to communicate. And it'll pick up some of that neurotransmitter like a vacuum, it'll, it'll take up all of the extra neurotransmitter. And then also sort of be like, Okay, this is what you guys are releasing today. And we used to think that was all that they do. But now some more studies are looking at them doing some more like behavior, things like my lab right now looks at how they play a role in like substance use disorder. So they do a lot of really important things...
Is it because it's sucking up all of the extra dopamine and serotonin that I need. And so I seek those things out through substances.
Actually, the opposite. It's like some substances they get spit out are inhibitory, which means that they're keeping the neurons from firing, and it sucks those up. So then the neurons just continue to fight. Instead of like, stopping like they're supposed to. Yeah,
Corinne Caputo
okay. It's good to know what my brain is up to. Yeah,
Morgan Johnston
exactly. And they actually astrocytes make up around half of the brain cells.
Corinne Caputo
oh Wow.
Morgan Johnston
I guess taking that like 86 billion from earlier I guess. I mean, there's about 40 billion. Yeah, to your brain.
Corinne Caputo
I will post a picture of one of these on our Instagram when we share because I'm looking at a picture on Wikipedia and they are very cool
Morgan Johnston
They're beautiful. I think another way to describe them is more like snowflakes because wherever you look at them, like all next to each other, they're all a little bit different, but they have like the the round Center and the little spikes coming out. Yeah.
Corinne Caputo
Hi, it's Corinne here to give a shout out to our patrons who are supporting this podcast. It means so much to me and to Moiya and to everyone who helps make this show. So thank you as always to our sunlight stars Sean Llewellyn Finn, Ian Williams and Megan moon. And thanks to our latest pre main sequence stars Shawn Klinsmann, and ridin force if you can support us hear your name on this podcast and make it to our patrons star chart, all by supporting us on Patreon for just about $1 per episode, patrons get access to our research notes for every episode with extra resources about each week's topic, and the first 50 patrons will be entered to win a free sign and personalized copy of millions book the Milky Way. And we're so close to 50. So please consider joining now getting in on our Patreon getting in on Ryan's book and then send it to your friends. Find the search art Patreon info and more at our website pale blue pod.com or go right to the source at patreon.com/pale blue pod.
Moiya McTier
Hello, I am here to share some very exciting news about multitudes membership program called the multi crew. They are refreshing their tiers of support with brand new perks and I'm going to tell you about it. They have the insider's tier for $10 a month where you get access to all things behind the scenes at Malta Dude, this includes a bonus monthly newsletter access to our crew only Instagram account and first dibs on any and all multitude updates that come down the pike. Plus all insiders get 10% off multitude logo merch always, there's also the collector's tier for $20 a month. collectors are now eligible for live show guest list tickets for all of multitudes digital and in person events, plus VIP meet and greets were available. And then you have the founders here for $50 a month. And multitude loves our founders so much. They can't wait to spend more time with the founders. So that's where personal hangouts come in. Each founder can schedule a private digital hangout with multitude hosts on an annual basis. These hangouts can include a game stream, private q&a session, watch party, or more. And these Hangout sessions lasts like one to two hours and of course are subject to host availability. The cool thing about this to refresh is that you can now do annual or monthly subscription so you get like a little discount if you sign up for an annual subscription at any of these tiers. If you want to get more involved with multitude and get some of these amazing perks. Then head on over to multi crew dot club or multitude dot productions slash multi crew.
Corinne Caputo
Okay, it just got an amazing package in the mail. It's a soy wax candle from queer candle co I got the redwoods sent and oh my god, it's so good. It's all the coziness of the holidays and all the happiness of a summer camp fire in one jar. queer candle Co is an incredible queer and trans owned business specializing in small batch soy wax candles that are hand poured with love. Candles are topped with a variety of botanicals like pressed flowers, dried herbs, acid aromatics, mine has these gorgeous pressed flowers on top that were almost too pretty to use the candle but it just smells too good. I got to do it. And I almost exclusively buy candles in different like wood and forest sense. But I'm not kidding. I put all the other candles away when the sun came because I loved it so much. And I was thrilled to learn that they sell and DIY refill kits online. So any candle is endlessly refillable, and no more sadness about finishing one, which I really struggle with who wants to get to the bottom of the candle. Queer candle Co is donating 10% of their monthly profits to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project as if you needed another reason to order. So use the code pale blue at checkout to get 10% off your first order at queer candle co.com. Or find them on Instagram and Tiktok at queer candle co
Moiya McTier
the fact that you're listening to this show tells me a couple things about you. And I can recognize those patterns because I am a scientist and an analytical thinking genius. But here are the things I know. One, you're listening to an astronomy podcast. So you clearly like to learn, but to your listening to specifically this astronomy podcast, which means you'd like to learn in fun and friendly and interesting ways. So please, let me tell you about brilliant.org, which is the best way to learn math and science interactively. Online. Brilliant has 1000s of lessons in math, science and data analysis. And they're adding new ones every single month. Brilliant doesn't just teach you facts and formulas, they actually help you develop your intuition for these subjects through interactive gameplay. So their science courses can help you get a deeper understanding of things we talk about a lot on here, like planetary orbits with their classical mechanics lessons, or particle physics with their quantum objects course, whatever you learn on brilliant, you'll have a fun time doing it. And it will strengthen your general analytical thinking skills, even outside of the specific topics that you're learning about in your lessons. So you as a pale blue pod listener can get a 30 day free trial by going to brilliant.org/pale blue pod. And the first 200 People who sign up using our code will get 20% off their annual subscription. Again, that's brilliant.org/pale blue pod for a 30 day free trial. And then if you are early enough, if you're an early adopter, you will get 20% off your annual subscription.
I have a potentially silly question. What color are these cells? Is that like, Is that even a question you can ask? Yes, they're that small. Okay,
Morgan Johnston
so I would describe most of your neurons is clear or like white ish. And then while they're inside your brain while it's alive, they're gonna be more like a pink color because of your blood. And then once we take them out, we can stain them for different colors so you can get all sorts of different colors. There's a lot of really neat pictures of sort of like rainbow brains because people will stay in all the different cells, different colors and they'll make it beautiful. I know some people are working on a version of like an animal where you could theoretically like see them like have been like stained while they're like inside, but I haven't
Corinne Caputo
seen what it feels like I'm when scientists kind of like way correct me if I'm wrong but like telescope images are not colorized like that happens later.
Moiya McTier
Yeah, yeah, we call them false color images, but
Morgan Johnston
I don't like that term could definitely see Flat Earthers using
Moiya McTier
the I know, they do and they do I, I like to think of it as US adding in valuable context information so that you know, like the temperature or the or the density or whatever, and we're using a color map to show you the temperature difference me.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, we do sometimes use that, like we'll go in and like color them so they're easier to see. But a lot of the times the stains are like like actual stains like what they sound like live, my lab uses a lot of purple stains. And so we have a bunch of brands in the lab that are purple.
Corinne Caputo
Those are my high school colors.
Moiya McTier
A bunch of majestic royal brains,
Morgan Johnston
I think it makes them a lot prettier to look at for sure.
Any other ways that space has influenced neuroscience?
Speaker 2
Yeah, so I have one other major instance of space influencing neuroscience. And it's gonna seem like a bit of a tangent, but I promise that we will get back to the topic
Moiya McTier
I trust you. Yeah, lead us, lead us wherever you want to go.
Morgan Johnston
You guys are putting so much faith in me. So in the 1960s, there was this researcher, his name was John Lilly, and he looked at a bunch of different things. One of his major interest was dolphins, and he was like, dolphins look incredibly smart. They seem like they can do a lot of tricks. I think dolphins are really neat. And one day, he was talking to a dolphin for whatever reason. And the dolphin made a sound back at him that he said sounded like human speech. And so he took this as a sign that the dolphins clearly want to communicate with us, and therefore it's our duty to teach them how to communicate with us.
Moiya McTier
Of course.
Morgan Johnston
So he wrote this book called man and dolphin where he explained his theory that dolphins want to communicate with us, we should teach them English. And we should teach them English to the point that we should have a dolphin representative at the United Nations who can represent marine creatures during these meetings.
Corinne Caputo
Oh my gosh,
Moiya McTier
I would pay I would watch. I would watch that.
Corinne Caputo
I would love it, that was so fun for me.
Moiya McTier
Also like, there are other animals that are as smart as dolphins where like we don't have like chimp representation, we don't have invertebrate representation like what
Corinne Caputo
Well I've been seeing people on Tik Tok who are like teaching their dogs like how to talk with buttons. And I'm like, Oh, well, are we gonna add... maybe we bring a dog to the UN.
Morgan Johnston
I think this whole story always reminds me of the people who teach like gorillas how to do the sign language. And I'm like, why don't we have a gorilla sign language representative?
Corinne Caputo
Yeah.
Morgan Johnston
Why are we teaching the dolphins English? Why can't it be another language? Yes.
Moiya McTier
Like maybe French? Or you know, like Mandarin would be easier for them to learn?
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, because their communication is very, totally tones. Yeah. So, um, do you guys have any possible idea how this might be connecting back to space?
Moiya McTier
I have no idea.
Corinne Caputo
Oh, well, there's so many dolphins in space. So this makes sense to me.
Moiya McTier
What is the constellation? The dolphin constellation?
Morgan Johnston
What if I said the name Frank Drake.
Moiya McTier
Oh, okay. I'm I'm intrigued. Frank Drake. We covered the Drake Equation in our SETI episode. And Frank Drake is the person who did that. So it has something to do with with extraterrestrial life, then
Morgan Johnston
So SETI is heavily featured in this story. So Frank Drake got a hold of John Lilly's book where he was explaining the dolphins want to communicate with us. And he was like, hey, if we can teach dolphins to communicate with us, we can clearly teach aliens how to communicate with us. So this is an important endeavor.
Moiya McTier
Look, I've said it before and I'll say it again, Frank Drake made amazing contributions to science, but it seems like sometimes he had some real low quality thoughts.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, I love him. Carl Sagan is also about to be featured in this and Carl Sagan also incredibly important human but the story is wild. So with Frank Drake's help John Lee got funding from NASA and from study to study these dolphins and figure out how to teach them English. And he with NASA's money, built a giant house that he flooded with water he like waterproof, all of like the walls and stuff flooded the house with water. And this woman named Margaret Lovatt lived full time with a dolphin named I believe his name was Peter. So the logic here was, at firstly, we're just trying to teach the offense how to speak English like in an aquarium by They were like, We know when you're teaching a baby how to speak English, you don't stop talking to it after five o'clock you like go make dinner and you talk to her while you're making dinner. So they had Margaret live with this dolphin full time and speak to him all the time as if he was a human companion.
Moiya McTier
So there were what there was some dry rooms and some wet rooms are what she always in, she knows.
Morgan Johnston
She would like she had a computer that was suspended from the ceiling so that she could like have electricity, but also not electric meters up in the water. She had some chairs that like were above the water, but like her feet would be dangling in it. And she would talk about like, Peter would come up and like nuzzle her feet to like, try to get her attention.
Corinne Caputo
Okay, I'm so nervous. If I this is me, I would be so nervous that we trust these cables to suspend my computer and not like drop it into this bath
Morgan Johnston
And what I love about her is like she's they've done a million interviews with her. I believe she died somewhat recently. But before that, they did a bunch of interviews with her. And she was like, yeah, the first night that I spent in this Dolphin House, he seemed wild. I was like, What am I doing with my life, but then everything just seemed really natural.
Moiya McTier
That happens every time you get a new roommate.
Morgan Johnston
That's true. We've all moved into a new house and had to flood the bottom floor for a roommate
Moiya McTier
happens. Every single one of us has had that experience. Yes.
Morgan Johnston
So Margaret lives full time with this dolphin. And supposedly she did eventually get the dolphin to say hello, Margaret, which is a huge accomplishment.
Moiya McTier
Just like that, like the words Hello, Margaret would come out of this dolphins mouth.
Morgan Johnston
Allegedly. I cannot find an audio recording of it. But yeah, allegedly, the dolphin would say
Corinne Caputo
Their mouth is so is such a different shape than ours and like how to get the "n" sound? What's that?
Moiya McTier
That's that's what's tripping you up? Yeah.
Morgan Johnston
That's so funny that I mentioned that "N" sound because she has specifically said the "n" sound was what tripped him up the most.
Corinne Caputo
Wow, I'm a genius. If anything, it is a psychic.
Morgan Johnston
So, and this is where Carl Sagan enters the story also. So Carl Sagan comes to visit because through this study connection, and he's heard about this, and he comes to visit and he goes, Hey, why are you trying to teach the dolphins to speak English? That's clearly hard for them. We should be learning how to speak dolphin.
Moiya McTier
Finally someone with some sense?
Corinne Caputo
I think I stand with that, I think i agree Yeah.
Morgan Johnston
So what was the reason? So they had two other dolphins that they would like observe communicating with each other and try to like, translate dolphin for us.
Corinne Caputo
Okay,
Morgan Johnston
so we could eventually speak it. The small issue with that is I used to know someone who studied dolphins and dolphins actually communicate through a lot of things other than sound like this guy that I knew who studied dolphins, apparently they like pee in each other's mouths to like communicate their names.
Moiya McTier
Okay!!
Corinne Caputo
Oh my gosh.
Moiya McTier
You Morgan you need to stop blowing my mind.
Corinne Caputo
Everyone's pee is a little bit different.
Morgan Johnston
yeah they wouldn't know the difference between like one dolphin's pee and another dolphin's pee
Moiya McTier
for the fact that it's like their identifier, you know that your pee tells someone who you are.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, it's like: hello, my name is
Corinne Caputo
it's humans who are crazy for not doing that.
Moiya McTier
You're right.
Corinne Caputo
I mean, all other animals like sniff each other and all sorts of places.
Moiya McTier
Oh, I'm literally crying.
Morgan Johnston
But yeah, so Carl Sagan spent a while trying to events generally to look at teaching us to speak dolphin and so teaching dolphins to speak English by eventually, as all researchers do. John Lilly got a little distracted. And he started doing a lot of LSD.
Corinne Caputo
Oh, my gosh
As you Do you do when you're studying dolphins? Yeah,
Morgan Johnston
it was the 60s. Yeah. So he was like, if we can't, like communicate with dolphins now, on the discount flame that you go to when you're on LSD? Probably we could communicate with them on that plane.
Corinne Caputo
Oh my gosh.
Moiya McTier
Yeah but the problem was that people weren't on enough drugs to do this experiment.
Morgan Johnston
It's exactly what we needed. So he he gave the dolphins LSD. And they never the dolphins couldn't communicate on LSD. They were no, but he was if you were this man, you've given the dolphin LSD. The dolphin has not really responded to it. What is your next step? Do you
Corinne Caputo
Well, if I was thinking like this, man, I would be like they need more LSD.
Morgan Johnston
That's a good option. Um, his idea was what if I also did LSD at the same time?
Corinne Caputo
Oh, I already assumed he was doing it with them. it's so insane if me No, of course he's doing it with them because they're trying to get on the same level. Right?
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, no, that's the plan. But I like his scientific approach of like, let's try one and then and then I'll join right you change one variable at a time. Yeah, exactly. He also tried this with ketamine and also did not do anything. Why would it be Because of this altered state, and we'd really help, he had a lot of really interesting writings that he did while he was on LSD about how he was going to communicate with aliens and how the aliens were trying to help us. And so we needed to talk to them
Corinne Caputo
The confidence I need.
Morgan Johnston
So shockingly, he never succeeded in learning to talk to dolphins. And so we'll never be able to communicate with alien life because we can't communicate with
Moiya McTier
dolphins. So one to one relationship.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah exactly, but what i thought was really interesting whenever I was learning about this, is that nowadays, there's a lot of people who are still convinced, like in the same way that we can teach gorillas sign language like that we could teach dolphins to communicate with us, but they can't get any funding for it. Because the whole John Lilly story is so surrounded in scandal. I didn't even cover like half of the scandal that they were like, no one will get them any money for it because people are worried this will happen.
Corinne Caputo
Oh my god.
Moiya McTier
yeah you gotta get some private funding for that.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah.
Moiya McTier
I want to know what happened to this thread of thought about us learning to speak dolphin slash us learning to identify people by peeing in their mouths, because what like, right, that seems like it could. It could be good research.
Morgan Johnston
I think it's viable for sure.
Moiya McTier
Wow. Yeah. You said, you put in the outline, in parentheses. This is a wild story. I could not
Corinne Caputo
so true
Moiya McTier
in a million years have guessed that this is where the dolphin story was going to take us.
Morgan Johnston
I was worried you'd maybe already heard a bit because NASA was involved. I feel like NASA probably tried to bury. Yeah,
Corinne Caputo
they're like, wait a second that had nothing to do with us. Yeah,
Morgan Johnston
they're like, No, we did do that. No, no, no, they,
Moiya McTier
they're very proud of a lot of their accomplishments. They put it up in in their various buildings. This one did not make it onto the wall.
Morgan Johnston
I wonder why.
Corinne Caputo
There's a there's a lot of dolphin statues around Staten Island. Like they had a bunch of artists like kind of do their own take on each statue. And there was like a school assignment when I was a kid where it was like, find them and take pictures of them. And this will be all I think about when I see them again. Yeah,
Morgan Johnston
I mean, it's much better than a lot of the stories about dolphins so I think yeah, works. So true.
Moiya McTier
Yeah. When you start digging into how dolphins actually behave. It's kind of terrifying.
Speaker 2
I know when they're so cute. It's really upsetting. Yeah, maybe we don't want to communicate with them
Moiya McTier
Probably not. What if they're all doing their own acid? Yeah.
Corinne Caputo
Oh my gosh, they have dolphin drugs.
Morgan Johnston
I think I saw something that they do like poke puffer fish on purpose to get like the puffer fish poison.
Corinne Caputo
I love that. Oh my gosh.
Morgan Johnston
Elephants also get drunk. Like they'll get like a bunch of like, fruits in their trunk and let it like ferment so that they can get drugs like everyone everywhere always wants a way to relax
Corinne Caputo
that everyone needs an escape. I get it.
Morgan Johnston
Exactly
Corinne Caputo
healthy escape.
Moiya McTier
Yeah, we are I say it again, we're not special.
Morgan Johnston
And especially when you're being forced to live in a house with this person of a different species that you've never met it. Of course, you're gonna want some LSD.
Corinne Caputo
Yes, exactly. This is where I finally watched our rival for the first time like a few weeks ago, which is like a classic but a lot of the same themes of like language and communication and aliens. So give it a watch listeners.
Moiya McTier
That's probably not something we'll do a review of, because it's not super spacey. But it's I've seen it I love it
Corinne Caputo
It's like actually very good, too. I love it. Yeah,
Morgan Johnston
I do think it's really funny how we're always like trying to teach the aliens or the dolphins how to communicate with us. And we're like, you can learn my language. But
Moiya McTier
well, that's because so many of these stories are done in in the western like, especially in the US, where we are so bad at learning other languages.
Corinne Caputo
And we're so egocentric in that way where it's like, what the way I do it is the best way like you come to me.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, like I even had to watch myself talking about the story like because I'm saying that we're trying to learn dolphin but I can't say we're trying to teach them dolphin human because the human speak a bunch of different languages.
Corinne Caputo
Right? Right.
Moiya McTier
Maybe they do.
Morgan Johnston
And I don't know about dolphin specifically, but I know like dogs and cats speak languages. They like you can teach a dog German and English or something. And still, when they communicate with each other like if you have like a German dog in English dog, they might have some more like behavior issues because of the language
Corinne Caputo
very interesting. Interesting. I've seen like videos online of people being like we just sit down this dog and it turns out he knows Spanish and not
Morgan Johnston
those are my favorite.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah.
Moiya McTier
are like super intense dog trainers that only teach the dogs German commands or something.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah, the drama.
Moiya McTier
Wow, that that might be the best story.
Morgan Johnston
You're welcome.
Moiya McTier
i i I laughed. I cried. My jaw spent like a large amount of time dropped. You know this. That was great. Thank you so much.
Morgan Johnston
Anytime
Moiya McTier
I think the stories of of brains influencing Space Studies, there aren't as many of them and they aren't as interesting. So there could ever be that story. Nothing. No, truly Morgan, nothing could ever beat the dolphin story. But there there is this one thing that I love to bring up. It's called Boltzmann brains. Have you ever heard of Boltzmann brains?
Speaker 2
No and I wanted to look it up so badly, not only online, but I want to be surprised. So I hold myself back.
Moiya McTier
Okay, cool. I gave a presentation on Boltzmann brains, pre pandemic, and the crowd was pretty split. Half of them were like this, this is really cool. And half of them were like, this is pretty dumb. Why did you waste my time telling me about this? Because and I'll give you the the punchline right up front. This is not a real thing. And the Boltzmann brain was just like, a, basically a mean, like a mean girl rumor type of thing that some scientists started about another scientist.
Corinne Caputo
That's so mean.
Moiya McTier
So let's go back in time to the 1800s. In the second half of the 1800s, the field of thermodynamics was really starting to take off, including the famous second law of thermodynamics. Either of you happen to know it off the top of your head.
Corinne Caputo
well I don't know the law, but my twin brother studied thermodynamics in school. So let me channel him.
Morgan Johnston
So you're basically an expert?
Corinne Caputo
yeah, in a way
Moiya McTier
Yeah. So the second law of thermodynamics is the one that says the entropy of a closed system is always increasing. In other words, if you have a closed system, and like energy isn't moving in or out of the system, that system is always going to trend towards chaos and disorder.
Corinne Caputo
That's definitely where my brain goes.
Moiya McTier
Yeah, yes, yeah. So that is a law. That is one thing that we've observed over and over again, in labs and in observation out in the real world. But when we look at the universe, it seems to be very ordered. There are particles on the Milly and micro scales, there are planets orbiting stars that orbit the centers of galaxies that orbit the centers of galaxy clusters, it feels very structured in a fun, hierarchical way fun if you if you really like organization. But this Austrian physicist in like, at the end of the 19th century, was really confused by this, how can this rule still be true if we see an ordered universe, and he came up with two possible explanations. The first, which we now know, is probably true, is that the universe just happened to start in a pretty ordered or low entropy state. And so the fact that we see a lot of order now is just a consequence of how the universe started. The other explanation he gave, which we are now pretty sure is bonkers, is that all of the order in the universe is actually due to random fluctuations, you know, you have trillions of particles moving around, given enough time, they're going to arrange themselves into weird little configurations, that type of universe where all of the planets and stars and galaxies and whatever, are just a consequence of random fluctuations, that's called a Boltzmann universe. Other scientists at the time so Boltzmann's contemporaries, they thought that he was being silly. And so they took his hypothesis of the Boltzmann universe to the extreme. And they said, Oh, well, instead of random fluctuations, leading to an entire ordered universe, what if all of that randomness just led to the formation of a much smaller, simpler object, like, for example, a human brain full of all of the neural pathways that would give that brain thoughts and memories and a personality to make it like a real person that believed that it was observing a very structured universe. And so the Boltzmann brain became this, this term that they were using to make fun of Ludwig Boltzmann, which sucks. But also his ideas suck. So whatever. And now it's become this thing that pseudo sciency people, like people who think they know way more about physics than they actually do. They'll bring up the idea of a Boltzmann brain like, what if you are not a human on a planet in a solar system and a galaxy in the universe? What if you are just a brain floating through the universe because of random fluctuations and you believe that you're observing this world and universe around you?
Corinne Caputo
Oh my gosh.
Moiya McTier
And it's like, a fun, I'm not I'm not gonna call it fun. It's this thought experiment that you know, like the type of people who really get into the simulation hypothesis. They also like to bring up boltzman brain. Yeah. But it is it is not a real thing.
Morgan Johnston
So, it's so funny that you bring up the simulation hypothesis, because so I was looking up like some of the similarities between neuroscience and astrophysics. And one of the things that I found was this article that was explaining that the human brain is 25% neurons and 75% water. Andspace is 25% matter and 70%, dark matter,
Moiya McTier
dark energy,
Morgan Johnston
dark energy.
Moiya McTier
Sorry,
Morgan Johnston
no, you're right. I don't know the difference. So I will accept what you say. Because clearly, they have the same thing, because they have the same portions. And then in this article, underneath them, the recommended section was the simulation. But what I thought was super funny is I don't know what those numbers are correct for space. But for the human brain, it's like, they very much cherry pick numbers to make it fit with space, because people say the human brain is anywhere between like, 70, and like 85% water, and they were like, we're gonna get 75 to fit with what we're saying.
Moiya McTier
Wow,
Corinne Caputo
of course,
Moiya McTier
so devious.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah. But there's also a Boltzmann brains reminds me of like, in undergrad, I went through this really deep, like, philosophy fades as we all do. I founded this one version of like, a philosophy of how we don't actually have any free will. And the theory was because the universe is like, constantly expanding, and the universe like came together to make us as people that maybe we're not actually our own people, but we are the universe, like acting through us. And so we're not making a decision, but like, the universe is making decisions to make us do different things. And our whole life was like, set in motion by the Big Bang.
Corinne Caputo
I've I mean,
Moiya McTier
sometimes that's how it feels. Yeah. I mean, there are also a lot of physicists and scientists who would say, if you knew exactly how all of the, like fundamental particles in the universe were arranged, including all the fundamental particles that make up us and our brains, that you would be able to perfectly predict everything that comes next. Like if you had a powerful enough computer, which, again, gets into the simulation hypothesis, but no, maybe I'm wrong. I don't care. I choose to believe that I have free will. Yeah.
Corinne Caputo
I mean, we're here now. So what does it matter? Yeah, yeah, totally.
Morgan Johnston
I feel really bad for that dude, though, that his friends chose to use their free will to bully.
Moiya McTier
Yes, I he, unless there are other Boltzmann's and there might be He, like we have the Boltzmann coefficient, we have other things that were named after him. So like he did find for himself. Good. Good for him. Yeah. We're almost at the top of the hour. But I would I would love to know about this NASA brain twin study.
Morgan Johnston
Yeah, I'll try to make it fast. So basically, in like, 2015, NASA had the set of twins. And one of the twins was like, hey, I want to retire. And they really, but you have both been astronauts. So you both been in space for like a similar periods of time, they didn't go on the exact same mission. So they were in space for the exact same period of time. But they have theoretically the same genetic makeup. They both been in space. And now one of them was gonna stay on the ground, and one of them was gonna go to space. And so the twin who stayed on the ground, he went to NASA and was like, hey, wouldn't it be cool if you took a bunch of samples from me and my brother and saw like, what the difference is? And the NASA scientists were like, Yeah, that's a really smart idea. Why did we think?
Moiya McTier
Why didn't they think of that
Corinne Caputo
these twins in the space? Well, I don't know them personally.
Moiya McTier
Do all twins just know each other, Corinne.
Corinne Caputo
Ultimately, there's like a meet up. know their names Mark, and Scott Kelly. And I'm pretty sure Mark is, is the Senator Mark.
Morgan Johnston
Mark is the one who stayed on the ground. Oh, so because he's got a lot of work to do. Because I was looking at the interviews with him, because yeah, so he's the one who stay on the ground. I was like, Man, when sucked to be like the twin who was on the ground, and then you have this famous like, astronaut. Yeah. So, but it's actually his idea. So everything's fine. He has said that he would like to go back to space Sunday, but he was okay with being on the ground. So they ran a bunch of tests on the twins like before the one way of space, and while they were both in space, and then while they were both on the ground, like afterwards, what I thought was really funny is in the paper that they released afterwards, they had to say like in their method section, how they got the samples back from the brother who is in space. And they were like, very scientific about like, Oh, these samples were put in this type of bag and then they were sent down in a Soyuz capsule and they were sent back to Earth. But in like, actuality, like the samples that were collected were like, poop. So they were like,
Moiya McTier
what can you learn about the brain by studying poop?
Morgan Johnston
So that wasn't the brain portion. They ran like a million tests? Yeah.
Moiya McTier
Okay.
Morgan Johnston
Um, you actually can learn a little bit. A lot of people measure cortisol in poop, it's a very easy way to get cortisol measurements, which is one way to look at stress, you can't learn some stuff. But luckily, that's not what I do believe it. So for the brain stuff, they ran a bunch of like cognitive tests, while they were like on this human to the International Space Station, and then he came back. So they ran a bunch of tests, he was there for a year, there were some really neat results. They in like other fields of biology are really cool. So I recommend people look it up. But for the brain stuff, what they found was the one who was in space had more risk taking behavior than his brother, who might, his willingness to, like, take risks decreased over the course of him being in space. So at the beginning, he was like, more willing to I guess, like put himself in harm's way for like a reward and not like got smaller throughout his duration space.
Corinne Caputo
Whoa,
Moiya McTier
why
Morgan Johnston
So one theory for all of the cognitive changes, I'm gonna say is mostly just like stress. So theoretically, astronauts love being in space. Also it must be an incredibly stressful experience. Like, what happens if a door opens?
Moiya McTier
Yeah, yeah, I was like it's it has it can have anything to do with radiation or the cosmic rays or the microgravity like that's, that's not going to affect personality?
Morgan Johnston
Well, the microgravity could be an explanation for one of the other things is that his ability to learn through like visual objects, like showing like a bunch of shapes and learning those, and decreased throughout his day, and one of the theories for that is that astronauts, actually, their eyeballs, like the shape of the eyeball changes while they're in space because of the gravity situation.
Corinne Caputo
Yes.
Moiya McTier
So cool
Corinne Caputo
We talk about this a lot at the Space Center, like your vestibular system keeps your balance. And when you're in the ISS, you're in a constant state of freefall, and you'd like totally lose track of like, what's up and what's down, it actually, like doesn't matter. And they've like decided internally, like, what to call what, but yeah, your eyes, we had these really fun goggles at the space center that were like, had a prism, we were really cool. And we would have kids, like, try to write their name in, when they're feeling this confusion and like the way it would flip your vision and your vision is not flipped, but you get that feeling of like confusion and up, like settle into it.
Morgan Johnston
That's super neat. Yeah, one of the other things is that they lose their sense of proprioception, which is your ability to know where you are in relation to everything else. So like, if you close your eyes, you know where your hand is? Yeah. And they they actually really struggle with that while they're in space.
Corinne Caputo
Yes, that was exactly what we would ask the kids is kind of like, close your eyes and raise your hand and like, how do you know, like, put your hand up? And like, which way is that? Yeah, yeah, there's a really cool mission patch I just discovered for this study, NASA makes like a mission patch for each mission that they do. And I will make sure to include the twin mission patch in our Instagram post.
Morgan Johnston
Oh, my God, that's so cool. So then the last thing that they found also was that the one who was in space, it his ability to recognize emotions actually got it, like declined while he was in space. Oh. But that was really interesting from like, a psychology perspective. Because you could argue that's the stress of space, or that it's like some other stuff that's going on. But I looked up and there's only like seven people on the ISS
Moiya McTier
There's not a lot up there. No, I'm pretty isolated.
Speaker 2
And if you're there for a year, I would imagine all of your people skills get a little rusty. Yes. And also
Corinne Caputo
there. I mean, like everyone speaks like English and Russian in the speech in ISS. But not everyone is American. So there's some barriers there and like communication and culture, I imagine
Morgan Johnston
Yeah. So yeah, so those are the main, like, cognitive effects that they found. But they also found that a lot of this went away, like after he had been back for a little bit. So it changes like while you're in space, but then once you get back, it's a little different. And the main point of them, like reporting all this stuff was to look at okay, well, what can we do better in the future to help like future astronauts, and one of their solutions because a lot of the cognitive changes that could happen could sort of like if they were taken to a more severe degree could harm your ability to like get back to Earth or like if something were to mess up on the rocket and you struggle with like recognizing objects, you would have a harder time repairing it. So NASA's solution that they argued was to make a lot more of the post flight stuff on like automated so that we don't have to worry about if the human that is there skills, which I thought was a really interesting solution, but it's really funny.
Moiya McTier
Yeah, that's that's always the solution. Well, let's just make a robot dude. Yeah, make a machine do it.
Morgan Johnston
oh wow. Yeah, these guys seem really cool though. I watched a few interviews with them and they said really neat. Yeah.
Moiya McTier
Mark Kelly definitely has a big fan base. Yes,
Corinne Caputo
they do. I almost when I was reading a play, like years ago and I was like, I think I want it to be about Mark and Scott Kelly trying to plan their birthday party like after all the space stuff comes out. I'm gonna have to dig up my notes on that and see, see what I jotted down.
Morgan Johnston
One of them would have been in space for their birthday.
Corinne Caputo
Speaking as a twin I know what it's like to share a birthday.
Moiya McTier
yeah. Do you do joint birthday parties?
Corinne Caputo
We don't not like we don't live in the same place. Now when we're your kids like Yeah, and we have the same friend group for a while. So like that made it super
Moiya McTier
I have really enjoyed this conversation. I've learned so much. I have laughed so hard. I'm never going to forget this dolphin story. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you for joining us. Morgan. Can you tell the listeners how to find you and your work on the interwebs?
Morgan Johnston
Oh, absolutely. So I do a lot of science communication on Tik Tok in YouTube. I'm at skin neuroscientist on both of those. I technically have a Twitter called Aska neuro but I think I tweeted for the first time like a year recently.
Moiya McTier
It's a dumpster fire they're either not missing
Morgan Johnston
Yeah I technically have a website I forget the URL, but it's askaneuroscientist...something so they can look me up there.
Moiya McTier
that will be in the episode description down below. And I feel like that sludgy coffee that you started is ready so we can
Yeah,
we can go measure its viscosity and see how ouzz it is. But that does mean that we're gonna go we're going to stop this episode. But Morgan, do you maybe want to tell the listeners like a lesson about how they can view themselves in relation to the universe
Corinne Caputo
Or a tagline perhaps
Morgan Johnston
Yeah um, you are made of space.
Moiya McTier
That's coming from a neuroscientist so you know, it's true on so many things.
Morgan Johnston
I would never lie to you.
Moiya McTier
pale blue pod was created by Moiya McTier and Corrine Caputo with help from the multitude productions team. Our theme music is by Evan Johnston and our cover art is by Shea McMullen. Our audio editing is handled by the incomparable Misha Stanton,
Corinne Caputo
Stay in touch with us and the universe by following at pale blue pod on Twitter and Instagram. Or check out our website pale blue pod.com. We're a member of multitude and independent podcast collective and production studio. If you like pale blue pod you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude dot productions.
Moiya McTier
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Corinne Caputo
Thanks for listening to pale blue pod. You'll hear us again next week by