Like many forty-something scientists working in labs today, Dr. David Eagleman remembers watching Carl Sagan on television as a kid and feeling his imagination expand. Each week on Cosmos (1980), Sagan provided context for our place in the universe, giving the unfathomably enormous cosmos a door of accessibility. For Eagleman, walking through that door was the beginning of a lifelong project to do for the brain what Sagan did for the universe.
This week that project comes to PBS as a series hosted by Eagleman called The Brain, launching in tandem with a book of the same name.
“Since I was a little kid, I wanted to do this show,” Eagleman told me, recounting his early memories watching Sagan make the universe, and our place in it, comprehensible. “Sagan put our story in the context of the cosmos. I want to provide context for our inner cosmos.”
Developing a show to deliver a Cosmos-level experience took two years. The six-episode series covers an expanse of topics ranging from questions that regularly ring in our ears like “How Do I Decide?” to the much more abstract “Who Will We Be?” The series kicks off with one of the most challenging questions of all -- “What is Reality?”
Eagleman’s treatment of these topics brings each within reach without relying on a raft of jargon, while staying true to science-based explanations. That’s one of the most important contributions the series makes to the ongoing discussion about the brain: it separates the known from the unknown; the evidence-based from over-hyped speculation.
Eagleman says clearing up misconceptions about brain science was one of his main reasons for doing the series: “The show gives the lay of the land of neuroscience, discussing the things we know and those which are still unanswered. It’s about telling that story.”
Telling that story is clearly Eagleman’s passion (he’s also had a best-selling book, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain), and it’s evident throughout this genuinely entertaining series. He’s an insightful guide able to link difficult science with familiar examples. And the story he tells is amazing. In the fine tradition of Carl Sagan, Eagleman shows that science is captivating without hyped embellishment, and, if you pay attention, you’ll find yourself immersed in it.
Some who watch will struggle with an inescapable conclusion: the “you” at the center of your personal universe is inseparable from the wetware in your head. There’s nothing in the “world out there” that comes to us without interpretation by the brain. And the level of complexity involved in interpreting what we think of as the simplest matters, like distinguishing between colors and estimating distances, is difficult to grasp. In some cases, as Eagleman shows, what’s in our head constitutes more of “reality” than what exists outside us.
For example, we generally think of “seeing” as the result of processing information that comes through our eyes, but the truth is that several times more of what we “see” consists of information produced within the brain. All of us carry around internal models that the brain uses to construct, from endless perceptual fragments, what we call reality. In other words, much of what we experience of reality is, in Eagleman's words, a “beautifully rendered simulation.”
(If you find conclusions like that one challenging, all the more reason to watch. Here’s another one: every moment of every day, you are living in the past, and not just in a poetic way – you are actually living in the past.)
“The show will tell the story like it is: your reality is irrevocably tied to the tissue in your head,” Eagleman told me. At the same time, however, it explores the context in which our brain does its work. “The show will also talk about the greater nervous system and how the brain is affected by the body.”
Another episode (titled “Why Do I Need You?”) is devoted to the social context of our brains – how the organ in your head interacts with, and is shaped by, all of the other brains it encounters. This area of study, called social neuroscience, is integral to understanding what underlies how people treat each other, from the good to the bad. “We devoted an entire episode to brains’ connectivity,” said Eagleman, “because to understand something like genocide, for example, it’s important to understand the neural phenomena dimension.”
Each of the topics in the series frames a panoramic view of the brain and its larger context. Ultimately, the series delivers you on the rising steps of what’s coming next for the brain, and by extension what’s next for us -- a topic that Eagleman’s lab at the Baylor College of Medicine is at the center of exploring.
“We’re studying sensory expansion, the integration of technology with the brain,” explains Eagleman, "and we’re much farther along than most people realize. Finally we are at a point where we don’t have to wait for Mother Nature. We can now define our trajectory for the future.”
Examples of this trajectory are hard to miss -- from robotic arms that amputees can control with their minds, to neural implants that allow paralyzed patients to regain movement, to a technology that Eagleman’s lab has been working on that can potentially return hearing to 53 million hearing-impaired people around the world (his lab is devising the implant tech for that one right now).
The story of the brain is the story of us -- understanding how the brain works is an understanding of what it means to be human. Following Carl Sagan’s example, David Eagleman takes on the challenge of growing this understanding, and the result is a captivating and sensible exploration of neuroscience that viewers will find surprisingly relatable. Check your local PBS station at 10 pm EDT Wednesdays beginning October 14 through November 18.
You can find David DiSalvo on Twitter @neuronarrative and at his website daviddisalvo.org.
