1 00:00:02,280 --> 00:00:05,390 I have a. 2 00:00:09,530 --> 00:00:15,230 So welcome. This is this is the fifth seminar in the country's memory network series. 3 00:00:15,920 --> 00:00:19,100 Also, for those of you who don't know me, I'm the organiser. 4 00:00:19,530 --> 00:00:27,470 And today's topic is Proustian memory. All throughout the year, we will keep trying to reduce the conceptual gap between mind and brain. 5 00:00:28,100 --> 00:00:35,720 And today is a very is a crowd pleasing topic, which is, of course, the neuroscience you already have. 6 00:00:35,810 --> 00:00:43,100 You probably know the book proofs of neuroscientist and Truth under which perhaps but one of the earliest 7 00:00:43,730 --> 00:00:50,059 articles which is published on this very topic was by all speakers today called Madeleines and Neuro Modernism, 8 00:00:50,060 --> 00:00:59,120 which came out in 1998. Customers kindly produce a book with a with her some copies, if you'd like, one at the end of the seminar. 9 00:00:59,600 --> 00:01:05,090 So they're going to speak together. And I will just first introduce Professor Gordon Sheppard, 10 00:01:05,330 --> 00:01:12,050 who's professor of neurobiology at Yale Medical School, where he also served as a deputy provost. 11 00:01:12,620 --> 00:01:19,279 He's a pioneer in the neuro analysis of the olfactory system, and he introduced the field time, 12 00:01:19,280 --> 00:01:26,090 sight, brain, Microsoft's dendritic, dendritic synopsis and neuro gastronomy. 13 00:01:26,840 --> 00:01:32,569 He also develops new fields of computational neuroscience and neuro informatics. 14 00:01:32,570 --> 00:01:40,010 And his books, the synaptic Organisation of the Brain Neurobiology, are used widely all over the world of textbooks. 15 00:01:40,550 --> 00:01:45,470 He's been the chief editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology and the Journal of Neuroscience. 16 00:01:45,710 --> 00:01:50,810 He's also our father, his collaborator today, our professor Kirsten Sheppard. 17 00:01:50,810 --> 00:01:58,610 Bob who our own professorship with Bob, who is in fact on the faculty of English here, where she teaches modern drama. 18 00:01:59,270 --> 00:02:07,340 Her book Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett was published this year by Columbia University Press. 19 00:02:07,610 --> 00:02:15,290 She is the author of a groundbreaking book called Silence on the Stage, published by the Princeton University Press. 20 00:02:17,120 --> 00:02:21,300 I think we could you just about this. 21 00:02:22,810 --> 00:02:28,570 Yes, maybe this one is that, which I would highly recommend. 22 00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:33,400 She's also author of Ibsen and the Early Modernist Theatre. 23 00:02:33,910 --> 00:02:40,600 She's the current knowledge exchange and public engagement champion for the Humanities at Oxford. 24 00:02:40,840 --> 00:02:50,530 Please join me in welcoming the speakers today. Thank you very much. 25 00:02:50,740 --> 00:02:55,720 May I turn it over to my collaborator? No, really. 26 00:02:55,840 --> 00:03:10,990 Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here. And Kirsten and I will attempt to give you a follow up to the article we wrote many years ago, 27 00:03:11,500 --> 00:03:19,120 in which it seemed there was an opportunity to bring together an analysis of a literary 28 00:03:20,740 --> 00:03:28,330 described episode and the neuroscience that could give insight into that episode. 29 00:03:28,960 --> 00:03:36,550 And so it gave the opportunity to address some of the interpretations by the author 30 00:03:36,550 --> 00:03:45,430 himself and by critics of this famous episode of The Madeleines and Memory, 31 00:03:46,450 --> 00:03:57,850 and to show how neuroscience can provide insights that have relevance to events that are described in literature. 32 00:03:58,660 --> 00:04:02,740 And so it really is a cross cultural opportunity. 33 00:04:03,280 --> 00:04:07,810 And so we invite all of you to join with us. 34 00:04:08,470 --> 00:04:14,650 And of course, we regard this entirely as an experiment. 35 00:04:15,640 --> 00:04:24,340 We are not Proustian. We were only drawn to this episode as an opportunity. 36 00:04:24,340 --> 00:04:33,190 And so we hope to learn as much from the discussion with all of you as we hope we can communicate to you. 37 00:04:33,550 --> 00:04:37,720 So please take it from there. 38 00:04:37,750 --> 00:04:42,070 Yes. So we're going to go through this in four parts. 39 00:04:43,840 --> 00:04:48,380 So I will start and will actually just analyse the moment. 40 00:04:49,060 --> 00:04:55,540 We just want to look at the moment, the famous moment, and go through it in some detail. 41 00:04:56,560 --> 00:05:03,790 And then I'll hand over to Gordon and then [INAUDIBLE] hand back in only like ping pong. 42 00:05:04,900 --> 00:05:08,680 But we will we will try to do it in an integrated way. 43 00:05:09,100 --> 00:05:13,180 So I'll lead off with this episode. Shall we start part one? 44 00:05:13,600 --> 00:05:22,690 Yeah. Part one. There we are. Part one analysis of the moment, which let's see, to start with the quote we go. 45 00:05:23,020 --> 00:05:29,110 So here's one of the famous bits of it, but one from a long distant past. 46 00:05:29,140 --> 00:05:33,340 Nothing subsists after the people are dead. After the things are broken and scattered. 47 00:05:33,340 --> 00:05:36,970 Taste and smell alone. More fragile but more enduring. 48 00:05:37,240 --> 00:05:41,139 More unsubstantial. More persistent. More faithful. Remain poised. 49 00:05:41,140 --> 00:05:44,920 A long time like souls. Remembering, waiting, hoping. 50 00:05:44,920 --> 00:05:53,950 Amid the ruins of all the rest. And bear unflinchingly in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. 51 00:05:55,420 --> 00:06:00,190 So this is the iconic moment that's really become a literary cliche. 52 00:06:00,970 --> 00:06:07,230 It's used very often. You'll see it in the media, used to indicate instantaneous and intense memory. 53 00:06:07,240 --> 00:06:12,970 We come across it all the time. But its precise nature, we feel, has been misunderstood. 54 00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:21,730 So there are three points about that. This is not, in fact, an instance of involuntary memory, but a combination of involuntary involuntary recall. 55 00:06:22,870 --> 00:06:26,050 And the second thing is the trigger is as much smell as taste. 56 00:06:26,140 --> 00:06:29,950 Smell is the most important component of flavour as you will be hearing. 57 00:06:30,340 --> 00:06:31,870 And Paris recognises this. 58 00:06:32,260 --> 00:06:38,200 Yet popular references to the Madeleine episode usually assume that the trigger is taste alone or it's characterised in that way. 59 00:06:38,860 --> 00:06:47,320 And thirdly, the memory does not emerge right away all of a sudden, but is delayed and in fact requires quite a bit of conscious effort. 60 00:06:47,860 --> 00:06:54,310 Proust's famous statement that might emerge from my teacup, in fact, comes at the end of a long process of recall. 61 00:06:55,300 --> 00:07:01,660 So let's analyse his description of what happened. We won't be looking at the full passage as it takes several pages, which is part of our point. 62 00:07:02,230 --> 00:07:03,850 But let's go through the key moments. 63 00:07:04,480 --> 00:07:14,020 So to begin with, he shows that certain very specific conditions need to be in place in order for involuntary memory to occur. 64 00:07:14,830 --> 00:07:23,410 We're actually getting ahead of ourselves. One is that the narrator is in a depressed, dejected state. 65 00:07:23,500 --> 00:07:28,450 His word is oppressed by the gloomy weather and the sad future he envisions. 66 00:07:29,230 --> 00:07:35,440 And the second thing is, although he is doing something that is habitual in that it's a physical act, 67 00:07:35,440 --> 00:07:38,500 he does all the time in taking food in his mouth. 68 00:07:39,850 --> 00:07:43,750 He doesn't normally drink tea, and he makes that point in the passage. 69 00:07:44,380 --> 00:07:47,170 So the circumstances are out of the ordinary for him. So. 70 00:07:47,200 --> 00:07:54,280 While the action itself is an ordinary thing that you do all the time and he's done all the time, the circumstances are unusual. 71 00:07:54,670 --> 00:08:01,150 And the other thing is that a final condition is that the memory that eventually emerges must have been a forgotten one. 72 00:08:01,270 --> 00:08:05,740 It was forgotten. It's totally unexpected, has not been thought about for years and years. 73 00:08:06,280 --> 00:08:10,180 And now we're on to the second quotation. Yeah. 74 00:08:10,540 --> 00:08:13,569 So. But was it an involuntary memory then? 75 00:08:13,570 --> 00:08:18,310 And so Chris Tex says otherwise. So here's the long bit. 76 00:08:18,610 --> 00:08:22,540 I begin again to ask myself what could have been this unremembered state? 77 00:08:23,560 --> 00:08:30,280 I decided to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. 78 00:08:30,700 --> 00:08:37,600 I rediscovered the same state. I ask my mind to make one further effort to bring back once more the fleeting sensation. 79 00:08:38,020 --> 00:08:44,920 I shut out every obstacle. I compelled my mind for a change, to enjoy the distraction, which I have just denied it. 80 00:08:45,340 --> 00:08:52,990 For the second time, I clear an empty space in front of it. I place in position before my mind's eye the still recent taste of that first mouthful. 81 00:08:53,320 --> 00:08:59,380 And I feel something start within me. I do not know yet what it is, but I can feel it mounting slowly. 82 00:09:00,430 --> 00:09:05,860 Undoubtedly. What is thus palpitating in the depths of my being must be the image, the visual memory, 83 00:09:06,130 --> 00:09:12,790 which being linked to that taste is trying to follow it into my conscious mind ten times over. 84 00:09:12,970 --> 00:09:19,180 I must say the task and suddenly the memory revealed itself is how that ends. 85 00:09:19,660 --> 00:09:22,930 So he shows a very specific sequence of events. 86 00:09:23,530 --> 00:09:28,260 One is that the sensory stimulus. First triggers an intense emotional state. 87 00:09:28,270 --> 00:09:32,230 So elation, joy, happiness. And then the specific memory. 88 00:09:33,340 --> 00:09:37,600 Now, let's see, I think a quotation. Do we want to think positively? 89 00:09:38,620 --> 00:09:45,430 Yeah. So here we go. The emotions evoked by the Madeleine are crucial to the whole theoretical edifice of critical thought on this episode. 90 00:09:45,760 --> 00:09:50,050 He goes on to say, An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses. 91 00:09:50,380 --> 00:09:56,680 So the emotion is described as this exquisite pleasure, something isolated, detached with no suggestion of its origin. 92 00:09:56,980 --> 00:10:01,720 This new sensation had the effect which love has of filling me with the precious essence. 93 00:10:02,170 --> 00:10:04,930 Whence could it have come to me this all powerful joy? 94 00:10:05,290 --> 00:10:10,390 I sense that it was connected with the taste of the tea and cake, but that it was infinitely transient, 95 00:10:10,630 --> 00:10:15,070 but that it infinitely transcended those savours could not indeed be of the same nature. 96 00:10:15,640 --> 00:10:20,260 Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? 97 00:10:23,200 --> 00:10:28,269 And so this emotional state defies mortality. 98 00:10:28,270 --> 00:10:34,660 It's so transcendent. He says, I ceased to feel I was mediocre, contingent, mortal. 99 00:10:35,800 --> 00:10:39,370 The narrator attempts to understand it. He asks, Where did it come from? 100 00:10:39,370 --> 00:10:40,930 What did it mean? How could I grasp it? 101 00:10:41,380 --> 00:10:49,300 So he tries to prolong it by drinking a second mouthful, but immediately the sensation starts to lessen and this is desensitisation occurring. 102 00:10:49,540 --> 00:10:59,680 And we've all felt this when you have a very powerful trigger and then you attempt to enjoy it, and then after a while it sort of wanes. 103 00:10:59,950 --> 00:11:05,590 And this can also be an unpleasant smell, for instance, that you sort of lessens as time goes on. 104 00:11:06,160 --> 00:11:13,360 So the sensory adaptation takes place and it gets in the way of him hanging on to the experience. 105 00:11:13,720 --> 00:11:16,990 But he's determined to make the emotional state reappear, as he says. 106 00:11:17,680 --> 00:11:27,010 And note that so far no mention has yet been made of combining a memory has not yet emerged in a tangible way by conscious and creative effort, 107 00:11:27,280 --> 00:11:30,909 and the emphasis here is on creative effort. So he's clearing his mind. 108 00:11:30,910 --> 00:11:34,180 He's concentrating. He's ignoring extraneous sounds and sights. 109 00:11:34,600 --> 00:11:39,880 He's able to call something forth, something, quote, quivering, but still indistinct. 110 00:11:41,230 --> 00:11:46,900 And he often uses this term create in this section, something is trying to struggle up from, 111 00:11:46,900 --> 00:11:50,740 quote, my very depths, but, quote, I no longer feel anything. 112 00:11:50,740 --> 00:11:58,360 So ten times over, I must begin again. So just when he's about to give up and resign himself to losing that moment forever, 113 00:11:58,870 --> 00:12:04,179 to never knowing what it was that was trying to struggle forth from his unconscious, suddenly the memory appeared, 114 00:12:04,180 --> 00:12:10,180 he says, his aunt giving him a bit of her teeth of Madeleine as a child and way only once 115 00:12:10,180 --> 00:12:15,100 the specific place is located does the full memory flood over him immediately. 116 00:12:15,310 --> 00:12:20,590 The old grey house on the street emerges. The town, the square, the streets, the gardens, the people. 117 00:12:20,950 --> 00:12:25,600 All of this, which is assuming form and substance, emerged from my cup of tea. 118 00:12:26,680 --> 00:12:31,660 So to conclude this little first section here, there are some things about this episode to note. 119 00:12:31,990 --> 00:12:40,240 There's a paradox in that the extraordinary state is brought about by a completely ordinary act and recalls a memory that is likewise unremarkable. 120 00:12:40,660 --> 00:12:47,080 It's only remarkable to the individual. The episode gets at the essence of being a writer in time regained his. 121 00:12:47,140 --> 00:12:50,920 Says that the moment of tasting the madeleine is in and of itself insignificant. 122 00:12:51,280 --> 00:12:57,490 The significance has to be extracted. And so here he links the Madeleine episode to his larger aesthetic project, 123 00:12:57,880 --> 00:13:05,830 saying that it is through this process of extraction that the writer arrives finally at for real life and quote, real life is literature. 124 00:13:06,430 --> 00:13:13,300 And finally, Bruce recognises at once that it is a combination of taste and smell that generates this intense emotional state, 125 00:13:13,690 --> 00:13:18,850 as he calls them, souls remembering. And this is where we go over to you. 126 00:13:19,540 --> 00:13:23,590 Oh, I was finding this quite interesting. So. 127 00:13:24,610 --> 00:13:26,740 So maybe we'll hold off then. 128 00:13:27,010 --> 00:13:37,080 Any discussion points until I've shown you what neuroscience is all about and how it might give insight into this episode, 129 00:13:37,090 --> 00:13:41,490 and then we can begin to encourage you to join in it. 130 00:13:42,580 --> 00:13:46,690 So what about the science of this literary moment? 131 00:13:49,120 --> 00:13:59,050 So we're going to be concerned with the brain, because all of our experience is actually, 132 00:13:59,560 --> 00:14:05,920 even though stimulated by our environment, is created for ourselves by our brain. 133 00:14:07,030 --> 00:14:16,149 And this first really came home to me when I got increasingly interested in flavour and 134 00:14:16,150 --> 00:14:25,810 flavour is actually at the core of the Madeleine incident because he's describing a flavour, 135 00:14:26,230 --> 00:14:29,890 he calls it a taste. He also includes smell. 136 00:14:30,820 --> 00:14:40,480 And when we wrote our original article, we pretty much kept those regarded those as separate compartments. 137 00:14:41,830 --> 00:14:52,180 But in the meantime, it's become obvious to those of us working on smell and taste that what we're really talking about is flavour. 138 00:14:53,170 --> 00:15:09,220 And flavour is a combination of all of the senses involved in our appreciation, our perception of the food or or drink that we take into our mouths. 139 00:15:11,300 --> 00:15:20,510 And the first key thing that we all want to recognise is the flavour is not in the food. 140 00:15:21,470 --> 00:15:23,720 Flavour is created by the brain. 141 00:15:25,400 --> 00:15:37,880 And so it's very similar in that sense and that way to colour, because colour isn't in the objects that we see having colour around us. 142 00:15:38,780 --> 00:15:48,200 Colour is created from the different wavelengths that are bouncing off all of us and is created 143 00:15:48,200 --> 00:16:03,800 as a as a perception to inform and elaborate on our experience of the visual world around us. 144 00:16:05,750 --> 00:16:09,620 We have an expert on the visual system of August. 145 00:16:09,980 --> 00:16:28,250 And so we will be able to consult with him if we need more light thrown on this aspect but flavour, then following on that will be a coloured light. 146 00:16:28,580 --> 00:16:32,390 Coloured light. There you are created out of wavelengths. 147 00:16:33,260 --> 00:16:51,860 So in the same way the metal, in the the sense, the perception that we refer to Proust or to Marcel or who is Marcel. 148 00:16:52,460 --> 00:16:59,540 All right. That Marcel has is not in the madeleine, but is the flavour of this created by his brain. 149 00:17:00,920 --> 00:17:08,450 And what about that brain? So if we are talking only about the sense of smell, 150 00:17:09,710 --> 00:17:21,560 then we have a that occurs by auto nasal inspiration of the air to bring in what's outside in the madeleine before we consume it. 151 00:17:22,220 --> 00:17:30,170 That stimulates the olfactory cells in the top of the nasal cavity. 152 00:17:30,950 --> 00:17:40,160 They send their fibres to the olfactory bulb, which forms and spatial pattern representing those molecules. 153 00:17:41,630 --> 00:17:50,600 I'm going to spare you all of the circuits and and dynamics that we have carried out in many others over the years, 154 00:17:50,600 --> 00:18:01,370 just to say that a pattern is created. We actually call it an odour image, a smell image pattern that represents those different molecules. 155 00:18:01,820 --> 00:18:11,270 And so it's created entirely by the brain. And in order that the brain can then process that information as a pattern, 156 00:18:11,930 --> 00:18:20,450 just as the visual system takes a pattern of stimulation of the retina and projects that further to the brain for processing, 157 00:18:21,320 --> 00:18:27,380 and that next goes to the olfactory cortex where further processing takes place. 158 00:18:28,160 --> 00:18:41,360 So that instead of an image of the of the sensory input and an image that is in terms of the language of the brain is created. 159 00:18:41,810 --> 00:18:53,090 And we call this a smell object or an odour object, because now it's in a form that the brain can use to send it on to other parts of the brain. 160 00:18:53,810 --> 00:19:03,170 And so in the case of just the sense of smell, it goes to the highest level of of perception, 161 00:19:03,950 --> 00:19:10,550 the in the prefrontal cortex in what is called the orbitofrontal cortex, medium and lateral. 162 00:19:12,290 --> 00:19:15,410 So that's the stimulation of the olfactory part of the brain. 163 00:19:15,770 --> 00:19:20,270 And from that, we get a perception of the smell. However, 164 00:19:20,270 --> 00:19:26,749 we're dealing in this case and in all cases in which we consume something so that 165 00:19:26,750 --> 00:19:34,460 it's inside our mouth with a different kind of stimulation of the factory system. 166 00:19:35,240 --> 00:19:43,010 And this happens when we breathe out. So that the volatiles that are released from what is in our mouth. 167 00:19:43,610 --> 00:19:53,840 And it's shown here as a piece of food. But it could be just the fluid, or it could be a very small biscuit, as in the case of the madeleine. 168 00:19:54,650 --> 00:19:55,520 A small cake. 169 00:19:56,150 --> 00:20:10,250 And but within the mouth, the volatiles are released as we digest, as we manipulate the food in our mouths so that they're caught by the. 170 00:20:10,720 --> 00:20:13,300 Breathing out. You can imagine yourself. 171 00:20:14,680 --> 00:20:25,360 You breathe out and that carries volatiles again up into the nasal cavity to stimulate the olfactory receptor cells. 172 00:20:25,720 --> 00:20:29,470 And the whole process in the olfactory system is repeated. 173 00:20:30,310 --> 00:20:42,040 But now there's an enormous difference, because not only is the olfactory system activated, but every other sensory system in the brain. 174 00:20:42,760 --> 00:20:52,960 So that touch system is activated by the touch of the madeleine in the mouth and the teeth, 175 00:20:53,800 --> 00:21:04,450 the taste system, the taste buds in the on the tongue, and the further back activate the taste system. 176 00:21:04,990 --> 00:21:12,190 And so the touch system senses fibres up to the somatic sensory part of the cerebral cortex. 177 00:21:12,970 --> 00:21:20,530 The taste system sends its fibres up to the taste part of the cerebral cortex. 178 00:21:21,460 --> 00:21:34,300 The visual system has already been activated by seeing the matter then as it's taken and put into the mouth and the cup of tea, 179 00:21:35,020 --> 00:21:38,980 and we'll see how important vision is as well. 180 00:21:39,940 --> 00:21:51,640 And even the auditory system is activated as you slosh around the tea in your mouth and crunch the madeleine. 181 00:21:52,630 --> 00:22:00,640 And just think about how important Rice Krispies Crunchy is to Sally Rice Krispies. 182 00:22:01,000 --> 00:22:11,980 And so now we're we're getting into understanding what it is that makes a particular food or or beverage attractive. 183 00:22:12,850 --> 00:22:21,880 And so now you see, we're stimulating quite a bit of the brain, and this is only sensory discrimination. 184 00:22:23,260 --> 00:22:30,220 Now we have to recognise that the motor system in our heads is also being activated. 185 00:22:30,640 --> 00:22:35,180 We never have flavours, never a passive sense. 186 00:22:35,320 --> 00:22:37,090 There's always an active sense. 187 00:22:37,630 --> 00:22:47,680 So when we take something in our mouth, we have to move our mouth and begin to use our tongues to manipulate the food or our liquid. 188 00:22:48,910 --> 00:22:52,990 So this is what we call an active sense or active touch. 189 00:22:53,500 --> 00:23:00,940 And this completely different from looking straight forward and seeing somebody and activating only 190 00:23:01,390 --> 00:23:08,980 the the visual system until we start to examine that person more and be more actively involved. 191 00:23:10,370 --> 00:23:18,310 And now I haven't even talked about what was so important for Proust and that with all the emotions. 192 00:23:19,150 --> 00:23:27,140 So first and remember memory. So first of all, they're our memory systems, then they're activated and I can't even show them there. 193 00:23:27,220 --> 00:23:35,020 I'll show you them in the animation. But there are memory systems involving the hippocampus and others. 194 00:23:35,800 --> 00:23:40,300 There are emotional systems that are connected, 195 00:23:40,300 --> 00:23:52,360 particularly to the olfactory and smell system that are aroused by different kinds of stimuli and the experience of them. 196 00:23:53,320 --> 00:23:56,630 There are all the systems involved in motivation. 197 00:23:57,940 --> 00:24:04,180 Usually we are motivated when we're hungry, we're motivated when we see something that we really like. 198 00:24:04,960 --> 00:24:10,030 It's a little different with Proust because he's not motivated to do anything, 199 00:24:10,720 --> 00:24:18,130 and so it's only his aunt who provides him with something that then stimulates his motivation. 200 00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:27,640 And so all of that effort to bring forth that unremembered memory involves the motivational systems, 201 00:24:27,640 --> 00:24:32,260 and these are tremendously important in human and animal animal life. 202 00:24:33,070 --> 00:24:38,530 There are reward systems that involve the transmitter called dopamine, 203 00:24:39,250 --> 00:24:50,900 that are systems that are activated when we achieve the conservation of something that we feel is rewarding. 204 00:24:50,920 --> 00:25:05,680 And so the reward systems obviously flooded with Marcel as he consumed the and then found the found the final the final goal of the of the memory. 205 00:25:06,340 --> 00:25:10,030 And finally, there are the language systems. So. 206 00:25:10,540 --> 00:25:22,660 Cruz could never have described this incident without it connecting to the language systems in a way that enabled him to explain them, 207 00:25:23,530 --> 00:25:31,899 enabled him to explain emotion that might not be so closely related to. 208 00:25:31,900 --> 00:25:42,470 Excuse me. Emotions are not necessarily connected to our language systems without some effort. 209 00:25:43,460 --> 00:25:54,300 And so and I believe there there are passages that relate to how difficult it was to express in words the emotions that were called forward. 210 00:25:55,100 --> 00:26:05,720 And so that emphasises how important language is to the human experience of memory and emotion and all the other things. 211 00:26:07,460 --> 00:26:15,890 So that's an introduction to just the most superficial view of the brain systems that are involved. 212 00:26:16,790 --> 00:26:22,340 And now I'm going to show you an animation that puts them into a sequence. 213 00:26:23,270 --> 00:26:33,770 It seemed to me that seeing this still view of the of the brain and the head and everything going on here with consuming the morsel of 214 00:26:33,770 --> 00:26:49,430 food didn't really give you the full and full insight into how complex this series of movements and sensations and and emotions are. 215 00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:53,240 And so I thought an animation would help to do that. 216 00:26:53,930 --> 00:27:03,920 So let's go to. How the brain creates flavour from food. 217 00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:16,790 So this whole thing of what I call neuro gastronomy, because it amplifies our view of gastronomy, which is the pleasure we get from the food we eat. 218 00:27:17,360 --> 00:27:26,630 And the brain is so central to the experience that it's an attempt to give you this this more enlarged view. 219 00:27:27,050 --> 00:27:30,800 And so I'm going to play this now, and you can listen to it, and then I'll be interrupted from time to time. 220 00:27:32,150 --> 00:27:33,229 First, this is a valley. 221 00:27:33,230 --> 00:27:42,170 Face eating actually begins when we start to think about food and flavours using our highest brain centres, especially the prefrontal cortex. 222 00:27:42,860 --> 00:27:52,700 We may shop for the food prepared or sit down at a restaurant, seeing food and sensing aromas activate our main reward system on Pablo's dogs. 223 00:27:52,700 --> 00:28:04,580 Autonomic centres for salivation begin to be active. So this is all in terms I don't have an animation for just for the the Proustian incident, 224 00:28:05,180 --> 00:28:10,820 but this gives you the larger context of when we when we are preparing to eat. 225 00:28:11,330 --> 00:28:21,649 And this is, of course, lacking in the case of of the of the Proust incident, because he's very depressed and he's not thinking about food. 226 00:28:21,650 --> 00:28:25,940 And so that forms an interesting contrast with the way the system usually works. 227 00:28:28,070 --> 00:28:34,610 We feel hungry due to hormones controlled by the hypothalamus, which activate motivation centres in the brain to want to eat. 228 00:28:35,030 --> 00:28:40,670 This symbolic phase thus involves the critical balance between our expectations of flavour, 229 00:28:40,730 --> 00:28:45,650 nutrition and amount inhibitory restraint by control centres in our frontal lobes. 230 00:28:45,980 --> 00:28:50,510 Stimulation by our senses and our systems for emotions, memories and reward. 231 00:28:50,990 --> 00:28:55,100 And influences from others through our language centres. So. 232 00:28:55,520 --> 00:29:01,070 So these these larger systems here involving emotion, memory and reward and so forth, 233 00:29:01,730 --> 00:29:09,860 are obviously in a different state for for Marcel as he's she's fed the tea. 234 00:29:10,190 --> 00:29:17,239 And so this is an, I think, an interesting variation on the normal way that the system usually gets at this balance, 235 00:29:17,240 --> 00:29:22,550 determines eating a flavourful and healthy diet, avoiding obesity and related disorders. 236 00:29:22,700 --> 00:29:28,670 Next, preliminary analysis. The food is served and the motor systems of our arms, hands and fingers. 237 00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:37,040 Selective bite. We use our eye muscles and visual perception to check out his appearance and breathe in the aroma, but also nasal smell. 238 00:29:37,460 --> 00:29:41,990 Autonomic pathways produced saliva. Next, ingestion. 239 00:29:42,500 --> 00:29:49,940 Our prefrontal cortex system decides to. So the auto nasal is the breathing in. 240 00:29:50,780 --> 00:29:55,700 And that's the one to ingest the food. We move the food to the mouth in head. 241 00:29:56,330 --> 00:30:04,040 So this is auto nasal smell when we're breathing in and sensing the smell of what we're about to eat. 242 00:30:04,040 --> 00:30:10,940 And that that would be what Marcel first sensed as he took the bell for a final test of the aroma. 243 00:30:11,330 --> 00:30:16,040 And the prefrontal cortex decides to ingest the food. The jaw opens. 244 00:30:16,040 --> 00:30:22,700 The tongue is pleased to receive the food. So there are those little white dots on the volatile molecules from the madeleine. 245 00:30:23,090 --> 00:30:24,170 And we take a bite. 246 00:30:25,670 --> 00:30:32,150 The initial analysis, the ingested food immediately activates touch receptors in the mouth and the signals are raised to the court. 247 00:30:32,600 --> 00:30:38,600 So these are the touch receptors here in the touch pathway going up through the thalamus. 248 00:30:39,380 --> 00:30:46,820 And when it reaches the cortex, then we believe that's where consciousness begins, predicts for touch perception. 249 00:30:47,370 --> 00:30:53,660 Control of perception of the food and its flavours all refer to the mouth as quote taste. 250 00:30:54,140 --> 00:30:57,980 The motor system for chewing commences coordinated with breathing. 251 00:30:58,100 --> 00:31:00,350 The food begins to stimulate the taste buds, 252 00:31:00,350 --> 00:31:07,580 activating the taste pathway for conscious perception of taste qualities sweet salt, sour, bitter and umami. 253 00:31:08,270 --> 00:31:12,290 The tongue moves the food to stimulate all the taste buds and pushes it to the teeth. 254 00:31:12,290 --> 00:31:15,889 For mastication, the lips close volatiles are released. 255 00:31:15,890 --> 00:31:23,770 Exhale. So here are the volatiles released from the madeleine that are now going to go up and back through the. 256 00:31:24,410 --> 00:31:27,920 You have no idea how hard it was for the artist to make those little white balls. 257 00:31:28,890 --> 00:31:35,330 It occurs and nasal smell begins. The dopamine reward system responds to the sensory stimuli. 258 00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:48,050 The salivary glands secrete their enzymes. So here's something we're not aware of, and that is that at the back of the mouth, our soft palate is open, 259 00:31:49,650 --> 00:31:57,290 is down, leaving it open for the volatiles to go back through the nasal pharynx and up into the nasal cavity. 260 00:31:58,070 --> 00:32:02,280 And in the same way. We're breathing through our trachea. 261 00:32:02,760 --> 00:32:09,030 And so we're holding all of this in our mouths, enabling this air to go back and forth, 262 00:32:09,930 --> 00:32:15,510 particularly upward and back, so that we can smell what's in our mouths. 263 00:32:16,230 --> 00:32:21,000 And at this, we're totally unaware. And that's something we'll come back to again and again. 264 00:32:21,690 --> 00:32:26,219 Hearing vibrations activate the auditory pathway to give perception of sounds such 265 00:32:26,220 --> 00:32:29,790 as crunchiness that are important in judging the quality and flavour of the food. 266 00:32:30,660 --> 00:32:34,190 Next forming the perceptual image. We're not aware of that. 267 00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:37,680 What we call taste is usually do mostly to recognisable smell. 268 00:32:37,860 --> 00:32:45,899 A better term is therefore flavour. It arises as a unified perceptual image as the association cortical areas 269 00:32:45,900 --> 00:32:50,040 process and relay this information to the prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex. 270 00:32:50,580 --> 00:33:00,090 So these are the association areas around the primary areas and as soon as all of the sensory systems begin to be stimulated together, 271 00:33:00,420 --> 00:33:10,440 they communicate to to enlarge the activation of the cortex through these association areas, which give us the elaboration of the perception. 272 00:33:10,860 --> 00:33:21,330 And so all of this is going on in Marcel's brain without him realising it, repeated chewing produces a mesh, makes the saliva, 273 00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:28,350 the movements of the tongue, and manipulating the food are complex, more complex actually, than tongue movements during speech. 274 00:33:29,100 --> 00:33:33,780 That's one of the most interesting things I found in this in this whole study. 275 00:33:34,140 --> 00:33:44,070 And that is we would think that the tongue movements we use in speech are highly refined and evolve during human evolution. 276 00:33:44,340 --> 00:33:51,990 But it turns out from studies of comparing tongue movements in manipulation of food and tongue movements in speech, 277 00:33:52,380 --> 00:33:57,360 that is the tongue movements manipulating the food in our mouths that are more complex and are 278 00:33:57,360 --> 00:34:05,160 the basis then for what was used then by this by the body to generate the vowels in the brain, 279 00:34:05,190 --> 00:34:08,849 chewing the residential pathways open so the volatiles from the back of the 280 00:34:08,850 --> 00:34:13,860 mouth ascend during exhalation to stimulate the smell receptors in the nose. 281 00:34:14,100 --> 00:34:21,839 Next analysing the perceptual object, memory systems are engaged, telling us that the food is what I like, what I want to hear. 282 00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:24,990 All the systems now that I mentioned before, 283 00:34:25,380 --> 00:34:34,020 many of them during normal eating are already activated as we think about the food we're going to eat in that swelling phase. 284 00:34:34,230 --> 00:34:40,860 But now they get stimulated by the what's actually in the mouth or what I crave. 285 00:34:41,250 --> 00:34:44,820 Emotion systems tell us that this food makes me happy or unhappy. 286 00:34:45,300 --> 00:34:52,080 Sensory Well, it definitely is making making Marcel happy the discrimination systems. 287 00:34:52,080 --> 00:34:55,680 Tell us how this compares with what I expected and with other flavours, 288 00:34:56,190 --> 00:35:01,409 the domain reward system is activated to refer or reject the food language systems 289 00:35:01,410 --> 00:35:06,209 enable us to communicate our judgements around the table using words during chewing. 290 00:35:06,210 --> 00:35:11,320 We're not aware that when we inhale, the food in our mouth does not activate the smell sectors. 291 00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:16,980 Nor are we aware that when we exhale, we so exhale again. 292 00:35:17,220 --> 00:35:28,800 We're totally unaware that the most of the flavour is coming from the activation of the olfactory sensory cells here. 293 00:35:29,670 --> 00:35:35,580 Most of us think that the flavour and the the the smell, 294 00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:47,670 the flavour we associate with the smell is coming from the mouth because that's where the food is and that's where the madeleine is and the tea. 295 00:35:48,240 --> 00:35:52,470 And this is why talking about the taste of the food is so confusing. 296 00:35:52,770 --> 00:35:57,749 And that's why how Marcel is referring to it as well, 297 00:35:57,750 --> 00:36:04,590 and richness of smell to the flavour as human perceives the mash becomes a mesh in which the individual 298 00:36:04,590 --> 00:36:12,600 food elements become fused to produce a continuous perception of a flavour object next swallowing. 299 00:36:12,990 --> 00:36:16,050 When the motion is judged by the prefrontal cortex system to be ready, 300 00:36:16,380 --> 00:36:21,420 the decision is made to swallow the final critical step in taking this foreign substance into the body. 301 00:36:21,420 --> 00:36:28,350 The tongue moves the mesh to the back of the mouth. The prefrontal cortex will to take over the mesh to the swallowing centre which 302 00:36:28,350 --> 00:36:33,120 acts automatically swallowing closes the nasal pharynx and the epiglottis. 303 00:36:33,750 --> 00:36:43,829 So there's the uvula, there is the epiglottis closing off so there's no more breathing so that the swallowing 304 00:36:43,830 --> 00:36:47,880 can take place without choking or without it going up into the nasal cavity. 305 00:36:48,300 --> 00:36:55,230 But this also we're totally unaware that the sensation of flavour continues without us realising 306 00:36:55,230 --> 00:36:59,490 it's been momentarily interrupted to prevent the food from going up into the nose and. 307 00:36:59,810 --> 00:37:06,170 Into the trachea and activates the muscles of the tongue and pharynx to push the mesh through the back of the mouth and into the oesophagus. 308 00:37:06,650 --> 00:37:12,230 Finally, post swallowing. When swallowing is finished, the muscles of the New Zealand epiglottis relax. 309 00:37:12,590 --> 00:37:13,580 Breathing resumed. 310 00:37:13,850 --> 00:37:21,140 And if we pay attention, we're aware of a heightened flavour left over from the fruit in the mouth and the resumption of retro nasal smell. 311 00:37:21,290 --> 00:37:29,090 Finally, the dopamine reward system signals the value of the food consumed and the relative desirability of the food is learned and remembered. 312 00:37:29,150 --> 00:37:35,170 Through synaptic plasticity, when hunger changes to satiation, motivation and emotional systems change, 313 00:37:35,210 --> 00:37:38,980 rejection and the prefrontal control system decides to stop eating, 314 00:37:39,200 --> 00:37:43,520 posting digestive effects throughout the gut and body conditioners for the next meal. 315 00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:46,430 In this most complex of human behavioural systems, 316 00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:54,860 all of the subsystems must be developed for healthy eating to occur and for recollection of unremembered memories. 317 00:37:55,580 --> 00:38:04,610 So this is the system that is work at work during this incident of unremembered memories. 318 00:38:05,180 --> 00:38:15,460 And so again, the key, I think, take home message is that all of this is creating the sensation from the madeleine. 319 00:38:15,470 --> 00:38:26,030 The madeleine is not is only the source of the molecules that then the brain works on that the the the. 320 00:38:28,460 --> 00:38:38,510 The key here is that all of this is taking place then in as the basis for the effort, 321 00:38:38,510 --> 00:38:44,420 the proof then puts forth in order to recall and unremembered memory. 322 00:38:44,690 --> 00:38:54,920 And so we can go back now to the text and ask what how this might relate to some of the criticism and interpretation that's been raised. 323 00:38:55,740 --> 00:39:01,760 Okay. Because we kind of our basic idea is we think Proust was on to this. 324 00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:06,200 We think without necessarily having had any insights like this, 325 00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:16,100 obviously there's a sense that the text is conveying something beyond an ordinary understanding of just, oh, the food is causing this. 326 00:39:16,610 --> 00:39:23,570 There's a sense that he really is aware of some other mechanism going on and he's trying to ascertain what it is and trying to define it. 327 00:39:23,690 --> 00:39:25,730 Oh, here I had one less. Oh, yeah. 328 00:39:26,000 --> 00:39:36,920 So here here are the different levels at which we work in neuroscience to uncover the basis of the neural basis of a particular behaviour, 329 00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:41,510 in this case of a very unhappy person coming into treatment. 330 00:39:41,660 --> 00:39:46,980 And we can, with understanding what happens, see how why you get food so happy. 331 00:39:49,220 --> 00:39:53,420 So that was the animation. And now we literally, in fact, go ahead. 332 00:39:54,020 --> 00:39:57,169 So we thought maybe look a bit at the context, the wider context, 333 00:39:57,170 --> 00:40:05,120 because he wasn't alone in seeing these kinds of moments as really significant and trying to pin them down. 334 00:40:06,020 --> 00:40:08,629 So his fellow modernists were busy with similar ideas. 335 00:40:08,630 --> 00:40:16,190 So James Joyce, Katharine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf were all bent on capturing the elusive, yet meaningful moments that make up who we are. 336 00:40:16,760 --> 00:40:23,360 Because this is so important to Marcel as part of his identity, and he keeps using this term essence. 337 00:40:23,720 --> 00:40:28,760 And I think it's very connected to the notion of identity. Joyce called these moments epiphanies. 338 00:40:29,030 --> 00:40:35,840 For Woolf, there were moments of being both Joyce and processes, such moments as quasi religious. 339 00:40:36,500 --> 00:40:43,310 These regained memories generate emotional states that seem to defy mortality, erase the fear of death, make life worth living. 340 00:40:43,940 --> 00:40:48,200 And all of this, of course, is elaborated in other moments, throughout time regained. 341 00:40:48,950 --> 00:40:56,660 The other modernist I wanted to talk about a Samuel Beckett, who made a famous study of Christ as a very young man in 1931, 342 00:40:56,990 --> 00:41:03,020 in which he seems to agree that the sudden overwhelming appearance of the memory is a miracle. 343 00:41:03,500 --> 00:41:09,860 That's his word, contingent upon a precise set of circumstances relating to the emotional state of the individual. 344 00:41:10,520 --> 00:41:15,080 So we have a big chunk of Beckett's treatise on Proust. 345 00:41:15,770 --> 00:41:18,829 No amount of voluntary manipulation, says Beckett, 346 00:41:18,830 --> 00:41:25,520 can reconstitute in its integrity an impression that the will has, so to speak, buckled into incoherence. 347 00:41:25,910 --> 00:41:33,680 But if by accident and given favourable circumstances, a relaxation of the subject's habit of thought and a reduction of the radius of his memory, 348 00:41:33,980 --> 00:41:38,840 a generally diminished tension of consciousness following upon a phase of extreme discouragement. 349 00:41:39,560 --> 00:41:45,980 If, by some miracle of analogy, the central impression of a past sensation recurs as an immediate stimulus, 350 00:41:45,980 --> 00:41:50,660 which can be instinctively identified by the subject with the model of duplication 351 00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:54,380 whose integral purity has been retained because it has been forgotten, 352 00:41:55,100 --> 00:41:59,570 then the total past sensation not its echo, nor its copy, but this in. 353 00:41:59,640 --> 00:42:00,840 Station itself, 354 00:42:01,200 --> 00:42:08,610 annihilating every spatial and temporal restriction comes in a rush to engulf the subject in all the beauty of its infallible proportion. 355 00:42:09,540 --> 00:42:17,460 So he subscribed to Proust's idea about involuntary memories as, quote, sealed vessels, which is Beckett's term, 356 00:42:17,790 --> 00:42:24,120 which contain the essences of our true selves, preserved intact, only accessible through involuntary recall. 357 00:42:24,510 --> 00:42:29,220 So the key idea here is that they are somehow preserved without being changed, 358 00:42:30,630 --> 00:42:37,200 improves searches for such impressions that have quote, as he says, the power to resuscitate the timeless man within me. 359 00:42:38,100 --> 00:42:41,190 And Beckett constantly uses terms like purity, integrity, 360 00:42:41,190 --> 00:42:48,419 the real he seems to see the same moral and salvation is dimension to involuntary memory that Proust does aesthetically, 361 00:42:48,420 --> 00:42:53,730 despite their drastically different uses of language, the one profuse the other quite sparing. 362 00:42:54,210 --> 00:43:00,150 One of the most interesting connections between Paris and Beckett is the ordinariness paradox I mentioned earlier. 363 00:43:00,150 --> 00:43:04,530 So the idea of habit really fascinated Beckett, as we know. 364 00:43:04,890 --> 00:43:10,470 I mean, Beckett's just looking at his plays, which is my area. They revolve around inconsequential acts. 365 00:43:10,530 --> 00:43:14,670 So taking off your boots, eating a carrot, standing and waiting. 366 00:43:15,330 --> 00:43:23,760 Famously, one critics, of course, said that nothing happens twice in Waiting for Godot, just as in time regained hinges on everyday acts. 367 00:43:24,060 --> 00:43:30,480 What proves calls little things. And both writers, in fact, focus more on states of being than on actions. 368 00:43:31,650 --> 00:43:37,049 Literature after Proust is full of such moments of finding the meaning in the seemingly insignificant, everyday, 369 00:43:37,050 --> 00:43:44,130 routine act and exploring his suggestion that of all human pursuits, the most important is trying to understand what we experience. 370 00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:48,750 To answer the question of quote What did it mean that he posed? We discussed earlier. 371 00:43:49,170 --> 00:43:57,330 Yet for all his insistence, he avoids dogmatism. He says that writers who propound aesthetic theories are guilty of a, quote, gross impropriety. 372 00:43:57,840 --> 00:44:03,000 He says a work in which there are theories is like an object which still has its price tag on it. 373 00:44:04,770 --> 00:44:09,130 Writers after Beckett have continued to explore how memory works, for instance. 374 00:44:09,150 --> 00:44:16,320 And I'm picking another playwright, Brian Friel, who in plays like Dancing at Looseness and Living Quarters, 375 00:44:16,980 --> 00:44:21,030 has really explored and put on stage the workings of memory. 376 00:44:21,570 --> 00:44:28,440 In a diary entry, he expressed thoughts on the slipperiness of memory that unconsciously blend an accurate understanding of the 377 00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:34,049 neuroscience of memory and a nod toward Paul recurs ideas about the uncoupling of memory and imagination, 378 00:44:34,050 --> 00:44:38,100 I think. So here is his quotation from Brian Friel's Diaries. 379 00:44:38,120 --> 00:44:42,980 Oops, how did we forget it? No, I think it's their next movie. 380 00:44:43,490 --> 00:44:46,560 No, I think we've got it in. Okay, well, here it is. 381 00:44:46,770 --> 00:44:50,429 The fact is a fiction. Have I imagined this scene? 382 00:44:50,430 --> 00:44:55,320 Then this is Friel writing, or is it a composite of two or three different episodes? 383 00:44:55,620 --> 00:45:03,420 The point is, I don't think it matters. What matters is that for some reason, this vivid memory is there in the storehouse of my mind. 384 00:45:03,720 --> 00:45:08,910 For some reason, the mind has shuffled the pieces of verifiable truth and composed a truth of its own. 385 00:45:09,450 --> 00:45:15,450 For me, it is a truth. And because I acknowledge its peculiar veracity, it becomes a layer in my subsoil. 386 00:45:15,780 --> 00:45:19,260 It becomes part of me. Ultimately it becomes me. 387 00:45:20,610 --> 00:45:24,450 I think you're going to illuminate how that works. Yeah, right. 388 00:45:24,540 --> 00:45:34,110 So I thought I'd add my part of the science in talking about how we recover and that we can bring it into consciousness. 389 00:45:34,620 --> 00:45:39,600 And I'm not going to be able to go into each of the systems in detail, 390 00:45:40,530 --> 00:45:51,030 but I'd like to try to put things in the context of the unconscious aspect of memory and as opposed to the conscious. 391 00:45:51,780 --> 00:46:06,870 So I've told you that the the contribution of rip through layers of smell to flavour occurs without our being conscious of it. 392 00:46:07,980 --> 00:46:13,710 Is everybody clear on that? But that means that flavour is an illusion. 393 00:46:15,000 --> 00:46:25,860 And what we think is one of the most conscious perceptions we have in our lives at least three times a day, 394 00:46:25,860 --> 00:46:36,180 and six or seven or eight, depending on how many cups of coffee we go around with during the day. 395 00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:44,130 It means that what we think is a clear fact that we there's a taste of things in our mouths, 396 00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:53,220 that the taste comes from what's in the in the thing we take into our mouths. 397 00:46:53,640 --> 00:46:58,680 And that is all due to what? The sensation for my mouth is an illusion. 398 00:46:59,940 --> 00:47:10,049 And I'm still impressed with this after having fully realised that from the co-workers and collaborators and 399 00:47:10,050 --> 00:47:19,770 colleagues in the field that this is something that there is no way that you can really be aware of this. 400 00:47:20,130 --> 00:47:31,230 So the next meal you have, sit down and start eating and try to think of those volatiles coming from the back of the mouth, 401 00:47:31,590 --> 00:47:38,970 stimulating the nose and having that referred to the mouth as what you're calling taste. 402 00:47:39,330 --> 00:47:52,830 And it just won't work. And so the this whole edifice of flavour is something that contains unconscious contributions from smell. 403 00:47:53,520 --> 00:48:02,700 And so in that sense, our memory of flavour is an unconscious memory. 404 00:48:05,430 --> 00:48:12,540 This may be a question of semantics, but I think this would be fun to to have as a as a discussion point. 405 00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:20,480 The second is, where was this memory lodged in the brain? 406 00:48:20,490 --> 00:48:26,400 Where was it actually present? We talk about memory traces, 407 00:48:27,240 --> 00:48:39,690 which is simply a word that describes that there must be something there that is actually there in order to be then recalled. 408 00:48:40,440 --> 00:48:47,430 And there's now enough work with brain imaging to address that. 409 00:48:48,330 --> 00:48:58,110 And one of the one of the key points, oh, I did what I did want to indicate this, 410 00:48:58,500 --> 00:49:10,050 that the olfactory system has a particular prevalence in memory of because of the fact that all of the systems, the visual system, 411 00:49:10,890 --> 00:49:17,790 the touch system and the auditory system come into the back of the brain and have 412 00:49:17,790 --> 00:49:25,620 connections that then go forward to be integrated with the and the taste system, 413 00:49:25,890 --> 00:49:30,270 to be integrated with the smell system in the orbitofrontal cortex, 414 00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:43,170 which then has close connections with the so called limbic areas where memories and emotions are that are central to memories and emotions. 415 00:49:43,770 --> 00:49:59,370 And so the one reason that the episode of the Madeleine is this is so strong in improves mind is that involves smell that 416 00:49:59,370 --> 00:50:07,770 has direct access to remember I showed you showed how this system is coming directly into the frontal part of the cortex. 417 00:50:08,250 --> 00:50:12,150 All of the other systems have to be referred to the frontal part. 418 00:50:12,540 --> 00:50:23,070 And so there's a lot of interest in where consciousness arises and usually focussed on the visual system and maybe Ray can comment on this. 419 00:50:24,240 --> 00:50:28,350 But in the olfactory system, in fact, we can go back to that. 420 00:50:31,250 --> 00:50:40,520 The fact is, is to remember, is only two synapses and only two relays away from the these highest levels of the brain. 421 00:50:41,300 --> 00:50:50,600 And so that's one reason why our senses, our sense of of smell and flavour is so immediate. 422 00:50:51,470 --> 00:50:59,180 And this is this is not even a part of the discussion yet of where consciousness arises in the brain, 423 00:50:59,180 --> 00:51:03,470 because most of the focus is on the visual system and on the other sensory systems. 424 00:51:03,980 --> 00:51:12,050 So that's a that's a whole area that I think is going to be very interesting to to explore. 425 00:51:12,560 --> 00:51:24,320 And then finally, I wanted to say that in the case of a memory like cone brain, it's what we call multi-modal. 426 00:51:25,850 --> 00:51:31,100 And that means that it consists of visual recollection. 427 00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:49,090 It consisted of the smell of the tea, the taste of the tea, the recollection of the probably the wind and the sounds of convoy. 428 00:51:49,150 --> 00:51:53,750 They all made this a multi-modal memory. 429 00:51:54,710 --> 00:51:59,960 So the question arises, where are those different parts of the memory? 430 00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:08,570 Where are they retained in the brain? And the best evidence now and I can go into this if you're interested, 431 00:52:09,440 --> 00:52:25,760 is that it's like the memory itself is like a stubbed a hole of perception, like a face actually has a gestalt to it and or a complex pattern. 432 00:52:26,720 --> 00:52:31,910 And it's a characteristic of a complex pattern that is small. 433 00:52:31,910 --> 00:52:35,960 Part of it can be enough to bring back the whole pattern. 434 00:52:36,740 --> 00:52:49,910 And so that, in a sense, is what happens with the recollection of brain is that he struggled with one part of it that's the flavour, 435 00:52:49,910 --> 00:52:55,940 the smell or the touch of the of the of the mad man. 436 00:52:57,050 --> 00:53:06,530 And what he was doing was trying to recreate the you can say that the reconnection of all 437 00:53:06,530 --> 00:53:15,200 the different parts of the memory that involved vision and ideation and touch and so forth. 438 00:53:15,620 --> 00:53:18,110 And finally then the whole thing comes back. 439 00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:28,340 And I think we can I think we can sense that from our own experience that a small part of a picture can bring back the whole part of the picture. 440 00:53:28,340 --> 00:53:31,670 And that's one of the essences of Gestalt. 441 00:53:32,780 --> 00:53:40,130 It's in the in some studies in the brain, it's called a content addressable memory. 442 00:53:40,610 --> 00:53:47,930 That is, every part of a pattern contains some representation of the whole pattern. 443 00:53:48,710 --> 00:53:55,070 And so there's actually evidence from brain imaging of the, 444 00:53:55,370 --> 00:54:03,080 the activation of different parts of the brain related to the smell and to the vision 445 00:54:03,470 --> 00:54:09,800 and to the hearing related to the recollection of these multi-modal memories. 446 00:54:10,640 --> 00:54:14,420 So that's maybe another form of neuroscience. 447 00:54:15,350 --> 00:54:19,070 So it's time to get some input from all of you. 448 00:54:21,410 --> 00:54:24,140 Can we just start the speakers without two or three children and figure out.