How Your Brain Creates Your Reality: A Neuroscientist’s Take On Consciousness, Near Death Experiences & What it Really Means to be You with Professor Anil Seth #366
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee speaks with Professor Anil Seth, a neuroscientist and author, about consciousness. They explore how our brains construct reality as a 'controlled hallucination,' the nature of death and self, and the profound implications of understanding our subjective perceptions for empathy and mental well-being.
Deep Dive Analysis
14 Topic Outline
Anil Seth's Perspective on Death and Consciousness
General Anesthesia: A Temporary State of Oblivion
Near-Death Experiences: Scientific Interpretations
Cultural Rituals and Scientific Understanding of Death
Consciousness as a Controlled Hallucination
The Dress Illusion: Challenging Perception of Reality
Individual Differences in Perception and Humility
The Brain as a Predictive Organ: Sine Wave Speech
Mindfulness, Meditation, and Changing Perception
The Self as a Perception: Brain, Body, and Interoception
Emotion as the Brain's Interpretation of Body State
Psychedelics and the Dissolution of the Fixed Self
Defining Consciousness for an Eight-Year-Old
Consciousness: A Converging Point for Disciplines
6 Key Concepts
Consciousness
Consciousness is defined as any kind of experience whatsoever, encompassing the experience of the world around us, being a self within it, and all our emotions, plans, and memories. It's the subjective 'something it is like' to feel, taste, or be, making us more than mere biological objects.
Controlled Hallucination
This concept suggests that what we experience as reality is the brain's best guess or prediction of what's out there, rather than a passive reception of objective reality. Our brains don't just 'read' the world; they 'write' it, constructing our perceptions based on sensory input and internal models, with 'control' ensuring these hallucinations align with reality for survival.
Brain as Predictive Organ
The brain constantly makes predictions about what's going on in the world and in the body, then updates these predictions based on incoming sensory information. This active, interpretive process means our perceptions are not direct reflections of reality but rather the brain's ongoing, best-guess constructions.
The Self
The self is not a fixed 'mini-me' essence behind the eyes, but rather a kind of perception itself—a set of perceptual predictions and a creative act. It is a dynamic, changeable process, largely based on the brain's inferences about the state of the body and its interactions with the world and others.
Interoception
Interoception refers to the perception of the body from within, encompassing senses that inform the brain about the internal state of the body, such as heart rate, blood pressure, and gut contractions. This internal awareness is crucial for forming our sense of self and emotions, and it can be trained.
Color Constancy
Color constancy is the brain's clever ability to perceive objects as having a consistent color despite changes in the ambient light. The brain controls for the surrounding illumination, inferring the true color of an object by adjusting for the context, as demonstrated by the 'blue and black / white and gold' dress illusion.
11 Questions Answered
A neuroscientist may view death as the end of consciousness, understanding that consciousness and self are processes intimately dependent on the brain and body. General anesthesia offers a glimpse into this oblivion, suggesting there's nothing to fear in the absence of experience.
Under general anesthesia, you are 'gone' with oblivion in the middle, similar to the state before birth or after death, with no awareness of time passing. In sleep, you always know some time has passed upon waking, indicating a different state of consciousness.
Near-death experiences, while meaningful to those who have them, can be interpreted as the brain doing 'quite strange things' when close to death, such as the visual cortex shutting down from the periphery inward, creating a tunnel of light. There's also evidence of a 'burst of activity' in the brain as death approaches, which could be the experiential flip side of an NDE.
No, our perceptions are not direct reflections of objective reality; they are the brain's constructions and best guesses. We never see things as they truly are, but rather as we are, filtering and interpreting sensory information based on our brains' predictive models.
People perceive the dress differently because their brains make different assumptions about the ambient light in the badly exposed photo. Some brains infer yellowish indoor light, leading to a blue and black perception, while others infer bluish outdoor light, leading to a white and gold perception.
Recognizing that everyone creates their own unique subjective experience and that our perceptions are constructions, not objective truths, can cultivate humility about our own viewpoints. This humility can then provide a platform for better communication, empathy, and understanding in social and political disagreements.
The brain's predictions can dramatically change what we consciously hear. For example, with sine wave speech, once the brain is 'primed' with the original clear sound, it develops an expectation about the meaning of the noisy, treated sound, causing us to hear it clearly even though the objective sound itself hasn't changed.
Meditation and mindfulness are highly complementary, helping to create a useful 'gap' between how things seem and how they are. They train attention to observe thoughts, emotions, and perceptions as transient constructions, rather than fixed realities, which can be valuable for mental well-being.
The self is not a fixed, unitary thing, but rather a changeable set of perceptions and predictions, largely based on the brain's inferences about the body's internal state (interoception). It is a creative act, constantly being generated and updated, rather than a static essence.
Emotions are largely the brain's interpretation of what's happening inside the body. While external events can trigger physiological changes, the specific emotion felt corresponds to the brain's meaning-making process of those bodily sensations, rather than a direct, objective reaction.
Psychedelics can 'shake the snow globe' of normal perception, revealing the indirect and constructed nature of our experiences, including the self. This 'ego dissolution' can offer a sense of continuity with the world and suggest that the normal experience of self is not fixed, opening a space for therapeutic work in a controlled setting.
12 Actionable Insights
1. Cultivate Perceptual Humility
Recognize that your perception of the world is a unique, subjective construction, not an objective truth. This understanding fosters humility, empathy, and better communication by acknowledging that others experience reality differently.
2. Practice ‘Start From Zero’ in Interactions
When interacting with others, especially loved ones, try to approach them as if it’s the very first time you’ve met. This helps strip away preconceptions and past conditionings, leading to a fresh and potentially more harmonious experience.
3. Engage in Mindfulness & Meditation
Use practices like meditation and mindfulness to create a psychological distance from your thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. This helps you recognize them as transient constructions rather than fixed realities, which can be valuable for mental well-being.
4. Train Interoception & Body Awareness
Actively pay attention to your internal bodily states, such as breath, heart rate, and physical sensations. This practice, known as interoception, helps you understand that emotions are the brain’s interpretation of bodily changes, which can help dissolve their negativity.
5. Recognize the Self as Changeable
Understand that your ‘self’ is not a fixed essence but a dynamic set of perceptions and predictions, a creative act of your brain. This perspective can be empowering, especially when feeling stuck, as it highlights the potential for change and growth.
6. Embrace Ritual for Comfort
During challenging times, such as grief, engage in rituals. Rituals provide a structured framework, give you specific actions to perform, and foster a sense of social participation, offering comfort and reducing overthinking.
7. Challenge Brain’s Predictive Habits
Be aware that your brain is a predictive organ, often making assumptions based on past experiences and evolving for safety, not always harmony. Actively notice and challenge these habits when they might be working against your current goals or relationships.
8. View Death as a Process
Consider consciousness and the self as processes rather than fixed entities. This perspective can help in coming to terms with death, as it frames it as a natural end to a process, similar to the oblivion before birth, offering reassurance against fear.
9. Align Beliefs with Understanding
Strive to align your personal beliefs with scientific understanding. Anil suggests that understanding more about how things are will, in the long run, always enable a better life and improved coping with adversity.
10. Reflect on Perception Daily
Engage in a ‘walking meditation’ by occasionally pausing to reflect on the nature of your perceptions. For example, consider where the colors you see truly exist (in the interaction between world and brain), introducing a useful gap between how things seem and how they are.
11. Consider Barefoot Footwear
Wearing minimalist or ‘barefoot’ shoes can naturally enhance mindfulness during walks. By allowing you to feel the ground more directly, it encourages greater attention to your foot’s interaction with the environment.
12. Participate in Perception Census
Visit anilseth.com to participate in the Perception Census. This allows you to explore individual differences in how people perceive the world and learn about your own unique perceptual style, while contributing to scientific research.
6 Key Quotes
The easiest way to define consciousness, it's the redness of red, it's the painfulness of pain, it's the sweetness of honey, it's the fact that for everything we do and everything we are, there is something it is like.
Anil Seth
Our brains don't read the world, they write them. All of life in his view is basically a controlled hallucination. The way we encounter reality, he asserts, is a construction.
Dr. Rangan Chatterjee
We never see things as they really are. We see them, I'm drawing another quote here, stealing a quote from the novelist in Ayssenin, we see things not as they are. We see them as we are.
Anil Seth
The outside universe we perceive doesn't exist as such. Through a series of electrical and chemical reactions, we generate a reality internally. We create forests and oceans, warmth and cold. We read words, hear voices and form interpretations. Then in an instant, we produce a response. All this in a world of our own creation.
Anil Seth (quoting Rick Rubin)
I think one of the things that the dress episode suggested to me was the importance in general for people recognizing that they have a point of view. That's what we see when we see the dress. It's not as it is. I'm seeing it through my point of view and recognizing that we actually have a point of view is important.
Anil Seth
The self is not the thing that does the experiencing, like the mini me behind my eyes sitting somewhere in my brain. The self is a kind of perception too. The self is a set of perceptual predictions. The self is a creative act.
Anil Seth