Today we discuss the science behind a wandering mind, the ins and outs of songs composed by humpback whales, and how an innovative new robotic capsule might help our digestive systems absorb drugs that aren’t as effective to take orally.
Today we discuss the science behind a wandering mind, the ins and outs of songs composed by humpback whales, and how an innovative new robotic capsule might help our digestive systems absorb drugs that aren’t as effective to take orally.
A Wandering Mind
Song of the Humpback
Robocap
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/a-wandering-mind-song-of-the-humpback-robocap
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today you’ll learn about the science behind a wandering mind, the ins and outs of songs composed by humpback whales, and how an innovative new robotic capsule might help our digestive systems absorb drugs that aren’t as effective to take orally.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Do you ever wonder how weird it is that our minds wander, sometimes completely at random? One minute I’m thinking about the science of mind wandering, the next I’m thinking about a delicious pizza from a spot in Jersey City. Thankfully, there are people like psychologist Jonathan Smallwood who have devoted their life’s work to the science of why our minds wander - and he has found some pretty surprising results.
CALLI: Even while you were saying all of that, my mind wandered toward how I could get to that place in Jersey City to get pizza before you finished. Jokes aside, though, why do our minds wander, Nate?
NATE: Like many things related to the brain, it comes down to emotions. To put it simply: unhappy people have minds that focus on the past, such as thinking of things we’ve done or could have done differently. However, happier people let their minds wander toward the future, primarily things we SHOULD do. And all of this is a subtle self-training exercise for the brain to be prepared for things to come. Even though mind-wandering seems like a waste of time, it’s actually quite important.
CALLI: Dang. That actually makes a lot of sense. Like how you were thinking of a pizza place you went to in the past, but I was thinking of making that delicious pizza my future. In any case, how did Smallwood figure this out?
NATE: For the record, I’m not depressed. I just really want pizza. As for Dr. Smallwood, he has consistently been tasking study participants with a tedious computer task that was designed to make people’s minds wander. While they participate, he has them hooked up to a brain scanner to see what exactly is going on while their minds wander.
CALLI: Hmmm. But if you want to figure out why minds wander organically, wouldn’t it make more sense to observe people naturally experiencing it?
NATE: Funny enough, that’s actually what he’s started doing. Each session used to be interrupted by the good doctor intervening with a question of ‘are you minds wandering’ whenever he believed the participant had drifted. Now, the studies focus less on contained experiments and more on observing true drifting, pre-empted by him asking them questions like “Are your thoughts detailed? Are they positive? Are they distracting you?”
CALLI: “Is this pizza more powerful than your sense of focus?”
NATE: Exactly.
CALLI: So then, to me, this sounds a lot like daydreaming. Are they the same thing?
NATE: Similar, but not exactly. Daydreaming usually comes as a result of boredom or listlessness, whereas mind-wandering tends to come under pressure to perform. Both are related to the idea of spontaneous thinking where thoughts separate from how we perceive our environment.
CALLI: That’s really interesting. So depending on the context, it’s either a wandering mind or a daydream. Got it. Is this normal? You’ve been speaking in broad terms so far, so I’m curious if everybody’s mind wanders.
NATE: Everybody’s mind wanders to some degree, but the primary focus of Smallwood’s research is the extent. How much do our individual minds wander? Smallwood doesn’t know for sure, but he believes that this “default mode,” as he calls it, of mind-wandering is in fact normal for everybody and even necessary for any thinking that requires knowledge.
CALLI: Why does he believe that?
NATE: A more recent study had people in a scanner room reading short factual sentences on a screen. Sometimes, this would be interrupted by a prompt that said “Remember,” followed by an item from a list of things from their past they provided before the experiment. Then, the next slide would be a statement, but according to Smallwood, their brains wouldn’t focus on the statement - they would instead be focused on remembering things from their past.
CALLI: Huh. And that means…?
NATE: That the brain scans of these individuals looked almost identical to brain scans of mind wanderers. This shows that mind-wandering is at least partially, if not mostly, related to memory retrieval.
CALLI: But what if you don’t want to retrieve those memories? Especially if it happens at random. Is there a way to, say, stop mind-wandering in situations where it could be dangerous, like when driving a car?
NATE: Well, that’s the thing. Smallwood believes that even if we could stop mind-wandering, it wouldn’t be a good idea because we don’t have any idea how or when you stop it. He hopes in the future that can be identified, but for now, the goal is to figure out how and when to control it.
CALLI: All very interesting stuff, Nate. And now that I know WHY I’m thinking of pizza, I think we should take a road trip.
NATE: Sorry, Calli, but my mind’s already wandered back to the summer of 2006. It was an unusually cold summer day - overcast, leaves on the ground, and there was a car with a bright neon license plate. And…
CALLI: Look, sorry, wandered again, Nate. I’ve already booked us plane tickets to Jersey, so tell me you’re ready for pizza.
NATE: *sigh* I’m always ready for pizza.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, did you know that much like the latest Harry Styles hit, humpback whale songs actually make their way around the world?
NATE: What, is there a marine biologist playing whale noises on a Ham Radio somewhere?
CALLI: No! Well, maybe actually. But, researchers recently found that whales share songs with each other, and these songs can make their way from one population to another, all around the globe. Researchers say this long range tune sharing is evidence of remarkably fast change in culture.
NATE: Oh that’s pretty neat. I guess I didn’t realize that whale songs were actual…songs?
CALLI: Yes! Male humpback whales sing songs and some researchers say they are as complex as jazz! Their songs have a language-like structure that they piece together. They’ll start with a short sound, and then combine a few of these into a phrase.
NATE: Oh this feels a bit like middle school music theory.
CALLI: They take these phrases and combine them together into a theme. Each whale song is made out of a few of these themes and can last up to half an hour!
NATE: Does each whale sing a different song? Is it just a cacophony of random songs all going at once?
CALLI: Each group of male whales will sing a song that is nearly identical, each of these songs differs drastically from other whale population’s songs elsewhere in the world. But, the songs don't stay the same, they slowly evolve over time. One male will decide to change a sound in the song, or add a new phrase, or mess around with the theme. If the whales in the group like it, they’ll add this new part to their song too, and the song changes!
NATE: Ah that is so fun, it kind of reminds me of those English soccer teams who all have super specific, regional, songs for their teams. But I thought this story was about songs going around the world?
CALLI: Right. Well one year, researchers noticed that one whale off the coast of Australia stopped singing his local song, and started singing a different song…one from a group of whales that lived on the other side of Australia. Within two years, his entire local group had joined him and started singing that song too. It was a mini musical revolution.
NATE: Humpback whales weigh like 60,000 pounds, I’m not sure you can call anything they do little.
CALLI: Well either way, it got researchers curious, were the whales somehow sharing songs? So they started recording different groups. They went to common whale areas and anchored microphones to the ocean floor, and other times they'd follow whale pods in a boat, pointing underwater microphones at them.
NATE: Where in the world were they doing that?
CALLI: From 2016-2018, they recorded whales in a bunch of places like off the coast of Ecuador, Australia, and the French Polynesian Island of Moorea. What is so wild though, is that while doing this study, they found that over the course of those few years, whales in French Polynesia started singing a song the whales near Australia had been singing a few years before. That means the song traveled more than 6,000 miles! And it happened in the Atlantic Ocean too! They found Humpbacks off the coast of Brazil singing songs that had been heard off the coast of Ecuador years before. They say it might even be possible that these songs go...all the way around the oceans of the southern hemisphere.
NATE: That is so far! And around continents! Do they know why it’s happening? Do the songs just travel that far through water?
CALLI: Researchers have a few ideas, but they think it's most likely that whales from different regions bump into each other and sing their own songs. One whale hears a song, or phrase, he likes, and decides to copy it and bring it home with him.
NATE: But when are whales from different oceans and continents just…bumping into one another?
CALLI: Researchers think it happens when they leave their home waters to head down near Antarctica to feed. It gets crowded down there, and that’s where they meet up.
NATE: Wow, so when whales travel, it's kind of like they leave a copy of their road trip playlist wherever they go?
CALLI: Ha, exactly, researchers say it is a cultural transmission of song rivaled only by humans.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: So, Calli. We know that the most common way to take medication is orally, right? Unfortunately, there are a lot of medications that are super limited in their effectiveness due to how our intestinal tract handles drugs, insulin being a great example that we’ve talked about before. But, what if I told you that there is a new method to take these medications orally and have them work just as they’re supposed to?
CALLI: I’d say “color me curious,” Nate. I’m dying to know.
NATE: MIT scientists have developed a motorized robotic capsule that can be safely consumed, won’t be destroyed through the digestion process, and once it arrives in the gut, it releases its drug for 35 minutes before being sent out in a bowel movement. It’s the size of a regular multivitamin, and is shaped like a smooth helix or spiral or a fusilli pasta noodle. They call this capsule RoboCap, and it’s by far the most effective non-injectable way to take medication that these scientists have found yet.
CALLI: RoboCap. Haha. I’d buy that for a dollar! But why is RoboCap necessary? What about our bowels makes it difficult to digest certain medications?
NATE: Well, our intestines are coated in layers of mucus that protect the cells lining the intestine from being colonized by bacteria. These layers of cells are known as “epithelial cells,” and they’re pretty thick. This is good for day-to-day living because it stops our intestinal fluids from leaking into the body. But it also means that some drugs, like insulin, can’t be digested properly. Insulin has a very low percentage of how much of the drug can be absorbed. This means that taking insulin orally was practically useless - until now.
CALLI: Fascinating. So how does RoboCap work? What’s its “prime directive” so to speak?
NATE: Nice RoboCop reference. RoboCap is a surprisingly complex but tiny piece of machinery that contains what you might call a “cargo hold” storing the drug. It’s covered in a gelatinous coating to protect any tissue from damage or discomfort on the way down to the stomach, where gastric acid does its job by dissolving the gelatin coating. This is where RoboCap’s “prime directive” comes into play: the change in temperature and proximity to the tissue walls trigger an electrical reaction in the RoboCap into automatically spinning round and round.
CALLI: Why?
NATE: So, remember how RoboCap is shaped like a helix? That shape lets it make contact with the two parts of the intestine: the plicae and the villi.
CALLI: And… remind me what those are again?
NATE: The plicae are these circular folds along the small intestine and the villi are these teeny tiny protrusions that are shaped like fingers that line the intestines. Both of these areas are thinner parts of the intestine and can interact with the capsule with less risk of damage. After about 35 minutes, the drug is completely dispersed into the intestine.
CALLI: That’s pretty cool. To be clear, they actually tested this, right? This isn’t a hypothesis but an actual controlled test?
NATE: Yep. They did a live study with pigs testing two drugs: insulin and vancomycin, which is used to treat colitis. Some pigs were given a drug-loaded RoboCap; others were given a placebo. The vancomycin was especially effective and was over 20 times more efficient than when it was taken as a normal pill, without the robocap. And for insulin, RoboCap had similar results, increasing the blood’s insulin levels and sharply decreasing glucose levels.
CALLI: Awesome. Okay Nate, but I do have to ask… this is a piece of machinery, right? I know you said it’s designed to be comfortable on the way in, but what about… uh… the way out?
NATE: You mean to ask what happens when you poop RoboCap out? You can rest assured that it was proven to come out just as comfortably as it went into the body. RoboCap was so effective at leaving the body that it left 100% of the test subjects without any sign of inflammation, infection or damage.
CALLI: What a relief. So when can humans start using RoboCap?
NATE: As is usually the case, RoboCap needs more testing. They want to try RoboCap out with more drugs, and begin determining the best targets for clinical trials. It’s pretty clear though that something like this could make a huge impact on populations that have less access to resources in order to take their medications.
CALLI: Just like Robocop.
NATE: JUST like Robocop, exactly.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. When your mind begins to wander during a difficult task, it’s not usually because of any underlying condition affecting your focus. Turns out that there’s a science to mind-wandering, where your brain is actively massaging its own memory sensors to pull information from the past. By monitoring mind-wandering in the moment, researchers are hoping to figure out ways to make mind-wandering much more effective for everybody!
CALLI: Researchers found that the very specific, and regional, songs that different groups of whales sing, can travel thousands of miles. When a whale hears a song or sound he likes, he brings it back to his group at home, and adds it to their song.
NATE: Meet the RoboCap, a small robotic capsule that’s twenty times more effective at depositing insulin and other drugs into the intestine than other oral supplements. After human testing, RoboCap could have the potential to change the world forever!