Today you’ll learn how the language we speak leaves a unique pattern in our brain’s wiring, about proof that people 3,000 years ago on an island in the Mediterranean were using hallucinogens, and how bad our memories actually are, and why.
Today you’ll learn how the language we speak leaves a unique pattern in our brain’s wiring, about proof that people 3,000 years ago on an island in the Mediterranean were using hallucinogens, and how bad our memories actually are, and why.
Find episode transcripts here:https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/brain-language-ancient-hallucinogens-unreliable-memory
Brain Language
Ancient Hallucinogens
Unreliable Memory
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[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 how the language we speak leaves a unique pattern in our brain’s wiring, about proof that people 3,000 years ago on an island in the Mediterranean were using hallucinogens, and how bad our memories actually are, and why.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: A new study has found that the language we speak leaves a unique imprint on the wiring of our brains.
NATE: So… You’re saying that people who speak different languages actually…think differently?
CALLI: Well actually…yeah. The study suggests that the brains of speakers of, say, French are wired differently than the brains of, say, Farsi speakers.
NATE: Okay so it’s like that movie Arrival, where the scientist finally figures out the alien’s language, and learning that rewires her brain and allows her to see into the future. This is great news - I’ve always wanted to time travel.
CALLI: Don’t start your DeLorean yet. Let me explain the study first.
NATE: I knew you were going to say that.
CALLI: Neuroscientist Alfred Anwander and a team at the Max Planck, Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences, in Leipzig, Germany wanted to know just how different language structures affected the structure of our brains.
NATE: Stop there. I thought all brains were essentially wired the same in the big picture. Like, motor skills happen here, and language skills happen here, and so on. Is this saying that’s not true?
CALLI: Actually, in this case, no. In the grand scheme of things, that’s still true. Different regions of the brain are still highly associated with different functions. However, each language that humans speak presents its own set of challenges. For example, the study used native German speakers and native Arabic speakers.
NATE: Two pretty different languages right there…
CALLI: Exactly. The roots of Arabic consist of trios of consonants that team up with vowels to produce words. One example is the word kitaab, which means book. If you rearrange those sounds to make taktub, you get the phrase he or she writes. And if you change them around again, you get the word maktab, which means office. They are all somewhat related, but in order to understand exactly what’s being said, your brain has to be really, really good at listening for specific sounds.
NATE: Arabic is read from right to left, right?
CALLI: Yep. That’s another challenge the brain has to wire for. And German has its own set of challenges. For example, word order in German is especially flexible.
NATE: What mean that does?
CALLI: Ha. Exactly. Words in German sentences can be rearranged and still mean basically the same thing, but those changes create subtle nuances.
NATE: So how does that affect the wiring of the brain?
CALLI: Well…when we speak, our brains create long cables of nerve cells from one part of the brain to another part - all connected by white matter. When you use one of those connections a lot, it gets stronger. They wanted to know how different those networks and connections were in different native speakers.
NATE: How do you test for that?
CALLI: MRI scans. They recruited almost a hundred participants, and, like I said, half only spoke German and no other language, and the other half only spoke Arabic. By comparing MRI scans, they found that the brains of the Arabic speakers created dense connections from the left to the right hemispheres and back. But the German speakers had strong white matter networks isolated to the left hemisphere.
NATE: Wow. So the way we speak actually affects the way we think?
CALLI: That’s the idea. But here’s another twist: the Arabic speakers involved in the study had recently moved to Germany, but didn’t yet speak German. So…they had been hearing German being spoken for at least a little while.
NATE: Could that have affected how their brains were wired?
CALLI: The researchers who conducted the study would like to know. They want to conduct a similar study in Arabic speakers’ home countries. But they think that even a month of learning a new language can stimulate more communication between the left and right hemispheres, and create all new connections. And when I say that, I mean PHYSICAL connections. So learning a brand new language is actually changing your brain, which is incredible.
NATE: Wow. Have they figured out which part of the brain affects my ability to speak alien and see into the future?
CALLI: I mean…when they do, you’ll hear about it on this podcast.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Archeologists at the University of Valladolid in Spain have recovered 3,000 year old human hair samples from a cave in Menorca, and guess what it contained.
CALLI: Really long lasting leave-in conditioner?
NATE: Drugs.
CALLI: I’m sorry? Did you say ‘drugs?’
NATE: Indeed, I did. Signs of ancient human activity at Es Carritx cave on the Mediterranean island have been documented in the past. In fact, it’s a pretty cool spot. They’ve found over 200 human graves in a chamber just inside the entrance of the cave that date from around 3,600 years ago to about 2,800 years ago.
CALLI: Wow. So was the cave essentially a burial site?
NATE: That’s the idea. Among other artifacts, they found six wooden containers stashed inside a small, hidden pit in an inner chamber of the cave. And inside those little wooden containers, they found human hair that had been dyed red.
CALLI: That’s both super fascinating and a little gross.
NATE: Totally. Archaeologist Elisa Guerra-Doce and her colleagues put the hair through chemical analyses and found that it contained atropine and scopolamine, compounds from nightshade plants that can cause hallucinations, delirium, and altered states of perception.
CALLI: I hate to say it but that sounds really trippy.
NATE: Exactly! They also found ephedrine, which boosts energy, but noted that none of these compounds are typically used to treat pain or for other medical treatments.
CALLI: So they weren’t using them as medicine.
NATE: No. These compounds are pretty potent, so their use really needs to be guided and monitored by an expert who knows how to handle their effects and their side-effects. The research team believes that the most likely explanation is that they were administered by shamans during rituals or ceremonies, and that those shamans could essentially guide the users through the experience safely.
CALLI: Did all ancient people use drugs like this?
NATE: That’s the interesting thing about this find. There is evidence that other ancient Europeans used non-medicinal plants to induce these altered states. But all the evidence so far is indirect - they’ve found containers full of the compounds and plants, but never any direct evidence that they actually ingested it. Until now.
CALLI: You said ancient Europeans - is there other evidence in other parts of the world?
NATE: Yeah. They’ve found psychotropics in hair samples from pre-hispanic mummies in Latin America, and in bones of prehistoric mummies in China. But those findings are relatively rare.
CALLI: Okay, did they also use them in ceremonies?
NATE: They think so. In fact, they’ve found evidence that as little as 500 years ago, Incan children were given coca leaves and other hallucinogens prior to being sacrificed.
CALLI: Holy yikes.
NATE: I know. And that’s the bigger point here. Findings like these help us put together a more accurate picture of the lives, societies, and cultures of the people who lived so long ago. We know that ingesting these plants was not a matter of recreation - it likely reflected their sense of the divine and was taken incredibly seriously.
CALLI: So…what will archaeologists find in hair samples from our age?
NATE: Probably Doritos, hairspray, and plastic.
CALLI: Yeah, real sacred.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: So Nate, do you have a good memory?
NATE: It’s like a steel trap.
CALLI: Let’s do an experiment. Close your eyes.
NATE: Okay. Closed.
CALLI: What color is my shirt?
NATE: Oh. Uh. Hmm. Red.
CALLI: How certain are you?
NATE: I’m absolutely certain. Definitely red.
CALLI: Okay, you can look.
NATE: Ah. It’s blue. Did I say red? I meant blue.
CALLI: That’s right, Mr. Steel Trap, researchers from the University of Amsterdam have published findings that show just how bad human memory can be - even after only a few seconds.
NATE: I’m sorry, what were we talking about?
CALLI: Ha funny. As funny as this might sound, this research can tell us a lot about how the mind works in everyday social interactions, and can help us understand how bias shapes our view of the world.
NATE: Those are pretty big claims. All that from a simple memory test?
CALLI: Yep. Let’s talk about the study itself. The study’s first author, Dr. Marte Otten and her colleagues conducted four experiments on nearly 350 people. The experiments went something like this: subjects were shown a series of letters in a circle and asked to memorize it. They were then shown a second circle of letters and were told to just ignore it. That was just a distraction. Finally, they were asked where a specific letter was located in the first circle.
NATE: Okay. So they were supposed to remember where one of the letters was placed?
CALLI: Yes. But there’s a twist. One or two of the letters in the first circle were backwards.
NATE: That’s weird, but okay.
CALLI: It’s weird, but definitely telling. Because about 37% of the time the participant remembered the letter being correctly printed, even when it was, in fact, printed backwards.
NATE: Let me get this straight - they saw a backwards letter in the first circle, but they didn’t remember it being backwards?
CALLI: Exactly.
NATE: Seems like a weird thing to forget. I would assume that we would be more likely to remember something out of the norm.
CALLI: The researchers call these short-term memory illusions. They believe what’s happening is that our mind commits to memory only the basic, raw data, and then make assumptions based on our expectations of how the world should be.
NATE: Okay. So even though the letter was backwards, they saw something familiar and just filled in the details?
CALLI: What could be more familiar than the alphabet? And, of course, their memories got worse when the time between seeing the letter and having to guess was lengthened. But there are two interesting details here: the first is that 37% of participants got it wrong even after only a few seconds. And the second is that they only counted people who were highly confident they were right.
NATE: Ahh…so these are the people who weren’t just guessing. They actually believed they had stored the information in their memory?
CALLI: That’s an important part of this, because it shows that even when we absolutely believe we remember something correctly, we could be totally wrong and have our own expectations to thank for it.
NATE: So…when I remembered that you were wearing a red shirt, maybe it’s because you often wear red and my mind was just expecting it?
CALLI: Could be. The research team would like to design more studies to see how this works in the real world. Have you ever had a conversation with someone you thought was really mad at you, but later they tell you they weren’t mad at all?
NATE: Sounds familiar.
CALLI: That could be because your mind simply expected them to be mad at you, and so it encoded the memory that way.
NATE: Maybe you’re just remembering wrong that you’re currently wearing a blue shirt.
CALLI: Nate… I AM wearing a blue shirt.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: Researchers have found that the language we speak affects the wiring of our brains. Different languages feature different challenges, and create unique neural pathways. The brain of a native German speaker works differently than that of a native Arabic speaker.
NATE: Archaeologists analyzed 3000 year old hair from a cave on the Mediterranean island of Menorca and found traces of hallucinogenic compounds, offering the first direct evidence that Bronze Age Europeans consumed psychedelic plants, most likely during rituals and ceremonies led by shamans.
CALLI: Neuroscientists published a study that shows our memories aren’t as rock solid as we might hope, and isn’t all that accurate even after just a few seconds.