Today, you’ll learn about how a man with advanced ALS, who can’t move a muscle, was able to communicate with his family using his thoughts, about a sixty-year-old mystery involving the earth and why it pulsates every twenty-six seconds, and how cats can learn the names of their fellow cats under the right conditions.
Today, you’ll learn about how a man with advanced ALS, who can’t move a muscle, was able to communicate with his family using his thoughts, about a sixty-year-old mystery involving the earth and why it pulsates every twenty-six seconds, and how cats can learn the names of their fellow cats under the right conditions.
A man with ALS can communicate with his thoughts.
The earth pulsates underneath your feet.
Cats know the names of their friends.
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/gray-matter-gabfest-our-pulsating-earth-smarty-cats
TITLE:
GRAY MATTER GABFEST, OUR PULSATING EARTH, SMARTY CATS
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 how a man with advanced ALS, who can’t move a muscle, was able to communicate with his family using his thoughts, about a sixty-year-old mystery involving the earth and why it pulsates every twenty-six seconds, and how cats can learn the names of their fellow cats under the right conditions.
CALLI: Without further adieu, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: Whoosh]
CALLI: Nate, let’s say you were only allowed to ask one question today, what would you ask?
NATE: For someone to help me find my car keys, I haven’t seen them in a week. Car’s got like three tickets on it.
CALLI: You gotta take care of that. Okay, now imagine if asking that one question took you all day, and it was a groundbreaking achievement?
NATE: What could be groundbreaking about asking if anybody’s seen your keys?
CALLI: Well for the first time ever, researchers were able to achieve full communication, sentences even! ... with a patient who is completely “locked-in.”
NATE: He’s locked in. I’m locked out.
CALLI: Not locked in his car, Nate. He has Locked In Syndrome. No muscle control at all. He can’t speak. Not even his eyes can move.
NATE: Boy that’s awful. What’s going on there?
CALLI: He’s 34, and has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
NATE: Isn’t that ALS?
CALLI: Yeah, also known as Lou Gherigs disease. It’s scary, but this news makes the future a lot less scary for ALS patients. It will help other locked-in or comatose patients, too.
NATE: OK, how do you communicate if you can’t move…anything?
CALLI: You may not be able to move, but when you’re locked in you still have your BRAINS.
NATE: Brains? First off, brain is singular, Zombie Calli. Secondly, how do you communicate with your brain if you can’t speak or move?
CALLI: Before becoming totally locked in, this patient knew he was losing motor function. So, he and his family approached neuroscientists to implant two electrodes directly on his brain in the region that controls movement.
NATE: The ultimate bluetooth headset.
CALLI: Yeah! They skipped the ears, and went straight to the brain! So, then, the doctors asked him to imagine moving his hands ... arms ... tongue, to see if they could get any clear signals from the implants…but after months of this they didn’t see anything. But they didn’t give up. They tried method after method until something worked. And then, it did, when they used a method called auditory neurofeedback.
NATE: Auditory neurofeedback. Like the brain and sound?
CALLI: Right. Basically, they would play two notes for him, and while the second was playing, they asked him to think about making it higher or lower, so it matched the first. And ... on the first day ... he did it!
NATE: His brain? Changed the note? Just by thinking about it?
CALLI: Exactly. And after 12 days of work, he reached the goal of matching the first note. When doctors later asked him how he was doing it, he said he was imagining his eyes moving.
NATE: Oh wow. Not even moving, just thinking about moving.
CALLI: Yeah! They were then able to adjust the system so that rather than changing a note, he could select “yes” or “no.” And with that they developed a system where he could spell full sentences.
NATE: Well what did he say? “Please somebody scratch my nose?”
CALLI: No, but with the first full message he thanked the researchers.
NATE: Wow, that’s so nice!
CALLI: After that, he started communicating with his family, asking for a massage, some pea soup, and if his son wanted to watch Robin Hood with him.
NATE: All would be top of my list, except maybe the pea soup. How long does all that take?
CALLI: A long time! The system they were able to develop was slow, and there was no way around that. They would show him groups of letters, and ask him if the letter he wanted was in that group. Once he had the right group, he’d pick a letter. He could do about one letter a minute. And across a hundred-and-seven days of spelling, he had an intelligible sentence on forty-four of those days. Remember, he’s totally locked in, can’t move anything. He’s just imagining his eyes moving up or down, that’s the whole system! It’s super slow. And it takes a lot of work, on his part and the part of the people helping him.
NATE: No kidding. One letter a minute. So...working regular work weeks, two weeks a year vacation, he could type out a book the length of 1984 in about...four and a half years! Hey, not bad for a guy who can’t move a muscle!
CALLI: Yes! And while all this is wonderful news, this process started a few years ago, and sadly, his responses have gotten slower, and less intelligible over time.
NATE: Oh no...
CALLI: Researchers don’t know the reason, but the electrodes are nearing the end of their life span. Replacing them is too risky. So they might need to find another clever way to get into his brain.
NATE: Even so, what a step! It's like communicating with someone beyond the bounds of life as we know it!
CALLI: Absolutely. But, importantly, we’re not ready for home kits just yet. This is one patient, so they need to try to replicate the success, and the system has some elements that are pretty hard to replicate.
NATE: Like the implants on the brain?
CALLI: Yes, exactly, and remember, the patient agreed to it before becoming locked in. Agreeing to experimental brain surgery isn’t an option for folks who are already in that state. Of course, there’s reason to hope. These patients face big challenges, but we are making strides towards giving them a more fulfilled life. This research means with a ton of work and luck, patients may not have to be locked in. It could also give insight into things like brain-operated prosthetics.
NATE: If you had been freed from being locked in, what's the first thing you’d say?
CALLI: Probably “I’m back” or “Is this thing on?”
NATE: I know I’d just ask for a nice cold Coke, nothing better.
CALLI: Well the small muscles in my eyes say cheers to that.
[SFX: Whoosh]
NATE: A planet - floating in outer space. A strange “pulsating” sensation coming from that planet every twenty-six seconds. A mystery that has baffled scientists for 60 years...
CALLI: Sounds like Detective Nate is on the case.
NATE: Not just on the case - we’re going to solve it!
CALLI: Even when you just said top scientists haven’t even been able to for 60 years?
NATE: Okay we’ll at least examine the evidence.
CALLI: Carry on Humphrey Bogart.
NATE: So let’s first identify what we mean when we say the Earth is “pulsating”. That pulse is a tiny seismic event that has been registered by seismologists all around the world.
CALLI: Also known as a “microseism”.
NATE: That’s correct Detective Calli. This blip was first discovered all the way back in the 1960’s by researcher Jack Oliver. He even figured out that the pulse originated from somewhere in maybe the southern, or perhaps the equator region of the Atlantic Ocean.
CALLI: But his research was cut short as he didn’t have the proper advanced seismology tools to continue looking.
NATE: Then, in the 1980’s when Gary Holcomb discovered that the pulse was strongest during storms.
CALLI: But, the trail ran cold. So his work, along with Oliver’s, was swept under the seismology rug for decades to come...
NATE: Then two new persons of interest entered the investigation in 2005 - researchers at the University of Colorado who were able to locate the pulse at its origin! The Gulf of Guinea off the western coast of Africa!
CALLI: The plot thickens...
NATE: Years go by. The pulse continues. And still no answers as to what’s causing it. But six years later, grad student Garrett Euler pinpoints it even further - to a site called the Bight of Bonny, in Nigeria. And there’s something interesting about this site...
CALLI: Besides “Bight of Bonny” being a great movie title?
NATE: Oh yes. ... When waves move across the ocean, there’s a dash—just a hint—of added pressure that runs along the sea floor. But, when the waves hit the continental shelf of a given land mass, there’s more pressure, of course there’s more pressure there. Then, that added pressure ripples out from the sight of impact. Something like a seismic pulse.
CALLI: I don’t a hundred percent follow your line of thought detective.
NATE: Here’s an analogy. If you and I are both sitting at a table and I HIT the table with my hand. BAM! You’ll feel the vibration across the surface, no? The area right under my hand is taking the impact, but the pulse of it is still felt on the other end. And there’s something about that particular part of the coastline of Nigeria that’s resonating, literally, with the Earth.
CALLI: Ohhh I get what you’re getting at. Sounds like this case has been solved...
NATE: That’s what they wants you to think.
CALLI: Who, Nate?
NATE: I said it. They! Anway, while many do believe that waves are the cause of this pulse. Others believe it comes from something else entirely...
CALLI: Here comes another twist.
NATE: Volcanoes!
CALLI: Volcanoes?
NATE: A team of scientists in China argue that the source of the pulse is from a volcano on the island of São Tomé. Right there, in the Bight of Bonny.
CALLI: What would put them on that scent?
NATE: Not only is the pulse’s origin point suspiciously close to the volcano, there’s also another part of the world where a microseism like this occurs. The Aso Volcano in Japan.
CALLI: Evidence pointing to two different culprits. This is a great mystery indeed.
NATE: And it doesn’t end there...
CALLI: Why am I not surprised?...
NATE: The other lingering question is simple, but dramatic - why is the pulse occurring in this single spot? As we know there are continental shelves and volcanoes around the world but none of them are creating the same pulse.
CALLI: And just when we thought we knew it all. Will we ever find an answer?
NATE: No one quite knows right now. Seismologists aren’t prioritizing the study at the moment.
CALLI: But surely there must be some importance to it with all this hullabaloo.
NATE: Scientists agree with you there! However, we don’t know yet. They’ll need to study the patterns to learn more about the pulse, more about the interior of the Earth. They’ll try of course to hone in on the exact cause, and maybe even find that the pulse causes other phenomena we can’t yet explain. But as of now the mystery will remain unsolved.
CALLI: Sounds like Detectives Calli and Nate need to make a trip to the Bight of Bonny to see it for themselves.
NATE: As long as I can bring my trench coat and fedora.
CALLI: The trench coat is fine but no fedora. Never a fedora.
[SFX: Whoosh]
CALLI: Nate do you like cats?
NATE: I’d say I tolerate cats? I like them fine, but I am allergic so I try to avoid them.
CALLI: Right, yeah. Well, you know I love them. I have my cats Jack and Sally, and then my roommate has two as well. So, I was very excited to learn about a new study that shows that cats seem to actually know the names of their cat friends, after watching us call them by name? Researchers say they even seem to know some of our human faces and names.
NATE: You’re telling me that those seemingly disinterested cats are actually listening to every word we say?
CALLI: Exactly, they just look disinterested.
NATE: So how do you test something like this? Did they have a little cat lineup like in one of those bank heist movies?
CALLI: Not quite. The study included forty-eight domestic cats, in Japan. Nineteen were cats that lived in private residences with at least three other cats. The remaining twenty-nine lived in these things called cat cafes. Those had other cats and a clientele that would change every day.
NATE: cat cafe?
CALLI: Those are kinda like a typical cafe, only they ... have a bunch of cats! The customers are welcome to pet and play with the cats while they’re there.
NATE: Not exactly the kind of place you’ll find me.
CALLI: No, I wouldn’t recommend it. Researchers took each cat and played audio of their owners saying the name of another cat they lived with four times. Then they’d show the cat a photo on a laptop.
NATE: Cats working on computers, seems like a bad inspirational poster.
CALLI: Ha, well there were no encouraging words on the screen. Half the cats were shown a photo of the cat the owner had been calling, while the other half were shown a photo of a completely different cat.
NATE: Wait this is actually sounding like the lineup from a bank heist movie.
CALLI: What is so interesting, is that when the photo did not match up with the cat that had been called, the house cats stared at the screen longer.
NATE: Well what does that mean?
CALLI: Researchers say it shows that the cats were expecting to see the cat that was called, and when the photo was different, their expectations were dashed, and it left them confused. So they kept looking at the screen to try to figure out what was going on.
NATE: But what about the cafe cats?
CALLI: They didn't seem to be bothered at all by the incongruity.
NATE: So what does that mean then?
CALLI: Well researchers say it means that cats likely learn the names of their friends by watching third party interactions, like when we talk to our cats, especially when all the cats are near each other, like when we feed them. Those cafe cats likely don’t have enough close interactions with their cat roommates to learn their names, there is just too much other stuff going on.
NATE: Oh wow, cats are sounding smarter than I gave them credit for.
CALLI: Totally. What's even wilder is that they seem to know human names as well. Researchers repeated the study with photos of humans the cats lived with and found similar results, especially if it was a household with several humans in it.
NATE: Oh that's wild. But why would having more humans in the house matter?
CALLI: The researchers think it is because more humans means more people referring to each other by their names.
NATE: Ah, so the cats are exposed to the names more often. Whereas I don’t ever say my own name aloud when I’m alone, and when I’m just with one person, I rarely need to use their name.
CALLI: Right. It’s pretty clear who you’re talking to when it’s only one person. It's all a really interesting addition to what we know about cats. Previous studies showed that they know their own names, and we also know that cats form bonds with their owners that can be considered affection or love.
NATE: So, if people want to improve their bond with their cat, what should they do?
CALLI: Talk to your cat! More communication will improve the relationship. Though, that’s always true.
NATE: Well if I ever see Jack and Sally, I’ll be sure to say hello, but hopefully through a glass door or a video call or something.
CALLI: I’m sure we can get that organized some time Nate.
[SFX: Whoosh]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. A man with severe ALS, who has no control of his muscles, not even his eyes, was recently the first “locked in” patient able to communicate in full sentences. With the help of electrodes in his brain, and a communication system developed by the scientists helping him, he could spell out sentences with his mind, at a pace of about a letter a minute.
CALLI: A strange pulse emits from the Earth every twenty-six seconds. And even after sixty years, scientists still can’t exactly discern why. It could be a volcano, it could be waves hitting the continental shelf. Hopefully one day we’ll get to the bottom of... The Mystery of the Pulsating Earth.
NATE: A new study shows that our cats are in fact listening to our conversations. The research suggests that cats not only learn the names of their fellow felines, but their human companions as well.