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After many many decades of people debating [music] this, you might have figured out the reason why we dream.
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Yes, and it's a simple answer. So, if you go blind, the visual cortex at the
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back of the brain gets taken over by hearing and by touch and by other things. In fact, our colleagues at
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Harvard did an experiment where they blindfolded normally sighted people, and you could start seeing that takeover
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happening after 60 minutes. And that's when we realized, "Wow, the purpose of
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dreaming is to defend the visual territory from takeover from the other senses." Well, what fascinates me about
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brain plasticity and what I've devoted my career to is figuring out the way that we can [music] be the sculptors of
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our own brains and how it gives us an opportunity to become the kind of person we would like to be. And can we do that?
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Yes. Here's the thing. Your brain peaked at the age of two. Okay, so at the beginning, you've got
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fluid intelligence, meaning you could learn anything. But now that you have grown up in this world, you've got
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crystallized intelligence, meaning you know how to drive a car, you know how to operate a cell phone, you know how to
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run a business. And so, your brain doesn't require as much change, which means that the structure of the brain is
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always degenerating. So, what are the set of actions that will fundamentally change my brain and make me that type of
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person who's motivated and disciplined and who has high agency and attacks the
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world? So, this is something I've studied in my lab for decades now, and the key is that
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And what about AI and the social media debate as it relates to brain development?
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>> Well, I happen to be a cyber optimist for young people. I think it's going to
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make them much smarter than the generation that came before. And here's why.