Genetic Diversity is the Key to Societal Success | Dr. Hannah Critchlow

Summary

Dr. Hannah Critchlow, a neuroscientist, discusses the importance of genetic diversity in shaping societal success. Through an engaging conversation about her journey from aspiring doctor to neuroscientist, she explains how our genetic makeup affects complex behaviors, including impulsivity, compulsivity, and social interactions. Dr. Critchlow emphasizes the significance of understanding biological constraints while promoting the value of working collectively in diverse groups to maximize innovation and problem-solving. She also delves into the fascinating connections between genetics and behaviors, advocating for the use of neuroscience to inform better societal structures and policies.

Highlights

• Understanding our DNA can reveal insights into complex behaviors like impulsivity and addiction. 🧬
• Women enhance group intelligence through mutual listening, making teams more successful. 👩‍🔬
• Diverse teams foster creativity and innovation, essential for societal progress. 🌟
• Grandparents offer wisdom and emotional support, enriching younger generations. 👵👦
• Genes influence where we fit socially, helping us choose our friends and partners. 🧠

Key Takeaways

• Unraveling our DNA can shed light on behaviors like impulsivity and addiction. 🧬
• Women in groups boost collective intelligence through better turn-taking and listening. 👩‍🔬
• Bringing diverse minds together can lead to groundbreaking solutions and innovations. 🌟
• Grandparent-grandchild relationships can enhance intergenerational intelligence. 👵👦
• Biological predispositions influence how we interact and build social circles. 🧠

Overview

Dr. Hannah Critchlow offers intriguing insights into how genetic diversity contributes to societal success. By decoding our DNA, we gain a better understanding of complex behaviors, from impulsiveness to how we form social connections. She emphasizes the importance of acknowledging both the constraints and freedoms offered by our genetic makeup.

Through engaging dialogue, Dr. Critchlow discusses the role of women in enhancing collective intelligence within groups. Women’s abilities to facilitate turn-taking and active listening significantly improve group performance. She highlights real-world applications like policy changes in the UK that subtly guide better health choices by modifying environmental cues.

Asserting the value of genetic diversity, Dr. Critchlow suggests that societies and organizations should focus on leveraging diverse backgrounds and perspectives. By doing so, groups can outsmart individual intelligence, especially through cooperation and combined knowledge. Her insight underscores the potential of neuroscience to inform and improve societal structures, leading to more inclusive communities.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Decoding DNA and its impact on behavior The chapter explores the decoding of DNA, specifically the 3.2 billion base pairs that form our unique genetic blueprint. It delves into how many of these genes are crucial in coding for various complex human behaviors. Examples provided include traits such as impulsivity, compulsivity, and a predisposition to addictive behaviors, illustrating the profound impact of genetic coding on behavior.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Genetic predispositions and societal interactions The chapter 'Genetic Predispositions and Societal Interactions' explores how genetic factors influence our social behavior and interactions. It discusses how our tendency to form social groups, whether we are extroverted or introverted, and our susceptibility to mental health conditions like depression, autism, and schizophrenia can be affected by biological predispositions. The chapter highlights that people who are genetically inclined towards depression may not benefit from simplistic advice to improve their mood, such as 'thinking their way out of it.' It also notes a finding that groups with a higher number of females tend to be more successful.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Introduction of Dr. Hannah Critchlow's new book In this introduction, Dr. Hannah Critchlow is interviewed about her new book 'Joined Up Thinking,' which has been recently published with Hoda. The conversation takes place live in Cambridge with Jonathan, who is thankful for Dr. Critchlow's effort to join him. The discussion touches on common misunderstandings about intelligence and hints at the themes of the book. Dr. Critchlow describes her book as a 'belter,' suggesting it contains robust content or compelling insights.
• 03:00 - 04:00: The journey into neuroscience and psychiatry The chapter discusses the evolution and integration of neuroscience and psychiatry, centered around individual perceptions and cultural linguistics. The narrative includes a personal anecdote about understanding the meaning of 'belter' and its interpretation, highlighting cultural nuances in language usage. This exploration serves as an analogy for how neuroscience and psychiatry can be understood differently across various contexts, similar to how different individuals interpret vernacular differently.
• 04:00 - 05:00: The role of genes in neurodevelopment The chapter begins with a dialogue where one participant remarks on the quality of the book they are discussing. It sets a conversational tone, indicating that the session might be an engaging one. The dialogue reveals that the main focus is on a neuroscientist who has previously authored a book titled 'The Science of Fates'. This book evidently challenged common perceptions in neuroscience by demystifying popular ideas. It suggests that the new discussion will delve into genes' roles in neurodevelopment, possibly building on the concepts introduced in the previous work.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Exploring the Science of Fate The chapter titled "Exploring the Science of Fate" discusses the intriguing idea that human destiny might be more governed by biological factors than one might prefer to believe. It emphasizes the role of scientists who work in laboratories, translating hard science into accessible public knowledge. The conversation delves into the speaker's interest in studying the intersection of biology and fate, hinting at personal motivations or philosophical considerations that drive such scientific exploration.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Neuroplasticity and biological constraints The author reflects on the non-linear trajectory of their career, which initially involved an interest in medicine. During their gap year, they worked as a nursing assistant in a psychiatric hospital, primarily on adolescent wards. The experience involved working with children diagnosed with severe conditions such as autism and bipolar disorder.
• 07:00 - 08:00: Free will and biological influence The chapter discusses the complex relationship between free will and biological influences, particularly in the context of mental health disorders such as personality disorders or schizophrenia. It reflects on experiences from 20 years ago, involving teenagers who exhibited challenging behaviors and were sectioned under the mental health act. The narrative highlights how these interactions significantly reshaped the author's perspective.
• 08:00 - 09:00: The genomics revolution and behavior The chapter discusses personal experiences related to behavioral and mental health, particularly focusing on the challenges faced by those working in mental health services. It touches upon emotional difficulties experienced in clinical settings, the stigma surrounding mental health two decades ago, and the shortcomings of available treatments at that time. The narrative specifically mentions experience with children's mental health, indicating the diversity of issues encountered in that demographic.
• 09:00 - 10:00: Environmental and genetic influences on obesity The chapter discusses the impacts of environmental and genetic factors on obesity. It begins with an overview of various psychological disorders such as autism, personality disorders, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, highlighting the diversity of behaviors observed in affected individuals. The text points out that while some children have experienced traumatic events that may influence their conditions, others have not. Similarly, the staff working with these children often have challenging backgrounds themselves, which influences their motivation to work in such settings.
• 10:00 - 11:00: The role of policy in addressing obesity This chapter explores the role of policy in addressing obesity, emphasizing the societal and systemic factors that influence the situation. The discussion highlights the paradox in treatment and care approaches, with a focus on psychiatric hospitals where children are kept due to safety concerns, while staff, regardless of their backgrounds, return home after shifts. This raises questions about the structural and policy-driven discrepancies relating to care and rehabilitation, urging a reevaluation of policies to better address the root causes of obesity.
• 11:00 - 12:00: Societal success through genetic diversity The speaker discusses their shift in academic focus due to an interest in the biological factors affecting societal success and individual thriving. Initially, they were intrigued by the general lack of flourishing in society and pursued studies in cell molecular biology. This led to a PhD in brain connectivity, where they examined how psychosis, delusions, perceptions, and memories are formed and influenced by life experiences.
• 12:00 - 13:00: The importance of diversity in problem-solving The chapter explores the impact of diversity on problem-solving, emphasizing how our perceptions of the world and our constructed reality influence our interactions. The discussion delves into neurospsychiatry, examining the origins of behavior and highlighting the importance of genetic research from an academic perspective, reflecting on experiences from 20 years ago during undergraduate studies.
• 13:00 - 14:00: Gender and group intelligence The chapter discusses the decoding of the human genome and how it's revealing insights into human DNA, inherited from both parents. This includes predispositions to certain behaviors as well as traits like eye color, hair color, height, and weight, all of which are influenced by our genetic code.
• 14:00 - 15:00: Leadership and decision-making in diverse groups The chapter discusses the complex relationship between genetics and behavior, highlighting how genes play a role in coding for behaviors such as impulsivity, compulsivity, and predisposition to addiction. This suggests that understanding our genetic makeup could provide insights into human behavior and decision-making processes in diverse groups.
• 15:00 - 16:00: The value of genetic diversity in the workplace This chapter explores the impact of genetic diversity within the workplace, emphasizing how genetic factors can influence social interactions, personality traits like introversion and extroversion, and even predispositions to specific mental health conditions such as depression, autism, or schizophrenia. These conditions often manifest later in life, sometimes not until one's 20s or even 40s. The chapter seeks to understand how genetic differences contribute to workplace dynamics and individual behavior.
• 16:00 - 17:00: Genetics and society: Understanding conditions like autism The chapter explores the biological predispositions that influence complex behaviors and subsequently shape our life paths or destinies. This fascination is rooted in understanding how genetics can affect conditions such as autism. The chapter delves into the intersection of genetics and society, examining how modern science, particularly neuroscience and psychology, is being adapted within popular science contexts. It highlights the significance of these fields in unraveling the complexities of human behavior and societal implications.
• 17:00 - 18:00: Perception, schizophrenia, and genetic advantages The chapter explores the interplay between perception, schizophrenia, and genetic factors, emphasizing the role of biology in shaping behaviors. It challenges the popular notion of neuroplasticity as the primary influencer of behavior, suggesting that genetic components may have a more significant impact than commonly believed.
• 18:00 - 19:00: Multigenerational family intelligence The chapter titled 'Multigenerational family intelligence' focuses on the concept of synaptic plasticity, as explored by the speaker during their PhD at Cambridge University. They emphasize the brain's ability to change and adapt in response to environmental stimuli, showcasing how new neural connections form as a result of learning and exposure to different experiences. This dynamic nature of the brain is described as a remarkable process, evident at a microscopic level.
• 19:00 - 20:00: The benefits of brain synchronicity The chapter discusses the concept of brain synchronicity and the balance between its benefits and biological constraints. It highlights the potential overestimation of brain plasticity and acknowledges that some individuals may have biological predispositions, such as towards depression, which influence their brain function and mental health. The discourse suggests a more nuanced understanding that accepts both the potential of brain synchronicity and its limitations due to inherent biological factors.
• 20:00 - 21:00: Influence of collective well-being and future hopes The chapter explores the notion of free will within the context of mental health and brain plasticity. It emphasizes that while changing one's behavior can potentially alter brain function and combat depression, this is not a universal solution for everyone. The discussion includes philosophical and scientific perspectives, highlighting the tension between predetermined outcomes and the potential for change through personal agency. The chapter illustrates the complexity of addressing mental health by invoking theories and examples, ultimately questioning the extent of human autonomy and control over well-being and future prospects.

Genetic Diversity is the Key to Societal Success | Dr. Hannah Critchlow Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 but then we're also finding out as we've been able to um kind of uncode the DNA the 3.2 billion base pairs that makes up our individual very unique blueprint for life um how a lot of those genes those nucleotides there um basically are involved in coding for some of our very complex behaviors so for example our impulsivity our compulsivity our predisposition to addictive behaviors even things like possibly you know the
• 00:30 - 01:00 way that we socially interact how we have our how we form our friendship groups how extroverted or introverted we might be whether we might be predisposed to towards you know depression for example or even um autism or schizophrenia some people that might be for example biologically predisposed towards depression and so for them it's not helpful for for people to say oh just think your way out of it the higher the number of females within the group The more successful that group would be
• 01:00 - 01:30 and that's not because females were inherently more [Music] intelligent all right when we're live here in Cambridge Jonathan hello hi Dr Kito it's a it's a pleasure and thank you for for cycling all this way to chat with me um I hear you have a new book I do yes I do it was published just a couple of weeks ago now it's called joined up thinking published with Hoda and I have to say it is a belter of a
• 01:30 - 02:00 book in a good way you know it's a really good book I'm Canadian what do what does belter mean I I said it and I I'm actually not entirely sure it's some I think I've heard other people say it before I think it means it's really good but why would a belt be really good I mean I it's a really good belt I don't I I mean I I trust that it's it's very good oh no maybe it's more like a Belta like you know when somebody is very loud and there's a really good song that's like an Anthem that people sing along
• 02:00 - 02:30 with I see yeah it's that kind of belter of a book okay well I hope this uh this chat is a is a belter of a chat um it's a pleasure to be here with you so I first I first came across um what you do so you're you're a neuroscientist by profession and um I came across a couple talks that you you've G you've given and which led me to your previous book The the science of Fates where you sort of uh you you demystify some maybe some some popular ideas in neuroscience and um you propose
• 02:30 - 03:00 that maybe we are are more subject to our biology than we we we'd hope to think um and it was a great read and I'm I'm fascinated by people like you because you know you're you're in the lab doing doing hard science and then you translate all of that into into ways that the public can access so what what got you interested in sort of studying um the science of of Our Fate and our our biological Destiny if you will mhm well uh uh it's a bit of a kind of um
• 03:00 - 03:30 it's not really a straight line in terms of my career I think so originally I was interested in pursuing medicine um and then I worked uh in my Gap year so My year between um kind of school and going to University I decided to work as a nursing assistant in a local psychiatric hospital so I was working mainly on the Adolescent Wards uh and I was working with children who had a wide variety of different diagnosis from or you know very severe autism to bipolar
• 03:30 - 04:00 personality disorder or schizophrenia um and you know their behaviors this was going back 20 years ago now their behaviors were very challenging um and they had been brought to this particular hospital um they were all sectioned under the mental health act um they were you know very young um teenagers um lovely really lovely kids and you know it really changed my perspective on
• 04:00 - 04:30 Behavior Uh and and and just on life I think generally but it also made me realize that I wasn't a emotionally robust enough to work on the wards CU I found it it was very upsetting um and this was at a time 20 years ago when there was a lot of stigma about mental health issues and also quite a lot of the treatments that were available um they just weren't working so what types of patients were you seeing at that time or did you observe um so there were generally I was working with children um and they had wide range ing different
• 04:30 - 05:00 diagnosis um so autism personality disorder bipolar schizophrenia um yeah there was a wide variety of different behaviors some of the children had had some very horrific traumatic events that had occurred earlier in their lives but some of them hadn't and then also when you looked at the staff that were working on the wards quite a lot of them had had um you know quite challenging upbringings as well and that's what motivated them to work within the
• 05:00 - 05:30 set that makes sense yeah and it and it really made me think you know why is it that there's these children that are you know effectively they're being locked up in these psychiatric hospitals um because that is deemed not safe for themselves and for others for them to go out um as things stood at the time right um so why is it that the staff were able to go home after that 12-hour shift you know and they may have not had great upbringings or great occurrences in life whereas there was something about the children that meant that they weren't
• 05:30 - 06:00 able to and they weren't thriving they weren't flourishing um and I really got interested in the biology behind that um and so I changed direction for my studies and went off and did cell molecular biology uh and then did a PhD looking at brain connectivity so I was looking at Connections in the brain um trying to understand more about how psychosis and delusions actually arise and how our perception of the world forms and how different memories from from our life experience can then go on
• 06:00 - 06:30 to effect how we perceive the world and how we form our sense of reality and then instruct how we interact with it so yeah became absolutely fascinated with that kind of subject area and just generally neuros Psychiatry so how our behaviors arise and at the same time so this was again I'm saying like you know 20 years ago um in my undergraduate degree I was there was large component of it was looking at um human molecular genetic
• 06:30 - 07:00 so looking at you know the genome had been recently sequenced uh and we were getting huge amounts of data on our genetic code so the DNA that we're given from our mom and our dad kind of untangling the sequences of that and seeing how it can predispose us to lots of different types of behavior so we all know for example you know it's really widely accepted that our eye color or even our hair color or even our height even our weight maybe you know quite a lot of that is coded by the gene that we're given from our mom and from our
• 07:00 - 07:30 dad but then we're also finding out as we've been able to um kind of uncode the DNA the 3.2 billion base pairs that makes up our individual very unique blueprint for life um how a lot of those genes those nucleotides there um basically are involved in coding for some of our very complex behaviors so for example our impulsivity our compulsivity our predisposition to addictive behaviors even things like
• 07:30 - 08:00 possibly you know the way that we socially interact how we have our how we form our friendship groups how extroverted or introverted we might be whether we might be predisposed to towards you know depression for example or even um autism or schizophrenia which you know generally speaking that that type of diagnosis might not come in the case of schizophrenia until late teens or even older you know in the 20s or even in some cases in your 40s in life so how can these genes give um a
• 08:00 - 08:30 biological kind of predisposition to very complex behaviors that go on to affect our life trajectory and the way that we lead our life so our destiny if you like so I became really interested in that and that's basically the book science I think that's yeah I think that's that's fascinating as an idea um for for two reasons one I think um we live in an interesting age in terms of Popular Science where I think neuroscience and psychology is getting a
• 08:30 - 09:00 lot of attention um people want to know about themselves right and I think um a lot of we're we're being sold this idea of like the the power of neuroplasticity and the power to sort of shape um our behaviors and from reading your book and actually speaking with a few other people on this podcast who who do behavioral genetics and and things like that um I I was quite surprised to to realize that maybe we're more subject to our biology then we would like to to
• 09:00 - 09:30 think EXA exactly and I you know my my PhD here at Cambridge University was actually looking at synaptic plasticity this idea that our brain can change in response to our environments um and I think you know and obviously I very much believe in that I could literally see it occurring down the microscope um you know you know new connections forming as we learn and remember new things from our environment so the shape of our brain literally changes in response to the things that we're EXP exposed to in our life and and it's wonderful to see
• 09:30 - 10:00 that and to accept that but I think also we've been almost over sold it there's been a lot of hype about it as you kind of said um and and I think it can be possibly more owering to actually accept that there is some degree of biological constraint within that scope for plasticity and so you know there's some people that might be for example biologically predisposed to towards depression and so for them it's not
• 10:00 - 10:30 helpful for for people to say oh just think your way out of it you know there's there's plasticity if you just change the way that you're behaving then you can change your brain and so therefore you you don't have to be uh kind of depressed you know sometimes that's not the case and it can be very helpful to accept that yeah you toy around this idea of of Free Will and I feel like there's this tension in your book where you like do we have free will yes or no and then you kind of invoke philosophy and Science and you you you cite a lot of a lot of other other
• 10:30 - 11:00 thinkers and um I I want to I want to chat with you about like the extent of maybe maybe our our free will there because um so how how how deep does this uh biological influence go because like you like you mentioned I can I can understand that you know my eye color and my hair color is is um inherited that's fine I can accept that I look at my mom and dad I resemble them that makes sense um and then you kind of Branch out a little bit more and you you talk about things like like personality am am I more extroverted or introverted
• 11:00 - 11:30 well okay I can I can maybe I can I can accept that those things might be slightly heritable but then you say things like how we select our friends and I think well no certainly I I screen my friends based on you know what I think is good moral character and then you get even further outside of that bubble like existential questions almost um what are my thought what are my attitudes towards romance um do I believe in in a higher deity and are are those types of questions also is there is there any sort of
• 11:30 - 12:00 biological foundation for those those types of things yeah yeah well the genomics revolution is really showing that um when we look at things like eye color and um height for example so the genetic heritability which is the proportion of differences that we see that might be due to the genetic variation within that person um so that heritability value um for eye color or for height for example could be something in the region of say 80 90% when we look at things things like for example intelligence as measured by IQ
• 12:00 - 12:30 scores the heritability is estimated to be around 55% so that's still quite a sizable amount you know there's still scope for change within that because 45% is thought to be due to our environmental factors maybe our diet or um the people that surround us or our schooling for example but when we think look at things like our ideology or even our belief system our religiosity then again we're seeing um herit ability values um of
• 12:30 - 13:00 around in the region of 40% so still that's quite that's quite a sizable amount and when we look at for things like you talking about um uh the way that we make friends and who we make friends with so there's this wonderful person called Robin dunar he works at Oxford University he's a professor of anthropology there and he's come up with this um idea he's been working for many many many decades and he's got a huge amounts of data behind him um he's come up with this wonderful idea that we have what the equivalent of a supermarket Market barcode on our forehead and when
• 13:00 - 13:30 we go and meet people what we're doing without any conscious awareness is that we're really scanning individuals to find out whether we have commonalities between them so we're all inherently drawn towards novelty to some degree but also we're drawn towards making sure that we don't have to expend too much energy in our brains because our brains are really um they consume a Hu huge amount of energy they consume something like 20% of our daily energy quota so
• 13:30 - 14:00 they're taking up a huge amount of energy in order for us to conjure up our sense of reality uh and instruct how we're going to interact so we don't want to waste too much energy interacting with people if we can't quite understand where they're coming from and so actually it makes more sense for us to become friends with people that might have similar backgrounds to us similar ways of looking at the world and see similar ways of communicating because otherwise we find it difficult to understand where they're coming from and
• 14:00 - 14:30 our brains just have to do too many computations in order to make sense of them so his idea is that we have this kind of bar scan and this kind of scanning code on our foreheads and we go around trying to figure out who we should be expending our social energy on in interacting in order to make the most of that interaction and there's some people that are perhaps you'd call them extroverts mhm and they are willing to go around and expend more energy on social interactions but a wider range of
• 14:30 - 15:00 social interactions and they've got a different region within their brain that's slightly larger and dumb Bar's idea is that they've actually got more beta endorphin receptors and they're wired to go out they're predisposed to go out and be motivated to interact with more people more different people in order to fill up those beta endorphin slots and feel satisfied whereas introverts we could call them spend a a smaller have they have a
• 15:00 - 15:30 smaller network of friends so they know fewer people and have less motivation to go out and interact with as many people but they expend more energy on each one of those individuals so they create if you like a community of um support of close support networks whereas the extroverts are there going around making sure that ideas and Innovation can hop from small group to small group group so that it doesn't become a stagnant Echo
• 15:30 - 16:00 chamber right now both types of people are very important within a society to make sure that it's smooth running so that you've got the support and established relationships and network of help there but also so that you've got Innovation uh and ideas Crossing between group and group so both types of people very important to society and there's a biological predisposition towards which type of person you probably are and you can look in the brain and start to
• 16:00 - 16:30 predict with some degree of sensitivity as to what type of person how you go about having your interactions with people so that's so that's one aspect of how our biology can actually give rise to our Behavior but within the book I also look at for example um how our kind of ideology and our religious beliefs are set up um or and how for example our food patterns our eating patterns are set up and our food preferences even our love interest and romantic relationships again you can see some quite compelling
• 16:30 - 17:00 data on how our genes are predisposed to make us um find people attractive if they have a very different immune system repertoire to us and the thinking of this is so so without you you realizing this or I myself realizing this I might be sniffing you out to find out whether I might find you attractive and if I did find you attractive it might be because you've got a very different immune system to me and therefore if we had a child together then um that child would
• 17:00 - 17:30 have a really strong diverse immune system so it would be able to ward off more bugs so that's happening unconsciously all of these decisions are happening unconsciously without our brain being consciously aware of it I I you you touched upon a lot of interesting things there I think um you're mentioning the extrovert introvert um sort of Duality there and I think those are both adaptive strategies just sort of in different ways and I I think that lines up a lot with um the sort of the subject matter of your your new book joined up thinking so um we
• 17:30 - 18:00 we'll park that here for a second I want to come back to that um but you you were talking about this idea of of love and interest and and how we select mates and a lot of this processing we like to believe is conscious right because we put so much emphasis on um our intimate partner and they say something about us right who who we select says something about us and of course we want someone who's compatible and romantic and and does all of those things but there's a lot of these um unconscious drives that we were're we're not even um aware of um
• 18:00 - 18:30 that are really at play here so so are we truly um free in in those decisions of choosing our friends and choosing a romantic partner well I I guess it's maybe it's somewhere somewhere in the middle there's these there's these constraints as you're saying um but we we do have sort of leeway to sort of play Within the joints if you will yeah yeah exactly I think you know really key to all of this underpinning all of this is the fact that our perception of the world is also you know slightly flawed so some lovely work that's come out as
• 18:30 - 19:00 Chris frith and UT fi's Lab at University College London so they've looked at how if you get different type different people together and allow them to freely discuss what they're seeing the problem is within so they're given a particular environment and they've got to kind of say what's going on within that environment and where a problem might be and when they get people to be able to freely discuss their their version of reality with each other they're more likely to get toward towards a more accurate representation
• 19:00 - 19:30 of reality and this goes to show that each of us has actually a slightly flawed version of reality we're each wandering around in our very different perception of the world we notice different things we're conscious of different things and that's based on our gen genes but also our experiences um and and that goes on to obviously instruct how we're going to interact with the world so we're each seeing the world in a very different way as well right I yeah I think our perception of things we're we're often
• 19:30 - 20:00 we're sort of Trapped in in the bubble of our own perception because that that is our reality um you you quoted Dr Robert spolsky in your book saying that um his argument for for biological determinism effectively that um I can't imagine Liv living as though Free Will didn't exist um so maybe we can ever truly perceive ourselves as um entirely bio like um as at the expense of our biological drives um because of the way we perceive perceive the world and
• 20:00 - 20:30 that's really important there's some some studies that have shown that actually when you make people not believe in their own agency so they have you make them think that they've got no control over their lives and actually they're more likely to Veer towards making immoral decisions so because they they think oh well it's not my responsibility the behavior isn't under my own responsibility it's not my fault I'm behaving like this it's my genes it's my brain and so therefore I've got to get out of jail card I can behave in any way possible so there is some danger
• 20:30 - 21:00 to my having written this book which which I am aware of so yeah I was thinking similar things because there like you're saying it's like this get out of jail free card let's let's start from the the Obesity example and then maybe move into like the criminality stuff because I think those have varying degrees of impact on society both you know important conversations to have but um let's take obesity for example um I don't think it's it's new information that it's a sort of a looming po uh a looming um
• 21:00 - 21:30 concern for especially Western societies um a morbid OB obesity is steadily rising and I don't remember the exact figures you quoted but um it is it is a problem that we we have to we have to address um but I I think the the public consensus of this problem is is largely um on on individuals you know if I see someone who's who's relatively out of shape um I might make a judgment on them cast judgment
• 21:30 - 22:00 about um their morality or their ability to control themselves or or make decisions um or just lack of self-control as a whole and I I look at them as sort of in a in a negative light but given all of U this understanding that we're now sort of drawing from from neuroscience and our understanding of the The genome there might be other factors that play there yeah and I think you know as the data um becomes unavoidable for policy makers you know
• 22:00 - 22:30 they have to accept that obesity is a growing problem if you excuse the pun uh is costing the NHS and most healthc Care Systems you know a huge amount as is diabetes um and there is you know a genetic predisposition towards these types of behaviors so in which case actually what we need to do is make sure because there is still an environmental um kind of um there's an environmental push behind any type of decision- making and so therefore what we need to do is
• 22:30 - 23:00 make sure that the environment supports those people that are predisposed to have these vulnerabilities and that's the you know the main argument of the book so simple things like for example in the UK um the supermarkets here now no longer have the ability to have um SES and confectionary right at the aisle where you go and pay so quite often you go shopping you've got you know you've got your bits that you've got to go and get you've made your list uh and then at the end perhaps you're like phew I've done all my shopping and so therefore um
• 23:00 - 23:30 I'm you know I'm I'm going to cave in and I'm going to get this chocolate bar here I'm going to get these crisps I'm going to get all of this stuff actually just remove that Temptation and make it easier for individuals to make health so that that's that no longer happens in UK supermarkets wow yeah so you know the simple things like that and for example making the choice between a chocolate biscuit and a piece of fruit um economically easier so for example if a banana or um an apple was half the price
• 23:30 - 24:00 of a chocolate bar that would help people to make that decision towards going making it the best decision and if for example supermarkets were encouraged when people were doing their online shopping to kind of advertise the healthier choices rather than the unhealthy choices again that would be you know a fantastic policy I think I think that that that surprises me a lot I didn't know that that was the case here because I was at the i' I've been to a couple markets while I've been been around um in London and uh and Cambridge
• 24:00 - 24:30 and at the sort of at the cash there's there's like nuts and like yogurts and healthy options and I just thought oh this maybe this is what they prefer here no no no so it's quite a recent change so that it's really interesting there's um uh so under David Cameron's government which was maybe well gosh I should know maybe about 10 years ago sure eight years ago I'm going to trust you on that okay well no don't I don't know I I should know off the top of my head but I don't it feels like it was 10 years ago but who
• 24:30 - 25:00 knows like it's been strange Time Warp over the last years fair enough fair enough it's not 10 years ago it's probably about five years ago gez where is the time yeah anyway so um under his leadership he set up the behavioral insights uh team that was basically using findings from neuroscience and psychology to help influence people's decision- making I think that's brilliant I I think that's a good example of science informing policy in in a productive way for for Society because um I think the extreme end of uh
• 25:00 - 25:30 of sort of um what do you like this biological determinism argument is that um are there just winners and losers effectively of like this genetic L Lottery well I don't think that's the case no no no no no and if you look at the major the huge majority of scientists and academics that are working in these types of field they're incredibly liberal because you can see that there are biological constra constraints within each of us we each have our you know vulnerabilities or flaws if you like and and on the flip
• 25:30 - 26:00 side we each have our strengths right so what we want to do as a society is help support people so that they make good decisions so that their flaws or idiosyncrasies aren't kind of manipulated or exposed by the environment in a bad way and so make support them in their decision- making there without them consciously possibly consciously being aware and then just try and make the most out of the strengths that each individual can offer and that is the the point of a smooth running Society is to make the most out
• 26:00 - 26:30 of everybody that's there every member that's there I I think that's that's absolutely brilliant and that's sort of I think that's a good segue into your new book that you're yes that you're working on um joined up thinking and let me let me see if I understand the premise we were talking off camera and you sort of you mentioned that there's there's all of us with these predispositions and we know we all perceive the world differently and you effectively argue that this is this is a very adapted um strategy um and it's good for
• 26:30 - 27:00 society um is that is that correct that's what you've been you've been writing on and looking at or am I am I missing some elements there yeah yeah so exactly so it's very much inspired by um the science of fate and I just want to can I really quickly go back to science of Fate because this is really cool kind of like technological development um so we're now able to image uh babies brains in the womb as their brain is developing and we can see that neural circuitry so those 8 to six billion nerve cells kind of connecting up for that baby in the womb and we can watch that from around second trimester of pregnancy but we can
• 27:00 - 27:30 also analyze the baby's brain when it's first born as well so it's a newborn and what you can see using these incredible new technologies is that the genes that you're given from your mom and dad line up with how those neural circuits so a lot of these genes that are involved in really complex behaviors that we've just been talking about ideology intelligence um eating preferences how we form relationships etc etc etc a lot of these genes are involved in Paving how that brain circuit is is going to wire up when we're a baby and then how it's
• 27:30 - 28:00 going to operate throughout the life into old age right and you can start to see that there's these genetic genes that we've genetic predispositions genes that we've been given from our mom and dad that may have mutated as well or changed and and recombined in different ways within each of us um and that's linked to how that the architecture of the neural circuit in the baby that's just been born um and how that then is linked to the behaviors the very complex behaviors um so we can start to piece
• 28:00 - 28:30 together all of this information to see Destiny and that watch how it starts to unfold so all of these Technologies are coming together the genomics revolution the Imaging Revolution within Neuroscience so that we can see the brain and how we also look at how um life trajectories are um kind of occurring for individuals because we've also got this big data Revolution so we can start to see how people's lives are panning out uh to quite a fine level of resolution um so so I I wanted to use
• 28:30 - 29:00 that data and to think about that data in a way that could be useful and positive for society not in some horrible way to resurrect Eugenics for example you know because we've got atrocious examples throughout our history of um you know Nazi uh kind of um execution of millions of people even in Sweden I think there was mass sterilization of um disabled children until you know quite late in the last
• 29:00 - 29:30 century um and similar things were going on within America as well right um there's been you know atrocious examples of eugenics movements and I don't want the bi the biological data and all of this information to be used to help spur on another Eugenics movement actually what it should be used for is to think well what's the point what is the point in us all be having this complexity in the way that we behave and I this complexity in our DNA code that allows
• 29:30 - 30:00 this wide breadth this vast breadth of behaviors that as a species we are capable of you know because you have different strengths to me I have different weaknesses to you what's the point of that well it's the point of it is so that when we bring different individuals together that have different biologies different experiences then what what we found and there's lots of studies that have shown this is that actually when you bring a group of diverse people people together so genetically diverse people people with
• 30:00 - 30:30 different ages people with different cultural experiences and different early years experiences and you get them to work together or bring their opinions together in a new way what you start to see is actually their intelligence that's on offer is much greater than any individual part so for example you can see this in action when we look at Wikipedia you know the on this online um kind of editing process has worked and it's resoundingly successful or we can see it in the legal system the judicial
• 30:30 - 31:00 system where we're using the power of the crowd the jury in order to make important decisions I mean there's some flaws sometimes with this but we're trying to B um cancel out individual bias or errors in our perception making when we bring people together and you can see time and time and time again that when you do bring people together then generally speaking they get a more representative view of reality and they are able to problem solve and innovate more effectively would so would this be um sort
• 31:00 - 31:30 of what makes democracy successful if you will it's like sort of all of us using our igist to the best of our abilities to sort of cast the best the best solution for for society whether it be in the judicial system or in healthcare or in other things because you mentioned um like an idea that I sort of extrapolate out of that is that the the what do you want to like the whole is greater than sort of any one individual right you're generating a higher intelligence is and when you say
• 31:30 - 32:00 that do you mean like the collective intelligence of the group yes like what what exactly do you mean by intelligence um well yeah it depends on how you measure it it very much depends on how you measure it so there's some wonderful studies that have been conducted by Anita woly uh who's in America but also with Thomas Malone um MIT and they are looking at groups of people that are working together to try and solve a problem so they're innovating and problem solving together and what so they're looking at that type type of intelligence and what they found is that there's a really robust predictor for
• 32:00 - 32:30 how well a group will do in terms of solving a problem so in order to solve a problem you've got to see the problem accurately you've got to come up with a creative way of working to solve that problem um and you've got to innovate as well uh and you've got to be able to communicate with each other in order to harvest all of that information right so is this like a perceptual issue like the more people you have the more the better you can perceive reality so part of it so exactly yeah so when we're talking
• 32:30 - 33:00 about group work yeah so part of it a big part of it is a perceptual problem and so what you see time and time again is that when you bring a group of people together they are more likely to perceive the environment in a more accurate way so they're seeing the real world because our brains um well our senses um each one of us is actually bringing in something in the region of 11 million bytes of data per second through our sense and our brain is only consciously aware of aware of around 40 to 50 byes a
• 33:00 - 33:30 second so that's a minuscule proportion right so each one of us is focusing in on a very small amount of data from the outside world but when you bring together a group of people you can actually start to cancel out that bias or kind of shortcuts and information processing that each one individual person is making so that you're more likely to see the real picture the real reflection of the situation so is this a
• 33:30 - 34:00 is this a matter of just number of inputs like the more people I have working on a particular problem the better solution will come out on the other side that can help but actually so going back to Anita St um Nita Willis study with Thomas Malone actually the biggest predicting factor for how a group could problem solve um their way out of an an issue together was um gender ratio you so the oh fascinating okay can you tease
• 34:00 - 34:30 that apart from me yeah yeah so it's actually the higher the number of females within the group The more successful that group would be and that's not because females were inherently more intelligent so they also took the IQ scores of the individual members of the group and that wasn't linked actually remarkably to how well the group would do so independent of IQ in this is independent of IQ yeah yeah it was actually the gender ratio was the biggest predicting Factor for how well that group would do and that was because females are much more likely to turn
• 34:30 - 35:00 take so they listen to other members of the group they ensure that there isn't dominance Dynamics so that one person creates an echol likee Clon like kind of um kind of echo chamber right um actually what happens is that the greater number of females within the group the more turn-taking the more listening there was and so therefore they were able to get towards a more representative view of the problem and then harness that brain power that was
• 35:00 - 35:30 on offer in terms of innovating and problem solving their way out of the issue is is that um is that finding just across groups or are there particular um let's say types of problems or maybe workplaces or activities where um that that um gender ratio difference is better seen like I'm not sure what the study what the the task was that there were so it was it was a number of different problem solving tasks oh number of different a number of different problems and it was the most robust Factor interesting yeah yeah so
• 35:30 - 36:00 now it's not thought it's not that you know males are inherently not capable of listening and turn taking although actually and I spoke to Anita woly and she says that it might be linked to testosterone levels she that there's some indication but actually it's thought it's probably more to do with a cultural um kind of expectation that boys from a young age in certain cultures aren't taught that actually listen Ing and turn taking is a really important skill so in in a lot of
• 36:00 - 36:30 cultures there's this idea that hierarchy competition being the loudest in the room being you know the most dominant in the run is the is the best well actually that's not going to be um helpful as we need to problem solve uh and and our way out of challenges like climate change for example or the number of issues that are pressing Humanity at the moment fair so are these like um I I just want to understand this correctly because I do think there there might be
• 36:30 - 37:00 there there's definitely Merit to like hierarchical organizations like any any company sort of operates in in a hierarchical fashion right so when you're talking about these groups succeeding preferentially at problem solving is it like um like you mentioned climate change so I would say like climate change is probably like more of like a conceptual issue and then once you once you i' identified Solutions then you can go and implement the solutions and then maybe when you're implementing a solution you would need like a chain of command or something like that just to go and to get things on the ground but do do you mean in the
• 37:00 - 37:30 sense that um uh let's go back to the climate change example um like we're kind of throwing our hands up like what do we do and versus all of us just sort of screaming at each other um taking the time to listen um which which so yeah there's a chapter that also talks about leadership and you're right okay leadership is essential I believe right you know but when we look to nature for example you can see that leadership is very trans and that seems to work very well and also the role of a transformational leader which has been
• 37:30 - 38:00 again linked to group success transformational leaders generally see their role as being able to facilitate communication and extract information from the individual um members of the team and then follow advice from the different members of the team that are offering their expertise so when you look look at a group basically the way that you can help maximize the success of a group is to ensure a that you're recruiting the right team so that you've got genetic and experien diversity within the individual members of the
• 38:00 - 38:30 team B you make sure that they've got um clearly delineated um areas of expertise so they feel confident bringing forward their ideas and what they have to offer within their own area of expertise you also make sure that they can communicate freely and they are confident at doing that but they also um value listening and silence in some ways and periods for reflection um and transformational leaders can help
• 38:30 - 39:00 with that process by ensuring that you can access all of the information that's available within those teams right and then in order to make some of the difficult decisions on how you're going to proceed forward that's that's very congruent with um with the thinking of I don't know if you're familiar with Dr France dallis primatologist at Emory um anyways he studies sort of hierarchies and chimpanzees and he he's he makes your exact point where he says that the most uh efficacious leaders and the most long-lasting leaders are not the the tyrants that come and just bully
• 39:00 - 39:30 everyone and like make everyone submit to them it's effectively the people that can can create Harmony among Among The Troop and exactly and sort of make sure everyone's opinion was was heard and they they felt seen and then this is this isn't like a primate Community yeah so if we bring that one level up to let's let's say humans and like human problems um I I can see how that makes a whole lot of sense yeah and he he he he ran a similar to the one you're citing where he um he he was assessing surgery
• 39:30 - 40:00 outcomes on surgical teams and surgery is a a very male dominated industry and he he came out with the same the same finding that the second you introduce females into the mix the outcomes were better and I I I I think that's that's very consistent with um with sort of some of the work that you're citing um so I I so if if gender is the sort of the number one predictor of of group success you mentioned that um you want to ensure that there's genetic
• 40:00 - 40:30 diversity in groups to make sure they succeed So when you say genetic diversity that that can mean a lot of things yeah so for example we know that we go back to you know conditions that were in some of the children in the psychiatric hospital where I worked 20 years ago um autism for example um H is thought to have a heritability so a genetic predisposition value of something in the region of 80 to 90% so that's a high heritability it's got a high genetic predisposition towards it um and you know when we look at kind of
• 40:30 - 41:00 big software companies like HP they're really focusing on having a recruitment program um specifically aimed at recruiting people that have a um autism diagnosis because they you know that they've got strength in their way of thinking they're generally speaking very good at you know focusing in and concentrating with a high level of detail to a particular issue and that can be a fantastic thing to have on your team absolutely of course of course yeah yeah and then when you look at and oh
• 41:00 - 41:30 there's some lovely studies from um Jee Robinson he's um based in America and he's looking at um uh kind of beehives okay so bees in a in a big beehive right if some Calamity strikes The Beehive so for example if the queen dies or if an intruder comes and starts um invading The Hive then quite a lot of the bees will kind of get caught up in an emotional contagion and kind of like be wandering around buzzing around frantically not really knowing how to act whereas a subsection of the Beehive
• 41:30 - 42:00 about 15 20% of the bees will just calmly get on pragmatically with the job in hand that they've been allocated to so they won't get caught up in that emotional drama of what's happening there in that particular instance and they'll just continue with the focus job that they have in hand and those genes that are different for those particular subsection of Gene um bees that are behaving in in that way a homologous to the genetic changes that we see in
• 42:00 - 42:30 individuals with autism that again have a very um focused attention to detail and can work in very concentrated way on particular tasks so we see throughout Evolution that you know there's different behaviors that confer different strengths that help the smooth running of a society or that help the smooth running of a hive or maybe help the smooth running of a business and it and it makes sense to try and tap into that difference that diversity of thinking to make the most of your hive
• 42:30 - 43:00 being successful or your business being successful which is what a lot of companies are doing now and there's similar things so for example we know about ADHD um that has a genetic predisposition again to it it's a lower value than autism um but again it's linked to entrepreneurialism Natural thinking Innovation and again it can be useful to have people that have ADHD within a team because of the strengths and thinking in the way that they think as well right but you you mentioned um some of these what I think people would refer to like maladaptive um sort of
• 43:00 - 43:30 conditions you mentioned um autism and you mentioned ADHD and you think like evolutionarily oh how could that be valuable right um I think like there might be that stigma that that exists um and it is from from your last book I sort of gathered that there's no there's no true idea of like a biological normal um the um we we exist sort of as a group and like we all have different things to offer and so you you mentioned you mentioned autism and and
• 43:30 - 44:00 ADHD and given the the right context you can extract a a lot of value and um from these modalities of thinking if you will um because they're sort of different than maybe um the way that people perceptual eyesee the world on average um what about behaviors that um are sort of it's it's less obvious to see the advantage of them um let's say something like like schizophrenia oh that's interesting okay so you know um it's thought that something in the region of so schizophrenia is diagnosed in around 1% of the population so one in a 100
• 44:00 - 44:30 people have got schizophrenia and that's across the world and across many many different decades as well so historically schizophrenia seems to have persisted across the human population um now what people might not be aware of and I was quite surprised when I found out is that 177% of the population human population admit to having experienced some kind of hallucination so hearing or seeing things that aren't there so that's a perceptual issue that's also seen in
• 44:30 - 45:00 schizophrenia right right so it's actually very common and that's without you know drugs or alcohol being involved so that's just the general population experiencing these types of hallucinations that people with schizophrenia might also experience um when we look at the genes involved the genetic changes involved in schizophrenia again it's got high heritability of around it's you know estimated to be around 80% 90% slightly lower than 90% so slightly less um than autism and it's again genes that are
• 45:00 - 45:30 involved in laying down the wiring of the neural Circuit of the baby in the womb and are also involved in how that neural circuit is going to function and operate throughout life um when we also look at the genes that are involved quite a lot of those genes have also been implicated in um well quite a lot of people with schizophrenia they're relative have a high creativity and a high Innovation kind of
• 45:30 - 46:00 um behavioral characteristic so there's some ideas that this condition which is quite stable throughout our population and has a high heritability the genetic changes that are associated with it confer an advantage up to a threshold up to a point and that Advantage is creativity and Innovation but once those genes converge and it's thousand like over a hundred genes have been involved um that
• 46:00 - 46:30 we've identified so far but once those genes converge it can reach a threshold which can then instead of conferring an advantage actually confer a disadvantage to individuals but possibly as we find out more and more about schizophrenia possibly in the future we might start to see that there's like recruitment strategies uh where we're actually actively trying to trct individuals that have a diagnosis because they think in a particular way as a result of the genes
• 46:30 - 47:00 that they've been given so there is there is an advantage um to to that perceptual um modality up up to a limit that being creativity um I mean yeah it's with schizophrenia it's slightly less clear like the data isn't completely there yet so there's yeah so yes there's no there's no so there's no General scientific consensus that says that people with schizophrenia in itself people that have been diagnosed with
• 47:00 - 47:30 schizophrenia are more creative and Innovative but you can see consistently that relatives are so there seems to be some kind of genetic uh reason behind it that's conferring some Advantage but it reaches a threshold but perhaps there are some advantages to schizophrenia as well that we you know the the the data isn't there yet but perhaps in the future we might similarly view these very complex conditions in a similar way to how we now currently view autism or
• 47:30 - 48:00 ADHD so you you um use the example of the workplace to sort of highlight the advantages of multiple modalities of thinking in different genetic predispositions are there other context that we should as like a collective um sort of consider this genetic diversity that we should try and invoke people from different areas to sort of enhance and make better yeah yeah so uh I also look at um so friendship groups we're talking about right earlier a little bit um but also I talk about the family being the cradle for intelligence and
• 48:00 - 48:30 how collective intelligence actually emerges from the family unit um and you know it's useful to have multigenerational family members kind of working as a group because when you look at the neurobiology of what happens within the brain during the typical lifespan you can see that different ages are associated with different brain strengths and different ways of operating so for example the younger people are generally speaking the more Innovative and better they are at um lateral problem solving skills as we get
• 48:30 - 49:00 older we experience more and we acre more wisdom from the world generally speaking hopefully we do um but we also start to filter out information from the outside world and instead rely more on our stored information so our prior assumptions about the world which is why sometimes you know much older people can come across as being quite rigid in their thinking stubborn maybe is because their brain is literally weighing information in a very different way to younger brains so there's different ways
• 49:00 - 49:30 of seeing the world and there's different ways of um having brain strengths and when you bring a family together actually you can see that those brain strengths that are on offer across different Generations can come together to create a really successful group sometimes or sometimes there's lots of arguments I think that's interesting because um as you're suggesting sort of the the nature of the brain and the way we process information changes over the lifespan so is it such that um as a
• 49:30 - 50:00 young child it would be good to be around someone with more crystallized intelligent because they sort of make up for what you're lacking is that what you're sort of saying yeah yeah exactly exactly so there's some lovely studies that have shown for example when a grandmother sees her grandchild um her brain region will light up with joy and empathy much more than if she saw her her own child so gives a generation so she's got this reward that's intrinsic Within her to spend time with her grandchild um and the grandchild benefits from the crystallized knowledge
• 50:00 - 50:30 and the wisdom that the grandparent can offer now that particular study was just looking at grandmothers but there's been a recent study looking at the grandfather's involvement so there's a culture within China where grandfathers actually play a much more active role and when they do play a much more active role in their grandchild's life then actually the um the the um success of that grandchild increases remarkably oh so so what is the grandparent um so the grandfather in that case offering to the
• 50:30 - 51:00 child that they they wouldn't get elsewhere companionship wisdom knowledge ah I see yeah that that that relationship across the generations that care and that support and that wisdom that the grandparent is offering can actually benefit the younger brain through the wisdom and the support that it's it's providing but also primed into that grandparents uh brain through this when we have a look at how the brain brain lights up with empathy and emotional understanding is this requirement this kind of need um to kind
• 51:00 - 51:30 of link with the younger generation and then when we look at the grandparents actually the more actively they seem to be involved in their grandchildren's life um that there's increases in their well-being and their health wow so there's preferential outcomes for those children who have that exposure yeah um that's amazing and and it seems that the grandparents that are getting involved also do better well it might be there is a caveat to this it might be that those grandparents that are too ill to
• 51:30 - 52:00 actually actively contribute to their grandchildren's lives obviously there's an underlying health issue yeah yeah so there might be some so there's some confounding factors there but I I I can see that making a lot of sense you know we've evolved living sort of um in multigenerational sort of environments I think the the the family unit as it's it's um described in like the modern times where it's just like your nuclear family is like rather a new idea we used to live sort of like with grandparents and and cousins and in like large tribes and stuff so that that makes sense to me
• 52:00 - 52:30 um and and it doesn't have to be that just your you know family is come in all different sizes and shapes nowadays don't they and it doesn't have to be just your genetic relations you know there's there's other people within your community that can take on those roles you know and that can be very beneficial when you have those relationships across Generations um so we're getting ready to wrap up I want I want to to ask you about friendship so you mentioned within the family um can I close on so actually I'm so sorry can I just really interrupt so so also in Joy depth thinking I look
• 52:30 - 53:00 at how we can start to harness the collective intelligence that's on offer within a group more effectively in a without conflict and doing it so that everybody benefits and and is happy doing so so there's some lovely studies looking at brain synchronicity for example so our brains fire with electrical oscillations moving so electrical signals zip across that neural circuit that's laid down in our bra baby's brain and the electric elal um kind of signals zip along at speeds of around 120 M hour you know
• 53:00 - 53:30 minimum but we can actually measure those electrical signals across the brain using EG and what people have found is that when groups of people are working together and effectively problem solving and learning together and building consensus then actually you get more brain synchronicity so those electrical signals start to become in step with each other they become in time in sync sychronized with each other right the better the group's working the more it's learning the more
• 53:30 - 54:00 synchronicity there is between the individual members so is there anything that we can do to try and help boost brain synchronicity so that we can help groups of people whether it's a family whether it's a team at work whether it's a friendship group whether it's wi Society at large is there anything that we can do to help boost that brain synchronicity within the group yes there is so okay yeah so that's handy so direct eye to ey Gaye contact so looking people in the eye when you're communicating with them that helps um but also things like um synchronized
• 54:00 - 54:30 activity so it's thought that singing together helps boost brain synchronicity but also exercising together in a synchronized way so exercise is linked as well to this ability to form brain synchronicity throughout our life so that seems to be linked so if you want to create a nice harmonious team then try listening to each other gazing each other in the eye not in a weird way just and doing activities like singing or you know doing some exercise together
• 54:30 - 55:00 I think that's fantastic so there's there is a lot of Merit to you know like office culture like on Fridays you know like dressed down Fridays and then they have like activities and we do things outside of work there's a lot of Merit to those things yes yeah yeah it helps it literally helps bring people together that might have had very different backgrounds very different experiences very different areas of expertise it helps bring those people together so that you can start thinking in tune with each other and understanding each other a little bit more and then more innovatively problem solving and when
• 55:00 - 55:30 you say brain synchronicity these are like more than just like nice feelings towards each other we're literally sort of we we're thinking in the same way if you will the electrical oscillations across the brain become in Step ah pretty cool hey yeah very cool very cool yeah um but we also see that um you know our physiology becomes can become in step with each other as well so heartbeats for example can become in step with each other if I was frightened I'd be giving off a signal through my sweat which you probably wouldn't be aware of which you'd process the smell
• 55:30 - 56:00 of which would tell you that I'm frightened and so it probably increase your heart rate so that you could get ready to physiologically for any threat that might be affecting you so there's all of these mechanisms that are in play to help us work together as a unified group so that we can start to protect ourselves as individuals but also help to protect the group and there's emot for example if your neighbor is happy then it increases the chance that you're happy by something in the region of
• 56:00 - 56:30 26% wow so we're really influenced by each other yeah very evidently very much so there is a science of Fate right there is a biological predisposition but there is also the effect of people around us and the whole reason for this as I argue in the books is that it's so that when we come together as a group we can share information and we can work together and get our way out of any challenges any problems that arise from
• 56:30 - 57:00 the environment that's fantastic um so with that larger message that you're describing um what is your hope for your readers and where can they find you oh okay um so yeah you can get the books on Independent book stores and Amazon for example um and um TED Talks tedex talk is being released hopefully in the next couple of weeks oh lovely yes on join up thinking um and I'm giving a talk in Cambridge in a couple of weeks as well
• 57:00 - 57:30 at the Jesus College intellectual forum and also for the undergraduates here um what else am I doing last week I was in Westminster talking to some of the civil servants there um yeah so and Bobs bus and Bobs yeah very cool very cool well thank you so much for your time Dr Kito oh thank you for the pleasure it was really good talking to you thank you cheers