Ed Boyden on Minding your Brain (Ep. 64)

Before we get to what you’ve done, let me just toss out a few general questions that the audience might be interested in.

在我们讨论你所做的事情之前，让我先提出一些观众可能感兴趣的一般性问题。

If I were to read all of the good popular books on brain science, what is it that I’m still most likely not to understand?

如果我读完所有关于脑科学的优秀流行书籍，我仍然最有可能不明白的是什么？

Similarly, we don’t actually have theories — detailed knowledge — enough to make predictive, interesting models, for example, of how we form emotions, of how we make decisions.

同样，我们实际上并没有足够的理论——————————来建立有趣的预测模型，例如，关于我们如何形成情感、如何做出决策的模型。

I sometimes half-jokingly say we should write a book about the brain called Ignorance: What We Don’t Know about the Brain.

我有时半开玩笑地说我们应该写一本关于大脑的书，名叫《无知：关于大脑我们不知道的事》。

I’m not sure how many copies we’d sell, though.

不过，我不确定我们会卖出多少本。

Then the chemical side is also a bit murky.

然后化学方面也有点模糊。

If we think about pharmaceuticals that treat brain conditions — it’s bathing the brain, this complexly wired circuit, in a substance.

如果我们考虑治疗大脑疾病的药物，那就是将大脑这个复杂的线路浸泡在一种物质中。

So of course, it’s going to affect parts of the brain that you want to change as well as parts of the brain that you’d rather leave alone.

所以当然，它会影响你想要改变的大脑部分以及你不想改变的大脑部分。

I think part of the problem is, we need to define brain conditions in terms of the underlying wiring and circuity.

我认为部分问题在于，我们需要根据底层布线和电路来定义大脑状况。

Most of the technologies we build are oriented around two classes of approach.

我们构建的大多数技术都围绕两类方法。

One is, can we make maps of the brain — detailed maps of the wiring, if you will, of the brain.

一是，我们能否绘制大脑地图——如果你愿意的话，可以绘制大脑线路的详细地图。

The other is, can you watch and control the high-speed dynamics of the brain.

另一个是，你能观察和控制大脑的高速动态吗？

In other words, can you watch the brain in action and then perturb it so that you can heal the brain by speaking the natural language of the brain, which is electrical pulses.

换句话说，你可以观察大脑的活动，然后扰乱它，这样你就可以通过大脑的自然语言（即电脉冲）来治愈大脑。

What we do is, to speak the natural language of the brain, which is electrical pulses, we borrow from the natural world, effectively, tiny solar panels that exist in bacteria and plants and other small —

我们所做的是，为了说大脑的自然语言，即电脉冲，我们有效地从自然界借用存在于细菌、植物和其他小型物体中的微型太阳能电池板——

One of my favorite studies was done by Dayu Lin and David Anderson and colleagues.

我最喜欢的研究之一是由林大宇和大卫·安德森及其同事完成的。

They took a molecule that lets you activate neurons with blue light, and they put it into a region of the brain — deep, deep in the brain — and then they implanted an optical fiber connected to a laser and aimed the optical fiber at this cluster of cells.

他们采用了一种可以用蓝光激活神经元的分子，并将其放入大脑的某个区域——“大脑深处”——然后他们植入了一条连接到激光的光纤，并将光纤瞄准了这组细胞。

Now, what happened?

现在，发生了什么？

When they turned on the laser, these cells were activated, and this was done in mice.

当他们打开激光时，这些细胞被激活，这是在小鼠身上进行的。

The mice would become aggressive or violent.

老鼠会变得有攻击性或暴力。

They would attack whatever was next to them, even if it was a rubber glove.

他们会攻击他们旁边的任何东西，即使是橡胶手套。

What I like about these technologies is, we can start to ask questions about why does the brain do what it does.

我喜欢这些技术的一点是，我们可以开始提出关于大脑为什么要做它所做的事情的问题。

What is the nature of something like a decision or an emotion, or even something like aggression or violence, where it has ethical implications?

具有道德含义的决定或情感，甚至侵略或暴力等事物的本质是什么？

Then the teams went on to actually discover that, through a movie — a bunch of blinking lights and so forth — you could simulate the same pattern of activity.

然后，团队继续实际发现，通过电影 ——“一堆闪烁的灯光等等”—— 你可以模拟相同的活动模式。

Li-Huei and I have now cofounded a company, Cognito Therapeutics, to effectively do human trials of movies to treat Alzheimer’s.

我和 Li-Huei 现在共同创立了一家名为 Cognito Therapeutics 的公司，以有效地进行电影治疗阿尔茨海默氏症的人体试验。

But if you use the information they’ve gotten by studying Parkinson’s and epilepsy in mice, and then try to build noninvasive ways of controlling the brain to repair it, I think that could translate to humans quite rapidly.

但如果你利用他们通过研究小鼠帕金森症和癫痫症获得的信息，然后尝试建立控制大脑进行修复的非侵入性方法，我认为这可以很快转化为人类。

In my group, Nir Grossman, who was then a postdoc in the group — we actually found a way to focus the effects of electricity deep in the brain from the outside.

在我的小组中，当时是该小组的博士后尼尔·格罗斯曼（Nir Grossman），我们实际上找到了一种方法，可以从外部将电流的影响集中到大脑深处。

Imagine now that we use optogenetics to discover a pattern of activity, and then we try to induce it through noninvasive means like watching movies, hearing sounds, focusing electricity from the outside, and so forth.

现在想象一下，我们使用光遗传学来发现一种活动模式，然后我们尝试通过看电影、听声音、从外部聚焦电流等非侵入性方式来诱导它。

I think that could be a pretty good pipeline for the future.

我认为这对于未来来说可能是一个非常好的管道。

But there’s a problem.

但有一个问题。

You can’t see things much smaller than the size or wavelength of light, and light has a finite wavelength of a couple hundred nanometers.

你看不到比光的尺寸或波长小得多的东西，而光的波长有限，只有几百纳米。

Now, that might sound small, but biomolecules are much smaller.

现在，这可能听起来很小，但生物分子要小得多。

They’re a couple nanometers.

它们只有几个纳米。

They’re like a hundred times smaller than the limit of a microscope.

它们比显微镜的极限小一百倍。

There are tricks you can play.

有一些技巧你可以玩。

A bunch of people won the Nobel Prize a couple years ago for inventing super-resolution microscopes, which are very accurate.

几年前，一群人因发明非常精确的超分辨率显微镜而获得了诺贝尔奖。

But they can be expensive and slow, and they’re hard to use to image three-dimensional objects.

但它们可能价格昂贵且速度缓慢，而且很难用于对三维物体进行成像。

My group — we often start by trying to think, can we do the opposite of what other people have done?

我的团队 — 我们经常首先尝试思考，我们可以做与其他人所做的相反的事情吗？

So we started thinking, what if, instead of zooming in like they’ve done for 300 years, let’s blow it up.

所以我们开始思考，我们是否可以像 300 年来那样放大它，而把它炸毁呢？

There are tricks you can play.

有一些技巧你可以玩。

A bunch of people won the Nobel Prize a couple years ago for inventing super-resolution microscopes, which are very accurate.

几年前，一群人因发明非常精确的超分辨率显微镜而获得了诺贝尔奖。

But they can be expensive and slow, and they’re hard to use to image three-dimensional objects.

但它们可能价格昂贵且速度缓慢，而且很难用于对三维物体进行成像。

My group — we often start by trying to think, can we do the opposite of what other people have done?

我的团队 — 我们经常首先尝试思考，我们可以做与其他人所做的相反的事情吗？

So we started thinking, what if, instead of zooming in like they’ve done for 300 years, let’s blow it up.

所以我们开始思考，我们是否可以像 300 年来那样放大它，而把它炸毁呢？

If you do it just right, and you soften up the brain so that it doesn’t resist the forces that you’re going to apply, add water, the diaper material swells, and the brain will become bigger by like a hundred times or 10,000 times in volume.

如果你做得恰到好处，并且软化了大脑，使其无法抵抗你要施加的力，那么加水，尿布材料就会膨胀，大脑的体积就会变大一百倍或一万倍。

It turns out, we discovered, that the process is very even, and it preserves the information of how the molecules are organized.

我们发现，事实证明，这个过程非常均匀，并且保留了分子如何组织的信息。

It’s just bigger.

只是更大了。

If we can make a map of the brain so detailed that we could simulate decisions or emotions in silico, in software, I would be very excited about this because it would kind of tie into my own desires for neuroscience, which is to understand something deep about the human condition.

如果我们能够制作出如此详细的大脑地图，以至于我们可以在计算机中、在软件中模拟决策或情绪，我会对此感到非常兴奋，因为这将与我自己对神经科学的渴望联系起来，即了解人类状况的深层内容。

But also, the practicality of it is that we could make very detailed maps of the brain and figure out where diseases begin.

而且，它的实用性在于我们可以制作非常详细的大脑地图并找出疾病开始的地方。

What we want to do is — using our expansion technique — we want to make a map of the brain which literally would tell you where the wires are and how they’re connected to each other, but also which biomolecules are on those wires.

我们想要做的是 —— 使用我们的扩展技术 —— 我们想要制作一张大脑地图，它实际上可以告诉你电线在哪里以及它们如何相互连接，而且还可以告诉你这些电线上有哪些生物分子。

Are some connections fast?

有些连接速度快吗？

Are some slow?

有的慢吗？

Are some strong?

有的强吗？

Are some weak?

有的弱吗？

To tell those things, we have to know more than the shape of the cells.

为了讲述这些事情，我们必须了解的不仅仅是细胞的形状。

We have to also know where the molecules that do the business of the neural computations — where they are located as well.

我们还必须知道进行神经计算的分子在哪里——它们也位于哪里。

I think one of the things we have to figure out is how can you detect consciousness, and how can you create consciousness?

我认为我们必须弄清楚的一件事是如何检测意识，以及如何创造意识？

Alan Turing proposed the Turing test, where you would converse with something and you could try to decide whether it was conscious.

艾伦·图灵提出了图灵测试，你可以与某个东西交谈，然后你可以尝试确定它是否有意识。

But with Siri and Alexa and all this stuff in homes and on phones nowadays, I think everybody would agree that’s probably not enough.

但随着如今 Siri 和 Alexa 以及所有这些东西出现在家庭和手机上，我想每个人都会同意这可能还不够。

You need to know something about the internal state as well, but we don’t have a firm grasp on that yet.

你还需要了解一些关于内部状态的信息，但我们对此还没有牢固的把握。

I think one of the things we have to figure out is how can you detect consciousness, and how can you create consciousness?

我认为我们必须弄清楚的一件事是如何检测意识，以及如何创造意识？

Alan Turing proposed the Turing test, where you would converse with something and you could try to decide whether it was conscious.

艾伦·图灵提出了图灵测试，你可以与某个东西交谈，然后你可以尝试确定它是否有意识。

But with Siri and Alexa and all this stuff in homes and on phones nowadays, I think everybody would agree that’s probably not enough.

但随着如今 Siri 和 Alexa 以及所有这些东西出现在家庭和手机上，我想每个人都会同意这可能还不够。

You need to know something about the internal state as well, but we don’t have a firm grasp on that yet.

您还需要了解一些有关内部状态的信息，但我们对此还没有牢固的把握。

Most antidepressants take three weeks or more to help people.

大多数抗抑郁药需要三周或更长时间才能发挥作用。

Ketamine will help within tens of minutes to hours.

氯胺酮会在几十分钟到几小时内发挥作用。

That’s an example where a hallucinogenic drug can actually have a rapid-acting effect on a psychiatric illness.

这是一个例子，致幻药物实际上可以对精神疾病产生快速作用。

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are other interesting findings that could be brought out of this, but I’m not an expert on that area.

如果可以从中得出其他有趣的发现，我不会感到惊讶，但我不是该领域的专家。

My landlady in Palo Alto, when I was a grad student at Stanford, taught me about it.

当我在斯坦福大学读研究生时，我在帕洛阿尔托的女房东教了我这件事。

It took me a while to actually get going on it, but yeah, I find it transformative because the parts of your mind that might be driving you anxious or causing despair — you realize what they’re trying to do for you.

我花了一段时间才真正开始做这件事，但是，是的，我发现它具有变革性，因为你头脑中那些可能让你焦虑或导致绝望的部分——你意识到他们想为你做什么。

You, by loving them and showing gratitude to them, can make them on your team rather than trying to rebel against you.

你通过爱他们并对他们表示感激，可以让他们加入你的团队，而不是试图反抗你。

For me, I’ve played with a lot of different strategies, including other kinds of meditation that aren’t so focused on the parts of your mind.

对我来说，我尝试过很多不同的策略，包括其他类型的冥想，这些冥想并不那么专注于你的思想部分。

To be honest, I felt relaxed after doing those kinds of meditation, but I didn’t feel like the parts of my mind were becoming allies.

说实话，做完这些冥想后，我感到很放松，但我并不觉得我的思想部分成为了盟友。

That was unique — with me, anyway, and other people might differ — but with the IFS method.

这是独一无二的——“无论如何，对我来说，其他人可能会有所不同”——但是使用 IFS 方法。

I think what we’re realizing is that when you intervene with the brain, even with brain stimulation, you can cause unpredictable side effects.

我认为我们正在意识到，当你干预大脑时，即使进行大脑刺激，也可能会导致不可预测的副作用。

For example, there’s a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

例如，大脑的一部分称为背外侧前额叶皮层。

That’s actually an FDA-approved site for stimulation with noninvasive magnetic pulses to treat depression.

这实际上是 FDA 批准的一个用无创磁脉冲刺激来治疗抑郁症的部位。

But patients, when they’re stimulated here .

但是病人，当他们在这里受到刺激时。

.

。

.

。

People have done studies.

人们已经做了研究。

It can also change things like trust.

它还可以改变信任等事物。

It can change things like driving ability.

它可以改变诸如驾驶能力之类的事情。

There’s only so many brain regions, but there’s millions of things we do.

大脑区域只有这么多，但我们要做的事情却有数以百万计。

Of course, intervening with one region might change many things.

当然，对一个地区进行干预可能会改变很多事情。

Maybe over the time course of several seconds, when you have an individual thought or feeling, maybe a lot of that is contained within the brain.

也许在几秒钟的时间过程中，当你有一个单独的想法或感觉时，也许其中很多都包含在大脑中。

But if you go beyond that time scale, there might be microbes in the gut that secrete molecules that can actually get into the brain and modulate complex functions, like maybe even social behavior, some people think.

但一些人认为，如果超出这个时间范围，肠道中可能存在微生物，它们分泌的分子实际上可以进入大脑并调节复杂的功能，甚至可能是社会行为。

Then there’s also the concept of extended intelligence, where I’m not just me.

然后还有扩展智能的概念，其中我不仅仅是我自己。

If I’m getting out of bed in the morning and getting dressed and having my cup of coffee, that’s one version of me.

如果我早上起床，穿好衣服，喝杯咖啡，那就是我的一个版本。

But then when I get up on a stage to lecture for my class, or if I go and hang out with friends, maybe certain parts of my personality are expressed and other parts are not.

但当我站上讲台为班级讲课时，或者当我去和朋友一起出去玩时，也许我性格的某些部分得到了表达，而其他部分则没有。

I think we all experience this all the time, where we’re part of an ecosystem of people as well.

我想我们都一直在经历这种情况，我们也是人类生态系统的一部分。

I think what’s going to happen is, we’re going to need to be able to simulate as much of the biology as possible, and then there might be a point where things kind of become unpredictable.

我认为将会发生的事情是，我们需要能够尽可能多地模拟生物学，然后可能会有一个点，事情会变得不可预测。

What do we need to know next?

接下来我们需要了解什么？

Do we have to map out the structure of human interactions as well?

我们是否也必须规划出人类互动的结构？

One of the things, actually, that our group published a couple years ago is a technology, a version of expansion microscopy, where we could actually try to map out which expressed genes are located at which synapses.

事实上，我们的小组几年前发表的一项技术是一种扩展显微镜的技术，我们实际上可以尝试找出哪些表达的基因位于哪些突触。

We can take a brain and blow it up and then look at where the expressed genes are cached or stored throughout the brain cell.

我们可以拿一个大脑并将其炸毁，然后查看表达的基因在整个脑细胞中缓存或存储的位置。

Now several groups are, I think, using such technologies to try to map out whether, indeed, all the different biomolecular types are involved with plasticity.

我认为，现在有几个小组正在使用此类技术来尝试确定所有不同的生物分子类型是否确实都与可塑性有关。

It’s kind of early days, but previous groups — before we even unveiled this technology — had found some evidence that when you activate a brain cell, interesting transcriptional spatial changes occur.

现在还处于早期阶段，但之前的研究小组——“在我们公布这项技术之前”——已经发现了一些证据，表明当你激活脑细胞时，会发生有趣的转录空间变化。

In fact, one of my favorite studies was done by a group in Utah.

事实上，我最喜欢的研究之一是由犹他州的一个小组完成的。

They found when brain cells are active, they turn on a gene, and this gene looks a lot like the coat protein of the HIV virus, the same virus that causes AIDS.

他们发现，当脑细胞活跃时，它们会打开一个基因，这个基因看起来很像艾滋病毒的外壳蛋白，艾滋病毒也是引起艾滋病的病毒。

Maybe even more amazingly, when a brain cell is active, it manufactures virus-like particles that can bring genetic material from one brain cell to another.

也许更令人惊奇的是，当脑细胞活跃时，它会产生类似病毒的颗粒，可以将遗传物质从一个脑细胞转移到另一个脑细胞。

It’s kind of wacky to think about it, when you actually put your mind to it.

当你真正下定决心去做的时候，想想这件事有点古怪。

When you’re forming a memory, is your brain manufacturing HIV-like things, and you’re exchanging genetic material from one brain cell to the next?

当你形成记忆时，你的大脑是否在制造类似艾滋病毒的东西，并且你正在将遗传物质从一个脑细胞交换到下一个脑细胞？

What the heck is going on?

到底是怎么回事？

But I think that just shows how little we know about the mechanisms of brain function.

但我认为这恰恰表明我们对大脑功能的机制知之甚少。

Here’s one thing I’ve been thinking a lot about: Suppose that, at a certain moment, I am conscious of something, and my brain has a certain state.

这是我一直在思考的一件事：假设，在某个时刻，我意识到了某件事，并且我的大脑有某种状态。

Presumably that brain state was caused by a previous brain state, and during that previous brain state we were not conscious.

据推测，该大脑状态是由先前的大脑状态引起的，并且在先前的大脑状态期间我们没有意识。

Otherwise, we would have called that the conscious experience.

否则，我们会称其为有意识的体验。

One reason why I’m so focused on brain circuit mapping is, if we could catch the brain circuit in action as a conscious sensation or feeling comes into fruition, maybe we could understand the process of consciousness.

我如此关注大脑回路映射的原因之一是，如果我们能够在意识感觉或感觉实现时捕捉大脑回路的活动，也许我们可以理解意识的过程。

Maybe that would give us a clue about what consciousness is, because we could understand how it arises.

也许这会给我们关于意识是什么的线索，因为我们可以理解它是如何产生的。

This is a very early-stage way of thinking about the problem, and we don’t have any data yet, really.

这是一种非常早期的思考问题的方式，我们还没有任何数据，真的。

But there are other people who have actually done some cool experiments, like Benjamin Libet and John-Dylan Haynes and others, where they asked people to — whenever they want — move their hand or do some other task.

但还有其他人实际上做了一些很酷的实验，比如本杰明·利贝特和约翰·迪伦·海恩斯等人，他们要求人们“无论何时只要他们想要”移动他们的手或做一些其他任务。

Then they image the human brain and they try to figure out what areas of the brain are active when people feel like they are making that decision.

然后他们对人脑进行成像，并试图找出当人们感觉自己正在做出决定时，大脑的哪些区域是活跃的。

They can actually detect changes in the brain up to 10 seconds before people feel like they’re making the decision to move their hand.

事实上，在人们做出移动手部决定之前的 10 秒内，它们实际上可以检测到大脑的变化。

That’s a clue that maybe you could try to understand the process through which something comes into conscious awareness.

这是一条线索，也许你可以尝试理解某些事物进入意识的过程。

And if we could map out the detailed circuitry — the electrical wires and the molecules along those wires that yield that — maybe we could actually try to simulate it in a computer.

如果我们能够绘制出详细的电路——电线以及沿着这些电线产生的分子——也许我们实际上可以尝试在计算机中模拟它。

But this is a very early-stage way of thinking about it.

但这是一种非常早期的思考方式。

Science can fail.

科学可能会失败。

There are certain things that science can’t yet answer, like what happened before the Big Bang and so forth.

有些事情科学还无法回答，比如大爆炸之前发生的事情等等。

But I think we have to give it our best shot.

但我认为我们必须尽力而为。

For example, here we are in my office, and there’s all sorts of stuff around.

例如，我们在我的办公室，周围有各种各样的东西。

Your brain has been processing a lot of it.

你的大脑已经处理了很多事情。

If I point at that blue highlighter over there, you probably saw it earlier but were not paying conscious attention to it.

如果我指着那边的蓝色荧光笔，您可能早些时候就看到了它，但没有有意识地注意它。

But now that I point at it, you are consciously aware of it.

但现在当我指出这一点时，你就会自觉地意识到这一点。

I actually think that something that we have to understand is, how are all these unconscious processes — this roiling sea of stuff that we have no access to — how are those processes contributing to the emergence of consciousness?

事实上，我认为我们必须理解的是，所有这些无意识的过程——“我们无法接触到的这片翻滚的物质海洋”——这些过程如何促成意识的出现？

That’s one reason why I’m very excited to study the process of consciousness, if you will.

如果你愿意的话，这就是为什么我非常兴奋地研究意识过程的原因之一。

What are the processes in the brain that lead to it that happen beforehand and that might help us understand, in a causal way, what gives rise to consciousness?

大脑中哪些过程会导致它提前发生，并可能帮助我们以因果方式理解是什么产生了意识？

But again, this is just an idea right now.

但同样，这现在只是一个想法。

Right now, it’s very hard to know what somebody’s feeling in their mind.

现在，很难知道某人内心的感受。

We use language to try to convey that, but it doesn’t quite seal the deal.

我们试图用语言来表达这一点，但并不能完全达成协议。

That’s one of the reasons, some people think, why there’s so much conflict: that you can’t understand the internal state of somebody else at a true level.

一些人认为，这就是存在如此多冲突的原因之一：你无法真正理解别人的内心状态。

What if I could read out what happens in my mind, and somebody else could experience that literal state, and vice versa?

如果我能读出我脑海中发生的事情，而其他人也能体验到那种字面状态，反之亦然，会怎么样？

This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about that I would like to work on long term, but obviously it has a lot of basic research to go into before we’re even close to ready for that.

这是我一直在思考的事情，我想长期致力于这一点，但显然在我们准备好之前还需要进行大量的基础研究。

Some of this language is used in meditative and consciousness-oriented and mindfulness practices that try to understand compassion and empathy in a greater way.

其中一些语言用于冥想、意识导向和正念练习，试图以更大的方式理解同情心和同理心。

But I wonder if there’s a precise neuroscientific way to tackle such things.

但我想知道是否有一种精确的神经科学方法来解决这些问题。

I was on a panel once at a conference where the chair of the panel asked the audience how many of the people in the audience had used a cognitive-enhancing drug, and nobody raised their hand.

有一次，我参加了一次会议的小组讨论，小组主席询问观众中有多少人使用过认知增强药物，但没有人举手。

Then the chair of the panel said, “You know what?

然后小组主席说：“你知道吗？

Probably 20 percent of you should have raised your hand,” because they had done an anonymous poll earlier of a similar population.

也许 20% 的人应该举手”，因为他们之前对类似人群进行了一项匿名民意调查。

I think there’s a stigma about talking about the brain.

我认为谈论大脑是一种耻辱。

I almost feel like we need a new language.

我几乎觉得我们需要一种新的语言。

I want to talk about me, but I also want to talk about my brain.

我想谈谈我自己，但我也想谈谈我的大脑。

Is there a new word which combines both of those words, so that I don’t have to talk about my brain in a dehumanizing sense?

有没有一个新词结合了这两个词，这样我就不必以非人性的方式谈论我的大脑？

I also think we need to start getting neuroethics on the table.

我还认为我们需要开始将神经伦理学摆上桌面。

We just all heard about the CRISPR baby debacle in China.

我们刚刚都听说了中国 CRISPR 婴儿的惨败。

Now, of course, there are lots of people making statements about you shouldn’t do that.

当然，现在有很多人发表声明说你不应该这样做。

In neurotechnology, can we get out ahead of the problem before it happens by working together and coming up with guidelines for what we want to do and what we don’t want to do?

在神经技术领域，我们能否通过共同努力并为我们想要做什么和不想做什么制定指导方针来在问题发生之前解决问题？

Maybe some things we want to do, but it should be thought about in detail by an objective — or at least as objective as possible — panel that’s not connected to the work, and so forth.

也许有些事情是我们想做的，但应该通过一个与工作无关的目标 ——或者至少尽可能客观地 ——小组来详细考虑，等等。

I’m talking to people now about what if we could get maybe a global neuroethics conference going, which would bring together the companies and the scientists, the investors and the governments, religious leaders and lawyers, and people with stakes in different parts of this, and to get that going before it is headline news that we don’t necessarily appreciate.

我现在正在和人们讨论，如果我们能够召开一次全球神经伦理学会议，将公司和科学家、投资者和政府、宗教领袖和律师，以及与这件事不同部分有利害关系的人聚集在一起，并在它成为我们不一定喜欢的头条新闻之前就开始讨论会怎样。

I know people who work on algorithms.

我认识研究算法的人。

They work on credit scores.

他们研究信用评分。

They’ve had these same conversations, and we wake up one day, and China has a social credit system which they use to control people, and it just happened, and we condemn it ex post.

他们也进行过同样的对话，有一天我们醒来，发现中国有一套社会信用体系，他们用它来控制人们，而这一切就这样发生了，我们事后谴责它。

But isn’t that the most likely course for brain science — that a bunch of things will just happen?

但这难道不是脑科学最有可能发生的过程吗——一堆事情会自然而然地发生？

Many will be very good, some will be bad, and we won’t really have much of a say at the regulatory level?

很多会很好，有些会很糟糕，而我们在监管层面真的没有太多发言权吗？

There are many countries, right?

有很多国家，对吗？

It was a period of great distrust in political systems, maybe not unlike our time in a way as well.

那是一个对政治制度极度不信任的时期，也许在某种程度上也与我们这个时代没有什么不同。

They decided to actually get together and figure out how to self-regulate and regulate molecular biology.

他们决定真正聚在一起，找出如何自我调节和调节分子生物学的方法。

Now, half a century later, this has yielded a lot of huge benefits to human health, and for the most part, they’ve been able to proactively discuss things.

现在，半个世纪过去了，这给人类健康带来了很多巨大的好处，而且在很大程度上，他们已经能够主动讨论事情了。

It’s not perfect, of course, but I think one can try to take action.

当然，这并不完美，但我认为人们可以尝试采取行动。

Doesn’t guarantee perfection, but we could certainly put our best efforts forth.

不能保证完美，但我们当然可以尽最大努力。

You’d go out on a date.

你会出去约会。

You’d turn on your lie detector.

你会打开你的测谎仪。

It would give you feedback throughout the course of the date.

它会在整个约会过程中给你反馈。

Is this a net social good?

这是一种网络社会公益吗？

If it’s bad, do we have a way of stopping it?

如果情况很糟糕，我们有办法阻止它吗？

They’ve done experiments where you show somebody something in a photograph or in a story, and then a week later you ask, “Oh, how was your experience?” It wasn’t their experience.

他们做过实验，你向某人展示照片或故事中的某些东西，然后一周后你问：“哦，你的经历怎么样？”这不是他们的经历。

It was in a photograph or a story.

它出现在一张照片或一个故事中。

Some fraction of the people will remember it as their experience.

一部分人会将其作为他们的经历而记住。

If we start thinking about these kinds of topics that connect to everyday human experience, like lies and memories and so forth, I think we also have to delve very deeply into the underlying neuroscience so we know what we’re talking about and what we’re doing.

如果我们开始思考这些与人类日常经验相关的话题，比如谎言和记忆等等，我认为我们还必须深入研究底层的神经科学，这样我们才能知道我们在说什么和在做什么。

For example, if somebody talks about something in a certain way, but it was not an intentional lie, it was a false memory — what are the subcategories of different things that people say?

例如，如果有人以某种方式谈论某件事，但这不是故意的谎言，而是错误的记忆 —— 人们所说的不同事物的子类别是什么？

What about things that are coupled to external influence, like the example I just gave, where the memory was affected by an external photograph or story?

那些与外部影响相关的事物呢？就像我刚才举的例子，记忆受到外部照片或故事的影响？

Anyway, I think that we have to make sure that the science accelerates as fast as the technology.

无论如何，我认为我们必须确保科学的发展速度与技术的发展速度一样快。

Sometimes I say that the hard part of neurotechnology is the neuro part.

有时我说神经技术的难点是神经部分。

Maybe we’ll have the ability to scan brains and read out information with unprecedented accuracy at some point in the future, but if we don’t understand the underlying processes and what the information means, then we might do the wrong thing with that information.

也许我们在未来的某个时候将有能力扫描大脑并以前所未有的准确性读出信息，但如果我们不了解潜在的过程和信息的含义，那么我们可能会用这些信息做错误的事情。

On things under- and overrated

关于被低估和高估的事情

Waking up at 4:00 in the morning — underrated or overrated?

早上 4:00 醒来 — 被低估还是高估？

I try to think backwards from problems and then use that to derive my path as much as possible.

我尝试从问题中逆向思考，然后用它来尽可能地得出我的道路。

It’s not an exact science, but the more I can understand my goal and use that to frame my approach, the better it can be.

这不是一门精确的科学，但我越能理解我的目标并用它来构建我的方法，它就越好。

There are times in my life when I give up this schedule.

在我的生活中，有时我会放弃这个时间表。

If I’m at a conference and the exciting discussions are happening late at night, I’ll actually switch.

如果我正在参加一个会议，并且激动人心的讨论发生在深夜，我实际上会切换。

I think one of the things that I really love about the space of ecological diversity is, if you think of brains as computing things, then ecological diversity might provide many ways of computing the same thing but in different ways that actually yield interesting computational insights or aesthetic outcomes.

我认为我真正喜欢生态多样性空间的一件事是，如果你将大脑视为计算事物，那么生态多样性可能会提供多种计算同一事物的方法，但以不同的方式实际上产生有趣的计算见解或美学结果。

You’ve probably seen all these controversies with CRISPR, for example, where the list of people who .

您可能已经看到了 CRISPR 的所有这些争议，例如，其中的人员名单。

.

。

.

。

Some people discovered CRISPR, and then other people figured out how it works, and still other people figured out that the way it worked was modular and therefore programmable, and then still other people applied it to human cells.

有些人发现了 CRISPR，然后其他人弄清楚了它是如何工作的，还有一些人发现它的工作方式是模块化的，因此是可编程的，然后还有其他人将其应用于人类细胞。

It’s a long list of people.

这是一长串人的名单。

Now, what if we could tell the whole story in a way that allows it to be appreciated in a broad audience fashion?

现在，如果我们能够以一种能让广大观众欣赏的方式讲述整个故事呢？

Part of me often wonders about storytelling as a modality for conveying the value of science.

我的一部分经常想知道讲故事是否可以作为传达科学价值的一种方式。

But the idea that you should limit it to a small number of people — I think it’s partly because of this limitation that it’s hard to understand a story with a hundred characters.

但你应该把它限制在少数人的想法 —— 我认为部分是因为这种限制，所以很难理解一个有一百个角色的故事。

I’m starting to meet people in this field now, and it’s quite exciting, the idea that you could actually make a prediction on human behavior based upon some kind of insight that’s mathematically extractable from prior behavior or from brain imaging.

我现在开始结识这个领域的人，这是非常令人兴奋的，这个想法是，你实际上可以根据某种从先前行为或大脑成像中数学提取的洞察力来对人类行为进行预测。

This free-will experiment I mentioned earlier — where you can predict somebody’s behavior 10 seconds later by looking at what their brain is doing now — I find such things fascinating.

我之前提到的这个自由意志实验 —— 你可以通过观察某人的大脑现在在做什么来预测 10 秒后的行为 —— 我发现这样的事情很有趣。

My group started at the MIT Media Lab, and now we have half our group over here in the MIT McGovern Institute, but I used to wander the halls of campus late at night to just look at stuff, the posters in the hallway.

我的小组从麻省理工学院媒体实验室开始，现在我们有一半的小组在麻省理工学院麦戈文研究所，但我曾经在深夜在校园大厅里闲逛，只是看东西，走廊里的海报。

I get inspiration by trying to connect dots from different fields or disciplines or even entirely separate, unconnected topics.

我通过尝试将不同领域或学科甚至完全独立、互不相关的主题的点联系起来来获得灵感。

I find a lot of productivity from inspirational environments and connecting dots between random things.

我从鼓舞人心的环境和随机事物之间的连接点中发现了很多生产力。

My group — we’re partly over at the Media Lab, which has a lot of very open environments, and our other part of the group is in a classical sort of neuroscience laboratory with offices and small rooms where we park microscopes and stuff like that.

我的小组——我们一部分人在媒体实验室，那里有很多非常开放的环境，而我们小组的另一部分人在一个经典的神经科学实验室，有办公室和小房间，我们在那里停放显微镜之类的东西。

I actually get a lot of productivity out of switching environments in a deliberate way.

事实上，我通过有意地切换环境而获得了很多生产力。

Now, you were first hired here by the Media Lab, is that correct?

现在，你首先是被媒体实验室录用的，对吗？

So I went to the Media Lab to talk to people there.

所以我去了媒体实验室与那里的人交谈。

I’d been an undergrad researcher there.

我曾是那里的一名本科生研究员。

That’s when I was doing work on quantum computing, for example.

例如，那时我正在从事量子计算方面的工作。

It was just sheer dumb luck.

这纯粹是运气不好。

They had a job opening that they couldn’t fill, and they said, “Why don’t you apply?”

他们有一个职位空缺，但无法填补，他们说：“你为什么不申请呢？”

In the old days, of course, the Media Lab did media.

当然，在过去，媒体实验室是做媒体的。

But now media is everywhere, and a lot of the newer hires at the MIT Media Lab are working at the intersection of a life science and some other kind of science, like Kevin Esvelt, who’s trying to build CRISPR gene drives to edit ecosystems and also thinks about the ethics and the politics and the sociology.

但现在媒体无处不在，麻省理工学院媒体实验室的许多新员工都在生命科学和其他科学的交叉领域工作，比如凯文·埃斯维尔特 (Kevin Esvelt)，他正在尝试构建 CRISPR 基因驱动来编辑生态系统，同时也思考伦理学、政治学和社会学。

It’s a great place for people between one field and another where there’s sort of some space.

对于人们来说，这是一个在一个领域和另一个领域之间有一定空间的好地方。

But you know what?

但你知道吗？

It could be an entire new discipline.

这可能是一门全新的学科。

Now, flash forward 12 years later, we actually started a center for neuroengineering here at MIT that I co-direct.

现在，12 年后，我们实际上在麻省理工学院成立了一个神经工程中心，由我共同领导。

One of the first things that we did when I got back to MIT as faculty was to start a class with the MIT Sloan School of Management and also a bunch of scientific, engineering, and other departments — it’s cross-registered amongst all these different schools here — which is about that very topic, Neurotechnology Ventures.

当我回到麻省理工学院担任教员时，我们做的第一件事就是在麻省理工学院斯隆管理学院以及一堆科学、工程和其他部门开办一门课程 ——它在这里的所有这些不同的学校之间交叉注册 —— 这就是关于神经技术风险投资的主题。

Now we’ve broadened the class to call it Revolutionary Ventures because we realized that a lot of the ways we thought about neurotechnology could apply to other fields that could also benefit from a big jolt in the arm, like alternative energy or other parts of healthcare and so forth.

现在我们扩大了类别，将其称为“革命性风险投资”，因为我们意识到我们对神经技术的许多思考方式可以应用于其他领域，这些领域也可以从手臂的巨大震动中受益，例如替代能源或医疗保健的其他部分等等。

We have about 30 students or so take the class each term.

每学期我们大约有 30 名左右的学生参加该课程。

We teach it every fall.

我们每年秋天都会教它。

I think I learn more from individuals and their variability than from categories of people.

我认为我从个人及其变异性中学到的东西比从人群中学到的东西更多。

For example, in our group at MIT, I have two PhD students.

例如，在麻省理工学院的我们小组中，我有两名博士生。

Neither finished college, actually.

事实上，两人都没有完成大学学业。

I can’t think of any other neuroscience groups on Earth where that’s true.

我想不出地球上还有哪个神经科学团体能做到这一点。

Again, I try to look more at the individual, and I try to get to know people over a long period of time to learn what they’re good at and how they can maybe make a contribution based upon their unique experience.

再次，我尝试更多地关注个人，并尝试长期了解人们，了解他们擅长什么，以及他们如何根据自己独特的经验做出贡献。

That’s different from what people have done traditionally.

这与人们传统上所做的不同。

In terms of how the venture capital side of science and the startup side of science go, I think there might be some differences.

就科学的风险投资方面和科学的初创方面的发展方式而言，我认为可能存在一些差异。

Again, this might be me new to this whole world, but having now talked to a few people, it seems like there are definitely differences in the personality, at least on the investing side.

再说一次，这可能是我对这个世界的新手，但现在与一些人交谈后，似乎性格上肯定存在差异，至少在投资方面是这样。

How should we improve the funding of science in this country?

我们应该如何改善这个国家的科学资助？

Brian Kobilka, who recently won the Nobel Prize for solving the structure of the G-protein-coupled receptor — and for context, one-third of all drugs target this class of molecules, so it’s a very, very important class of drugs — he lost his funding because he wasn’t making progress fast enough.

布赖恩·科比尔卡 (Brian Kobilka) 最近因解决 G 蛋白偶联受体的结构而获得诺贝尔奖 ——就背景而言，三分之一的药物都针对此类分子，因此这是一类非常非常重要的药物 ——他失去了资金，因为他的进展速度不够快。

If I recall, he had to moonlight as an emergency room physician to keep going on his research.

如果我记得的话，他不得不兼职做急诊室医生才能继续他的研究。

Doug Prasher, who cloned the gene for green fluorescent protein, which has been used in something like a million biology studies, ballpark — he lost his funding and eventually left science, ended up driving a shuttle bus for, I believe, a rental car facility or something.

道格·普拉舍（Doug Prasher）克隆了绿色荧光蛋白的基因，该基因已被用于大约一百万项生物学研究中，大概——他失去了资金并最终离开了科学界，最终我相信，他开着一辆穿梭巴士去租车公司或其他什么地方。

Anyway, there’s so many stories.

无论如何，有很多故事。

For me, it became personal because when we proposed this expansion microscopy technology, where we blow up brain specimens and other specimens a hundred times in volume to map them, people thought it was nonsense.

对我来说，这变得很个人化，因为当我们提出这种膨胀显微镜技术时，我们将大脑样本和其他样本放大一百倍来绘制它们，人们认为这是无稽之谈。

People were skeptical.

人们对此表示怀疑。

People hated it.

人们讨厌它。

Nine out of my first ten grants that I wrote on it were rejected.

我在上面写的前十项资助中有九项被拒绝了。

If it weren’t for the Open Philanthropy Project that heard about our struggles to get this project funded — through, again, a set of links that were, as far as I can tell, largely luck driven — maybe our group would have been out of business.

如果不是开放慈善项目听说了我们为这个项目筹集资金的努力 ——再次，通过一系列链接，据我所知，这些链接很大程度上是运气驱动的 ——也许我们的团队就会破产。

But they came through and gave us a major gift, and that kept us going.

但他们挺过来了，给了我们一份重要的礼物，这让我们继续前进。

When you propose a project, a bunch of your peers will then critique it.

当你提出一个项目时，你的一群同行就会批评它。

The problem that a lot of these daring-sounding projects encounter is that they sound bad during peer review because they’re so off the wall, or they bring together multiple fields that maybe nobody’s qualified to evaluate them.

许多这些听起来很大胆的项目遇到的问题是，它们在同行评审中听起来很糟糕，因为它们太离谱了，或者它们汇集了多个领域，可能没有人有资格评估它们。

One thought is, what if — instead of taking people’s opinions and then just sort of combining those opinions, and then, okay, you’re in or you’re out in terms of getting the money — what if we take a step back, and we think about why the peers are thinking this way?

一种想法是，如果 —— 不是听取人们的意见，然后只是将这些意见结合起来，然后，好吧，你在赚钱方面是进还是出 —— 如果我们退一步，想想为什么同行会这样想呢？

If somebody critiques a proposal, but they’re doing it from a vantage point that doesn’t see a certain part of the proposal as valuable because they’re missing an underlying piece of knowledge, or they’re evaluating a proposal — based upon opinion — that, if we think about the logical underpinnings of it, the rationale is actually pretty solid in terms of its being linked to ground-truthable sciences, like physics and chemistry.

如果有人批评一项提案，但他们的立场并不认为该提案的某些部分有价值，因为他们缺少基础知识，或者他们正在评估一项提案 ——“基于意见”—— 如果我们考虑它的逻辑基础，那么其基本原理实际上是相当扎实的，因为它与物理和化学等可靠的科学相关。

In other words, if we take a step back and apply more logical principles of evaluation to the outcomes of peer review, can we actually improve the ranking of these proposals?

换句话说，如果我们退一步，对同行评审的结果应用更符合逻辑的评估原则，我们真的能提高这些提案的排名吗？

This is something I’m thinking a lot about right now.

这是我现在思考很多的事情。

As I evaluate people and evaluate ideas that people propose to me as well, I’m trying to hone those skills in myself.

当我评估人们并评估人们向我提出的想法时，我正在努力磨练自己的这些技能。

That’s one of the three things I would do.

这是我要做的三件事之一。

But what if somebody tries something out one Friday afternoon, and whoa, that could cure disease, or that could yield an amazing new insight into biology, or that could allow us to diagnose brain diseases early, or whatever?

但是，如果有人在某个周五下午尝试了一些东西，哇哦，这可以治愈疾病，或者可以对生物学产生令人惊叹的新见解，或者可以让我们及早诊断脑部疾病，或者其他什么？

Why wait a year?

为什么要等一年？

What if one could dynamically allocate funding up and down based upon the real-time metrics of science?

如果可以根据科学的实时指标动态地上下分配资金会怎样？

In my own group, sometimes we get a project out of the blue, and hey, that’s pretty cool.

在我自己的团队中，有时我们会突然得到一个项目，嘿，这太酷了。

Then we’ll dynamically try to understand if we can reallocate resources.

然后我们将动态地尝试了解是否可以重新分配资源。

That’s another thing I would do.

这是我会做的另一件事。

The third thing I would do is I would go looking for trouble.

我要做的第三件事是我会去找麻烦。

I would go looking for serendipity.

我会去寻找机缘巧合。

If you look at CRISPR for genome editing — that was found by some scientists working on yogurt.

如果你看看用于基因组编辑的 CRISPR ——这是由一些研究酸奶的科学家发现的。

If you look at fluorescent proteins — that was identified by a person who just was obsessed with jellyfish.

如果你观察荧光蛋白——这是由一个痴迷于水母的人发现的。

In my own field, if you look at our optogenetics work or our expansion microscopy work — these fields owe a debt to basic curiosity about critters living in bodies of water for optogenetics, and expansion microscopy goes back to the 1980s where people were wondering why do certain polymers swell so hugely, with no practical-purpose implications of it.

在我自己的领域，如果你看看我们的光遗传学工作或我们的膨胀显微镜工作 ——这些领域归功于对光遗传学中生活在水体中的生物的基本好奇心，而膨胀显微镜可以追溯到 20 世纪 80 年代，当时人们想知道为什么某些聚合物膨胀得如此之大，但没有任何实际用途的意义。

One idea is, how do we find the diamonds in the rough, the big ideas but they’re kind of hidden in plain sight?

一个想法是，我们如何找到未加工的钻石，伟大的想法，但它们隐藏在众目睽睽之下？

I think we see this a lot.

我想我们经常看到这样的情况。

Machine learning, deep learning, is one of the hot topics of our time, but a lot of the math was worked out decades ago — backpropagation, for example, in the 1980s and 1990s.

机器学习、深度学习是我们这个时代的热门话题之一，但很多数学知识都是几十年前就已经计算出来的——例如反向传播，在 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代。

What has changed since then is, no doubt, some improvements in the mathematics, but largely, I think we’d all agree, better compute power and a lot more data.

毫无疑问，从那时起发生的变化是数学方面的一些改进，但我认为我们都同意，很大程度上是更好的计算能力和更多的数据。

So how could we find the treasure that’s hiding in plain sight?

那么我们怎样才能找到隐藏在众目睽睽之下的宝藏呢？

One of the ideas is to have sort of a SWAT team of people who go around looking for how to connect the dots all day long in these serendipitous ways.

其中一个想法是组建一支特警队，他们整天四处寻找如何以这些偶然的方式将各个点联系起来。

What if I brought together to evaluate a proposal, and I have a physicist who can tell me, “You know what?

如果我聚集在一起评估一个提案，并且我有一位物理学家可以告诉我，“你知道吗？

That amount of energy won’t kill the brain.” Then I have a biologist who says, “You know what?

那么多的能量不会杀死大脑。”然后一位生物学家对我说：“你知道吗？

That’s a really important problem.” And then a chemist who would say, “You know what?

这是一个非常重要的问题。”然后一位化学家会说：“你知道吗？

That molecule probably won’t be toxic.” You actually need a committee to judge some of these ideas.

该分子可能不会有毒。”你实际上需要一个委员会来判断其中一些想法。

In physics, there’s a small number of building blocks, like protons and electrons, and a small number of ways they interact, like electromagnetism and so forth.

在物理学中，有少量的构建块，如质子和电子，以及它们相互作用的少量方式，如电磁学等。

Chemistry — there’s more stuff.

化学 — 还有更多东西。

There’s a hundred-odd things in the periodic table, although maybe there’s only 30 to 50 that you actually have to work with if you’re trying to make something actually happen.

元素周期表中有一百多种元素，但如果你想让某件事真正发生，你实际上需要使用的元素可能只有 30 到 50 种。

Again, there’s a small number of bonds: covalent and ionic and so forth.

同样，有少量的键：共价键和离子键等。

I think the problem right now is that a lot of the scientific questions we’re wrestling with, whether it’s in biology and medicine — but I’m not an expert in this; you know more about some of these things than I do — but in economics and education and so forth, it also seems like — from my distant view — some of these problems relate to this idea that there’s a lot of different building blocks and a lot of ways they interact.

我认为现在的问题是我们正在努力解决的许多科学问题，无论是生物学还是医学，但我不是这方面的专家；我不是这方面的专家。你对其中一些事情比我了解得更多 ——但是在经济学和教育等方面，似乎也 —— 从我的远见来看 —— 其中一些问题与这样的想法有关，即存在许多不同的构建模块以及它们相互作用的多种方式。

In biology, we have what, 30,000 genes in the human genome, and while we know their sequence, for the most part, we have no idea how these gene products interact with each other, and how they’re architected into cells and tissues and organs, and how those go wrong.

在生物学中，人类基因组中有 30,000 个基因，虽然我们知道它们的序列，但在很大程度上，我们不知道这些基因产物如何相互作用，以及它们如何构建成细胞、组织和器官，以及它们如何出错。

The problem is this cognitrone explosion of possibilities is so staggeringly huge that a lot of what we try will fail.

问题是这种可能性的认知爆炸是如此巨大，以至于我们尝试的很多事情都会失败。

What do we do about it?

我们该怎么办？

One point of view is, “Well, if we had better tools, and we could map those building blocks and those interactions, maybe we could reduce the risk of biomedical science.” Again, it’s not my field.

一种观点是，“好吧，如果我们有更好的工具，并且我们可以绘制这些构建模块和相互作用，也许我们可以降低生物医学的风险。”再说一遍，这不是我的领域。

You know more about this than I do.

你比我更了解这一点。

I’d love to hear your opinion.

我很想听听你的意见。

But in economics and in other fields, it also seems like people are trying to make better maps of things and how they interact.

但在经济学和其他领域，人们似乎也在尝试绘制更好的事物地图以及它们如何相互作用。

That’s one idea.

这是一个想法。

What if we could make these problems .

如果我们能解决这些问题呢？

.

。

.

。

Progress might seem to be slower because the problems are so hard.

进展可能看起来比较慢，因为问题太难了。

But with better tools, maybe we can level the playing field and make 21st-century sciences more tractable, in the same way that 20th-century sciences gave us lasers and computers and the internet.

但有了更好的工具，也许我们可以创造公平的竞争环境，让 21 世纪的科学变得更容易处理，就像 20 世纪的科学给我们带来了激光、计算机和互联网一样。

There’s always this question of why is the universe understandable in the first place, and maybe now we’re entering the realm of complexity where things are less understandable.

总是有这样一个问题：为什么宇宙首先是可以理解的，也许现在我们正在进入复杂的领域，那里的事物更难以理解。

But again, we have to accept reality for what it is.

但同样，我们必须接受现实。

With optogenetics, the problem was, how do you control the brain to repair it?

对于光遗传学来说，问题是如何控制大脑进行修复？

With expansion microscopy, the question was, how do we make a map of the brain that’s precise but scalable?

使用扩展显微镜，问题是，我们如何制作精确但可扩展的大脑图？

Thinking backwards from major problems is really, really important.

从重大问题中逆向思考真的非常非常重要。

How do you actually then do anything about it?

那么你实际上该如何做呢？

One strategy we try to do is to think of every possible idea of how to solve the problem.

我们尝试做的一个策略是考虑如何解决问题的每一种可能的想法。

With optogenetics, my co-inventor Karl Deisseroth and I — when we were both students, we just started going through all the laws of physics.

对于光遗传学，我的共同发明者 Karl Deisseroth 和我——当我们都是学生时，我们刚刚开始研究所有物理定律。

How would you control the brain?

你会如何控制大脑？

Well, there’s only so many kinds of energy.

嗯，能量的种类就这么多。

There’s mechanical force.

有机械力。

There’s magnetism.

有磁力。

There’s light.

有光。

The list is pretty short, actually.

实际上，这个列表很短。

You can actually try to write down every possible way of doing it.

实际上，您可以尝试写下所有可能的方法。

I call this method the tiling tree method, where you try to take this base of possibilities and break it down into parts.

我将这种方法称为平铺树方法，您尝试采用这种可能性基础并将其分解为多个部分。

If you draw it properly, it looks like a tree diagram.

如果你画得正确，它看起来就像一个树形图。

Here’s this base of possibilities split into two parts, and each of those splits into more parts, and eventually it covers a page.

这是可能性的基础，分为两部分，每一部分又分为更多部分，最终覆盖一页。

It looks like a tree, and then the leaves of the tree — the bottom nodes — are ideas you could actually test by doing a literature search or doing an experiment.

它看起来像一棵树，然后树的叶子  - 底部节点  -  是你可以通过文献检索或实验来实际测试的想法。

A lot of our projects, actually, at some point or another involve this kind of can-we-think-of-every-possible-idea approach.

事实上，我们的很多项目在某些时候都涉及到这种“我们能想到每一个可能的想法”的方法。

We did not pioneer this.

我们并不是这方面的先驱。

Fritz Zwicky called this morphological analysis in the 1930s, and he claims to have thought up dark matter and gravitational lensing and a lot of these hot topics in astrophysics that are being investigated today.

Fritz Zwicky 在 20 世纪 30 年代将这种形态学分析称为形态分析，他声称提出了暗物质和引力透镜以及当今正在研究的许多天体物理学热门话题。

But of course, he thought these up almost a century ago.

但当然，他在近一个世纪前就想到了这些。

He claimed to have thought up these ideas through this sort of tiling-tree or morphological-analysis kind of approach.

他声称是通过这种平铺树或形态分析方法想出了这些想法。

On the Ed Boyden production function

关于 Ed Boyden 生产函数

I started college, and I started working on this origins of life project when I was only 14.

我开始上大学，14 岁时就开始从事这个生命起源项目。

I went to a program at the University of North Texas, where they take people kind of young, so a lot of my classmates were 16 years old.

我参加了北德克萨斯大学的一个项目，那里招收的都是年轻人，所以我的很多同学都是 16 岁。

It was great to kind of jump directly into science.

直接跳入科学领域真是太好了。

I grew up in a suburb of Dallas, Texas, which didn’t have a lot of scientific stuff going on at the laboratory or research level, so actually getting to jump into science was just transformative for me.

我在德克萨斯州达拉斯的郊区长大，那里在实验室或研究层面上没有太多的科学知识，所以真正进入科学领域对我来说是一种变革。

Then at some point, you want to go solve a problem.

然后在某个时候，你想要解决一个问题。

I call that the impact phase.

我称之为影响阶段。

Some people go start a company or join a research group or whatever.

有些人去创办公司或加入研究小组或其他什么。

What I realized was that, for me, the skills I wanted to learn and the impact I wanted to do really required me to get my hands dirty, get into a laboratory and start playing around with real matter.

我意识到，对我来说，我想要学习的技能和我想要产生的影响确实需要我亲自动手，进入实验室并开始研究真实的物质。

But if somebody’s more mathematically inclined, you might not need to go into a laboratory.

但如果有人更喜欢数学，你可能不需要进入实验室。

Lots of great people do mathematics on their own.

许多伟人自己做数学。

Also, we have new hybrid interdisciplinary majors.

此外，我们还有新的混合跨学科专业。

One of the majors that I advise at MIT is biological engineering, which is only like a decade old, maybe a little bit more.

我在麻省理工学院推荐的专业之一是生物工程，它只有十年的历史，也许更久一些。

You can now go to college and major in a discipline which will combine some computer programming and some chemistry and some physical modeling and so forth.

你现在可以上大学，主修一门学科，该学科将结合一些计算机编程、一些化学和一些物理建模等。

Again, a theme of what I try to do as a professor is, “Can we do on purpose what previously we did accidentally?” So one thing I try to do is to help people craft curriculums that are optimized for what they want to do.

同样，作为一名教授，我尝试做的一个主题是：“我们可以故意做以前无意中做的事情吗？”因此，我尝试做的一件事就是帮助人们设计针对他们想做的事情进行优化的课程。

Sometimes that means prescribing mixing and matching that helps people sort of go in their own direction.

有时，这意味着混合和匹配可以帮助人们朝着自己的方向前进。

When word got out that I had two college dropouts doing the PhD in my group, a lot of other people started contacting me who also had dropped out of high school or college, saying, “How can I get into brain technology?”

当我的团队中有两名大学辍学生在攻读博士学位的消息传出后，很多其他人开始联系我，他们也从高中或大学退学，说：“我怎样才能进入大脑技术领域？”

I kind of designed a little custom curriculum for them, where it’s like you need to know some physics, but frankly, gravity waves — you don’t need that if you’re studying the brain.

我为他们设计了一些定制课程，就像你需要了解一些物理学一样，但坦率地说，重力波  - 如果你研究大脑，你不需要这些。

Then you need to know some chemistry, but this kind of chemistry — that might be not so important.

那么你需要了解一些化学，但是这种化学 —— 可能不是那么重要。

Mathematics, too.

数学也是。

There’s some parts of mathematics that are absolutely essential, but other parts — you probably don’t need that right away in brain science.

数学的某些部分是绝对必要的，但其他部分 ——你可能在脑科学中并不立​​即需要这些。

I kind of designed a little custom curriculum.

我设计了一些定制课程。

Maybe in a year or two you could get up to speed by learning what’s most important.

也许一两年后，您就可以通过了解最重要的内容来加快速度。

I have people in my group who are professional neurosurgeons, and then, as I mentioned, I have college dropouts, and I have people who .

我的团队中有些人是专业的神经外科医生，然后，正如我提到的，我有大学辍学者，也有这样的人。

.

。

.

。

We recently published a paper where we ran the brain expansion process in reverse.

我们最近发表了一篇论文，其中我们反向运行了大脑扩展过程。

So take the baby diaper polymer, add water to expand it, and then you can basically laser-print stuff inside of it, and then collapse it down, and you get a piece of nanotechnology.

因此，采用婴儿尿布聚合物，加水使其膨胀，然后你基本上可以在其内部激光打印东西，然后将其塌陷，你就得到了纳米技术。

The co–first author of that paper doesn’t have a scientific laboratory background.

该论文的共同第一作者没有科学实验室背景。

He was a professional photographer before he joined my group.

在加入我的团队之前，他是一名专业摄影师。

But we started talking, and it turns out, if you’re a professional photographer, you know a lot of very practical chemistry.

但我们开始交谈，事实证明，如果您是一名专业摄影师，您就会了解很多非常实用的化学知识。

It turns out that our big demo — and why the paper got so much attention — was we made metal nanowires, and the way we did it was using a chemistry not unlike what you do in photography, which is a silver chemistry.

事实证明，我们的大型演示——以及这篇论文为何受到如此多的关注——是我们制造了金属纳米线，而我们所做的方式是使用一种与摄影中使用的化学物质不同的化学物质，即银化学物质。

I really try to understand how individual people and their unique background and interests could change the world, but it means that we don’t really have a formula.

我真的很努力去了解个人以及他们独特的背景和兴趣如何改变世界，但这意味着我们并没有真正的公式。

I try not to have formulas, in general, when it comes to the actual day-to-day of science.

一般来说，当涉及到实际的日常科学时，我尽量不使用公式。

I often say to people in my group, “We want to revolutionize the world for the better and do the right thing and be ethical, but beyond that, let’s not try to make any artificial policies.”

我经常对我的团队中的人说：“我们希望彻底改变世界，让世界变得更好，做正确的事，遵守道德规范，但除此之外，我们不要试图制定任何人为的政策。”

The way that I manage time I arrived at through lots of experimentation.

我管理时间的方式是通过大量实验得出的。

For example, I keep a calendar of future plans.

例如，我保留未来计划的日历。

Many people do, but then I also keep a calendar of the past, which logs how long it actually took for me to write that grant, or to meet with that person, or to eat dinner, or whatever.

很多人都这样做，但我也会保留一份过去的日历，记录我实际花了多长时间写下那笔拨款，或与那个人会面，或吃晚饭，或其他什么。

Over time, I’ve learned a lot about how long it takes me to do something.

随着时间的推移，我了解到很多关于做某事需要多长时间的知识。

So I read a lot of old papers.

所以我读了很多旧报纸。

I read a lot of things that might be forgotten because I think that there’s a lot of treasure hiding in plain sight.

我读了很多可能会被遗忘的东西，因为我认为在显而易见的地方隐藏着很多宝藏。

As we discussed earlier, optogenetics and expansion microscopy both begin from papers from other fields, some of which are quite old and which mostly had been ignored by other people.

正如我们之前讨论的，光遗传学和膨胀显微镜都是从其他领域的论文开始的，其中一些论文相当古老，而且大多被其他人忽视了。

I sometimes practice what I call failure rebooting.

我有时会练习所谓的失败重启。

We tried something, or somebody else tried something, and it didn’t work.

我们尝试过一些东西，或者其他人尝试过一些东西，但没有成功。

But you know what?

但你知道吗？

Something happened that made the world different.

发生了一些事情，让世界变得不同。

Maybe somebody found a new gene.

也许有人发现了一个新基因。

Maybe computers are faster.

也许计算机更快。

Maybe some other discovery from left field has changed how we think about things.

也许来自左翼领域的其他一些发现改变了我们对事物的看法。

And you know what?

你知道吗？

That old failed idea might be ready for prime time.

那个失败的旧想法可能已经准备好迎接黄金时段了。

With optogenetics, people were trying to control brain cells with light going back to 1971.

早在 1971 年，人们就试图利用光遗传学来控制脑细胞。

I was actually reading some earlier papers.

我实际上正在阅读一些早期的论文。

There were people playing around with controlling brain cells with light going back to the 1940s.

早在 20 世纪 40 年代，就有人尝试用光来控制脑细胞。

What is different?

有什么不同？

Well, this class of molecules that we put into neurons hadn’t been discovered yet.

嗯，我们放入神经元中的这类分子尚未被发现。

I think if I was given a pile of money right now, what I would like to do is to find a way — not just in our group but across many groups — to try to find those unfundable projects where, number one, if we think about the logic of it, “Hey, there’s a non-zero chance it could be revolutionary.” Number two, we can really, in a finite amount of time, test the idea.

我想，如果我现在得到一大笔钱，我想做的就是找到一种方法 ——不仅在我们的团队中，而且在许多群体中 ——试图找到那些无法资助的项目，其中，第一，如果我们考虑一下它的逻辑，“嘿，它有一个非零的机会它可能是革命性的。”第二，我们确实可以在有限的时间内测试这个想法。

And if it works, we can dynamically allocate more money to it.

如果它有效，我们可以动态地分配更多的钱给它。

But if it doesn’t work, then we can de-allocate money to it.

但如果它不起作用，那么我们可以取消分配给它的资金。

If I think about optogenetics or expansion microscopy, or these other techniques that we’ve been talking about, the amount of money that we actually invested in it to get it going was not that much.

如果我考虑光遗传学或扩展显微镜，或者我们一直在谈论的其他技术，我们实际上为其投入的资金并没有那么多。

They were actually fairly inexpensive projects.

它们实际上是相当便宜的项目。

Then finally, I would like to go out and treasure hunt.

最后，我想出去寻宝。

Let’s look at the old literature.

我们来看看古代文献。

Let’s look at people who might be on the fringes of science, but they don’t have the right connections, like the people who I talked about earlier.

让我们看看那些可能处于科学边缘但没有正确联系的人，就像我之前谈到的那些人。

They’re not quite in the right place to achieve the rapid scale-up of the project.

他们还没有处于实现项目快速扩大规模的正确位置。

But by connecting the dots between people and topics, you know what?

但是通过连接人和主题之间的点，你知道吗？

We could design an amazing project together.

我们可以一起设计一个令人惊叹的项目。