Epiphany of the week Dr. Matt Wachsman, MD PhD

This is the start of the main thread of the podcast. I am going to teach you to do Real, bleeping, Magic Spells. 



And that is barely in the top five of the weirdnesses of this podcast. Number one, is that the deep parts of the brain that take in all internal and external sensory input are well known to process this input at 10 times the speed of what we call consciousness. We do not see the world. Perception is even on a significant tape delay. 

The first set of episodes, which the most important ones we've had already, are to hammer down this point: Our brains produce illusion.  Stage magic plays on this. Optical illusions play on this, but every sense has illusion tricks due to this processing. We will be demonstrating about a half dozen for each sense. 

The next set of episodes demonstrates deep brain perturbations of thinking. Wikipedia lists dozens of examples; we've mentioned already the most important. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases. We will hit the main categories. We will explore their neurobiological basis. 

Then, knowing that all is illusion what does one do? It seems to come to a choice between doing great stuff or having great entertainment. We will be covering spells for divination, unlocking creativity, wishes, invisibility (or rather undoing invisibility), coercing truth, uncovering lies, a little bit of yoga, doing and undoing compulsions, and some Black Magic--that's Magic by and for undoing racial disparity and racism.

That reminds me of the time my Dungeons and Dragons club visited the Black Arts and Sciences Club on campus. It wasn't at all what we expected but everyone had a really good time and a there was a considerable amount of cross over..because.. nerds, right? Well that pretty well sums up this podcast too. Oh, and tell Anchor I have the absolute best advertisement for them.


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Deep brain structures retained throughout evolution for their survival benefits take in all internal and external sensory input and process/distort, store, and respond to these sensations at 10 times the speed of conscious thought. This is done through chemical signals that are, tautologically, drugs of abuse. Wackiness ensues.

The worst consequence of this, is "The Bowie Effect". This is the ineluctable reaction to seeing those "on the edge of the night". We respond those in need, or those who are sick, or those who are being chased by lions or law enforcement by "turning away like a blind man" and responding by "Sat on a fence but it don't work". The conflict between natural empathy and the Bowie response, of course, puts us Under Pressure.


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In which the listener is introduced to their own autonomic brain processing. we begin with demonstrating auditory processing. Specifically, we demonstrate the Deutch effect of how sound is coded to be speech or music. That is a trick. The technique section presents my research findings on addiction presented at the December 2019 AAAP meeting in San Diego. To summarize: everyone gets better. The drop outs from Methadone and Suboxone centers decline with time. Furthermore, those dropping out often/usually drop back in. Two Thirds of those coming back, do better by every measure. Obviously this extrapolates to meaning, everyone is going to eventually recover from opiate addiction. Medication assisted treatment saves lives with an over 2/3's reduction of mortality from the moment people enter treatment (ok, it's probably more like over 90% reduction, but I like to understate).


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Summary: Parts of the deep brain, retained throughout evolution for conferring survival benefits, take in all internal and external sensory inputs. These are processed, stored, and responded to emotionally, cognitively, and physically at 10 times the speed of conscious thought. A consequence of this was first noticed by the Nobel Prize winning physicist Niels Bohr* in the 1950's while watching a Western. Dr. Bohr noticed that the gunslinger responding to a draw always wins. He theorized there are two different motor (and cognitive, and memory) pathways one which is cortical and we run and one that is subcortical and runs us ! 

His observations were noted and verified only in the last 10 years as "the Gunslinger effect". This same process underlies much of the little voice in our minds, our emotional responses, and our actions.


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