Mariano Sigman: Your words may predict your future mental health
Mariano Sigman: As túas palabras poderían predicir a túa futura saúde mental
In his provocative, mind-bending book "The Secret Life of the Mind," neuroscientist Mariano Sigman reveals his life’s work exploring the inner workings of the human brain. Full bio
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to know how the ancient Greeks dressed,
que nos permiten saber
aspects of human thought --
profundos do pensamento humano
that have shaped our culture
que deran forma á nosa cultura
the structural columns of human thought.
estruturais do pensamento humano.
opinions about this.
diferentes sobre isto.
philosophical debate.
dun vello debate filosófico.
even amenable to science?
esta pregunta desde a ciencia?
how the ancient Greek cities looked
aspecto das antigas cidades gregas
are the archaeological records,
como os rexistros arqueolóxicos,
books of human culture,
da cultura humana,
with a very wild and radical hypothesis:
unha hipótese tan arriscada como radical:
we would call schizophrenics.
o que hoxe chamaríamos esquizofrénicos.
humans described in these books
descritos neses libros
and in different places of the world,
e lugares do mundo,
as coming from the Gods,
that they were the creators,
que eles mesmos eran os creadores,
about their own thoughts.
sobre os propios pensamentos.
é que a consciencia,
en que a percibimos hoxe,
of our own existence --
na nosa propia existencia,
sobre uns poucos exemplos moi específicos.
and very specific examples.
history only about 3,000 years ago
na historia humana hai só 3.000 anos
and objective manner.
cuantitativo e obxectivo.
to go about this is quite obvious.
isto é bastante obvio.
and then he wrote,
un día e logo escribise.
completamente introspectiva."
a fully introspective consciousness."
what is the essence of the problem.
cal é a esencia do problema.
of a concept that's never said.
dun concepto que nunca foi dito.
does not appear a single time
non aparece nin unha soa vez
is to build the space of words.
foi construír o espazo das palabras.
that contains all words
que contén todas as palabras
between any two of them
que a distancia entre dúas delas
closely related they are.
relacionadas que están.
to be very close together,
"can" e "gato" estean moi próximas,
to be very far away.
estean moi separadas.
for any two words within the space.
par de palabras dentro do espazo.
that we can construct the space of words.
de diferentes maneiras.
that when two words are related,
cando dúas palabras están relacionadas
just by pure chance.
por simple casualidade.
and high-dimensional space,
e de gran dimensión,
of how well this works,
do ben que funciona,
we analyze this for some familiar words.
analizamos algunhas palabras familiares.
into semantic neighborhoods.
automaticamente en campos semánticos.
os termos científicos...
the scientific terms and so on.
that we organize concepts in a hierarchy.
que organizamos conceptos en xerarquías.
break down into two subcategories
se distribúen en dúas subcategorías
at this for a while,
a bit like doing poetry.
un pouco a facer poesía.
is like walking in the mind.
é como camiñar pola mente.
what are our intuitions,
cales son as nosas intuicións,
in the neighborhood of introspection.
ao campo da introspección.
"reason," "emotion,"
"razón," "emoción,"
"candle," "banana,"
"candea," "plátano"
of introspection,
da introspección,
and somehow vague,
dalgún xeito difusa,
coller os libros,
of words as a trajectory
como unha traxectoria,
spends significant time
pasa un tempo significativo
of introspection.
de introspección.
the history of introspection
a historia da introspección
available written record.
escrito dispoñible.
coller todos os libros,
how close it is to introspection,
que cada palabra estaba da introspección,
as time goes on and on,
a medida que pasaba o tempo,
and closer and closer
in the ancient Greek tradition.
na tradición da Grecia antiga.
in the Homeric tradition,
máis antigos na tradición homérica
getting closer to introspection.
á introspección.
to an almost five-fold increase
ata case quintuplicarse
and closer and closer
in a different, independent tradition.
diferente e independente.
on the Judeo-Christian tradition,
na tradición xudeocristiá,
for the oldest books in the Old Testament,
máis antigos do Antigo Testamento,
had been recognized by scholars,
foi recoñecido por eruditos,
the father of modern psychology.
o pai da psicoloxía moderna.
of being quantitative,
important conclusions
das conclusións máis importantes
one of the beauties of science,
unha das belezas da ciencia,
can be translated
of different domains.
about the past of human consciousness,
sobre o pasado da percepción humana,
we can pose to ourselves
que podemos formularnos
about the future of our own consciousness.
sobre o futuro da nosa propia consciencia.
of where our minds will be in a few days,
as nosas mentes nuns cantos días,
are now wearing sensors
levamos sensores
a previr enfermidades,
help us prevent diseases,
e analizando as palabras que dicimos,
and analyzing the words we speak,
something may go wrong with our minds.
se algo vai ir mal nas nosas mentes.
the recorded speech of 34 young people
o discurso gravado de 34 mozos
of developing schizophrenia.
de desenvolver esquizofrenia.
we measured speech at day one,
o discurso no día un,
dese discurso poderían predicir,
of the speech could predict,
information in semantics
suficiente na semántica
organization of the mind.
a futura organización da mente.
of schizophrenics and a control group,
de esquizofrénicos e un grupo de control,
for the ancient texts,
onset of psychosis.
o inicio dunha psicose.
was not so much what they were saying,
non era o que estaban a dicir,
ao que pertencían as palabras,
neighborhoods the words were,
to the other one.
of speech within one semantic topic,
da fala dentro dun tema semántico,
that for this group of 34 people,
coherence could predict,
na coherencia semántica puido predicir,
that could not be achieved --
existing clinical measures.
das medidas clínicas existentes.
while I was working on this,
mentres traballaba nisto,
back in Buenos Aires,
en Bos Aires,
estaba a vivir en Nova York
he was living in New York.
because nothing was said explicitly --
non había nada explícito--
that something was going wrong.
de que algo non ía ben.
and I called Polo,
through words, his feelings,
os seus sentimentos,
effective way to help.
sinxela, pero moi efectiva.
close to understanding
that we all have,
que todos temos,
a very different form of mental health,
unha forma moi diferente de saúde mental,
and automated analysis
cuantitativa e automatizada
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Mariano Sigman - NeuroscientistIn his provocative, mind-bending book "The Secret Life of the Mind," neuroscientist Mariano Sigman reveals his life’s work exploring the inner workings of the human brain.
Why you should listen
Mariano Sigman, a physicist by training, is a leading figure in the cognitive neuroscience of learning and decision making. Sigman was awarded a Human Frontiers Career Development Award, the National Prize of Physics, the Young Investigator Prize of "College de France," the IBM Scalable Data Analytics Award and is a scholar of the James S. McDonnell Foundation. In 2016 he was made a Laureate of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
In The Secret Life of the Mind, Sigman's ambition is to explain the mind so that we can understand ourselves and others more deeply. He shows how we form ideas during our first days of life, how we give shape to our fundamental decisions, how we dream and imagine, why we feel certain emotions, how the brain transforms and how who we are changes with it. Spanning biology, physics, mathematics, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy and medicine, as well as gastronomy, magic, music, chess, literature and art, The Secret Life of the Mind revolutionizes how neuroscience serves us in our lives, revealing how the infinity of neurons inside our brains manufacture how we perceive, reason, feel, dream and communicate.
Mariano Sigman | Speaker | TED.com