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  • - I want to explain something to you as if you were smart?

  • - Yes. - I like that.

  • - I have a very close friend in Australia

  • who's in charge of measuring

  • what happens to Australian soldiers

  • before and after going to Afghanistan or Iraq.

  • What they see is that with every deployment,

  • the frontal lobe becomes slower.

  • And that means that when your frontal lobe becomes slow,

  • you cannot pay attention and you cannot engage.

  • But when they exposure to a very terrible,

  • frightening situation, your frontal lobes comes online.

  • So what we show is that when you're traumatized,

  • when you're not in danger, your brain doesn't function.

  • But when you're in danger,

  • your brain has been changed

  • so that you are a specialist in dealing with danger,

  • but you're no longer a specialist in dealing

  • with spring in western Massachusets.

  • And it passes you by.

  • Let's talk about quantitative EEGs,

  • which are fairly easy brain maps,

  • much cheaper than FMRIs, where I can show you

  • what the wiring of the brain looks like.

  • When you close your eyes,

  • you're supposed to feel relaxed and calm,

  • and it can measure that in the brainwaves

  • at the back of your brain.

  • You ask traumatized people to close their eyes,

  • they develop a lot of high-intensity waves

  • in the back of their brain as if their brain is saying,

  • "If I close my eyes, I'm in danger.

  • I need to look around all the time"

  • to make sure that nobody's going to hurt me."

  • That is driven by this brain that is set to expect danger.

  • And when you see these brain maps of people,

  • they are extremely abnormal.

  • And you can can say,

  • "Oh, no wonder they have so much trouble with their temper.

  • Oh, no wonder they have so much trouble with eating.

  • No wonder they have

  • so much trouble with forming relationships."

  • And we can focus on these things,

  • and we can actually repair these circuits.

  • Now, but we can do is to actually wire up your brain,

  • so whenever you make quiet waves in your brain,

  • you get a little reward.

  • You hear some sounds and you see some images that you like.

  • So we can shape your brain to actually have

  • a different configuration and a different wiring,

  • so it's no longer set to expect danger,

  • but it's actually set to be open to new experiences.

  • Neural feedback needs a lot more work

  • because it's never been supported by federal funding.

  • How long does it take?

  • What's the best method to rewire these brains?

  • Because I wouldn't give little abused kids

  • in the foster care system psychedelics,

  • you can be sure of that,

  • but it would give them neural feedback,

  • so they can go to school

  • and not be labeled as a pain in the neck kid,

  • and they're able to have friends and they're able to learn.

  • To my mind that's actually my biggest dream.

  • Is that smart enough?

- I want to explain something to you as if you were smart?

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