- [Instructor] Funding for the Secret Life of Scientists is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
(soft music) (typewriter clicks) - Half my lab is working on how brain cells speak to each other.
And how that can be changed and how those changes can make new memories and new skills that you learn.
The other half is using that information in trying to figure out the cause and maybe we hope new treatments for diseases like Parkinson's, drug addiction, schizophrenia, and autism.
I'm like a trained elephant.
I'll do what you ask.
(soft music) (soft music) (typewriter clicks) Sometimes neuroscientists ask impossible questions.
How does our body work?
How does our mind work?
We can't really ask exactly that question, but we can begin to ask little building blocks of that question.
My laboratory looks at how brain cells speak to each other.
One of the questions in neuroscience for a long time had been what is the single basic unit of neurotransmission?
Great work in the 1940s by Bernard Katz showed that there's tiny packets, of neurotransmitter release that he called Quanta.
These individual tiny events it's like matters made from atoms.
neurotransmission is made from these tiny packets of neurotransmitter.
When I first started my laboratory, one day we decided to use a new recording technique and one day we saw quanta.
We saw the first direct recording of quanta that's ever been seen.
We thought theoretically it could happen but we didn't really believe it could have happened.
And I was so excited watching that data that I had to lie down on the floor.
I couldn't believe that something that people had hypothesized, for so long actually existed and we could see it.
The sensation was we've just seen something so fundamental.
Something that every animal does all the time for everything it does.
If it's done with the nervous system it's done in this way.
It was astonishing.
It was like a great gift.
A few minutes later, we realized, now we can share it.
We can show it to other people.
(soft music) (soft music) (typewriter clicks) It's hard to come up with anything novel in music.
There's only a limited number of notes, but within that, what a tremendous amount of creativity people can give to each other.
There can be moments of discovery in music.
One that's really obvious is when we tried to teach elephants to play music.
These elephants they used to work in the logging industry in Thailand.
Logging is actually illegal in Thailand now.
Richard Lair, who's an American helped to start the Thai Elephant Conservation Center.
I went to Thailand and he said, "You know elephants like music, everybody who lives with elephants knows that."
But would they play music?
And I built a giant marimba and in about half an hour, an elephant learned to play it.
(marimba plays) The way that we conduct the xylophone orchestra is we just tell the elephants which instruments to play.
So, you know I say start and stop, I'll do this.
And then some of the elephants know that means stop and they'll drop the stick.
And sometimes you go stop, stop, stop.
And they know you're telling them to stop and they keep playing.
This will sound nuts, but they're playing a joke.
They think it's funny.
Well, to me the elephant music sounds like an elephant walking in the forest.
A gentle thoughtful kind of sound.
And they kind of seem to soak into every sound in the note.
Sometimes it gets angry too, and you know elephants can have a temper.
Some of them can have a very bad temper I'm afraid.
They can also be very loving and very sweet.
(xylophone plays) There's three elephant records now, pure elephant music.
It's exactly what they play in real time.
The reason I decided to do it was 'cause it was a chance to hang out with elephants.
They're about the most amazing creatures you can imagine.
They're 10,000 pounds.
They're really smart.
And unless you're out there and spend a little time with them, you can't believe the skills they have.
(bell rings) (soft music) (soft music) (typewriter clicks) (typewriter clicks) (typewriter clicks) (Dave chuckles) I got very bad grades in high school.
I was very lucky and just did weird things and something came out of it.
They're both fine parts of your brain.
Playing country fiddle with Pete Seeger for the surviving members of the Abraham Lincoln brigade.
And these were men in their nineties.
It was very moving.
I have a competitor whose work I follow very closely Mark Whiteman, in North Carolina.
I have been following his work for years and often is influential on me, even if it's just like how can I do this better than this guy?
One of the elephants in the tile of an orchestra was the star of Dumbo Drop.
(dramatic music) Well, I'll just have to go with our favorite dopamine neurons, 'cause we've done so much work on them and they're really troublesome.
Probably Smoke on the Water, just like everybody else.
(upbeat music) It will be their last album, and it's called Water and Music 'cause they like being in the water more than anything else, except food and sex.
I think maybe the best rock and roll songwriter of all time might be Chuck Berry.
♪ Who never ever learned to read or write so well ♪ ♪ But he could play the guitar like ringing a bell ♪ - Well obviously Rock Hudson or Clark Gable.
I mean it's really obvious.
Strong, silent type.
That's me.
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