Human Evolution Explained In 90 Minutes | Most Logical Breakdown By Dr. Sid Warrier

0:03 90% of brain real estate is just for your face and your hands. Everything below this is replaceable. When we talk about the evolution of the human being, you show a photo of a monkey, then primal man, and finally homo sapiens. What was the force behind evolution, efficiency, and control? The more you are able to control, the more your chances of survival. evolution that led to humans began to start moving things around with the for limbs. That is why the hands started developing fingers. So eyes were the last one to tell. Oh, really? Cuz eyes are very expensive. It takes a lot of energy to convert light into meaningful signals. You hear so

0:48 many young parents say that, "Hey, you know, my children, they're way more advanced than we were when we were our age." What does that say about where the human species is going? Any kid growing up with an iPad, as soon as the iPad is taken away, the babies start crying. I fear that this behavior pattern will lead to serious attention issues. Because if this level of stimulus is the new normal, reality can never compete with it. What will the human species look like in a thousand years? Today, we are not really controlling our environment with our hands so much. Machines do all of it. We need fingers to type but now we have voice and suppose if we all get brain chips it is possible that we might lose our fingers. Wow.

1:35 [Music] We began the last episode with the intention to talk about the next stage of evolution for the human species. But in order to understand the next stage of evolution, it was important to explore the present stage of evolution. And mental health issues are more rampant

2:21 than ever. Therefore, that conversation went into the realms of mental health. Yeah. For the sake of this conversation. So, I'm going to begin this particular podcast with some very simple questions and we can cover them very quickly in order to head into the body of this episode. So, doc, first and foremost, let's do a recap on what neuroplasticity means. Sure. In the brain, there are neurons that connect with each other. The pattern in which those neurons connect with each other will decide your thoughts, your behaviors, your thinking patterns. If you want any of these things to change, the neural connections need to change. That ability of the neurons to change their connection is

3:06 neuroplasticity. So every time you learn something new or unlearn something that you've learned before, that is what neuroplasticity is. Gotcha. Okay. Now for the key question for this episode, which is also my favorite subject when it comes to the realms of science, the evolution of our species. Yeah. Usually when we talk about the evolution of the human being, they show a photo of a monkey, then primal man, then slightly more evolved primal man, and finally homo sapiens. They don't show us what's happening next. Uh I think that within the realms of science, perhaps neuroscientists are the people who are the closest to answering that question in terms of where is the brain going next. And

3:53 that's what we're going to discuss in this episode. Yeah. But I'd love for you to quickly take us through the timeline of evolution beginning from us being unisellular organisms. Wow. Because you said that the lyic system is uh ancient. It's ancient. Yes. Right. What's the most ancient system in the brain? So why does the brain exist? Because we have to navigate a complex environment. Right? So the first unicellular organism realized that now I'm using a lot of words that I'm using as a conversation. So realization I hope that people understand that the way that an animal realizes something is different from the way a human realizes something.

4:40 But the way evolution worked is life needs to survive. For life to survive it needs to hunt and it needs to protect itself. So unicellular organisms don't have neural networks. There's nothing called nervous system in a single cell organism. Like a bacteria does not have a nervous system. A virus does not have a nervous system. But eventually unicellular organisms figured out that if they work together they can get more things done. Now these figuring outs were happening at a chemical level. So at a chemical level the unicellular organisms started

5:27 clubbing together and started working together and that is what led to multisellular organisms. What is reality for that unisellular organism? Because it can't see things, it can't feel things. No, but it exists. So how do we define life? Now very quickly we have gone to one of the hardest problems in not just science but also philosophy, spirituality. We are trying to define what is life and what is consciousness. I will say right at the start that we do not have a clear answer right because if you did that would be a huge leap forward. So we won't sit here and pretend that we have the answer to what defines life. But there are some hypothesis. There are some working definitions that we can use for this conversation. So we can say that life is

6:16 any organic matter that is capable of sensing the environment and adapting and reacting to it that is life. So anything that can sense something around it and change its output you can say that it is life. So how do you know that a rock is not alive? Because a rock does not react to what is going on around it. A rock is the same wherever it is, whatever it is, whatever is happening around it. But even a small plant will change depending on the season, depending on what is going on. If there is dryness or if there is water, it changes. It reacts. So you say

7:01 that there is life in this. when it stops reacting you say it is dead right that's like a working definition of life so that's why I would say that a bacteria is alive because a bacteria can change its cell wall a bacteria can change the chemicals inside itself based on what is going on around a bacteria can eat or take up something that can give it energy so it is capable of sensing and it is capable of reacting to the environment. Everybody agrees that bacteria are alive. The confusion is are viruses alive and even before viruses because some viruses only have a strand of DNA

7:47 or a strand of RNA from non-living to living. Correct. Damn. From unconscious to conscious. So basically whenever anything is capable of sensing the environment and reacting to it you would say that there is some evidence of consciousness. H so consciousness is not a binary. It's not that you are conscious or unconscious. Consciousness is a spectrum and it depends on your ability to spot reactions that you can say something is conscious or unconscious. So for example there are certain human conditions where the person may not be reacting at all and you can say the person is unconscious but actually the person is conscious like so there's

8:33 something called locked in syndrome where a particular part of the brain in your brain stem it's an area called pawns p ns if there is an infact there if there's an injury in that part you become completely paralyzed You can't move your hands. You can't move your legs. You can't speak. You can't do anything. You're completely paralyzed, but you are able to sense. But there's no way for people to know whether you can sense or not. So you can hear everything I'm seeing, but you can't re respond. Not even not even with your eyelid. Nothing. So there are some small eye movements

9:19 that sometimes may be possible but people have been thought to be in coma while they were actually not in coma. They were just paralyzed completely. So these are interesting things and you can't know unless you have an MRI and you do those tests and all of that. So back to evolution like this glass is not doing anything. It doesn't seem to have any purpose in itself. It'll only move when we move it. Whereas a bacteria would not do that. It has a sense of purpose. At some point, bacteria combined with other bacteria and formed multisellular organisms. So like fungi. So there's something called hifi. Um so or hydra. So th those are sort of fungal

10:06 creatures that had multiple cells attached together. So those are called as multisellular organism. still no nervous system. It's still all chemical. So from one side of that organism to the other, all the information was being carried through chemicals. Eventually the multisellular organisms became bigger and bigger and the organism realized that for information to travel from one side to the other, it was taking too long. So imagine that in human evolution if there was there were two towns so Mumbai and Pune and something very important is happening in Mumbai that

10:51 Pune people had to know and the only way that Pune could know is by writing a letter and physically transporting that letter. It would take too long. So evolution figured out that instead of chemicals what if we use electricity to transport information and that is the first time that nerves evolved simply for speed of transfer of information. So now just think about this for a second all this so that you know what is going on around you. So imagine if you were if you lost your eyes. Imagine if you lost your your

11:37 hearing. Imagine if you lost your touch. Close your eyes and just imagine what would it be like if you could not see or hear or touch. Would you even know that you exist? You can't sense anything. There is nothing. The reason that you know that you are here is because your nervous system is giving you information from the world. And that started in that amoeba. The first time those neural networks started developing, it was able to transfer information and eventually there was so much information and the creatures also got bigger and bigger that there was no one center that was deciding on what to

12:23 do. So that is the first time that the neural centers condensed into one node where all the information came and decision making start and what species is this? So all this was happening in the ocean, right? All this was happening in the water and um sort of like the great great great grandfather of octopus there like um so octopi have very interesting neural structures because there is one brain and then there is a brain inside each leg and then there is neural networks. So that's how the connections happen. Right? There was an organism called bilateria. It's a back

13:08 it's almost like a multisellular bacteria and that was the first time that nature decided that it's important to know right and left. So amieba has no right and left. Amieba is like the circular thing and right left but in bilateria species there was a right and left and that is the first time that there was a central line that came. So there was a central line and then there was nerves going on both sides. Spinal cord that was the earliest version of the spinal cord. So did the spinal cord come first or the brain? The spinal cord. So that that first node that formed was the early spinal cord. Yes. So that no that node was nothing that

13:55 node was just a collection of nodes. Gotcha. Right. and then several nodes came and all of those nodes connected and that formed the earliest version of uh spinal cord. Now what's interesting is that why did all this come about? So that you can get information so that those creatures can hunt for food. There is nothing else in life except looking around and getting food for energy. So alongside this development of the nerves and nodes there was also how to take in food. So parallel to the nervous system the gastric system was also

14:41 developing and you can't say what is more important. So the nervous system developed so that you can eat and you ate so that you can build a nervous system better. What was the force behind evolution? In one word, survival. That's the easiest word. But bacteria was also surviving. So you have to go one step deeper. It's not just survival. Because why did evolution keep pushing forward? And I would say the simplest way of putting it is efficiency and control. So yes, you can survive. Even the

15:28 bacteria were surviving. But did it have control? It had control over very little things. The more you are able to control, the more your chances of survival. So the one factor that seems to be pushing evolution forward is a push for more and more control of the environment. That's the one uh engine. I'm obviously linking it to you and me in the modern day. Absolutely. Nothing changes. So one of the beautiful things about evolution is that every lesson that every one of our ancestors have learned is still in us. So the lessons that our first uh

16:16 unisellular bacteria learned is still in us. Those lessons probably became our sense of smell by the way. Oh really? Yeah. Because sense of smell is entirely chemical and sense of taste is also chemical. Imagine how much of evolution needed to happen to get the ability to convert rays of light which are photons into signals that you can understand because we are essentially made of chemicals. So it's easy for us to uh sense chemicals. So taste developed, smell developed both are chemicals. They directly enter our body and they directly cause reactions for us to

17:01 understand what is going on. Then we develop pressure. So movement things happening around us is basically pressure. So when I touch you, I am basically putting pressure on you. That developed next. So the sense of touch developed after that. Then there was pressure but from sound waves that developed after that and then eyes. So eyes were sort of like the last one to develop. So there are entire species of fishes deep underwater that don't have eyes. They have everything else. They're able to sense everything else but eyes did not develop because eyes are very expensive from an

17:48 evolutionary perspective. So it takes a lot of energy to convert light into meaningful signals. So that evolution kept that for the last right and very interesting because there are some senses that other animals developed that we don't even have like uh there are certain insect species that can see ultraviolet and infrared spectrum of light. There are um animals that can sense geomagnetic direction. So the earth has magnetic waves. Sea turtles can sense that. So even if you blindfold them and you leave them in the water, they'll be able to make their way across like thousands of kilometers of ocean because they know where is north, where is south. They're

18:34 able to sense it. But if you put a large magnet on their heads, they get lost. So they are able to sense geomagnetic, you know, the poles. So there are a lot of these senses that other animals developed that we never developed. We don't even know what it's like. So all these senses developed so that we can become more and more aware of our environment. But it's not enough to just be aware information if you don't know what to do with it. So then as more and more senses developed our ability to process all that information also developed. So you had specific centers that was dedicated to processing specific senses.

19:21 Let's go back to that timeline of evolution. Yeah, we we reached the point where we were talking about just the spinal cord developing. Correct. Uh do earthworms have brains? Earthworms are part of the bilateral species? So earthworms if you cut them in half the left side left side and the right side are both similar. Right? So the when you cut them what happens is on top is the nervous system the spinal cord and right underneath is the gastric system and that's it mouth to anus it's a single tube these two developed together I want you to remember this line so the nervous system and the GI system developed together they are twins they came through evolution together they are

20:09 intricately connected Ed both of them are constantly in support of each other which is why we say gut brain. Yes. So even today if something goes wrong in your brain your gut will suffer. If something goes wrong in your gut your brain will suffer. Yeah. As evolution progressed. The progression happened in two main areas. One is movement. So earthworms had a lot of legs right? They would move. But you want to move more and more efficiently. So how do you move faster? How do you move quicker? So movement progress. So their body is physically changed. And the amount of processing that needs to be done also changed because if you have

20:55 to move very quickly that means that your processing time is less now. So you need a more efficient processor. So the nervous system evolved and that is how it's it wasn't enough. Remember earlier there was just a neural mesh there was just a net then there were nodes and then all the nodes came to the center and then there was a spinal cord but even that wasn't enough so one part of the spinal cord became bigger. So the node at the end of the spinal cord became bigger because that is where the primary sensory organ started accumulating. So whichever part of the body had the senses which was the mouth and the taste and the smell since

21:43 that is where the maximum amount of information was coming in that node became bigger and bigger and bigger and eventually that is what led to the brain. That is how we had not only left and right but we also developed a front and back. Wow. Because the front was where the mouth was and since eating was the primary reason for survival or the primary motivator for survival senses or senses. So then that node became bigger. That's the brain. Wow. That's why our heads are the way they are. Correct. The head is where it is because the mouth is there and so the other senses are there because

22:29 everything is about eating. Everything below this is replaceable. Everything below this has been replaceable. If you think about it, the face has roughly remained the same forever. If you look at a snake, nose, eyes, doesn't really have ears as such. But if you look at evolution, this part the shape would have changed but roughly it's the same because the functions of this part is this much to see to hear to taste and to smell and to eat. Below this has been a whole range of experiments. What is the most efficient way of eating? So is it slithering through the

23:17 floor? Is it flying? Is it running on four legs? Is it walking on two legs? Evolution is just playing trial and error. Trial and error. What is the best way to eat and survive? So this part is the same. As long as you're eating properly that that branch of evolution will progress more. Okay. Now let's move on. So, we've reached the first early brain being developed. What would be a modernday kind of example of this kind of a species where a brain's developed and probably there's some kind of a spinal cord? Worms. So, um you could think of worms or you could push it a

24:04 little bit further into reptiles. So, early reptiles, fish, um fish also. Yeah. So depending on so here again there is a differentiation because some creatures stayed in the ocean and some of them crawled out. So it was the earliest form of reptiles that crawled out. So those are called as amphibians. So the ancestors of crocodiles for example. So they can both be in the water and outside. Sea snakes. Sea snakes. So there are all of those reptiles they are able to function both in water and out. So that happened and then evolution progressed underwater also and outside the water also. Eventually what happened if you are out of the water you need legs. There is no use for legs and hands

24:53 underwater. So underwater what you need is fins. What you need is long tails. What you need is a you know aerodynamic body that can go through water quickly. Whereas above you need legs because you need to propel yourself through the ground faster. And uh that's how reptiles kept evolving and eventually again there was further breakage. Um you had eventually you got mammals because earlier all the creatures were uh born through eggs and then you got mammals. I I just want to rewind a bit. Reptiles according to the timeline of the earth became the dinosaurs that we knew.

25:39 Correct. Right. Correct. Along with the dinosaurs, some of them evolved into I believe shrews. Yeah. Right. Uh shrews are the ancient ancestor I believe of monkeys. They're like they're like ratlike creatures. Correct. So uh there are there was something called as a squirrel monkey and the there were lemurs and they eventually became the monkeys that we know and they evolved into large apes and smaller apes chimpanzees orangutangs which led to humans. The only reason I'm bringing up shrews is because when the dinosaurs went extinct

26:25 because of that cataclysmic event where the meteors hit. Yeah. Uh the shrews apparently went underground, survived. Yeah. And then were able to come out after the cataclysm and those are all our great grandparents. Yeah. That's where that second phase of evolution of life on the earth started. Uh, and the reptiles that survived survived like crocodiles survived. I'm sure snakes survived etc. Uh, insects, cockroaches. H, but the dinosaurs were too big to survive. Yeah, that effectively that's where the dinosaurs died. Yeah. So, there were some uh creatures in that time that were also airborne. They were flying. Um, but yeah, so a lot of lot of evolutionary changes happened there.

27:11 When we talk of neuroscience, when we talk of how the brain evolved, it is still that primary principles are still there. Like there's a spinal cord, there's a brain. Now eyes are very well developed. People can see very well. You're talking about now? Uh no, even during the dinosaur times, um eyes, nose, ear, all these senses are already developed pretty well. And now the main evolution, the main attention that evolution was focusing on was movement. How do we move? I'm I'm sorry. I'll have to pause you a little bit here. There's a very common phrase called the reptilian brain. Yeah. Which is very alive in us today as well. Yeah. So, I'm going to have to ask you to come back to 2025 and talk about what the reptilian brain is because we share this with the dinosaurs. Yes. So, the reptilian brain

27:59 is the most primitive part of the brain. That is where your brain stem is. And the reptilian brain is responsible for the core survival parts of our body which is breathing, your heart rate and your core defense mechanisms. So that fight and flight basic structure reptilian brain it it doesn't even cover the lyic system as it exists today. That is still not reptilian brain. Reptilian brain is even before that. So it is primarily your brain stem and it has your core attraction towards food and and running away from

28:44 danger reptilian brain. That's it. That's it. And that still exists in us today. So whenever you have an urge to not die, whenever you have an urge to eat something or whenever you have an urge to have sex, it's actually a gift of your reptile ancestors. They felt the same. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think reptiles even get upset? There's no way to know. I'll tell you where I'm coming from. We'd gone to Vantara recently and we documented it and there was an interaction we had with the crocodiles where uh Forest Galante was guiding us through it. He patted onto the crocodile enclosure. All these crocodiles came towards us and there was like 100 crocodiles in front of us. Wow. B.

29:31 Oh my god. They will jump. Uh-huh. Yeah. A little bit of primalness in their eyes for sure. And there was just deadness in their eyes. Mhm. I felt like there was no like zero emotion, nothing. [Music] I almost was envious of that. Recently I had gone scuba diving and I dived with sharks in Maldives and we were around 30 m underwater and we were surrounded by around six tiger sharks huge ones 10 12 ft long and one of them swam next to me maybe 5t away

30:18 and I could see its eyes. It is completely black. There's no blinking and it it h you you have a surreal experience because your human brain is wired to look for emotion. Every time you look into someone's eyes, you are looking for some sort of emotion. You're looking to understand what is going on. You cannot understand what is going on in a shark's brain by looking into its eyes. Or are things even going on? It is thinking of something. It is reacting to the environment. It is alive. It's not dead. It will act. It might bite you. But you are looking for signals from its eyes whether it'll bite

31:05 you or not. But you are not wired. You are not trained. But the people who have been diving there for 10 years, 20 years, the the professionals there, the guides, they know. So they know that this shark is behaving like this. is the shark is doing. So they are they are now trained to understand the shark's behavior patterns. So even in your example, the guy who called the the crocodiles, he might not look into their eyes, but he knows how what each alligator is feeling or each crocodile is feeling. So emotion is a tricky thing because it takes two to understand an emotion. It's you also need to learn that animal's emotional behavior patterns. So if you are seeing a crocodile for the first time, you won't understand

31:50 anything. But they do have some reaction. And you can see this with pets all the time, right? Like with cats, with dogs, you know that some things you can say, you shout at them, they'll go to a corner and sulk. That is upset. Sometimes they'll just look into your eyes and you know what they're thinking. Yeah. They're actually trying to convey something to you. Yeah. And that's also your empathy because it's not that it's their thought, it is your thought and you will now act accordingly. So it takes two for that emotional connection to happen. Uh so coming back to that evolutionary story, the reptilian brain is not really capable of expressing emotion.

32:36 The reptilian brain can't do that. In fact, at the reptilian level, the facial muscles are not even developed enough to show expression. in your face that is capable of doing all these expressions. A reptile's brain, a reptile's face doesn't have so many muscles. Its muscles are very simple. Jaw open, jaw closed, eyes, whatever. That's it. Turn head. It's much simpler. So, we are looking for expressions that it is physically incapable of making. That is the communication gap. Okay. Was there a difference between the

33:22 brains inside the shrew's skull versus the brains inside the dinosaur skulls because they were present at the same time? Correct. So the difference would be not very big. This is where the differences really started when we went from eggbearing to mammals. So I think it's called ovaris and viviperis. M so when creatures were born in eggs versus when creatures were born when the female of the species would carry um the baby and deliver the baby. Gradually there was a a difference in the way that the brains evolved at least in our our branch.

34:10 What was happening was we began to have more and more use of our forlims. So we have forlims and we have hind limbs. So forlims is the the the limbs that are in front closer to the mouth and hind limbs are the ones that are closer to the anus. That's pretty much the difference, right? And in the in the branch of evolution that we come in, the four limbs began to be used for other things than just walking. Whereas in all the other uh other branches like cats and dogs and horses, the forlims and hind limbs are exactly for the same purpose for walking, for running. There's no

34:55 difference. Just in our branch, we began to start moving things around with the four limbs and gradually there was a shift in our center of gravity backwards. And this was an experiment. The way I see it is this was an experiment. It could have worked, it could not have worked. If it wouldn't have worked, we wouldn't be here. As simple as that. It's how rats kind of go up like that. And squirrels go up. Yes. So the squirrels were actually so some of the rodents the squirrels would pick up a nut, right? And eat that nut like this. And even beavers in the forest, the beavers were able to use their four legs uh four limbs to say build a dam.

35:41 You know those you've seen stories of water coming in and beavers building a little dam. So gradually some of the animals figured out that they can balance themselves on the hind legs and still move their four legs to get more things done. Before that, the only way to interact with the environment was with our mouths. So if you look at a dog or a lion, the only way they will interact or move anything is with their mouth. They will pick up their babies with their mouth. They will hunt with their mouth. They will eat with their mouth. They will uh try to clear the area with their mouth. Everything is with their mouth and their face. There's no other way to interact with the environment. More control is possible on the environment. On the environment, if

36:26 you use your hind legs for something else and four legs for something else. So their brain started evolving because of the usage of the hands. Yes. And that is why the hands started developing fingers. This was a huge thing. I cannot stress how big of a thing developing fingers were for the journey of the brain. Yes. Simply because till now dexterity or moving small things accurately was not an option. Which is why fingers evolved. And so evolution realized that you can have more control over the

37:15 environment by learning to move particular digits independently. Huge thing. Cut back to 2025. Is there still an evolving relationship between your hand and your brain? Absolutely. If you look at the brain, there's something called as the humunulus. So the humunulus is a shape in your brain that represents what part of your brain controls what part of your body. Okay? So you would imagine that you have your legs, two legs, two hands. So you would imagine that all of these parts will get equal amount of real estate in the brain

38:03 because the brain real estate is very precious. Aic millimeter is very precious and fought for. But would you believe that 90% of that real estate is just for your face and your hands? Wow. Of of you're saying the physical area of the human brain. Wow. And only one small part is for your chest and legs and feet. Most of that part it is it's called the motor cortex which is the part of the brain that is responsible for how your body moves. So your movement is controlled by the motor

38:48 cortex and the majority of that area is just for your fingers and your face. Let's talk about our closest cousins, the chimpanzees. They also have hands. Yes. Their hands are way more powerful than our hands. Okay. Yes. This a stronger species. Yes. I'm assuming our hands are more superior than their hands in terms of intricacy. Like we have a neater handwriting. Yes. Um but there are very interesting studies of chimpanzees doing some pretty dextrous work and um like there are chimpanzees who have learned to type on a keyboard which is pretty

39:33 impressive right because learning to type is not an easy thing. So there is a whole school of thought that a chimpanzeee brain is capable of learning a lot of things that a human brain is. Um except that it's difficult to convince a chimpanzzeee brain as to why why should it learn it? Um but anyway that's a it's almost like an obscure question but the brain is almost the same. A chimpanzeee brain and a human brain is almost the same. So the networks are all in place and chimpanzeee brain also has dexterity. So um there are monkeys who can solve who can work on a Rubik's cube which takes a

40:18 lot of dexterity like turning and all of that. So it is possible. Um I'm I'm just trying to think of the cool things that humans can do with the hands that chimpanzees can't. H I'd probably say art or something. But that's not a function of the hand. That's a function of thought. Where I'm going at with this is what humans are to chimpanzees. The next stage of humankind will be to human beings. Interesting. I'll tell you what it is. So when we come when we talk about movement, chimpanzees and humans theoretically would be capable of pretty much all of it. Okay. So when we talk of evolution say reptilian brain reptilian

41:08 brain limbic system which is the emotional part of the brain monkeys also have this lyic system on top of the lyic system is your prefrontal cortex. In the prefrontal cortex the oldest part is your motor cortex. Does that make sense? So the motor cortex is where your hands and legs are getting moved. Chimpanzees, orangutans, great apes all have a motor cortex that is pretty much as developed as us. But evolution didn't end there because beyond that, evolution progressed. Our prefrontal cortex kept evolving and the most recent parts of our prefrontal cortex is where we differ from monkeys,

41:57 chimpanzees, chimpanzees because we are capable of insight. And this is where the story changes because till now from say the earliest microorganisms had no sense of whether it's alive or not. We are guessing at some point chimpanzees seem to build a lot of animals actually seem to build a sense of community. They would get they would form longlasting relationships. They would break up. They would do a lot of things that human societies also do. So they're also capable of thinking. They would elect a leader. They would be one person who's deciding everything. They

42:43 would fight against different tribes. A lot of things that human beings are still doing. But as far as we know, they have cognition, which means they can think. But what they don't have is metacognition which is can they think about thinking? H can they think about thinking? Can I think about why am I thinking? It's like a human being dwelling upon his or her own mental health. Yes, this is metacognition and this is something that only an evolved prefrontal cortex can do because until now everything else that a human being does a monkey can also do which is fight

43:30 for food, make a family, take care of their kids, go to work technically which is to go and find food, build a tribe, protect your family, All of this monkeys also do. What can humans do currently that a monkey cannot is to think about what am I doing here? Why am I here? And why am I thinking? What is this? What am I what is going on? The spiritual aspect of life. You can think of it as a spiritual aspect of life. You can just think of it as selfawwareness. So this is the crux of the consciousness conversation which is like I said at the

44:18 start of the episode consciousness is not binary. You can't say this is conscious or not conscious. Consciousness is a loop. It's a spiral. Are you conscious? A bacteria is also conscious because it is acting. But are you conscious of being conscious? And are you conscious of being conscious of being conscious? That spiral is what leads to evolution. Whatever our next stage of evolution is, what role do you think the hands will play or is it too difficult to no? We can extrapolate, right? Uh let's look at the principles that we have formed so far. Why is evolution happening for

45:04 survival? Why is the what is the other reason that evolution is happening? For control of our environment. So why did hands evolve? Because we wanted to control our environment better. Today we are not really controlling our environment with our hands so much. Because now we have found third party tools to control our environment for us. Right? Because monkeys needed to evolve hands because they wanted to dig and they wanted to look for things and they wanted to climb and they wanted to break a fruit off. Today machines do all of it. So technically we don't need fingers

45:52 so much. We need fingers to type. But now we have voice. And eventually suppose if we all get brain chips. Technically the reason that we evolved hands will go away. It'll lose its purpose. It'll lose its purpose. Like a tail. Like a tail. So we will not need fingers because the only point of fingers was to interact with our environment. But now we are interacting with our environment in other ways. So while we are still scrolling with our fingers and typing with our fingers, we are also figuring out other ways of interacting with the environment. And when I say environment, I mean digital environment. We still need a hand. We still need fingers to

46:37 open a car key or open a door. But what if you figure out other ways of doing all of it? What if you can just tell the door to open? What if you look at the car and it opens? All of these things if it's possible and if it sustains for a million years it is possible that we might lose our fingers because evolution will not keep anything that we don't use for a long time. What would you say is the most significant thing we do with our hands today? Eating would be the primary thing and that's not changed. Uh eating would always remain the most important thing that we do and that will always remain a core drive. Um and if you look at it very

47:22 simplistically, everything else that you do is say at your job or whatever is in a way linked to being successful enough that you can eat. Wow. Right now this is at the reptilian brain level. Your motivation at the reptilian brain level is this much. Does that mean that we don't have more to offer? No. So at the limbic brain level, you will have other motivations. So you will have ego. So the limbic brain is where ego comes in. This is who I am. Tigo taking charge of its territory. Yeah. Sort of like that. Yes. So that's where the ego comes in. So ego comes with its own

48:08 motivation. Then you have your prefrontal cortex. Prefrontal cortex come with its own motivation that I want people to look at me this way. I want to be remembered in a 100 years. A tiger will not think like this because a tiger's brain is not capable of thinking 100 years ahead. Only a human brain can even conceive of time like this. What will you do? If you try to have this conversation with a tiger key, what will you do in 5 years? Even if you could speak in a tiger language, how do you put that thought across? Because for a tiger, it's all dayto-day. I'll wake up and then whatever my body is telling me to do, I will do. How do you plan 5 years

48:55 ahead? The part of the brain that does that is the prefrontal cortex, specifically the frontar part of the prefrontal cortex. Can can we talk about the perception of time within the human brain? Yeah. A lot of astrophysicists I've spoken to on the show have said that actually physics has still not understood what time is just a convenient uh means for certain mathematical equations that we use to explain the nature of the universe which is what we term as physics but they no one's understood what time is what is the relationship of the modern human brain with time and I also asked this from the perspective where it's like a really boring example, but it's it's a common one, which is that on vacation,

49:40 time seems to pass much slower than normal. And when you're in your work environment, on a day-to-day basis, time seems to fly by. But during some tasks, time gets stretched and during tasks where having fun, time shrinks. What's actually happening in the brain? When you say time, there are two kinds of time. There is objective time and there is subjective time. And for all practical purposes in our everyday life, what we are talking about is subjective time. Objective time is the time that is calculated on paper. Right? So how much time is between 12:00 and 4:00? And you would say 4 hours. Great. That's objective time. But subjectively, if you start

50:27 working at 12:00 and you stop working at 4:00, did you do 4 hours of work? It's impossible because subjectively the way that the brain is structured, you were aware of what you were doing for only around 50 to 60% of that. the rest of the time you were daydreaming. This is just the way that the brain is wired. Your attention will flow in and out. And when your attention is flowing out, you won't even realize that it's gone. So whatever amount of time you think you have, you actually have half

51:12 of that in terms of subjective time. So you are only whatever time you are aware of is the time that is available to you. So that is so this whole thing is called chrono perception. What part of the brain processes time? Multiple parts. So there are so there are circardian rhythms and there are basically chronosensing apparatus at multiple levels. So there is a time loop even in the cells in the organs. So the liver keeps its own clock. The heart has its own clock. Um and different parts of the brain has they have their own clocks. So circadian rhythm is a 24-hour cycle and then you have your uh monthly cycles. So different loops happen. So there are multiple clocks going on in

51:59 your body. The part of the brain that is aware of moment to moment um that it's um so there's something called as a default mode network which is the part that is involved in self introspection. So that's what the part that is aware of the self. Whenever you go into default mode network state, you lose awareness of time because time is an external perception. Is this like going into flow state sort of? Yeah. Even when you meditate or when you daydream also. So flow state is different because flow state is when you are engaged in something outside. So even in flow state you're not actively thinking of time but in default

52:46 mode network state you're going inwards you're daydreaming you are in your own imaginary land and vape you will lose sense of time like how when you're dreaming you are in full internal state so time has no relevance when you're dreaming can you tell how long you've been dreaming there's no sense of time so this happens this is how your brain perceives time because there is a block that keeps track of how your attention is put out into the world. And whenever that attention goes away from the external world inside, you lose sense of time and then you come back again and you have to see a clock that oh and then you go back. With practice you can increase the duration of your

53:31 focus on the external world. But you have to focus for it. You have to practice this. If you don't practice, people who are not attentive, this is what happens. They'll flow out, they'll be aware of time, they'll flow in, and they're not aware of time. So, the more daydreaming you do, the less aware of time you are. Does that make sense? Yeah. I'm I'm just trying to link it to how this whole section of our podcast can add value to a modern day human being. Sure. So I'll tell you one thing that people should do to make their time management better. First of all, understand that your attention flows in waves like a sine wave. Your attention will come and your attention will go. Expecting that you

54:17 will have constant attention for 2 hours, 3 hours is not possible. So first step is understand that attention is coming in waves. That's why you should focus in waves. The Pomodoro technique is a great method. So 20 minutes, set an alarm, sit, know that as soon as the alarm goes off, you will stop and then you will relax. So you are learning to sync your attention with the wave form that already exists. And so whenever you are in sync you can focus and then you come out and you can make more time this way. You can be more efficient with more efficient work. Correct. So you sync up.

55:05 Okay. Let's go back to the main timeline of evolution. We actually reached the point where we were talking about hands and how the development of hands was very significant for the sake of the development of the brain. Yes. Because suddenly you could manipulate your environment much better. Yes. And this is the point in the timeline where we were apes. Yeah. Right. And then multiple different branches broke out. One became gorillas, one became orangutans, one became chimpanzees. What I'm actually trying to say is that at some point some of those chimpanzees evolved to the next stage. So there were many species. So there was

55:52 Homo Africanis then Homo erectus then uh Neanderthal chromagnon then Homo sapiens. All of these were different stages of evolution from ape to man. Why did that jump happen from chimpanzzeee to that something more than a chimpanzeee phase? There are multiple theories. Um so there's something called as a sephilization theory which is that some of the some of the species of um early early men who were living next to water bodies around the Nile. They were eating fish. And one of the theories is that fish contains more dexas hexoninoic acid. So, DHA which is a part of the omega-3 fatty acids and getting access

56:40 to that food led to greater brain development. That is one theory that why did civilization develop around rivers and that area. Now, this is interesting. What is the biggest problem that current human beings are trying to solve? In my eyes, it's about making the world a kinder place. I think human empathy on a very core level because I think that's the root of many of the other problems. So at the brain level, how would evolution fix this? Maybe the most maybe the part of your brain responsible for empathy develops more. That's what being intuitive is in the first place. Being an empath,

57:27 feeling other people's emotions. So what stops people from being empathetic? Ego. Yeah. Exactly that. The feeling that I am in danger, the feeling that who I am is going away, that if I'm empathetic towards this person that is harmful to me. Got to pause you. You remember the Hindi podcast we did about evolution. How do you become Shiva? We spoke about a part of your brain that's responsible for your sense of self and ego. Yeah. And how that switches off when you meditate. Yeah. So the part is called amygdala and it is primarily responsible for detecting threat around you. So anything that is a threat to who you are, the amydala will

58:14 get activated. It's a very useful part. It's not a bad part. You need that because the amygdala decides what is important and what is not. What should you pay attention to and what is not. But that ego, that sense of I am in danger. I need to protect myself. This identity of mind is at risk. As long as we are holding on to that thought, it will prevent us from truly getting to the next stage of thought, right? You know, we spoke about the possibility that perhaps hands won't be that important in the future. kind of made me reflect upon all that's happening around us today. Um I think our guts are getting really affected

59:00 because of uh the degraded quality of the food that we're putting into our bodies today. Cheese is not what it used to be. Milk is not what it used to be. Wheat is not what it used to be, etc., etc. Secondly, um I do believe that labmade meats will become a reality maybe 100 years from now and at that point perhaps human beings are going to stop killing other beings for the sake of food. I think conjecture and the third thing that popped up in my head was love. And I realized that as we spoke about the evolutionary process, we didn't even mention love once. Because honestly, evolution is a

59:48 lot more about sex than it is about love. Uh in saying that, of course, animals feel love between each other, especially parent and child love. But this romantic love situation, is it there in primates? So love as we experience it is an interpretation of everything that is leading up to that point. So let me explain what are the components of love. At the primal level is reproduction, sex, attraction that is there even in human love. If you go a little higher there is

1:00:34 emotion. Wanting somebody, being afraid of losing them, jealousy also there, excitement is there, that is also part of the limbic system because love is at the limbic level a gamble. You find a perfect partner, you are gambling whether can we get them or not. What do you mean at the limbic level? at the emotional level. Okay, at the emotional level, you when you find somebody that you think is a good partner, think about this from an evolutionary sense, right? Like finding a good partner is a very valuable thing. And so there's a lot of adrenaline

1:01:20 attached to it. So that is also there in the current human equation, even if it is in the dating scene. So suppose if you are texting somebody at 3:00 a.m. Why is there excitement? Because you are in that chase period. You're in that initial chase period. The adrenaline that comes with it, the dopamine that comes with it is part of a very old network. You are gambling. You are trying something. It's not a sure thing yet. Sure. Adrenaline come. Excitement come. So, if you've been in a relationship with somebody for 5 years, texting them at 3:00 a.m. doesn't give that same adrenaline spike because that uncertainty is not

1:02:06 there. So, that is also part of the human uh experience of love. Bonding with somebody you love, whether you are now co-parenting a child, uh whether that love is towards a child, that bond which is part of the oxytocin network is also part of human love. And then you have the story that we create out of all of this. So when a human being says I'm in love, we are talking about the combination of all of this and we are clubbing it under one word. No wonder people are confused because we should be actually using seven different words for this. But we are combining all of this and calling it one emotion which is

1:02:51 love. We are actually doing a disservice because the reason that people struggle is because I love you. But I love you. Which part of your brain said I love you? Did the reptilian part say I love you? Did the lyic system say I love you? Did the prefrontal cortex say I love you? I love you meaning. The lens I'm viewing this entire conversation through Yeah. is an evolutionary lens. Got it. And my conjectures that human beings are becoming better looking, more intelligent and more empathetic as time passes. Uh, and this is also based on the fact that you hear so many young parents say that, hey, you know, my children, they're way more advanced than

1:03:37 we were when we were that age. And you actually see that I'm sure you have a nephew or a niece. I feel that with my nephew and niece. Yeah. Um, they just cut above what we were. What does that say about where the human species is going? See, obviously I understand this whole angle of they have Google, they have AI, you know, that whole generation beta thing that they're going to be the first generation born within a world governed by AI. So obviously those children are going to get some other fiery level of education and a fiery level of perhaps mental health issues because of an overactive brain within childhood. Like you know this whole narrative about how pre-teens are dealing with anxiety now. We didn't know the word anxiety when we were pre-teens. So, how far back will that

1:04:23 anxiety start happening now to generation beta? They'll probably have to navigate through a lot of their own minds earlier in life. But I'm curious to see what Gen Alpha and beta are as people in their 30s when you and me are like 50 60 years old. So, in a way, there's no way to answer that. But loosely speaking, we can kind of see the trajectory of where the human species is going. Yeah, we can speculate because one of the reasons for anxiety is that we are getting in more information than we know what to do with right. So that way I feel that our generation was at a disadvantage because when we were growing up when our brains were developing we didn't have access to that much information because I remember spending the first 13 to 15 years of my

1:05:09 life reading child and it blighten and there is a certain rate of information transfer that can happen from books right and of course I would watch movies and all that but then the internet game and even when the internet started it was in this flood of information that happened when I was 25 to 30 and in the last 5 years the amount of information that I've received through scrolling on Instagram and you know on YouTube has been more than probably all the rest of my life put together. So I would say that my brain is not really wired to deal with such an information flood. Now it's an interesting question that what

1:05:54 if somebody born today will their brain at the age of 1 2 3 because they've grown up with iPads because they've grown up with such a world would they be better off or worse off than us. So far what I have seen is that they would be worse off because the way that the internet is structured is that any kid growing up with an iPad as soon as the iPad is taken away I have seen the baby start crying. I have patients in my OPD. The parent will come in, but because there's nobody else at home, they'll bring the kid and the kid is nose deep into a mobile and the kid is two and it can barely hold the phone,

1:06:43 but then it's just looking at YouTube videos and in the middle the mom would just take the phone away and the kid would start balling and crying. As soon as the phone is back, the kid is like I fear that this behavior pattern will lead to serious attention issues. And that is what we are seeing playing out. Also, the reason that ADHD and uh these sort of problems are increasing is because your brain is now not wired to pay attention to one thing that is not this level of stimulating. Because if this level of stimulus is the new normal, reality can never compete with it. So I feel that if I if I have to predict, I feel that there will be a correction which has already started. So

1:07:28 in places like Australia, social media is now banned for people for kids under 16. I think that is going to be the norm. We are going to have to protect children from overexposure to this level of stimulation from an early age because that developing brain needs to be protected. M I think there will be a correction on this and people will kind of be more into physical activity nature. Yes, they have to be similar to how uh kids were kids were given um uh cocaine and opium 100 years ago. Uh for even kids with some cough, they were given stuff like this because at that time heroin was given to kids because at that time they thought

1:08:14 But then you very quickly realize how harmful it is and now it's unimaginable, right? But at one point it happened. So I think something similar will happen with social media where right now we're still figuring out and adults are realizing it's harmful and for kids I feel there will be a shift where kids will get protected. And the pertinent question now is what will the human species look like in a thousand years? H what I I think we were pretty much the same a thousand years ago. A thousand years ago. Yes. 1,000 years is too less a time for things. Let's stretch it to 50,000 years. Sure. Sure. So let's look at it logically. What are the parts of our body that we don't really use anymore

1:09:00 that much? What do we not use? So we don't use hair. Wow. Really? Because hair was originally intended for temperature control. But currently hair does not have a lot of evolutionary advantage. And if tomorrow everybody goes bald functionally, will something change? Will you be will you not be able to do anything that you're currently doing? No. So hair would be one. Um there is an argument for toes. We don't really need them. We're not anyway. Most of us are now walking around with shoes. So whatever function of toes there would have been is also

1:09:46 going away because shoes don't have toes and we are able to function pretty much all day. So why can't our feet look like toes? What are the functions of toes? Earlier they would provide grip, we were able to climb better, all of that. But now we don't need it. So just thinking logically these would be some of the things that go away. Um a lot of us are now sedentary and we are sedentary as in we are not moving around so much. Our metabolism is not wired for sedentary life. Our metabolism is wired to be walking a lot more. What if our metabolism changes? What if our metabolism figures out that hey we actually don't need this level of

1:10:32 metabolism and activity? What if it slows down? We might have changes in the way diabetes happens and blood pressure happens because all those are a result of a previous system where we needed much more energy. What if you realize that a lot of the food that we eat is processed food. So our gut might change. The bacteria in the gut might change. We might learn to eat and live with processed food better. But all this is over a 50,000 one one lakh years. I also think we've reached that point in the story of the earth not just the human story. But the story of the earth where science has suddenly started advancing way faster than it did until now. Oh yeah. So what Yuallo Mahari says

1:11:20 is that uh obviously the next species will have machines incorporated into its own biology, right? Which is nanobots as well as neural link style uh brain chips. Yeah, I can see that happening. Absolutely. I think that's a very obvious. So evolution is now proving too slow because like we said natural evolution would take 50,0001 lakh years. But when have we ever waited that long for anything like we will make it happen? So this is where androids will come in. But because this is a brain centric episode. Yeah. Um whenever you speak about the prefrontal cortex, you say that this is the newest part of the brain. Yes. Uh my question to you is within the preffrontal cortex, what's

1:12:06 the newest part? Brilliant. That that's a clue in terms of where the human brain is going. Yeah. So there are two parts that are developed the most recently. Uh again this is very very subtle because everything is new but there's one called fronttoolar which is responsible for planning ahead. So it's sort of projection visualization. No the best word would be prediction. How do I predict what will happen? Pattern recognition. pattern recognition over time. Pattern recognition not just in a static place. Pattern recognition is me saying this is a this is a cup but prediction is me saying where

1:12:52 will this cup be tomorrow morning at 10:00. For that I will need information as to what your house habits are. Where does the cook keep the cups? And so if I'm good at prediction, I can take a pattern from the past and project it into the future and say in 12 hours this cup will be there. The better I am at prediction, the better is my survival. This is where humans differ from animals, which over 50,000 years could possibly become a stronger sixth sense. Yes. So a stronger sixth sense could very well be the next stage of evolution. You can call it a sixth sense. This is simply better cognitive ability. We are it's not a sense. We are

1:13:41 basically putting whatever we are sensing to better use. We're processing all the data around us much better. Exactly. Exactly how an AI neural net works. Correct. And so if you have the ability to incorporate AI into our prediction patterns, we would be able to make even better prediction. So imagine if you have an AI chip that is now able to process all of this and then if you ask me where will the cup be tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. It might be instinctive for me. Of course, it will be here. In fact, I might be able to tell you where will it be in one week based on previous patterns. So that calculation ability might seem like

1:14:26 magic today but it is simply information processing. How better how well can I process information? Right? Um so this is one part you said there's another part. The other part is the part that is self-introspective. Animals couldn't do this but there is a part called as a ventromedial prefrontal cortex which is outside. The part outside is called dorsalateral prefrontal cortex. That is the part that is responsible for executive functioning. Executive functioning basically means logical thinking. How do I plan my action? So if I if you ask me to set up a chessboard, I will be able to plan. Or if you ask me to make chai, I'll be able to plan the sequence um you know keep the utensil, add water,

1:15:13 what is the sequence of action, how do I plan it? That part is a dorsal prefrontal cortex. Logical thinking looking ahead. Inside that is a ventromedial prefrontal cortex that has the ability to think about emotions. It's new. Animals can't do that. We can do that. We are able to look at ourselves and say, "Huh, I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling angry." And I say we, but I would say that a lot of humans can't do it because this takes effort. So introspection, looking at yourself, understanding what is going on within you is a new skill and that is where spirituality comes in. Exactly. Here is where spirituality

1:16:00 comes in. Because when one begins meditating regularly in life, it's discomforting. You're made to face your own truths. And that's why most people stop meditating or your brain's overactive. You can't like not even meditating. They won't even journal. They won't even think about their emotions. They don't even want to address the fact that they are feeling something. You're challenging the part of your brain that's at the brink of human evolution. Yes. That's not everyone's cup of tea. No. Today I believe that somebody who's capable of regulating themselves are at a better place than somebody who's not. Because somebody who can regulate themselves better, I believe would be able to deal with their own stresses better, which means they are at a lesser risk of mental health issues. What do you mean by regulate themselves?

1:16:48 If I am upset, what do I do with it now? Okay, that is regulation. Viewing your own inherent emotions as external to whatever is viewing those emotions. Correct? So, so far in human history, the successful people have been the ones who could solve external problems better. So, Thomas Edison could invent a light bulb. He successful. Elon Musk could create whatever Tesla company or SpaceX successful. And that will continue. The world will still need human beings to solve external problems and all entrepreneurs will be rewarded. But just as important as external problems are internal problems. And so far the people who are good at solving

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