The Evolving Leader

The Reality Check with Dr Nadine Dijkstra (FROM THE INNER CANVAS SERIES)

• Nadine Dijkstra • Season 6 • Episode 29

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We’re excited to launch this new Evolving Leader mini-series, ‘The Inner Canvas’ co-hosted by our research colleagues psychologist Emma Sinclair and Neuroscientist Dr Emily Clements. In each episode, Emma and Emily talk to pioneering scientists about new breakthroughs in our understanding as to how we make sense of ourselves, painting a picture of the internal canvas that our mind creates. As a result we’ll learn more about our mindset and why it matters, and continue on our journey as evolving leaders.

In this first episode, Emma and Emily are joined by Dr Nadine Dijkstra, Senior Research Fellow at the Department for Imaging Neuroscience, University College London. Nadine’s research on the reality threshold was featured as one of the top three scientific breakthroughs of 2023 and leads us to question whether a lot of what we see in the world is actually constructed in our brains, at which point we might give ourselves that reality check and ask ourselves if our interpretation is really correct. In other words, are your experiences the same as everyone else’s or is the way you think, feel and see unique to you? 

We’ll be releasing the next conversation in this series later in 2024.


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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

Scott Allender:

Hi friends, I am very excited to introduce you to a new evolving leader mini series called the inner canvas.

Jean Gomes:

In these shows our research colleagues, psychologist Emma Sinclair and neuroscientist, Dr. Emily Clements, talk with pioneering scientists about new breakthroughs in our understanding of how we make sense of ourselves.

Scott Allender:

Yes, these will be fascinating conversations that will help our audience learn more about their mindset and why it matters,

Jean Gomes:

and continue with the journey as evolving leaders.

Scott Allender:

Tune in for a powerful set of insights.

Emma Sinclair:

Hello, I'm Emma Sinclair,

Emily Clements:

and I'm Dr. Emily Clements,

Emma Sinclair:

and we're asking a new question of self awareness, which is how does your mind brain and body create your experiences of the world? Are your experiences the same as everybody else's, or just the way you think, feel and see become very unique for you? In this miniseries revolving leader, myself and Emily cast a unique spin on how we understand ourselves, painting a picture of the internal canvass our mind creates. By bringing in guests who research unique aspects of our brain, we aim to open the science up to a wider audience, and apply what we learn about our internal world to everyday life. So Emily, who are we speaking with in this episode?

Emily Clements:

In this episode, we give ourselves a reality check with Dr. Nadine Dijkstra. Nadine is going to introduce her research on the reality threshold, which is featured as one of the top three scientific breakthroughs in 2023. Nadine is a senior research fellow at University College London, with a PhD in artificial intelligence, and a background in experimental psychology. She now uses a multi method approach, which includes brain scanning, machine learning, and computational modeling, to answer questions such as, how do we keep apart what is real and what is imagined. The reason why we brought Nadine on to this series is while the science behind the reality threshold is fundamental, the implications of the work are so much wider. If we can begin to understand that a lot of what we see in the world is constructed in our brains, we can better give ourselves that reality check and ask ourselves if our interpretation is really correct. This episode will take you through how our brains create visions and imagination, then how we can use this knowledge to gain more control over our lives and leadership. And how we might trick the reality threshold and our emotions for positive change. We end with a look to the future and how our sense of reality will be altered, for better or for worse, by artificial intelligence, virtual reality and deep fakes. We hope you enjoy learning from the Dean as much as we do. Let's begin.

Emma Sinclair:

So can we dive into your research a little bit and understand it perhaps for those of us who don't have a neuroscience degree or backgrounds and maybe just understand, we've talked about this idea of the reality threshold? I don't know if that's where you want to start. But it could you bring that to life for us and why that's so important to understand.

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah, so I think probably the better place to start is to think about mental imagery and imagination what that is. So that's the topic that has been the topic of my research. So imagination is closing your eyes and picturing for example, a beach or whatever it just the images that you can see in your mind's eye. That's what we what I talk about when I talk about imagination and mental imagery. And I really focus on the seeing aspect. But this also goes for, you know, your mind's ear, the kind of music that you can hear in your mind. So this this kind of, so we call it simulating sensory experiences that you can kind of see and hear things in your mind. And during my PhD I focused on to what extent we use the same parts of the brain when we imagine something as if he would see us as when we would see that same thing. So I asked people to look at a bunch of pictures and then I also imagine those same pictures while I measure their brain activity. And over the course of four years, I found that actually, the brain does something very, very similar when you imagine something as when you actually see it. So that kind of begs the question how then do we know what's real or imagined? Because your brain does not have access to the outside world, right? Your brain is trying to generate what you're seeing, it's trying to infer what you're seeing based on electricity, but it can't like, directly know what's real or imagined. So the fact that your brain uses many of the same mechanisms to imagine us to see seems problematic. And that's where the reality threshold comes in is okay, but then how do we keep the two apart? And do we use? Do we always keep the two apart? And what happens when we don't? And we, for example, have hallucinations or delusions?

Emma Sinclair:

How have you found the reality threshold, what what's, what's the journey that's taking you to understanding that?

Nadine Djikstra:

So I think the reality treshold is, is only is kind of the this concept of the idea that the brain needs to keep the two apart. So thinking about if you imagine something, you're, you know, many of the same brain areas become active. But then what is the threshold at which point a brain decides that that activation represents reality? That's the idea of the reality threshold. So we talk specifically about the visual cortex, which is where your brain processes, signals coming from your eyes. Your visual cortex also gets activated when you imagine something. So then, at what point does the brain say okay, this activation in visual cortex tells me something about what's actually out there in the world, whereas this activation is only made up, basically, that's a very concrete example. And then reality threshold would be, when does it count as reality according to your brain, I mean, imagine something to bring to something very similar as when we see, you can also flip that around and say, actually, when we see something, your brain does something very similar as when you imagine something. So I think the idea here where our work kind of relates to each other, it's this idea that your brain is really actively creating your reality. It's not, it's not just like a camera, it doesn't just kind of pick up what's out there. But it's actively filling in what you see based on your preconceptions, and etc. And I think what that really highlights and that's, that's what consciousness research is also partly about, is that your experience of reality is very subjective. It's not, it's not very objective. And I think that's also where it can be important for leadership or any kind of interaction with other humans is to realize that your version of reality is really the version that your specific unique brain creates. And that is very different to somebody else's brains.

Emma Sinclair:

Could you help us just bring to life, the experiments that you ran, and published last year to help us measure what we talk about when we have the, this concept to the reality threshold?

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So what I did is I asked participants to imagine a very simple picture. In this case, it was diagonal lines. So they were just imagining diagonal lines, while they were looking at this kind of white noise TV static image. So they had to have a dice open, imagine diagonal lines in that white noise. And then what I also did sometimes, without participants knowing is I showed real diagonal lines in that noise as well at the same time. So you have imagined lines, and realize, and then I asked participants, okay, how safe it was your imagination? How clearly could you see those lines? And then I asked them, hey, actually, did you see any real lines presented on the screen. And then what we found was that when participants were imagining these lines really, really vividly, they were more likely to say that they saw real lines, even when there was nothing there. So sometimes they didn't show anything. So it basically shows that in some cases, participants mistook their very vivid imagination for reality. And what's really nice about this is we did some computational modeling which, and then combined with what we know about the brain, and how the brain processes imagination and reality is a very easy way to explain this, the same brain areas get activated by imagery and perception. But it's about the strength of the activation. And that determines whether we think it's real or not. So if imagination is very, very vivid, very strong, then we can think it's real, even when it's just imagined, but usually, imagination is weaker, and then we can keep it apart from Unity.

Emily Clements:

So I can imagine that that must be like very different for different people. I think I mentioned it before the podcast, but I personally don't have hardly any mental imagery going on. Whereas Emma, for example, has really good mental imagery. So I'm just so curious to know in people when you tell them to close their eyes and imagine use the kind of beach scene before what would you expect to see in people that have different mental imagery abilities, what would you expect to see happening in their brains?

Nadine Djikstra:

In their brains? Yeah, so that's this recently some research that is coming out on this. So there's a specific term for people who cannot see anything in their mind when they try to imagine something. And that's called a Fantasia. So this is the absence of phantasms, so the absence of any visualization in your mind, basically. And there's some research that just came out last year and beginning of this year. And actually, we can't really tell what the differences are yet. So there's some hints that may be one, when people who don't have visualization, they rely more on their frontal cortex, which would suggest that perhaps they're just putting in more effort to try and see something, but it's just not really happening. That feels like my experience. We all like everybody expected that we would see differences in the visual cortex, because this is where, you know, we process what we see as well. So if you don't see anything, when you imagine, perhaps the visual cortex is also not activated. But it's very surprisingly, as the visual cortex is still activated. And people will say that they can't see anything in the mind's eye. But they imagine while they imagine so it's a bit of a puzzle. At this moment. Actually, we don't really understand what's going on there. Well, we do seem to see is that perhaps people and this is not in terms of the brain, but in terms of kind of confusions and behavior, as perhaps people with a Fantasia are less likely to confuse imagery for perception because their experience of imagery is so different. And how that works in the brain is the next question that we are still trying to figure out. But psychologically speaking, it seems that perhaps people would lose vivid imagery are less likely to confuse the two. That's a current kinda.

Emily Clements:

So there's a there's a positive.

Nadine Djikstra:

There's a positive Yeah, exactly. So there's so that yeah, no, I think so. I think so. So that's, you know, it might be protective factor against things like psychosis, or And another very recent, so again, this is all very, very recent research. So we need to be bit careful about drawing from conclusions. But there's one paper that suggests that people with a Fantasia are less likely to have these traumatic V experiences of a traumatic event that you see in PTSD and PTSD, people get these flashbacks. Maybe if you don't have any imagery, you don't get these flashbacks because you can't see it in your mind.

Emma Sinclair:

Can I ask on that? Where the question came from, for your research? What is it that you're sort of posing in terms of why this is important? I mean, it's, you know, Harvard is a breakthrough of last year. So congratulations on that. I'm just really fascinated. What's that? What's the research question behind it for you?

Nadine Djikstra:

So the research question is really is how, how can we imagine things? How can we see things in our mind? And then, you know, building on to that finding out that we use very similar mechanisms as as as actual seeing how do we keep the two apart? How does the brain keep the two apart? It's really it's unclear now. And it's, it seems like such a fundamental question, right? Like, how do we keep our, our internal world like separated from the external world? It goes quite deep pricing. And, and I think it's quite surprising that we don't know that yet. We really, we just don't know. Yeah, so that's the research question.

Emma Sinclair:

And how is this? Where are you seeing this helping people you mentioned before, like, perhaps in schizophrenia, or hallucination? What's, what's the sort of applied element of this down the line?

Nadine Djikstra:

I think there's a few different directions we could take it in. So I do I am a fundamental researcher. So I'm mostly just interested in the fundamental mechanisms at the start, but eventually, yeah, I think figuring out how the brain usually is able to keep apart imagination and reality will tell us what might go wrong, when that doesn't work anymore, such as in psychosis. So we are currently repeating the experiment that you mentioned from last year in a much larger group of people and then we are also measuring their psychosis and hallucination proneness in these people with with questionnaires and then the question would be, do we see that people are more likely to experience hallucinations in daily life, for example, that they sometimes see things that aren't there? These kinds of experiences? Do those people also have higher confusions between images of perception in our in our experiment? That's something we're we're looking into now.

Emily Clements:

I know your researches a lot in visual imagery, but you were also talking about auditory hallucinations. But I think one of the things that interests me in this is if you can start to tease apart and understand how the brain distinguishes between what is real and what is imagined how much impact that could have in terms of just understanding our Often like speaking about kind of how we construct our own reality. And you know, the our own stories that we tell ourselves. And you know, when two people are in a situation, and they leave that situation, and they have a completely different view of what happens, because we just create this own story, a narrative in our head that fits. Maybe sometimes also, what we're projecting onto a situation and what we're expecting.

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah, 100%.

Emily Clements:

Yeah. Do you think like, I know, the core mechanisms for your work is this kind of visual imagery? But do you think really, underneath it, this ability to look at what the brain is doing, when something's real, as imagined could then be kind of translated to a lot of different areas in our lives, like our beliefs, our experiences?

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah for sure. I really, I really do think that. So the way that I and other people think about it is there's a hierarchy of complexity in terms of how we build up our model of the of reality. So for example, if I am interacting with you, then the first level is the sensory or the perceptual level, which is what I see and hear. And that's what my research taps into. But then above that is what I think you think about our interaction, what I believe your intentions are, what the context is, and you can go like more and more abstract in terms of, you know, higher order beliefs is what we call them. And this is what your say what you're talking about. And the idea would be that if at the first level of just what we see, if already, at that point, things are more subjective than we like to think then it's only gonna be exaggerated at higher levels, right? It's only gonna, like add up, add up it up and becomes more and more subjective. So yeah, I think inferring other people's intentions is a good example, because that is very subjective. And if it's, you know, I don't even hear what you're saying, if, if I already kind of fill in what you're saying, just in terms of literal words that you are uttering if I'm already, like, changing that, based on my preconceptions, then the meaning of those words, I'm only gonna, like, go go further and further away. Does that make sense? It's a bit it's a bit of an abstract concept.

Emily Clements:

Yeah. And I loved the that hook. For me, it was the, the fact that even if that what we consider as our very kind of like the sensory perceptual, like what you see what you hear, at that very base, in senses and everything else, on top of that, it's more complicated, if we are considering the even that is constructed. So even that can kind of alter depending on your own experiences. So for example, even just the fact that I don't have, like mental imagery, you guys do, again, a conversation, if someone was describing something quite visual, the experiences that we have in those conversations just going to be so different.

Nadine Djikstra:

Exactly. 100% 100%. So in terms of individual differences, I think there's going to be massive effects there. And another area that I think is quite interesting that people have just started to explore us that individual differences in imagery, fitness also seem to be related to individual differences in perceptual sensitivity. So if your imagination is very, very, very vivid, you might also be more sensitive to things in the environment. So you might see things that other people don't see, you might hear things that other people don't hear. So, yeah, this this goes quite far, I think.

Emily Clements:

What are you currently doing at the moment for your research, but research studies you running? I think you might have mentioned that you're doing some brain imaging at the moment?

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah, so I actually, I'm really excited about this, because I'm doing two things, the brain imaging is something that we're that I'm just finishing some analysis on. So it's basically our study that we did the behavioral study, we also did it in the in the brain scanner. And then so I seem to find have found the regions that code for the reality TV show. So that's really exciting. So that's something that we're looking into now. And another thing that we're doing is actually use brain stimulation. So that's a transcranial magnetic stimulation, which alters the electrical field of your brain. And the idea is that if the main difference between imaging and perception is really the strength of the signals, what happens if you increase the strength of these signals with brain stimulation? Well, people are imagining to do that and think it's real. That's the that's the study that as well.

Emily Clements:

So you pinpointed the the areas or the network that you think responsible for and that's kind of us being able to say that's real. That's not

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah, and now we're stepping them with with brain stimulation to see if that changes it. Yeah.

Emily Clements:

On people are you how do you what do you use to zap it just so people who don't know what it is can understand? So it's called

Nadine Djikstra:

TMS or transcranial magnet stimulation and it's basically a magnetic field that's interacting with the magnetic field of the electrical current in your neurons. And it's very safe kind of non invasive way to change your brain activity. So it's like a H shaped kind of coil that you just push on somebody's head, and then you send some current, and then that changes, your brain activity. This technique is also used to treat depression. It's it's quite safe.

Emily Clements:

Nice. And so what do you think the potential benefits of it could be? If you can, you can zap people's reality threshold? Yeah, this is real now. Well, this is the Madison.

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah, I mean, ultimately, ultimately, ultimately, in like, maybe 10 or 20 years, let's, you know, if if we can do that maybe we can change it for good for people with psychosis. And we can, you know, maybe their reality threshold is just miscalibrated that maybe we can recalibrate it with, with with our with our brain stimulation, that will be amazing. Right? So that's one potential application in the future.

Emma Sinclair:

Where is your research taking next?

Nadine Djikstra:

So I think this reality threshold is really like a concept. Now, it's a concept based on one behavioral study. So we really need to investigate more how this is implemented in brain which factors or influence it? What are the individual differences? How does this affect things like hallucinations? Psychosis? PTSD? Is it you know, related to just general receptionist, there's so many questions that come from just as basic simple concepts. So that's, yeah, lots to do. The role of emotion as well, very important.

Emma Sinclair:

This gets me sort of quite fascinated to think about how you take that into leadership or even into team environments where, you know, you work on a base assumption that we're all seeing the same thing. And I know, you know, studies and been shown that people do see different things, obviously. But I mean, how do you even start a conversation around that? I don't know, if you if that came up in any of your research in terms of how people just made it okay to say, Well, I definitely not seeing what you're seeing there. And is that okay? Yeah,

Nadine Djikstra:

I think that's actually that's actually one of the things that I love about it is we don't talk about it. So we assume that everybody's experience is similar. But then, for example, a Fantasia which is this, like complete lack of visualization. People don't realize this until they're like 3040 years old, and then they're like, wait, you can see thanks for your mind. They're so surprised that other people can see these things. So I think, exactly, it's exactly something that we don't talk about. And I think in terms of like collaboration and any kind of interaction with others, it's just good to check your assumptions. Like if you're going to make important decisions about what you think somebody else thinks, then maybe just ask, just check. Yeah, cuz because there's a good chance that you're wrong.

Emily Clements:

I'm just thinking about that different internal Canvas that people have going on, and how that affects people and interactions. Do you with your research kind of on it? Do you find yourself at all in your work or in your life, kind of using the understanding, I guess, that you've gained from your research in the way that you interact with people?

Nadine Djikstra:

No, 100% 100%? I think in terms of checking assumptions, I think that's a really good example. Like I mentioned before, I think we're all very quick to assume that I just think similarly, as we do and know, my research, and just research in this area in general has really shown to me that that's not just not true, in many circumstances. So yeah, I think I'm much more like, I have a very direct communicator, I just really asked, I think being Dutch also is maybe plays a role in that. But I think just knowing that, you know, everybody's interpretation of a specific situation is so subjective, I think that makes me Yeah, always really want to check, especially when it's important.

Emma Sinclair:

Why can we imagine as human beings, what does that are unable for it?

Nadine Djikstra:

One thing that we're thinking about is maybe the conscious visualization aspect is important for generating an emotional response. That's something that we've been thinking about. So there's some research that shows that if you can imagine something very, very physically, then the emotion associated with the experience is also stronger.

Emma Sinclair:

That connection is, is the same, I think, I guess I'm trying to understand what love to from that, you know, the concepts of how and why you might imagine so I could see it in a sporting environment, obviously, and a lot of coaching is in that space, you know, imagining the imagining winning, imagining being at the line, the same as done in, you know, thinking about visions for organizations, you know, five years 10 years, and then working back from that futures future end state. And I've just recognizing now even working with leaders that if you've got a group of leaders who can do that, and it becomes very vivid and to your research, and sometimes the imagination is so vivid that you physically can see it, and then you've got a group can't, it just begs the question, how do you how do you start? From why start from a place of imagination? Is it the place to start? I don't know.

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah, that's a really good question. So again, the question is really like, how important is the is the seeing aspect? Because you can, you can kind of think about a future right without actually seeing it. Right? If that makes sense. Like you can, you can, okay, where do you want to be in five years? And you can like, give a verbal description of what that would be. But that doesn't mean you actually see yourself there. And yeah, we Yeah. And my intuition is the same as yours, that seeing yourself there makes you more motivated? And like, Yeah, makes you feel it more.

Emma Sinclair:

But do we do a connection to the emotion sounds like that's?

Nadine Djikstra:

I think so. Yeah, that's,

Emma Sinclair:

that'd be 2020 was breakthrough, I can guarantee exactly.

Emily Clements:

I guess what I'd like to know is if say, you know, someone listening to this episode, is listening and understanding about the reality threshold, understanding the things we've spoken about. So the fact that it, you know, even things that we're imagining are kind of constructed, but even our reality is constructed, thinking about how this might play into how we interact with other people, and then also have endless speaking kind of about our visions of the future. What could someone gaining understanding about the reality threshold do for them personally, in terms of understanding themselves a bit more and helping them.

Nadine Djikstra:

So this is all going to be hand wavy, Anessa scientist, I don't like it, but I'm just going to preface it. And then I'll say that this is all just my speculation, and we need more research. But I Yeah, the way that I harnessed my own imagination, which is similar to what Mr mentioned, is to kind of trick my brain into creating a specific reality. Because if you, you know, we know that your brain responds very similarly. So you can kind of decide what your reality looks like, by imagining it that way. If you're constantly imagining that things, if you're constantly imagining, you know, hard future or scary things, then your brain is gonna feel like that's real, you're gonna feel like that's real. So your whole perspective of the world, and your whole experience is going to be negative. But you can also harness that the other way. So you can, you know, imagine positive things and imagine good things. And then, and then that is also going to be the lens through which you see the world. I think that's something that is quite powerful. And I think there's a lot of like, self help stuff that already, you know, focuses on that. But we can back that up with neuroscience, because you could just trick your brain that that's that that's true.

Emma Sinclair:

How does our mind play tricks on us in that respect?

Nadine Djikstra:

All the time? I mean, I mean, we've all obviously, I mean, I assume that most people have experienced anxiety, right? And when you're anxious, you, everything is scary, you see everything negatively see danger everywhere, and none of that speed. All right, that's, I think that's a very clear example. And then when you're really anxious, and you're, you know, driving in a dark road at night, you might see like, scary people in the bushes everywhere. But again, none of that's real, that's just your brain, creating a reality that fits with your perspective of the world. But you can flip that around as well. And it's hard because it requires a lot of kind of self awareness and reflection and realizing that your brain is playing tricks on you realizing that it's not real. I think a lot of Yeah, cognitive behavioral therapy, for example, goes into that, as you know, seeing your thoughts for what they are, which is just thoughts and interpretations, not reality, and then trying to flip that around.

Emma Sinclair:

When could this become like almost a hate the phrase, I'm going to use it because it makes sense, almost like a superpower in some respects. Because you'd really touching on that idea of it being part of your core self awareness. Now, what I don't want to do is suggest that everybody walks out there and questions whether they really are seeing a table in front of them, and we become very existential. Like, what's that kind of question? You should ask yourself? Well, in the moment, since you said, maybe it's an area of uncertainty or a moment you actually want to ask like, what am I actually seeing here? Yeah,

Nadine Djikstra:

I mean, you can just ask, is this real? Okay, you can, like that. Sounds fine. Yeah, I think that would work. And I think good interpersonal relationships is also a big thing, right? You assume somebody has really bad intentions, or you can just get is this real? Maybe not, you know, and then you can ask and check and do other checks to

Emily Clements:

That's the reality check.

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think and I think a lot of this we already know from psychology and from other areas of research, but I think You know, the neuroscience now is really showing how far this actually goes, I think.

Emily Clements:

Yeah. And that's the way I see it on. So you were like, kind of speaking about anxiety and like seeing threats in the dark. I just started to think Do you think there's a in some ways? Are most people's brains set up to almost have the negative construction perceive a threat? Because either like, is that the survival mechanism? And is twisting that to create a more positive constructive reality? Is that the work? Is that harder? Or? I mean, we all know some people who are just like, so optimistic like, did they? Were they born with it? Like how? Yeah, how? How hard do you think it is? Do you think it is? Like, that's the kind of tendency for most people to get a bit more negative?

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah, again, this is not my area of expertise. So this is a bit of speculation. But that's yeah, that's what I would think as well, indeed, that, you know, for survival mechanisms, or survival. reasons, it makes more sense to notice when things are bad, and to have a little bit of a bias of noticing things that could potentially be dangerous. You know, the things that are positive and keep you safe, don't really add any information for your survival chances. But it doesn't make you feel better. So especially in our, you know, modern society where there's no lions lurking everywhere, it might be helpful to try. Yeah, flip that perspective a little bit. But yeah, I would, I would assume that that is less automatic and requires more effort.

Emily Clements:

Yeah. And I guess I'm thinking, so like to bring you back to your, you know, visual, actually, what you're seeing. So I feel like a lot of people have situations where their stay in a conversation with someone, and they think, Oh, they looked pissed off with me. Like, is that? Do you think there's an element or sometimes the that kind of constructed reality come in, we're in a certain kind of mood thinking, and we're seeing certain motions on people's faces who met like, maybe it's not even yet 100% 100%?

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah, totally. So in terms of emotions, that's a really clear one. But even you know, if you, if you have a slightly ambiguous picture that's done research that I'm more aware of your slightly ambiguous picture, you expect to see one thing, you're gonna see that thing. And if you expect to see something else, you're going to see that other thing, even though the picture is the same. So it's your expectations, your view, it really influences what you're saying, yeah.

Emma Sinclair:

I'm going to I'm going to take this into something else, just in terms of this, this crossover between reality and imagination. And where, you know, most recently are some of the emerging topics we share with you beforehand. This is becoming harder, potentially, for us as human beings. And one one is the rise of AI. And when we were thinking about this, from a visual perspective, obviously deep fake became something, you know, that we were considering. And I think we just posed this question like, how can we trust what we see? How is how is this affecting your thinking and the work that you're doing as well? Yeah,

Nadine Djikstra:

no, it's a really good question. And, you know, the way I think about this is that my research is going to show hopefully, what the brain uses to decide what's real or not. And then maybe we can say, Okay, those are also the things that we use when we evaluate whether a deep fake is real or not. But that doesn't actually help us and actually, you know, the truth of whether it's real or fake, right? Because I think, you know, as the technology advances, that's just going to be almost impossible, unfortunately, especially if you just have a have video material. But you don't know whether that's a recorded video or a generated video. I don't think there's any, you know, as if it's really good. I don't think there's anything that would distinguish the two because it's just in a video material in both cases. Yeah.

Emily Clements:

And I guess like what you're saying is not not in our brains. We know exactly. Where that would then detect it. But see, yeah, we like with your reality fresh. Well, I guess that the signal when we're watching this video is strong enough that we don't, we're gonna perceive that as I think so too. Yeah,

Nadine Djikstra:

I think I think we do also use other cues. So yeah, if it's, if the quality of the video is good, yes, but we will also maybe check if it makes sense. So, you know, a good example, if we suddenly see a video of a human flying, we're probably gonna think it's a deep shake, because humans don't fly. Right. So like those kinds of things. Have, you know, our background knowledge about the laws of the universe will also influence whether we think something is real or imagined or real or fake. But yeah, if the technology is good enough,

Emily Clements:

That's interesting kind of in itself, though, in terms of, because if we have certain models and belief systems, say if it was, I don't know if deep fake was used for kind of political agendas or whatever, like, you know, if you have a certain view, and you see a kind of constructed video, some people would see it and think, Oh, that's not real, and other people might kind of perceive that as real.

Nadine Djikstra:

Oh, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I think that's, that's probably what's going to happen then.

Emma Sinclair:

That kind of brings me to that. That's very Yeah, simple question that you asked in terms of how you how you can stop playing tricks on yourself for search, which is, is this real? You know, I almost didn't dismiss it, but I didn't really think about it as such an important question until you then bring that into the reality. And as Emily said, if you've got two groups of people watching a, you know, a deep fake video, and, you know, essentially arguing about the future and positive policy around those, then the question really is actually, we need to bring that into our own awareness of well, what is what is reality? And how do we, how do we question that in the future? That takes us into a completely different realm is leadership and beyond,

Nadine Djikstra:

understand and observe, and I think realizing how subjective our experience our initial experience is, will hopefully also, you know, motivate us to actually do this reflecting did make this extra step, not just assume, and not just, you know, take the information as face validity, but actually think about it. There's actually some really interesting research from my collaborator Steve Fleming Professor Steve Fleming is professor of metacognition, or self awareness is the research. And he has shown that people with more dogmatic views, both sides of the political spectrum, but just the more extreme, the views are, the lower the metacognition, so the lower the self awareness, which intuitively makes sense, right? So if you're, you know, if you go very extreme them probably just not reflecting on things

Emily Clements:

very much anymore. Yeah, um, for people who aren't familiar with metacognition, can you give like, a definition of what is metacognition and Oh, very, yeah,

Nadine Djikstra:

so metacognition is thinking about thinking. So that can be that's quite broad as it can be reflecting on whether what you see is accurate or not. So that's the area where I'm looking into, but also, whether what you remember, actually happened or not, was, was was accurate, or, you know, when you're doing a linear, revising for an exam, whether your knowledge is good enough or not. So it's just kind of reflecting on your own cognitive abilities or cognitive processes.

Emily Clements:

So how does the say this metacognitive kind of ability that some people have an IQ can be kind of higher in some people and lower in some people with that, right. So how does that interact with our reality thresholds? So when we're trying to perceive something is kind of real, or it's imagined? What what's our that metacognition unable to do for?

Nadine Djikstra:

So again, we don't know. So the way that Steve and me are thinking about this is that you use the same mechanisms of priority, the same mechanisms. So you're, and we call this perceptual metacognition, that is, how well you know how accurate your perception is. And then I then we're kind of adding a dimension to that saying, okay, that perceptual metacognition is not only saying how accurate your perception is, but it's also saying whether your perception is real or imagined. It's like adding, adding another factor to it. But this is this is going really into the nitty gritty of the of the, of the science.

Emily Clements:

Yeah I tend to go deeper into that. So I'll hand it back over to bring us back to reality.

Emma Sinclair:

So what happens in the dean, I'm just going to take you to another route, what happens when we do have something that definitely feels real, but we know it isn't real? Because we are, you know, so I'm thinking virtual reality, we put a headset on. We know it's not real. But in all intensive purposes, it feels ridiculously real when you're in it. Like, how, how are we making sense of that world?

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah, that's really that's really interesting question and something I've been thinking about a lot as well. And it also reminds me of things like lucid dreaming. I don't know if you, yeah. So people have a lucid dream. And most people experience one or two in that lifetime or a couple I know, but some people have it more regularly. It's when you're dreaming, or you can wake up in your dream, but you're still dreaming. So you're still in your dream world, but you realize that you're dreaming so you You're aware that you're dreaming. So you know, it's not real, but it still feels real. So what a lot of people do including me is they start flying, because that's amazing. And you can just fly in your dream. And you're like flying and you're experiencing, and you feel it. So your emotions are in line with what you're experiencing. But you know, that this is you just dreaming. So there seems to be a distinction between kind of experiencing something as real in virtual reality in dreams and knowing that it's real, which is like a higher Nestle. So we think about it as a higher level, this belief level that we talked about, whereas the first level is the kind of perceptual experiential level, and then the belief or the knowledge is the higher level. And, you know, again, something we still need to investigate a lot of, and we were still kind of, at the at the first steps into that research, we probably is going to be different brain mechanisms that track both of those, and they interact. So usually when you you know, when something feels real, you're gonna think it's real, but sometimes it can decouple.

Emily Clements:

I know this is really dystopian, but it's making me think about, you know, when they talk about the kind of like future of AI and how it could solve, like, loneliness and all these problems, and I'm just wondering how they, you know, even if you had these kind of super intelligence systems that people could kind of socially interact with, and it could give them a lot of that like, comfort and reassurance and, you know, even say, like chat, GBT, you can talk to it, ask for advice. The just like, a wonder for humans, what's going to be going on with this? Like, okay, we might be able to experience things as like, a real conversation with a human, but if we know it's not a human like, what, what that does for?

Nadine Djikstra:

Yeah it's a really good question. And I don't know, honestly, because I think the emotions are mostly driven by the first level, the perceptual experience, or level, at least, that's my intuition. Again, we don't know. But you know, if you're in a virtual reality environment, and it's very realistic, or you suddenly see a lion, you can be scared, right? Your initial response can be your buddy, you know, your cortisol is gonna go up, your whole fight or flight is gonna go on a turn on, even though you know, you know, this is just simulated and the same is what you see with with imagination is when you imagine something very vividly, it still feels like you still have the same emotion. So in AI, you know, if it feels real to us a social interaction, it might give us the same sense of belonging as an actual human does, but I don't know, again, more research is needed. But yeah,

Emily Clements:

I wonder as well, like, I think when we talk about AI, we always go to kind of the negative side of that. But do you think there's kind of potential in terms of like, the like, you were saying that actually, the emotions happen at this experiencing level? So when we are perceiving something and experiencing it, even if we don't know it's real, it could have a kind of emotional impact? Do we think there's kind of potential benefits for say, using something like VR and that ability to kind of trick our reality threshold? Could that be used for good? Is it being used for good at the moment? Yeah.

Nadine Djikstra:

100% 100%. So I think there's, there's a few different examples of VR, for example, therapy. Exposure therapy is one example. You know, where you don't need a real spider, but you can just have a VR headset of a spider, if somebody was fear of spiders, and you can treat them by creating a virtual reality environment where you show a spider, and it's all a bit more controlled, and it's a bit less intense. And then you can kind of use that and build up the intensity in a very controlled way. So I think that's a good example. Another one is training for surgery, it might be good not to have an actual human, when you haven't done that before. So then being able to do that in a virtual reality environment really helps. So I think those are just some are like military training is what it's used for, as well. Where again, you know, you can create this really real life, or like lifelike scenarios that are actually not real, but still help you to get used to the emotions that that kind of situation would bring up and helps you to navigate that.

Emily Clements:

What your research really highlights to me and kind of as we spoke about, is just it brings that awareness of the fact that so much is constructed, and that we do have this kind of balance going on in our brain of what is real and what is imagined. And I think the science is really, you know, really valid and it's based in real like hardcore neuroscience but it can really bring up a lot of self awareness questions for people. And yeah, to me passing out so I was very excited to have you on the show. And I just think the work you're doing is absolutely amazing. And I'm really looking forward to seeing Yeah, I you probably will Want to keep it under wraps now until it's published, but I'm excited to see, you know, what parts of the brain are creating our reality?

Nadine Djikstra:

That's hopefully going to come out in a few months. So keep an eye out.

Emma Sinclair:

I have learned an awful lot. And that question seriously that question is what is what is real is something that I am going to put back up the top of the list of things to start to experiment with over the course of the next next few weeks and just see what comes up for me personally, I think with that question, I think it's great one. So thank you, Nadine. Really, really appreciate it.

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