From our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. We have been using mri machines for the last 1020 years to try to look at brain function. What i do is look at how different parts of the brain Work Together to produce behavior. How does the brain Work Together . Explored our magnificent human brain through to series. Together manyt researchers on Brain Science. James gorman writes in todays New York Times about the teams worked to develop the First Interactive wiring diagram of the living, human brain. His data could help us answer this important question, how do differences in brain wiring relate to differences in our behaviors, our thoughts, emotions, and experiences . Of a fiveyear effort supported by the National Institutes of health. Of course with me on this journey to help understand this research and its potential impact is eric kandel. Im pleased with great excitement i read this this morning and then called him up. Its like we are back in the saddle again. [laughter] Brain Science is alive. You gave us a great moment. Tell me about what led you to this. , but youdid you write were a guinea pig. We have been thinking we cover advances, new stories in neuroscience often, but we had been thinking we ought to do it in a little more systematic way. Asked mego my editor to start looking not so much and some of the applied research, but into the nittygritty, how neurons it is obvious that the technology is changing, money is flowing into it. There is a lot of excitement, and around the same time that we were getting going, president obama announced the initiative, the brain challenge. We thought, how are the ways we are going to look at this . One of the big challenges is trying to cope with neuroscience it seems bigger than the universe. All we could do was do a sampling of some of the projects. We thought, lets start out with mapping. But itt everything, serves as kind of a foundation. Lets talk to some of the people who are trying to map the brain in different ways. The question was whether we were going to start sort of at the level of the electronic microscope or at the level of the whole human brain. The whole human brain is something people relate to immediately because they have one. We know about the mapping of the human genome. Give me your sense as a neuroscientist of the significance of the things that he reported. Significance of this is several fold. One is, we want to understand how the human brain works. The key to understanding is how the different components interact. Many people have been looking at this from a variety of perspectives. This particular study moves it forward in the following way. One is, it is very systematic. It doesnt take the three of us, it takes 1200 people. Number two, using people from normal walks of life. Men, women, baseball players, academics, etc. , who had their brains scanned. She is going about this in a very systematic way. She is doing for kinds of studies. Do functional imaging to see what areas of the brain are active. She wants to see how areas two ways of she has approaching it, one in the resting stage, and then she has a way of tracing connections between them, which he calls the. Athways finally, in critically important, she is going to combine these three imaging approaches with behavioral studies. She is going to see what happens when you learn something, when you sing a song, when people interact socially. So shes going to get a variety of different studies. What is unique about this is not that it is new, but that it is systematic. The year itd of will be available online. Already much of it is available online. Any scientist in the world can go in and query the database and look for connections between different activities in the brain or different qualities. There is another very nice thing about this. That is its a wonderful environment in which she has done her work. One of the pioneers in brain imaging is an outstanding urologist we had here at the series. It is a wonderful environment in which to work, lots of interesting people to talk with. This is going to be a thought through and reliable set of studies. You would be the first to point out, she is one person working on one part of it. She comes from psychology. Questions. Series of you went through this. Tell me what it was like. The mri, as anyone knows who is gone through one, is very noisy and many people have been conditioned to cope with the fear. That was one thing. The test that you do in the mri, there are a variety of them. Some are simple as curling your toes to map where your toes are. Others require the kind of memory activity that may be convinced that i completely lost my mind. You see a series of pictures and you try to remember whether the one you saw two times ago is the one you are seeing now. So you see a pipe, then a tree, a car, and then you have to push, is that the same one . No, it is not. Pretty soon, it is very hard to do. Thingsthe fascinating she asked me afterwards, i said i was working so hard on that. She said youre going to have inr emotions tied up competing in these things. Thats knowing thats not going to be true for everyone. Neurosciencethat does not have a baseline database for structure and activity. In a healthy brain that can be crossreferenced with announced traits, cognitive skills, and genetics. How important is it to have that . This is not around the corner. We talked about this once before. We are speaking more like many decades for a complete understanding of the brain. Alan mayberry has done a wonderful imaging on depressed people. If you look at psychiatry, for example, there is no area that is really understood on this level. Autism, were just beginning to understand which areas of the brain are involved. We have not been able to do this before because we did not have the tools to do it like we do now . The imaging tools, or is it some new theory . Theory. Is no new the imaging tools that came along were noisy and not completely reliable. It took a long time to really work out the difficulties with them. They are now much more reliable, and this is a very Reliable Group of investigators, number one. Number two, you need huge resources to carry out these large gayle studies. The problem is extremely difficult. She is asking herself, how does the brain function in very general terms . How do people handle the same task in somewhat different ways . Explain this to me. You have said the central question is how do differences between you and me and how our brains are wired up relate to differences in our behavior, our feelings, and our emotions . Did,e of the things i which all the volunteers go through, is you fill out a questionnaire. Interestingly, the Research Assistant who is there in the how often do you feel sad or discouraged . These are very traditional, well used psychological tests that many people have used over the sort of tiey can them to what that says about your state of mind. If you have 1200 people and you have data on how they take these tests, you may be able to see what the variations are that correspond to the variations that show up or maybe not. You may be able to see something closer than you had before, and that may begin to give you an idea. You are not just looking at a difference in size or structure, you are looking at what happens when people are doing something, which parts of the brain are working together. I will give you a simple example. This would not apply to new york cabdrivers. In london, you have to pass the examination. If you look at the brains of london cabdrivers, the hippocampus gets larger the more they drive. And when they stop driving, it shrinks. So this is wonderful, but we dont know what are the other areas that this hippocampus region connects with. We know in individual cases, it play thest if you violin, the representation of the lefthand is much larger than people that dont play a violin. We know in very primitive ways that different body functions are represented in the brain, and a change with experience. And use. And they shrink. And of course we know in certain disease states, certain areas are larger than others. This is a wonderful beginning. This is not the end. This is a systematic beginning. There is one program mass general and harvard are developing imaging. Withford is involved minnesota and washington university. You just got 300 million to do what . Columbia 200gave million for the mindbrain initiative. We want to tackle problems of the brain on a variety of different levels. We want to understand how the s. Ain work we want to understand disease states. We want to understand how mental functions have an impact on other aspects of society. For example, how do people respond to a work of art . What is it about music that moves you in a certain way . What makes usnd human. That is right. I assume part of this is not the mapping thing, but maybe it is, the connection between neurons. They are not looking at this level with the mri at the connections between neurons. We are looking at the connections between regions and information flow and the direction of information flow. Other people are looking at the connections between neurons more in mice and fruit flies. One is systematically mapping the brain of the fruit fly and is combining this with behavior. What we talked about the last , this is what you are seeing in action. People are doing things that they did before, more systematically and collaboratively to push this forward. Are they getting more money . No. The money is embarrassing. Are you talking about money fromnih . Million a year is set aside for the brain initiative. That is not enough to pay for dinners for the three of us. [laughter] it is a point well taken. When you think about the nih budget for neuroscience part of this is coming out of preexisting funding. What makes you crazy when you think about that is, it is about understanding a whole range of affects millions of peoples lives. Ther it is depression or what the head of the nih will tell you is that there was a small amount of money in the very beginning of the human genome project and it served as to develop seed money. So that is the hope. In europe, they have put 1 project thator a is not as well regarded as the plan at nih. Is trying to see whether you can simulate the human brain in a computer. Since we know how so little about how the brain works, its going to be a hard decision. A complete situation of information across the board with what you are doing, what helen is doing, we what everybody is doing . In addition to human intelligence, theres energy and resources. The resources are grossly inadequate. What is interesting about this, it is threedimensional and interactive. Explain why that is important. Complicatedit so that you need new kinds of mathematical tools and software to understand. At harvard, they are working on connecting to the neuron level. The smallest volume we can see with the electron microscope is in the nanometer range and the volume you see in the functional one is one trillion times bigger than the other. The one that is one trillion like bigger is something one 1000th of a cubic inch. It is very small. Between, therein are important interactions going on at that level and in between levels. Importanty it is very to do the human brain in worm, and withhe the fly. They can give you solutions that in many simpler, but cases they have parallel behaviors. Wayou can explore it in a you cannot explore the human brain. We should also point out that this is not the only methodology that has come along recently. Tics. Ve optigene you can turn on any cell or combination of cells that you want and you can shut them off. This is a very powerful technique. Revolutionized the field. On in a is a lot going variety of different places, and yet some of it has enormous connections. It is about some basic questions. Engineering, mathematicians, chemistry, nanotechnologists. Their help is needed, and they find these problems interesting. Me of how, asinds much as we are learning, the vastness of what we dont know, and the extraordinary quality of this is really amazing. You have to always ask yourself dont get ahead of yourself. This is hard work. Absolutely. But its very satisfying. After all, you are tackling the most fascinating problem of science. Welldone. Great to have you here. Back in a moment. Stay with us. They have omelettes over there, pancakes, vegetables, bacon, sausage. Its too early for me. My stomach hasnt woken up yet. Im just not hungry. No, thank you. If you want to help yourself to breakfast over there, we have two buffets. I know exactly what is on display over there. Achy. We are trying to have a private conversation. His new movie is called phil omena. Here is the trailer for the film. He used to be the bbcs man in moscow. Thats why im depressed. What are you working on at the moment . I know this woman. She had a baby when she was a teenager. I dont do this. Why not . I think i should do a Human Interest story. Philomena, how are you . I had a hip replacement last year. [laughter] to useng to ask you not my real name when you write the story. Anneat about and bolin boleyn . You are a journalist. I used to be. Also a roman catholic. Yes, i mean i used to be. I would like to know if anthony is still with me. I think of him every day. I told for people today that they were one in a million. What are the chances of that . What makes you think he is kobes . Obese . Because of the size of the portions. Do you remember anything he said . Greg hello. I did not abandon my child. He was taken from me. Have you ever been to mexico . Im pleased to have Stephen Freers back at this table. How did it come about . It is based on a true story this woman lived. [laughter] i was just hired, i was the last person in. Im on a list of people she trusts. Judy. Book bought the book and wrote himself into it, wrote his autobiography into it, really. Ours other words, chance to tell his own story as well, as he suggested. Did he go sell the movie and then went in search of reducers and directors . Producers and directors . Eventually they turned up at my door. What was the challenge when they turned up at your door . Easy, theyt seem never do. What i really liked was the tragedy of the comedy. That was what really got me. It is quite easy to tell a depressing story, and they had this comic relationship down. It is the story of a woman who lives in a catholic home for child,others, loses her it is adopted, and comes to america. That is a kind way of putting it. I dont want to offend anybody unnecessarily. Therefore she wants to know where he is. Is kept silent. She always wanted to know. The story came out. After his 50th birthday, she tells her daughter and in her garter makes the connection her daughter makes the connection. Job and he decides to write a Human Interest story. It all works together in some way. Then this very incongruous couple sets out on the road to america. Even though there is sadness here, she finds what she needed to know, doesnt she . Yes. Out that her son was looking for her as she was for him. And that troubles her because she didnt know that he wanted to know. Imagine that he thought, my mother got rid of me because she doesnt love me. She assumed that he was angry with her or didnt like her. How was it to direct her . Thesey we are going to do pages today. That is really all you have to say. Actually she is a wonderful woman. She really is. What is she now, 78 . She is getting on. Quick she is the last person to hide that. Quick she is the biggest female star in britain. The whole thing is phenomenal. Tell us about stephen coogan, who was here. He was a very bright guy and he wanted to do something he had never done before. He can do all that comics stuff. He can tell the jokes and make you laugh. He just knows how to do them. I think he wants to do something different. I just thought he was enormously talented. If ive got a conventional or perhaps he wants to be called a conventional actor. You got to think about these things. This is a scene where she is really wondering about her son, anthony, and some of the things we have discussed already. Here he is, roll film. Wonderinglways whether anthony was in trouble or in prison or elsewhere. It turns out he is happy somewhere and is doing all right. Kobeobese . S a lot of americans are huge. What if that has happened to him . What makes you think he is obese . Because of the size of the portions. John houston used to direct with his ear. You can hear the music in it. You can hear the conviction in it. He used to turn his back. It is interesting you say that, because don hewitt, the great executive producer of 60 what hewas famous for could do in screening. He would turn his back, i am , and here it. What are you hearing . You hear the conviction, the shape tom of the musicality. It is more interesting than the faces. I have known lots of people who are just listening, and you can hear when it is right. I wonder if there is an equivalency between the sense of pitch, and people can hear better than other people when there is a finely tuned sense of hearing that is connected to Something Like pitch. It is all connected to the brain. You can hear the conviction. Music. Hear the so it is easy directing judy pinc. Do you say anything to her like louder, quieter . That was helens line, four ,hings a director should say louder, softer, faster, slower. Tell them whatto to do. They are very, very good at their job. Directors whobe. Re interested in how i am. You want to know how they got there . To know how everybody gets their if they do something well. Thats a passion of mine. Judy used to sleep at the side of the set. They would be hilarious from laughter then then they would stop and do a take. There is the chemistry right there. I dont know how she does it, but shes very, very good at her job. Did you change the script at all . You are directing the script writer. Always rewriting and shifting in saying if you turn this scene around, it will be better. It might have a better dramatic shake like this rather than like that. All the work went on the writing. Once we were shooting the right scene, these actors could do it standing on their heads. What is this other film you did, obama na lis greatest fight. That was about the supreme mmad ali. To everybodys surprise, he won. , his clerkjustices turned around and argued with him and said there is no difference. Accept that he was honorable in his conscientious objection. I read it. I read the script. Writer. E english he said i am writing something very good. And said, you are absolutely right. You go to a party and say, do you have a script i might want to be reading . How does that happen . Writingaid im something very good, and she turned out to be right. You are now making a documentary film about lance armstrong. Is it his life, is it a biopic . It is a dramatic 10 years. Lied10 years he doped and bullied. So it is about all that. Did you go to france . One day there was a picture , and it was ben. He is a wonderful actor. I shouldnt be saying