Dr. Michael Kilgard

And so, okay, I can change the brain with this one thing.

Others came along and said, what if instead of doing acetylcholine, I stimulated, instead of nucleus basalis releasing acetylcholine, I stimulated locus coeruleus releasing norepinephrine?

Same thing happens.

Wait a minute, it's a totally different brain area.

It doesn't matter.

I release these neurotransmitters.

I also can quadruple it.

All right, what if I did dopamine?

You also get an increase.

So the idea is I'm just labeling these things.

All these events, I'm a wash in information.

Everything I look, every leaf that wiggles, every breath of air, wind against my face, every bit of my shirt, most that I ignore because it doesn't matter.

But I'm learning what matters and what doesn't matter.

And a baby is doing it by fumbling around with their fingers and hitting themselves and trying to get the bottle.

We're doing it by trying to figure out what gets us social cues, what gets us reward or prestige or mating opportunities or safety or security.

And the way the neurons know, the tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of me

is this little release.

And this release is very transient.

It's not about how much there is.

It's about the timing of it.