Why I Got into neuroscience

The transcript is about the host of the Kyle Maxwell Podcast introducing a new solo series where he will discuss various topics related to science, psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. He explains that his career interests have shifted from philosophy to neuroscience and discusses his curiosity about human nature and the connections between different disciplines. He also emphasizes the importance of a moral framework in the pursuit of knowledge and warns against the dangers of science being used for immoral purposes. The host expresses his goal of blending different fields of study to gain a deeper understanding of complex issues. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Kyle Maxwell Podcast. This is going to be the first episode for the solo series, when I'll just be having episodes with me talking in front of the camera, not interviewing guests. So this is kind of like a second part of the podcast, the original podcast, where I'll just be sharing them. Hello everyone. Welcome back to the ... Okay, this is really the last take. Hello everyone. Welcome to the Kyle Maxwell Podcast. Today will be the beginning for a new series, or a new segment on the show, where I'll be having a solo conversation with me in front of the camera, going into various different topics regarding science, psychology, psychiatry, possibly medicine, getting into neuroscience. This is going to be like a different flavor towards the other segment of the show, where I usually, what I've been doing for years, interviewing guests, talking about philosophy, going through different cultural topics, history, things of that nature. So the solo part of the podcast will be more geared towards science and more hardcore ... Not hardcore, but more cut and dry topics, as experimental psychology, or biology, neuroscience, and things of that nature. I wanted to split up the show, or kind of add a new segment, because I felt as if I was starting to change, and as far as where my career was taking, years ago, I kind of came on the scene on social media, talking about philosophy, going into stuff like Nietzsche, and I was really into Socrates, and the Stoics, critiquing post-modernism, diving into different ideologies. I had a whole ... What's the word I'm looking for? A lecture series on a study I call atrociology, going into the studies of atrocities, human nature, why people do terrible things. So the theme of this new segment is to dive into my switch in my career. I came on the scene really philosophically grounded, but I'm starting to make a ... I'm starting to dive into neuroscience, and my interests and my different things I talk about are starting to expand, and I wanted to take advantage of that and add that to a segment on the show, but enough of me rambling. So the point of this episode is to talk about that change, why I made that change. It's not really a change. It's not calling it a change. It's more like an addition to what I've already been talking about for years. So a little background on me, in case this is the first time you're watching this. My name is Kyle Maxwell. I am a student now. I just got back into school, going to University of Maryland, Global Campus. It is an online school located in Maryland, obviously, because of the name. I am a psychology major, but I am also a pre-med, so I'm pretty much double majoring in a social science and a STEM at the same exact time. I am looking to get into neuroscience, and I hope to become a psychiatrist one day. I got to psychiatry, I would think, a couple months ago, actually. So here's how all this happened. This is the purpose of this show, the purpose of this episode, is to explain where I started, where we are now, and where I'm going as far as career interests. So you might be thinking, how does someone start in philosophy, start talking about history, critiquing Marxism, talking about post-modernism, going through Foucault, and talking about different philosophers like Nietzsche, and going to Paul Tillich, and the existentialists. How does someone start there, switch to psychology, go really deep into Jung, go really deep into Freud, start talking about cognitive psychology, getting into Bravacian psychology. How does someone go from there, then go into, start talking about rigorous things, such as neuroscience, and going into neurodegenerative diseases, as far as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. So I think the best way to categorize all this is just a genuine curiosity of human nature. And that's where it all started. If you're not genuinely interested in human nature, the social sciences, the philosophy, all that stuff is kind of, it's not for you if you don't have a natural curiosity of, why did that person say that thing? Why did they do that thing? Why do they believe that certain belief? And that actually predates all the way back to the Greek, to the Greeks, Socrates, a Socratic questioning, that why do you believe what it is that you believe? That's what that Socratic reasoning, that deduction is. So why did you say that one thing? So what makes you believe that? What makes you say that thing? What is underneath? What is the locus of the belief? And those questions have always sparked interest. I want to know. I really want to know. Why did that person act that way when they've seen that one thing? Why? It's always that question, why? And that is the, that is philia sophia. And for people who don't know that, philia sophia is a Greek term. So philia is the love of, that's where the word philosophy comes from, philosophy. Philia sophia is the love of wisdom. So if you don't have that, that ancient love of wisdom, why did that person say that thing? Why did they do that? This is not the, it's not the right. You don't, you're not in, you're not, you're not in the right place because it's going to become, people are going to become objects. People are going to become, it's going to become all an experiment for you. And if you don't have that human drive to understand why someone believed or said that certain thing, if you don't, if it's not coming from a genuine place, I don't think it's going to, you're susceptible to being indoctrinated by a bunch of other things that are not related to the topic itself, if that makes any sense. And for people who think that I sound cuckoo right now, I'm not. Because history shows, especially the social scientists, and history shows us now, if you're not grounded in that, in that Hippocratic, that ancient, that traditional Socratic tradition of seeking knowledge for, not for its own sake, but in a deep, in a deep moral sense to better understand human nature, not to dissect it as if it's some sort of experiment. You become susceptible to a whole bunch of different ideologies that try to plug in that hole that other people don't have. For instance, many things happen, especially in the Nazis during the 20th century. Yeah, so there were all these scientists, and they were doing really, really great things, and then out of nowhere, a dictator just comes and takes over the entire country. And all of a sudden, now all the Nazis are now, instead of helping people, helping people who are sick, helping people who need psychological or psychiatric treatment, now we are perverting the sense of that, the sense of science and searching for truth has been flipped upside down. And now the pursuit for health and the pursuit for truth and the pursuit for answers has now been perverted by a immoral, by an immoral locus, a locus of immorality, is searching for knowledge outside of a moral framework. And this is what Act on T4 was. When Hitler was gassing the Jews in the chambers, using science in a no-moral sense, using Cyclone B in the factories, a peptide that is supposed to be used for cleaning, that's supposed to be used for disinfecting matter, not human beings. So the, you can see, and this is obviously an extreme situation, but you can see how the, and this is what a mad scientist is, the search for knowledge can extend so grand to where the, it's outside of the box it's supposed to be in. And I wanted to say that because this is where my curiosity started, it started with the philosophical questions, you know, how could someone become like Hitler? How can someone use the intellect, use what he knows, and then step outside of the box of morality, step outside of the box of what, of, yeah, of that human connection, step outside of that, and then use science and then use philosophy and use psychology for something that is completely inhumane, like how can someone do that? And it's all connected, if you think science is here, if you think philosophy is over here, if you think religion is here, and philosophy is over here, and science is over here, and then neuroscience is over here, you're making a grave mistake, because for me, especially for people who don't, it's all connected in the one. The motivations and the behaviors will say the same exact thing, well they're kinda right, well they actually don't believe in free will, they think it's all biologically driven, which is a topic for another episode. But why people do things, the things that they believe, the things that they think, why they think the things that they think, how people think about the things that they think, all these questions can, are not determined, they're just not, they're not just in this own way, or people think this way in science, and then people think this way in religion, and people think this thing in neuroscience. One of my things, one of my goals is to blend all of this into one. I think it is very fragmented, and I don't think it's a, now don't get me wrong, some things that are in the religious realm cannot be explained outside of the religious realm. Some things that are in the cut and dry neuroscience world should not become a philosophical debate, you know, I'm not saying that the pulmonary embolism is just all in your head, I'm not saying that the cancer cells are just a matter of your will to change it, I'm not saying that. But I'm saying if there is a common connection, how can we look at this particular problem through the lens of all these different things that on the surface may seem that it's unrelated, you know, how can we make the conversation of major depressive disorder a philosophical conversation? How can we make the conversation of post-modernism or Marxism, how can we look at that through a neurological lens? How can we start thinking about economic issues? How can we start thinking about philosophical problems? How can we think that through a psychiatric realm? And this is one of the things that I think about all the time, but it started way back when I was studying philosophy and studying history and religion, and so these questions were always in the back of my mind, and I know I sound like a skepto right now, but I don't care because this is just, this is as authentic as it can get. So this was all in my mind when I was just purely in the philosophical, asking, you know, these basic questions, why people do the things they do, where do our values, our beliefs, where do these things come from, why do we care about our beliefs, and this is something that I don't think scientists, maybe it's not their job to ask these questions, but I don't think that it's something that they really think about, because, you know, there is a meme that I came across on the internet one day, and it really changed my perspective. Well it didn't really change it, it really solidified my perspective of free will and our senses of where we're going as human beings. You know, you'll come across behaviorists, particularly like B.F. Skinner, that, you know, they have their particular theories of, you know, conditioning, they think that, you know, Skinner has said verbatim that he does not believe in free will, and he thinks that what behaviorists as a group, you know, they all kind of differ, but the overall idea is that the nature is our personalities, our values itself, how we think, how we act, how we interact, is 100% contingent on the environment, and some people go even further than that and say it is genetically determined. Genetic determinism is something that boggles my mind, and this may contradict what I just said about looking at things through different lenses, but I'm not saying that they're wrong, I'm not saying that they're wrong for looking at personality through a genetic lens, but they just happen to come to the wrong conclusion. So I'm all for looking at different problems through different lenses, but it doesn't mean that people can't be wrong. I'm not suggesting that there's some sort of relativistic truth here, I'm not saying that, but I do encourage looking at different problems through different lenses. So, for instance, you'll get psychologists, you'll get behaviorists that say that our personality is genetically determined, determined by environment, and so the meme that I came across changed that, because I was starting to think, is our personality, is the things that I like, the things that I talk about, my values itself, is that just because I was in the environment of people who said and believed those things? So there is this meme, and believe it or not, a meme is actually an abstraction of truth. It's an abstraction of human behavior that has been risen up to the highest level of an abstraction itself. And this is something that Carl Jung talked about with the archetypes. The bottom-up archetype is something that everyone can understand on a subconscious level, that people act out subconscious. It predates the linguistic apprehension of the behavior itself. It predates that. The hero predates the linguistic description of what a hero is. The protagonist, the evil brother, the big, the ever-loving mother, the tyrannical father, the dictator, these things predate language itself. So, the meme. Sorry, back to the meme. So it was a picture of a guy, and he was really like, it was a picture of a guy, I believe he was like an alcoholic or something, and he looked really like messy, he looked really like beat up, he just looked kind of dirty, kind of filthy. And one of the guys asked, they said, you know, what happened? Why did you end up like that? And he said, my dad was an alcoholic. So then they went to the next picture, and it was a well-dressed guy, and he had everything. He was very successful, and he looked very well put together. And a person asked him, how did you get all that stuff? How did you get to this point in life? And he said, because my dad was an alcoholic. Now, let's break that apart, because there's different ways that you can look at a certain problem. Yes, if you look at it on a percentage level, if you look at this strictly through statistics, which in by itself can be problematic. If you look at it statistically, okay, you know, 60% of people who grow up in this environment go on to believe or say this certain thing. Okay, we understand that. But where does the – where does that – how does that apply to the person reading that? How does that actually apply? Because there's a way of looking at something, which is through an analysis, a statistical analysis. X out of X people do this. Okay, so we understand that. That's here. But where does that – so what now? So now the question is, am I part of that group who is predetermined to behave in that specific way, or am I the exception? Now the – if you look at this strictly through math and statistics, yes, you are part of that group. If you look at this through a philosophical or you look at this through a moral sense, you can tell yourself, yes, I have a – but despite the facts, I can have a chance in beating those odds. And so then it becomes, okay, so which – so this is two different solutions to the same problem. I can either submit myself to the concrete facts, okay, I am predetermined to act this specific way or do this specific thing. For instance, there is a twin study on personalities, and this is a famous twin study. So they got a whole bunch of twins. I think it was – not didactic twins. It was a dizygotic and monozygotic twins. So the twins were born and then they followed them for a specific period of time. But the other group was twins that were adopted, and it turns out that the adopted twins in a completely different environment, they were more like their biological parents despite growing up in a different environment. And the twins that were – that remained in their environment, they grew up to be nothing like their parents. So the group of twins that grew up outside of the environment of the other twins, they actually were on average were more like their parents. So this goes back to the – okay, so how are we going to analyze this data? And one of the reasons that I even make content, one of the reasons that I even open my mouth is because I believe in – this is going to sound really cringe. I believe in a dynamic, in a nuanced solution to scientific data. I don't think it's right to – because you cannot derive a, okay, well, this data says this, so then, therefore, we're going to do X. Now, obviously, in certain cases, if you're looking at a CT scan and you see a whole bunch of tumors on there, you're not going to will yourself out of a cancer, obviously. But for – so the question doesn't become, okay, when do we act determining, when do we have faith? That's not the question. The question is when you're presented with this data, okay, what are the available options? What are the options? What are the best options when I am presented with a study that says that these twins, on average, act more like their biological parents despite growing up in an environment? Now, we can just take that data and run with it, or we can do what I believe scientific, rigorous scientific analysis should be, is we should look deeper into the study, look deeper into – just don't read the abstract and say, okay, well, this says this, so therefore this. That's not – I don't understand how that's science, and we see that all the time, people just reading the headline or reading the cover paper, and it says, oh, this amount of people, this drug has been proven to have this amount of effects on XYZ. No look into the sample size. No look into the methodologies of it. No look into where the study took place. No look into how far the – how long ago the study was and if any further contradicting data and any further studies contradict that data that was presented. There's no look into how the – so I already said methodologies, but you understand my point. We don't look deep into the facts enough, and that makes you question, you know, okay, so why are we just taking off the facts? What is our motivations? And that ties me back to the point. There is a motivation to grab the facts, take them, and then go somewhere else with them. There's a motivation going on there that's deeper than the facts itself. So this is all part of the integrative style that I'm really starting to become passionate about. You know, there's a whole lot more going on in facts and in data than we think. And I'm thankful that I started out in – I'm grateful that I had a philosophical grounding because it makes me look at things. I think it gives me an edge. I look at data differently. I think I read scientific papers differently. I think I look at things more holistically, and it's a very union way of analyzing data. It's a very psychodynamic way of analyzing data. Maybe that's putting things where it ought not to be, but that is the bigger question. How are we looking at the facts? How are we looking at them? So this is all part of what has driven me to go deeper into the science, actually, from starting so – not so far away, but starting in a – something that was so orthogonal towards something like I want to know what is really going on in people's heads. What is really going on beyond the behaviors? And one of the things that really got me going towards neuroscience is when I was looking at disorders like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD is a big one. Is ADHD a neurological problem or is it an ethical issue? I've had a lot of experience with people who've had ADHD, and my sister had it, dated some people with it. There's a lot more going on behind that than we think. So there's different ways of looking at data, and we've already made that point clear. We can look at things from a different way. End of story. So the question then becomes, which is the best way to look at it? Okay. What gives us the best answer? Let's look at it from a pragmatic standpoint. What gives us the best explanation for something like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? Okay. We can look at this strictly through a neurological sense. Okay. There are not lesions, but there's been studies that have shown that people with ADHD, their prefrontal cortex does not work like other people's. So their prefrontal cortex is located in the frontal lobe. It helps us think and plan, create strategies, abstract, think about thinking. Something that you'll see with people who have this is it's not that they can't think, but it's that they think by doing. So people who don't have ADHD, we have the ability to think about something, to play the simulation in our head. So if I want to move that object or that painting on the wall over there, I can use my prefrontal cortex and my visuospatial cortex. I can see what I would have to do to place that painting from there to there. And I can run through the possible risks, the benefits. I can run through all the different simulations, how I can do it. I can do that in my head. Now people, now it obviously has like a, there's obviously a gradient. Some people have it worse than others, but if you see someone who has a severe case of ADHD, their mind is going so fast and because they're not producing their mind, they're not producing enough norepinephrine. Norepinephrine is a neurotransmitter that helps people focus, that helps people zone in and focus on one thing. And that's something, so they take selenic serotonin reuptake inhibitors to help slow down their brain to help them focus more. But so for people who do have more severe cases, they have to take, they have to actually take the painting and move it. They have to do, they have to do that before they think about doing it. So it's not that they can't think about their actions before they do it. It's that they are, hence the hyperactivity part. They do the things in substitute for thinking about it. And then that process, so they're always, so their minds are, so people look at it as their minds are going so fast and that's dragging their body everywhere, but I actually think it's the reverse. They are acting so instinctual, which is a biological sense, their bodies are moving and their minds are catching up to the behavior. So you'll see people who, yeah, so you'll see that, you'll definitely see that manifest in someone who has OCD. You know, OCD, some people think that a sensitive impulsive disorder is something that I have to have something a certain way, but actually the thoughts have to be intrusive. That's the biggie. So they have to be thought, they have to be things that you did not want to do, but then you are impulsively having to do those things to get rid of the desire. So people with OCD, they'll have to, so I always have to have like a can facing frontwards. So if I go like this, it'll go like that. And if I put it here, then it'll go like this. They don't want to do that. The thing is, is if I go like this, okay, so that triggers in their mind, so I don't want to change it. So because I don't want to change this can, I'm going to change the can, I'm going to fix it so that I don't have to think about it anymore. See, the behavior is coming before the cognition. The behavior is coming before the cognition. If I move, so if I'm thinking about moving a painting, am I moving it here from there? Okay, I can think about that first, and then I do it, or thinking about it first. Let me think about this decision. You want to buy this house. Okay, let me think about it. This comes for the impulsivity. They are doing stuff instead of thinking. So they are thinking, but they're just doing more than thinking. So what people take for that obviously is SSRIs and stuff, but we can talk about that later. So that's looking at it from a neuroscientific standpoint. Okay, they're doing more than they can think about. But what happens when data contradicts that? What happens when we look at that differently? Okay, so here's, okay, that's what the brain is doing. Okay, we understand that. That's what the brain is doing. But how come, so what happens when we get studies that show that narcissistic mothers are actually a contributor to the onset of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? There's actually been studies that have shown that extremely judgmental mothers and fathers who were previously on prescription, they contribute to their offspring being more susceptible to anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder and depression. And them being tilted in a personality, more like a temperament-wise, them being tilted, being more susceptible towards anxiety and depression is what drives them to then be susceptible to other mood disorders like ADHD, OCD, and things of that nature. So what is really going on? Now that's a different way of looking at it. And when I seen that study, it really blew me back because I was like, huh, how can that, the behavior of the parents, of the mother specifically, it was a judgmental mother that contributed to the susceptibility of their offspring being onsetted to anxiety and depression and then that manifesting as ADHD. And I was like, huh, that's a different, that's definitely a different way of looking at it. And stuff like that gets me thinking, like, okay, well, so which is it? So are we going to go with that or are we going to go with the purely neurological? If you look to the neurological, I mean, well, that doesn't really, I mean, we can't fix, we can't go in there and make an incision and lobotomize you and take out your ADHD. We can't do that. But what we can do is change, or through cognitive behavioral therapy or family therapy, change the behaviors of what leads up to the pathologies. Now I am, I always think it's a behavioral problem. It's something ethical. It's something moral. That's where I believe the question should sprout. What is the most natural way that we can look at this without getting an MRI, without getting some billion-dollar technology machine? How can we look at this, pretend we did not have the tools, the scientific tools to look at this problem? Would that change how we view someone with depression? Would that change how we view someone who has bulimia nervosa? Would that change how we look at these different ailments? And I think if we pull it back, if we go back in history a little bit, not too far back when we were ripping out people's brains thinking that that was going to change them or thinking that someone's personality could have had a freaking dent in the back of their head, that's phrenology for people who aren't aware of that. But let's take a step back because sometimes we can get too on the rails with this stuff. You always want to assess something as if someone can do something about it. And I know that sounds radical. I'm not talking about lymphoma. I'm not speaking about someone who has a rare autoimmune disease. You're not going to will yourself out of multiple sclerosis. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am suggesting is, what is the most natural way that you can fix this problem? And that actually is the most natural way to fix it. I mean, it's abstract more than just talking about disorder and stuff. If my house is a mess, if I'm a hoarder, is an antidepressant, is a scolopram the first line of defense because my house is a little junky and I'm all over the place? Really? Is an SSRI the first line of defense? Or is me looking back in my childhood or me assessing my life in a different way the first line of defense, the first possible solution? We're so quick to throw jugs at people and throw this illness at people and throw this diagnostic test at people that we're forgetting that a lot of these things, especially now I'm speaking in the psychological, psychiatric world, a lot of these things arise from other, they come from some other place. They come from some other thing that we did way back when. And there's obviously a financial incentive to throw clozapine at some person or some type of antipsychotic because they may present some type of delusion. I mean, there's obviously a financial incentive there. But what if we look at things differently? What if we try natural remedies first? What if we try to, you know, what if we try to, you know, what if we try to prevent things from happening? You know, there's a big movement going on right now, something that I'm really focusing on in school that I hope on applying and getting my MD, PhD in the neurosciences. Neurodegenerative disease is an Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's is big. Huge neurodegenerative disease that causes cholinergic neuronal death. And there's multiple ways of looking at it. You can look at it through genes. If you're looking at it through an epilepper protein, epsilon-4, that makes you six times as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. If you have two of the epilepper protein, epsilon-4, it allows for both parents, that makes you 12 times as likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. You can look at it through tau tangles. You can look at it through the amyloid precursor proteins, ACP. You can look at it through amyloid tangles, tau tangles, beta amyloids. You can look at it through Alzheimer's disease. You can look at it through all types of things, diet, vascular dementia. We can look at it through all different lenses. But no one wants to talk about how we can prevent these things. People want to talk about it. But are we going to get anywhere going over tau tangles and microtubules and peritilical filaments? Are we going to go anywhere with that? Or are we just doing this so we can publish papers and science direct? I mean, are we really getting anywhere talking about or fetishizing the beta amyloids and how they are supposed to fold in three, but when they actually fold in two, that makes it susceptible to aggregating beta amyloids. And then when beta amyloids start tangling, that's when they become immune. Are we really getting anywhere with that? Or can we really start talking about how we can stave off dementia through regular diet and exercise without putting people on anticholinergics? Like, what are we really doing here? There are so many natural ways to prevent Alzheimer's disease. There are so many natural ways to prevent Alzheimer's disease. There are so many natural ways to prevent Alzheimer's disease. There are so many natural ways to prevent Alzheimer's disease. There are so many natural ways to fix these problems. I'm not a professional or a doctor or anything, but it's coming from a genuine place. How can we look at things differently and not just throw drugs or throw diagnostic tests at people first? I think that's enough of an all-over-the-place podcast today. I probably have one of the most unorganized podcasts ever, but this is how it is. I hope you guys enjoyed that. Talk to you soon. And yeah, look out for the next video. Thank you for watching.