In school uniforms Scouts Red Cross volunteers and a contingent of transgender women one protester a man honey said she was angry that political leaders were complacent while the future of young people was at risk of. Doing what they are doing. Trying to bring change in the way and as the protests went on local media reported that a hate wave was likely to hit Pakistan's largest city with temperatures reaching over $100.00 degrees did aid n.p.r. News Islam the Dow is down 78 points this is n.p.r. News. 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Connecticut Public Radio's news reports are made possible by AAA travel a sign up plastic surgery center and bad spot and Ok Ill empowering people with disabilities listen for news reports on Morning Edition and All Things Considered It's 3 o 6 This is Science Friday I'm Ira Flatow we've heard about steep declines in the populations of certain species for instance just this February reports of a drop in insect populations worldwide now another possible warning sign of global environment in crisis report in the journal Science of this week says that North American bird populations have declined by nearly 3000000000 yes will it be 3000000000 birds since 1970 that's a loss of nearly one in 4 birds What is the cause and how do you count that kind of population decline can Rosenberg is one of the authors of the report and applied conservation scientist at the famous Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Africa Welcome back to Science Friday. Thanks hi Ira That's a lot of birds isn't it. It is a lot of birds there are a lot of birds out there but we're we've been seeing this steady decline and people who love birds and are out there every day have been noticing fewer and fewer birds and now we can put some hard numbers on those declines but there's still a lot of birds left right this is not a we're not talking about an extinction here we're not and this is different from from other studies that are showing and of course there are birds that are dropping towards extinction but what we're seeing here is like a whole nother level of biodiversity loss because we're seeing the loss of abundance among among common species of birds so it's not just the rare and threatened species but what we're finding is this pervasive loss among common for 1000000 every day birds giving me an idea of what we're talking about what kind of birds. Well some of the biggest losses are in grassland birds birds like metal larks and horned larks savanna sparrows but not only the specialist species one of the big surprising results is that other birds that are found out in farmland rural landscapes across America like red winged blackbirds are also in steep decline so what that's telling us is that habitat loss is so pervasive in that these environments are just not able to support basic bird life we have had birds go extinct and I'm speaking specifically about the famous passenger pigeon right. That's right and we make and we make an analogy in the paper one of our coffers had done this fascinating study where she was able to bring in whatever data existed from the passenger pigeon from the 18 hundreds and a century create a model of what the big Cline of the passenger pigeon might have looked like before it went extinct and that decline looked a lot like what we're seeing today in these other cumbers and nobody ever thought the passenger pigeon would go extinct it was the most abundant bird that ever lived on the continent but. These declines look very similar and what it's telling us is that if we if we had been monitoring birds back at that time and people were paying attention and we were at that 30 percent loss point let's say it's very likely that we would have been able to prevent that extinction to do something about it and is that the same case now can we prevent any loss of birds. And well we might not be able to save everything but. But that is what gives us hope and we have we have examples of birds more recently that we have recovered and that we have brought back the bald eagle the peregrine falcon in those cases we knew what the problem was and when we were able to ban d.d.t. The harmful pesticide and pass laws that stop shooting of hawks and eagles and these populations rebounded pretty quickly so we know birds can be reasonably and we know that they will respond positively to our actions if we do it but don't we have to know why they died off to begin with. If that's true and we maybe got lucky in a sense with a bald eagle because d.d.t. Was such an obvious factor and since these laws as we're seeing now are so pervasive there really across every single habitat then obviously multiple factors are at work and it's very complex and it's not it's not a simple thing but we do know in a lot of cases what the Major. Factors are in habitat loss and we know a lot of the things that are killing birds such as collisions with Windows and buildings and pretty Asian by outdoor cats and these are things that we can do something about and we can minimize those bird deaths at the same time that we're working to protect and restore habitat changing climate have anything to do with this thing. Well that's a good question this week of course and we've thought about that a lot and climate change is obviously having an effect. And it's probably going to be having more of an effect as we move forward but climate change is not the driver of these big declines it is habitat loss and so in a sense the habitat loss issue is it's right in front of us there's so much urgency there and if we're not protecting and restoring habitats and if there isn't enough habitats for these birds to survive in and move and not just birds other other wildlife to move into as climate change does whatever it's going to do on the landscape then then it won't matter very much so we can't just focus on climate change into the future we have to make sure we're protecting these populations right now I want let me get a bit into the methodology this is fascinating to me hope to mice it's true how do you know how do you count the bird populations. Well we we relied on 2 very independent sources of data and one of them were fairly simple counts that that have gone back 50 years or more that are done by bird watchers and we have because so many people love birds and can identify them we have this fantastic collaboration between the scientists and the amateur bird watchers where the scientists can design these surveys that are quite rigorous but they have bird watchers are the eyes and the ears out there are scientists cannot collect this kind of data themselves so we have thousands of people out there collecting the data and then giving it back to the scientists who can then do these analyses and so we're very lucky to have this 50 year monitoring data set on bird populations we don't have anything like that for any other group of organisms but then the weather radar data was a completely different source that doesn't rely on human observations and radar can see the migration that's happening in the sky and since most birds are actually migrating at night the radar is picking up these bird migrations at night if you if you could even even see this on the weather channel if you see a big storm coming on when they show the radar that clutter that you see out behind the storm those are birds usually so the weather the weather people filter that out but ornithologist have taken advantage of it and it's really only recently because we need supercomputers really to look at that at that scale are 143 of these next red weather radar stations and we're able to piece that together and look at the total massive migration that's passing over the United States over the entire spring migration and we went back into back in time with that kind of data we were able to go back only 11 years but we saw 14 percent decline in the massive migration passing over the United States in just an 11 year period. And that's about the same order of magnitude that we were seeing from the surveys so these 2 very independent sources of data are essentially telling us there's this major loss and that gives us a lot more confidence that the result is real do you have any confidence that folks like us you know the individual can do anything to help well it's going to start with the individual just just as your previous guest was talking about and if we're going to solve the climate crisis. The response to this paper is really been phenomenal there is so much interest in this story because so many people love birds and and we've provided a list of actions that people can do and we have she called the 7 Simple actions and I'm not sure I can remember all 7 of them but they are things like protecting your windows from preventing birds from crashing into your windows by breaking up the reflexion and keeping keeping your cat indoors so it doesn't hunt birds and drinking bird friendly coffee is a great simple way it's great coffee and you could be saving bird habitat at the same time I guess not there a minute tell me what bird Sharon Liko. I'd like to get well. Most coffee all coffee is grown in tropical regions and like a lot of other agricultural crops to grow coffee normally requires cutting down the rain forest but in certain areas they grow the coffee underneath the shade of the rain forest canopy and it serves to protect the habitat but it produces great coffee and it's a small proportion of the market right now but it's something that we're trying to make people aware of and make them grow make that grow so it's so it's shade grown coffee that we consider to be friendly friendly to birds What about pesticides they kill off the birds. Well they certainly do and since so many of the declines we're seeing are birds associated with agricultural areas and one way or another on top of the outright loss of habitat you have this greater and greater use of more toxic pesticides these new nicotine away ads could be worse than d.d.t. And a different study just came out this week in science as well showing the high toxicity of these chemicals to birds and we think that this could be the cause of declines in certain groups of birds such as these aerial insect eating birds aerial insectivores such as swallows and swifts and Nighthawks that of that have been declining so stately so. Absolutely that's that's part of part of the puzzle and then minimizing minimizing your use of pesticides around your home is a good start every one of these individual actions can then be amplified you know by taking it to scale in your come in community and ultimately we want people who are doing these things to be a voice for change so that these can actually result in changed policies and societal change you mentioned in your list that pollinators were probably tell me which means by that. Pollinators of a problem well birds birds are are such an intricate part of all ecosystems and they perform these services as part of the ecosystems and they they act as predators and prey in the food webs but birds are also doing things like pollination they're doing pest control of insects they're doing dispersal of seeds they're helping forests regenerate by dispersing seeds so when you're losing this big chunk of bird abundance you're losing those those functions within the ecosystems and we could be approaching a point where the ecosystems themselves are unraveling another tipping point. To be fearful of Ok. Yeah well it could be happening where you know I would say it's hard not to be alarmed you know when you have numbers like we had like we've generated here we've all read Silent Spring so we know what's what could be happening can Rosenberg is the author of report in the science and apply conservation scientist and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca New York thank you for taking time to be with us today thank you are when we come back a look ahead of what might happen if some seemingly Saif ice scenarios actually come to pass pretty spooky stuff could it really happened what would happen Stay with us we'll be right back after this break. I'm Ira Flatow this is Science Friday from w. N.y.c. 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This is Science Friday I'm Ira Flatow imagine this one day your phone rings your friend is calling you through Face Time when you pick it up your friend pops up on the screen telling you that you've been robbed while on vacation and can you transfer them a few 100 bucks to leg at home well you go online you transfer the money to the account info that they sent you but when you scroll through Instagram you've discovered you've just been deep faked someone impersonated your friends image and scammed you so you sent the money to somebody you don't know now that's not a real story but it you know it doesn't sound too far off for example how far off are self driving cars or possibly the death of the oceans or antibiotics that no longer work these are all topics we talk about today that could lead to a disaster scenario if they aren't kept in check and we asked what Saif I disaster keeps you up at night on our Science Friday box pop app weird from Mike in Louisville Bob in Jupiter Florida and a listener in Buffalo New York you know a plausible so far as to Dorio keeps me up at night a if machines gain sentience it sounds farfetched but some of the captains of industry today like you on the bus even guys like Joe Rogan That's their big fear it's not really a cypher Eisen Aereo but hurricane Stu seem to be getting stronger I was born and raised in Miami and we never had any hurricanes like we've had since the last 20 years so I believe that it's going to be time for us to all of our way when it comes to all of these for power for Earth. I would have to say as the apocalypse we're pretty much at each other's throats all that anyway so it doesn't that far out of the realm of possibilities for us to take it one step further with the addition of some sort of super rabies or something to that of. Pretty scary stuff we have some imaginative listeners but we want to hear from you what Saif I asked her scenario from today's headlines keeps you up at night give us a call 844-724-8255 extension 844 site talk or tweet us at Science Friday my next guest has turned the knob all the way up to 11 into into panic mode and he talked to scientists to imagine what the future might look like under some of these scenarios and he says it's going to be all right mostly like Pearl is a journalist and author of the book the day it finally happens alien contact dinosaur park's immortal humans and other possible phenomena and you can read an excerpt of his book on our website Science Friday dot com slash deep fakes welcome Mike to the show Hi Ira It's great to be here and I know you looked at a lot of scary scenarios did researching that make it more or less anxious about the future. Well definitely less anxious it's a it's a habit of mine to research the things that scare me the most so for me this is you might say it's their p. Ok it was pretty scary for me when I was reading it let's go through some of them I mentioned deep fakes you know where people can impersonate you now how close are we to that technology. Well I'm not in the business of giving an exact timeline I find that when when forecasters give exact time lines that's kind of when they get in trouble but I think within within my lifetime you know I think we should definitely we should definitely worry next few decades I would say is a pretty safe bet because we've seen already young the on You Tube channels or videos of people imitating or putting words into the mouths of famous people and you can tell the difference right I mean and they've done a lot worse you know they've made some some nonconsensual sex tapes of celebrities and things like that. It all started it's funny how it all started in 2016 with this you know this this demonstration out of the Max Planck Institute called Face to face where it all looked very innocent they were just replacing one person's face with another face and I think a lot of people thought oh this could be used for movies or this could be used in therapy you know creating suppressed memories or something like that and then it just went it went as dark and went as dark as it could go very very quickly you know which is definitely a theme of the book well you know if the pendulum really swings so far where people are communicating with each other and you can't you don't really know if that's you know Avatar or the fake maybe maybe goes backwards maybe then we have to resort to real face to face talking to one another again you know like an old days that sounds good to me that definitely sounds good to me I mean you know I talked to Peter Eckersley who at the time was working at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and I said Surely there must be some kind of security protocol that you can put in place that will make sure that we're authentically talking to people that we know and he was just like No absolutely not but he said you could just ask him a question that nobody else would know I was like oh yeah right that's a very low tech solution but it seems like it would work pretty well it's a capture for. Talking to precisely Yeah yeah and sort of analog capture Yeah let me go through some of the stuff you have been in your book and I think speaking relatively. About what we're just talking about you have something called the day the entire internet goes down can anybody think of a more horrifying thing. Entire Internet going down for me it's pretty horrifying I mean sometimes I fantasize about it to you know like people have an Internet if you will and do an internet cleanse as they call it which I can't bring myself to do but if the whole thing went down as scary as I would be I sometimes go oh maybe I kind of want it and you also put the probability of these things happening you say the plausibility rating is 4 out of 5 which seems pretty high Yeah I mean I didn't go with I didn't go with things when the when the problem when the plausibility rating I found to be too low when you're one of your people who called in suggested as the apocalypse is the plausibility of that is you know zombies aren't. Real So I just thought well I don't want to go down that low but but with but with something like this I think the plausibility not the not necessarily the probability but the plausibility I would put it about 4.4 out of 5 pretty good well tell me give me the thoughts the scenario under which this happened so. My editor was a little bit worried about this because I kind of because like what what you see in the chapter is almost a bit like a road map it's not going to happen because of like a solar flare or because somebody trips over the wrong wire and the Internet goes down it's more like there would have to be a concerted effort by some thing with a lot of money of like a state actor. A network of a network of cells around the world really trying very hard to to damage the Internet infrastructure because it is so widespread and there are there are a number of places where it's particularly vulnerable. Well you know I don't think a lot of people think about the fact for instance that the Internet is is the is the World Wide Web because we run cables under the ocean just like we did in the Telegraph days and that if you if you cut if you cut a bunch of those cables which by the way I don't endorse you know you would you would kind of you would lose that worldwide aspect of the World Wide Web It would take a few would take several other several other measures along those lines for these terrible terrorists who I again don't approve of to completely knock out the functionality of the Internet and it would only last for a short time because the effort to bring it back on would be you know a global effort to bring the Internet back would be you know what would be a very quick part of it you know it's getting it back. So let me let me go to some of them our listeners on a tweet the people tweeting in some of their doomsday. Let me go to Steve in Gainesville Florida hi Steve welcome to Science Friday. Oh Ira How you doing there go ahead oh yeah so my doomsday scenario has to do with the new crisper Gene anything to war I'm thinking about way back towards World War 2 where you know not just trying to do the final solution and I could see that becoming a thing where you can take the gene. For instance you know like you can design a disease or a virus or whatever to attack only people who watch I see that is probably one of the most dangerous. All right what do you think about that by so I mean the designer baby that was definitely attempting chapter to write there is a movie there is that movie Gattaca that kind of goes into that a bit that describes to my mind a really sort of plausible and and interesting version of that scenario where you have. A stratified society where there are the altered people up top and then they sort of like natural the more natural people that the bottom layers of society but I'm still trying to I'm still trying to understand so in this scenario there are if you have the blue eyed genes somebody somebody sends out some kind of technology to tell those people what was it exactly that he's gone but he's just worried about you know the ability to crisper Well just saying you know peripherally What about the day when humans are cloned we can clone dogs writing animals. That were you would all I mean I'm pretty sure we could probably clone humans now I mean as it stands if you clone when they've gone through and cloned extinct mammals. Do usually they don't they have not lasted very long there was an extinct goat that was cloned that died very quickly of a lung defect cloning a person. That was there not just a Chinese scientist who. Clone some feet is a yes so you know welcomed with open arms Right right exactly you know if it were a chapter in my book I think my my approach to writing about that might be to focus on the reaction rather than the technology itself I think that you know mass hysteria is always a big part of these like big newsworthy events and. Kind of a kind of an underrated aspect of any kind of side if I scenario is sometimes an overreaction Here's some tweets that are coming in Candace tweets that she's afraid of going out like the dinosaurs because of a near earth objects striking us you know one of my thinking yeah that's very likely and in fact a large a large mirror one mile or more near Earth objects striking us some time while the earth still exists so in the next few trillion years I think is viewed as you know something that's 100 percent certain So I hope you take comfort in that. And when you go to another tweet before going to the phones how about a mass migration by desperate people escaping climates that are too hot for human habitation where crops can no longer be raised and he goes on to say these in capital letters will happen you know I mean some might argue that that already is happening as a matter of fact. What about do you do you see that we're going to have absolutely self driving cars. Well the expert that I spoke to. Was very very certain when when I spoke to him but he helped me kind of he gave me a little bit of a little bit of focus when we think about self driving cars. You know we tend to think about them you know I think about them in a way and I think about how our roads work he helped me think about how self driving cars would work if they were universal in some place like India and it becomes sort of much more discouraging to think about you know self driving those those streets in India being full of sort of like self driving robo cars these sort of like golf carts replacing the like vibrant streets that they have now things like 22 wks that they have and when you think about that all over the world when when self driving cars become universal it's sort of it sounds a bit more dreary talking with Mike Perl author of the day it finally happens and we're talking on Science Friday from w n y c studios let me let me go to the phones now let's go to Brian in Yuma Arizona hi Brian. Hey good afternoon how are you doing there go ahead the thing that keeps me up at night is the fact that we can advertise our location universe the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and. You imagine how far down the food chain we are somebody would have to travel here. You have thought about that Mike haven't you I sure have yeah. The way that I approached aliens in the book was I tried to imagine what it's going to be like on the day when you when you flip open Twitter and read it when aliens have been absolutely 100 percent confirmed the situation this situation I propose is one where. You know the the authority the SETI authorities say hey can everybody with the ability to transmit radio signals please not send them to this area because we have just confirmed that aliens are there and we have no idea if they're friendly but it's too late you know a billionaire billionaire with access to radio has already sent you know sent his little hello because there actually is no international law that says that says there's any kind of penalty for contacting aliens and you know summoning them here to turn us into their breakfast Yes I mean how can we ever forget that Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man right Google down if you know what we're talking about. We don't we don't know did did people saying Jew wow or well me put it the other way how did you you know filter out all the different things that could happen. Well I mean I I wrote about everything that I thought I could add something to the conversation about you know there are there there's a there's an info there's a there's an infinity of potential events out in the future and I think a lot of them cause us to cause us a lot of anxiety when we think about them we think about for instance you know a nuclear war as something that absolutely ends the world and as and as terrible of a catastrophe as a nuclear war can be you know when you actually break down the day that it occur is say I saved the day that 100 nuclear weapons are used as disastrous as that obviously is and as much as we don't want it. When you get right down to it humanity survives we don't think about we don't think about what comes next That's why I kind of wanted to focus on each individual day rather than treating each one like an ending treating it treating it more like a beginning so and so the horror comes after the apocalypse Right right exactly I mean we have that term post apocalypse you know right didn't want to go to post apocalypse I'm trying to focus on that that one day what you'll feel and feel and see and smell on that one day but yeah I mean it's good to think about what happens next you know and in realistic terms for me for me that that really makes me feel it makes you feel better not worse Well how did you leave on zombies and all of this since it's so you know it's all over culture sure and I knew I knew I would be facing these questions everywhere I went out having having written the book and not done a chapter on zombies and it really is just because you know zombies are this you know they're this correct me if I'm wrong traditional Caribbean the sort of like a local urban myth and and if I were to write could I probably could write a chapter on them I would I would I would focus on you know what it's like to be bitten by so. A humanoid if anybody has been attacked by somebody if anybody used their teeth to attack another person I would want to talk to the victim for the book that's a story I would like to hear because that's what it would be like to be attacked by a zombie you know I try to capture those kinds of feelings I would want to talk to people who'd been in villages that were that were ripped apart by Ebola What's it like to fear your neighbors because they might have the disease I think be outbreak would be would be something like that there are even in these terrible side stories there are human stories with real emotion that can kind of give us insight into the present and can tell us more about who we are might Pearl author of the day it finally happens you can read an excerpt of his book on our website at Science Friday dot com slash deep fakes he's going to join us after the break so we'll take more of your questions Stay with us 844-724-8255 We'll be right back after this. 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This is Science Friday I'm Ira Flatow we've been imagining what the world might look like under science find techno environmental disasters with my guest Mike Pearl He's a journalist and author of the book the day it finally happens alien contact dinosaur parts and more immortal humans and other possible phenomena we haven't even mentioned in the title stuff title of the book is there's someone out so much else to talk about so you read the book and you see what he has to say and we'll fill in all the other stuff on the radio here. A lot of things that people are asking about just going to sum up a bunch of tweets we've had and people from vox pop calling and they're worried about Ai artificial intelligence taking over the singularity is their number one concern what do you feel about that well I I did the deep fakes chapter and that was my main I mean my main coverage when it comes to the more the Judgment Day from Terminator 2 scenario where Skynet comes on line. I had done some research about that prior to this particularly again with talking to Electronic Frontier Foundation and others and they cautioned me against talking to in too much detail about a certain kind of singularity where the machines turn against us where the machines decide that we the matrix singularity where they decide that we're worthless that were just nothing but answer that they need to convert us into energy or something like that not that it's impossible I could have I could have easily done a chapter on that but what they said I found very interesting and sort of comforting which was that you know in philosophy of mind the concept of intelligence the concept of sentience are there a bit of a black box we don't quite understand what those are and if we ever do put together some kind of neural net that has human intelligence as we understand it that'll be a kind of a spontaneous. Thing that I think we may know once we build it we may never understand it and it's not just sort of like snapping enough microchips on to your robot brain to sort of like to grow and grow and grow and grow they said that's not really what intelligence is so they they they told me if I were to write a chapter for this book on this it would be more about. Algorithms that drive our our economy algorithms that drive our politics the way that those the way that we trust software at times to make decisions for us collectively and sort of like leave you know we step aside and let an algorithm decide where where our roads should go or what stories should be there or what our city should look like and before long maybe we miss something that we didn't even realize was going away so that was sort of that's sort of how I view the scary singularity I think mine is a little bit more comforting than most people's All right speaking of comforting Let's go to Athens Georgia Jackson's on the line Hi Jackson. Thanks for taking my call. Larry I always get me up what about Yellowstone National Park and wiping out to a super volcano exploiting somewhere or some other natural disaster that's going to get life or intentionally kill hundreds of millions of people Ok. Well you talked about the asteroid that might hit us now about the volcano when. Sure and this is another one that most likely will happen some time but you know the vulcanologist that I spoke to told me something very comforting which is that we will have some degree of warning most likely it could be decades or centuries of change at Yellowstone that the ground itself elevating the. Different different gashes compounds leaking from the earth that geologists will understand signals move toward. A super volcanic event the scary part is that they said that as vulcanism increases around the Yellowstone area people will start to become accustomed to things like earthquakes and eruptions and that you know when you look at when you look at times and I don't want to blame victims but people who don't evacuate from disasters it's because you know they look at they look at their situation and they say I'm a survivor I made it through the last one I'll make it through this one but if you're in Billings Montana for instance and and the Yellowstone caldera goes you know it it actually super up it's you're not you're not going to survive here there's pretty much going to be no survivors in that area in fact that it's going to be a. Near extinction event for humanity if not an extension of that when that actually does occur let me you know last question another natural disaster and tweets what keeps me up at night is a Carrington level solar flare that has the potential to damage our electrical system so that it takes months or years to recover Yeah I mean they're pretty scary right because there's just absolutely no way to know when one is going to happen there was one in the eighty's that knocked out the electrical grid in the back. What I find really interesting about solar flares and for the most part if you're if you're out sunbathing and there's a solar flare they're not there even the really strong ones aren't powerful enough to like even give us a bad sunburn. But as we move more and more of our of our communications infrastructure into orbit as we have more satellites out there and maybe other technologies orbiting us that we haven't thought of yet we're going to we're making ourselves more and more vulnerable to solar flares but the but the fallout is stuff where we do not yet understand how it's going to impact us when a solar flare knocks that stuff out that's something to worry about some more Thank you my. It's a great book it's a great Mike Pearl is 8 author of the boat. Day it finally happens and contact dinosaur parks in mortal humans and other possible phenomena and we have a an excerpt on our website Science Friday dot com slash deep fakes thanks for joining us Mike have a great weekend. If you're able go ahead and touch something near you maybe your radio maybe your nose with your index finger gone great right now do the same thing with your pinky finger according to decades of work in neuroscience a slightly different area of your brain was activated for each of those actions because your brain contains a map of your hand with individual regions in it for each finger but if you perform the same actions with Cho different toes your brain might see a slight theme of just light up a generic foot region the same place each time unless you're a person who happens to use your feet for everything do research from cell reports last week studied people born without arms and who paint with their feet and that research found that their brains maps of their bodies place a much higher emphasis on their feet and individual toes which says something interesting about our brains capacity for rewiring in response to how we use our bodies here to talk about is bad it is then vessel link a Ph d. Candidate in clinical neuroscience at the University College of London co-author on the new research and he joins us by Skype welcome Dan thanks for having me please explain this mapping that the brain does of our hands of our feet why do we have it how is it different. Yes So what we have we have basically you know a brain a big map of our body to you know where we're being touched when we have to use a different body part right and as you explained when you touch individual fingers of the hand that activates just slightly different place on that map and. Yet for the feet Normally that doesn't exist so different body parts have different like resolution right sort of place where you are touching a lot with your hand you need fine detail you have very detailed regions for parts of our hand but an area that isn't touched very much your lower back maybe you just don't have you just have to generic somewhere around around in my back and that's why it's so hard if you tell somebody just to move one of your little toes or toes you can hardly do that you move all the toes at the same time yet you know many are very few people can indeed and so what did you see when you looked at the brains of people who do everything with their feet and who were they right so we had we got in contact with 2 people who have this in mazing dexterity with their feet so that they can paint with their toes and actually make a living doing so. And what we did is we put them in an m.r.i. Scanner which is if we touch a body part we can see exactly which are the brain is is activated when that happened and what we found is that actually for individual toes you could see as well of her separation as normally you would see 4 hands. And so it turns out their feet are mapped the way other people hands her man. Yes it really shows that they have this this fine dexterity and this fine. Sense of touch knowing where parts of their feet are that has an impact on how the brain represents it as well. So what happens when people don't have this map or some part of the body isn't very well map would I notice if my brain didn't have really precise finger map for example. You know you would so if I would take if you would if I would touch your lower back right and I could possibly even touch you to think it is in different places of your lower back and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference whether that's where I'm touching you with 2 fingers or just one. There's a you know there's this have implications for people who might want to use prosthetic limbs for example. Yes So in general what we showed is that you have this correspondence between the way you've learned to use your body parts all your life and how your brain represents it and we should have shown that in these 2 people who have these phenomenal capabilities the brain sort of stretches its body representation and just the fact that the brain can stretch this body representation that it can make room for more resolution is very positive news for for your artificial limbs and statics to see whether that potentially the brain would also have space to make room for those kind of tools so so were the people you studied the people that the painters are used to painted with their their toes were these people who did not have hands or arms yesterday they were born without any hands and that's why they use defeat for everyday life and so in doing that their brain knew that and rewired their toes basically to like to be where their hands would be in the brain. Well yes we saw 2 things both that the normal foot area becomes more defined but we also saw some evidence of the at that place late typically ute you would they she typically would use to control your hands and to do touching with your hands now also was used during for movement do you think this is something that could be taught to people to to you know aid in that rewiring in the brain if you can yes did enough for our you know even if you had your full use of your limbs. Yes we do think so I think the fact that they didn't have hands is not necessarily important for their foot area and the way that developed so if you were even if you had hands started from a very young age to use your feet to do your to do your writing to drive your car to paint then probably probably does for Terry would develops into his I'm Ira Flatow this is Science Friday from w. N.y.c. Studios talking with Jana Van Vander Starlink. Ph d. Candidate from universe of College London Dan. What does what do these foot and hand maps tell us about how our our brains are at birth I mean. Well you just tell us I'm going to try to figure it out myself. So the big question that we have going on now is we found these these foot maps in foot paint is right but the one question we do not yet know is whether people were willing to everyone's born with these not so you just kind of lose it by because no one ever pays attention to food to our feet feet movement right so we wear shoes all day we kind of tool to use our hands to reach for things and so on so with the one question we do have is are we all in with these maps and we just lose it or is it we've not everyone's phone with generic foot area and because these artists use their feet in very dexterous ways they developed a special mark had to do you have any ideas which one you prefer as an answer what do you think. Of I think I think there's probably some genetic predisposition for developing these specialized maps because if you look at non-human primates for example who use their feet often for grasping branches and climbing trees and also many Dexter's ways they often also show very localized brain areas for each individual digit of their feet where it was so what about amputees later in life can they be taught you think to really use those areas so this is this is the actual main focus of our life with Professor making at University College London and main the main thing that we find actually is that when you are told without. Hand you do not no longer have this you do not represent this had so then what is in the hand area and people with both hands. Is no longer activated but people who teases you it will lose a hand later in life they still represent this hand in that area so there doesn't seem to be much to. Changing later in life you know we keep talking about how the brain is so plastic going to doubt the ball when we're young you know are we going to be able to unlock greater plasticity in adults the I think. I think yeah I mean the main Currently we think there probably isn't a lot of. Opportunity later in life for this stuff is t. Is a general movement that no science is made where 20 years ago people were very optimistic we saw a lot of evidence for that this is the of the brain but now meant much research has come out that to see actually for changes later in life the brain isn't plastic anymore like early in life as this study showed there's a very large scope but later in life not so much so but that's actually a good news for people who are happy because because when they lose their hand because the brain is not not that plastic it doesn't lose that information either so you could potentially design a priest or ceases which can connect truths that information again so because the brain keeps all the information it used to have if we just lawyer find a way to wire an artificial limb to that we should be able to control it I can they're making progress on that we have been following and I want to thank you very much for staying up and taking time to talk with us today. Yeah there was thank you then Vesa link is a Ph d. Candidate in clinical neuroscience at the University College of London and if you missed any part of our program you like to hear it again subscribe to our part casts or you ask a smart speaker to play Science Friday every day now is Science Friday and just to repeat we want to hear your voice on Science Friday and we now have a new app to help us do that the app is called Science Friday vox pop and we've got a question in there for all you bread bakers it's a bread baking question need help perfecting your proof or refining your rise in a few weeks we're going to be talking about talking with a baking expert about bread hacks and flowers and grains and want to know what do you need help with let us know on the Science Friday vox pop app download it where you get your apps and the question we want you to answer is like to make bread you like to do a lot kinds of great baking What do you need help with in making bread What would you like to know Glenys know and say oh you can you can be part of the program when we talk about that also of course we're on social media all week on Facebook Twitter Instagram email us at psi fry at Science Friday dot com safe right Science Friday dot com or better yet go to our website and take part in all our educational material also have a great week I'm Ira Flatow in New York. 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If they misbehave they're on borrowed to the president also dismissed a whistle blower's claims of an improper conversation with a foreign leader as a political hack job that story coming up on All Things Considered. Climate change is a planetary threat full stop but people got to make money we all seeming. A lot so let's see if Corish delicious fruit perfect for making what anyone is becoming famous for English walking while I know English why I'm caught climate change on the vine next on Marketplace. Hope you can join us tonight at 630. Or. Cool in the forty's sunny and warmer for the 1st Saturday. In the low eighty's armory Hardman It's 4 o'clock. With the leader of Ukraine it's Friday September 20. 8th. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying President Trump is again defending himself against a whistle blower's claims that he made an inappropriate promise to a foreign leader during a phone conversation last month as a partisan whistleblower. They should even have information I've had conversations with many leaders that are always appropriate Trump speaking today from the White House multiple news outlets are reporting the complaint appears to center on Ukraine House Democrats are looking into a Wall Street Journal report on whether.