SIO517: How Is It That 9 Days in Space Means Weeks of Rehabilitation?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:12 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 517 and I have a great one for you today. Dr. Jenessa Seymour is here and we're not talking law though. We're talking science and it's a really cool one. So you might have seen astronauts. They came back from space and there's videos of like not only how hard it is for them to walk or move or do anything once they get here. There's also like days and days of physical therapy, shaky walking stuff to like going going forward, which seems so crazy because they were gone for so little time, like nine days. And so a lot of people were wondering, like, what's going on there? I think there's probably even some dumb conspiracy theories about it. But that's just everything that you know, that should be the new rule, whatever the one where there's porn of everything. I think now it's there's a conspiracy theory about it, that's the that's my Thomas's rule. Whatever the number of that thing is do one more or something. I don't know seven people knew what I was talking about just then Anyway, what's going on there? Well, there's some really cool brain science about it I mean pretty much all brain science is really cool, but we're gonna dig into it so much fun. Can't wait Hey, I've got some announcements for one If you are not a patron you missed that I did a whole bonus on this show on the patreon feed about dan Carlin's episode of common sense he put out recently. I Don't hate dan carlin or anything thing I think he's a decent enough guy but he just this the way that people do this like independent both parties suck but also the constitution and you know just the way he did that I had so many thoughts about it the uselessness of dan carlin's independent thinking that's what it's called so if you want to check that out patreon.com/seriouspod you can also skip the ads oh one more cool thing I'm actually doing a conference this almost never happens but I'm doing Skeptical, the Northern California Science and Skepticism Conference.. It is Saturday, June 27th in Oakland, California. So if you want to come see me, come see the conference. That'd be a lot of fun. I think Lydia is coming too. Come say hi and go to skepticalcon.com. I'll try to put a link in the show notes. Come out. It'll be a Lot of Fun. I'm going to be talking about the left conspiracy theories around the shootings. I Think that's a good one to talk about. I'm excited. All right. All that aside, can't wait to get to a really fun episode. So we'll take this break and then we'll get to it. Dr. Jenessa Seymour, how are you

0:02:43 Thomas: Doing? Yeah, you're not a real life attorney today. Well, you still are, but I feel like it's been a while since you've had your neuroscience hat on. It's been a minute. Does it still fit? How's the hat? That's good. Yeah. Well why do you have your neuroscience hat on today? Right, right. What were they, what were they doing? Cause I, whatever happened to

0:02:44 Jenessa: I'm doing pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Yeah it's it's uh weird but it fits.

0:03:01 Jenessa: Yeah so the Artemis space mission landed and uh among the many things that were talked about was the astronauts adjusting to being back on land and uh there's some cool neuroscience involved involved in how that works, how you adjust. Oh my God. No, it's not them. Yes. Yes, that's right.

0:03:28 Thomas: Of those ones that got stuck forever because of Elon or something. What the hell was that? So it's not them. Yeah, I think they are too. Oh, these were the ones that kind of took a flyby around the moon, maybe I want to say. Okay. So how long was that mission? Right. And yet even still,

0:03:42 Jenessa: I think it was nine days, 10 days. It was not very long, you know, compared to ISS where people go up to the space station and stay there for, geez, it could be months at a time. Years, I think. Sometimes people have stayed up there for years. So this is a brief, you Know, less than two weeks. They went up, they went around the moon, they came back. Yeah. I think that's not what's

0:04:03 Thomas: They got back and couldn't do anything. They're just stumbling all over the place. Maybe they got drunk though okay it must have been a rough party yeah so there's not really any sound in this

0:04:10 Jenessa: Happening. I can't say for sure, but I know this can happen without alcohol. So I sent you a video of one of the astronauts demonstrating this. She is in physical therapy and rehab for, among other things, trying to regain her balance. Yeah. No. For your purposes. Yeah,

0:04:32 Thomas: But just uh I'm gonna I'm going to describe okay she's wobbly she's real wobbly so she's got her

0:04:35 Jenessa: Yeah. This one is 10 days after. After splashdown. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's actually how

0:04:37 Thomas: Hands crossed on her chest she's trying to walk in a straight line it's sobriety test see I knew it she's a field sobriery test I bet you if you operate the spacecraft under the influence that's That's got to be even more of a ticket. I can't imagine how much they charge you for that one. That's gotta be, I mean, if driving under the influence is bad, I got to imagine flying a space shuttle. Okay. So she's, she's trying, her balance just seems all off. So it looks to me like, and I don't know how long after the thing, this was 10 days after the nine days or like 10 days total. Wow. So 10 days After Splashdown, it's like, she got a gyroscope in her. That's all effed up. Like she's just kind of like she's walking, obviously, but it looks like she has vertigo, which is something I have from time to time. And I have it a lot right now lately. And I don't know why I might have gone to space. I'm going to have to check if that was it. But it looks a lot like that. It's like she'S kind of fine, kind of final wobble, wobble wobble. Still, after 10 days, after only a nine day journey, that is that's surprising. I wouldn't have thought that's how much it F's you up. Hmm.

0:05:44 Jenessa: We're studying things like vertigo and concussions and other impacts on the vestibular system. We can study these astronauts and people who've been in microgravity. What happens when they come back helps us to understand how these systems work. The critical thing there is she has her eyes closed. So if she had her eyes open, she would be doing pretty okay. But the absolute second she closes her eyes, that's when we get this wobbly gait. Yes, this is noticeable. If

0:06:13 Thomas: Interesting. Interesting. So a normal person's not like probably that good at walking with their eyes closed, but they're at least not kind of randomly wobbling over like, okay, bounce a book on your

0:06:24 Jenessa: You've ever had an exam at a neurologist, this is one of the things they'll have you do is walk walk heel to toe, balance up on your toes, balance on your heels. Oh God. They'll say walk with your

0:06:35 Thomas: Head. Make sure you're ready to be married off. Yeah, I know. I've done it. Yeah. And I feel like

0:06:42 Jenessa: Eyes closed and they want to see that this doesn't happen. Yeah. You might be like not perfectly balanced, but you should not be wobbling around like that or see that there is a drastic difference in your balance with your eyes open and closed. Yeah, uh-huh. Exactly, exactly. I am a very clumsy,

0:06:57 Thomas: It's sort of the, almost the episodic nature too. It's not just like a little off. It'S like, she'll be fine. And then like, you know, like that seems a little different than if you were were just maybe not great at walking with your eyes closed. Yeah, really not that long at all.

0:07:12 Jenessa: Klutzy person and I just kind of vaguely look like wow she just is tumbling around huh but it's not like that it is not like oh doing great and then whoa like sideways oh my god that's not what's happening to me so um yeah there is a a characteristic response that a neurologist would look for, to look for vertigo, to look for these disorders of the vestibular system, and it shows up in the astronauts after not that long in space. Yeah, yeah, no, no. It will wear off, but basically the, the, like, sea legs motion sickness, that wears off when you get to space. It takes about a day or two, and when you come home, it takes about an hour or two. It's really really not all that different from like sea legs if you're somebody who you know works on rough seas but this vestibular thing where like she looks fine but then she closes her eyes and all of a sudden we still see it it's not clear how long that takes it does go away eventually but you can see here there are people observing her like this is part of physical therapy there's a a very intentional intervention. Whereas the general like sea legs thing, you know, the nausea and all of that, one paper referred to the term stomach awareness as a symptom, which I've never heard that term before, but I suppose it's sort of self-evident, that sensation of being desperately aware of your stomach, I guess. Oh, I forgot lunch. You're making me realize. Yeah, those kind of

0:07:51 Thomas: Jeez. Are they like permanently effed up or what? Hmm. I'm always aware of my stomach. God, hungry right now. Wow. So when you're up into space, that's also, so you're just like floating

0:09:02 Jenessa: Things. The nausea, the dizziness, like things you associate with motion sickness, that'll be gone all on its own without intervention in about a day or two for most people. There is, oh god, I read a report of one astronaut was debilitated by motion sickness for the entire trip up into space just the whole time. Yeah, yeah, you'll get it on the way up and on the Wayback. Yeah. Yeah everything about this actually sounds like it kind of sucks and I don't want to do it. Yeah no. I was watching the splashdown. And when they landed, and it took them like, I don't know if you were watching, it took like 45 minutes to open the freaking door. I was like, I'm out already. I would be like, are you kidding me? I'm home and you're not opening the, oh my God, I'm OUT. I'm so out. This tiny little thing with four people crammed in it. And then they opened the door. And instead of getting out, four doctors went in. Now it's even more claustrophobic while I'm bobbing in the ocean? Get me the hell out of here. Oh my god, I would never have the patience. I could not. Yeah, for sure. So, okay, what is this and why

0:09:27 Thomas: There and you're like, ah, dizzy. God. That sounds really awful. Actually. I mean, I'm not to pee so bad yeah right you probably have to appreciate a good snuggle to get in there to do that you know yeah it's nine o'clock do you know where your limbs are right wow huh right right

0:10:23 Jenessa: Is it happening? The whole thing comes down to proprioception, your perception of your body. Often I say your body in space, but I think that's a little confusing in this context. We don't mean in outer space. Your body in relation to the space around you. Where are my limbs? It might seem obvious, of course, I know where my limbs are, but oh no. So how do you sense your body in space? How do you know where your limbs are? Normally when we talk about a sense, we're talking about like one or two sensory receptors. You know, vision is like a photon hits your eye and it hits receptors in the back of your retina or hearing there's hair cells in the cochlea and they move because of vibrations in the air here with proprioception it's more of like a meta sense it's the integration of a whole bunch of other senses and many that are outside the like the five senses that we normally talk about so the first one is how do you know where gravity is How do you know where down is? So this is going to happen in the inner ear, and it's very similar to hearing in that it's going to use those, we call it a hair cell, because it looks like hairs if you put it under a microscope. It's got these little dangly pieces, and the cells are embedded in like a jelly, and on top of the jelly are otoliths, which is ear stones is how you'd translate that. They're like little calcium carbonate rocks which I tried to look it up I was thinking like oh okay so it's just like little bones but apparently our bones are made of calcium phosphate so they're not little bones I don't know I texted dr jaffe and we were trying to figure it out that like maybe that's an evolutionary thing because calcium carbonate is like what the shells are made out of with invertebrates like crabs and things so might just be like a really old evolutionary thing like ears have been around for a very long time I don't quite know to be honest with you but you got little rocks in your ears basically so they're sitting on top of the jelly the hair cells are in the jelly and you've got two panels the utricle is horizontal and the saccule is vertical if you were sitting upright, which I am right now. So right now, my saccule, those little otoliths in the jelly are getting tugged down by gravity, and it tugs on the hair cells. And so it sends a signal that my brain interprets as like, oh, gravity is down. I can also tell because there's pressure of like the seat on my legs, right? I can feel the chair pushing against me, so I can feel that gravity is down.

0:13:19 Thomas: But you wouldn't want your brain to flip every time you like went in next to a wall like lean lean next to a gravity. It's sideways. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Happens to me all the time.

0:13:27 Jenessa: Exactly. I need something else. What if I was in water? I would not want to get into a lake and go, oh God, help. That can happen, unfortunately. So we want to not lose our up and down, right? If I were to lay on my back, think about those panels. As I lay down, that vertical panel is not vertical anymore. It's not getting tugged down. And instead the utricle, which is horizontal right now, would be getting tugged backwards. And that would tell me, oh, gravity is at my back now, I'm flat. Gravity is beneath my back instead of beneath my feet. And it would keep you telling where down is. So the relative amount of tug on those two, you only need the two in order to say roughly where down is. But they can also give you directional acceleration. So okay right now that vertical panel is tugging down to tell me gravity is down below my feet and the horizontal panel is just just sitting there it's not doing anything. If I were to suddenly rocket forward in this office chair those stones would get tugged backwards. If I have all the right visual signals I will see objects moving past me in the same direction, those stones are getting tugged backwards. And I would say, oh, I'm moving forwards. That's what that signal means. Why am I getting a down signal and a back signal? Gravity is below me, and I'm accelerating forwards.That's what that means. Okay, we're good. But it doesn't always work that way. This is where you can get big problems for pilots in particular. Imagine for a second, you're in a plane, you wake up in a a plane, blindfolded, as one does. You can't see to tell your orientation, but you feel pressure on the bottom of your legs. Well, you would assume you're sitting upright and gravity is below you, and so you're probably just cruising along forward, you know? You're probably parallel to the ground moving forward, right? If you woke up blindfolded in the plane and all the pressure

0:15:38 Thomas: Maybe. Oh, wait, because you know you're lying down, you're saying? If it was at your back,

0:15:41 Jenessa: Was on your back, you would think, my God, I am rocketing up vertical into the sky. Yeah, it's that or yeah, either I am accelerating forward or upward, or for some reason I'm a pilot

0:15:52 Thomas: I would think you're just accelerating forward. Maybe I missed something. Okay, yeah,

0:16:03 Jenessa: This plane laying on my back, which is probably not true. So yeah, you have two options, right? You're either accelerating forward at a very rapid rate or we're flying upwards, gravity's down. It's one of the two. What do I do? This is where you can get confused. If you had your eyes open, you would just use the visual cues. Things are flying past me in a certain direction and I can see the ground and I can see where everything is and we're fine. But imagine, for example, a fighter pilot taking off on an aircraft carrier. You just have the horizon line on the ocean. You basically don't have visual cues or it's the

0:16:40 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. It's probably not. Yeah. Yeah, you stall. Hmm, yeah. Right. So I think some of the directions there got a little, I'm not 100% sure I was following that, but let's suffice to say, if you've ever been on the Gravitron, I feel like this is pretty, pretty straightforward.

0:16:44 Jenessa: Middle of the night or it is foggy. You are just relying on hopefully your instruments. That is the correct answer. Look at the instruments. But if you feel as you are accelerating, if you correctly perceive you are accelerating, I am being sucked into the back of my seat because I am accelerating. If you incorrectly perceive that I feel the pressure on the back of my seat and I feel this tug of gravity backwards because I'm flying vertically upwards. The correct solution is not to fly directly vertically upwards, it's to get horizontal parallel with the ground, right? So you would push forward to go down and you would fly directly into the ocean. So this is called a controlled flight into terrain or CFIT, abbreviation I kept coming across. Sounds funny, probably really tragic most of the time. I don't know why I find that acronym just very silly that like, wow, we have an acronym for just flying right in the side of a goddamn mountain. But essentially that's what's happening. It's called a somatographic illusion, body and gravity producing an illusion where it is this overwhelming sensation that I am flying straight straight up. And especially depending on the plane, that can cause a huge problem. If you flew too vertical, too fast. Yeah, I don't, there's some sort of stall. I don'T really understand or know the term for it, but it can stall the engine. So you're like, oh shit. And you tip forward, but you weren't flying vertical. You were horizontal and accelerating and they just right into the ground. Not good. So this is why you look at the instruments. There's a similar one, the somatogyral illusion, where the rotation of the plane is misperceived. This is why you want two pilots whenever possible, and you want all those instruments. It would be pretty rare for both pilots to get the mismatch at the same time. But for one person, it is not unusual for them to look at the instruments and say, I know, I am flying horizontal, but your body is screaming at you that you are moving vertical and it's really hard to overcome. So best bet is, if you can, to have two pilots so that somebody can be like, hey, why don't you just let me take over right now? And you just close your eyes and lay back for a second because your brain is just giving you completely incorrect information. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah! It's essentially that,

0:19:29 Thomas: Forward. It's like once the gravitron starts spinning and then you're feeling the force against you, it makes it feel like that's gravity. And so your brain reorients to where it looks uphill. Like it looks, which is so interesting to think about. Cause like nothing's changed with your, I remember when I was a little kid and I first went on that and I was like, I don't get it. Do we tip over or something? Cause it like, it's really interesting to think about how you're seeing the same exact thing nothing changes visually but when the acceleration hits you your brain wants to flip it so that's up and like you're looking at the guy in the little booth thing in the middle operating the gravitron and it's like that's uphill somehow even though it's all entirely an illusion really weird so it's like that yes literally the same thing yeah yeah you're just being accelerated against the yeah

0:20:18 Jenessa: Yeah, exactly. So what's really happening is your back is sucked to the wall. In that case, it's because of centrifugal force, but it's essentially the same thing as acceleration for our purposes, at least. Don't ask me to say physics wise. Is it? Yeah. Okay. I believe you. Um, yeah. So it's the acceleration. That's what's causing your back to be sucked against it. So you

0:20:37 Thomas: Yeah, well, I mean, then you see they do the pilot training.

0:20:45 Jenessa: You have the physical sensation of your back against the wall telling you something, and also the utricle, those otoliths are being pulled back, that's pulling on the hair cell, that's sending a signal to your brain, that in some contexts you would correctly interpret as acceleration, in many contexts would correctly interpret as gravity is below my back, and sometimes we can get that mixed up and go gravity is below my back but no you were accelerating being whipped into the wall in that case so yeah it's the same thing essentially uh-huh yeah yeah so some of that

0:21:25 Thomas: They have that, like, friggin' arm that they sit them in that's kind of the same thing. Spins them around. The G-force and stuff.

0:21:32 Jenessa: Is training them on with yup with the g-forces there's the physiological thing of like all the blood going to your feet and trying to like not pass out some of that is also this aspect of not losing your orientation and just like getting used to it basically that like you are going to misperceive things and you need to realize that's going to happen because what you cannot do is get up there and trust your body over the instrument and die basically it's a big deal yeah unfortunately Fortunately, it's a huge problem if you lose the instrument or don't trust the instrument. That is how you lose gravity and sometimes how you do forward or sideways up or down acceleration, like one direction acceleration. You've also got a sense for rotational acceleration. So rather than the acceleration just going forward in a straight line, rotation turning.

0:22:03 Thomas: Yeah, happens all the time. Huh. Mm-mm.

0:22:32 Jenessa: Turning so for this you have three semi-circular canals you might have seen this on an anatomy diagram before it's right again in that inner ear area it's near the cochlea and it's going to use very similar to the cochlea: liquid flowing around over the hair cells and you've got three because they're going to pick up rotation in three dimensions so I've got one oriented where if I were to tip forward or backward, the liquid would flow forward or flow backward over those hair cells and correctly tell me you are falling forward or maybe intentionally bending forward, whatever. You got one that's oriented like a halo, so you can tell you've tipped to the left or tipped the right. And then you got another one that is oriented kind of like a collar, so if I turned to my left, turned my head or turned my whole body, I can tell that I've turned left, turned right. This is why you get dizzy. So if you were to just turn to your left, you know, the liquid moves to your right, and then you stop and it stops and you're good. But if you spin and spin and spend in one direction, you build up momentum in that liquid and it keeps spinning. And then you stopped and the liquid keeps spinning and now exactly. So

0:23:52 Thomas: Right, yeah. So your brain thinks you're still spinning. Mm-hm.

0:24:02 Jenessa: So your eyes know you're not spinning and your muscles know that you're not spinning, but your vestibular system is saying you are spinning. Now what? First of all, you're going to have a very hard time coordinating your movements because you use that to move. If you were spinning to the left while walking, you would coordinate your movements to be able to do that on purpose, right? You could hypothetically, I don't know, do cartwheels, whatever. But also if you're not actually rotating, you, anytime you've seen somebody dizzy, try to walk. That's what we're seeing, right? Oh, I'm spinning to the left. Let me juke to the right. And actually they were not spinning to left and now they fall way over to the Right. Okay. You've got these rotational forces. That's telling me I have spun along my axis. And then in order to know where those limbs are, you know, if I have my eyes closed, where's my arm? You've got stretch receptors. So these ones, they're in your skin, wrapped around your muscle fibers, wrapped Around your tendons. And they work by if you physically deform the receptor, it lets in sodium and fires. Yeah,

0:24:46 Thomas: Wow, what? What is this? Never heard of this one.

0:25:22 Jenessa: Stretch receptors are really weird. Yeah exactly. If I were to pull on your skin and like stretch

0:25:24 Thomas: Stretch receptor. Or like stretching what? Your body, huh? That's crazy. Wow, that's so— all the things. I love this.

0:25:31 Jenessa: It out, that would trigger those receptors. Or if you stretch your muscles, like intentional stretching, you know, doing like a bent over and try to reach for the floor, that stretch up your hamstring. How is it that you sense that happening? It's a stretch receptor. And they are detecting tension in the muscles, the tendons, the ligaments, the skin. Basically when the skin, the muscle, whatever is pulled taut the receptor is also pulled and it pulls open sodium channels sodium comes in neuron fires isn't it it's like such an ingenious design of like oh wow what a what a smart way to do that so sends the signal up and now you know where your arms are because you feel them stretching and moving around think about it like if you had your eyes closed and uh your kid was holding your hand, if they raised their hand and that raised your arm up as well, you would feel that happening. You wouldn't look over and be like shocked that your arm went up. You would feel your arm stretching in some places and stretching less in others, you know? Yeah.

0:26:50 Thomas: Stuff and I think a lot about it. I've never thought of that. Like I just, you just think like

0:26:54 Jenessa: Yeah. So like certainly touch would help if you were touching something, but you could do this

0:26:54 Thomas: Oh, no, you know your arm moved up, but it's like yeah, when you break it down like that's like there's no reason. I mean, I guess I assume the normal like nerve endings that are the same as touch and all that like kind of told you maybe vaguely like how your arm's moving, but it sounds like it's more complicated than that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:27:17 Jenessa: With your arm just moving through the air, moving extremely slowly through the air. So there's no air current touching the skin to really give you the signal. It's those stretch receptors are most of what's going to do it for you. Obviously, if you have your eyes open, well, that'll just do it. So what is proprioception, perception of the self? It's all of this. It's when you integrate visuals, gravitation, rotation, and stretch receptors, you can put it all together and say, I know where I am. I know how to correct if I want to change my trajectory. I'm going to need to pull my elbows in because I can see that they're going to hit the door frame. Being able to like mentally calculate that. Your retina is 2D. So this door looks very small as you're coming towards it in terms of the space it's taking up on your retina. But you know, when you get closer to it, it will be a certain width, right? And you're able to calculate that and calculate the width of your body and know, oh, that's a really small space. I got to turn because I won't fit through it wide, but I'll fit through It from the other direction. Your brain is just doing this. You know, you don't have to stop and like get out a tape measure, right? You can just do it. Yeah. Yeah, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah I have really poor proprioception. I just lose track

0:28:09 Thomas: Yeah, I love it. It's so cool. That's why I love doing sports. I think I have a really good one of those, like all that stuff combined. And it's just, I don't know, it's really interesting. So I guess if someone's like, you know, quote unquote clumsy, do you think it's that for some reason those things just aren't as trained or line up as well or something? Seems interesting. Huh?

0:29:05 Jenessa: Of my own limbs all the time and just bang into something and I'm looking at them now I got it but

0:29:07 Thomas: They're right there. Jenessa, they're right here. They're there. They're here. I got them for it. No. Yep. Yep. Right there. Yep. Okay. Okay, you got it. Yeah. Oh, as you're growing. And yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, sure.

0:29:14 Jenessa: My childhood home, my parents still live there. We moved in when I was four. You know, in high school, that means I had lived there for over a decade and I would bang my hip on the corner of this one counter every time I walked in the kitchen. It's like it's not moved. It's been in the same place for over A decade. Nothing's changed, but I just could so easily lose track of the route I'm planning to take and how I need to move my body in order to take that route without crashing into something. Like I just lose track of where I am. And some of that naturally happens with teenagers. Your limbs are getting longer so fast. You know, you were inches shorter a couple of months ago, you know, like it's very weird. But even as an adult, I mean, I'm just like constantly covered in bruises because I just banged into something we've lived in this apartment for three years the furniture hasn't moved like it's not because I have any excuse to not know where the object was I just crashed into that door jam for the hundredth time just because I I don't know I turned around and if I'm looking at it it's there if I turn around who knows what's behind me it's a mystery yeah

0:30:34 Thomas: That's, oh man, I bet it's so interesting to study what goes into all this and like, can it be improved? Does it have to do with, you know, when you're a kid, maybe in your brain is more elastic. Is it one of those things where it's like, if you didn't do a lot of stuff with your body, maybe you didn'T develop. I don't know. Who knows? Like there's a lot. I was thinking how interesting it must be. Cause like when you brought up the plane stuff too, I was already thinking like, I haven't flown a plane, but just kind of from knowing, you know, how that stuff generally works. You've got a bajillion instruments. Like I remember— I had a friend who was learning to— a friend who was kind of like how to, it was a friend of a friend was taking him up to fly and was like, yo, maybe try try it out, you know, take the wheel for a sec kind of thing, the equivalent of that. And he was telling me like, man, it is crazy when you're driving. It's like stuff just generally kind of goes like you're driving, you got to adjust every now and then. With a plane, it's like somehow that extra dimension is like 9 million times more complicated. And to stay in the right trajectory, there's so many different things. And when you'RE mentioning all this body stuff, I mean, it makes sense. We are moving now. Now, usually we're walking on one plane, so that, as in, you know, surface, so, so that, that helps, but not always. And also like, even then we're still in three-dimensional space. We have all these different gauges. It's almost like the, you Know, levels, you got those little bubbles with the thing in it in levels. It's a bunch of those. And then you got to think about like, how do we calibrate that? And I think it's really interesting. I was just thinking, as you're talking about it, I wonder how and when that happens. Like, it's not like you can come out of the box totally, completely calibrated. And I imagine some of this stuff has got to reinforce on other senses, you know, like your vision or whatever. And then I was thinking like people who are born without vision, I know that it's not like they have no balance. So maybe they have to use other senses to kind of calibrate these various gauges and dials that we have in our ears. And it's just, it'S crazy how complicated it is. And it'S so cool. I just, I think it'S really interesting. Thing. Wait, from what? Oh, it's called genetic floppiness. I'm okay. Interesting. Oh, wow.

0:31:08 Jenessa: Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh huh. Yep. Yep, yeah. Right. Yeah, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, right. Yeah! Yeah. So like, for me, I know a part of it is I have a lot of hypermobility. So on the one hand, that made, it's so funny to say how clumsy I am because I did gymnastics and my specialty was balance beam. When I'm on, I can do it. The absolute second I take my attention off, that's when everything falls apart. And part of it for me, I think, is with that hypermobility, my stretch receptors are not in great contact with my muscles, my tendons, my ligaments. They're already super stretched out, kind of. Hypermobality is genetically, I'm a floppy person. I am a wet noodle. So yes. So like the collagen just doesn't form right. And it makes my joints hypermobile and my muscles stretch really easy, but they don't like snap back into place after. So there's a hypotonic, like the muscles don't have the tone that you want, like, the tension that you should have to kind of hold yourself up, right? Yeah, I'm just kind of a wet noodle all the time. And like those stretch receptors are just not getting the correct information. Everything's loose all the time. So how would you know that it's been stretched into a certain direction? I can tell

0:34:03 Thomas: They're behind your back. They're right behind your back. I said, I'm glad I could help yet again.

0:34:07 Jenessa: By looking, obviously, like my eyes are fine. But yeah, like with my hands behind my back, do I know where they are? Not really. Yes. There's also a really cool experiment. It's

0:34:18 Thomas: I'm Mr. Helpful. There they are. They are the last place you put them in the cool way or the

0:34:26 Jenessa: Could come into this because NASA used a bunch of deaf people for experiments on this. This one was actually the cool way. This was a nice one. There's like a hundred different reasons a person could be deaf, but one way that a person could become deaf is from spinal meningitis. Yeah, it's like meningitis is just overall like not good for your body. Definitely get that checked out. It's bad. Yeah. So meninges, they are this membrane that wraps around your brain and your spine

0:34:33 Thomas: A not cool way okay thank god oh yeah I don't know what it is every time I hear it it sounds horrible whatever it is sounds truly horrifying oh wow wow so in itself it's not like a virus or

0:35:06 Jenessa: And it protects it. It's part of the blood-brain barrier. So it usually does a really good job of keeping infection out of the brain and the spine because you really need the brain in the spine. That's why you get sick and it'll affect your nose and your stomach and everything, but but it almost never affects your brain. Your brain is separated and protected. If the meninges get infected and swollen, it's extremely dangerous because that disrupts the blood-brain barrier and it can let your brain and spine get infected. And then it's just, it's all going downhill from there. It's super dangerous. Yeah, so the word itself is just meningitis,

0:35:48 Thomas: Whatever disease it's like the barrier breaking down and then other stuff can kind of affect you is that what it was right oh okay yes you should get all the vaccines that the doctors the people

0:35:58 Jenessa: Itis of the meninges, like inflammation. There's different causes. Is there's bacterial and viral, and there's quite a few different. I think there's a vaccine for one of the types. Whatever one it is, your doctor is going to offer it to you at some point, I think on your way to college, and you should get it because it spreads in dorms. And it's dangerous, super dangerous. Get your vaccines, everybody.

0:36:25 Thomas: People who are in charge of doing that say you should get. Okay. So people who have gone,

0:36:27 Jenessa: Yeah, pretty much. If they pull a needle out, I'm just running face first into it. Just give it to me. I don't know what it is. I don't care. I trust you. Yeah. So if it is starting to get into the whole infecting of the neurons thing, it can kill hair cells. Yeah. Oh yeah, no. So it doesn't make like the hair on your head. They're called that because they have cilia that looks like hair under a microscope. So yeah, they have nothing to do with the hair on your head. The hair cells are, they're in different places in your body doing different things, but the ones we care about there's hair cells in your cochlea that you use for hearing so if those die off or you know partly all of them some of them whatever you can get varying degrees of deafness and they're also in that vestibular system to do the gravitation and rotation so you can end up with deafness and killing off the vestibular system so they're immune to motion sickness yeah so on the

0:36:37 Thomas: You can go deaf from that, from meningitis. All right. And I forget you, did you mean literal hair cells or just the way they look? Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, boy. Oh, immune to motion signals. Yeah. But also wouldn't you be able to not like do anything? Don't you need your your vestibular system? Huh. Right. That's kind of what I was imagining. Yeah. Hmm. Oh yeah. Right?

0:37:59 Jenessa: One hand, like, yeah, it's useful for detecting gravity and rotation, but you have your eyes and your stretch receptors. You have like backup systems here, right? So if they close their eyes, like their balance is not going to be as great as other people. But what's weird is, yeah. They don't get motion sick. How is that? Why is that you could have imagined just the opposite, right? What if they were just motion sick forever and that's not what happens. Okay. So why is that what is going on here? Why do you get motion sick at all? Imagine, you know, I get motion sick extremely easily. Some people don't get it at all. Some People are more prone to it than others, but if you've ever had it, it sucks. And essentially what's happening is you've got the vestibular cues. Say you're moving while you're accelerating, right? So as you speed up or slow down, those things that normally sense gravitation can tell you also you have sped up are slowed down. As you go around a curve, the rotational forces will say you're moving. Your visual system will either tell you you are moving four bazillion miles an hour or not at all, depending on where you look, right? Look at the horizon line. I'm not moving at all. Look right

0:39:18 Thomas: Yeah. Really? Huh? That's interesting. Not just from being carried by our parents or something,

0:39:18 Jenessa: Out the side of the window in the car and everything's flying past you. And oh my God, I'm moving so fast. And then your stretch receptors say, you are not moving. You are obviously sitting completely still. So one theory, the one that I find the most convincing of why would that make you feel sick? Well, we know that the physics can't be incorrect. Like the universe does not just sometimes be moving and not moving at the same time. That's not a thing. And we did not evolve to understand the concept of a car that I could be moving while not moving my legs. That's not a thing we ever expected to encounter. Well, I suppose so, but how often are your parents

0:40:07 Thomas: Like there's gotta be. Yeah, that's true. Okay. So matter of degree, I guess. Cause like the

0:40:09 Jenessa: I mean they're not running 30 miles an hour, that's for sure. Yeah, matters of degree are certainly part of it, and then that's true, it's an extremely important part of our early life. Oh, and actually

0:40:17 Thomas: Whole beginning of your life, you're only carried by your parents. That is why I am. Yeah yeah okay all right yeah that does seem to be especially with a lot of other animals like

0:40:24 Jenessa: Um now that you mention it there were some studies that babies don't get it it's like a thing you age into. Babies and dogs. We're going to come back to the dogs in a minute. So, okay, what is probably going on here? How could it be that some of your neurons are sending signals? You're moving and some of them are not. Well, if you consumed a neurotoxin, that would do it. That it has gotten into the system and it is sending incorrect information. And we might as well throw up Just whatever it is that I ate that is causing this problem, just get it out of here.

0:41:05 Thomas: Cats or whatever it does seem like emergency might as well there's just like might as well there is no you know like just like the first probably it's not going to kill you to throw up probably and so if you ingested anything bad get it out of there interesting yeah oh so

0:41:12 Jenessa: It can't hurt, right? Something has gone wrong. Might as well try this. And also while we're at it, if we can make you very dizzy and make the thought of moving seem horrifying, you'll lay down. And laying down and taking a rest is a good way to heal faster and easier. Just lay down. Quit it. It is possibly proposed as an evolutionary mechanism of your

0:41:40 Thomas: That's like a I don't want to say intentional but that's so that's It's like, for that purpose, it's not just a byproduct of some dizziness or something. Slow the F down.

0:41:51 Jenessa: Body being like, sit down. Stop it. Take a nap. Do not throw up and keep running. You need to lay

0:41:53 Thomas: Wow. That's so interesting. Holy crap.

0:42:01 Jenessa: Down. It might be. One study determined this because dogs, like humans, also get motion sick, And so what they did was they surgically removed the vestibular system, those inner ear mechanisms, and then they gave the dog a poison and the dogs did not throw up. Yeah, I don't know, you know, yeah, I mean, this was in the 80s.

0:42:22 Thomas: We're allowed to experiment on dogs like that? Holy shit. Wow.

0:42:29 Jenessa: I don't know. I mean it's not from the 1800s like you would have hoped, but I don't know that this was worth it. I'm just reporting what happened.

0:42:36 Thomas: Yeah. But that's crazy. So, wow. So getting dizzy, so even though that seems like an indirect thing, neurotoxin to like feeling dizzy to throwing, it somehow, yeah, that's just so counterintuitive. Maybe I'm missing. Hold on. Let me try to get a handle on it. So here's where I lost track. When you were describing it, what's the thing that's happening first? Because at first you were saying like you were throwing up because your body thinks you might have ingested a neurotoxin and that's just like a good way to do it.

0:43:05 Jenessa: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. So hypothetically, the motion sickness is the thing that shouldn't

0:43:07 Thomas: But then with the dogs, I got confused because they were ingesting the neurotoxins and then not. So you're trying to test kind of the other direction of that.

0:43:20 Jenessa: Happen. Treat it like an illusion. It's a mistake. It's an accident. Well, the evolved mechanism is I have actually ingested a neurotoxin. And what that has done is it's messing with the neurological signals. It's causing one system to say, oh, you're moving, ooh, hallucinations. And it's causing another system to go, I don't know what you're talking about, everything's fine. Yes, yes, exactly. Uh, yeah, right, right. The motion part is the thing that is like an accidental way

0:43:31 Thomas: Oh, I think that's the part I just missed real quick, even though I think you did say it. So the motion sickness itself, you're saying that's caused by the mixed signals that you're getting. Okay. Yeah. I think I might've, I got, I Got hung up on the carrying and the car and the baby. And I think, and that's not like a, you know, that's Not something that's like happening on purpose, just in purely in terms of motion that doesn't like serve us well in any motion sense. Yeah.

0:44:16 Jenessa: To trigger this system. So basically the dogs that did not have the system ingest a poison And they don't throw it up. So it seems like the system that triggers, oh, God, toxin, bleh, is your vestibular system. Your motion detection system is the one that tells you, get it out. Isn't it?

0:44:18 Thomas: Ah, okay. Now I'm getting it. Hmm. Yeah. That's so weird. Boy, that that's counterintuitive. That must have been quite a discovery that's really interesting wow yeah yeah yeah

0:44:43 Jenessa: Yeah. So this bane of our existence is because the way, you know, evolution is not trying to get to an end state that is optimal, right? It's you just got to live and have a baby. So it worked. This is all way, that system helps you detect gravity and rotation. And if it also turns out that it can be triggered by a neurotoxin, then when it's triggered and the stretch receptor isn't, just throw up, just do that, and also lay down. Something's probably wrong and laying down is never a bad idea well sometimes it could be the best method right now to just take a nap well that adrenaline hit maybe well you could probably do an adrenaline injection to

0:45:18 Thomas: Yeah now I'm going to test does hearing like a tiger stop motion sickness that's going to be because your body's gonna be like well you can't lay down yeah yeah that's my new hypothesis let's get a tiger and some people no we can't do that it's interesting right that's wow yeah I

0:45:43 Jenessa: To maybe overcome it. To see if that would do the trick temporarily.

0:45:47 Thomas: I wonder if it would. So evolution is just insane. It's just the coolest thing. I don't even, it's like every single time I hear anything about this, I say the same thing, which is that it's impossible. There's no way this happened, but there's also no way God happened. Cause that's more impossible. So we're just in this thing where it's I guess this impossible, cool thing happened. That's really cool. And it's you can study how it got there. And the real thing is, It's like, I see it with my kids too. Like the real key is that we just cannot fathom time. We cannot fathom billions of years, even millions of years. It's hard enough to even fathom thousands of years but like when you try to explain to the kids anything about millions of year, you know, we at least have mathematical ways of kind of being like, yeah, okay, that's a lot but they just have no clue. They're like, so was that, you know?

0:46:09 Jenessa: It's really amazing. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

0:46:37 Thomas: Dinosaur's like a hundred years? No, it's not even close. It's not even close to that.

0:46:42 Jenessa: Ask them how old their kindergarten teacher is. And they're always like, I don't know, 80.

0:46:44 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. But the fact that it's geological time, just evolutionary time. And how many of these things too, this is another thing that I think a lot of people who are vaguely familiar with evolution think is like, oh, humans evolved this, but it's like, no, we were not human when we evolved most of these, most of these. You know, like a lot of this stuff is God knows what we were. It's not even like chimpanzee stuff. This is like way, way, way, way, way, way back. And we still retain a lot of these tools, these systems, right? Like from way back before we were anything like even a human or chimpanzee,

0:46:48 Jenessa: They have no idea. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I thought it was so interesting that the otoliths are not calcium phosphate, the stuff we make our bones out of, they're calcium carbonate, the things that crabs make their shells out of. They're that old. They are before vertebrates. They are extremely old. I don't think so. Yeah, like all of our bones are the calcium phosphate,

0:47:23 Thomas: I imagine. Yeah. Oh, so it's not like, are you saying there's nothing else in our body? That's like, cause I was thinking like, Oh, it's just like fingernails or something. Is it, is there nothing else? Is there nothing in our body that's like that? That's, that's interesting. Huh?

0:47:54 Jenessa: Which is different. And the invertebrates, because they don't have an endoskeleton, they don't have bones. I was talking to Dr. Jaffe about this, trying to make sense of it, because it is not my thing invertebrates have the exoskeleton and they make it out of calcium carbonate and there's like a whole bunch of papers that are like asking that question of like why is that like why did vertebrates go no to the carbonate yes to the phosphate like why didn't we evolve a different mechanism but apparently we did not for making the little ear stones stones we do those different which might indicate just how important and old this being able to know where down is is yeah yeah yeah and it's it's so interesting how for as advanced and fancy as it

0:48:28 Thomas: Neat. Yeah. Well, and that's the thing too. It's so interesting about learning more about evolution. It's just these stages of it. Like I used to think, and one of the reasons I used to not be so certain of atheism when I was a kid was like, how, how do you evolve an eye? Like you need everything to like work at once for it to even work. But it's just not true. Like it is actually beneficial to be able to detect a little bit of light or that kind of thing. And so it's like, apply that to this, you know, it's beneficial to being able to do that. To be able, to detect a little bit of direction going stage by stage. And who knows how many thousands of years each one is for each little tiny modification of this crazy system that just seems impossibly complex. Like everything you described, all these gauges and all these like ways that our brain is like dealing with that information. And we got backup systems and we got all this stuff. It's like when you go one tiny iteration at a time over thousands of years, it's crazy what it can do. Right. Yeah. Yeah, huh. Wow. Yeah you probably need some of that for that, but yeah. Huh.

0:49:35 Jenessa: Seems all it takes is one little thing to mess with it and now you get out of a car and you're like I want to throw up and die like it's and it's not working at all and and that's what happened with these deaf participants they put them for almost two weeks in a slowly rotating room they did the like zero g vomit comet flight they put the sailing on a really choppy ocean and like all the experimenters on the boat are super seasick and they're just like sitting there playing cards they got no problem you know certainly they're not going to yeah they're They're not going to be gymnasts competing on the balance beam like they're not going to Be right but between vision and stretch receptors they're perfectly fine

0:50:16 Thomas: Huh. Wow. So I guess looping it all back around, I mean, have we explained why the astronauts are seemingly disoriented or they're messed up for so long?

0:50:20 Jenessa: At walking around day to day and they're totally immune to those motion sickness things because they're you know the docs who surgically removed it for these individuals they got spinal meningitis and it was pretty much the same effect. Yeah. Yeah. So you get home, right? And the motion sickness, you know, basic, that stuff wears off. But what is left, the whole time you were up there, you still used vision to, you go reach for an object to use your eyes.

0:50:58 Thomas: Because I would think after talking about all this, you'd think, OK, well, as soon as the little crab stones settle down in our otoliths or whatever the hell weird stuff you described, you would think that'd be like, all right, we're good. Why does it take so long? Capsule thing. Yeah. Right. Well, so it's because it's tugging you

0:51:26 Jenessa: I have to get from one end of the little space shuttle spot. I don't know what you call it. The interior of the ship. I got to get from here to there and I got a push off and I gotta move. I'm gonna use my eyes. I'm going to use my stretch receptors. The rotational forces should still work because that's moving left to right and I create rotational force when I rotate. We're in microgravity. The utricle and the saccule are not going to work for telling me where down is they will work for forward acceleration or up down acceleration but for the most part they're just not doing anything most of the day whereas normally sitting here on earth all day while I am vertical particle, that saccule is tugged on and sending a signal down, down, down, down, down is here, down is here, over and over and over again. And they're in space and it's just not happening. There's nothing.

0:52:29 Thomas: And it. So you're both falling, you know, you're both at the same rate. Cause it's all about that versus your body's movement, right? There is still gravity. So there's always gravity.

0:52:34 Jenessa: Yes. Right. Microgravity.

0:52:40 Thomas: Well, no, there's still quite a bit of gravity. I mean, it's still pretty strong up there, but you're in free flow with the ship. There's nothing holding you like the chair holds me, you know and stops me from falling and that kind of creates that differential like I imagine this is all true if you are in free fall too when they do the spacewalk stuff that like is that plane that they do they're not actually going into outer space they're going in an airplane that can dive for a long time you go up high and dive for a long time at the exact speed that you would fall and so it feels exactly like being in no gravity or whatever quote unquote no gravity because of that so it's really about just you versus your surface that you're sitting on you know like that kind of thing yeah it's not many well the earth the earth is still giving you yeah yeah but it's

0:53:23 Jenessa: Well, that's where they're talking about, like, when you're on Earth, you have one G-force acting on you. And when you go really really fast in the fighter jet you have like I mean I don't know how many g's they get up to before you like die but yeah it doesn't take a lot but they get to you know a certain number of g forces that are you have to train to be able to tolerate that and that's why they say on the all the papers I was reading the term they use is microgravity because they don't want to say no gravity because like you said there's always some gravity like the moon's over it's tugging on everything, right? And the ship itself, you have, yeah, everything's still tugging on you. But compared to while you're standing on the surface of the earth, which we have decided to call that one G, you are in far less Gs. Right, right. Gravity is, yeah. Gravity

0:54:12 Thomas: Still not that it's relative to your that's why you can get more gravity in these fighter jets you're not going more in the earth it's it's relatively it's your acceleration relative to what you're sitting on because that's what creates the force. Yeah. Right. Right, right, right.

0:54:25 Jenessa: Is definitionally, it is acceleration, right ? So that's the point is the G forces are acting on on your utricle and saccule are less. So it's not being tugged down the way that right now on Earth, they're being tugged down. They are being tugged down with one g-force of force on them. The saccule is doing that right now to me because I'm sitting vertical, and the utricle is not because it's that horizontal panel that's just sitting there. So the orientation is the important part. They're in the spaceship, and for all intents and purposes, there's no up or down for them right it's that here my saccule is tugged down and my utricle is not and that is how I have a down when you're floating in space with microgravity you know with very little g-forces acting on you you don't have that differential of one is tugging down to the wherever down is and the other one is not there is no down you could be upside down in the space there's no up or down. They're like, oh, this is the top of the spaceship. It was the top when it was on Earth. But right now, it's kind of arbitrary, right? So that's the part that is not affecting those receptors. So they're not experiencing it the same way. You get home, and with your eyes open and your stretch receptors, that's like it worked in space. Depending on how long you were in space, if you were up on the space station for a long time, you could have muscle atrophy and all kinds of things contributing to this. I doubt that would happen that fast with nine days in space, but it's a little outside my area of expertise. Really, when they get down here, they come back, they get over the ugh feeling and what's left. I know how to use my vision and coordinate that with my stretch receptors, but if I close my eyes, I got really used to the idea that I don't have to worry about where down is. And rotational forces are really only generated by me and nothing fights me when I you know if I spin I could just spin forever but now there's there's resistance from everything and that's where the confusion comes in is retraining yourself to go oh no if I close my eyes I do have to rely on other senses whereas in space you had to ignore that feeling of oh god where's down where is down? Where is down?" You had to tell yourself to stop worrying about where down is and now you've come back and you have to once again worry about where down and your brain is like, what do I do? And it's confusing and disorienting and the fact that you can use your eyes and your stretch receptors is like a crutch you might accidentally lean on for weeks. Right. You get out of

0:57:15 Thomas: And so it's probably important to do this in order to get that back so that you're not just leaning on your vision. Yeah, wow. That's crazy. But it's crazy also that it takes so long. I mean,

0:57:23 Jenessa: Bed in the middle of the night and suddenly discover that you do not in in fact, know how to walk. Yeah. Yeah, it looks bad, right? Like, it's not good. Yeah I wouldn't

0:57:32 Thomas: You said that was 10 days. So longer than this person was even in space and it still is a a challenge. Yeah. Wow. Really interesting. So just making sure. So that's caused, so that continued sort of disorientation, I don't know what you want to call it, like that continued, I guess, motion sickness from, well, yeah, what do you call even what that is? Right, right, right.

0:57:54 Jenessa: Call it motion sickness because the nausea should have worn off by now. I think disorientation is probably a good term for it. A vestibular, vestibule disorder might be an okay way to say it. Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah yeah and you know what's weird? One of the things you don't have

0:57:58 Thomas: Yeah. What do you, what Do you call it? It's like this induced. Yeah, sure. None of that is caused by your instruments being malfunction. It's just your brain, how your brain learned to silence that that information or deal with that information in space. That's crazy. So that's what takes. So that is why there is no like you are not really taking a pill. You are not really doing anything that is fixing that. It is like your brain has just got to relearn it and you have to go through that physical therapy in order to do that. Oh, with the proper grip strength per weight. Yeah. So if you judge like if you have

0:58:36 Jenessa: Have to relearn is like grabbing and moving things there was an experiment where they did I don't know how the hell they did this they did it on the ground and in space measuring grip strength and they showed that in space people still grabbed things as if it was gonna fall yeah exactly yep yeah they kept doing it in space as oh that's a heavy one you better get that with

0:59:00 Thomas: To grab something heavy, you are going to have to grip it harder. So you do not lose that huh huh well at least for that length of time I have to imagine eventually that's got to go

0:59:09 Jenessa: Two hands and get it, like really get it. They would grab it hard as if it was going to fall, even though it wasn't. So your brain does not correct that one. Oh yeah. No, this is a learned

0:59:22 Thomas: Right I mean if you were if you're raised in space I'm sure you would never even learn that so there's got to be yeah but it's interesting how sticky it is so like it seems like different different

0:59:26 Jenessa: Behavior. Yeah. Yeah, some of it is extremely, I can't remember if they use stubborn or they might

0:59:31 Thomas: Amounts of this are stickier than not you know like some stuff you might abandon right away then relearn right away some stuff you might not do you know that's kind of interesting I wonder why that that is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's what I was just going to ask, though, is you would think it would

0:59:45 Jenessa: Have used the word sticky in this article, that some of them are really resistant and some of them adapt very quickly these astronauts were up there for I think it was nine days and some of these senses adapted so fast that it is taking about the same length of time to learn it back yeah right I would suspect that is a huge part of it that yeah you can like kind of cheat with

1:00:08 Thomas: Be easy come, easy go or hard come, hard go. Why would there be a mismatch? You know, I guess it could be in some ways it could be that you need to spend that amount of time with your eyes closed, sort of, you know, roughly speaking. It's like you're only training that back when your eyes are closed. So maybe it's just like getting those reps in. That could be why. Yeah? Yeah.

1:00:35 Jenessa: Your eyes most of the time and so the pt is really the closed eyes part right it was all day every

1:00:37 Thomas: Yeah. And the way you unlearned it, so to speak, was fully all the time. It wasn't like you only unlearn it when you're right. Yeah, exactly. So it's like you have that amount of time. I guess that could make maybe I'm just guessing, but that could be part of it where it's you have that amount of time training the other way. And then, you know, you need to spend a certain amount of time with your eyes closed to get it trained back. Really interesting. Well, this is fun. Yeah. I do, too. It's really cool. I love this stuff. I think about all the time with, like I said, sports and hockey. Like I love the stuff where one of the reasons I love sports is I love when I do something and I don't even understand it. This is probably something you've done just the way tools become an extension of your body. Right. So like, yeah, yeah. OK, well, we'll teaser it another time as we're way out of time. But the length

1:00:47 Jenessa: Every day. Yeah. Yeah, I love this stuff. Yeah! Oh, I had that on the list if we had time today.

1:01:23 Jenessa: We should get to it. Yeah... Right... Yeah... Yeah. I always say this is why, like, athletes get

1:01:27 Thomas: Of the hockey stick. So when you catch a hockey pass that's far away from you and you have to extend your stick out like kind of with one hand, there's exactly one little part of the stick that can do it because when you're stretched out think about the way a hockey stick works like there's the normally when you'RE standing there's the blade the whole blade is kind of flat on the ice or it can be right but when you stretch it out that blade sticks up and you only have that little like essentially the the heel of it and there's maybe a puck's worth of space maybe and that's the part you have to hit the puck with like it if it doesn't hit that the puck's going under it's going you know it's loosely kind of banging around and like what will happen is like when I'm playing defense and someone's trying to clear the puck at the blue line, they try to shoot the puck away from me and just bet like, just right away, I put my, the whole extension of my stick right where that needs to go. And it's just like, I don't know how that's happening. It's so, it's so fun and interesting to think about like practicing and getting adept with something being an extension of your body. And even so, even if it is an extension of our body, the amount that our brains are able to get like good at that is just so crazy. Like, it's nuts. I just think it's so cool. Maybe we'll have to talk about that next time. Yeah. Oh yeah. Especially hockey. Yeah. It's impossible. Yeah, yeah. For a lot of it. Yeah

1:02:37 Jenessa: Interviewed after a game, and they're like, how'd you do it? And they always sound like morons, but it's like what do you expect them to say oh well I calculated the trajectory of the puck by looking at the — they definitionally don't know how they did it. It's flow states and it's muscle memory and like no one could give an intelligent answer to that question. Like, it's setting people up for failure oh man all right we should definitely do flow states

1:02:59 Thomas: Yeah, it's also like when you're in that flow state you're not like your memory like, I've noticed for me anyway maybe people are different but I have a hard time remembering what the hell just happened like even if I could give an account of it like in the moment after I get done I'm like ah I don't know man my blood was all in my muscles. I don' t remember what happened. Oh, that could be super fun. All right, well, this was great. Thanks so much, Dr. Jenessa Seymour, as

1:03:23 Jenessa: And the way that your body integrates tools into your body plan. Yeah, that'll be cool.

1:03:34 Thomas: Always putting that doctor hat on uh, despite you've had that law hat so much lately, so uh Appreciate you coming on and explaining that. Am I hearing like a song? Oh, is it the cat? Oh,

1:03:37 Jenessa: Good talking to you. You got little rocks in your ears, basically. That is the ice cream truck.

1:04:10 Thomas: In the cool way or the not cool way

1:04:10 Jenessa: The music. I'm a floppy person. I am a wet noodle. Oh God, toxin.