Brain strain

Professor, author, alum David Eagleman reflects on the eve of debut TV series 

Neuroscientist and Rice alum David Eagleman ’93 points out in a new PBS series and accompanying book that every experience changes one’s brain. So how did the experience of making his first TV show change his brain?

“It caused me to think in very different ways,” said Eagleman, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine and an adjunct professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice.

David Eagleman: "Figuring out the tools of the television medium changed my brain." Photo by Tommy LaVergne

“When you write a book, you sit by yourself for thousands of hours and have total control over what gets on the page, but your tools are limited,” he said. “Making this series involved probably 60 people … and everybody collaborated. What we got out of it is bigger and better than any one person could possibly make.

“So figuring out the tools of the television medium changed my brain. There’s a whole different alchemy in the combination of visuals and narrative arcs and moments that have gut-wrenching emotion.”

“The Brain with David Eagleman” is a six-part look at what presenter and writer Eagleman calls “a whistle-stop tour into the inner cosmos.” It premieres nationally (locally on KUHT) at 9 p.m. Oct. 14 and is sponsored in part by Rice. The book, titled “The Brain: The Story of You,” is available now.

Though filmed around the world, the series features Houston and includes scenes at Rice, like this one at Brochstein Pavilion.

The show is bound to raise Eagleman’s status as a public scientist, even beyond his best-selling books and high-profile talks on time, perception and the intersection of science and law. But he acknowledges the 2 1/2-year process of making it was mind-bending work – much of it done on the fly.

“By the time we started rolling the cameras, I had the whole structure of the episodes and the series, but day to day and moment to moment, we’d show up, we’d look at the scene, the cameraman’s ready, (the director) says, ‘OK, action!’ And then I realize it’s not quite right to say these words with this background,” he recalled. “So for two years it’s been a constant scramble.”

"The only way to possibly make it through is to realize deadlines are really helpful." Photo by Tommy LaVergne

And it continues to be, as he squeezes dozens of interviews about the show between teaching, running his research group at Baylor, administering two startup companies and writing. “The only way to possibly make it through is to realize deadlines are really helpful,” said Eagleman, who earned a bachelor’s degree in literature at Rice. “You don’t have any choice. You have to be at this next thing at this next time, and so you just do it. That’s sort of my secret.”

Eagleman’s show isn’t the first by PBS to look at the brain and surely won’t be the last, he acknowledged. “The big-picture topics like emotion, stress, mental illness, learning and memory (covered in a 1984 series) are what they are,” he said. “But the million little details we’ve learned since haven’t led to the kind of breakthroughs we’re all expecting. At least not yet. We’re still in many ways lacking the theoretical scaffolding upon which to hang those details.

“Almost everything I talk about in this series — What is reality? What makes me me? How do we decide? Who’s in control? Do I need you? Who will we be? — aren’t going to change no matter how much new technology comes along. What will change are the particulars.”

One such agent of change will appear in Episode 6. The Versatile Extra-Sensory Transducer, or VEST, translates speech into sensations that the brains of deaf people can learn to decode and, Eagleman believes, has the potential to expand sensory perception for everyone.

"There may be hundreds of thousands of people who are regular VEST wearers -- and it'll be on version 53." Photo by Tommy LaVergne

The VEST is being developed by Eagleman and Rice alumnus Scott Novich, who enlisted the assistance of a Rice capstone design team last spring. Eagleman demonstrated the VEST in a popular TED talk earlier this year.

“The next time this series gets made, boy, it’ll be a whole different world,” he said. “There may be hundreds of thousands of people who are regular VEST wearers — and it’ll be on version 53. It’ll be completely sleek and wonderfully designed, and maybe it’ll be the kind of thing that’s just as standard to wear as eyeglasses or a necktie. But the fundamental questions that serve as the trellis of this show won’t change at all.”

Eagleman hopes the series “will expose a lot of people to what’s happening in modern brain science, and in a way that requires less investment than plowing through a 300-page book.”

“It’s a very interesting challenge to figure out how to balance one’s scientific career with an opportunity to do something one has always wanted to do, which is to disseminate information in a way that turns the world on to the beauty of science,” he said. “That’s something I inherited from Carl Sagan. He turned me on to the idea of being a scientist. To be able to do that for the next generation is a huge honor and opportunity.

“I just have to stay up later and get up earlier than everyone else to be able to keep both plates spinning at the same time.”

Watch for the upcoming fall issue of Rice Magazine for an in-depth interview with Eagleman.