Scientists Discuss Epigenetics & Generational Trauma

[Music] this is Star Talk Neil degrass Tyson your personal astrophysicist and today it's special edition you know what that means we've got Gary O'Reilly Gary hey Neil how you doing man former Soccer Pro allegedly Chuck yeah man what's all right man good you know I'm loving these special editions because what they all have in common is something about The Human Condition yeah what it is to be human or what it is to no longer be human because a machine is going to replace our mind body and soul all of that is in special edition yeah

so today's topic epigenetics and you Gary set the stage here uh okay plenty of great ideas start with a question and podcasts for that matter right and that question would be what what if so using what if the stresses and traumas experienced by your grandparents could affect your genetic makeup Generations later I don't want that to be the case all right hold that thought I already know that's the case right you have my grandparents they wouldn't let me forget that their stresses and traumas actually are affecting that's a that's a verbal doubling down but even

even though those stresses and traumas will have taken place long before you were conceived yeah we're back on an epigenetic Trail but this time our destination is transgenerational not intergenerational so it's transgenerational epigenetic inheritance yes it's for real it's a thing and we may have found the sharpest blade at The Cutting Edge of epigenetic research so having said all of that please Neil introduce Our Guest are you saying we have a sharp blade sitting Among Us in a metaphoric way let you know right now that the orderly have said that that's not allowed Dr Bianca

Jones Marlin welcome to Star talk thank you for having me yeah so you you just right up the street here at Columbia University yes oh my gosh Stu at the Zuckerman Institute what goes on at the Zuckerman Institute we study the mind the brain and the behavior of humans of model organisms and how the world Works can I add what's a model organism model organisms there's like the ones that we really like that work really well for our genetic questions like mice flies non-human primates like like rees's macak and monkeys but we also have non

nonmodel organisms like naked mole rat for example which are precious you can't beat that exactly what what's the difference between a naked mole rat and a New York City rat a lot um one's brilliant York City one will steal your wallet exactly you're clo no no you'll never see a naked Mo rat with a piece of pizza in his mouth going down some stair they like E Pizza Mo right so what makes the mole rat a different category of animal to study relative to the list you just gave yes it's because we're looking at model

organisms because we have a question that can pretty much generalize amongst organisms when you have a non-model organism like my good friend um Dr uh uh Ishmael Abdul Sabor who studies his naked mol rats at Columbia he's looking at pain and a cool thing about them they don't feel pain they don't feel pain they also don't get cancer and they live kind of forever so they're outside of the Paradigm of what you're EX investigating I did not know that they're also precious but it allows us to you know ask different questions that we can ask

in myice that dieet within two years your background is in Neuroscience as it specifically applies in these challenges so first let's just set the stage yes we need to know what Epi genetics is and I know what an epicenter is it is you know the part of the Earth above directly above where the SC the earthquake took place epidermis okay epidermis is the skin above all your body and organs so what is epig Gen is something sitting above your jeans perfect on the nose no I don't want to be the one who explains it you

did it so well did I don't want a woman explain you what you just said to me awesome I want you to women expain me no no what did I surely there's missing content there go yes and so our genetic code this is our DNA this stays the same and the cool part it's the same in every cell our genetic code is the same in every cell but we have eye cells we have liver cells we don't have eye cells growing in our liver hopefully and vice versa and this is because we have epigenetic markers

same as the epicenter and the epider dermis Epi means Above So epigenetics means above the genome these are Big proteins big markers that sit on the genome and they say nope don't read this part of the genome or come read this part of the genome and they change the way that DNA is wrapped around his stones or sit on a in a space so it turns them on and off is that a way to we think about it that way you can yes I think you can so the expression of the gene better word expression

is dependent upon the epigenetic determination how much is expressed and when it is expressed is depends on the epigenetic epigenetic environment so here we have transgenerational epigenetic inheritance how does that get inherited oh my goodness I mean if we all knew how how it got inherited like that quickly I think you'd be addressing me in my Nobel Prize uh but we're not there yet but there are questions around problem here when you get your Nobel Prize you're coming back here on the show exct all right Girl Scout honor okay um so there's many questions that

are left um unanswered when it comes to how transgenerational epigenetic inheritance works I think we're at the space now in Neuroscience where we are observing that intergenerational inheritance of an experience is pretty much Canon now we can say with my studies as well as others that an experience and a parent will change the way The Offspring develop and I'll be pretty specific with this experience in a parent experience in a parent even before the child is conceived exactly before the child is conceived so not a pregnant pregnant model organ because we heard that that can

be influenced you could you can Envision away if you have a pregnant person that's pregnant with a female the eggs of their granddaughter could be inside of them so you pretty much can be talking to three generations in one space okay well catch me up on bio 101 so I knew that a girl born has all the eggs she'll ever drop yes but how does the egg that she drops have eggs which means she has the genetics of her granddaughter who will then make up the body and the eggs of the granddaughter inside of those

eggs that's inside of the mom so it's basically like a Russian doll right I got two Russian dolls here okay pass me my Russian doll okay oh she's got a space space space station whose office do you think you're in you here in the Haiti planetarium Neil degrass Tyson's office cuz it was a Russian doll I turned around and expect to see like I don't know this is the International Space Station and inside there is soy so how they get it works okay so each of these is is sort of a genetic expression within the

previous one so is the the oneide she want me to keeps going okay went inside of there so let's say let's say Mom space station had like stressful experience yes and then baby what's what's on baby this is so baby so yes yeah baby soy is probably going to be stressed but baby soos was there in the in the right now we're talking about grandbaby who's grand baby okay I don't know what this thing is SciFi to me so so this is now grandchild okay it sits well with I this is way too transgenerational we

not about great grandchildren I don't know anything about this yet all right so then the last one here we're now four generations in yeah and guess what that is oh butnick butnick butnick and it's Russian all the way through oh look at that one you're telling me that some parts some elements of all of our behavior is not our fault oo I'm saying that in some model organism she like so listen cuz my kids are listening to this okay like no that's on you let me not be so negative are you suggesting that some components

of our character personality demeanor and the like is traceable to forces that occurred outside of the life we've lived what I'm saying is that in some model organisms there's an experience that can happen into a in a parent that leads to epigenetic changes that leads to changes in development of Offspring now we've demonstrated this in worms my lab specifically looks at mice when it comes to humans the best study surrounding the most studied uh uh topic surrounding intergenerational and transgenerational inheritance comes from after World War II the Dutch hunger winter so this is a period

of time where the Netherlands were cut off from food and it led to a man-made famine so this is also I think something pretty particular we're not anything about really 1944 to 1945 yes late in the war then the generations were suffering from serious medical conditions of diabetes diabetes hypertension even schizophrenia not just for the children and we're speaking about young children who were young children who were starved but were not pregnant we're not procreating we starved they went on to have children who went on to have children which is our generation now like the

generation of these these people are alive now uh and what we observed is that what other Studies have observed this is not what my lab particularly does is that there's an increase in hypertension diabetes schizophrenia and I also think it's very particular to you think the Dutch were black I was just GNA go there oh sorry I didn't mean go go this is a man-made famine this is not something that that's track tracking with like uh the environment in a way that all all things are aligned this is a man-made famine so you can Envision

a space where you have a man-made famine a man-made uh decrease in food increase only in salted food because that's all you have access access to for Sal preser food if you have it at all plus a lot of stress I would assume if we're talking about the black population prior to you know the 1900s and then introduce food deserts and access to low quality food we can Envision epigenetic space what a food desert is yeah so a food desert is um common a common terminology that we use for a space in which there's not

fresh food available in like a x block radius like a walking radius that's food desert okay you can get McDonald's before you can get broccoli okay Chuck has defined food desert so you've got this Dutch winter femine in 4445 as a real time observation a data set yeah and I think it's it is possibly the only one that's been able sadly created so far it is the best study and this because this is because the Netherlands took very clean note of who served in the military so they started to see these these data come about

um now we know that there is a Chinese famine um that took place we of course can look at the Black American and Native American population and tie food deprivation with stress and look at uh and health outcomes but this one is well studied in a short period of time if we take that and use that as starting point yes you'll research at your Marlin lab what a coincidence you work in a lab called the Marlin lab voila I chose well what I heard the boss there is great she's fast what a coincidence exactly yeah

how what are what are you that so your research covers a number of things but what about this epigenetic inheritance what is your research about um what is it finding and how are you finding it and going about getting the results yes we spoke about the Dutch hunger winter and and Black America and our work is really motivated on how do we make tomorrow better than it is today what does it mean to be a human in this space and in this place have experiences that are both positive but also negative how that affects the

way the brain develops the body develops how that affects Offspring interactions with Offspring and how does that affect therefore communities which affect the world that really is a heart of um what we do in the Marlin lab and if you didn't get it the Marlon lab is it's my my lab that one Co um yes and so I take my passion for figuring out how we can make tomorrow better than it is today and my love for Science Biology and Neuroscience to bring this together so although our mission is to uh Aid the world in

this way we use model organisms such as mice and techniques such as studying epigenetic inheritance to get to this answer so how do you I mean okay if we're back to trauma what are you sadly doing to mice to inflict trauma and how do you then balance that out to see how these changes take place well first we paint the mice black that's the first thing we you know the sad part is oh gosh they're called c-57 black six those are the name of the mice it's just like in the name every time you write

it down we're like black mouse yeah oh what a shame but we treat them very well right because we really want to see we will not allow them to get a mortgage in certain areas we do Redline them um time for our first commercial break we'll be back after we reset you cut up parts of the maze oh God a maze with no exit right just stuff just messing with you yes because we want to see like how what is the bare minimum that you could do to create an epigenetic change we really try to

do the bare minimum and uh we also respect the fact that every mouse that is part of this exper experiment and experience is a mouse that we're asking them to dedicate their life to this experience so we do take that very seriously did she say she's asking them we do we do look they have names after uncore black 6 they have a name we give him a name so okay yeah there's Tyrone you're going to get me in trouble here okay I I am forbidden from saying anything right now yeah yeah you better Malik is

my favorite Laticia so guys okay I'm I'm pulling it back goad go go ahead y'all got to get me in trouble all right um so they pretty much have a pretty regular mouse life right they hang out in a cage they get food sometimes they get to have sex they live their best life this is what they do so there's not much many Dynamic things happening in their life when when they're here in the lab what we do is we place them into a new chamber so they haven't seen this chamber before we then introduce

an odor a smell this is a smell kind of smells like almond it's called a seaphone and we present acetophenone for 10 seconds and then it co- terminates with a light foot chock we give them a light foot shock on their foot and they jump back but in a mouse who pretty much has had the best life of eating drinking and hanging out this is a terrible thing yes yes it's like right it's a big deal it's like this is when they find out oh my God I'm black this is the you find out you're

black until life was one day I smell almond I smell some almond and I got a sh sh right so they're like what is happening this happens uh five times in a row right and then we put them back in the cage over the span of 10 minutes okay oh wow we put them back in the cage and we take them out the next day we put them in the chamber you could already tell they from the chamber itself expensive yes they freeze it's called freezing mice do two things they'll either freeze or run away

those are their two responses to stress so they freeze when they get in we have not given them the odor they already know the room is already stressing them out so then they get kind of chilled with the room like okay nothing's happening and then we turn on the odor and they freeze again of course even before you shock them right and they're counting down for the foot shock and so they freeze freeze freeze when they smell it and then they jump because they get the foot shock we do this for 10 10 minutes a

day for three days there's many way many things you can use many things neuroscientists use to um create this pairing like odor or we can use sound we use odor for sensory corespondence sensory correspondence yes and I even said the vision like going into the chamber will also make them scared but we use odor for very specific reason and I can either tell you now or you can ask me and I can tell you what do you want me to do no let's do it do you me guessing Okay we use odor because odor is

just a really cool sense the lab studies smell taste and sound these three in focusing on odor when you breathe in you respire you're smelling my lovely Aqua deparma perfume right and you'll that you'll remember this moment forever because of this this is how we interact with the world when you breathe in there's some neurons that interact both with the world and with the brain these neurons are called olfactory Sensory neurons they're first order neurons that like explore the world and also can send a message back to the brain and um I was lucky enough

to train under Richard Axel for my postto he won the Nobel Prize for understanding he along with his post Linda Buck won the Nobel Prize in4 for ironing out what it means to have a Mamon sensory system like this like the nose what we see in the nose is that every neuron in the nose expresses only one olfactory receptor so it could pretty much only respond to a chemical that bind only to thator so there's a level of specificity and and speaking epigenetic inheritance and transgenerational epigenetic inheritance what does it mean for us to be

stressed because of our ancestors this is what we're missing in the field and this why I'm so proud that my lab has been able to bring this to the field the level of specificity because we're not talking about your feelings getting hurt we're talking about an odor that only binds and activates this one receptor in this nose right and what we've been able to replicate because another lab did this first and it came up with a lot of controversy and then de demonstrate to a h extent is that those neurons that were smelled that almond

you take that Mouse out not the mom's only the dads you breede them and you look at the Next Generation and those Generations are born with a different all Factory sensory get the hell out of here so how do you how do you ins it's you can look up the nose and say oh you've got more or you've got the same so how are you testing how are you finding your results to prove yes we have a really cool new technique amazing thank you yes yes I mean that is really I mean let me back

up just for a minute yeah you describe the experiment as though it was written on a tablet somewhere but you had to sit down with either yourself or with colleagues and figure out what would make a good test for the hypothesis hands down that took a lot of time I just want to give credit to it's easy to say put him in give all no you have to think that through I mean that's just tremendous okay and you want it to be simple enough so that there's not another a lot of complicating other factors the

causes and effects right right right on the nose that's so great and it's not an easy part of the brain to get to uh we created techniques and we use techniques now um in the lab we do brain clearing so we can clear the entire tissue okay that's yeah see I'm you listen just use light sheet Imaging and so cool brain clearing straight up they clone Tyrone stuff and I'm not sure transgenerationally yes like a little transgenerational so so so how and now how exactly and where exctly that's going to be the name of my

first book like transgenerational Tyrone inter General inheritance of trauma so what's the brain clearing though that's how how do you how do you get to that space I totally skipped apart because we're seeing that The Offspring have a brain that looks like the parent but I didn't tell you what the parent brain looks like we take the animal out of this chamber after 3 days of odor shock pairing we actually let them relax day 10 they actually get to you know have a little fun they breed cuz we're going to look at those kids later

and 21 days later we ask them to sacrifice their life and then we look at their their brain right and if you look at the animals that just got an odor and no shock or just got a shock and no odor or got odor and shock but it's not co- terminating at the same time their brains all look the same the paired animals we call the animals got the odor co- terminating with shock they have more neurons that respond to that odor so I want to give a second to like give the beauty of biology

that that sits there before we even get to the Next Generation the brain does the brain takes energy to make new things to change it's electri an electric device so it makes sense so what period of time does it take for this generation of more receptors to actually happen we are see in the order of 21 days about a month cool part about the manal factor epithelium there's stem cells in this area what part that's the part where the where this the the smell exactly the neurons that can smell the world and then send information

the main old factory epithelium epithelium another Epi look at that Epi good okay and so this tissue it has a stem cell population there are very few few areas of the brain that have stem cells one is hippocampus an area known for placement and memory uh one is the olfactory bulb this is where these neurons send the information to that go to other parts of the brain and um the manala epithelium so there's neurons that are that are there they're not neurons I take that back there's cells that are there and they're like uh what

am I going to be when I grow up and they usually hang out and they're like okay I'm going to be a peppermint cell because that's what my epigenetic modifications will like allow me to be and then we give them this experience this odor shock pairing and what we've been on G gone on to demonstrate what my lab has demonstrated is that these neurons are going to be peppermint say as important as peppermint is Almond's more important I'm not going to do that I got to I got to I got to make a my receptor

Choice got to make a detour cuz cuz that's more important for me because now I have this experience I just want to just that that becomes a stimuli basically insan just so we just W you're brilliant just thanks just on the same on the same Mouse page how long does it take a newborn Mouse to be old enough to have a Next Generation it takes about six weeks so a mouse is born six weeks later it can get pregnant yes and how long is the gestation period 21 days that's why you said 21 days before

because it just happens to be a um a coincidence that also 21 days is a good time in the nose and the typical life expectancy of a mouse is a few years two years in the lab two two years a year and a half yeah two years okay in the wild a lot a lot shorter yeah because they're tasty snacks for owls and foxes and things so I guess what I'm getting at is mice which are interestingly genetically similar to us because we're mammals and vertebrates and this sort of thing I get that but what

would take us decades to manifest as an organism happens in weeks yes in your lab so that if you need to go through multiple experiments it's way more efficient uh people also study flies and worms and they can do this seven generations in two weeks so we're we're dead smack in the middle it Tes it takes a while to get to the transation that's why flies and worms show up in these kinds of conversations you would not do it on galpagos tortoises because that would just too long 0% chance they'll out your so you conduct

this experiment with a with an adult yes how many generations will this be present this this change we are observing it right now from parent to offspring from sperm of male to offspring our preliminary data suggests that this is not carried on to the next Generation if you do nothing to the parent and this makes evolutionary sense if your parent has gone through a trauma and you have not come across this stressor or trauma in your lifespan why would you give your offspring anxiety like why is it that you would pass that on to the

next Generation if it's not relevant biology is smart it's smarter than us and so we sometimes speak about this in a lens of like fear we don't want this but really it's I view it as a biology wanting us to survive because if you have more neurons in the Next Generation you probably can sense this odor right so it becomes a defense mechanism in in a manner of speak adaptive in a way right right and I wouldn't call you know anxiety or stressors in this area adaptive but I do think biolog logically the hope is

that it becomes something that the animal um will allow the organism to survive it it gives a defense mechanism that wouldn't otherwise be there and it needed it for the almonds even though why would you need to defend against almonds you in your lab gave them the electric shock because that's what the world looks like right the world is dynamic it's always changing we're not we're go there may be times where something that originally is neutral becomes something that has to be aversive and your brain has to learn that it's the beauty of being able

to learn that having your genome learn that and having that be passed on so if your Generations are in the same environment that caused all the trauma and stress for the original Parent and it stays like that understandable you've got the mechanisms that you should be able to survive but what if that environment changes and you don't long lead it surely you've got a slightly maladapted series of Offspring it's the question of maladaptation I cannot create a space in my mind that would describe biology being Mal adoptive okay because what if that odor did come

back right like like the odor could never come back and then yes you probably have a few more neurons you maybe smell a little bit less peppermint but what if that odor does come back because not smelling peppermint won't kill you but not smelling almond could yes see that just and that's Evolution right in a nutshell right there happening much quicker than we normally we describe that it's not epigenetic but it's in in the Skeptics Community we describe how why is we are so good at seeing patterns even when there's no pattern there right and

it's been plausibly traced back to if you think you see a lion in the bushes and you run away even though there wasn't a lion in the bushes you live another day if you if you don't think there's one there and there is then that's the end of your Jee pool game over right so so there's a benefit to the caution to be on the cautionary side of all this let's let's throw it into the moment we have a war in Ukraine we have a war raging in Gaza both with huge tolls on on the

Next Generation the stress and Trauma must be unimaginable for the likes of me anyone else i' imagin are we likely to see future Generations experiencing all sorts of issues like we did with the winter famine it's a scary thought really sad heart the new black people of the world yeah right look this is Generations on Generations right and I do think and I I I would love to add my hope as a neuroscientist is that biology is adaptive and wants us to survive and so although there is going to be an element of inheriting the

man-made trauma right this not like ethological trauma this is man-made trauma that we are notice that place hasn't become stut it's kind of hard to De gender that it's human made political manmade trauma deal with it right but I I do I would want to finish the fact that we can still learn and so my hope is that in understanding what's happening with these mechanisms that the Marlin lab is studying we can also understand a little bit more about what it means to readapt when things are not in the state of trauma and that's what

we hope to bring bring forward so it's not all hope is lost is there a difference inheritability between the male who experiences the trauma and the female the female is carrying eggs the but the male produces sperm this can we sit on that for a second this is the part that makes me excited about science the manuala epithelium turns over on the order of 21 days maybe 40 days so like there's a neuron it's born live your best life you're dead in 40 days and a new one comes in in humans and mammals Humes why

does it die away uh so for example maybe if anyone's had Co over the last few years you'll come to know you can't smell but then after a while you begin to smell right because or you smell things that you're not smelling like gas okay s that was my experience I I kept saying who left the stove on I'm running around the house like someone left the stove and they are all looking at me like what is your problem we have an electric oven good good one but now you can smell fine if you ever

maybe when you played soccer you probably headbutted a ball yes and for a period of time you probably couldn't smell well or your taste was kind of funny this is oh but no I can see what you're saying I can see that that there's a there's a direct cause and effect because those neurons send their dendrit so the part of the the neuron that takes an information out into this like this area the remind us of the parts of the the nerve cell yes so we have the cell body that's represented here by my well

well manicured hand and then we have the dendrites here the dendrites to sit out in the ether of our nasal cavity and so as we breathe in as we respire we get these molecules they bind to the dendrites the dendrites are those looking like tentacles coming off the body exactly and then they'll send this message to the cell body that says okay there's enough of these molecules that are bound let's make this neuron fire electrically because neurons are both chemical and electrical um and so I'll fire electrically and it sends that electric signal down the

axon right and then it it uh ends in What's called the manal factory bulb so this is when it starts sending information to the brain to places like the amydala which represent emotion places like the puriform C this stimulus gets shared with parts of the brain that can take action on it yes is that a fair way to characterize it yes exactly and this is important because turns over every 21 days uh 21 to 40 days so do sperm right our data has demonstrated that when you mate a animal 40 days after the odor shock

pairing we still see this change in the Next Generation so that's got to be the female females are never shocked we would never do that in the Marlin La wait wait wait How does it go beyond exactly it's something happening that gets down to the sperm right it's being stored and even new SPM yes in the gonad epid is idus oh well the epid yes in the epid word should be epid B it's your epid I know don't go technical on me EP that's the that's the what the thing that creates sperm the epid epidemis

is an area of the inside the testes um in which immature sperm so like their sweet baby sperm they go into the epidemis and they get what's called an epidos somal payload this is not the work that we have pioneered this is work that others have pioneered that demonstrate if you have like for example low food so in metabolics has been demonstrated there's a a payload of information that comes from the liver or that's in the liver and also found in the epidemis and what happens is these sperm go through the epidemis they mature they

get grown and they also get this payload the epidos that says you were starved and they bring that down to the Next Generation yes so I years ago and I'm you you maybe you'll know this and I can't I'm so sorry but I read a study trying to look it up I was trying to look it up but I was trying to look at the study itself and it dealt with sperm production and cocaine use in men do you know the study I'm talking about believe I do it was done at pen yes yeah yes

yes and it was fascinating because the men were passing the information on in their sperm that uh equated back to the cocaine use wow and it was just fascinating too but this is exactly what we're talking about so what you're saying there is outside of a stress trauma certain environmental circumstances can have an effect on on the way the the epigenetics are R to we do know that that stress and Trauma do cocaine use lifestyle yes there must be all sorts of other things I'm guessing environmental pollutions and all sort so do you have a

list I mean can you make rank list of avoid this because it'll mess up your gonads I mean we don't want to say mess up will respond to that list it may not be mess up it will change change is not always bad that's true right are you willing to take that experiment on to see if it goes good or bad all right so all right right so what has risen to the top of people's research efforts are studying the bad effects yes so give me an example of something that could be a good effect

in the epigenetic transgenerational could I give you something that would be an example of a good effect I think a good effect is biology saying if it ain't broke don't fix it right like it may not be that we effect is the neutral effect yeah the neutral effect is right yeah St SP a lot of time on a yach and your children come out going what oh dear Mom I'm so terribly terribly hungry oh yeah the starvation threshold is different when you're on a yacht no for example just as an example yes it's long been

known that suicide rates are higher among people who are less traumatized right so suicide rate for black Americans was way lower than than for white Americans especially wealthy white Americans and and and and black females is the lowest of course they have it the hardest those numbers creeping up a little recently which is a sign of more equality I guess but Su wow I guess we finally made it what a metric we did it guys was angry as a white man Okay cool so I don't know if this question is relevant or even interesting but

as they say your biggest problem is your biggest problem so if you're on the yacht and there's a delay I see where you're going with caviar and you have a big party you're trying to put on you could be very stressed by that don't judge my trauma like don't judge my trauma my is my trauma to the therapy session your trauma is your Trauma from a psychologist lens yes yes the biggest deal in this mouse life is that it got its foot shocked we all stubbed our toe at some point within this last week we're

not really going to remember it happens often but in the dynamic of this mouse yes that's oh better than us I'm I'm coordinated okay sorry I'm not going to apologize yes yes I can see the the biggest problem being the biggest problem I think when we think about looking at humans we have to take culture into consideration and that's what we separate when we study mice why we have a model organism like Mouse is because we can control everything else right right there are definitely cultures in which the morbidity associated with suicide suicidality is higher

my mother from Guyana South America one at some point it had the highest suicidality rate and no longer does I think it's number three now in the world in the world wow yes right and we saw that there was a trend with the three major populations which are Indo indog Guyanese afrane and and uh Chinese Guyanese or like Asian guyes as well as a native population and it was higher in the indog but there are also different cultural aspects of being indog so I think it's harder it's harder to par so you got to get

the basic science in there first before you get sociological hands down I think it's wise yeah interesting it's wise and respectful other it's a big Tangled mess and you don't know what your causes and fix what happens if the uh the the shocks were generational and continued yes so right now what we're observing is an intergenerational change but what if the environment doesn't change even in the Next Generation or the generation after that this is when we can start to Envision a space where what we're looking at is an actual Evolution CH change in evolution

and not just an epigenetic change interesting because if what and we have not demonstrated this nor have other labs but it could be the space in which for Seven Generations you get the odor foot shock right and then you have the eighth you'll you'll expect to see the change in brain what if you do nothing to the eighth and then look at the 10th is this when it finally has stopped becoming intergenerational and finally overrode so in that 12th generation what we see is the same expression that we did in the eighth and the seventh

but we created that eth and seventh now happening but that smells lamaran here people say lamaran as if it's like bad okay well okay let me let me do right got to do right by Lamar Baptist Lamar Jean Baptist Lamar came a half a century before DM he also want to give credit where credits du Darwin's work is built upon what Lamar um studied if I could put that in a nutshell pretty much what lamarian inheritance would describe is a giraffe walking in its draft space and it sees green leaves on top of a tree

and it's like okay I really want these green leaves I'm going to hope and wish and stretch and try to get those leaves try to get the Le and as you try your neck gets longer and then you have a longer neck and the next generation is even longer so it's characteristic from things that happen B on your circumstances or surrounded exactly all right whereas Lamark I mean Darwin says you were born with a long neck you eat all the top of the leaves all your cousins die with short necks and now you get to

breed more and have you were selected to remain because your neck was suited for eating trees everybody else died doesn't mean that it's one or the other it does not have to be nature versus nurture in the space it could be an Endor so is this adapt and survive or is that just a just too broad a stroke I think this is what it comes back to how many generations does the smell continue on what we can say is that former the studies that went on after lamaran inheritance um became uh a concept where scientists

would go in and they would say okay well let's see if Lamar is is real we're going to go take this mouse we're going to cut off its tail and let's see if the next generation is born with with no tail in fact let's do for three generations we do not do this in the lab let me clarify right but for three generations you cut off the mouse tail and poles so don't apologize for not doing exactly and poodles are still born with tails yes with long tails they cut them short to to make it

a little bushy toughed but right so they mean they said okay Lamar is wrong but what they didn't study is are the mice now afraid of the scientist who comes in with the lab coat and scissors right so what are we really focusing our question and answer on CU that would be a psychological trauma just a physical change let's turn this around cuz we've talked about traumas we're going to cut the tails off young animals right how cute how wonderful what if you get exposed an animal to something pleasant and continued that Pleasant exposure do

you find that that becomes a more balanced a happier creature I know it is this is not going to happen anywhere right but is it possible to have other things transferred not just trauma if I were to have a convers ation with Biology I think what biology would say back to me is like let's survive so we can Thrive all right if Sugar's good if flowers smell good we're good wait do you have conversations with Biology all the time all the time and it speaks back to me okay okay in the way neurons fire like

a science is so beautiful all right right but what we think is happening when it comes to a stressor yeah is that there's something called coincidence detection and we talk about this as electrophysiologists who record from neurons in the brain when one neuron fires and another neuron hears that fire and also fires is coincidence detection we have an animal who's smelling the environment so those neurons are firing and it gets a shock that's another pathway that's now firing the same time those old factory Sensory neurons are firing MH if we have something pleasant we could

have the smell of a flower maybe some dopamine be released and like that could be paired but it may not be dopamine makes you feel good dopamine is a neur a neurotransmitter makes you feel good but would that be enough of a threshold to say now let's take all the energy necessary to make sure animals smell flowers more oh it's already roped into what the pleasant circuitry looks like but I think the best way to answer that question yeah would be let's override it with something really good let's give him some good cocaine right because

it's so good that it's bad how does that change the Next Generation oh that's the way I would approach that that experiment is that true with most things they so good they're bad well yeah I mean sugar is certainly what like you know we there's sugar receptors in our stomach on our tongue and our brain but why cuz it's essential for survival right it's got high calorie density exactly but at one point hijacked by by candy bar company but it was but the scarcity is what allowed it to be oh it's so good and hey

I got to get this cuz you're not going to get it but now that it's abundant now it's a bad thing because you can get it all the time it's subject to abuse those same receptors have have been hijacked by modern civilization right so you would agree or possibly even lament that these features of our adaptability in modern times if you don't need that adaptation yet you still have manifestations of it a clever Advertiser or a clever marketing person can hijack those sensory urges of course yeah of course absolutely and whose responsibility is that to

fix that so we've discussed Chuck's need for sugar quite needs to survive senses sight smell taste they're all senses so it's all survival this whole thing of epigenetic inheritance is I mean to thrive a simple umbrella to my mind is survival yes and so therefore it's as necessary as oxygen oh hands down hands down amazing sweet oxygen to aerobic yeah yes they anerobic life that does doesn't want oxygen just to be just to be we're being specious we're just only talking about the important ones speciesist correct no isms so let's let's see if we can

land This Plane this fascinating plane let me be cynic here so what now you understand the phenomenon what are you going to do about it an entire generation of people survived the depression famine uh racism slavery can you do anything about it other than just come behind us all is that well here's why you're that way and then go back to your lab meanwhile Chuck has hypertension he's got he's got race issues prostate prate all kind okay if you can't do anything about it what good is this and if you can do something about it

then are you playing God I that's a twofold answer one is for the love and need of understanding science the other one is for the love and need of understanding people if there was a space in which someone who had gone through trauma ancestrally and then are born here in modern day and are suffering from all these elements even though they eat healthy they exercise they s hypertension they still feel this anxiety I believe to have a neuroscientist say to you you can take that burden off of you it's not your fault this is just

the way that you've inherited experiences of your ancestors that validation within itself will probably create a shift for better so so that that that uh thing there it's not your fault it's not your your fault I mean I just heard you talk about sugar so maybe that one is it's not your fault it's not your fault it's not your fault Mantra it's not your fault except the sugar that part that runs deep that's great and I think the other is if we have to understand what's happening in a in a maladaptive situation quote unquote in

a bad situation we have to understand the basics of biology we can't fix something unless we know what how it broke in in the hit series The expanse there's talk of adapting a life form that can just simply live in the vacuum of space because that's a new frontier where a lot of people are hanging out in all the time so I'm just wondering do you generally in science if you understand something ultimately you can manipulate it and control it yes uh is there a plan for that going forward where you can go in and

Nip Tuck tweak pinch and all these symptoms go away thereby removing the epigenetic forces operating if we understand it can we go in can we NP talk in the same way if we understand understand the need for sugar should we pound it into our food and candy and give it to our children I think it has to do with responsibility as scientist to say we now have the ability to do a little nipping and a little tucking but do we understand how this is going to change generations to come if we take out the ability

for you to change this adaptation you could do them a future generation to not want sugar and then they won't even have or not smell the smell and not have anxiety but then constantly get that's a really good answer I can't even rebut that the unintended consequences why you give me such a good name I got nothing to ask you now you answer my question so good why the good doctor is here I know I know to give the good answ good doctor like so I I'd love everything you've described is there any controversy in

your among your colleagues about what you're doing or they do are there competitive ideas where does your work fit in the landscape of other scien smack in the center of the controversy and a lot of it has to do a with what we're taught in textbooks and what we decide is Canon decide his truth and then we see that maybe Lamark wasn't all wrong and that really draws people's brains so our job as neuroscientist is to say put your textbook aside this is the data let's look at what our Studies have demonstrated and take it

from there on a clean slate uh but weely there are other labs publish what you do it's it's then reproducible so why should anything be so controversial as what is poking mice I think you on a very a very important note of this unless you just special black mice nobody else get don't stop don't poor Tyrone your name of tyone are any of your might name Tyrone have I can't answer the question now cuz you know one is and I can't say it now so of course um but I will say that my lab was

the first to replicate the study okay of the original par change in the parent fantastic this study was start yes Brian Dez and car Russ they I got a lot of fire for it because got a l of they got a lot of fire for it so I entered into the Flames thinking like first things first can we replicate this cleanly using our brain clearing and using our cool microscopes we've been able to replicate that brain clearing we then built upon it by showing this is the mechanism I think that unfortunately we have to sometimes

wiggle our brains out of the old mindset and just look at the data and see what that looks like and I think that's why shows like this are so important because you're motivating people to think slightly differently and have that little of different of a spin and that direction the the way The Cutting Edge of Neuroscience works I mean when you look at addiction just addiction alone the work that has been done to prove that addiction is not a matter of willpower it's not a matter of Desire it's not it's actually a brain malady I

mean if you had told somebody that 30 years ago they'd have laughed at you they they said you're a quack and now it's just accepted you know so yeah keep going this is great that Dove tales with the Free Will question right how much are we actually in control of our body mind and soul right and how much of it is a chemical response and how much of it is is man-made right well that's you you've introduced an entirely new aspect to the bring the data yeah I only talk about the data show now we

have to ask because we've we like neuroscience and Star Talk special edition so so we're compelled to ask how much genetic control do you have over your husband I Rely heavily on epigenetics my relationship with my husband and my children okay um completely obedient households in prayer yeah that's so funny it's so funny thank you for sharing your expertise and you just up the street in Columbia yes I am we got to come back yeah just a couple miles north of here we're at the American Museum of Natural History and you got your own lab

and there's more research going on in different areas in the Marlin lab so we may well be revisiting soon okay all right Dr Professor thank you for joining us all right for having me Chuck always good to have you man always a pleasure all right this has been Star Talk special edition here the grass Tyson as always bidding you to keep looking up [Music]