必备知识：语言学习与口语的科学 | Eddie Chang 博士

欢迎来到胡伯曼实验室精华版，这里我们会回顾往期节目，为你提炼出最有效、最实用的科学工具，帮助你改善心理健康、身体健康和表现能力。

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance.

我是安德鲁·胡伯曼，斯坦福大学医学院神经生物学和眼科学的教授。

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

接下来，让我开始与查恩博士的对话。

And now for my discussion with Doctor.

埃迪·张。

Eddie Chang.

埃迪，欢迎你。

Eddie, welcome.

嗨，嗨，安德鲁。

Hi, hi, Andrew.

很高兴能和你一起聊。

Great to be here with you.

你最近主要研究的是言语与语言的神经生物学机制。

Your main focus these days is the neurobiology of speech and language.

对于不太了解的人，你能帮我们区分一下，说话和语言在大脑中是不是由不同的区域控制的吗？

So for those that aren't familiar, could you please distinguish for us speech versus language in terms of whether or not different brain areas control them?

我一想到语言，就想到词汇，想到说话这件事。

When I think about language, I think about words and just talking.

当我坐下来录一个长播客，或者准备问你问题的时候，我其实根本不会刻意去想该用哪些词。

If I sit down to do a long podcast or I think about asking you a question, I don't even think about the words I want to say very much.

我的意思是，我当然得稍微想一想，但除非是想强调某个词，或者某个词我特别容易说错，又或者我想调整语调，不然我根本不会去想音节这种细节。

I mean, I have to think about them a little bit, one would hope, but I don't think about individual syllables unless I'm trying to, accent something or it's a word that I have a particular difficulty saying, or I want to change the cadence, etcetera.

那这些大脑区域里到底藏着什么？

So what in the world is contained in these brain areas?

对我来说，最有趣的问题之一就是，大脑里究竟如何表征这些内容——我知道这正好是你研究的核心。

What is represented to me is perhaps one of the most interesting questions, and I know this lands square in your wheelhouse.

当然。

Sure.

我们来聊聊这个吧，Andrew，因为现在最令人兴奋的进展之一，就是我们正在搞清楚大脑究竟是怎么处理这些问题的。

Let's get into this, Andrew, because this is one of the most exciting stuff that's happening right now is understanding how the brain processes these exact questions.

说话对应的是交流的信号。

And speech corresponds to the communication signal.

它指的是我移动嘴巴和声带发出声音，而你听到的是这些声音组成的听觉信号。

It corresponds to me moving my mouth and my vocal tract to generate words, and you're hearing these as an auditory signal.

语言的范围要广得多，它指的是你从我说的话中提取出的信息。

Language is something much broader, so it refers to what you're extracting from the words that I'm saying.

我们称之为语用，也就是你有没有抓住我话里的重点？

We call that pragmatics, and sort of are you getting the gist of what I'm saying?

还有一个方面，我们叫语义。

There's another aspect of it that we call semantics.

你能不能理解这些词和句子的含义？

Do you understand the meaning of these words and the sentences?

还有一个部分叫句法，指的是词语如何按照语法规则组合在一起。

There's another part that we call Syntax, which refers to how the words are assembled in a grammatical form.

这些全是语言的核心组成部分，而说话只是语言的一种表现形式。

So those are all really critical parts of language, and speech is just one form of language.

还有其他很多形式，比如手语、阅读，这些都是重要的交流方式。

There's many other forms, like sign language, reading, those are all important modalities for reading.

我们的研究主要聚焦在我们所说的语音上，也就是这种音频信号的产生过程，虽然你看不见，但麦克风能捕捉到。

Our research really focuses on this area that we're calling speech, again, the production of this audio signal, which you can't see, but your microphones are picking up.

我的声带制造出空气中的微小振动，麦克风在录音时会捕捉这些振动，而你耳朵里的传感器也同样在接收它们。

There are these vibrations in the air that are created by my vocal tract, that are picked up by the microphone, in the case of this recording, but also picked up by the sensors in your ear.

你耳朵里那些极其细微的振动会把这些声波转化成电信号。

The very tiny vibrations in your ear are picking that up and translating that into electrical activity.

这真是一个极其复杂的机制。

It's such a complex feat.

有些人说，说话是我们人类所做过的最复杂的动作，不是指杂技或体育运动那种极限表现，就是单纯的说话。

Some people would say it's the most complex motor thing that we do as a species is just speaking, not, you know, the extreme feats of acrobatics or athleticism, but speaking.

而且当你观察歌剧演员，或者说唱歌手即兴表演的时候，就会发现，这不只是嘴唇在动，舌头也参与其中。

Well, and especially when one observes, you know, opera or people who, you know, freestyle rappers, you know, and of course it's not just the lips, it's the tongue.

对。

Yeah.

你刚才提到了另外两个结构，咽和喉，它们主要有什么不同呢？能简单给我们讲讲吗？

And you've mentioned two other structures, pharynx and larynx are the main ones Can that you tell us, just educate us at superficial level, what the pharynx and larynx do differentially?

因为我觉得大多数人可能都不太熟悉这个，

Because I think most people aren't going to be familiar Okay,

好的。

sure.

我先重点说说喉吧。当我们说话的时候，其实是在控制呼吸。

I'll talk primarily about the larynx here for a second, which is that if you think about when we're speaking, really what we're doing is we're shaping the breath.

所以在接触到喉之前，得先从呼气说起。

So even before you get to the larynx, you gotta start with the expiration.

我们吸满气，然后把空气呼出来。

We fill up our lungs and then we push the air out.

这本来就是呼吸的正常过程。

That's a normal part of breathing.

但语言和说话的奇妙之处在于，人类进化出了利用这一生理机制的能力——加上了喉。喉的作用是，在你呼气时，让声带闭合。

What is really amazing about speech and language is that we evolved to take advantage of that normal physiologic thing, add a larynx, and what the larynx does is that when you're exhaling, it brings the vocal folds together.

有些人叫它们声带。

Some people call them vocal cords.

其实它们不是带子，而是声襞。

They're not really cords, they're really vocal folds.

那是两片组织，由肌肉拉近到一起。

They're two pieces of tissue that come together and a muscle brings them together.

当气流通过闭合的声襞时，就会以很高的频率振动，大约在100到200赫兹之间。

And then what happens is when the air comes through the vocal folds when they're together, they vibrate at really high frequencies, like 100 to 200 Hz.

男女声音听起来不一样，主要是因为喉部的大小和形状不同。

And the reason why men and women generally have different voice qualities is it has to do with the size of the larynx and the shape of it.

一般来说，男性的喉部更大，气流通过声襞时的振动频率大约是100赫兹，女性则在200赫兹左右。

Okay, so in general, men have a larger voice box or larynx, and the vibrating frequency, the resonance frequency of the vocal folds when the air comes through them is about 100 hertz for men and about 200 for women.

先吸一口气。

So you take a breath in.

呼气的时候，声襞闭合，气流从中间穿过。

As the air is coming out, the vocal folds come together and the air goes through.

这就产生了我们所说的发声声音。

That creates the sound of the voice that we call voicing.

这不只是你声音的特质，更是你声音的能量。

It's not just your voice characteristic, it's the energy of your voice.

这股声音是从喉部发出的。

It's coming from the larynx there.

这是一种噪音。

It's a noise.

它构成了声音的源头。

And then it's the source of the voice.

接着，这些能量和声音会向上通过声道的各个部分，比如咽部，进入口腔——也就是你的嘴巴、舌头和嘴唇，这些部位会以特定方式调节气流，从而形成辅音和元音。

And then what happens is that energy, that sound, goes up through the parts of the vocal tract, like the pharynx into the oral cavity, which is your mouth and your tongue and your lips, and what those things are doing is that they're shaping the air in particular ways that create consonants and vowels.

我所说的调节气息，指的就是这个过程。

That's what I mean by shaping the breath.

整个过程始于呼气。

It just starts with this exhalation.

声音是在喉部产生的，而喉部以上的部位，就像我现在嘴巴这样活动，把气流塑造成你能听出是词语的特定模式。

You generate the voice in the larynx and then everything above the larynx is moving around just like the way my mouth is doing right now to shape that air into particular patterns that you can hear is words.

这让我立刻想到更原始的、非习得的发声，比如哭声或笑声。

Immediately makes me wonder about more primitive or non learned vocalizations like crying or laughter.

这些是靠语言区域产生的吗？还是有自己独特的神经结构？

Are those produced by the language areas or do they have their own unique neural structures?

我们把这些叫做发声。

We call those vocalizations.

发声就是一个人能发出像哭喊或呻吟这样的声音，这类声音也涉及呼气。

A vocalization is basically where someone can create a sound like a cry or a moan, that kind of sound, and it also involves the exhalation of air.

它还涉及喉部的声带闭合，产生可听见的声音。

It also involves some phonation at the level of larynx where the vocal folds come together to create that audible sound.

但事实上，这些是由大脑的不同区域控制的。

But it turns out that those are actually different areas.

所以，即使语言和说话区域受损的人，往往依然能呻吟、能发声，这涉及的是大脑的另一个区域，甚至非人灵长类动物也有类似的专门负责发声的区域。

So people who have injuries in the speech and language areas oftentimes can still moan, they can still vocalize, and it is a different part of the brain, I would say an area that even nonhuman primates have that can be specialized, you know, for vocalization.

这种沟通方式和说话是不一样的。

It's a different form of communication than words, for example.

我先稍微休息一下，感谢我们的赞助商 Function。

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Function.

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Function provides over 160 advanced lab tests to give you a clear snapshot of your bodily health.

这些检测能让你清楚掌握心脏健康、荷尔蒙水平、自身免疫功能、营养指标等多方面的情况。

This snapshot gives you insights into your heart health, your hormone health, autoimmune function, nutrient levels, and much more.

他们最近还新增了高级 MRI 和 CT 扫描服务。

They've also recently added access to advanced MRI and CT scans.

Function 不仅提供 160 多项关乎身心健康的生物标志物检测，还会分析结果，并由顶尖医生给出改善健康的建议。

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比如，最近一次在 Function 做检测时，我发现自己的某些血脂指标稍微偏高。

For example, in a recent test with Function, I learned that some of my blood lipids were slightly out of range.

因此，我决定开始服用纳豆激酶，它能自然地帮助降低低密度脂蛋白胆固醇。

As a result, I decided to start supplementing with nattokinase, which can naturally help reduce LDL cholesterol.

后续的检测证实了这个方法确实有效。

And it did in a follow-up test, I could confirm that this strategy worked.

现在我的血脂已经回到理想水平了。

My blood lipids are now back exactly where I want them.

像Function提供的这种全面体检，对健康来说太重要了。

Comprehensive lab testing of the sort that function offers is just so important for health.

我的意思是，你要怎么知道自己身体内部到底发生了什么？

I mean, how else are you going to know what's going on under the hood?

我虽然已经做血液检测好几年了，但以前又费时、又复杂，还特别贵。

And while I've been doing blood work for years, it used to be time consuming, complicated, and expensive.

以前我每年花几千美元想搞到这些数据，但结果说实话也不太靠谱；现在有了Function，不仅方便，还特别便宜。

In fact, I used to spend thousands of dollars per year trying to get this kind of data and the data, frankly, we're not all that good, but now with Function, it's extremely easy and affordable.

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A Function membership is only a dollar a day, dollars $3.65 a year.

想想它提供的信息、能帮你避免的健康问题，还有那些能主动改善你健康的做法，我真觉得这是一笔省钱的投资。

And if you think about the information it provides and the health challenges it helps you avoid and the proactive things that it can do for you to enhance your health, I truly look at it as a savings.

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To learn more, visit functionhealth.com/huberman and use the code Huberman for a $50 credit towards your membership.

再次提醒，网址是 functionhealth.com/huberman。

Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman.

说到存储和表达能力，你在帮助瘫痪人士恢复语言交流方面做了非常出色的工作，也获得了应得的广泛认可。

Speaking of storage of and ability to speak, you are doing some amazing work and have achieved some pretty incredible, well deserved recognition for your work in bringing language out of paralyzed people.

你通过脑机接口，把大脑中负责语言产生的神经活动转化为硬件设备，也就是非生物的人工工具，让那些无法说话的瘫痪者能够沟通，是这样吗？

Essentially allowing people who are locked in to a paralyzed state or otherwise unable to articulate speech using brain machine interface, essentially translating the neural activity of areas of the brain that would produce speech into hardware, artificial non biological tools, in order to allow paralyzed people to communicate?

这涉及多种不同的情况。

So there are a series of conditions.

比如脑干中风。

They include things like brainstem stroke.

脑干是连接大脑皮层——也就是我们思考、运动控制、语言等功能所在的区域——和脊髓及面部、声带神经的关键部位。

The brainstem is the part of the brain that connects the cerebrum, which is the top part that's our thinking and a lot of the motor control, speech, language, everything, and the brainstem is what connects that to the spinal cord and the nerves that go out to the face and vocal tract.

如果脑干发生中风，你的大脑可能依然充满丰富、有创意、聪明的想法，但这些想法却无法转化为语言，甚至无法通过手写表达出来。

So if you have a stroke there, you could be thinking all the wild, creative, intelligent thoughts you have in the mind and the cerebrum, but you can't get them out into words, or you can't get them out to your hand to write them down.

这是一种非常严重的瘫痪，叫做脑干中风。

So that's a very severe form of paralysis called brainstem stroke.

还有一种情况我们称为神经退行性病变，神经细胞会逐渐死亡或萎缩，比如渐冻症就是这种病。

There's another kind of conditions that we call neurodegenerative, where the nerve cells die, basically, or atrophy in a condition called ALS.

这也是一种极其严重的瘫痪。

That's a very severe form of paralysis.

在最严重的情况下，患者会完全丧失所有自主运动能力。

In its extreme form, people essentially lose all voluntary movement.

连膈肌和肺部的肌肉也会衰竭，变得无力，最终无法呼吸。

The muscles to their diaphragm and their lungs essentially give out as well, they get weakness there and then they can't breathe anymore.

在我们这个领域，这些都是最令人痛心的情况。

In our field, are kind of like the most devastating things that can happen.

我们说的‘闭锁综合征’，指的是一个人的认知和意识完全正常，却无法表达出来——不能动，不能说话，这种状态极其痛苦，因为从心理和社交上，人会被彻底孤立。

This condition of what we call being locked in refers to this idea that you can have completely intact cognition and awareness, but have no way to express that, no voluntary movement, no ability to speak, and that is devastating because psychologically and socially, you're completely isolated, that's what we call Locked In Syndrome, and it's devastating.

我们一直在研究辅音和元音的电信号模式，一旦我们破解了这些语音基本单元的编码规律，实验室的一部分工作就开始聚焦于这个具体问题。

So we've been studying this patterning of electrical activity for consonants and vowels, and essentially once we figured out a lot of these codes for the individual phonetic elements, part of the lab started to focus on this very specific question.

对于这些瘫痪患者，我们能不能在他们试图说话时，从大脑皮层捕捉到那些神经信号，再通过导线把这些信号传到电脑里，让电脑解读并翻译成语言？

For people who have these kind of paralysis, could we intercept those signals from the brain, the cerebral cortex, as someone is trying to say those words, and then can we intercept them and then have them taken out of the brain through wires to a computer that are gonna interpret those signals and translate them into words.

于是我们开展了一项临床试验，叫BRAVO试验，目前还在进行中，第一位参与者是一位瘫痪了十五年的男子。

So we started a clinical trial, it's called the BRAVO Trial, it's still underway, and the first participant in the BRAVO Trial was a man who had been paralyzed for fifteen years.

他之前遭遇了一场车祸。

He was in a car accident.

车祸后第二天，他还能自己走出医院，但第二天就出现了并发症——脑干发生了大面积中风，后果非常严重。

He actually walked out of the hospital the day after that car accident, but the next day had a complication related to it, where he had a very large stroke in the brainstem, and that turned out to be devastating.

他从中风中昏迷了大约一周，醒来后才发现自己再也说不出话，也动不了胳膊和腿。

He didn't wake up from that stroke for about a week, he was in a coma for about a week, And when he woke up from that coma, he realized that he couldn't speak or move his arms or legs.

他后来告诉我们，那一刻真的让他觉得生不如死。

As he told me or communicated to us, that was absolutely devastating.

那时他甚至一度想结束自己的生命。

He wanted really to die at that time.

他还能眨眼睛或者动嘴吗？

Could he blink his eyes or move his mouth in any way?

他还能眨眼睛。

He could blink his eyes.

嘴巴能动一点，但说不出任何能听懂的话。

He had some limited mouth movements, but couldn't produce any intelligible speech.

说话完全含糊不清，根本听不明白。

He was like completely slurred and incomprehensible.

他挺过了这次重伤。

He survived this injury.

很多人得这种中风根本活不下来。

A lot of people who have that kind of stroke just don't survive.

他之所以能交流，是因为脖子还有一点活动能力，就自己想了个办法：让朋友在棒球帽上绑根小棍，靠脖子带动小棍，在屏幕上点选字母来拼出词语。

The way he actually communicates, because he has a little bit of residual neck movements, is that he improvised and had his friends basically put a stick attached to his baseball cap, and because he could move his neck, he would essentially type out letters on a keyboard screen to get out words.

事实上，他就是靠这个装置，用脖子控制帽上的小棍，一个字母一个字母地敲出来交流的。

In fact, this is how he communicated, was through a device that he would essentially peck out letters one by one by moving his neck to control this stick attached to his baseball cap.

他差不多有十五年没说过话了。

He hadn't really spoken for about fifteen years.

天哪。

Oh, goodness.

是的。

Yeah.

这属于一项临床试验，需要我们医院和FDA共同审核批准，过程非常严格。不过，基于我们之前做的大量研究，还是有理由相信这个方法可能有效。

So it was part of a clinical trial, it was something that our hospital and also the FDA had to approve and looked at very carefully, but given a lot of the work that we had done, there were some basis for why this might work.

于是我们做了一台手术，在控制声带、喉部、嘴唇、舌头和下颌运动的大脑区域植入了电极。

And so we did a surgery where we implanted electrodes onto these areas that control the vocal tract, the areas that control the larynx, the areas that control the lips and tongue and jaw movements when we normally speak.

我们希望这些区域仍然有活动，手术中我们把电极阵列植入他的大脑，并连接到一个固定在头骨上的接口，这个接口会穿过头皮。他现在已经带着这个装置三年了。

These are areas that presumably may be active, that was our hope, and he underwent a surgery, a brain surgery, where we put an electrode array and we connected it to a port that was screwed to his skull, and the port actually goes through his scalp, and he's lived with this now for the last three years.

他大脑中与语言相关的区域上植入了一组电极。

So he has an electrode array that's implanted over the part of this brain that's important for speech.

电极连接到一个接口，我们再用一根线接上这个接口，把所谓的脑电信号从模拟信号转换成数字信号。

It's connected to a port, and then we connect a wire to that port that translates those, what we call analog brain waves, and converts them into digital signals.

然后我们用机器学习和人工智能算法，来识别这些极其细微的模式。

We put them through machine learning or artificial intelligence algorithm that can pick up these very, very subtle patterns.

你根本没法用肉眼直接看到大脑活动，然后把它翻译成词语，这个算法我们花了好几个星期才训练好，能准确解读这些信号，最让人惊叹的是看他当时的反应。

You can't actually see them with your eye in the brain activity and translate those into words, and this is something that took weeks to train the algorithm to interpret it correctly, but what was incredible about it was to see how he reacted.

我们会让他试着说出某个词，比如‘外面’，他就在心里想，努力想说出口，然后这个词就会出现在屏幕上。

He would be prompted to say a given word, like outside, for example, and then he would think about it, try to say it, and finally those words would appear on the screen.

最神奇的是，你能明显看出他特别开心，身体和脑袋都晃来晃去，忍不住笑出声来。

And what was really amazing about it was you could really tell that he like got a kick out of that, because, you know, his body was shaken away and his head was shaken away, that he would start to giggle.

看到这场景真挺有意思的，但后来我发现，他一笑，下一个词的识别就乱了。

That was cool to see, but then I also realized that when he was giggling, it kind of screwed up the next word's decoding.

这个bug你们后来修好了吗？

Is that a bug you've since fixed?

没有，我们还没解决这个问题。

No, we haven't fixed that.

还不如直接让他别笑了，来得简单。

It's easier just to tell him to stop giggling.

我们训练这个系统，让它能识别五十个词。

The way this worked was we trained this computer to recognize 50 words.

我们一开始只用了很少的一组词，而且现在还在不断扩充。

We started with a very small vocabulary that's expanding as we speak.

我觉得，要不了多久，这些词汇量就会变得大得多。

I think that this is just a matter of time before these vocabularies become much, much larger.

我们最初选了50个词，然后列出了所有能用这50个词组成的句子。

But we started with a 50 set of words, we created essentially all the possible sentences that you could generate from those 50 words.

这么做很重要，因为你可以用这些句子训练出一个计算模型，模拟所有可能的词组组合，从而用这50个词生成各种句子，就像手机输入法的自动纠错一样——你打错了一个字母，手机能根据上下文猜出你本来想打的是什么。

Why that was important was, you can use all those possible sentences to create a computational model, computer model, of all the different word combinations to give different sentences given those 50 words, and then you can essentially do what we call autocorrect, it's the same kind of thing that we do when you're texting, for example, you get the wrong letter in there, your phone actually knows, because of its context, what to correct it.

因为脑电波解码不可能每次都百分百准确，实际上错误率还挺高，所以像自动纠错这样的功能就特别有用，就像我们现在发短信时用的那些功能，能自动修正和优化内容。

So because the decoding is not 100% correct all the time, in fact it's far from that, it's really helpful to have these other features like autocorrect, the stuff that we use routinely now with texting that makes it correct and then updates it.

这其实是多种技术的结合。

So it's a combination of a lot of things.

一方面是AI在翻译脑活动模式，另一方面也融合了我们从语音技术和语言处理中学到的经验，把这些东西整合在一起，系统才终于能顺利运行。

It's the AI that is translating those brain activity patterns, but it's also things that we've learned from speech and speech technologies that, you know, you put all together and then all of a sudden it starts to work.

这是第一次，一位瘫痪的人能够仅凭脑活动，生成出词语和句子。

That was the first time that someone was paralyzed and could create words and sentences that was just decoded from the brain activity.

我们先休息一下，感谢我们的赞助商BetterHelp。

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, BetterHelp.

BetterHelp提供由持证治疗师全程在线进行的专业心理辅导。

BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.

我做心理辅导已经很多年了，可以说它跟健身很像。

I've been doing therapy for a long time and I can tell you that it's a lot like physical workouts.

有时候我想去做，有时候又不想做。

There are times when I want to do it and there are times when I don't want to do it.

但每次做完辅导，我都会感觉好多了，还会得到一些之前没想到的具体建议，落实之后能改善生活的方方面面。

But whenever I finish a therapy session, I come away feeling better and I have specific actionable items that hadn't occurred to me that when I implement improve various aspects of my life.

数据显示，有效的心理辅导能带来非常多的好处。

The data tell us that there are just so many benefits that come through effective therapy.

有效的辅导需要和治疗师建立良好的关系，一起获得洞见，并带走一些可以在日常生活中实际应用的具体方法。

And effective therapy involves having a good rapport with your therapist, getting insights from them and with them, and coming away with specific actionable tools that you can apply outside of therapy.

BetterHelp能帮你轻松找到合适的专家治疗师，帮你获得这些有效辅导带来的好处。

With BetterHelp, they make it very easy to find an expert therapist who can help provide those benefits that come through effective therapy.

数据表明，这确实有效。

And the data say it works.

BetterHelp 的实时咨询服务基于超过一百七十万条用户评价，平均得分高达 4.9 分（满分 5 分）。

BetterHelp has an average rating of 4.9 out of five for its live sessions based on over 1,700,000 client reviews.

而且由于 BetterHelp 完全在线进行，效率非常高。

Also because BetterHelp is done entirely online, it's extremely efficient.

不用开车去咨询师办公室，也不用找停车位之类的麻烦事。

There's no driving to a therapist's office, looking for parking or anything like that.

你只要登录账号，无论在哪里都能直接开始咨询。

You simply log on and do your session wherever you happen to be.

如果你想试试 BetterHelp，请访问 betterhelp.com/huberman，首月可享九折优惠。

If you would like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp dot com slash huberman to get 10% off your first month.

再次提醒，网址是 betterhelp.com/huberman。

Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman.

现在大家经常提到 Neuralink，对吧？就是埃隆·马斯克的公司。

These days we hear a lot about Neuralink, right, Elon Musk's company.

虽然你和其他实验室所做的那种脑机接口技术已经存在很久了，但最近神经链接公司引发了不少关注，人们开始热议脑机接口未来可能带来的潜力。

While brain machine interface of the sort that you do and that other laboratories do has been going on for a long time, there's been some press around Neuralink about the promise of what brain machine interface could do.

你对通过调控神经回路来实现超常或超越生理极限的功能有什么看法？

What are your thoughts about manipulating neural circuitry to achieve superhuman or superhuman or supraphysiological functions?

这里我们甚至不需要特指神经链接公司，它只是众多企业和实验室正在认真探索这一方向的一个例子而已。

And here, we don't even have to think about Neuralink in particular, it's just but one example of companies and people in laboratories that are quite understandably considering all this.

现在确实是个非常有意思的时代。

It's a really interesting time right now.

这方面的科学研究已经持续了几十年。

The science has been going on for decades.

你所说的脑机接口领域，我们做的工作其实也已经有不少年头了，早期的研究主要集中在恢复功能上，比如让瘫痪的人或猴子用意念控制屏幕上的光标。

The work that we've done in this field that you call brain machine interface has been going on for a while, and a lot of the early work was just trying to restore things like arm movement or having people or monkeys control a computer cursor, for example, on the screen.

这类研究已经持续了几十年。

That's been going on for decades.

真正的新变化是，现在产业界开始介入，部分技术正走向商业化，我们正逐渐进入一个新阶段——不再只是学术研究，而是开始开发可以植入人体的医疗产品。

What's been really new is that industry is now involved, some of this is now becoming commercialized, and we're starting to see us now cross over to this field where it's no longer just research, that we're talking about medical products that are designed to be surgically implanted.

有些研究者也在做非侵入式的技术，不需要动手术。

In some cases, there's people doing this kind of work non invasively as well that don't require surgery.

你刚才问的这个问题，我们称之为增强功能。

The specific question that you were asking about is an area that we call augmentation.

你能设计出一种设备，让人超越正常极限——比如超强记忆力、超快的沟通速度，甚至超越语言，或者更精准的运动能力吗？

So can you build a device that essentially enhances someone's ability beyond supranormal, super memory, super communication speeds beyond speech, for example, superior precision athletic abilities?

我觉得现在提出这些问题非常必要，因为正如你所说，到目前为止，大家的重点都放在医疗应用上。

I think that these are very serious kind of questions to be asking now because, as you mentioned, the pathway so far is really to focus on these medical applications.

说实话，我们对这些场景未来会是什么样子，想得还不够深入，对增强功能带来的伦理影响，更是缺乏全面的思考。

I personally don't think that we've thought enough, actually, about what these kind of scenarios are gonna look like, and I don't think we've thought through all the ethical implications of what this means for augmentation in particular.

这其中有一部分其实一点都不新鲜。

There's part of this that is not new at all.

人类从古至今，一直在用各种方式提升自己的能力。

Humans throughout history have been doing things to augment our function.

咖啡、尼古丁，还有许多从医疗用途转向大众消费的药物，早就无处不在了。

Coffee, nicotine, all kinds of medications that crossover from medical to consumer, that is everywhere.

所以，追求增强、提升或优化能力，其实并不是什么新鲜事。

So the pursuit of augmentation or performance or enhancement is really not a new thing.

真正跟神经技术相关的问题，在于它的侵入性——比如，这些技术如果需要手术，而且目的又不是医疗用途的话。

The questions really, as they relate to neurotechnologies, for example, have to do with the invasive nature, for example, if these technologies require surgery, for example, to do something that is not for a medical application.

不过，这方面的做法也谈不上是全新领域。

Again, there, that is not exactly new territory either.

人们早就经常为了外貌整形做这类手术了，但主要针对身体，而不是认知功能。

People do that routinely for cosmetic kind of procedures, for physical appearance, not necessarily cognitive.

我认为，只要技术继续以现在的速度发展，这项应用很快就会到来。

So I do think that provided the technology continues to emerge the way that it does, that it's gonna be around the corner.

而且，它可能不会以那种特别明显的方式出现。

And it probably is not gonna be in ways that are super obvious.

我不觉得我们会直接获得记住世界上所有事实的能力。

I don't think it's gonna be like, can we easily memorize every fact in the world?

但它会以更渐进、更隐蔽的形式出现，其实很多方面，我们现在已经拥有了。

But in forms that are gonna be much more incremental and maybe more subtle, in many ways, we already have that now.

比如，你根本不需要在脑子里植入神经接口才能获取世界上所有的信息，你只要有一部iPhone就够了。

Like, for example, you don't have to have a neural interface embedded in your brain to get information, essentially access to all information in the world, you just have to have your iPhone.

虽然通过脑机接口可能更快，但我完全不会排除这种可能性。

Whether you could do it faster through a brain interface, I definitely wouldn't rule that out.

想想看，我们用来说话和交流的系统，是经过数千年甚至上百万年演化而来的，背后支撑的是数以百万计神经元构成的网络。

But think about this, that the systems that we have already to speak and to communicate have evolved over, you know, thousands and millions of years, and they're supported by neural structures that have bandwidth of millions of neurons.

目前没有任何技术——哪怕是在商业产品里，甚至在实验室里——能接近大自然演化出的这种能力。

There's no technology that exists right now that people are thinking about that are in commercial form, certainly, not even in research labs that come anywhere close to what has been evolved for those natural purposes.

所以我其实想说的是两方面：我们其实已经身处其中了。

So I'm essentially saying two sides of this, which is we're already getting into this now.

增强——无论是身体还是认知上的——这个话题根本不算新鲜。

This is not new territory, this topic of augmentation, both physical and cognitive.

我们早就超越它了。

We've already surpassed that.

这本来就是人类的常态，但现在我们进入了认知增强的领域。我认为，技术才是限制我们能走多远的关键，而我们还没好好讨论过一个问题：这真的是我们想要的吗？

That's part of what humans do in general, but we are entering this area of enhanced cognition, these areas that I think the technology is going to be the rate limiting step in how far you can go, and we have not had the full conversations about, number one, is this what we actually want?

这对社会来说是好事吗？

Is this going to be good for society?

谁有资格使用这项技术？

Who gets access to this technology?

这些问题都会变成现实中的难题。

These are all things that are going to become real world problems.

你能跟我们说说，你们是怎么把脑机接口和像潘乔这样无法说话的人的面部表情语音提取结合起来的吗？

Could you tell us what you're doing in terms of merging the brain machine interface with extraction of speech signals from people who are locked in like Pancho with facial expressions?

当然可以。

Sure, yeah.

我现在就跟你面对面坐着。

I'm here with you in person.

我们本来也可以在线上进行，其实挺简单的。

We could have done this virtually, probably, it's pretty easy to do that.

我们本来完全可以分开录制，但亲眼看到你的表情、理解其他沟通方式，这种体验是不一样的。

We could have recorded this really separate, but there is something about being able to actually see your expressions and to understand other forms of communication.

另一个非常重要的点是，你做出的那些非语言表情。

So another really important one is nonverbal the expressions that you're making.

比如，如果你露出困惑的表情，而我说得不够清楚，这就会提醒我需要换种说法，或者放慢语速。

For example, if you have a quizzical look on your face, if I'm saying something not clear, that's a sign to me that I need to rephrase it or to say it in a different way or to slow down.

面部表情其实是我们交流中非常关键的一部分，这主要有两个方面。

Facial expressions actually are a really important part of the way we speak, and there's two things.

它不只是你对我的话有什么感受或理解的反映，还包括你看到我的嘴巴和下巴如何运动——你的眼睛其实能捕捉到这些动作，从而帮你更清楚地听到那些声音。

It's not just the expressions of how you're feeling and perceiving what I'm saying, but it's also seeing my mouth move, and your eyes actually see my mouth move and my jaw move in a particular way that actually allows you to hear those sounds better.

所以，把视觉信息和声音一起传入大脑，不仅能提升理解度，还会让交流更自然。

So having both the visual information, but also the sounds go into your brain is gonna improve intelligibility, also make it more natural.

我们之所以对‘不只是在屏幕上显示文字’，而是用完全由计算机生成的虚拟人脸来还原说话者的口型和表情特别感兴趣，是因为这样能更完整地传递表达信息。

And the reason why we're also very interested in this idea of not just having text on a screen, but essentially a fully computer animated face, like an avatar of the person's speech movements and their facial expressions is gonna be a more complete form of expression.

现在你可能想象，这还只是有人盯着电脑屏幕解读这些信号，但我觉得未来几年，随着趋势发展，我们的社交互动会比现在更多地转移到这种数字虚拟空间里。

Now you can imagine right now that might just be someone looking at a computer screen interpreting these signals, but I think the way things are going in the next couple of years, a lot more of our social interactions, more than even now, are gonna move into this digital virtual space.

当然，大家现在都在想这对普通用户意味着什么，但对残障人士来说，这同样意义重大——他们又该如何参与其中呢？

Of course, people are thinking about what that means for most consumers, but it also has really important implications for people who are disabled, right, and how are they gonna participate in that?

所以我们正在思考，像潘乔这样瘫痪的人，还能通过哪些其他形式的脑机接口来帮助他们提升沟通能力？

And so we're thinking really about for people like Pancho and other people who are paralyzed, what other forms of BCI can we do in order to help improve their ability to communicate?

其中一个方向是打造更全面的虚拟形象，能够解读他们面部表情，以及说话时嘴巴和下巴的运动，从而改善沟通效果。

So one is essentially building out more holistic avatars, you know, things that can essentially decode, you know, essentially their expressions or the movements associated with their mouth and jaw when they actually speak to improve that communication.

那你有没有设想过，不久的将来，我不再只是发文字推文，而是打完字之后，我的虚拟形象会直接说出来？

So do you envision a time not too long from now where instead of tweeting out something in text, my avatar will, I'll type it out, but my avatar will just say it.

它会以我的虚拟形象的样子，把我正在发的推文内容说出来。

It'll be an image of my avatar saying whatever it is I happen to be tweeting at

就在那一刻。

that moment.

我们正在做的就是这件事。

That's what we're working on.

这一定会实现，而且很快就会到来，目前进展已经非常显著了。

That is going to happen and it's going to happen soon, and there's a lot of progress in that.

我们只是想让沟通和表达的方式更丰富，更贴近自然。

And again, we're just trying to enrich the field of communication expression to make it more normal.

我们觉得，拥有这样一个虚拟形象，能为那些通过语音神经假体学习说话的人提供反馈。这种设备我们称之为语音神经假体，它能帮助人们最快地掌握说话技巧——不是简单地在屏幕上看到文字，而是让人真正感受到自己在控制这个形象，仿佛它就是自己身体的一部分。

And we actually think that having that avatar is a way of getting feedback to people learning how to speak through a speech neural prosthetic, that's the device that we call, it's a speech neural prosthetic, that is gonna be the way that can help people learn how to do it the quickest, not necessarily like trying to say words and having it come on a screen, but actually have people embody, feel like it's part of themselves, or that they are directly controlling that illustration or animation.

正如很多人知道的，我已经服用AG1将近十五年了。

As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for nearly fifteen years now.

我早在2012年就发现了它，那时候还没做播客，从那以后我每天都坚持服用。

I discovered it way back in 2012, long before I had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since.

据我所知，AG1是目前市场上品质最高、成分最全面的基础营养补充剂。

AG1 is to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market.

它把维生素、矿物质、益生元、益生菌和适应原都浓缩在一份粉剂里，冲水好喝，方便饮用。

It combines vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, and adaptogens into a single scoop that's easy to drink and tastes great.

它的设计旨在支持肠道健康、免疫系统和整体精力水平。

It's designed to support things like gut health, immune health, and overall energy.

它通过弥补你日常饮食中可能缺乏的营养来发挥作用。

And it does so by helping to fill any gaps that you might have in your daily nutrition.

当然，我们都该吃高质量的天然食物，但大多数人可能还是摄入不足，尤其是益生元、维生素和矿物质，而AG1正好能补上这些缺口。

And of course we should all eat high quality whole foods, but most of us are probably not getting enough prebiotics, vitamins, minerals, and AG1 ensures that those gaps are filled.

如果你想试试AG1，可以访问drinkag1.com/huberman，享受专属优惠。

If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to get a special offer.

限时活动中，AG1会免费赠送你一周的AGZ睡眠补充剂，还有维生素D3K2一瓶，只要订阅就送。

For a limited time, AG1 is giving away a week supply of AGZ, which is their sleep supplement, and a free bottle of vitamin D3K2 with your subscription.

AGZ是我参与设计的，味道很好，也是我唯一在吃的睡眠补充剂。

AGZ is something that I helped design, it tastes great, and it's the only sleep supplement I take.

它含有一系列成分，极大改善了我的睡眠，无论是深度慢波睡眠还是快速眼动睡眠，我都非常喜欢。

It has a collection of different things in that has dramatically improved my sleep, both my slow wave deep sleep and my rapid eye movement sleep, and I absolutely love it.

再次提醒，访问drinkag1.com/huberman，订阅即可获得一周的AGZ和一瓶D3K2。

Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman to get a week's supply of AGZ and a bottle of D3K2 with your subscription.

我经常被问到关于口吃的问题。

I get a lot of questions about stutter.

如果有人有口吃，想缓解这个问题，该怎么做呢？

What can people with stutter do if they'd like to relieve their stutter?

口吃是一种说话不流畅的状况。

Stutter is a condition where the words can't come out fluently.

你脑子里想法都有了，语言也没问题。

So you have all the ideas, got the language.

其实，我们之前还讨论过语言和说话之间的区别。

In fact, remember we talked about this distinction between language and speech.

口吃是说话方面的问题，对吧？

Stuttering is a problem of speech, right?

想法、意思、语法全都在，但就是说不出来，话不流畅。

So the ideas, the meanings, the grammar, it's all there and people stutter, but they can't get the words out fluently.

这属于说话障碍，特别是影响发音，涉及到发声器官必须高度协调才能实现流畅说话的复杂动作。

So that's a speech condition, and in particular, it's a condition that affects articulation, specifically about controlling the production of words in this really coordinated movements that have to happen in the vocal tract to produce fluent speech.

口吃是一种有倾向性的状况。

And stuttering is a condition where people have a predisposition to it.

有些人天生容易口吃，有些人不会，但即使容易口吃的人，也不是一直都会口吃。

So there's an aspect of stuttering, you are a stutterer or you're not a stutterer, but people who stutter don't stutter all the time either.

你可能是个口吃者，但只在某些时候才会口吃。

So you could be a stutterer who stutters at some times but not others.

而焦虑和口吃之间最主要的关系是，焦虑会引发口吃，甚至让情况更糟。

And really the main link between stuttering anxiety is that anxiety can provoke it and make it worse.

这确实没错。

That's certainly true.

但焦虑并不一定是根本原因。

But it's not necessarily caused by anxiety.

它可能会触发或加重口吃，但本身并不是直接诱因。

It can essentially trigger it or make it worse, but it's not the cause of it, per se.

所以口吃的真正成因至今还不明确，但它确实和我们之前提到的那些大脑功能有关——要产生流畅的言语，我们根本意识不到自己口腔和喉部在做什么。

So the cause of it is still really not clear, but it does have to do with these kind of brain functions that we've been talking about earlier, which is that in order to produce normal fluent speech, we're not even conscious of what is going on in our mouths, in our larynx.

我们根本意识不到，如果意识到了，反而说不出来，因为整个过程太复杂、太精密了。

We're not conscious, and if we were, we'd not be able to speak because it's too complex, it's too precise.

这是我们天生具备的能力，做起来非常自然。

It's something that we have really developed the abilities to do and we do it naturally.

这属于我们内在的程序，是通过长期接触和经验自然习得的。

It's part of our programming and part of what we learn inherently, and it's just through exposure.

所以，口吃本质上就是这套机制在某些时候无法协调运作了。

So stuttering is essentially a breakdown at certain times in that machinery being able to work in a really coordinated way.

你可以把控制发音器官的这些区域想象成一场交响乐——要让说话自然流畅，光靠声带是不够的，嘴唇、下巴都得配合，不能各自为政，必须极其精准地同步激活和控制，才能发出正确的词语。

You can think about the operations of these areas that are controlling the vocal tract, let's say speech is like a symphony, in order for it to come out normally, you've gotta have not just one part, the larynx, but the lips, the jaw, they can't be doing their own thing, they have to be very, very precisely activated and very, very precisely controlled in a way to actually create words.

而口吃，就是这种协调性出了问题。

And so in stuttering, there's a breakdown of that coordination.

如果一个人有口吃，是不是越早干预越好？毕竟小时候大脑的可塑性很强。

If somebody has a stutter, is it better to address that early in life when there's still neuroplasticity that is very robust?

如果是这样，通常的治疗方式是什么？

And if so, what's the typical route for treatment?

我猜一般不会动手术吧。

I have to imagine it's not brain surgery typically.

我猜应该是找语言治疗师，通过交流帮助他们找到卡壳的点，尤其是跟焦虑之间的关联。

I'm guessing there are speech therapists that people can talk to and they can help them work out where they're getting stuck in the relationship to anxiety.

没错，正是这样。

Yeah, exactly.

这部分确实跟焦虑有关，但更多是靠治疗来找到一些技巧，创造有利于说话的条件，让词语能顺利出来。

I mean, part of it is about that anxiety, but a lot of it really has to do with therapy to sort of like work through and think of tricks basically sometimes to create conditions where you can actually get the words to come out.

有些口吃问题本质上是启动困难。

Some forms of stuttering are really initiation problems.

根本就很难把话开头。

Just getting started itself is very hard.

你想发出第一个元音或辅音，可就是发不出来。

You wanna start with the initial vowel or consonant, but it won't emit.

所以很多治疗都集中在如何营造这样的条件，让说话能顺利开始。

So a lot of that therapy is really just focusing on how do you create the conditions for that to happen.

还有一个我很感兴趣的方面是反馈——也就是我们听到自己说话的声音。比如每当我吐出一个词，我同时也在听自己说什么，这叫听觉反馈。

There's another aspect to it that I find very interesting is that the feedback, essentially, what we hear ourselves say, for example, every time that I say a word, I'm also hearing what I'm saying, so that's what we call auditory feedback.

这种反馈其实非常重要，有时候只要稍微改变它，就能让口吃变好或变糟，这说明大脑不只是在发送说话的指令，还可能在和听声音的区域互动，而这种互动在口吃时可能出了问题。

That turns out to be very important, and sometimes when you change that, it can actually change the amount someone stutters for better or for worse, and it's giving us a clue that the brain is not just focused on sending the commands out, but it's also possibly interacting with the part that is hearing the sounds, and there's something might be going on in that connection that breaks down when stuttering occurs.

有些人是口吃者，但并不是一直口吃。

So there are individuals that are stutterers, but they don't stutter all the time.

在那些时刻，大脑里必须进行极其精准的协调，才能让话语流畅地出来。

In those instances, there's something happening in those particular moments where this very, very precise coordination needs to happen in the brain in order to get the words out fluently.

埃迪，从我们38年前第一次成为朋友起，我就觉得——

Eddie, I have to say from the first time we became friends, 38 ago,

就是这种情况。

something like that.

就是这种情况。

Something like that.

今天能坐在这里和你聊天，对我来说真是莫大的荣幸，不只是因为我们相识这么久，也不只是因为我们通过医学和科学的走廊重新联系上，更因为我觉得你所做的事情，真正代表了探索与应用的最前沿。

To be sitting here with you today for me is a absolute thrill, not just because we've been friends for that long or that we got reacquainted through literally the halls of medicine and science, but because I really do see what you're doing as really representing that front absolute cutting edge of exploration and application.

潘乔的故事，就是你众多患者中受益匪浅的一个例子。

I mean, the story of Pancho is about one of your many patients that has derived tremendous benefit from your work.

作为一院之长，你当然也和许多在脊髓等领域做出杰出贡献的人并肩工作。

Now as a chair of a department, you of course work alongside individuals who are also doing incredible work in the spinal cord, etcetera.

所以，代表我自己和所有听众，我真心感谢你今天来分享这些内容，也感谢你一直以来所做的一切。

So on behalf of myself and everyone listening, I just really want to thank you for joining us today to share this information, but also just for the work you do.

这真的太了不起了。

It's truly spectacular.

非常非常感谢你。

So thank you ever so much.

谢谢你。

Thanks.