What Could an Actor and a Neuroscientist Have to Discuss? A Lot, Actually. #TEDIntersections

As much as we all think about consciousness,

you dwell in it in a way that I don't think many people do.

And has that for you made, you know,

the study of self,

has that made how you relate to yourself change or evolve over time?

It opens a bit of distance between what it feels like to be me here now,

and how I might reflect on that.

So I can sort of understand emotions as being constructions of the brain.

It doesn't mean they're not real;

everything feels real and is real.

But it might not be quite how it seems to be.

And I think the other thing,

which is actually very complementary to centuries of thought in things like Buddhism,

that everything is impermanent, everything is changing.

And to become comfortable with the idea that the self is always changing, always evolving.

There's a certain liberation in that too.

It makes you think differently

about the person that you were and the person that you might be.