The Paul Taylor PodcastThe Hidden Forces That Shape Your Behaviour, With Professor Bill Sullivan
I loved this conversation.
Professor Bill Sullivan researches the impact of microbes, pathogens and parasites and how they influence not only human health, but human behaviour. Bill is a very engaging communicator and takes us on a very enjoyable journey on how these hidden forces affect the behaviour of animals and humans alike, and we explore the potential treatments and ethical considerations that arise.
Be sure to put Bill's book high on your list of priorities and check his website out here.
If you heard BetterHelp on the show today, you can get 10% off your first month at BetterHelp.com.au/PaulTaylor
Professor Bill Sullivan. Welcome to the podcast.
Hi Paul, it's great to be here.
And I think this is going to be the first podcast Bill that my daughter is excited about.
I haven't that lot. Yes, I have an eighteen.
Year old daughter who is in her last year of high school and is about to go to university.
And she is obsessed with biology to.
The point where she did her exams early in year eleven rather than year twelve. We've got a slightly different system than you guys, and in her last biology class she cried, it was that upset. And she's off the university to study microbiology. And you have a PhD in sale and molecular biology.
Is that correct?
That's right, it's in selling molecular biology. But I am in a microbiology department, so you know that knowledge from my PhD has extended itself into looking into microbiology. And it sounds like that's exactly what your daughter is interested in. So good luck to her. I can tell her that it's been fascinating field for me for decades, and I hope she gets as much joy from it as I did.
And so tell me what do you used to currently teach? What sort of classes? Do you teach at the university, And I.
Yeah, I teach a lot of microbiology, so we deal with a lot of microbes, everything from viruses to bacteria to parasites. And I also teach lectures on the pharmacological aspect of that, so how we utilize drugs and develop new drugs to combat some of these infections that are caused by the various germs we talked.
About, ah, and it must have been in a very exciting time whenever COVID kit might you're to follow, were.
We were very very busy, not in the sense that we were working in the lab because those were shut down for some time, but infectious disease, which generally doesn't get a lot of attention in a country like the US, and I imagine Australia as well, it suddenly was on everybody's radar for obvious reasons, and we were fielding all sorts of calls and requests for information to help navigate people through this terribly uncertain time. So yeah, absolutely absolutely.
And you so, you know, you did a lot of science outreach, and so what inspired you to move out of the lab and move out of the classroom to start talking more to the general public about science and science communication.
Well that's what got me interested in science when I was a young kid and adolescent. Were these science communicators like you know Carl Sagan for example. He's the one that my generation is familiar with, and he was just a brilliant communicator explaining principles that are quite complicated in very poetic and understandable terms. And then Bill Nye came along and some others as well that were kind of inspirations to step out of the Ivory tower once in a while and tell people what you're working on. Especially when you're dealing with public health items like infectious disease, that information has to be communicated to the public so that we can ensure our society doesn't implode and have dramatically bad consequences from some pandemic. So it also feeds back when the work we do. We have to remind the public and the government officials that funding basic science research is critically important. It is fueling the pipeline for the discovery that are going to be coming down the road to cure all sorts of diseases or at least get some better treatments for them. And if we don't have that revenue invested in the process, which, believe it or not, is really difficult to do. There's not a lot of money being invested in diseases and disorders and research for it. So that component also plays into my motivation for getting out there and explaining why it is so critically important to engage in scientific research.
Now, let's talk about human behavior.
So my favorite subject.
The psychologists would tell you that they've got human behavior neiled. But you've written a book called Police to Meet Me, and you talk about a lot of hidden forces that kind of underpin what we do, what we feel, how we believe, and what are some of those hidden forces that a sheep who we are with our us really knowing about it.
Yeah, So that actually stems from the research that's been ongoing in my lab for years now. We study this parasite called toxoplasma gandhia.
Oh that's an interesting parasite.
Ah, you've heard of it?
Yes, And can you tell our listeners about this?
And I'm not trying to evade your question. I will certainly get to the hidden forces, but to better understand them. It was this toxoplasma parasite and our research on it that ultimately led to the ideas behind the book. So why in the world would I mentioned this crazy parasite in the context of human behavior. Several reasons. Toxoplasma is an extremely common parasite of all animals, including human beings, and it's actually present in the brains of one third of the human population, which is just staggering number of people, right like three billion people if those ass you know are accurate, And it's all around the world. You know, there's not like any corner of the globe where this parasite hasn't gotten into And the reason why is because it is transmitted through multiple different mechanisms. The first one is the cat. So any kind of cat, when it's infected with this toxoplasma parasite, will shed the parasite eggs into the litter box or the garden, the sandbox, anywhere in the environment. And these parasite eggs are stable for years out in the environment, and they can be picked up by other animals and infect them, and they can certainly be picked up by humans and infect us. We can get the parasite directly from the cat, or we can get it from undercooked meats. You know, animals that also got infected with the parasite. If we don't cook the meat sufficiently, the parasite can infect us that way as well. So it's hugely common. But it doesn't cause any over disease. You know, you won't feel anything more than a mild flu when you become infected with this parasite. And that's why for years it was kind of put on the back burner. This parasite obviously isn't causing a health crisis. Most people aren't even aware that they have it. But then in the eighties and nineties, toxoplasma became one of the number one killers of AIDS patients because when your immune system deteriorates, the parasite then can become a lethal infection, which basically told us that this parasite never goes away. It infects us and it stays in the body, probably for the rest of your life. And it likes to hide out in the brain and the heart and skelet to muscle tissue. So when you hear that there's a parasite hiding out in your brain, it makes you wonder what in the world could this thing be doing. And that is I'm sorry, Paul, that is a very long winded answer to one of the hidden forces that might be influencing human behavior. There's very well documented studies in mice and rats, as well as some non human primates and now even wolves, that when they are infected with this parasite, they don't get sick, but the parasite hides in their brain for the rest of their lives and starts to instigate risk taking behavior in those infected organisms. And these are very well documented studies and animals that I've found endlessly fascinating. We've conducted some of these behavioral essays ourselves, and when we infect mice with this parasite, it survives the initial infection just fine. And if you look at the mouse, it looks perfectly normal, okay, But if you study its behavior, it's very different. It is hypermodal, which means it moves around a lot more than usual, it takes a lot more risks. And one of the most odd ball findings that actually makes evolutionary sense is that these mice are no longer afraid of cats.
Crazy.
I'm no longer afraid of anything, actually, but when you put cats into the picture, you get a very interesting and elegant evolutionary story where this parasite has figured out a way to kind of re engineer the mammalian brain, if you will, in a way that makes it takes more risks and it is more likely to be eaten by its major predator, and it gets into the cat, where it really wants to go, because the cat is the only organism on the planet where the parasite can complete the sexual stage of its life cycle and be spread around in the form of those sturdy eggs that I talked about at the beginning of the conversation.
Wow.
So I knew that the parasite got into the mice, and I knew that it impacted their behavior and reduced their fear of cats. But I didn't realize that the whole driver was that was completing the sexual cycle.
How clever is that?
It isn't that amazing. It's evolution has all kinds of time to work with. Okay, we're talking about millions of years, So maybe when you consider the fact that it took millions of years to hone this behavior, it might not look so miraculous. But I have to admit when I first learned about it, just like you, I was blown away. My mind was blown and it's just really clever on the part of this toxoplasma parasite to be able to do this. And it raises the next logical question, which if three billion people have this parasite in their heads, what might be happening to their behavior if anything. And those studies are just starting to be done. So we didn't even know about this whole mouse behavioral change to get into the cat until the late nineties. So we're talking about very new science. And of course when you're doing studies like this with humans, you can't pull them into the lab and infect them with the parasiteans studies, right right, throw them in a lion cage and see if they're not afraid, right, No, they frown upon that here.
So in the ethics departments build there, I tell you that.
But we can do correlation studies. You know, we do have blood tests to discern whether people are infected or not, and then we can just just you know, look at behavioral patterns and see if there's a correlation. Now, I probably don't have to tell you that correlation is not causation, but it's the best we can do. Since we can't throw humans in a lion cage and then see what whether they're afraid or not. So these correlation studies have been fascinating so far. There's a really strong correlation between this what we call latent toxoplasma infection in the brain and schizophrenia. So if you are infected with toxoplasma, I believe you're almost twice as likely to get schizophrenia as a non infected person would be.
Say significant increased risk ride.
It's a strong it's a strong correlation, and if memory serves correct, it's stronger than any single gene that's ever been implicated in schizophrenia. Now that's not to say genetics aren't involved or other environmental factors, because there are people diagnosed with schizophrenia who don't have a toxoplasma infection. So there's obviously more to this story, but that correlation is strong and I think warrants further investigation. There's other correlations that speak to other neuropsychoses. In people infected with toxoplasma. You see an elevated risk for rage disorder, an elevated risk for impulsive gambling, other risk taking activities.
I was going to ask about it, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, risk taking behavior, right.
And as you're surmising, this parallels what we see in rodents, you know, higher proclivity to engage in risky behavior, and we're seeing parallels to that in people who carry this parasite in their brain. There's even one study that showed people with toxoplasma in their brain, and you know, most people don't even know about that, they're three times more likely to be involved in a car wreck, presumably because of this parasite in the brain and the increased risk taking activity that comes along with it. Now, it's not necessarily all bad, and this is where we get into some really interesting philosophical discussions because there is one study out there that suggests people with this toxoplasma in their brain have a higher chance of being a successful entrepreneur.
Again, maybe because the behavior increase.
Exactly they're rolling the dice on something that you know might pay off, right, So this this is really interesting and it makes people like me wonder. You know, I'm trying to develop drugs that gets rid of this parasite completely from the body, you know, because for you know, compromise patients, this could be a fatal affection. So we need drugs to get rid of it completely, and those currently don't exist. It's one of the missions of my lap. But let's say we're successful and we do find a drug that can get rid of these cysts once and for all, what would happen to the personality of that person that people knew and loved. Would it change in a way you know that would be better or worse. It's a really interesting thing to contemplate, and that was one of the drivers behind the book, was to look at some of these hidden forces in the body and see what's under the radar there that might be influencing our behavior in ways that we don't know about.
So, Bill, when you look at my studies or other animals, is it particularly impacting on the amygdala or on certain circuitry that's involved in behavior. As soon as you're talking, I'm thinking, surely the amigdala in the front of lobes, the go no go circuit has to be involved in this. Do we know specifically where it's acting or have we not got that level of detail yet?
That's an excellent question, and there's really scant information at this time. The great Robert Sapolski actually did a study trying to find where the cyst went in the brain. I think this is over ten years ago now, but he's one of the few people who actually tried, and he stated in his paper that he did see a very slight enrichment in the amigdala for where the parasite was going. But I don't believe that's ever been replicated. I don't know if anyone's tried to replicate it. Most of the studies I'm aware of, and the studies from my own lab, have found pretty much a random distribution these cysts throughout the brain, and it might explain why sometimes the behavioral changes vary. Yes, you know, you don't see the same degree of change every single time and in every single animal. So I think there's a little luck of the drawl as to where the parasite happens to end up in the brain. And what sort of behavioral modification you see.
Bloody Yeah, we could get We could end up with targeted parasite cysts in the briand to try and improve our change behavior as Wow, that opens a whole ethical Pandora's box.
Doesn't it?
It sure does.
So let's know I talk about so.
An old quote about genes is that genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger. So let's explore both sides of that. Let's talk about genetics and behavior, because again there's a whole host of different association studies around certain genes and certain behavior. What are the sort of the big ones of interest that you've looked at, and then we can jump into the environmental stuff.
Yeah, sure, well, well there's a connection there because I never I never think about genes independent from the environment anymore. You know, back in the day that was kind of there. There was almost like gene tyranny. Everyone thought that the genes were everything, and if we sequence the human genome, we were going to solve all the diseases and disorders that are out there. Now. I don't want to underplay that achievement at all. It's a fantastic achievement, has produced wildly informative studies, but I think it diminished how we think about the interaction between the environment and genes. And I got involved in this because there's there's basically two hidden forces. Okay, to go back to the analogy that pleased to meet me, use is, genes and epigenetics are what I consider two other very related hidden forces that are operating in our body. As you said, most people think of genes, you know, it's kind of like, well, they build you, right, They're a recipe for life. And most people won't have to be convinced that there are genes that control your eye color or whether you have curly hair. But when you tell them that there's genes that are involved in addiction or obesity or things that people usually look to your you know, your moral discipline about. You tell them that genes can influence that genes can dictate what sort of foods you like. You know, and you know, there's even a study that shows that genes can have something to do with when you lose your virginity.
Wow, I mean it's.
Crazy, right, But when you when you when you read the whole story, it's basically because there's genes that initiate puberty earlier in some individuals, and that's really all it's about. But genes can have some remarkably predictive power with respect to behavioral changes and personality in general, much more than I ever appreciated before I started doing the research for Please to Meet Me. But I love the analogy. Say that again, Paul, what did you say.
Genes genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger.
And I'm not sure who there was.
Some Nobel Prize winner who said genes are not deterministic.
They do not operate in a vacuum.
Genes are the servants of the environment, right, and that gets into the interactions between them.
Yeah, and I think there's a lot of truth to that statement. But sometimes genes really do have a huge impact, and sometimes it's just a single one. So the examples I cited in my book would be like a genetic mutation in certain gene will cause sickle cell amenius. There's a genetic mutation in another gene that will cause Huntington's disease. And these are predictive without fail. They are right every single time. So in those cases it really doesn't matter what the environment's doing. That phenotype, that characteristic is going to happen no matter what. But we don't want to overextend that, Okay. So those are actually rare instances where the genes are really really important and highly predictive. Other things like personality and behavior are far more complicated. They involve the activities of hundreds, maybe thousands of genes, and we are in we're nowhere near close to being able to formulate predictions. So the analogy that I used was that genes are the piano, but it's the environment that plays the song. Yeah, okay, so when you're talking about behavior, that's where the environment it can have really strong effects, even things if physical characteristics can be affected by the environment. So we all know height is about eighty percent genetically controlled, but it does have a twenty percent environmental component. So that means you're in your DNA, you could have the genes that should build a human being that is six foot tall. Okay, let's just say that for the sake of argument. But if that individual grows up in poverty and is malnourished, you're not going to get to that six feet. That genetic potential is not going to be realized. Why because of the environment. And that's where this concept of epigenetics comes in, which is the environment basically regulating how gene activity works, and that can have a profound influence on how someone looks and acts, which to me is mind blowing for two reasons. First of all, it kind of destroys the whole nature nurture dichotomy. Yeah, in my mind, that's a false dichotomy. We shouldn't really bifurcate those principles like that there are two sides of the same coin. And the second thing it tells me is that there are a lot of potential people in your genome and you are just one manifestation of what could have happened, which I think is a fascinating philosophical concept.
It is a really interesting concept. And I'll give you one that was springing to mind as you were talking about that. And Dennis Charney has done a lot of research on resilience, studying a lot of combat veterans, but then done genetic testing around a whole heap of people who've been through trauma, some who get PTSD, some who don't, and they have identified that there is one gene that if say you have one variant and I have another variant, and that if we are brought up in highly stressful situations, I will develop PTSD and have massive mental health problems, whereas you with a different variant of that gene end up becoming much more resilient. Right, And so exactly what you talked about there, the gene environment interaction then having a huge impact on behavior. And so if you're brought up in a stressful situation, you end up much more resilient. But if you're not brought up in a stressful situation, you don't end up.
Much more resilient. So there's two different versions of you depending on that upbringing.
And it's really fascinating, isn't it that that environment and I've never thought about it before from that perspective, that there's a whole heap of potential use that they interact. Jesus, we're getting into quantum physics here and right.
Right, If you're a believer in parallel univers indeed, you know there's an infinite number of other Paul Taylors out there that could be very similar to you or very different.
Hmm. Yeah, wow, that's fascinating.
So let's let's just dive into epigenetics a little bit and just give our listeners a bit more of a sense about epigenetic regulation of things and how that happens throughout our lifetime to affect a whole host of different things.
Yeah.
So, epigenetics is a relatively new science, and we started studying it in the context of toxoplasma because that's how old some of these gene regulatory mechanisms are Toxoplasma evolved millions and millions of years ago, long before we came into the picture, right, and it's still using epigenetics. So the way I like to describe epigenetics, just so people understand it very simply, is that you can have you think about a caterpillar and a butterfly. Okay, very very different physical manifestations of the same genome. A caterpillar and a butterfly have the exact same DNA, So how do you get such drastic morphological differences in these two forms? And that's what epigenetics comes down to. They have the same exact genes, but different ones are turned on and different ones are turned off between those two different states. And put simply, epigenetics is simply a chemical modification that takes place on the DNA molecule, on a gene, if you will, that changes its activity. It can ramp it up, it can ramp it down, it can shut it off completely. And those chemical modifications come from the environment. They come from signals in the environment. And this not only can affect us today, it has affected us during our entire lives. So the way an embryo develops for example, from a single cell. Every time a new cellular division occurs and it's time to make different organs, that's when epigenetics comes into play. It's like a unfolding computer program, if you will. But when one of those cells divides in the embryo and says it's time to be a liver cell, that cell shuts off all the other unrelated genes and turns on only the genes designed to make it a liver cell. And that's epigenetics probably at its most simplest. Where it affects people as they grow is that we can see studies, like you mentioned before. If we look at children, for example, who are subjected to aces or adverse childhood experiences, bullying, neglect, abuse, and you look at their genomes, they are epigenetically modified. They're not mutated, but the genes are chemically modified to express stress genes differently. So, like you were alluding to earlier, stressful situations are handled differently on average by children who were in stressful environments, you know, for you know, their most impressionable years. Those changes are governed by epigenetics. There's a well documented study that shows children who are unfortunately subjected to aces have what we call DNA methylation at stress responsive genes. Now, DNA methylation is one of those chemicals I told about, told you about that can modify DNA, and you can think of them as like little construction cones on the highway. Every time a gene gets methylated, once it starts to shut down. So if you have a heavily methylated gene, it can be virtually completely turned off. And that means the stress responses in these children are just not being turned on correctly or they're in a constant state of being hyperactivated. And that extends into their adulthood and explains why there's correlations between children who experience those unfortunate events when they were young and then have problems interacting socially, you know, in older age, and they're more more prone to violence and mental health disorders.
And to end up in prison as well, right.
And to end up in prison, yeah, yeah, So it's even if they get into a better environment later in life. There seems to be a window during our childhood. It's critically important, and if it's epigenetically wired in the wrong way, it can set that child up for a lifetime of trouble. And that's something we need to deal with, and that knowledge is power. It might be able to help us.
And it has huge implications, doesn't it throughout society and throughout how we treat these people when they end up in trouble.
I couldn't agree more.
And then even you know, if we just take people in prisons, we know a huge amount of them have had a traumatic brain injury, right, which then modifies their behavior. And that seems to be pretty obvious. You go, well, this person's has had a traumatic brain injury that has changed certain areas of the brain, and their front elopes.
Don't work as well, so we need to do something about that. That is a bit more obvious.
But it's the same as that epigenetic modification of that child who's brought up in a stressful environment with a father who's violent and.
Drinking and they're poor in all of these things.
As you rightly say, it can then affect their behavior throughout their life. Now, is there any evidence then that those epigenetic changes can then be passed on to their children, because I know that so certain things.
For instance, we know that.
If one of your parents was an alcoholic or a drug addict, there will then be atpigenetic changes on your dopamine receptors, which will then influence your behavior at your risk of becoming addicted yourself. Do we see similar things with people who've been through uses or is there any other examples of that where you've seen epigenetic modifications actually then happening in the next generation. Because we didn't used to think that could happen.
Right right, right, Yeah, we didn't think that trauma could be inherited in those ways. And unfortunately, the mindset of many individuals is to tell someone who is suffering, or who's committed crimes or is overly aggressive, to snap out of it, change your behavior, and that might be like telling a blind person to see God, damn it. Yeah, you know. I like the parallel that you drew there between brain injury and the proclivity for violence. What's the difference if it's an actual brain injury versus modification of your DNA molecule. Both are going to affect behavior, and we need to step back as a society and evaluate are we really treating people even if they've committed offenses that we find, you know, quite horrible. Are we really going about this the right way? And more importantly, are there biomarkers that we might be able to essay to catch this sort of behavior or try to predict that this person is going to be in a higher is going to have a higher proclivity for violence or aggression, and then we might be able to start therapy or treatment before it becomes a problem. That's that's my ultimate hope. But you were you were.
I'm sorry whether.
The oh the evidence yea. The concept you're referring to there, and it's a mouthful, what's called transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. And you've stumbled upon one of the most controversial ideas in genetics today, because there's a whole school of thought that with epigenetics there is now a real tangible way that behavioral learned behavior can be passed on to the next generation, or that trauma could be passed on to the next generation. But the evidence for that idea we need some more. It needs to be more rigorous. But I'll tell you about one of the coolest experiments that I wrote about in the book that just blew my mind and suggests that an investment of research dollars into this phenomenon is worth it. So these scientists several years ago wanted to investigate whether trauma was heritable, so they used a mouse model and they basically induced a learned fear into these mice. And the way they did that was mice normally love the smell of cherries, right, just like we do, but not if they're shocked at the same time they're smelling the cherries. Okay, So if the scientists allow them to smell cherries but then shock them, they start to develop an unusual fear of cherries. Okay. So the interesting part came when the scientists decided to mate those mice that were unnaturally afraid of cherries with a normal mouse and then look at the behavior of the offspring, and wouldn't you know it, the offspring were afraid of cherries. And that's remarkable because they never saw their parents get shocked. They've never been shocked. They were just born with this brand new fear that most mice do not have. And then they looked at the grand children of those parents and the behavior was still there. Those grandchildren were still afraid of cherries, and that's pretty remarkable to me. And they've done a whole lot of mechanistic work that tracked it down to an epigenetic modification of an olfactory receptor that happens to go to the brain, and this epigenetic change was taking place in the sperm of the males that were shocked by the cherries.
Oh wow.
So it provides a really interesting and plausible mechanism for how this might be happening, how this inherited trauma might be happening. But we do have to be careful with how we interpret these sorts of results, because you know, if I know how to play the guitar, you know, my kids were not born knowing how to play the guitar. But that's a very complicated behavior, maybe very simple ones, especially ones that play into survivor.
I was just about to say the survivor, because it's interesting that that that the two mice being meted, one with the fear, one without the fear. The dominant one that's passed on is the fear. So straight away, am I brain on my survival? That that that's got to be a survival.
And and that would make that would make perfect evolutionary.
Sense right absolutely.
And when you see other examples in different model organisms, like there is a oh what is this creature. I think it's some kind of water flea or something like that. There's a little microscopic water flea that when you put its predators sent into the tank, its offspring will be born with these defensive hooks on its head which are not present on the parent. Oh wow, So that's another example of how an epigenetic change that took place in a parent that got scared and then whilah, it's children are born with this new defense system.
Yeah.
So it's almost like the parent is sending, you know, like a signal of some kind of molecular signal that is woven into the fabric of the DNA to tell its child, Hey, this is a dangerous environment. You should expend extra energy to make these horns on your head, which you normally don't have to do. But since there's since mom and dad detect predators, we're basically sending you a molecular signal that you've got to make these horns on your head. And then after a couple of generations, if the predator scent is no longer there, they go away. So it's reversible changes as well.
Yeah, and now there's two there's two things that that that jump up two rabbit holes that I want to go down here, and one is the what's known as the Dutch hunger winter. So this came out of I believe it's the Second World War where the Germans encircled a part of Holland and basically imposed a famine on there.
And and what.
They found is that certain babies who were conceived at a certain time, so it was all about the trimester, and I'm struggling to remember. I think it might have been the third trimester. I'm not sure which one it was. But they went on to express genes that basically made them more thrifty and were much more likely to develop diabetes and obesity when they were brought up in an environment where there was good nutrition. So it was basically when they're born or sus certain trimester when genes are being methylated at without food, with mother didn't have the food. It basically then said to that child, you're going to be in an environment with no food, so you need to hold on to all of that energy. And they then had children who were more likely to be diabetic and opese if they were brought up with sufficient food. Obviously, if they hadn't been brought up with with sufficient food that would have been a survival advantage, but they then went on to have grandchildren who expressed the same thing. So again that's another one of those for me, driven by survival.
Survival is prioritizing stuff.
So that's one around epigenetic and nutritional epigenetics, and we know that nutrition has got huge methylation capacities. So I'll get your comment on that in a second. But then the other one about trauma and intergenerational trauma. So the Aboriginal community in Australia have been through pretty severe trauma. I don't know if you've heard of the Stolen generation that happened in Australia where it was a few decades ago were people thought that they were an inferior race and that they should be outbred basically, and they actually thought that this was good for the population, so they went in and stole a whole heap of children and give them to white people. And what has now been clear is that that trauma has actually been passed on from generations and it influences behavior. And then there's the whole heap of other disadvantages that they've had. And we now know that people are born Aboriginal are more than thirty times more likely to be incarcerated than white people. And some people in this country go, oh, they're just poorly behaved and they need to sort their stuff out, and they have got no idea about the impact of that trauma and that intergenerational trauma. So take either of those that you might find interesting to have a comment on.
Well they are. I was not as familiar with the second example, but I certainly heard of the Dutch hunger famine and it's tie to transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, and to the best of my knowledge, it's one of the few examples that we have of this phenomenon possibly occurring in human beings, and I personally think it's pretty convincing evidence. You know, a lot of the molecular machinery is not in place, but I think the proof of principle is there. And like you said, the prenatal environment is kind of like a sensory one as well, and mom is trying to set up her baby to be ready to be born into the environment that she is currently experiencing, right, And that's why those children were born with thrifty genotypes, which means they did not incur mutations in their DNA. That's not the mechanism here, it's purely epigenetic. DNA was either methylated chemically modified in some way that it allowed these children to extract the maximum number of calories minimal amount of food, which is a horrible phenotype to have if you're growing up in a virtual candy land, which we are today.
Yes, exactly, but a brilliant phenotype to have if you're in an environment where there is not food.
And that's what biology was trying to do. It was trying to prepare those children to be ready for a famine, and they're very well could have been one, you know, had history gone differently, but there wasn't. And as a consequence, we now have a lot of individuals who have a thrifty genotype but are extracting too many calories, even though they're probably eating reasonably well, they're just still extracting too many calories. And that not only tells us about you know, intergenerational trauma, but it also tells us about you know a lot about the obesity epidemic. You know, how much of this is really beyond someone's discipline, and you know, whether it's moral, fiber it might be DNA fiber that's actually more in play here, and maybe we should have a little more sympathy and compassion with respect to you know, obese people or people who have been subjected to these adverse childhood experiences and then have higher rates of incarceration, you know, to speak to the Aborigines example that you brought up. I think I think studying these epigenetic phenomena is very telling and puts us in a much more compassionate place with respect to Let's try to figure out what's going on at a biological level, and then from there we can potentially work on potential you know, treatments for these individuals. We may be able to develop epigenetic drugs that can change how these marks exist and then put an end to that transgenerational inheritance.
If you will.
And it's interesting you're talking about the fatal environment. So I know, particularly with my interest in stress and resilience, that if mum is stressed in the third trimester, that developing fetus actually grows a bigger and more sensitive amygdala and they're born with hypervigilance to stress and threat, and that is an amazing evolutionary mechanism that mom is basically sent to that unborn child, you are going to be born into a dangerous environment.
You need to be on your guard.
I mean, it's an amazing adaptive response, isn't it if that task is born in a dangerous environment. But if they're not born in a dangerous environment, it becomes maladaptive because they're hypervigilant to stress and threat and more prone to anxiety and depression.
And it's then not good.
Right, right, that's a brilliant example. Evolution is conservative. It's going to take the safe way out. You know, it doesn't take chances, right because that usually doesn't work out in your favor. But if a mother is exposed to stress and wants to kind of molecularly educate that child, Hey, this is a stressful environment. These are the genes that are going to help you. That's okay. The child might have an advantage if there is a stressful environment. And I think evolution predicts that the environment is going to be relatively stable because in the past we didn't wander very far. You know, our environment pretty much stayed the same our entire lives. So that's not the case anymore today. And those genes as you said the way they were epigenetically modified could now be maladaptive, and evolution doesn't care about that as long as the child lives long enough to replicate.
It just evolution doesn't care about you at all, needs just about survival of the species.
Vehicle, doesn't care if you're happy, doesn't care if you see rainbows and sunshine. It just wants you to live long enough to replicate, and it considers its job well done.
So like, let's not will switch checked a little bit. Let's talk about Ozzy Osbourne.
Oh yeah, the great Ozzy Osbourne, the man on the Crazy Train himself.
Yeah, so you write about him in your book, tell us a little bit about it.
I did.
I wrote about Osbourne Surprise in the context of a drug and alcohol addiction. And it's a fascinating story because most people aren't aware that Ozzy Osbourne was one of the first people on the planet to have his genome sequenced. He was I don't know exactly where he was, but he was up there, like in the top ten percent.
Wow.
And it's not because he volunteered. You know, scientists approached him, you know, they sought him out as a specimen in there a specimen because they purposefully wanted to see what kind of genes he has that have kept him alive through all that he's put his body through. I'm not making that up. That's exactly what their motivation was. They wanted to try to learn something about drug and alcohol addiction from this guy who's had notorious stories about drug and alcohol addiction and has emerged at the end of that tunnel relatively unscathed like many people. Scientists were befuddled by this, and they wanted to see if sequencing Ozzy Osbourne's genome could reveal something. And Ozzy said the funniest things, you know, when the scientists approached him, He's like, the only gene I knew about was that guy from Kiss.
Excellent, you know.
So Ozzy really had no idea what was going on, but he was. He played along, and he sent them samples of his DNA and scientists sequence it and lo and behold, they found never seen mutations in a gene called eighth four I believe it was, which produces an enzyme that that works in the liver to detoxify alcohol. And the way this gene was mutated this is the crazy part. It would have produced a ton of this ADH four enzyme. So Ozzy Osbourne is genetically engineered to process alcohol at a much higher rate than your ordinary average human being.
Apart from half of the Irish population apparently, so alcohol alcohol, I'm refining machines.
Yeah, but the b fair Paul, I would like to actually go back usually write a grant to researchers look at the Irish population compare it to Ozzy Osbourne and see if they share that mutation or that would be interesting. And he had some other mutations as well that scientists didn't know what to make of back when it was done, because, like I said, he was one of the first human beings to get his genome sequenced. We have sequenced you know, tons more since then over the past twenty years, because sequencing has gotten so much easier to do and it's so much cheaper. So we have the genomes for hundreds of thousands of people now, and we can do what are called genome wide assortment studies gwas the genomes of you know, literally millions of people, and supercomputers can spit out these analyzes that tell us, you know, certain phenotypes correlate with these genetic mutations. So I say all that, just basically to educate people that one of the most common denominators that come out of these genetic studies looking at people struggling with alcohol are genetic modifications in what's called the GABBA neurotransmitter system in the brain. And for those who don't know, GABA is a neurotransmitter or a brain chemical that calms the brain down. It basically de escalates brain activity, and that's something that's necessary in order to sleep and in order to focus in things of that nature. And basically, what they're seeing in a lot of alcoholics, not all of them, but a lot of them, there is some sort of genetic mutation in the regulation or the manufacturing of GABBA and how it works, and the end result is that these individuals have a hyperactive brain. So now things start to make a lot more sense. Right If someone has a hyperactive brain and they accidentally discover one day when they first try alcohol that, oh my god, if I drink this, I feel normal. Brain has calmed down. I can sleep at night, I can focus, And that's going to be a real short term solution because alcohol is an addictive substance, and the more you ingest, the more of a tolerance you build up and it just leads into this vicious cycle of addiction. But it explains very nicely why some alcoholics struggle so much to give it up. It's because as soon as they start to do so, their brain could kick back into this hyperactive mode and it'll just be a downward spiral from there. So the bright side to all of that is that information is really powerful and it suggests that one we shouldn't just be you know, scornful and admonishing and judgmental about people who struggle with drug and alcohol addiction. There's a real biological basis for why this is happening and why it happens to just like ten or twelve percent of people. You know, the vast majority of people who experiment with drugs or alcohol do not get addicted. Only a small subset do. And now we're learning it's because they have genetic mutations at key genes that regulate brain activity. And that leads us to a new discovery of therapeutics that might be able to mimic what Gabba does and kind of fill this hole you know that is in their character, their molecular character. You know, it'll be able basically, it'll be able to treat alcoholism without the resurgence of a hyperactive brain.
Well, I mean, you only have to it's not a massive lape to look at. I did a workshop a talk last week and with somebody else that they're doing another talk who was leading the research on psychedelics for mood disorders and getting unbelievable results. So you can see that that basically a compound and it's a chemical.
The chemical structure of.
That compound, psilocybin or the MDMA can actually and he described it as the rocket ship for therapy. Right, So it doesn't work in and of itself, but he said it absolutely supercharges therapy to change people's brain. And so there are just one chemical ingested and the research that they were doing was showing one intervention can completely change people who no interventions has worked with. They take one MDMA or psilocybin assistant therapy and it can have a massive effect. Now they're tending to do two or three in the therapy lasts longer, but it is just the potential for a therapeutic to change the brain.
So much so that opens the door.
To the stuff that you were saying, And let's do another little pivot and talk about something that's a very hot button in your country right now, which is political beliefs.
Right So what you know, maybe a little bit of a hot but maybe a little.
Wow is.
This?
I mean, is there something around in the water that is making people more diametrically opposed?
But what in general.
Does our biology have to do with our political beliefs? Because there is a massive experiment going on right now.
Really, you know, that's that's the billion dollar question, Paul. And if I had an answer to that, well, I would love to put it into practice, because we can't what we have going on right now, and it's not just our country, maybe maybe our country to an amplified degree, but this hyper polarization and this whole US versus them, this this ship's got to stop. Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry if I can't.
Say that.
Past, but but it's it's the most frustrating because there are organizations that are profiting massively by dividing people, by misinforming people. And what we as a group, and this is on us, have forgotten is that hey, we're all Americans and we should recognize when there is an entity out there that it's trying to divide us. Okay, that's the enemy, not you and me. You know, the enemy is trying to divide us. But that's neither here there. Like you were asking, there are biological explanations for all sorts of behavior. Politics is not excluded from that realm. That was like the what I was trying to make. The main takeaway of my book is that no matter how bizarre unusual you think the behavior is, there's a biological basis for it. There's no magic or supernatural element to this. And if we can discover what that biological basis is, that gives us a foothold on how to proceed forward. It also helps generate compassion because people can't help who they are. You know, you don't get the shop for your genes. You don't get the shop for your prenatal environment or the environment you were exposed to as a child. You have no say in that matter.
You know.
It's like, you know, you didn't get to pick your language. Yeah, you know, why should I hate you because you don't speak my language? You know, you have no control over that. So I think we got to take a step back in a time out, you know, sober up and you know, talk ourselves down from these partisan ledges, if you will, and get back in touch with our common humanity. I think that's the only way forward to solve this critical, critical problem. But getting back to the biology you spoke before about dopamine. Really interesting study that goes to these g WADS analyzes where scientists look at the genomes between people who are on the far right and the far left. And one interesting thing did pop out of those analyzes that has a pretty good that has pretty good statistical power, is that there's a dopamine receptor that is different in people on the far left who would be liberals, and the way this dopamine receptor is modified. All the details aren't worked out yet, but the correlation's pretty strong is that those individuals would have greater thrill seeking activity. They need a larger dopamine hit in order to feel the pleasure that say, normal people would feel from a lesser experience. So that would be behavior that's more consistent with what you see in your trademark liberal. Okay, they tend to be higher risk takers, they tend to explore more, they tend to be open to new experiences and new cultures, and you know, there was a personality traits that you would associate with liberalism, So that mutation might explain one why liberals exist and two why humans started exploring around the world. You know, it might go all the way back to why we started migrating out of Africa in the first place. So it's a really fascinating dichotomy, and it's just one of the few genetic variants that seem to exist between far left and far right individuals. Now there's also brain differences between liberals and conservatives, some of which may have a genetic basis, But the end result is that scientists can look at a brain scan of an individual they don't know anything about, and with about seventy five percent accuracy, they can predict whether that person's a liberal or a conservative. And you know what it boils down to. You mentioned it earlier. It's the size of the amygdalo wow, which tends to be larger in conservatives, okay, which means they have a greater capacity to sense threats and they have a greater concern that something might be dangerous, whereas liberals would not have that grave of a concern. Where liberal's brain differs is I'm blanking on the region of the brain, but it's one of the analytical sections. So liberals will tend to see the complexity in problems and try to figure out, you know, evaluate the situation, you know, with a little more logical reason rather than fear and emotion. And I'm not saying either one of those approaches is better or worse. You know, in my deal world, if you're thinking about small tribes where we evolved, you know, one hundred and fifty to two hundred people, it would be advantageous to have one half who are really good at threat detection, and then maybe the other half who are really good at evaluating that threat.
Yeah. Nice, I like that, you know.
Working together to try to you know, hey, that's a good possibility. Let's think about it. Yes it is a threat, No it's not, and then move forward. So I think that might be one of the explanations why evolution has kind of built this dichotomy into our society and we're not taking advantage of it. Instead we're using it to turn on.
One Well, it's also a potential explanation about how one side is being massively motivated by somebody who is around generating fear and actually playing beautifully into that.
He's not the.
First, Right, he's not the first you lik in, not the first different countries around more right wing stuff. It's all he's driven around the messaging that rallies them. It's always around fear and threat Right.
You're right, those are very potent motivators.
Wow, bloody interesting.
So tell me this, Like, so, as you're discovering all this stuff, and I can I can hear in you that a lot of the discoveries that you have made, it actually made you sort of sit back and look at things a bit more objectively and go, wow, we need to have a bit more compassion about this people, these people, and these people and these people and these people. But how does that, aside from that, how does all of this knowledge help us to live better lives?
Yeah? That's that was one of the main takeaways I had in the process of writing this book. Exactly like you said, I was blown away by some of the science that's out there, some of the studies that have been done that are shining a light onto these hidden forces that are governing or influencing our behavior in ways that we have no idea that it's even happening. And yes, it might bring up some unsettling questions with regard to free will and things like that. But I look at it more from a half glass, half full perspective and that this knowledge is powerful. You know, if we know that certain genes produce undesirable behaviors, we now have the technology or you know, it's the advent of Crisper and gene editing might be able to eradicate some of these genetic defects that cause anomalist behaviors, just like we're using Crisper and gene editing to cure sickle cell anemia right now. You know, it's a wonderful time to be alive and to see how the power of genetics can be utilized for human benefit. Epigenetics is the same way. Scientists are busy making epigenetic drugs that can either posit methylation marks or remove them. And now that we have Crisper, we can probably target those modification marks to very specific genes and not have like off target effects. And then you know, we talked about maybe fixing transgenerational epigenetic inheritance with tools like that. And the more we learn, the more we do these psychology experiments and learn how humans respond to different stimuli and different environments. We can move forward with that. And it's a little frustrating because it's such common sense that, yes, we need to provide children with outstanding, exceptional environments. You know, we can need to remove them from situations that subject them from bullying and abuse and put them into encouraging environments where they can be curious and learn and grow up without you know, fear and paranoia. There was a very basic common sense things to do. And now we have the biological evidence that suggest that, Look, if we don't get our act together as a society and we don't invest in these poor children, they're going to grow up to be a problem.
Absolutely.
Why wait for that?
Why?
And to me, it's just from a from a humane perspective. You know, we can give all these millions of dollars to all these violent activities that the world's engaged in, or we can invest it in poor people. But no, in America, it's pull yourself up by your bootstraps, right, you should be able to get out of poverty. And I'm just like, all right, you think about that for a yeah, exactly, you read my mind. Just like we said at the outset, Paul, there are many different yous in your genome, different versions of you. And someone who's criticizing a poor person because they can't get out of poverty. Let's put your genome into that body and that environment, and let's see how you do. And if you do that simple thought experiment, I think that would be sufficient for a reasonable reasonable person to say, you know, I really haven't been very compassionate or smart about this. You know, we really do need to be a little more humane and how we treat other people who are different than us.
Yeah.
Absolutely, to tell me this, But what are you excited about from with the future and particularly with emerging technologies and AI and.
All of that in your world.
Is there anything that you're particularly excited about right now?
Well, coming from a genetics background, I am really excited about the power for gene editing, but I also go into it with a little trepidation. I feel the same way about AI. I think it can be a marvelous tool, but it can also I can also foresee how it could radically change society. So, like with respect to gene editing, the compromise that forms in my mind is that yes, it should be used for you know, like inherited blindness, or to rid a family of generations of Huntington's disease, or to cure sickle cell anemia. I think those are no brainers. If we have the power to fix those, I think it would be inhumane not to do it. But when you get people who are saying they want to tweak this or that gene because it's been linked to improving memory or learning, that's where we get into a really dangerous area because we don't know enough about how genetic networks integrate themselves to produce those sorts of activities. And we do see in some mouse models as well as in humans who have off the charts intelligence. There's trade offs. You know, if you make these tweaks, like in a mouse model, for example, to make them enhanced with respect to memory or learning, they're not as social as they used to be. Interesting, there's something different about them, and it just is a warning for us to be to proceed with costion when we make a when we make a change in a gene that's linked to a behavior or personality trait, we could be changing something else that might not be very.
Desirable unintended consequences. Right because gene genes have more that.
We're complex, very very complex ecosystems.
And absolutely, and they don't work in isolation, like you said, They work with an environment, and a gene mutation in one environment may be great, but it might be horrible in another environment.
Yeah.
Absolutely, Bill, this has been absolutely brilliant, fascinating.
I love the conversation.
It's been a blasphemy. You've asked some excellent questions.
So please to meet me. Is the name of the book? Where do people go to get it?
And is there are other places where they can follow you and your work? And just where are we saying people?
Yeah, they can buy the book anywhere. It's sold on Amazon and all sorts of bookstores, and you can learn more about the book. Follow additional articles that I've written that are related to the book at author Bill Sullivan dot com.
Author Bill Sullivan dot com.
Okay, get on at people, and your next book purchase should be pleased to meet me by Professor Bill Sullivan.
Bill, this has been bloody awesome. Thanks very much, Ben, Oh.
Thanks Paul. I had a blast
