We think, at least in this preliminary -- it's one study; it's probably wrong, but it's one study -- (Laughter) we think that at least a reasonable hypothesis is that, to be creative, you should have this weird dissociation in your frontal lobe.
So basically a story, you get a physical reaction; your heart can race, your eyes can dilate, you could talk about, "Oh, I got a chill down my spine" or, "I could feel it in the pit of my stomach."
And when I saw this figure, the hairs raised up on the back of my neck, because one way to think about it is, "Oh, that's interesting, captive monkeys are sort of on their way to becoming like Americans."
A reflex signal travels back to your bladder, making the detrusor muscle contract slightly and increasing the bladder's pressure so you're aware that it's filling up.
And the keel-like protrusion on their sternums, where the flight muscles attach, shrinks or disappears, except in penguins, who repurpose their flight muscles and keels for swimming.
And if you blow that up, and zoom in 900 times, you see there are hairs there, tiny hairs. And if you look carefully, those tiny hairs have striations. And if you zoom in on those 30, 000 times, you'll see each hair has split ends.
And I sat down to draw this, and as soon as I saw it, a shiver ran down my spine and I realized that in this refusal to make an image, we had found a way to capture loss and mourning and absence.
And I used to not be a great fan of public restrooms, but now I can go anywhere, because I consider it more when that inner muscle puts a suggestion on my daily agenda.
Now, we don't know the answer, but if it turns out to be yes, then we have a different evolutionary pathway to create intelligence on planet Earth, and one might think that the artificial intelligence community might be interested in those mechanisms.
And if we can get out of the first-person narration and write the story from another character's perspective, suddenly that other character becomes much more sympathetic, and the plot opens up.
Looking at our primate relatives, we can see that the palmaris longus is sometimes absent in those that spend more time on the land, but always present in those that spend more time in trees.
And that gives me great hope, really, in saying that I do believe that there is a path ahead to get us to start thinking about priorities, and saying, what is the important thing in the world?