TedTest

From the Ted Talk by Greg Gage: The cockroach beatbox

Unscramble the Blue Letters

When you think about the brain, it's difficult to understand, because if I were to ask you right now, how does the heart work, you would instantly tell me it's a pump. It pumps blood. If I were to ask about your lungs, you would say it ecngxehas ogxyen for carbon dioxide. That's easy. If I were to ask you how the brain works, it's hard to understand because you can't just look at a brain and understand what it is. It's not a mechanical object, not a pump, not an airbag. It's just like, if you held it in your hand when it was dead, it's just a pecie of fat. To understand how the brain works, you have to go inside a living brain. Because the brain's not mechanical, the brain is electrical and it's chemical. Your brain is made out of 100 billion cells, called nnoures. And these neurons communicate with each other with electricity. And we're going to eavesdrop in on a conversation between two cells, and we're going to letisn to something called a sikpe. But we're not going to record my brain or your bairn or your teachers' brains, we're going to use our good friend the cakcoroch. Not just because I think they're cool, but because they have brains very similar to ours. So if you learn a little bit about how their brains work, we're going to learn a lot about how our banirs work. I'm going to put them in some ice waetr here And then — Audience: Ew! Greg Gabe: Yeah ... Right now they're becoming athetsenzeid. Because they're cold blooded, they become the temperature of the water and they can't control it so they just basically "chillax," right? They're not going to feel anything, which may tell you a little about what we're going to do, a scientific eeixnrepmt to utnndrsead the brain. So ... This is the leg of a cockroach. And a cockroach has all these beautiful hairs and pricklies all over it. Underneath each one of those is a cell, and this cell's a neuron that is going to send information about wind or viroibatn. If you ever try to catch a cockroach, it's hard because they can feel you coming before you're even there, they start running. These clles are zipping up this information up to the brain using those little anoxs with electronic mgseaess in there. We're going to record by sckitnig a pin right in there. We need to take off the leg of a cockroach — don't wrory, they'll grow back — then we're going to put two pins in there. These are metal pins. One will pick up this electronic message, this electric msasgee is going by. So, we're now going to do the surgery, let's see if you guys can see this. Yeah, it's gross ... All right. So there we go. You guys can see his leg right there. Now I'm going to take this leg, I'm going to put it in this initonven that we came up with called the Spikerbox — and this replaces lots of eensxvipe epinuqmet in a research lab, so you guys can do this in your own high schools, or in your own basements if it's me. (Audience: Laughter) So, there. Can you guys see that? Alright, so I'm going to go ahead and turn this on. I'm going to plug it in. (Tuning sound) To me, this is the most beautiful sound in the world. This is what your brain is doing right now. You have 100 billion cells making these raindrop-type noises. Let's take a look at what it looks like, let's pull it up on the iPad screen. I plgegud my iPad into here as well. So remember we said the axon looks like a spike. So we're going to take a look at what one of them looks like in just a brief second. We're going to tap here, so we can sort of average this guy. So there we see it. That's an action potential. You've got 100 billion cells in your brain doing this right now, sending all this information back about what you're seeing, hearing. We also said this is a cell that's going to be taking up information about vibrations in the wind. So what if we do an experiment? We can actually blow on this and hear if we see a change. Are you guys going to be reday? If I blow on it you tell me if you hear anything. (Blowing) (Sound changes) Let me just tuoch this with a little pen here. (nsioe) That was the neural fniirg rate. That actually took a while in nuseeoicncre to understand this. This is called rate coding: the harder you press on something, the more spikes there are, and all that iimoantrofn is coming up to your brain. That's how you perceive things. So that's one way of doing an experiment with electricity. The other way is that your brain is not only taking in elareictcl ipsluems, you're also sending out. That's how you move your muscles around. Let's see what happens if I've plugged in something that's electric into the cockroach leg here. I'm going to take two pins, I'm going to plug them onto the cockroach. I'm going to take the other end, I'm going to plug in into my iPod. It's my iPhone actually. Do you guys know how your earbuds work in your ears? You have a battery in your phone, or iPod, right? It's sending electrical creunrt into these magnets in your earbuds which shake back and forth and allow you to hear things. But that current's the same crnucery that our brain uses, so we can send that to our cockroach leg and hopefully if this works, we can actually see what happens when we play music into the cockroach. Let's take a look. (Music beat) Can we turn it up? There we go. (aneiduce reacts and gasps) GG: So what's happening? Audience: Wow! (lueahgtr) So you see what's moving. It's moving on the bass. All those audiophiles out there, if you have awesome, kicking car stereos, you know, the bass speakers are the biggest skarpees. The biggest speakers have the longest waves, which have the most current, and the current is what's causing these things to move. So it's not just speakers that are causing eirtceictly. Microphones also cause electricity. (Beat) So I'm going to go ahead and invite another person out on the stage here to help me out with this. So there we go. (Beatboxing) This is the first time this has ever happened in the history of mankind. Human beatbox to a cockroach leg. When you guys go back to your high shoocl, think about neuroscience and how you guys can begin the neuro-revolution. Thank you very much. Bye bye. (auppasle)

Open Cloze

When you think about the brain, it's difficult to understand, because if I were to ask you right now, how does the heart work, you would instantly tell me it's a pump. It pumps blood. If I were to ask about your lungs, you would say it _________ ______ for carbon dioxide. That's easy. If I were to ask you how the brain works, it's hard to understand because you can't just look at a brain and understand what it is. It's not a mechanical object, not a pump, not an airbag. It's just like, if you held it in your hand when it was dead, it's just a _____ of fat. To understand how the brain works, you have to go inside a living brain. Because the brain's not mechanical, the brain is electrical and it's chemical. Your brain is made out of 100 billion cells, called _______. And these neurons communicate with each other with electricity. And we're going to eavesdrop in on a conversation between two cells, and we're going to ______ to something called a _____. But we're not going to record my brain or your _____ or your teachers' brains, we're going to use our good friend the _________. Not just because I think they're cool, but because they have brains very similar to ours. So if you learn a little bit about how their brains work, we're going to learn a lot about how our ______ work. I'm going to put them in some ice _____ here And then — Audience: Ew! Greg Gabe: Yeah ... Right now they're becoming ____________. Because they're cold blooded, they become the temperature of the water and they can't control it so they just basically "chillax," right? They're not going to feel anything, which may tell you a little about what we're going to do, a scientific __________ to __________ the brain. So ... This is the leg of a cockroach. And a cockroach has all these beautiful hairs and pricklies all over it. Underneath each one of those is a cell, and this cell's a neuron that is going to send information about wind or _________. If you ever try to catch a cockroach, it's hard because they can feel you coming before you're even there, they start running. These _____ are zipping up this information up to the brain using those little _____ with electronic ________ in there. We're going to record by ________ a pin right in there. We need to take off the leg of a cockroach — don't _____, they'll grow back — then we're going to put two pins in there. These are metal pins. One will pick up this electronic message, this electric _______ is going by. So, we're now going to do the surgery, let's see if you guys can see this. Yeah, it's gross ... All right. So there we go. You guys can see his leg right there. Now I'm going to take this leg, I'm going to put it in this _________ that we came up with called the Spikerbox — and this replaces lots of _________ _________ in a research lab, so you guys can do this in your own high schools, or in your own basements if it's me. (Audience: Laughter) So, there. Can you guys see that? Alright, so I'm going to go ahead and turn this on. I'm going to plug it in. (Tuning sound) To me, this is the most beautiful sound in the world. This is what your brain is doing right now. You have 100 billion cells making these raindrop-type noises. Let's take a look at what it looks like, let's pull it up on the iPad screen. I _______ my iPad into here as well. So remember we said the axon looks like a spike. So we're going to take a look at what one of them looks like in just a brief second. We're going to tap here, so we can sort of average this guy. So there we see it. That's an action potential. You've got 100 billion cells in your brain doing this right now, sending all this information back about what you're seeing, hearing. We also said this is a cell that's going to be taking up information about vibrations in the wind. So what if we do an experiment? We can actually blow on this and hear if we see a change. Are you guys going to be _____? If I blow on it you tell me if you hear anything. (Blowing) (Sound changes) Let me just _____ this with a little pen here. (_____) That was the neural ______ rate. That actually took a while in ____________ to understand this. This is called rate coding: the harder you press on something, the more spikes there are, and all that ___________ is coming up to your brain. That's how you perceive things. So that's one way of doing an experiment with electricity. The other way is that your brain is not only taking in __________ ________, you're also sending out. That's how you move your muscles around. Let's see what happens if I've plugged in something that's electric into the cockroach leg here. I'm going to take two pins, I'm going to plug them onto the cockroach. I'm going to take the other end, I'm going to plug in into my iPod. It's my iPhone actually. Do you guys know how your earbuds work in your ears? You have a battery in your phone, or iPod, right? It's sending electrical _______ into these magnets in your earbuds which shake back and forth and allow you to hear things. But that current's the same ________ that our brain uses, so we can send that to our cockroach leg and hopefully if this works, we can actually see what happens when we play music into the cockroach. Let's take a look. (Music beat) Can we turn it up? There we go. (________ reacts and gasps) GG: So what's happening? Audience: Wow! (________) So you see what's moving. It's moving on the bass. All those audiophiles out there, if you have awesome, kicking car stereos, you know, the bass speakers are the biggest ________. The biggest speakers have the longest waves, which have the most current, and the current is what's causing these things to move. So it's not just speakers that are causing ___________. Microphones also cause electricity. (Beat) So I'm going to go ahead and invite another person out on the stage here to help me out with this. So there we go. (Beatboxing) This is the first time this has ever happened in the history of mankind. Human beatbox to a cockroach leg. When you guys go back to your high ______, think about neuroscience and how you guys can begin the neuro-revolution. Thank you very much. Bye bye. (________)

Solution

touch
piece
neurons
oxygen
currency
current
brain
invention
listen
impulses
equipment
audience
understand
firing
expensive
message
worry
electrical
brains
water
information
cells
speakers
anesthetized
ready
experiment
school
plugged
axons
spike
laughter
neuroscience
vibration
exchanges
messages
sticking
electricity
noise
cockroach
applause

Original Text

When you think about the brain, it's difficult to understand, because if I were to ask you right now, how does the heart work, you would instantly tell me it's a pump. It pumps blood. If I were to ask about your lungs, you would say it exchanges oxygen for carbon dioxide. That's easy. If I were to ask you how the brain works, it's hard to understand because you can't just look at a brain and understand what it is. It's not a mechanical object, not a pump, not an airbag. It's just like, if you held it in your hand when it was dead, it's just a piece of fat. To understand how the brain works, you have to go inside a living brain. Because the brain's not mechanical, the brain is electrical and it's chemical. Your brain is made out of 100 billion cells, called neurons. And these neurons communicate with each other with electricity. And we're going to eavesdrop in on a conversation between two cells, and we're going to listen to something called a spike. But we're not going to record my brain or your brain or your teachers' brains, we're going to use our good friend the cockroach. Not just because I think they're cool, but because they have brains very similar to ours. So if you learn a little bit about how their brains work, we're going to learn a lot about how our brains work. I'm going to put them in some ice water here And then — Audience: Ew! Greg Gabe: Yeah ... Right now they're becoming anesthetized. Because they're cold blooded, they become the temperature of the water and they can't control it so they just basically "chillax," right? They're not going to feel anything, which may tell you a little about what we're going to do, a scientific experiment to understand the brain. So ... This is the leg of a cockroach. And a cockroach has all these beautiful hairs and pricklies all over it. Underneath each one of those is a cell, and this cell's a neuron that is going to send information about wind or vibration. If you ever try to catch a cockroach, it's hard because they can feel you coming before you're even there, they start running. These cells are zipping up this information up to the brain using those little axons with electronic messages in there. We're going to record by sticking a pin right in there. We need to take off the leg of a cockroach — don't worry, they'll grow back — then we're going to put two pins in there. These are metal pins. One will pick up this electronic message, this electric message is going by. So, we're now going to do the surgery, let's see if you guys can see this. Yeah, it's gross ... All right. So there we go. You guys can see his leg right there. Now I'm going to take this leg, I'm going to put it in this invention that we came up with called the Spikerbox — and this replaces lots of expensive equipment in a research lab, so you guys can do this in your own high schools, or in your own basements if it's me. (Audience: Laughter) So, there. Can you guys see that? Alright, so I'm going to go ahead and turn this on. I'm going to plug it in. (Tuning sound) To me, this is the most beautiful sound in the world. This is what your brain is doing right now. You have 100 billion cells making these raindrop-type noises. Let's take a look at what it looks like, let's pull it up on the iPad screen. I plugged my iPad into here as well. So remember we said the axon looks like a spike. So we're going to take a look at what one of them looks like in just a brief second. We're going to tap here, so we can sort of average this guy. So there we see it. That's an action potential. You've got 100 billion cells in your brain doing this right now, sending all this information back about what you're seeing, hearing. We also said this is a cell that's going to be taking up information about vibrations in the wind. So what if we do an experiment? We can actually blow on this and hear if we see a change. Are you guys going to be ready? If I blow on it you tell me if you hear anything. (Blowing) (Sound changes) Let me just touch this with a little pen here. (Noise) That was the neural firing rate. That actually took a while in neuroscience to understand this. This is called rate coding: the harder you press on something, the more spikes there are, and all that information is coming up to your brain. That's how you perceive things. So that's one way of doing an experiment with electricity. The other way is that your brain is not only taking in electrical impulses, you're also sending out. That's how you move your muscles around. Let's see what happens if I've plugged in something that's electric into the cockroach leg here. I'm going to take two pins, I'm going to plug them onto the cockroach. I'm going to take the other end, I'm going to plug in into my iPod. It's my iPhone actually. Do you guys know how your earbuds work in your ears? You have a battery in your phone, or iPod, right? It's sending electrical current into these magnets in your earbuds which shake back and forth and allow you to hear things. But that current's the same currency that our brain uses, so we can send that to our cockroach leg and hopefully if this works, we can actually see what happens when we play music into the cockroach. Let's take a look. (Music beat) Can we turn it up? There we go. (Audience reacts and gasps) GG: So what's happening? Audience: Wow! (Laughter) So you see what's moving. It's moving on the bass. All those audiophiles out there, if you have awesome, kicking car stereos, you know, the bass speakers are the biggest speakers. The biggest speakers have the longest waves, which have the most current, and the current is what's causing these things to move. So it's not just speakers that are causing electricity. Microphones also cause electricity. (Beat) So I'm going to go ahead and invite another person out on the stage here to help me out with this. So there we go. (Beatboxing) This is the first time this has ever happened in the history of mankind. Human beatbox to a cockroach leg. When you guys go back to your high school, think about neuroscience and how you guys can begin the neuro-revolution. Thank you very much. Bye bye. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation	frequency
cockroach leg	3
billion cells	2
biggest speakers	2

Important Words

action
airbag
alright
anesthetized
applause
audience
audiophiles
average
awesome
axon
axons
basements
basically
bass
battery
beat
beatbox
beatboxing
beautiful
biggest
billion
bit
blood
blooded
blow
blowing
brain
brains
bye
called
car
carbon
catch
causing
cell
cells
change
chemical
cockroach
cold
coming
communicate
control
conversation
cool
currency
current
dead
difficult
dioxide
earbuds
ears
easy
eavesdrop
electric
electrical
electricity
electronic
equipment
exchanges
expensive
experiment
fat
feel
firing
friend
gasps
good
greg
gross
grow
guy
guys
hairs
hand
happened
happening
hard
harder
hear
hearing
heart
held
high
history
human
ice
impulses
information
instantly
invention
invite
ipad
iphone
ipod
kicking
lab
laughter
learn
leg
listen
living
longest
lot
lots
lungs
magnets
making
mankind
mechanical
message
messages
metal
microphones
move
moving
muscles
music
neural
neuron
neurons
neuroscience
noise
noises
object
oxygen
pen
perceive
person
phone
pick
piece
pin
pins
play
plug
plugged
potential
press
pricklies
pull
pump
pumps
put
rate
reacts
ready
record
remember
replaces
research
running
school
schools
scientific
screen
send
sending
shake
similar
sort
sound
speakers
spike
spikerbox
spikes
stage
start
stereos
sticking
surgery
tap
temperature
time
touch
tuning
turn
understand
vibration
vibrations
water
waves
wind
work
works
world
worry
yeah
zipping