Ideas worth spreading

Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality

14,309,437 views |

Anil Seth |

TED2017

• April 2017

Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience -- and not just any conscious experience, your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it. How does this happen? According to neuroscientist Anil Seth, we're all hallucinating all the time; when we agree about our hallucinations, we call it "reality." Join Seth for a delightfully disorienting talk that may leave you questioning the very nature of your existence.

Right now, billions of neurons in your brain are working together to generate a conscious experience -- and not just any conscious experience, your experience of the world around you and of yourself within it. How does this happen? According to neuroscientist Anil Seth, we're all hallucinating all the time; when we agree about our hallucinations, we call it "reality." Join Seth for a delightfully disorienting talk that may leave you questioning the very nature of your existence.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

About the speaker

Anil Seth

Cognitive neuroscientist

See speaker profile

How can the "inner universe" of consciousness be explained in terms of mere biology and physics? Anil Seth explores the brain basis of consciousness and self.

Anil Seth | Faber/Dutton, 2021 | Book

Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

Seth sets out his groundbreaking new theory of consciousness and self, drawing on more than 20 years of research. His radical argument is that we do not perceive things as they are, but rather that we are prediction machines, constantly inventing our world, and that we experience the world — and the self — with, through and because of our living bodies.

Dan Falk | Quanta, 2021 | Article

"Anil Seth Finds Consciousness in Life's Push Against Entropy"

How does consciousness arise in mere flesh and blood? To the neuroscientist Anil Seth, our organic bodies are the key to the experience.

Ian Cheney | Science Sandbox/Motherboard, 2018 | Watch

The Most Unknown

The Most Unknown is an epic documentary film that sends nine scientists to extraordinary parts of the world to uncover unexpected answers to some of humanity's biggest questions. How did life begin? What is time? What is consciousness? How much do we really know?

Daniel Dennett | Back Bay Books, 1992 | Book

Consciousness Explained

A classic text in the science of consciousness, bringing together neuroscience and philosophy to lay the foundations for our emerging understanding of how brains give rise to subjective experience.

David Chalmers | Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1995 | Article

"Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness"

Another classic, making the influential distinction between the "hard" and "easy" problems of consciousness. Read it and see if you agree.

Anil Seth | Aeon, 2016 | Article

"The real problem"

Seth's approach to the problem of consciousness, charting a pragmatic "middle ground" between the hard problem and the easy problems.

Learn more

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.