How Conversations Can Shape Reality

In 1953, a patient named Henry Molaison had experimental brain surgery and lost the ability to form new long-term memories. Every morning he woke up a blank slate, unable to chat about yesterday or tomorrow.

Neuroscientist Shane O'Mara argues this case exposes something we take for granted: conversation is one of our most overlooked superpowers.

Chatting is an improv game of memory

When two people recall something together, they often summon far richer detail. You remember the cake at that restaurant, your friend remembers the flowerbeds outside. It's like a jigsaw — you put in a piece, they put in one, and a fuller picture emerges.

O'Mara calls this 'collaborative memory'. It's not just about the past; it lets us imagine the future together. Humans marched out of Africa partly by sitting around fires and talking about what might lie ahead.

Chatting is the foundation of nations

Chimpanzees never sit in a circle to debate who is dividing spoils unfairly. But humans do — from boardrooms to class meetings, from juries to village councils, we hash out differences and plan the future through talk.

Without this habit of 'deliberative assembly', nations could not exist. Elections and jury trials are basically ways of talking through the past and future until we agree.

Scientists can now watch brains chat

Conversation used to be too fleeting to study. But new tools like functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) can scan four people while they talk, tracking who contributes what.

Artificial intelligences also help, parsing huge volumes of chat. O'Mara thinks this could open a new era of conversation science.

The secret to good conversation isn't cleverness, but building rapport — making the other person feel at ease, even good about revealing themselves, like a good psychotherapist. And conversation's magic may be that it can, in an instant, change the direction of a book — or a life.