This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta.

One morning in March each year, I raised the window shades in my home and see that the cherry tree

outside has exploded into blue. The tree has bare branches one day, a riot of delicate

white flowers the next. The last time this happened, the change was so spectacular that I reached for my phone to capture the moment.

But the photo failed to show what my eyes had seen. For one thing, the camera included lots of details

my brain ignored, stray branches, the edge of my window sill. The light in the picture was not as brilliant as it had

appeared to me just moments earlier. More importantly, the image didn't capture the meaning my brain perceived when I saw the tree in bloom.

The message that winter was nearly over, that spring was around the corner.

Let me now ask you a question. Which version of the Cherry tree represents reality better?

The one in the photo?

Or the one inside my head.

Today we launch a two-part series that explores what happens when two ways of understanding come into

conflict with each other. One is objective, the other subjective. One aims for

precision, the other is attentive to meaning. Each can be bewildered, even suspicious,

of the other.

Two ways of seeing this week on Hidden Brain. Oh, you're not. Richard Davidson grew up in Brooklyn during the 1960s. When he was in high school, he came

across an article in the magazine Science News about a study.

I had read about a sleep laboratory that was based in a hospital in Brooklyn, Mymonides Hospital,

actually the hospital that I was born in.

Ritchie called the hospital to ask

if he might be able to volunteer in the lab. You know, I talked to some receptionist to kind of dismiss me and it took more persistence.

I actually wrote a letter, a handwritten letter, and then followed it up with another phone call

...