Welcome to this curated educational transcript of the Joe Rogan Experience. In this session, we provide a deep-dive examination of the critical perspectives and historical dialogues presented in Episode #1513. Our mission is to offer a high-fidelity, searchable research resource for students of cultural history, emerging technology, and global discourse. This transcript has been specifically optimized for academic reference, linguistic study, and archival preservation regarding Neurobiology, Dopamine Regulation, and Human Performance Protocols. Andrew, how are you? What's happening, man? Doing
great. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Really
excited to talk to you about this. Just sort
of for an introduction, tell people what you
do. So I'm a neuroscientist, meaning I'm a professor
of neurobiology and ophthalmology, Stanford School
of Medicine. So I run a laboratory. I teach a
little bit. I teach neuroanatomy to medical students,
but mainly my lab does research. So I've got
students and postdocs. And we're trying to figure
out the answers to two problems. The first problem
is how to regenerate the damaged nervous system,
in particular the connections between the eye
and the brain, to restore vision to the blind.
So that's a big mission of ours. And to prevent
vision loss in people that are losing their vision.
And the other thing that we're doing is we're
focusing a lot on stress and other states of
mind. So I'm obsessed with the idea that all
our states of mind come from the brain and the
body. And we're trying to figure out what happens
in the brain and body. when we're stressed and
how to control it. What happens in the brain
and body when we are creative and how to control
it. And essentially for all states of mind, but
rather than try and tackle the really high level
stuff like flow and states of awe, we're really
focused on these states of stress and things
like focus and the ability to think clearly and
do certain things athletically or cognitively
because first of all, there's a lot of suffering.
There are a lot of people out there that are
suffering from an inability to control their
states of mind. And also there's great potential
for people who aren't suffering to be able to
create and perform and do better things once
we can understand how those states come about.
That's an interesting way of putting it, suffering
because they can't control their states of mind.
That is the case, but that's not like a politically
correct way of describing it. I guess I never
thought about that. Would that be accurate? Well,
I think it's fair to say that all our states
of mind and body, and I say mind and body because
the nervous system, which is the brain, the spinal
cord and all that stuff, it connects to our body
and our body connects to our brain. So we can't
really separate those. But states of mind, which
include the stuff in our skull and the body,
those essentially dictate our whole life experience,
right? So whether or not we're feeling calm.
when we want to be calm, whether or not we're
feeling stressed, when we'd rather be calm, whether
or not we are feeling focused when we need to
do work, or whether or not we're feeling creative
when we want to be creative. All of that stems
from the nervous system. The other organs of
the body are involved, but the nervous system,
the brain and those connections, it's really
what it's about. So if you see somebody who's
in a state of depression, or you see somebody
who's in a state of flow and creativity, you
can be pretty sure that that's reflecting the
activity of neurons in the brain. The idea that
the body and the brain are inseparable. Most
people who are physically active accept that
and appreciate that, and they know that this
is probably true. But there's a lot of people
that kind of want to deny that and concentrate
only on the brain. And particularly, like, there's
psychiatrists that will prescribe medication
before they'll prescribe exercise. And this is
a controversial subject. That's what I meant
by saying, like, that... you are unable to control
aspects of your brain or aspects of the way you
are viewing things or the way you feel about
things. Yeah. So I think if we take a step back
and we just kind of think about what the brain
and nervous system does, and again, nervous system
includes all of it, we can say the brain is special,
right? This brain, there is something fundamentally
important about the brain part because somebody
who, let's say, has a limb amputated, it doesn't
fundamentally change who they are. It can change.
what they can do. And there will be aspects of
their personality and temperament that might
shift, but who they are hasn't changed. Whereas
if someone has a brain lesion where their brain
is degenerating, that person is fundamentally
different. So there is something special about
the real estate in our skulls. But that said,
the job of the brain is really to combine our
experience of what's going on in our body with
what's going on in our mind and to react and
behave to things in an adaptive way. So if I
may, there's just sort of like... If we take
a step back and just think, there are basically
five things that the nervous system is responsible
for doing. First is sensation. Sensation is non
-negotiable. It's happening all the time. Sound
waves are coming in. Your feet are in contact
with your shoes or the floor. That's all happening,
and you can't control it because we have sensors,
things in our eye, our tongue, our nose, our
skin, our ears, that take physical events in
the universe, photons of light. Sound waves,
physical pressure on the skin. And it transforms
that into one language. And the language is the
language of electricity of neurons. Now, perception
is the next thing that the brain does. And perception
is all about which sensations we are conscious
of. So if I say, you know, the contact of your
hands with the table, now you're conscious of
it. That's just your perceptual window. It's
like a spotlight. It just goes straight to your
hands. So there's sensation, perception. And
then there are these things we call emotions,
which are brain -body states. They tend to make
us either want to get up and move or stay still.
They tend to make us think this is a good place
for me to be at mentally and physically or I
want to shift this. And then there are thoughts,
which we could discuss in detail if you want,
which kind of arise spontaneously. They're kind
of running in the background all the time like
pop -up windows on a badly filtered internet
connection. But we can also deliberately have
a thought. Like I can say, That pad of paper
to my right is yellow. I can decide that. In
the same way, I can do the fifth thing, which
is an action. So you've got sensations, perceptions,
feelings slash emotions, thoughts and actions.
And all five of those include. the brain and
the body. But how much brain and how much body
is shifted by a kind of underlying, let's just
think of it as a tide, like the level of the
tide. And that's the autonomic nervous system.
So if I'm suddenly stressed for whatever reason,
my perceptual window is going to shift. My eyes
are literally going to change their focus. My
world will become more like portrait mode. I'll
see you and everything else will become blurry.
When I'm calm, I actually have panoramic vision.
I can see everything around me. So I better.
So My state, my internal state of alertness or
sleepiness impacts all this. And in sleep, which
is kind of the opposite extreme of stress, I'm
not in relation to anything outside me. I'm not
perceiving anything. I'm sensing things. It's
non -negotiable. I'm not having real thoughts,
but the thoughts are kind of disoriented in space
and time. And behavior is done. You're lying
down. You're sometimes paralyzed in sleep. So
when I say states, it's really about this dynamic
shift between what we're perceiving and how we're
perceiving it. We could go really in depth in
this or not, but states of mind are fundamentally,
I think, to me anyway, are the most important
aspect of trying to understand how the brain
works. Because ultimately, if you want to understand
mental illness and mental health, if you want
to understand high performance, which is something
my lab is really interested in, if you want to
understand any of that, you have to understand
how these states of mind and body relate. Because
the autonomic nervous system, which is... strongly
impacting these states is in the body. The basis
of it is connections between the brain and body.
So you're analyzing people in stress states,
and are you doing cognitive function tests on
these people in stress states versus people in
calm, placid states? How are you doing? Are you
doing similar tests? Yeah. So there are two states
that – like we can take that whole tangle of
mess that I just threw out on the table and simplify
it and say, look, there are two states that I
think if we could really crack, we could really
understand the underlying neural mechanisms and
we could understand how people could get themselves
into these two states, we would greatly improve
human health and human performance, cognitively
and physically. OK. And those two states are
the state of sleep. So not just the importance
of sleep. I know you had Matt on here. a great
sleep researcher, not just that sleep is important,
but how to get better at sleeping, how to access
sleep. So a lot of people struggle with that.
And the other state is clear, calm, focused.
Those two states for my lab right now are the
target states. There's so many states, but if
we can figure out how those work and how to allow
people to put themselves into those states, I
think it's my belief that we'll do. humankind
a great service. Okay, so when you say sleep,
the state of sleep, what techniques are you talking
about to achieve the state of sleep or do a better
job? of sleeping? Yeah. So when people come into
my laboratory, we essentially start pressure
testing them from the moment they walk in the
door. So we have a laboratory. We do some animal
work. We work on mice and we study states like
fear and courage. And we're interested in what
leads to winning in certain forms of competition
between animals and these kinds of things, aggression,
those kind of very primal states. We also have
a human lab. So people come into the laboratory.
We have an equivalent lab essentially to our
mouse lab. People put on VR goggles. We wire
them into a lot of gear that allows us to measure
things like heart rate, breathing. We're measuring
pupil size, eye tracking. And in some people,
because they are neurosurgery patients, we have
access to the brain. We drop electrodes down
into the brain, record from the human amygdala.
So you have a hole in their head? They have a
hole in their skull. The neurosurgeons actually,
which I am not, tell us that it's no big deal,
right? That basically they look at the skull
as kind of a... poorly evolved device. They always
tell me, you know, you're much better off with
a titanium plate there anyway. It's much stronger.
So they don't have a problem putting a little
hole in the skull. These are patients that have
other issues, right? So they're saying you're
better off with a titanium plate than skull bone?
Well, if you're concerned about concussion or
anything, if you really want to protect the brain,
you would, you know, you could build a better
device to protect the brain. But isn't the real...
Brain damage comes from the brain slamming against
the inside wall of the skull. Yeah. How is that
going to be better with titanium? Yeah. I mean
this is neurosurgeons and they're – There's foam
inside the – Yeah. There are synthetic materials
that they use to protect against sloshing around.
Do they – how much – how far do they go with
this? Do they ever like remove the top of someone's
head and replace it with titanium? Yeah, large
portions, large windows. I've seen windows in
the skull that are the size of an iPhone. What?
Yeah, sure. You don't flip it open. Oh, no. No,
but now keep in mind that these are - Like a
lid, a manhole cover for your brain? Basically.
Really? Is that available online? Can Jamie look
that up? He's looking it already. Well, you know,
a guy who used to work in my lab, who's now at
Neuralink, a neurosurgeon. Oh, one of those guys.
One of those guys. Ready to fucking bring on
the AI hyper world. I'm scared. Among other things.
I mean, I think that, well, I always say, you
know, all of human evolution is based on - Human
neuroplasticity, the ability to learn and acquire
new functions in the nervous system or where
our biology kind of cliffs off and can't support
us in what we want to do. We build technology.
Right. And this is the idea. Innovation steps
in and says, I've got an idea to accelerate this
process. And then you get Captain Super Genius,
who thinks it's no big deal, cut giant holes
in the top of your head and stick these wires
in there. I mean, I think there's that version
of it. And I think. I haven't spoken to them
directly, except this one individual there. But,
you know, first of all, I don't think they're
thinking about large windows in the skull unless
there's a clinical need. Elon said it's about
a quarter. Behind the ear, the route in through
the bone there. And the other thing is that I
think it's very likely that the first 10 years
of that work. will be clinical in nature, movement
disorders, Parkinson's. And of course, because
I said that, they'll probably beat that by five
years. Well, the quote that made me uncomfortable
was when Elon told me, you're not going to have
to talk to communicate anymore. I was like, oh,
Jesus Christ, where are we going with this? Well,
this is interesting because, so I have a good
friend who's a neurosurgeon at UCSF. each other
since we were little kids, since we were nine.
His name is Eddie Chang, and he's kind of the
world expert. He's a neurosurgeon, but he's also
the world expert in speech and language. And
what he's been doing is decoding, essentially
figuring out what neural signals come out of
the brain that allow us to speak in a certain
way. So let's say I wanted to build a device
that would allow you to speak eight languages
tomorrow that you don't know today. The reflexive
idea is... That people like Eddie and people
like me and maybe the Neuralink folks are going
to go in and build chips that are going to stimulate
the hippocampus and you're going to learn faster
and do all that. But there's a whole other version
of this. And it gets right back to this issue
of brain and body that we were talking about
before. Now, speech is a brain thing. You think
about what you want to say, maybe for a joke
or here, and it's in your head. But it's transformed,
meaning those nerve signals go in the form of
electricity to the pharynx and larynx. And you
say things like, hello, my name is. In my case,
Andrew, right? That transformation is happening
at the muscle. So in theory, if I know that in
English, right, and I know the nerve signals
that come out of that area of cortex, that speech
area, that say, hello, my name is Andrew. Well,
I can take those, look at how it controls the
pharynx and larynx, and insert maybe a little
box. Maybe I don't even have to put it under
the skin. Maybe it's a device that I hold. So
that when I say, hello, my name is Andrew, but
I dial it to Mandarin or French, I'll just say,
and I can't do this because I don't speak Mandarin
or French. Hello, my name is Andrew. I'll think
that, say it in English in my head, but my pharynx
and larynx will say it in Mandarin or French.
But isn't the problem with the way language is
structured in different languages? I'm sure you've
read translations from Russian to English. Sure.
It's really weird. Very different. Or English
to Russian is even weirder sometimes. Right.
So this is really Eddie's work, but because we're
such good friends, we talk about this a lot.
One of the fundamental discoveries that he's
made – and I should just mention all these neurosurgery
patients, they have epilepsy or something else.
There's a reason for opening up the skull and
going in there. We're not just – Just curious.
There was a time a couple decades ago when you
could do this kind of stuff, and there's some
very interesting experiments that came out of
that just because you could decide to study rage
in humans and go in there and start probing around.
Lobotomies. Lobotomies, yeah. There's obviously
a really interesting and famous and kind of sad
history around that, but also some interesting
data came out of it. You know, a patient will
come in, they'll do this, they'll record these
areas. And what he's found, it's so interesting
because if I, let's just say with that same statement,
hello, my name is Andrew. There's a neuron in
my cortex that responds when I say that and when
I want to say that. But if I just change it slightly
and I say, hello, my name is Andrew, I make it
a question. There's a neuron right next door
that encodes that. Turns out there's a map of
inflection. Regardless of language, there's a
map of – it's not quite meaning but there's a
map of intonation and inflection in the brain.
So in theory, because that map is so regular
across cultures, he's looked now in Chinese -speaking
people, in English -speaking people and people
who have a second language. He's even has some
interesting data about people who have up speak.
They're really annoying. Oh, I hate that shit.
Yeah. That's a lot near where you live. Yeah.
That's a San Francisco tech thing. Is it? Yeah.
It's like what they're doing is letting you know
that they're one of the tribe. Okay. And we're
all in this together. And I think like you do.
And you can trust me because I'm an original.
Well, it might reflect a subtle brain damage.
You think? I think the data show that it's a
distortion of the regular map. I think it's the
same thing as a southern accent. I think you're
just fitting in with your environment. Because
I know people that have adopted that shit once
they've gotten into the tech world. I'm like,
hey, fuckface, you didn't used to talk like that.
Or the people that go to... England and start
speaking with a British accent? Oh, like Madonna.
Oh, did she do that? Yes, she did. I don't follow
pop culture carefully enough. Yes, she did. Yeah,
I'm moving to Texas. I'm going to start saying
y 'all two weeks in. I'm giving myself two weeks.
I'm going to try out y 'all. Well, some of this
stuff is learned. Are you moving? I've heard
rumors of that, but I guess, okay. Sorry to hear
that. Sorry for California. Congratulations,
Texas. These maps have some regularities across
people because when we're born into the world,
You know, we are not a completely clean slate.
There's a kind of a map that expects the world,
including language, to be a certain way. And
we can't expect that we're going to be born in
China or born in France or born in California
or Northern California for that matter. So the
map is what we call semi -malleable. It's not
a rigid, concrete, hardwired map. So what makes
you think that this upspeak is like damage? Well,
so I asked Eddie about this. Eddie? Chang, my
friend, this neurosurgeon who is, you know, kind
of premier world. Not kind of. He is the world
expert on speech and language and the neural
transformations and how it controls the pharynx,
all that stuff. And I said, what's with the upspeak
thing? He said, yeah, you know, we see that sometimes
and I'm concerned about that. And when a neurosurgeon
tells you their concern, you kind of go, okay,
what are you concerned about? And he goes, there's
something wrong with the map. And this kind of
– so maybe it's – it could be because of upbringing
and people – the brain is plastic as adults too.
And not in the same way it's plastic in childhood.
But if you are forced to learn another language,
your brain will fundamentally shift. Neuroplasticity
is a real thing. And I think it's interesting
you raise this kind of cultural component because
– Actually, it was Eddie's advisor, a guy named
Mike Merzenich, was really the one who discovered
adult neuroplasticity. You know, in the 70s and
80s, and my actually scientific great grandparents,
David Hubel and Torrenson Wiesel, won the Nobel
Prize for showing there are critical periods,
these periods of development after which the
brain cannot change. And they had important implications
for amblyopia and eye stuff. Merzenich came along
and said, you know what? I don't buy that. And
he started doing experiments with his students
and postdocs where they would create an essential
need or contingency. Like if the animal doesn't
eat unless it learns something, then the brain
can change. If you break down learning events
into kind of smaller, more focused events, the
brain can change as an adult at essentially any
age. And so the strongest drive for adult neuroplasticity
is focus. It's the ability to say, this is really
important. It's making a soda straw view of the
world. It's almost like being in a state of stress.
And the best way to do that for a young person
in adolescence or maybe even older is the social
pressures. If they're strong, they will shape
and rewire the brain. I mean, I look at what's
happening in the world right now, and I think
we are in a state of immense neuroplasticity.
Everybody is having to rewire their understanding
of what's going on. Just to sort of put a – kind
of a bow of some sort on the speech and language
thing. I don't think brain -machine interface
is going to be all about sticking chips in the
head. But still, let's get back to the upspeak
thing. Sure. Why does he think it's damage? Like
what is it about upspeak? Well, he just thinks
that the map, which shows up kind of normally
in – I mean, this is probably the first time
in human history people have used this upspeak.
It's also the first time in human history people
have typed with their thumbs. I was listening
to two guys at the airport back when you can
go to the airport. And these two guys at the
airport were talking in upspeak. And it was like
as clear as day to me. Like they were letting
each other know that they're in the tribe. And,
you know, I remember Jamie had a tech problem
once and he was on the phone with this lady who
was doing upspeak. When she was talking to him
and we both looked at each other like, ew, yuck.
It does kind of create a kind of visceral, like,
like nauseous. I can't trust those people. I
can't trust someone who talks like that because
I know you're unoriginal. Like you, not, not
what, not what most of us are clearly at least.
mostly influenced by the people around us. But
it's not just that. It's like you've changed
how you talk to fit in with this. There's a tech
world. There's tech language. That's tech speak.
It's English, but it's tech speak English. It's
letting you know. And there does seem to be a
body response too. There's a thing to it. There's
sort of a spinal extension. I don't trust them.
I don't trust them. I think they're sneaky. Well,
I'll try and get the data from Eddie. I'm being
halfway joking here. If you're like an upspeak
person, like, hey, man, I've always loved your
show. But then you said you don't trust people
who talk like me. Joking. But also, stop doing
that. Stop fucking doing that. I know what you're
doing. I think Eddie would say that there's some
distortion in the way they're using this map.
But how did it start? I think it started with
one. Really smart person who's probably a little
autistic who talked like that because they were
trying to keep it together. And then everyone
else was like, I want to be as smart as John.
And then they started talking like that. And
then it became a thing, sort of like accents.
I grew up in Boston, right? They talk in a weird
way. And I picked it up. And then one time I
heard myself on television. I heard myself talk
like that when I was 19. I was like, oh, my God.
I sound like a fucking idiot. What is wrong with
me? Because I had only lived there. at that time
for like six years but i adopted it whole hog
and i was like what what's wrong with me like
why am i i wanted to fit in that's what it was
i'd moved there when i was 13 and i tried to
fit in and so i had adopted this speech pattern
i didn't realize it until i heard it like you
knew you listen to a tape of yourself you actually
find out what you really sound like you're like
ew do you watch your performances i have to watch
stand up I have to watch some of those. Podcasts,
I try not to unless it's important, unless it's
like something that I need to watch over again.
Like I'll probably listen to this one over again
because you're probably going to say some things
that you already have that I need to reflect
on and research. This is a very interesting subject
to me. It's very important to me, and there's
many different parts of this that I wanted to
talk to you about, particularly how— people respond
to damaged brains and what can be done to repair
damaged brains, and stress, what we were talking
about earlier, states of stress and how they
reflect on your ability to think and assess and
resolve problems. Because it seems to me that,
me personally, if I'm tired, If I'm, like, particularly
working out, right? Like, if I'm working out
with, like, a Muay Thai trainer and he has, like,
a particular combination that he wants me to
do, if I'm exhausted, it's like my monkey brain
can't put that combination together. I'm like,
what do I do again? Left, right, low kick, knee
to the body, elbow, clinch. Like, what is it
again? Like, it's simple. It's very simple, right?
But if I'm tired, it's not simple anymore. So
what's going on? Like, why? Does being tired
have an effect on the way you perceive things
and what memory and? Combinations of things that
you have to put together and that's nothing that's
just being tired That's not your life depending
upon it, which is a huge factor and for fighters
There are many, many fighters who do really well
in the gym when there's no pressure. They're
comfortable. You look at them, you're like, wow,
that guy's incredibly skillful. He must be incredible.
Like when he fights, he must be amazing. Then
you see him fight and they just lock up. Like
for whatever reason, they can't rise to the occasion.
They are dwarfed by the moment. And whatever
it is, whether it's the way they're perceiving
these threats, the way... their mind is just
wired or the way they have learned to handle
situations. Maybe they have a series of bad memories
that gets relayed every time they're in a situation
and they start concentrating more on failure
than on staying calm and trusting the process,
which is a big factor. Your training is supposed
to come out almost in a zen -like state. And
when you're fighting, the whole idea is to maintain
calm and maintain this sort of center as much
as possible. And when someone's pressuring you
and attacking you and talking shit to you in
particular, what they're trying to do is weaken
that center. What they're trying to do is break
that up so you can't have a happy place. There's
no happy place for you. And then you see people
fall apart. You see them fold. And it's fascinating
because it's not a physical thing. Like the physical
body is still capable of performing, but there's
something going on with stress. Where the brain
can't send the orders to the body correctly.
And you're so overwhelmed with anxiety or fear
of failure or just the overwhelming reality of
the consequences of making a mistake that you
crumble. Yeah. This is why we're. obsessed with
clear common focus yeah or sleep as a good jumping
off point for you know because we eventually
want to tackle all the states but that's a good
jumping we're jumping all over the place but
let's get we started with sleep so let's get
back to sleep so sleep and stress make a good
uh sort of counter examples so but if we're just
going to focus on sleep first of all sleep is
the only time that you're in complete relation
to only one thing and that's yourself it's also
a time in which There's a core operation of the
brain in wakefulness. This is especially apparent
in stress, but it's happening all the time, where
your brain is trying to do two things in wakefulness.
And I realize we're talking about sleep, but
most of what your brain is trying to do is pass
things off to reflexive behavior. So I don't
have to think about picking up water. I don't
have to think about walking down the hall. I
just do it. I just breathe. I just move. I eat.
I'm not conscious of it. There's another mental
operation. which is very demanding, but extremely
important. And this is encompassing a lot of
different aspects of neural circuitry and function,
but the brain wants to figure out duration, path,
and outcome. How long is something going to last?
What's the path to do it? And how is it going
to work out? Those are the two things that the
brain is mainly managing during waking states.
And of course, it's keeping your heart rate going
and your breathing going, your digesting going,
but that's all running in the background. When
you go to sleep, Your perception of space and
time, not outer space, unless that's what you're
thinking about, but space and time becomes untethered.
It becomes very fluid. So when you lie down to
go to sleep at night and you're drowsy, you stop
doing these duration path outcome analyses. And
if you have trouble sleeping, it's because you're
still doing what's the duration? What's the path?
What's the outcome? Your brain's looping in that.
So when you go into sleep, it's the one time.
in which the brain can untether space and time.
Like if this were a dream, you know, your dog
could float in here and sit down on the table
and then morph into somebody that you know from
long ago. And we'd be okay with that because
it was a dream. So that period of six to eight
or 10 hours, whatever you need, is essential
for resetting neural circuits in the brain. There's
some chemical events too, but neural circuits
so that during wakefulness, you can do duration
path outcome, like learning a new martial art.
move. So it's the untethered aspect of it is
crucial? It's absolutely crucial. And how do
we know this? We know this. So when people come
into my lab, we study these two states. We put
them into VR goggles and we deliver very real,
not cartoons and animation, but very real 360
video of things like claustrophobia, if you're
claustrophobic, diving with great white sharks,
if you don't like sharks, spiders crawling up
you, we find your pain point. We bring you into
a state of stress and we find In everybody, and
this is not necessarily a new phenomenon, that
your pupils dilate. When your pupils dilate,
the optics of your world changes. And you are
looking at the visual world, which is space,
physical space, and you start slicing time differently.
If you've ever been stressed, it feels like things
are taking forever. That's because your body
is sending your brain more signals per unit time.
It's saying, like, My body's active, my body's
active, my body's active, my body's active. Think
about when you're drowsy, your body is sending
fewer signals to the brain per unit time. And
what ends up happening is the brain uses physical
space and use these signals from the body. We
know this from neural recordings to start creating
a space -time relationship. The space -time relationship
really says, let's just take the jujitsu example,
even though I've never done jujitsu. You're trying
to figure out. Where do I place my hand? Where's
my grip? How do I move my leverage? What am I
going to do when you're trying to sequence thing?
It's duration, path, and outcome. In sleep, the
forebrain essentially shuts off. There's some
other things that happen too, of course. And
the brain starts to drift and idle into these
states where duration, path, and outcome analyses
become impossible. We also put people into deeply
relaxed states. So we're studying three different
ways to do that. One is hypnosis, which is not
like, you know, charm hypnosis, stage hypnosis,
but medical hypnosis. My colleague David Spiegel
in the Department of Psychiatry is kind of a
world expert in hypnosis for pain management,
et cetera, trauma. You can put people into hypnotic
states, which are very sleep -like. They're a
little different than sleep, but they're like
a shallow stage of sleep. We also use particular
patterns of breathing or respiration to bring
people into states that are sort of like sleep.
It's like a very shallow level of sleep, but
they're completely immobile. Or in some cases,
we've studied things like more traditional forms
of meditation, although that's less the focus
these days. What we find is that the brain can
go into states where duration, path, and outcome,
cognitive processing, physical activity is impossible.
And the brain starts to show wave -like activity
that's very similar to sleep. And what I didn't
tell you is that we also have people do a cognitive
task. So while they're in a very stressful environment,
like with heights or they're being bombarded
with… you know, snake experience or we have a
bunch of different experiences, they're required
to do a cognitive task, which is a duration path
outcome task. And then we put them into these
states of pseudo sleep. And then we evaluate
their ability to perform in these tasks again.
And what we found is interesting. What we found
is that first of all, these sleep -like states
can be very restorative. I imagine that... You
mentioned the float tank earlier, like maybe
float tanks. And we could talk about why the
float tank would put you into a pseudo sleep
-like state. Certain substances put us into sleep
-like states. Naps and just letting the mind
drift can put us into sleep -like states. And
those sleep -like states do two things that are
very powerful. One is they reset our ability
to do these very taxing, demanding duration path
outcome kind of brain functions. As well, they
allow people to access sleep more easily. So
we want people to be able to get into deep sleep
because nothing is as restorative as deep sleep
because in deep sleep and in the states that
I'm talking about, these deeply relaxed states,
duration path outcome analyses are impossible.
And I think being able to toggle back and forth
between these states is really where high performance
emerges. So for the very stressed human being
who's suffering from generalized anxiety, we
study those types of patients. in addition for
people who are doing well in life but are high
performers. So we do some work with elite military,
with some athletes. We've had David Goggins out
to the lab. You can't use him. You can't use
him. So he's an extreme outlier, right? He's
too far on the outside. So what's remarkable
about him is he has figured out how to tap into
– he can force himself into duration path outcome.
Now, I don't know his state while he's running,
if he's relaxed, if he's aggro the whole time.
I don't know. But he is a bit of a mutant in
the sense that – but he's created in his words.
He's turned himself into that mutant. He's figured
it out. He's figured it out. He was not born
that way. We know that. The most special thing
about him, really, is that and also that he's
willing to share that he was at one point in
time a large, fat, lazy guy, you know, and then
he became this savage that you see. He forced
his mind into that particular state. Well, and
the states that will allow people to go there
often are fear states. anxiety states, things
that are extremely high pressure because the
adult brain especially doesn't want to change.
We're basically born, we get wired up by our
experience, we get wired up by what we're exposed
to. Brain plasticity is very passive for the
first 25 years of life. If you're a child, the
things you hear and see and do are shaping you.
Kids come home saying things they've never even
heard before. It's amazing. And as an adult,
you have to crack into that neural circuitry
and reshape it. But why is that? What is it about
adults? Because I have my own theory, and this
is just a martial arts -based theory. Young kids
learn so fast. They learn so fast. But I always
feel like it's because they don't have jobs.
They don't have a family to take care of. They
don't have a girlfriend who's on their back.
They don't have bills and the IRS breathing down
their neck. They don't have anything. So they
can just think about it, and their mind, like,
if... If they have a hard drive, right, and they
have a one terabyte hard drive, they got like
a hundred gigs full. They have all this space.
You could fill that space up with technique and
movement and it becomes their whole life because
it's thrilling and it's exciting to learn and
their body heals quicker so they can force themselves
into situations. With adults, it's extremely
difficult to find the bandwidth, to find the
amount of time to really completely focus on
something because you have so many distractions.
Does that make sense? Oh, absolutely. What you
just described is a beautiful description of
the top contour. And below that, what's happening
is in childhood, the whole brain is literally
more plastic because there's more space for the
neurons to move around and make new connections.
The whole environment. The chemicals that are
swirling around in there are set for plasticity
because we were basically designed to come into
the world and be customized to our experience.
I mean, if the human animal is exceptionally
good at any one thing, it's that. So if you're
an adult, say if you're a 35 -year -old man with
a family or a 35 -year -old woman with a family
and a job and you want to learn a new skill,
what is the best way to force your brain to accept
these new patterns and learn this quickly? By
attacking two separate parts of a process. Neuroplasticity
is not an event. It's a process and it has two
parts. The first one is if you want to learn
and change your brain as an adult, there has
to be a high level of focus and engagement. There's
absolutely no way around this because so focus
and intensity and that kind of the Goggins phenotype,
right? I think Goggins is now a noun, a verb
and a pronoun, right? It's like, it's amazing.
So if you're going to Goggins this process, what
you need to do is you need to, regardless of
how agitated you feel, you have to lean in and
focus extremely hard. Now, the reason for that
is that there's a neurochemical norepinephrine,
also called adrenaline, same thing. That's released
in the brain and body. Most people back off at
that point because they feel this agitation.
But we have to remember that that noradrenaline
was designed to get us into movement. That's
the purpose of noradrenaline, to take us out
of stillness and into movement. And then the
other thing we have to do is we have to take
that elevated level of alertness and we have
to focus it. And there's a second neuromodulator
called acetylcholine. Which is secreted from
this little structure in the base of the forebrain
when we visually focus on something. Or in the
case of maybe if you're doing auditory learning
when you focus with your auditory attention.
Can I pause you there for a second? So acetylcholine
you could take in a supplement. And norepinephrine
you can actually get from float ice tanks. Like
you can get it from cryo chambers. You can get
it from cryotherapy. So using those strategies
of taking like acetylcholine is actually an alpha
brain. One of the supplements my company sells.
When you take that along with float tanks and
doing, or excuse me, cryo chambers and do some
intense exercise or whatever you're trying to
get good at with intense focus. Can those things
accelerate that process? Almost certainly increases
the plasticity, the rate of plasticity. So you
would recommend if someone was trying to get
better at something, like a cryo chamber would
actually accelerate the process of learning?
Yeah. So, yes. Wow. So the reason for that, but
you don't necessarily need a cryo chamber. What
you need are, so we have these requirements.
We need urgency and focus to trigger plasticity.
Right. That's one part of the process. I haven't
mentioned the second part yet. Neuroplasticity
is triggered when urgency and focus combine.
Acetylcholine is released for the aficionados
out there. It's called the nucleus basalis, but
that doesn't matter. There's a little compartment
of neurons in the base of your forebrain that
doesn't like to release acetylcholine on a regular
basis. It's greedy. It's greedy. And it doesn't
want to use that. With your child, it'll rain
your brain with acetylcholine. But as an adult,
30, 40, up to 80. Why is that? Because... You
know, Mother Nature designed us to learn what
we need to learn and then do that, reproduce
and die. I mean, not to be, you know, dark about
it. But I would say evolution is not about us.
It's about the offspring. Yes. 100%. And then
it's not even about them. It's about their offspring.
Exactly. It never ends. We are being manipulated
from the inside. Yes. I mean, that's what, you
know, kind of drew me in neurobiology is that
all these complex things you see in the world,
it's all internal. If you get urgency, it can
come from – let's use David as a – he's a shining
example of this, right? You can sit there and
just ramp up your level of urgency through purely
psychological means. You could – Take an ice
bath. You could do high -intensity breathing,
anything that brings your level of alertness
up. Can I ask you this? If you were going to
try to improve your ability to get better at
something, when would you use that ice bath or
the cryotherapy? Would you use it before? Would
you use it afterwards? Definitely before. Before.
What we're talking about is a two -part process.
The first part is the learning trigger. The learning
trigger is gated by two things, adrenaline, which
is also norepinephrine, same thing. and acetylcholine.
And so you need that level of alertness up and
you need acetylcholine released at the location
in the brain that corresponds to what you're
trying to learn. So things like supplements and
certain nutrition regimens can assist the process
for sure. There's no question about that. Things
like... Alpha -GPC, caffeine will bring up the
adrenaline and kind of anything to raise that
alertness. Doesn't nicotine as well? Nicotine
has some sort of a nootropic benefit to it. Not
encouraging people to smoke, but, you know, you
can take it in various forms, particularly gum.
I know people take it in gum just for the nootropic
benefit of it. Yeah, I'm not encouraging people
to take anything. But there's a very, very famous
Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist who I went
to his office to visit him in New York. chewed
seven pieces of Nicorette during that half hour
meeting. And I was like, what is going on here?
And he said, well, first of all, it increases
plasticity. And second of all, he has the belief,
and this is not a clinical study, but he thinks
that it can also hold off certain forms of Parkinson's
and Alzheimer's. Didn't Bertrand Russell, wasn't
he like a famous smoker? Like it wouldn't even,
I don't know. I think he wouldn't even go on
a plane unless there was a smoking section because
he couldn't imagine not having his pipe. for
a certain amount of time. Well, creatives, you
know, when I think when smoking became less in
vogue, I think creatives really suffered because
it's very clear that, so Nicorette is nicotine
and the acetylcholine binds to the nicotinic
receptor. So when you take nicotine in cigarette
form or in Nicorette form, you're actually increasing
the release of acetyl, the action of acetylcholine
in the brain. Yeah, I don't smoke cigarettes,
but I have. And the only time I have is before
shows because I have friends that are comedians
that would smoke. And I'd be like, give me one
of them things. Let me see what's going on. And
I smoked. I was like, whoa, dude, you get high
off these things. This is crazy. Particularly
if you don't smoke cigarettes, you get this really
weird high. Well, your receptors have never seen
that level of nicotine before. Right. They like
that. It's exciting. Yeah. Yeah. And so for those
moments, you know, your acetylcholine is like
a spotlight. It brings your vision literally
into this more kind of portrait mode where you
can see more like a narrow window of what's going
on. There are behavioral ways to access this,
too. Before a fight, you know, somebody is really
ramped up. Their world is not they're not seeing
everything. They're probably I've never done
the walk, of course, but probably walking out
to the octagon. They're not seeing all the the
color of the hat of the woman in the corner.
You know, they're not relaxed. They're hyped
up. But that's a trigger for plasticity. Because
the brain needs some way to cue this plasticity
process to let itself know, because it's a self
-learning organ, let itself know that something's
really different. That's adrenaline. Something's
changed. Then there's focus. What's changed?
So in the jujitsu example you gave earlier, it's
the ability to focus on what the sequence is,
what happens when, and okay, I did that correctly
or I didn't do that correctly, but that's duration,
path, and outcome again. And having acetylcholine
and noradrenaline up, That sets the plasticity
trigger. However, that doesn't guarantee that
those synapses are going to change. It does not
mean that you're necessarily going to learn.
Oh, no. What guarantees that that process will
be converted into literally the change in the
connections between neurons, sometimes new neurons,
but mostly the change in the strength of the
connection so that eventually you don't have
to do duration path outcome. You can just be
reflexive about it is states of deep sleep. and
any state where you're not doing duration path
outcome. So we know from two recent studies,
some of this was done by my lab, but by other
labs as well in humans, which I think is important
to distinguish between mouse and human where
we can. A lot of the changes in these brain structures
occurs after learning during deep sleep, in particular,
slow wave sleep. But it also occurs during periods
of naps and shallow sleep or even just periods
where people deliberately decompress, where they're
not focusing on any one thing in particular.
So if we were going to kind of operationalize
this process, it would be focus intensely, have
an intense period of urgency, and then access
the deepest rest you can where you're not thinking
about anything, where space and time becomes
very fluid. So stress in that case post. exercise
or learning session would actually hinder your
ability to grow and get better absolutely and
elite performers like elite military elite athletes
i'm sure you're familiar with this they understand
that the ability to toggle back and forth between
these high alert high attentional states and
deep rest is not just the key to performing what
you can already What you can already do. It's
also the ability to get better over time. You
know, I think Goggins, again, is such a remarkable
example because it seems like it's all gas pedal.
But I'm guessing, I've never asked him about
this, but I'm guessing that he has his ways of
recovering so that he can remain in that heavy
gas pedal all, you know, significant amount of
the day all the time. I don't know about that.
Maybe he's just all gas pedal. I think he's all
gas pedal. Could be. I mean, he eats well. I
mean, you know, he does sleep, but he prides
himself on his ability to just go, let's go,
motherfucker, and just force himself to do it.
It's so impressive because, you know, I think
most everybody struggles to try and get themselves
in action. I mean, we know that actions are the
key to neuroplasticity. I mean, yeah, you can
do some mental training and that can be powerful.
You can do meditation. You can learn to access
sleep and all that stuff. But ultimately, to
get better at anything, you got to get your reps
in, whatever that is, neurosurgery or running.
That's interesting you say that because that's
what he does with his mind. He's getting his
reps in and he describes it. He calls it armoring
your mind. You have to armor your mind. And,
you know, like he told the story once about being
on a plane. Some football player said, you know,
how do you keep that dog alive inside of you?
And he goes, it is like a dog. He goes, my fucking
dog, if I feed my dog, and I feed him again,
that motherfucker's always hungry. He goes, he's
always hungry. He's never not hungry. He's like,
you've got to be that dog. You've got to always
be there. So he's always there. And this doesn't
mean he's not a pleasant guy. I love the guy.
I love hanging out with him. He's great. He's
great to have dinner with. He's fun. He's a good
guy to be around. He's not like an asshole or
anything. He's fun. But when it's go time, he's
fucking ready. He's David. David Goggins, all
the time, 24 -7, ready to go. Wake him up four
in the morning, time to run. Let's go, motherfucker.
You know, stay hard. That's what he does, like
all day long. He is every bit as intense as that
public persona. When he came out to the lab,
it was kind of interesting because we just built
this great white shark experience. And I'd gone
down to Mexico. We had dealt with these sharks.
And my friend Michael Muller, he's got this whole
thing where we could leave the cages. And we
did all this. And it was fun and crazy and probably
a little stupid, frankly. But we bring it back.
We build this VR stimulus. And he and a couple
other team guys came in. And, you know, so I'm
explaining what we're doing and we show the shark
thing on the screen. And he goes, I don't like
sharks. And I'm thinking, OK, so we'll give him
something else. And then we go through the whole
thing and I'm explaining how we wire people in
and we record from the brain. And I said, all
right, so who would like to try the sharks? David,
I'll go. Like just he just wanted to be first.
And I realized I was like, OK, he wasn't showboating.
That's just the way he is. It's just if there's
something that creates that sense of agitation,
that's a signal for him to go forward. Do you
know what he does in the summers? I don't. He
goes to Montana to fight forest fires. Does he
really? Yeah, he doesn't even make any money.
Amazing. He just goes there. He's rich, and he
gets fucking dropped off in Montana in the woods,
camps out there, and fights forest fires. With
a bunch of other savages, and he does it to keep
his brain hard. That's fantastic. He's the real
deal. He is the real deal. Can you imagine? You've
got millions of dollars in the bank, and you're
like, I'm going to go fight forest fires all
summer just to stay hard. Yeah. Maybe I would
have done that when I was a teenager to impress
girls, but I don't think— Bro, he's 40. He's
doing it for him. He doesn't give a fuck. Well,
that's the thing is I think that authenticity
is a real thing. I mean, there is a kind of a—
Third, there is a secret sauce in this whole
mix. And this is kind of what brought me to my
lab. We do work with typical people, but we also
do some work with people from David's former
community and domestic and foreign special operations
who are interested in this process for obvious
reasons. How can you leverage the nervous system
to build better, longer -lasting warriors? It's
a really interesting question. And you could
do that with brain machine interface. You could
do that with you can imagine doing that with
drugs or with, you know, supplementation or nutrition,
all of that. But since the nervous system sits
at the foundation of any of those, we start to
think about this problem. And there's actually
another element to it, which is the reward pathways
involving dopamine. So you asked about kids,
like why they can learn all day long. So their
brain is very different, but it still needs some
degree of focus and they still need to get their
sleep. They still have to. obey those two rules
of this process but they engage in something
else which is really powerful which is play a
lot of their learning is through playful exchange
especially with the little kids like in kindergarten
and nursery school and then as they get older
the social dynamics can be kind of harsh but
they can also be really pleasurable and fun so
the molecule dopamine is a really misunderstood
molecule we all make it from a location in the
back of our brain And people think of it as like
reward, like, oh, I got a bunch of money or I
did a great performance. Dopamine is responsible
for that feeling of feeling great. But in addition,
dopamine is what's released any time an animal
or human thinks it's on the right path. And that's
very subjective. So this is not and I want to
be really clear that this is not. positive thinking
or, you know, the secret or telling yourself
that you're performing well, even when you're
not. Right. Like if you are a rioter and you
break into a courthouse, but you feel like you're
on the right path, you're going to get a release
of dopamine. Heavy release of dopamine. Yeah.
Even if you're committing a crime and you really
probably shouldn't be doing that. Yeah. Mother
Nature built these systems, adrenaline, acetylcholine,
dopamine, to be very generic in terms of what
can activate them on purpose. You know, cocaine
will cause a tremendous release of dopamine.
So will methamphetamine. The problem is it sets
a focus on just getting more of that thing. Right.
So dopamine is evoked through play. It's evoked
through humor, right? If you've ever just been
working like mad or you see this in, you know,
team guys know this really well that, you know,
because they tell me that you can be in the worst
situation and somebody will crack a joke. And
all of a sudden it's like. You have energy. Now,
that couldn't have been glycogen. That wasn't
because you're ketogenic. It wasn't because you're
whatever. That's neural energy. And that neural
energy is dopamine. Is that what happens when
you hear a great song and you get pumped up?
Is that the same thing? Absolutely. And the reason
dopamine is so powerful in this process of neural
plasticity is that dopamine has the ability to
buffer noradrenaline. So that stress that you
feel when you're in effort. It's very hard for
most people to keep that going. But when you
get a, when I say a shot, I mean, internal release
of dopamine through humor or through the sense
that you're on the right path. Let's take the
fight example where it's stressful and you're
getting beaten down. All of a sudden you land
one or you do something properly and the other
guy starts to timber a little bit or shuffle
a little bit. You gain a chemical advantage and
it comes in two forms. One is it triggers. marking
of the synapses that likely will change later.
We rarely forget the events associated with dopamine
for that reason, because they signal, oh, whatever's
happening now, that was good. And in addition
to that, they start pushing back on the level
of acetylcholine, excuse me, noradrenaline in
the brainstem. And this is crucial because there
was a study that came out two years ago, not
from my group, that asked, why do we quit? If
you set 800 or even 500 pounds on the bar out
there, I can't lift it. So I'm not talking about
that kind of quitting. I'm talking about a long
run. Why do I quit? If I'm not injured, like
what actually causes quitting? When do we decide
that something is futile? And it turns out that
for every bit of effort, any bit of effort, lifting
a glass of water or running up a hill or in a
fight, there are little bits of noradrenaline,
adrenaline that are released in the brain and
body. And there's a counter. There's a cell type,
which are called glia. which literally means
glue in Latin. These cells are paying attention
to how much norepinephrine is coming. And if
it hits a certain threshold, the brain stops
voluntary control over the musculature. It says,
that's it, I quit. And there are these beautiful
experiments where they manipulate the visual
environment so that this isn't, they're certain
that this isn't lack of muscle fuel or liver
fuel. This is lack of neural fuel. Dopamine pushes
back that level of noradrenaline. And it gives
you more gas. It lets you go further. And you
see this through teamwork, when you feel like
you're supported, when you're in cohesion, humor,
play. If you're in serious effort and it's just
things are going terribly, maybe I've never done
comedy, but you're trying to write a joke and
it's just frustrating. And then suddenly you
just kind of laugh at how ridiculous the process
is. There's a kind of loosening or a lightning
and you have more energy. That energy is reductions
in epinephrine. And so - I don't know how David
Goggins has done it, but everyone does this a
little bit differently. But it could be, and
I'm speculating here, of course, never done the
neurology, but that David has somehow figured
out that the leaning in process for him is the
dopamine trigger. Like there is a kind of sicko
thing about the way he talks about it. Like it's
like a it's a little bit masochistic. And for
him, maybe it was that way. And it's rooted in
his origin story. For other people, they find
this in purpose, like that you're doing this.
for your kids or you're doing this for somebody
else you know i think that the human animal has
a capacity to to push has a capacity to focus
has a capacity to learn at all ages but these
gates on plasticity are set by certain requirements
and You know, when I look out there and I see
all the stuff about, you know, psychology and
all the self -help and wellness stuff. You know,
I'm a neuroscientist, so I look at the lens of
everything through neurochemicals and neuroscience.
But it all kind of boils down to a couple basic
chemicals and systems or what we call circuits
in the brain. What's the difference between noradrenaline
and norepinephrine? Yeah, great question. So
same thing. So adrenaline and norepinephrine,
excuse me, adrenaline and epinephrine, same thing.
Same thing. Norepinephrine and noradrenaline,
those two things are the same thing. It was a
naming war. So scientists are like, they have
egos, some more than others. And there was a
naming battle. And so if you go to Australia,
they call it one thing. In England, they called
it another. And basically it was two labs discovered
the same thing and it was a pissing competition.
Oh, well, how confusing for everybody else. Exactly.
And you can find that over and over and over
again in science because no one ever comes in
with a gavel within like nomenclature committee
and says, we're just going to call it this. Noradrenaline
is so much easier to say. Stick with that. Norepinephrine,
like I've fucked that up a hundred times. Well,
and it gets worse because like you think about
the autonomic nervous system and they're like
sympathetic, parasympathetic. Sympathetic sounds
like sympathy, but it's actually the stress state.
Do you think that you would benefit from data
from real world situations in a much more comprehensive
way than you would from these virtual situations
you're putting people in? You know, we have a
VR thing out here. We have an Oculus, and it's
pretty cool. There's one of them where you walk
on a plank, and you really do feel like this
plank is over, like it's on the 60th floor of
a building, and it goes out a window. And you
really do feel like you're kind of, but you know
you're not. There's a difference. You get a little
bit of it, but you don't get the real thing.
Like being in the jungle and the leaves part
and there's a real tiger in front of you. The
feeling that you would get would probably be
you probably wouldn't be able to recreate it
with virtual reality. There's some part of your
brain that knows this is bullshit. Yeah. So we
have three laboratories to explore this. One
is the virtual reality. And virtual reality can
give you what? the scientists call presence,
the sense that you're really in that environment.
And that's mainly visually and auditory driven.
My colleague, Jeremy Baylinson, who's on the,
I'm in the medical campus. He's on the other
campus. He's studied this a lot. Like what are
the requirements for getting people to feel presence?
So people who come to our lab, they don't think
they're underwater with a shark unless they're
afraid of great white sharks. And for that moment
where one of these guys is coming in and it opens
its jaws for that person, it's every bit as scary
as the real experience. No way. If you look at
their – well, we don't know because we don't
put them in the water. I think – I just can't
imagine. Well, here's the – It's probably close.
I agree. I mean, here's the challenge. We needed
to stress people, and we needed to do it really
well for a lab. And if you look historically,
the experiments that came before ours were really
lame. It was like a picture of someone with a
knife in their arm. For some people, that's gross.
For some people, that's scary. But that's not
really fear, right? Or they'd startle people.
But I can jump out of – You know, probably not
to you, but I could jump out in front of a typical
person with a teddy bear and they'll get startled.
Doesn't matter. It's a teddy bear. So that's
different. That's not fear. So VR allows us to
access states. The more sensory stuff that we
can include, the better. There are some now that
include smell. We have that. We're working with
augmented reality. So which is a little bit like
the Star Wars thing of projecting a chessboard,
that kind of thing. We find people's. Pain points,
meaning we find the places in which we can trigger
their autonomic function. We also run studies
outside the lab. So I have a large scale study
running right now with David Spiegel, my colleague
in psychiatry, where people are equipped with
whoop bands. So we're monitoring sleep. We're
going to. expand this to include some other devices
that actually allow us to look at heart rate
variability and body cavitation and some other
things in some interesting ways but also body
position so we're tracking them 24 hours a day
and those people are reporting back to us levels
of stress life events that kind of thing so this
is outside the laboratory but we can do this
in real world essentially and those people were
using interventions which are mainly respiration
based so which are looking at specific patterns
of breathing that trigger particular states in
the brainstem that allow people to either sleep
better or buffer their stress in response to
life events better. So this isn't really breath
work as much as it is teaching them specific
patterns of breathing that capture these neurons
that switch their brain states. It really is
fascinating that these periods of rest are crucial
to learning and developing. They're absolutely
crucial. They're every bit as... which are part
of the process as the actual trigger event. And
the athletes, the people, the high performers
that I've encountered are all really good at
accessing those states also. Is there a desirable
ratio? Right. So you want to focus as long as
you can focus well, and then probably a little
bit longer because there's also plasticity of
the circuits that control focus. So going back
to your jujitsu example, And as you get to the
point where you're starting to not be able to
do this duration path outcome stuff, which involves
motor movements and mental thinking, you're saying
you're getting tired. You're literally going
into a sort of sleep -like state where space
and time duration path outcome becomes hard.
What you can do at that point is to start buffering
the noradrenaline, norepinephrine. Now, I don't
know which one to say, but I'll just keep going
with whichever is reflexive. And you can start
to buffer that through things like. humor through
things like setting the urgency higher. That
is not a time to relax and taper out. That's
a time to ratchet up the intensity if you want
to grab a stronger trigger. But that period can't
last infinitely. And the question is how long?
Well, we know that you can do more short bouts
of that each day than you could ever do one long,
long bout. We know that. So you can maybe do
two or three bouts of that a day, or if you are
doing it several times a week, you basically
want to dose it about twice as much as deep stress
as you do the deep. focus, excuse me, deep sleep
as you do the deep focus. So if you're, I don't
know how long these training regimes go, but
part of that training is reflexive for you. I
wouldn't count that in the learning process because
it's dialed into your nervous system. But at
the point where it becomes challenging, a clock
sort of starts. And when that period ends, I
think at least double that amount of time of
deep rest if you want to maximize learning. There's
been a lot of work done on visualization and
learning through visualization, and they found
that you can get a similar benefit to actual
physical training, obviously not with the endurance
and the strength and all those other things,
but in terms of skill learning. You get a similar
benefit from an equal time of visualization.
What do you attribute that to? How is visualization,
how can you learn things through visualizing?
So that's – visualizing is setting the brain
through these duration path outcome circuitry
loops. It's running the script essentially. And
it's important to move the musculature. It's
important to say the words if you're, say, learning
a motor skill or learning a movement – a language,
excuse me. But at some level, the brain doesn't
really know what's going on in the body. It's
the command center except what signals it receives
back from the body. And so if the visualization
is intense – The brain isn't completely convinced,
but it's pretty convinced that you're actually
experiencing that thing and rehearsing it. It's
a little bit of your own internally driven virtual
reality is what you're doing. And so I think
mental training is powerful, but there's no replacement
for repetition. So what about, obviously, physical
training has its limitations in your body's ability
to keep doing the movements. You're going to
get tired and you're going to break down. Would
it be more beneficial to get more rest or would
it be more beneficial to get rest but also spend
a significant amount of time visualizing? We
haven't looked at visualization specifically.
The one thing that is very close to visualization,
which is very powerful, based on neuroimaging
studies, so legitimate science, I should say,
is hypnosis. Hypnosis is a really unique state.
And this is of mind and body. Have you been hypnotized?
Many times. Yeah. And I'm very interested in
hypnosis because of the work with Spiegel and
the incredible success that he's had with pain
management, smoking cessation, these kinds of
things. Hypnosis is a state of deep relaxation,
not unlike sleep, but also deep focus. So it's
very unlike any other state of mind. You're either
usually asleep or you're focused or somewhere
in between kind of drifting back and forth in
between. But hypnosis is a deliberate narrowing
of context. So the person or the audio script
is bringing you into a state of mind that's centered
around particular types of events, but you're
in deep rest. And the idea is that you're taking
that plasticity process of focus and urgency
and then rest, and you're combining them into
a single session. And so hypnosis and deep hypnotic
states are the place where neuroplasticity can
be accelerated. So when you say hypnosis, What
kind of sessions are you talking about and how
often? Like say if you're an athlete, like let's
say maybe you're a basketball player and you
want to get better at basketball. You train as
much as you possibly can, but there's limitations
to that. You sleep as much as you possibly can.
How often would you recommend someone doing some
sort of a hypnosis session to try to improve
their skills? Probably one – well, it depends
on how intense their training is. For some of
the people – I'm doing work with in athletics
and in the military community, they have extremely
demanding lives, right? And certainly for the
military folks, it's high risk, high consequence,
even when they're in non -deployment. So under
those conditions, maybe every day. 30. Hypnosis
every day. Yeah. 30 to 45 minutes as a replacement
for some other standard form of nap or meditation.
I mean, not necessarily lumped on top of that.
So the standard eight hour sleep and then on
top of that, some sort of meditation for like
30 minutes? Yeah. There's a process of doing
this. We have a script that we use in our lab.
I'd be happy to send it to you that takes you
into these deep. sort of relaxation states. They're
sort of meditative. Some people can self -hypnose
by induced, you know, some people call them intentions,
but I don't like that because it sounds a little
bit too much like an uncomfortable set of yoga
classes I've taken where they start with the
whole, like I don't know really what that's about
and they make you use complete declarative sentences.
It feels weird to me. That's just my own bias.
Oh, they mean they make you set your intentions
for the class? Yeah, it's like I am this, this,
and this. Ew. Do you say it out loud? Oh, no.
No, no, no. That would sound weird. me out of
the room or, you know, even though I said it
like this, if they combine the upspeak, then
I'd probably, yeah, then I'd, then I'd file a
complaint. But, um, yeah, they even, sometimes
it's really bad. Sometimes they even make you
work a pronoun into it. So you'd have to say,
Joe, you know, anytime someone's trying to have
a fake pronoun, like one of the new ones, that's,
that's it. I don't know. You might. I don't even
know how to go there. You stunned me. Probably
we're all going to be required to at some point.
Maybe not. Maybe not. Hypnosis is powerful, and
I think stage hypnosis has done a great disservice.
No disrespect to the stage hypnotist out there
to detract from the power of hypnosis as a medical
tool and a high performance tool. Yeah, my own
personal experience is that I didn't understand
what hypnosis was. My first experiences with
hypnosis were there was a guy named Frank Santos.
It's a famous in the Boston area. He's a very
famous. comedy hypnotist and he was an actual
hypnotist would hypnotize people and get them
to quit smoking and things along those lines
but then would do this comedy hypnotism show
where he would get people on stage and man like
we would me and a bunch of other comedians would
go and watch it every week because it was crazy
he would Put them under. They would definitely
be under. And they would think they were having
sex. They would think they would be in a boat.
They'd think they'd be in the water. It was weird.
It was really weird to watch. And I always just
thought it was, like, really weak -minded people.
My thought was, and obviously I'm 21 at the time.
I didn't know anything. But my thought at the
time was, okay, there's certain people that are
just, they have nine -volt brains, and you can
trick them into doing anything. And that explains
cults and a lot of other shit and televangelists
and all sorts of nonsense that should be, like,
really. obviously fake to people, but they fall
into it anyway. And so that's what I thought.
I thought it was just really dumb people that
he was tricking. Well, some people are more easily
hypnotized than others. And it's actually pretty
predictable. There's actually a test that we
could do right now. Really? Yeah. Can you do
it to me? Yeah, I can use the one that Spiegel
taught me. So you look up at the ceiling and
you're going to look and now close your eyelids.
You're not very hypnotizable. How's that? Look
up one more time and then close. Yeah. So probably
not as hypnotizable. Why? So for people that
are very hypnotizable. Is that a word? Yes, it
is. Hypnotizable. At least if it's not, then
I'm stamping it in. Nowadays, I just I'll put
a Wikipedia entry. It'll be there. But no, I
don't know. I've heard Spiegel use it before.
Susceptible to hypnosis. Susceptible to hypnosis.
I asked Spiegel how you measure this kind of
back of the envelope, you know, curbside consult,
as they call it. People who are more hypnotizable,
their eyelids will flutter in an attempt to go
down. The reason is that a lot of hypnosis is
anchored on the ability to go into these deeply
relaxed states. And some people's autonomic nervous
system gets locked in a state of more, excuse
me, of more attention and kind of higher levels
of alertness or levels of sleepiness. So think
about like a seesaw. So you can either be really
stressed. So when you're really stressed, like
you're analyzing time, you're analyzing space
differently, duration path outcome, what's going
to happen? When's it going to happen? Real emergency.
The other state would be sleep, right? That's
the other extreme duration path and outcome are
essentially non -existent space and time are
fluid, whatever. The hinge in the middle of that
seesaw for some people is very tight. They get
locked over here or locked over there. They can't
get the energy or they can't de -stress. Hypnosis
involves taking somebody from a state of alertness
like you and I are in now and bringing them into
a almost sleep -like state. Now, for some people,
their autonomic nervous system isn't that willing
to do that. It's almost like the hinge on that
seesaw is locked. It doesn't want to budge. And
this fluttering of the eyelids. is reflective
of a peripheral nerve, believe it or not, that
originates in the brainstem. That's a central
part of the autonomic nervous system. The other
thing that they'll do, you ever see on the stage
hypnosis where they'll have people look up at
the ceiling and then they'll sometimes shine
a light in their eyes or they'll like have them
look at a light. I haven't seen that. They're
looking at how we call it labile, but how rigid
or... labile, how willing to move the pupils
are because autonomic arousal impacts the pupils
of the eye. So it's an external read of what's
going on in the brain. A lot of people don't
know this, but your eyes are not connected to
your brain. Your eyes are brain. They are central
nervous system and their brain, your neural retinas
that you use for seeing things around you are.
part of the central nervous system they are the
way that you know when to be alert and to be
asleep and they are two pieces of brain that
during development got squeezed out of the skull
and placed outside the skull whoa yeah they're
the only two pieces of your brain that are outside
your skull assuming that you don't have some
sort of damage That is fucking crazy. Your eyes
are a part of your brain. Yeah. And that's why
when people tell me, oh, you know, the eyes are
the window to the soul. I'm like, well, look,
I don't know about souls, but they are definitely
your brain. So when I look at you and now it's
weird because I'm looking at, you know, we're
not looking at each other's pupils. Right. But
when the hypnotist, I should say, looks at the
pupils, they're saying, you know, the pupil size
is a direct readout of. of how loose that hinge
is. So when they shine light in someone's eyes
and they take it away and they go... That's so
weird that you can look in someone's eyes and
there's something about... You can kind of tell
what kind of a person they are in some ways,
or at least tell how they're thinking. If someone's
uncomfortable being around you, you could see
it in their eyes. If you tried to write that
down, like, what are you seeing? You try to explain
it to someone. Good luck. Good luck writing that
down. I don't know what that is. But I know when
someone's full of shit. Like if someone's lying
to me or bullshitting me, I'm not always aware,
but I'm aware a lot. Well, and it's not just
their individual eyes, but it's also the way
that they focus their eyes. So you know the myth
of the cyclops, right? One eye in the middle
of the head. That myth has origins in the fact
that the cyclop was one -dimensional anger. And
it turns out that when we are – experience an
increase in autonomic arousal. So let's say we
decide we're going to fight, we decide we're
going to learn, or maybe even just we're going
to write something important. Something's important.
Our eyes, the pupils change shape. But because
our eyes don't really move in our skull, they
actually do what's called foveate in a little
bit. There's an eye musculature reflex that gets
triggered in. And so you can see this sometimes
in people that are getting ready to fight. Their
eyes are actually brought inward. That triggers
another neural circuit to increase levels of
autonomic arousal and starts deploying resources
internally, fuel resources, fuel. For bouts of
intense stuff, whatever that intense thing is
going to be. When we're relaxed, like we view
a horizon or we're just walking or we're in what's
called optic flow when things are flowing past
us, we go into panoramic vision. So in panoramic
vision, you go out of that soda straw view of
the world and you start being able to see the
corners of the room. the ceiling, the floor.
And that's a relaxed state. So sometimes we're
even subconsciously perceiving how stressed or
relaxed somebody is, not by necessarily their
pupils, although that might play into it. It
certainly has a role, but whether or not based
on your prior kind of intuitive knowledge about
that person, whether or not they're like cyclops
or whether or not they're in panoramic vision.
And this is important because it changes the
way we perceive time. If we are in cyclops vision,
soda straw view, that high intensity, we tend
to do two things. One is we tend to be more in
tune with what's going on inside us. We start
– the brain does this other thing which is called
interoception. It's like paying attention to
what's going on inside us versus outside us.
And when we're stressed, time outside us seems
to go really slowly. It's like you're in the
security line at the airport and you need to
get your flight. It's a very different perception
of the person in front of you and what they're
doing than when you're relaxed and you've got
plenty of time. And that's because outside events
start to feel slower. This is why after a car
crash, people will say, you know, oh, everything
was in slow motion. Or I've never actually looked
at fighters. I visited the UFC training center,
Duncan French. I went out there and talked to
him about this. Shout out to Duncan. Yeah, he's
done some – his graduate thesis is like this
beautiful work related to this, although not
directly. It has important implications for this,
which is when you're in these high adrenaline
states, you parse time differently. And when
I hear about fighters, you know, say like being
able to – time the fight, or it's almost like
they can see things coming in slow motion. That's
because their internal level of arousal is really,
really high, but it feels like relaxation. So
there's like sleepy, not feeling so good. Everything
feels like it's going on really fast. I can't
deal with life. Then you ramp up your level of
intensity and everything outside you feels like
it's going a little slower. Maybe you're matched
to that. Like I'm a pretty high intensity guy
when I'm in New York. I feel great, at least
before the COVID thing. People walking down the
street, I finally feel like the tempo is kind
of matched between internal and external. Oh,
is that why, like, those high -functioning people
enjoy Manhattan? Yeah, why neurotic people like
Manhattan. Is that what it is? You take a neurotic
person, you put them in Manhattan, they're like,
oh. Yeah. Yeah, they love it. Yeah, a lot of
my friends that are neurotic, they love it there.
Yeah. I come from neurotic lineage. I'm constantly
trying to get to the other part of the seesaw.
But I get it. You know, I get out of the subway
in New York, and I'm like. The walking speed,
the speed of everything, it just, I finally feel
like internal to external match. Does this thing
that connects the fluttering of the eyelids to
being able to be hypnotized more easily, does
that coincide with a personality variable? Not
that I'm aware of. I'd have to ask David. I don't
want to throw something out there that's wrong.
I'd have to ask him. There's a whole set of personality
traits and coping traits that relate to. There's
a small subset of people that just cannot be
hypnotized. Really? You can't really force hypnotism
on people. But is it they cannot or they are
not willing to let themselves be? Because I've
been hypnotized. My friend Vinny Shorman, he
works with fighters. He hypnotizes. He calls
it mental coaching. And I was like, I want to
know what you're doing. He's been on my podcast
before. I'm like, do it to me. Let's see what's
up. It was very weird. Did you find it beneficial?
I think I did. I only did it once. But I was
kind of stunned by it. I'm like, oh, this is
a weird state where you're kind of there but
not there. Like it's not like you don't know
what's going on. You do know what's going on,
but you're in this weird sort of quasi -relaxed,
sleepy thing. It's a very unusual state. This
match of high focus, deep relaxation is not a
brain state that we can access very easily without.
I mean there are other ways to do it. But that
state would be super beneficial for people wanting
to learn something because it would relax them
much more deeply than it would just ordinarily
everyday life while you're conscious. That's
right. It's taking the two pieces of the plasticity
puzzle and putting them in the same event. So
I don't think it should be the only way to learn
new things because there are things you can't
do in hypnosis like roll jiu -jitsu. I mean,
for instance, but as a tool for accessing faster
learning, it's quite powerful, just like sleep.
I mean, I think the work of Matt Walker and Bill
Dement at Stanford and others has just shown,
like, if you want to pull someone apart, you
want to just make them insane. unable to do these
duration path outcome, you know, mental operations,
you sleep deprive them. There's a thing that
people do this sort of reductionist dismissive
way of viewing meditation and viewing states
of mind. That is really weird to me because smart
people do it occasionally. And there's a guy
that I think is very smart. And he was talking
about it on Twitter, like mocking meditation.
Well, and I was like, man, this is a guy who's
probably never really meditated. Well, meditation,
you know, I guess growing up in Northern California
and the whole mindfulness thing. That's the problem.
So it's the stuff around it often, you know,
and I think this is why like it's exciting that
respiration slash breath work is now making a,
you know, a big showing in the world because
I think it has tremendous value. I think that
it's the stuff around it that causes problems
and can get it pushed into like the naming. I
mean, like. I mean, I have nothing against yoga.
I mean, there's a lot of powerful tools in yoga,
but it's the ashandas and all the stuff around
it makes it sound a little bit like religion.
And a lot of people in medical communities and
other religious communities back off from that.
Well, there's a problem with yoga that I actually
had a conversation with my yoga instructor about
because. I do a Bikram class, and they say things
in the class like you're massaging your descending
colon. I'm like, no, you're not. You're definitely
not doing that. You should probably stop saying
that because that's not really possible. You're
not massaging your fucking colon while you're
stretching. That's nonsense. Are you increasing
your flexibility? Yes. Are you strengthening
your balance and your stability? 100%. But there's
so much nonsense that goes with it that they...
You know, if you talk to a doctor, they're like,
oh, right. You're not doing that because I have
talked to doctors. I'm like, OK, before I criticize
this, is it even possible that this is going
on? Like, no. Right. And the medical community
can be a little bit too one sided as well. But,
you know, I think Stanford's a very progressive
place. Spiegel and I have this study looking
at respiration and its impact, I think, is a
sign that the times are changing. We're not doing
this in any kind of mystical way. The fact that
people in military special operations and athletics
are starting to think about the mind and the
tools to access the mind is. a sign that there's
been a tide change. I had James Nestor on the
podcast recently, and we talked about his new
book, Breath, and just the ability to control
various aspects of your nervous system and even
your immune system through breath work. It's
very confusing because everybody breathes. So
you and I are both breathing right now. We're
not doing breathing exercises, but we're breathing.
So what is it about breathing exercises that
accentuate these aspects of... autonomic system
and sympathetic system? What's going on? First
of all, I think James' book is great. It's amazing.
It sounds like I'm just shamelessly plugging
Stanford constantly, but most of the studies
he was referring to were done by my colleagues,
Paul Ehrlich, Sandra Kahn, stuff in my lab, Mark
Krasnow. These are serious scientists and serious
physicians who are saying, look, respiration
has an important role in balancing oxygen and
carbon dioxide in the body. and in the brain.
And that has an important impact on states of
mind and body. I think that's just no medical
professional, presuming they're any good, could
argue that. So take, for instance, Mark Krasnow's
lab and a neighboring lab at Stanford discovered
that animals and people periodically throughout
sleep and throughout the day will do what's called
a physiological sigh. These have been known about
since the 30s, but it turns out there's a set
of neurons in your brainstem and my brainstem
that every once in a while when the level of
carbon dioxide in your bloodstream gets too high,
you do a double inhale and an extended exhale.
So it's sort of like two inhales through the
nose and extended exhale. Your dog does this
right before it goes down for a minute. Yeah.
To offload carbon dioxide. That double inhale,
I don't think James talked about this. If he
did, forgive me. The double inhale. maximally
inflates the little sacs in the lungs, the alveoli
of the lungs. And that pulls carbon dioxide out
of the bloodstream at a higher level so that
you offload it more in the exhale. Now, these
physiological sides are the fastest way that
I'm aware of from work in our lab and with Spiegel
to take that seesaw from too high level of stress
to a little bit calmer. Double inhale, exhale.
So this is in breath work. This is a set of neurons
that every kid and every adult has. They use
periodically, but we can also consciously control
through the diaphragm. So that's one way to bring
things more calm. I think, you know, James talked
about this in his book, but those breath work
of the sort where, you know, kind of tummo type
breathing of doing, you know, 30 inhales and
really offloading a lot of carbon dioxide. causes
the release of noradrenaline, norepinephrine.
And noradrenaline, norepinephrine are Mother
Nature's way of buffering us against infection
and disease. Everyone thinks stress kills your
immune system. It's the opposite. Stress... activates
your immune system. And that makes sense. If
we suddenly had to forage or go out and find
water, we need two or three days and we didn't
know what we're going to, you can't afford to
get sick. This is why if you work, work, work,
work, work, and then you finally rest, you're
more likely to get sick as you go into that more
parasympathetic, relaxed state because your immune
system also gets shut off. Is that why people
in prison that are getting COVID -19 are not
really getting sick? There's so many of them
that are asymptomatic. Could be. I didn't realize
they were asymptomatic. Or if you're very stressed
for a very long time, eventually the immune system
can't deploy these killer cells that it needs
to deploy. So there's a certain amount of stress
that's actually beneficial to you and your immune
system. Right. But I get very... I start doing
eye rolls and I get a little frustrated when
people are like adrenal burnout. Look, your adrenals
were designed to take you through two lifetimes
if you need to. The idea that your adrenals are
just going to shrivel up into, you know. Somebody
told me that their doctor told them that coffee
is giving them adrenal burnout. Is that nonsense?
I want to see. I mean, I teach neuroanatomy.
Show me adrenal burnout. Show me an adrenals
that won't secrete adrenaline anymore. So why
are they saying that? Like, where did that come
from? Sounds good. Sounds better than parasympathetic
sympathetic. Yeah. Yeah. That's like this doctor
was telling my friend that drinking coffee. He's
burning out his adrenals. I mean, it may be putting
them into a state of heightened activation and
they can't take it down a notch in the evening.
They don't know how to relax. They don't know
how to turn on the parasympathetic nervous system
without doing things like eating or something,
which is one way to do it. But and I think as
a society, we're struggling to manage this seesaw.
I mean, we know that. Being in a chronic state
of stress is bad physically. You don't want to
do that, but you also don't want to do it for
your mind. I mean, anytime you're stressed, you're
also able to be recruited better by other people's
stress. We know that. Recruited by other people's
stress. Yeah. So my lab has also looked at like
how stress spreads between people, how the autonomic
nervous systems communicate. And we know that
the best way to get what's called emotional contagion
is to get people into a heightened state of.
you know alertness i'm guessing and i have no
knowledge of comedy whatsoever but i'm guessing
that the comedian that's less funny that comes
out before the main person i'm guessing they're
trying to get them like ramped up you can create
a more emotional contagion you have to take them
from the floor all the way up to the ceiling
kind of get them up a level is that right or
am i way off base with that well it's interesting
that you put it that way it's actually a problem
that comedians that have sensitive egos will
bring less funny comedians with them on the road
so they look better. it's like amongst elite
comics it's actually very frowned upon because
it's you're setting yourself up to look like
a hero you rescue the audience from some terrible
comedian that you had open for you if you you
could judge the uh ego or the health of the ego
of the headliner by what kind of comedians they
consistently take with them on the road i mean
you know everybody has bad sets occasionally
but A lot of times these weak -minded guys will
bring these terrible comedians on the road with
them. Interesting. Yeah. But the reason is because
they don't want to be outshined. That's what
it is. Makes sense. Yeah. Well, that's anchored
in a neurobiological phenomenon. Forgive me.
This is all I think about. Oh, please. Called
dopamine reward prediction error. So it's very
simple, really. It basically says that the degree
to which something feels really good or you experienced
it as great could be a great meal or a comedy
set. from the perspective of the audience, of
course, is going to depend on how much dopamine
you got before. So if I tell you we're going
to go to a restaurant tonight, this is amazing.
I got the most amazing steaks, amazing steaks.
And we get there. There's a higher probability
that steak isn't going to taste great to you.
Really? Absolutely. Reward prediction error means
that – But what if it's really great? It has
to exceed the dopamine that you had en route
to that. You can't bullshit people. That's what
you're saying. You basically can't bullshit people.
Right. Well, there's something that does happen.
There's a contagion that does happen when people
are funny where it's contagious and everyone
around you starts laughing more because there's
more people around you laughing. Like if I'm
in a room and there's a funny comedian on stage
and there's a bunch of people to my left and
right that are laughing really hard, I'm more
likely to laugh. Right. There's something weird
that goes on. And one of the things that I've
always said about stand up is I think it's kind
of a mass hypnosis. It's not just funny, you
know, because if it was funny, there's these
comics that are doing these Zoom comedy shows.
i encourage them to all stop doing it immediately
because it's terrible even great comics look
terrible because you're lacking that critical
element of an audience stand -up comedy is one
of the rare art forms you really can't do on
your own you have to do it in front of people
and i think what's happening is When it's not
just – when a person is on stage that's really
good, it's not just that they're funny. It's
not just their timing is excellent. It's not
just they have these really insightful ways of
looking at things that make you laugh. It's also
that you're around a bunch of other people that
are experiencing it together. And when that person
is good, you are allowing them to think for you.
There's some weird – like if I'm watching a guy
on stage and he's really good or a girl on stage
who's really good, when someone is killing, I'm
allowing that person to think for me. I'm like
sitting there just like, go ahead, take me for
a ride. Let's go. And then they're making you
laugh. But it's you're also aware that you're
in it with these other people. So you have this
enhanced state because all these other people
are around you and you're all experiencing it
together. This is I don't know much about comedy
at all. So forgive me. But comedy to me is very
interesting because it's a and I don't know how
the comedy scripts are written, but I find them.
incredibly fascinating because it seems like
almost all jokes are a break from the space time
rule that the brain expects. Close contact card
magicians do this very well too. It's like you're
expecting something to happen and I think he's
going there. So it's sort of duration path outcome
like this. And then all of a sudden you get hit
with something that's surprising. Yes. This is
probably not funny. Maybe it is to you or not,
but there's a Steve Martin thing from way back
when where he, he basically does comedy for dogs
or something. He brings out dogs and, and, and,
It's a perfect example of just breaking all the
rules. The dogs are telling him what to do. And
at first, it's not funny. And then he keeps going
with it. And what you realize is he's, I don't
want to use the word hypnotize incorrectly here,
but he's bringing you into a reality where the
dogs are setting the rules. And it's hilarious
because the brain, when it sees surprise. It
could be a card that, you know, you pick and
then I tear it up and then you suddenly produce
it from my shoe or something like that. Extreme
magician type stuff or really funny joke. It's
like the brain wants to go one place. And when
something unexpected happens, dopamine is released.
We know this. It's like surge of dopamine. And
all of a sudden, it's like I'm in a state where
then you can take me further up the staircase.
The one thing we know about dopamine was why
it's so powerful is not just that it can buffer
these feelings of effort, but that. it can take
you into new ways of thinking about a problem.
I mean, this is why a lot of – and this isn't
work that I'm involved in, but this is why a
lot of the excitement about the therapeutic use
of MDMA and things that increase dopamine are
windows into modes of processing information
that are very different. Now, on the dark side
of that, if you think about cocaine or methamphetamine,
you've got dopamine coming in artificially and
– It tends to create a problem. It tends to make
people super focused on everything outside them
and in pursuit of more stuff. That's what happens
with really high dopamine. But dopamine appropriately
dosed allows us to. And explore new realities
of how, you know, what led to that joke, a new
variation. Anyway, I'm sort of like parsing comedy.
I don't know anything about it. But when I watch
comedy, I'm always looking for that element of
surprise. And sometimes I think you're laying
out crumbs for me. And then you'll hit me with
something I had no idea. And that's twice as
fun. Then you get that pop. That's the pop. That's
dopamine. When someone does cocaine, do they
wear out their dopamine receptors? So in short,
yes. The dopamine receptors. are very prone to
saturation remember the the they're like parking
spots and you can fill those up very quickly
and there's actually changes that happen at the
genetic level in cells when there's too much
dopamine in the system for too long like with
dopamine addiction or crack cocaine addiction
the cells actually start modifying the way they
work so that they become better and better at
gobbling up dopamine the whole system becomes
a dopamine pursuit And in thinking about the
brain for these kind of very top contour conceptual
levels, we can think of addiction as just a narrowing
of the things that bring you pleasure. And so
what you want is to obviously not use cocaine.
What you want is to access the dopamine system
through whatever process appeals to you, provided
that it doesn't deplete that dopamine system.
You can maximize this to the point where things
don't work anymore. And there is a like kind
of a little weird techie cult thing happening
in the Bay Area. They call it dopamine fasting,
which has no basis in physiology where these
kids. Literally, they're not looking at each
other in the eye because like, oh, it's too much
dopamine. What? Yeah, I swear. It's a real thing.
I get asked about this a lot. Oh, my God. And
if anything, it would have the opposite effect
that they're seeking. No wonder why there's bums
just shitting in the street up there. Everyone's
losing their mind. I have to be a little defensive
of Northern California. It has a lot of problems.
But when I go down to Venice, which I love, and
I love L .A. also. I'm not one of these Southern
California hating Northern Californians. There's
a pretty serious homeless problem down here,
too. Oh, it's growing. Yeah. Yeah. But San Francisco
homelessness is— It's on another level. I mean,
I don't go to the city anymore. You're the king.
I don't go to the city. San Francisco either
has the kings or the homeless people. Not a title
we want to— Gavin Newsom, you did it, you motherfucker.
You started it. I live in the East Bay side,
on the Oakland side, and we have that problem
there. But Oakland's always had a lot of problems.
Well, it's one of the side effects of a really
tolerant, progressive community, for whatever
reason. You're tolerant to— Drug addicts making
tent compounds. And it's very unfortunate because
it ruins everything else. I get the idea behind
it. I get it. But in practice, it is not effective.
It's not good for them. It's not good for you.
It's certainly not good for property values.
It's not good for safety. It's not good for sanity.
It's not good for sanitation. It's not good for
anything. I mean, fucking downtown LA, they're
finding typhoid. Like they're bringing back middle
aged or what is it? Not middle aged. What's the
word I'm looking for? Middle ages. Medieval.
I always fuck that up. I fuck that up. Yeah.
Medieval. Medieval diseases. They're bringing
back diseases that haven't been around for fucking
thousands of years. I don't know why that can't
be solved. I just don't understand that problem.
The homeless problem to me is so, it's so odd.
that they just let them camp out. Like I went
to Venice the other day for dinner, and we're
driving by this house, and there's a beautiful
house to my left that's probably worth like $5
million. And in front of it, there's 13 tents.
I'm like, this is crazy. The last time I was
down here was in March, right before COVID hit,
or around the time, who knows when it hit. But
there's a block on Venice Boulevard leading down
to that Erewhon market that was maybe one block,
and I drove in the other night, and it extends.
you know, seven blocks. Yeah. And they don't
do shit about it. And I don't know what they're
going to do. Every time you go into an underpass,
you're entering a homeless encampment. Now they've
even, the one over here on Winnetka, they put
a porta potty there and a hand washing station.
Like we give up here, shit in this bucket. It's
crazy. Like, wow, this is, it's just, I mean,
I don't know. Maybe there's bigger fish to fry.
Maybe there's more important things right now
with COVID. I can't think of anything more important
than making sure that citizens have healthcare
and shelter. And, The route to do that is not
my expertise. I don't have any great ideas about
that. But I just – the homeless problem to me
is very bothersome. There are neighborhoods in
Berkeley. You go down towards the 4th Street,
5th Street. It used to be kind of an artist district.
You get down near the skateboard park. They call
it the Aaron Brockovich Park because it had all
this like sewage and toxic waste seeping up and
kids were getting infections and stuff. So down
near there. Now everyone wants to go there, right?
But bus after bus after tent after tent. It's
an entire city now. Of people living in the avenues
back there. Yeah. And I don't know what they're
going to do about it. And there doesn't seem
to be any solution. I mean, there's nothing on
the table. No one's doing anything. They're just
letting it grow. It's so weird. It's so weird.
I mean, I don't want to be the person engineers
the solution. I've got shit to do. Aren't you
fuckers? They're mayors and congressmen. That's
your district. Go do something. Yeah. I mean,
I'm. I'm not a very political person, but I'm
very disappointed at, well, a lot of things.
But I see a lot of great things happening in
the world. But I also see almost total failure,
even on the part of the scientific community,
to communicate accurately what's going on right
now. There's so much confusion. And, you know,
I don't want to get into the COVID thing because
it's not my expertise. But the fact of the matter
is that science has also, you know, there are
a lot of people that don't believe in science.
But science has also failed at some level to
get out there and explain to people what they
need to know. Who are the people that don't believe
in science? Well, there are the anti -vaxxer
flat earth people. Yeah, schizophrenics for the
most part. And I think the ease with which a
celebrity can just decide that vaccinations work
a certain way or don't work a certain way and
it spreads so quickly and people love that idea.
You know, I try and look at it through the lens
of neuroscience, say, what is it about the mind
where people can't seem to connect to logical
ideas when it's inconvenient for them? But they
can string together all these random dots into
a theory that this was all caused by, you know,
5G or something that makes no sense at all. So
it tells me that, yes, people are challenged.
But in addition to that, I do think that the
scientific community has a responsibility. Let's
not go after Fauci specifically, but why isn't
there a team of scientists out there saying,
as a team, we've figured out this, that, and
the other thing? Jamie was just bringing this
up earlier before the show that someone was being
criticized because they said we should have more
experts to draw upon other than Fauci. And this
person who was interviewing, explain what they
were saying. I was on CNN this morning. She just
kept asking, what's your problem with Fauci?
And he said, well, there's other. Why don't you
talk to somebody at Stanford? He named someone
specifically. I don't remember off the name.
But just talk to other people. And she's like,
well, we have other epidemiologists coming on
the program or whatever. But he's just like,
why not try this person, this person, this person?
She just kept grilling him on Fauci. Why do you
keep asking about Fauci? What's the problem with
Fauci? It's very strange. That's not what the
issue is. The issue is divergent opinions are
important. Particularly when it comes to medicine
and science, there's different perspectives and
also equally educated experts who vary on what
they think the approach should be. And I think
regarding this thing, the COVID thing is completely
unique, right? Because it is a novel coronavirus.
So we really don't know. We don't know. And you
go back and listen to what the World Health Organization
was saying in January versus what Fauci was saying
in March. versus what they're saying today in
July, it's very different. So clearly, there's
no one expert who has a fucking finger right
on the pulse and like, I got this. This is what
we need to do. Listen to Fauci. Listen to...
Joan over there or whoever the fuck it is. That's
not the case. We need a panel of experts. Yes,
we do. When the space shuttle exploded, we had
a panel of experts. Now, Richard Feynman was
the one who was kind of the front runner and
he's the most eloquent and he knew how to speak
to the general public. And so he was the one
that got all the attention for figuring out it
was a washer ring that heated up or got cold.
I forget what it was. Feynman figured that out?
Yeah, Feynman figured that out. Wow. In addition
to doing so many other amazing things. And chasing
chicks, playing the bongos. What he did then
would have gotten him fired today very quickly.
Yes. Well, my dad's a physicist. So according
to my dad, it was bongo drumming naked on the
roof of Caltech. Oh. Yeah. So he took it to a
whole other level. Also a guy who was very into
float tanks. Oh, good for him. He really was
into the float tank thing. I think like anybody
who tries them gets into them. I've never tried.
I know. We need to get you into one. But my prediction,
my hypothesis is that it's dramatically changing
that sensation piece of the equation so that
your perception can now move and kind of float.
No pun intended. It makes it hard to do this
duration path outcome kind of rigid thinking
in there because my understanding is that the
salinity of the water and the temperature of
the water makes it so that you kind of don't
notice the boundary between yourself and the
water. It becomes one environment. So Feynman
actually talked about this as a way to access
space -time relationships of the mind that he
anchored to. physics principles. And so he was
a big proponent of the float tank, I think also
because he was a little afraid to try psychedelics.
I want to talk to you about the float tank, but
I don't want to steer away, right away from science
and the responsibility of science, because I
don't think the responsibility is in science.
I think the problem is, and this is a new problem,
the newfound ability to communicate online and
reach massive amounts of people without any expertise
whatsoever. That's what this podcast is. I mean,
I've said a bunch of stupid shit on here that's
not accurate. And you can get away with it. At
least I'm ethical in it that if I do make mistakes,
I will correct them. And I'll try to be as honest
as I can about what I know or what I don't know.
But when someone's slightly schizophrenic or
delusional and they're more prone to believing
in conspiracies because conspiracies, they activate
some weird spot in your brain. And maybe we could
talk about that. I don't know what that spot
is. There's some weird reward mechanism that
comes from discovering things that are hidden
that people don't want you to find out, that
everybody else doesn't know about. And you could
be the fucking Paul Revere of 5G. And you could
be the guy running around, you know, 5G is coming,
5G is coming. There's something about that that
really dumb people really gravitate towards.
And some really smart people with some mental
tics, some things that are off. And it's a real
problem because it's a giant distraction. I don't
think the responsibility lies in science because
science is supposed to be about data, analyzing
these things, coming up with cold, hard facts
that are provable, right? Things you could show.
This is repeatable. This is what the situation
is, and this is how we know. A spokesperson for
science would be wonderful, but there are people
like that. There's Neil deGrasse Tyson who does
a fantastic job. About the cosmos. Yes. I mean,
I love his work, but there's this. There was
this culture in the 80s and 90s around, you know,
and I grew up sort of in this because my dad's
a physicist. You know, he's a physicist. We spent
some time around a lot of physicists. The cosmos
and astrology, that gained immense popularity.
It's very exciting and very interesting and mostly
irrelevant to what we're dealing with right now
in 2020. Right now, it's about biology, virology,
epidemiology, and there has not been a voice
for that. besides Fauci. And I think he's doing
the best he can with what he's got. I do. I have
to believe that. But I think a panel of experts
who could appeal to different types of people
through different types of mediums would assist
in at least letting people know what the process
is. You know, we've sort of said there are people
out there who don't think COVID exists. You've
got people that are just waiting for a vaccine.
They're not going to leave their house until
there's a vaccine. You've got people that are
afraid of vaccines. There needs to be some structure
of communication about what scientists are doing
because there's incredible work happening in
laboratories at Stanford, all over the world,
trying to figure out the solution to this problem.
And at the same time, people are very stressed.
You know, for the person that doesn't have a
W -2 or regular 1099 income, this period of time
is immensely stressful. And the more stressful
something, the more stressed a human or any animal
gets, the easier it is to recruit them into.
some sort of delusional thinking. Psychosis is
defined as ascribing meaning to something for
which there's none. If I suddenly tell you that
the brick in that corner is sending me messages
about what I should say next, that's breaking
with our space -time understanding what's allowed
here. People are doing that in subtle kind of
incremental ways. Some of them might be diabolical
and evil, but what we know is that the more stressed
people are, the better People are able to recruit
them into ideas where they can connect dots that
otherwise might not be connected. It has everything
to do with the way that the brain computes information.
So I'm not saying a panel of experts would necessarily
buffer us or inoculate us against those kind
of forces. But I do think that there was a time
in this country, at least when I was growing
up, I'm 44 years old, where at least there was
some faith that the figures that you saw on a
screen or that were talking to you were putting
in a best faith effort. I mean, there might have
been a lot of shady stuff going on behind the
scenes, but I think that has completely fallen
away. And so now it's all, as you said, very
aptly, it's all about following individuals who
can be most convincing in the moment. It's about
capturing people in these highly dopaminergic,
anxious states where you can start leading them
down a thought path. And pretty soon there's
no notion of science. Pretty soon you're talking
about flat earth and it's and it's scary. And
other countries aren't doing this. China is not
doing this in China. They are. They are working,
chipping away. In Europe, they are working and
chipping away in a way that is in keeping with
the reality that has been broadly presented to
them. Here, reality is getting very distorted.
There's also a problem with – and it's not because
of Fauci, but Fauci represents to a lot of people
a point of ideological loyalty, right? You believe
Fauci because you think Trump's a moron. I believe
Fauci because I think he's a scientist who's
got the best set of tools to look at the problem.
Right. But you know what I'm saying? So anything
that opposes his perspective gets diminished,
even if it's a legitimate scientist that has
an altered perspective. Or someone who instead
wishes that we focus the public on how to strengthen
the immune system and the techniques for strengthening
the immune system, which we are aware of. These
are real things. And you don't hear a peep out.
Which is, to me, very frustrating. Me too. I'm
very disappointed. I guess that's what I was
saying poorly before and you said much more clearly
now, which is, you know, I'm disappointed that
he's the only person out there and the only voice,
not because I don't believe what he's saying
is valid, but because I think there are other
things that are important. First of all, the
stress problem has not been addressed. I work
in my laboratory, but one of the reasons I'm
getting out there and trying to talk to people
about stress and these systems and trying to
provide tools is because people are stressed.
And for that person, whether or not they're wearing
a mask and washing their hands 25 times a day
and staying at home or going out, stress, there
are tools for that. And we have an obligation
to teach people those things. And there are tools
for enhancing the immune system. And we need
to teach people those things. Yeah, I wish that
was a big part of the government, whether it's
local government or national government, the
focus of not just telling people to stay inside
and be scared and wash your hands and wear a
mask, do all those things, but also exercise,
drink more water, take vitamins. You know, teach
people meditation techniques. Give people some
tools that can help them get the proper sleep
that they need because I think these are all
immense factors. I agree. I mean, the foundation
of our well -being is through the very basic
kind of almost boring stuff. It's hydrate, sleep.
gratitude, social connection, nutrition, exercise.
You start hearing about this thing and you kind
of go, well, it's not exciting. It's not the
magic pill. But I think of all that as kind of
the tide that comes in that's required to bring
the boat out to sea. I think people think about
the thing that's going to trampoline them up
to the highest position, that's going to suddenly
turn them into a high performer. you know and
um i have i'm doing some work with a former team
guy his name is pat dosett and blake mycoskie
who started tom shoes so just full disclosure
because i have a position on their company board
i want to do full disclosures not work in my
lab and they've got this you know this company
this program that's really about building foundational
tools for people like for the every person that
it's great but and i also feel like our government
should be sending these messages out there Because
we're really lacking that. And I think the instability
of the situation that we see today has a lot,
the psychological response to all this has a
lot to do with the fact that we didn't hit COVID
prepared. We didn't hit the situation prepared.
The world was, you know, that the United States
is badly obese. It's a real serious medical problem.
I'm not even touching the psychology, just medical
problem, badly obese and stressed. I'm going
to send you. I'm going to send this to you, Jamie,
so you can put this up on the screen because
Bridget Phetasy sent me this today, and it's
fucking appropriate and hilarious. And it's about
what we're going through right now in terms of
obesity and stress and all these poor people.
Hold on a second. Give me a second here. I'm
going to find it. God damn, I got a lot of text
messages. Woo! I can only imagine. Oh, I can't
even imagine. I'm like, what the fuck is this?
Sorry. One more second. God damn, I have 150
new text messages. Here. Here we go. I'm sending
this to you right now, Jamie. A lot of dead air
here, kids. Here we go, Jamie. Bam, bam. Well,
I will say my physician friends tell me that
one of the major threats to... You know, one
of the major risk factors is obesity. Yeah, this
is. Would you look at a lady that weighs about
400 pounds in a scooter yelling at a fit woman,
put a mask on, you're putting my health at risk.
And she's got a McDonald's bag in her hand. that's
a lot of what's going on. I was hoping that what
this was going to do was it was going to be a
wake -up call for people, and I was going to
see obese people really take their health seriously
and go, well, while I'm alive, what are the primary
factors that lead to really bad results with
COVID? Well, according to the doctors that treated
patients in Manhattan, the number one factor
was obesity. That was number one. And so there's
older people that, you know, did way better than
young people that were obese. So it's not just
an age -related thing. It's an obesity -related
thing. But people, as long as they're okay, they
can stay inside and wear a mask, they're fucking
healthy. They'll just eat ice cream and watch
TV and hope someone comes up with a solution.
The daddy government comes along and fixes the
problem. It should be a wake -up call. It should
be a health -related wake -up call for people.
It should. I mean, I think that we saw in the
80s and 90s, you know, fast food and cheap calories
became so prominent. And we see the effects of
that now, right? That's here now. The problem
is now. I think the other problem that's happened
over the last 10 years, and we're starting to
see this emerge in much in the same way that
we've seen obesity emerge, is... the phone and
i love the phone i'm born and raised in silicon
valley i use the phone i love the phone but it
is a complicated device because we are bringing
a ton of our attention to it social media is
very complicated it has wonderful aspects but
there are ways in which it's converting and engaging
neuroplasticity in the young brain, the way it's
engaging our attention. Think about how much
attention people will place on that little phone,
but they can't read two pages of a book. That
worries me. And not because I'm a university
professor and I need everybody doing equations
or learning about neuroscience. Not at all. I
just worry about the neuroplasticity of learning
to be defocused and scatterbrained. There is
a time to put the brain into states of space
-time fluidity to come up with new comedy routines
or scientific ideas. You know, you could take
a walk. You can run. You can put the float tanks.
There are a bunch of different ways to do this.
But the phone is starting to gobble up all that
dopamine and all that space -time duration path
outcome stuff. And we are wasting our cognition
and we're wasting the most. Precious gift we
were given by Mother Nature and evolution is
a brain that can teach itself things and that
can predict things and that can look at the past,
can learn from elders and gain wisdom. I mean,
all that stuff is what we were put here to do.
And, you know, my dad said, you know, he thinks
I asked him if he thinks there are other galaxies,
you know, because he's more versed in the in
physics and the cosmos than I am. And he said,
I don't know. But if there was a. they probably
extinguish themselves with social media because
it's like mental chewing gum. People just kind
of throwing away their cognition. And the dopamine
thing, it's not that they're getting so much
dopamine from using the phone. It doesn't feel
like a big win. It's that they're spending it
out, like spending $5 bills all day long. Pretty
soon you're broke and you're exhausted. And so
I worry about our use of these devices and what
it's doing to our neurology. But I also know
they're extremely important. Alan Levinowitz,
who was on the podcast recently, had a book called
Natural. And it's one of the things that he talked
about in the book was that what we're doing is
essentially the – it's weird. And he talked about
this on Twitter and that's how I engaged with
him. We're taking most of our information and
we're making it processed information by getting
things off of Twitter, by getting things off
of social media. You're getting this very weird
interaction with people. It's boiled down to
this very strange 280 -character version that's
not equivalent to an actual conversation with
a human being or reading a book or watching a
documentary or any of those things. It's this
weird thing that's most of the information that
you're receiving. And if you look at human beings
that are on processed food diets, you see the
body behaves very poorly and it just reacts very
poorly and it's terrible. It's just not good
for it. It's unhealthy. Well, equally unhealthy
is processed information. And this was his argument
in his book. That's a great argument. It's a
great argument. I think we are in an adolescent
stage of this technological intervention. And
this will lead to whatever Neuralink is going
to be and whatever the successor to Neuralink
is going to be. I think things are going to get
way weirder, I think. But there's potential for
a beneficial aspect to it. And I think one of
the potentially beneficial aspects is that it
seems like all of technology is moving us. At
least in this virtual sense of using phones and
computers, the boundaries between people and
information are becoming smaller and smaller.
The problem is the boundaries between physical
people are becoming greater. There's more separation,
particularly with COVID, right? There's more
physical separation between people. But the boundaries
between being able to access the thoughts of
people is smaller. So the beneficial aspects
of what we talked about with even your immune
system and your health and just overall mental
well -being, community, love, friendship, all
those things, you need to be right there. You
need to be right there. You need to hug each
other, all that stuff. That's crucial. That's
everything. And hardwired into us. And with COVID,
that's, first of all, everyone's scary because
everyone could give you the bug and could kill
you or kill your grandma. And then on top of
that, you're engaging in this processed form
of communication all day long. And most of it
is toxic. Right. I mean, if you're engaging with
people on social media, then I mean, I've talked
about this multiple times in the show. There's
people I follow that don't even know I'm following
them because I just have them bookmarked because
they're just so toxic. I go and just I want to
know what they're doing. I'll just go to them
like, look at this motherfucker. He's on Twitter
12 hours a day yelling at people. arguing constantly
and I just imagine that their mind is a fucking
chaos, just a wreck, just potholes and burning
buildings. Their head is just filled with shit.
But it's effective. In a terrible way, it's effective.
It's like in the engineers talk about signal
versus noise. And the brain is essentially an
engineered machine. It looks for where signal
is high and above the noise. And so there really
is a payoff nowadays, a short -term deleterious
payoff, but payoff nonetheless for being able
to recruit people's attention, recruit their
autonomic nervous system, get them into those
modes of – having to click and follow and scroll
now i agree that i think social media like for
instance i teach some science on social media
i've managed to great make great connections
through social media but we have to be very judicious
in our use of it and that's hard for most people
and what i think is going to happen is that we're
going to talk about signal noise i think what's
going to happen is we're going to start selecting
for people that are very good at controlling
their attention are very good at separating themselves
from technology as well as using technology.
And so for people that are just rabidly consuming
technology and information and thinking this
is the way to live a good life or to get ahead,
they're actually just falling into the noise.
And the people that are, I think it's one of
the reasons why a select set of individuals have
been so effective at controlling the landscape,
the political landscape, the lots of landscapes,
let's just say that. And I think that We need
to think about whether or not we're in the noise
or whether or not we're paying attention to these
big peaks of signal. We're getting recruited.
We're getting kind of groomed by these things.
And it is scary. And at the same time, I agree.
I think that eventually we will break through
this. i do because that's what the human animal
is really good at yeah i think we're in the technological
dark ages that's what i think i think we very
well i think we're just some weird thing where
there's a lot of people going this is not good
kids this is not good but most people like you
and just in the just wading into the fray because
it feels kind of good yeah well especially when
you don't have real meaning or purpose in your
life because you're unemployed and you're stuck
at home because of covid and you're scared well
that's that's a way that people occupy their
mind and engage and you You're seeing a big uptick.
Yeah. Big uptick in – well, at least the people
that I'm paying attention to and the toxicity
of their exchanges. It's just – Well, this is
kind of scary and I'm sort of hesitant to just
kind of flip to another research study. But there
was this guy in the 60s, this guy Robert Heath,
who didn't need patients who had epilepsy. He
just got permission to record from the human
brain. And so he put electrodes into their brains
and he let them stimulate any area of the brain
that they wanted. This was like – He just did
it. And they'd stimulate one area and they'd
feel kind of drunk or they stimulate another
area. They'd feel sexual arousal. They stimulate
another and they start laughing. The number one
area that people like to stimulate created a
sense of mild frustration and anger, which is
totally perplexing on the face of it. You say
like, why would people like that more than sexual
arousal or feeling drunk or happy or giddy or
whatever? It turns out. That this dopamine system
we were talking about earlier is tethered to
that. And it very likely explains not just the
human animal, but all animals ability to lean
into challenge in order to acquire more resources
to fight and overcome that. You know, if you
had a bunch of whole species where everyone just
backed away from any frustration and challenge,
that would be very problematic. And so right
now I see us in the state of extreme anger and
frustration or mild anger and frustration. Some
people are going to drill through this and they're
going to make things work. They're going to Goggins
it to make it the verb. And a lot of people are
just going to feed that frustration and anger
but in a loop. It's just a closed loop where
they're just clicking and scrolling and clicking
and scrolling. And they're not building anything
out of that. So this circuit is really important.
It's actually part of the circuit that underlies
the state that we would call courage. And my
lab has worked on it and this relates to some
of the stuff done with military groups. It those
states of courage were designed to accomplish
specific goals, you know, find food, find mates.
And then in the world of military, you know,
conquer this or learn that and, you know, learn
a new skill. Right now, the phone in many ways
is hijacking some of that circuitry at a low
level. And it's it's never the subtle stuff is
the stuff that scares me. It's, you know, obviously
I'm very disturbed when I see rioting and looting,
but when I see a technology that is kind of gnawing
away at our neurology little by little, and then
we kind of go, oh my goodness, we can't cope
with life and what's being thrown at us. I think
that's when. I think we really need to look at
what that neural circuitry was built for and
start building new technologies to take us out
of this mess. Yeah, that's what I'm hoping the
future of these, whether it's Neuralink or some
other sort of immersive technology that allows
people to communicate in a very different way.
You know, when Elon is saying you're going to
be able to talk without using words, what I'm
really hoping, and this sounds really crazy,
but I think what could help. is if we could read
thoughts and clear intentions, really understand
intentions versus interpretation of intentions.
Like someone could say something sarcastically
and you could read it the wrong way and you can
get upset at them. If you read it in text, it's
even more easy to misinterpret what someone's
saying or to purposely, deceptively. frame what
they're trying to say. But if you can just read
someone's mind, we're going to have a much better
understanding of each other and the rewards versus
the positives versus negatives of holding on
to these really toxic patterns that people are
swimming in right now with social media. I agree.
And I do think that neuroplasticity, in addition
to brain machine interface, So it probably will
involve machines that we put on our faces or
whatever. But neuroplasticity is the way out
of this, right? I mean that's what the brain
can do. It can learn new contingencies, new ways
of relating. That's why I'm so adamant about
understanding this process and really feeling
so much importance on – especially with kids
because it's all so passive. Like their brains
are just passively shaped by experience. So that
can be a little scary to people. It's also beautiful
because it means that – You set one proper intention
or one rule that they should learn and adopt,
and that can have a long -lasting effect. The
ability to de -stress themselves, self -soothe,
the ability to work through a hard tangle of
a problem. interpersonally or academically, whatever
problem, that can be done. It's just that we,
I do think, especially in this country, we've
learned to back away from that internal sense
of agitation. And, you know, going back to what
we were talking about earlier, that agitation
is the first requirement for getting plasticity.
There's no way around that. And we have this
kind of obsession with flow states, which I think
are great, and awe and all this stuff. And we
think that's the portal to it. But I think, I'm
certain, actually, that it's not the portal.
The portal to Changing the brain is these high
urgency, high attentional states followed by
rest and just keep going, toggling back and forth
and back and forth. That is what's really important,
right? That you cannot strive for a life of total
relaxation because you're not going to get shit
done. There's nothing there. It's not the active
state of the human mind. It doesn't thrive under
those conditions. But we're all so concerned
about stress and we're so concerned about the
pressures of whether you're in some sort of a
competitive environment or a job that you're
involved in that requires an immense amount of
your focus and your attention. We're all striving
for that state where you're like a monk in a
lotus position. not doing anything now that seems
terrible to me because it's divorced from everything
we know about competition winning in the brain
yeah there's a cool set of experiments that i
think you might especially appreciate given your
background in martial arts which is called the
tube test where they take two rats or two mice
they put them in a tube typically it's male mice
but also female mice and they start fighting
for position in that tube one mouse pushes the
other mouse out or rat inevitably That one is
the winner. The one that got pushed out is the
loser. We know that statistically, if you put
those mice back into another tube test, even
with another mouse, the winner has a higher probability
of winning and the loser has a higher probability
of losing. Even if you push the winner from behind,
so you take a loser and you push it from behind
with a stick and it wins, even if it doesn't
win on its own effort. it becomes a winner. Now,
this is totally weird. And for about two decades,
this really perplexed neuroscientists, and this
was taught in psychology classes, but not neuroscience
classes. So in the last five years, neuroscientists
come in, we have a lot of new tools now that
let us monitor the brain and look at the brain
in real time as rodents or people are doing these
kinds of things. And so They figured out that
there's a specific area of the frontal cortex
that becomes more active in the winner and less
active in the loser. So much so that if you shut
down that brain area, the winner suddenly becomes
a loser. You increase activity in the loser,
it becomes the winner. So you ask yourself, what
in the world is this brain activity or brain
area doing? It turns out it's taking the feeling
of stress and arousal, which both of them are
experiencing. It's a battle. And it converts
it to more steps of forward movement per unit
time. It's just forward movement. And so one
animal is feeling stressed and is pausing more
or is backing up. The other animal is feeling
the same level of stress and is moving forward,
just physically. And it's wild because you can
even take an arena, make it really cold, which
mice don't like, put a warm heat lamp in the
corner, and the animal that won at the tube test
gets the sweet spot. Every single time. And so
what this says is that those are mice. We're
humans. My lab's been looking at this. We had
a paper a few years ago identifying the area
in the brain that actually leads to forward movement
and rewards it with a dopamine reward. This was
a paper we published in Nature. The area of the
brain is interesting only because it maps exactly
to that brain area that Robert Heath found people
like to stimulate. frustration and anger. So
frustration and anger were designed to get us
to move forward adaptively. Now, I don't know
how this plays out in the octagon where you're
seeing somebody get beat up and, you know, but
and then they're all of a sudden they're winning
and it's switching back and forth. But, you know,
my dream experiment would be to record from the
brains of those guys in real time. We don't have
the tech to do this right now, but someday we
will. And I bet you that every forward step or
perception that you have an advantage over the
other guy or gal. leads to a dopamine increase,
lowers that norepinephrine, and allows them to
keep moving forward. They get energy. It's not
gassing at the level of can't breathe or gassing
at the level of conditioning. Something's happening
neurally. So as a society right now, we are stressed,
and this is not the time to back off, go into
the lotus position. And people come at me sometimes.
I do think we need tools to buffer stress. I
want to be clear about that. I don't want people
stressed all the time or seeking stress. Goodness,
we were given and we were endowed with this amazing
neurology that allows us to do this. We did it
in famine. We did this with foreign invaders.
We did this with animals and storms. And we did
this. And here we are. We've got severe challenges.
But forward movement, balanced by rest, is the
solution that's worked for us for tens of thousands
of years. And it's what's going to work now.
And it all comes back to just a few select brain
areas because this is a primitive situation we're
in. It's not a sophisticated situation. Yeah,
that's an uncomfortable reality for a lot of
people, that the struggle is good, right? That
there's benefits to it, particularly if you're
looking for growth and also if you're looking
for stimulation and a sense of meaning. People,
for whatever reason, are hardwired to try to
figure things out, to try to get better at things
and to have a purpose. And a lot of times the
purpose that they feel other than family and
loved ones and friends and things along those
lines, there's a purpose of success in their
chosen field, success in whatever endeavor, even
if it's a hobby, you know, like whatever the
thing is that they obsess upon. That's what gives
people this sense of meaning of. And I think
that's why there's buildings. That's why there's
cities. That's why we figured out the wheel.
There's something about people that need a problem
to solve. And then once they've solved that problem,
they need a new problem. Right. And that's what
the nervous system was fundamentally designed
to do. That and make sure our offspring make
it to the next. So when you see like riots and
looting and you see people pushing against the
building and let us in, do you? You look at it
from that perspective, like, oh, there's sort
of a battle going on here, and they're trying
to win, just like the mouse in that tube. When
you see those protesters in Portland are trying
to get into the courthouse, like, what are they
doing? They're trying to get in there because
it's locked. And they have this idea in their
head that that's going to be the conquest. But
you saw, like... Chaz, remember that? That zone
in Seattle. Six blocks. They let them have it.
And then what happened? They fucked it up. It
fell apart. It fell apart. It fell apart because
there was no end goal then. Once they have it,
what are you going to do? Are you going to sustain
it? No. People started leaving. Murders took
place. They started beating people up. They were
filming things. They were behaving like the police.
It was crazy. It was crazy. boundaries up. They
essentially turned it into a far worse version
of the United States. But in their mind, they
thought, if we just take this over, this right
now is not ours. But if we take it, there's a
police precinct there. If we storm the precinct
and occupy it, then we're going to win. Yeah,
we're in. But then once they're in, they're like,
now what? Well, there's no resistance. Once there
was no resistance, they didn't have a fight.
There was no battle. It was very primitive. And
actually, I hadn't thought about it. It's a perfect
example of real life example of the tube test.
These, you know, two opposing forces pushing
back and forth. And we know that the more, you
know, we call it autonomic arousal, the more
stress you get, the more your mental and visual
landscape becomes that sort of straw view where
all you can think about is the adversary. Yes.
You know, now in a fight in an octagon or a boxing
ring or jujitsu match, that's great because that's
everyone's agreed to that. But it. That's not
designed to be played out in society over these
micro -wins. It's not even clear that they're
wins because what's really changed? I think that
working through legislation, working through
top -down legislation, identifying specific things
to go after. I mean, that was the beauty of the
civil rights movement in the 1960s, Brown versus
the Board of Education. What a beautiful thing
to create openness in schools where anyone could
attend, going after specific legislation. That's
far and away a different way of looking at. problem
and solving a problem and you know I don't have
a lot to say about the situation in terms of
the protests I saw a lot of looting where I live
in Oakland I'm the first house in on a commercial
district drove a car through the window looted
the place three times pharmacy three times I
mean it was right up next to me so you know I
think that But that seems to me to be just opportunists.
They're taking advantage of the chaos. It was
clear it was not the protesters. There's many
things going on simultaneously. And to kind of
conflate them all together seems disingenuous.
Well, this is a problem. In science, we have
a phrase. You're either a lumper or a splitter.
The lumpers like to kind of lump everything together
and push forward a grand theory. Now, today I'm
using some generalizations because I don't want
to get too far down in the weeds, but I'll stand
behind anything I've said because it has detailed
background to support it. But the splitters.
as annoying as they can be when they come to
meetings, no, but this, but that, you need a
certain number of splitters. This is why I think
like a panel of people is good. You get a lumper,
a lumper and a splitter. And then pretty soon
the splitter is annoying everybody because you
just want to go for coffee or you want to just
break and the lumpers are done. But the splitter
says, no, we're actually not thinking about this
problem in a nuanced way. And this is where I
think maybe it's not specific scientific information,
but a scientific training and ability to think
about a problem and be comfortable. Knowing you
may not solve it today or ever, but you're going
to lathe into this thing over and over and over.
That's the kind of training that a scientific
thinking will give somebody. You don't even have
to want to be a scientist to do it. I don't know
if anyone wants to be a scientist nowadays. I
certainly hope so. But we need to have more nuance.
We need balance between the lumpers and splitters.
And as you point out before, social media is
all about lumping and high emotional states.
And that's the worst combination. Yeah, I think
what you just said is perfect. I mean that's
really what we're dealing with today is this
inability to recognize nuance and to accept nuance
and to be rigid and committed to your position.
And your position is something you defend because
your position essentially is you, right? This
is one of the problems that people have with
ideas, that they marry their mind to these ideas.
And if these ideas prove to be – even if – objectively
they know that this idea has holes in it, they
will still defend that idea tooth and claw because
that idea represents their ego or represents
them as an individual. And that's unhealthy for
everybody. But it's also, it's part of being
a human being, this instinct to do such a thing.
Absolutely. There's a paper that came out recently
in the journal Neuron, excellent journal, that
was all about the dopamine system being attached
to beliefs. Beliefs and thoughts we think of
as kind of these vague, you know, like what are
thoughts? You know, I have thoughts all the time,
but I can also deliberately have a thought. Beliefs
are almost like actions in the sense that they
can recruit dopamine release. What this paper
showed is that. People just believing – thinking
more and more about what they already believe
leads to these dopamine increases. It literally
reinforces the belief they have from the inside.
That presents a certain particular type of problem
for trying to convince people how to change their
opinion. It means I have to take your mind or
the person's mind into a completely different
state in order to change it. Maybe it's hypnosis.
Maybe it's proper landing of media ideas. I don't
know what that form would take. But changing
people's minds – provided that they are older
than 25, has to be done by the person themselves.
I can't change your mind unless you're a child.
A child, we can impact them. But once you're
an adult, only you can direct your own plasticity.
No one can do it for you. So we are becoming
more and more polarized. And because of the nature
of the AI bots that drive social media, the information
that you're getting and that I'm getting. Well,
hopefully that's more aligned than, you know,
some of the ideas that I'm getting and other
people are getting where we fundamentally disagree
because social media and media in general is
designed to bring us into these high amplitude
aroused states. But we're getting different information.
We're not reading the same newspaper. And so
our beliefs are actually diverging and being
reinforced by dopamine. So we are creating a
bigger and bigger conceptual divide. through
the hijack of these neural mechanisms. I wonder
if that's one of the really attractive things
about these protests is this internal recognition
somewhere, even if it's subconsciously, that
we don't connect with people enough. And that
there's no greater connection than a group of
50 ,000 people that are supporting an individual
cause. And working towards a common goal. We
know this. If you really want to build team,
build a sense of community, you can have them
all watch a concert, bring them into a peak state,
or you can all have them fight the same fight.
I wonder if there's like a yearning for that.
Because of the separation of, I mean, think about
the coinciding factors, right? You have social
media, which separates us. You have COVID, which
separates us. And then you have these protests,
which unites us. And it must be incredibly satisfying
for people that have been locked up and are constantly
on social media to be in this mass movement.
And you'll probably alter your own perceptions
and beliefs to fit in better. with this movement.
So people that would never be violent may be
violent. People that would never loot might loot.
People that would never use graffiti or start
smashing the windows of Starbucks might be so
inclined, because of the mob mentality, to join
right on in, just to be accepted and be a part
of this group and just to feel something, just
to be excited by this gigantic movement. And
when it's so undeniable that the cause is worthy,
like the George... Floyd murder, when you see
that and you go, well, fuck this, man, this is
wrong. This is injustice. And then everybody's
on the street and they're chanting together.
You're like, it's perfect. It's a perfect combination
of things. It is the perfect combination. And
it is a combination, you know, up until now,
I've been talking about what's like just frustration
or just winning, but you're talking about group
cohesion. You're talking about fighting a fight.
You're talking about being locked up before.
So all these forces. pulling on the same neurochemical
forces. There aren't many neurochemical ingredients.
There are a lot of ways to access them. And I
look at what's happening now and I sort of go,
well, it's sort of like the inverse of Burning
Man. I've never been to Burning Man. I'm probably
the one person in the Bay Area that hasn't been
to Burning Man. But going out to the desert,
no money, everyone's going to get along. There's
going to be a lot of sex and everyone's going
to get along and everything's great. No rules,
basically, except be kind. And now we're seeing
the exact inverse of that. And so there needs
to be something that can satisfy this yearning.
for connection. And that can make us feel like
we're building. And, you know, back in the last
century's history, I mean, you know, the build
after the war was a, you know, everyone community
building, there were a lot of problems with the
way that was played out, of course, was not done
equally among race, racial groups, etc. But a
common goal, a common battle, a common fight
is very good at recruiting these systems in the
brain. And I don't know how that's going to come
about. I keep hoping I have this 14 year old
niece and I just keep hoping that like her generation
is looking at all this and they're just like,
we're going to work this out. Well, I think what's
going to happen with places like Seattle and
Portland, unfortunately, I sense a mass exodus
of rational people from the area. I think they're
probably going to go, OK, people have lost your
marbles. We're going to get the fuck out of here
and we're going to take our tax dollars with
us and leave you with your Marxist mayor. And
congratulations, you fucked the whole city up.
And then there needs to be some sort of a recognition
of the mistakes and then a correction. And that's
probably what's going to happen. You're probably
going to see more and more of this, more and
more chaos. And then, like, you know, what's
going on today in Portland. And now you've got
Homeland Security troops, which, I mean, I don't
even know what branch of the military they're
a part of. I have no idea. weird they're all
wearing camo and they don't have badges on they
just they just show up in minivans and pull people
in the cars and everybody's like what the fuck
is this like what is going on here well There'll
probably be a correction because of that as well.
It's most likely that what we're experiencing
is just a lot of chaos and then lessons will
be learned. And unfortunately for a lot of people,
victims will be made. You know, they're going
to make victims out of a lot of people and a
lot of people are going to lose their businesses
and their livelihoods and even their lives along
the way. Well, and we saw this in the 60s, you
know, the civil rights movement was an incredible
movement, but we also had like the whole hippie
movement. There was like a lot of the same parallels
were happening in the last 20 years. I was watching
this, you know, because I grew up in the Bay
Area. People think of Silicon Valley as very
conservative, but I remember a time growing up,
at least in my house, the way that my dad talked
about hippies was like, it doesn't lead anywhere.
It's bad for everything, the counterculture movement.
My mom was the opposite. So I think neither was
correct. But, you know, they had crazy stuff
going on like this. There was this guy, Uli Geller,
that was, you know, he thought he could bend
spoons with his mind, you know, spoonbender.
That was the joke of my life. Don't be a spoonbender.
You know, like whatever you do, don't be a spoonbender.
Because it's like stay attached to facts and
things that are designed to move human progress
forward. That's really important. At the same
time, you had the whole counterculture thing
going crazy. And I feel like in the last 20 years,
we've seen some spoonbenders. The explosion of
access to all things, you know, and people being
so hungry to have everything that everyone else
has. And there's been a gradual decline, at least
in some sectors, you know, an appreciation for
hard work ethic. That's why I think, David, you
know, I have a deep appreciation in this for
the work with, you know, people in the military.
But people who, you know, that whole American
thing that I grew up with of you get up, you
pick a vocation, you grind away at it, whether
or not it's, you know. garbage garbage man or
scientist doesn't matter you're just building
your the same circuits are underlying all that
and i think right now people are feeling Like
they don't know which way is forward. Right.
Like we talk about moving forward and pushing
against stream. But I think a lot of people just
don't know which way is forward. So what's ever
thrown in their face, they go that direction.
Yeah. Well, they think they have a sense of what's
forward and they're moving in that direction.
And a lot of them are very young, too. And so
their their version of the world is not, again,
to use the word, not particularly nuanced, which
is, you know, they're they're imitating their
atmosphere. They are a part of this, what they
think is a very valid and worthy movement. And
they're pushing forward. And it's very attractive.
Again, it's one of those things that I think
ultimately we're going to get something out of
this. I think ultimately we'll probably be good.
And I think racially it will be fantastic. I
think this big explosion of tension is going
to be awesome when it all settles down. Because
we're going to realize how ridiculous it is to
look at people and base. how you treat them or
how you feel about them based on their appearance
because of what part of the world their ancestors
came from. It's just as stupid as looking at
someone because of their hair color or their
eye color. I mean, imagine a world where all
blue -eyed people were devils. We hate them all.
It's crazy. It's fucking stupid. Things that
are completely outside of your control should
have absolutely nothing to do with how a person
values you as a human being. And I think most
people haven't experienced this, but there's
something out there. Maybe it's on the internet,
but my colleague, Jeremy Balanson, built this
VR experience called Walk of a Thousand Cuts
or 10 ,000 Cuts. So you put the VR on, you see
yourself, a reflection of you, and then they
turn a dial or you turn a dial and then your
skin, if you're Caucasian, becomes black, African
-American. And then you walk down a city street.
And it's very interesting. I've done this experience.
And people look at you out of the corner of their
eye. And you're like, oh, I've never experienced
that before. The virtual people do. The virtual
people are looking at you out of the corner of
their eye. Can you beat them up? Can you beat
up virtual people? There isn't that option in
there. There's a different VR experience where
you can beat people up. There is? There is. You
should come up to the lab. You should come up
to the lab. But you don't feel anything. I have
a VR boxing game, and it's weird because when
they hit you, you get a flash, and it gets you
a little nervous. You really do feel like you're
sparring. But when you hit them, there's no satisfaction.
Well, you're used to the real thing. There's
nothing like that real impact, right? There's
no replacement for real sparring. For hitting
things. For real sparring, getting hit. Or even
hitting a bag. I mean, it would be nice, I mean,
you don't really have to hit a person, but if
you hit the thing, like, if they could figure
out a way to make a robot, you know, that was
interacting with the VR program, that understood
where the footsteps of the VR, so it's in the
correct position. So, like, as you hit it, that's
where it should be. And you could actually push
off of it, and it would back up a little, and
then you could hit it. It's coming. I bet it
is. It's coming. And I should be clear. I'm not
a total technophile. I think we're using the
tech that we have now because it's the best we've
got. And I hope that in five years, with all
these amazing engineers I'm surrounded by and
elsewhere, that we won't be using that tech and
we'll be doing something completely different.
So I'm sorry to interrupt you. So when you are
in this different race and you're walking down
the street, you get this feeling. Is there overt
racism? Yeah. So you go to a job interview and
you're standing there next to somebody else.
You're actually seated down. And then the interviewer
comes in and says, hello, nice to meet you. And
they put out their hand and shake the person's
hand next to you. White guy. And then you. Put
out your hand and they don't shake it. They go,
nice to meet you. They do the nod. They make
eye contact. And then you go into a different
set of experiences. It takes you through about
10 minutes of these experiences. And what's interesting
about it is none of them is so overwhelming that
you're like, oh, my God, this is what it must
be like. But what's interesting is I did that
experience three years ago. Every time I walk
past a black person on the street, I now. It
triggers a frame of mind. I'm thinking about
how I react. I'm thinking about it. Whereas before
I wasn't. I've never considered myself a racist
person. I don't now. But it fundamentally changed
the way that I experience interactions with people
on the street. And that was it. 10 minute or
so or 20 minute or so VR experience. And that's
just the tip of the iceberg about what's possible.
I think we really what it tells me is that because
of how stringently gated plasticity is, plasticity
is vaulted by these chemicals. We need to bring
those chemicals into play if we want people to
change the way they feel. I don't think watching
a protest on the street can do it. I think the
George Floyd thing absolutely did it. That was
a very dramatic. terrible example it went it
was visceral to watch that and i think that's
why it had the effect it did it underscores essentially
everything we've been saying about neurochemicals
being the gates to changing the brain without
that it's not going to happen what talking about
this vr program highlights one of the reasons
why i don't like cities like manhattan i'd like
them to visit but i don't want to live there
because you don't say hi to everybody Right.
You can't. Yeah, you're just in the optic flow.
You'd be like, hey, hi, how are you? Hey, what's
up? Hi, lady. It's the human safari. I always
say New York is like a human safari, but it's
like, again, signal the noise. Like a person
has to have a cat on their head naked and on
fire before you're like, oh, wow, maybe they
need something. It's very impersonal. There's
this sort of weird thing that happens when you
get around large numbers of people where they
don't become, they're not as valuable because
you're overwhelmed by them. There's so many of
them. Whereas if you're in a small town of 20
,000 people and you walk down the street and
there's a guy walking towards you, you look at
each other and go, hey man, how you doing? I
like that too. What I liked about New York is
I felt like... It's you had Italians and Irish
and black people, white people in Puerto Rican
people. Yes. And so there's a you also experience
them. Yeah. Right. You see that. And, you know,
the Bay Area, I love the Bay Area. But one of
the problems I have with the Bay Area is it's
become, you know. People are hidden away a lot
more. There isn't that in a lot of culture as
well. It's a car culture. And every place has
its challenges. But I think New York is such
a beautiful experiment in putting a bunch of
people with different genetic and ethnic backgrounds
together, putting them together and saying, you
know, you may not all get along, but at least
you will hear those. those accents you'll get
cursed at in five different languages and i think
there's a real beauty to it i wonder how much
that's going to change because of covet because
obviously people are terrified of being jammed
into a subway now with strangers and that was
one of the cool things about new york is that
you did all walks of life poor and rich would
interact with each other on the street in la
there's virtually none of that and there's this
weird sort of separation between people and where
they live, and then also the car thing. Car culture
is, I mean, it just, you're in your own little
environment. You set up your own little world,
and that's your car, and you're driving around,
and these other people that you interact with,
that's a little segment of their world that they're
taking with them on the 405. And because of that,
you don't have the same sort of melting pot aspect
that you do get in New York. New York, really
uniquely, I mean, I grew up in Boston. It doesn't
have it. You know, Boston has like, there's public
transport. There's the T, you know, you can ride
the train, shit like that. But it's not nearly
as prevalent as the subway system in New York
City or the walking in New York City. Everybody's
walking. Yeah. And you have to be right up next
to it. Yep. You know, I think martial arts has
this a bit as well. I grew up skateboarding.
That was my sport. And what I loved about it
is, first of all, it's like all ages, sort of
a weird sport in that way. You got little kids
hanging out with grown men and girls and all
this. Yeah. And so you get this big mixing pot.
Also ethnically, so diverse. It wasn't always
like that, but you've got Vietnamese, Mexican,
black, white kids, everything. Hanging out together,
whoever can get their tail down, drop in and
go. That's great. Science is making an effort,
and I think now especially after the recent events
in the world, to try and bring in more diversity.
And it's a desperate need because you want that
diversity of opinion. You want that diversity
of outlook, et cetera. We're fortunate to have
an African -American. colleague in our department,
which is actually a small department. And there's
an immense need for that. I think science is
going to be more diverse in the years to come.
It's a focused effort now that the National Institutes
of Health is going to put money and energy into
this, thankfully. But there can always be more
done. But I think when thinking about kids and
neuroplasticity, like... Whenever I'm not skateboarding
anymore, it wasn't very good at it anyway. But
I did enjoy it. And I loved the community around
that. I think more of that, please, for the next
generation, more things like that. I think martial
arts is great. You go into a gym and it's like
it doesn't matter really where you're from. Right.
Especially if you're going to spar, if you're
going to get in and start boxing rounds, you
have to be able to take it. Yeah. And it's not
about background. It's about what you can do.
Yeah, that is really important. I mean, and it's.
It's just more of those things where people can
interact with all kinds of different people gives
you a more balanced perspective. It gives you
a broader perspective, right? And bringing it
back to the way the brain functions, the more
variables that you have in terms of when you
see a person, you know, you know so many different
examples of human beings that you have more to
draw upon. And I hope that one of the things
that comes out of this George Floyd thing and
then the Black Lives Matter protests. People
have a more open -minded approach towards just
human beings in general. And I think these things,
they happen in these big explosive events and
then shifts. And I think we're absolutely experiencing
a global consciousness shift. And it's very chaotic
and scary in some ways for a lot of people right
now. But I think ultimately we're going to come
out of this. the better. And if you look at,
say, Steven Pinker's work, where he covers the
history of human beings and interactions, we
are in the best time ever. And it's hard to say
that because you know there's still poverty and
there's still violence and there's still crime
and there's still racism and sexism and rape
and all sorts of awful shit. but it's way less
and way better than it was just 100 years ago
or 200 years ago and it seems to constantly be
moving in that trend and i'm hoping that that's
going to be what comes out of this this is going
to be another event that as the dust settles
and as the lessons are learned and as we kind
of get our feet back on the ground and we understand
what went wrong and what happened particularly
because of this this coronavirus situation that
we're in, we're, you know, everything's in chaos.
Everything's thrown up in the air. 30 something
percent of people can't pay their rent right
now. It's crazy. It's nuts. It's terrible. Unemployment
rates through the roof. It's crazy. It's terrible.
It's terrible. And every time I. You know, I
think being able to take someone else's frame
of mind or reference just as an exercise, it's
so hard. I mean, we become kind of autistic in
our way of just feeling like our experience is
the one experience and just being able to try
and think about what it must be like over the
last three months to not have any income, you
know, to see your gym or your business open then
shut again, at least here in California. Incredibly
stressful. It's pulling on all the levers that
create internal tension and outward. physical
explosion, you know, and we yeah, I I am optimistic
in terms of the long arc of this But right now
we are in the pressure point. Yeah, it's rough
to bring it back to your work one of the things
that you talked about was eyesight and Regaining
eyesight or dealing with people that have weakening
eyesight my eyesight is going to shit man Do
you have a retinal condition? No, I'm just old
52 and just there's a you know, macular degeneration
like I mean, I can read my phone. I can read
all these text messages that are coming in, 14
new ones since I put my phone down. But what
I do know for sure is that my vision is not as
good as it was 10 years ago and certainly not
as good as it was 20 years ago. What can be done?
Okay. So there's what can be done now and where
we're headed. But I suspect you want to know
what can be done now. Fix my eyes. Okay. So we
do have a clinical trial in my lab right now
through my affiliation with ophthalmology where
– People put on VR goggles, very separate from
the fear -inducing thing. It's actually a very
pleasant experience. And we use a particular
pattern of stimulation that activates the cells
in the eye that are most vulnerable and create
vision loss. It stimulates those in a way that
reinforces their connections with the brain.
That's the logic. So every cell in your eye has
a different function, but some of them, their
job is to transmit visual information to the
rest of the brain. They're called ganglion cells.
We know what patterns of activity make them healthy
and what reinforce regeneration. Back in 2016,
my lab published a paper showing that that particular
pattern of stimulation combined with a particular
pattern of gene therapy. So this is one injection
into the eye of a gene that triggers growth of
these cells. In mice, that allowed regeneration
of neurons that were damaged and it actually
reversed. slightly, but it reversed blindness.
Completely blind mice were able to see again.
So that was in mice. We then took that, built
a human clinical trial using just the VR part.
However, some... people in this trial are receiving
injections. It's about once every month, very
painless injection into what we call the vitreous
of the eye. They shoot it right in the eyeball?
Yeah, just a little insulin syringe, go right
in. You look that way, boom. A skilled ophthalmologist
can do this without any pain or anything. I know
it sounds terrible, but it's very straightforward.
To inject something called CNTF, ciliary nootrophic
factor. And the combination of this growth factor
plus the visual stimulation, we believe is going
to Protect cells that would normally be lost
from getting lost, so offset vision loss, and
potentially restore vision. Now, the results
of this trial aren't done, but we are recruiting
people for this trial. Jamie, you're in, right?
My eyes are good. They're working just fine right
now. What about prisoners? Get some prisoners
that are really bad people, but they can't see
that good. The injection part, provided it's
done by a skilled ophthalmologist, it's a cinch.
You've been through way worse this morning on
your way to work. Trust me. So it's nothing.
The other thing is that there was a paper published
just recently, a couple weeks ago, not from my
lab, but from a group over at University College
London, looking at the effects of red light on
mitochondria in a different cell type, which
are the photoreceptors of the eye. So you've
got the cells that connect the eye to the brain
called the ganglion cells, and you've got the
photoreceptors, which take all this photon information,
turn it into this incredible thing we call vision,
which itself is a whole galaxy of information,
but is amazing. Those cells degenerate over time,
the photoreceptors. They don't do very well in
part because as we age, the mitochondrial function
gets disrupted. This study was preliminary. It
wasn't very many subjects. I think it was only
20 subjects. Maybe it was 12. But getting red
light therapy, just viewing a very bright flashes
of red light of a particular wavelength. So I
don't want people going out there and blasting
their eyes. Improved vision on vision tests almost
immediately. And that's a very non -invasive
approach. I have one of those red light therapy
machines. It's probably a little different than
this. If you're interested in doing this, let
me know and we can potentially plug you into
this. What would be the difference between that
red light therapy and the other kind of red light
therapy? Because I really like that juve thing.
I'm not exactly sure what it does. It's supposed
to regenerate collagen and do a bunch of different
things. But it feels good. It feels good to stand
in front of it. One of the things is, remember,
we're saying that the eyes are actually a piece
of brain. Your brain needs to know when to be
awake and when to be asleep. One of the best
ways to wake up your brain is to view bright
light. And, you know, there are all these people
that are fanatic about blue light out there.
Viewing bright light in the morning from sunlight
is the best thing. Like in Southern California,
go outside two to 10 minutes of getting bright
light. And then you want to avoid light. from
like 11 p .m to 4 a .m actually it's been shown
to suppress melatonin it can disrupt sleep it
has a lot of problems you don't really want to
be looking at any bright light in the middle
of the night a lot of people get obsessed with
blue light being bad you want bright light during
the day and you don't want any bright light at
night really too much of it and people come after
me they're like the blue blockers you know i
call it like the blue blockanistas have been
coming after me recently because i'm out there
saying like it's like what about the it's like
look the blue blockers will help filter some
light It'll make things less bright. It's hard
to see with sunglasses in your house. So be my
guest and wear them. But really what you want
to do is dim the lights in the evening. Deeper
sleep, melatonin suppression won't be a problem.
That's all good. Get bright light first thing
in the morning when you wake up. And then the
bright red light is probably having a dual effect.
It's probably increasing mitochondria in the
photoreceptors if the study is right. And I do
believe this study, it looks really good to me.
And the person who did it has been in the game
a long time. So I trust him. And in addition
to that, it's going to wake up your system and
get the balance of these hormones like you want
cortisol high in the morning and melatonin coming
up about 16 hours later before sleep. It's going
to put all that into the right rhythm. So I say
go ahead and do the red light thing. But if you
want to pursue the red light flashes or the VR
and maybe even the CNTF injection, we should
talk about that. CNTF injection, you mean the
bacteria? They squared it right in your eyeball?
That's the growth factor, yeah. But I'm scared
of that. Well, the good news is – The good news
is that the VR, we do have a condition in the
study where it's just VR. So it's a daily, you're
essentially, you know, neurons like to be active.
And these cells that connect the eye to the brain
are the most, above all others, the most active
neurons and cells in your entire body. Do you
know of anybody who's done this where they had
the injections in the eyes? Oh, yeah. Many people
now in the study have had the injections. And
what are the benefits? Well, so I want to be
careful here. I can't talk about the results
of a clinical trial, but I can say they're promising.
And this isn't human. Just wink. Wink if you
think I should do it. Wink if you can fix my
eyes. Well, I think if you qualify for the study,
I definitely think you should do it. Okay. But
I can't reveal the results of the study because
I actually don't know. In the name of good science,
I'm blinded to the conditions. No pun, right?
Like, I just don't know. But we have subjects
or patients that are as young as 17, as old as
80. And the beauty of this is that if you decide
not to get the injection, it's completely non
-invasive. How many injections do you have to
have? I think it's like once a month for a period
of about six months. So would I have to go to
the Bay Area once a month? No, so there is another
version of this where there's a slow -release
polymer capsule that's placed into the eye. Oh,
Jesus, that sounds even worse. Just inject me
and get it over with. Well, someday we will have
drops that will get through the vitreous and
down there. We work on glaucoma in my lab. People
for glaucoma take drops for eye pressure. But
getting things into, you know, remember, it's
brain. There's a reason why you have this tough
sclera. I'm not going to be able to think that
way. Okay. The brain thing is really fucking
my head up. The fact that your eyeballs are your
exposed brain. Two pieces of the brain. That
is so nuts. Two pieces of the brain. And so visual
repair is soon going to go the way of two other
strategies. And I think we're going to see this
in humans in the next couple years, meaning two
years. Because I hate the 10 years thing. We've
been hearing the 10 years thing forever. One
is the work of someone that you've had on here
before, David Sinclair. Love that dude. He's
great. He's a terrific guy, both for sake of
his work on combating aging and also just I really
have to tip my hat to him because he was really
first man in in terms of doing public facing
science education through podcasts and things
like that. And, you know, I'm starting to do
that and others are starting to do it. And he
deserves credit for that. It puts scientists
in a vulnerable place. And I think he's doing
it with a lot of integrity. He's also got a fun
personality. So great guy. Yeah. So for him to
get the point across. So David's not typically
known for doing vision research, but he paired
up. with another guy's lab, a guy named Zhigong
He at Harvard Children's Hospital, someone I
know very well. We worked together on a number
of things. And they took advantage of what are
called these Yamanaka factors. Yamanaka won the
Nobel Prize for finding these four factors that
could essentially allow a cell to turn into anything.
any other cell type, kind of create stemness
in these cells, make them pluripotent stem cells.
The problem was that tends to induce cancers
in these cells. So David's lab has combined an
anti -cancer gene. I think these work are still
not published, but he's talked about them, so
I feel comfortable doing this. Suppresses cancer
while turning these cells young again. And at
least in mice, they see some very encouraging
results. So that would be a sort of one injection
kind of thing where you go in once, you get the
injection, and then never again. If I did an
injection once a month, How long are we talking?
How many months do I have to do it for? So the
study would probably run for about six months
or the embedded capsule, the CNTF capsule combined
with the VR. Now you have to put those VR goggles
on for 20 minutes a day and watch this. That's
easy. You can listen to music, do whatever you
want. It's a very passive thing that triggers
activity of these cells. The activity is key
because we know that neurons, you know, you hear
fire together, wire together and all this other
stuff. But the fact of the matter is neurons
that are. Even if you cast an arm, the neurons
that support movement of that arm very quickly
start to turn off and eventually they can die.
So keeping neurons active and alive and healthy
involves keeping them literally active electrically.
And so that's what the VR component is about.
There's the Sinclair kind of turning back the
clock stuff. And then colleagues of mine at Stanford
are doing incredible work with neural prosthesis,
so little robotic retinas, as well as stem cells
that are injected into the eye that settle down
into your eye and give you the cells that you've
lost. And we're not quite there with the human
trials yet, but there's a group, the Retinal
Repair Initiative. I'm part of this thing. It
has a kind of funny name, but it's called the
Retinal Dream Team, which is a bunch of people
brought together to... cure blindness, to solve
blindness in a particular disease called neurofibromatosis.
So there are dozens of labs working extremely
hard on this problem. This is one place where
I can say there's been tremendous progress in
the last five years. There are clinical trials
now, for instance, the one in my lab. And in
two or three years, you're going to start seeing
people who would normally go blind. You're going
to halt that. And you're going to see people
who are completely blind. I think eventually
those people will see again. Wow. Yeah. That's
intense. It's amazing. It's amazing. And, you
know, blind people, the mental real estate, but
like the visual real estate in the brain gets
taken over by other functions. There's this guy,
Dan Mancina. He's a skateboarder. He's completely
blind. He's an amazing guy. He skateboards blind?
With a cane. Whoa. Rides up to curbs and handrails.
Always onto him. Kick flips out. This kind of
stuff. Yeah. I've talked to him a bunch of times
because he was having some issues with his sleep.
Because one of the issues that blind people have
is because light is controlling when to be alert
and when to be asleep. He was having some issues
with this. So he contacted me. We're also in
touch because he's trying to build skate parks
for blind kids. There he is right there. Oh,
yeah. Check out Dan. Wow. That's insane. He's
such a beast. I mean, most people would be afraid
to do this without, yeah. That's crazy. Yeah.
And what's so great about Dan is he also, you
know. That is nuts. He's in graduate school.
I mean, he is such a machine. He's tapping things
so he knows where they are. But how does he know
the scale of the ramp or the pitch of the ramp?
He has an internal representation of it. Wow.
Yeah. That's bonkers. I wish he could see how
cool it is. There he is. Yeah, he's... He teaches
blind kids like what's possible, basically. Wow.
Because talk about COVID and being indoors. Blind
people, I spend a lot of time with blind people
because of the visual restoration stuff. And
there are people like Dan who are out there trying
to get blind people to come out of their rooms
to get into society. If you have a dog. You're
better off, right? Because the dog, you outsource
your vision to the dog. There are now glasses
that blind people can wear and walk down the
street. And it communicates with somebody in
like a dispatcher who says, oh, you know what?
There's someone sketchy over there to your right.
You might want to cross the street. And it works
really well, but it's very expensive. And of
course, privacy is an issue. You get home, you
start undressing. You don't want the person looking
at you in the mirror. Or maybe people do, but
that's a whole different business. But people
like Dan are... And I do believe the hope is
that people like Dan will eventually see again.
Wow. But that's going to require new cells. And
actually for him, he's going to need new eyes.
So Dan actually has had, because he had this
Coates disease that led to a retinitis pigmentosa,
he had his eyes removed. Whoa. So whenever people
are like, sometimes you'll see on social media,
people will say, I don't believe he's blind.
It's like, the guy doesn't even have eyes. Yeah.
So anyway, there's a, that's a whole universe
of stuff. But if you would like to explore visual
repair and visual restoration, offsetting vision
loss more, I'd be happy to further the discussion.
Yeah, I would love to. Yeah. I'll be a guinea
pig. Let's get the party rolling. Dude, we just
did three hours. Oh my. Isn't that crazy? Sorry.
No, I apologize. It was awesome. Great conversation.
I really appreciate it. If people want to get
a hold of you on social media, what's your Twitter?
Do you have Twitter, Instagram? What do you have?
I have a Twitter, but I don't use it. I'm on
Instagram. It's Huberman Lab, H -U -B -E -R -M
-A -N -L -A -B. I teach neuroscience there. I'm
big on public education. Beautiful. And we recruit
subjects to the lab for studies every now and
again. I will announce them there. And yeah.
That's the deal. Eventually, I'm supposed to
write a book, but I've been too busy doing science.
But listen, man, this was so much fun. And I
think we could probably do 100 of these. So let's
do it again. Great. Thank you very much. Thank
you. Really appreciate you. All right. Bye, everybody.