LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman Question & Answer in Seattle, WA

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.840 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.860 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:09.940 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:12.800 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:14.880 | Recently, I had the pleasure of hosting two live events,

00:00:17.500 | one in Seattle, Washington, and one in Portland, Oregon,

00:00:20.100 | both entitled The Brain-Body Contract,

00:00:21.920 | where I discussed science and science-related tools

00:00:24.160 | for mental health, physical health, and performance.

00:00:26.940 | My favorite part of each evening, however,

00:00:28.780 | was the question and answer period that followed the lecture.

00:00:31.800 | I love the question and answer period

00:00:32.960 | because it gives me an opportunity to hear directly

00:00:34.720 | from the audience as to what they want to know most,

00:00:37.520 | and indeed, to get into a bit of dialogue,

00:00:39.440 | so we really clarify what are the underlying mechanisms

00:00:42.560 | of particular tools, how best to use the tools

00:00:44.600 | for things like focus and sleep.

00:00:46.100 | We also touch on some things related to mental health

00:00:48.080 | and physical health.

00:00:49.200 | It was a delight for me,

00:00:50.180 | and I like to think that the audience learned a lot.

00:00:52.440 | I know that many of you weren't able to attend those events,

00:00:55.400 | but we wanted to make the information available to you.

00:00:57.520 | So what follows this is a recording

00:01:00.200 | of the question and answer period

00:01:01.360 | from the lecture in Seattle, Washington.

00:01:04.040 | I hope you'll find it to be both interesting and informative.

00:01:07.180 | I'd also like to thank our sponsors of these live events.

00:01:09.720 | The first is Momentus Supplements,

00:01:11.600 | which is our partner with the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:01:14.680 | providing supplements that are of the very highest quality,

00:01:16.940 | that ship international, and that are arranged in dosages

00:01:21.420 | and single ingredient formulations that make it possible

00:01:23.980 | for you to develop the optimal supplement strategy for you.

00:01:27.080 | And I'd also like to thank our other sponsor,

00:01:29.220 | which is Inside Tracker,

00:01:30.280 | which provides blood tests and DNA tests

00:01:32.280 | so you can monitor your immediate

00:01:33.700 | and long-term health progress.

00:01:35.320 | I'd also like to announce

00:01:36.200 | that there are two new live events scheduled.

00:01:38.880 | The first one is going to take place Sunday, October 16th

00:01:42.040 | at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles.

00:01:44.460 | The other live event will take place Wednesday,

00:01:46.200 | November 9th at the Beacon Theater in New York City.

00:01:49.620 | Tickets to both of those events are now available online

00:01:52.560 | at hubermanlab.com/tour.

00:01:55.000 | That's hubermanlab.com/tour.

00:01:57.700 | I do hope that you learn from and enjoy the recording

00:01:59.640 | of the question and answer period that follows this.

00:02:01.840 | And last, but certainly not least,

00:02:04.200 | thank you for your interest in science.

00:02:05.900 | [upbeat music]

00:02:08.480 | - What is your most used protocol?

00:02:19.480 | I'm assuming that you mean the protocol that I use the most.

00:02:22.160 | I genuinely do the morning sunlight viewing this evening.

00:02:26.320 | I went and looked at the sunset every single evening

00:02:29.360 | and I absolutely do 10 to 30 minutes

00:02:34.080 | of some non-sleep deep rest protocol every single day.

00:02:38.280 | Every single day.

00:02:39.920 | The reason I called it non-sleep deep rest

00:02:41.840 | is because while I love the classic traditions

00:02:45.120 | and things like yoga nidra,

00:02:48.000 | my fear was that if I call things yoga nidra,

00:02:50.360 | that people would get spooked.

00:02:52.660 | But I also have to say that I rather loathe

00:02:56.640 | the fact that scientists use so many fancy terms

00:03:00.520 | that it also vaults information

00:03:02.640 | from the very people that fund the work.

00:03:05.160 | So I have a kind of an ax to grind

00:03:07.360 | with the scientific community too.

00:03:08.820 | So non-sleep deep rest was my attempt to put my arms

00:03:12.680 | around a number of different things like yoga nidra,

00:03:15.600 | which I have great reverence for and other tools like that.

00:03:18.940 | I do that usually in the early afternoon

00:03:21.880 | or if I wake up first thing in the morning

00:03:23.640 | and I haven't slept enough or not that well,

00:03:26.140 | I'll do 30 minutes of yoga nidra

00:03:27.800 | and I feel terrific after that.

00:03:31.080 | I'll just mention a brief anecdote.

00:03:33.300 | I learned about yoga nidra while researching a book

00:03:37.000 | that I never wrote that may or may not ever be published.

00:03:40.680 | I went and spent a week in a trauma center

00:03:44.060 | and addiction treatment center in Florida

00:03:46.040 | and saw some amazing work of some amazing people

00:03:49.620 | and some amazing transformations

00:03:51.100 | and it was a big part of their daily routine

00:03:53.740 | for these people to do yoga nidra and non-sleep deep rest

00:03:57.780 | and I thought they're really onto something here.

00:03:59.500 | So almost religiously for me every day, 10 to 30 minutes.

00:04:04.100 | Not that it matters but the CEO of Google

00:04:05.980 | is really into NSDR.

00:04:07.300 | I don't know him but he's written about that

00:04:10.380 | a number of times.

00:04:11.480 | In Seattle, sunrise varies from 4.30 a.m. to 9 a.m.

00:04:14.680 | depending on season.

00:04:15.540 | Are you recommending to vary your wake up outside time

00:04:18.320 | with the seasons?

00:04:19.160 | Somewhat, you don't need to see the sun cross the horizon.

00:04:24.160 | That would be great but not everyone can wake up

00:04:27.060 | with the sun.

00:04:27.900 | You want to get so-called low solar angle sunlight.

00:04:32.020 | Why?

00:04:32.860 | 'Cause of that yellow blue contrast

00:04:34.140 | that we talked about before.

00:04:36.120 | Many people wake up before the sun is out.

00:04:38.560 | If that case, if you wanna be awake,

00:04:40.520 | turn on as many bright lights as you can.

00:04:42.200 | Up here, I don't know, does anyone here,

00:04:43.720 | you don't have to admit this if you don't want to

00:04:45.200 | but maybe nod or raise your hand if you're comfortable

00:04:47.320 | with meaning that in the winter you feel less well

00:04:50.080 | or typically in the transition.

00:04:51.800 | Yeah, it's huge up here.

00:04:54.040 | It's really, it's amazing.

00:04:55.320 | And then when you're on campus

00:04:56.680 | or that's where I've spent time and you see Rainier

00:04:58.560 | and it's like the blossoms are out and you feel almost high

00:05:01.800 | because that's dopamine.

00:05:03.660 | Animals that have white pelage in the winter

00:05:07.160 | and then it turns dark in the summer and spring months,

00:05:10.960 | that pathway, the melanin pathway is from tyrosine

00:05:14.500 | which is the precursor to dopamine

00:05:17.720 | and also to melanin production in the fur.

00:05:20.900 | So the whole system is linked.

00:05:23.400 | It's not rigged, it's linked.

00:05:24.860 | So what do I suggest?

00:05:25.880 | I suggest in the winter months,

00:05:28.140 | getting 30 minutes of sunlight viewing.

00:05:30.760 | I know it's a lot but it's much better

00:05:33.640 | than feeling lousy all day.

00:05:35.320 | And then the real key in the winter

00:05:37.280 | is to try and catch some sunlight before it goes down.

00:05:39.940 | If you're indoors and it goes down

00:05:41.720 | and then you go outside and it's dark,

00:05:43.780 | your brain and body don't really know

00:05:45.900 | where they are in time.

00:05:47.580 | And then you flip on Ozark and you're watching Ozark

00:05:51.240 | and then you really don't know where you are in time.

00:05:53.960 | I have one more episode, don't tell me what happened,

00:05:56.880 | that shows.

00:05:58.400 | When I was a postdoc,

00:05:59.400 | I used to recommend The Wire to my competitors.

00:06:03.700 | (audience laughing)

00:06:05.360 | True.

00:06:06.840 | I go to sleep fired up, ready and excited

00:06:08.780 | to do whatever it takes.

00:06:09.620 | When I wake up, that drive is depleted.

00:06:11.480 | Why and what can I do?

00:06:12.800 | Interesting.

00:06:13.820 | Have not heard that one before

00:06:15.740 | but if I were to venture a guess,

00:06:18.720 | you know we didn't spend much time tonight

00:06:20.060 | talking about the autonomic nervous system,

00:06:21.760 | this kind of see-saw that takes us from very alert,

00:06:25.680 | potentially panicked, but to very, very deep sleep.

00:06:28.680 | Even, you know, God forbid we go into a coma,

00:06:30.920 | it's because the parasympathetic nervous system

00:06:32.600 | is overactive relative to the sympathetic nervous system,

00:06:35.920 | see-saw of autonomic function.

00:06:37.820 | You may be sleeping very, very deeply

00:06:41.060 | and when you are in deep, deep rest,

00:06:44.020 | the last thing you want to do

00:06:45.080 | is get into that forward center of mass,

00:06:47.380 | thinking, planning, predicting, right?

00:06:49.680 | In, you know, again, in yoga nidra,

00:06:51.840 | again, non-sleep, deep rest,

00:06:52.960 | there's this common theme in the script

00:06:54.720 | of going from thinking and doing and predicting

00:06:57.440 | to being and feeling, they say.

00:07:00.140 | And I'm not making fun of them as the moment I hear that,

00:07:02.040 | I go, oh, just going to be and feel.

00:07:03.880 | What are you doing?

00:07:04.720 | You're actually just moving into sensation

00:07:06.280 | but no planning, right?

00:07:08.540 | There's nothing mysterious about it.

00:07:10.400 | Sensation but no planning.

00:07:11.680 | Now, in sleep, a very deeply parasympathetic

00:07:15.340 | sleep state, what's happening?

00:07:19.160 | You actually, that visual aperture is actually so big,

00:07:23.780 | right, you're not in panoramic vision,

00:07:25.580 | your eyes are actually closed.

00:07:26.920 | Space and time are, from past, present, and future,

00:07:30.660 | are invited into your thinking.

00:07:31.920 | You're in a deep, deep state of relaxation

00:07:34.520 | and it may be, Dustin, that when you're waking up,

00:07:39.340 | you're having a hard time transitioning out of that

00:07:41.320 | because you're sleeping so deeply.

00:07:43.120 | You may be waking up mid-sleep cycle.

00:07:45.240 | Many people find it useful to set an alarm

00:07:47.720 | so that they wake up at the end of a 90-minute

00:07:50.020 | so-called ultradian cycle.

00:07:51.720 | There are some sleep apps that do this on the phone.

00:07:54.260 | I can't recall their names.

00:07:56.480 | So rather than sleeping seven hours,

00:07:59.300 | you might be better off sleeping six

00:08:01.360 | or seven and a half hours, right,

00:08:03.960 | waking up at the end of one of these 90-minute cycles.

00:08:06.440 | Try that.

00:08:07.280 | That would be consistent with what we know

00:08:08.500 | about the biology.

00:08:10.480 | But I think it's common to, if you sleep very deeply,

00:08:13.200 | to wake up and not necessarily wanna spring out of bed.

00:08:16.120 | I've heard of these people that just wanna spring out of bed

00:08:18.120 | and attack the day.

00:08:18.960 | Jocko Willink, 4.30 in the morning,

00:08:20.800 | his Casio phone, watch, I'm seeing his watch,

00:08:23.680 | when it's like eight for me.

00:08:24.880 | I'm like, wow, like again, these people are amazing.

00:08:27.340 | I must be doing something wrong.

00:08:30.100 | But these are, you know, I don't wake up that way,

00:08:33.060 | you know, like Tigger.

00:08:34.240 | I'm like, I want water, I want sunlight,

00:08:38.460 | 90 minutes later, I want caffeine.

00:08:40.300 | What are some of your favorite books

00:08:43.960 | that have had the biggest impact on you?

00:08:45.420 | Kyle G, thank you, Kyle.

00:08:46.900 | Gosh, so many.

00:08:49.140 | You know, for non-fiction,

00:08:53.200 | well, Oliver Sacks' autobiography, On the Move,

00:08:58.500 | had a profound impact on me.

00:08:59.940 | You know, people hated him.

00:09:01.680 | The scientific community tried to kick him out.

00:09:04.880 | They said horrible things about him,

00:09:08.400 | created all sorts of scandals.

00:09:10.920 | It wasn't until Awakenings became a blockbuster movie

00:09:13.620 | that suddenly he got appointments at NYU in Columbia.

00:09:16.780 | Then now they wanted him back,

00:09:20.020 | and the revered neurologist, like incredible, right?

00:09:23.300 | But he was also a real seeker in the cuttlefish thing,

00:09:27.120 | and he had a lot of internal struggles too,

00:09:30.540 | some of which I relate to, some of which I don't.

00:09:32.480 | Actually, I've been in touch with his former partner

00:09:34.940 | because I actually moved to Topanga Canyon

00:09:37.040 | for a short while just 'cause Oliver lived there.

00:09:39.140 | I thought, if I go there, I'll actually finish this book.

00:09:41.580 | Guess what?

00:09:42.420 | Just moving someplace doesn't allow you to finish a book.

00:09:45.180 | He lived in Topanga, so I was like, that's the key.

00:09:48.860 | It didn't work.

00:09:49.860 | And people were wondering why I was hanging

00:09:52.780 | around their house all the time,

00:09:54.560 | 'cause it was Oliver's former home.

00:09:56.500 | So that's an amazing book.

00:09:59.480 | And tells you my obsessive nature.

00:10:02.320 | The other books that have had a profound influence on me,

00:10:06.320 | I would say in the non-fiction realm,

00:10:08.840 | well, I learned how to make a decent steak

00:10:11.080 | and a few other simple recipes not well

00:10:13.960 | from Tim Ferriss' book, The 4-Hour Chef,

00:10:16.120 | 'cause I really needed help.

00:10:18.240 | That was a fun one.

00:10:19.260 | I like Robert Greene's book, Mastery,

00:10:23.280 | because I've had amazing mentors,

00:10:25.160 | and that book is all about finding mentors

00:10:28.980 | and assigning mentors to you, even if you don't know them.

00:10:31.880 | And as you can tell from my stories about Oliver,

00:10:33.800 | who I never met, and a few other folks

00:10:36.760 | that I've just decided that they don't know it,

00:10:38.500 | but I'm mentoring them, they're mentoring me, excuse me.

00:10:41.340 | That book was really important for me.

00:10:44.540 | And that mentor-mentee relationships

00:10:46.940 | always involve a breakup, either by death or by decision

00:10:50.200 | or by consequence, your circumstance, rather.

00:10:52.840 | There's something happens, and they're supposed to break.

00:10:55.580 | You're not supposed to apprentice with somebody forever.

00:10:58.840 | That was an interesting book for me.

00:11:00.640 | I would say in the fiction realm,

00:11:03.020 | I would say in the fiction realm, it's all childhood books,

00:11:08.720 | 'cause it's been a long time since I've read fiction.

00:11:10.520 | I read a lot of poetry.

00:11:11.360 | I'm a big Wendell Berry fan.

00:11:13.020 | I like poetry because poetry, to me,

00:11:15.700 | is like the subconscious.

00:11:17.840 | The structure is all messed up,

00:11:20.160 | and you think you understand what they're talking about,

00:11:22.020 | but you don't really know.

00:11:23.240 | And so it always feels important and consequential,

00:11:27.040 | even though it's your own interpretation.

00:11:31.640 | And then I love the psychologists.

00:11:33.440 | I love Jung, I love Erickson,

00:11:35.120 | I love the psychologists and could read endlessly

00:11:39.820 | about the early days of attachment theory

00:11:42.820 | and things like that,

00:11:43.660 | because I find that stuff to be fascinating.

00:11:45.720 | So those books have been a lot of fun,

00:11:47.040 | and I love picture books with animals.

00:11:49.340 | (audience laughing)

00:11:52.000 | And so if you can get ahold of Joel Sartore's

00:11:57.040 | Instagram account, The Photo Arc,

00:11:58.640 | he decided to take pictures of every animal on the planet,

00:12:01.520 | especially the ones that are endangered.

00:12:03.360 | He's an amazing photographer,

00:12:05.720 | but his books are even better,

00:12:07.080 | so if you like animal books.

00:12:09.280 | What excites you most about the future research

00:12:11.240 | of mental health treatment,

00:12:12.120 | particularly anxiety and depression?

00:12:13.800 | Michael, thank you, Michael.

00:12:18.080 | Well, there I think that we're in an exciting time.

00:12:20.680 | I'll just reveal my biases.

00:12:25.480 | I'm quite pessimistic at the idea

00:12:29.480 | that we're gonna have better medications soon

00:12:33.440 | for most things.

00:12:36.160 | What I do think we are starting to approach

00:12:38.520 | is a time in which we understand

00:12:39.880 | how broad categories of drugs impact

00:12:43.720 | broad categories of chemicals,

00:12:45.940 | which kind of shift our mind

00:12:47.680 | in broad categories of directions.

00:12:50.060 | What does all that mean?

00:12:51.200 | I think we're starting to realize

00:12:52.500 | that because there are different receptors

00:12:54.280 | for all these chemicals all over the brain and body,

00:12:56.640 | that that side effect-less drug

00:12:59.120 | is unlikely to exist for mental health,

00:13:02.040 | but that the combination of maybe some pharmacology,

00:13:07.040 | but especially behavioral tools,

00:13:10.340 | people actually learning how to drive this thing

00:13:12.940 | that we call our nervous system,

00:13:14.960 | is potentially helpful, maybe very helpful.

00:13:17.880 | Now, in cases like schizophrenia, autism,

00:13:22.400 | and I didn't put those next to one another for any reason,

00:13:24.920 | by the way, OCD, eating disorders,

00:13:29.920 | and I'm very mindful of the fact

00:13:33.600 | that anorexia is the most lethal

00:13:35.440 | of all the psychiatric disorders, right?

00:13:38.040 | Amazing and sad fact.

00:13:40.260 | I think for those conditions,

00:13:43.800 | we are soon going to enter a time

00:13:45.560 | in which it's going to be combination behavioral,

00:13:48.840 | drug therapy, and yes, brain-machine interface.

00:13:51.380 | I don't mean putting chips down below the skull.

00:13:53.520 | I think there's going to be,

00:13:54.920 | and there are things happening now

00:13:58.280 | of people using devices like virtual reality,

00:14:01.180 | as well as transcranial magnetic stimulation,

00:14:03.300 | placing a magnet on a particular location in the head,

00:14:05.260 | combined with a particular maybe drug,

00:14:08.440 | maybe psychedelics, maybe not, to enhance plasticity.

00:14:12.940 | I hear a vote for psychedelics,

00:14:15.360 | and I wanna make a serious point about psychedelics.

00:14:17.800 | Five years ago, when I, well, four years ago,

00:14:21.700 | when I started doing a bit of public-facing stuff,

00:14:24.000 | I was absolutely terrified to say that word.

00:14:28.100 | Terrified.

00:14:28.940 | I thought I'd lose my job.

00:14:30.660 | I really did.

00:14:31.500 | I thought, "Don't say psychedelics."

00:14:34.020 | And I'll be very honest.

00:14:35.860 | You know, for me, I think that the clinical data

00:14:40.280 | on MDMA and on psilocybin are very interesting,

00:14:44.020 | very interesting.

00:14:44.860 | I don't think they are the first and only pass

00:14:48.660 | at rewiring the brain,

00:14:50.480 | but it is clear that the brain can enter a state

00:14:53.740 | of heightened learning capacity,

00:14:56.620 | but it needs to be directed towards something.

00:14:59.900 | The goal of opening plasticity just, it opens plasticity.

00:15:04.840 | That's not the goal.

00:15:06.740 | It's like running.

00:15:07.740 | The goal isn't running.

00:15:09.280 | The goal is to run in a particular direction.

00:15:11.620 | So what I think is really needed

00:15:13.020 | is to drive that plasticity in particular directions.

00:15:15.660 | And I would love to see more directed use of those

00:15:19.820 | in, of course, the safe clinical setting

00:15:21.700 | where it's appropriate.

00:15:22.780 | And a guest on the podcast, Matthew Johnson,

00:15:26.020 | who's at Johns Hopkins,

00:15:27.700 | I asked him, "What's the deal with the microdosing?"

00:15:30.140 | And you know what his answer was?

00:15:31.260 | I was very surprised.

00:15:32.660 | He said, "Macro dose."

00:15:36.240 | (audience laughing)

00:15:37.660 | And I thought, okay, I'm not a guy who, you know,

00:15:42.060 | I'm not into, I'm not pushing this, I'm not a proponent.

00:15:46.020 | I said, "You're kidding me, why?

00:15:47.820 | "Why, why would you say this?

00:15:48.660 | "This guy runs an NIH-funded lab

00:15:50.600 | "at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

00:15:52.720 | "I thought, why?"

00:15:54.400 | And he said, "Because the one session

00:15:57.320 | "with a trained professional

00:15:59.500 | "that's triggering rewiring plasticity that's guided

00:16:04.060 | "is as far as they know from the data."

00:16:06.940 | You can go back and listen to, these are his words,

00:16:08.660 | not mine, but he's the expert in this area.

00:16:12.120 | "Are encouraging plasticity in a particular direction."

00:16:15.640 | And he thinks that that's far more useful

00:16:18.360 | than just kind of nudging the system a little bit

00:16:21.600 | without any particular goal or outcome.

00:16:24.480 | Very interesting and very surprising.

00:16:27.440 | And again, a trained academic

00:16:29.280 | at one of the most elite institutions in the world.

00:16:32.000 | I think we're in very exciting times for those compounds.

00:16:36.700 | And there are studies at Stanford and elsewhere on ketamine

00:16:40.920 | and other things, but it's early days.

00:16:43.680 | Young people should be very cautious, young, young people.

00:16:47.040 | And adults should be cautious,

00:16:48.520 | especially people with pre-existing psychiatric issues.

00:16:51.880 | And people who have the propensity for addiction,

00:16:54.040 | although some of those compounds

00:16:55.520 | are being used to treat addiction.

00:16:57.480 | So I'd be an idiot and I would be lying

00:17:00.200 | if I didn't say that it is very exciting times

00:17:03.040 | for psychedelic therapies.

00:17:04.780 | (audience cheering)

00:17:07.780 | (audience applauding)

00:17:10.940 | Where do you see the biggest area,

00:17:14.140 | and I've done only one clinical trial.

00:17:17.540 | - True.

00:17:18.380 | - I took part in one clinical trial,

00:17:20.420 | so I don't speak from a lot of experience there,

00:17:22.200 | just a little bit.

00:17:23.100 | I was a subject in that trial.

00:17:25.240 | Where do you see the biggest area

00:17:27.160 | for performance enhancement within the elite athletes

00:17:29.220 | and operators that already hit marks

00:17:31.340 | of proper sleep and nutrition?

00:17:33.080 | Meg Young, thanks for your question, Meg.

00:17:37.740 | - Yeah, I think that, well, first of all,

00:17:40.300 | very few of them hit marks for proper sleep.

00:17:43.340 | But for those that do,

00:17:44.920 | so once you have your sleep dialed in

00:17:47.100 | and you've got your nutrition dialed in

00:17:48.540 | and the motivational component is there,

00:17:51.060 | I think where there's a lot of work still to be done

00:17:54.600 | and where people can really get outsized effects

00:17:57.220 | is in this weird little cavern of human existence

00:18:00.900 | that we call creativity.

00:18:02.500 | And I didn't have time to talk about it tonight.

00:18:04.820 | But there's a very unique brain state

00:18:06.580 | that we call creativity,

00:18:07.980 | which is taking pre-existing neural maps

00:18:10.620 | and starting to combine them in unique ways

00:18:12.940 | to create new ways of performance.

00:18:16.180 | Performance can be basically summarized in any domain

00:18:18.620 | as essentially four stages.

00:18:20.100 | You have unskilled, skilled, mastery,

00:18:23.460 | which is when the brain can generate movements

00:18:26.260 | or cognitive computations

00:18:29.100 | that create very predictable outcomes.

00:18:31.540 | And then there's this fourth tier,

00:18:33.780 | this fourth layer, which is virtuosity.

00:18:36.300 | And virtuosity, by definition,

00:18:38.660 | means inviting back in a component of uncertainty.

00:18:41.780 | What this looks like in terms of operators

00:18:45.280 | or this looks like in terms of athletes,

00:18:48.520 | or even we can say musicians

00:18:51.640 | or people who are in the cognitive fields

00:18:53.700 | or poets or writers,

00:18:56.220 | is what it means is introducing that uncertainty

00:19:00.300 | about what's gonna happen next.

00:19:01.820 | And the way to do that is to destabilize the system.

00:19:05.320 | In other words, to create states of mind

00:19:07.520 | in which there are literally sensory disruptions.

00:19:10.780 | It's like what I would like to see is more training

00:19:13.760 | in a kind of fun house of mirrors type environment.

00:19:17.980 | That's when you start to see incredible performances emerge.

00:19:21.660 | And virtuosos invite in uncertainty.

00:19:25.500 | They actually don't know what they're going to do next.

00:19:29.200 | And so this becomes a little bit of a vague concept.

00:19:31.320 | And what I'm about to tell you next

00:19:32.740 | might seem a little silly,

00:19:33.700 | but one of the best ways to access creative states

00:19:36.100 | is to, no surprise, use your visual system

00:19:40.360 | to view things that are highly unstable and uncertain.

00:19:43.960 | I don't just love fish tanks.

00:19:46.580 | I love staring at videos of aquariums in Tokyo

00:19:51.240 | and actually watching the fish

00:19:54.840 | because it's completely unpredictable.

00:19:56.960 | There's some evidence that doing things like that,

00:19:59.860 | or people will say, "Oh, I was in the shower.

00:20:01.960 | "I took a walk in nature

00:20:03.020 | "and then I had this idea."

00:20:04.160 | I actually don't think it was the walk or the shower.

00:20:06.960 | It's that nature is filled

00:20:08.520 | with unpredictable visual stimuli, auditory stimuli.

00:20:13.020 | When you can predict what's going to happen next,

00:20:15.160 | you have very little opportunity

00:20:17.140 | to up-level your game, so to speak.

00:20:19.960 | It's only by way of unpredictable sensory input

00:20:24.280 | that you can do that.

00:20:25.120 | So if you're a coach or you're working with people

00:20:28.400 | who are very high-level performers,

00:20:30.320 | do you want them to stand on one leg and spin around

00:20:32.680 | and then do what they're doing?

00:20:33.520 | Not necessarily.

00:20:34.940 | What you want to do is try and get them into brain states

00:20:38.120 | that are different than the brain states that they're in

00:20:41.160 | when they normally enter their practice.

00:20:43.100 | The liminal state between sleep and waking, excuse me,

00:20:46.920 | the liminal state between sleep and waking

00:20:48.680 | is a very powerful one for accessing creativity.

00:20:50.960 | Many people access ideas as they're waking up in the morning

00:20:54.520 | they have great insights.

00:20:55.560 | Other people, while strolling in nature,

00:20:57.580 | I don't think it's the strolling or the waking up.

00:21:00.120 | I think it's the lack of, as we call it,

00:21:03.520 | top-down regulation on rules.

00:21:05.520 | You are able to access combinations of neural maps

00:21:10.380 | that are unusual.

00:21:11.900 | So you can play with this a little bit.

00:21:13.260 | A lot of people throughout history

00:21:15.160 | have used compounds, drugs, to do this.

00:21:18.660 | Great writers would get drunk

00:21:20.000 | and then try and write or wake up.

00:21:22.480 | The amount of self-abuse that people,

00:21:25.280 | including athletes and creatives,

00:21:26.760 | put themselves through to try and capture these windows

00:21:29.260 | of cognitive ability is pretty intense

00:21:32.000 | and I don't think that's a good idea.

00:21:34.440 | I think one should be an explorer

00:21:37.360 | and try and find these cognitive states

00:21:39.480 | in ways that are non-destructive.

00:21:41.960 | I'm starting to sound like my mother with all this.

00:21:44.020 | (audience laughing)

00:21:47.440 | Heel flips on lock, no kick flips, next question.

00:21:50.220 | (audience laughing)

00:21:53.820 | There's some skateboarders in the audience,

00:21:55.160 | my first non-biological family,

00:21:57.080 | there's some amazing skateboarders in this audience

00:21:59.300 | and I'm not gonna be the one doing a kick flip

00:22:01.000 | anytime soon, but they're great to have.

00:22:02.700 | One of the reasons we built the podcast

00:22:04.960 | with the help of the great Mike Blaback

00:22:07.160 | is because I learned a long time ago

00:22:09.760 | that if you want things done right

00:22:11.580 | and you wanna do them outside the lane lines

00:22:14.040 | and you wanna have control over how things come across,

00:22:17.700 | you do it with skateboarders.

00:22:18.680 | 'Cause I didn't come from a community

00:22:20.920 | where I didn't have parents at my sports games

00:22:25.880 | and things like that, so thanks to the skateboarders

00:22:29.140 | and the misfits and those folks.

00:22:32.000 | Do you have any tips on how to improve memory?

00:22:33.760 | Yes, Ron Verrett, yes, okay, this is a wild literature

00:22:37.260 | and I love it and it's changing the way that I do things.

00:22:39.240 | I thought that to remember things,

00:22:41.680 | you're supposed to get really, really excited,

00:22:43.460 | really focused and remember them.

00:22:46.080 | And guess what, that's not how you do it.

00:22:48.120 | There are data and there are stories

00:22:54.640 | going back to medieval times

00:22:56.520 | that they used to teach kids things

00:22:59.760 | and then throw them in the river.

00:23:01.860 | There's a beautiful annual review of neuroscience

00:23:05.760 | written by the late James McGaugh,

00:23:07.680 | a brilliant researcher who taught me that in this review.

00:23:12.380 | And it turns out that if you want to remember something,

00:23:14.800 | you want to spike adrenaline

00:23:16.760 | after you acquired that information, after.

00:23:21.080 | That means the double espresso and the ice bath

00:23:24.640 | after you study for math, immediately after.

00:23:28.920 | And you think about this and you know,

00:23:30.120 | that makes perfect sense, right?

00:23:32.040 | Think about the one trial learning

00:23:33.920 | that nobody wants to experience,

00:23:35.360 | which is a car accident or some traumatic thing.

00:23:38.800 | You didn't get the spike of adrenaline first,

00:23:41.200 | you got the spike of adrenaline after.

00:23:44.520 | So again, I discourage the use of excessive stimulants

00:23:49.440 | or you know, anything like that.

00:23:51.720 | But if you're going to try and remember information,

00:23:55.540 | you need to get your brain and body

00:23:57.320 | into a high autonomic arousal state.

00:23:59.680 | Literally, you need to deploy adrenaline into your system

00:24:02.840 | after you have made the attempt to learn some information.

00:24:07.840 | So much so that if you give people a beta blocker

00:24:11.460 | after learning emotional information,

00:24:13.840 | they don't learn it as well.

00:24:15.920 | Incredible, just incredible data in animals and humans.

00:24:18.840 | This is the beautiful work of Larry Cahill

00:24:20.840 | at UC Irvine and James McGaugh.

00:24:22.960 | So that's how I would focus on remembering things better.

00:24:25.680 | And it's also true that if you tell yourself

00:24:27.680 | that something's really important to you,

00:24:28.840 | you'll be able to learn it better.

00:24:30.800 | If you meet people and they tell you their name

00:24:32.440 | and you forget it two seconds later,

00:24:34.360 | well, you should probably be thinking,

00:24:36.320 | and now I do this, I meet people and I think,

00:24:38.360 | okay, what terrible thing did this person do

00:24:40.680 | just trying to spike my adrenaline or something like that?

00:24:43.580 | It's a terrible trick,

00:24:44.600 | but I haven't figured out a better way.

00:24:45.680 | But that's actually one data-supported way to do that.

00:24:49.560 | Easily a dozen or more studies in humans

00:24:53.000 | on that very topic.

00:24:54.200 | How do you manage social media addiction, Paul?

00:24:56.840 | Well, we should be careful with the use of the word addiction

00:25:03.240 | because here I think it's entirely appropriate.

00:25:06.140 | When you're engaging in a behavior

00:25:07.740 | over and over and over again,

00:25:08.920 | and you're thinking to yourself,

00:25:11.040 | this isn't even that interesting.

00:25:13.060 | You're officially addicted.

00:25:15.160 | That's the litmus test for addiction,

00:25:17.840 | not this feels so good.

00:25:19.160 | People talk about the dopamine hits of social media.

00:25:22.160 | Those only come at the beginning.

00:25:24.360 | But then when you find yourself scrolling,

00:25:26.960 | like what am I doing?

00:25:28.560 | Maybe it's that narrow visual aperture,

00:25:30.520 | you're a hypnotized chicken.

00:25:31.960 | But maybe also you are seeking more dopamine hits

00:25:37.760 | because guess what, that dopamine wave pool is depleted,

00:25:41.160 | at least for that activity.

00:25:43.180 | It is true that dopamine, you have a baseline

00:25:45.360 | and then you have peaks that ride on that baseline.

00:25:48.120 | I do think that we can have dopamine for one behavior

00:25:50.420 | and not for another, but it's a generalized phenomenon.

00:25:53.740 | So how do you manage it?

00:25:55.300 | You have to stop seeking within social media.

00:25:59.740 | And so I've taken on the practice of turning off my phone

00:26:03.280 | for a couple hours each day.

00:26:04.560 | It's incredibly hard.

00:26:05.800 | People get really upset too, by the way.

00:26:08.020 | So you haven't noticed?

00:26:09.540 | These tethers that people expect.

00:26:11.900 | We recorded a podcast recently,

00:26:13.880 | so I don't wanna go into too much depth now

00:26:17.080 | about attachment and grief.

00:26:20.080 | And we all have a map,

00:26:21.880 | now you understand what the maps are,

00:26:23.680 | of space, time, and a dimension called closeness

00:26:28.060 | to everyone that we know.

00:26:29.960 | Space, where they are, time, when they are,

00:26:33.260 | dead, alive, when will I see them again, et cetera,

00:26:36.080 | and closeness.

00:26:37.120 | And the phone has allowed us to tap into space, time,

00:26:41.080 | and this closeness map, which define all our attachments

00:26:44.500 | on a very regular basis.

00:26:46.440 | So you can understand why it's so valuable to people.

00:26:49.740 | The plane lands and everyone's texting.

00:26:51.680 | The plane takes off, everyone's texting.

00:26:53.080 | It's like, where are you?

00:26:53.900 | Well, the plane's in the air.

00:26:54.740 | There's this thing called flight tracker.

00:26:55.920 | No one cares about that anymore.

00:26:57.640 | You wanna hear from the person.

00:26:58.920 | So I do think that, I used to do an every odd hour

00:27:01.720 | of the day, my phone was off,

00:27:03.220 | and like half the relationships in my life disappeared.

00:27:06.220 | They couldn't tolerate it.

00:27:09.120 | I loved it, but I loved them too.

00:27:12.080 | So I would say take breaks, and I would say at least an hour.

00:27:16.360 | And if you find yourself excited to get back on the phone,

00:27:19.140 | that excitement, that is the dopamine system.

00:27:22.520 | So you can kind of learn where it is for you.

00:27:24.560 | But if you find yourself scrolling mindlessly,

00:27:27.320 | and it's not doing anything for you,

00:27:29.160 | you're driving that wave pool down, down, down, down, down.

00:27:33.600 | So hopefully that analogy will help.

00:27:35.400 | It's weird to call myself Dr. Hebermann.

00:27:38.800 | In my business, if you refer to yourself in the third person,

00:27:41.140 | it means you're officially a narcissist.

00:27:42.840 | So I'm just gonna start with, were you nervous tonight?

00:27:46.280 | And if so, what did you do to prepare?

00:27:47.920 | Brianne, you saw my nervousness, didn't you?

00:27:50.860 | No, I asked myself that question.

00:27:54.320 | I was excited, and I think I'm good at lying to myself

00:27:58.520 | and telling myself that autonomic arousal

00:28:01.360 | that might be nervousness is excitement.

00:28:03.320 | But in truth, I wasn't.

00:28:06.780 | I was and am really excited to tell you all these stories

00:28:10.540 | and about biology.

00:28:11.840 | I know this might sound like a little bit of a line,

00:28:13.900 | but I actually don't feel myself as a person

00:28:18.900 | when I do the podcast or I do this stuff.

00:28:21.900 | I took a walk before I got here, and I have to be careful.

00:28:25.500 | There are only two topics that make me cry.

00:28:27.160 | One is talking about my bulldog,

00:28:28.400 | the other is talking about my graduate advisor.

00:28:30.100 | So I have to be very careful.

00:28:31.340 | But I took a walk, and I imagined that they were here.

00:28:34.900 | And I know.

00:28:36.280 | I know, don't make me cry.

00:28:37.480 | Lex Friedman made me cry on a podcast,

00:28:39.440 | and it was really unfair.

00:28:40.880 | And he was like digging and digging.

00:28:42.400 | And there are a few people in the audience

00:28:43.920 | that know Costello, and it's like, you know.

00:28:46.320 | And I just kept thinking to myself before coming in here,

00:28:49.940 | like, you know, I love them and miss them,

00:28:52.140 | and Costello would be entirely bored with this whole thing.

00:28:55.880 | So I distracted myself a bit, and not so nervous.

00:28:59.160 | Now, I do get nervous about things.

00:29:00.720 | Sure, I'm human.

00:29:01.760 | But when it comes to biology,

00:29:04.440 | I think I still feel like that little kid

00:29:06.000 | who just wants to tell you all the stuff, you know, so.

00:29:09.440 | You know, can't help it.

00:29:11.040 | Is learning from failure equal to learning from success?

00:29:14.120 | Is one more efficient than the other?

00:29:15.720 | Rachel, thanks for your question.

00:29:17.280 | Well, on a trial-by-trial basis,

00:29:19.160 | we know that when you fail at an attempt,

00:29:23.320 | on the next attempt, your forebrain is in a position

00:29:26.440 | to engage better.

00:29:28.040 | And this makes total sense, right?

00:29:29.560 | You feel that frustration, ugh.

00:29:31.640 | You wanna get the next one right?

00:29:33.140 | Well, you're harboring, or I should say,

00:29:35.960 | funneling more neural resources.

00:29:38.800 | Your focus, that aperture, tightens.

00:29:41.400 | Now, you have to be mindful of that, too,

00:29:43.740 | because when you have a failure,

00:29:45.300 | and then you're, like, you're gonna hit the bullseye.

00:29:47.100 | I'm thinking about a dart board,

00:29:48.040 | 'cause I'm terrible at darts.

00:29:49.760 | You know, sober, I'm terrible at darts.

00:29:52.260 | And I don't even drink.

00:29:54.320 | So that next trial, part of the problem is

00:29:57.320 | is that focus can narrow so much

00:30:00.080 | that you can start to lose access to information

00:30:02.540 | that might help you if you were just to relax a little bit

00:30:05.280 | and dilate that focus a little bit.

00:30:06.640 | But in general, on a trial-by-trial basis,

00:30:08.480 | focus is the cue that your nervous system

00:30:10.680 | is going to be positioned to learn better on the next trial.

00:30:13.880 | Now, in terms of life experiences,

00:30:16.520 | gosh, I wish for everyone fewer failures and more successes.

00:30:20.380 | But, you know, failures keep you humble.

00:30:22.780 | And I've had a lot of 'em.

00:30:24.320 | I mean, if people ever wanted, and they, you know,

00:30:27.280 | I'd be happy to tell you about 'em.

00:30:28.920 | I mean, I've made a ton of mistakes in life,

00:30:30.840 | a ton of mistakes.

00:30:32.100 | Some of those were mistakes of persistence,

00:30:34.440 | like dumb decisions, like it's gonna change,

00:30:36.880 | it's gonna change, and it's clearly never gonna change.

00:30:39.520 | And then some were failures of misjudgment

00:30:43.600 | about other people or situations.

00:30:45.960 | And a lot of them were just plain failures,

00:30:48.360 | like the experiment didn't work,

00:30:50.640 | or it just wasn't the right thing.

00:30:54.840 | And you try and reframe those.

00:30:57.120 | I do think that we owe it to ourselves

00:30:59.520 | and to the people that we know

00:31:00.800 | to try and generate some wins here and there

00:31:03.180 | and try and help other people generate wins.

00:31:05.380 | You know, in running a lab over the years,

00:31:08.580 | and I still do, you realize that you want your students

00:31:12.540 | to publish a paper and feel that success pretty early

00:31:16.240 | so that they can experience, A, how much work it is,

00:31:19.560 | so they pick problems wisely,

00:31:21.160 | but B, so they can feel that, like, oh, I can do this.

00:31:24.280 | And I think that, you know,

00:31:27.000 | this gets into the psychological as well.

00:31:29.980 | I think that, yes, failures help, but successes help.

00:31:33.280 | And there I think, you know, I function best in a team,

00:31:38.280 | and I think that for those of you

00:31:39.800 | that feel like you're fighting some challenge alone,

00:31:42.980 | I do think that there are great resources to be had

00:31:45.620 | in trying to access other people as sources of support.

00:31:50.620 | I think that that's a great tool.

00:31:54.400 | There's this whole literature, scientific literature,

00:31:57.180 | around social connection and how that can help us

00:32:00.660 | reframe motivation and goals.

00:32:02.520 | Anyway, maybe that's a topic to expand on another time,

00:32:05.520 | but failure is important on a trial-trial-based basis.

00:32:10.520 | People who don't experience enough wins

00:32:12.640 | for a long period of time,

00:32:13.960 | the brain is a prediction machine after all,

00:32:16.880 | and they start to predict failure,

00:32:18.200 | so it takes a bit more work to wedge oneself out of that.

00:32:22.660 | When are you gonna start training jiu-jitsu?

00:32:25.380 | Lex made me ask, Ryan Flores.

00:32:27.080 | Okay, here's the story with that.

00:32:29.140 | Lex said, "Do you wanna try jiu-jitsu?"

00:32:31.360 | I said, "Sure."

00:32:33.600 | Lex said, "Okay, it'll be great

00:32:36.380 | "to show people a beginner's mind."

00:32:38.840 | Said, "Sure."

00:32:40.000 | We went and did a jiu-jitsu class.

00:32:41.600 | He was very nice, nice, nice, Russian, nice,

00:32:45.680 | like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:32:47.200 | Then he puts it on the internet with me in a rear naked,

00:32:50.720 | him putting me in a rear naked choke.

00:32:52.960 | It was actually Lex Friedman choking out Andrew Huberman.

00:32:56.300 | There, I just talked about myself in the third person.

00:32:58.300 | Damn it.

00:32:59.940 | Edit that one.

00:33:01.100 | I have not had the time for jiu-jitsu.

00:33:04.240 | I like my ears the way they are, you know?

00:33:06.720 | Have you ever seen these people that do jiu-jitsu?

00:33:08.980 | Their ears literally look like stomps.

00:33:11.620 | No, I should do it.

00:33:13.000 | It looks like a great sport,

00:33:14.440 | and unlike the other sports I've been involved in in my life,

00:33:17.040 | boxing, please don't do it.

00:33:18.500 | It's not healthy.

00:33:20.120 | Skateboarding, all those,

00:33:21.640 | you don't really damage your head doing jiu-jitsu, so no.

00:33:26.200 | I'm gonna get you back for that one, Lex.

00:33:27.960 | Okay.

00:33:29.420 | Can you go through, oh, wow, John Edwards.

00:33:32.320 | There's a joke that my friends used to tell

00:33:34.420 | about the supplements I take.

00:33:35.820 | They used to say, someone would say,

00:33:37.780 | "What supplements do you take?"

00:33:38.900 | And they would just go, "All of them."

00:33:40.960 | (audience laughing)

00:33:42.300 | I don't take all of them,

00:33:44.200 | but I have been very systematic.

00:33:45.660 | For about 30 years, I've been interested in compounds

00:33:48.940 | that change the nervous system,

00:33:50.440 | and I do think that the events of the last few years

00:33:54.140 | have changed the way that people view supplements.

00:33:56.160 | I think that more people are starting to think about

00:33:58.520 | how to take better care of their health,

00:34:01.880 | and people are realizing that, obviously, great sleep,

00:34:06.060 | mindsets, social connection, exercise, nutrition,

00:34:11.060 | and so forth are very important,

00:34:13.860 | but I actually don't know anybody,

00:34:16.200 | granted I run with a strange crowd,

00:34:17.780 | but I don't know anybody

00:34:19.360 | that doesn't take something nowadays.

00:34:22.260 | You know, I could go through the whole list,

00:34:24.380 | but I would say the most fundamental things,

00:34:27.340 | and there's no product pitch here,

00:34:28.620 | the most fundamental things are

00:34:30.620 | the things that are going to support

00:34:32.100 | your kind of foundational health.

00:34:34.180 | So that's going to mean mainly getting,

00:34:37.020 | either by food sources or supplements,

00:34:38.680 | is gonna be getting sufficient amounts

00:34:41.100 | of these essential fatty acids.

00:34:43.380 | So important.

00:34:44.400 | For some people, that's taking liquid fish oil.

00:34:47.020 | For some people, it's capsule.

00:34:47.940 | For some people, it's eating fish.

00:34:49.020 | I don't like the way fish tastes, unless I'm in Seattle.

00:34:51.020 | By the way, the seafood here is amazing.

00:34:53.160 | Not so much in California.

00:34:54.620 | So I think the essential fatty acids,

00:35:00.060 | and then I'm big on the data, dare I say, out of Stanford,

00:35:04.100 | Justin Sonnenberg's lab and Chris Gardner's lab,

00:35:07.380 | that these fermented foods,

00:35:08.700 | of which all these cultures have interesting fermented foods,

00:35:11.820 | kefir and sauerkraut and kimchi,

00:35:14.620 | and pick your fermented food,

00:35:17.000 | that those seem to really encourage

00:35:19.200 | health of the gut microbiome.

00:35:20.540 | So I started eating a lot of those

00:35:21.900 | and taking no probiotics except in a few of the supplements

00:35:26.740 | that I was already taking.

00:35:28.100 | So I'm not trying to dodge the question,

00:35:30.420 | but I think, by and large, if you're eating well

00:35:33.620 | and doing the other foundational behaviors well,

00:35:35.820 | you can get away with a minimum of supplements.

00:35:39.420 | D3, it seems to be, a lot of people deficient in D3,

00:35:42.340 | but not everybody.

00:35:43.580 | So I think those are the main ones, however.

00:35:47.640 | I do think that nutrition should be

00:35:49.380 | the primary entry point.

00:35:50.780 | Again, it should be behaviors first,

00:35:52.140 | then nutrition, then supplements,

00:35:53.460 | then prescription drugs, only if you need them,

00:35:55.420 | and then, for some people, their brain-machine interface,

00:36:00.420 | like TMS and things like that, are going to be useful.

00:36:02.460 | But behaviors change your nervous system.

00:36:05.140 | No supplement actually rewires you

00:36:07.540 | or changes your nervous system.

00:36:08.820 | Behaviors do that.

00:36:10.560 | I hope I didn't dodge that question entirely.

00:36:12.420 | I do take some of the things that we talk about

00:36:14.740 | on the podcast to do some focused work sometimes,

00:36:17.700 | alpha GPC, but lately, I've been doing this whole thing

00:36:20.180 | of cold water exposure to spike my adrenaline,

00:36:22.680 | 'cause I hate it, and it spikes my adrenaline

00:36:24.900 | after learning, based on the McGaugh and Cahill data.

00:36:28.440 | What would be your best one or two pieces of advice

00:36:31.320 | to recommend protocols for improving learning and retention

00:36:33.460 | for graduate students in science and medicine?

00:36:35.100 | We try to sleep sometimes.

00:36:36.860 | Thank you, JD.

00:36:37.860 | Oh, great, you're UW, JD.

00:36:40.620 | So, you know, I used to teach this course

00:36:43.860 | at Cold Spring Harbor on career development

00:36:47.380 | for scientists, and there's a lot in there,

00:36:49.700 | but the two things that are most important are,

00:36:52.980 | for sake of answering this question,

00:36:56.380 | I would say are find non-destructive ways

00:37:01.380 | to reset your dopamine and your energy levels

00:37:06.540 | and do those at least every three days.

00:37:09.300 | So for me, it was kind of a tough thing

00:37:12.840 | to take a long walk or to spend,

00:37:15.980 | I used to work really hard on Mondays,

00:37:17.780 | really hard on Tuesdays, and I would not go in

00:37:19.900 | until the afternoon on Wednesdays, and sometimes not at all.

00:37:23.300 | And then I'd go in Thursday, Friday,

00:37:24.900 | and work really, really hard,

00:37:26.340 | and then not at all on Saturday,

00:37:27.700 | and then maybe do a little bit of work from home on Sunday,

00:37:29.660 | and I was very productive that way.

00:37:31.540 | Those breaks are absolutely key,

00:37:35.340 | and it's not encouraged so much in academic or tech

00:37:39.340 | or maybe anything now.

00:37:40.940 | I hear about so much stress and overwork.

00:37:43.060 | I say you just do it and define the culture

00:37:45.940 | and let the results and your focus be the thing

00:37:49.380 | that defines you, not how many hours you're in there.

00:37:52.060 | But I realize there's a huge cognitive load

00:37:54.420 | and energetic load, and for that,

00:37:56.560 | I do think these non-sleep deep rest protocols

00:37:58.700 | are where it comes in really handy.

00:38:00.120 | There are at least two faculty I know at Stanford,

00:38:02.240 | one who's a so-called Howard Hughes Investigator,

00:38:04.740 | who is big, those are big deal appointments,

00:38:08.160 | they get tons of money, et cetera, et cetera,

00:38:10.520 | and they do amazing science most of the time.

00:38:12.780 | These individuals certainly do.

00:38:15.220 | And they take two 20-minute naps per day in their office.

00:38:18.860 | When this guy came and visited me years ago

00:38:20.820 | when I was at a different university,

00:38:22.060 | he took the time that we were supposed to meet in my office

00:38:24.060 | and talk about data, he asked if he could take a nap.

00:38:26.600 | And he gave a great talk that afternoon.

00:38:29.420 | So there you go.

00:38:31.580 | I do think you have to take control of your schedule

00:38:34.460 | and do those things, and I hope that helps.

00:38:36.720 | And then, of course, for some people,

00:38:38.820 | exercise and so on is the way they reset.

00:38:41.840 | What research or work are you doing

00:38:43.060 | or that your colleagues are doing

00:38:43.900 | that you're most excited about lately?

00:38:45.100 | Glenn, yeah.

00:38:46.620 | One project in particular,

00:38:47.940 | I hope this paper gets accepted soon,

00:38:49.820 | it's been out for review forever,

00:38:50.980 | and if the viewers are in the audience, please,

00:38:53.260 | just tell us one way or the other, you know?

00:38:56.460 | We did a very large-scale study during the pandemic,

00:39:01.580 | we meaning David Spiegel and I,

00:39:04.060 | and an amazing PhD named Malise,

00:39:07.940 | she now has two last names, excuse me, Balbon,

00:39:11.380 | Yilmaz Balbon.

00:39:12.460 | And Malise, we essentially equipped people

00:39:14.920 | with remote monitoring devices and measured sleep

00:39:17.260 | and heart rate variability and a bunch of stress

00:39:19.300 | and a bunch of other things,

00:39:21.340 | and we gave them a very brief set of breathing protocols.

00:39:25.800 | And it turns out that this thing

00:39:28.260 | that I'm talking about a lot on the podcast these days

00:39:30.760 | of this double inhale, long exhale,

00:39:32.460 | the so-called physiological sigh,

00:39:34.380 | was the most effective breathing practice

00:39:37.620 | for allowing people to control their heart rate variability,

00:39:40.180 | reduce overall heart rate, access better sleep,

00:39:42.620 | and these were extremely short protocols.

00:39:45.140 | So I'm very excited about this.

00:39:46.480 | I didn't discover physiological sighs.

00:39:48.560 | I love the idea that people can do a very brief protocol

00:39:52.080 | once a day, maybe even just while walking down the street

00:39:55.240 | or in a moment, and actually learn to control

00:39:58.560 | that autonomic seesaw better.

00:40:00.280 | So I'm very excited about that.

00:40:01.960 | And then we are gearing up to do some studies

00:40:04.980 | on people who have more severe forms of anxiety

00:40:07.240 | and panic attack using mainly respiration,

00:40:12.720 | but also looking at some of these eye vision related ways

00:40:17.160 | of controlling the nervous system.

00:40:18.880 | I love that stuff.

00:40:19.720 | If I keep talking about it,

00:40:20.560 | I'm gonna give you a data presentation.

00:40:22.040 | So I'm gonna turn around.

00:40:23.400 | How does dopamine factor into neuroplasticity if at all?

00:40:26.040 | Colin, great question.

00:40:27.560 | It's a very strong trigger of plasticity,

00:40:29.560 | so much so in fact that there's some work that shows

00:40:34.260 | if you stimulate with an electrode,

00:40:36.000 | the brain area that releases dopamine,

00:40:37.640 | and you pair that with anything, anything,

00:40:41.440 | even just like an eight kilohertz tone,

00:40:45.260 | the brain remaps and it's like,

00:40:47.200 | "Oh, I love that eight kilohertz tone."

00:40:50.200 | Remember, dopamine is dumb, and it's just dumb.

00:40:54.240 | And it's just, you know, it's like Costello

00:40:56.920 | when he used to, this dog, I could hang a rope from a tree.

00:41:00.560 | This dog was so lazy, it wouldn't cross a room for a stake.

00:41:03.880 | You had to give the stake to him,

00:41:06.040 | but it would run across the field.

00:41:07.560 | He would run and jump on and hold onto that rope.

00:41:10.720 | And he would suddenly bite through his lip

00:41:12.640 | with blood dripping down.

00:41:13.760 | I was like, "Oh my God, it's breaking my heart."

00:41:16.160 | He loved every set.

00:41:17.160 | That's dopamine.

00:41:18.160 | It turns us into idiots.

00:41:19.580 | He was smart about what he needed to be smart about.

00:41:25.040 | Dopamine, so if you trigger dopamine release

00:41:27.920 | with Ritalin, Adderall, to a lesser extent, L-tyrosine,

00:41:32.400 | and certainly, please don't do this,

00:41:33.720 | but cocaine, amphetamine, whatever you're doing,

00:41:36.440 | it seems super interesting.

00:41:38.840 | It's true, and that's why it's such a slippery slope.

00:41:41.720 | It makes anything you're doing

00:41:43.060 | seem interesting and important.

00:41:44.760 | And actually, I'll use this as an opportunity

00:41:46.560 | to say something about the psychedelic thing earlier.

00:41:48.960 | One of the issues with MDMA,

00:41:50.680 | it's a very unusual brain state.

00:41:53.000 | It's high dopamine, high serotonin.

00:41:56.140 | Completely synthetic compound.

00:41:57.460 | There are other things in there that it does as well.

00:42:00.000 | One of the problems with people I see,

00:42:01.920 | with the problem with people taking MDMA,

00:42:04.980 | just at a basic level,

00:42:07.920 | is that if you're not pushing that

00:42:10.360 | towards some therapeutic outcome, music sounds amazing.

00:42:15.240 | Everything feels and sounds amazing,

00:42:18.160 | but it's a very neurochemically severe state.

00:42:22.160 | So that's why I think if people are going

00:42:23.720 | to explore those things, do it as part

00:42:25.240 | of one of the university-supported clinical trials.

00:42:28.680 | Those drugs make everything seem interesting,

00:42:32.440 | even stuff that's not terribly interesting.

00:42:34.840 | Now, they also have the potential

00:42:36.240 | for trauma-healing capacity.

00:42:39.320 | These are the MAP studies and so on.

00:42:40.760 | So you have to be very careful

00:42:42.520 | with what you pair with dopamine

00:42:43.920 | and what you pair dopamine with.

00:42:46.640 | And for those of you that are high-sensation-seeking,

00:42:48.800 | novelty-seeking, and everything's interesting to you,

00:42:51.940 | and you want more and more and more experiences,

00:42:55.060 | you basically have a eight-cylinder car in you,

00:42:59.420 | and you need to be very careful how you drive that thing.

00:43:01.540 | Like any high-performance automobile,

00:43:03.400 | it's gonna spend more time in the shop.

00:43:06.300 | So learn to drive appropriately.

00:43:11.000 | What advice can you offer to future scientists

00:43:14.580 | who want to make an impact like you have?

00:43:15.980 | Ryan O'Boyle, get tenure first.

00:43:18.420 | No, I'm kidding.

00:43:19.260 | (audience laughs)

00:43:22.020 | So I have this weird history in science,

00:43:24.700 | and I'm not looking for sympathy here,

00:43:26.340 | but my undergraduate advisor, who I adored,

00:43:30.580 | he's like a father to me, my graduate advisor,

00:43:32.620 | and my postdoc advisor, who I also adored,

00:43:35.340 | all three of them died.

00:43:36.700 | Suicide, cancer, cancer, really young.

00:43:39.420 | So the joke in my field is,

00:43:40.580 | you don't want me to work for you.

00:43:42.260 | But in all seriousness, all three of them

00:43:44.840 | had a really morbid sense of humor, all amazing people.

00:43:47.580 | But it is this kind of weird curse that I've had.

00:43:50.560 | So what scientists, what advice?

00:43:54.040 | Well, Ben Barris, the late Ben Barris,

00:43:57.140 | died of pancreatic cancer, an amazing individual.

00:43:59.260 | They're actually making a documentary about Ben's life.

00:44:01.740 | He was transgendered, he was totally irreverent,

00:44:04.380 | he said whatever he thought, he offended everybody,

00:44:07.380 | he was awesome, brilliant too.

00:44:10.400 | Ben and I had a conversation as he was dying,

00:44:15.160 | I recorded a lot of conversations with him,

00:44:17.800 | and I told him I was interested

00:44:19.960 | in doing public facing education,

00:44:21.940 | and he said, "Well, you're tenured now,

00:44:23.540 | "and people are gonna be upset,

00:44:26.040 | "and they're not gonna like it,

00:44:27.260 | "and your colleagues are probably gonna hate it,

00:44:28.880 | "so whatever you do, you better make it good."

00:44:31.580 | And I was like, "Wow, that doesn't really help much, Ben."

00:44:34.580 | And he said, "You seem to have a compulsion for it."

00:44:38.180 | So he was right, I think that if you are excited

00:44:41.820 | about science and sharing what you know, then do that.

00:44:46.820 | And even if it seems super nerdy,

00:44:49.880 | I mean there are these, I think they call themselves

00:44:51.720 | entomologists, the insect people,

00:44:54.020 | they make insects seem really, really cool.

00:44:56.940 | And if you are excited about spindle kinetics or whatever,

00:45:01.940 | you know, tell people about it, I really mean it.

00:45:06.620 | I think that the one caveat is that I do think

00:45:10.020 | it's important to get a formal,

00:45:11.460 | rigorous training in it first.

00:45:13.780 | I think that you will go further and faster in the long run.

00:45:18.060 | And there's some amazing people out there,

00:45:19.540 | there's a post-doc at Stanford,

00:45:20.780 | I think his name is Ben Reen,

00:45:22.100 | I think if you shorten it up on Instagram,

00:45:23.560 | it's actually Brain, Brain, 'cause he works,

00:45:26.500 | he talks about brain science,

00:45:27.660 | so that's why it's weird, B-R-E-I-N.

00:45:30.900 | He does a great job, and he's a really good example

00:45:33.060 | of someone who's still on the ascent with his career,

00:45:35.420 | doing serious science and doing science communication.

00:45:38.160 | But you have to be careful, it's time consuming.

00:45:40.980 | Look, people will dislike you for whatever.

00:45:44.980 | I made the mistake once of saying that I eat butter.

00:45:48.300 | Apparently that's a sin on the internet.

00:45:49.920 | I like little bits of, I actually like a lot of butter,

00:45:52.240 | but I try and eat little bits of butter.

00:45:53.980 | But somehow it's like there's this idea

00:45:55.580 | that I eat sticks of butter.

00:45:56.740 | So you have to be careful, the things I've heard,

00:46:00.060 | I heard I was dead, that was cool.

00:46:01.980 | So you have to be careful, and remember,

00:46:05.380 | everything is stamped into the cloud now

00:46:08.260 | and the metaverse or whatever it's called.

00:46:10.640 | So I would say, here are the rules that we have

00:46:15.180 | at the podcast, here's the rules that I created for myself.

00:46:19.100 | I truly don't do it for me, I do it 'cause I think

00:46:21.980 | people wanna hear about it, but I've been telling myself

00:46:24.060 | that since I was six years old.

00:46:25.680 | The other thing is never, ever, ever do it

00:46:30.420 | just for your own gratification.

00:46:33.300 | You should really try and think,

00:46:34.460 | is anyone gonna get anything useful out of this potentially?

00:46:36.820 | That's the goal.

00:46:37.660 | If you're doing that, it'll work out for you.

00:46:39.620 | If you are thinking about how to get followers

00:46:41.960 | or something like that, it ain't gonna work out.

00:46:45.260 | That's my advice.

00:46:47.140 | Is age 66 too old for neuroplastic?

00:46:48.900 | No, no, I'll cut myself off to begin learning

00:46:51.860 | with Sandra Tresari, no, did I pronounce that right?

00:46:55.100 | Thank you, Sandra.

00:46:57.300 | No, Richard Feynman, the great Richard Feynman

00:47:01.780 | taught himself to draw later in life.

00:47:04.420 | He was also really into flotation tanks, did you know that?

00:47:07.300 | Yeah, he was also into bongo drumming naked

00:47:09.360 | on the roof of Caltech.

00:47:11.060 | Richard Feynman did so many things

00:47:13.580 | that would get most people fired nowadays.

00:47:15.620 | He's just lucky he was alive when he was.

00:47:18.300 | You can absolutely learn at 66 and way beyond.

00:47:21.580 | There's an amazing study from Rusty Gage's lab

00:47:24.820 | at the Salk Institute years ago showing

00:47:26.980 | that even people who are very late in life,

00:47:30.060 | terminally ill in fact, are still producing new neurons

00:47:33.580 | in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus.

00:47:35.740 | These people were gracious enough to allow researchers

00:47:38.540 | to inject them with dyes that would label these neurons

00:47:41.140 | for analysis post-mortem after they died.

00:47:44.060 | Absolutely you can learn.

00:47:45.480 | What's harder is focus.

00:47:48.180 | Oftentimes what's harder is sleep as well,

00:47:50.160 | but the same mechanisms apply.

00:47:51.760 | There's no evidence whatsoever

00:47:54.040 | that neuroplasticity disappears at any stage,

00:47:56.920 | despite what Hubel and Wiesel told the BBC.

00:48:00.620 | How do you tackle reading research papers?

00:48:03.000 | Do you have a specific strategy?

00:48:05.140 | Yes, I do.

00:48:06.180 | I take notes on everything.

00:48:11.820 | There's four questions that we teach students

00:48:15.000 | and that I think that I use.

00:48:16.680 | The first one is what's the question they're asking,

00:48:18.520 | major and more specific.

00:48:20.780 | Second is what do they do, methods-wise, what do they do?

00:48:23.980 | You don't have to know all the details

00:48:25.080 | in the methods necessarily, but be versed in those methods.

00:48:29.320 | But you have to understand are they looking at mice?

00:48:32.160 | Are they looking at humans?

00:48:33.420 | Did they have people in two different conditions

00:48:37.240 | or just one?

00:48:38.220 | You have to understand what did they do?

00:48:39.320 | Then you ask what did they find?

00:48:40.440 | And then the last question is the most important one.

00:48:42.640 | And you should write down the answer to this

00:48:44.280 | is what did they conclude?

00:48:47.160 | And then you look back at the first question

00:48:49.040 | and you go did they actually answer that question

00:48:51.720 | or is it something unrelated?

00:48:53.040 | And those four questions are essentially the way

00:48:55.420 | that I parse each paper.

00:48:57.140 | Learning to parse papers is tricky.

00:48:58.660 | For the podcast I use the telephone.

00:49:01.060 | I call people and I badger them and I ask them

00:49:04.160 | who's doing the really good work in this area?

00:49:06.080 | And I spend a lot of hours doing it.

00:49:07.700 | And then the best way to remember science

00:49:11.260 | is to tell someone about it.

00:49:12.600 | So before each podcast I'll call someone and be like

00:49:14.600 | hey did you know that they used to throw kids in the river?

00:49:18.120 | I do this and my sister, my poor sister,

00:49:20.360 | and she's like yeah.

00:49:21.480 | My sister by the way does not watch the podcast.

00:49:24.400 | She's a therapist and she's like hey,

00:49:26.520 | I learned this amazing breathing technique.

00:49:28.940 | I was like oh yeah, really?

00:49:29.860 | Tell me about it.

00:49:30.700 | And it's like someone else is there.

00:49:31.520 | I'm like you know I have a podcast.

00:49:32.560 | She's like I don't like your podcast.

00:49:34.700 | Yeah, it's an older sister, older sister.

00:49:37.840 | She's not lying.

00:49:41.600 | What is your favorite sauce condiment seasoning sauce?

00:49:45.000 | There's one in every audience.

00:49:49.040 | I like the spicy stuff.

00:49:51.740 | We've been fermenting our own food at home.

00:49:55.000 | It's kind of cool.

00:49:55.840 | You put the cabbage in the stuff

00:49:57.540 | and the little ceramic thing outside

00:49:59.480 | and then it goes pop, pop.

00:50:01.220 | It makes this amazing sound and then you can like eat,

00:50:03.020 | make your own sauerkraut with peppers

00:50:05.060 | and like fermenting that stuff.

00:50:06.480 | It's really good.

00:50:07.840 | Okay they're telling me one more question so we'll do two.

00:50:10.480 | What's most important from your ADH?

00:50:12.560 | Ah, Gabriel, got a lot of questions about ADHD.

00:50:17.560 | For people on medication or not on medication?

00:50:23.540 | So I'll answer both.

00:50:25.880 | For people on medication, I think work with somebody

00:50:30.800 | really good who's willing to work with you

00:50:35.280 | to allow you to find that minimal effective dose

00:50:38.520 | and also timing that dose.

00:50:40.320 | One of the key things that we know now

00:50:42.960 | is that from that waking up point in your morning

00:50:46.840 | until about eight or nine hours later,

00:50:49.120 | we've sort of named that phase one of the day

00:50:51.240 | for lack of a better naming protocol.

00:50:53.840 | The systems that release cortisol, dopamine and epinephrine

00:50:58.760 | are essentially more effective at producing those

00:51:02.880 | than they are in the later periods of the day

00:51:04.440 | which makes sense if you think about the way

00:51:06.400 | that the autonomic nervous system works, et cetera.

00:51:09.160 | So there's an important question

00:51:10.440 | that I can't answer for you but you can answer for you

00:51:12.960 | which is if you're using Ritalin, Adderall, Vyvanse,

00:51:17.720 | these things that enhance dopaminergic transmission,

00:51:20.960 | modafinil or modafinil.

00:51:22.960 | By the way, for the people in the audience like me

00:51:25.660 | who didn't go to college when these things were all in use,

00:51:28.740 | the numbers of people that use these compounds

00:51:31.720 | on and off prescription is astronomical.

00:51:35.700 | It's incredible.

00:51:37.200 | I didn't realize it, I think something like 80%

00:51:40.000 | of college students use these at some point, incredible,

00:51:43.840 | 'cause they put you into a narrow aperture

00:51:45.600 | tunnel of concentration.

00:51:47.280 | So you want to, with a physician's support of course,

00:51:51.240 | to help get permission or not,

00:51:54.280 | to figure out what time of day to take your medication.

00:51:59.280 | Now for people who are not on medication,

00:52:02.320 | I'll just go right back to what I said earlier

00:52:04.060 | which is that you can train focus but it feels terrible

00:52:07.780 | to train it, it is hard.

00:52:09.740 | Again, there are these large scale studies in China

00:52:12.660 | and elsewhere of people literally teaching themselves

00:52:17.460 | and yes they blink although less often

00:52:19.540 | to focus their vision on a narrow aperture

00:52:22.340 | and to really battle through that agitation, stress

00:52:27.100 | and learn how to keep their focus.

00:52:28.960 | Now focus will drift, right?

00:52:30.580 | Focus is not a constant, focus will drift

00:52:33.180 | and you pop out of focus states

00:52:34.680 | and then refocus and pop out and refocus.

00:52:36.420 | That's something that you can train up.

00:52:38.140 | I've heard from many people who've managed

00:52:39.340 | to train themselves off medication

00:52:41.000 | or to lower doses of medication

00:52:42.640 | and look, some people can't do that.

00:52:44.060 | They absolutely have to maintain

00:52:46.020 | their standard medication protocols.

00:52:48.180 | This is a larger discussion obviously

00:52:51.340 | as it relates to ADHD.

00:52:52.620 | We're gonna do another episode on ADHD

00:52:54.680 | because the data are coming out so, so fast.

00:52:57.280 | What future episodes are in the pipeline, David Nguyen?

00:53:00.980 | Okay, thank you for that question.

00:53:02.540 | We have one on grief.

00:53:03.620 | We have an amazing episode with a guy

00:53:06.840 | from the Rockefeller University on the,

00:53:08.900 | this is, am I allowed to say

00:53:10.380 | it's gonna be my favorite episode?

00:53:11.840 | I love all the guests but this episode just blew me away

00:53:15.060 | on the relationship between language,

00:53:17.700 | speech, dance and music and I have no musical talent

00:53:22.220 | and I'm not a very good dancer so that's being generous.

00:53:25.300 | Amazing interplay between those things.

00:53:29.780 | Exercise in the brain, OCD, bulimia,

00:53:33.500 | binge eating disorder.

00:53:35.140 | Peter Attia's coming on.

00:53:38.620 | He'll teach us about everything, medicine

00:53:40.900 | and longevity and I'm kind of blanking at the moment.

00:53:46.700 | David Anderson from Caltech on aggression

00:53:48.640 | and emotional states, amazing.

00:53:51.160 | And then there are a number of people,

00:53:53.060 | Lisa Feldman Barrett or Barrett Feldman,

00:53:55.980 | I always get it backwards, sorry Lisa,

00:53:57.340 | on emotions in the brain

00:53:58.860 | and really we do take suggestions

00:54:00.960 | about who to bring on the podcast very seriously.

00:54:02.900 | What we're mostly looking for,

00:54:05.060 | what we're mostly looking for are the people

00:54:06.600 | that no one else has heard, that people haven't heard of

00:54:11.420 | who are not going on podcasts every week

00:54:14.340 | and that people should absolutely hear from

00:54:17.240 | and then I will tell you,

00:54:18.500 | they're gonna kill me for saying this

00:54:19.700 | but I'm gonna do it anyway.

00:54:21.640 | We have some short series coming up

00:54:23.760 | with expert professionals.

00:54:25.740 | I'm gonna do a short series on trauma

00:54:28.660 | and my hope for this series

00:54:30.620 | is that you'll actually get to see

00:54:31.980 | an exquisitely skilled trauma therapist

00:54:34.600 | take someone through, excuse me, I seem so excited,

00:54:38.140 | I'm spitting on the audience, excuse me,

00:54:41.100 | so to take someone through actual trauma therapy,

00:54:45.020 | this isn't staged, this is somebody who's actually

00:54:47.220 | in a point of near suicidal grief and trauma,

00:54:50.300 | taking them through it in the course of the podcast

00:54:52.540 | so people can see what this process actually entails.

00:54:56.140 | That's a very meaningful project to me

00:54:58.220 | for a number of reasons, so we're really excited about that

00:55:02.420 | and to be honest, I feel like there's just

00:55:04.900 | such a treasure trove of information out there,

00:55:06.940 | I just wanna grab it all and tell you all about it until,

00:55:10.500 | I always say, if nothing else, I'll cure insomnia, so yeah.

00:55:15.500 | (audience applauding)

00:55:18.560 | Thank you, thank you, thank you.

00:55:21.320 | (audience applauding)

00:55:24.480 | Thank you, appreciate it.

00:55:37.080 | Thank you so much for your time,

00:55:47.920 | I really appreciate everyone coming out on the weekday

00:55:50.000 | and I'd be remiss if I didn't say,

00:55:52.560 | thank you for your interest in science.

00:55:54.520 | (audience applauding)

00:55:57.680 | (upbeat music)

00:56:00.260 | (upbeat music)

00:56:02.840 | (upbeat music)

LIVE EVENT Q&A: Dr. Andrew Huberman Question & Answer in Seattle, WA

Chapters