How Your Nervous System Works & Changes

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

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.900 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.640 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.680 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.620 | For today's podcast,

00:00:16.880 | we're going to talk about the parts list

00:00:18.840 | of the nervous system.

00:00:20.400 | Now, that might sound boring,

00:00:22.040 | but these are the bits and pieces that together

00:00:25.000 | make up everything about your experience of life,

00:00:28.320 | from what you think about to what you feel,

00:00:30.520 | what you imagine, and what you accomplish

00:00:32.600 | from the day you're born until the day you die.

00:00:35.680 | That parts list is really incredible

00:00:38.320 | because it has a history associated with it

00:00:41.740 | that really provides a window into all sorts of things

00:00:45.360 | like engineering, warfare, religion, and philosophy.

00:00:49.600 | So I'm gonna share with you the parts list

00:00:51.940 | that makes up who you are

00:00:53.960 | through the lens of some of those other aspects of life

00:00:57.840 | and other aspects of the history of the discovery

00:01:01.340 | of the nervous system.

00:01:03.080 | By the end of this podcast,

00:01:04.520 | I promise you're gonna understand a lot more

00:01:06.440 | about how you work and how to apply that knowledge.

00:01:09.320 | There's gonna be a little bit of story.

00:01:12.120 | There's gonna be a lot of discussion about the people

00:01:13.800 | who made these particular discoveries.

00:01:16.360 | There'll be a little bit of technical language.

00:01:18.260 | There's no way to avoid that.

00:01:20.160 | But at the end, you're gonna have in hand

00:01:22.460 | what will be the equivalent of an entire semester

00:01:26.000 | of learning about the nervous system and how you work.

00:01:30.020 | So a few important points before we get started.

00:01:33.200 | I am not a medical doctor.

00:01:34.900 | That means I don't prescribe anything.

00:01:36.640 | I'm a professor.

00:01:37.920 | So sometimes I'll profess things.

00:01:39.700 | In fact, I profess a lot of things.

00:01:41.920 | We are going to talk about some basic functioning

00:01:44.560 | of the nervous system, parts, et cetera.

00:01:46.800 | But we're also gonna talk about how to apply that knowledge.

00:01:49.700 | That said, your healthcare,

00:01:51.600 | your wellbeing is your responsibility.

00:01:53.420 | So anytime we talk about tools, please filter it

00:01:56.000 | through that responsibility.

00:01:57.900 | Talk to a healthcare professional

00:01:59.260 | if you're gonna explore any new tools or practices.

00:02:01.980 | And be smart in your pursuit of these new tools.

00:02:06.220 | I also wanna emphasize that this podcast

00:02:09.220 | and the other things I do on social media

00:02:11.540 | are my personal goal of bringing zero cost

00:02:15.220 | to consumer information to the general public.

00:02:18.120 | It is separate from my role at Stanford University.

00:02:21.560 | In that spirit, I really wanna thank the sponsors

00:02:24.120 | of today's podcast.

00:02:25.620 | The first one is Athletic Greens,

00:02:27.840 | which is an all-in-one drink.

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00:02:38.260 | So I'm really delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.

00:02:41.180 | The reason I like it is because I like vitamins and minerals.

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00:03:24.060 | There's a lot in the news lately

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00:03:27.080 | We can all get vitamin D3 from sunlight,

00:03:29.400 | but many of us aren't getting enough sunlight.

00:03:31.860 | Vitamin D3 has been shown to be relevant

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00:05:03.980 | So let's talk about the nervous system.

00:05:06.460 | The reason I say your nervous system and not your brain

00:05:09.660 | is because your brain is actually just one piece

00:05:13.020 | of this larger, more important thing, frankly,

00:05:16.040 | that we call the nervous system.

00:05:17.860 | The nervous system includes your brain and your spinal cord,

00:05:21.900 | but also all the connections between your brain

00:05:24.620 | and your spinal cord and the organs of your body.

00:05:27.500 | It also includes, very importantly,

00:05:30.180 | all the connections between your organs

00:05:33.480 | back to your spinal cord and brain.

00:05:35.520 | So the way to think about how you function at every level

00:05:39.180 | from the moment you're born until the day you die,

00:05:42.060 | everything you think and remember and feel and imagine

00:05:45.880 | is that your nervous system is this continuous loop

00:05:49.000 | of communication between the brain, spinal cord, and body

00:05:52.280 | and body, spinal cord, and brain.

00:05:54.220 | In fact, we really can't even separate them.

00:05:55.860 | It's one continuous loop.

00:05:57.620 | You may have heard of something called a Mobius strip.

00:06:01.180 | A Mobius strip is almost like one of these impossible figures

00:06:03.780 | that no matter which angle you look at it from,

00:06:06.060 | you can't tell where it starts and where it ends.

00:06:08.140 | And that's really how your nervous system is built.

00:06:11.460 | That's the structure that allows you to, for instance,

00:06:16.100 | deploy immune cells, to release cells

00:06:18.740 | that will go kill infection

00:06:20.380 | when you're in the presence of infection.

00:06:21.860 | Most people just think about that

00:06:23.420 | as a function of the immune system,

00:06:25.300 | but actually it's your nervous system

00:06:27.980 | that tells organs like your spleen to release killer cells

00:06:31.660 | that go and hunt down those bacterial and viral invaders

00:06:35.740 | and gobble them up.

00:06:37.620 | If you have a stomach ache, for instance,

00:06:39.500 | sure, you feel that in your stomach,

00:06:41.580 | but it's really your nervous system

00:06:43.260 | that's causing the stomach ache.

00:06:45.460 | The ache aspect of it is a nervous system feature.

00:06:49.260 | So when we want to talk about experience

00:06:52.380 | or we want to talk about how to change the self in any way,

00:06:55.900 | we really need to think about the nervous system first.

00:06:58.780 | It is fair to say that the nervous system

00:07:00.740 | governs all other biological systems of the body,

00:07:04.280 | and it's also influenced by those other biological systems.

00:07:08.380 | So if we're talking about the nervous system,

00:07:10.860 | we need to get a little specific about what we mean.

00:07:13.200 | It's not just this big loop of wires.

00:07:15.740 | In fact, there's a interesting story about that

00:07:18.420 | because at the turn of the sort of 1800s to 1900s,

00:07:22.420 | it actually was believed that our nervous system

00:07:24.340 | was just one giant cell.

00:07:26.520 | But two guys, the names aren't super important,

00:07:29.240 | but in fairness to their important discovery,

00:07:31.580 | Ramon y Cajal, a Spaniard, Camillo Golgi, an Italian guy,

00:07:35.340 | figured out how to label or stain the nervous system

00:07:38.980 | in a way that revealed, oh my goodness,

00:07:41.200 | we're actually made up of trillions of these little cells,

00:07:44.900 | nerve cells, that are called neurons.

00:07:47.040 | And that's what a neuron is, it's just a nerve cell.

00:07:49.300 | They also saw that those nerve cells

00:07:52.140 | weren't touching one another.

00:07:53.580 | They're actually separated by little gaps,

00:07:55.540 | and those little gaps you may have heard of before,

00:07:57.940 | they're called synapses.

00:07:59.860 | Those synapses are where the chemicals from one neuron

00:08:03.140 | are kind of spit out or vomited into,

00:08:05.300 | and then the next nerve cell detects those chemicals

00:08:09.820 | and then passes electricity down its length

00:08:12.380 | to the next nerve cell and so forth.

00:08:14.400 | So really the way to think about your body

00:08:17.440 | and your thoughts and your mind

00:08:18.940 | is that you are a flow of electricity, right?

00:08:21.620 | There's nothing mystical about this.

00:08:23.000 | You're a flow of electricity

00:08:24.360 | between these different nerve cells.

00:08:26.300 | And depending on which nerve cells are active,

00:08:28.540 | you might be lifting your arm or lowering your arm.

00:08:30.900 | You might be seeing something and perceiving that it's red,

00:08:34.100 | or you might be seeing something and perceiving

00:08:35.700 | that it's green, all depending on which nerve cells

00:08:38.780 | are electrically active at a given moment.

00:08:41.680 | The example of perceiving red or perceiving green

00:08:44.320 | is a particularly good example,

00:08:46.260 | because so often our experience of the world

00:08:49.500 | makes it seem as if these things that are happening

00:08:53.020 | outside us are actually happening inside us.

00:08:55.940 | But the language of the nervous system is just electricity.

00:08:59.260 | It's just like a Morse code of some sort,

00:09:02.680 | or the syllables and words and consonants

00:09:05.480 | and vowels of language.

00:09:06.500 | It just depends on how they're assembled, what order.

00:09:08.980 | And so that brings us to the issue

00:09:11.420 | of how the nervous system works.

00:09:12.900 | The way to think about how the nervous system works

00:09:15.200 | is that our experiences, our memories,

00:09:17.820 | everything is sort of like the keys on a piano

00:09:21.500 | being played in a particular order, right?

00:09:23.900 | If I play the keys on a piano in a particular order

00:09:26.500 | and with a particular intensity, that's a given song.

00:09:29.960 | We can make that analogous to a given experience.

00:09:32.720 | It's not really that the key A-sharp or E-flat is the song.

00:09:37.720 | It's just one component of the song.

00:09:41.120 | So when you hear that, for instance,

00:09:43.960 | there's a brain area called the hippocampus,

00:09:46.140 | which there is, that's involved in memory.

00:09:49.000 | Well, it's involved in memory,

00:09:50.780 | but it's not that memories are stored there as sentences.

00:09:54.740 | They're stored there as patterns of electricity and neurons

00:09:58.040 | that when repeated give you the sense

00:10:00.720 | that you are experiencing the thing again.

00:10:02.920 | In fact, deja vu, the sense that what you're experiencing

00:10:06.840 | is so familiar and like something

00:10:08.960 | that you've experienced previously

00:10:10.880 | is merely that the neurons that were active

00:10:14.380 | in one circumstance are now becoming active

00:10:16.740 | in the same circumstance again.

00:10:18.760 | And so it's really just like hearing the same song

00:10:21.580 | maybe not played on a piano,

00:10:23.280 | but next time on a classical guitar,

00:10:25.680 | there's something similar about that song,

00:10:27.760 | even though it's being played on two different instruments.

00:10:30.080 | So I think it's important that people understand

00:10:32.860 | the parts of their nervous system

00:10:34.720 | and that it includes so much more than just the brain

00:10:38.200 | and that there are these things, neurons and synapses,

00:10:40.980 | but really that it's the electrical activity of these neurons

00:10:44.640 | that dictates our experience.

00:10:47.080 | So if the early 1900s

00:10:49.360 | were when these neurons were discovered,

00:10:51.360 | certainly a lot has happened since then.

00:10:53.440 | And in that time between the early 1900s and now,

00:10:57.760 | there's some important events that actually happened

00:10:59.840 | in history that give us insight or gave us insight

00:11:04.040 | into how the nervous system works.

00:11:05.880 | One of the more surprising ones was actually warfare.

00:11:09.580 | So as most everybody knows in warfare,

00:11:13.120 | people get shot and people often die,

00:11:16.120 | but many people get shot and they don't die.

00:11:18.700 | And in World War I, there were some changes

00:11:22.520 | in artillery in bullets that made for a situation

00:11:27.520 | where bullets would enter the body and brain

00:11:31.640 | at very discreet locations

00:11:33.300 | and would go out the other side of the body or brain

00:11:35.960 | and also make a very small hole at that exit location.

00:11:39.280 | And in doing so produced a lot of naturally occurring

00:11:42.360 | lesions of the nervous system.

00:11:44.200 | Now you say, okay, well, how does that relate to neuroscience?

00:11:47.020 | Well, unlike previous years where a lot of the artillery

00:11:52.160 | would create these big sort of holes

00:11:54.560 | as the bullets would blow out of the brain or body,

00:11:57.480 | I know this is rather gruesome,

00:11:59.320 | when the holes were very discreet,

00:12:01.560 | they entered at one point and left at another point,

00:12:04.120 | they would take out or destroy very discreet bits

00:12:07.880 | of neural tissue of the nervous system.

00:12:10.420 | So people were coming back from war with holes

00:12:13.800 | in their brain and in other parts of their nervous system

00:12:16.500 | that were limited to very specific locations.

00:12:19.200 | In addition to that, there was some advancement

00:12:21.960 | in the cleaning of wounds that happened,

00:12:25.200 | so many more people were surviving.

00:12:27.340 | What this meant was that neurologists

00:12:30.220 | now had a collection of patients that would come back

00:12:33.440 | and they'd have holes in very specific locations

00:12:36.760 | of their brain and they'd say things like,

00:12:39.000 | well, I can recognize faces,

00:12:42.180 | but I can't recognize who those faces belong to.

00:12:45.640 | I know it's a face, but I don't know who it belongs to.

00:12:48.440 | And after that person eventually died,

00:12:50.840 | the neurologist would figure out,

00:12:52.040 | ah, I've had 10 patients that all told me

00:12:54.660 | that they couldn't recognize faces

00:12:56.080 | and they all had these bullet holes

00:12:57.440 | that went through a particular region of the brain.

00:12:59.360 | And that's how we know a lot about

00:13:00.640 | how particular brain regions like the hippocampus work.

00:13:03.820 | In fact, some of the more amazing examples of this

00:13:08.000 | where people would come back and they, for instance,

00:13:10.520 | would speak in complete gibberish,

00:13:13.120 | whereas previously they could speak normally.

00:13:15.680 | And even though they were speaking in complete gibberish,

00:13:18.520 | they could understand language perfectly.

00:13:20.280 | That's how we know that speech and language

00:13:21.920 | are actually controlled by separate portions

00:13:24.160 | of the nervous system.

00:13:25.200 | And there are many examples like that,

00:13:27.120 | people that couldn't recognize the faces of famous people.

00:13:31.800 | Or, and that actually brings us

00:13:33.520 | to an interesting example in modern times.

00:13:35.720 | Many, many years later in the early 2000s,

00:13:39.160 | there was actually a paper

00:13:40.440 | that was published in the journal "Nature,"

00:13:42.000 | excellent journal, showing that in a human being,

00:13:45.780 | a perfectly healthy human being,

00:13:47.600 | there was a neuron that would become active,

00:13:50.760 | electrically active, only when the person viewed

00:13:54.600 | the picture of Jennifer Aniston, the actress.

00:13:57.120 | So literally a neuron that represented Jennifer Aniston,

00:14:00.080 | so-called Jennifer Aniston cells.

00:14:01.560 | Neuroscientists know about these Jennifer Aniston cells.

00:14:03.840 | If you can recognize Jennifer Aniston's face,

00:14:05.960 | you have Jennifer Aniston neurons.

00:14:08.800 | And presumably you also have neurons

00:14:10.120 | that can recognize the faces of other famous

00:14:12.800 | and non-famous people.

00:14:14.440 | So that indicates that our brain is really a map

00:14:18.440 | of our experience.

00:14:20.240 | We come into the world and our brain has a kind of bias

00:14:23.040 | towards learning particular kinds of things.

00:14:24.920 | It's ready to receive information

00:14:26.840 | and learn that information,

00:14:28.400 | but the brain is really a map of experience.

00:14:31.620 | So let's talk about what experience really is.

00:14:34.600 | What does it mean for your brain to work?

00:14:36.400 | Well, I think it's fair to say

00:14:38.560 | that the nervous system really does five things, maybe six.

00:14:42.280 | The first one is sensation.

00:14:44.320 | So this is important to understand for any and all of you

00:14:48.520 | that want to change your nervous system

00:14:50.520 | or to apply tools to make your nervous system work better.

00:14:53.520 | Sensation is a non-negotiable element

00:14:56.160 | of your nervous system.

00:14:57.380 | You have neurons in your eye

00:14:58.800 | that perceive certain colors of light

00:15:01.300 | and certain directions of movement.

00:15:03.080 | You have neurons in your skin

00:15:05.040 | that perceive particular kinds of touch,

00:15:07.580 | like light touch or firm touch or painful touch.

00:15:10.920 | You have neurons in your ears that perceive certain sounds.

00:15:15.000 | Your entire experience of life is filtered

00:15:19.720 | by these what we call sensory receptors,

00:15:22.480 | if you want to know what the name is.

00:15:24.760 | So this always raises an interesting question.

00:15:26.720 | People ask, well, is there much more out there?

00:15:29.380 | Is there a lot more happening in the world

00:15:31.560 | that I'm not experiencing or that humans aren't experiencing?

00:15:35.560 | And the answer of course is yes.

00:15:37.440 | There are many species on this planet

00:15:39.200 | that are perceiving things that we will never perceive

00:15:42.100 | unless we apply technology.

00:15:44.480 | The best example I could think of off the top of my head

00:15:48.160 | would be something like infrared vision.

00:15:50.540 | There are snakes out there, pit vipers and so forth

00:15:53.720 | that can sense heat emissions from other animals.

00:15:56.080 | They don't actually see their shape.

00:15:57.680 | They sense their heat shape and their heat emissions.

00:16:01.400 | Humans can't do that unless of course

00:16:03.260 | they put on infrared goggles or something

00:16:05.480 | that would allow them to detect those heat emissions.

00:16:08.360 | There are turtles and certain species of birds

00:16:11.520 | that migrate long distances that can detect magnetic fields

00:16:15.200 | because they have neurons.

00:16:16.940 | Again, it's the nervous system that allows them to do this.

00:16:20.520 | So they have neurons in their nose and in their head

00:16:24.320 | that allow them to migrate along magnetic fields

00:16:27.520 | in order to, as amazing as this sounds,

00:16:29.980 | go from one particular location in the ocean,

00:16:33.120 | thousands of miles away to all aggregate

00:16:37.280 | on one particular beach at a particular time of year

00:16:40.560 | so that they can mate, lay eggs

00:16:43.220 | and then wander back off into the sea to die

00:16:45.800 | and then their young will eventually hatch.

00:16:48.840 | Those cute little turtles will shuffle to the ocean,

00:16:51.800 | swim off and go do the exact same thing.

00:16:54.400 | They don't migrate that distance by vision.

00:16:56.780 | They don't do it by smell.

00:16:57.840 | They do it by sensing magnetic fields, okay?

00:17:01.180 | And many other species do these incredible things.

00:17:04.820 | Humans are not magnetic sensing organisms.

00:17:07.500 | We can't do that because we don't have receptors

00:17:09.860 | that sense magnetic fields.

00:17:11.620 | There are some data that maybe some humans

00:17:14.160 | can sense magnetic fields,

00:17:15.860 | but you should be very skeptical of anyone

00:17:17.460 | that's convinced that they can do that

00:17:19.140 | with any degree of robustness or accuracy

00:17:22.260 | because even the people that can do this

00:17:24.560 | aren't necessarily aware that they can.

00:17:26.940 | Maybe a topic for a future podcast.

00:17:29.260 | So we have sensation.

00:17:30.700 | Then we have perception.

00:17:31.980 | Perception is our ability to take what we're sensing

00:17:36.180 | and focus on it and make sense of it,

00:17:39.340 | to explore it, to remember it.

00:17:40.960 | So really perceptions are just whichever sensations

00:17:43.580 | we happen to be paying attention to at any moment.

00:17:46.220 | And you can do this right now.

00:17:47.680 | You can experience perception

00:17:49.540 | and the difference between perception

00:17:51.060 | and sensation very easily.

00:17:53.260 | If for instance, I tell you to pay attention

00:17:56.500 | to the contact of your feet, the bottoms of your feet

00:17:59.360 | with whatever surface they happen to be in contact with,

00:18:01.900 | maybe it's shoes, maybe it's the floor.

00:18:04.620 | If your feet are up, maybe it's air.

00:18:07.160 | The moment you place your,

00:18:09.060 | what we call the spotlight of attention

00:18:10.820 | or the spotlight of perception on your feet,

00:18:13.140 | you are now perceiving what was happening there,

00:18:15.840 | what was being sensed there.

00:18:18.100 | The sensation was happening all along, however.

00:18:20.820 | So while sensation is not negotiable,

00:18:24.740 | you can't change your receptors

00:18:26.280 | unless you adopt some new technology.

00:18:28.740 | Perception is under the control of your attention.

00:18:32.180 | And the way to think about attention

00:18:33.700 | is it's like a spotlight, except it's not one spotlight.

00:18:37.060 | You actually have two attentional spotlights.

00:18:39.680 | Anyone that tells you you can't multitask,

00:18:43.020 | tell them they're wrong.

00:18:44.420 | And if they disagree with you, tell them to contact me.

00:18:47.440 | Because in old world primates of which humans are,

00:18:52.440 | we are able to do what's called covert attention.

00:18:55.700 | We can place a spotlight of attention on something.

00:18:58.340 | For instance, something we're reading or looking at,

00:19:00.780 | or someone that we're listening to.

00:19:02.080 | And we can place a second spotlight of attention

00:19:05.180 | on something we're eating and how it tastes,

00:19:07.380 | or our child running around in the room, or my dog.

00:19:10.660 | You can split your attention into two locations,

00:19:12.980 | but of course you can also bring your attention,

00:19:15.920 | that is your perception, to one particular location.

00:19:19.420 | You can dilate your attention,

00:19:20.880 | kind of like making a spotlight more diffuse,

00:19:23.060 | or you can make it more concentrated.

00:19:25.100 | This is very important to understand

00:19:27.900 | if you're going to think about tools

00:19:29.860 | to improve your nervous system.

00:19:31.800 | Whether or not that tool is in the form of a chemical

00:19:35.220 | that you decide to take,

00:19:36.260 | maybe a supplement to increase some chemical in your brain,

00:19:38.820 | if that's your choice, or a brain machine device,

00:19:43.160 | or you're going to try and learn something better

00:19:45.640 | by engaging in some focus or motivated pursuit

00:19:49.100 | for some period of time each day.

00:19:51.200 | Attention is something that is absolutely under your control,

00:19:55.340 | in particular, when you're rested.

00:19:57.780 | And we'll get back to this, but when you are rested,

00:20:00.860 | and we'll define rest very clearly,

00:20:04.500 | you are able to direct your attention

00:20:06.640 | in very deliberate ways.

00:20:08.060 | And that's because we have something in our nervous system

00:20:11.980 | which is sort of like a two-way street.

00:20:14.340 | And that two-way street is a communication

00:20:16.460 | between the aspects of our nervous system

00:20:18.260 | that are reflexive and the aspects of our nervous system

00:20:22.140 | that are deliberate.

00:20:23.480 | So we all know what it's like to be reflexive.

00:20:26.140 | You go through life, you're walking.

00:20:27.860 | If you already know how to walk,

00:20:29.100 | you don't think about your walking, you just walk.

00:20:31.900 | And that's because the nervous system wants to pass off

00:20:34.640 | as much as it can to reflexive action.

00:20:36.760 | That's called a bottom-up processing.

00:20:39.580 | It really just means that information is flowing in

00:20:42.420 | through your senses, regardless of what you're perceiving,

00:20:45.640 | that information is flowing up

00:20:46.940 | and it's directing your activity.

00:20:49.280 | But at any moment, for instance,

00:20:51.280 | let's say a car screeches in front of you around the corner

00:20:54.340 | and you suddenly pause, you are now moving

00:20:56.980 | into deliberate action.

00:20:58.440 | You would start looking around in a very deliberate way.

00:21:01.740 | The nervous system can be reflexive in its action

00:21:04.540 | or it can be deliberate.

00:21:06.240 | If reflexive action tends to be what we call bottom-up,

00:21:09.920 | deliberate action and deliberate perceptions

00:21:13.180 | and deliberate thoughts are top-down.

00:21:15.600 | They require some effort and some focus,

00:21:17.980 | but that's the point.

00:21:18.900 | You can decide to focus your attention and energy

00:21:21.580 | on anything you want.

00:21:22.860 | You can decide to focus your behavior in any way you want,

00:21:26.540 | but it will always feel like it requires some effort

00:21:30.580 | and some strain.

00:21:31.460 | Whereas when you're in reflexive mode,

00:21:32.800 | just walking and talking and eating and doing your thing,

00:21:35.720 | it's gonna feel very easy.

00:21:37.300 | And that's because your nervous system basically wired up

00:21:39.820 | to be able to do most things easily

00:21:41.900 | without much metabolic demand,

00:21:43.500 | without consuming much energy.

00:21:45.060 | But the moment you try and do something very specific,

00:21:48.360 | you're gonna feel a sort of mental friction.

00:21:50.860 | It's gonna be challenging.

00:21:52.460 | So we've got sensations, perceptions,

00:21:54.980 | and then we've got things that we call feelings/emotions.

00:21:58.780 | And these get a little complicated

00:22:00.440 | because almost all of us, I would hope all of us,

00:22:03.840 | are familiar with things like happiness and sadness

00:22:07.020 | or boredom or frustration.

00:22:09.820 | Scientists argue like crazy,

00:22:11.840 | neuroscientists and psychologists

00:22:13.300 | and philosophers for that matter,

00:22:14.740 | argue like crazy about what these are and how they work.

00:22:18.700 | Certainly emotions and feelings

00:22:20.740 | are the product of the nervous system.

00:22:23.020 | They involve the activity of neurons.

00:22:25.560 | But as I mentioned earlier, neurons are electrically active,

00:22:28.500 | but they also release chemicals.

00:22:30.660 | And there's a certain category of chemicals

00:22:33.860 | that has a very profound influence on our emotional states.

00:22:38.140 | They're called neuromodulators.

00:22:41.420 | And those neuromodulators have names

00:22:43.040 | that probably you've heard of before,

00:22:44.660 | things like dopamine and serotonin

00:22:46.880 | and acetylcholine, epinephrine.

00:22:49.900 | Neuromodulators are really interesting

00:22:52.340 | because they bias which neurons are likely to be active

00:22:55.740 | and which ones are likely to be inactive.

00:22:58.660 | A simple way to think about neuromodulators

00:23:00.700 | is they are sort of like playlists

00:23:02.940 | that you would have on any kind of device

00:23:05.700 | where you're gonna play particular categories of music.

00:23:08.180 | So for instance, dopamine, which is often discussed

00:23:11.020 | as the molecule of reward or joy, is involved in reward.

00:23:16.940 | And it does tend to create a sort of upbeat mood

00:23:20.020 | when released in appropriate amounts in the brain.

00:23:23.420 | But the reason it does that

00:23:24.940 | is because it makes certain neurons and neural circuits,

00:23:29.120 | as we call them, more active and others less active.

00:23:32.900 | So serotonin, for instance, is a molecule

00:23:36.060 | that when released tends to make us feel really good

00:23:39.220 | with what we have, our sort of internal landscape

00:23:41.940 | and the resources that we have.

00:23:43.620 | Whereas dopamine, more than being a molecule of reward,

00:23:46.340 | is really more a molecule of motivation

00:23:49.320 | toward things that are outside us and that we want to pursue.

00:23:52.760 | And we can look at healthy conditions or situations

00:23:57.480 | like being in pursuit of a goal

00:23:59.400 | where every time we accomplish something

00:24:01.240 | in route to that goal, a little bit of dopamine is released

00:24:03.660 | and we feel more motivation, that happens.

00:24:06.600 | We can also look at the extreme example

00:24:08.740 | of something like mania, where somebody is so, you know,

00:24:13.100 | relentlessly in pursuit of external things like money

00:24:16.240 | and relationships that they're sort of

00:24:18.580 | in this delusional state of thinking

00:24:20.340 | that they have the resources that they need

00:24:22.180 | in order to pursue all these things

00:24:23.320 | when in fact they don't.

00:24:24.620 | So these neuromodulators can exist in normal levels,

00:24:28.420 | low levels, high levels.

00:24:29.700 | And that actually gives us a window

00:24:31.480 | into a very important aspect of neuroscience history

00:24:34.980 | that all of us are impacted by today,

00:24:36.860 | which is the discovery of antidepressants

00:24:39.140 | and so-called antipsychotics.

00:24:41.100 | In the 1950s, '60s, and '70s,

00:24:43.580 | it was discovered that there are compounds, chemicals,

00:24:47.420 | that can increase or decrease serotonin,

00:24:50.080 | that can increase or decrease dopamine.

00:24:52.820 | And that led to the development

00:24:54.980 | of most of what we call antidepressants.

00:24:57.960 | Now, the trick here or the problem

00:25:01.000 | is that most of these drugs,

00:25:03.320 | especially in the 1950s and '60s,

00:25:05.680 | they would reduce serotonin,

00:25:07.020 | but they would also reduce dopamine,

00:25:08.720 | or they would increase serotonin,

00:25:10.060 | but they would also increase

00:25:11.440 | some other neuromodulator or chemical.

00:25:13.280 | And that's because all these chemical systems in the body,

00:25:17.300 | but the neuromodulators in particular,

00:25:19.460 | have a lot of receptors.

00:25:21.360 | Now, these are different than the receptors

00:25:22.780 | we were talking about earlier.

00:25:23.980 | The receptors I'm talking about now

00:25:25.360 | are sort of like parking spots where dopamine is released.

00:25:28.700 | And if it attaches to a receptor, say, on the heart,

00:25:32.940 | it might make the heart beat faster

00:25:35.140 | because there's a certain kind of receptor on the heart.

00:25:37.580 | Whereas if dopamine is released

00:25:40.280 | and goes and attaches to muscle,

00:25:42.460 | it might have a completely different effect on muscle.

00:25:44.640 | And in fact, it does.

00:25:46.480 | So different receptors on different organs of the body

00:25:49.140 | are the ways that these neuromodulators

00:25:51.420 | can have all these different effects

00:25:53.740 | on different aspects of our biology.

00:25:55.860 | This is most salient in the example

00:25:58.860 | of some of the antidepressants

00:26:01.160 | that have sexual side effects,

00:26:03.580 | or that blunt appetite, or that blunt motivation.

00:26:06.740 | Many of these which increase serotonin

00:26:10.280 | can be very beneficial for people.

00:26:12.320 | It can elevate their mood, it can make them feel better,

00:26:14.760 | but they also, if the doses are too high,

00:26:18.020 | or if that particular drug isn't right for somebody,

00:26:20.600 | that person experiences challenges with motivation,

00:26:23.360 | or appetite, or libido,

00:26:24.800 | because serotonin is binding to receptors

00:26:27.800 | in the areas of the brain

00:26:28.680 | that control those other things as well.

00:26:31.180 | So we talked about sensation, we talked about perception.

00:26:34.420 | When we talk about feelings,

00:26:35.480 | we have to consider these neuromodulators.

00:26:38.000 | And we have to consider also that feelings and emotions

00:26:41.100 | are contextual.

00:26:42.720 | In some cultures, showing a lot of joy or a lot of sadness

00:26:46.520 | is entirely appropriate.

00:26:47.860 | In other cultures, it's considered inappropriate.

00:26:50.440 | So I don't think it's fair to say

00:26:51.820 | that there's a sadness circuit or area of the brain,

00:26:55.180 | or a happiness circuit or area of the brain.

00:26:57.520 | However, it is fair to say that certain chemicals

00:27:01.420 | and certain brain circuits tend to be active

00:27:04.020 | when we are in motivated states,

00:27:05.640 | tend to be active when we are in non-motivated, lazy states,

00:27:09.340 | tend to be active when we are focused,

00:27:11.600 | and tend to be active when we are not focused.

00:27:14.060 | I want to emphasize also that emotions

00:27:19.240 | are something that we generally feel

00:27:21.980 | are not under our control.

00:27:23.220 | We feel like they kind of geyser up within us

00:27:25.100 | and they just kind of happen to us.

00:27:27.180 | And that's because they are somewhat reflexive.

00:27:29.880 | We don't really set out with a deliberate thought

00:27:32.440 | to be happy or deliberate thought to be sad.

00:27:34.780 | We tend to experience them

00:27:36.120 | in kind of a passive reflexive way.

00:27:38.840 | And that brings us to the next thing, which are thoughts.

00:27:41.800 | Thoughts are really interesting

00:27:43.020 | because in many ways they're like perceptions,

00:27:45.740 | except that they draw

00:27:47.100 | on not just what's happening in the present,

00:27:49.440 | but also things we remember from the past

00:27:52.280 | and things that we anticipate about the future.

00:27:55.080 | The other thing about thoughts that's really interesting

00:27:57.020 | is that thoughts can be both reflexive,

00:28:00.760 | they can just be occurring all the time,

00:28:02.660 | sort of like pop-up windows

00:28:04.380 | on a poorly filtered web browser,

00:28:06.920 | or they can be deliberate.

00:28:08.440 | We can decide to have a thought.

00:28:10.020 | In fact, right now you could decide to have a thought

00:28:12.080 | just like you would decide to write something out

00:28:13.920 | on a piece of paper.

00:28:15.280 | You could decide that you're listening to a podcast,

00:28:17.640 | that you are in a particular location.

00:28:19.840 | You're not just paying attention to what's happening,

00:28:21.500 | you're directing your thought process.

00:28:23.780 | And a lot of people don't understand,

00:28:25.520 | or at least appreciate that the thought patterns

00:28:27.740 | and the neural circuits that underlie thoughts

00:28:30.560 | can actually be controlled in this deliberate way.

00:28:33.680 | And then finally, there are actions.

00:28:36.320 | Actions or behaviors are perhaps the most important aspect

00:28:40.140 | to our nervous system.

00:28:41.560 | Because first of all,

00:28:43.260 | our behaviors are actually the only thing

00:28:46.580 | that are gonna create any fossil record of our existence.

00:28:50.720 | After we die, the nervous system deteriorates,

00:28:53.120 | our skeleton will remain,

00:28:54.800 | but it's in the moment of experiencing

00:28:58.120 | something very joyful or something very sad,

00:29:01.520 | it can feel so all encompassing

00:29:04.500 | that we actually think that it has some meaning

00:29:06.920 | beyond that moment.

00:29:08.160 | But actually for humans, and I think for all species,

00:29:12.000 | the sensations, the perceptions and the thoughts

00:29:16.480 | and the feelings that we have in our lifespan,

00:29:19.760 | none of that is actually carried forward

00:29:22.700 | except the ones that we take

00:29:24.860 | and we convert into actions such as writing,

00:29:28.920 | actions such as words,

00:29:30.440 | actions such as engineering new things.

00:29:32.680 | And so the fossil record of our species

00:29:35.540 | and of each one of us is really through action.

00:29:39.040 | And that in part is why so much of our nervous system

00:29:43.320 | is devoted to converting sensation, perceptions,

00:29:46.840 | feelings and thoughts into actions.

00:29:49.660 | In fact, the great neuroscientist or physiologist,

00:29:53.540 | Sherrington, won a Nobel Prize for his work

00:29:57.320 | in mapping some of the circuitry,

00:29:59.960 | the connections between nerve cells

00:30:01.480 | that give rise to movement.

00:30:03.420 | And he said, "Movement is the final common pathway."

00:30:07.160 | The other way to think about it

00:30:08.620 | is that one of the reasons that our central nervous system,

00:30:11.840 | our brain and spinal cord include this stuff in our skull,

00:30:14.920 | but also connects so heavily to the body

00:30:17.120 | is because most everything that we experience,

00:30:19.800 | including our thoughts and feelings,

00:30:21.600 | was really designed to either impact our behavior or not.

00:30:25.920 | And the fact that thoughts allow us to reach into the past

00:30:28.760 | and anticipate the future

00:30:29.960 | and not just experience what's happening in the moment,

00:30:32.700 | gave rise to an incredible capacity

00:30:35.100 | for us to engage in behaviors

00:30:37.100 | that are not just for the moment,

00:30:38.820 | they're based on things that we know from the past

00:30:40.920 | and that we would like to see in the future.

00:30:43.960 | And this aspect to our nervous system of creating movement

00:30:47.800 | occurs through some very simple pathways.

00:30:50.480 | The reflexive pathway basically includes

00:30:53.720 | areas of the brainstem we call central pattern generators.

00:30:57.000 | When you walk, provided you already know how to walk,

00:31:00.040 | you are basically walking

00:31:03.100 | because you have these central pattern generators,

00:31:05.000 | groups of neurons that generate right foot, left foot,

00:31:07.140 | right foot, left foot kind of movement.

00:31:09.040 | However, when you decide to move

00:31:10.600 | in a particular deliberate way

00:31:12.160 | that requires a little more attention,

00:31:14.240 | you start to engage areas of your brain

00:31:17.520 | for top-down processing,

00:31:18.880 | where your forebrain works from the top down

00:31:22.620 | to control those central pattern generators

00:31:24.600 | so that maybe it's right foot, right foot, left foot,

00:31:26.820 | right foot, right foot, left foot

00:31:27.960 | if maybe you're hiking along some rocks or something

00:31:30.120 | and you have to engage in that kind of movement.

00:31:32.560 | So movement is just like thoughts,

00:31:36.000 | can be either reflexive or deliberate.

00:31:39.440 | And when we talk about deliberate,

00:31:41.000 | I wanna be very specific about how your brain works

00:31:44.020 | in the deliberate way

00:31:44.860 | because it gives rise to a very important feature

00:31:48.440 | of the nervous system that we're gonna talk about next,

00:31:50.240 | which is your ability to change your nervous system.

00:31:53.240 | And what I'd like to center on for a second

00:31:55.180 | is this notion of what does it mean

00:31:58.060 | for the nervous system to do something deliberately?

00:32:01.060 | Well, when you do something deliberately,

00:32:03.480 | you pay attention, you are bringing your perception

00:32:06.680 | to an analysis of three things.

00:32:09.460 | Duration, how long something is gonna take

00:32:12.680 | or should be done.

00:32:14.160 | Path, what you should be doing.

00:32:16.240 | And outcome, if you do something

00:32:18.260 | for a given length of time, what's gonna happen.

00:32:20.600 | Now, when you're walking down the street

00:32:21.880 | or you're eating or you're just talking reflexively,

00:32:24.200 | you're not doing this, what I call DPO,

00:32:26.220 | duration path outcome type of deliberate function

00:32:29.400 | in your brain and nervous system.

00:32:31.300 | But the moment you decide to learn something

00:32:34.080 | or to resist speaking or to speak up

00:32:37.280 | when you would rather be quiet,

00:32:39.400 | anytime you're deliberately forcing yourself

00:32:42.240 | over a threshold, you're engaging these brain circuits

00:32:46.480 | and these nervous system circuits

00:32:48.360 | that suddenly make it feel as if something is challenging,

00:32:52.120 | something has changed.

00:32:53.620 | Well, what's changed?

00:32:54.720 | What's changed is that when you engage in this duration path

00:32:58.000 | and outcome type of thinking or behavior or way of being,

00:33:02.000 | you start to recruit these neuromodulators

00:33:06.020 | that are released from particular areas of your brain

00:33:08.320 | and also it turns out from your body

00:33:09.920 | and they start queuing to your nervous system,

00:33:12.240 | something's different.

00:33:13.080 | Something's different now about what I'm doing.

00:33:15.280 | Something's different about what I'm feeling.

00:33:17.680 | Let's give an example where perhaps somebody says something

00:33:21.160 | that's triggering to you.

00:33:22.160 | You don't like it and you know you shouldn't respond.

00:33:25.340 | You feel like, oh, I shouldn't respond,

00:33:27.000 | I shouldn't respond, I shouldn't respond.

00:33:28.400 | You're actively suppressing your behavior

00:33:30.840 | through top-down processing.

00:33:33.640 | Your forebrain is actually preventing you

00:33:35.600 | from saying the thing that you know you shouldn't say

00:33:38.340 | or that maybe you should wait to say

00:33:39.760 | or say in a different form.

00:33:41.560 | This feels like agitation and stress

00:33:43.760 | because you're actually suppressing a circuit.

00:33:46.120 | We actually can see examples of what happens

00:33:48.420 | when you're not doing this well.

00:33:51.100 | Some of the examples come from children.

00:33:53.960 | If you look at young children,

00:33:55.440 | they don't have the forebrain circuitry

00:33:57.900 | to engage in this top-down processing

00:33:59.880 | until they reach age 22, even 25.

00:34:03.320 | But in young children, you see this in a really robust way.

00:34:06.920 | You'll see they'll be rocking back and forth.

00:34:08.720 | It's hard for them to sit still

00:34:10.000 | because those central pattern generators

00:34:11.960 | are constantly going in the background

00:34:13.400 | whereas adults can sit still.

00:34:15.400 | A kid sees a piece of candy that it wants

00:34:17.600 | and will just reach out and grab it

00:34:19.660 | whereas an adult probably would ask

00:34:21.580 | if they could have a piece

00:34:22.420 | or wait until they were offered a piece in most cases.

00:34:25.560 | People that have damage to the certain areas

00:34:27.980 | of the frontal lobes don't have this kind of restriction.

00:34:31.120 | They'll just blurt things out.

00:34:32.580 | They'll just say things.

00:34:33.480 | We all know people like this.

00:34:34.960 | Impulsivity is a lack of top-down control,

00:34:38.960 | a lack of top-down processing.

00:34:41.120 | The other thing that will turn off the forebrain

00:34:43.160 | and make it harder to top-down processing

00:34:45.280 | is a couple of drinks containing alcohol.

00:34:48.560 | The removal of inhibition is actually

00:34:51.200 | a removal of neural inhibition of nerve cells

00:34:54.600 | suppressing the activity of other nerve cells.

00:34:57.440 | And so when you look at people

00:34:59.320 | that have damage to their frontal lobes

00:35:01.120 | or you look at puppies or you look at young children,

00:35:04.080 | everything's a stimulus.

00:35:05.440 | Everything is a potential interaction for them

00:35:07.420 | and they have a very hard time

00:35:08.880 | restricting their behavior and their speech.

00:35:11.520 | So a lot of the motor system

00:35:13.920 | is designed to just work in a reflexive way.

00:35:16.800 | And then when we decide we want to learn something

00:35:18.760 | or do something or not do something,

00:35:21.180 | we have to engage in this top-down restriction

00:35:23.680 | and it feels like agitation

00:35:25.280 | because it's accompanied by the release

00:35:27.160 | of a neuromodulator called norepinephrine,

00:35:30.080 | which in the body we call adrenaline

00:35:32.080 | and it actually makes us feel agitated.

00:35:34.320 | So for those of you that are trying to learn something new

00:35:36.980 | or to learn to suppress your responses

00:35:39.120 | or be more deliberate and careful in your responses,

00:35:43.140 | that is going to feel challenging for a particular reason.

00:35:46.480 | It's going to feel challenging

00:35:47.540 | because the chemicals in your body

00:35:49.140 | that are released in association with that effort

00:35:52.420 | are designed to make you feel kind of agitated.

00:35:55.640 | That low-level tremor that sometimes people feel

00:35:57.620 | when they're really, really angry

00:35:59.060 | is actually a chemically induced low-level tremor.

00:36:02.400 | And it's the, what I call limbic friction.

00:36:04.920 | There's an area of your brain that's involved

00:36:06.380 | in our more primitive reflexive responses

00:36:08.560 | called the limbic system.

00:36:09.960 | And the frontal cortex is in a friction.

00:36:12.760 | It's in a tug of war with that system all the time,

00:36:16.000 | unless of course you have damage to the frontal lobe

00:36:18.260 | or you've had too much to drink or something,

00:36:19.780 | in which case you tend to just say and do whatever.

00:36:22.320 | And so this is really important to understand

00:36:25.460 | because if you want to understand neuroplasticity,

00:36:28.720 | you want to understand how to shape your behavior,

00:36:30.740 | how to shape your thinking,

00:36:31.840 | how to change how you're able to perform in any context.

00:36:36.700 | The most important thing to understand

00:36:38.600 | is that it requires top-down processing.

00:36:41.760 | It requires this feeling of agitation.

00:36:44.760 | In fact, I would say that agitation and strain

00:36:47.260 | is the entry point to neuroplasticity.

00:36:50.240 | So let's take a look at what neuroplasticity is.

00:36:52.920 | Let's explore it not as the way it's normally talked about

00:36:56.020 | in modern culture as a neuroplasticity.

00:36:58.720 | Plasticity is great.

00:36:59.960 | What exactly do people mean?

00:37:02.000 | Plasticity itself is just a process

00:37:04.040 | by which neurons can change their connections

00:37:06.680 | in the way they work so that you can go from things

00:37:10.720 | being very challenging and deliberate,

00:37:13.480 | requiring a lot of effort and strain

00:37:15.480 | to them being reflexive.

00:37:17.020 | And typically, when we hear about plasticity,

00:37:18.800 | we're thinking about positive

00:37:19.920 | or what I call adaptive plasticity.

00:37:22.360 | A lot of plasticity can be induced, for instance,

00:37:24.340 | by brain damage, but that's generally

00:37:26.280 | not the kind of plasticity that we want.

00:37:28.160 | So when I say plasticity, unless I say otherwise,

00:37:30.840 | I mean adaptive plasticity.

00:37:32.680 | And in particular, most of the neuroplasticity

00:37:35.680 | that people want is self-directed plasticity

00:37:38.600 | because if there's one truism to neuroplasticity,

00:37:41.440 | it's that from birth until about age 25,

00:37:45.680 | the brain is incredibly plastic.

00:37:47.640 | Kids are learning all sorts of things,

00:37:49.660 | but they can learn it passively.

00:37:51.380 | They don't have to work too hard or focus too hard,

00:37:54.800 | although focus helps, to learn new things,

00:37:57.720 | acquire new languages, acquire new skills.

00:38:00.120 | But if you're an adult and you want to change

00:38:02.000 | your neural circuitry at the level of emotions

00:38:04.520 | or behavior or thoughts or anything really,

00:38:07.340 | you absolutely need to ask two important questions.

00:38:11.400 | One, what particular aspect of my nervous system

00:38:16.400 | am I trying to change?

00:38:18.380 | Meaning, am I trying to change my emotions

00:38:20.440 | or my perceptions, my sensations,

00:38:22.480 | and which ones are available for me to change?

00:38:24.840 | And then the second question is,

00:38:26.620 | how are you going to go about that?

00:38:28.260 | What is the structure of a regimen

00:38:31.680 | to engage neuroplasticity?

00:38:33.360 | And it turns out that the answer to that second question

00:38:36.380 | is governed by how awake or how sleepy we are.

00:38:40.080 | So let's talk about that next.

00:38:41.600 | Neuroplasticity is the ability for these connections

00:38:44.500 | in the brain and body to change in response to experience.

00:38:47.560 | And what's so incredible about the human nervous system

00:38:50.080 | in particular is that we can direct our own neural changes.

00:38:54.100 | We can decide that we want to change our brain.

00:38:57.440 | In other words, our brain can change itself

00:38:59.520 | and our nervous system can change itself.

00:39:01.400 | And the same can't be said for other organs of the body.

00:39:04.280 | Even though our other organs of the body have some ability

00:39:07.480 | to change, they can't direct it.

00:39:10.020 | They can't think and decide, oh, you know,

00:39:11.960 | your gut doesn't say, oh, you know,

00:39:13.240 | I want to be able to digest spicy foods better.

00:39:15.500 | So I'm going to rearrange the connections

00:39:17.480 | to be able to do that.

00:39:18.360 | Whereas your brain can decide

00:39:20.120 | that you want to learn a language

00:39:21.660 | or you want to be less emotionally reactive

00:39:24.040 | or more emotionally engaged.

00:39:25.740 | And you can undergo a series of steps

00:39:28.040 | that will allow your brain to make those changes

00:39:31.020 | so that eventually it becomes reflexive for you to do that,

00:39:34.180 | which is absolutely incredible.

00:39:36.060 | For a long time, it was thought that neuroplasticity

00:39:40.300 | was the unique gift of young animals and humans,

00:39:43.380 | that it could only occur when we're young.

00:39:45.140 | And in fact, the young brain is incredibly plastic.

00:39:48.120 | Children can learn three languages

00:39:49.920 | without an accent reflexively,

00:39:52.120 | whereas adults, it's very challenging.

00:39:54.760 | It takes a lot more effort and strain,

00:39:56.440 | a lot more of that duration path outcome kind of thinking

00:39:59.160 | in order to achieve those plastic changes.

00:40:02.880 | We now know, however, that the adult brain can change

00:40:06.360 | in response to experience.

00:40:08.200 | Nobel prizes were given for the understanding

00:40:11.820 | that the young brain can change very dramatically.

00:40:14.360 | I think one of the most extreme examples would be

00:40:17.020 | for people that are born blind from birth,

00:40:19.980 | they use the area of their brain

00:40:21.460 | that normally would be used for visualizing objects

00:40:24.640 | and colors and things outside of them for braille reading.

00:40:28.180 | In brain imaging studies, it's been shown that, you know,

00:40:31.200 | people who are blind from birth, when they braille read,

00:40:33.400 | the area of the brain that would normally light up,

00:40:36.760 | if you will, for vision, lights up for braille reading.

00:40:40.960 | So that real estate is reallocated

00:40:43.560 | for an entirely different function.

00:40:45.320 | If someone is made blind in adulthood,

00:40:49.560 | it's unlikely that their entire visual brain

00:40:52.080 | will be taken over by the areas of the brain

00:40:55.500 | they're responsible for touch.

00:40:56.840 | However, there's some evidence that areas of the brain

00:41:00.180 | that are involved in hearing and touch

00:41:01.580 | can kind of migrate into that area.

00:41:04.120 | And there's a lot of interest now in trying to figure out

00:41:06.500 | how more plasticity can be induced in adulthood,

00:41:10.080 | more positive plasticity.

00:41:12.380 | And in order to understand that process,

00:41:15.640 | we really have to understand something that might

00:41:17.980 | at first seem totally divorced from neuroplasticity,

00:41:20.880 | but actually lies at the center of neuroplasticity.

00:41:23.920 | And for any of you that are interested

00:41:25.420 | in changing your nervous system,

00:41:27.020 | so that something that you want can go

00:41:29.440 | from being very hard or seem almost impossible

00:41:32.360 | and out of reach to being very reflexive,

00:41:34.900 | this is especially important to pay attention to.

00:41:37.660 | Plasticity in the adult human nervous system is gated,

00:41:43.400 | meaning it is controlled by neuromodulators.

00:41:47.640 | These things that we talked about earlier,

00:41:49.600 | dopamine, serotonin, and one in particular

00:41:53.000 | called acetylcholine, are what open up plasticity.

00:41:57.920 | They literally unveil plasticity

00:42:00.200 | and allow brief periods of time

00:42:01.640 | in which whatever information,

00:42:03.700 | whatever thing we're sensing or perceiving or thinking,

00:42:07.180 | whatever emotions we feel,

00:42:09.020 | can literally be mapped in the brain

00:42:11.260 | such that later it will become much easier

00:42:14.240 | for us to experience and feel that thing.

00:42:16.920 | Now this has a dark side and a positive side.

00:42:19.920 | The dark side is it's actually very easy

00:42:22.240 | to get neuroplasticity as an adult

00:42:24.520 | through traumatic or terrible or challenging experiences.

00:42:28.400 | But the important question is to say, why is that?

00:42:31.720 | And the reason that's the case

00:42:33.660 | is because when something very bad happens,

00:42:37.260 | there's the release of two sets of neuromodulators

00:42:40.240 | in the brain, epinephrine,

00:42:42.720 | which tends to make us feel alert and agitated,

00:42:45.260 | which is associated with most bad circumstances,

00:42:48.200 | and acetylcholine, which tends to create

00:42:50.800 | a even more intense and focused perceptual spotlight.

00:42:55.060 | Remember earlier we were talking about perception

00:42:57.160 | and how it's kind of like a spotlight.

00:42:58.840 | Acetylcholine makes that light particularly bright

00:43:01.480 | and particularly restricted to one region of our experience.

00:43:06.080 | And it does that by making certain neurons

00:43:08.600 | in our brain and body active much more than all the rest.

00:43:13.600 | So acetylcholine is sort of like a highlighter marker

00:43:18.200 | upon which neuroplasticity then comes in later

00:43:21.800 | and says, wait, which neurons were active

00:43:23.820 | in this particularly alerting phase of whatever,

00:43:28.760 | day or night, whenever this thing happened to happen.

00:43:30.800 | So the way it works is this.

00:43:31.920 | You can think of epinephrine as creating this alertness

00:43:35.320 | and this kind of unbelievable level of increased attention

00:43:38.980 | compared to what you were experiencing before.

00:43:40.680 | And you can think of acetylcholine as being the molecule

00:43:44.880 | that highlights whatever happens during that period

00:43:48.900 | of heightened alertness.

00:43:50.440 | So just to be clear, it's epinephrine creates the alertness

00:43:54.760 | that's coming from a subset of neurons in the brainstem

00:43:56.840 | if you're interested, and acetylcholine coming from an area

00:44:00.080 | of the forebrain is tagging or marking the neurons

00:44:04.600 | that are particularly active during this heightened level

00:44:07.520 | of alertness.

00:44:08.420 | Now that marks the cells, the neurons and the synapses

00:44:13.160 | for strengthening, for becoming more likely to be active

00:44:17.680 | in the future, even without us thinking about it, okay?

00:44:21.760 | So in bad circumstances, this all happens

00:44:25.480 | without us having to do much.

00:44:27.600 | When we want something to happen, however,

00:44:30.040 | we wanna learn a new language.

00:44:31.540 | We want to learn a new skill.

00:44:33.180 | We wanna become more motivated.

00:44:35.360 | What do we know for certain?

00:44:36.520 | We know that that process of getting neuroplasticity

00:44:40.320 | so that we have more focus, more motivation,

00:44:42.480 | absolutely requires the release of epinephrine.

00:44:46.740 | We have to have alertness in order to have focus,

00:44:50.100 | and we have to have focus in order to direct

00:44:53.280 | those plastic changes to particular parts

00:44:56.000 | of our nervous system.

00:44:57.680 | Now this has immense implications in thinking

00:45:01.200 | about the various tools, whether or not those

00:45:03.720 | are chemical tools or machine tools or just self-induced

00:45:08.240 | regimens of how long or how intensely you're going to focus

00:45:11.800 | in order to get neuroplasticity.

00:45:13.840 | But there's another side to it.

00:45:17.160 | The dirty secret of neuroplasticity is that

00:45:20.280 | no neuroplasticity occurs during the thing

00:45:23.680 | you're trying to learn, during the terrible event,

00:45:27.300 | during the great event, during the thing

00:45:29.440 | that you're really trying to shape and learn.

00:45:32.480 | Nothing is actually changing between the neurons

00:45:35.680 | that is going to last.

00:45:37.160 | All the neuroplasticity, the strengthening of the synapses,

00:45:41.600 | the addition in some cases of new nerve cells,

00:45:44.640 | or at least connections between nerve cells,

00:45:47.440 | all of that occurs at a very different phase of life,

00:45:50.900 | which is when we are in sleep and non-sleep deep rest.

00:45:54.840 | And so neuroplasticity, which is the kind of holy grail

00:45:57.960 | of human experience of, you know, this is the new year

00:46:00.460 | and everyone's thinking new year's resolutions.

00:46:02.280 | And right now, perhaps everything's organized

00:46:04.920 | and people are highly motivated,

00:46:06.400 | but what happens in March or April or May?

00:46:09.160 | Well, that all depends on how much attention and focus

00:46:12.460 | one can continually bring to whatever it is

00:46:14.880 | they're trying to learn.

00:46:16.080 | So much so that agitation and a feeling of strain

00:46:19.320 | are actually required for this process of neuroplasticity

00:46:23.400 | to get triggered, but the actual rewiring occurs

00:46:26.240 | during periods of sleep and non-sleep deep rest.

00:46:30.640 | There's a study published last year

00:46:32.020 | that's particularly relevant here that I want to share

00:46:35.280 | was not done by my laboratory,

00:46:37.320 | that showed that 20 minutes of deep rest,

00:46:41.280 | this is not deep sleep,

00:46:42.920 | but essentially doing something very hard and very intense

00:46:46.840 | and then taking 20 minutes afterwards,

00:46:49.160 | immediately afterwards, to deliberately turn off

00:46:52.300 | the deliberate focused thinking and engagement

00:46:55.680 | actually accelerated neuroplasticity.

00:46:58.460 | There's another study that's just incredible,

00:47:00.680 | and we're going to go into this in a future episode

00:47:03.040 | of the podcast, not too long from now,

00:47:05.160 | that showed that if people are learning a particular skill,

00:47:10.160 | it could be a language skill or a motor skill,

00:47:12.800 | and they hear a tone just playing in the background,

00:47:16.480 | the tone is playing periodically through the background,

00:47:18.520 | like just a bell, in deep sleep, if that bell is played,

00:47:23.520 | learning is much faster for the thing

00:47:26.700 | that they were learning while they were awake.

00:47:29.200 | It somehow cues the nervous system in sleep,

00:47:32.800 | doesn't even have to be in dreaming,

00:47:34.560 | that something that happened in the waking phase

00:47:38.000 | was especially important,

00:47:39.500 | so much so that that bell is sort of a Pavlovian cue,

00:47:43.600 | it's sort of a reminder to the sleeping brain,

00:47:46.320 | oh, you need to remember what it is that you were learning

00:47:48.600 | at that particular time of day,

00:47:49.680 | and the learning rates and the rates of retention,

00:47:52.840 | meaning how much people can remember

00:47:54.220 | from the thing they learned,

00:47:55.400 | are significantly higher under those conditions.

00:47:58.820 | So I'm going to talk about how to apply all this knowledge

00:48:01.520 | in a little bit more in this podcast episode,

00:48:04.100 | but also in future episodes.

00:48:05.920 | But it really speaks to the really key importance

00:48:10.160 | of sleep and focus,

00:48:12.600 | these two opposite ends of our attentional state.

00:48:15.760 | When we're in sleep, these DPOs,

00:48:17.760 | duration, path, and outcome analysis, are impossible.

00:48:20.400 | We just can't do that.

00:48:21.800 | We are only in relation to what's happening inside of us.

00:48:25.420 | So sleep is key.

00:48:27.380 | Also key are periods of non-sleep deep rest,

00:48:30.080 | where we're turning off our analysis

00:48:31.960 | of duration, path, and outcome,

00:48:33.580 | in particular for the thing

00:48:35.160 | that we were just trying to learn.

00:48:37.240 | And we're in this kind of liminal state

00:48:40.240 | where our attention is kind of drifting all over.

00:48:42.480 | It turns out that's very important for the consolidation,

00:48:45.120 | for the changes between the nerve cells

00:48:47.360 | that will allow what we were trying to learn

00:48:49.560 | to go from being deliberate and hard and stressful

00:48:53.120 | and a strain to easy and reflexive.

00:48:57.280 | This also points to how different people,

00:49:01.240 | including many modern clinicians,

00:49:03.120 | are thinking about how to prevent bad circumstances,

00:49:05.840 | traumas, from routing their way

00:49:07.680 | into our nervous system permanently.

00:49:09.280 | It says that you might want to interfere

00:49:11.540 | with certain aspects of brain states

00:49:14.180 | that are away from the bad thing that happened,

00:49:17.540 | the brain states that happened the next day

00:49:19.560 | or the next month or the next year.

00:49:21.800 | And also I want to make sure that I pay attention

00:49:25.920 | to the fact that for many of you,

00:49:27.220 | you're thinking about neuroplasticity,

00:49:28.600 | not just in changing your nervous system

00:49:30.880 | to add something new, but to also get rid of things

00:49:33.920 | that you don't like, right?

00:49:35.880 | That you want to forget bad experiences

00:49:38.080 | or at least remove the emotional contingency

00:49:40.500 | of a bad relationship or a bad relationship

00:49:43.320 | to something or some person or some event.

00:49:45.940 | Learning to fear certain things less,

00:49:49.340 | to eliminate a phobia, to erase a trauma.

00:49:52.760 | The memories themselves don't get erased.

00:49:54.980 | I'm sorry to say that the memories themselves get erased,

00:49:57.760 | but the emotional load of memories can be reduced.

00:50:00.600 | And there are a number of different ways

00:50:01.920 | that that can happen, but they all require this thing

00:50:04.640 | that we're calling neuroplasticity.

00:50:07.520 | We're going to have a large number of discussions

00:50:09.920 | about neuroplasticity in depth.

00:50:12.020 | But the most important thing to understand

00:50:14.440 | is that it is indeed a two-phase process.

00:50:17.420 | What governs the transition between alert and focused

00:50:21.240 | and these deep rest and deep sleep states

00:50:24.800 | is a system in our brain and body,

00:50:27.240 | a certain aspect of the nervous system

00:50:28.860 | called the autonomic nervous system.

00:50:31.580 | And it is immensely important to understand

00:50:33.800 | how this autonomic nervous system works.

00:50:36.260 | It has names like the sympathetic nervous system

00:50:38.400 | and parasympathetic nervous system,

00:50:39.720 | which frankly are complicated names

00:50:42.400 | because they're a little bit misleading.

00:50:43.760 | Sympathetic is the one that's associated

00:50:45.580 | with more alertness.

00:50:46.420 | Parasympathetic is the one that's associated

00:50:48.080 | with more calmness.

00:50:49.760 | And it gets really misleading

00:50:51.100 | because the sympathetic nervous system sounds like sympathy

00:50:54.340 | and then people think it's related to calm.

00:50:55.860 | I'm going to call it the alertness system

00:50:57.420 | and the calmness system

00:50:59.200 | because even though sympathetic and parasympathetic

00:51:02.700 | are sometimes used, people really get confused.

00:51:05.380 | So the way to think about the autonomic nervous system

00:51:08.700 | and the reason it's important for every aspect of your life,

00:51:11.940 | but in particular for neuroplasticity

00:51:13.900 | and engaging in these focused states

00:51:15.960 | and then these defocused states

00:51:17.620 | is that it works sort of like a seesaw.

00:51:19.860 | Every 24 hours, we're all familiar with the fact

00:51:23.000 | that when we wake up in the morning,

00:51:24.180 | we might be a little bit groggy,

00:51:25.300 | but then generally we're more alert.

00:51:26.980 | And then as evening comes around,

00:51:29.140 | we tend to become a little more relaxed and sleepy

00:51:31.180 | and eventually at some point at night, we go to sleep.

00:51:33.640 | So we go from alert to deeply calm.

00:51:36.860 | And as we do that, we go from an ability

00:51:38.780 | to engage in these very focused duration path

00:51:42.000 | outcome types of analyses

00:51:43.580 | to states in sleep that are completely divorced

00:51:46.780 | from duration path and outcome

00:51:48.480 | in which everything is completely random and untethered

00:51:50.840 | in terms of our sensations,

00:51:52.060 | perceptions and feelings and so forth.

00:51:54.060 | So every 24 hours, we have a phase of our day

00:51:57.500 | that is optimal for thinking and focusing

00:52:01.220 | and learning and neuroplasticity

00:52:03.420 | and doing all sorts of things.

00:52:04.760 | We have energy as well.

00:52:06.660 | And at another phase of our day,

00:52:07.900 | we're tired and we have no ability to focus.

00:52:11.380 | We have no ability to engage

00:52:13.180 | in duration path outcome types of analyses.

00:52:15.820 | And it's interesting that both phases are important

00:52:19.940 | for shaping our nervous system in the ways that we want.

00:52:22.600 | So if we want to engage in neuroplasticity

00:52:24.580 | and we want to get the most out of our nervous system,

00:52:27.260 | we each have to master that both the transition

00:52:30.680 | between wakefulness and sleep

00:52:32.800 | and the transition between sleep and wakefulness.

00:52:35.480 | Now, so much has been made of the importance of sleep

00:52:37.900 | and it is critically important for wound healing,

00:52:40.500 | for learning as I just mentioned,

00:52:42.040 | for consolidating learning,

00:52:44.020 | for all aspects of our immune system.

00:52:47.340 | It is the one period of time

00:52:48.480 | in which we're not doing these duration path

00:52:50.140 | and outcomes types of analyses.

00:52:51.720 | And it is critically important to all aspects of our health,

00:52:54.180 | including our longevity.

00:52:55.560 | Much less has been made, however,

00:52:59.100 | of how to get better at sleeping,

00:53:01.780 | how to get better at the process

00:53:03.780 | that involves falling asleep, staying asleep,

00:53:06.620 | and accessing the states of mind and body

00:53:10.060 | that involve total paralysis.

00:53:11.720 | Most people don't know this,

00:53:12.560 | but you're actually paralyzed during much of your sleep

00:53:14.900 | so that you can't act out your dreams, presumably.

00:53:17.540 | But also where your brain is in a total idle state

00:53:21.800 | where it's not controlling anything,

00:53:24.000 | it's just left to kind of free run.

00:53:26.060 | And there are certain things that we can all do

00:53:29.880 | in order to master that transition,

00:53:32.400 | in order to get better at sleeping.

00:53:34.340 | And it involves much more than just how much we sleep.

00:53:36.680 | We're all being told, of course, that we need to sleep more,

00:53:39.400 | but there's also the issue of sleep quality,

00:53:41.760 | accessing those deep states of non-DPO thinking,

00:53:45.320 | accessing the right timing of sleep.

00:53:48.100 | Not a lot has been discussed publicly,

00:53:49.780 | as far as I'm aware, of when to time your sleep.

00:53:52.540 | I think we all can appreciate that sleeping

00:53:55.380 | for half an hour throughout the day

00:53:57.840 | so that you get a total of eight hours of sleep

00:54:00.960 | every 24-hour cycle is probably very different

00:54:04.040 | and not optimal compared to a solid block

00:54:06.220 | of eight hours of sleep.

00:54:07.340 | Although there are people that have tried this.

00:54:08.880 | I think it's been written about in various books.

00:54:11.800 | Not many people can stick to that schedule.

00:54:14.460 | Incidentally, I think it's called the Uberman schedule,

00:54:16.580 | not to be confused with the Huberman schedule,

00:54:19.020 | because first of all,

00:54:19.860 | my schedule doesn't look anything like that.

00:54:21.280 | And second of all,

00:54:22.120 | I would never attempt such a sleeping regime.

00:54:24.480 | The other thing that is really important to understand

00:54:28.840 | is that we have not explored as a culture

00:54:32.820 | the rhythms that occur in our waking states.

00:54:35.820 | So much has been focused on the value of sleep

00:54:38.220 | and the importance of sleep, which is great,

00:54:40.420 | but I don't think that most people are paying attention

00:54:42.920 | to what's happening in their waking states

00:54:44.740 | and when their brain is optimized for focus,

00:54:47.500 | when their brain is optimized for these DPOs,

00:54:49.880 | these duration path outcome types of engagements

00:54:53.100 | for learning and for changing,

00:54:55.200 | and when their brain is probably better suited

00:54:57.320 | for more reflexive thinking and behaviors.

00:54:59.520 | And it turns out that there's a vast amount

00:55:02.520 | of scientific data which points to the existence

00:55:06.360 | of what are called ultradian rhythms.

00:55:08.460 | You may have heard of circadian rhythms.

00:55:10.760 | Circadian means circa about a day.

00:55:13.640 | So it's 24 hour rhythms

00:55:15.120 | 'cause the earth spins once every 24 hours.

00:55:18.080 | Ultradian rhythms occur throughout the day

00:55:20.640 | and they require less time, they're shorter.

00:55:24.640 | The most important ultradian rhythm

00:55:26.120 | for sake of this discussion is the 90 minute rhythm

00:55:28.640 | that we're going through all the time

00:55:31.000 | in our ability to attend and focus.

00:55:34.000 | And in sleep, our sleep is broken up

00:55:37.400 | into 90 minute segments.

00:55:39.500 | Early in the night, we have more phase one and phase two,

00:55:42.140 | lighter sleep, and then we go into our deeper phase three

00:55:44.560 | and phase four sleep,

00:55:45.400 | and then we return to phase one, two, three, four.

00:55:47.520 | So all night, you're going through these ultradian rhythms

00:55:50.180 | of stage one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four,

00:55:53.360 | it's repeating.

00:55:54.940 | Most people perhaps know that, maybe they don't,

00:55:57.720 | but when you wake up in the morning,

00:56:00.120 | these ultradian rhythms continue.

00:56:02.280 | And it turns out that we are optimized

00:56:04.480 | for focus and attention within these 90 minute cycles

00:56:08.500 | so that at the beginning of one of these 90 minute cycles,

00:56:10.800 | maybe you sit down to learn something new

00:56:12.480 | or to engage in some new challenging behavior.

00:56:15.720 | For the first five or 10 minutes of one of those cycles,

00:56:18.160 | it's well known that the brain and the neural circuits

00:56:20.800 | and the neuromodulators are not gonna be optimally tuned

00:56:24.840 | to whatever it is you're trying to do.

00:56:26.080 | But as you drop deeper into that 90 minute cycle,

00:56:28.560 | your ability to focus and to engage in this DPO process

00:56:32.240 | and to direct neural plasticity and to learn

00:56:35.280 | is actually much greater.

00:56:36.700 | And then you eventually pop out of that

00:56:39.180 | at the end of the 90 minute cycle.

00:56:41.060 | So these cycles are occurring in sleep

00:56:43.120 | and these cycles are occurring in wakefulness.

00:56:45.300 | And all of those are governed by this seesaw

00:56:47.960 | of alertness to calmness

00:56:49.320 | that we call the autonomic nervous system.

00:56:51.600 | So if you want to master and control your nervous system,

00:56:55.340 | regardless of what tool you reach to,

00:56:57.400 | whether or not it's a pharmacologic tool

00:56:59.040 | or whether or not it's a behavioral tool

00:57:00.640 | or whether or not it's a brain machine interface tool,

00:57:03.960 | it's vitally important to understand

00:57:06.560 | that your entire existence is occurring

00:57:09.560 | in these 90 minute cycles,

00:57:11.140 | whether or not you're asleep or awake.

00:57:13.000 | And so you really need to learn

00:57:14.520 | how to wedge into those 90 minute cycles.

00:57:17.620 | And for instance, it would be completely crazy

00:57:20.880 | and counterproductive to try and just learn information

00:57:24.020 | while in deep sleep by listening to that information

00:57:26.300 | 'cause you're not able to access it.

00:57:28.440 | It would be perfectly good, however,

00:57:31.320 | to engage in a focus bout of learning each day.

00:57:34.200 | And now we know how long that focus bout

00:57:36.180 | of learning should be.

00:57:37.120 | It should be at least one 90 minute cycle

00:57:39.360 | and the expectation should be that the early phase

00:57:42.120 | of that cycle is going to be challenging.

00:57:44.260 | It's going to hurt.

00:57:45.100 | It's not going to feel natural.

00:57:46.280 | It's not going to feel like flow,

00:57:48.180 | but that you can learn and the circuits of your brain

00:57:51.280 | that are involved in focus and motivation

00:57:53.160 | can learn to drop in to a mode of more focus,

00:57:56.780 | get more neural plasticity, in other words,

00:57:59.360 | by engaging these ultradian cycles

00:58:02.080 | at the appropriate times of day.

00:58:04.300 | For instance, some people are very good learners

00:58:06.500 | early in the day and not so good in the afternoon.

00:58:09.080 | So you can start to explore this process

00:58:11.820 | even without any information

00:58:13.640 | about the underlying neurochemicals

00:58:15.060 | by simply paying attention,

00:58:16.880 | not just to when you go to sleep

00:58:18.320 | and when you wake up each morning,

00:58:20.320 | how deep or how shallow your sleep felt to you subjectively,

00:58:24.020 | but also throughout the day

00:58:25.320 | when your brain tends to be most anxious,

00:58:28.440 | because it turns out that has a correlate

00:58:30.820 | related to perception that we will talk about.

00:58:34.800 | You can ask yourself, when are you most focused?

00:58:37.180 | When are you least anxious?

00:58:38.340 | When do you feel most motivated?

00:58:40.000 | When do you feel least motivated?

00:58:42.920 | By understanding how the different aspects

00:58:45.640 | of your perception, sensation, feeling,

00:58:47.480 | thought and actions tend to want to be engaged

00:58:51.020 | or not want to be engaged,

00:58:52.460 | you develop a very good window

00:58:54.900 | into what's going to be required

00:58:56.600 | to shift your ability to focus

00:58:59.560 | or shift your ability to engage in creative type thinking

00:59:03.340 | at different times of day, should you choose.

00:59:05.760 | And so that's where we're heading going forward.

00:59:07.860 | It all starts with mastering this seesaw

00:59:10.660 | that is the autonomic nervous system

00:59:12.440 | that at a course level is a transition

00:59:14.780 | between wakefulness and sleep,

00:59:16.800 | but at a finer level and just as important

00:59:19.500 | are the various cycles,

00:59:20.560 | these ultradian 90 minute cycles

00:59:22.200 | that govern our life all the time,

00:59:24.200 | 24 hours a day, every day of our life.

00:59:26.420 | And so we're going to talk about

00:59:27.540 | how you can take control of the autonomic nervous system

00:59:30.080 | so that you can better access neuroplasticity,

00:59:33.100 | better access sleep,

00:59:34.760 | even take advantage of the phase

00:59:36.660 | that is the transition between sleep and waking

00:59:38.880 | to access things like creativity and so forth.

00:59:42.520 | All based on studies that have been published

00:59:44.860 | over the last hundred years,

00:59:46.020 | mainly within the last 10 years

00:59:47.660 | and some that are very, very new

00:59:49.300 | and that point to the use of specific tools

00:59:51.660 | that will allow you to get the most

00:59:53.380 | out of your nervous system.

00:59:55.120 | So today we covered a lot of information.

00:59:57.640 | It was sort of a whirlwind tour

00:59:59.420 | of everything from neurons and synapses

01:00:01.760 | to neuroplasticity in the autonomic nervous system.

01:00:04.460 | We will revisit a lot of these themes going forward.

01:00:07.220 | So if all of that didn't sink in in one pass,

01:00:10.560 | please don't worry.

01:00:11.440 | We will come back to these themes over and over again.

01:00:14.440 | I wanted to equip you with a language

01:00:16.960 | that we're all developing a kind of common base set

01:00:20.280 | of information going forward.

01:00:22.200 | And I hope the information is valuable to you

01:00:24.200 | when you're thinking about what is working well for you

01:00:27.320 | and what's working less well

01:00:29.360 | and what's been exceedingly challenging,

01:00:31.020 | what's been easy for you in terms of your pursuit

01:00:33.640 | of particular behaviors or emotional states,

01:00:36.300 | where your challenges or the challenges of people

01:00:38.280 | that you know might reside.

01:00:40.680 | As promised in our welcome video,

01:00:42.700 | the format of the Huberman Lab Podcast

01:00:44.720 | is to dive deep into individual topics

01:00:47.000 | for an entire month at a time.

01:00:49.060 | So for the entire month of January,

01:00:51.000 | we're going to explore this incredible state

01:00:53.580 | that is sleep and a related state,

01:00:56.440 | which is non-sleep deep rest.

01:00:58.980 | And what they do for things like learning,

01:01:01.940 | resetting our emotional capacity.

01:01:04.080 | Everyone's probably familiar with the fact

01:01:05.480 | that when we're sleep deprived,

01:01:06.480 | we're so much less good at dealing with life circumstances.

01:01:10.980 | We're more emotionally labile.

01:01:12.920 | Why is that?

01:01:13.760 | How is that?

01:01:14.740 | But most importantly,

01:01:15.580 | we're going to talk about how to get better at sleeping

01:01:17.520 | and then how to access better sleep,

01:01:19.280 | even when your sleep timing or duration is compromised.

01:01:24.260 | We're also going to talk about the data

01:01:26.260 | that support this very interesting state

01:01:28.980 | called non-sleep deep rest,

01:01:31.500 | where one is neither asleep nor awake,

01:01:34.140 | but it turns out one can recover

01:01:36.160 | some of the neuromodulators and more importantly,

01:01:38.580 | the processes involved in sensation, perception,

01:01:41.600 | feeling, thought, and action.

01:01:43.020 | It's sure to be a very rich discussion back and forth

01:01:46.460 | where I'm answering your questions and providing tools.

01:01:49.420 | And I'm certain you're also going to learn

01:01:51.320 | a lot of information about neuroscience

01:01:54.280 | and what makes up this incredible phase of your life

01:01:57.180 | where you think you're not conscious,

01:01:58.640 | but you're actually resetting and renewing yourself

01:02:02.220 | in order to perform better, feel better, et cetera,

01:02:05.120 | in the waking state.

01:02:06.560 | If you want to support the podcast,

01:02:08.060 | please click the like button and subscribe on YouTube.

01:02:11.320 | Leave us a comment if you have any feedback for us.

01:02:14.040 | And on Apple, you can also leave a review

01:02:16.360 | and comments for us to improve

01:02:19.020 | the podcast experience for you.

01:02:20.940 | Please also check out our sponsors and thank you so much.

01:02:23.900 | We'll see you on the next episode next week.

01:02:26.080 | [upbeat music]

01:02:28.660 | (upbeat music)

How Your Nervous System Works & Changes

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