- Did you always know you wanted to be a neuroscientist from the time you started college? What was your trajectory? I should know this, but you were an undergraduate at? - At Princeton. - At Princeton, that right, studying? - Math. - Math. So you could have just done all your work with a piece of paper and a pen, but you had to try and engineer all these electrodes.

Okay, that's a pen and paper pen. - I took a very random route. I studied math as an undergrad. I spent a few years running around playing music and traveling and living a bohemian life. - Tell me more about that. - Oh, it was, I basically just told you all I'm going to tell.

- Following the Grateful Dead. - No, not quite following them, but that was an important part of the story. - Was that an important part of your personal development? - Yes, very much so. Free expression, dance, music, creative, exploratory music, all that kind of stuff. - Such a contrast to the EJ that comes forward when we're talking about the precision of neural stimulation in specific retinal cell types.

But I think it's useful for people to hear both young and old, like that one's nervous system can be partitioned into these different abilities. You're like, go and dance and travel, and you weren't doing anything academic at that time. - No, for a few years I wasn't doing that, programming computers to make a living.

And then I started three different PhD programs at Stanford before I started- - Simultaneously? - No, no, no. - Oh my goodness. - In sequence, I started in the math PhD program. I learned that was not really for me. And I started in an economics PhD program in the business school there.

And I realized after less than a year, that was not for me. I worked in a startup company for a while. I did a lot of stuff for a few years and took some settling. But then I decided to go into neuroscience. And there were a couple of formative things.

One is that I had gotten a really formative experience as an undergraduate from a wonderful guy called Don Reddy, who taught an introductory neuroscience course, who was really inspiring mentor. And then when I was at Stanford, I met Brian Wandel, my PhD advisor, and I was inspired by him.

I thought, I didn't know why he was studying, what he was studying, but I just knew I wanted to learn from this man. And I wanted to study with him. I just knew this was the person who should be my mentor. - Based on something about him. - Yes.

- Can I ask you about these three PhD programs? Because I think people here, or see what you're doing and probably imagine a very linear trajectory. But now I'm hearing you like tour around playing music. Then you start a PhD program. Nope. Then another one. Nope. Then another one.

Without getting into all the details. I mean, were there nights spent lying awake, thinking like, what am I gonna do with my life? Or did you have the sense that you knew you wanted to do something important, and you just hadn't found the right fit for you? Like how much anxiety on a scale of one to 10, 10 being total panic, did you experience at the apex of your anxiety in that kind of wandering?

- Am I allowed to go above 10? Like turning up the amp to 11? - Sure. I just think it's really important for people to hear whether or not they want to be scientists or not. This idea that people that are doing important things in the world, in my view, rarely if ever understood that that's the thing that they were gonna be doing.

There was some wandering about. - That sure seems like it, doesn't it? Yeah, I experienced the same when I talked to other people, and it seems like that. And for sure, for me. It just took a while of trying different things to see, number one, what I was really good at, and where I felt I could make a difference.

And I realized I studied math, and I was okay at math, but I know, I have known mathematicians who are really talented, gifted mathematicians, the one who really make a difference. I wasn't gonna be one of those people. Likewise, playing music. I don't have that intrinsic talent. It's fun.

I can play songs in front of people and do stuff. I like it and stuff like that, but I don't have that kind of talent. In fact, I'll say something that I say to friends sometimes, and you're a good friend of mine. If I had the talent to get a few thousand people on their feet dancing by playing music, I'd probably just do that.

- Really? As long as we've been friends, I knew none of this. I knew none of this. Mostly because I think we always end up talking about neuroscience or other aspects of our life, but I didn't know, I mean, I know a great many things about you, but I had no idea.

It's so interesting. Do you still do dance? We had Eric Jarvis on the podcast, by the way, professor at Rockefeller who studies, at one point was studying speech in birds, as in song in birds. And then he's done a great many other things now in genetics of vocalization. And he actually danced with or was about to dance with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company.

So he had really, really talented dancer. And so dance seems to be like a theme that comes up among the neuroscience guests on this podcast. Do you still dance? - Yeah, I love to dance. I'm a free form dancer. I'm not a skilled dancer, but I love music. I love dancing.

I think it's part of the human spirit. I someday will understand the neuroscience behind dancing, right? Dancing is a universal human thing in all cultures. What is this dancing thing? Why do we do this and other creatures don't? - Well, Jarvis thinks that perhaps it's one of the more early forms of language.

And that song came before spoken language. It's sort of interesting that birds that can actually recreate human speech oftentimes have the ability to dance as well. - Oh, wow. - And so there's some common circuitry there. We'll provide a link to that episode. Jarvis, a really interesting guy. - I would love to hear that.

But if I may, I'd like to riff on that in a different way. I did spend some time wandering around, as many people do. And I think particularly for your young listeners and viewers who don't know, wow, could I ever be a scientist and develop new things, stuff like that?

Yes, you can. And if you're messing around in your life, trying this, trying that, trying the other thing, definitely stick with it. Keep looking for the thing that works for you. I really deeply believe that. You gotta play around. You gotta find what it is that works for you.

Interestingly enough, at least it's interesting for me, I spent a lot of years studying the retina in a pure basic science, just curiosity-driven research way, as you and I have both done in the past. And as it turned out, I learned all the stuff I needed to know about the retina to develop a high-fidelity adaptive retinal implant of the type that I'm talking about in that process.

The technology, the stimulation, recording, figuring out the cell types, how do you stimulate, all that stuff. I learned all that stuff. And I have come to a point in my life where I realize, wow, if somebody's gonna do what I think needs to be done, which is to take everything we've learned about the retina and instantiate that in smart technology that can restore vision and do all the things we've been talking about, who are the people in the world who have the right training and background and know-how to do that stuff?

I'm one of them. I know that. And it's totally by chance that I picked up and learned, or it seems by chance that I picked up and learned the things that I need to know for this. But I definitely have the right know-how to do this based on all my training and the research that I've done.

And it feels accidental sometimes. I look back on my own history. I'm like, how did I get here where this is obviously the thing I need to do? Was this on purpose? It didn't seem like it was on purpose, but now I gotta do this because I know what needs to be done and it's something that needs to be done.

So that's my mission for the coming decade or so. - Wow. I mean, I knew you had this engineer, mathy, geeky neuroscience. I don't wanna say geeky, 'cause it makes it sound like I'm not right there in the same raft with you. But I didn't know about this more free-spirited move in all directions, depending on what one feels in the moment, dancing EJ.

It's very cool. Are you still a absolute level 11 coffee snob? - Yes. - Okay, yeah. I used to go to meetings and EJ would bring his own coffee maker and coffee to meetings. We're not talking about an espresso machine. We're talking about like extreme levels of coffee snobbery.

- Press pot, the correct ground coffee, the correct kind of press pot, yeah. - Good, good, good. I expect nothing less. Proof that not all circuits in the brain are neuroplastic, nor should they be. - That's right. - But to bridge off of that in a more serious way, despite the free exploration aspect to yourself and that hopefully other people don't suppress, it seems like you really are good at develop, like knowing your taste.

Like it seems like the, I think it was the great Marcus Meister, a colleague of ours who has also worked on the neural retina extensively, of course, who once said that there's a coding system in the brain that leads to either the perception, the feeling of yum, yuck, or meh.

And that so much of life is being able to register that in terms of who you interact with and how, and the choices or problems to work on. It seems like you have a very keen sense of like, yes, that. And you move toward that. You've always been very goal-directed since the time I've known you.

So, and you've picked such a huge problem, but going about it in such a precise way, hence the analogy to the space mission. So like when you experience that, may I ask, does it come about as like a thought? Like, oh yeah, that has to be the thing, or is it like a whole body sensation?

- What a great question. I love that question. I have two things to say to that. The first is that for me, it's all feeling. I don't make hardly any decisions out of thoughts. I think, I process, I put it all into the hopper, and the hopper comes out and spits out a feeling, and the feeling's like, yeah, that's the thing to do.

A hundred percent. And I know not everybody's like me. Lots of people aren't like me, and particularly lots of scientists aren't like me. But I definitely roll that way. That is absolutely how I work. There's something that's related to that that I think is philosophically, and in terms of personal development and spiritual development stuff, I think is quite relevant that I think you'll relate to.

My favorite aphorism is know thyself, the oracle. And I think, because if you don't know yourself, you can't do anything. You don't even know where to go. You can't even orient yourself at the next thing in your life. And I think it deserves to have two corollaries that go with it, or addenda.

Know thyself, be thyself, which is not easy. It's not easy to really be yourself in this world. There are all sorts of things telling us to be something other than what we are. And the third one is love thyself. And it's, you know, having gone through much exploration of yourself and your life and your values and me too, and all the things we've talked about over time, that's not easy.

Some of us are not necessarily programmed to love ourselves. And it's a skill. And I really, I try my best to be with those three things all the time. Know thyself, be thyself, love thyself. - Could you elaborate a little bit more on your process for the third? This is a concept that has been very challenging for me, and I think for many other people.

And it gets kind of opaque when it starts getting conflated with like self-respect and et cetera. Like loving thyself, do you have practices? Do you meditate? Do you journal? Do you spend time trying to cultivate a love for self? - Yeah. Yeah, I meditate in an informal way in the morning with my coffee.

Every morning I make a fantastic cup of coffee. And I sit with it for five or 10 minutes and take in my world as it's coming toward me and start to, as I come into the day and come into consciousness, I meditate like that. And I have a Ashtanga-related yoga practice.

Many of your viewers and listeners will know about Ashtanga yoga. It's a very physical, spiritual, traditional yoga practice that has a deep meditative and breath-focused component. I know you've had lots of episodes and discussion about the breath and the importance of that for awareness. You know, at the end of many Western yoga practices, you end with namaste, which is expressing your respect and for the connectedness of what is in front of you to the whole universe and what's common to all of us and everything.

And I usually practice yoga by myself. When I say namaste at the end of my yoga practice, a part of that is to myself. - Earlier, when I asked you about how you guide your decisions, you said, "It's all feel." And you provided a beautiful description as to how and why that occurs for you and your trust in that.

I don't recall you saying whether or not the feeling is in your head or it's a whole body feeling. Does it have a particular signature to it that you'd be willing to share? Is it excitement that makes you want to get up and move or is it a stillness?

I think I ask because we've been talking throughout today's episode about the precision of neural coding and the signals that are at the level of individual cells. And yet, when it comes to feeling, we actually have a pretty crude map and certainly a deficit in language to explain what this feeling thing is.

And I know that people experience life and feelings differently, but I think it's often insightful when somebody with your understanding of the nervous system and yourself can share a bit. What does it feel like? - I love that question. And it relates to something you said to me years ago.

What it feels like is ease. And I remember years ago when we were talking about challenging things that each of us was facing in our lives, you said to me something like, "I wish for you some ease with all of this." It was very moving, touching. As that's what a good friend does is to give that to somebody who they love.

And it sticks with me probably 10 years later. So the feeling I feel when I'm on the path that makes sense for me is ease. It's, there's just, it's just, okay, this is it. - Thank you for tuning in to the Huberman Lab Clips channel. If you enjoyed the clip that you just viewed, please check out the full length episode by clicking here.