Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Recently the huberman allow podcast hosted a live event at the plenary theater in Melbourne, Australia. The event was called the brain-body contract and featured a lecture followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience. We wanted to make the question and answer session available to everyone.
Regardless if you could attend so what follows is the question and answer session from the plenary theatre in Melbourne Australia. I also would like to thank the sponsors for the event. They are eight sleep and a G18 sleep makes Smart mattress covers with cooling Heating and sleep tracking capacity. Now one of the key aspects to getting a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And that's because in order to fall in stay deeply asleep. Your body temperature actually has to drop by about 1 to 3 degrees. And in order to wake up in the morning feeling refreshed your body temperature actually.
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huberman, and now for the question and answer session from Melbourne, Australia
Hey doctor, human
some some of your listeners are in or approaching our 50s. Okay same.
And are thinking of doing all we can to prevent. Dementia same do you have any additional thoughts or protocols or research we could focus on yes. So
for the next two and a half hours. Oh, no, I'm kidding. The
I'm not known for being succinct didn't go over too much earlier. So, okay so ground truths. So let's start with ground truth. And then let's move to
emerging. Let's maybe get to a little bit of speculation.
avoid conjecture ground truths
Blood circulation is good for the brain.
Perhaps most important for the brain. So
anything that is good for cardiovascular
health is going to be good for brain health. It's not the only thing but that's true.
We know this. So you hear these days a lot about Zone to cardio. I don't know who
gets credit for that Peter t a talks a lot about it. I talked a lot about it. None of us invented the notion but
you know 150 probably more like 180 to 200 minutes of so-called Zone to card.
So per
week is good numbers to shoot for some
of us to get more some of us less. What is Zone 2 cardio Zone to cardio
is cardiovascular exercise could be running could be swimming could be walking depending on your level of Fitness, which you can just barely maintain a conversation where you to push any harder or faster, you wouldn't be able to complete your sentences with much ease. Okay. So is this Zone to cardio for me? No, but if I were to draw
I'll go and try and have a conversation at some point. I
would bit of a hard time. That's a Zone to cardio.
So we know that's true. Why well, it seems to do a number of things at the level of release of growth factors brain-derived neurotrophic Factor
at the level of different. Let's call them. I realized the immunologists are going to unlock roll their eyes, but anti-inflammatory cytokines and things of that sort.
Sort you also have inflammatory cytokines and things of that sort.
It does seem that increasing blood flow in
and through the brain is important for brain health,
which is not all that surprising. There are species of animals that spend part of their life swimming about and then when they stopped
a good port and stick to a rock or something good portion of the nervous system actually
degenerates, but neurodegeneration and dementia are not necessarily the same thing and this is
That we don't often hear about the age-related decline in memory capacity in particular working memory can be related to reductions in dopamine Transmission in the brain. So things that increase the catecholamines that we talked about earlier.
This could be pharmacology of course,
but it doesn't have to be
pharmacology could be anything that increases the catecholamines and we talked about this on the podcast. We have zero cost protocols that you don't have to sign up for you and just go to our website.
And go to dopamine regulation and it will list out ways to increase the catecholamines through zero cost and very low cost ways are known to improve working memory working memory. Of course the capacity to maintain a string of numbers were information for sake of kind of immediate goals, but not information that's passed to the longer term memory.
So that's that's different than neurodegeneration. That's simply reductions in the amount of neuromodulators like
dopamine being deployed as we get older so
Modular modulating dopamine
through healthy ideally means
but I do think we are going to see an increase in the
use of selective pharmacology for this purpose and here I'm not recommending anyone do drugs or take drugs prescription or
otherwise, but it does seem that certain compounds like nicotine
believe it or not, even though it increases vasoconstriction and blood pressure can offset some of the age-related reduction.
Ins in dopaminergic and cholinergic acetyl choline cholinergic transmission and you know, you don't want to smoke Vape Dipper snuff. I'm not even recommending people take is in patches,
but I think there is some use cases
for nicotine provided you're doing it with the you know, your physician knows and you're not getting into blood pressure dangerous blood pressure range or supplementation with choline donors and things of that sort to increase
Acetylcholine and dopamine some people are trying to take things like modafinil and adderall and older age but keep in mind these are not modafinil but Adderall Vyvanse etcetera. These are amphetamines there in feta means I'm not recommending this but I think that's
where we're headed. I think you're going to see a number of
different cognitive enhancers that are used to offset some age-related cognitive decline AKA dementia now in terms of so, we're going Zone to cardio to like prescription drugs. We're going to bracket.
Sitting here and then behavioral protocols that can increase neuromodulators such as the catecholamines now in
terms of other
things that can perhaps decrease the likelihood of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia as it relates to neuro degeneration. Currently, there are a lot of do not don't hit your head too hard. If you hit it really hard don't hit it again hard. This will call to hit model literally.
You know and we think of football or I guess rugby is that's a
sport you guys play down here where they use the head as a battering ram. I've seen this right Big Macs on those kids and then there's home and
they yeah, but the problem
is not necessarily just rugby or American football or Austria. I
was told that someone told me I had to shout out an Australian football team and I know it's a
setup so I'm not going to do it. They're like
when you're in Melbourne tomorrow, you got to say that your favorite team is blank.
And I'm like this feels really dangerous. So I'm not going to do it. I'm not gonna do it. But what's that?
Do it. I can't remember the name of the team, but I watched the document. What's that? But I still don't understand the rugby thing. They
do they use the guy's head as or gals head as a battering ram.
Because I did used to play at UCSD outside that my lab later this big field and my Bulldog loved watching. It was like this and through this sport makes sense, but they were just like Ron and then the I never understood it. But anyway, what's that?
Got it. I need a translator. Sorry, but I love the enthusiasm.
Yeah, so we think about head injuries and brain injuries mostly in the context of sport, but that's not where most a head injuries occur. Most of them occur construction workers car accidents. TBI things of that sort. There's some interesting data on hyperbaric chambers. This is getting
really into the you know, kind of high-level stuff your meaning most people don't have access to them.
I look forward to learning more. These are playing with different concentrations of
oxygen in a little micro environment for traumatic brain injury
and neurodegenerative.
A generation. I mean do I think in five years that everyone's going to be sitting in hyperbaric chambers or to offset neuron loss. Probably not. I think it's not cost effective. But I will say that most of the things that
are good for the body are good for the brain keeping kind of a thing that plaques the arteries capillaries and veins of the brain to so heavily vascularized minimal and and minding those
neuromodulators obviously
drugs have a
Slyke methamphetamine can deplete dopamine neurons the data on MDMA by the way, I don't know there's a drug enforcement in the
room the data, you know where they have most of the safety data
or lack of safety data in some cases on
MDMA. Keep in mind MDMA ecstasy is methylenedioxypyrovalerone amphetamine or Methamphetamine. We know
causes neurodegeneration. No question. It also causes bad teeth. Do you know how you know how it turns people into mouth-breathers dry?
Mouth and the teeth you generate. Yeah, we have an episode on oral health Camille. This is real. That's actually why the teeth degenerates from excess of dry and it limits saliva production saliva is very important for remineralization of the teeth. There ain't a shout out to the dentist in the house. So
the the thing about MDMA is interesting because it turns out that MDMA because it also it increases dopamine just
as methamphetamine does member MDMA methylenedioxypyrovalerone feta mean but also,
Huge increases in serotonin seem to be
most most of the effect of MDMA the kind of empathic genic effect.
There was a study done of people from the
LDS Latter-Day Saints sometimes referred to as Mormons. Why was this the on MDMA done with people from the LDS community and I don't want to imply that everyone from the LDS Community does MDMA but why
they're very interesting test population because they don't do other drugs, but for some reason
MDMA is not on the no-fly list. So there's as be it's a beautiful paper in which they took people who had only done as any drug not even taking caffeine, right either once or semi frequent or very frequent use
of MDMA and they did a bunch of cognitive testing
and there were some attention issues when people
had taken over what was a couple of hundred doses of MDMA at the 80 milligram dose or more
but doesn't seem to be much neurodegeneration, which is not to say that it's all
If there is an abuse and addictive potential there the biggest issue seems to be contamination of batches. We have a fentanyl issue in the u.s. I don't know if it's happening down here as well. Very concerning.
Okay. So the point here is that I think very soon you're going
to hear about drugs prescription drugs and supplements to augment the release of neuromodulators not forsake of them pathogenic States or psychedelic States, but to try and keep those dopaminergic neurons online to offset.
Because that's what the questions about. In fact. There's a Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist at
Columbia University. Whose name I won't tell you or maybe I will who when I went to visit his office chewed no fewer than five pieces of Nicorette in the course of a half an hour and I'm like what's going on? It's got Nobel Prize, but this looks kind of pathologic and I said why and he said well the nicotine is to offset age related loss
of dopaminergic and cholinergic neurons. I thought really is like yeah when I quit smoking because I'm one lung cancer, but this him is anak data. I'm not
Letting you do this.
I think there are number of things that we can do, but protect those neuromodulators keep perfusion that is blood flow to the brain strong. There's a case for cardiovascular exercise and it does seem it really does seem that exercise that engages the neuromuscular connections more than cardiovascular exercise. So not just resistance training, but anything that involves involves coordinated bodily training learning new physical skills Dance Etc really does seem to offset some of the loss of cognitive.
Functioning in adult. So it's kind of interesting that physical exercise is great for cognition and probably
cognition may or may not help physical ability, but one probably can imagine why there's a bi-directional relationship there. Your nervous
system doesn't really distinguish between physical
and cognitive. It's all working as a bunch of functional units.
I could go on and on about this, but hopefully that at least gets here
the gears turning around some things that perhaps you've heard about and something
Things that you haven't and we'll do an episode on dementia and offsetting dementia in order to get into some of the fine details. Okay. Can we increase our willpower just like training a muscle group with your research into the AMC see who I'm so glad that you mentioned the amcc I think of all the new areas of Neuroscience research that are out there. I think the anterior mid cingulate cortex is one of the most interesting structures and and areas of research nowadays.
You know, I think
if I have my way then not only
will most people have heard of dopamine and the amygdala I guess you need a Star Wars character named after your brain part isn't there one right? I only saw the first three I'm of that generation but isn't there a me Dolla or something? Yeah, right.
Don't leave me hanging here is there or not if I'm wrong just say no. Okay. Anyway, the amygdala thanks, the the amygdala is a brain structure
that.
Is involved in threat detection and Novelty detection not just
threats. The anterior mid cingulate cortex is an area of the brain that we know is activated. Well, let me tell you the best
experiment the
best experiment was done in my opinion by a neurosurgeon at Stanford Joe Parisi. He's probing around in people's brains. They got little piece of skull missing is stimulating in the brain to T2. He's asking them questions. How do you
feel what's going on? How do you feel what's going on? And he's
got this electrode in the
Enter mid cingulate cortex
and the patient says
I feel like something really
bad's going to happen like a storms coming. It's like okay we can stop
stimulating is like no I'm going
into the storm. That's interesting
stimulate a little bit further back just by a millimeter or so
completely different subjective experience for the patient. That's interesting
get a different patient in their map to they enter mid cingulate cortex stimulate.
And the person says I feel like I'm going to get out of my chair and I'm going to do something
hard wild. Right? This is prior to
any knowledge of what the interim it cingulate cortex is doing make a long story short people who successfully overcome a physical challenge a cognitive challenge that learn a new skill
that successful dieters. I don't really like the term
their intermittent signal at
cortex grows or becomes more.
Active under conditions that challenge the internment cingulate cortex. So this
brain region seems to be the brain region that puts us in a forward Center of mass
physically and sore cognitively and emotionally
I often like to think that the nervous system as sophisticated as it is in psychology as sophisticated as
is as it is, excuse me
can be Bend into kind of three categories things that we like to eat or don't like to eat or can kind of be Bend into yum
yuck or me.
That's come with the nervous system has to do because ultimately you have to decide do I want to go toward it so called appetitive Behavior don't wanna get away from it Welling do nothing
people were either like yum or some cases yum.
Yuck or in some cases like or like nah,
right Yum Yum Yum Yum man. This is that the sort of three
tributaries that we have the option of moving down not moving down or moving away from
so the interim it cingulate cortex because it has inputs from so many different areas and outputs to so many different areas that can access circuits related to dopamine norepinephrine and can access it circuits related to memory and context. It's a hug
It's a hub that by All Views through all lenses of the existing research suggests that when we any time we do something truly challenging in particular things that we do
not enjoy. This is key
the internment cingulate cortex undergoes some sort of plasticity. Everything's in the
research data. Now point to the idea that the intermittent cingulate cortex is the seat of so called willpower which is linked to Concepts like tennis.
Petit when grit and
Etc and what I love about this research is that it comes from a bunch of different areas human brain Imaging brain stimulation Etc.
Here's what I don't like about the reality but that we all need to accept which is that the
enter mid cingulate cortex is modifiable by experience by leaning into challenges at any stage of life. That's great. We talked about that earlier plasticity, but
Lest we forget plasticity goes in the other direction too. It seems that when we don't engage in challenges that the interim it cingulate cortex. It doesn't atrophy but it undergoes sort of a downshift inactivation. Now here's what's really really interesting and relates to the previous question. The enter mid cingulate cortex seems to be especially active at base.
Line and available for plasticity in what are called super agers super agers. We've all heard a blue zones. The super agers are these people who are they don't just exist in blue zones their spread around the world. These are people that seem at least by cognitive measures and other physiological measures of the body seemed to age extremely slowly
so they shouldn't really be called super agers right? There should be called super non agers. Anyway
the anteroom. It's
you like cortex seems to be hyperactive in these super agers as they're called. And so it seems that not only do they maintain cognitive function later in life. But that seems to be related to their regular engagement in challenging things. So remember for so many years we heard okay like nuns don't get to mention. There's all sorts of things you can imagine could be related to that and then we're thinking oh, maybe it's crossword puzzles.
It was crossword puzzles name is hanging out with other
people and you know, and then you know that person down the street and she cycling on the weekends like crazy and she's 90 and she looks like she's 50 and she's sharp as a tack. It's probably leaning into
Challenge on a regular basis
leaning into Challenge on a regular basis as opposed to one specific cognitive or physical thing which means that if you love cycling or you love the cold plunge or you love a certain form of exercise. It's probably not doing it that much for your interim ID cingulate cortex.
But these super agers also live longer. And so there is this notion that because the internment singlet cortex has connectivity to a lot of areas of the brain and body that it is somehow linked to the will to
live and this is being examined now in so called terminal cancer patients so
called, you know terminal cases. I don't like the language because there are these amazing instances and Physicians that oncologists have known this for a long time that when people decide they're going to fight
Fight cancer they don't always win that fight
unfortunately, but oftentimes, it's the people who
insist on fighting it psychologically
that they won't give in that end up.
Still living more months more years and in some cases putting the cancer into remission with of course other tools, right? I'm not saying you shouldn't use other tools to combat cancer. It's a very interesting structure relates to the question on dementia. Hopefully that was informative Julian. Thank you. How would you recommend shift workers minimize the effects of disruption to their circadian rhythm. Oh, this is so important. You know, why because like right now ninth 1940 p.m. We're kind of doing shift work right now most
On a
shift work schedule now in the world. This is true.
We think of shift workers is only the people who are up in the middle the night and sleeping during the day but most people are doing shift work. The criteria for shift work is at least a two-hour verint at least in the u.s.a. To our variance and the sleep-wake cycle more than three nights a week. Anyone here go to sleep every night. Same time. Wake up every morning same time never stay up later than that more than two nights a
week. Okay. Most people are doing shift work nowadays. They're just on there.
Phone or they're on their computer
and I'm not going to
argue. That's Nest, you know, you shouldn't many times that to me as
well. So here's what we do know and I could we didn't whole episode on shift work, but I'll try and summarize some of the key points.
You want to have your cortisol elevated early
in the day and then subside across the day that's the ideal
pattern of cortisol release cortisol is a great thing when it's high and then tapers off
from early day into the later day. It's a bad thing if that
cortisol Peak is shifted late that cortisol Peak is coming every 24 hours. You don't have a choice question is is it can be early day or is it can be late day laid a cortisol is Peaks are associated with depression anxiety. This was done by my colleague David Spiegel.
And the great Robert sapolsky at Stanford. I study about that.
Robert another great beard
amazing and and I I was I was to blend in with the species that he studies because he was like the baboon guy, you know, I haven't quite figured out how to master that one, you know, like the Cuttlefish look but working on it working on it. Maybe I just have to send out never mind. There's a there's a story about
you hurt. Remember the earlier
story The Domain anyway the Cuttlefish me. Anyway, never mind.
Again, this is why I don't like to speak too late in the day and get myself into trouble. But the point here is that having that cortisol Peak early in the day sets you up for mood focus and alertness immune system function in a
really in a really great way
shift workers have a serious problem, which is that late Peaks and cortisol are kind of Paramount in all forms of shift work. And so what you need to do is to put yourself ideally.
Lighting conditions that limit the amount of blue light
coming in at night or when you're doing that
shift work. Now you have to do your work and I think in the next two years if I have my way 11 idea that I'd like to embed in people's minds as you know, we hear a lot now about how hyper processed foods and highly processed foods are bad for us. Sort of empty calories. What are empty calories is foods that are very calorie dense, but Micro nutrient poor, right? That's what it really is. It's also the quality of food issues and people get up, you know.
Like let's please not have the seed oil debate. It's like people get really into this and then it's unclear to me still and okay, but we sort of think of empty calories like alcohol sugar Etc calorie-dense. Micro nutrient poor light can be viewed in much the same way these days. We live in a very blue light Rich World lot of blue light so short wavelength light blue light UV light. And by the way in sunlight, especially down here very UV Rich blue.
Which is great during the day, especially when it's offset or sorry when it includes long wavelength light full spectrum light by the way for everyone that's obsessed with red light and I love red light red light therapy. Remember the best source of red light is the sun
its full spectrum light. It includes red. It's just there's a bunch of other stuff in there too. So it doesn't look like a Red Light Panel
that said if you are going to do shift work, one of the best things you can do and it's been shown to reduce cortisol.
Levels at night while you're doing that shift work is to filter out some of the blue. So that is a use case for blue blockers or even for glasses that put you
into more reddish conditions provided. You can still do the work you need to do safely. You will see a dramatic reduction in cortisol under those conditions this blue and UV pathway picked up by a certain set of neurons in the eye all the interns of the photosensitive. Melanopsin cells Etc is a
real thing and it and it's designed to activate you. This is why a so called seasonal affective disorder lamp sad lamps are basically bright blue-white ish light. So when you're doing that shift work, if you can get into red or orange or amber light conditions, if that's great. You can do this very inexpensively by the way by just getting some party lights. It doesn't have to be any fancy red light. This is not time about red light panels. The other thing of course is
When you get back
to your non work environment, you need to do some work to think about when is best to sleep. When is not best to sleep, you know the best to sleep all day and be up all night or get that sunlight in the morning and I talked about that in the shift work episode and I'm tempted to go down that rabbit hole now, but I would just encourage you to take a look
at that episode and
I'll just kill you all to a resource that huberman live.com website allows you thanks to our wonderful Engineers to put in multiple topics so you could say
Shift work red light
or shift work
dopamine or shift work sunlight and it will take you to the exact time stamps across all the episodes where those specific
topics occur is all zero cost
as opposed to having to go in Peru's all these different episodes. A lot of people have said why not shorter episodes. It's like well the idea was to create a library of information that now ai
is and better engineering of websites can allow you to just pull the relevant information.
Nation just like you would a book where I used to go to the library. For those of you like me old enough to where we actually took
this thing called a book off a shelf is Xerox copied it in any
event is very archaic and very expensive and you'd always get the
margin of the book in the middle like that the spine it sucked now, you can go to the website and just get that information and then we also just launched an AI dot huberman Lab.com website again is all 0 costume you'd say hey, what should I do for shift work, but I wanted to hear to come here tonight. So I didn't tell you that until you got here now. I'm just kidding. I'm just
Okay, okay, and there are a few other tools about adjusting eating
schedules for and whatnot for shift work. But hopefully that gets you going Julia. Thank you.
What's the difference between n SDR and meditation? Thank you for this question. I am a huge huge huge believer and proponent and practitioner of NSD are non sleep deep rest. What is non sleep deep rest well to be fair Yoga Nidra, which translates to yoga?
Is a
thousand-year-old
practice thousands of year old practice in which you like completely still keep the Mind awake.
You're not thinking in a structured way. It's more of a body scan directed relaxation etcetera. I discovered this in 2015 when I was doing some research for a book that I still can't manage to seem to finish on trauma and addiction and I went I have a friend very talented trauma
therapist who's managed to
help people with all sorts of addictions.
Ins be on the podcast in the not-too-distant future and I went down to this clinic in,
Florida.
And everyone there spent the first hour of the day doing Yoga Nidra. This is pretty wacky. I was still in my pure scientist quote-unquote pure scientist naive
scientist lens, and I thought what is this about? He said well, you know so much of addiction is about an inability to regulate impulses to deal with agitation, especially in the early days of trying to get sober being sober and it just helps people learn to regulate self-direct the nervous system in terms of relax self-directed relaxation. It also seems to help
they're sleep. It also has these components about time and and sort of if because he said, you know, it's kind of interesting if you take a step back.
If you can tolerate craving for a second, you just did it. So why couldn't you do it for another second I can do for another second another second.
It's not as if it necessarily increases linearly or over time. So, you know what's going on. And so again sort of our ability to realize and regulate our state's across time and to realize there's
this funny thing where when we feel terrible, we think it's going to go on forever when we're happy. We're we were like certain it's going to stop as I kind of a
asymmetry in our nervous system that we don't
understand we showed he started talking about Yoga Nidra really seems to help addicts recover and stay
sober they do it regularly. Well,
this is cool. What is it? I'm a neuroscientist. We started studying in my laboratory.
We discovered that the brain goes
into these States during Yoga Nidra that are similar to
sleep.
Body still mind alert.
And that seems to be very beneficial maybe even accelerates neuroplasticity and learning and indeed there's evidence for that and there's evidence that Yoga Nidra out from a laboratory out of
Scandinavia. Not my laboratory showing that it can increase dopamine levels in the striatum basal
ganglia by up to
60% using human positron emission
tomography Imaging so we talked about how to increase dopamine through non pharmacologic
means this is something about body still brain.
Very very powerful
way to do that. I made up this term This Acronym non sleep deep rest because I have tremendous respect for Yoga Nidra and the church the yogic Traditions, but I was concerned for a lot of people and
unfortunately when they hear Yoga Nidra the it
sounds esoteric and they're not going to approach that practice. Also Yoga Nidra, it includes intentions and some things that are a little bit on the mystical side. And I knew I was going to take some heat for it.
And I feel badly about it. But that bad feeling is offset by I think when you call something non sleep deep rest, it tells you what it is.
And then more people are likely to come to the practice and I felt like it was worth, you know kind of putting myself jumping on the grenade for that one.
So non sleep deep rest is very effective at restoring cognitive and physical Vigor and can indeed offset some degree of sleep loss. It also gets you better.
ER at falling and staying asleep, and it's very simple and very easy to do and it's zero cost and if you want to try it you can go into YouTube and put NSD are my last name. There's a woman named Kelly boys Bo is who has a much more pleasant voice than mine. Who does them as well? These are all zero cost protocol. She's also in the waking up app, and there are many of them come and he decides I is another person who has, you know, Wonderful Yoga Nidra scripts so you can find these things and they're really about 10 minutes to 20 minutes sometimes 30 minutes.
On you can do it for an hour, but most people won't do that consistently. You don't have to do them every day and they're very very effective at restoring mental and physical Vigor when you're feeling depleted and it getting you to be a
better sleeper. So I figure that's a zero cost tool that is grounded in good mechanistic science and make sense logically. So why
not meditation typically and if they're many different forms of meditation, but if
you're let's just say kind of
Nerd if there were such a thing third eye meditation closing your eyes focusing your concentration on a point just sort of at your forehead concentrating or breathing redirecting your attention to your breathing. If it if your attention
drifts, we know based on work from Wendy Suzuki's laboratory at New York University and some work out of the University of Wisconsin can improve memory can improve focus and does seem to have some stress off setting effects, but it's more
or of a
Focus exercise as opposed to an energy replenishing
exercise now some people meditate and feel better afterwards. They have more energy, but then it sort of like well compared to what I don't think that's the
major effect of meditation
and while we're on these topics I should just say that self-directed hypnosis of the sort that my colleague David Spiegel studies is more about solving a particular problem. So hypnosis is more about engaging neuroplasticity. Remember earlier. We said that neuroplasticity and adulthood can be activated by Focus followed by
I rest it seems that in the self-directed hypnotic States the brain enters kind of pattern of activity in which neuroplasticity can
be accessed more quickly. We think
because the brain is both focused and relaxed in a particular way merging
that focus and rest State and of
course the hypnotic script is not about getting you to do
crazy things on stage that's stage hypnosis, but self-directed hypnosis is for instance smoking
cessation, by the way that the success was smoking cessation
for
Hypnosis is far greater than the cessation was smoking from pretty much any other protocol, but unfortunately, it has the name hypnosis which makes people think about stuff that people do on stage. That's kind of
wacky. So we need a new name
for it because unfortunately names are a problem there their names can be differentiators as opposed to integrators. They don't bring
peace when people say I'm going to hypnotize you you should try
hypnosis people like like Jung Yak math or like yuck.
So by the
Oh, wait is everyone here? Remember how you know if you're highly hypnotizable. Do you know that the Spiegel? I roll test it's not what teenagers do David Spiegel and his
father psychiatrist
discovered the clinical application of hypnosis to clinically approved tool. There's brainstem neurons that cause elevations and alertness and focus and their associate with moving the eyes up their brain stem neurons that close the eyelids and push in essentially Drive the eyes down.
That are associated with parasympathetic States. We want to go like this when you're tired you're out there. I'm sure
if you are capable of keeping your eye your gaze upward and closing your eyelids you score on a particular end of the so-called Spiegel. I roll test which makes you highly hypnotizable because that state of hypnosis is one in which your what alert but very very relaxed. So if you go to Spiegel's laboratory, they're going to look at you and they say look up at the ceiling and then close your eyelids.
And if you can still see the whites of they still see the whites of your eyes as your eyelids closed. Well, then you're in the highly hypnotizable
realm of interesting, right? There's all nervous system related and you can see the stuff is this is
like real clinical tools.
Okay, how do we stop ourselves from mindlessly scrolling on our phones hard questions. I didn't look at my watch because I'm bored. I'm just thinking how much time do you have?
Well on the way here to Australia
my Rob who you met earlier, my friend and podcast producer.
He said, okay guys.
Everyone's deleting social media from your phones for the whole trip the whole trip.
I'm like hmm. I don't know if I can go on this trip Rob. No kidding. We got what we have one guy who's kept on his phone so that we can
post things and we continue to
honestly, I think that's what it takes if it's social media that you're scrolling. I think you
should do a delete and reinstall.
If I'm honest a delete and reinstall every day because I think and then you have to limit the amount of time
and one of the members of my podcast team experiences. He said I just picked up my phone a minute ago, and I went to like hit the Instagram Tab and it wasn't there and I know it's not there and that's where I say. Yeah. It's at some point. It becomes more compulsive than addiction. These are just reflexive behaviors. It's like
walking to the refrigerator could do it every day of my life all day.
I just I walk into people's homes and just look in the refrigerator.
Traitor, I don't even know I get into people's cars that look in the glove box. I just do this. I'm going looking around. I'm not gonna steal anything but like the teenage
boy in me, you know, just calling walk in I'm gonna open your refrigerator.
So I think it's gets to the point of reflexive
and it's
compulsive and it might be
addictive but it can't be good when it's like that but I think social media can be really useful so I think
Um, if you you can set timers can try the graying out the screen getting rid of the color thing, there's all this stuff but I think if there are particular apps that you're struggling with that would just delete them from your phone and do a reinstall because that's enough of a of a behavioral barrier there enough steps involved enough sequencing to put the thing back on
there each day and each time maybe twice a day that you're going to vastly reduce your use to be honest. I think that's probably the best way to do it
and they're probably people in this audience that are
Seeing this seems crazy. Like just don't
turn it on. Just don't just don't open it and look if I
was 65 years old, I'd say that too but it doesn't work that way for certainly the younger generation. It doesn't I know this because I gave a talk at Santa Clara University a few years ago. And I was talking about limiting social social media use and phones and this kid came up to me afterwards. He said you don't get it. It's
like you're like back then I was like 43 so you
Don't get it. He
said for you. The phone was a thing that you like integrated in here. Like post-90s high school life like you watch The Breakfast Club or so. I don't know how he knew that movie. I was like, you're right. I did watch The Breakfast Club a bunch of times.
And he said but for us
it's like life.
I roll my eyes and I thought wait. No. Listen. I'm going to listen because no one knows what it's like to be 16 years old or 24 years
old in 2024, unless you're 16 or
24 like okay. Here we go. Listen, he said when my phone he said when my phone Powers
down,
I feel the energy drain out of me and when it comes back up, I feel Life Energy come back into my
body and I thought oh my goodness, like we are hosed, but that's but that's the reality and I'm of the mind. You know, I was a I was a camp counselor. I worked with at-risk kids. I was a wild kid and you learn something, especially when you work with kids like me when I was a teenager. I was a hellion is be a channel not a damn you cannot
Block this system that's emerged. This is here and it's here to stay. So I think things like didn't leading the app as putting it back on there as the only way to go and we have to listen. I think we have to listen understand that, you know, we after all adults created these Technologies and these kids are using them and I don't think we're going to see a reversal. I don't so we have to really I think what he said to me as scary as it was to me, I think reflects the reality. It's part of their life energy. It's part of their connectivity and we're going to
Have to come up with better tools and I doubt those tools are going to be to the effect of eliminating it you could say, unfortunately, you know all the adult last I checked. I'm an adult people in my life have argue
differently, but I
think we're going to have to learn to be a channel not a damn with this. I do
if resources and ethics were not an issue. What would your dream clinical trial to run?
Ohmygoodness
is a hard
question.
okay dream clinical trial
What's that?
Yeah, more cuttlefish like cuddlefish. I like the idea of more cuddling physical contact Sookie. I think we're all still recovering from the years. We had a few years of just like no physical like physical contact so minimal. I mean there's the classic Harlow experiments, right the wire monkey or worse is the cloth monkey mind primates go to the cloth monkey, even if they don't get food there. I mean, it's such a critical.
Component of you know how our nervous system forms.
I think this is a this is a you know, what I'm gonna do something I've never done before. I'm going to turn the question around. I actually I'm seriously. I'm not trying to avoid answering this but we've worked on also I've worked on cuttlefish. We worked on respiration practices. We worked on Vision. We worked on neural regeneration. You know, I've enjoyed working on a great number of different things. I'm sort of curious what people
What do you think we need more of I've never done this but I really want to know I don't know how we're going to do this in any
kind of non-chaotic format. But what the hell
it's late enough in the evening, which is do it. Like really I mean, so they're not there's trials on psychedelics. Maybe we do this by kind of like I'll throw out some options and then we'll do it. So right now it seems that psychedelics are a big thing. Do they increase plasticity? Yeah. I'm excited about it. I'm a convert but I do think that one has to be careful in there are certain.
Pulling populations, like people
who suffer from certain types of manic
bipolar or schizophrenia that really need to avoid these things kids. I mean being a kid is
basically being in a psychedelic state
but you know lateral connectivity of the brain is extensive
and you know, I don't
encourage I mean that the trials with MDMA and PTSD are
incredible what's happening with maps is incredible, you know, 60-plus
percent remission rates done with licensed Physicians. Of
course, I don't get Cavalier with
this.
Okay, so I'll just ask so I
mean
it's going to be hard to draw out the dissenters but more work on psychedelics psilocybin Etc as
ways to ameliorate depression are people like more like yum
yucker, man. Is that like yum. Okay. We're like yuck. Don't be afraid to say yuck. I like a good argument. Is anyone like yuck on psychedelics sorcery, it's sorcery. I heard that Matt. Okay. Alright interesting. Okay, so psychedelics get a strong and
shhhh, I think we have enough evidence that changing patterns of respiration changes brain States, but I think that that's an interesting area. I don't know. Can you just shout it out? Just shout it out one. Alright first over here. Yes.
I got the accent you guys are
so good. I love the accent. Listen. I listen. I don't drink I don't drink anymore. But when I use it when I used to go to bars, I'll just say the Australian accent never fails in the u.s. Yeah.
time Chambers
time Chambers
Oh hyperbaric chambers. Yeah hybrid. That's an interesting one. Yeah, I mean when I think of ways to modify physiology thing temperature light neuromodulators, right? You think by the way anytime you want to think about changing something in the body your brain you think mechanical and chemical? So this is kind of changing the chemistry of the brain and body through hyperbaric chambers. Thank you.
Appreciate it. I think I record
did we run into each other at the gym the other day? No anyway
thing.
I recognize you
okay one I'll get you in one second. Yeah. Yeah love that. Okay, so protocols for childhood trauma. Yeah. So I mean, I think we're finally at the place where we as a world where like this word trauma actually is Meaningful like because we knew it before but I think before people thought of like if you hadn't lived in a war zone, which obviously is trauma now, I think people appreciate that trauma is
Inherent to a lot of Life, by the way, I love your shirt. I own that shares
like yeah as a Lonsdale share as Against Racism. Hey love, I love that shirt, you know the history of that shirt right is like Lonsdale was co-opted by some Neo-Nazi groups as a brand. So Lonsdale came out with an Against Racism and hate shirt, which is like the best like to that which is a yeah. So anyway little side note. They're not sponsored by Lonsdale
but rad shirt.
Yeah, I think childhood trauma, you know trauma
can be best defined as an adverse event that changes the nervous system in a way that causes maladaptive functioning going forward. It's not every bad thing. Right but it certainly happens and I think we need to learn to rewire the nervous system. Let's face it whether or not psychedelics or its talk therapy or its hyperbaric chambers or it's cold plunge as what we were talking about. Is that neuroplasticity. We're trying to rewire the nervous system. So I love that one. We need some very structured tools. There's all sorts of stuff about so
so as a release for trauma and you know, there's little bits like little silos of things that are all very interesting breathwork could you know release work but so far there isn't that like a structured framework for treating trauma different groups doing different things EMDR Etc. I think they all have Merit. Okay. There was a shouting out.
Consciousness the big see
ya in my house Costello
was The Big C. He would always remind me that but
Consciousness. I think that now with AI we have to ask
ourselves like what is what is consciousness and
I think we need a clear definition of what that is. Do you guys know the story of like they were going to solve Consciousness a few years ago and and they didn't do it. There was this bet in Neuroscience
that it was going to be solved by 20
15 or something like
that. So I think we need it. It's not obviously so we need better definition of what that means. But I think it's very important
problem indeed. So thank you. Maybe a
free will. Yeah, that's a tough one. That's when I usually avoid read Robert Robert slammed me on that one on the podcast. What was it in the
back?
I heard it as an Adaptive technique, but
oh, yeah, you know we here. Yeah, we hear so much. I'm agreeing with you the we hear so much about ADHD these days without an understanding like what it really reflects except in the extreme clinical cases. So I think a better understanding I did two episodes of the podcast by the way on attention in ADHD one Focus mainly on behavioral and nutritional tools. It was positively received by about half of people and then the other half were like, this is garbage. What about all the drugs that are useful than
What about all the drugs that can be useful people said this is garbage. You're putting kids on meth, and I'm like, wait a second. Hold on. We try and cover it all. So because I favor balance. I heard a excellent things that there was we're all male voices. We kind of got out of sampling bias here unless I'm got a high frequency cutoff. Thank you.
Something negotiation.
Sorry.
Science
of negotiation. Yeah, so people being able to resolve differences
better Lord, please. Yes.
Oh my goodness. I mean this is yes. Thank you. If ever there was a call to action. It's like, you know, this is a big question right? I'm a neuroscientist not a historian not a futurist or a politician, but I'm thank goodness. Imagine what a terrible job. I would do I like being outdoors. I hate meetings. I like dressing like this and and I don't like the news be the worst. But yeah, if
There was a need and a question. It's you know,
are we just going to continue in these like iterative
cycles of like when the economy is good things you mostly good and then a lot of people are still suffering and then it like these cycles of and or are we going to finally just sit back and go? Okay. What are we good at as a
species? What are we really bad at? What are we like kind of good at and
start coming up with some tools to try and function better on the whole with the understanding that there are Bad actors out there.
That are constantly
trying to you know, exploit and manipulate
but they're also a lot of good
actors to and by good actors. I don't mean actors in The Stage acting sounds. I mean, I think that
look we're we're a smart species we can think in past
present and future terms. We can look at mechanism. We can communicate better with each other better than any species except maybe the Cuttlefish.
And so I think the question is are we you know, is there going to be some sort of sitting back and finally
Saying like enough like let's just figure out a way to dialogue and I love that. You know, it's a science we that there are problems in their hard problems. And
honestly, I think it's going to come about if it comes about it's going to come about through groups. Not through individuals. I don't think we're going to get the like the world leader or world leaders of 12 people. Like let's get it done. Let's look at it done right this time.
I'm I think it's going to be a more Collective Consciousness. You know, I'd like to see fewer individual leaders and more groups and panels leading things. But anyway, that's that's my bias and you know,
genetics
genetics genetics love it
Yeah.
Okay. Well, there's okay. I'll say two things and then I think my team is gonna make me close out wait.
Rad, okay awesome. Now, it's turning like I like a science punk rock show. So the genetics why I think the big thing is in genetics are were soon going to be in the place where we can do genetic what right now you can take human embryos and Screen them for mutations by whole genome sequencing. It's very inexpensive compared to a few years ago. It's still expensive and you can do selection. You can select out based on lack of mutations, maybe even based on
Over representation of certain genes
that's interesting has some ethical
considerations but it soon will be you can do
crisper you could in theory you could modify the Genome of adults and certainly babies. And so that's where we're headed is already being done in certain countries. It was done in China. It was not looked upon kindly by the International Ethics committees, but it was done a
In the in the HIV receptor, so those babies exist. So it's happening. It's going to be interesting
times the microbiome I think is really exciting. What here's my big call to action is that there's a microbiome in the gut but there's also microbiome on the skin and the nose and the mouth and the genitals like these all these little niches and well, I guess it depends the little or not so little niches depends. I was thinking about the nostrils
the night's getting along there I go again the
They are all important and there's a lot more to understand. I think the gut microbiome is
just one of the microbiomes
so and female hormones certainly important topic. It's received far less sadly far less attention than male hormone therapy or
understanding and
things are starting to change their it's been slow. Yeah. Yeah. There's it's been can you believe it was like only like eight years ago that the National Institutes of Health in the United States was like, hey, maybe
You should start studying female mice to it's like like this. I mean we're modern science is very far behind. We're very far behind and I think it's a resource issue. It's also,
you know, it's there's a bunch of sociological considerations in science. Anyway,
I'm trying to change the story there, but I'm but one person and you know, I hope to live a very long
time but you know, should I get hit by a bullet a bus or cancer
tomorrow? I want you.
to know that it's going to be or late long time from now natural causes. So I have a morbid sense of humor at work. I worked with a physician's they all talk like that. I hope to live a very long time but it's a collective effort. So I just want to before we wrap want to say a couple of things
we can get on with the rest of the
night. First of all, it is a collective effort, you know, I as I've mentioned several times this evening, I looked no differently on the massage.
Therapy versus Chiropractic versus whole genome sequencing is just all different lenses to look at the same sort of set of goals through and yes, there's a range of quality and rigor and communication Styles and personalities. But if you can maintain some level of curiosity and discernment about what works for you or doesn't work for you or where you think there's Merit,
that's great. But it's going to
be a wonderful thing when we can all start a dialogue and see where the points of convergence
are where we're basically talking about two different groups talking about the exact same thing through different language. I think that's where things really can move forward the discourse of public science and health communication obviously is something I'm very passionate about I would love to see more podcasts believe it or not. Not just my podcast but they're more podcasts. If you have something to say to the world, please say it please put it out there on social media. I do think that there's value there. So I'm encouraging the every person not just usually they go the young people but like the air,
Every people to, you know, get information out there and and to support the efforts, and I also want to say thank you so much for coming out on a Saturday night here in Melbourne and for listening to the podcast and for ya, it really means a lot to me. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. I really appreciate it that the podcast is indeed a labor of love. I feel oh, so blessed to
do it and and my hope is that the tools protocols and information will radiate out as far and wide as possible. I don't need or want credit.
I just want people to have the information. I really mean that and to share it where you think it can be useful to people and last but certainly not least.
Thank you for your interest in science.
