Kind: captions
Language: en
what is the relationship between sleep
and learning which is I think one of the
most certainly for me one of the most
important things yeah you actually have
to have sleep in order to consolidate
the things that you've learned during
the day and integrate the items into
your schema of the world and you also
need sleep in order to refine what you
know
reducing the power of things that you
now know are not true in light of the
new information
and to refresh your synaptic circuitry
in your brain so that you can fit new
things in the next day okay so sleep is
implicated both in memory retention and
erasing memory yes talk to me about what
is the importance of forgetting so I I
forget a lot a lot a lot I am very
distressed by how much I forget but my
wife will often say I wish I had your
brain because I don't get hung up on
things yeah so even though it is like
I'm not kidding it's so much traumatic
for me the amount of information that I
encounter versus what I retain but I
don't get stuck emotionally yeah and I
think you actually probably retain more
than you think you may not be it's not
how it feels but yeah you may not be
able to call it to mind the specific
names of things but I believe I believe
you've probably integrated these things
into your schema and how you view the
world what is the schema exactly so it's
a kind of a loose term to see say how
you view the world how things fit into
the story that you build in your brain
of what the world is about and so for
example there's a schema we have of
Christmas and what it involves there's
all kinds of pieces of information in
that schema or the schema of what a
university is or a schema of what a
center of town looks like and so we have
things that may or may not be in any
particular town but we have an idea of
what a town center should look like you
know so are you familiar at all with the
idea of chunking yeah yeah it's kind of
like chunking yeah for people that don't
know explain what chunking is oh boy I
think you could probably explain it
better than me but it's it's a way to
simplify the World by
um sticking related things together in a
chunk that's pretty good okay on the
money I think the idea comes from chess
so where a chess master will look at a
board and he's not seeing the individual
pieces they just see that setup of where
you are versus where I am means that
we're at this point in the game roughly
and that these moves have been played
and these moves are yet to be played
which is how they're able to play so
many games at one time I have a feeling
though I'm certainly not an expert in
this that this is part of the problem
that AI will face as we try to get to
general intelligence the thing that we
call common sense I have a feeling is is
largely tied to not only the things you
can infer but how much you can reduce
something to a set of like Christmas
it's not exactly Christmas snow the glow
of Christmas lights maybe a dude in a
red coat cookies you know and it could
be a lot of different things but yet
there's some overarching organizational
principle that we put things in so
hearing you tie that to sleep that we're
constantly updating that schema yeah
um why is that so important well I mean
what we learned throughout our lives
um changes us and it should because
we are constantly evolving our knowledge
as new things get known
we change where we live and we need to
update our schema with the new place
that's home instead of the old place if
we go to the old place and knock on that
door or try and walk in it would be bad
right so we need to constantly update
our schema with new information
and in fact that does get harder as we
get older because just to update the
schema just to update the schema and
possibly one of the reasons why that
gets harder is because our sleep starts
to
degenerate degrade a little bit now it's
variable whose sleep gets worse at what
age but we do know that we wake up more
often we
um
have fewer big deep slow waves of slow
wave sleep and we are more prone to get
sleep apnea which was really makes us
wake up a lot and so our sleep just the
quality can get bad and then the
updating of our schema doesn't work as
well and that means that we can't learn
new things as the world changes around
us as as easily so I would do you know
is is it the breakdown of sleep that
causes the breakdown of brain plasticity
or is it just that the brain moves
through phases and when you're younger
you're super plastic and as you get
older just gets more and more rigid
that's a good question and I don't think
we know the answer to that yet we do
know a lot of things change with age and
aging but we don't know if they are
linked to sleep the two go hand in hand
so much but we do know that those who
have the worst
cognition when they're older also have
the worst sleep so again
yes which is causing which
um
a bit like progression
but it's a positive feedback the
positive feedback loop so but if you can
arrest
sleep degradation you could probably
arrest dementia as well
okay that's very interesting all right
so then as we tease that apart walk us
through what are the phases of sleep
right uh and what are we doing in our
lives that begin to disrupt those phases
right
um so the first phase we go into when
we're dozing is called stage one and
that's a lot of alpha in our brain which
is 8 to 11 Hertz activity
and is it a quieting down or a revving
up of the mind it's a I guess it would
be considered perhaps a quieting down
there's actually no change in neural
activity but it's a change in pattern of
activity
um so let me ask sorry and we will go
through all these stages but I find this
very interesting so the brain doesn't
end up conserving energy while we sleep
which would have been my sort of
childhood thought yes oh my brain is
going offline right but is it I'm
assuming the difference between
conscious activity and subconscious
activity or even during the day is my
brain activity primarily subconscious
that's a difficult one we don't really
have a good physiological definition for
what subconscious is interesting yeah so
um I think our subconscious is working
all day long in terms of what we Define
as the subconsciousness just thoughts
and feelings and gut feelings and
emotions that occur beneath our
perception of how we feel or what we're
thinking
um if I showed you a brain scan of
somebody spaced out yeah they're totally
in the default mode Network yeah they're
driving to work but they're not really
aware because they've done it so many
times and I showed you a brain scan of
somebody in phase one maybe is the
closest would you be able to tell the
difference like is it obvious this
person is daydreaming versus this person
is sleeping yeah yeah they're different
yeah
and even daydreaming I mean it depends
on what you're daydreaming about right
um what your brain is going to be doing
which parts of your brain are going to
be activated interestingly the very
first research project I ever did before
I was involved in Brain Research I was
just working in a research lab
was for pilots who were flying a really
difficult flight simulator at Northrop
aircraft Corporation
and these are really good test pilots
and we gave them a really difficult
problems to solve while they were flying
uh flying the simulator
and then we'd freeze and blank out their
screen and ask them questions about
their awareness or situational awareness
about how much fuel they had and all of
that where the bogeys were how far away
they were from base and those that were
doing the best had the most of this
Alpha Rhythm which is the dozing Rhythm
so while flying yes the ones that were
doing the best were the ones that were
most relaxed in their brain pattern and
the ones that were doing the worst were
the ones that looked most alert awake
engaged involved that's really isn't
that interesting now would you call that
the Zone yeah I think that's what you
would call that they were in the zone
that's really interesting so needless to
say I'm not a fighter pilot uh I don't
play professional sports but I do play
video games and every now and then you
find yourself in a position where you
can just read the map effortlessly you
know where people are going to be it
feels so different it feels awesome
first of all yeah your reflexes your
ability to just Intuit where things are
going to be happening at that's really
interesting that that most closely
mimics the first stage of sleep I would
not have guessed that I know very
interesting okay so stage one we're in
we're in an alpha wave phase yeah uh
which you would liken to being more
relaxed relaxed yeah okay but we're we
are asleep at that point no it's called
stage one because it's a transition
between wakefulness and sleep actually
we have found in my research lab that
one of the things that turns off one of
the first things that turns off quote
unquote off or changes mode is the
hippocampus which is involved with
learning and memory and that goes to
sleep minutes before the rest of our
brain does even though in the night I'm
going to be consolidating my memories
yeah so I say turned off but in fact
it's not turning off it's just turning
off to learning new things coming in
from the outside world okay so that was
one of the questions I was going to ask
you later but this now feels like the
perfect time can we learn things at
night could I play a calculus book and
wake up uh better at math it would not
be no that would not be a good idea just
there's nothing that you can do if
you're sleeping that's awesome you
really want to turn off to the outside
world in order to consolidate the things
that you learned all day long so there
is a just like there's a time for
everything there's a season for
everything you want to turn off what's
coming in from the outside world so that
you can process what you already have
interesting I have a conundrum for you
okay
I work a lot
while I love what I do it can be very
stressful and in uh the last few years
I've been working so much that it was
just completely disrupting my sleep and
it was miserable it would take me
eight hours to get
five hours of sleep I'm just really not
fun and there were times where if I was
getting my hair cut if I stopped moving
I would just start falling asleep yeah
absolutely miserable I hated it yeah and
I'm somebody who prioritizes sleep so
I'm not I don't have an alarm set
nothing I'm going to bed but I just
could not shut off my brain I couldn't
get into that where I was I felt relaxed
enough to to fall asleep or I would fall
asleep but then wake up after one to two
cycles and then I would be awake for two
hours is about normal right and then so
by the time I fell back to sleep I'm
just I did not feel good I was tired all
the time so one day I don't remember
what made me try this I started
listening to an audio book out like a
light yeah I would wake up fall back to
sleep within 30 seconds I mean just
magically delicious right yeah but I've
got the outside world coming in yeah so
it's not a pressing out these so I think
what that did that audiobook is it
helped distract your mind from the loop
it was in like oh I've got to do this
and this and I I did I tell somebody to
do this or
um so it distracts your mind from those
alerting and alarming things that were
keeping you awake and instead Let The
Trail Of Consciousness follow this story
that wasn't going to affect you one way
or another and that was enough to allow
your
parasympathetic nervous system to relax
as you relaxed and enjoyed the story and
then sleep could just take over and I do
the same thing I don't do podcasts
because I'm interested in every story
um I just I just play a kind of a
Mindless little video game on you know a
math video game and your mind doesn't
spark back up when you put that down and
go to sleep you know
um
no you know I just basically think the
video game for making me sleepy and just
I don't do a lot I don't you know take
my thing and walk to another room and
put it away I just
lay it down and sometimes I don't even
get that far it falls onto my pillow
yes okay so stage one alpha relaxed we
can begin to tune out the outside world
and our alerting mind begins to quiet
the hippocampus switches into some other
internal mode and could you can you
actually see the hippocampus change its
wave pattern electrical what do we yeah
is it a wave pattern or an electric it
is a electrical wave pattern okay so
same yeah got it okay and then how long
are we in stage one so we're in stage
four just for a few minutes you know
five minutes very quick yeah yeah very
quick and then we go into stage two
which has
um
called K complexes and spindles which
are bigger waves that where all the
neurons are silent and then they're all
active at the same time and then
spindles are a little buzz of activity
that
come once every 10 seconds or so and
they last about one and a half seconds
something like that it's 10 to 15 cycles
per second and it starts small and it
builds up and then it goes small again
unless you smoke weed and then you get
these weird monster spindles yes that
we're unsure what they do which will be
something I'm sure we will get into
later because I have a wife that likes
to partake yeah yeah uh okay so the the
brain is pulsing which is very
interesting that's is that because of
the need for the glial system to clean
out yeah that's actually mostly
happening in the deeper stage of sleep
we call it okay so this is different
yeah this is stage three so stage two is
what we're talking about now so what's
the pulsing then so the K complexes are
um
we don't know exactly in in animals they
are
married to something that also starts
during that state which is called p
waves these are Big excitatory drives
from inside of our own brain stem that
go to our forebrain so
um
K complexes and p waves may or may not
there's some controversy be the same
thing but they're big glutamatergic
drives it also happens because our
Thalamus which is our Gateway of
Consciousness it's kind of sitting right
in the middle of our brain and allows
the outside information to reach our
cortex it relays it it starts to close
and become more hyper polarized more
negative and what does that mean that
means so when okay so our neurons are
electrical as well as chemical and the
inside of the neuron is very negative
related to the outside the electrical
potential is very negative and when
outside information comes in it's
excitatory so it actually makes the
inside of the cell more positive and
then when it gets to a threshold when it
gets so positive it gets to a threshold
which is negative 55 millivolts then it
fires an action potential a whole lot of
things that are voltage dependent open
up so sodium channels open allow a lot
of sodium to come in to really
depolarize and that's called an action
potential and those each one of those
are the ways one neuron communicates
with the next neuron and how our whole
brain works together and why we can see
these electrical patterns because the
more neurons that are involved in firing
at the same time the more our electric
roads that are out here on our school
can see this positive potential go by
and then as they're all filing silent
and becoming negative together you can
see this negative potential and so um do
you uh so if you had to guess is there a
metronome effect going on is it trying
to synchronize something it's um it is
kind of like a metronome in that it's
also a positive feedback so you have the
all the neurons firing at the same time
and then there's a bunch of other things
happen once they fire they there are
things like clothes that are deactivated
and then everything becomes negative
together and then when it becomes
negative enough there are other voltage
dependent channels that open and all
becomes positive and then do we have
this kind of synchronicity when we're
awake
in some places yeah for example if
you're walking or doing anything
rhythmic moving your body there's a lot
of synchronous in your spinal cord that
allows that to be a rhythmic normal
movement fishes swimming
um
they're so interesting but we don't yet
know why that metronome is going off we
don't but when I started 30 something
years ago we really didn't we thought
maybe it was just something that was a
signature of something else going on but
now we know that actually that
synchronous firing and synchronous
silence that happens during this non-rem
we call it non-rem slate stage of sleep
could be the thing that actually cleans
our brain and these p waves these big
excitatory p waves Target a different
part of our brain than our Thalamus
during wakefulness targets and the part
of the brain that it targets is
out in in the parts of the brain that
form our schema where cortex talks to
Cortex instead of outside world talking
to and this is coming from the brain
stem comes from the brainstem The
excitatory Urge comes from the brain
stem and it targets out these cortical
cortical connection okay so I imagine
this is very conserved over Evolution
yeah it appears to be
um yeah zebrafish
uh we there are animals that don't have
much of a cortex but they still have
sleep that's really interesting so
there's probably something very ancient
very primordial that this is going to
end up being tied to versus something in
the neocortex which is more a higher
level cognition probably not memory um
or would it be because I guess every
animal would need to go hey I learned
this food is here this movement where
that thing's a predator yeah okay so
even fruit flies completely false in my
apartment no no I mean they it may the
reason why we can't measure the same
brainwave activities through to a in a
fruit fly is because even though they
have a lot of neurons that help them
move and interact with the world they're
not layered in the same way so in our
cortex all the neurons are lined up kind
of and then these electrical potentials
that I'm talking about work like a
battery you know you
um when the battery is lined up the
right way you can see the electrical
potential but if they're all jumbled
relative to one another even though they
might all be firing and Silent at the
same time the
the way that the electricity is Flowing
is this way in this neuron and this way
and that neuron waves cancel each other
out so we can't see it but right okay so
that's stage two
um is what stage is
memory
consolidation happening versus
forgetting I assume there are different
stages yeah
um so that stage two is part of
consolidation those big excitatory waves
and those sleep spindles where is where
our cortex is telling other parts of our
cortex or our hippocampus which is kind
of the short-term memory structure is
telling our cortex hey this is what I
learned today and and teaching it
um and so that happens in that stage two
in stage three uh that's when we have
those big slow waves that sweep through
regularly stage two we have those K
complexes which are big waves but they
come
you know once every 10 seconds or so and
sleep spindles which come once every 10
seconds or so but in that deep slow wave
stage of sleep they're coming all the
time there's still each one comes once a
second or so but
um but that's probably where they're all
firing together and they're all quiet
together and that's creates when the
neuron fires not only these are
electricity and neurochemicals that are
released but also when it fires when all
the sodium is rushing into the cell the
cell expands because it brings water
with it and so it's actually all the
cells are expanding and Contracting at
the same time which could create a pump
like action pumping out the debris and
the waste into our lymphatic system to
clean our brain and
that yeah that is probably one of the
functions of stage three specifically
yeah of stage three specific okay so
when we think about neurodegenerative
diseases
um you hear a lot about uh beta amyloid
plaques building up Tau proteins things
like that
one where do those come from and B it
seems like because I know we were
talking earlier but also knowing your
research that
as we get into like really bad
neurodegenerative diseases they're also
going to massive sleep disruption yeah
um
so yeah what what are the amyloid
plaques what are the Tau proteins why do
they matter why do we have to clean them
out every night do they serve a function
are they all bad like what's up guys
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no no no we need them we we couldn't
survive or learn or do well without them
it's kind of like I guess you could sort
of think of it as
making the mess on our desk as we work
during the day right and
um we need that to do the business that
we're doing but we also need to clean it
up
um every night so that the next day we
can come in and be organized and
efficient and know where things are so
um so it's a normal part of being awake
because phosphorylating this towel and
it helps us to
carry things where they need to go
same with amyloid proteins we have to
have them but it's one that become
a mess misfolded and a mess that if we
don't clean it up it starts to Gunk up
our office of our brain and then we
can't find anything and
um our neurons aren't working like
they're supposed to because it's less
and less efficient that stuff is very
interesting to me especially
as it relates to metabolic disease and
whether Alzheimer's is metabolic disease
in the brain I'm curious before we get
into stage four
how much of what's going on in here is
tied to metabolism because I know if you
mess up your sleep you're going to
notice it immediately in your metabolic
response it really is the first thing
that gets messed up is your metabolism
and you get four in the morning you get
hungry for junk food because your body
says I'm not efficiently processing you
know energy anymore and I need more of
it so the one of the first things that
happens when we go to sleep is we
convert the free adenosine that's been
freed through the process of of
um metabolism
um it gets built back into ATP which
have these packets of energy that our
whole body uses so
that is a very important part and when
we sleep deprive ourselves our adenosine
builds up and up and up and up the
longer awake that's what caffeine does
it blocks The receptors for this
adenosine so we don't know how long
we've been awake and we don't feel the
signal that we're sleeping but it
doesn't caffeine doesn't help us to
change free adenosine back to ATP and
that happens very slowly and
inefficiently when we're awake but
really well and quickly when we're
asleep that's interesting so basically
you're is is the adenosine like a
hormone where the body's like I'm gonna
do this because I need you to go back to
sleep and so it's just sort of a clock
and it just produces it and it knows ah
you'll hit this sense that I must go to
sleep and then cool cool like it's done
a job I'm gonna take it all back and
then okay you're awake and I'm gonna
pump it back out or does it have some
other function and sleep is just a
byproduct it's it's freed up because of
the process of energy use so
um ATP adenosine trisphosphate when we
um
utilize the ATP it basically kicks that
off it kicks that off interesting and
the next and then it goes from
triphosphate to die diphosphate to
monophosphate to to just free adenosis
and then we grab it again and we grab it
again
wow mitochondria are working hard to
talk about a very simple thing that I
have never put together okay that makes
a lot of sense uh that's why power naps
are power naps because you can quickly
grab some of that free adenosine turn it
into ATP that is so interesting okay
that makes better than better than a cup
of coffee because it's actually building
background energy okay so the cup of
coffee is bamboozling you so you don't
feel that you're tired but the power nap
is actually creating ATP with the free
adenosine so you're lowering the level
that tells you that you're tired yes and
you're actually producing energy yeah
very interesting but I also know that
you've talked about that some people
naps don't work yeah so why that seems
weird we don't know we don't know yet at
um it's also true that some people don't
get all of the health benefits of
exercise they're just a variety of
people out there yeah I know really yeah
I've never heard that yeah yeah some
people you know they can exercise all
they want they could train for a
marathon and they're they're it's not
doing the repair and benefits for the
body at other people because so that's
really interesting I should not be
surprised everything we're so
individualized different from that is
horrifying to think that you could be
doing all of that because I absolutely
despise working out I could be doing all
that work and not seeing all of the
benefit I'm sure you get some but yeah
I'm sure you get this very interesting
yeah okay so uh there's more to go into
there but I think it's probably better
to wrap up stage four and then we can
sort of circle back and get into some of
these things especially what we can do
to optimize this stuff right
um stage three stage four they're really
the same thing they've been collapsed
into one um
because so you guys can talk about four
stages anymore oh no the fourth stage
being REM sleep but it's not called
stage four it's just called REM rapid
eye movement sleep yeah so you're still
technically in stage three no you've
just completely switched out of stage
three and you're in a completely thing
entirely REM sleep is also called
paradoxical sleep because our cortex
looks like we're awake and there's so
much activity is that why it's not
considered stage four it's just so
different yeah stage one two three are
all kind of sort of degrees of depth are
are Thalamus that thalamic gate becomes
less and less aware of the world outside
of us
um
I don't know that's maybe a misnomer too
it's not even stage two and stage three
are so different from one another to in
terms of what neurotransmitters are
there and what's not there so we did say
oh this is how you're marching into
sleep but in fact we now know as of
recently that stage two and stage three
are entirely different as different from
one another as wakefulness is from any
other state as well yeah okay that's
unexpected yeah okay and then stage four
is different than all of them yes and it
looks like we're more wakeful so yeah
describe what is going on in rem yeah
why is it so weird why do we dream I
mean this is the weird one right we're
again closed to the outside world
instead we're internally generating uh
our own reality and that reality is
unreal you know it's some things that
can't happen in the outside world what
we do know is we are in turn generating
an internal State this dream state all
of these dreams and what those dreams
allow us to do is things that we can't
do during wakefulness fly or
um
um you know become monsters or fight
monsters or play out all kinds of
scenarios in fast kind of forward motion
that we can't do and if we did we might
put ourselves at risk but because we're
safe in our beds
um not acting out our dreams we can
safely do these things and so
um yeah it helps our brain to expand and
be imaginative and work through
complicated problems and put things
together that don't make any sense
during wakefulness when our logic and
judgment decision-making brain is you
know Reigns well hopefully Reigns
um instead we can play out all kinds of
crazy scenarios that may allow us to put
things together that we wouldn't
otherwise
that'd be interesting so is are you
saying that your hypothesis is that by
having what I'll call a narrative
component I don't know if you'd use
those words but by having a narrative
component we go into a more creative
state
where we can connect ideas that somehow
when we wake is going to be used well
yeah so that's the really cool thing
about this dream state is our brains are
learning we are it's learning from the
dream state in the dream state we are
learning and our brain is learning from
itself but not in the way that I'm
consolidating memories in quote-unquote
learning this is a different type of
learning it's it's it's an it's you're
creating new knowledge but from the
things you already know uh well we can
measure the synapses and the synaptic
strengths and which synapses are
strengthened and which are weakened
interesting so I'm when you say learning
you mean mechanistically yeah neurons
are wiring together yeah in the same way
that they would if I I want to learn a
math problem or how to solve a math
problem and those neurons would be
strengthened yeah I mean it's really
powerful they call it plastic State and
so it's just as plastic as when we're
most alert and weight learning the best
in during the daytime but the one thing
that you can do during that dream state
you can't do during wakefulness is you
can do Erasure so you can delete and
eliminate Pathways that no longer work
for us or are redundant and that happens
during REM only during REM sleep yeah I
don't understand why that would happen
while I'm telling myself some
acid-induced
Bizarro narrative I mean I don't
remember many of my dreams but the one I
remember is they're so weird that I'm
just like yeah how is this the time and
place that I'm going hey you know that
thing you don't use that anymore let's
prune that out yeah do we have any sense
of why those two happen at the same time
yeah I think it's because
um well one thing that needs to happen
is we need to we need to prune those
redundant pieces of information away
otherwise we would just saturate our
brains with
irrelevant pieces of information and
even wrong things that we should tag at
least to say yes I used to believe this
but now I know it's wrong so it's REM
sleep that you can reduce the weight of
those things so it's not the first thing
you think of when you know someone asks
you you know where did you park your car
yesterday it's
um or last night it's not the place you
parked it last week or the month before
it's where you parked it yesterday so
you need to prune those things away so
so you know what's current and what's
here now so it's the novelty encoding
parts of your brain that need that get
pruned and the reason why that's
possible is because that's the state in
which uh brain stem area called the
locus cerrillas which provides
norepinephrine another word for it is
noradrenaline to our brain that only
lets us it's only puts us in the go mode
it only puts us in the strength and
strength and strengthen when we're awake
when we're asleep it's gone and so
that's the only time during REM sleep
it's when it's really gone and you can
say yes to these things and know to
these things be selective it's kind of
like
you know during the daytime you you have
a housewarming party and your guests are
bringing all kinds of things into your
house right house plants and and
dishes and all of that and yes you
accept all of these things when you're
awake
um but you unwrap them in your um when
you build proteins in that stage two and
stage three sleep and then during REM
sleep you put them where they go and you
throw out the things that they replace
at least new things replace man this is
so interesting to me I have a hypothesis
for you okay let me know this is going
to be so absurd but I love talking to
people that really know their stuff so
you can correct me where I go wrong uh
when I'm teaching students about
business yeah I'm always trying to get
them to understand that you have all
these dots
your Market what you're trying to sell
them what you think they want how you
think you're going to get there the
state of the economy all this stuff and
your job is to connect those dots with a
narrative which I'll call your schema
for how to move your business forward
right the problem is the only thing I
can tell you is that your schema is
wrong but you need one in order to move
forward with conviction yeah and if you
don't move forward with conviction then
you'll fall prey to what most businesses
fall pray to which is doing nothing is
the only sin so if you do nothing you'll
get bowled over by all the other people
that find a way to move forward with
like real conviction yeah
and so when you are getting your team on
board you're gonna only talk narrative
you're going to talk about how the dots
connect
but when you're alone you need to come
back out to just dots and see if there's
another way to connect these in a more
efficient narrative yeah and so getting
them to understand the brain is a
predictive engine and when you are able
to predict the outcome of your behaviors
you're closer to ground truth when you
can't predict the outcome of your
behaviors you have a flaw in the model
yeah
man I'm grasping at straws here but this
makes a lot of internal sense to me that
if in the REM State what my brain is
doing is going your schema is held
together with this narrative yeah but
for a minute I need to come back out to
just dots there's no logic and so when I
hit that point where it's just dots I'm
having these weird dreams I got a dream
Once where it was raining corpses no
idea what that meant
um but I'm I'm back out to there's
there's no coherent logical cohesion
between these right but my brain is now
removing things that haven't been
serving me yeah and then is going to
reconsolidate all this back into a
updated schema When I Wake yeah exactly
I think that's really interesting if
that holds true like that really makes
sense to me from just how the world
works yeah
very interesting very interesting okay
so now talk to me is there a correlation
between either
or both
schizophrenia and a dreamlike state or
psychedelics in a dreamlike state yeah
yes the answer is yes
um so
schizophrenia is long-interested sleep
researchers because it's
the hallucinations are so much like what
hallucinations we experience When We're
Dreaming and so it was thought to be a a
dream like state right
um
interestingly the only real difference
that you can see in the brains of people
with schizophrenia well there are two
things one is during wakefulness
your gamma which is the cortical
cortical connectivity is slightly
different in frequency it's just it
changes a little bit almost as though
we're being more driven by an internal
cortical cortical connection like we are
during REM sleep
and then the second
is we don't have those beautiful sleep
spindles that I talked about so people
explain to people so spindles are way
too connected to intelligence yeah I
always get very uneasy with stuff like
this or I want to know can I can I yeah
make more of them right well the reason
why you probably get uncomfortable is
because we don't really have a good
grasp of what intelligence is we just
um we know there are different kinds of
intelligences and we know that our ways
of testing them are very very flawed but
but intelligence is broadly speaking
what you talked about earlier which is a
way to
absorb information process it form a
schema and use that schema the next time
you encounter the world so it's a way to
um use what you know in a very efficient
fashion perhaps is the way you could
think about it if you had to guess if
you could turn a dial and increase the
amount of spindles that somebody has
would they get smarter
yeah I
yes
however that qualify that it's not just
spindles like you said cannabis you know
increases the length of spindles and can
almost replace all of REM sleep with
spindles but it's what's going on during
those spindles the timing is everything
so it's when neurons fire in relation to
spindles it's the neurochemicals that
are present or apple absent during
spindles that allows us to reshape our
schema and so
um so it's not just the rhythm itself
it's what's going on in the background
of that Rhythm or on top of those
rhythms or because of those rhythms
that's that's the important thing so I I
think I'm a little wary of devices for
example that's going to externally cause
your brain to cut to fire in a 10 to 15
Hertz spindle fashion because if the
rest of your brain isn't doing what it's
supposed to do it's not in the state
it's supposed to be in it's not going to
do you any good and in fact it probably
could do more harm than good it's
interesting I've heard you talk about
that then you know the brain one the
systems are never that simple it's like
there's redundancies in the systems and
uh depending on context it could be
doing seeming to do the same thing but
in fact it's actually doing the reverse
so all very very complicated but going
back to schizophrenia and psychedelics
yeah
um
so what have we found is it a dreamlike
state and that's why they're
hallucinating and the wires are just
getting crossed or
I think
a dream like State because that stage
two sleep spindle State isn't doing what
needs to happen which is updating your
schema with the information that you
learned during the day so why would that
result in hallucination so
yeah I I just had a really fascinating
conversation with an undergraduate at
UCLA who's really interested in
schizophrenia and sleep
and it might be that your
distal
cortico cortical communication is
happening without
instruction
so it's without that instruction say
where the hippocampus can tell the brain
this is what we learned today this is
now we gotta tag this with false and
this is true and we've got to refresh
and all of that happening during that
those sleep spindles when the cortex is
teaching the I mean the hippocampus is
teaching the cortex what it knows
instead you're staying in perhaps a
rem-like state in that you're doing all
these a free associations you're backing
out you see the dots and not the schema
anymore like you said and but that's
happening
without the organization step of this is
what I've learned today first so so the
brain is talking to itself but the brain
doesn't recognize I'm talking to myself
yeah and so it's misinterpreting this is
a signal coming from the outside yeah
when in reality it's a signal coming
from the inside yeah yeah that was the
latest Revelation that I had um with
this undergraduate it's people with
schizophrenia the more schizotypic they
are the more they can tickle themselves
and you know that's revelatory explain
what that means well because we can't
tickle ourselves because when we do this
to ourselves we are we have what's
called an efference copy so our brain
our motor cortex says I'm about to I'm
doing this I'm getting close to my
shoulder and we can expect it and the
thing about tickles that it's an
unexpected well one of the things about
tickles it's unexpected and so
um so we can't but if you don't have
that feedback from the outside your
brain telling you this is coming from
inside of me and not from the outside
that give me the chills yeah isn't that
amazing so the they can tickle
themselves so they have completely lost
track is this inside or outside
whoa do we have any sense of how you
re-establish that connection
I that one that's a micro circuit
question and that's something that my
lab is also looking to in a lot of other
labs too but
um so there are sort of two compartments
of our neurons the the that are
listening to the outside world uh so one
the proximal compartment that's really
close to the cell body is where the
outside world talks to our our cortex
and puts that new information and then
the distal
parts of the antenna which are called
dendrites are where the cortical
cortical information comes in and
normally when we're awake
our whole brain chemistry weights
um things to be more attuned to what's
coming in from the outside world and yes
there can be definitely thankfully uh
some modification of that based on our
schema and the distal dendrites
information where cortex is talking to
Cortex but mostly the two compartments
are very separated from one another
they're physically separated from
another they're chemically separated
from another they're anatomically
connect connectivity wise separate from
each other and um and then during sleep
during this REM State and the spindle
State we switch from that internally or
that externally focused novelty encoding
uh
proximal
close to fell body circuit to paying
more attention to what's going on from
on in the distal cortical cortical
circuit and so and what mitigates that
what switches us from this to that is
thing called interneurons which are
inhibitory interneurons which during
wakefulness kind of inhibit that
cortical cortical input to some degree
in a in a very regulated and rhythmic
fashion that's what sets up that gamma
Rhythm that I talked about that's
different in people with schizophrenia
is these interneurons and it's really
these interneurons that seem to not be
as viable in people with schizophrenia
so if somehow you can restore the health
of these interneurons and restore how
they're connected with the circuit they
can switch us from external to internal
in a fashion that makes sense with
what's actually going on in the world
around and have we seen any impact on
diet is anybody looking at that
of course diet affects everything you
know neurotransmitters
um are and the cofactors the coenzymes
are all part of that I don't know myself
of any studies about diet but one thing
that will definitely cause people with
schizophrenia or the tendency to have
schizophrenia to tip them over into a
break is alcohol
um and doesn't weed also have I've heard
people say like yo-yo yeah yeah be very
careful yeah and it's probably because
it's messing up with those sleep
spindles that we talked about and what's
exactly what alcohol is doing alcohol no
alcohol inhibits the
um stage it it interferes with our sleep
it makes our sleep not do what it's
supposed to do so during those deep slow
waves of slow wave sleep of the timing
of things isn't right that alcohol
affects our interneurons big time it's a
Gaba Agonist which is an the
neurotransmitter that imaginurons use
and so it falsely clamps things down
when they shouldn't be clamped down
takes our forebrain off line which is
why we become so it's part of the fun
yeah part of the fun yeah but um but
yeah so and and so it interferes with
our sleep and I think if your sleep is
already compromised when you have
schizophrenia you don't have good sleep
spindles in the first place it might be
that you're able to hang on to reality
just barely of tooth and nail by the few
sleep spindles that you get and then
alcohol wipes those out and so then you
go from the edge of barely hanging on to
tip over to the side of
um hallucinations and
oh that's so interesting this is a
random side note but
um I had a friend have a friend
whose brother is paranoid schizophrenic
and he said he spent like a year he had
to move back home spent a year tracking
his brother down finally found him his
brother was convinced like the French or
Italian government were after him and he
was you know running from like underpass
to underpass trying to like keep away
from the satellites being able to read
his mind well wait though against
stranger uh he finds his brother gets
him on back on his medication his
brother then develops secondary
depression and while taking the
medication is able to explain this is
less fun than being a paranoid
schizophrenic because at least then I
mattered then like the governments were
after me I was like of central
importance and every day my life
mattered and I was running he stops
taking his medication and and goes back
onto the street right and I was like
whoa yeah like there the the brain is
complicated yeah and to think that
I mean look it clearly is there's
something just misfiring it's it's not
working the way that it should yeah but
I kind of got what he was saying oh I
was like wow yeah to feel like I I
matter more than anybody else and like
everything is about me and governments
are after me right I was like there
that's spy versus spy yeah yeah I don't
think we as humans need to matter to the
whole world we just need I'm not trying
to celebrate or say that schizophrenia
sounds amazing not at all but I think
this touches on a very basic human need
which is that we need to matter to one
another we need to matter to somebody
and I think that's as a parent that's
the best thing we can give for a child
is the knowledge that we matter we
matter to them at least and that we can
make a difference in the world that our
actions matter that you know we can make
the world a better place and that they
hope and expect us to do that and so
that connection between it I mean
uh we are social animals and just like
other social animals we're not the only
social animals in the world there are
lots of social animals we need our clan
we need each other and when we feel like
we don't matter and nobody cares
depression definitely sets in I think
this was a major problem during the
pandemic when we were isolated from each
other especially those people who lived
alone I mean wow that's
we are social animals that is a
fundamental part of who we are thank God
for the telephone thank God for Zoom
thank God for that we could at least see
each other in some way and tell each
other that we matter to one another but
I I totally get what this friend of
yours or this you know
felt uh that's crazy yeah we and I think
that maybe way one way to help people
stay on their meds is let them know that
they do matter show them that they do
matter it's really well even if they're
not the central of this Central you know
character of this conspiracy yeah of
this big government conspiracy if you
matter to somebody your nieces and
nephews you know your brothers and
sisters your mother and father I think
that could that could make the
difference all right let's go dark for a
second all right if we had to break
somebody like really break them isolate
them or deprive them of sleep
uh I think sleep would do it faster can
you kill somebody by not letting them
sleep yeah that's bananas yeah well
because oh gosh no one's never done well
but I know of in humans
um in other mammals it's five weeks
something whoa I can't that does not
sound fun no so what ends up happening
what's the mechanism by which you want
to break it's um because sleep has so
many functions it's not even clear what
what the mechanism is but do they get
organ failure um yeah yeah multiple
organ failure immune system degeneration
lesions
um sepsis
um all kinds of different things would
kill you it just kind of actually kind
of like covid and other very bad viruses
they target different organs depending
on who you are and what state they're in
so
um so sleep deprivation will Target
different organs and where you're most
vulnerable will be the one that
that hurts you faster wow what what does
that process look like because you don't
go from I'm a little tired to I'm dead
like do they start hallucinating do they
start
um well people well I mean people have
self-deprived or have been unfortunately
deprived of sleep and hallucinations are
part of it yeah
um hunger oh um your metabolism goes
haywire and you get super hungry and
you'll continue to lose weight you'll
lose weight with long-term sleep
deprivation yeah even if you're eating
yeah yeah whoa
um so there was one women's magazine who
talked to this researcher and said hey
you know even though I could eat
whatever I want and still lose weight if
I lose anything no but she'll be ugly
because your skin doesn't you know
refresh and renew yeah I mean you'll be
cranky and and just not look good not
feel good it's it's it's not a good
thing
um and then type 2 diabetes insulin
regulation goes Haywire one night a full
sleep deprivation will set you on the
path toward type 2 diabetes so
um yeah you want to get your sleep no
joke yeah I think actually probably the
Nobel prize-winning discovery about the
function of sleep being that it's
important for every everything living
creature is that it's it's metabolism I
think it's the mitochondria and the
repair of the mitochondria is that
you're saying that will happen I will I
think yeah I know a few researchers that
are looking to sleep in mitochondria and
I think that's that's the where the
money is I mean cognition yes we all
want to learn better and understand
better but I think the essential
life-sustaining function of sleep has to
do with energy
that's interesting so knowing the little
bit about mitochondria that I know they
have their own DNA
uh what's going on at the level of sleep
that would impact this little organelle
that should have its own setup in its
own system it repairs itself so why why
does my as if I could exist without them
but why does my sleep affect
mitochondria so profoundly that you see
a Nobel Prize coming yeah well okay so
think of think of sleep as I think of it
as a washing machine
um
if you
don't
or if you don't clean your clothes
ultimately they'll get gunked up heavy
dirty won't do their won't do their
insulation function they won't help you
function if you get sleep but it's
messed up it's like putting your clothes
in the washing machine but interrupting
the cycle putting on the clothes soaking
wet or whatever so one of the functions
of sleep is to actually repair our DNA
and if we can't do that when we're awake
we just can't so we need to put it in
the washing machine and we need to do
the things that we do DNA repair isn't
happening like at all times and it's
primarily yeah well no interesting yeah
so I understand how the brain cleans
itself with that the pump that you're
talking about where I'm basically
expanding and contrasting and when I
contract it it's um pulling things in
and then when I expand it's letting
everything wash out yeah so that I get
how there's a mechanistic thing and that
I could only do that when I basically
put my body down so that I'm not going
to fall off something or whatever while
my brain is going through the cycle but
at the DNA cellular level is there some
resource that the cell has to do while
it's awake and that it stops doing it
yeah there's it's like like again like
the washing machine there are things
that need to be coordinated and together
and timed well that metronome yeah it
really is it's it's timing is everything
um so things are happening during waking
that allows wakefulness to be
waking like norepinephrine allows us to
be alert and awake and attending to the
outside world
um and then
and when it's present while we sleep
which happens sometimes
um in insomnia
especially stress related insomnia you
can have sleep but your norepinephrine
system is still going post-traumatic
stress disorder also
um you're in your sleep all of the
elements that need to be there to do the
job efficiently aren't there or things
are in the way they're in the way that
shouldn't be in the way so it's less
efficient and doing its jobless well
okay so now going back to mitochondria
and the Energy System
um sleep playing a primary role in that
so I've heard people say that fat loss
happens at night you think it happens
when you're exercising but in reality it
doesn't what what do you think is going
on with the energy system at night that
is so profoundly important well I
actually don't know and that's why I
think it's in the future yeah
um so guessing there are different
things never
hormones cortisol growth hormone all of
these things change with the sleep wake
cycle and with a circadian cycle so
again it's also better to go to sleep
when you're circadian Cycles and your um
sleep needs are
are joined at the same time so better to
sleep at night and expose ourselves to
light during the day to help coordinate
our circadian and sleep needs together
so
growth hormone is one of those things
that gets released in a big bolus when
we're asleep at the right time and if we
miss that
we won't have that big bonus of growth
hormone and Bill bolus does a different
thing than eeking out over time so even
if it was the same amount over a 24-hour
period very different impact than the
same amount primarily over an eight-ish
hour yeah and you can understand that
because for example the reproductive
cycle also depends on boluses of
hormones being released at the right
time if you get a bolus released at a
time when the rest of your system isn't
ready it won't produce for you know for
fertile situation and
um and if instead of a bolus you just
eke out a little bit all the time you
also won't develop the follicle and
release the egg that sort of thing so
there's a difference in a bolus versus
just a little bit over time that
um yeah and it has to be done in a
coordinated fashion yeah that
coordination thing that's coming up a
lot yeah I had never really thought
about that before that makes a lot of
sense take the body offline coordinate
everything all at once hey quick quick
it's kind of like uh Disneyland I don't
know why this is coming to me when they
you know switch over all their lights
and they turn on the Christmas season or
whatever it's like all at night
everybody descends really fast well
nobody's there yeah yeah that's right if
you tried all those workers you tried to
do that with all those workers while the
guests were in the park and it would be
chaos right people couldn't find their
rides the workers couldn't get to you
know take down the big things they
needed to take at down and bring in the
big trucks to bring in the big Christmas
tree or whatever at Disneyland you need
that to be timed right exactly yeah very
very interesting okay so talk to me
about optimized sleep we it literally
can kill you if you don't get it so how
do we make sure that we're not just
getting it but we're really getting it
in the right way the right amounts yeah
how do we prepare well you know our
bodies are built to optimize our own
physiology so if you listen to your body
you'll be all right which so few people
do myself included yes until I really
started taking it seriously right yeah
um if you're studying being calculus and
you're trying to absorb this information
and you get overwhelmed with a sense of
sleepiness listen to your body put your
head down on your textbook if you want
to take a nap because during that time
your brain is doing what it needs to do
which is start to put these this new
information into your schema and build
it and if you deny yourself of that you
won't learn as well similarly if you're
feeling sick and you want to go to bed
go to bed don't make yourself don't just
take a bunch of pills and make yourself
go through the day because that sleep is
actually doing what your body needs
which is restoring your immune system
and helping it to work well similarly
after getting a vaccine you know people
feel a little sick often and and want a
good night's sleep get that good night's
sleep because it's been shown that if
you don't get a good night's sleep after
you get a vaccine it's 50 as effective
if anything so listen listen to your
body do what it says to do now I will
say there was a a time when I was I
don't know in my early 20s where my body
told me stay up later stay up later stay
up later and it got to the point where I
had to set an alarm to make a 10 p.m
movie oh wow I felt so weird yeah now
thankfully my body then told me yeah not
seeing the sunlight is very weird you
need to flip your schedule and so I went
back but that was really me doing what
felt natural yeah and my schedule got
pushed back back well I think that's
because you weren't exposing yourself to
the outside light in the morning like
when it needs to be so so but that means
that people can listen to their body and
get in the wrong place yeah so when we
think about sleep hygiene when we think
about the optimal like what you would do
with your kids to make sure that they
were on track how would you have people
shape themselves is it like the mornings
coming to bed at a certain time yeah and
I think you know back when we were more
agrarian culture that wasn't a problem I
mean we just couldn't do that much at
night now we have computers and false
lights and all of this stuff so yeah we
can wedge ourselves into a into a bad
place
but yeah get outside in the morning
expose yourself to that outside light
there's nothing stronger than the
sunlight even when it's behind a cloud
um in resetting our circadian system
does it count if you're looking out the
window
it yeah I mean just think of in terms of
film you studied film right or you
wanted to you you know the light coming
through a window is great
um for a camera versus false lights you
have to spend a lot of energy to try and
reproduce the same amount of it of light
so does the light need to
um actually touch your skin because it's
my understanding that you do some of the
UV light gets bounced back by glass and
so that getting outside does make some
difference I don't know how much amount
you know what getting outside helps for
a lot of other things that like
converting
to vitamin D that we can use
um but the photons it's actually not UV
it's blue light interestingly 470
um nanometers is that what it is that is
the wavelength of that blue light that
really activates our our eyes and that
doesn't get filtered unless we have a
blue light filter on our glass so
um
so yeah so that still would there might
be other things the Sun hitting your
skin it matters but you're still going
to get that alertness signal just by
getting enough blue light in your eyes
yeah okay yeah
um do you think it matters like time of
day I've heard huberman and other people
point out that like light is actually
sort of qualitatively different early in
the morning that sends certain signals
to your brain yeah it does um so
our circadian system is set so that when
we see a bright blue light
our circadian system says that's morning
so if you keep yourself indoors all day
long and don't go out until the evening
and that's when you get the brightest
light your circadian system says it's
morning and it shifts everything
so that that becomes your new morning
your clock gets reset to that light is
there any difference pre-sunrise post
sunrise or doesn't matter so normally
when you fall asleep at night say 10
o'clock at night you get a big surge of
melatonin and that's the hormone of
Darkness it's called
um if you at that time expose yourself
to Bright Light say you've just flown
across the Atlantic and now what was 10
o'clock at night is now
I don't know six o'clock in the morning
um
your your brain will reset your clock to
that night it doesn't do it all at once
it can't shift six hours at once with it
it needs several days to do that but it
will start switching things so that it
says okay this is my new morning time
and that's good we want that I went we
want to be able to inform our brains of
what time of day it is and reset that
every day you have your actually own
endogenous clock that will free run in
absence of any light so if suddenly
someone puts you into a cave you still
would have a roughly 24-hour Rhythm it's
generally most often a little more than
24 hours which is just very interesting
I've heard that it's like 25 hours yeah
not 25 that's a lot it's you know 24.1
to 12.4 yeah it's pretty close but a
free running human will go to bed later
and later and later every night just
because our clocks are a little longer
than the 24 hour Rhythm and so it needs
to be reset every day yeah okay what
time should we go to bed
all right so if say you got up at a good
time in the morning six seven why is
that a good morning
it well I'll say it's a good time just
because that's when the Sun rises and
that's when the rhythm of the earth is
usually aligned for business and other
things that you would need to do farming
uh you know that's when you would be
that's why it's a good time I mean
actually if you're a shift worker and
you work at night
um don't go outside in the morning you
want to keep yourself in darkness and
just switch your whole circadian rhythm
so that you expose yourself to Bright
Light in the evening because that's when
your circadian rhythm says okay this is
morning and I'm going to be alert for
the next 16 hours so don't shift workers
though have a higher preponderance of
cancer yeah but that's probably because
they're incompletely able to do that so
they've not quite switched over well and
and that's often because unfortunately
shift the shifts of shift work give them
you know weekends off and so then then
the weekend they want to be around their
family we're social creatures they'll
get up in the morning and and so every
week your your circadian is going back
and forth and back and forth or some
crazy shift working jobs we'll have you
four days on and three days off and
um you know it's just that's not good so
if you can actually
set your whole life to this new time
it's fine it's like you've moved to
Europe I mean interesting it's fine now
is there data around that because I
would be very curious to see how the
rates of cancer correlate to the rate
the level of vitamin D yeah uh there are
data there are data and so it doesn't
matter this is really about if you fully
shift your schedule you're going to be
fine the rates of cancer are no not
elevated anymore
um so right if you fully sleep switch
your schedule you'll you'll be okay
you're all your clocks will be aligned
now vitamin D is another question though
that's another thing that you know that
you get from the Sun you can take
supplements though
depends on how well you absorb those
particular supplements what else you're
taking in your nutrition at the same
time and whether it blocks that
absorption of vitamin D or not
um so Orange Juice and vitamin D don't
go together for some reason
um in our guts yeah milk is fine um oil
salt oil soluble things but
water-soluble things don't no good yeah
so um anyway so I would hypothesize that
if you're able to replace everything
that including social connections with
that new schedule
then hang out with other shift workers
yeah have a shift working family
okay so we assuming we get up at six or
seven uh then we go to bed at
so
um so the healthy amount of sleep the
healthiest on a population level is
about seven to eight hours
so seven and a half hours to eight hours
with an adult children need more so even
teenagers need more as our brains are
developing we need there's a lot more
demands on sleep that now that they need
to they need but uh healthy adults about
seven and a half eight if you put
someone in a quiet dark room this is a
study done at Wayne State University
um and Henry Ford Hospital
by Tim rears if you put someone in a
semi-dark and quiet room with nothing
else to do just a bed and them for 12
hours a day for a month every single day
people will average out this is on
average to 8 hours and 15 minutes of
sleep per night and so you can't even
oversleep you can't just say okay
there's nothing else to do I'm just
gonna sleep for 12 hours your body just
won't do it you just body won't do it
yeah you're it once your needs of sleep
have been fulfilled you'll wake up so if
you've been sleep deprived though you
would have a period of time and that's
what happened in this study the first
week or two of the study people did
sleep quite a lot more you know 10 hours
of the 12 or more depending on how sleep
deprived they were but once they
fulfilled that sleep debt eight hours
and 15 minutes and again on average some
people slept a lot less some people
slept a lot more but on average it was
eight hours or 15 minutes so
um so the population-based studies show
that that if you just ask people in
chunks do you sleep four hours five
hours six hours seven eight nine nine
plus those that have the lowest
mortality were the ones that you know
chose the seven o'clock so I mean seven
hours eight hours also had low and six
hours also had low but seven around
seven was the best for for these adults
um so does it need to be all at once can
you break it up yeah I I there are a lot
of cultures that break it up and they
seem to be healthy
um they have a nice snap in the middle
of the siesta in the middle of the
afternoon not too late to spoil their
sleep that night
um and they'll only sleep five or six
hours during the during the night and
then they'll make up with another hour
and a half or so during the Siesta and
that's fine and is it true that a sleep
cycle is about 90 minutes yeah on
average the first sleep cycle is more
like
105 minutes or so 110 and then later in
the night they're shorter but on average
it's about 90 minutes all right so what
happens then if you start pushing your
sleep back is there any difference
between so if I normally go to bed at 9
00 pm and then one night I go to bed at
11 PM is there going to be a problem
yeah and does it matter if I just always
go to bed at 11 am I going to be fine
yeah again there's that alignment
between circadian and homeostatic drive
to sleep
um yeah if you normally go to bed at 11
and wake up at
um seven in the morning that's a healthy
amount of sleep that's eight hours right
and
and then waking up at seven that's when
you expose yourself to the bright light
um versus those who go to bed at 10 wake
up at six they're exposing myself to
brighter light at six so the alignment
between the Circadian and homeostatic
needs for sleep are different so yeah so
that's fine but pushing if I miss my
normal bedtime by two hours am I
creating a problem for myself you are
creating a problem for yourself because
you're misaligning you're circadian and
homeostatic needs
um and even if I get all so I normally
go to bed at nine and I get seven hours
of sleep I go to bed at 11. I still get
seven hours of sleep you're saying just
because I switched yeah what what is
that knock-on effect well so so so say
normally you wake up at six and you did
that morning wake up at six but now
you're going to bed at I don't know what
to say
ten to six eleven uh you can say you go
to bed at midnight
um that night two hours later
you um your circadian rhythm is set to
release your melatonin at the normal
time you know 10 11 o'clock at night and
once you're nicely asleep and it starts
building up before that
um and so it's trying to do that but
you're still awake and you've got lights
exposed and and so your melatonin
release has been dampened and then when
you go to bed two hours later you're
already past that peak of your when your
clock says you know let's release this
melatonin and so your sleep will be
missing that and you will miss all that
growth hormone Surge and all of that
that's why my wife says no matter what
time I go to bed I wake up at the same
time that makes sense because she's
doing it as a one-off because what will
end up happening my wife I will a little
bit my wife more than me will stay up
quite late on the weekends
and so because the rest of the week
she's on a normal cycle then she's like
I still wake up at the same time yeah
yeah it's her clock her circadian system
waking her up very interesting so okay
to encapsulate I want to get up at a
good time I want to get light in my eyes
um I'm gonna be all day I'm gonna be
building up the adenosine which is going
to cue me to go to sleep I want to go to
sleep at roughly the same time uh
because all of my circadian rhythms
clocks everything are used to secreting
the different hormones and everything at
the same time and so if I'm awake like
yeah hey you miss your window sorry
um it's not like everything just shifts
back on a one-off but I can shift my
entire schedule if I want to but I do
need to be getting somewhere around
seven hours of sleep for optimal
longevity yeah
um and certainly I will say for Optimal
Performance if you're not getting sleep
it just feels so lame yeah God I hate
being tired so much yeah do not
understand people that chronically sleep
deprive themselves that's just Madness
yeah from where I'm sitting yeah yeah
all right talk to me what's the
difference between the Sexes do we have
different sleep needs do we respond
differently to perturbations yeah how
does that all work out yeah and it seems
to be true in every species we've
studied there are sex differences and
the amount and the pattern in which we
sleep really yeah tied to hormones or
what's causing them well you know yes in
in
so children as far as I know the studies
that I've you know they before their
hormones kick in they sleep about the
same in their sleep needs are about the
same once your hormones start kicking in
um especially cycling hormones they
definitely affect well so much including
when we are sleepy and how much sleep we
need so as we cycle as women cycle
through the monthly cycle there will be
times when sleep is more Elusive and
that's probably
adaptive and a good thing really yeah
why I don't know maybe seeking a mate I
don't know it's fast asleep by the way
right
yeah
um and then uh or you know preparing a
nest or whatever it is that's so
interesting because it's across all
animals yeah I'm very surprised by that
so uh even flies really yes Whoa man I
uh I don't have a hypothesis for that
one so you don't male flies take more
naps really yeah if they're already
getting more consistent sleep why would
they take more naps well so yeah I I I
don't know it probably has something to
do with the reproductive cycle and all
the other things a female's body has to
do in order to prepare the Next
Generation to wake for that hour you
know it's it's it's not like females
flies don't sleep they sleep but there's
other things that are going on also
demanding there I've seen some of your
um the talks that you give where you
show people the different slides and
this is where they're at and this part
of their hormone cycle and it seems like
there's only one part where they just
diverge all of a sudden quite
dramatically yeah what is that part of
the cycle yeah and why what's going on
what's Happening we don't know we don't
know why
um there's still there's a lot of people
doing hormones and and sex differences
and other people doing sleep in the two
Fields haven't come together nearly as
much as they need to so
um yeah so during that one hormonal
phase in rats which you know there's an
equivalent in humans as well that's when
our progesterone and estrogen levels are
are very high and
um that's when we're getting the least
amount of sleep that's when in women We
complain of the most insomnia but when
you when they do sleep their sleep is
super efficient and really high quality
so that's when the spindles are aligning
themselves across different areas of the
brain that's when our slow waves which
are cleaning our brain are even bigger
in that high hormonal amplitude stage of
our Cycles so yes we're getting less of
it but it's more efficient which it
might be another reason why different
people need different amounts of sleep
is maybe some people's sleep are is more
efficient in doing the job faster than
other people's
I don't know it's very intriguing is
there any research on a uh recent mother
and how much sleep she gets like does
she sleep more lightly because I know
there are different phases of your sleep
if you try to wake somebody up they
won't wake up like they I know in rem
they'll incorporate noises you've heard
you say that kids will actually sleep
through fire alarms yeah like loud fire
alarms yeah
um what do we know about that and sex
differences is there anything yeah not
much especially when you're talking
about new mothers
woefully small amounts of data
um there's a lot of things that we don't
know for example the cerebellum which is
beneath our Thalamus it's
um so we don't have that thalamic gate
of Consciousness and our cerebellum it
learns it's a really strong learning
machine and it might be able to help us
wake up even with small noises that are
relevant to our survival or our
Offspring survival so that might be why
some people
most people parents are lighter sleepers
because they're cerebellum is attuned to
the noises that their baby is making
um and that's good that's adaptive right
you you want that
um not waking up when the fire alarm
goes off those not super adapters
that's children adults will and so again
that's super dangerous for a kid like
from an evolutionary standpoint you're
out in the Serengeti we are not chilling
in a house kids are very helpless in
many many ways right so it is our our
job as parents to be the ones to wake
them up and carry them out of the
burning house right
um yeah but they have they have pictures
just like all right you can stay knocked
out I'm gonna do the things I need to do
I know your parents are going to snatch
you up yeah yeah interesting yeah is
that preserved across species that young
ones are way harder to wake up um yeah
yeah the ones that you know social
species interesting rats for example too
yeah so it really might be tied to you
know that somebody else is going to be
looking out for you when you're an
infancy yeah and on well it's it's it's
not so much a confidence thing as there
are some really important thing things
going on essential things that are going
on in your brain when you're developing
so it's worth rolling the dice it's
worth it you kind of have to in order
for your brain to be continuing to
develop and incorporating all the
differences in the world we you know
we're born into such different
environments some of us are born with a
silver spoon in our mouth some of us are
born super poor on the dirt and have to
walk miles to get water
um so we really need to be able to adapt
to the environment in which we're born
and the bodies which are born with so
you know some people are born without
limbs you know you really don't want to
dedicate whole big portions of your
brains to a limb that doesn't exist
right instead you want to repurpose it
for something else during development we
are incorporating the world that is
actually around us into our brain and
maximizing its efficiency so
um so that happens through sleep I just
talked about you know how we restructure
our schema through sleep and that's
happening in Spades when we're
developing
very intriguing
um so going back to women and how
different things are for them
um talk to me about
PTSD and the locus Aurelius yeah yeah
blue spot yeah yeah so I know when
things go wrong with that spot you can
have all kinds of problems but I also
know that estrogen is protective against
it but I also know that women suffer
from uh Stress and Anxiety more than men
so start us explain the blue spot and
then help us understand yeah estrogen's
role in all of this yeah so the blue
spot is
um in our brain stem and it is one of
the first relay places for all incoming
sensory and stimulation so it'll wake us
up it'll switch our attention from this
conversation to if somebody's listening
or watching this and something goes on
in their house they're going to switch
their attention away from what we're
talking about to whatever it is and
that's really good and it's adaptive
because you know we need to be able to
switch our attention yeah otherwise
we're in trouble that's the locus
surrealist it helps us to be alert and
aroused and and reorienting as we need
to it also as it's tonically firing
helping us to learn from whatever we are
engaged in so this conversation
hopefully both of our local surrealists
is is going and we're able to follow the
conversation really well
um but when it switches to a phasic you
know sharp like with some that's when we
need to switch our attention but right
now it's tonically happening
um
so so it's responsive to stressors and
what it does is it helps us to learn
quickly from that stressor because what
it provides to the brain all over the
brain is norepinephrine which helps us
to learn quickly and strengthen synapses
it's only when it's not present that we
can actually weaken those synapses after
we've Consolidated what we've learned
and changed our schema once once that's
done you can erase those novel memories
from the novelty encoding structures and
our proximal dendritic tree and so we
really need norepinephrine to be absent
in order to be able to do that synaptic
weakening it can't happen when
norepinephrine is present when that blue
spot is firing so the only time when the
blue spot stops firing is during rapid
eye movement sleep but that's something
that we've known for you know since this
80s maybe and
um but we've only ever studied it in
males so we know that that's kind of
Dogma the locus real stops firing in REM
sleep that therefore REM sleep is able
to allow us to reformulate our schema
and erase those things that aren't
necessary and we can strip the emotional
intensity off of them that's right so
for example if we're learning something
that's emotionally
um
really relevant to us and and those
emotions help us to learn those things
um our local surrealist is firing
helping us to learn that emotional
memory it's during sleep that we can
consolidate those all the facts to our
the rest of our brain to those distal
dendrites and then during REM sleep when
we can erase the the
novelty of it the salience of it so that
it's not something that just happened to
us that day it's something that we've
Consolidated and now we can erase from
the novelty encoding circuitry so we can
encode something new but it's with the
lack of locus surrealist activity the
lack of activity in the blue spot in REM
sleep that we can do that and just
recently my lab hasn't started to record
from Locus realists in females and we
find across the Ester cycle the locus
realist doesn't completely stop firing
during REM sleep in some phases of the
cycle and the low hormonal phases of the
cycle which would really not allow you
to refresh your brain quite as well as
you would otherwise and
um
I I don't know what the physiological
importance of that is but uh given that
that's the case that also might be why
women are two to four times more
susceptible to post-traumatic stress
disorder because post-traumatic stress
disorder is a disorder not a forgetting
I mean that's too overly simplistic it's
a disorder of not being able to relegate
the past to the Past it's where these
emotional traumatic memories stay in the
present as though they just happened
that same day and yes we're able to
consolidate it but then we're not able
to do the Second Step which is to erase
it from this novelty encoding circuitry
to allow us to learn new things after
that instead hangs on to that traumatic
memory at all the aspects of it the
emotionality and the way it makes our
heart beat fast and our skin sweat and
all of that and so it just happened that
same day so if your Locus illness is not
stopping firing during REM sleep at
certain phase cases of our hormonal
cycle then REM sleep can't do what it's
supposed to do which is to refresh that
novelty encoding circuit that's our
hypothesis and that's what REM is a trip
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uh in PTSD my stress levels remain
elevated so I'm doing the this isn't
important this is important thing in
sleep yeah but I actually can't get to
that this isn't important because my
stress levels are still so high which is
telling my body no no this remains
Salient and so it becomes a generalized
salience like do you end up overwhelming
your short-term memory like if you're
constantly just saying like yeah
everything's important everything's
important you can't strip anything away
yeah does that have long term like as
anybody looked at PTSD and victims and
how they have trouble learning new
things yeah so one of the things you
can't learn for example is the context
of safety you know you know so yeah
that's that's not good
um and in animals we they don't learn
any kind of reversal based learning
whatever what I mean by reversal
learning is that was then this is now
now my home is moved and now the place
where my food is used to be is moved all
of of that is reversal learning we call
it reversal just because it's it's not
necessarily unlearning because you might
still remember where your food used to
be but it's
re-weighting I guess recontextualizing
an example I've heard you use a lot
which makes a lot of sense especially
for people our age is that you hear the
sound of a helicopter you're in War uh
that's bad sound danger danger but when
you go back home it could just be a news
helicopter and so you have to
re-contextualize the same sound yes and
not have the same Panic response which
is perfectly adaptive in the theater of
war but at home you don't want to be
diving under the table every time a
helicopter comes by okay so that makes
the prediction that anything that quiets
that down should allow me to lessen
hopefully eradicate
PTSD so beta blockers is something I've
heard you talk about
um have we looked at how effective those
are at they have been
studies and I think there's
what do beta blockers do so beta
blockers block The receptors of
noradrenaline which is the the
neurotransmitter produced by the locus
cerulus that blue spot which helps us to
learn but whenever those beta receptors
are occupied by norepinephrine
that only allows us to formulate new
memories and strengthen new memories and
that doesn't allow us to weaken
others so
so beta blockers block that receptor so
no adrenaline cap occupy it and then
make the neuron think that there's no an
orbinephrine here you know there's
nothing important there's nothing
stressful we don't need to learn
anything new and I think the reason why
many of those clinical trials failed is
because they didn't quite understand
that you do need the beta adrenergic
receptor occupied by norepinephrine when
you are learning something new like the
context of safety but it's during sleep
that you need the beta block the beta
receptors to be not occupied by
norepinephrine anymore so that you can
do the loosening that's required for
reassociating and recontextualizing
something so very interesting so you
need to give them at the right time I
think and enough you also other clinical
trials I think failed because they gave
too low overdose and it didn't
you know didn't occupy enough or didn't
block enough of the beta receptors in
the brain and if you looked at the
research on psychedelics and trauma
therapy I have it's really fascinating
and the thing about psyched dogs many of
them actually activate the serotonergic
system and we don't even know which
specific receptors serotonin is another
neuroadrenaline is one neurotransmitter
system serotonin isn't as a different
one that is also on whenever we're
learning
um so the serotonergic system comes from
all over the brain it comes over from
the dorsal wrathane nucleus in the brain
stem and that's another nucleus that
shuts off during REM sleep so
this neurodenergic system and the
serotonergic system are normally off
during REM sleep so psychedelics don't
reproduce REM sleep because there are
agonists of Serotonin however they might
there are at least 15 maybe 21 different
receptors for serotonin and each of them
do a different thing in a different
neuronal subtype in a different
compartment of the neuron and so
in in my model of the way things work
the serotonin receptors out there at the
distal dendrites were are cortexes
talking to each other
those are the ones that actually help
dampen the effect of that on our
response to the world outside so what
they do when you occupy the
serotoninergic receptors is they shunt
out
information coming in from the
familiarity encoding horticocortical
schema and don't allow that to dominate
us anymore and instead it weights
everything toward what's going on right
now here and now so again there's lots
of lots of different receptors but for
that one in any case that's really
important I think to be absent in REM
sleep because that's when you want to be
building those schema about the outside
world
if you don't have enough serotonin in
your system then you're in then you
perhaps are always you know too attuned
to what's going on out there in the
distal dendrites and not enough attuned
to what's coming in from the outside and
learning new things
depression antidepressants or
sergeantergic agonists it may help us to
be more attuned to the world around us
that as we're Awakening and walking
around it but I would also suggest that
maybe antidepressants should be stopped
when we want to go to sleep because we
need serotonin to be off in order to
rebalance our system at night so
um do ssris disrupt sleep they do they
really do they actually block REM sleep
pretty effectively depending uh on when
you take it and how much you take it but
also those studies haven't been done in
people who are trying to learn something
new so we don't know if it's 100
blocking REM sleep when someone is
studying for an exam for example maybe
that homeostatic need for Sleep
overcomes the ssris blockage of REM
sleep and you get beautiful REM just
when you need it
that's really interesting so
um
when you get people on different
medications the amount most people are
going to be taking it chronically
it's so this is a reason that I'm very
hesitant to take supplements when you
start isolating things the number of
knock-on effects that you can have is is
pretty crazy but I've heard you talk
about the importance of if you've just
suffered something traumatic you need to
understand this what you can do to block
the encoding of that traumatic event and
I don't want to pause your mouth but
it's like hey if you can talk yourself
down and get into a calm place before
you go to bed great if you can't
even getting drunk might be better than
just going to sleep yeah why would that
be true yeah we do want to learn from a
traumatic experiences right we don't
want to not learn what's dangerous out
there for example but we don't want to
hang on to that novelty of that memory
for the rest of our lives we want to put
it where it goes and then leave it right
and access it when we need it the next
time but other than that it's lying
dormant and and I'm sitting there ready
when you need it you don't want it to be
there
present and part of your life every
single day and influencing every
decision you make is that first night's
sleep an important window for avoiding
that yeah the the first couple of nights
sleep it takes about a week to
consolidate a memory and put it away
yeah it um but that first couple of
nights is when you actually
um are hanging on to the memory until
it's Consolidated you do do you don't
want to erase it until it's really fully
Consolidated fully entrenched in
everything that you know and and in the
way that it should be entrenched and
then after that once it's Consolidated
you want sleep to be able to
um to reverse the weight of that
salience so
um so what happens in the first couple
of nights when you've learned something
really mind-blowingly new is you are
consolidating it and and you hang on to
it until that whole process is done and
then you start erasing it from that
novelty encoding circuitry so um
so but in order to consolidate it and
put it where it needs to go you need to
rearrange the schema that are already
there right so if you want for example
to remember the specifics
specific context of something that's
scary and fearful instead of just
generalizing it if you want to learn the
specific context you want to put those
memories where they go and that involves
some weakening of some of the memories
in that schema already in order to put
the pieces of information where they go
and you also need your novelty encoding
proximal dendrites to be
ready for that new those new pieces of
information and all the refinements of
them if that is already saturated with
something then you can't learn anything
but the simple relation in in-out
relationship you know sound scary run
right that's that's the simple ones so
if you want to learn all of the pieces
of the information the context and which
is something scary happened you need
your brain to be refreshed by the Sleep
the night before and able to encode all
the pieces of information and then able
to write it out to the long-term memory
structure and then able to refresh that
novelty encoding circuitry again so the
next day you can refine that with even
more information more context as you
think about the trauma that happened you
can even contextualize it more you can
talk it through with your friends and
family they can help you realize that
was then this is now this is why this
happened you'll be able to learn these
new things and these new pieces of
context because you your sleep that
first night was a healthy sleep so
that's why you really need that sleep to
be norepinephrine free because you can
both write the new pieces of information
into the context through that those
sleep spindles and erase that novelty
encoding context from from from
the novelty encoding structures so that
you can again recontextualize and
relearn the next day and then after a
few days of that a few nights of that
you'll have done the job of con of
writing out all those pieces of
information your memory will be good
your schema will be good and you can
just completely erase that from your
novelty encoding structure so that you
can turn to your attention to something
new so when I when you said it's better
to even get drunk or stay up all night
if your sleep doesn't lack that
norepinephrine and serotonin then that
first night then instead of doing you
might be able to consolidate it but
you're gonna you're gonna saturate your
system with that that traumatic memory
and create a positive feedback loop that
just continues to re-entrench it as
though it happened the same day every
day yeah so I want to talk about that so
um everything that you went through
assumes everything is working well
so get your sleep uh make sure that you
don't have dysregulated stress response
just in general but as somebody who I
went through a period in my life where
my anxiety was off the charts now it
ended up being uh I'll call it 70 diet
and so I no longer have generalized
anxiety disorder right
um but I know what it feels like to have
a very disproportionate response to
something and just be I don't understand
what is going on so
um if somebody were in a car accident
let's say very traumatic moment
um I know that historically people
thought well you need to talk to
somebody about it then the studies show
that's actually terrible and you're just
reinforcing it right
um so one I'd love to hear what we know
about how talk therapy over a traumatic
event can actually just reinforce it
right and then if we had somebody that
has a disproportionate response and and
their amplitude of stress does not match
what happened yeah what kind of protocol
if we had an infinite Pharmacy or maybe
that is the right answer but yeah we
have access to anything like they're
gonna perfect compliance uh if we need
drugs we have drugs like what would that
protocol look like yeah so unless that
talk therapy is teaching you something
about how to contextualize that it it's
actually really good to speak to a loved
one after a traumatic event if they're
helping you to be helping you de-stress
and contextualize so one of the things
that shuts the locus cerealis off
fastest after a traumatic event is being
able to learn from it so you know if you
had a car accident and someone can say
well yeah but you ran you ran the red
light you say oh you're right I was
texting I ran the red light I next time
I'm never going to do that again I'm
never going to text while driving and
you was a drunk driver and I was just
sitting at the right if you're just
sitting in the red light and there's a
drunk driver there's not much you can
learn from it so now stress level
through the roof yeah life's
unpredictable oh my God I'm never gonna
leave my house will not stop firing if
there's nothing to be learned from it it
it's still searching for what can I
learn from that what can I learn from
that so the way to
um the way that I you know de-stress
after such a random haphazard event is
to
take what I have a I have a world view
where I believe that everything
ultimately will work out for the best
even if right now it looks terrible it
will work out for the best and that
helps me to de-stress because I know oh
you know it's horrible now but with a
Long View you know I'm gonna you know
this is all these troubles are going to
be over it's very interesting and and so
that can help me calm down
um and and talking to my mother always
helped me with that because why she's
had she had the wisdom of the years
right I'm like you're gonna get better
you're gonna get better you're gonna
survive it's gonna you know you may be
in the future you're going to be a
transportation Minister and you're going
to be able to make lights safer or
reduce the amount of drunk driving
because you're going to help you know
with Psychiatry
um you know so that is really profound
so I am a growth mindset junkie and I've
never understood that there was even
like an actual brain mechanism happening
behind the scenes but like you you and I
have I think very different World Views
but they probably serve the same
function I literally just took a note
prayer because I know that you pray and
you've often referred to that as being
something that you use to lower your
stress
that's really interesting when I think
about how something like prayer could
serve such a profound function to last
from you know for thousands of years
probably more yeah uh that's very giving
you a universal world of view that takes
you out of the immediacy of this moment
and tells you something good will come
from this yeah yeah the I'm gonna learn
something I'm gonna get something feels
like a really interesting trigger what I
find so fascinating about it though it's
just the thought
but that thought somehow that context
registers at a very deep limbic level
that's right it does it does our Locus
realis is connected it gets all kinds of
inputs from our prefrontal cortex from
our hippocampus from our learning and
memory systems from our emotional
systems and it feeds back onto our Lucas
realism says okay
it's okay now analog assist says okay
it's all right I'll stop barking you
know I'll stop alerting you it's it's
gonna be all right
that's cool yeah that's cool I love
understanding the mechanisms to things
when they're I guess is a known one okay
very interesting so you have a world
view you just had this car accident even
though it was a drunk driver uh your
world view kicks in you feel like it's
going to work out for the better
um what else would we throw in our
protocol right
um so if that's not enough
that really might be enough it oh yeah
whatever you you just need to quiet the
the locus right right right got it
sometimes it's not enough sometimes you
have forgotten to go back to your world
view or pray or you don't have people
around you to remind you
um that you know it's gonna work out
uh then
yeah well again like we were just saying
it's something inside your own brain
that you can that you can teach yourself
so you can calm yourself down your mind
can keep you well
um your mind can keep you well that's a
it's nice yeah mine can also make you
sick yes exactly terrifying flip side
right yeah I didn't make up that
catchphrase that was the title of a TV
show or not on TV it was an NPR show and
when I was a child I used to listen to
it all the time I love it yeah yeah your
mind can keep you well I like that yeah
um
but if
all those cat these things fail then I
would you know stay up if you're if you
have insomnia and because you can't
figure this out and you are stressed
be awake be awake until you can find it
your way out of it
um and some people maybe it's doing
something super relaxing to get their
mind off of it like
um you were listening to podcasts a
story get your mind off of this
immediate thing listen to a nice story
you know watch a nice movie read a nice
book
um or listen to you know get get a
Storyteller to tell you a good story a
bedtime story that takes your mind off
of this this horrible thing that just
happened allow your whole system to
relax and then have a very good night's
sleep most sleep is adaptive most people
don't get PTSD from a traumatic event
and that's because our sleep is most of
the time doing what it's supposed to do
but if you are you know for some reason
you sleep deprived from the night before
and you're super sleepy even though you
you know you're wired you can go to
sleep that's not good don't go to sleep
wired I guess that's the
the thing I'm trying to say don't go to
sleepwire do something to calm yourself
down so that your Locus realist can
quiet and do what it's supposed to do
during sleep do you meditate
I I have tried for me it's prayer but
I'm gonna say prairie yeah it is it's
made of Teddy meditative so this may be
too private I think by all means say
nothing but
um how do you pray yeah are you asking
for something for yourself for others
for protection love yeah I mean just
knowing that there is an all-powerful
being who cares about me who really
helps and then secondly
um
prayer is also thinking being thankful
so meditating I guess on all the things
you're thankful for and you're grateful
for so prayer reminds me of all the good
in my life and the good and the people
around me
um and then also praying for people and
four things helps me
to not feel as helpless
I don't feel helpless because I'm doing
something right I'm asking God to who's
all-powerful to intervene and to change
things and that that very much helps me
feel like I've done something it helps
you know some people they like to write
lists that also helps um me but that's a
way to put the list in God's hands
interesting so I'm not religious but I
have been in situations before where
something feels so out of my control I
am desperate to appeal yeah to a higher
power I get it go for it yeah it's uh
even if you don't believe it do it yeah
it makes you feel like oh I still have a
thing I can do I totally get that uh has
anybody looked at prayer and loneliness
so I used to be religious and I remember
that feeling of like I'm talking to
somebody who's listening yeah they're
powerful and loving it's a very nice
feeling yeah it is I think the moment in
my life there was a moment in life that
I was the loneliest ever and I was
crying and I just felt completely spun
out of control and I heard this voice in
my head that just said
why are you crying I'm with you and it
kind of Arrested my tears
oh yeah that was a long time if I've
ever heard god
um but you know but it was like why I'm
I'm here with you I'm like oh yeah I'm
not alone I'm not alone I'm never alone
so interesting yeah that's one of those
things man they're so I have a thought
that runs through my head frequently and
long time listens to the show will have
heard me say it many times but there is
a god-shaped hole in all of us
you need to fill up with something so
all right we're I'm really starting to
formulate a very useful understanding of
how I can leverage sleep to whether it's
strip the emotional resonance off of
something whether it's free up my
short-term memory so I can learn new
things the consolidation uh the removing
of the narrative from the dots and
snapping back to just dots so I can
update my schema that's really going to
stick with me I love the way you said
that it's really nice thank you it's
gonna stick with me too nice it may be
useful yeah
um how do I supercharge learning so I'm
I'm a big believer that we can all 100x
our abilities but it doesn't happen by
accident and so I'm always looking for
an edge on how I can learn something
better like is it naps is it
yeah just meditating before I go to bed
like how do we really make sure we
remember what we learned yeah
that's a good question and we don't
really know how we tag the things that
we want to remember and how we tag the
things that we want to forget
um there's a lot of automaticity to it
that must be pretty good I think your
brain is probably already optimized to
learn great
I really hope that's not true if this is
optimized we are all in trouble I just
throw a lot of time at it that's that's
my only solution yeah which I really
want to shorten that time right
um
so there's
our cat but I don't think it's good
enough shortcut it's not good in the
long run so yeah it's it's probably good
for cramming in one piece of information
but okay we'll take it we'll take it
right right
um one study done in the 90s I believe
it was that that while the person was
learning something kind of mind-blowing
they had a
clock ticking in the background is very
loud clock and then when they were in
REM sleep the experimenter made that
clock go back on again and so it did
reactivate a lot of the pathways that
we're learning
um but what we don't know yet is what
the Locos is doing is that just again
reinforcing that one thing you learned
and preventing it from being you know
from disconnecting and becoming dots and
making making it creative there was no
creativity part of that study stuff is
so complicated yeah so um so we still
need to look at creativity and insight
whether you that those people 20 better
on that one thing that they were
learning but they didn't
test whether or not they could extract
that and apply it to other situations
but 20 better you know that goes that's
a c to an a right if you're talking
about a test
um but you might also not be able to do
the Erasure parts that you need to do
you might be sacrificing other parts of
other things that you learned the day
before that for example and that you
need to schematize instead of learn via
just wrote man I hope somebody does some
research on that because so my brain
already starts worrying so all right
let's say that each day I was going to
pick one thing and I was going to study
it for let's say 20 minutes and then I'm
going to replay the clock ticking for
five minutes during my REM cycle which
let's say is tied to my Fitbit or
whatever and so I know when I'm actually
in rem yeah it triggers but it only
triggers for a brief period so that
theoretically I can still do all the
other things yeah that would be really
interesting I would just do that one
night and just for five minutes yeah I
don't know don't do it night after night
uh you're gonna screw everything up and
saturate your brain without one thing
yeah that sounds about right you end up
getting some advantage in one area but
you end up sacrificing everything else
yeah because you are competing against
Evolution yeah Evolutions had a lot of
time to figure things out
but we were talking about this right
before we started rolling camera there's
a really interesting meme about here's
what the Olympics looked like in 19
whatever 1921 here's what they look like
in 1921 or 2021 and it is hilarious how
much more advanced we are now so
obviously as you pointed out it's not
our biology our biology hasn't changed
yeah but the cultural element that
Stacks we've more belief because we've
seen what's possible better equipment
better training right we know what our
bodies can do we can push it harder
knowing that we're not going to rupture
anything or if we do at least there'll
be good Physicians on hand to help us
heal yeah yeah man it's so interesting
learning learning really is a superpower
and memory is the thing that I've
struggled with most profoundly in my
life so and I'm always looking for
things that can help with that yeah are
there you might hate this question but
are there drugs that help with memory
yeah there's even one called mementine I
mean yeah for memory right interesting
have I never heard of this yeah it's
esca side effects what's the on label
use case so I I believe it's for uh
dementia okay yeah app and it works
somewhat somewhat
um again nobody study these things in
relation to sleep so what it does is it
boosts acetylcholine by blocking The
receptors that reuptake it acetylcholine
is really important it makes you feel
tired
I mean that's um adenosine yeah yeah
that's all right acetylcholine ACH is
the yeah you're trying to cram the yeah
you're right
um yeah so acetylcholine you need it
when you're attending to something it's
pumping great and giving us great
rhythms for learning when we're
exercising so walking and learning is a
great thing to do or running and
learning is a great thing to do it's
also really present in our brains when
we're in Rapid Eye movements you're more
likely to remember something that you
learned while walking or running yeah
yeah or Incorporated yeah because of the
neurochemistry yeah because of the
rhythms of our brain the Rhythm or the
and the chemistry the chemistry sets up
the Rhythm so interesting yeah wow I've
never heard that before yeah I I have
experience that you can get insights
while walking which is very interesting
yeah
um but I did not know that you're more
likely to remember something yeah yeah
um yeah so actually sitting at our desk
trying to learn something is probably
not the best way to learn things really
yeah that's interesting
um is there
evolutionary reason for that just that
we would have always been moving I think
so I think it's probably that's probably
what it is
um yeah I don't I don't know otherwise
but
um
but we can create for example cats
watching a bird fly around has a ton of
that acetylcholine actually whenever we
attend to something acetylcholine gets
ramped up in that area of the brain
that's we're using for that for that
purpose so and then again during REM
sleep we have a ton of acetylcholine in
those areas of the brain that are trying
to learn
during slow wave sleep when we're
cleaning our brains acetylcholine is
gone it's completely gone so we need it
to be absent when we're doing the
cleaning process
very interesting okay I'm gonna try to
talk through something the side effects
are oh please yeah acetylcholine is what
every single one of our muscles uses our
gut uses it um and it and so a lot of
acetylcholine will will screw us up
screw up our guts makes us feel awful in
lots of ways so it does not sound like a
good trade yeah yeah anything that makes
me feel sick like even eating a meal too
late which is actually something we
didn't talk about when you talk about
sleep hygiene for me even even stopping
eating three hours before I go to bed I
will feel the difference so I stop
eating seven hours before I'm gonna go
uh and it feels awesome yeah I love it
yeah and
I used to eat like literally choo choo
swallow sleep yeah and uh when I stopped
doing that I was like whoa this really
makes a huge difference that's great I
remember when my wife my wife had
massive digestive issues and she kept
saying you know I really think it
matters like how much before I go to
sleep that I stopped eating and I was
like why it doesn't make sense yeah 100
definitely not it she's like no I really
I really think it is and I'm gonna start
stopping earlier and earlier and she
settled on about three hours and when I
started doing intermittent fasting just
for other reasons had nothing to do with
with how I was sleeping I found that it
improved my sleep yeah that's just very
very interesting yeah it is actually
there was just a study out about
um what eating a high protein meal will
do it changes the way your gut
a hormone your gut secretes that then
travels to your that hormone travels to
your brain it helps you sleep better
protein I've heard that carbohydrate
injuries help you sleep better I've
never heard it about protein yeah I
think that there's a lot of research
that needs to be done yet um this was in
flies and mice
um but and then baby mice and baby
humans sleep better if their tummy is
full so but not adults not adults but
well actually I'm trying to think of
what studies have done with adults and
being full and sleep but I know if
you're working your digestive system
that's not a good thing while you're
sleeping but again I you know I think
more studies need to be done to iron
these things out why does it work in
babies why is it different in adults we
don't know
it's very interesting you can understand
why babies would need food in terms of
just the rapid growth yeah especially no
because they've got tons of body fat but
I would imagine they're not accessing
the body fat and they're eating a high
sugar diet for sure while they're breast
readily available energy yeah but sort
of quick to go through the system
very interesting yeah I mean there can't
be enough studies on diet it's but it is
a very difficult thing to do unless you
can literally imprison people and only
give them the food that you want them to
eat because the compliance is so low
yeah
very interesting yeah right there's a
complex idea that I want to try to talk
through
um
nudge me if I go too far afield here but
when you were talking you you made me
realize that there are Concepts that are
pre-embedded in the brain
and one of the things that I find really
important so I'm obsessed with what I
was talking about earlier the brain is a
prediction engine whatever it is
whatever cool thing you're trying to do
with your life you you really are trying
to update your schema so that you better
you get closer to ground truth and
you're better able to to do only the
things that are going to be effective
and as a species what makes humans
interesting and you made sort of an
oblique reference to this earlier is
that we we don't come pre-hardwired with
everything we don't adapt to a limb that
we don't have we are doing things based
on the actual environment that we're in
we could have been born into a lot of
environments but we're actually in this
one and so making sure that we're
adapting to that so all right humans are
the most adaptive of all the animals
which is exactly how we've become the
most dominant apex predator of the world
has ever seen uh
but at the same time we're not blank
slates yeah
so there are ideas that are embedded in
the brain and I can't remember what you
were saying but the note I took was
right or false and true are categories
of things that are innate and that our
brain when we sleep is tagging things
this is true this is false
and I just thought whoa that has real
implications in terms of as we all
social media is sort of deranging this
where we're losing a hold of and I don't
mean it like in a political way but if
if true and false are a category that
the brain is looking for to tag
something this is effective part of the
schema this is ineffective part of the
schema
and adjust accordingly
if you're
reinterpreting the world based on true
and false you better be right and so
then it becomes a question of what are
we using to tag things as true and false
and this is where
as somebody who teaches entrepreneurship
I'm always trying to get people to
understand if you don't have the right
metric by which you judge the success or
failure of a test you're going to be in
trouble
how close am I with that like category
thing that the brain is doing yeah I
think you're very close I have a good
friend someone I used to work with whose
World schema was built by his parents
and his community and
um but then he went to business school
and he learned all kinds of new things
that weren't quite fitting with that
schema for example
um you know what was what he was told
was good for him he saw how the business
world was just taking advantage of it
and and using it to profit and not
necessarily working out for his best
interests but for the bottom line best
interest or the business
and
um and then one day with one experience
he his whole schema changed and he's no
longer he he realized that all that
schema was wrong I mean there was just
huge holes in it it didn't align anymore
and he saw how they could align and
um and then he realized that he couldn't
just trust his parents anymore he was an
adult at that time and he couldn't just
trust his community around him but
there's a whole other world out there
and forces at work that they didn't
understand and that he didn't understand
until that moment and so he had to shift
his whole world view and then make a
whole new schema and
um so the way that we build the world is
usually first we have to trust our
parents our caregivers we'd have to
trust and they if they say something's
important or something scary you know we
trust them because that's part of
survival but there comes a point when we
should start you know weighing things
for ourselves and based on our
experience and based on our own thoughts
and based on what we've learned
so that we are we are
building a schema that makes sense to us
and like you say you better be right
um but if we're wrong we might be able
to survive okay but not optimally
it's really interesting so as you were
saying that it made me realize okay
you've got the categories of true false
but the entire world view is going to
influence the tagging of true and false
yeah that's really interesting so what
are other categories that the brain
comes pre-hardwired with so it it
doesn't give you your world view but it
does give you category of you can
determine this is useful this is not
useful or this is true this is false
have you thought about other categories
that we come pre-hardwired with sure
well we're we're
pre-hardwired to learn who our parents
are and to imprint on them so that we
know who to trust and who to look for
for comfort and for food and that is
pre-hardwired we have this area of our
brain or several areas of our brain that
are trained to look for the caregiver
and whether that caregiver is a good one
or bad one doesn't matter we are
hardwired to imprint on that person and
to and to learn from them
it can be really difficult when we're
later when we were older to say
that parent or that caregiver that I
imprinted on did a terrible job and I
don't want to be that and I don't want
to marry that and I you know I select a
partner it can be really difficult to
fight against when we learn something
new about the world and and get a bigger
and a different world view that's wrong
I don't want somebody to abuse me you
know I don't want to find a partner
who's going to abuse me like I was
abused when I was a child and it's
really hard because we've imprinted you
know our brain and that critical period
of imprinting has closed so it's it
becomes a really hard thing it's not
impossible absolutely it is possible but
it takes a lot of effort and a lot of
sleep
what does that effort look like how do
you begin because childhood trauma
really freaks me out because of how long
it echoes through people's lives and it
seems for most people
either because they won't adhere to a
treatment protocol but it seems
um intractable yeah it's
is it intractable we have plasticity
like you say we are able to learn new
things but we need to be dedicated about
it and Surround ourselves for example by
people who aren't going to abuse you
anymore and believe that that is the
good thing and
um we will always have that wiring that
original imprint wiring but we can form
new synapses and and
make those synapses strong and stronger
than the original ones were but if we
have a process look like it's actually
synaptic remodeling it's actually
dendrites and axons practitioner yeah
repetition repetition surrounding
ourselves Again by this new world that
we want instead of the world that we had
and a dedication and attention to it
every day and sleeping on it every night
and
um
it's it's a long slew process because
during those critical periods it happens
quickly it happens quickly because our
brain said okay this is the time when we
learn about who our parents are and what
a caregiver looks like and um and so it
that and once that critical period is
closed and I call it critical period
there is a particular time of release
the window well with caregivers if you
were if we were chicks baby chicks
um it's at 17 hours after a closure
after hatching that's brief so yeah um
so for a couple of hours after that if
you if you don't happen to encounter
your mother until a hour 19 or 20. it's
okay you'll still but if you encounter
something at 17 hours that's not your
mother like a something that's making a
sound and moving away from you you're
gonna imprint on that thing so there's a
there's a it's so it's few hours I'm
sorry for a few hours for um
for a chick for humans of course it's
going to be longer but we don't actually
know what the exact critical period is
yet there's there's some studies that
need to be done language learning is
another thing that our brains are set to
learn
um if we are born deaf we will still
learn language it won't be the oral
language we'll learn body language
better we'll learn to lip read we'll
learn sign language if it's given to us
or the signs that the body language of
our caregiver is giving us so our brain
is set to learn and there is a critical
period to that too if we are for example
born into an English-speaking family and
we try at age 35 to learn Chinese and
that's the first time well not the first
time but if during your critical
language learning period in the first
six months of life if you've never heard
Chinese and all the sounds of it and it
was never directed toward you and you
were never told a story in that language
you won't have built saved the synaptic
path Pathways that were open during that
period of time to hear all the different
six months yes yeah before we're even
babbling or just at the beginning of
battling just listening to the sounds of
these languages will change our brain
and help us to preserve synapses that
will allow us to always hear the sounds
of that other language so that later
when we try to actually pick it up
ourselves we'll still be able to hear it
and those people that were never exposed
to it will have pruned those synapses
away okay so really tight period for
imprinting for language
um what are what are some of the other
phases and I will contextualize this so
this really matters to me uh so impact
Theory the reason this company is called
impact theory is my theory on how to
impact people at scale is through story
so I tried just telling people think
like this act like this you can build
your own company do whatever you want
two percent of people would take that
advice and do something with it it was
extraordinary to witness but I was just
like what about the 98 that are doing
exactly nothing with this information
and how do we reach them yeah and that's
when I really started getting obsessed
with world view so I'm I'm going to
assume you know nothing about my story
so my last company was in manufacturing
so we were in the inner cities so we had
I had big brother for a kid that grew up
in South Central as sort of a knock-on
of going to USC uh and I watched him get
consumed by his zip code Flash Forward
15 years later I now have a thousand
employees that remind me of him and I'm
like ah but I'm not a young kid anymore
I know what to do with this and so
realizing that the difference between
the two percent the 98 the two percent
had a growth mindset and they were
willing to try things and deploy it but
I had one guy in the two percent get in
a fist fight with his friends because
they were like you changed because
you've started reading yeah and I was
like you got in a fist fight because you
read now he's like yes and I was like oh
my God like this does not make any sense
so then I was like okay I'm going to
give up on adults and I'm going to focus
on kids and I'm going to catch them at
what I think of as the age of imprinting
11 to 15. you're not imprinting on your
parents you're now imprinting from
culture that I can influence I can't
influence who your parents are but I can
influence what your friends think is
cool and so the whole idea of impact
theory is to tell stories make video
games
that have actual real useful ideas at
the core so the way that we sum it up is
if in one of our stories a mentor gives
the character advice you as the viewer
can take that advice because it's real
and
so I want to know that that age of
imprinting the 11 to 15 rough swag is
actually a moment where I can influence
people because Disney takes a younger
approach and so they're going after like
that 6 to 11 like really get them young
it's just as a person that's not a form
of entertainment that I find as
interesting yeah so I'm really hopeful
but there's something still you know
going on here and we are still learning
um in terms of what's possible yeah our
brains are definitely still developing
at age 11 to 15. not we as researchers
yeah 11 to 15 we are still learning yeah
yeah definitely and social learning is a
big big thing at that time so it's great
to surround yourself by people who
um
who like to read for example
um at that age because even if you were
came from a family which didn't do a lot
of reading you can have that influence
you because it's your peers and people
you respect and like and admire who are
doing this behavior that you can then
engage in so absolutely it's possible
the um the school system
the reason why preschool is actually a
really good age is because again that
language learning if you have someone
reading to you when you're a baby and
you know what age one two three looking
at you telling you you're a good person
that's a that's also a really big
critical period for language learning
vocabulary learning it's not the end but
it is a critical period do you know
Jeffrey Canada
no man I want this guy on the show so
bad so he's one of the early Charter
School people so Grows Up In Harlem says
I'm going to fix the education system
gets a full ride scholarship to Harvard
goes into education spends I think a
decade trying to fix it from the inside
realizes never going to fix this from
the inside starts these schools on the
outside but largely based on a key
Insight which is he asked why do middle
income kids do well and lower income
kids do poorly and he realize it's the
number of words you hear by the age of
three and the ratio of positive to
negative and I was like what and he said
in a middle income household you hear
roughly I think it's 5 million words and
the ratio of positive negative is 70
positive 30 negative in the inner cities
it's either 3 million or 2 million I
can't remember it was dramatically less
and the ratio is flipped it's 30
positive seventy percent negative yeah
what that does to the language centers
of your brain is so startling yeah and
so he went on this crusade to get people
who are about to become mothers you can
wait till they actually had kids if you
were about to become a mother he's he
wanted you to start reading to your baby
in utero and to keep breathing yeah once
they were born and I was like whoa
that's one of those insights about the
brain that scares me yeah it scares
me it it has become not that age but
that idea has become the central mission
of my life yeah if you can intercept
people at the right time with the right
idea in the right format you will change
how their brain develops yeah yeah
exactly how they see the world the
entire scheme at those early early ages
we're forming our schema of the world
how the world works it's
um it's really good to intervene early
if you want someone not to be screwed up
and to work better in this Society yeah
no doubt but it's incredible I mean this
this guy is probably one of the examples
there are lots of people who are
surrounded by horrible situations as
they grow up and they're able to
you know
lock lock onto latch onto the one role
model that's different and that's better
and they're able to
not reproduce that same bad situation in
their own life when they're adults and
it's a very inspiring story
um but we actually really do even those
people who say I did it all by myself
there's always somebody or some
influence somewhere that helped them
for sure for sure all right what do you
as you look at the research being done
around sleep being done around the brain
in general where where do you think this
goes so you've already planted a flag on
mitochondria the Energy System yeah
um I I love a good hypothesis I
completely understand you have no idea
where this will all lead and you're
super open to being wrong as a scientist
I'm sure that just guides all of your
thinking but what are what are some
interesting areas that either you want
to see studied or that you see some
early research coming out that could be
very meaningful yeah
so drug addiction that's a powerful
remodeler of the brain the drugs
negatively and positively or only
negatively well it's positive in terms
of drug seeking behaviors right it
requires the entire brain toward uh you
know if you're a drug yeah you know
but but it's a powerful rewiring of of
your brain that I would like to see
good ways to use sleep to rewire back to
learn through sleep
and processes restore the processes that
happen during sleep so that we can be
open to
relearning the good way again and not to
be so stressed
so drug addiction is is one area PTSD is
another something I'm really passionate
about I've got some family members who
have PTSD and lost a family member
through PTSD so um so that's again
another way that stress powerfully
remodels the brain for the worse and I
would like to figure out a way to make
it so that sleep helps us be adaptive
sleep helps us to adapt and do you see a
path because is it just oh we just need
to you know read a good book play a
calming video game meditate whatever and
then you're going to be fine or do you
see like is AI going to play a role some
of the brain feedback that people are
getting I think biofeedback is going to
help
um people are very unaware of their own
stress levels for example and and how
they're processing things if we're able
to tell them through a wearable that hey
it looks like you are stressed right now
you should probably do some relaxation
exercises before you go to bed and then
um yeah there's also a really
interesting study where they cued people
to learned something before they went to
sleep and then gave him the cue during
the dream yeah it was like a ticking
clock it was a little different it was a
tone they used
um and and got people to dream about
that thing
um that they'd were trying to new thing
they were trying to incorporate into
their old schema and if they dreamed
about it especially but actually
everybody were better able to
incorporate that into their the scheme
of who they are uh again I wouldn't
overuse this be careful but
um
so I think I think
yeah um
I don't know enough about AI but
probably you know there's a way
biofeedback at least to let people know
what state they're in because they're
oftentimes pretty much too much in their
head and don't really know what their
body is doing and how it's reacting so
I'm going to follow up on something you
just said So based on something I've
heard you talk about before which is
that if you understand the neuronal
firing of a rat compared to where it's
at in the Maze you can actually
effectively read its mind and so knowing
the look I'm not an expert on AI but I'm
deep enough in it that I I understand
where this is headed
um
that AI really will be able to take
inputs if you put a device of sufficient
Fidelity on the brain and let me read
the brain patterns the waves the you
know neurons that are firing that we'll
be able to start to reconstruct what
you're thinking about they've been able
to get very rooted like if they tell you
to think about a person's face it's
pretty startling like how I mean it's
not like a portrait but like you start
to get a sense of what they're thinking
about
um I have a feeling that we're going to
get pretty good at interpreting brain
signals you'll need better sensors but
when you have a company like neuralink
where it's actually tapping into the
brain
combined with AI just recognizing
pattern after pattern because what
you'll do is you'll read people let's
say a million people as wearables begin
to be a thing
and you'll say okay this person is doing
this thing we get this readout therefore
When I See This readout you're doing
this thing and they'll be able to
basically just reverse the you know the
the direction that they're thinking
about it and so
that is as I think about biofeedback and
I think about Ai and I think about just
the ability to collect all of this data
that you'll be able to get somebody with
a PTSD or whatever and say okay you're
about to go to sleep I'm going to
visualize where your brain is right now
how you're feeling and there's a Target
and so you're going to start moving the
okay this is a stress brain this is a
calm brain and as you move it there the
screen lights up or does something to
reinforce that's right and people will
be able to use that visualized
biofeedback as a way to control their
emotional state which is my fantasy as
somebody that struggled with anxiety
yeah I was like I really want a way to
practice yes calming myself down which
is how I found meditation which ended up
being utterly transformational
um yeah
no I think exactly that that is the goal
I think the the promise of these
wearables is that they are measuring
peripheral measures of heart rate
variability for example temperature
um skin conductance a lot of these
things that are peripheral measures of
what's going on with our autonomic
nervous system that the thing that
meditation is probably best at calming
down so
um so I think there is real promise
because people again are kind of
famously bad at reading their own bodies
and so if you can give them a device
that tells them you know there's a green
window now you're good go to sleep that
would be amazing
um be very amazing so I um I am either
just really dumb and when I work out I'm
just terrible or I have a natural
tendency towards muscular imbalances I
fear it's column a uh and so I have many
times ended up having like really
chronic pain from
um it's often been in my traps or my
scalenes where I thought that I had a
weakness in my traps and oh I need to
get my neck stronger and my trap
stronger but in reality it was my middle
back was weak yeah and I went to see a
physical therapist and he pointed it out
he's like nope the problem's actually in
your middle back and you're not
stabilizing yourself and he was like
fire your middle back muscle yeah and
I'm like I'm firing it he's like no
you're not I'm like I promise you I am
and so he's like okay let me put
biofeedback on you and he's like make it
beep and I'm like okay I'm firing it and
he's like if it's not beeping you're not
firing the muscle and so learning to
fire it was eye-opening at how different
my body map of where that muscle was and
where the muscle actually was I felt I
used to joke with him I feel like I'm
firing my heels to like get it that low
in my back to just reach my mid-back
right but once I learned how to do it
yeah my ability to because it when I
first started it would beep at you so
when you fired it beep and then by the
time I was done I could get it to go
yeah and so I was like Wow and so
realizing that once you hear or don't
hear or in this case see or don't see
you can make profound changes and you
can fire things in this case a muscle
that that truly felt out of my conscious
control but slowly slow you're able to
do it yeah if people could get a hold of
their their autonomic nervous system and
I don't know how much they'll ultimately
be able to get a hold of but if you can
get a hold of it it's pretty profound
are you familiar with two malt
meditation do you know Wim Hof no oh my
gosh you're gonna love this so I can't
believe he's real I've met him as far as
I can tell he's been studied by science
he can maintain a core body temperature
even in ice and so we set all kinds of
World Records for swimming under ice and
he's his corneas froze and he went blind
swimming under the ice thankfully he was
with a diver who's able to pull him back
up but like water that cold cold yeah uh
and so he went into a laboratory setting
and they measured his internal core
temperature uh he can do that he can
also take like a dime-sized spot in his
palm and warm that up when people ask
him to wow they injected him with an
endotoxin and he was able to
um muster an immune response so
everybody was like okay it's just you
you're a freak of nature it's like no I
can teach anybody to do this so he
teaches people so anyway the this
concept of tumult meditation is that
basically they can control their heart
rate body temperature so things that we
would say are normally outside needed
right it's interesting I didn't know
Houdini did that
um yes things like that that there have
been sort of the rare people throughout
history that have been able to do but if
through wearables AI we can give people
a better way of doing that that's about
as close to being a superhero as I can
imagine getting I agree that kind of
stuff is
um I really hope that that ends up being
a thing another thing that's very
similar to that that I've heard you talk
about I've always wanted to be able to
do and I can't is lucid dream is lucid
dreaming real
oh yeah it's real I don't know if it's
real good
people that don't know what it is yeah
what is it so it's a way to realize that
you're dreaming and control your dreams
or introduce a new element to it or
um
through some studies it says okay when
you're in REM sleep we're gonna know and
we want you when you hear this sound to
incorporate this thing into your dream
and when you've done it tell us by
moving your eyes in a particular pattern
so people some people can do that and
they can do it about a third of the time
of of when they go into REM sleep not
all the time but a third of the time how
does it not wake them up the second I
tell myself I'm Dreaming I wake up yeah
that's the thing
do they train themselves uh so there is
some controversy are they awake is there
a good portion of their brain that is
actually awake and able to respond if
you're able to respond to the outside
world here as a tone or whatever and and
make control your body in a way I mean
what how does that differentiate from
wakefulness it might actually be
weightless I said paradoxical sleep REM
sleep is paradoxical because your brain
looks like it's awake well it looks like
it's awake during lucid dreaming too so
how do you know someone's still asleep
you don't
um aetonia is really the only way which
is when our muscles are actively
inhibited so that we don't act out our
dreams there's some indication that
people who are lucid dreaming maintain
that atonia but etonia is something that
could also be dissociated from sleep
people with cataplexy you know
narcolepsy with cataplexy they will fall
down with etonia while being perfectly
awake so it's
um it's controversial now having said
that those dreams people would do lucid
dreaming you know are very Vivid and
they're different from Daydreams they're
they're more active they're more Vivid I
guess is the way to say it
um so it might be this in between
different brain State that's not just
regular REM sleep and the reason why I
don't know if it's real good is because
nobody has been able to record from the
local cirillas for example or the dorsal
rafae nucleus which we know shut off
during REM sleep do they shut off when
someone's in lucid dreaming they're
awake they're on whenever we're awake so
do they go on are we really is this
state uh kind of a hallucinogenic kind
of state that's more like wakefulness
than sleep we don't know I would caution
people to be cautious with it don't try
and do it all the time because in fact
if it's really more waking than sleep
and it's serving sort of a waking
function and not the sleep function then
you're depriving yourself of real REM
sleep when you're doing it so
um and and all the good things that come
from real REM sleep so
so I I've I've lucid dreams I've been
able to tell I'm in a dream and change
it in some way it's great way to get rid
of nightmares
um but I also just let myself
have a real dream and wake up and
remember just part of it instead of the
whole thing and because and so one of
the new new bits of research that we're
doing in the laboratory is being done by
a graduate student named Raquel Guthrie
and another graduate student named Ward
Ward Pettibone and what they're doing is
they are seeing in animals and in humans
whether or not
um the whole brain sleeps at the same
time and is in the Sleep same same sleep
State at the same time there's lots of
evidence that animals that sleep
unahemispherically sleep hemispherically
one hemisphere is awake while the other
is asleep people don't do that but we
might be able to sleep you know one
chunk of brain at a time for example or
hippocampus Raquel showed in humans can
be in
asleep very long minutes before our
cortex goes to sleep and so what is it
doing it's it's doing this other brain
wave pattern and it's not remembering
and this is probably although we haven't
done the study yet in people probably
the reason why we don't remember what
happened in the two minutes before we go
to sleep so um you know you know if
you're reading a book and you're falling
asleep over the book you can read the
same page four times over and over yeah
over and over again right that's because
you're hippocampus your memory you know
immediate associative memory system is
asleep and so your cortex is you're
moving your eyes the working memory is
in your cortex but it's not going into
your long-term memory so um so that same
thing happened during REM sleep can your
hippocampus be in REM sleep while your
cortex is in slow wave sleep or the
opposite and maybe lucid dreaming is
this part thing where you can somewhat
respond to the world around you because
there are parts of your Thalamus that's
not closed can you remember dreams
people who can remember of their dreams
and tell it to you vividly is it because
their hippocampus is not asleep actually
it's awake and writing those new
memories in even though you know and
those who can never remember their
dreams the hippocampus is in REM sleep
proper so we don't know the answers to
these yet there aren't enough people
with electrodes planted in their brain
that we can ask what is your dream and
how did you change your memories we
can't ask these things of animals
um so we can't say yeah hey what did you
dream about and we can see what their
activity of their brain is and if it's
not consistent with the world
immediately around them but consistent
with the world that they experienced the
day before we can say hey it looks like
that rat is running that maze we can't
ask it you know were you dreaming about
running the maze so it will actually
replay the maze in its head yeah that's
so interesting because dreams the ones
you remember I I can't tell you a time
where I've ever had a dream that was
like the thing I learned I am dreaming
about it's it might be something I'm
stressed about but the dream is so
surreal yeah that it's like is this
about that it's good it's good that it's
different I think that's again that
backing out from the literal thing to
the to the dots again
um so it gives you a new way to
interpret a new way to interpret it but
the rats are doing it literally well
they do some of it literally and some of
it's
in real life and so this is something
that Ward is looking into how do we gain
insights from from our dream state in
rats he's looking in rats do rats that
have gained insight and shown you that
they've gained Insight by the
performance did they did their dream
sleep and non and non-rem sleep they
look differently than rats that didn't
learn anything do the rats are there
rats with PTSD do they just replay the
literal thing that happened to them and
if they didn't get PTSD are they
replaying portions of that but also you
know incorporating in an abstracted ways
yeah that's really interesting do you
put much stock in dream interpretation
I love dream interpretation just because
I think that it tells us
how it's it's kind of like interpreting
a movie right it tells us how we're
thinking about things I don't think
it's necessary I think most people don't
remember their dreams well enough to but
but the stories that we make up about
our dreams
reflect you know who we are and where we
are and what we're thinking that's
interesting yeah if you ever had
recurring Dreams yeah what one I'd love
to hear what they actually were and I'd
love to hear your breakdown of why
recurring dreams is It Something That
We're struggling with
I think it is I think and some and some
my recurring dream when I was a child
was a
couldn't run away from it it was so
stressful and so fearful
yeah it was it was awful and I told my
mother about it and probably because she
was listening to the mind can keep you
well she said okay next time you have
that dream do something different than
you've been doing every time this past
time these past times and I said okay
what should I do she said oh and let's
see what can you do think about it and
I'm like oh I could I could go I could
you know stab the monster I could hit it
and she's like okay try it I know let's
rehearse that so imagine that much as
imagine yourself turning around and
stabbing or hitting it and so I did that
and then the next time I had that
nightmare
I was too afraid to actually turn around
and stab it or hit it or touch it in any
way but I was able to at least say no
stopped and I was able to do something
different it was just something
different and knocked me I never had
that recurring nightmare again I've had
other recurring dreams flying for
example it's a great recurring dream you
know it's a lot of fun or being able to
swim underwater you know what's the use
of that I'm never going to be able to
fly but you know but maybe it has
something else to do maybe that
nightmare of the monster was about an
uncontrollable
force in my life that I didn't have
couldn't get away from and so in my
dream the fact that I was able to do
something against that Force
may have allowed me to make a difference
in my Waking Life too against that thing
that I didn't even know was that was the
thing that I was embodying in my dream
but I could could take some control over
it even if it's just saying no
so that maybe during my Waking Life I
was able to say no to this adult that
was doing something to me and I don't I
don't know I don't remember it back then
but but um but it can be powerful our
minds are extremely plastic when we're
in the dream state of sleep and so even
though I think the interpretation of our
dreams may say more about of our our
waking selves I think what happens
during our dreams actually can change
our minds can change the way we think
about the world so again flying dreams I
don't know maybe that's about power and
about
um you know feeling in control and able
to do things that you couldn't otherwise
do and so maybe it's a reflection of a
sense of
Elation that I had about learning new
things like about the brain
um
yeah it's really really intriguing
dreams are fascinating I don't remember
nearly enough of mine
um you probably remember just as much as
you need to it's interesting maybe I
used to remember more and because I find
dreams so interesting and because I'm
such a student and fan of narrative it's
I always love like yeah they would just
be so impossibly weird that I don't know
there was something fun in the way that
time can change or the way that things
melt into something else or the way that
it's like oh I'm talking to this cocker
spaniel but I know it's actually my mom
yeah and you're like what and it changes
into your mom and then changes into your
girlfriend
it's like yeah so weird it is wonderful
it's weird and wonderful and I
understand why you want to and you know
remember more of your dreams because
it's like a free movie that is just fun
yeah and that you are so wired into
emotional yeah that it's literally
plugged into your central nervous system
yeah which is everybody anybody that's
into like the metaverse and stuff like
that's the fan see right that one day
like you'll be able to actually
experience these just impossible
scenarios but actually experience yeah
and you do when you dream yeah I so
rarely remember mine now and I've never
known like
is it because I have a high stress life
and that's why I don't remember them
because I I used to have them a lot and
I used to why I mean do we dream every
night yeah no matter what no matter what
okay yeah so I'm still dreaming clearly
yeah uh but I almost never remember them
it might be a really good sign that your
sleep is super efficient you know and uh
it can't again we don't know but it's
quite possible that the dreams that you
remember is because your hippocampus was
actually awake maybe for the last half
of the dream and able to sew that
working memory all that stuff into a
long-term memory and
um so that that could be fine
occasionally but if you're doing it all
the time right your hippocampus is
missing out on all the brain clearing
things that you need to do so it could
be a very good sign that makes sense
you've talked about the thalamus a
couple times I've heard you say in
previous interviews that every time you
do new research your sense of where the
Consciousness is seated changes yeah uh
are we currently settled on the thalamus
do we not know what's the no no
um I think Consciousness is an emergent
process and so there's no one area that
controls it
is it a complexity thing you stack
enough neurons and you're eventually
going to get to Consciousness yeah yeah
I think so and so I I think
a outstanding question still is can an
ant be conscious or is it in a colony
that's conscience
um is it all of these individual players
working together is
um yeah is a beehive conscious how does
you know we transfer information one
beef to the next and you see them pulse
yeah oh yeah hard to say that they're
not connected pretty rapidly right yeah
and if you look at an individual neuron
migrating to the spot it's going to go
you can say well that that looks like a
conscious being it's making decisions
it's putting out its filipody you're
here or there and then it's saying nah
not that one I'm gonna go up here and
then I'm gonna go over there and it
looks like you're watching a snail you
know go to the food or something like
that or a place of safety and then if
you think of you know the billions of
neurons you have in your brain is each
independent
you know entities then then you think of
it a city as your brain is a city or a
universe rather than an individual I
actually have a quote that I wrote down
of you saying yeah yeah this is I find
this really interesting you said and I
quote it's almost like your brain is
filled with billions of individuals
making decisions and talking to one
another it's almost as if our brain is a
city or even a universe full of
communicating entities that do different
tasks yeah
yeah that's heavy and so how does that
brain filled with independent entities
direct our body to do anything to be
sitting here talking to you today it
takes I don't know if it's just majority
rules or what it is where's the will we
have no idea but we do know Will has a
lot to do with things for example the
belief that you can change can make all
the difference in the world between
whether you do change where does that
belief come from what is what is it that
believes is it is it the the
consciousness of all of these entities
saying you know what we're just going to
do it you know and where there's no home
there's no little man in our heads
saying you know this is what we're going
to do now this this is what we are we're
made of all these billions of neurons
um yeah yeah that that's a trip to me
the it's interesting I did not expect
this theme to emerge in this
conversation but the idea of uh the
metronome of something that is
conducting all of these incredibly
complex things but when you think about
each neuron really fighting for its own
Survival looking for a connection
[Music]
um being self-directed in some way that
I imagine we don't fully understand at
this point yeah it's really interesting
that a self-emergence now the one of the
things that I find
utterly fascinating about the brain is
that if you cut the corpus callosum the
thing that connects the two hemispheres
for those who don't know uh you'll get
two personalities yeah that's weird it
is crazy isn't it I mean it's amazing
and yeah the the
the studies are so revealing about
what what Consciousness is what do you
take away from it how do you interpret
that data uh well you know we do know
there is lateralization to function like
or language for the most of us is in the
left hemisphere and our
spatial
relations is in the right Hemisphere and
and the idea that these two areas one
can dominate the other and make it do
what it wants is really it's really
interesting so this some of one of those
unihemis or the Corpus callosin studies
the man was describing trying to address
himself in the morning and and you know
button up his shirt and while his you
know right hand was buttoning his left
hand was unbuttoning so it was like
these two Consciousness and does that
mean that the left hemisphere just
didn't know what the right hemisphere is
doing just said hey why is my shirt you
know why is it coming together I want to
go to bed is the right hemisphere want
to go to bed and the left hemisphere
wants to go out into the world you know
I don't know because the right
hemisphere doesn't have the language
when he talks about it he talks about
what what he was trying to button up the
shirt he says I was trying to button my
shirt
um if you were able to speak to his
right hemisphere who would it say oh
yeah that was silly I was trying to go
to bed right it was interesting one of
the studies that I heard about the one
of the hemispheres was deeply religious
and the other was a pure atheist I was
like wow man in the same brain yeah and
so you begin to realize that this is a
competition of perhaps Rivals going on
in the brain that there is some
mechanism whether it's majority rule or
what but something is happening and it
happens so fast that you're unaware of
it yeah and I feel like a stable me I
feel a sense of I I have a self and yeah
like this is one thing I've often
thought about with alcohol is and look
I've never been
blind drunk the way a lot of people have
yeah but I've never not felt like me
yeah I've always felt I call this my
OverWatch mechanism I've always felt
like there's a me version above like I
feel the silly impulses the way that
everybody else is but I feel like I've
got a guy sort of riding above it all
yeah that's me yeah and so that idea
knowing that it's actually super false
and my brain is billions of these
somehow cooperating things that come to
some kind of consensus and can move me
forward and cause me to react to like if
I see a a hose out of the corner of mine
I think it's a snake I'll jump back like
so fast yeah or pulling your hand back
from something that's hot before you
have any sort of conscious awareness
yeah
I think it's incredible everything that
you said also it's incredible that we
wake up still me yeah in the morning
considering how much is going on in our
brains how different our brains are when
we fall asleep how much plasticity
happens with REM sleep how do we wake up
still
knowing who we are and feeling like
we're the same person yeah
um especially when I think about yeah
how do we recognize a childhood friend
is like oh yeah you're the same how do
we say you're the same it's been 30
years since we saw them 40 years and how
do we know that maybe they aren't maybe
you both have changed together and
that's why you recognize them I don't
know anyway go ahead oh just did that
you have a sense every cell in your body
is turning over but there is a sense of
you that does stay the same yeah I've
thought about this with skin like if you
get a sunspot or a liver spot or
whatever they're called
every cell in your body is turning over
but somehow that stays yeah so like
there's this day yeah scars I sort of
get do the cells turn over in a scar I
guess they must right yeah that's
interesting yeah huh yeah well yeah I
mean the I just recently learned from
Aaron Schumann is in Germany that the
rate at which proteins turn over in our
brains so
you know every seven days whoa you know
our neurons are different because our
every protein is turned over so
oh that's startling yeah it is wow and
I'd heard it was every seven years which
is still incredible right but and so
there must be something that's slower
than protein turnover that takes longer
but
you know that's really interesting that
must have implications in terms of
neurodegenerative disease like if you
could halt whatever is breaking down and
make sure that the next round is healthy
that's actually really encouraging from
like a stem cell standpoint if things
are turning over that fast I obviously I
have no idea if that's going to end up
being productive or not but oh very well
could be really interesting yeah yeah
Gina this is utterly fascinating where
can people follow you
I have I haven't Lab website I don't
update it as often as I should so
instead if you want to go to the
department at UCLA it's the integrative
biology and Physiology or just
ibp.ecla.edu I will make sure that my
lab website is tied to that and is and
is linked but my Department's full of
really great people doing super
fascinating research and so I and all
UCLA is I'm also part of the brain
research institute
bri.ucla.edu but either way ibp is is
fine yeah I love it yeah thank you guys
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