Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
Andrew huberman a neuroscientist at
Stanford working to understand how the
brain works how it can change their
experience and how to repair brain
circuits damaged by injury or disease he
has a great Instagram account at
huberman lab where he teaches the world
about the brain and the human mind also
he's a friend and an inspiration in that
he shows that you can be humble giving
and still succeed in the Science World
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a side note let me say that I heard from
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was more critical on occasion than I
meant to be didn't push on certain
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year
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fredman and now here's my conversation
with Andrew huberman
you've mentioned that in your lab at
Stanford you induced stress by putting
people into uh virtual reality and
having them go through one of a set of
experiences I think you mentioned this
on Rogan or with Whitney that scare them
so just uh on a practical psychological
level and maybe on a philosophical level
what are people afraid of what are the
fears what are these fear experiences
that you find to be effective yeah so it
depends on the person obviously um and
we should probably define fear right
because you can without going too far
down the rabbit hole of of defining
these things um you know you can't
really have fear without stress but you
could have stress without fear and you
can't really have trauma without fear
and stress but you could have fear and
stress without trauma so you know we can
start playing the word game and that
actually is one of the motivations for
even having a laboratory that studies
these things is that we really need
better physiological
neuroscientific and operational
definitions of what these things are I
mean the the field of understanding um
emotions and states which is mainly what
I'm interested in is very complicated
but we can um we can do away with a lot
of complicated debate and say in our
laboratory what we're looking for to
assign it a value of fear is a big
inflection in autonomic arousal so
increases in heart rate increases in
breathing um persp ation pupil dilation
all the Hallmark signature features of
the stress
response uh and in some cases we have
the benefit of getting neurosurgery
patients where we've got electrodes in
their amydala and their insula and the
orbital frontal cortex um down beneath
skull so these are chronically implanted
electrodes we're getting multiunit
signals and we can start seeing some
Central features of uh meaning within
the brain and what's interesting is that
as trivial as it might seem in listening
to it almost everybody responds to
Heights and falling from a high virtual
place with a very strong stress if not
fear response and that's because the
visual vestibular apparati right the the
optic flow and how it links to the you
know balanc semicircular canals of the
inter all this technical stuff but
really all of that pulls all your phys
ology the the feeling that your stomach
is dropping the feeling that you're
suddenly you're sweating even though
you're not afraid of falling off this
virtual platform but you feel as if
you're following falling excuse me
because of the optic flow that one is
universal so we've got a dive with great
white sharks experience where you
actually exit the cage we went out and
did this in the real world and brought
back 360 video that's built out pretty
oh so this is exual 360 video 360 video
and this was important to us right so
when we decided to set up this platform
a lot of the motivation was that a lot
of the studies of of these things in
Laboratories I don't want to call them
lame because I want to be respectful of
the the people that did this stuff
before but they'd study fear by you know
showing subjects a picture of a bloody
arm or a snake or something like that or
and it just unless you have a snake
phobia it just wasn't creating a real
enough experience so we need to do
something where people aren't going to
get injured but where we can tap into
the physiology and that thing of
presence of people momentarily not the
whole time but moment arily forgetting
they're in a laboratory and so Heights
will always do it and I if people want
to challenge me on this I I like to
point to that movie free solo which was
wild because you know it's incredible
movie but I think a lot of its
popularity can be explained by a puzzle
which is you knew he was going to live
when you walked in the theater or you
watched it on at home you knew before
that he he survived and yet it was still
scary that people somehow were able to
put themselves in into that experience
or into Alex's experience enough that
they they were concerned or worried or
afraid at some level so Heights always
does it if we get people who have
generalized anxiety these are people who
walk wake up and move through life at a
generally higher state of autonomic
arousal and anxiety then we can tip them
a little bit more easily with things
that don't necessarily get everyone
afraid things like um claustrophobia
public
speaking that's going to vary from
person to person um and then if you're
afraid of sharks like my sister for
instance is afraid of sharks she won't
even come to my laboratory because there
there's a thing about sharks in it
that's how terrified some people are of
these specific stimuli but Heights gets
them every time yeah and I'm terrified
of heights it it's you know when we have
you step off a platform virtual platform
and it's a flat floor in my lab but we
you're up there well you actually allow
them the possibility in the virtual
world world to actually take the leap of
faith yeah maybe I should describe a
little bit of the experiment so um
without giving away too much in case
someone wants to be a subject in one of
these uh experiments we have them
playing a cognitive game it's a simple
lights out kind of game where you're you
know pointing a cursor and turning out
lights on a grid but it gets
increasingly complex and it speeds up on
them and um you know there's a failure
point for everybody where they just
can't make the motor commands fast
enough and then we surprise people
essentially by placing them virtu all of
a sudden they're SS they're on a narrow
platform between two buildings yeah and
then we encourage them or we cue them
with a with by talking to them through a
microphone to continue across that
platform to continue the game and you
know some people they they just won't
they actually will hold get down on the
ground and hold on to a virtual beam
that doesn't even exist on a flat floor
and so what this really tells us is the
power of the brain to enter these
virtual States as if they were real and
we really think that anchoring the
visual and the vestibular the balance
components of the nervous system are
what bring people into that presence so
quickly there's also the potential and
we haven't done this yet to bring in 360
sound so the reason we did 360 video is
when we started all this back in 2016 a
lot of the VR was pretty lame frankly it
was CGI it just wasn't real enough but
with 360 video we knew that we could get
people into this presence where they
think th in a real experience more
quickly and our friend Michael meller
who I was introduced to because of the
project I reached out to some friends
Michael Muller is a very famous um
portrait photographer in Hollywood but
he Dives with great white sharks and he
leaves the cage and so we worked with
him to build a 360 video apparatus that
we could swim under water with went out
to gual Lupe Island Mexico and actually
got the experience it was a lot of fun
it was there were some interesting
moments out there of danger but it came
back with that video and built that for
the Sharks and then we realize we need
to do this for everything we need to do
it for Heights we need to do it for
public speaking for
claustrophobia and what what's missing
still is 360 sound where 360 sound would
be U for instance um if I were to turn
around and there was a like a giant
attack dog there the moment I would turn
around and see it the dog would growl
but if I turn back toward you right then
it would it would be silent so and that
brings a very real element to one's own
be Behavior where you don't know what's
going to happen if you turn a corner
whereas if there's a dog growling behind
me and I'm and I turn around and then I
turn back to you and it's still growling
yeah that might seem like more of an
impending threat but um and sustained
threat but actually it's when you start
linking your own body movements to the
experience so when it's closed loop
where my movements and choices are
starting to influence things and they're
getting scarier and scarier that's when
you can really Drive people's nervous
system down these Paths of high high
states of stress and fear now we don't
want to traumatize people obviously but
uh we also we also study a number of
tools to that allow them to calm
themselves in these environments so the
short answer is Heights heights yeah
well from a psychology and from a
neuroscience perspective this whole
construction that you've developed is
fascinating we did this a little bit
with autonomous vehicles so to try to
understand the decision making process
of a pedestrian when they cross the road
and trying to create an experience of a
car you know that can run you over so
there's a danger of there I was so
surprised how real that whole world was
and the graphics that we built wasn't
ultra realistic or anything but I was
still afraid of being hit by a car but
everybody we tested were really afraid
of being hit by that car even though it
was all a simulation it was all
simulation it was uh it was kind of boxy
actually I mean it wasn't like ultra
realistic simulation and it's
fascinating looms and Heights so any
kind of depth we're just programmed to
um to not necessarily recoil but to be
cautious about that edge and that depth
and then looms things coming at us that
are getting larger there are looming
sensing neurons even in the retina at a
very very early stage of visual
processing and um incidentally uh the
way Muller and you know folks learned
how to not get eaten by great white
sharks when you're swimming outside the
cage is as they start lumbering in you
swim toward them and they get very
confused when you loom on them because
clearly you're smaller clearly they
could eat you if they wanted to but
there's something about forward movement
toward uh any creature that that
creature questions whether or not it
would be a good idea to generate forward
movement toward you and so that's
actually the survival tool of these cage
exit white shark divers are you playing
around with like one of the critical
things for the autonomous vehicle
research is you couldn't do 360 video
because the there's a game theoretic
there's an interactive element that's
really necessary so maybe people realize
this maybe they don't but 360 video you
obviously well it's actually not that
obvious to people but you can't change
the reality that you're watching that's
right so uh but you find that
that's like is there something
fundamental about fear and stress that
the intera development is essential for
or do you find you can you can arous
people with just the video great
question um it works best to use mixed
reality so we have a snake stimulus I
personally don't like snakes at all I
don't mind spiders we also have a spider
stimulus but like snakes I just don't
like them they's something about the the
slithering and the it just it creates a
visceral response for me um some people
not so much and they have lower levels
of stress and fear in there but one way
that we can get them to feel more of
that is to use mixed reality where we
have a an actual physical bat and they
have to stomp out the snake as opposed
to just um walk to a little safe Corner
which then makes the snake disappear
that tends to be not as stressful as if
they have a physical weapon and so you
got people in there you know banging on
the floor against this thing and there's
something about engaging that makes it
more of a more of a threat now I should
also mention we we always get the sub
report from the subject of what they
experience because I we never want to
project our own ideas about what they
were feeling but that's a beauty of
working with humans is you can ask them
how they feel exct and humans aren't
great at explaining how they feel um but
it's a lot easier to understand what
they're saying than a mouse or a macak
monkey is saying um so it's the best we
can do is language plus these
physiological and neurophysiological
signals is there something you've
learned about yourself about your
deepest fears like you said snakes is
there something that like if I were to
torture you I'm so I'm Russian so you
know I always kind of think how can I
murder this people that this person that
enter the room but also how how can I
torture you to get some information out
of you what what would I go with h it's
interesting you should say that I never
considered myself claustrophobic mhm but
um cuz I don't mind small environments
provided they're well
ventilated but I uh before covid I
started going to this Russian B yeah um
you know and then which I'm and I had
never been to a b so you know the whole
experience of really really hot sauna
yeah and the what do they call it the
plot they're hitting you with the leaves
and and it gets really hot and humid in
there and there were a couple times
where I thought okay this thing is below
ground it's in a city where there are a
lot of earthquakes like if this place
crumbled and we were stuck in here and
I'd start getting a little panicky and I
I'm like I don't like small confined
spaces with poor ventilation so I
realize I think I have some
claustrophobia and I wasn't aware of
that before so I've put myself into our
own
claustrophobia stimulus which involves
getting into an elevator um and with a
bunch of people virtual people and the
elevator gets stalled and at first
you're fine you feel fine but then as we
start modulating the environment and we
actually can control levels of oxygen in
the environment if we want to um it is
really uncomfortable for me and I never
would have thought you know I fly I'm
comfortable in Planes I but it is really
uncomfortable and so I think I've un
unhatched a bit of a claustrophobia yeah
yeah for me as well probably that one
that one is pretty bad the heights I
tried to overcome so I went to skydiving
to try to overcome the fear of heights
but that didn't help did you jump out
yeah jum yeah jumped out but it was it
was a it was fundamentally different
experience and I guess there could be a
lot of different flavors of f Heights
maybe but the one I have didn't seem to
be connected to jumping out of a plane
is a very different cuz like once you
accept that you're going to jump then
it's it's a different thing I I think
what I'm afraid of is the moments before
it is is the was the scariest part
absolutely and I I don't think that's
emphasized in the skydiving experience
as much and also just the acceptance of
the fact that it's going to happen so so
once you accept it it's going to happen
it's not as scary it's the fact that
it's not supposed to happen and it might
that's the scary part that I guess I'm
not being eloquent in this description
but there's something about
skydiving that uh was actually
philosophically liberating I was it I
was like wow it it was uh the
possibility that you can walk on a
surface and then at a certain point
there's no surface anymore to walk on
and it's all of a sudden the world
becomes three-dimensional and there's
this freedom of floating that the
concept of like of Earth disappears for
a brief few seconds I don't know that
was that was wild that was wild but I'm
still terrified of height so I mean one
one thing I I want to ask just un fear
because it's so fascinating is have you
um learned anything about what it takes
to overcome
fears yes and that comes from two from a
you know research study standpoint two
parallel tracks of research one was done
actually in mice uh because we have a
mouse lab also where we can prob out in
different brain areas and try and figure
out what interesting brain areas we
might want to prob around in humans and
a graduate student of my lab she's now
at Caltech um Lindsay SLE um published a
paper back in 2018 showing
that what at first might seem a little
bit obvious but the mechanisms are not
which is that there really three
responses to fear you can pause you can
freeze essentially um you can Retreat
you can back up or you can go forward
and there's a single Hub of neurons in
the midbrain in the it's actually not
the midbrain but it's in the middle of
the thalamus which is a forbrain
structure uh and depending on which
neurons are active there there's a much
higher probability that a mouse or it
turns out or a human will advance in the
face of fear or will pause or will
Retreat now that just assigns a neural
structure to a behavioral phenomenon but
what's interesting is that it turns out
that the lowest level of stress or
autonomic arousal is actually associated
with the pausing and freezing
response then as the threat becomes more
impending and we used visual Looms in
this
case The Retreat response has a slightly
higher level of autonomic arousal and
stress so think about playing hide and
go seek and you're trying to stay quiet
in a uh in a closet that you're hiding
if you're very calm it's easy to stay
quiet and still as your level of stress
goes up it's harder to maintain that
level of quiet and Stillness you see
this also in animals that are stalking a
cat will chatter its teeth that's
actually sort of top down inhibition and
trying to restrain Behavior so the
freeze response is actually an active
response but it's fairly low stress and
what was interesting to us is that the
highest level of autonomic arousal was
associated with the forward movement
toward the threat so in your case um
jumping out of the plane however the
forward movement in the face of threat
was linked to the activation of what we
call collateral which means just a side
connection literally a wire in the brain
that connects to the dopamine circuits
for reward and so when one safely and
adaptly meaning you survive moves
through a threat or tor a threat it's
rewarded as a positive experience and so
the key it actually Maps very well the
cognitive behavioral therapy and a lot
of the existing treatments for trauma is
that you have to confront the thing that
makes you afraid so otherwise you exist
in this very low level of reverberatory
circuit activity where the the circuits
for autonomic arousal are humming and
they're humming more and more and more
and we have to remember that that stress
and fear and threat were designed to
agitate us so that we actually move so
the reason I mentioned this is I think a
lot of times people think that the
maximum you know stress response or fear
response is to freeze and to lock up
yeah but that's actually not the maximum
stress response the maximum stress
response is to advance but it's
associated with reward it has positive
veilance interesting so so there's this
kind of everyone always thinks about the
Bell sh you know the sort of Hump shaped
uh curve for you know at low levels of
arousal performance is low and as
increases performance goes higher and
then it drops off as you get really
stressed but there's another bump
further out the distribution where you
perform very well under very high levels
of stress and so we've been spending a
lot of time in humans and in animals
exploring what it takes to get people
comfortable to go to that place and also
to let them experience how there
heightened states of cognition there
there's um changes in time perception
that allow you to evaluate your
environment in fast at a faster frame
rate essentially this is the Matrix as a
lot of people think of it um but we tend
to think about fear as all the low-level
stuff where things aren't worked out but
there are many um there are a lot of
different features to the fear response
and so we think about it quantitatively
and we think about it from a circuit
perspective in terms of outcomes and we
try and weigh that against the threat so
we never want people to put themselves
in unnecessary risk but that's where the
VR is fun because you can push people
hard without risk R of physically
injuring them and that's uh like you
said a little bump that that seems to be
a very small fraction of The Human
Experience right so it's kind of
fascinating to study it because um most
of us move through life
without ever experiencing that kind of
uh Focus well everything's in a peak
State there I really think that's where
Optimal Performance lies there's so many
interesting words here but what's
performance and what's Optimal
Performance we're talking about mental
ability to what to perceive the
environment quickly to make actions
quickly what's Optimal Performance yeah
well it's very subjective and it varies
depending on um task and environment so
one way that we can make it a little bit
more operational and concrete is to say
um there is a sweet spot if you will
where the level of internal autonomic
arousal AKA stress or alertness whatever
you want to call it is ideally matched
to the speed of whatever challenge you
have be facing in the outside world so
we all have um perception of the outside
world as exteroception and then
perception of our internal real estate
interoception and when those two thing
when interception and exteroception are
matched along a couple Dimensions
performance uh tends to increase or
tends to be in in optimal range so for
instance if you're I don't play guitar
but I know you play guitar so let's say
you're trying to learn something new on
the
guitar I'm not saying that being in
these super high states of activation
are the best place for you to be in
order to learn it may be that you your
internal arousal needs to be at a level
where your analysis of space and time
has to be well matched to the
information coming in and what you're
trying to do in terms of performance in
terms of playing chords and notes and so
forth now
in these cases of high threat where
things are coming in quickly and animals
and humans need to react very quickly
the higher your state of autonomic
arousal the better because you're
slicing time more finely just because of
the way the autonomic system works it
you know the the P P the pupil dilation
for instance and movement of the lens
essentially changes your your Optics
that's obvious but in with the change in
Optics is a change in how you bin time
and slice time which allows you to get
more frames per second read out with the
guitar learning for instance it might
actually be that you want to be almost
sleepy almost in a uh kind of drowsy
state to be able to and I don't play
music so I can't I'm guessing here but
sense some of the Nuance in the chords
or the ways that you're to be relaxed
enough that your fingers can follow an
external cue so matching the movement of
your fingers to something that's pure
exteroception and so there is
no perfect autonomic state for uh
performance this is why I don't favor
terms like flow because they're not well
operationally defined enough but I do
believe that optimal or Peak Performance
is going to rise when internal state is
ideally matched to the SpaceTime
features of the external demands so
there's some some slicing of time that
happens and then you're you're able to
adjust slice time more finely or more
less finely in order to adjust to the
the stimulus the Dynamics of the
stimulus what about the the realm of
ideas so like you know I'm I'm a big
believer uh this guy named Cal Newport
wrote a book about deep work oh yeah I
love that book yeah he's great uh so he
I mean one of the nice things I've
always practic deep work but he it's
always nice to have
words uh put to the the concepts that
you've practice ractice it somehow makes
them more concrete and allows you to uh
to get better it turns it into a skill
that you can get better at but you know
I also value deep
thinking where you think it's almost
meditative you think about a particular
concept for long periods of time so
programming you have to do that kind of
thing for you just have to hold this
concept like like you you hold it and
then you take steps with it you take
further steps and you you're holding
relatively complicated things in your
mind as you're thinking about them and
there's a lot of I mean the hardest part
is there's uh frustrating things like
you take a step and it turns out to be
the wrong direction so you have to
calmly turn around and take a step back
and then it's you kind of like exploring
through the space of ideas is there
something about your study of Optimal
Performance that could be applied to the
act of thinking as opposed to action
well we haven't done too much work there
but what um but I think I can comment on
it from a neuroscience perspective which
is really all I do is well I I mean we
do experiments in the lab but um looking
at things through the lens of
Neuroscience so what you're describing
um can be mapped fairly well to working
memory just keeping things online and
updating them as they change in
information it's coming back into into
your brain uh Jack Feldman who I'm a
huge fan of and um fortunate to be
friends with is a uh professor at UCLA
works on respiration and breathing but
he has a physics background and um and
so he thinks about respiration and
breathing in terms of ground States and
how they modulate other states very very
interesting and I think um important
work Jack uh has an answer to your
question so I'm not going to get this
exactly right because this is lifted
from a coffee conversation that we had
about a month ago but uh so um apologies
in advance for the but I think I it
mostly right so we were talking about
this about how the brain updates
cognitive States depending on demands
and thinking in particular and he used
an interesting example I'd be curious to
know if you agree or disagree uh he said
you know most great mathematics that's
done by people in their late teens and
20s and even you could say early 20s
sometimes into the late 20s but not much
further on maybe I just insulted some
mathematicians no that's that's that's
true and I think that it demands his
argument was um there's a tremendous
Demand on working memory to work out
theorems in math and to keep a number of
plates spinning so to speak mentally and
run back and forth between them updating
them in
physics Jack said and I I'm in I think
this makes sense to me too that there's
a Reliance on working memory but an
increased Reliance on some sort of deep
deep memory and deep memory stores
probably stuff that's moved out of the
hippocampus and forbrain and into the
cortex and is um more some episodic and
declarative stuff but really so you're
you're pulling from your library
basically it's not all Ram it's not all
working memory and then in
biology and physicists tend to have very
active careers into their you know 30s
and 40s and 50s and so forth um
sometimes later and then in biology you
see careers that have a much longer Arc
kind of these protracted careers often
uh people still their 60s and 70s doing
doing really terrific work not always
doing it with their own hands because
there people in the labs are doing them
of course but um and that work does tend
to rely on insights gained from having a
very deep knowledge base where you can
remember a paper and a or maybe a figure
in a paper you could go look it up if
you wanted to but it's very different
than the working memory of the
mathematician and so when you're talking
about coding or being in that tunnel of
thought and trying to iterate and
keeping a lot of plates spinning it it
speaks directly to working memory my lab
hasn't done too much of that working
memory but we are pushing working memory
when we have people do things like these
simple lights out tasks while they're
under we can increase the cognitive load
by increasing the level of autonomic
arousal to the point where they start
doing less well Y and you know everyone
has a cliff this is what's kind of fun
we've had um you know Seal Team
operators come to the lab we've had
people from other units in the military
very you know we've had a range of of
intellects and backgrounds and all sorts
of things and everyone has a cliff and
those Cliffs uh sometimes show up as a
function of the demands of speed of
processing or how many things you need
to keep online I mean we're all Limited
at some point in the number of things we
can keep online so what you're
describing is very interesting because
it I think it has to do with how narrow
or broad the information set is because
and I don't proog I'm not an active
programmer so and this is a regime I
don't really fully know so I don't want
to comment about it uh in that in anyway
uh that that you know doesn't suggest
that but I think that what you're
talking about is top- down control so
this is prefrontal cortex keeping every
bit of reflexive circuitry at Bay the
one that makes you want to get up and
use the restroom the one that makes you
want to check your phone all of that but
also running these anterior Thalamus to
prefrontal cortex Loops which we know
are very important for working memory
yeah let me try to think through this a
little bit
so reducing the process of thinking to
working memory
access is tricky he's probably
ultimately
correct but if I were to say some of the
most challenging things that uh an
engineer has to do and a scient
scientific thinker I would say it's kind
of pressing to think that we do that
best in our 20s but is uh this kind of
first principles thinking step of of
saying you're you're accessing the
things that you
know and then saying well let me how do
I do this differently than I've done it
before this this weird like stepping
back like is this right let's try it
this other way that that's the the most
mentally taxing step it's like you
you've gotten quite good at this
particular pattern of how you solve this
particular problem so there's a there's
a pattern recognition first you're like
okay I know how to build a thing that
solves this particular problem in
programming say and
then the question is but can I do it
much
better and I don't know if that's I
don't know what the hell that is I don't
know if that's accessing working memory
that's that's almost access maybe it is
accessing memory in a sense that's
trying to find similar patterns in a
totally different place that could be uh
projected onto this but you're you're
it's you're not quering uh facts you're
quering like functional things like yes
it's patterns I mean you're running
you're testing algorithms yeah right
you're testing algorithms I so I want to
just um because I know
some of the people listening to this and
you have have basis in you know
scientific training and have scientific
training so I want to be clear I think
we can be correct about some things like
the role of working memory in these
kinds of processes without being
exhaustive we're not saying they're the
only thing we're you know we can be
correct but not assume that that's the
only thing involved right and I mean
Neuroscience let's face it is still in
its infancy I mean we probably know 1%
of what there is to know about the brain
um you know we've learned so much and
yet there may be Global states that
underly this that make prefrontal
circuitry work differently than it would
in a in a different regime or even time
of day I mean there's a lot of mysteries
about this but so I just want to make
sure that we we sort of are we're aiming
for precision and accuracy but but we're
not going to be we're not going to be
exhausted so there's a difference there
and I think uh you know sometimes in the
vastness of the internet uh that gets
forgotten um so the other is that
um you know we we think about um you
know we think about these operations uh
at you know really focused keeping a lot
of things online but what you were
describing is actually um it it speaks
to the the very real possibility
probably that the with certainty there's
another element to all this which is
when you're trying out lots of things in
particular lots of different algorithms
you don't want to be in a in a state of
very high autonomic arousal that's not
what you want because the higher level
of autonomic arousal and stress in the
system the more rigidly you're going to
analyze space and time right and what
you're talking about is playing with
space-time dimensionality and I want to
be very clear I mean I'm the son of a
physicist I am not a physicist when I
talk about space and time I'm literally
talking about visual space and how long
it takes for my finger to move from this
point to this point you you are facing a
tiger and trying to figure out how to
avoid being eaten by the
and that's primarily going to be
determined by the visual system in
humans we don't walk through space for
instance like a sen Hound would and look
at three-dimensional scent plumes you
know when a senent Hound goes out in the
environment they have depth to their
odor tra the odor Trails they're
following and they don't think about
them we don't think about odor Trails
you might say oh well the smell's
getting more intense aha but they
actually have threedimensional odor
Trail so there see a cone of odor see of
course with nose with their Factory
cortex we do that with our visual system
and we parse time often subconsciously
with mainly with our visual system also
with our auditory system and this shows
up for the musicians out there
metronomes are a great way to play with
this um you know bass drumming when the
frequency of bass drumming changes your
perception of time changes quite a lot
so in any event space and time are
linked in the through the sensory appara
eye through the eyes and ears and nose
and um probably through taste too and
through touch um for us but mainly
through vision so when you drop into
some coding or iterating through a
creative process or trying to solve
something
hard you can't really do that well if
you're in a rigid um high level of
autonomic arousal because you're
plugging in algorithms that are in this
space regime this time regime matches
it's SpaceTime matched whereas
creativity I always think the Lava Lamp
is actually a pretty good example even
though it has these counterculture new
AG connotations because you actually
don't know which direction things are
going to change and so in drowsy States
sleeping and drowsy States space and
time become dislodged from one another
somewhat and they're very fluid and I
think that's why a lot of solutions come
to people after sleep and naps and this
could even take us into a discussion if
you like about psychedelics and what we
now know for instance that people
thought that psychedelics work by just
creating spontaneous bursting of neurons
and hallucinations but the the 5H 2ca
and 2C and 2A receptors which are the
main sites for things like LSD and
psilocybin and some of the other um huc
the ones that create hallucinations the
drugs that create hallucinations the
most of those receptors are actually in
the um collection of neurons that encase
the thalamus which is where all the
sensory information goes into a
structure called the thalamic reticular
nucleus um and it's an inhibitory
structure that makes sure that when
we're sitting here talking that I'm
mainly focused on whatever I'm seeing
visually that I'm essentially
eliminating a lot of sensory information
under conditions where people take
psychedelics and these uh particular
serotonin receptors are activated that
inhibitory shell it's literally shaped
like a shell starts losing its ability
to inhibit the passage of sensory
information but mostly the effects of
psychedelics are because lateral
connectivity in layer five of Cortex
across cortical areas is increased and
what that does is that means that the
SpaceTime relationship for vision like
moving my finger from here to here very
rigid SpaceTime relationship right if I
slow it down it's slower obviously but
there's a prediction that can be made
based on the neurons and the retina and
the cortex on psychedelics this could be
very strange experience yeah but the
auditory system has one that's slightly
different SpaceTime and they're matched
to one another in deeper Circ in the
brain thefactory system has a different
SpaceTime relationship to it
so under conditions of of these
increased activation of these serotonin
receptors space and time across sensory
area starts being fluid so I'm no longer
running the algorithm for moving my
finger from here to here and making a
prediction based on Vision alone I'm now
this is where people talk about um
hearing sites right you start linking
the this might actually make a sound in
a psychedelic State now I'm not
suggesting people run out and do
psychedelics because it's very
disorganized but essentially what you're
doing is you're mixing the algorithms
and so when you talk about being able to
access new Solutions you don't need to
rely on psychedelics if people choose to
do that that's their business but in
drowsy States this lateral connectivity
is increased as well the shell of the
thalamus shuts down and what's H there
there through these so-called pwns chicl
occipital waves and what's happening is
you're getting whole brain activation at
a level
that you start mixing algorithms and so
sometimes I think Solutions come not
from being in that narrow tunnel of
space time and strong activation of
working memory and trying to well
iterate if this then this very strong
deductive and inductive thinking and
working from first principles but also
from states where something that was an
algorithm that never you never had in
existence before suddenly gets lumped
with another algorithm and all of a
sudden a new possibility
comes to mind and so space and time need
to be fluid and space and time need to
be rigid in order to come up with
something meaningful and I realize I'm
riffing long on this but this is why I
think you know there was so much
interest a few years ago with Michael
pollen's book and and other things
happening about psychedelics as a
pathway to exploration and all this kind
of thing but the real question is what
you export back from those experiences
because dreams are amazing but if you
can't bring anything back from them
they're just amazing I wonder how to
experiment with a
mind without without any medical
assistance first like you know I I push
my mind in all kinds of directions I
definitely want to I did uh shrooms a
couple of times I definitely want to uh
figure out how I can experiment with um
with psychedelics I'm talking to uh Rick
dolin I Thinkin doblin uh soon I went
back and forth so he does all these
studies in psychedelics and he keeps
ignoring the parts of my email that asks
like how do I participate in these
studies yeah well there are some
legality issues I mean conversation I
want to be very clear I'm not saying
that anyone should run out and do
psychedelics I think that drowsy States
and sleep states are are super
interesting for accessing some of these
more creative states of Mind hypnosis is
something that my colleague David
Spiegel associate chair of Psychiatry at
Stanford works on where also again it's
a unique State because you have narrow
context so this is very um kind of
tunnel vision and yet deeply rela excuse
me deeply relaxed where new algorithms
if you will can start to surface um
strong state for inducing
neuroplasticity and I think that you
know so if I had a um I'm part of a
group um that uh it's called the linal
collective is a group of people that get
together and talk about um just wild
ideas but they try and Implement um and
it's a it's a really interesting group
some people from military from uh logic
Tech and some other backgrounds academic
backgrounds and I was asked you know
what would be um if you could create a
tool if you just had a tool like your
magic Wan wish for the day what would it
be I thought it' be really interesting
if someone could develop psychedelics
that have um onoff switches so you could
go into a psychedelic State very deeply
for 10 minutes but you could launch
yourself out of that state and place
yourself into a linear real world State
very quickly so that you could extract
whatever it was that that happened in
that experience and then go back in if
you wanted because the problem with
psychedelic States and dream states is
that first of all a lot of the reason
people do them is they're lying they say
they want plasticity and they want all
this stuff they want a peak experience
yeah inside of an amplified experience
so they're kind of seeking something
unusual I think we should just be honest
about that because a lot of times
they're not trying to make their brain
better they're just trying to experience
something really amazing
but the problem is space and time are so
unlocked in these states just like they
are in dreams that you can really end up
with a whole lot of nothing you can have
an amazing Amplified experience housed
in an amplified experience and come out
of that thinking you had a meaningful
experience when you didn't bring
anything back you didn't bring anything
back all all you have is a fuzzy memory
of having a transformational experience
but you don't actually have yeah tools
to bring back or sorry actual actually
concrete ideas to bring back yeah it's
interesting yeah I wonder if it's
possible to do that with the with a mind
to to be able to hop back and forth I
think that's where the real power of you
know adjusting States is going to be it
probably will be with devices um I mean
maybe it'll be done through pharmacology
it's just that it's hard to do onoff
switches in in human pharmacology that
we have them for Animals I mean we we
have you know cre flip common Aces and
we have um you know Channel opsins and
Halo root opsins and um all these kinds
of things but to to do that work in
humans is tricky but I think you could
do it with um virtual reality augmented
reality and other devices that bring
more of the sematic experience into it
you're of course a scientist who's
studying humans as a collective I tend
to be just a one person scientist of
just looking at myself and you know I
play when these deep thinking deep work
sessions I'm very cognizant like in the
morning that there's times when my mind
is
so like eloquent at being able to jump
around from ideas and hold them all
together and I I'm almost like I step
back from a third person perspective and
enjoy that whatever that mind is doing
I'm I do not waste those moments I and
I'm very conscious of um this like
little creature that woke up that's only
awake for if we're being honest maybe a
couple hours a day uh early part of the
day for you early part of the day not
always well early part of the day for me
is a very uh fluid concept so you're one
of those yeah I'm one yeah you're one of
those being single one of the problems
single and no meetings I don't schedule
any meetings I I will I've been living
at like a 28h hour day so I like I uh it
drifts so it's it's all over the the
place but after a uh traditionally
defined full night
sleep uh whatever the heck that means I
I find that like in in those moments
there's a Clarity of mind that's just
this everything is effortless and it's
the it's the deepest Dives
intellectually that I make and I I'm
cognizant of it and I try to bring that
to the other parts of the day that don't
have it and treasure them even more in
those moments cuz they only last like 5
or 10 minutes like cuz of course in
those moments you want to do all kinds
of stupid stuff that are completely is
is is worthless like check social media
or something like that but those are the
most precious things in in in in
intellectual life is those mental
moments of clarity and I wonder I'm
learning how to control
them I think caffeine is somehow
involved I'm not sure exactly sure well
because if you learn how to titrate
caffeine everyone's slightly different
with this what they need but if you
learn to titrate caffeine with time a
day and the kind of work that you're
trying to do you can bring that
autonomic arousal State into the close
to perfect place and then you can tune
it in with you know sometimes people
want a little bit of background music
sometimes they want less these kinds of
things the the the early part of the day
is interesting because the one thing
that's not often discussed is the
transition out of sleep so there's a a
book um I think it's called Winston
Churchills nap and it's about naps and
and the transition between wake and
sleep as a valuable period um I've a
long time ago um someone who I respect a
lot was mentoring me said um be very
careful about bringing in someone else's
sensory experience early in the day so
when I wake up I'm very drowsy I sleep
well but I I don't emerge from that very
quickly I need a lot of caffeine to wake
up and whatnot but there's this concept
of getting the download from sleep which
is you know in sleep you're you were
essentially expunging the things that
you don't need the stuff that was
meaningless from the previous day but
you were also running variations on
these algorithms of whatever it is
you're trying to work out in life on
short time scales like the previous day
and long time scales like your whole
life and those lateral Connections in
layer five of the of the neocortex are
very robustly um active and AC cross
sensory areas and and you're running a
an algorithm or a colle you know a brain
it's a brain state that would be useless
and waking you wouldn't get anything
done you'd be the person talking to
yourself in the hallway or something
about something that no one else can see
but in those States you do that the
theory is that you arrive at certain
Solutions and those Solutions will
reveal themselves in the early part of
the day unless you interfere with them
by bringing in social media is a good
example of you immediately enter
somebody
else's space time sensory relationship
someone is the conductor of your
thoughts in that case and so many people
have written about this um what I'm
saying isn't entirely new but but
allowing the download to occur in the
early part of the day and and asking the
question am I more in my head or extern
am I in more of an interoceptive or
exteroceptive mode and depending on the
kind of work you need to do if it's it
sounds like for you it's very
interoceptive in the and very you got a
lot of thinking going on and a lot of
computing going on allowing yourself to
transition out of that sleep State and
arrive with those solutions from sleep
and plug into the work really deeply and
then and only then allowing things like
music news social media doesn't mean you
should talk to loved ones and see faces
and things like that but some people
have taken this to the extreme when I
was a graduate student at Berkeley there
was a guy um there a professor brilliant
odd but brilliant um who was so fixated
on this concept that he wouldn't look at
faces in the early part of the day MH
because he just didn't want to anything
else to impact him now he would didn't
have the most um rounded life I suppose
but if you're talking about um cognitive
performance this could actually be very
beneficial you said so many brilliant
things so one if you read
books that describe the habits of uh
brilliant people like uh writers they do
control that sensory experience in in
the in the in the hours after wake like
many
writers you know they have a particular
habit of several hours early in the
morning of actual writing they do don't
do anything else for the rest of the day
but they control they're very sensitive
to noises and so on I think they make it
very difficult to live with them I try
to I'm definitely like that like I can I
I love to control the sensory uh how
much information is coming in there's
something about the peaceful just
everything being peaceful at the same
time and we we're talking to a me your
friend of Whitney come who um has has a
has a mansion a castle on top of a cliff
in in the middle of nowhere she actually
purchased her own Island uh so she wants
silence she wants to control how much
sound is coming in and she's very
sensitive to to sound and environment
yeah beautiful home an