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 and environment but
like clearly puts a lot of attention
into into details yeah and and very
creative yeah and that's yeah that
allows her creativity to flourish I'm
also I don't like that feels like a
slippery slope so I I enjoy
introducing the noises and
signals and uh training my mind to be
able to tune them out cu I feel like you
can't always control the environment so
perfectly because uh because your mind
gets comfortable with that I think it's
a skill that you want to learn to be
able to shut it off like I often go to
like back before Co to a coffee shop it
really annoys me when there's sounds and
voices and so on but I feel like I can
train my mind to to block them out so
it's it's a balance I think yeah and I
think um you know two things come to
mind um as you're saying this um first
of all yeah I mean we're talking about
what's best for work is not always
what's best for you know completeness of
life I mean you know autism is probably
many things like when we autism just
like Fe there probably 50 ways to get a
fever there probably 50 ways to that the
brain can create what looks like autism
or what people call autism there's an
ing set of studies that have come out of
David ginty's Lab at Harvard
Med um looking at these are Mouse
mutants where um these are models for
autism where nothing is disrupted in the
brain proper and in the central nervous
system but the sensory the sensory
neurons the ones that inate the skin and
the ears and everything are are hyp
sensitive and this maps to a mutation in
certain forms of human autism so this
means that the the overload of sensory
information and sensory experience that
a lot of autistics feel they like that
they can't tolerate things and then they
get the stereotype behaviors the rocking
and the kind of the shouting it you know
we always thought of that as a brain
problem in some cases it might be but in
many cases it's because they just can't
they they seem to have a m it's like
turning the volume up on every sense and
so they're overwhelmed and none of us
want to be come like that I think it's
very hard for them and it's hard for
their parents and so forth so I I like
the the coffee shoing example because um
the way I think about trying to build up
resilience uh you know physically or
mentally or otherwise is one of um I
guess we could call it Lim I like to
call it lyic friction that's not a real
scientific term and I acknowledge that
I'm making it up now because I think it
captures the concept which is that you
know we always hear about resilience it
makes it sound like oh you know under
stress where everything's coming at you
you're going to stay calm but there's
another you know so limic the lyic
system wants to pull you in some
Direction typically in the direction of
reflexive Behavior and the prefrontal
cortex through top down mechanisms has
to suppress that and say no we're not
going to respond to the banging of the
coffee cups behind me or I'm going to
keep focusing that's pure top- down
control so lyic friction is high in that
environment youve put yourself into a
high lyic friction environment mean that
the prefrontal cortex has to work really
hard but there's another side to lyic
friction too which is when you're very
sleepy there's nothing incoming it can
be completely silent and it's hard to
engage and focus because you're drifting
off you're getting sleepy so their limic
friction is high but for the opposite
reason autonomic arousal is too low so
there turning on Netflix in the
background or looping a song might boost
your level of alertness that will allow
top down control to be in in the pl
exactly The Sweet Spot you want it so
that this is why earlier I was saying
it's all about how we feel inside
relative to what's going on on the
outside we're constantly in this I guess
one way you could Envision it spatially
especially if uh people are listening to
this just on audio is I like to think
about it kind of like a glass barbell
where one sphere of perception and
attention can be on what's going on with
me and one sphere of attention can be on
what's going on with you or something
else in the room or in my environment
but those this barbell isn't rigid it's
not really glass would plasma work here
I don't know anything about
plasma sorry I don't know okay but so
imagine that this thing can contort the
size of the the the globes at the end of
this barbell can get bigger or smaller
so let's say I close my eyes and I bring
all my experience into what's going on
inter in through interoception
internally now it's as if I've got two
orbs of perception just on my internal
state but I can also do the opposite and
bring two both orbs of perception
outside me I'm not thinking about my
heart rate or my breathing I'm just
thinking about something I see and what
you'll start to realize as you kind of
use this spatial model is that two
things one is that it's very Dynamic and
that the more relaxed we are the more
these two orbs of attention the two ends
of the barbell can move around
freely the more alert we are the more
rigid they're going to be tethered in
place and that was designed so that if I
have a threat in my environment it's
Tethered to that threat I'm not going to
be if something's coming to attack me
I'm not going to be like oh my breathing
Cadence is a little bit quick that's not
how it works why because both orbs are l
linked to that uh to that threat and so
my behavior is now actually being driven
by something external even though I
think it's internal and so I don't want
to get too abstract here because I'm a
neuroscientist I'm not a a theorist but
when you start thinking about models of
how the brain work I mean brain works
excuse me they're only really three
things that neurons do they're either
Sensory neurons they're motor neurons or
they're modulating things and the the
models of attention and perception that
we have now 2020
tell us that we've got interoception and
exteroception they're strongly modulated
by levels of autonomic arousal and that
if we want to form the optimal
relationship to some task or some
pressure or some thing whether or not
it's sleep an impending threat or coding
we need to adjust our internal
space-time relationship with the
external space-time relationship and I
realize I'm repeating what I said
earlier but we can actually assign
circuitry to this stuff it mostly has to
do with how much lyic friction there is
how much you're being pulled to some
source that Source could be internal if
I have if I have pain physical pain in
my body I'm going to be much more
interoceptive than I am EXT receptive
you could be talking to me and I'm just
going to be thinking about that pain
it's very hard and the other thing that
we can link it to is top- down
control meaning anything in our
environment that has a lot of salience
will tend to bring us into more
exteroception than interoception and
again I don't want to litter the
conversation with just a bunch of terms
but um what I think it can be useful for
people is to do what essentially you've
done Lex is to start developing an
awareness when I wake up am I mostly in
a mode of interoception or exteroception
when I work well is that what is working
well look like from the perspective of
autonomic arousal how alert or calm I am
I what kind of balance between internal
focus and external focus is there and to
sort of watch this process throughout
the day can you linger just briefly and
cuz use this term a lot it be nice to
try to get a little more color to it
which is interoception and
exteroception uh what are what are we
exactly talking about so like what's
included in each category and how much
overlap is there interception would be
uh an awareness of anything that's
within the confines or on the surface of
my skin that I'm sensing Al so literally
physiological physiologically like
within the boundaries of my skin and
probably touch to the skin as well
exteroception would be perception of
anything that's ex beyond the reach of
my skin so that that bottle of water um
a scent um a sound although and this can
change dramatically actually if you have
headphones in you tend to hear things in
your head if as opposed to a speaker in
the room this is actually the basis of
ventriloquism so there are beautiful
experiments done by Greg Reen Zone up at
UC Davis looking at how auditory and
visual cues are matched and you have an
array of speakers and you can this will
become obvious as I say it but you know
obviously the ventriloquist doesn't
throw their voice what they do is they
direct your vision to a particular
location and you think the sound is
coming from that location and there are
beautiful experiments that Greg and his
colleagues have done where they suddenly
introduce a auditory visual mismatch and
it freaks people out because you can
actually make it seem from a perception
standpoint as if the sound arrived from
the corner of the room and hit you like
it physically
and people will recoil and so sounds
aren't getting thrown across the room
they're still coming from this defined
location array of speakers but this is
the way the brain creates these internal
representations and again not to I don't
want to go down a rabbit hole but um I
think as much as you you know I'm sure
the listeners appreciate this but you
know everything in the brain is an
abstraction right I mean they're they're
the sensory apparati there are the eyes
and ears and nose and skin and taste and
all that are taking information and with
interoception it's taking information
from sensors inside the body the anic
nervous system for the gut I've got
Sensory neurons that intermate my liver
um Etc taking all that and the brain is
abstracting that in the same way that if
I took a picture of your face and I
handed it to you and I'd say that's you
you'd say yeah that's me but if I were
an abstract artist I'd be doing a little
bit more of what the brain does where if
I took a pen pad and paper maybe I could
do this because I'm a terrible artist
and I could just mix it up and I let's
say I would make your eyes like water
bottles but I'd flip them upside down
and I'd start assigning fruits and
objects to the different features of
your face and I showed to you I say Lex
that's you say well that's not me and
I'd say no but that's my abstraction of
you but that's what the brain does the
space time relationship of the neurons
that fire that encode your face has have
no resemblance to your face right and I
think people don't really I don't know
if people have fully internalized that
but the day that I and I'm not sure I
fully internalized that because it's
weird to think about but all neurons can
do is fire in space and in time
different neurons in different sequences
perhaps with different intensities it's
not clear the action potential is all or
none although people neuroscientists
don't like to talk about that even
though it's been published in nature a
couple times the action potential for a
given neuron doesn't always have the
exact same wave form people it's in all
the textbooks but you can modify that
wave for well there I mean there's a lot
of fascinating stuff with uh with
Neuroscience about the fuzziness of all
the uh of the transfer of information
from neuron to neuron I mean there we we
certainly touch upon it every time we at
all try to think about the difference
between artificial neural networks and
biological neural networks but can we uh
maybe linger a little bit on this uh on
the circuitry that you're getting at so
the brain is just a bunch of stuff
firing and it forms abstractions that
are fascinating and beautiful like
layers upon layers upon layers of
abstraction and I think it uh just like
when you're programming you know I'm
programming in
Python it's uh it's all inspiring to
think that Underneath It All it ends up
being zeros and ones and the computer
doesn't know about no stupid python or
Windows or Linux it it only knows about
the zeros and ones in the same way with
the
brain is there
something interesting to you or
fundamental to about the circuitry of
the brain that allows for the magic
that's in our mind to
emerge how much do we understand I mean
maybe even focusing on the vision system
is is there something specific about the
structure of the vision system the
circuitry of it that uh allows for the
complexity of the vision system to
emerge or is it all just a complete
chaotic mess that we don't understand
it's definitely not all a cha mess that
we don't understand if we're talking
about vision and that's not just because
I'm a vision scientist let's stick to
Vision let's stick to Vision well
because in the beauty of the visual
system the reason David huble and torr
and weasel won the Nobel Prize was
because they were brilliant in Forward
Thinking and adventurous and all that
good stuff but the reason that the
visual system is such a great model for
addressing these kinds of questions and
other systems are hard is we can control
the stimul we can adjust spatial
frequency how finer the gradings are
thick gradings thin gradings we can just
temporal frequency how fast things are
moving we can um use con isolating
stimuli we can use there's so many
things that you can do in a controlled
way whereas if we were talking about
cognitive encoding like the you know
encoding the space of Concepts or
something you know I I I've you know I
like you I if I may are am drawn to the
the big questions in Neuroscience but I
confess in part because of some good
advice I got early in my career and in
part because I'm um not perhaps smart
enough to go after the really high level
stuff I also like to address things that
are tractable and I want you know we
need to we need to address what we can
stand to make some ground on at a given
time they you can construct brilliant
controlled experiments just to study to
really literally answer questions about
yeah yeah I mean I'm happy to have a
talk about Consciousness but it's it's a
scary talk and I think most people don't
want to hear what I have to say which is
you know which is uh we can save that
for later perhaps or it's an interesting
question of uh we talk about
psychedelics we can talk about
Consciousness we can talk about
cognition can experiments in
Neuroscience be constructed to shed any
kind of light on these questions so I
mean it's cool that Vision I mean to me
vision is probably one of the most
beautiful things about human beings uh
also from the AI side computer vision
has the is some of the most exciting
applications of uh neural networks is in
computer vision but it feels like that's
a that's a neighbor of cognition and
Consciousness it's just that we maybe
haven't come up with experiments to
study those yet yeah the visual system
is amazing we're mostly visual animals
to navigate survive humans mainly rely
on Vision not smell or something else
but um it's a filter for cognition and
it's a it's a strong driver of cognition
maybe just because it came up and then
we're moving to higher level Concepts
just the the way the visual system works
can be summarized in it um in a few
relatively succinct statements unlike
most of what I've said which has not
been succinct at all let's go there you
Thea what's involved yeah so the retina
is this three layers of neuron structure
at the back of your eye it's about as
thick as a credit card it is a piece of
your brain and sometimes people think
I'm kind of wriggling by out of a real
by saying that it is it's absolutely a
piece of the brain it's it's a forbrain
structure that in the first trimester
there's a genetic program that made sure
that that neural retina which is part of
your central nervous system was squeezed
out into What's called the embryonic eye
cups and that the bone formed with a
little hole where the optic nerve is
going to connected to the rest of the
brain and those that window into the
world is the only window into the world
for a for a mammal which has a thick
skull birds have a thin skull so their
pineal gland sits and lizards too and
snakes actually have a hole so that
light can make it down into the pineal
directly and entrain melatonin rhythms
for time of day and time of year humans
have to do all that through the eyes so
three layers of neurons that are a piece
of your brain they are central nervous
system and the optic nerve connects to
the rest of the brain the neurons in the
eye some just care about luminance just
how bright or dim it is and they inform
the brain about time of day and then the
central circadian clock informs every
cell in your body about time of day and
make sure that all sorts of good stuff
happens if you're getting light in your
eyes at the right times and all sorts of
bad things happen if you are getting
light randomly throughout the 24-hour
cycle we could talk about all that but
this is a good incentive for keeping a
relatively normal schedule consistent
schedule of light exposure consistent
schedule try and keep a consistent
schedule when you're young it's easy to
go off schedule and recover as you get
older it gets harder but you see
everything from outcomes in cancer
patients to um diabetes um you know
improves when people are getting light
at a particular time of day and getting
Darkness at a particular phase of the
24-hour cycle we were designed to um get
light and dark at different times of the
of the Circadian cycle that's all being
all that information is coming in
through specialized type of neuron in
the retina called the melanops an
intrinsically photosensitive gangling
cell discovered by David buron at Brown
University that's not spatial
information it's subconscious you don't
think oh it's daytime even if you're
looking at the sun it doesn't matter
it's a photon counter it's literally
counting photons and it's saying oh even
though it's a cloudy day lots of photons
coming in it's winter in Boston it must
be winter and your system is a little
depressed it's spring you feel alert
that's not a coincidence that's these
melanops and cells signaling the
circadian clock there are a bunch of
other neurons in the
eye that signal to the brain and they
mainly signal the presence of things
that are lighter than background or
darker than background so a black
objects would be darker than background
a light object lighter than background
and that all come it's mainly a it's
looking at pixels mainly it's they look
at circles and those neurons have
receptive fields which not everyone will
understand but those neurons respond
best to little Circles of dark light or
little Circles of bright light little
Circles of red light versus little
Circles of green light or blue light and
so it sounds very basic it's like red
green blue and circles brighter or
dimmer than what's next to it but that's
basically the only information that sent
down the optic nerve and when we say
information we can be very precise I
don't mean little bits of red traveling
down the optic nerve I mean spikes
neural Action potentials in space and
time which for you is like makes total
sense but I think for a lot of people it
it's actually beautiful to think about
all that information in the outside
world is converted into a language
that's very simple it's just like a few
syllables if you will and those
syllables are being shouted down the
optic nerve converted into a totally
different language like mors
code goes into the brain and then the
thalamus essentially responds in the
same way that the retina does except the
thalamus is also waiting things it's
saying you know what that thing um was
moving faster than everything else or
it's brighter than everything else so
that signal I'm going to get up I'm
going to allow up to
Cortex or that signal is much redder
than it is green so I'm going to let
that signal go through that signal is
much eh it's kind of more like the red
next to it throw that out the
information just doesn't get up into
your cortex and then in cortex of course
is where perceptions happen and in V1 if
you will visual area one but also some
neighboring areas you start getting
representations of things like oriented
lines so there's a neuron that responds
to this angle of my hand versus vertical
MH right this is the defining work of
Hub visil Nobel and it's a very
systematic map of orientation line
orientation direction of mve movement
and so forth and that's pretty much and
color and that's how the visual system
is organized all the way up to the
cortex so it's hierarchical you don't
build I want to be clear it's
hierarchical because you don't build up
that line by suddenly having a neuron
that responds to lines in a some random
way it responds to Lines by taking all
the dots that are aligned in a vertical
stack and they all converge on one
neuron and then that neuron response to
vertical lines so it's not random
there's no abstraction at that point in
fact in in fact if I showed you a black
line I could be sure that if I were
Imaging V1 that I would see a
representation of that black line as a
vertical line somewhere in in your
cortex so at that point uh it's
absolutely concrete it's not abstract
but then things get really mysterious
some of that information travels further
up into the cortex so that and goes from
one visual era to the next to the next
to the next so that by time you get into
an area that um Nancy kwish are at MIT
has studied her much of her career the
fusiform face area you start finding
single neurons that respond only to your
father's face or to Joe Rogan's face
regardless of the orientation of his
face I'm sure if you saw Joe because you
know him well from across the room and
you just saw his profile be like oh
that's Joe walk over and say
hello the orientation of his face isn't
there you wouldn't even see his eyes
necessarily but he's represented in some
abstract way by a neuron that actually
would be called The Joe Rogan neuron or
neurons it might have limits like I
might not recognize him if he was upside
down or something like that it'd be
fascinating to to see what the limits of
that Joe Rogan concept is so nany's lab
has done that because early on she was
challenged by people that said there
aren't face neurons there are neurons
that they only respond to space and time
shapes and things like that moving in
particular directions and orientations
and turns out Nancy was right um they
used the stimula called called grible
stimuli which um any computer programmer
would appreciate which kind of morphs a
face into something gradually that
eventually just looks like this like
alien thing they call the gal and the
neurons don't respond to grebles in most
cases they only respond to faces and
familiar faces anyway I'm summarizing a
lot of literature and forgive me Nancy
and for those of the gbo people if there
ours they like don't come after me with
pitchforks actually you know what come
out fors I think you know what I'm
trying to do here yeah so the point is
that in the visual system it's very
concrete up until about visual area 4
which has color pin wheels and seems to
respond to pin wheels of colors and um
and so the stimula become more and more
elaborate but at some point you depart
that concrete representation and you
start getting abstract representations
that can't be explained by simple
point-to-point wiring MH and to take a
leap out of the visual system to the
higher level Concepts what we talked
about in the visual system maps to the
auditory system where you're encoding
what
frequency of tone sweeps so this gonna
sound weird to do but you know a like a
Doppler like hearing something a car
passing by for instance but at some
point you get into motifs of music that
can't be mapped to just a a a what they
call a tonotopic map of frequency you
start abstracting and if you start
thinking about concepts of creativity
and love and memory like what is the map
of memory space right well your memories
are very different than mine but
presumably there's enough structure at
the early stages of memory processing or
at the early stages of emotional
processing or at the earlier stages of
creative processing that you have the
building blocks your zeros and ones if
you will but you depart from that
eventually now the exception to this and
I want to be really clear because I was
just mainly talking about
neocortex the six layered structure on
the outside of the brain that explains a
lot of human abilities
other animals have them too is that
subcortical structures are a lot more
like machines it's more plung and chug
and what I'm talking about is the
Machinery that controls heart rate and
breathing and receptive Fields um you
know neurons that respond to things like
temperature on the top of my left hand
and one of the you know I came into
Neuroscience from a more of a
perspective initially of psychology but
one of the reasons I forced upon myself
to learn a some
electrophysiology not a ton but enough
and some molecular biology and about
circuitry is that one of the most
beautiful experiences you can have in
life I'm convinced is to lower an
electrode into the cortex and to show a
person or an animal you do this
ethically of course a stimulus yes like
an oriented line or a face and you can
convert the recordings coming off of
that electrode into an audio signal an
Audio Monitor and you can hear what they
call hash it's not the hash you smoke
it's the hash you hear and it's it
sounds like it just sounds like noise MH
and in the cortex eventually you find a
stimulus that gets the neuron to spike
and fire Action potentials they're
converted into an auditory stimulus that
are very concrete crack crack crack
sounds like a bat cracking you know like
home runs you know or or outfield
balls when you drop electrodes deeper
into the thalamus or into the
hypothalamus or into the brain stem
areas that control breathing it's like a
machine you never hear hash you drop the
electrode down this could be like a like
a grungy old tugon electrode not high
fideli electrode as long as it's got a
little bit of insulation on it you plug
it into an audio monitor it's picking up
electricity and if it's a visual neuron
and it's in the thalamus of the retina
and you walk in front of that animal or
person that that neuron
goes and then you walk away and it stops
and you put your hand in front of the
eye again and it
goes and you could do that for two days
and that neuron will just every time
there's a stimulus it fires so whereas
before it's a question of how much
information is getting up to Cortex and
then these abstractions happening where
you're creating these ideas when you go
subcortical everything is there's no
abstractions it's 2 plus 2 equals 4
there's no abstractions and this is why
I um you know I know we have some common
friends at neurol link and I love the
demonstration they did recently I'm a
huge fan of what they're doing and and
where they're headed and no I don't get
paid to say that and I have no you know
business relationship to them I'm just a
huge fan of the people and the mission
but my question was to some of them you
know when are you going to go
subcortical because if you want to
control an animal you don't do it in the
cortex the cortex is like the abstract
painting I made of your face stim moving
removing one piece or changing something
may or may not matter for the
abstraction but when you are in the
subcortical areas of the brain
stimulating electrod can evoke an entire
Behavior or an entire State and so the
brain if we're going to have a
discussion about the brain and how the
brain works we need to really be clear
which brain because everyone loves
neocortex it's like oh canonical
circuits in cortex we're going get the
cortical connectome and sure necessary
but not sufficient not to be able to
plug in patterns of electrical
stimulation and get Behavior eventually
we'll get there but if you're talking
subcortical circuits that's where the
action is that's where you could
potentially cure Parkinson's by
stimulating the subthalamic nucleus
because we know that it Gates motor
activation patterns in very predictable
ways so I think for those that are
interested in Neuroscience it pays to
pay attention to like is this a circuit
that abstracts the sensory information
or is it just one that builds up
hierarchical models in a very
predictable way and there's a huge chasm
in Neuroscience right now because
there's no conceptual leadership no one
knows which way to go and this is why I
think neuralink has captured an amazing
opportunity which was okay while while
all you academic research labs are
figuring all this stuff out we're going
to pick a very specific goal and make
the goal the end point and some academic
Laboratories do that but I think that's
a beautiful way to attack this whole
thing about the brain because it's very
concrete let's restore motion to the
parkinsonian patient academic Labs do
that want to do that too of course let's
restore um speech to the stroke patient
but there's nothing abstract about that
that's about figuring out the solution
to a particular problem so anyway those
are my and i' and I admit I've mixed in
a lot of opinion there but having spent
some time like 25 years digging around
in the brain and listening to neurons
firing and looking at them anatomically
I think given it's 2020 we we need to uh
ask the right you know the way to get
better answers is ask better questions
and the really high level stuff is fun
it makes for good conversation and it
has um brought enormous interest but I
think the questions about Consciousness
and dreaming and stuff they're
fascinating but I don't know that we're
there yet so you're seeing there might
be a chasm in the two
views of
uh the power of the brain arising from
the
from the circuitry that forms
abstractions or the power of the brain
arising from the majority of the
circuitry that's just doing very uh boot
Force dumb things that are like that
don't have any fancy kind of stuff going
on that's really interesting to think
about and which one to go after first
and and and here I'm poaching badly from
someone I've never met but whose you
know work I I follow which is and it was
actually on your podcast I think Elon
Musk said you know basically the brain
is a what you say a monkey brain with a
supercomputer on top and I thought
that's actually probably the best
description of the brain I've ever heard
because it captures a lot of important
features like lyic friction right we
think of like oh you know when we're
making plans we're using the prefrontal
cortex and we're executive function and
all this kind of stuff but think about
the drug addict who's driven to go
pursue herin or cocaine they make plans
so clearly they use their frontal cortex
it's just that it's been hijacked by the
lyic system and all the mon the monkey
brain as he referred to it's really not
fair to monkeys though Elon because
actually monkeys can make plans they
just don't make plans as sophisticated
is AES I've spent a lot of time with
monkeys but I've also spent a lot of
time with humans anyway I'm but you're
you're putting you're saying like we
there's a lot of value to focusing on
the monkey brain or whatever the heck
you call it like I do because let's say
I had an ability to place a chip
anywhere I wanted in the brain today and
activate it or inhibit that area I'm not
sure I would put that chip in neocortex
except maybe to just kind of have some
fun and see what happens the reason is
it's an abstraction machine and
especially if I wanted to make a Mass
Production Tool a tool in mass
production that I could give to a lot of
people because it's quite possible that
your abstractions are different enough
than mine that I wouldn't know what
patterns of firing to induce but if I
want let's say I want to increase my
level of focus and creativity well then
I would love to be able to for instance
control my level of lyic friction I
would love to be able to wake up and go
oh you know I have an 8:00 appointment I
wake up slowly so between S8 but I want
to do a lot of linear thinking so you
know what I'm going to just I'm going to
turn down the limic friction and or ramp
up prefrontal cortex's Activation so
there's a lot of stuff that can happen
in the thalamus with sensory gating um
for instance you could shut down that
shell around the thalamus and allow more
creative thinking by allowing more
lateral connections these would be some
of the those would be the experiments
I'd want to do so they're in the
subcortical quote unquote monkey brain
but you could then look at what sorts of
abstract thoughts and behaviors would
arise from that rather than and and here
I'm not pointing my finger at neural
Link at all but there's this obsession
with neocortex but I I'm going to well I
might lose a few friends but I'll
hopefully gain a few and and also um one
of the reasons people spend so much time
in neocortex yes I have a fact in an
opinion one fact is that you can image
there and you can record there right now
the two Photon and one Photon microscopy
methods that allow you to image deep
into the brain still don't allow you to
image down really deep unless you're
jamming prisms in there and endoscopes
and then in the endoscopes are very
narrow so you're getting very you know
it's like looking at the bottom of the
ocean through a through a spotlight yeah
and so you much easier look at the waves
up on top right so let's face it folks a
lot of the reasons why there's so many
recordings in layer 2 three of Cortex
with all this Advanced microscopy is
because it's very hard to image deeper
now the microscopes are getting better
and thanks to amazing work mainly of
Engineers and chemists and physicists
let's face it they're the ones who
brought this revolution in Neuroscience
in the last 10 years or so you can image
deeper but we don't really that's why
you see so many reports on layer 2 three
the other thing which is purely opinion
and I'm not going after anybody here but
is that as long as there's no clear
right answer it becomes a little easier
to do creative work in a structure where
no one really knows how it works so it's
fun to probe around because anything you
see is novel if you're going to work in
the thalamus or the pulvinar or the
hypothalamus so these structures that
have been known about since the' 60s and
70s and really since the you know
centuries ago you are dealing with exist
you have to combat existing models yeah
and where whereas in cortex no one knows
how the thing works the neocortex six
layer cortex and so L more room for
Discovery there's a lot more room for
Discovery and I'm not calling anyone out
I love cortex we've published some
papers on cortex it's super interesting
but I I think with the tools that are
available nowadays and where people are
trying ahead of of not just reading from
the Brain Monitoring activity but
writing to the brain I think we really
have to be careful and we need to be
thoughtful about what are we trying to
write what script are we trying to write
because there are many brain structures
for which we already know what scripts
they write and I think there's
tremendous value there I don't think
it's boring the fact that they act like
machines makes them predictable those
are your zeros and ones yeah let's start
there but let what they're what's sort
of happening in this field of writing to
the brain is there's this idea and again
I want to be clear I'm not pointing at
neuralink I'm mainly pointing at the the
neocortical jockeys out there that you
go and you observe patterns and then you
think replaying those patterns is going
to give rise to something interesting
yeah I I should call out one experiment
or two experiments which were done by
susumu tagawa Nobel Prize winner from
MIT done important work in memory and
Immunology of course is where you got
Nobel as well as Mark morford's Lab at
UC San Diego they did an experiment
where they monitored a bunch of neurons
while an animal learns something MH then
they captur those neurons through some
molecular tricks so they could replay
the neurons mhm so now there's like
perfect case scenario it's like okay you
monitor the neurons in your brain then I
say okay neurons 1 through 100 were
played in the particular sequence so you
know the space time you know the keys on
the piano that were played that gave
rise to the song which was the behavior
and then you go back and you reactivate
those neurons except you reactivate them
all at once like slamming on all the
keys once on the piano and you get the
exact same
behavior so the SpaceTime
code may be meaningless for some
structures now that's freaky that's a
scary thing because what that means is
that all the space-time firing in
cortex the space part May matter more
than the time part so you know rate
codes and SpaceTime codes we don't know
and you know I'd rather have I'd rather
deliver more answers in this discussion
questions but I think it's an important
consideration you're saying some of the
magic is in the early stages of what the
the closer to the raw information that
bra ising I believe so you you know the
stimulus you know the neuron then codes
that stimulus so you know the
transformation when I say this for those
you that don't think about sensory
Transformations it's like I can show you
a red um Circle and then I look at how
many U times the neuron fires in
response to that red circle and then I
show the red circle a bunch of times
green circle see if it changes and then
essentially the number of time that is
the the transformation you've converted
red circle into like three Action
potentials you know beep beep or
whatever you want to call it you know
for those that think in sound space so
that's what you've created you know the
transformation and you march up the it's
called the Nur axis as you go from the
periphery up into the
cortex and we know that and I know Lisa
um Feldman Barrett or is it Barrett
Feldman Barrett f F excuse me um Lisa
that um talked a lot about this that you
know birds can do sophisticated things
and whatnot as well but humans there's a
strong what we call seiz a lot of the
processing is moved up into the cortex
and out of these subcortical areas but
it happens nonetheless and so as long as
you know the Transformations you are in
a perfect place to build machines or add
machines to the brain that exactly mimic
what the brain wants to do which is take
events in the environment and turn them
into internal firing of neurons so the
Mastery of the brain can happen at their
early level you know another perspective
of it is uh you saying this means that
humans aren't that
special if we look at the evolutionary
time scale the leap to intelligence is
not that special so like the extra
layers of
abstraction isn't where most of the
magic happens of intelligence which
gives me hope that maybe if that's true
that means the evolution of intelligence
is not that rare of an event I certainly
hope not um Al so you you hope there's I
I hope there are other forms of
intelligence I mean I think what humans
are really good at um and here I want to
be clear that this is not a formal model
but what humans are really good at is
taking that um plasma barbell that we
were talking about earlier and not just
using it for analysis of space like the
your mediate environment but also using
historical information like I can read a
book today about the history of Medicine
I happen to be doing that lately for
some stuff I'm researching and I can
take that information and if I want I
can inject it into my plans for the
future other animals don't seem to do
that over the same time scales that we
do now it may be that the Chipmunks Are
All Hiding little like notebooks
everywhere in the form of like little
dirt castles or something that we don't
understand I mean the waggle dance of
the bee is in the most famous example
bees come back to the hive they Orient
relative to the honeycomb and they
waggle a guy down in Australia named
seren vissan who studied this and it's
really interesting no one under really
understands it except he understands it
best the bee Waggles at a in a couple
ways relative to the orientation of the
honeycomb and then all the other bees
see that it's Visual and they go out and
they know the exact coordinate system to
get to the to the source of whatever it
was the food and bring it back and he's
done it where they isolate the bees he's
changed the visual flight environment
all this stuff they are communicating
and they're communicating something
about something they saw recently but it
doesn't extend over very long periods of
time the same way that you and I can
both read a book or you can recommend
something to me and then we could
Converge on a set of ideas later and uh
In fairness because she was the one that
said it and I didn't and I hadn't even
thought of it um when you talked to Lisa
on your podcast she brought up something
beautiful which is that I never really
occurred to me and I was sort of
embarrassed that it hadn't but it's
really beautiful it and Brilliant which
is that you know we don't just encode
senses in the form of like color and
light and sound waves and taste but
ideas become a form of sensory mapping
and that's where the cool you know the
really really cool and exciting stuff is
but we just don't understand what the
receptive fields are for ideas what's an
idea receptive field and how they're
communicated between humans because we
seem to be U to be able to encode those
ideas in some kind of way it's yes it's
taking all the wrong information and the
internal physical States the the that
sensory information put into this
concept blob that we in a store and then
we're able to communicate that yeah your
abstractions are different than mine I
actually think the comment section you
know on on social media is a beautiful
example of where the abstractions are
different for different people so much
of the misunderstanding of the world
yeah is because of these abst these idea
receptive Fields they're not the same
whereas I can look at a photo receptor
neuron or factoring neuron or a V1
neuron and I am certain I would bet my
life that yours look and respond exactly
the same way that Lisa's do and mine do
but once you get Beyond there it gets
tricky and so when you say something or
I say something and somebody gets upset
about it or even happy about it their
concept of that might be quite a bit
different they don't really know what
you mean they only know what it means to
them yeah so from a neurolink
perspective it makes sense to optimize
the control and the augmentation of the
of the more
primitive uh circuitry so like the the
stuff that is closer to the raw sensory
information go deeper if they I think go
deeper into the brain and I and to be
fair so Matt McDougall um who's a
neurosurgeon neurolink and also clinical
neurosur great guy brilliant they have
amazing people I have to give it to them
they have been very cryptic in recent
years their website was just like a like
neur like nothing there that you know
they know they really know how to do
things with style and um and they've
upset a lot of people but that's good
too um but Matt is there I know Matt he
actually came up through my lab at
Stanford although he you know he was a
neurosurgery resum we spent time in our
lab he actually came out on the shark
dive and did great white shark diving
with my lab to collect the VR that we
use in our fear stuff I've talked to
Matt and I think you know he and other
folks there are hungry for the deeper
brain structures the problem is that
damn vasculature all that blood supply
it's right it's not trivial to get
through and down into the brain without
damaging the vasculature in the
neocortex which is on the outer crust
but once you start getting into the
thalamus and closer to some of the main
arterial sources you really risk getting
massive bleeds and so it's it's a it's
an issue that can be worked out it just
is hard this just maybe be nice to
educate I'm showing my ignorance so the
the smart stuff is is on the surface so
I didn't realize this I didn't quite
realize because you keep saying deep
yeah so so like the the early stages are
deep yeah in in actually physically in
the brain yeah so the way to um you know
of course you got your your deep brain
structures they're involved in breathing
and heart rate and kind of lizard brain
stuff and then on top of that this is
the the um the the model of the brain
that no one really subscribes to anymore
but anatomically it works and then on
top in mammals and then on top of that
you have the lyic structures which gate
sensory information and decide whether
or not you're going to listen to
something more than you're going to look
at it or you're going to split your
attention to both kind of sensory
allocation stuff um and then the
neocortex is on the outside um and that
is where you get a lot of this
abstraction stuff and now not all
cortical areas are doing abstraction
some like visual area one auditory area
one they're just doing concrete uh
representations but um as you get into
the higher order stuff that when you
start hearing names like infro parietal
cortex and you know when you start
hearing multiple names in the same then
you're talking about higher order areas
but actually there's a an important
experiment that um that drives a lot of
what people want to do with brain
machine interface and that's the work of
Bill Nome who is at Stanford and Tony
maavin who's at runs the center for
neural science at NYU this is a wild
experiment and I think it might freak a
few people out if they really think
about it too deeply but um anyway here
he goes there's an area called Mt in the
cortex and if I showed you a bunch of
dots all moving up and this is is what
they this is what Tony and Bill and some
of the other people um in that lab did
way back when is they show a bunch of
dots moving up somewhere in Mt there's
some neurons that respond they fire when
the neurons move up and then what they
did is they started varying the
coherence of that motion so they made it
so only 50% of the dots moved up and the
rest move randomly and that neuron fires
a little less and eventually it's random
and that neuron stops firing because
it's just kind of dots moving everywhere
it's awesome and there's a systematic
map so that other neurons are responding
and things moving down and other things
are responding left and other things are
moving right okay so there's a map of
direction space you okay well that's
great you could leion Mt animals lose
the ability to do these kind of
coherence discrimination or Direction
discrimination but the Amazing
Experiment the one that just is kind of
eerie is that they lowered a stimulating
electrode into Mt found a neuron that
responds to when dots go up but then
they silence that
neuron and and sure enough the animal
doesn't recognize the neurons are going
up and then they move the dots
down they stimulate the neuron that
responds to things moving up and the
animal responds because it can't speak
it responds by doing a lever press which
says the dots are moving up so in other
words the sensory the dots are moving
down in reality on the computer screen
they're stimulating the neuron that
responds to dots moving up and the
perception of the animal is that dots
are moving up which tells you that your
perception of external reality
absolutely has to be a neuronal
abstraction it is not tacked to the
movement of the dots in any absolute way
your perception of the outside world
depends entirely on the activation
patterns of neurons in the brain and you
you can hear that and say well duh
because if I stimulate you know the
stretch reflex and you kick or something
or whatever you know the knee F Lex and
you kick of course there's a neuron that
triggers that but it didn't have to be
that way yeah because a the animal had
prior experience B you're way up in the
you know higher order C cortical
areas what this means is that and I
generally try to avoid conversations
about this kind of thing but what this
means is that we are constructing our
reality with this SpaceTime firing the
zeros and ones and it doesn't have to
have anything to do with the actual
reality and the animal or person be
absolutely convinced that that's what's
happening are you familiar with the work
of Donald
Hoffman so he's
uh uh so he makes an evolutionary
argument that's not important of that we
our
brains are completely detached from
reality in the sense that he makes a
radical case that we have no idea what
physical reality is and in fact it's
drastically different than what we think
it is oh my so so he
goes scary so he doesn't say like
there's just cuz you're kind of implying
there's a there's a gap there there
might be a gap with constructing an
illusion and then maybe
using uh communication to maybe uh
create a consistency that's sufficient
for our human collaboration whatever or
mammal you know just maybe even just
life forms are construct a consistent
reality that's may be detached I mean
that's really cool that neurons are
constructing that like that you can
prove that this is what you're science
at his best vision science but he says
that like our brain is actually just
lost its on the on the on the path
of evolution to where we're no long
we're just playing games with each other
in constructing realities that allow our
survival but it's it's it's completely
detached from phys IAL reality like
we're we're missing a lot we're
missing like most of it if not all of it
well this was um it's it's fascinating
because I just saw the Oliver Sachs
documentary there's a new documentary
out about his life and there's this one
part where he's like I've spent part of
my life trying to imagine what it would
like to be be uh to be a bat or
something to see the world through the
life you know the sensory apparat of a
bat and he did this with his these
patients that were locked into these
horrible syndromes that to pull out some
of the the beauty of their experience as
well not just communicate the suffering
although the suffering too and as I was
listening to him talk about this I
started to realize it's like what you
know like they're these mantis shrimps
that can see 60 shades of pink or
something and they they see the stuff
all the time and animals they can see UV
light every time I learn about an animal
that can sense other things in the
environment that I can't like heat
sensing what not I don't crave that
experience the same way saxs talked
about craving that experience but it
does throw another penny in the jar for
what you're saying which is that it
could be that most if not all of what I
perceive and believe is just um a a
neural fabrication and that For Better
or For Worse we all agree on enough of
the same neural Fabrications in the same
time and place that we're able to
function not only that but we agree with
the things that are trying to eat us uh
enough to where we don't they don't eat
us meaning
like that it's not just us humans you
know right I see because it's
interactive it's interactive so like so
like uh now I think it's a really um
nice thought experiment I think because
uh
Donald really frames it in a scientific
like he makes a hard like as hard as our
discussion has been now he makes a hard
scientific case that we don't know
about reality uh I think that's a little
bit uh hardcore but I I think it's I
think is hardore is hardore I think it's
a good thought experiment that kind of
uh cleanses the pallet of the confidence
we might have about uh about cuz we are
operating in this abstraction space and
you know and uh you know the sensory
spaces might be something very different
and and it's kind of interesting to
think about if if you start to go into
the realm of neuralink or start to talk
about just everything you've been
talking about with dream states and
psychedelics and stuff like that which
part of the which layer can we control
and play around with to maybe look into
a different slice of reality it you know
you just got to do the experiment the
key is to just do the experiment in the
most ethical way possible you just I
mean that's the beauty of experiments
this is why um you know there there
there's wonderful theoretical
Neuroscience Happening Now make to make
predictions and but the but that's why
experimental science is so wonderful you
can go into the laboratory and poke
around in there and be a brain Explorer
and and listen to and write to neurons
and when you do that you get answers you
don't always get the answers you want
but that's you know that's the beauty of
it I I think when you were saying um
this thing about reality and the Donald
Hoffman model I was thinking about
children you know at um like when I have
an older sister Shir uh she's very sane
um uh but when she was a kid she had an
imaginary friend yeah and she would play
with this imaginary friend and it had
there was this whole there was a
consistency this friend was like it was
Larry lived in a purple house Larry was
a girl it was like all this stuff that a
child a young child wouldn't have any
issue with and then one day she
announced that Larry had died right and
it wasn't dramatic or traumatic and that
was it and she just stopped and I always
wonder what that um neurodevelopmental
event was that um a kept her out of a a
psychiatric ward had she got you know
kept that imaginary friend but but it I
it's also there was something kind of
sad to it I think the way it was told to
me because I'm the younger brother I
didn't I wasn't around for that but my
my dad told me that you know there was a
kind of a sadness because it was this
beautiful reality that had been
constructed and so we kind of w i i
wonder as you're telling me this whether
or not you know as adults we try and
create as much reality for children as
we can so that they can make predictions
and feel safe because the ability to
make predictions is a lot of what keeps
our autonomic arousal in check I mean we
go to sleep every night and we give up
total control and that should frighten
us deeply but you know unfortunately
autonomic rousel Yanks us down under and
we don't negotiate too much so you sleep
sooner or later um I don't know um I was
a little worried we'd get into
discussions about the nature of reality
because I'm I it's interesting in the
laboratory I'm a very much like what's
the experiment what would the you know
what's the analysis going look like what
mutant Mouse are we going to use what
what what experience are we going to put
someone through but I think it's
wonderful that in 2020 we can finally
have discussions about this stuff and
look kind of peek around the corner and
say well neur link and people others who
are doing similar things are going to
figure it out they're going to the the
answers will show up and we just have to
be open to interpretation do you think
there could be an
experiment uh centered around
Consciousness I mean you're plugged into
the Neuroscience Community I think for
the longest time the quote unquote
c-word was totally not uh was almost
anti-scientific but now more and more
people are talking about Consciousness
Elon is talking about Consciousness AI
folks are talking about
Consciousness it's it's still nobody
knows anything but it feels like a
legitimate domain of inquiry that's
hungry for a real experiment
so I have
fortunately three short answers to this
um uh the first one is
a I'm not I'm not particularly sucin I I
agree that no the joke I always tell is
um there two things you never want to
say to a scientist one is uh what do you
do and the second one is um take as much
time as you need and you definitely
don't want to say them in the same
sentence um I have three short answers
to it so there's a um there's a cynical
answer kind of uh and it's not one I
enjoy giving Which is that um if you
look into the 70s and back at the 1970s
and 1980s and even into the early 2000s
there were some very Dynamic um very
impressive speakers who were very smart
in the field of Neuroscience and related
fields who thought hard about the
Consciousness problem and fell in love
with the problem but uh overlooked the
fact that the technology wasn't there
yeah so um I admire them for falling in
love with the the problem but they
gleaned
tremendous taxpayer
resources essentially for nothing and
these people know who they are some of
them are alive some of them aren't I'm
not referring to Francis Crick who was
brilliant by the way and thought the
claustrum was involved in Consciousness
which I think is a great idea it's this
obscure structure that no one's really
studied people are now starting to study
it so I think Francis was brilliant and
wonderful but there it you know there
were books written about it it makes for
great television stuff and
thought around the table or after a
couple glasses of wine or whatever um
it's an important problem nonetheless
and so I think I do think the
Consciousness the issue is it's not
operationally defined right that
psychologists are much smarter than um a
lot of uh heart scientists in that for
the following reason they put
operational definitions they know know
that psychology if we're talking about
motivation for instance they know they
need to put operational definitions on
that so that two Laboratories can know
they're studying the same thing the
problem with Consciousness is no one can
agree on what that is and this was a
problem for attention when I was coming
up so in the early 2000s people would
argue what is attention is it spatial
attention auditory attention is it and
finally people were like you know what
we agree have they agreed on that one I
remember sort of I remember hearing
people scream a lot of tension right
they couldn't even agree on attention so
I was coming up as a young graduate
student I'm thinking like I'm definitely
not going to work on attention and I'm
definitely not going to work on
Consciousness and I wanted something
that I could solve or figure out I want
to be able to see the circuit or the
neurons I want to be able to hear it on
the Audio I want to record from it and
then I want to do gain of function and
loss a function take it away see
something change put it back see
something change in a systematic way and
that takes you down into the depths of
some stuff that's pretty um uh plug and
chug you know but you know I'll borrow
from something in the the military
because I'm fortunate to do some work
with units from Special Operations and
they have beautiful language around
things because their world is not
abstract and they talk about 3 meter
targets 10 meter targets and 100 meter
targets and it's not an issue of picking
the 100 meter Target because it's more
beautiful or because it's more
interesting if you don't take down the 3
meter targets and the 10 meter targets
first you're dead so that's a I think
scientists could pay to you know adopt a
more kind of military thinking in that
in that sense the other thing that is
really important is that just because
somebody conceived of something and can
talk about it beautifully and can glean
a lot of um resources for it doesn't
mean that it's LED anywhere so but this
isn't just true of the Consciousness
issue and I don't want to sound cynical
but I could pull up some names of
molecules that occupied hundreds of
articles in the very Premier journals
that then were later discovered to be
totally moot for that process and
biotech companies folded everyone and
the lab pivots and starts doing
something different with that molecule
and nobody talks about it because as
long as you're in the game we have this
thing called Anonymous peer review you
can't afford to piss off anybody too
much unless you have some other funding
stream and I have avoided battles most
of my career but I pay attention to all
of it and I've watched this and I don't
think it's ego- driven I think it's that
people fall in love with an idea I don't
think there's any there's not enough
money in science for people to sit back
there rubbing their hands together you
know the beauty of what neural link and
Elon and and team because obviously he's
very impressive but the the team as a
whole is really what gives me great
confidence in their
mission is that he's already got enough
money so it can't be about that he
doesn't seem to need it at a level of uh
I don't know him but it doesn't he
doesn't seem to need it at a kind of an
ego level or something I think it's
driven by genuine curiosity and the team
that he's
assembled include people that are very
kind of abstract neuro neocortex
space-time coding people there're people
like Matt who's a neurosurgeon you can't
I mean you know you can't BS
neurosurgery failures in neurosurgery
are not tolerated so you have to be very
good to exceptional to even get through
the gate and he's exceptional and then
they've got people like Dan Adams who
was at UCSF for a long time he's a good
good friend and known him for years um
who is very concrete studied the
vasculature in the eye and how it maps
to the vasculature cortex when you get a
team like that together you're going to
have denters you're going to have people
that are highlevel thinkers people that
are coders when you get a team like that
it no longer looks like an academic
laboratory or even a field in science
and so I think they're going to solve
some really hard problems and again I'm
not here they don't you know I have
nothing in at stake with them but I
think that's the solution you need a
bunch of people who don't need first
author papers who don't need to complete
their PHD who aren't relying on outside
funding who have a clear Mission and you
have a bunch of people who are basically
will adapt to solve the problem I like
the analogy of the 3 meter Target and
the 100 meter Target so the folks in
neur link are basically many of them are
some of the best people in the world at
the 3 meter Target like that you
mentioned Matt new surger like they're
solving real problems there's no BS
philos
philosophical uh smokes and weed and
look back at look at the stars
but uh so both on Elon and because I
think like this I think it's really
important to think about the 100 meter
and the 100 meter is not even not even
100 meter but
like like the stuff behind the hill
that's that's that's too too far away
which is which is where I put
Consciousness
I'm
maybe I tend to believe that uh
Consciousness can be
engineered I me part of the
reason part of the the the business I
want to build leverages that idea that
Consciousness is a lot simpler that
we've than we've been talking about well
if if someone can simplify the problem
that will be wonderful I mean the reason
we can talk about something as abstract
as face representations infusive form
face area is because Nancy caner had the
Brilliance to tie it to the um kind of
lower level um statistics of visual
scenes it wasn't cuz she was like oh I
bet it's there that wouldn't have been
interesting so people like her
understand how to bridge that Gap and
they put a tractable definition so so I
just I that's what I'm begging for in
science is a tractable definition this
is what but I want people to sit in the
I want people who are really
uncomfortable with woow woo like
Consciousness like high Lev stuff to sit
in that topic and sit uncomfortably
because it forces them to then try to
ground and simplify it into something
that's concrete because too many people
are just uncomfortable to sit in the
Consciousness room because there's no
definitions it's like attention or or
intelligence in the artificial
intelligence Community but the reality
is it's easy to avoid that room altoe
which is what I mean there's analogies
to everything you've said with the
artificial intelligence Community with
the Minsky and even Alan ing that talked
about intelligence a lot and then they
drew a lot of funding and then it
crashed because they really didn't do
anything with it and it was a lot of
force of personality and so on but that
doesn't mean the topic of the touring
test and intelligence isn't something we
should sit on and think like think like
what is first of all I mean touring
actually attempted this with a touring
test he tried to make concrete this very
question of intelligence it doesn't mean
that we shouldn't Linger on it and uh
for we shouldn't forget that ultimately
that is what our efforts are all about
in the artificial intelligence community
and in the people whether it's
Neuroscience or whatever bigger umbrella
you want to use for understanding the
mind the goal is not just about
understanding layer two or three of the
vision it's it's to understand
Consciousness and intelligence and maybe
create it or or just all the possible
biggest questions of our universe that's
that's ultimately the dream absolutely
and I think what I really appreciate
about appreciate about what you're
saying is that everybody whether or not
they're working on a kind of low-level
synapse that's like a reflex in the
musculature or something very high level
abstract can benefit from looking at
those who prefer three you know
everyone's going after a 3 meter 10 m
and 100 meter Targets in some sense but
to be able to tolerate the discomfort of
being in a conversation where there are
real answers where the zeros and ones
are are known zeros and ones those the
equivalent of that in the nervous system
and also as you said for the people that
are very much like oh I can only trust
what I can see and touch those people
need to put themselves into the
discomfort of the high level
conversation because what's missing is
conversation and conceptualization of
things at multiple levels I think one of
the this is um I I don't gripe about my
lab's been fortunate we've been funded
from the start and we've been happy um
in that in that regard and lucky and
we're grateful for that but I think one
of the challenges of research being so
expensive is that there isn't a a lot of
time especially nowadays for people to
just convene around a topic because
there's so much emphasis on productivity
um and so there there actually believe
it or not there aren't that many
Concepts formal Concepts in Neuroscience
right now the last 10 years has been
this huge influx of tools and so people
have been neural circuits and probing
around and connectomes it's been
wonderful but you know 10 20 years ago
when the Consciousness stuff was more
prominent the seword as you said um what
was good about that time is that people
would go to meetings and actually
discuss ideas and models now it's sort
of like demon it's sort of like
demonstration day at the school science
fair where everyone's got their thing
and you some stuff is cooler than others
but um I think we're going to see a
shift I'm grateful that we have so many
computer scientists and theoreticians
and um or theorists I think they call
themselves um somebody tell me what the
difference is someday um and you know
psychology and even dare I say
philosophy you know these things are
starting to converge we you know
Neuroscience that the name Neuroscience
there wasn't even such a thing when I
started graduate school or as a postto
it was neurophysiology you're a neur
anatomist or what now every it's sort of
everybody's invited and that's beautiful
that means that something's useful is
going to come up all this and there's
also tremendous work of course happening
on for the treatment of disease and we
shouldn't Overlook that that's where you
know ending you know eliminating
reducing suffering is also a huge
initiative in Neuroscience so there's a
lot of Beauty in the field but the
Consciousness thing continues to be a uh
it's like an exotic bird it's like no
one really quite knows how to handle it
and it dies very easily well
yeah I I think also from the AI
perspective I so I view the brain as
less
sacred uh I think from a neuroscience
perspective you're a little bit more
sensitive to BS like BS narratives about
the brain or whatever I'm a little bit
more uh comfortable with just poetic BS
about the brain as long as it helps
engineer intelligence systems well you
know what I mean well and and I have to
you know I confess um ignorance when it
comes to you know most things about
coding and I'm I'm have some
quantitative ability but I don't have
strong quantitative leanings and so I I
know my limitations too and so I I think
the Next Generation coming up you know a
lot of the students at Stanford are
really interested in quantitative models
and theory and Ai and I remember when I
was coming up um a lot of the people who
were doing work ahead of me kind of
rolled my eyes at some of the stuff they
were doing um including some of their
personalities although I have great many
great um senior colleagues everywhere
the world so it's the way of the world
so nobody knows what it's like to be a
you know a young graduate student in
2020 except the young graduate student
so I I know what I I'm I know there are
a lot of things I don't know and um in
addition to why I do a lot of public
education increase scientific literacy
and neuroscientific thinking Etc a big
goal of mine is to try and at least pave
the way so that these really brilliant
and forward thinking um younger
scientists can make the biggest possible
dent and make what will eventually be
all us old guys and gals look stupid I
mean that's that's what we were all
trying to do that's what we were trying
to do so yeah so from the highest
possible topic of Consciousness to the
to the lowest level uh topic of David
goggin's uh let's I don't know if it's
low lowlevel he's high perform
high performance but like low like
there's I don't think David has
a has any time for philosophy let's just
put it this way uh well it's I mean I
think we can tack it to what we were
just saying in a in a in a meaningful
way which is whatever goes on in that
abstraction part of the brain he's
figured you know he's figured out how to
dig down in whatever the lyic friction
yeah he's figured out how to grab a hold
of that
Scruff it and send it in the direction
that he's decided it needs to go and
what's Wild is that he's what we're
talking about is him doing that to
himself right he's it's like he's
scruffing himself and directing himself
in a particular
direction and sending himself down that
trajectory and he what's beautiful is
that he acknowledges that that process
is not pretty it doesn't feel
good it's kind of horrible at every
level but he's created this re rewarding
element to it and I think that's what's
so it it's so admirable and it's what so
many people crave which is regulation of
the self at that level and he practices
I mean there's a ritual to it there's a
every single day like no exceptions
there's a practice aspect to the
suffering that he goes through it's
principled suffering principled
suffering it is and I mean I just I mean
I admire all aspects of it including him
and his girlfriendwife I'm not sure
she'll probably know this fiance
wonderful person asking no no we've only
commun I um we've only I've only
communicated with her um by a text about
some stuff um I was asking David but
yeah they they clearly have formed a
powerful team yeah um and it's beautiful
thing to to see people working in that
kind of synergy it's inspiring to me
same as with Elon that guy like David
Goggins can find
love uh that that you find a thing that
works which gives me hope that like
whatever whatever flavor of crazy I am
you can always find another thing that
works with that but I I I've had the so
maybe let's trade goggin stories uh you
from a neuroscience perspective me from
a uh self-inflicted pain perspective I
somehow found
myself in communication with David about
some challenges that I was undergoing um
one of which is we were communicating
every single day email phone about a
particular 30-day challenge I did that
stretched for a longer of uh push-ups
and pull-ups you made a call out on
social media yeah social media actually
I think that the point I I knew of you
before but that's where I started
tracking some of what you were doing
with these physical challenges and I um
the hell's wrong with that guy well no I
think I actually I don't often comment
on people's stuff but I think I
commented something like uh
neuroplasticity loves a non-negotiable
rule no I said a non-negotiable contract
because at the point where yeah neural
neurop plasticity really loves a
non-negotiable contract because you know
and I've said this before so forgive me
but you know the brain is doing analysis
of duration path and outcome and that's
a lot of work for the brain and more
that it can pass off duration path and
outcome to just reflex the more energy
and and it can allocate to other things
so if you decide there's no negotiation
about how many push-ups how far I'm
going to run how many days how many
pull-ups Etc you actually have more
energy for push-ups running and pull-ups
and when you say neuroplastic you mean
like the brain once the decision is made
it'll start rewiring stuff to to make
sure that this we can actually make this
happen that's right I mean so much of
what we do is reflexive at the level of
just core circuitry breathing heart rate
all that that boring stuff digestion but
then there's a lot of reflexive stuff
like how you drink out of a a mug of
coffee that's reflexive too but that you
had to learn at some point in your life
earlier when you were very little
analyzing duration path and outcome and
that involved a lot of top down
processing with the prefrontal cortex
but through plasticity mechanisms you
now do it so when you take on a
challenge provided that you understand
the core mechanics of how to you know
run push-ups and and pull and whatever
else you decided to do once you set the
number and the duration and all that
then you all you have to do is just go
but people get caught in that tide poool
of just well do I really have to do it
how do I not do that what if I get
injured what if I you know can I sneak
at this so that you know and that's work
yeah and to some extent I I look I not
David goggin obviously um nor nor do I
claim to understand his process U
partially you know um but maybe a little
bit which is that it's clear that by
making the decision there's more
resources to devote to the effort of the
actual execution well that's a really
like what you're saying was not a lesson
that was obvious to me and it's still
not obvious it's something I really work
at which is there is always an option to
quit
and I mean that's something I really
struggle with I mean I've quit some
things in my life it's like stupid stuff
and uh one lesson I've
learned
is if you quit once it opens the
door that like it's really valuable to
trick your brain into
thinking that you you're going to have
to die before you quit like it's
actually really convenient so actually
what you're saying is very
profound but you shouldn't
intellectualize it like
it took me time to
develop like out psychologically in ways
that I think I would be another
conversation CU I'm not sure how to put
it into words but it's really tough on
me to uh to do certain parts of that
challenge which is a huge is a huge
output the the number that see I was I
thought it would be the number would be
hard but it's not it's the entirety of
it especially in the early days was just
spending I'm kind of embarrassed to say
how many hours this took so I I didn't
say publicly how many hours cuz people I
I knew people would be like don't you
aren't you supposed to do other stuff
well it's um hell are you doing again I
don't want to speculate too much about
but occasionally David has said this
publicly where people will be like don't
you sleep or something and his process
used to just be that he would just block
delete you know like gone but it's it's
actually um it's it's a super
interesting topic and
because self-control and directing our
actions and the role of emotion and
quitting these are these are vital to
The Human Experience and they're vital
to performing well at anything and at a
high obviously at a super high level
being able to understand this about the
self is crucial
um so I have a friend who was also in
the teams his name is Pat dosset he did
nine years in the SEAL Teams um and in a
similar way there's there's a lore about
him among Team guys um because of a kind
of funny challenge he gave himself which
was so he and I swim together although
he swims further up front than I do um
and he's very patient um but you know he
was on a he was assigned when he was in
the teams to a position that gave him a
little more time behind the desk than he
wanted and not as much time out out in
deployments although he did deployments
um so he didn't know what to do at that
time but he thought about it and he
asked himself what what does he hate the
most mhm and it turns out the thing that
he hated doing the most was bear crawls
you know walking on your hands and knees
so he decided to Bear crawl for a mile
for time so he was Bear crawling a mile
a day right and I thought that was an
interesting example they gave because
you know like why pick the thing you
hate the most and I think it Maps right
back to lyic friction it's the thing
that creates the most limic friction and
so if you can overcome that then there's
carryover and I think the notion of
carryover has been talked about
psychologically and kind of in the
self-help space like oh if you run a
marathon it's going to help you in other
areas of life but will it really will it
well I think it depends on whether or
not there's a lot of lyic friction
because if there is what you're
exercising is not a circuit for bear
crawls or a circuit for pull-ups what
you're doing is you're exercising a
circuit for top- down control and that
circuit was not designed to be for bear
crawls or pull-ups or
coding or waking up in the middle of the
night to do something hard that circuit
was designed to override lyic friction
and so neural circuits were designed to
generalize right the stress response to
an incoming threat that's a physical
threat was designed to feel the same way
and be the same response internally as
the threat to an impending exam or
divorce or marriage or whatever it is
that's stressing somebody out and so
neural circuits are not designed to be
for one particular action or purpose so
if you can as you did if you can train
up top beond control under conditions of
the highest limbic friction that when
the desire to quit is at its
utmost either because of fatigue or
hyperarousal being too stressed or too
tired you're you're learning how to
engage a circuit and that circuit is
forever with you and if you don't engage
it you it sits there but it's atrophied
it's not it's like a plant that doesn't
get any water and a lot of this has been
discussed in self-help and growth
mindset and all these kinds of ideas
that Circle the internet and social
media but when you start to think about
how they map to neural circuits I think
there's some utility because what it
means is that the lyic friction that
you'll experience in I don't know maybe
some future relationship to something or
someone it will it's a category of
neural processing that should
immediately click into place it's just
like the lyic friction you experienced
trying to engage in the God knows how
many uh push-ups pull-ups and and
running you uh you know runs you were
doing 25,000
so folks if if Lex does this again more
comments more
likes no well this the problem with you
getting more followers is you're going
to get more actually I should say that's
the benefit I I don't know maybe it's
not politically correct for me to ask
but like there is this uh stereotype
about Russians being you know like
correct no like like like uh like being
really um you know durable and and you
know I I started going to that Russian B
that way back uh before Co
and um they could tolerate a lot of heat
you know and and they would sit very
stoic you know no one was going oh it's
hot in here they just kind of like ease
into it um so maybe there's something
there who knows there might be something
there but it could be also just personal
I just have some I found myself
everyone's different but I've found
myself to be able to do something
unpleasant for very long periods of time
like I'm able to shut off the mind and I
don't think that's been fully tested and
I monkey mind or the
supercomputer uh well it's interesting I
mean um which mind is which mind tells
you to quit exactly limic limic friction
tells you well limic friction is the
source of that but what who are you
talking with exactly so there's a um we
can uh put something very concrete to
that so there's a paper publish in cell
you know super top tier Journal uh two
years ago um looking at f
and this was in a visual environment of
trying to swim forward toward a a Target
and a reward and it was a really cool
experiment because they manipulated uh
virtually the visual environment so um
the same amount of effort was being
expended every time but sometimes the
perception was you're making forward
progress and sometimes the perception
was you're making no progress because
stuff wasn't Drifting by meant no
progress so you can be swimming and
swimming and know making progress and it
turns out that with each bout of effort
there's a
epinephrine and norepinephrine is being
released in the brain stem and glea the
what traditionally were thought of a
support cells for the neurons but they
do a lot of things actively too are
measuring the amount of EP epinephrine
and norepinephrine in that circuit and
when it exceeds a certain threshold the
glea send inhibitory signals that shut
down top down control they literally
it's the quit you stop there's no no
more it's you quit
enduring it can be rescued endurance can
be rescued with
dopamine uh be so that's where the
subjective part really comes into play
so you quit because um you've learned
how to turn that off or you've learned
how to ro some people will reward the
pain process so much that friction
becomes the reward and I you know when
you talk about people like goggin and
other people I know from Special
Operations and people have gone through
Cancer Treatments three times you hear
about you know just when you hear about
people the Victor Frankle stories I mean
you hear about Nelson Mandela you hear
about these stories I'm sure the same
process is involved again this speaks to
the generalizability of these processes
as opposed to a neural circuit for a
particular action or cognitive function
so I think um you have to learn to
subjectively self-reward in a way that
replenishes you uh goggin talks about
eating Souls it's a very dramatic
example in his mind apparently that's a
form of reward but it's not just a form
of reward where you're it's like a
you're picking up a a trophy or
something it's it's actually it gives
energy it's a reward that gives more
neural energy and I'm defining that as
more dopamine to suppress the nor
adrenaline adrenaline circuits in the
brain Stone so ultimately maps of that
yeah he creates enemies he's always
fighting enemies I never I think I have
enemies but there are usually just
versions of me inside my head uh so I I
thought about through that 30-day
challenge I tried to come up with like
fake enemies it wasn't
working the only enemy I came up with is
David well now you have you certainly
have a a a form formidable adversary in
this one I don't care I'm David I'm
willing to die on this one so let's go
there uh but well let's hope you you
both uh uh both survive this um this one
but my problem is the physical there's
uh so everything we've been talking
about in the mind there's a physical
aspect that's just practically difficult
which is like I can't like you know when
you injure yourself at a certain point
like you just can't function or you're
doing more damage you're talking about
it taking yourself out of running for
yeah um for the the rest of your life
potentially or like you know or for
years so you know I'd love to avoid
that right there's just like stupid
physical stuff that you just want to
avoid you want to keep it purely in the
mental and if it's purely in the mental
that's when the race is interesting but
yeah the the the problem with these
physical challenges as as David has
experienced I mean it has a toll on your
body I tend to think of the mind is
Limitless and the body is kind of
unfortunately quite limited well I think
the key is to dynamically control your
output and that can be done by reducing
effort which doesn't work for for
throughout but also by um restoring
through these uh subjective reward
processes and and we don't want to go
down the rabbit hole of why this all
works but these are ancient Pathways
that were designed to bring resources to
an animal or to a person through
foraging for hunting or mates or water
all these things and they work so well
because they're down in those uh uh
circuits where we know the zeros and
ones and that's great because it can be
subjective at the level of oh I reached
this one uh Milestone this one horizon
this one 3 meter Target but if you don't
reward it you it's just effort if you do
self-reward it it's effort minus one in
terms of the adrenaline
output I have to uh ask you about this
you're one of the great communicators in
science I'm really big fan of your
enjoying in terms of like this the
educational stuff you putting it in on
Neuroscience thank you what's the uh do
you have a philosophy behind it or is it
just uh an
instinct oh Unstoppable Force do you
have a like what's your thinking because
it's rare and it's exciting I'm I'm I'm
excited that you know uh somebody from
Stanford so
I okay I'm in multiple places in the
sense of like where my interests lie and
one you know politically speaking
academic institutions are Under Fire uh
you know for many reasons we don't need
to get into I get into it in a lot of
other places but I
believe in
uh in places like Stanford and places
like MIT as uh one of the most magical
institutions for
inspiring people to dream people to
build the future I mean it's I I believe
that it is a really special these
universities are really special places
and so it's always exciting to me when
uh
somebody as inspiring as you represents
those places so it makes me proud that
uh somebody from Stanford is is like
somebody like you is representing
Stanford so uh maybe you could speak to
what's how did you come to be who you
are in being being a communicator well
first of all thanks for the the kind
words especially um coming from you I I
think um Stanford is an amazing place as
is MIT and it's such a MIT is better by
the I'll let it out anything you say at
I have many friends at Mi yeah you know
hi Ed smarter friends yeah Ed boen is is
is is uh best in CL you know among the
Best in Class there's some people not me
that can hold hold a candle to him but
not many maybe one or two I think the
the great benefit of being in a place
like MIT or Stanford um is that when you
look around you know that the the
average is very high right that you have
many best-in class among the you know
one or two or three best in the world at
what they do and um It's a Wonderful
privilege to be there and uh one thing
that I think also uh makes them and
other universities like them very
special is that there's an emphasis on
what gets exported out of the University
what you know not keeping it Ivory Tower
and really trying to keep an eye on
what's needed in the world and trying to
do something useful um and I think the
proximity to Industry and Silicon Valley
and in the Boston area in Cambridge also
lends itself well to that and there are
other institutions of too of course so
um the reason I got involved in
educating on social media was actually
because of a a Pat dosset the be mile
bear call Guy it was at the turn of 2018
to 2019 uh we had formed a a a good
friendship we were we he talked to me
into doing these early morning um cold
water swims I was learning a lot about
pain and suffering but also the beauty
of cold water swims and and we were
talking one morning and he said um so
what are you going to do to serve the
world in 2019 it's like that's the way
that like a Tex and former seal talks
like we're just literally what are you
going to do to serve the world in 2019
like well I run my lab it's like no no
no what are you going to do that's new
and he wasn't forceful in it but I was
like that's an interesting question I
said well um if I had my way I would
just you know teach people everyone
about the brain because I think it's
amazing he goes we'll do it and I all
right he goes Shake on it so we did it
you know and so I started putting out
these posts and it's grown into um to
include a variety of things but you
asked about a governing philosophy so I
want to increase interest in the brain
and in the nervous system and in biology
generally that's one major goal I'd like
to increase scientific literacy which
can't be rammed down people's throats of
talking about how to look at a graph and
statistics and you know zc scores and P
values and uh genetics it has to be done
gradually in my opinion um I want to put
valuable tools into the world mainly
tools that map to things that we're
doing in our lab so these will be tools
um centered around how to um understand
and direct one's states of mind and body
so reduce stress raise one's stress
threshold so it's not always just about
being calm sometimes it's about learning
how to tolerate not being not calm um
raise awareness for mental health I me
there's a ton of micro missions in this
but it all really Maps back to you know
like the eight and 10-year-old version
of me which is I used to spend my
weekends when I was a kid reading about
weird animals and I had this obsession
with like medieval weapons and stuff
like catapults and and then I used to
come into school on Monday and I would
ask if I could talk about it to the
class and teach and I just it's really I
I promise and some people might not
believe me but it's really I don't
really like being the point of focus I
just get so excited about these gems of
that I find in the world in books and in
experiments and in discussions with
colleagues and discussions with people
like you and and around the universe and
I can't just compulsively I got to tell
people about it so I try and package it
into a form that people can access you
know I think if I've uh I think the
reception has been really wonderful
Stanford has been very supportive um
thankfully um I've given done some
podcast even with them and they've
reposted some stuff on social media it's
a precarious place to put yourself out
there as a research academic I think
some of my colleagues both locally and
elsewhere probably wonder if I'm still
serious about research which I
absolutely am and I also acknowledge
that um you know their research and the
the research coming out of the field
needs to be talked about and not all
scientists are good at translating that
into a language that people can access
and I don't like the phrase dumb it down
what I like to do is take a concept that
I think people will find interesting and
useful and offer it sort of like a um
you would offer food to somebody
visiting your home you're not going to
cram frog RA in their face you're going
to say like do you want a cracker like
and they say yeah and like do you want
something on that Cracker like do you
like cheese like yeah like do you want
swiss cheese or you want that really
like stinky like French I don't like
cheese much but um or do you want frog
like what's that like so you're trying
the best information prompts more
questions of Interest not questions of
confusion but questions of interest and
so I feel like one door opens then
another door opens then another door
opens and pretty soon um the image in my
mind is you create a bunch of
neuroscientists who are thinking about
themselves neuroscientifically and I
don't begin to think that I have all the
answers at all um I cast a neuroscience
sometimes a little bit of a psychology
lens onto what I think are interesting
topics and you know I um you know
someday I'm going to go into the ground
or the ocean or wherever it is I end up
and um uh I'm very comfortable with the
fact that not everyone's going to be
happy with how I deliver the information
but I would hope that people would feel
um like some of it was useful and
meaningful and got them to think a
little bit
harder since you mentioned going into
the
ground and uh Victor Franco man search
for meaning I read that I reread that
book uh quite
often what
uh let me ask the uh the big ridiculous
question about life uh what do you think
is the the meaning of it all like and
maybe why do you do you mention that
book from a psychologist perspective
which Victor Franco was or do you do you
ever think
about the the bigger philosophical
questions it raises about meaning what's
and the meaning of it
all one of the great challenges in
assigning a good you know giving a good
answer to the question of like what's
the meaning of life is um I think
Illustrated best by the Victor Frankle
example although there are other
examples too which is that our sense of
meaning is very elastic in time and
space and I'm I'm uh we talked a little
bit about this earlier but it's amazing
to me that somebody locked in a or
concentration camp can bring the Horizon
in close enough that they can then micr
slice their environment so that they can
find rewards and meaning and power and
Beauty even in a little square box or or
a horrible
situation and I think this is really
speaks to one of the most important
features of the human mind which is we
could do let's take two opposite
extremes one would be let's say the
alarm went off right now in this
building and the building started
shaking our vision our hearing
everything would be tuned to this
SpaceTime bubble for those moments MH
and everything that we would process all
that would matter the only meaning would
be get out of here safe figure out
what's going on contact loved ones
Etc if we were to sit back totally
relaxed we could do the you know I think
it's called pale blue dot thing or
whatever where we could imagine
ourselves in this room and then they
were in the United States and this
continent and the Earth and then peering
down us and all of a sudden you get back
it can seem so big that all of a sudden
it's meaningless right if you see
yourself as just one brief glimmer in
all of time and all of space you go to I
don't matter and if you go to oh every
little thing that happens in this text
thread or this you know comment section
on YouTube or Instagram your SpaceTime
bubble is Tiny MH then everything seems
inflated and the Brain will contract and
dilate it SpaceTime yeah vision and time
but also sense of meaning and that's
beautiful and it's what allows us to be
so dynamic in different environments and
we can pull from the past and the
present and future um it's why examples
like Nelson Mandela and Victor Frankle
had to include it makes sense that it
wasn't just about grinding it out they
had to find those dopamine rewards even
in those little boxes they were forced
into
so I'm not trying to dodge any answer
but for me personally and I think about
this a lot because I have this
um complicated history in science where
my undergraduate graduate adviser and
post-doctoral adviser all died young so
uh you know and they were wonderful
people and had immense importance in my
life but what I realized is
that be we can get so fixated on the
thing that we're experiencing holding
tremendous meaning but it only holds s
that meaning for as long as we're in
that SpaceTime regime and this is
important because what really gives
meaning is the understanding that you
can move between these different
space-time dimensionalities and I'm not
trying to sound like a theoretical
physicist or anyone that thinks about
the cosmos in saying that it's really
the fact that sometimes we say and do
and think things and it feels so
important and then two days later we're
like what
what happened well you had a different
brain processing algorithm entirely you
were in a completely different state and
so what I want to do in this lifetime is
I want
to I want to engage in as many different
levels of contraction and dilation of
meaning as possible I want to go to the
micro I sometimes think about this I'm
like if I just pulled over the side of
the road I bet you there's an ant hill
there and their whole world is
fascinating you can't stay there and you
also can't stay staring up at the clouds
and just think about how we're just
these little beings and it doesn't
matter the key is the journey back and
forth up and down that staircase back
and forth and back and forth and my goal
is to get as many trips up and down that
St staircase as I can before the reaper
comes for me oh beautiful so the the the
dance of dilation and contraction
between the different SP zoom in zoom
out and uh get as many steps in on on
that
staircase that's that's my goal anyway
and I've watched people die I watched my
postto advisor die wither away my
graduate it was tragic but they found
beauty in these closing moments because
their bubble was their kids in one case
or like one of them was a Giants fan and
like got to see a Giants game you know
in her last moments and like and you
just realize like it's a Giants game but
not in that moment because time is
closing and so those time bins feel huge
because she's slicing things so
differently so I I think um learning how
to do that better and more fluidly
recognizing where one is and not getting
too tacked to the idea that there's one
correct answer like that's what brings
meaning that's my goal anyway I don't
think there's a better way to end it
Andrew I really appreciate that you
would uh come down
and contract your SpaceTime and focus on
this conversation for a few hours uh is
a huge honor I'm a huge F of yours as I
told you I hope you keep growing and
educating the world about the the human
mind thanks for talking today thank you
I really appreciate the invitation to be
here and people might think that I'm
saying it just because I'm here but I'm
a huge fan of yours I send your podcast
to my colleagues and other people and I
think what you're doing is isn't just uh
amazing it's important and so thank you
thanks for listening to this
conversation with Andrew huberman and
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now let me leave you with some words
from Carl
Yung I am not what happened to me I am
what I choose to
become thank you for listening and hope
to see you next time