Kind: captions
Language: en
a quick note before we start last
episode we gave a shout out to some
cubesats
those super cool cube shaped nano
satellites
but a shout out can only be a shout out
if you pronounce the name properly which
sadly i did not
so i'm here to tell you that the
satellite we called ursa major
is actually ursa major short for
university of rome la sapienza micro
attitude and orbit testing
that's a much cooler name okay on with
the show
now i don't want to jinx us because
technically there's still a few hours
left
and it would just be like this dystopian
year to throw in a last-minute surprise
but hey everyone i think we did it we
made it through
2020. so go ahead and give yourself a
pat on the back
draw hop bubble bath play nintendo with
your kids pop a bottle of champagne
break dance in your living room binge
netflix eat a bunch of chocolate and ice
cream
you've earned it
and hopefully that little reward will
work its way along the mesolimbic
pathway of your brain
from the ventral tegmental area to the
nucleus accumbens
where it can get you pumped for 2021
[Music]
in case that wasn't clear my budding
neuroscientists
i'm talking about motivation that
special sauce that keeps you going when
times get tough
because if you want to make that new
year's resolution stick
it might be helpful to understand what
it is that powers our motivation
and what takes it away we know that to
get motivated
we need to respond to incentives that's
by definition
how the brain works
this is nova now a pure hit of dopamine
for your already
overly stimulated brain cells brace
yourselves
i'm alok patel
[Music]
today's episode is kind of a two-parter
part one is the science lesson
part two is the after party your reward
for sticking it out through the
neuroscience jargon
i promise you it's well worth it but
then again
for some of us science is its own reward
i'm carmen sandy professor of
neuroscience and i am
at the brain mind institute in
switzerland and i'm pretty sure
professor carmen sandy is with me on
that
her lab literally studies motivation
yeah
motivation is one of these terms that
it's quite complex it's not just simple
to define because saying we have
motivation to
work or to do things in order to get
rewards
and this is one important aspect of
motivation but motivation is also to be
able to energize ourselves in order to
avoid adversity instead of giving up and
both types of motivation because we are
interested in the neuroscience
of motivation are regulated by slightly
different
neural circuits seeing as we're headed
into a new year
and we're trying to stay positive and
all i want to focus today on
positive motivation the way our brain
energizes and rewards itself
to get stuff done
this is carmen's specialty and uh
one of the most prominent regions and
circuits is the mesolimbic circuit
that involves dopaminergic projections
from the ventral tegmental area to the
nucleus accumbens and this is saying
okay wow awesome neuroscience at its
finest
can we break this down a little bit okay
i can try
yeah the mesolimbic system is composed
of the ventral tegmental area which is a
very tiny
brain region that it's in the brain stem
so quite deep in the brain
the ventral tegmental area this is where
the reward system
starts where your neurons actually
produce dopamine
a neurotransmitter important for
motivation and then these neurons
are projecting into different brain
regions but
one that is very important for the
motivational
consequences is the ventral striatum or
the nucleus accumbens
the nucleus accumbens which is
placed more or less in the middle of the
brain it's a very small region
maybe the size of an almond but it's
important so remember that one
the nucleus accumbens
[Laughter]
so we go from the brainstem which is
more deep parts of the brain and then we
go to the middle of the brain
that pathway is called the mesolimbic
system
also known appropriately as the reward
pathway
it's kind of like the pathway if you
were to go to your kitchen and like grab
a cupcake but not really because it's in
your brain it's way more important than
that
of course we are interested in looking
at other aspects
so i could tell you about our work now
or later whatever you prefer oh we're
going to get into it i just
correct me it sounds like what you
described just now is
neuroscientists have an idea between all
these areas you were mentioning
ventral tegmental area mesolimbic area
nucleus accumbens of where
cues come into the brain and the pathway
it takes into the brain
to to dopamine which is a signal kind of
a feel-good chemical which says hey
good job or nice work keep going and
that's kind of the pathway you all have
been studying
when it comes down to motivation is that
a fair assessment
yeah you i think you made it much
clearer well you made it smarter
but on the other hand a real world
example of this
would be the research you and your team
did about measuring motivation in the
brain
and you all used money which is so
perfect
because i feel like we can get anyone to
do anything for the right amount of
money
so could you just walk us through the
details of this of this
money-bound experiment to measure
motivation
yeah this experiment is um
kind of a person a modified version of a
previous experiment
in which people had already seen that if
you present
participants different levels of
incentives that means different
amounts of money there will be a
gradient on how much
the nucleus accomplish gets activated
the experiment works like this
first you scan the participants brains
with a nifty technique called
proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy
that allows us to
capture the levels of metabolites
in specific brain regions metabolites in
this case just means specific
chemicals glutamine and glutamate that
are active
in the nucleus accumbens and these
chemicals are related to each other
glutamine is like a raw material
something the brain needs in order to
make neurotransmitters that either
excite neurons or calm them down
let's call it the resource maybe to be
converted into
the neurotransmitters glutamate is one
of those transmitters
in fact it's often considered the most
important neurotransmitter in the brain
because it stimulates activity in
neurons
and so the lab used a brain scanner to
measure the levels of those two
chemicals
in each participant
and afterwards the subjects went outside
the scanner
and did perform the task next is the
task
each participant gets a rubber ball
filled with air
think of those pumps people use to
sometimes check your blood pressure
which they then have to squeeze as hard
as they can
we asked the subjects first of all to
squeeze three times with their maximal
capacity
as much as they could so that eventually
we could see
what is the maximum and establish the
threshold once that
threshold of effort is established the
participants then have to repeat the
same effort
80 times so eventually it's quite
demanding
and to motivate the participants they're
offered money for each
successful squeeze so we gave them 20
cents or
50 cents or one swiss franc then they
were given
a signal and they had to start squeezing
until we told them that
that was okay it was done
when the experiment was over the team
had two kinds of data to look at
chemical and behavioral the brain scans
measured the levels of different
metabolites
within that nucleus accumbens area and
then the task
measured how much effort people would
exert to receive a reward
so basically what we were asking here is
if
particular levels of metabolites in the
nucleus accumbens
can predict how these individuals are
going to perform
in a motivated task and what they found
is this
there is a connection but it's not so
much about the amount of any one of
these metabolites
as it is about the balance between them
in particular
the ratio between glutamine and
glutamate this was
a very good predictor of the capacity to
endure when we are doing effort and to
keep motivated over time
the participants who had more glutamine
relative to the amount of glutamate
not only performed better on the task
but the task
felt easier to them as well it's almost
like this ratio between the
neurotransmitter and the raw material
that makes it
could predict the participants mental
stamina their ability to persevere
through a strenuous task
one possible explanation is that because
glutamine
can serve so many different functions
within the brain it acts as a kind of
metabolic reservoir
that you can draw from to overcome
fatigue and power through
because many times when we're talking
about physical fatigue
it's been demonstrated that in fact
the body is not so tired is the brain
that it's signaling
that perhaps it's the time to to stop so
we think that
probably what we found is something
related to this type of signal
so when people feel burned out or or
when we say the phrase listen to your
brain you might be actually listening to
the glutamate to glutamine
ratio now dr sandy if i think about the
individual differences you all saw it
makes me want to ask you are there
genetic differences between our ability
to stay motivated
and could you also tell us about any
disease or medical conditions
which could affect motivation in people
or lifestyle states
what are things every day that people
have heard of that
could intrinsically mess with our brain
circuitry
that could then affect motivation yeah
it's all
super interesting questions obviously
genetics
always counts but it counts also less
than one expects
somehow i think it's the the mixture
between genetics and
life experiences wherever they are and
for this
uh something that it's really very
important
in defining the levels of motivation is
stress
so it can be the current levels of
stress the exposure to chronic stress
that really depletes in
the capacity of individuals to keep
going and also
i think mentally or the mind power or
mental power to keep going
stress aka 2020's mascot
is actually one of carmen's other
research interests so we have very
interesting data
that points to stress as i said chronic
but also
stress that maybe happened in early life
of individuals
this is shaping also how
the brain is developing in ways that uh
the the the brain is sensing that
something is going on out there that
might be dangerous and it might be
less risky to have a different type of
behavior and maybe less motivation
it makes the individuals to be less
daring in other words
our own survival instincts work against
us
when we're under a lot of stress when we
need our motivation
the most the brain can actually respond
by shutting us down
to try and save energy i mean really
brain you're doing this to me now
but other conditions that you were
asking are
certainly depressing parkinson's disease
also schizophrenia all of these
conditions can disrupt the balance of
chemicals in your brain in ways that
affect motivation
carmen hopes that someday research like
hers can help inform
therapies or even nutritional
supplements that could rebalance those
chemicals
that could fine-tune the glutamine to
glutamate ratio
no that does not mean we'll all be
taking motivational pills soon but i'm
sure some health influencer will
probably try to sell those
so be aware for most people the secret
to getting and staying motivated will
remain
more simple and it won't require any
knowledge of the nucleus accumbens or
ventral tegmental area
but it does all come down to finding the
right balance
this is how biology works and too much
is not good
and too little is not good normally so
we need to
find the optimal i think in my case
it's indeed to get this balance
sometimes i try to work
a lot a lot a lot and it's not very
effective it's
what it's effective for me is here in
switzerland going to the mountains
and doing hiking in nature it's amazing
we get replenished and why does it
happen i don't know
so next time i'm burned out i'm just
going to go take a walk in the swiss
mountains
and see what that does for my motivation
[Laughter]
well dr sandy thank you so much i think
this is gonna
hopefully get people thinking about how
to boost their own motivation
and when to know to chill out thanks so
much
thank you it was nice talking to you
after the break remember i said there's
no motivation
pill to get you instantly amped up well
in my case that's only half true
so i'll be sharing with you dr patel's
personal though as of yet non-peer
non-peer-reviewed and non-clinically
tested
method for instant motivation
hey listeners if you can't tell from the
way i
jam out to our theme song i'm a bit of
an
audiophile straight up music lover the
right track or rhythm gets me focused
energized and motivated so this whole
season
i've been working on a little side
project you know i have a
kind of a fun question in every
interview we do
uh so one last question with every
brilliant guest we've had on the show i
have one last question
and i have one last question for you
i've been asking them all one question
last question one last i have one other
question for you one last one
one last question what is your
hype song
what is a song that gets you motivated
to do your work
let me think about it why um oh that's a
really good question
so friends will be going through my
music files i want to search it just
give me one second let me just pull it
up
so as a parting gift this year i want to
offer you this expertly curated
adrenaline infused playlist
in hopes it can get you pumped for 2021
what is a clear hand and hype song we
can share with our listeners
oh my gosh that is so funny because i
have hype songs too
yes my hype song right now is helen
reddy
i am woman that is awesome
i am a woman hear me roar in numbers too
big to
ignore and i know too yes i love
k-pop songs especially the bts music
[Music]
rock and roll
i've been listening to an artist
recently and his name is
vic mirages
i have two songs that i have been
playing on repeat oh my gosh tell them
to us
okay one is called
and the other is called la temera
[Music]
there's a canadian band called pop
suddenly i can't think of the name of
the song um
it's it's um
[Music]
and um i'm now looking up the song
sorry
reservoir is the name of the song
so i am uh a fan of a specific genre of
music which is very prevalent in south
asia called sufi music
and there's a singer called nusrat fateh
ali khan i know that's first but the ali
khan yep sorry don't mean to interrupt
exactly so especially his remixed music
it's long and repetitive so you can work
et cetera and it's beautiful
one of the songs that i really love is
called
it's about a little bit of a trans and a
lot of these songs have dual meanings uh
it could be taken as medicinally induced
trans or spiritually induced strands
and that's intentional
[Music]
what is the song that you could play
that gets you energized to
bring about your statistical genius to
the world well
usually it's anything by beyonce
[Music]
i like single ladies and crazy in love
you know
just kind of gets me gets me going are
you guys is that going to be our outro
song
cause man what's the song that nephili
can play that gets you
excited about doing what you do anything
by lisa
[Music]
is there a specific track one of them
done
it's awesome
[Music]
i'm a classic carnatic music guy
one of the best songs is raja rajeshwari
and
brahma simha saneshwari that means it's
the highest level or throne
that the goddess is occupying and that's
inspirational for me
[Music]
what i love about all these songs is how
different they are
each of us truly has our own unique
rhythmic source of motivation
my hype song would have to be bridge
burner
by mutoid man
[Music]
it's some heavy metal stuff
[Music]
i usually start the day with either
beethoven or mozart
i i love the classics oh classics
yeah we've got your classics i quite
like the rocky song
with those five days you just put it on
it's like yeah the eye of the tiger song
yeah it has to be
fear of the dark with iron maiden
[Music]
it's so good
[Music]
welcome to the jungle like guns and
roses it gets me going every time
it's adrenaline i love it
i can't every time i hear it i'm like
banging away and just like singing along
and it's the best
[Music]
[Applause]
woo all right i feel like i
simultaneously want to sprint
fight slam beers and dance we need to
take it down a notch
did you um i know i can count on our
most lovable scientific duo
to lighten the mood jonathan and omar
what you got for
us phoebe bridgers has a
nice new album
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
i don't want to get you out but i've
also been listening to a lot of podcasts
obviously
and by a lot of podcasts he means this
one yeah i've been trying to
while jonathan answering pulling out my
my spotify like playlist history
uh to see what i have been listening it
looks like
memories by maroon 5 has been uh played
quite a number of times the past few
weeks
maybe i'm feeling a bit nostalgic i
guess
here's to the ones that we got cheers to
the wish you were here but you're not
cause our drinks bring back all the
memories
ah you guys are gonna make me cry too
bad i'm such a hardened soul
but for real it has been an incredible
journey this year
and we have to save the final slot for
our hype song
mvp wildfire expert emily fisher
so it's funny that you asked me this
question
because she gave us a whole playlist
within our playlist
an entire playlist of smoke-related
songs oh my gosh this is perfect because
i did something that i was not supposed
to do and
sometimes my co-pi and i frank would
take over the headset of the aircraft
and we would blast
song that had the word smoke or fire in
it into the headsets
so that the back of the plane could hear
them and usually we'd have to mute
my headset because i would be laughing
so wildly that like
that would override the song and they
couldn't hear it
can you give us give us like one or two
that really like set the smoke fire mood
we didn't start the fire billy jolts
burning love elvis presley burning for
you
blue oyster cold
burning down the house talking head this
is so good
set fire to the rain adele fire on the
mountain
marshall tucker band
girl on fire by alicia keys oh my
goodness
on that note stay safe stay groovy stay
motivated everyone and have a fantastic
new year
[Music]
[Applause]
nova now is a production of gbh and prx
it's produced by ian koss r.e jocelyn
gonzalez isabel hibbard christina manan
and sandra lopez monsalve julia court
and chris schmidt are the co-executive
producers of nova
dante graves is director of audience
development sookie bennett
senior digital editor robin kasmar is
science editor emma uk's research intern
and nina porzuki is managing producer of
podcasts at gbh
our theme music is by the dj who lights
up my mesolimbic pathway
dj kidd koala and i'm alok patel
thank you for joining us for season one
of the nova now podcast
hopefully you've learned something and
it'll come into play the next time you
think about
genetic engineering feeding a growing
population political pollsters if
mailing voting is safe what happens when
you breathe in wildfire smoke how judges
handle science in the courtroom
why you jump at horror movies how we're
going to ship copa 19 vaccines all over
the country
our dependency on satellites or how
exactly
your neurotransmitters are going to
handle 2021 which is going to be a much
better year science is everywhere and it
will be along for the ride
catch you all soon
you