1016 The Science of a Success Mindset with Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman

This is episode number 1016 with Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman. Welcome to the School of Greatness.

My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

[Speaking of the language] Priest and academic Richard Lingard wrote, you, can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. And actor Sean Mulvihill said, Understand this and be free. We are not in our bodies. Our bodies are inside us. My guest today is neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, who is a professor at Stanford University and head of the Huberman Lab. this is part two of my interview with Andrew. Part one has been blowing people away. So if you haven't listened to it yet, make sure to go to lewishouse.com/1015 to check it out. And in the first episode, we talk about how much control your brain has over your emotions and experiences, the positive effects stress can have on the body, the science of hope, how we can rewrite our subjective experience to increase happiness and more. So make sure you check that out after this one if you haven't checked it out yet. And in this episode, we discuss what neuroplasticity is and why it's the key to learning new things. The importance of keeping a sense of play in your life. This is huge for so many people right now, where go getters get it wrong. The techniques for deep relaxation and why you need to make it a priority. The science of gratitude and how it rewires your brain for success and so much more. Again, this episode is going to be a game changer for so many people.

And so is the last one.

So make sure to re-listen to these over and over again. share them with a friend who you think will be inspired by it, who this will help. And a quick reminder, if this is your first time here, click that subscribe button on Apple podcast right now in the School of Greatness, as well as.

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Okay. After this quick message, the one and only Andrew Huberman.

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The mental strain you feel when you're learning something is the trigger for neuroplasticity for your brain to change.

Say that again. The mental strain you feel while doing something is the what?

Is the trigger for neuroplasticity.

Which neuroplasticity allows you to expand your mind to do more things.

That's right. So, neuroplasticity is a process of taking something where there's duration, path, and outcome, where I'm working hard, I'm thinking hard, maybe it's a hard conversation, maybe it's a business plan, maybe it's a scientific career. And the goal of neuroplasticity is to.

Make things reflexive so you don't have to think about them. For instance, I just started taking Spanish class one-on-one and it's extremely hard. It makes me want to say, why am I doing this? This is gonna take me years until I'm conversational, who knows how long until I'm fluent. if it's this hard at this stage, man, is it ever going to get easier? I have those moments every time I'm doing class. I'm like, this sucks. Because I'm like, I'm 37. Can I learn this language at this point? It's so much easier when you're five. Now it's almost impossible. I watched your video on this a couple days ago on social media. And the video you talked about this is that, yes, it's harder when you're older to expand your neuroplasticity. But it's going, it's almost the, what I'm hearing you say is like, it's the only way to live is the order you get, you need to constantly be expanding it, otherwise you'll be going backwards. That's right.

So, you know, when you want to learn something new like Spanish or a new physical skill, your mind shifts over, the forebrain comes on and says, okay, we're gonna pay attention to things and now what am I doing? I get so tired. I'm like, and we get, and we start doing evaluative stuff to other people, to ourselves and you can start using all sorts of examples like, wait, you know, I was a professional athlete in your case, or I want to be clear, I was never a professional athlete, but you were a professional athlete. You've been successful in other regimes of life, but it still feels like effort, right? And so, but that effort is because two things are happening. One is adrenaline epinephrine is being released, so it doesn't feel great. It's not fun. It's like, and then in addition to that, by bringing focus to something, you're recruiting a neuromodulator called acetylcholine, which is the molecule of focus. Now, it's important- which takes energy and effort. It takes energy and effort. You feel it in your body and in your brain. And, it tends to highlight acetylcholine will highlight the areas of your brain that are active during that learning phase when the teacher is talking or you're talking and making that effort, it's paying attention how you're moving your mouth, what it sounds like to you, feedback cues. and it's marking those brain areas for change. And then later, when you sleep or when you work out or when you're having a conversation with somebody, that's actually when the brain changes occur.

So, during the actual activity.

That's right.

It's when you're not doing the activity, resting or recovering, when it starts to expand or it starts to contract.

It's when the, so neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to change in response to experience, and is the main way in which we go from deliberate action, duration, path, outcome stuff to reflexive action and thought. That process has two parts. One is the trigger, which is in adults is triggered by focus and attention and even heightened state of agitation. The more frustrated you feel, the more you're actually triggering learning. It's saying, this is important, this is important. Because the brain just wants to do whatever it wants to do. It needs to cue itself to, oh, this must need to change. And then the second part is, Deep relaxation, meditation, in particular a form of meditation called yoga nidra, which we could talk about, but forms of deep relaxation, deep sleep, like slow wave sleep, that's when the connections between neurons called synapses actually get stronger. That's when the connections that you don't want get removed. And that's also in certain cases where you get new neurons actually born in your brain to help these circuits speak Spanish.

This is why in sports growing up, I remember I would go to basketball camps in the summer. and I would always learn new footwork. And I always just wanted to be like the fancy guy doing like whatever finger roll layups or something as a kid. But then we would go to these basketball camps and we'd just work on the fundamentals and footwork and like all this different stuff. And I remember being in the moment of being very frustrating and challenging. I was like, I don't get this. And I would suck at it. But then the next day I would come back and I would all of a sudden like have it after a few times of doing it. But I never learned how to do it in the moment. It was always like, okay, I might have got it once, but then I fumbled on it. It was the next day or the next few days where it's like, oh.

I can do it.

It just shows up. It shows up. It just shows up. And that's because when the mind is able to relax, it's then making the.

Connections on how to do that thing. Yeah, so in deep sleep and rest is when the connections actually get built up. It's sort of like in with resistance training, right? The gym is a little misleading. Resistance training, 'cause people get the famous pump, and so they get a visual glimpse into what they might look like later. But then of course it goes back down, right? But actual hypertrophy, the enlargement of the muscle fibers and the strengthening of the neural connections, which you see, is later when you sleep. So it's the same thing with neuroplasticity.

How important is it for us to constantly be learning and challenging our mind the older we get?

Well, I believe it's very important for living a full life. And my hero in this, two heroes actually, I would say Richard Feynman, the great physicist who had a very playful attitude about learning. That's one thing that I really should illustrate if you are in frustration and strain. A sense of play is great because in play you have focus, you have intention and alertness, and it keeps you light enough that there's that dopamine release. Dopamine is released in play for a reason. because kids and animals, young animals and young children, learn social interactions through play. A puppy bites another puppy and the puppy barks out loud, that's why they have those sharp puppy teeth, to say that's too much of a bite. Then they play a little bit more. They're finding the boundaries. They're finding the limits to which they can use physical force for hurting another or just for playing. They learn soft bite. Play in animals as an ancient form of sampling these neural pathways. And as adults, we tend to be more demanding of ourselves. We don't tend to embrace as much play. Richard Feynman is somebody who really incorporated a lot of play into his adult life. He learned how to, in addition to being a Nobel Prize winning physicist, he also played bongo drums. He would learn how to sketch and paint late in his life. He did float tanks. He was kind of a wild man, but he had a lot of fun, and he was a lifetime learner. So I think it's important because it's a great way to learn dopamine release. And it's a great way to expand one's experience of life.

This is when we were, when I was in Poland with Wim Hof earlier this year, I took a group of like 13 guys and we were all nervous to get into this ice tub together for 10 minutes, like up to here. And for the first two minutes, it was not fun. We were just like, this sucks, this is cold. But then all of a sudden we were like, let's have fun.

We're gonna be in here for eight more minutes.

We might as well try to enjoy it. So we started chanting, we started singing, we started just in a rhythm together, smiling, and it was like, it's more enjoyable. It's still gonna be challenging, but you might as well try to have the most fun in the challenge than just suffer, right?

Yeah, team and community, not by coincidence, is a powerful tool for buffering stress. Again, look at high performing teams like SEAL teams or other special operations units. Team is a big part of it for being functional in the actual job.

It almost be impossible to do it.

Alone if you're a Navy SEAL. Yeah, there are other divisions of special operations where actually it's more focused on solo missions. Yeah, where, and so there are people that are very good at that, but teamwork is a great way to buffer the stress response.

Yeah.

And so earlier you asked, is there any way to make it not cold? I guess the answer is no, but there is a way to make the cold not painful.

Right.

And so that's where dopamine intervenes. The other thing that's important because we talked about neuroplasticity, you trigger it with focus and effort and strain is children can learn very easily. Their brain is hyper plastic and very quickly is the whole job of the young brain is to take things that it's taught and very quickly pass it over to reflex, including morals and beliefs. It's automatic. Yeah, and this is what's scary is also the things that kids hear and they're exposed to those beliefs become reflexive. Now, around age 25 or so, the brain is still plastic and forever for the entire life, but then you need more focus and you need what's called self-directed plasticity, neuroplasticity. Self-directed meaning the only person that can change their brain for the better after about age 25 is the actual person.

You.

You can't force neuroplasticity on somebody, positive neuroplasticity. So, the other element that's really important to Plastiq is this deep rest phase. And it's associated with the release of the molecule neuromodulator serotonin. Serotonin is a reward molecule just like dopamine, except that it's released in the brain in response to the subjective experience that we have enough resources. So, when we eat a big meal or we enjoy, even better, when we enjoy a meal with friends or family and it just feels like one of those incredible evenings, you know, you're reset. It's that feeling of being reset. It's an anti-depressive effect. When we are, when you hold, you know, if you hold your child or a partner that you love or your dog, if you love your dog, there's this feeling of having enough. And so whereas dopamine is really the molecule that makes us look at things outside the boundaries of our skin, like to be in pursuit of things, It really is the pursuit motivation molecule. Serotonin is really about feeling like we have enough in our immediate environment. And it's so powerful because unless that serotonin box is checked off periodically, we cannot lean back into the dopamine outward pursuit process for very long.

So we need serotonin.

Absolutely.

To feel more, what, complete, whole, safe. Safe.

Once you feel, this is where people I think that the go-getters get it wrong, no pun intended, where getting after it and being hard driving is really important. We've all seen examples of this. I've seen a number of these in Silicon Valley friends that did very well in tech get to the point where they reach that finish line and then they don't have a whole lot or a whole lot of people to share that with and they end up very isolated and depressed. And then they go through this whole cycle of trying to find themselves. you need to balance serotonin and dopamine. Maybe across the day, maybe across the week. You know, I think in religious practices, all religions really, there's a kind of Sabbath, there's a rest period, you know, for many, many or I think all of them. That makes sense because there needs to be a renewal, whether or not people have a religious practice or not, there needs to be a renewal, a recovery, to recover the immune system. You can't drive the immune system all.

Week, all week, all week. You need to This is why I love sports analogies because there's a pre-season, there's a season, there's a post-season where you're really in high stress and emotion and then there's a post-season. There's an off-season for a reason. You can't be in season 10 years, you know, in a row. You've got to find time to relax and have a bi-week. It's like if you don't have a bi-week, you're probably going to get injured eventually.

So it's just like trying to create that in your own life. Do you do that for yourself as well? Do you have- Definitely. I've got things I do each day and I've got things I do on a weekly basis. I'm less good about the annual vacation. I've never done it. It's so hard. I've been doing science 25 years. I'm sure some of my former relationships will be like, that's right. We never actually took a vacation. We never took a vacation. Yeah, my former girlfriend and I was like, we'd go to Paris, England, Germany. And I was giving talks and talks and talks. And then I'd get sick and then one day she was so understanding. It's like, I still feel some guilt about that. But we would take an afternoon and.

Go to a gallery.

But then I was right back at it.

That's been my life too.

It's hard. You have to find that balance. Luckily, I was in my 30s then and when you're in your 20s and 30s, you can get away with less serotonin in your system.

But now you need more serotonin.

Oh, absolutely.

So what do you do every day to get more serotonin?

Sleeping an adequate amount is key. The practice that served me the best has not been a meditative practice. There are two practices. is called yoga nidra, which doesn't involve any movement. It literally means yoga sleep. This was introduced to me about five years ago. Just laying on your back? You listen to a script. There are a lot of scripts on YouTube, and it teaches you to, there's some breathing involved, but it's really a body scan. You learn to go into deep relaxation.

Yes.

I do this once or twice a day. If I wake up and I haven't had enough sleep, I do it first thing. Five, 10 minutes. There's a 20-minute script I like. There is a 10-minute script. that's out there too. I can give you the links to these if people are interested in them. I have no affiliation with any Yoga Nidra businesses, but I love the practice because I feel like I recover the sleep I didn't get. I then feel really alert. In the afternoon, if I'm feeling tired, I'll do Yoga Nidra. It also involves some intentions, which has a kind of pseudo self-hypnosis component. And I have a colleague, David Spiegel, in the Department of Psychiatry, who does clinical hypnosis. And these intentions that we do in states of deep relaxation, are known to have positive effects on thinking and action. They are in pain mitigation and even breast cancer outcomes. David's work has shown that. So we're not saying stage hypnosis with like a pendant, we're talking- Self hypnosis.

Self hypnosis or medical hypnosis.

Well, it's like you said deliberate thought as opposed to reactive thought. Right. And you're teaching your body and brain to go into deep relaxation deliberately.

You're doing it. And that's, I think, a power. You're saying, okay, lay down, relax your body, relax your face, breathe slower, you're telling yourself to do it.

You're using the body to control the mind, that's again, and you're deliberately turning your thoughts off. Most people can't do that. And so for me, Yoga Nidra has been a absolute amplifier, accelerator, whatever you want to call it, on my career and life and well-being. It also gets you better at falling asleep because one of the reasons why people have trouble falling asleep is they can't turn their thoughts off. So you're training your nervous system how to do this. I should say, because it sounds a little bit out there in the new agey space, there are several studies, imaging studies, positron emission tomography studies, and others looking at yoga nidra specifically. This wasn't worked on by my lab, although we are exploring it in my lab as a tool for stress mitigation, anxiety mitigation. But these studies show that 30 minutes, I believe it was, of yoga nidra resets the levels of dopamine in an area of the brain called the basal ganglia, which prepares the brain and body for action. So these deep relaxation states, even if we're wide awake still, allow the nervous system to reset so that it can get back into action. So for the go-getters, if you really, if you want to have a long career, you want to high perform your whole career, you want to have tools that allow you to reset that dopamine level, because that has a huge effect, excuse me, on buffering adrenaline, as we said earlier. But in addition to that, serotonin is what resets the dopamine pathway. So now there's sort of what we're seeing is kind of a logic to it. You need to alternate rest and effort. You need to reward effort. You need to understand- With rest. With rest. So there's yoga nidra, and I would say the best time to do it is first thing in the morning, before you go to sleep at night or any time of day. In other words, I believe everyone should have some deep relaxation process that's deliberate, that doesn't involve ingesting anything. Not food or wine or anything.

For some people, a drink is fine.

I'm focused on behavioral tools. Supplements and drugs have their place. There are clinically depressed people that need a boost in dopamine or need a boost in serotonin. I think even though drugs like Prozac get a bad rap, those drugs have also saved millions of lives. There's just an appropriate dose and context. some people shouldn't take them.

Well, people also, what I'm hearing you say is you should take them when you need them, when you're unable to physically create those habits for yourself and routines for yourself. But then once you take it, you're always going to need it until you can learn how to behaviorally change your actions.

That's right.

Right?

It's like the obese person that finally, if they really can't move, maybe they do need to do some sort of surgical procedure or they need to do something that, but then once they start exercising, I believe you always want to go behaviors. Focus on behaviors first. Get the behaviors dialed in. Everything we've talked about today is free. Everything we talked about is self-directed, so it's behaviors. Then I think diet is very important or nutrition. I think supplementation definitely has its place. I think we are past the ridiculous idea of the 80s and 90s, like, oh, can't you get everything from what you... no one can even agree on what we're supposed to eat. Right. Every scientist I know who's serious about their mind and body takes supplements.

Yeah.

I don't have a supplement company. I'm going to be very clear about this, but they all have their regime for them. And I think we're seeing a tide change now where supplements are no longer being thought of as this like niche thing that only bodybuilders.

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There isn't like people who are selling snake oil are about, there is a lot of snake oil out there, but there are also some supplements that are powerful for the sorts of things that we're talking about, for sleep and all the others. We could talk about them if you like, but I think it's behaviors, nutrition, supplements, and then there is a place for prescription drugs. There are people that are clinically depressed and suicidal and need help and they need to talk to a board certified MD and get a hold of in some cases, the opinion of whether or not they should take these drugs. Doesn't mean they should take them forever, but we tend to jump to drugs and that's why I think a lot of those drugs, they won't change your behaviors.

You still need to change your behaviors. The easy way out to start is taking the drugs, but what you should be doing is the behavioral nutrition supplements. If you do those three things first.

You should start to feel better. Oh, absolutely.

Sunlight in the morning, the things we've talked about.

Breathing, relaxing, yeah.

Things.

I have a friend, he's an MD and he says it beautifully. He says, you know, better living through chemistry still requires better living. There is no pill or substance or psychedelic that's going to completely rewire you. It's not even clear what that would look like. And then there's a fifth category that's starting to emerge now, which is brain machine interface. Things like devices that people put on and to adjust their brain waves, enhance plasticity. There are great devices out there for what I would say reading and measuring from the nervous system, monitoring sleep for instance, monitoring brain waves. We're still in the infancy of good commercially available brain machine interface, but I think that will eventually show up. The other thing, because you asked about tools each day, I have a daily practice of doing yoga nidra. For me, that's my form of meditation and sort of serotonin reset. The other one is gratitude. I know gratitude gets a lot of discussion nowadays, but I always want to point out that gratitude is not complacency. People think it's navel gazing, but it has been shown to increase levels of serotonin in the brain.

It's a science, now I did an interview with Dr. Lori Santos, she's the Yale professor, Science of Happiness at Yale. I had her on and I was like, okay, what are the top scientific reasons for happiness right now? that are proven and she was like, Gratitude is like one of the top three or four. It's like, okay, so this is not woo-woo anymore. She's like, no, this is scientifically proven.

That gratitude makes you happier. I think gratitude is wonderful. It resets the system so that you can be in pursuit. I think gratitude sounds like complacency and people are like, oh, I don't want to be a naval gazer. Then I'm not gonna be content.

Then people fear that they're not gonna be content.

They're gonna be complacent. They're like, I'm just happy with where I'm at. But serotonin resets that's dopamine, which puts you back in the fight and allows you to fight longer and further. And I guess I'm doing this a lot today, but I've had the great privilege of doing some work with these communities. If you look at high performers in these very high-risk, high-consequence special operations communities, they have gratitude practices.

Really?

They do. And they incorporate them. And so, you know, people think there's like some secret sauce or there's something, you know, and they are, very unique individuals and very special individuals, but they have those practices. They have the same tools that Ed Mordon can use.

That's right. We all have these tools. You do yoga, nidra, you do gratitude.

Practice throughout the day. What else do you do? So the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I actually is a gratitude. No matter what pops in my head, I reorient to being grateful that I'm waking up. I mean, you know, it's, you know, I've had a number of close calls in life. I've lost people like everybody. I'm 45, so, you know, seen a lot of babies born, seen a lot of people die. That's just the way it goes. But I express some gratitude for just waking up. And that puts me in forward motion. And then I can do things like make my bed, reward that that I'm not doing something else and start getting into things. And I tend to reward relationships in a big way. My dog's 10 years old. I raised him since he was a puppy. He's a bulldog. He's probably getting to the end. I try and really just focus on the sheer pleasure of having a bulldog. There are such characters and him in particular, relationships of all kinds. Like if I spend time with people or just, I just try and think about mentors, people that got me where I am. I do that all the time. And I'm pretty, as you probably imagine, I talk fast, I work a lot, I'm pretty intense, but I finish my days now not feeling ground out and depleted. doesn't mean I'm grateful for every opportunity or everything that comes my way. I have to be conscious of it, but I think a deliberate practice of relishing or enjoying what we have is so powerful. And not just going through the motions.

If we're not enjoying it and we're just waiting for the end result, we're going to be unhappy.

Absolutely, and there's something called dopamine reward prediction error where people work, work, work, work, work, or they expect something to be great. and as you do that, you actually raise the level of dopamine that's required to make it feel good when you get there. This is why people achieve great things and kill themselves.

It's crazy.

The failure to respect these neurochemical pathways and these neural pathways is actually, I mean, it's basically throwing away everything that we were given, in my opinion. And I don't want to give the impression that people have to follow these protocols because I'm talking about them. We were all given these. People will sometimes ask me, they'll say, Is there an app or a product around this? I just say, Look, Mother Nature has the patent for this. Whatever people's beliefs, this stuff was built into us for whatever reason. We can use these different neurochemical pathways to organize our life in a way that really serves us and the people around us best. The gratitude practice can be one second long. It can be 10 minutes if you want. People do love and kindness meditation. I've never done that. I've always had a hard time being in meditation for a long period of time. I'm not good at mental visualization. So I tend to gear more towards behaviors.

Wait, you're a neuroscientist. You're not good at mental visualization.

Well, I try, but I think we all differ in our ability to hold on to a mental imagery. And mine's kind of fleeting. So I tend to write things out. But yeah, gratitude practices, I get trying to get sun in my eyes. I mean, exercise, I love, unfortunately, I love exercise and training. I think that got into me young. For people that that's harder to do, then you know, you just build these things up through subjective reward.

Yeah, yeah. I want to go back to neuroplasticity at a later age in life. How much, like let's say I want to, every year I want to challenge myself to learn something that's harder or maybe not it comes easy to me. Maybe it's Spanish this next couple years and then something else 10 years. The older I get, say 80, 90, 100, hopefully I get there. If I keep pushing my mind to be challenged in that way that's uncomfortable, will that actually help me live longer or will it hurt me? to living a shorter life?

-Oh, that's a great question.

-I hear people who live in the blue zones around the world, right? Who they kind of have their normal routine, they have their family, they walk up a hill every day, they eat a certain way, and they have good community relationships. But I don't know if I've heard them say like they're constantly challenging their mind to expand.

-I'M pretty confident saying that it's not going to shorten your life. Remember that the dopamine system So, dopamine and acetylcholine are the primary triggers for adult neuroplasticity. We know this because there are experiments done by a guy named Mike Merzenich at UCSF. If you stimulate the areas of the brain that release dopamine and acetylcholine, you can rapidly induce plasticity, like one-trial learning, like Spanish today, like fluent in Spanish today, which is kind of scary. This is actually the basis of companies that are thinking about inserting wires into.

The brain and stimulating it.

Wait, I could be fluent in Spanish today? In theory, if you stimulate enough acetylcholine and dopamine release while experiencing enough Spanish, you'd probably have to speak that Spanish.

You'd probably have to read it. Wow.

You could remember it and connect it.

Yeah, it's possible. It's like Matrix.

It's possible. Like I know Kung Fu. Yeah, we're not quite there yet, but it's possible. It's been done in other forms of learning and other studies. Really? Yeah, what's it called? Well, if you release that, you'd have to actually have an electrode down in your head. I don't know that you want to drill a hole in your head.

Put something in your head.

You'd have to drill a hole in your head. Enough dopamine in your- Remember, the dopamine comes from the neurons that are in there. So you'd be stimulating the dopamine neurons, the acetylcholine neurons, and you'd be probably reading a Spanish script.

I will say there are- Shut up! Well, there are programs happening right now.

To accelerate language learning through implantable electrodes. No way.

It's already happening.

It's happening. Someone's done it before?

It's happening now.

They're testing it now. I don't think they're at one day for an entire for fluency, but they are definitely at massively accelerated language learning. Really?

Yeah.

I have close friends that do this.

Sort of thing for a living.

You know someone who's done this? Who run the laboratories who do this kind of stuff.

Absolutely.

So what do they do? They put something in your head? Well, the goal, so we know that dopamine and acetylcholine from experimental already published results. If those are released, then in massive amounts, whatever you pair that release with, whatever sensory experience, massively rewires the brain according to that experience. So, Mirzenik has these beautiful studies where he showed that if you play a certain auditory tones and you stimulate these brain areas, the auditory cortex, the area of the brain that listens and hears and understands sounds, massively rewires according to what was played in that moment. But because these neurochemicals are like gates, they open the gate to plasticity. You normally engage them by focus, agitation, stress and strain, self-reward, etc. Or going to, you know, and having a conversation in Spanish where you're like, wow, I'm doing it. I'm fluent. I'm doing it. That's going to keep me up at night. I get it.

Right.

But you can imagine there are groups on this planet that are very interested in rapidly accelerated language learning that would be willing to put many millions or billions of dollars, probably not billions, toward programs to get massively accelerated language learning by putting either implantable chips in the brain that will stimulate these brain areas, including memory areas, or stimulating acetylcholine or dopamine.

So people have already done this where they cut open their head and put.

A chip in their brain. These are neurosurgery patients who are already.

Undergoing surgery for other reasons.

And have agreed to be part of this. Yeah, really. Yeah, and there are animal studies doing this all the time. Shut up.

Absolutely. And are there any results of this?

Well, they're not, the groups that are doing these sorts of things are not going to reveal the results just yet. So you can imagine that these are related to government military type contracts. It makes sense, right? You'd want to do this. Yeah, absolutely. And it's definitely happening overseas too. I mean, massively accelerated learning. is kind of the holy grail of neuroscience. Right? Right.

How can we learn anything faster? Because time is the thing that we're all trying to maximize.

Right. And you could imagine that because the human brain in development can be biased toward becoming exceptional at math or exceptional athletics. I mean, you could build brains that are, you could bias brains to be very, very good, even exceptional at the level of surpassing all previous behavior by triggering these sorts of plasticity events.

Yeah.

I mean, I wouldn't run out and put the chip in your head immediately. I mean, this stuff has to be worked out. But certainly there's a whole community that's spinning up right now around nootropics, smart drugs. It's not a word or an area that I'm really a big fan of because what are you talking about? Creativity, task implementation, focus. The word smart drugs is terrible. Nootropics is even worse. because it's not pointed enough. It doesn't illustrate exactly what the end goal is. It's sort of a throwaway catch-all kind of like smart drug. Like, what is smart?

Right.

So, but there are, you know, for instance, I know a Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist who chooses immense amounts of Nicorette each day. He's in his 70s because it increases his focus. He quit smoking, which stimulates nicotine, and those stimulate acetylcholine. So, nicotinic is a nicotinic stimulant and nicotine is acetylcholine receptor. So, his goal is to continue to learn in his old age by stimulating the nicotine pathway. So, yeah, he chooses non-stop nicotine. Now, I'm not recommending people chew nicotinic. I want to be clear, I'm not a doctor, I don't prescribe anything. I'm a professor, so I'm professing things. But there are things like choline, alpha-GPC, that will stimulate acetylcholine release and will allow you in theory, to learn quicker and better in about a learning.

To give you more focus under adversity.

So they will trigger the plasticity event to be, it's like carving that knife in deeper, but then you need a corresponding increase in the amount of rest in order to make sure that those pathways get better. Think about it like going to the gym. I actually have seen these guys in the gym in LA where They've got electrodes on the muscles, so they're maximally recruiting motor units, but then you need that much more recovery because it's unusual to get those high threshold motor units.

So you need to rest for two days.

You can't go back to the gym tomorrow.

Right.

And a lot of these guys are also drug assisted to the point where you can almost smell it from across the room. But that's another story. But that whole area is geared around maximum stimulus, maximum recovery, maximum stimulus, maximum recovery. So, drugs supplements can accelerate these processes. A fun one from sports because should have been the Olympics this year, but the sprinters have their own drug community. It's not just the anabolics. Those sprints are won by who gets out the blocks fastest. That's reaction time. And there's lore, I'm not involved in this, but there's lore of sprinters taking drugs to accelerate nerve transmission by focusing on the On the gun. It's all about hearing the gun and getting out the blocks. So they take drugs to stimulate dopamine and acetylcholine because that between the faster reaction, more focused faster reaction.

So is that activating the adrenaline receptor.

So you react quicker? It's actually happening at the neural level and it's allowing them to hear the gun as it's going off.

And not hear it after the fact.

That's react. Because you can lose by being the last person out the blocks. most of those drugs are illegal, but there's a whole world of drugs in sports that are geared around the mental side and focus and the ability to get into sleep. I mean, you can bet given now the understanding that sleep is so fundamentally important for performance, people are hacking sleep like crazy. Chili blankets, magnesium, theanine, certain things that I think do work. People are wearing whoops and aura rings and it's all about sleep now, right? It's all about sleep. so powerful. And there are- Sleep is the ultimate drug. And people are now developing drugs that will allow people to fall asleep and sleep better, function better on less sleep, optimize the amount of slow wave sleep time. Anyway, it's a whole- Whole world. I'm fascinated by it because it's the extreme of the things that we're talking about. But for the typical person, behaviors are the way to go.

Behaviors.

And nutrition is not an area of.

My expertise, but incidentally, the body is connected to the mind. The body's connected to the mind.

And if the body doesn't have good.

Gut health, and good nutrients, then it's going to be affecting the way you think and the way you feel and the way you act.

Absolutely.

It's going to be harder and harder if you don't have energy.

Right.

And food and nutrition gives you proper energy. That's right. Or it takes the energy away from you. That's right. It depletes you from energy.

So.

So the older we get, it's harder to expand our neuroplasticity, but that's why we should be learning new, challenging things.

Every year, is what I'm hearing you say. to help us. Yeah, and whether or not it extends the lifespan, I don't know, but I do know this. So the dopamine pathway is intimately tied to the reproductive hormone pathway. So testosterone and dopamine have a very close relationship. So much so that they're released and they're triggering or they're releases from very neighboring areas in the brain. Because if you think about it, it's the pursuit molecule, right? Like testosterone's main effect is to make stress and effort feel good. That's what it does. It suppresses that kind of grinding response like it's painful and increases recovery. In women, which are more estrogen dominant than testosterone dominant, and both men and women both have testosterone and estrogen, of course, estrogen is sort of similar to testosterone in that it's coupled to dopamine. A lot of people think the opposite of testosterone is estrogen.

It's not.

It's a molecule called prolactin. Prolactin is what's secreted after orgasm. It's what's secreted after a big win and there's that crash. It's designed to keep organisms in the place they are so that there's pair bonding, there's recovery and shift them into that serotonin regimes. So the reason I mention this is that being in pursuit of goals and trying to trigger neuroplasticity isn't just about changing your brain. It's closely linked to the reproductive hormones, testosterone in men and estrogen in women, meaning it's linked to the will to live. The will to pursue, and it's not just about sex. I know as soon as we talk about testosterone and estrogen, people start thinking about mating behavior. It's that, but there's a lot more. It's the will to live. So when dopamine is reduced, the will to live is reduced. When serotonin is too high and dopamine is too low, People feel like they have everything they need. Think chronic pot smokers, no beef against the pot smokers, but they don't tend to be the most ambitious people. Sometimes they are, but they tend to make people pretty placid. Think any high levels of antidepressants that make you feel like you have enough of everything you need, they make people kind of, there's a passivity there. So that's why it's important to keep these things in the right range. So the will to live is tied to the dopamine system. and to the reproductive system.

So, what are we doing when we don't have a goal in our life? What happens to us?

We are essentially on idle. It doesn't mean that we don't have the will to live. It means that we are idling and the brain and body, because they are so intimately related with one another and affect one another, they see when we're in pursuit of a goal and that sends every organ in the body the message to keep going. The will to live is getting at a deeper abstract concept, but it's a real thing. And so people that are low in estrogen, typically in women, or in men, people that are low in testosterone or low in dopamine. So it's ultimately dopamine, which is motivation and drive and pursuit. You don't want too high, but you definitely don't want it too low.

And in order to increase our dopamine, we do some of these tools.

Right, you want to be in pursuit of something. You want friction, but you also want to be able to reward the effort process, reward that friction process. Now, keep in mind children which have the ultimate will to live, you know, in positive environments, children are wonderful because they're all about the will to explore and live and learn. It's just their default is to explore, live and learn. And children are flooded with dopamine. You show them a baby something new and it's like, Because the mother nature has wired them to use that process to incorporate new ideas and new learnings. That's how they can learn.

That's how they learn. The more they have, they can learn, they connect ideas and they can grow. And they play.

I mean, you tell kids a story, a ridiculous story, and they'll go with you on that. As we become set in our ways, it's kind of interesting. The brain, over time, the space between the neurons tends to fill in with this stuff called extracellular matrix. It's like pouring concrete between the neurons makes it much harder for them to rearrange and move around. But a lot of beautiful studies, experimental studies have shown that that extracellular matrix, if it can be reduced, the neurons can move around and form new connections. And the way to do that is Maine.

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To do that is by triggering some strong pursuit goal. The more important the goal is, the more the faster the plasticity is going to happen.

How does someone like you, I don't want to stereotype a scientist and a professor, but how does someone like you have fun when most scientists are more like lab rats that are just like focused on the research and the work and getting it done? How do you incorporate play and fun in your life?

Well, I love doing science because to me being a brain explorer is like the coolest thing. I mean, when I was a little kid, I want to be an astronaut and then I didn't pursue that path. But for me, the next best thing is to be a brain explorer and dig around in the brain and try and understand the brain. But I enjoy, let's see, I'm a little bit of a sicko in the sense that I love music, I love food, I love to eat, I love to train, I love friendship. I'm at this point now, and I wasn't always like this. I've definitely experienced depression. I've been there. I'm at the point now where maybe it's the gratitude practice, maybe it's the fact that I've been trying to get enough sleep, and I sometimes do. But I just feel so happy to be in relation to all these opportunities. And the fact that people care about neuroscience and they want to learn and that there's a place for me in this world to teach it, you know, it's just kind of like an endless source of joy. I love movies, music, friendship, training, food, your dog, my dog. Goodness, art. I think I've found enough things in the world that I love that, you know, I feel like I have like five times, five lifetimes worth of things to pursue.

What about fears? Do you have a lot of fears? And how much does fear play into the body and mind connection?

The fear is huge in the body mind connection because it can shut us down. I mean, fear can really take us to the point of, you know, from a place of feeling really great to just they can like crump us all at once. And I mean the things that, well I have several fears. One is, you know, I have this weird history in science where my undergraduate advisor, my graduate advisor, my postdoc advisor are all dead. They all died young. So it was like, it was suicide, cancer, cancer. It was really rough because I was close with all of them. And so I have one major fear which is dying without getting the information that I believe should be out in the world, out into the world. Because I'm struck by this all the time, you know, when people die, there's no download from their brain. There's no fossil record of their thoughts unless they write, they speak, they put things out into the world. For some people, it's art. For other people, it's their family, whatever it is. But one fear is that, you know, I'll get hit by a bus or something or have a heart attack before I'm able to express, you know, sort of put out my expression. That's one. And then the other is, these days I have a lot of irons in the fire doing public education, running my lab, my lab's actually two labs. I guess a big fear of mine is that in trying to take on so many things that the quality will drop. And so as a consequence, I've had to really put boxes around my life so that I can really dig in. And I'm blessed to have amazing people in my lab. I mean, I've just my lab operations. as a manager, I would die without him. My graduate students and postdocs, they're phenomenal. And so I'm blessed to have great people around me. But yeah, I would say that's one of the big fears, is that I can't do it all. And of course I can't, but I have not tried to learn Spanish fluently.

Do you want to or no?

I do. Actually, a few years ago, I promised on social media I was going to learn Spanish as proof of principle for neuroplasticity. And then I would deliver some of the tutorials in Spanish because there's huge parts of the world that I think are curious about neuroscience. They don't have access to them.

And I abandoned mission temporarily. I tell you what, man, I've been saying this for 20 years. I want to learn Spanish. And for whatever reason, I have a Spanish girlfriend now from Mexico, which gives me more of a motivation, which I.

Know you talk about needing some greater motivation.

It'll accelerate the process. If you have like a reason why. I suppose just I want to do this because you're going to quit probably unless there's a bigger reason, a bigger reward at the end. And I've been saying this since, you know, high school. I took Spanish in high school, college. I've traveled all over Latin America, Spain, everything. I'm a passionate salsa dancer for 15 years. I've been dancing extreme amounts of guys.

Like you have bumped me out a number of times because once Salsa picks up, there's salsa dancing, I'm like, like.

Periphery of the room. Exactly. And that was another thing that I was committed to learning because it was so challenging to learn that I was like, I need to go all in. I need to create like reward loops for myself, all this stuff because it was so embarrassing and humiliating to get started in something in a completely uncomfortable setting.

But now you're very skilled at it.

Now I can go anywhere in the world, any salsa club, and find the best dancer and dance with them in a moment without speaking. to them and feel 100% comfortable. That's admirable. It's the greatest feeling. And I want that in every other area of my life. I want it in Spanish because I want this message to reach 100 million people a week and I know the Latin community could use this message.

So your incentive was the same. I'm like information transfer.

Exactly. And I'm also like, okay, you can translate things, you could have a translator.

With you, you could have subtitles. But my dad's from a Latin country, he's from Argentina and when people make the effort.

They respect it.

Well, it's such a deep sign of respect to really go over to somebody else's side and deliver it in a form that's really designed for them. Yeah, that's.

And it's almost like you have empathy for someone else when you try to learn something that they know, and that's hard for you to learn. So I said to myself, okay, I've tried to do this many times the last 20 years, and I've always failed. I was like, I need to pay for it. I need to do it every week. I need to have a one-on-one teacher because I've tried apps, I've tried this stuff, all these things didn't work. And I need to stop thinking about becoming fluent.

Right.

I need to start appreciating the process of every day just doing it.

Right.

And after six months, I'll be able to see and look back like, okay, I actually know some stuff. And after a year or two, I'll know a little more. And then hopefully one day I'm just.

Fluent and attach reward to the intention and the effort process. Yes. I mean, what I heard you say was that At a very core level, you really want to meet people where they're at so that they can derive more from the message. Absolutely. And so if you can build, so as an example of the subjective reward process, the more that you can tap into that intention, this is why I think intentions and being able to be pulled by some bigger, greater, greater mission is the ultimate thing because then the discomfort we feel is offset by this reward that you can always look to.

Yes.

It's like it's always there. It's like having that magic drug on the shelf that you can just take. But because it's internal, it's always with you, which is far more powerful than needing it from some external source.

Exactly. Exactly.

So I'm excited. I'm excited for the Spanish-speaking people out there. They're gonna hear it from you.

Exactly. So not to hold your feet to the fire. No, but I feel like it's just I gotta enjoy the process and I gotta enjoy like the challenges of day-to-day and I'm starting to make fun now. I'm starting to, when I'm like really stressed, because I'll get tired when I'm just like, I have no clue what this means. And all I want to do is.

Like go watch sports or go work out or... But the confusion is the trigger. That's what I'm learning from you. It's saying, it's like raising a flag and it's saying there's something special about this mental track that we need to return to later and it's flagging it.

Yes.

And so when you sleep or you're.

Doing something else, you'll reconnect the dots. You're actually, yeah, that's, that's, so that's what I'm doing. When I'm getting frustrated and challenged now, I'm just like, I just start having fun. I'm just like, okay, I'm just like being playful in the moment and it brings me with more energy as opposed to like this lazy, tired feeling. I'm like excited. I'm like, okay, I don't know this, but I'm gonna figure it out one day. So good. And so it's just like I'm committing to the process and making the process.

The prize, not the end result of prize. And also, maybe someday you'll run for office and then you can reach more.

People with a specific message. I think it's like, what, 60 million Spanish speaking people in America 40 million or something like that. There's a lot of people. So who knows? Anyways, my team's telling me I need to wrap this up because I want to go into talking a lot about fear and how to overcome fear and eliminating stress and all these different things. But I'll have to get you back on and talk about these things. So hopefully you'll come back on and.

We'Ll- I'd be happy to come back.

Anytime you guys want. We'll do more and talk about fear and how to overcome fear and all these different things. But this has been fascinating and I want to ask you a couple final questions, Andrew. One is called the Three Truths. So imagine it's your last day on earth and you've actually accomplished all of your, you've gotten all your work out there in the world that you wanted to create. Your books, your lab results, all the research you got to do, 99% of it, right? You're always going to want to do more, but you got to do as much as you could. You have books out there, lectures, everything is out in the world that you wanted to do, but it's your last day and you've got a For whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you. So, this podcast is gone, your books, your results, everything. So, it's all gone with you to the next place, wherever you go. But you got a pen and a piece of paper and you get to write down three things you know to be true about your entire life and the lessons you've learned that you would share with the world. This is all we have to remember you by or your lessons. I call it the three truths. What would you say are your three truths?

Okay, well, the first one I'm going to poach. from the Oracle, which is know thyself. I do believe that through whatever exploration, whether or not it's therapy, meditation, religious exercise, all of the above, I think people should explore what they're, you know, sort of how they're showing up in the world. Yeah. And then obviously, based on today's discussion, I believe that we can make changes around that, but know thyself. wish I had said it, but someone beat me to the punch. The second one is, it's rather Freudian, but I do think there's a core set of operations about the way we work that are important. You can imagine three boxes, it's like a three box diagram. And in the first one it would say wish, and there's an arrow next to it, it would say anxiety, and then there would be an arrow, and then the last one would say defense. Typically, we have a wish. It creates some anxiety in us and then we get into some reflexive defensive behavior. For some people, that's addiction. For some people, that's rabid ambition to the point of neglecting things, whatever the defense is. And I think our job is to intervene between anxiety and defense, or at least come up with defenses that serve humanity so that we're giving as opposed to destroying. Yes. But I do think that Wish Anxiety Defense is a big one. And then, goodness. And then for the last one, a couple days ago I might not have said this, but I had an experience that leads me to say, I think have fun. Because it's the ultimate reset. It's not the only thing you want to do, but it's really tragic when people are so hard driving that they can't derive pleasure. And as we talked about today, the pleasure process is part of the renewal process, is part of the ability to be in greater pursuit. And I think that when we're having fun, provided it's not at somebody else's expense, I think that it has a regenerative quality to it. And that we can, I think that's the best experience of life.

It's hard to learn and grow without having fun, is what I've heard you say.

I stole this. I feel bad because I stole it. The great pleasure of knowing Laird Hamilton, the great Laird Hamilton, and we had done some training. We were talking about it, and we were leaving their house, and he said, what Laird said, he said, Remember, I'm gonna get this wrong, Laird, so sorry, but he said something like, Remember, in fear of death, have fun. And he was not saying go and do stupid things that put you in risk. What he was saying was, this fear of death is something we all live with and we all struggle with. So we have to remember to have fun. That's it, man. Something like that. I think I botched it, but I was thinking, you know, Laird's done some incredible things in his life. He's an incredible human being and family man and husband and father, all this stuff and friend. And so I was like, you know, I could afford to have more fun.

So that's what I'm telling myself these days.

Yeah.

Trying to say the scientists gotta have fun, too. Yeah, I'm trying. Where can we follow you on social media and how can we we support you in this moment. You got a book coming out in the future.

The future, I know I haven't gotten around to actually writing the whole thing. I teach neuroscience and do regular neuroscience posts on Instagram. Yeah, they're fascinating, by the way. What's your handle there? It's Huberman Lab, so H-U-B-E-R-M-A-N-L-A-B. And right now I'm doing 100 days of neuroscience in the 15-second reels format, which is a real challenge to me, but I do some longer posts. We talked talk about everything from stress, fear, dopamine, learning. We touch on some stuff related to autism, Alzheimer's, things like that. It's not medical advice, but I talk about the research. I invite researchers on to talk about their work and it's a lot of fun and I love the questions there.

So people can send me questions. Very cool. So, follow you on Instagram, Twitter as.

Well, Huberman Lab, and you reply to people there. I do, yeah. Mainly Instagram.

I do have a Twitter account, but mainly Instagram. cool. Awesome. This is fascinating, man. I can't wait to have you back on in the future. And I want to acknowledge you, Andrew, for the incredible gift that you have to educate us about understanding thoughts, feelings, emotions, all this stuff. I think it's so confusing, especially in 2020, on how to improve our lives when there's so much destruction and distraction and noise and stress, anxiety, like we've talked about. So for you to come and bring a scientific practical and then make it practical as well how we can apply this in our life. It's really empowering to so many people. So I acknowledge you for the gift you are, man, for constantly showing up.

This is really beautiful. Thank you. Thanks for having me on. It's been a real pleasure.

I was a fan long before you invited me on. So for me, it's especially gratifying. We'll have you back on a bunch, man.

I'm excited. And my final question, what's your definition of greatness? The human species was given this tremendous gift. of neural plasticity, the ability to change ourselves and be better in deliberate ways. And my definition of greatness is anyone that's making that effort even in a tiny way just to take this incredible machinery that we were given, this nervous system, and to leverage it toward being better, feeling better, and showing up better for other people. That's, I really believe that's why we're here.

Yeah, thank you very much, brother.

Thank you.

Appreciate it, man.

Thank you so so much for listening to this episode. Hopefully you listened to both parts of.

This interview with Andrew Huberman.

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And I want I'm going to leave.

You with this quote from the great Brian Tracy who said, Set peace of mind as your highest goal and organize your life around it. I hope this was powerful, great reminders, and you've got some great tools for your life to continue to organize it.

For peace for yourself.

If no one's told you lately, you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. I'm so grateful for you and you know a time when it It's time to go out there and do something great.

This is Comedy Bang! Bang! The podcast, the promo, and in 30 seconds, I'm gonna tell you why you should check out the show. I, the host Scott Aukerman, have a light-hearted conversation with famous celebrities like Jon Hamm, Allison Williams, Phoebe Bridgers, Jason AlexandEr, Natasha Lyonne, Bob Odenkirk, just to name a few. Things go a little off the rails when different eccentric characters and oddballs drop by to be interviewed as well. Each week is a blend of conversations and character work from your favorite comedians, as well as some new hilarious voices. Comedy Bang! Bang! the Podcast. Listen every Monday wherever you get your podcasts.

Going up. Prices keep going up these days. It feels like being on an elevator that only goes up.

F--- going up. but not at Metro.

We're pushing the down button. We've lowered prices. Get one line of 5G data for forty dollars, period. That's 20 lower. And you get a free Samsung 5G phone when you bring your number only at Metro. Five-year guarantee on eligible plans.

Exclusion Supply. See website for details. Not available at Metro with T-Mobile in.

The past six months. Tax supplies.