Caltech Neuroscientist Adolphs Redefines Emotion as Functional State

加州理工神经科学家 Adolphs 将情绪重新定义为功能状态 Ralph Adolphs 博士断言，将核心功能性情绪状态与主观意识体验区分开来，对于神经生物学的科学进展至关重要。 Ralph Adolphs 博士与 Andrew Huberman 探讨了情绪的功能性定义，将核心情绪状态与有意识的感受及通用面部表情区分开来。他们探讨了大脑如何处理恐惧、身体内感受信号和社交线索，以及自闭症和元认知的神经机制。对话还重点介绍了实用的情绪调节策略，包括情境回避、刻意冷暴露以及短暂的思绪静止。 Ralph Adolphs 博士从功能角度将情绪定义为介于僵硬、自动的反射与灵活、目标导向的规划之间的中间状态，其主要特征是能够优先调配注意力并中断正在进行的行为。 (2:54) 情感神经科学的科学进展要求将核心、客观的功能性情绪状态与体验情绪的主观意识经验区分开来。 (19:31) 情绪调节依赖于情绪粒度——即对具体内部状态的精准识别——它使个体能够采取如认知重评等针对性策略。 (22:58) 情境回避，即主动构建个人环境以尽量减少接触负面诱发因素，是调节情绪最有效的单一策略。 (31:01) 刻意冷暴露可作为一种生理工具，训练自主神经系统自动下调压力反应，并能迁移至应对愤怒等心理压力源。 (33:26)

Dr. Ralph Adolphs argues that emotions are evolved functional states designed to interrupt ongoing behavior and reprioritize action, operating as a flexible middle ground between rigid reflexes and slow cognitive planning. Across clinical lesion studies and behavioral experiments, Adolphs and Andrew Huberman outline how emotional regulation can be cultivated from effortful cognitive appraisal into automatic physiological resilience. Functional States, Priority, and Conscious Experience (2:54) Adolphs defines emotions by their operating properties rather than subjective conscious feelings or rigid anatomical centers. Drawing on Nobel laureate Herbert Simon’s work, he characterizes emotions as priority interrupt mechanisms characterized by valence (approach versus avoid), scalability in response to threat intensity, and temporal persistence. A notable study from the University of Iowa showed that patients with bilateral hippocampal amnesia sustained elevated sadness five minutes after watching tragic film clips, demonstrating that internal emotional states outlast the declarative memory of the triggering event. Critically, Adolphs separates functional emotional states from conscious awareness. He argues that equating emotion solely with subjective introspection stalls scientific research in animals and artificial intelligence. By categorizing emotions as functional control states, affective neuroscience can evaluate emotional processing objectively, analogous to how visual processing or memory encoding is investigated without requiring verbal reports of subjective awareness. Dissociating Threat Circuits and Expression Myths (45:58) Neurobiological evidence indicates that emotional states are not governed by singular, isolated brain centers. Adolphs’ research with Antonio Damasio on Patient S.M.—who has bilateral amygdala damage—demonstrated selective deficits in detecting and experiencing external threats, such as live snakes, spiders, and haunted houses. However, a collaborative study with Justin Feinstein and René Hurlemann revealed that inhaling carbon dioxide provoked acute panic attacks in S.M. and two similar patients. This finding proved that internal, interoceptive alarms (like arterial acidosis from suffocation) bypass the amygdala entirely to trigger fear via brainstem pathways. Adolphs also challenges Paul Ekman’s traditional model of six universally recognized facial expressions. Co-authoring a critical reassessment with Lisa Feldman Barrett and colleagues, Adolphs notes that classic cross-cultural studies relied on artificial, forced-choice matching of posed actor expressions. In real-world contexts, emotional inference relies on dynamic, predictive modeling of baseline behavioral deviations rather than static visual readouts. Granularity, Attractor Loops, and Task-Switching Friction (22:58) Effective emotion regulation relies on emotional granularity—the precise conceptual differentiation of internal feelings rather than broad positive or negative categorization. Adolphs and Huberman warn that cognitive reappraisal can backfire if an individual fixates on not feeling a negative emotion; hyper-focusing reinforces dynamic neural attractor states, locking the brain into recursive loops of anxiety or distress. Consequently, situational avoidance—proactively configuring one's environment to preempt emotional triggers—is often the most effective frontline regulatory strategy. Cognitive control also contends with neural task-switching overhead, where residual brain activation from a prior activity creates cognitive inertia. Structured transitions, such as brief meditative breathing or deliberate mental routines used by elite military operators returning home, serve as functional circuit breakers. Adolphs incorporates three- to five-minute silent pauses at the beginning of laboratory meetings to clear working memory and mitigate cognitive drag. Autonomic Inoculation Through Physical Stress (33:26) Autonomic control can be conditioned through physical stressors to produce automatic psychological regulation. Adolphs describes using deliberate cold water immersion in an ice trough, noting that repeated exposure conditioned his autonomic nervous system to downregulate breathing and heart rate automatically. This physical adaptation transferred to everyday life, completely blunting a sudden surge of road rage during an aggressive driving encounter. Similarly, Adolphs frames ultra-endurance running as a tool for training long-horizon resilience. Because extreme physical fatigue during a 100-mile race fluctuates non-linearly, pushing through temporary despair teaches the brain not to project current misery indefinitely into the future. Such extreme physical challenges leverage advanced human perspective-taking and mental time travel, decoupling awareness from immediate discomfort to foster broader states of awe and gratitude. Adolphs emphasizes that human emotional perception is an internally constructed model built by the brain rather than an unmediated mirror of objective reality. While deliberate thermal stressors, physical endurance, and intentional digital boundaries provide tangible mechanisms for training autonomic flexibility, Adolphs contends that future affective neuroscience must move toward high-dimensional physiological readouts across multiple organ systems to fully map the interplay between bodily states and emotional control.

加州理工学院神经科学家 Ralph Adolphs 教授指出，情绪并非单纯的主观意识感受，而是一种介于刚性反射与缓慢认知规划之间的适应性功能状态；真正的情绪调节并非彻底压抑感受，而是通过认知重塑、情境规避和自主神经训练建立灵活的自动调控能力。 情绪的功能性定义与核心属性 (2:54) Adolphs 提出，科学研究应依据情绪的“功能演化目的”与运行特征进行界定，而非简单地等同于主观感受或归结为特定的大脑区域。在面对突然的环境威胁（如猛兽）时，刚性反射过于单一，而高级认知规划又耗时过长，情绪作为中间机制能够打断当前目标，赋予生存行为最高优先级。将情绪与意识体验剥离，使科学界能够客观研究非人类动物甚至人工智能的“功能性情绪”。 Adolphs 进一步归纳了情绪的几大关键属性：效价（趋向或回避）、可度量性（强度随威胁临近而升级）以及时间持续性。爱荷华大学针对双侧海马体损伤失忆症患者的实验表明，即使患者因短时记忆丧失而迅速忘记悲伤短片的内容，体内诱发的悲伤情绪状态依然持续存在，证明情绪的神经生理状态具有独立于陈述性记忆的持续维持机制。 恐惧加工的解构与面部表情的重估 (45:58) 传统神经科学常将杏仁核视作唯一的“恐惧中枢”，但 Adolphs 与 Justin Feinstein 等人的实验对此作出了修正。对双侧杏仁核彻底损毁的 Patient S.M. 案例研究显示，该患者面对活蛇、蜘蛛和恐怖屋等外部物理威胁时毫无恐惧感，但在吸入二氧化碳诱发血液 pH 偏低和窒息感时，却能触发剧烈的惊恐发作。这表明大脑存在分离的处理机制：外部威胁需要杏仁核参与，而内部生理失衡诱发的恐惧则绕过杏仁核，直接依赖脑干通路。 在情绪识别方面，Adolphs 与 Lisa Feldman Barrett 等人重新评估了 Paul Ekman 提出的“跨文化六大基本表情”理论。他们指出早期研究过度依赖演员摆拍和强制单选题，而在非摆拍的真实情境和开放式描述下，人们仅凭面部表情判断内在情绪的准确率其实远低于主观预期。面部情绪的感知实际上是大脑根据动态基线偏差进行的主动预测处理，而非孤立地识别单个“情绪单元”。 情绪颗粒度与多层级调节策略 (22:58) 情绪调节的基础依赖于人类特有的元认知监控能力与情绪颗粒度。Adolphs 引用 Lisa Feldman Barrett 的研究指出，能够精准区分和概念化细微的内在感受，而非笼统归为好与坏，有助于选择更具适应性的行为。Antonio Damasio 的神经学案例证实，眶额皮质损伤导致完全丧失情绪反应的患者并不会变得超理性，反而因无法评估选项的价值偏好而丧失做基本决策的能力。 在调节技术上，认知重评存在双刃剑效应：过度专注于“试图摆脱负面情绪”可能形成神经吸引子回路，反而强化焦虑。因此，Adolphs 认为最有效的方法是前端的“情境规避”，通过重构环境防止触发应激。同时，情绪调节的最高境界并非僵化的模式，而是类似于心率变异性（HRV）的情境灵活性，即根据具体的社交和任务需求自如切换策略。 生理应激训练与数字噪音的物理剥离 (33:26) 情绪调节能力可以通过生理应激训练拓展至心理应激领域。Adolphs 结合自身经验指出，长期的刻意冷水浸泡使机体应对寒冷从最初的剧烈应激转变为自主神经系统的心率与呼吸自动下降，这种适应性调节成功泛化到日常生活中，使其在遭遇路怒场景时能自动平复愤怒反应，实现低认知损耗的平稳调节。 此外，Adolphs 和 Huberman 探讨了长时间耐力运动（如 100 英里超级马拉松）对心理韧性的重构作用，这种长时程的不适打破了即时情绪预测的线性推断，有助于激发敬畏感与长远规划能力。针对现代数字环境带来的持续注意力劫持与任务切换消耗，Adolphs 在实验室坚持会议前数分钟的静默调节，并彻底退出所有社交媒体平台，通过主动消除多余的神经噪音来维护认知与情绪的自主性。 本节目阐明情绪是高度灵活且受演化塑造的生物控制系统，但目前关于高维度外周生理指标与特定情绪状态的精确对应关系、以及任务切换过程中的单神经元计算机制仍有待深入研究。神经科学展现的核心启示在于：人们所体验的外部现实是由大脑主动构建的，通过认知框架的细化、刻意的生理应激暴露与物理环境边界管理，个体能够主动塑造和优化这种内在现实。

[18:17] Ralph Adolphs: By the way, I loved your dog in the waiting room there. They would meet those criteria and they would have functional emotions. [18:17] Ralph Adolphs: There's I think no problem assigning to AI to some extent and certainly to many animals those functional emotions. Where it gets complicated is that in us, and also by assumption in animals... they also have conscious experiences of emotions. [19:31] Ralph Adolphs: If you tie emotion to the conscious experience of emotion... well, then you're not studying emotions, you're studying consciousness... As a scientific discipline, we should separate the conscious experience from the process, from the emotion, and that's the way we make progress. [22:58] Ralph Adolphs: It's a topic called emotional granularity. It's like at what—how fine a grain can you conceptualize and be aware of your own emotions. And then once you're aware of them, you can bring various emotion regulation strategies—mostly cognitive reappraisal type of strategies—to bear. [33:26] Ice shop staff: Hey, boss. Having a good party again tonight? [41:34] Ralph Adolphs: I'm actually grateful and feeling some sense of awe right now at just existing. [41:34] Ralph Adolphs: I could imagine sitting where you're sitting and I'm seeing Ralph Adolphs here [90:14] Unnamed UC San Diego Colleague: Is this any good? [102:01] Andrew Huberman: Bulldogs are probably more on the slow, mellow side... very little spontaneous movement. I think it's one of the reasons why people feel comfortable approaching a bulldog, whereas pit bulls are always kind of winding around and moving. [107:18] Ralph Adolphs: The ability to detach and decouple from the constant challenges and sensory information that's normally coming in, it's like sleep allows the brain to actually train itself and focus on particular internal regulation strategies that are then subsequently useful for dealing with the world later. [200:41] Ralph Adolphs: Why would I be? I'm already above 100% in terms of people emailing me. I don't need more. [202:07] Ralph Adolphs: Yes, but the side effects are preventing me from training for a 100-mile race.

[0:00] I see somebody come up behind me. They [0:02] can see I'm trying to park. They can [0:04] move over. No, they come right up behind [0:05] me, go on the horn, and you know, you [0:08] immediately feel just an immediate anger [0:11] response, right? [0:13] >> Well, after the ice bath, it's flat. So, [0:16] there was an immediate automatic [0:18] downregulation of my autonomic emotional [0:20] response to a psychological stressor, to [0:23] somebody honking at me that was trained [0:26] and generalized from the ice bath. It's [0:28] an experiment of one. I'm not claiming [0:29] this as a published study, but so I [0:32] think there's a there's a direct [0:34] autonomic training component as well in [0:37] terms of the strength and the [0:38] automaticity, the ease with which you [0:41] can regulate emotions that they can [0:42] become kind of automatically regulated. [0:45] You don't have to overthink it. It [0:47] becomes smooth and effortless to some [0:50] extent. And that's that's the place [0:51] where where you where you want to get. [0:53] Hey everyone. To celebrate the launch of [0:55] my new book entitled Protocols, I'm [0:57] pleased to share that I'll be hosting [0:59] three live events very soon. The first [1:01] live event is in New York City at Radio [1:04] City Music Hall on September 17th. The [1:07] second event is in Los Angeles at the [1:09] Dolby Theater on October 8th. And the [1:11] third live event is in San Francisco at [1:13] the Masonic on October 28th. At each of [1:16] these events, I'll be discussing topics [1:17] from the book and my favorite part, [1:19] taking questions directly from you, the [1:21] audience. To get tickets, you can go to [1:23] hubbermanlab.com/events [1:26] and use the code protocols to get early [1:28] access. Again, that's [1:29] hubbermanlab.com/events [1:31] and use the code protocols to get early [1:34] access to tickets. Welcome to the [1:36] Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss [1:38] science and science-based tools for [1:40] everyday life. [1:44] I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor [1:46] of neurobiology and opthalmology at [1:49] Stanford School of Medicine. My guest [1:51] today is Dr. Dr. Ralph Adolfs. Dr. Ralph [1:53] Adolfs is a professor of psychology, [1:55] neuroscience, and biology at Caltech [1:58] University and a world expert in the [2:00] neurobiology of emotions. Today, we [2:02] discuss what emotions are, how they grow [2:05] and shrink in our brain and body, and [2:07] why some emotions seem to recruit our [2:08] behavior and decision-m and some simply [2:11] don't. We also discuss where and how [2:13] emotions are mapped in the body. and we [2:15] dispel common myths about the brain body [2:17] storage of emotions from our past, which [2:20] is a very commonly discussed topic that [2:22] frankly, as you'll learn today, many, if [2:24] not most people get wrong. We also [2:26] discuss why some people are able to [2:28] observe but not react to their emotions [2:30] and what tools may assist in helping you [2:32] build better emotion regulation. As [2:34] you'll soon realize, Dr. Adolf is [2:36] uniquely positioned to explain the real [2:38] neuroscience and psychology of emotions [2:40] and how to put that information to use. [2:43] Today's conversation therefore ought to [2:44] be valuable for people of every age and [2:46] profession and for anyone interested in [2:48] improving their emotional life and [2:50] understanding of others. And now for my [2:52] conversation with Dr. Ralph Adolfs. Dr. [2:55] Ralph Adolfs. Welcome. [2:57] >> Thank you, Andrew. Pleasure to be here. [2:59] >> Longtime admirer of your work because [3:02] you're one of the few people who has [3:03] studied these things we call emotions, [3:05] brain states, cognition, and much more [3:07] in humans. There have been others in the [3:09] field of neuroscience of course, but I [3:11] would argue few people have combined a [3:14] real grounding in neuroscircuits with an [3:16] interest in what most people think of as [3:18] a psychological set of issues in a way [3:20] that also takes into account the animal [3:23] data and really the broadest picture of [3:25] this thing that we call emotions. I'm [3:26] just going to start with a statement of [3:28] gratitude. Thank you for doing that [3:29] because it's so easy for people to [3:31] stimulate a brain area, see an animal or [3:33] a human behave or speak in a certain way [3:35] and say, "Oh, this is the brain region [3:36] for this." And you've long been pushing [3:38] back on that. [3:39] >> It's a tall order, you know, and one [3:40] impetus for the work that I've been [3:42] doing in the book that I co-wrote with [3:43] David Anderson, the book uh that I have [3:46] forthcoming with Princeton University [3:48] Press, is precisely to do what you just [3:50] said is to kind of integrate and pull [3:52] together uh findings and emotion from [3:54] animal studies, findings from social [3:56] psychology. Typically, those people in [3:58] those fields don't talk to one another. [4:00] They do very different studies, very [4:02] different methodologies. And so trying [4:04] to integrate across disciplines that are [4:06] that far apart to really try and get a [4:09] get a sense for what are emotions in a [4:11] sense that would satisfy psychologists [4:14] and lay people about human emotions but [4:16] they would also speak to the mechanisms [4:18] that you can study in mice for example [4:20] or flies as David Anderson does. [4:22] >> So how do you think about emotions and [4:25] how do they relate to brain and bodily [4:27] states? The basic answer is that I think [4:30] of emotions as functional states of a [4:33] particular type. They should be [4:35] understood by what they do, their [4:37] function rather than how they happen to [4:39] be constituted in the human brain or [4:41] differently in an octopus nervous system [4:43] or in an AI which we should talk about. [4:45] Um and so the way to situate them is to [4:49] think of control of behavior in response [4:52] to particular types of environmental [4:54] challenges. So at the sort of simplest [4:56] level, you would have reflexes. You [4:58] know, I put my hand out on a hot stove [5:00] or you tap the patellar tendon on my [5:02] knee and there's like a very rigid [5:04] behavior that's adaptive that's very [5:06] rigid, but just for that particular [5:08] circumstance, I withdraw my hand. That's [5:10] a reflex. At the opposite end, you would [5:13] have, you know, goal-directed [5:15] general valition and planning [5:17] everything, you know, the stuff we do [5:18] all the time that's extremely flexible. [5:21] And so if you have a bear or a tiger, [5:24] you know, something charging at you, [5:26] that challenge requires a control of [5:28] behavior that's intermediate between [5:30] those two extremes. I can't have a [5:31] reflex for a bear if it's far away or if [5:34] it's close or if it's a rattlesnake or [5:36] or or a tiger or all the different kinds [5:38] of potential threats out there. Instead, [5:41] I need something that's more flexible, [5:42] which emotions are. So that's the sort [5:45] of big picture that emotions are [5:47] functional states that have particular [5:50] features or operating characteristics [5:53] for dealing with certain types of [5:55] environmental challenges like running [5:56] away from a bear. I mean first of all I [5:58] think the question what is an emotion is [6:01] a good and a valid question. It's not an [6:03] illposed question. You occasionally run [6:05] into the view that well emotions don't [6:08] really exist or we don't really you [6:10] can't really say anything about them. [6:11] question is just ill-posed or [6:13] meaningless. I don't think that's the [6:14] case. Paul Griffith's philosopher wrote [6:17] a book some years ago, I think 97 or so, [6:20] what emotions really are, uh, where he [6:23] first kind of made the claim that, well, [6:25] they don't really exist, you know, and [6:27] you could see how people come to that [6:29] conclusion if you survey all the [6:30] different theories that are out there, [6:32] Joe Leoo or Lisa Feldman Barrett or Paul [6:35] Ecman, they look pretty different. And [6:38] so you might come away with the [6:39] impression, look, even the experts can't [6:41] agree on what emotions are. The words we [6:44] have for emotions predate modern [6:46] science. So it's just a confused [6:48] concept. I don't think that's the case. [6:50] I think I mean there's room for [6:52] revision, but I think everybody kind of [6:54] knows what emotions are and I think it [6:57] deserves a straight answer that science [7:00] should provide. I think the question is [7:02] well posed enough to admit of an answer [7:05] and then how could you start getting to [7:08] an answer. So let's just start sort of [7:10] from the simplest case would be to list [7:13] some examples. So you could say well you [7:15] know emotions are anger, fear, disgust. [7:18] You could list specific examples that [7:20] are uncontentious I would hope where [7:22] pretty much everybody agrees. Okay, [7:24] these are examples of emotions right? [7:26] You could do the same if I asked you [7:27] what's a car, right? And you would say, [7:29] well, you know, it's a Mercedes and a [7:31] Honda and a Toyota. Or if I asked you, [7:34] what's a bird? And you would say, it's a [7:35] robin and a hummingbird and an eagle. So [7:38] you could list examples. That's not an [7:40] answer yet. What you would then want to [7:42] say is, well, what is it in virtue of [7:44] which these examples, what makes them [7:47] all instances of an emotion? What do [7:50] fear, anger, etc. share in common? What [7:53] features do they have that makes them [7:54] emotions? just like what the cars or the [7:57] bird species have in common that makes [8:00] them cars or birds. And so David [8:02] Anderson and I did that in our book a [8:05] decade ago or so now the neuroscience of [8:07] emotion where we listed some features of [8:11] emotions that helps to answer the [8:12] question and sort of get a handle on [8:14] what is it that these all share in [8:16] common. I elaborate on that and have a [8:18] longer list and really go into detail [8:20] and okay so what are the features of [8:22] emotions in my forthcoming book? Maybe [8:25] I'll just list a couple to go through [8:27] them quickly. So, one feature of [8:29] emotions is priority, which is that they [8:32] can take over your behavior that they [8:34] share in common with reflexes. If I put [8:36] my head on a hot stove, you know, I [8:38] can't help but withdraw it. And if [8:40] you're suddenly confronted by the bear, [8:42] you can't help but run away or crawl [8:44] into a ball or whatever your adaptive [8:45] behavior is. So they have priority and [8:48] interrupt your behavior which is [8:50] something that the the noble laurate [8:52] Herbert Simon already pointed out in a [8:54] paper back in the 50s or 60s that [8:57] they're interrupt mechanisms of a [8:59] certain kind. If you're just going about [9:00] your business and normal goal- directed [9:03] behavior you always need to be [9:04] monitoring for the bear or the tiger the [9:07] predator that's out there and if you [9:09] detect that emotions have to take over [9:11] or you're dead. So priority is sort of [9:13] one that doesn't distinguish emotions [9:16] from reflexes or fixed action patterns. [9:18] They they share that. Another one is [9:21] veilance that psychologists ubiquitously [9:23] mention which is sort of the simplest [9:27] dimension along which you can organize [9:29] emotions in terms of their similarity. [9:32] So anger, disgust, fear you might say [9:35] are more similar to one another than [9:36] either of those is with say happiness. [9:38] There's some similarity structure. Some [9:40] emotions cluster together. Some are [9:42] further apart and the simplest dimension [9:44] which is one that Charles Darwin already [9:47] mentioned in his book the expression of [9:48] the emotion in man and animals he called [9:51] it principle of antithesis is veilance [9:53] which is approach or avoid pleasant or [9:56] unpleasant this basic veilance [9:59] dimension. Are there any neutral [10:01] emotions? I I ask this because your [10:04] colleague at Caltech who I respect [10:06] tremendously, Marcus Meister once wrote [10:08] a review where he said, you know, a good [10:10] way to think about sensory systems and [10:12] maybe neural systems of all kind is that [10:14] they're encoding for yum, yuck, or meh. [10:17] >> And the me is a very interesting one. [10:19] Just like an animal or including us can [10:21] go forward, backward, or stay put. Now, [10:23] we can go side to side, too, of course. [10:25] Those are just different versions of [10:26] forward in in this context. And I [10:28] sometimes wonder because algorithms are [10:31] repurposed across different neural [10:32] systems if there is indeed a meh emotion [10:36] or maybe the emotion is meh. I don't [10:38] want to take us down a philosophical [10:40] path but does that make sense because as [10:41] as long as we're talking about veilance [10:43] >> sure anger and happiness clearly you [10:46] know sad and happy okay opposite ends of [10:48] the spectrum but what was it apathy is [10:51] there a state of prioritization of doing [10:53] nothing? It's a really good question. I [10:55] mean I think you know when you list [10:56] these features um like priority veilance [11:00] I I'll get to some others. One question [11:03] is which of these are necessary? Um you [11:05] know like a package of uh all of these [11:08] features uh that emotions have. Do you [11:11] need all of them or can are some of them [11:13] sufficient? And I think the answer is [11:15] some of them are sufficient but there's [11:16] some that are necessary. I think [11:18] priority is necessary. I think veilance [11:20] maybe not as you were alluding to. I [11:22] could imagine there's still veilance but [11:25] it's at a neutral region of the of the [11:28] spectrum. But then there's other ones [11:30] which are the ones that David Anderson [11:31] has studied in particular in the [11:32] hypothalamus in mice and I think goes [11:35] into great detail in the podcast that [11:37] you had with them which are scalability [11:39] and temporal persistence. And so [11:41] scalability would be that an emotion can [11:44] scale in intensity. uh one of the best [11:47] examples of that has been is is for the [11:50] case of fear and the bear coming at you. [11:52] So typically it would scale from anxiety [11:55] and monitoring you know there's the bear [11:56] sort of out there to fear where you [11:59] might run away or hide to panic. So that [12:02] sort of threat imminence scalability and [12:05] that's something where emotions are [12:07] different now from reflexes because [12:08] reflexes are binary. It's all or [12:10] nothing. I either pull my hand away or [12:12] nothing. The knee jerks or not. It's not [12:14] there's not like some scalable package [12:16] in there. And then temporal persistence [12:19] is even more something that's essential [12:21] to emotions and speaks to their function [12:24] which is you have this internal state [12:26] let's say of aggression or of fear that [12:29] has to last some time because the the [12:32] bear might be around for some time. So [12:34] you might be running away or you might [12:36] be attacking in anger. Those are phasic [12:38] little bouts but the actual internal [12:41] state that is motivating those persists [12:43] for quite a long time. So temporal [12:45] persistence is really important and it [12:47] allows the person or the animal to [12:50] incorporate lots and lots of information [12:52] that's coming in and to have a [12:54] motivational state that would be suited [12:56] for that kind of environmental [12:57] challenge. It's not like a hot plate [12:59] where if you pull your hand away you're [13:00] done. The bear is out there and it might [13:02] might come back. It might still be [13:04] lurking in the forest. So you better be [13:05] afraid for some period of time. David [13:08] Anderson studied this a lot in terms of [13:10] what neural circuits, what properties of [13:13] neurotransmitters in the brain could [13:15] actually implement persistence. Would [13:17] you have really slow neurotransmitters [13:19] like neuropeptides for instance, which [13:20] is what he studied. But my colleagues at [13:22] the University of Iowa actually did a [13:25] really cool study in humans that showed [13:27] the temporal persistence of emotions [13:30] independent of memory. So here's a [13:32] study. They took patients with amnesia. [13:35] So these were like four or five people [13:37] who had medial temporal lo hippocample [13:40] damage. They live in a time window of [13:42] maybe a minute or so. I used to study [13:44] these patients when I first started as a [13:46] posttock at the University of Iowa with [13:48] with Damasio. And you know, you can talk [13:50] to them, you they can uh process [13:53] information, but if you go to the toilet [13:54] and you come back five minutes later, [13:56] they would stand up and shake your hand, [13:58] introduce themselves to you because they [14:00] would have no recollection of having met [14:02] you before. So just no memory, very [14:04] strong antrograde amnesia as it's [14:06] called. So they had those end controls. [14:08] They showed them really sad movie clips [14:10] in all cases. The patients can [14:13] understand and watch the movie clip. [14:14] They get really sad and weepy. Right [14:17] after watching these sad movie clips, [14:18] everybody rates, "How sad do you feel?" [14:21] The amusement patients feel really sad. [14:23] The controls feel really sad. You wait [14:25] five minutes. You then ask the controls, [14:28] "Well, how do you how sad do you feel?" [14:29] And they say, "Yeah, I still feel a [14:30] little bit of sad sadness in me because [14:33] I remember having seen the movie." And [14:35] if you ask them, "Why do you feel sad?" [14:37] They say, "Well, because you showed me [14:38] the sad movie 5 minutes ago." The [14:40] amnesic patients, you ask, "How do you [14:42] feel?" They say, "I feel really sad and [14:44] I don't know why. I have no idea." and [14:46] you ask them, "Do you remember seeing a [14:48] movie?" Say, "Nope." There's like no [14:50] declarative memory of the movie, but [14:52] there's still the temporal persistence [14:54] of the sadness. It lasts some time. [14:57] >> So, I thought this was a really cool [14:58] study because it showed very clearly [15:00] that there is temporal persistence in [15:02] emotions and sadness probably has one of [15:04] the longest time constants as we know [15:06] from personal experience. But it's [15:08] separate from just declarative memory. [15:10] It's not that you're remembering that [15:11] the bear is there. That's going on too. [15:13] But independently of that, the emotion [15:15] state has its own temporal persistence. [15:18] The state has to last some time. And [15:20] again, that's something that reflexes [15:21] don't have. It just goes straight [15:23] through. There's there's no temporal [15:24] persistence. [15:26] >> I'd like to take a quick break and [15:27] acknowledge our sponsor, Helix Sleep. 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[18:07] If you'd like to try Rora, you can go to [18:09] roora.com/huberman [18:11] and get an exclusive discount. Again, [18:13] that's rura r o r a.com/huberman. [18:17] It is striking to me that maybe 30 years [18:20] or ago or so, there was discussion about [18:22] whether animals have emotions based on [18:24] these criteria, priority, veilance, [18:26] scalability and persistence. Is it [18:29] generally agreed upon that animals have [18:32] emotions? I believe they do because I [18:33] love my dog and other animals and I want [18:35] to believe that. But as scientists, if [18:37] we step back, do they meet the criteria [18:38] for emotions that you're setting up here [18:40] for us? [18:41] >> Absolutely. Yes. So if you have those [18:43] criteria, those functional criteria and [18:46] you would add one or two others, many [18:48] states in animals and certainly the [18:50] states that we would ordinarily [18:52] interpret as emotions in our pets, in [18:55] our dogs, cats. By the way, I loved your [18:57] dog in the in the waiting room there. [19:00] They would meet those criteria and they [19:02] would have functional emotions. [19:04] >> Uh we should talk more about this is [19:06] also the the claim now from anthropic [19:08] that large language models have [19:10] functional emotions as well. [19:11] >> That's so wild. we have to return to [19:12] that because I think it it kind of [19:14] boggles the mind you know how could a [19:16] machine have emotions but [19:18] >> well but again these are functionally [19:19] defined emotions and there's I think [19:21] there's no problem assigning to AI to [19:24] some extent and certainly to many [19:27] animals uh those functional emotions [19:29] where it gets complicated is that in us [19:31] and also by assumption in animals I have [19:35] no doubt they also have conscious [19:37] experiences of emotions and most people [19:41] take the conscious experience of the [19:43] emotion as the ground truth for the [19:46] emotion. Emotions without conscious [19:48] experiences of emotions sound like an [19:49] oxymoron. It's like you can't have that. [19:52] They the conscious experience is the [19:53] emotion, [19:54] >> which is what William James said, which [19:56] is what Joe Leoo says. And I think it's [19:58] implicitly there across essentially [20:00] every psychological theory is the [20:02] assumption that emotions really are [20:05] types of conscious experiences which I [20:07] think is the intuition that if I ask you [20:09] how do you know what's the ground truth [20:11] right how do you know you're having an [20:13] emotion you would say because it's a [20:15] certain type of conscious experience [20:17] because of how it feels. And if I asked [20:19] you more specifically how do you know [20:21] it's sadness versus anger versus fear [20:24] you would say because of how they feel. [20:25] They feel different. And so we take the [20:28] conscious experience, our own [20:30] introspective access to the conscious [20:31] experience as the ground truth. That has [20:35] a lot of problems associated with it. [20:37] Deep philosophical problems. But just [20:39] practically it has two big problems that [20:42] I think science should avoid. One is it [20:45] gets really problematic to know whether [20:46] or not animals have emotions because we [20:49] don't know how to test whether or not [20:51] they have conscious experiences. I have [20:53] no doubt that they do. It's just that [20:55] there's no scientific way to test [20:57] currently. So we should have different [20:58] criteria. And the other question is if [21:00] you tie emotion to the the conscious [21:04] experience of emotion, that is you [21:05] equate you conflate emotions with [21:08] feelings. Well, then you're not studying [21:10] emotions, you're studying consciousness. [21:12] We spoke about Kristoff Kau earlier. [21:14] Great respect for people that are [21:16] studying consciousness, but I don't want [21:18] to study consciousness. That's too hard. [21:20] >> And there's lots and lots of debates and [21:22] disagreements. So if we can avoid that [21:25] and study emotions in the absence of [21:28] needing to study conscious experiences [21:30] of emotions, we can move forward with [21:32] the science which is what every other [21:34] discipline does. So if you're a vision [21:37] researcher, right? So you study vision, [21:40] you study consciousness. No, you don't [21:41] you don't need to. I mean you can but [21:43] there's a huge amount of work that [21:45] people do studying vision and how that [21:47] works in the brain studying memory you [21:50] know any other cognitive process without [21:53] needing to study conscious experiences [21:56] they're typically accompanied in humans [21:57] and if you if you talk to the lay person [21:59] on the street and you say I'm a vision [22:01] researcher they take you to be studying [22:04] the conscious experience of seeing [22:06] perhaps or if you say I'm a memory [22:08] researcher they take you to be studying [22:10] the conscious experience of recollection [22:12] But scientifically most people working [22:14] in those fields don't study [22:15] consciousness and it's perfectly valid [22:17] to study vision and memory you know in [22:19] in in horseshoe crabs or alesia where [22:22] nobody has any claims about [22:24] consciousness. We should do the same [22:25] thing with emotion and then we can have [22:27] an integrated science across species [22:30] that can move forward without needing to [22:32] tackle the difficult problem of [22:34] consciousness. Again, yes, for sure we [22:38] and other animals have conscious [22:39] experiences of emotions and that's very [22:42] important. But we also have conscious [22:43] experiences of seeing and memory. As a [22:45] scientific discipline, we should [22:47] separate the conscious experience from [22:49] the process from the emotion and that's [22:51] the way we make progress. That's the one [22:53] of the main arguments that David and I [22:55] had in our book and that I reiterate in [22:57] the forthcoming book. At risk of taking [23:00] us in a philosophical direction, I'd [23:01] like to actually ask a biological [23:04] psychological question. Given these [23:06] criteria, you know, priority, veilance, [23:08] scalability, and persistence, but really [23:10] focusing mainly on priority. I think all [23:12] of us have had the experience of an [23:14] emotion coming on, but not in its kind [23:17] of overtaking maximal form. Like, okay, [23:19] we feel ourselves getting annoyed and we [23:21] can observe the emotion growing. The [23:24] arousal state is familiar to us. We [23:26] understand. Let's assume in this example [23:28] that we understand why it's happening. [23:30] Maybe you're in line at the store and [23:31] the person ahead of you is taking [23:32] everybody's time by doing something [23:35] that's really unnecessary and kind of [23:37] obnoxious to us in that moment. And so [23:38] our frustration is is rising and we are [23:40] observing the emotion even though the [23:43] emotion is us, right? It's within us. [23:46] And then at some point we might blurt [23:48] something out or we might feel compelled [23:50] that we have to just say, "Excuse me, [23:51] like could this maybe be taken care of?" [23:53] >> But you have some control. [23:54] >> You have some control. And and there's [23:56] this almost like running together of two [23:58] consciousnesses like there's like two of [24:00] us in there at the same time observing [24:03] self observing the outside world and [24:05] then at some point the prioritization [24:07] gets to the point where like we just do [24:10] something and sometimes it's a decision [24:11] and sometimes it overtakes us. Now at [24:13] the opposite extreme, we've all observed [24:15] I you can just go on X the social media [24:17] platform and for some reason the [24:18] algorithm likes to serve up a lot of [24:20] examples of people like on planes losing [24:22] it, people get going unhinged like you [24:24] know I like people just like completely [24:25] melting down and it's and it's very uh [24:28] in our language hypothalamic, right? And [24:30] so people are are drawn to that. [24:32] >> I have an antidote to those people. [24:34] >> They should take ice baths. I can tell [24:35] you more. Take ice baths. I think this [24:37] helps seriously. [24:38] >> Yeah. Well, ice baths. Yeah, let's [24:39] definitely talk about ice pass and ultra [24:41] um ultra races because uh you you're [24:43] training for one. [24:44] >> No, but I think I think what you said is [24:46] exactly right and extremely important [24:48] for humans and probably unique to humans [24:51] as opposed to other animals which is [24:53] that we can be conscious of and monitor [24:55] our own emotions and by doing so we can [24:59] regulate them to some extent. So emotion [25:01] regulation and control and monitoring [25:03] emotion being aware of what emotion you [25:05] have those two go hand in hand and your [25:07] Stanford colleague you know James Gross [25:10] start spawned this huge field in the '9s [25:13] I guess when it started of emotion [25:14] regulation that is now huge um I just [25:18] finished my term as co-editor of this [25:20] journal a effect of science and I would [25:23] say like a quarter or so or a third of [25:26] the submissions are about emotion [25:29] regulation it is so important in in in [25:32] humans and most of pathologies and [25:34] difficulties about emotions are not [25:36] about the emotion per se. It's about our [25:38] ability or disability to control them to [25:41] regulate them. [25:42] >> If you don't mind, um because of your [25:45] understanding of emotions and states and [25:48] and neuroscience, but also your [25:50] experience as a human in the world, has [25:52] anything you've learned changed the way [25:54] that you watch your emotions grow, [25:56] decide when to step in, when not to step [25:58] in? you don't seem like an impulsive [25:59] person. So, we're not but most people [26:00] aren't. We're not talking about uh [26:02] pathology here. And I'll seed this [26:04] question by saying, you know, I have a [26:05] few friends who were in tier one special [26:08] operations and you know, that's [26:09] high-risisk, high consequence work. [26:10] We've had Alex Honold on the podcast, [26:12] high-risisk, high consequence endeavors. [26:14] Um, and they all say the same thing, [26:16] which are that emotions cloud logical [26:19] judgment. So, they're somehow far from [26:21] emotions or their emotions don't get [26:23] prioritized. But of course these are [26:25] this all of these people that come to [26:27] mind have you know healthy marriages now [26:30] you know healthy families they they're [26:32] loving people they have anger they have [26:34] they have emotions but they they've sort [26:36] of categorized emotions as cloud [26:38] judgment in the professional or you know [26:40] peak performance context. Therefore they [26:42] don't allow them to be prioritized. [26:44] Sounds a little bit robotic sounds a [26:46] little bit mechanical quote unquote on [26:48] the spectrum. people like will say these [26:50] things, right? But in some ways, [26:54] provided they're allowed to allow [26:55] themselves to be emotional emotional and [26:58] let emotions quote unquote take over in [27:00] the right context, that's kind of the [27:02] ideal circumstance, right? So, so what [27:04] do you know that allow that has impacted [27:06] the way that you think about emotion [27:08] regulation that perhaps people could [27:10] consider if not benefit from? [27:12] >> Yeah, I think it's, you know, it's a [27:13] mixture. On the one hand, you absolutely [27:16] need emotions. If you have no emotions [27:18] as we know from Antonio Damasio's [27:21] original work in his book Daycart's [27:22] error uh which he put out just as I was [27:25] starting as a posttock in Iowa 1994 I [27:27] think you know if you have massive [27:29] frontal lobe lesions that make it the [27:31] case that you're no longer emotionally [27:33] responding to stimuli the consequences [27:35] are devastating which is that you cannot [27:38] make decisions complex decisions in your [27:40] life you can't organize your life you're [27:42] not motivated to take the right path [27:44] through life because you don't feel one [27:46] one way or the other about the different [27:48] options that are available. So, it's [27:50] clear that not having emotions is very [27:52] bad and certainly if you were out facing [27:54] the bear, which may not happen to too [27:55] many people these days, that would be [27:57] very bad. On the other hand, being able [28:00] to regulate them and control them um is [28:03] definitely a human skill that's very [28:05] important and that helps you a lot. The [28:07] first part is what you were talking [28:08] about first uh earlier which is the [28:11] ability to uh monitor your emotions to [28:15] identify your emotions. I think Lisa [28:16] Felman Barrett actually first did the [28:18] main work on this. It's a topic called [28:21] emotional granularity. It's like at what [28:23] how fine a grain can you conceptualize [28:27] and be aware of your own emotions. [28:29] >> And then once you're aware of them, you [28:32] can bring em various emotion regulation [28:34] strategies mostly cognitive reappraisal [28:36] type of strategies to bear on the [28:39] emotion and thereby to some extent [28:41] control your emotions. How important is [28:43] it to use language to provide that [28:47] granularity? I've certainly experienced [28:49] like feeling a bunch of things around a [28:51] particular scenario and it if you can't [28:54] separate out the elements, it can feel [28:56] overwhelming. People always say if you [28:58] can name the emotion, but I I find that [28:59] a little tricky because sometimes it's [29:01] not one emotion. It's a bunch of things. [29:03] It's confusion. It's frustration. Are [29:05] those the same thing? I don't know, you [29:07] know. And and I think many people, [29:10] >> myself included, sometimes just like it [29:12] just feels like too much. Not because [29:15] the emotion is so big, but because it's [29:17] such a tangled jungle of of where there [29:19] isn't really language to disinfect. [29:22] >> Absolutely. Yeah. I don't think you need [29:23] to put it into language. And I think [29:24] people's strategies vary. Some people, [29:26] you know, some people think in words, [29:28] some people think in pictures, most [29:30] people are a mixture. And if you look at [29:32] different languages, you know, if you're [29:34] French or German speaking like me, [29:37] bilingual, we have different words for [29:39] different emotions. But you need some [29:42] sense of the concept which I think the [29:44] concepts for emotions are pretty much [29:46] universal across languages. Uh so you [29:49] know there there all these different [29:50] examples of emotion words from different [29:52] languages like shoden fo is one that [29:55] people know now you know joy at another [29:57] person's misfortune from the German uh [29:59] gigiel I think is often trumpeted as [30:02] another example. I forget what the [30:04] culture is but this is the emotion you [30:05] feel if something is just unbearably [30:08] cute. There's a great book uh Tiffany [30:10] Watts Smith has a book I think it's [30:11] called the book of human emotions which [30:13] is basically like a little uh dictionary [30:16] an entry from a toz of all the different [30:19] emotion words in different languages but [30:23] the fact that we don't have a word for [30:25] gig or for shaden for in English you [30:27] perfectly well have the concept I just [30:29] described it to you you have no problem [30:31] understanding what the emotion is and so [30:32] I think as long as you have some kind [30:34] some concept which need not be put into [30:36] words some way to think about and [30:39] differentiate the different emotions [30:41] that are going on in you that gives you [30:44] a purchase on your ability to to some [30:47] extent evaluate them and say this is an [30:49] emotion I want or this is an emotion [30:51] that I don't want and then to act on it [30:54] through various strategies cognitive [30:56] reappraisal for example or acceptance [30:58] depending on what your strategy is [31:01] >> yeah the psychologists seem to disagree [31:02] here because um many people some who've [31:05] been on this podcast all of whom are [31:07] experts will say you know if you don't [31:09] allow yourself to feel the emotion then [31:10] it grows and other people will say well [31:12] if you focus on something then it grows [31:14] and um and this is where I think [31:16] neuroscience can be of great help [31:17] because probably both things are true [31:19] and it depends on the context but [31:21] >> yeah that's exactly right [31:22] >> maybe this is a good opportunity to talk [31:23] about um sort of dynamic attractor [31:26] states which is and I don't throw out [31:28] that language to confuse people but but [31:30] there is this idea in neuroscience right [31:32] like if we if you and I both you know [31:33] talk about this cup and I slide it [31:35] forward and then we start looking at it [31:36] and you know more and more brain brain [31:38] circuits are going to be devoted to. We [31:39] could spend several hours. It's not a [31:41] very interesting conversation, but [31:43] >> we if we do that about an emotion we [31:45] feel because of something somebody said [31:46] to us at work or online. I think we're [31:48] all familiar with the idea that we can [31:49] go down these rabbit holes within our [31:51] own mind. [31:51] >> Absolutely. [31:52] >> And it's a very dangerous way to live [31:55] >> and just knowing that it exists perhaps [31:57] can be helpful but because it's almost [31:59] like if you go far enough down a path, [32:01] it's like a horror movie. If you go far [32:02] enough down a path, it's very hard to [32:04] extract yourself. [32:05] >> Absolutely. Absolutely. I think I mean [32:06] cognitive reappraisal or any other sort [32:09] of complex reappraisal strategy for [32:11] emotions it is a double-edged sword and [32:14] it it's trainable. It's as you say if I [32:17] really focus on okay now you know I'm [32:19] starting to feel sad. I really don't [32:21] want to feel sad. I really don't want to [32:22] feel sad. I really don't want to feel [32:23] sad. Well the more I think about it the [32:25] sadder I get. Right. [32:26] >> Um or same with anxiety. Some emotions [32:28] are probably more prone to going down [32:29] this rabbit hole than others. But again, [32:31] it's a trainable skill that there are [32:33] other ways of dealing with it where you [32:34] can kind of just stop that process from [32:37] going down at all. You want to stop it [32:39] at the earliest front end. I mean, one [32:41] quick answer to the question of what's [32:43] the most successful strategy is the [32:45] earlier you can stop that process, the [32:48] better. And so, in the first place, [32:50] don't get yourself into a situation [32:51] where you're going to be anxious or [32:53] guilty or sad or whatever emotion you [32:54] want to avoid. So situational avoidance [32:57] just in terms of structuring your [32:58] environment would be one strategy and [33:00] then once you're in it I think it's [33:02] idiosyncratic to a large extent. So you [33:04] would have to figure out what works for [33:06] you but it's definitely trainable. Two [33:08] parts are trainable. One is the specific [33:10] strategy so you can do cognitive [33:13] reappraisal without overthinking it and [33:15] going down the rabbit hole and actually [33:16] feeling the emotion even more. And the [33:18] other one is just the strength and [33:21] automaticity of control that you have. [33:24] Which brings me to the ice bath. So [33:26] briefly talk about the ice because this [33:27] is relevant actually. So I I started [33:30] doing these a while back. One of my [33:33] former colleagues Justin Feinstein who [33:34] now runs a a float clinic on Maui. Um I [33:38] forget how it came about, but we were [33:40] talking about floating ice baths and he [33:43] mentioned you and he mentioned Wimhof [33:45] and said, you know, take a look at these [33:46] guys. And I saw, you know, whims [33:47] swimming in some frozen lake. Looked [33:50] kind of interesting. Anyway, so I [33:51] started doing ice baths some time ago. [33:53] They weren't that popular yet back then. [33:55] And now my wife bought Amazon like a [33:58] horse watering trough or some big thing. [34:00] Insulated it, put on a lot safer than [34:03] being out on a lake, too. [34:04] >> Put on the talk about that. [34:05] >> And I get, you know, these 40 lb ice [34:07] bags every week. They know me very well [34:09] at at Joe's Ice up there. Every time I [34:11] go in, they say, "Hey, boss. Having a [34:13] good party again tonight?" Yep. cuz I [34:15] can eat a lot of ice. But so this is the [34:17] interesting thing when I start first [34:19] week it is terrible super painful. You [34:22] know you go in it's like a whole body [34:23] cold pressure task right second week [34:26] it's also you know your breathing goes [34:27] up your heart rate goes up but gradually [34:31] and kind of with some automaticity to [34:33] it. Now I go into the ice bath [34:36] immediately my heart rate goes down my [34:38] breathing goes down I beget I get super [34:41] relaxed. So this is the interesting part [34:43] that I propose of emotion regulation. It [34:46] generalizes for me. This is an [34:48] experiment of one, but for me it [34:49] generalizes. So previously prior to the [34:53] ice bath and driving around Pasadena and [34:55] I don't know in the last year or two, [34:58] this seems to have risen somehow. I'm [35:01] trying to park on the street. There's a [35:03] lane next to me. I have my signal out. [35:06] There's a parking space. It's clear what [35:07] I'm trying to do. I see somebody come up [35:09] behind me. They can see I'm trying to [35:11] park. They can move over. No, they come [35:13] right up behind me, go on the horn, and [35:15] you know, you immediately feel just an [35:18] immediate anger response, right? [35:21] >> Well, after the ice bath, it's flat. So, [35:24] there was an immediate automatic [35:26] downregulation of my autonomic emotional [35:28] response to a psychological stressor, [35:31] somebody honking at me, [35:33] >> that was trained and generalized from [35:35] the ice bath. It's an experiment of one. [35:36] And I'm not claiming this as a published [35:38] study, but so I think there's a there's [35:41] a direct autonomic training component as [35:44] well in terms of the strength and the [35:46] automaticity, the ease with which you [35:48] can regulate emotions that they can [35:50] become kind of automatically regulated. [35:53] You don't have to overthink it. It [35:55] becomes smooth and effortless to some [35:58] extent. And that's that's the place [35:59] where where you where you want to get. [36:01] I've known Whim a long time and um [36:03] although I sometimes in my opinion [36:05] unfairly get tacked to the the [36:07] deliberate cold exposure as we call it [36:09] thing a little too much because we talk [36:10] about many things on this podcast not [36:12] just that I do find it very useful and [36:14] years ago my lab had collaborations with [36:16] the special operations community and [36:17] they'll tell you that the one of the [36:19] reasons it's such a wonderful tool is [36:21] it's so reliable. You always get an [36:24] increase in adrenaline, norepinephrine [36:26] in the brain, and to some extent, and [36:28] this might surprise you, perhaps not, [36:30] you get often reductions in cortisol, [36:32] which is kind of paradoxical, but when [36:34] people practice, it's very reliable, and [36:36] provided it's not so cold or it's an [36:38] open lake where you [36:38] >> reliable and super efficient and safe [36:41] unless you're doing it in a lake or [36:42] you're doing hyperventilation. [36:43] >> 5 minutes after a shower, it's extremely [36:45] efficient. So, I [36:46] >> was That's a lot. That's good. [36:47] >> Well, after 5 minutes, you can look at [36:49] my body mass index. After 5 minutes, I [36:51] get hypothermic. So I can't stay in [36:53] >> that's a good long while and even in a [36:55] cold shower and there are now evidence [36:57] of um improved resilience to subsequent [37:00] stressors of the sort that you described [37:02] there there's some okay papers I think [37:03] it's a wonderful tool um especially for [37:06] this uh buffering this immediate stress [37:08] or anger response very powerful [37:11] >> before we went on Mike we were talking [37:13] about a different type of stressor which [37:15] is the ultramarathons that you're [37:17] currently training for a 100 mile race [37:19] which is by the way super impressive [37:21] even to shoot for it. I know you've done [37:22] others. [37:23] >> Trying is the operative word here. [37:25] >> Well, I have I have confidence in you. [37:27] >> Talk to me in two months. [37:28] >> I will. I have confidence in you. You're [37:30] going to finish this 100 mile race. But [37:31] we were talking about something that I [37:33] think is relevant to bring up now, which [37:34] is uh you were describing how you know [37:37] at some points during the these races [37:40] you just feel like complete garbage, but [37:43] then you start to feel better. And so [37:45] then the next time you feel like [37:47] complete garbage, you have the cognitive [37:49] knowledge. Yeah. that you felt terrible [37:52] then better again and so you're starting [37:53] to integrate over longer periods of [37:55] time. So here's another example of [37:56] emotion regulation but over much longer [37:59] time scales. It's a little bit harder to [38:01] access for most people than a cold [38:03] shower. [38:03] >> No, but I think this is one thing one [38:04] one reason there many reasons but [38:06] there's one reasons that I that I love [38:07] these ultramarathons and sort of [38:09] identify as an as an ultra runner uh [38:11] even though I didn't do it for decades [38:13] and I'm just now getting back into it [38:15] because of that nonlinearity. You have [38:16] these major ups and downs and you know [38:19] sort of mantra that ultra running has [38:20] co-opted is you know relentless forward [38:22] momentum but the sort of psychological [38:25] equivalent is just relentless optimism [38:27] like optimism in the face of adversity. [38:29] You have to just keep that mindset and [38:32] everybody there is like that you know [38:33] you you come around like mile 40 mile 50 [38:35] mile 60 you come around some curve and [38:37] you look and feel like crap people go [38:40] looking good looking nobody says looks [38:44] like you're not going to make it. No, [38:45] nobody says that, right? So, everybody [38:47] is super positive. You're hanging in [38:50] there and it is really hard and you [38:51] know, you've just been going downhill, [38:53] your knees are shot, you have blisters, [38:55] you've been vomiting, super tired, and [38:58] you extrapolate and you think this this [39:01] is not going to work. But if you refuse [39:04] to give up, doesn't always work, but [39:06] about half the time or so, it levels out [39:08] and it starts going back up again. You [39:10] keep going. I mean, you feel wrecked at [39:13] mile 50. I feel wrecked or earlier mile [39:15] 30. So trying to think forward and say, [39:17] "Wow, I have to do this over again. This [39:19] is like not fathomable." [39:21] >> Uh so it's a really interesting exercise [39:23] in not giving up and being able to do [39:26] something that you think is impossible [39:28] to do. For that matter, all of your [39:30] listeners would think it's impos if any [39:32] any of your listeners went running with [39:34] me, they would conclude two things. One [39:36] is they're faster than I am. and two, [39:39] I'm not going to be able to do a 100 [39:41] miles, which means if I actually [39:43] finished the 100 miles, all of you would [39:46] be able to do so as well, which I think [39:48] is true. I think anybody can do it. [39:50] Anybody who's basically healthy if they [39:53] only wanted to, which is the key, could [39:55] actually do it. So, it's just a really [39:57] interesting exercise. You know, it's [39:59] only 30 hours. Well, only, but it's only [40:01] 30 hours. It's not like, you know, [40:02] years. How hard can it be? How bad? [40:05] Well, it's it's hard, but it's doable. [40:08] It's definitely doable. And so it's just [40:10] in that sweet spot of something that [40:12] seems impossible and is just [40:14] unbelievably hard but doable and that's [40:18] attractive somehow one if if you can do [40:20] it which of course doesn't happen all [40:21] the time. [40:22] >> Yeah. And I don't know if there are any [40:23] data on this, but there for people that [40:25] have lived through really hard things [40:27] and come out better or have pushed [40:29] themselves to deliberately do hard [40:31] things of the sort that you're [40:33] describing, I do think that the memory [40:35] of that [40:36] >> can recall our body and brain's ability [40:40] to lean into other hard things. I think [40:42] so. I mean, it must be the case. I don't [40:44] know of any good experiments on that, [40:46] but you know, was that post-traumatic [40:48] resilience, I guess they call it. You [40:49] know, I mean, some people come out of [40:51] very difficult circumstances. Maybe they [40:53] do quote unquote the work they need to [40:54] or not, and and they just say, "Okay, [40:56] like I'm better for life cuz I'm out of [40:58] it." Other people carry the wounds of [40:59] that forward in a way that they, you [41:02] know, their psychological and sometimes [41:03] their physical health is a downward [41:05] trajectory. It's a very interesting [41:07] thing about like how do how should we [41:08] conceptualize pain and pain ending? Like [41:11] some people seem to live in the [41:13] discomfort of the pain having even [41:15] happened. [41:16] >> Yeah, you can certainly persevere and [41:17] overcome you know severe adversity if [41:21] it's time limited and I think just your [41:23] own sort of belief in yourself and your [41:25] capability to overcome adversity as you [41:28] were saying is one important component. [41:31] Another one is something like gratitude [41:33] or awe [41:34] >> and you get to appreciate and just value [41:37] you know just the fact that I'm here [41:39] talking to you. I mean, I'm just I'm [41:40] actually grateful and feeling some sense [41:43] of awe right now at just existing. [41:47] >> And so, G getting to that point where [41:49] you're just every morning you wake up [41:51] and you have this sense of I guess [41:53] gratitude and awe or some combination of [41:55] those emotions, I think that's a really [41:58] valuable thing to carry out of all of [42:01] this. And, you know, it takes time to [42:02] kind of accumulate, but I like living [42:05] that way. I want to get back to the [42:07] emotion system, but I'll just I feel um [42:09] inclined to um mention we had Dhacker [42:11] Kelner on the podcast studies on awe and [42:14] he defined it so beautifully. He said [42:16] it's when we bring our attention from a [42:19] small spatial scale to a large spatial [42:21] scale or from large to small [42:23] >> but then during the course of our [42:25] discussion he added that this is also [42:27] true in the time domain. So when we live [42:29] our life dayto-day, we start to feel [42:31] kind of lost in time. Yeah. And awe [42:33] becomes less common. But when perhaps we [42:37] run a 100 mile race across 30 hours, we [42:40] realize how much can happen in 30 hours. [42:42] One could say, "Oh, well then you finish [42:44] the race and the rest of life seems [42:45] trivial." But it seems the opposite is [42:47] true that we realize that time is this [42:49] very elastic thing, at least in our [42:51] minds, and all of a sudden we have awe [42:53] for the fact that we have so many days [42:55] of life to live forward. It's very [42:56] interesting and it almost speaks to the [42:58] ice bath again like you have this very [43:00] compressed stressful experience that [43:02] gives you that gap that gap between [43:04] stimulus and response that seems very [43:06] hard to access unless we subject [43:07] ourselves to these kinds of [43:08] >> no and I think that capability the I [43:11] mean people think you know chimpanzees [43:12] maybe can feel awe but I think it it I [43:15] think it's a uniquely at least as we [43:16] have it it's uniquely human emotion and [43:19] it's based on a broad sort of [43:21] metacognitive ability we have which is [43:23] to detach our conscious experience from [43:25] the here and now and do like mental time [43:27] travel. It's pretty derivative to the [43:31] need to understand other people. So I [43:32] could put myself into your shoes right [43:34] now. I I can I can do that. I could [43:36] imagine sitting where you're sitting and [43:38] I'm seeing Ralph Adolf's here. You know, [43:40] I could imagine zooming around and [43:41] adopting another person's perspective in [43:44] space. We certainly zoom around in time [43:46] and reminisce, you know, stuff from the [43:48] past, imagine things in the future. And [43:51] I think a is like that too. We adopt a [43:53] different perspective that's not just [43:56] tied to the here and now, which I think [43:58] is probably a crucial ability that [44:01] distinguishes the nature of conscious [44:03] experience in humans, which is that we [44:04] have some control over it. I can [44:07] simulate what it's like to be you. I can [44:10] imagine being in the past or in the [44:12] future. I can zoom out broadly when I'm [44:15] feeling awe. And I think animals are [44:18] more just stuck with whatever the senses [44:21] are delivering to them right now. That's [44:23] the content of their conscious [44:25] experience. We can use it flexibly. And [44:27] that's I think why we can plan and write [44:30] novels and fiction and think about most [44:32] of the time, right? When what if I ask [44:35] you what's in your consciousness? What [44:36] are you thinking about? It's not stuff [44:38] that's in front of you. You're [44:39] daydreaming. You're like all all kinds [44:41] of places. And that really gives the [44:43] human mind the power that distinguishes [44:45] it from any other animals and is is is [44:48] the reason we have everything that we [44:49] have that makes us so so different. So [44:52] awe I think is an example of a uniquely [44:55] human emotion that deres from that that [44:58] ability to adopt a vast point of view or [45:00] a point of view that's not tied to just [45:02] whatever the senses are delivering to [45:04] you. [45:05] >> I'd like to take a quick break and [45:06] acknowledge our sponsor AG1. 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I [45:51] started taking it long before I even [45:52] knew what a podcast was. It's a great [45:54] product and it's now made even better [45:55] with the new AG1 Pro formula. If you [45:58] would like to try AG1 Pro, you can go to [46:00] drinkaga1.com/huberman [46:03] to get a special offer. AG1 is giving [46:05] away a free bottle of omega-3 co-enzyme [46:07] Q10 with your first subscription. Again, [46:10] go to drinkag1.com/huberman [46:13] to get a free bottle of omega-3 [46:14] co-enzyme Q10 with your first AG1 [46:17] subscription. As long as we're talking [46:19] about assessing the emotions or the [46:21] perspective of another, what are some [46:23] favorite experiments either yours or [46:25] others in the field about perception and [46:28] assessment of emotions? You know, I've [46:30] seen a number of studies like, oh, you [46:31] know, people with lesions here or there [46:32] see scary faces as not that scary. [46:35] What's what's the sort of general [46:37] conclusions about those studies now in [46:39] 2026? Because I have a feeling a lot of [46:41] what was in the textbooks when I was a [46:43] graduate student may may not still hold [46:45] up. When I started as a posttock in the [46:47] early 90s with Damasio, I started my [46:51] career on that topic by studying this uh [46:53] this famous patient SM who had selective [46:56] bilateral amydala lesions and the [46:57] finding was that she's unable to [47:00] perceive fear in emotional facial [47:02] expressions and [47:03] >> perceive fear. Could she feel fear? [47:04] >> Subsequently, we also did that. It took [47:07] for some reason because it's just harder [47:08] to do. It took some years. Um Justin [47:11] Feinstein who has the float uh clinic in [47:13] Maui was the first author on that paper. [47:15] So some years later we took that same [47:17] patient to haunted houses. We took her [47:19] to an exotic pet store where there were [47:21] snakes and spiders. We showed her horror [47:23] movies, a whole bunch of things and [47:25] found also she doesn't seem to [47:27] consciously experience fear either. So [47:30] there seem to be this very specific [47:32] deficit for fear tied to the amydala [47:35] from one patient. So that's a big [47:37] caveat. Does this generalize? Well, yes. [47:40] The amiga is important for fear, but [47:42] just saying it's a center for fear is [47:44] overly simplistic. It's it's embedded in [47:46] a big network of structures. There's [47:48] individual differences and so on and so [47:50] forth. The perception of emotions has [47:53] been has been studied a lot and probably [47:55] has been the topic of the most [47:57] acrimonious debates to some extent. So [47:59] Paul Ecman back in the 70s uh famous by [48:02] the way I dedicate my forthcoming book [48:04] to him because he probably had the [48:06] biggest impact on modern emotion science [48:09] of any single person. But his claim to [48:12] fame was he went to New Guinea and you [48:14] know these non-western cultures and [48:16] claimed that universally across all [48:19] cultures people recognize these [48:20] so-called basic emotions from facial [48:22] expressions. If you Google this now, you [48:24] know, emotional facial expressions, you [48:26] will find pictures of emotional facial [48:29] expressions. Lots of AI companies and [48:32] computer algorithms are predicated on [48:34] the idea that you can read out the [48:36] emotion from somebody's facial [48:37] expression. He had six of them. [48:39] Happiness, surprise, fear, anger, [48:41] disgust, and sadness. Sometimes contempt [48:44] um added in there. Well, it turns out [48:46] it's more complicated than that. And [48:47] actually Lisa Felman Barrett of all [48:49] people co-authored a paper with me and [48:52] three other people a couple of years [48:54] back that uh the title was something [48:57] like emotional facial expressions [48:59] reconsidered. We took stock of the whole [49:01] literature and asked is this really [49:03] true? Is Ecman's claim really true? Can [49:04] you tell how someone feels from their [49:06] facial expression? And the answer is [49:08] well not nearly as well as you would [49:10] think and in general not. And the [49:13] reasons are methodological and once you [49:15] think about it, they make a lot of [49:16] sense, which is that the emotional [49:18] facial expressions that Ecman pioneered, [49:20] I used them in the first 1994 nature [49:23] paper with his amydala leion patient, [49:25] >> those aren't actually what you normally [49:26] see walking around the world. People [49:28] don't have those facial expressions. [49:30] They are posed facial expressions by [49:32] actors. Yeah, they're very extreme. And [49:34] then the task is like, well, here's a [49:36] list of emotion words, happiness, fear, [49:39] anger, disgust, etc. Pick the one that [49:41] matches the face. That's the typical [49:43] task. [49:43] >> So, it's multiple choice. [49:44] >> Look, if I gave you a bunch of emoticons [49:46] and a bunch of emotion words and ask you [49:48] to match them, you could do that very [49:50] easily. Wouldn't show you anything about [49:52] emotions. It shows you that there's by [49:55] convention there's some association [49:58] between these things and these things. [49:59] That's it. So when you actually see real [50:03] world facial expressions and when [50:04] instead of giving a list you just ask [50:06] people just generate freely a word that [50:08] describes that you get something that's [50:10] much has much more variation much more [50:13] heterogeneity which then was part of the [50:15] ingredient for Lisa's whole claim that [50:19] variation is the norm and that in fact [50:21] emotions are in some sense constructed [50:24] rather than packages to be found in [50:26] nature which I disagree with that part [50:28] but emotional facial expression for the [50:30] perception of emotions in others and in [50:33] animals. Um, I was just talking before [50:35] coming in here to one of your colleagues [50:37] about your cute dog and they've done [50:41] studies, there's several studies now [50:43] where dog owners, if you ask them, can [50:45] you tell if your dog feels guilty when [50:48] you come home because it did something [50:49] bad? Dog owners are pretty convinced [50:52] they can tell. Well, if you do a control [50:54] experiment, they're a chance. They think [50:56] they can tell. So our conviction that we [50:59] can tell something about people or [51:01] animals, their their emotion states just [51:03] from looking at the facial expressions, [51:05] our conviction vastly outstrips our [51:07] accuracy. We're pretty convinced we can [51:09] do it. We're mostly not so accurate, [51:11] which makes sense because ordinarily [51:14] it's not the it's not just some facial, [51:16] you know, if I see you now and you look [51:18] sad, I wouldn't stop there and I but I [51:20] would say Andrew Huberman is sad. I [51:22] would ask you how are you feeling? [51:24] What's going on? I would probe you and [51:26] get a lot more information. Maybe you [51:27] would say, "Oh, no. I'm just this drink [51:29] I had tasted bad or something, you know, [51:31] that caused me to make a certain facial [51:32] expression." So, in general, these [51:35] artificial lab situations where all you [51:37] see is a picture of a face and asked for [51:39] the emotion. We don't do that in the [51:41] real world anyway. We would probe [51:43] further. We would take into account the [51:45] whole circumstances. We would ask the [51:47] person and then you can disambiguate [51:49] these emotions. So it's not that we [51:51] cannot tell what emotions people or [51:53] animals feel, but we don't do so [51:55] normally just from a single slice like a [51:58] facial expression. I feel like at least [52:00] in the context of romantic partnership, [52:03] so much more of our assessment of [52:05] another person and their assessment of [52:07] us is actually a mathematical [52:09] integration of noticing when frequency [52:12] of speech [52:14] >> or frequency of text is heading in a [52:16] negative direction relative to the mean, [52:19] right, at a particular time of day. And [52:20] I think the brain is really good at [52:21] saying like like normally somebody's [52:23] pretty communicative in the morning but [52:25] less at night for sake of example. But [52:27] suddenly they're like a little more tur [52:29] with us in the morning but maybe not [52:30] even harshness. There's fewer words [52:32] exchange and then the the the brain [52:34] doesn't think oh like they they looked [52:36] angry or they looked frustrated. They [52:38] you go oh like they were like a little [52:40] little quieter this morning than than [52:42] usual. And then if it's a very quiet [52:44] person you have you have fewer data [52:45] points to work from. But we become [52:47] exquisitely tuned to this. [52:49] >> Absolutely. much more than like, oh, [52:51] they're they're carrying their shoulders [52:53] differently. At the extremes, I think we [52:54] see this. Somebody walks in the door and [52:56] you can tell like they're sad. [52:57] >> We're looking for change like it's a [52:59] time series. The number of times or even [53:02] just like if you've probably had this [53:04] experience like in an email with a [53:05] colleague, let's move it to a different [53:07] domain. There's a certain kind of [53:08] language that's used in an email that's [53:10] different than the usual language. Like [53:12] they've never really used these words [53:13] before. You don't even identify which [53:15] words those are. [53:16] >> Yeah. years ago there was this chart [53:18] that some graduate student or postoc put [53:20] out that if the director of a lab signs [53:23] off with their name it means one thing [53:24] if they punctuate their email it means [53:26] like let's meet you know like you're in [53:28] trouble you know if there's just a dash [53:30] with a first initial you know there's [53:31] all this and you kind I laugh too and [53:33] then you realize you go wow like they're [53:35] really paying attention to all these [53:37] subtle cues but those seem like the kind [53:39] of cues that we rely on much more than [53:42] than like do they look sad do they sound [53:45] happy And I think we vastly [53:47] underestimate this. I don't know if [53:48] there are any good studies of this, but [53:49] this feels like the [53:50] >> more bunch of Yeah, we just finished a [53:53] study like this where people texted. [53:54] That's all they had. But it's dynamic. [53:56] It's a conversation. There's like a [53:58] whole transcript. And then the question [54:00] is, what can you tell about a person [54:01] both in terms of their stable [54:03] personality and their current mood just [54:05] from that text? It turns out you can [54:07] tell a lot. So people did the study [54:09] recently where people generated I think [54:11] it's about a page or so of sort of diary [54:14] type written text and asked just large [54:18] language models like GPT or Claude to [54:21] analyze that text without knowing [54:23] anything else and just tell me the the [54:25] personality profile and it's as good as [54:28] the ground truth or as another person or [54:30] a clinician would be [54:31] >> as good as a clinician. It gets close to [54:34] the ground truth and it's as good as [54:36] like a a a good friend or a person who [54:38] knows the person. So if you score the [54:40] big five, which is what they did in that [54:42] study, extraversion, conscientiousness, [54:43] neuroticism, etc., [54:44] >> you can tell that AI can tell that just [54:47] from a transcript of text quite well. So [54:51] the information is there clearly in what [54:54] we say, what we write and the order in [54:56] which that progresses that tells a lot [54:59] about a person enough that AI can [55:02] basically diagnose your personality from [55:04] just text. It's almost like our brain is [55:07] very attuned to when we don't get what [55:10] we were expecting to get in terms of the [55:12] amount of interaction. Like I have some [55:14] people that clean up the graffiti on the [55:16] street where I live and there's always [55:19] an exchange of hello or like a hi if one [55:21] of us is on a call or busy [55:23] >> and I can say with certainty because [55:25] this happened the other day that if I [55:26] looked over and the person saw me and [55:28] then turned away even though we we I [55:29] don't know their name. Well maybe I do [55:31] now but that there's very little [55:33] familiarity except with we always [55:35] acknowledge the other's presence. Yeah. [55:37] >> If they were to do that I would think [55:39] gosh like this person's like maybe [55:42] upset. One of the key ingredients of [55:44] Lisa Feldman Barrett's thinking [55:45] certainly in recent years which is [55:47] prediction that the most of the [55:49] information comes from the when there's [55:51] a mismatch between what you're [55:53] predicting about a circumstance and [55:55] something that's just different because [55:56] that carries information something [55:57] changed right like what you were saying [56:00] um and and Lisa's work Lisa's thinking [56:02] on emotions incorporates prediction in a [56:06] big way these days that there's [56:07] something that you're predicting about [56:08] the world but suddenly you know there's [56:10] a tiger or something unexpected and you [56:12] need to incorporate that and that [56:14] carries important information but [56:16] absolutely we're always predicting and [56:19] there's we're taking into account things [56:21] that change like the facial expressions [56:23] you know the original studies like the [56:25] ones I started doing as a postoc where [56:27] you just show these static Paul Ecman [56:30] pictures of facial affect well we never [56:32] see that in people it's always dynamic [56:35] the face is changing and so Philip Shins [56:37] Rachel Jack colleagues in Scotland for [56:40] instance have studied this in great [56:41] detail and used dynamic actual videos of [56:44] people making faces and asked at what [56:47] point does the brain start to represent [56:49] different emotions depending on not how [56:51] the face looks but how the face is [56:53] changing. [56:55] dynamics are everywhere. It's super [56:56] important [56:57] >> because when we look at babies and they [56:59] start to smile for the first time or [57:01] they express what we think is, you know, [57:03] humor or something like that, we are so [57:04] tuned to faces because they they can't [57:06] really do much. And whether or not [57:08] they're interacting with us or not is [57:11] really dependent on our behavior. [57:13] There's a lot of control there. We're [57:14] putting them in front of us. As they [57:16] develop more autonomy, then these sorts [57:18] of dynamics really emerge. Right. The [57:20] face I mean the face is visible and the [57:22] face the human face has way more muscles [57:24] and control than other animals do. Great [57:27] apes have similar sets of muscles but [57:29] monkeys or your dog. You can't make [57:32] those kinds of faces. It just side every [57:34] once in a while and I project onto him [57:36] what that's about. But he's a real [57:38] sweetie. I had another bulldog mut. [57:40] They're both mutza who is much much more [57:43] coarse, less affectionate. This one is [57:44] like pure butter. But of course I don't [57:46] know what's going on in his head. He [57:48] could be thinking like this guy's the [57:49] biggest jerk in the world, you know, [57:50] like I we should be walking right now. [57:52] This patient SM who had bilateral [57:55] amydala lesions, could she experience [57:58] autonomic arousal? Could she experience [58:00] stress? Could she experience anxiety [58:02] under any conditions? [58:03] >> She could. Um, and that and that's [58:05] really important. So, it's you might [58:07] think that, you know, it's just like the [58:09] whole emotion system is gone. You just [58:11] sort of denerated the entire autonomic [58:13] nervous system and that's why you don't [58:15] have emotions. But it's much more [58:17] specific than that and fits with [58:19] thinking about emotions as evolved [58:22] functional modules for dealing with [58:24] particular types of statistically [58:27] recurring environmental challenges that [58:29] share some some challenging feature in [58:32] common. So she doesn't have fear to [58:35] external stressors like we went with her [58:38] into a haunted house. She poked the [58:41] monsters and wanted to touch things. [58:42] Same with the u the snakes and the [58:44] spiders in the pet store. But we did a [58:47] study again Justin Feinstein uh I think [58:49] was the first author on this one as well [58:52] with her and with a couple two maybe or [58:55] three patients who had similar lesions [58:58] in collaboration with Renee um Hurleman [59:00] from Germany where we put a mask on them [59:04] and in have had them inhale carbon [59:06] dioxide. If you do that you get a panic [59:09] attack in about half the population [59:11] because it makes you feel like you're [59:12] suffocating. So as soon as you get that [59:14] carbon dioxide in, it changes the pH in [59:16] your blood that's detected by the brain [59:19] and it you get this massive air hunger [59:21] like you suddenly can't breathe. That's [59:22] what your so your brain goes into this [59:24] alarm mode of some suffocation like a [59:27] panic and she and the other amydala [59:29] patients had a full-blown panic attack [59:32] when they inhaled the carbon dioxide. So [59:34] this intraceptive signal seems not to [59:37] depend on the amydala and to depend on [59:39] other brain stem circuits. Uh so we had [59:42] a a very important association between [59:44] different types of fear which is I think [59:47] a bottom line story for the way that the [59:50] science is informing our folk psychology [59:52] which is these categories we have like [59:54] anger or fear or disgust there many [59:58] varieties. It's much more finely [59:59] differentiated than that once you look [60:01] at the science. And once you look at the [60:02] brain systems, they're distinct brain [60:04] systems in this instance for fear to [60:07] something out there in the world versus [60:08] panic of something happening inside you [60:10] like having a heart attack or not [60:11] getting enough air. [60:12] >> I see. Yeah. [60:13] >> Maybe we could talk a little bit about [60:15] the bodily representation of these [60:18] things we're calling emotions. Uh years [60:20] ago, I posted on social media a picture [60:22] of a figure from your paper with uh from [60:25] your book, excuse me, with David [60:26] Anderson, which was describing a study [60:28] where people self-described, so it's [60:31] purely subjective record reporting as I [60:33] recall, [60:34] >> where in their body they felt different [60:36] emotions. So, it's kind of like a heat [60:38] map in the forehead for certain um [60:40] emotions and in the whole body for [60:42] others. And and there were wide range of [60:43] emotions. And admittedly, it's [60:45] subjective report, but does this hold [60:48] up? Like I think to myself like where do [60:50] I feel sadness like heartache? Well I [60:52] tend to feel it around my heart but [60:53] maybe that's because it's called [60:54] heartache. Where do I feel anger? Well [60:56] extreme anger I'm going to feel as a [60:58] whole body experience. Same thing with [60:59] awe. So what if anything is important [61:03] about the regularity [61:06] andor the variation in kind of where in [61:09] our body we feel emotions. Some people [61:11] would say this is like their whole [61:13] experience of life. They feel things in [61:15] their body all the time. Some people [61:17] feel I think are more cerebral. They [61:20] they kind of think things more than they [61:21] feel things. [61:22] >> You know, I think it's a great it's a [61:23] great question. I mean that figure that [61:25] you're alluding to came from a paper I [61:27] think in PNAS by Lowry Newman and [61:29] colleagues in Finland and he and his [61:32] colleague Haney Serimaki. They've done [61:34] some of the great uh great recent [61:36] studies also on uh experience of [61:40] emotions in humans using functional MRI. [61:42] But what you mentioned so the experiment [61:44] is I just give you a word right I'm not [61:47] actually making you feel the emotion I'm [61:49] asking you sadness draw you know where [61:53] on the body you think you would feel [61:54] that emotion so if you think about it [61:56] it's certainly not about actual [61:58] physiological changes in the body [62:00] nothing's measured in the body they [62:01] don't have electrodes on the body or [62:02] whatever there's people just drawing on [62:04] a little mannequin where they think they [62:06] would feel the emotion it's also not [62:08] about conscious experiences of emotion [62:10] I'm not making I'm not showing you sad [62:11] movie clips or anything like that. I'm [62:13] giving you a word, a single word. So, [62:15] it's about concepts. It's about where in [62:18] the body, people's concept of sadness or [62:21] happiness or fear where that corresponds [62:24] to changes in the body. Now, that's an [62:27] interesting question, but you have to [62:28] narrow it down to that which is a [62:30] fundamental problem with most emotion, [62:33] including that one. I think the title, I [62:35] forget what the title is, but it's [62:36] something like bodily maps of emotions [62:38] or bodily maps of subjective experience. [62:40] Maybe even it should be something like [62:43] people's concept of where in the body [62:46] emotion words are associated with [62:48] changes or something like that. What's [62:50] interesting about that study is that [62:53] Lowry has gone on to look at it in [62:55] different cultures. He's looked at it [62:57] developmentally across children and [62:59] asked how these concepts and where in [63:01] the body you would feel emotion develop. [63:03] So, it's super interesting work, but [63:05] it's ultimately about people's concepts [63:07] of how emotions correspond to changes in [63:09] the body, not the real actual changes in [63:12] the body. But then, as you were saying, [63:15] of course, there are real changes in the [63:17] body when you really feel an emotion as [63:19] well. And that's harder to study, but [63:22] people have studied it quite a bit with [63:23] a focus on the part of the brain that [63:26] gets a lot of input from the body, which [63:28] is a part of cortex called the insula. [63:31] And so there's lots and lots of work on [63:33] the insula. It gets input from all the [63:36] organs in your body, everywhere in your [63:37] body. So you know, from your heart, from [63:40] your liver, from your kidney. I had a [63:42] kidney stone not too long ago. We should [63:43] talk about the kid. Have you had a [63:44] kidney stone? [63:45] >> Don't. It's really interesting. You have [63:48] to pass it. [63:49] >> Eventually, it's passed. But it's uh it [63:51] evokes very interesting adaptive [63:53] behaviors. Well, just as an aside uh [63:56] before I forget it. So normally for [63:58] pain, extra receptive pain, like we were [64:00] talking about the hot plate before, you [64:01] know, you pull your hand away or there's [64:03] some kind of reflex. [64:04] >> For the kidney stone, that's not [64:06] adaptive. There's nothing to pull away. [64:08] So my wife, this was in Switzerland, [64:10] we're in a remote little town in the [64:12] middle of the night. My wife sees me [64:13] curled up into a ball right on the floor [64:16] just kind of breathing loudly and kind [64:18] of curled up and making rocking motions [64:20] and goes, "What's wrong?" And I tell [64:22] her, "Well, I have a kidney stone." And [64:24] then she asked me, "Can't you just stop [64:25] that behavior? You know, can we get on a [64:27] plane and fly to the US so you can get [64:29] ultrasound, maybe get treated for the [64:31] kidney stone? Can you stop curling up [64:32] into a ball and, you know, making [64:34] rocking motions?" And I was kind of [64:36] thinking about that through my haze of [64:38] pain and said, "Well, [64:40] >> no, it's kind of like the hot plate and [64:42] pulling away. It's a really strongly [64:45] motivated behavior to just kind of [64:46] withdraw basically." So it was a very [64:48] interesting adaptive behavior. and she [64:51] called, you know, the equivalent of 911. [64:54] And in the middle of the guy of the [64:55] night, some guy came down and uh, you [64:58] know, put a bunch of opiates into me and [65:02] he kept having the scale of, you know, [65:04] on a scale from 0 to 10, how painful is [65:06] it? I would sort of go from 10 to 9.5 [65:10] and it was extremely painful. But [65:11] eventually they got me to a clinic [65:13] there. I passed the stone and it was an [65:16] interesting experience. I mean, it's [65:17] pain, but just like what we were talking [65:19] about for emotions, pain is not pain. If [65:22] you have a pain in your eye or you have [65:23] a pain from a hot stove, this is a very [65:26] different type of pain and one that's I [65:29] would say worse than the hot stove. It's [65:30] like because you can't escape [65:32] >> when you can't rub it, [65:33] >> you can't do anything. Just curl up into [65:35] a ball and pray. I mean, it it was [65:36] horrible. At any rate, so at that [65:39] moment, had I been in an MRI study, my [65:42] insula would have been strongly [65:44] activated. So this you know this is a [65:46] region of the brain that according to [65:49] theorists but Craig was the first [65:51] Antonio Damasio has theories in a [65:54] similar vein this would be the substrate [65:56] for the conscious experience of the [65:59] emotion or of pain in your body. So it's [66:01] getting all this input from your body [66:03] and representing the changes in your [66:05] body as a conscious experience. This was [66:08] the original theory that William James [66:10] had back in 1884. He wrote this paper in [66:12] mind. what is an emotion? And his theory [66:15] was that you see the bear, you run away, [66:18] your heart rate goes up, and then you [66:20] feel the emotion which is a consequence [66:23] of you perceiving all the changes in [66:24] your body that happened first. Now, [66:27] that's I think the conscious experience [66:29] of emotion. Yes. And a lot of that [66:31] depends on representing perceiving [66:34] everything that changes in in our body. [66:36] But to my mind, that leaves the question [66:39] of what the emotion is. That's still [66:40] antecedent to that. You first have to [66:42] trigger all the changes in your body and [66:43] run away. What's doing that? Right? [66:45] >> That's the emotion. The conscious [66:47] experience may well come later and [66:48] unfold over some time. But the emotion [66:51] state separate from the conscious [66:53] experience as I've emphasized would be [66:55] the one that actually motivates all the [66:56] behaviors and all the different changes [66:57] in your body. So long answer to your [67:00] question. There's there's two different [67:03] ways of talking about the role of the [67:04] body. The one that you alluded to in [67:07] this figure from Loi Newman and [67:08] colleagues that we reproduced in her [67:10] book is about people's concepts of [67:12] emotions and they're certainly tied to [67:15] changes in the body. Whether or not [67:17] those are accurate, I think we just [67:20] don't know. So, is it the case that [67:22] those drawings that they have uh in in [67:24] in the figure that we were speaking [67:25] about, if you put electrodes on, you [67:27] measured blood flow changes, that's [67:29] actually where things change when you [67:30] have awe or anger. I think we just don't [67:33] know. I think that's a set of studies [67:34] that remains to be done. [67:36] >> But then in addition there is the fact [67:38] that all of the changes in your body are [67:40] represented in your brain in the insula [67:42] and that seems to be a big part of the [67:45] substrate for feeling the emotion for [67:48] the conscious experience of the emotion [67:50] and other things nausea pain kidney [67:52] stones. So it's not limited to emotions [67:55] but the strong feelings that we have [67:57] like you know you have a tightness in [67:59] your chest uh if you're feeling really [68:01] sad for example that would be [68:03] represented in your insula [68:05] >> because in eastern medicine there's [68:07] strong beliefs about different organs [68:09] being associated with different [68:11] emotional states even like gall you know [68:13] someone has a lot of gallbladder you [68:15] know but then again I I I always have to [68:18] remind people that a key feature of [68:20] schizophrenia and psychosis of other [68:22] kinds is clang associations. Two words [68:24] sound alike and some and people link [68:26] them. And so we also are subject to this [68:28] in a much milder way in the world of of [68:31] health and science and especially in the [68:32] public discourse. People will say, "Oh, [68:34] you know, a a walnut looks like a brain. [68:36] Walnuts are good for your brain." Well, [68:38] they have some fatty acids that are [68:40] probably good for for neurons, but it [68:42] has absolutely nothing to do with the [68:43] shape of the walnut. It's amazing how [68:44] these ideas can kind of perpetuate. [68:46] >> Well, and I think there is some truth to [68:48] them. I think it just has the honest [68:50] answer is it has not been tested. Mhm. [68:52] >> So if you ask someone like Lisa Feldman [68:54] Barrett has has has made this point [68:56] repeatedly that there really is no [68:58] systematic association between specific [69:01] emotions and specific changes in your [69:03] body. Well, if you look at those [69:04] studies, people put a few electrodes on [69:06] and they measure, you know, heart rate [69:08] changes, blood pressure changes, etc. It [69:10] is extremely crude. You're looking at a [69:13] tiny tiny slice of what's going on in [69:15] your body. What you would want to do is [69:17] have a detailed highdimensional readout [69:19] of okay your your gallbladder and your [69:22] liver and your kidney and your heart and [69:25] changes all over your body and look at [69:28] that and ask is there is there some kind [69:30] of association between specific emotion [69:32] states and changes some kind of complex [69:35] change in your body and I would bet that [69:37] there is but we just don't have those [69:39] data yet so those studies remain to be [69:41] done [69:41] >> yeah they really should be done because [69:43] I could make up a story where if someone [69:47] or an animal feels extreme anger like of [69:49] the sort that they would have right [69:50] before they were in a fight that certain [69:53] immune organs would deploy a bunch of [69:55] things that prepare for wound healing or [69:58] prepare for resilience in the in the [69:59] aftermath. That that just stands to [70:01] reason. I of course I have no data for [70:03] that but [70:04] >> well and the link between the brain and [70:05] the body I mean we now understand that [70:08] that is so detailed and so intricate [70:10] that really brain and body are very very [70:12] tightly coupled and we do know that [70:15] there are signatures they're distributed [70:18] they're complicated but Lisa Filman [70:19] Barrett herself in collaboration with [70:21] Tor has published neuroiming studies [70:24] showing that for basic emotions like [70:27] anger and fear and sadness and so on [70:30] there are reliable signatures of brain [70:32] activation. They're distributed. They're [70:35] spread out. They're complicated. They're [70:36] not just like in one place. But given [70:38] that, given that association between [70:40] emotions and patterns of the brain and [70:42] the fact that the brain and the body are [70:43] so intimately tied together, I think [70:45] it's a completely reasonable hypothesis [70:47] that you would find a similar [70:49] highdimensional signature of changes [70:51] throughout your body that are [70:53] systematically associated with certain [70:55] types of emotions. I had a thought [70:57] spring to mind based on our earlier [70:59] discussion. From the perspective of [71:01] media and advertising, it makes perfect [71:03] sense why all media and advertising is [71:06] incentivized to get you to prioritize an [71:10] emotion to the point where it takes over [71:12] behavior to go click and buy something [71:14] or to vote a certain way or to hate a [71:16] certain group or to like a certain [71:18] group. And so really what they're [71:20] fighting for is this prioritization [71:22] thing like like the the path to behavior [71:24] is through the prioritization [71:26] >> in attentional capture. It captures your [71:28] attention [71:29] >> which is what emotions are are designed [71:31] to do. And once you've captured people's [71:33] attention you have a captive audience [71:35] and you can control them much more. [71:37] >> And in some sense it's obvious right you [71:39] get people emotional they're more likely [71:40] to behave in a certain way versus [71:42] another. I think we underestimate the [71:44] extent to which all day long we are [71:45] bombarded with these signals like like [71:47] subtle advertising doesn't really work [71:50] well someone said I don't know who said [71:53] it but you know all AB testing leads to [71:55] like you know sex or violence because if [71:58] you really just look at what's likely to [72:00] grab people's attention you know [72:01] eventually you regress into the [72:03] hypothalamus the more primitive states [72:05] like inspire more attention which tells [72:07] you a lot about the world you know and [72:09] there and there are ethical lines and [72:10] there there are societal lines where [72:12] where you say, "No, no, that's that's [72:14] too extreme, too much violence, too much [72:16] skin." But it's all veering in the like [72:18] toward the hypothalamus, so to speak. [72:19] It's all getting more and more [72:20] primitive. There's a lot of processing [72:22] that goes on in all these subcortical [72:24] structures and certainly what we [72:25] understand best in terms of emotions are [72:27] all these subcortical circuits and a lot [72:30] of that is below the radar of our [72:32] conscious awareness. [72:34] >> I'd like to take a quick break and [72:36] acknowledge our sponsor, Function. [72:38] Function provides over 160 advanced lab [72:41] tests to give you a clear snapshot of [72:43] your bodily health. This snapshot gives [72:45] you insights into your heart health, [72:47] your hormone health, autoimmune [72:48] function, nutrient levels, and much [72:50] more. They've also recently added access [72:52] to advanced MRI and CT scans. Function [72:56] not only provides testing of over 160 [72:58] biomarkers key to your physical and [72:59] mental health, it also analyzes these [73:02] results and provides recommendations for [73:04] improving your health from top doctors. 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A [73:47] Function membership is only a dollar a [73:49] day, $365 a year. And if you think about [73:52] the information it provides and the [73:53] health challenges it helps you avoid and [73:55] the proactive things that it can do for [73:57] you to enhance your health, I truly look [73:59] at it as a savings. To learn more, visit [74:02] functionhealth.com/huberman [74:04] and use the code huberman for a $50 [74:07] credit towards your membership. Again, [74:08] that's functionhealth.com/huberman. [74:12] At the opposite extreme, what happens [74:15] when I go to like the mom and I see a [74:19] piece of art that just for some reason [74:21] makes me feel a certain way, maybe [74:24] sadness, maybe happiness. Do you think [74:26] that art of that sort is is able to [74:30] capture the circuitry related to [74:32] particular emotions across people? So [74:34] not just about my unique experience and [74:36] and art is subjective, right? So there's [74:38] things related to taste, but let's [74:40] assume this is abstract art. So there's [74:41] no apparent faces or animals or no [74:44] depictions of scenes. But let's say out [74:47] of a hundred people, you know, more than [74:49] half say, "Yeah, I look at that and I [74:51] just feel peace." Is it the case that [74:54] some art can tap into neural circuits or [74:56] some music can tap into neural circuits [74:58] independent of the lyrics? I mean, we [75:01] don't have the brain imaging presumably, [75:02] but there is a kind of a more [75:04] sophisticated example. We're not [75:06] regressing to the hypothalamus. [75:08] Absolutely. [75:09] >> But this is the stuff that like the [75:11] richness of life is also about that. [75:13] >> Sure. [75:13] >> Right. And so the interesting question [75:14] is which particular features in the [75:16] music or in the abstract art is it that [75:19] are driving those generalizable emotion [75:21] responses? And they're certainly there. [75:22] One of the earliest studies on emotion [75:24] actually was done by Anne Blood and [75:27] Robert Sattorii in the mid '9s or [75:29] something I believe using I'm pretty [75:31] sure using position tomography PET [75:34] rather than fMRI at the time. And what [75:36] they did was they played music to people [75:38] and I think they set it up so that you [75:40] and I could hear the same piece of [75:42] music. In your case, the music really [75:44] does something for you. And the [75:46] particular measure was does it send [75:48] shivers down your spine? Do you get like [75:50] chills, goosebumps from listening to the [75:52] music? And it does that for you, but not [75:54] for me. And in your case, same auditory [75:56] stimulus, different emotion. And from [75:59] the imaging, they show that the insula, [76:00] the structure we're just talking about, [76:02] the amygdala, several of these emotion [76:04] related structures are indeed activated [76:06] when you have shivers, chills down your [76:09] spine listening to music. For abstract [76:11] art, my Caltech colleague John Doherty [76:14] had a paper a little while ago where [76:16] again he found something generalizable. [76:18] decomposed abstract art into the [76:21] constituent sort of visual features that [76:23] you can feed it into a neural network [76:26] and get a representation of all the [76:28] different you know shades and colors and [76:31] the basic visual composition basic [76:33] visual features that constitute that and [76:36] from that you can reconstitute whether [76:38] or not it is liked or not liked whether [76:41] it's a pleasant whether people find it [76:43] pleasant or unpleasant so it doesn't [76:46] come out of nowhere yes there's [76:47] something about even if it's abstract, [76:49] even if it's abstract music or if it's [76:52] abstract art, there's some auditory or [76:54] visual features there that are [76:57] generalizable and that can be used to [76:59] evoke emotions. And the big question [77:02] then is, can we link that back? [77:04] Obviously, the emotions didn't evolve in [77:06] order to appreciate abstract art, but [77:08] they evolved to detect tigers and bears [77:10] and other things. Well, are there [77:12] similar kinds of visual features? [77:14] Presumably, there are. So there's some [77:16] visual features in the real world that [77:19] for which particular emotions evolved [77:22] that can also then find find a place [77:25] again in abstract art and evoke similar [77:27] emotions. That's the basic story. But [77:29] the answer to your question is yes. Even [77:31] for these very uniquely human sort of [77:33] abstract kinds of stimuli. Uh people [77:35] have done work and found particular [77:37] features in those stimuli that will [77:39] trigger emotion states in humans and and [77:42] they're great stimuli to use. talk a [77:44] little bit about um hard wiring versus [77:47] learned emotional states at the brain [77:49] level. We know there are brain areas [77:52] that process faces just the organization [77:55] of two dots and a vertical line and a [77:57] horizontal line below it. There are [77:58] neurons that like that organization of [78:01] features and I should know the answer to [78:03] the next question, but I don't. Are [78:06] there neurons that are tuned to a [78:08] smiling face versus a frowning face at [78:11] the level of like almost like like very [78:13] sparse emoji like level? We call them [78:15] units in the brain. Are there units that [78:16] are tuned to frowning faces or smiling [78:19] faces? And of course, you'd love to be [78:20] able to do the experiment in somebody [78:22] who was you had never been exposed to [78:24] them for the first time, but that's [78:25] impossible to do. So, right. Right. [78:27] >> I have to assume the experiment has been [78:30] at least thought about if not done. [78:32] >> Yeah. I mean, it's a great question. I [78:33] mean, you know, with respect to face [78:35] processing in general, the sort of [78:37] consensus is it's both hardwired and [78:40] innate in some sense that there's [78:42] something there in the brain already at [78:44] birth that's that's experience [78:46] independent. Uh but then it also depends [78:49] on normal maturation and development and [78:51] experience. And so people like Rebecca [78:53] Saxs at MIT for instance has done [78:56] functional neuroiming studies on on [78:58] babies and shown them faces and asked [79:00] the question how does this pulse system [79:02] develop? It's always a mixture. People [79:04] tend to think in terms of black and [79:06] white. It's you know it's hardwired and [79:07] innate or it's learned. Nothing is [79:10] either or there it's always both. A good [79:12] example is the visual word form area. So [79:14] there's regions in the brain that like [79:16] like the ones that my former Celtic [79:18] colleague Doris SA studied that are [79:20] specialized for faces, but there's also [79:22] a region in the brain typically on the [79:24] left in most people that's for [79:26] recognizing words, letters. Now that [79:29] couldn't have evolved because uh you [79:31] know we we had a long history of brain [79:34] evolution before language written [79:36] language was was ever there. So the [79:38] question is how does it come about? [79:40] can't be hardwired or innate because [79:43] there wasn't long enough evolutionary [79:44] time to evolve a region of the brain for [79:46] figuring out words. But if you take a [79:48] look in preverbal infants at the [79:50] connectivity of this region that's going [79:52] to become specialized for processing [79:55] words once the infant can read, it's [79:58] already wired up in a way to other brain [80:00] regions that predisposes it to be able [80:03] to do those computations that with [80:06] experience it can later be used in order [80:08] to recognize words. I see. So there are [80:10] certain preset innate uh systems. Coming [80:14] back to your question, smiling versus [80:15] frowning faces, there are two parts to [80:18] it. The first part is I can find you a [80:20] single neuron in the brain that responds [80:23] selectively for anything you like. [80:25] There's like no shortage of them. But [80:27] those in general, those single neurons [80:30] don't do anything. The re or aren't [80:31] important to understand how the brain [80:33] works because the rest of the brain that [80:36] is getting its input from all these [80:38] neurons and all the downstream [80:40] processing is not like a reflex. It's [80:43] not listening to only that one neuron. [80:45] It's getting input from tens of [80:46] thousands of neurons. So at the [80:48] population level, if we record from [80:50] thousands of neurons and we ask from [80:52] that, is there information in a thousand [80:54] neurons from which the rest of the brain [80:57] listening to those thousand neurons or [80:59] we as the scientist could decode smiles [81:02] versus frowns? The answer is yes. We've [81:04] done that in collaboration with Ulut [81:06] Saer and Shu Wang and and colleagues [81:10] where we can record from epilepsy [81:12] patients like what Eddie Chang does. [81:14] Same same kind of work. And so you can [81:16] you have information and of course if [81:18] you think about it there has to be [81:20] information in the brain neurons that [81:23] would distinguish frowns from smiles [81:25] because you can distinguish them. So [81:26] where else would it come from? It has to [81:28] be there in the brain. But it's not [81:30] there mechanistically at the level of [81:32] single neurons. They're very noisy. Uh [81:35] they typically respond to many different [81:37] types of cues. So you always have to [81:39] think about hundreds or thousands a [81:42] large ensemble of neurons because that's [81:44] really the kind of unit of relevant [81:46] information because that's what the rest [81:47] of the brain listens to. [81:48] >> Yeah. I was thinking about how you know [81:51] in a hierarchical system like the visual [81:53] system like we have neurons that are [81:54] tuned to circles more or less you know [81:56] center surround. We we talk about [81:58] circles, then bars, then oriented bars [82:00] of a particular angle, then moving bars, [82:03] etc., etc., and it's so built up from [82:04] from simple stuff to more complex stuff. [82:06] So, you can build feature detectors for [82:08] lots of different things. I I guess I [82:10] was wondering when we come into the [82:12] world, are there cells in the fusifiform [82:15] area that not just like faces but that [82:17] are prepared to respond to two dots the [82:21] eyes a vertical thing the nose and then [82:24] a bar that is either you know bent up at [82:26] the edges or bent down at the edges and [82:28] then we build on that scaffold. I don't [82:30] know that anyone's done these [82:31] experiments [82:31] >> that exact experiment but I think that [82:33] in broad strokes the answer would be [82:35] that at birth it's it's crude and it [82:37] becomes more much more refined and more [82:40] granular through experience and then [82:42] indeed exactly what you said happens you [82:44] know and coming back to emotions if you [82:46] think about so how does the state of [82:49] fear come about in the brain from seeing [82:52] the the seeing the bear or or the tiger [82:54] well at the level of the retina it's [82:56] just a bunch of pixels it's some you [82:57] know blobby black shape that is looming [82:59] and coming closer etc. But then [83:02] progressively you have to construct more [83:04] and more abstract representations and [83:06] you well know how this works in the [83:08] visual system and artificial systems [83:10] deep convolutional neural networks that [83:12] do object classification do exactly [83:15] that. They take just you know pixel-wise [83:17] input but then build something abstract [83:19] like right now I recognize Andrew [83:21] Huberman there. If I look over here, you [83:23] know, I can still recognize you whether [83:25] you're on the left or the right, whether [83:27] you're close or far away, I would be [83:29] able to recognize you invariantly with [83:31] respect to those details. Even though at [83:34] level of the retina, like like a camera [83:36] taking a picture, the detailed pixels [83:38] can be vastly different. You can be left [83:40] or right or close or lit in different [83:42] ways. And you need to abstract from that [83:45] an invariant representation regardless [83:47] of the details. Same thing for emotions. [83:50] Regardless of whether whether it's a [83:51] bear or a tiger or a big armed pickup [83:54] truck coming at you or lots of other [83:55] kinds of stimuli, they all need to [83:58] funnel in to a central abstract [84:00] representation. That's another key [84:02] feature of emotions. They require [84:05] abstraction [84:06] >> and that's what makes them so flexible [84:08] and that's why you can get David [84:09] Anderson and I have described it in our [84:11] book as this sort of fan in fan out [84:14] architecture. I can get to the emotion [84:16] state from seeing a bear or smelling a [84:18] bear or hearing a bear or hearing a twig [84:20] snap, hearing somebody yell there's a [84:22] bear. Zillions of different inputs [84:24] completely unlike the rigid reflex which [84:27] only has one input and that's it. They [84:29] get the central state of fear and then [84:31] the outputs are also diverse. I can [84:33] hide, I can run away, I can defend [84:35] myself. And so that flexibility that the [84:38] central emotion state affords, you can [84:40] get to it in many different ways because [84:42] many different sensory cues are [84:44] informative about a potential threat. [84:46] And then you can behave in very flexible [84:48] ways that are context dependent. That's [84:50] exactly what emotions allow you to do [84:52] and what makes them so different from [84:53] reflexes. Reflexes is just a single path [84:56] through. There's only one way to trigger [84:58] it and there's only one behavior. Mhm. [85:00] >> So if you had only those, you would have [85:02] to have a separate reflex for the bear [85:05] and for the tiger and for every [85:06] possible, you know, large threat out [85:08] there, which you couldn't possibly have. [85:10] It's not efficient. Yeah. The fan in fan [85:12] out uh visual is very, very useful. And [85:15] it gets to the next topic I'd like to [85:17] ask you about, which is building uh [85:20] social intelligence and emotional [85:21] intelligence because we define that [85:23] different ways. people who seem unable [85:25] to read the room, so to speak, versus [85:28] people who are hyper sensitive to other [85:30] people's emotions, not necessarily [85:32] responding to them, but they're really [85:33] in tune. I'll go out on a limb and say [85:35] that some of the happiest, most [85:37] functional, and when I say functional, I [85:40] also include in that they take great [85:42] care of the people around them, their [85:43] families, their co-workers, people that [85:45] I know and have observed are not super [85:48] emotionally in tune with the emotions of [85:51] others. meaning it doesn't seem like [85:53] they're clocking every little nuance. [85:55] And some of the more I'm generalizing [85:57] here, less functional, more labile [85:59] people that I've known are really in [86:02] tune with like what everyone in the room [86:03] is feeling, who did this, who didn't do [86:05] that. And going back to our our earlier [86:07] conversation that so much of how we [86:09] gauge other people's emotions is an [86:11] integration over, you know, how how [86:13] often they tend to acknowledge us when [86:15] they when we walk down the hall. If the [86:16] first time I met you, you walked right [86:18] by me, which who knows what would have [86:20] happened. And the second time and the [86:21] third time, and then the fourth time you [86:23] say, "Good morning," I'd say, "Oh, Lex [86:24] is a really delightful person." If you [86:26] did the opposite, said hello, hello, [86:27] hello three days in a row and stopped [86:29] four times, just like looked looked at [86:31] me and brushed right by, [86:32] >> I'd probably think like that's weird, [86:34] you know? So, there's some advantage [86:37] actually to not being in tune with all [86:39] the subtle cues of everyone around us. [86:42] What in the brain is known about a [86:46] social awareness, about reading the [86:48] room? We talk it up these days because [86:51] indeed empathy is important, but this is [86:53] a tricky one. I'm going to get some heat [86:55] for saying this, but there's also a lot [86:57] to be said for like walking into a room, [86:59] acknowledging, okay, great. And then [87:00] like getting your work done. You don't [87:02] want to be wrapped up into people's [87:03] emotional states because unnecessarily [87:06] because they're labile, they're all over [87:08] the place. It's there's a cost. [87:10] >> Well, I think it's extremely [87:11] heterogeneous. And so this is not sort [87:13] of one sizefits-all and there's not one [87:15] type of sort of emotional intelligence [87:18] skill that fits all occasions and many [87:21] different kinds can work. They depend on [87:24] the context. They depend on the [87:25] circumstances. Initially when James [87:27] Gross had emotional regulation, it was [87:29] sort of focused on some basic mechanisms [87:31] like suppression, reappraisal, [87:34] acceptance. And now the big two topics [87:37] in emotional regulation are variability [87:40] and flexibility. So there's not just one [87:42] way, but you need to be able to have [87:44] many many different options and you can [87:46] vary vary your emotion regulation [87:48] responses. But the other big part of [87:50] emotion regulation, which is obvious [87:52] once you think about it for any any [87:54] parent would think about it, is it's [87:57] interpersonal. It's between people. You [87:59] regulate other people's emotions and you [88:01] have to pick up on other people's [88:02] emotions and you influence other [88:04] people's emotions. It's a birectional [88:05] interaction. And so I think a big part [88:08] of emotional intelligence comes from [88:10] being able to read that probably in a [88:13] fairly automatic way and in a context [88:16] dependent way. And depending on the [88:18] context, it can be the case that what's [88:20] most adaptive is if you really get [88:22] involved with other people and you [88:24] really talk to them a lot, you're very [88:25] empathic or you just take over and that [88:28] can work too depending on the [88:30] circumstances. So there are multiple [88:32] strategies and I think for any of these [88:35] social intelligence, emotional [88:36] regulation, any of these sort of meta [88:38] cognitive skills. The most successful [88:40] skill is if you don't just have one, but [88:43] you have variety and you can switch [88:45] between them and you can use context to [88:47] switch between those. Just like [88:49] physiological heart rate variability, [88:51] you don't want to train to just be able [88:52] to have a low heart rate. You want to be [88:54] able to train to have a variable, a big [88:56] range. Same thing with emotions. What's [88:58] most adaptive is being able to have a [89:01] big range of emotions and being able to [89:03] switch adaptively depending on the [89:05] context between them. And I think that's [89:07] where, you know, real long-term context [89:11] dependent social intelligence for people [89:13] that really come out ahead. It's not one [89:15] tiny slice where they do well and don't [89:16] do well in lots of other circumstances. [89:18] It's the ability to be really adaptive [89:20] and flexible and switch around [89:22] >> which requires a a a keen sense of [89:26] oneself like where we are in our [89:28] internal state and a keen sense of of [89:31] context. In fact, I observed a really [89:33] impressive physician recently and like [89:34] moving through the hospital environment. [89:37] I mean he was just like all agency to to [89:40] but then with the patient it was as if [89:41] he dropped into a bubble. You know the [89:43] patient was understandably a little [89:45] nervous about what was to come and and [89:47] it was remarkable. I was like, "Okay, [89:48] that is superb bedside manner." But then [89:51] it comes time to do the actual work and [89:53] that's not a time for emotion. It's just [89:55] like 100 you have to be able to 100% [89:58] like I mean the life and well-being of [90:00] the patient relies on being absolutely [90:03] focused on the task at hand. I mean it's [90:06] it's related again to the presumptive um [90:09] association between emotional [90:11] granularity what Lisa Fman Barrett [90:14] pioneered decades ago the ability to [90:17] differentiate and be aware of all the [90:18] variety of emotions in you and emotion [90:22] regulation flexibility that you're able [90:24] to adopt many different emotion [90:26] regulation strategies but in order to do [90:28] so you need the emotional granularity to [90:31] be able to be aware of all the different [90:33] emotions that are going on in the first [90:35] It's pretty two things. One is an [90:37] ability to differentiate at a very fine [90:40] grain and the other one is to step back [90:41] and have some kind of metacognitive [90:43] oversight and control. So you can see [90:45] okay here's this full spectrum of things [90:47] I could do and you can take a look at [90:49] all of those incorporate the context and [90:51] pick one the one path amongst many that [90:54] you could take that's the most adaptive. [90:56] It's interesting. Some of my favorite [90:58] scientists are very emotive people. And [91:00] then some of my favorite scientists, I'm [91:02] thinking of one in particular when I was [91:03] down at UC San Diego when my lab was [91:05] there. Most people probably label as a [91:07] little bit on the spectrum. I won't [91:09] mention his name. He would walk into a [91:10] faculty meeting where someone else was [91:12] presenting and he would say out loud to [91:14] me like sitting there like, "Is this any [91:16] good?" And [91:17] >> I have encountered people like that, [91:19] too. [91:19] >> And you know, [91:20] >> it's very disconcerting when you're [91:21] giving the talk. [91:22] >> It's disconcerting when you're giving [91:23] the talk. But I was going to say there's [91:24] also something incredibly refreshing [91:26] about it because it's almost like [91:28] they're they're asking the questions [91:30] that they they need to ask. You're a [91:32] little embarrassed for them, but you're [91:33] but it's liberating. You feel like ah [91:35] we've broken the social mold here a [91:37] little bit and someone would say excuse [91:39] me so and so and so is presenting be [91:40] like oh sorry and then we'll just sit [91:42] down and then listen. I mean they're [91:44] entirely polite very actively engaged in [91:46] the conversation but I sometimes wish [91:48] like how cool would that be? Like I'm [91:50] sure there's a cost other areas in life, [91:53] but how cool would that be? You lose a [91:55] this person has a little bit less [91:56] context dependent, you know, flexibility [91:59] around emotions. And I have to imagine [92:01] that they move through life in a way [92:03] that's kind of like liberated. [92:05] >> Well, they wouldn't have this huge [92:06] cognitive load all the time. You know, [92:08] if [92:08] >> you extremely smart now, that's [92:10] correlative, right? But like incredible [92:12] actually a physicist [92:13] >> turned neuroscientist. And I just [92:15] thought, man, that's pretty cool. And [92:17] then the more you go into engineering [92:19] and science fields, the more of these [92:20] people you encounter. This is true. You [92:22] see fewer of these people in the [92:23] performing arts for instance. [92:24] >> Sure. [92:25] >> My lab studies autism amongst other [92:26] things. And you certainly would have the [92:28] case that as a spectrum, yes indeed, you [92:31] would have mathematicians, engineers, [92:33] lots of people who are very successful [92:35] who are on the spectrum to some extent. [92:37] And I think, you know, coming back to [92:38] what you were saying, it's sort of [92:40] liberating or simplifying. If you had to [92:43] really efforty, cognitively think about [92:46] how to regulate your social behavior and [92:48] make all the right moves and not offend [92:49] anybody, you were worried about that all [92:51] the time. It would be overwhelming. And [92:53] I think it is overwhelming for many [92:55] people with autism that you need to [92:57] somehow internalize it and it has to be [92:59] relatively effortless and automatic. It [93:01] has to become automatic at some level [93:03] and then you can move through life [93:05] fairly smoothly in a socially very [93:07] complex way. And that's what's difficult [93:09] for many people with autism that they [93:11] lack that part. They can compensate to [93:13] some extent, but the cognitive load [93:15] starts really being an impediment [93:17] because if you have to track everything, [93:18] you have to remember, okay, I should [93:20] make eye contact, I have to remember [93:22] turn taking, if you have to cognitively [93:24] remember all those things, it's just [93:26] overwhelming. So, you have to be able to [93:27] somehow have it be automatic at some [93:30] level. [93:31] >> I'd like to take a quick break and [93:33] acknowledge one of our sponsors, [93:34] Element. Element is an electrolyte drink [93:36] that has everything you need and nothing [93:38] you don't. That means the electrolytes, [93:40] sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in [93:42] the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper [93:45] hydration is critical for brain and body [93:47] function. Even a slight degree of [93:49] dehydration can diminish your cognitive [93:51] and physical performance. It's also [93:53] important that you get adequate [93:54] electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, [93:57] magnesium, and potassium are vital for [93:59] the functioning of all cells in your [94:00] body, especially your neurons or your [94:02] nerve cells. Drinking Element makes it [94:05] very easy to ensure that you're getting [94:06] adequate hydration and adequate [94:08] electrolytes. My days tend to start [94:10] really fast, meaning I have to jump [94:12] right into work or right into exercise. [94:14] So, to make sure that I'm hydrated and I [94:16] have sufficient electrolytes, when I [94:18] first wake up in the morning, I drink 16 [94:20] to 32 ounces of water with an element [94:22] packet dissolved in it. I also drink [94:24] Element dissolved in water during any [94:26] kind of physical exercise that I'm [94:27] doing, especially on hot days when I'm [94:29] sweating a lot and losing water and [94:31] electrolytes. Element has a bunch of [94:33] great tasting flavors. In fact, I love [94:34] them all. I love the watermelon, the [94:36] raspberry, the citrus, and I really love [94:38] the lemonade flavor. So, if you'd like [94:40] to try Element, you can go to [94:41] drinkelement.com/huberman [94:43] to claim a free element sample pack with [94:45] any purchase. Again, that's [94:47] drinkelement.com/huberman [94:49] to claim a free sample pack. Let's talk [94:52] about autism. And I'll just put the [94:54] mention up front because this is a topic [94:55] that sometimes gets people triggered. [94:57] Let's leave out for the time being, not [94:59] because it isn't important. It is [95:01] important. Let's leave out severe cases [95:04] of autism where people need lifelong [95:06] care. They can't care for themselves and [95:09] let's talk about the rest of the [95:11] spectrum. Already in that statement, I'm [95:12] sure I violated some of the newer [95:14] nomenclature. But let's just liberate [95:16] ourselves a little bit. Um, come at this [95:18] from a place of benevolence and trying [95:19] to understand social dynamics, social [95:21] processing in the brain. So, we're not [95:23] talking about people with severe [95:24] stereotypes who just need lifelong care [95:27] even, etc. We're talking about the rest [95:29] of the category. So something like this [95:30] former colleague of mine in San Diego a [95:33] little bit on the spectrum. [95:33] >> For all I know he would have been one of [95:35] our participants maybe I mean a [95:38] delightful person, happy marriage, happy [95:40] family, everyone in his lab adored him [95:42] and brilliant scientist and um [95:46] >> by my read highly functional in all [95:48] aspects of life but definitely not [95:51] >> tuned in to what other people are [95:54] thinking or doing and and context [95:55] mattered, right? I mean, he understood [95:58] what not to do in in a broad sense, but [96:00] you know, he was free of this burden [96:02] that you described. So, there's a lot of [96:04] emphasis nowadays on kids who have [96:07] autism of the sort that we're describing [96:09] and the need, we're told, to train them [96:12] to make eye contact and read faces. So, [96:15] this lands square in your work. Maybe [96:18] you could just fill out a bit of what's [96:21] now known, what's thought, what's not [96:23] known. [96:23] >> It's a great topic. I mean the way that [96:25] I personally have approached it is not [96:28] with a primary interest in autism. I [96:30] don't have a family member who has [96:32] autism. I'm not don't have any personal [96:34] experience. It's really been um just [96:36] like with the amydala lesion patient. [96:38] It's the my main motivation has been to [96:41] just understand the mind cognition [96:43] emotion in general and with respect to [96:46] autism by understanding individual [96:47] differences. Everybody's different from [96:49] everybody else. And autism is one [96:52] particular dimension that we just have a [96:54] lot of tools to look at that is, you [96:57] know, social interaction, social [96:59] awareness, ability to read other [97:01] people's emotions. And so that dimension [97:04] of social variability maps onto one of [97:07] the facets of of autism spectrum [97:09] disorder. And so that's why we've looked [97:12] at both people who do not have any [97:14] diagnosis of autism. There's still [97:16] there's a range of autistic like traits [97:19] that you can quantify with [97:20] questionnaires that are well regarded. [97:22] And then once you get to a DSM5 [97:24] diagnosis, you have more and more severe [97:26] cases of autism with respect to social [97:29] functioning that again you can quantify [97:31] using tools like the etc. But it's [97:33] a spectrum that I personally look at as [97:35] a particularly interesting and important [97:37] dimension of individual differences in [97:39] social interactions with other people in [97:41] my lab that have different motivations. [97:43] They have family members with autism for [97:45] instance. So they're personally [97:46] interested in autism as a as a [97:49] psychiatric category. [97:51] But coming to your question, there's a [97:54] lot of really interesting work and a lot [97:56] of opportunities now that we've been [97:58] actually using in our lab as well to [98:00] look at the question of processing about [98:02] faces, eye contact, etc. I mean right [98:05] now how much eye contact are you making [98:07] with me? How much eye contact am I [98:09] making with you? It is extremely [98:11] variable. I mean the eyes move around. [98:14] They carry a lot of information. You [98:16] know, socially there's a a gigantic [98:18] range there. It's data that are now [98:21] fairly easy to quantify and collect in [98:24] hundreds or thousands of people using [98:26] their webcams. And so we have a study [98:28] going on where people watch for example [98:30] a zoom video uh other people interacting [98:34] talking and we use the webcam on their [98:37] laptop to record where they are looking [98:39] on the screen when they have that zoom [98:42] video going on. So we can quantify along [98:44] across large numbers of people and the [98:46] basic finding has been that people who [98:49] are further along have high who score [98:51] higher on this dimension of the autism [98:54] spectrum of social interaction with just [98:56] questionnaire based measures or a [98:58] psychiatric diagnosis make less eye [99:01] contact and as well as other features. [99:04] So we're looking at contact with the [99:06] person who's talking distraction to [99:08] other things. We have experimental [99:11] features where there's a person talking, [99:12] they're making eye contact, there's like [99:14] TV or something that goes on in the [99:16] background and we can quantify to what [99:18] extent is your visual attention, your [99:20] gaze that we can quantify from the [99:21] webcam captured by somebody looking, [99:24] somebody talking, somebody smiling or [99:25] laughing, the TV going on in the [99:28] background as a distractor. And we can [99:30] put all of that into a big model and ask [99:32] what is it that normally drives visual [99:34] attention and what is it that [99:36] distinguishes people with autism and [99:39] where they would look. And the basic [99:41] answer is that the social features like [99:44] eyes or who's talking have less of a [99:48] weight on where autistic people would [99:50] look than the distractors, but they tend [99:52] to be more distracted. And that that is [99:55] we've been doing this study every month [99:57] now for a year that seems to be a [99:59] temporally stable personality traitlike [100:02] feature of autism spectrum disorder. So [100:05] it fluctuates to some extent and we're [100:06] trying to quantify does it interact with [100:09] whether you've slept badly the night [100:10] before or you're stressed or other [100:13] things that can change. Those do have an [100:15] effect. But the answer seems to be it's [100:17] fairly temporally stable and it's almost [100:19] like a signature for individuals. [100:22] There's some people that are real [100:24] faceelookers and they look at faces a [100:26] lot and there's some people that look at [100:27] faces hardly at all and that seems to be [100:30] stable across time and like a basic [100:32] personality trait [100:34] >> in this population of people diagnosed [100:37] >> across the board for everybody. If I [100:39] just take the general population on [100:41] average it's the case that those people [100:42] who would have a diagnosis of autism or [100:44] who score higher on autistic traits even [100:47] if they don't have a diagnosis look less [100:49] at faces. But across everybody, it's the [100:52] case that some people look a lot at [100:53] faces, some people don't. And that [100:55] that's temporally stable. So in general, [100:57] right now, if you quantify it from this [100:59] podcast, how often do I make eye contact [101:01] or look at you? And then you ask, you [101:03] know, like in a classroom or in a lab [101:05] meeting, how often do I make eye [101:07] contact? It would be similar proportion [101:09] that I'm just like not a face looker or [101:11] eye looker and you might be. It's like a [101:13] stable personality trait and it's [101:16] associated coarsely with this dimension [101:19] in autism spectrum disorder. But of [101:21] course the million-doll question is what [101:23] else is it associated with? Is it [101:25] predictive of career success? Is it [101:28] predictive of anything else? And so we [101:31] don't know. We're measuring everything [101:32] else and getting lots of questionnaires [101:34] on these people to ask what what are the [101:36] associations and is there any causal [101:39] hypothesis that we would come up with [101:41] that if you don't look at faces a lot [101:43] there's some consequences if you look at [101:46] faces a lot there are other consequences [101:48] if that were the case we're not there [101:50] yet that would make very interesting [101:53] predictions which mean well maybe I [101:54] should be looking at your face all the [101:55] time and uh you the podcast would get a [101:58] million hits or who knows what [101:59] >> just be you as What should we say? [102:01] >> Well, that's I mean that that's another [102:02] big question which which we're looking [102:04] at in these longitudinal studies which [102:06] is a question of to what extent can you [102:08] change who you are and you know your [102:10] emote we were talking about emotion [102:12] regulation. You can regulate your [102:13] emotions. You can have this [102:15] metacognitive insight. You can have some [102:17] control. Can you change if you're [102:19] extrovert or neurotic? Can you change [102:21] your personality? And the answer seems [102:24] to be to some extent. Uh for some [102:27] variables more than others but we're [102:28] trying to quantify that. So we have this [102:30] big longitudinal data set where we give [102:33] people tons and tons of questionnaires [102:34] about their personality, about their [102:36] mood, about lots of things and are [102:38] asking to what extent over time do they [102:41] get pushed around and that can change [102:43] and which ones stay constant and [102:45] constitutes sort of the core of their [102:47] personality that's unchangeable. But I [102:48] think it's a super super interesting [102:50] question. What parts of you can change [102:52] and what parts of you cannot? [102:54] >> Yeah, I think about this all the time. I [102:55] feel like some people, this is [102:57] pseudoscientific what I'm about to [102:58] describe. They seem to have very high [103:00] autonomic what I call like art RPM. I [103:03] have a it's more of a former colleague [103:05] because I haven't been working in that [103:06] field for a while but um you ever see [103:08] Bon Rosska [103:10] >> from Basil give a talk like he moves a [103:13] lot. He's very electric. He's also very [103:15] thin and he moves and and his brain he's [103:17] exceedingly smart has a high basil [103:18] metabolic rate. [103:20] >> High basil metabolic rate and [103:21] >> like a hummingbird. [103:22] >> Yeah. But he moves a lot. Right. And [103:24] then other people they move less. I [103:25] think about this all the time because [103:27] I'm fascinated by and I love dogs. I go [103:29] to this AKC meet the breeds thing every [103:31] year. I don't go every year. They do it [103:33] every year, but I highly recommend [103:34] people go even if you don't want a dog [103:36] because you get to see all the different [103:38] genetic variation, which of course [103:40] relates to body size, but also [103:41] temperament and and just bulldogs are [103:44] probably more on the on the slow mellow [103:46] side compared to Yorkshire terriers that [103:48] are more [103:48] >> very little spontaneous movement. [103:51] I think it's one of the reasons why [103:53] people feel comfortable approaching a [103:54] bulldog, whereas like a, you know, pit [103:56] bulls are always kind of like winding [103:58] around and moving, but some dogs it may [104:00] relate to other things, cuteness and [104:01] what, but some people just seem to have [104:02] a lot of spontaneous movement. Other [104:04] people are more stable in their bodily [104:06] movements. And it does seem to relate to [104:08] kind of how excitable they are or not [104:10] excitable they are. So you can imagine [104:11] like if you're if you're humming at a [104:13] higher RPM, you can like more prone to [104:15] action forcing. It's a super interesting [104:17] observation because the question of [104:18] course is to what extent does it relate [104:20] to how their mind is working, right? I [104:22] mean, as we're talking now and as you [104:23] were just talking, you're, you know, [104:24] we're moving our hands, we're moving our [104:26] body, we're moving our face, you know, [104:28] not just sitting there speaking. So, to [104:31] some extent, all of these bodily [104:32] movements are interfaced with thought. [104:34] >> If I had to sit completely still and [104:36] not, you know, move, it would be pretty [104:38] hard to have this conversation, right? [104:40] So, to some extent, bodily movements [104:43] actually help us structure our thoughts. [104:44] It's not just like a large language [104:46] model. It's not just language going on. [104:48] It interfaces with the body [104:51] >> and it punctuates thoughts to some [104:54] extent. So I think it's super [104:55] interesting and it's it's certainly the [104:57] case that the way that somebody moves [104:59] their body does say something about how [105:01] they're thinking as well. [105:02] >> Yeah, I've been reading my audio book [105:04] and I asked them uh the sound [105:06] technicians to allow me to stand while I [105:08] read it. Much easier to read an audio [105:10] book and to put in flexion. You actually [105:12] can lean in when you want to emphasize [105:14] something and you can, you know, point [105:15] to the words for a moment, but then when [105:17] you need to work through a passage that [105:19] needs to be very finely structured with [105:21] little emotion because that happens too [105:23] if you clasp your hands and do it. So [105:26] >> our friend Eddie Chang tells me that um [105:28] the hand representations in the brain [105:30] are very close to the language center. [105:32] So these were probably our first tools [105:34] of language or at least they co-evolved. [105:36] >> Well, your mouth and your hands are the [105:37] most dextrous and over represented in [105:40] the brain. you can, you know, control [105:42] the world with them and you can move [105:43] from the most. Yeah. When, you know, [105:45] when the co pandemic started 2020, we [105:47] weren't allowed to to go on campus at [105:50] all. So, we sat around in our [105:51] apartments. I sat at home, we had lab [105:53] meetings on Zoom, only Zoom and [105:56] lectures. All the classes were on Zoom. [105:57] Prior to that and then then Zoom took [105:59] off and now it's most meetings are [106:01] hybrid. But before that point, [106:02] everything was face to face. I would [106:04] stand up and lecture. We would talk face [106:06] to face and suddenly switching to just [106:08] seeing a bunch of often little just [106:09] black squares right for the for the [106:12] whole classroom there on Zoom. That was [106:14] a hard switch. That lack of an [106:16] interactive nature which is something [106:18] that we're looking at now. I think it's [106:20] going to be super cool. I have a [106:21] graduate student just starting this. The [106:23] experiment is this. I would see your [106:25] face on a screen and that's it. I would [106:27] see a video of you. I would zoom with [106:28] you right now and we could be having [106:30] this podcast over Zoom. I actually [106:31] thought we were going to have this over [106:32] Zoom. So I'm very happy it's not over [106:34] Zoom actually better in person and then [106:36] then you're here if you're in person, [106:37] right? And it feels different. It feels [106:38] different. And so we we're sort of [106:41] trying to parameterize that degree of [106:43] social realness of social interaction. [106:46] And then we're doing that with people [106:47] with autism asking where does it change [106:51] and how difficult is it for people with [106:53] autism to interact with another person? [106:55] Is it equally difficult over Zoom? Is it [106:57] equally difficult over Zoom if you have [106:58] the selfie camera turned off? the other [107:00] person can't see you and you know that [107:02] and so we're trying to look at the the [107:05] degree of actual social interaction as a [107:07] relevant dimension and I think it makes [107:09] a huge difference. I mean it feels [107:11] completely different being face to face [107:13] that if you're on Zoom let alone if I [107:15] just watch a video that's not actually [107:17] aligned in time. [107:18] >> The way I described the kind of higher [107:20] or lower RPM before made it perhaps made [107:23] it sound like one or the other was [107:24] better. But I think sometimes about like [107:26] Alex Honold who again who was a guest on [107:28] this podcast and there have been claims [107:30] that his amydala doesn't react as much. [107:32] Anyway, we could we could talk about [107:33] that. I think Alex kind of like maybe [107:35] chuckles a little bit at those studies [107:36] cuz he does experience anxiety and fear [107:38] just not in the context of this like [107:41] highly trained situation he's put [107:43] himself in every single day for so long. [107:45] But I do have to wonder whether people [107:47] who go out on long runs, for instance, [107:49] there's not a lot of talking going on. [107:51] Or Alex, he's devoting his physical and [107:55] mental energetic resources toward [107:57] climbing and figuring out these how to [107:59] navigate high-risisk, high consequence [108:00] >> situations, totally just in flow. You're [108:02] just like totally absorbed in what [108:04] you're doing. If you're doing a type [108:05] climbing [108:06] >> once he he's got it, but like to work [108:08] out the puzzle of like with ropes first [108:10] of how to maneuver so that he can [108:12] actually free solo it is is a remarkable [108:14] thing. But I almost get the impression [108:16] that if people speak less that they're [108:19] able to devote more mental and physical [108:20] resources to the thing they're doing. I [108:22] never ran ultras, but I recall like [108:25] running, you know, I used to run for [108:26] like a long 8 to 10 mile run on Sundays [108:28] used to be a thing. Now it's getting [108:29] shorter and shorter run. I have to go [108:31] get it back. But come back from those [108:33] and there's a fatigue component that [108:34] confounds what I'm about to say. But one [108:36] is a lot less reactive [108:39] when you spent a bunch of time just in [108:42] your own head and you've learned to [108:43] tolerate the voice in your own head. I [108:45] find that I'm much calmer after I've [108:47] spent a bunch of time alone because I've [108:49] I've gone through that kind of initial [108:51] stage of the mind fluttering and then [108:52] you want to communicate with people and [108:53] I'll lock up my phone in a box these [108:55] days to do real work and I come out of [108:57] it and things come my way and they're [108:59] sort of out there and over there and [109:01] unless they really demand my attention [109:03] >> they kind of just don't grab me. Whereas [109:06] I think when we're highly engaged with [109:08] in in our own mental dialogue it's [109:10] almost like we're trying to converse [109:12] with the world. So I think there's real [109:13] value to doing these solo treks and to [109:16] devoting time to getting past that need [109:19] to engage with the world. I think it's [109:21] very very useful. [109:22] >> Yeah. I mean I'm sure it's [109:22] idiosyncratic. It'll vary. But I think [109:25] that particular aspect that you [109:27] mentioned that you can just be [109:28] comfortable in your own mind and that [109:30] that's beneficial. Uh I think that's a [109:33] big part it's a big part of lots of [109:35] training techniques and big part of lots [109:36] of meditative techniques that you just [109:39] but again it's very individual. It's not [109:41] just sort of onesizefits-all, but the [109:43] ability to not just be driven by sensory [109:45] input and be comfortable with your own [109:48] mind. It's not that you're doing nothing [109:49] at all. You're training you're training [109:51] your own mind to be comfortable. And I [109:53] think the consequence of that is then [109:55] subsequently when you encounter [109:56] challenges in the world, you're actually [109:57] better equipped to deal with those and [109:59] better equipped to regulate your [110:01] emotion. But when you're just at peace [110:03] with yourself, if you're not doing [110:04] nothing, your brain is being trained all [110:08] the time and it's being trained in a [110:09] useful way. And I think the ability to [110:12] detach and decouple from the constant [110:14] challenges and sensory information [110:16] that's normally coming in, it's like [110:18] sleep allows the brain to actually train [110:21] itself and focus on particular internal [110:24] regulation strategies that are then [110:26] subsequently useful for dealing with the [110:28] world later. Could we say that one form [110:31] of potentially useful emotional [110:33] intelligence or social uh intelligence [110:35] training is to just spend some time in [110:37] your own head either moving or not [110:39] moving. You could do it meditating or [110:40] you could do it running but to just [110:42] resist the temptation to get pulled out [110:44] into the world and just get good at just [110:46] sitting with these things that we call [110:47] emotions and thoughts. I think so, [110:49] especially it's again it's going to be [110:51] individual um and it's going to vary but [110:53] I think so especially if you can get [110:56] some kind of metacognitive or reflective [110:58] awareness and work on what is going on [111:01] in your mind and ultimately it's [111:04] training control. It's training control [111:06] of your emotions and training control of [111:08] your thoughts. And if you're constantly [111:11] bombarded and just dealing with stuff [111:13] coming in, you don't have time to do [111:14] that. It's called social media. [111:16] >> Exactly. Yes. Of which I have none. Um, [111:18] and so if you're just by yourself, you [111:20] know, if you're running or if you're [111:22] meditating or if you're trained up, if [111:23] you're in an ice bath, uh, I think you [111:26] actually get a particular type of [111:28] internal training that you just don't [111:31] have the leisure to get if you're [111:33] bombarded by social media, for instance. [111:35] Yes. You know, every beginning of my lab [111:36] meeting now, people have their laptops [111:38] open and their phones out. We put them [111:40] down and we actually have five minutes [111:42] of silence, a sort of meditative silence [111:44] for to people to clear their minds at [111:47] the beginning of Yeah. Five minute or [111:48] three minutes. At the beginning of every [111:49] lab meeting, we have a short meditative [111:52] session. I put a picture up of some [111:53] beautiful pe on the north shore of [111:55] Kawaii and people in case people want to [111:57] look at that, but many people just close [111:58] their eyes. People can do whatever they [112:00] want. It's but the idea is to clear your [112:04] mind and focus and relax and get into a [112:08] frame of mind where you're actually now [112:10] most receptive to listen to the research [112:12] presentation that's coming up because [112:14] you you know you come in and your mind [112:16] is all over the place and you know [112:18] there's an email here and the phone is [112:20] going and you just your mind is buzzing. [112:22] So quieting that, finding some focus and [112:24] then being able to engage subsequently [112:27] much better with the real world, [112:29] listening to the talk. I think that's [112:31] that helps and we do that every lab [112:34] meeting Mondays at noon seems to work [112:36] for people. [112:36] >> How long have you implemented this? [112:38] >> We started it in uh 2020 when George [112:42] Floyd was killed uh specifically to [112:45] remember George Floyd. So it was a there [112:47] was a very specific starting point [112:48] because many people were upset and we [112:50] figured we needed some kind of [112:51] remembrance or just a moment of silence [112:53] to to acknowledge things and then it [112:56] morphed into you know you can remember [112:58] whatever you like. you can just relax [113:01] and then it sort of morphed into this [113:03] idea. Well, you know, let's just have a [113:04] moment of silence and just like [113:07] recalibrate from the busy world and [113:09] everything that's just been going on to [113:11] now, you know, I mean, it's good to do [113:13] on average every day in any case, but [113:16] certainly right now before we launch [113:18] into the research presentation at a lab [113:20] meeting. So, we sort of morphed from a [113:22] moment of silence to remember somebody [113:24] to a short meditation essentially. [113:28] >> I love it. that my neuroscience [113:29] colleagues are doing ice baths, training [113:31] for 100 mile races, and doing um [113:34] >> the question is, is it helping my am I [113:35] getting more nature papers as a [113:37] consequence of any of these? [113:38] >> That's a different metric. That's a [113:39] different metric. Uh you seem like a [113:41] happy vital person and and you're [113:43] writing books and you're doing public [113:45] education here. In addition to all of [113:46] that, I'd like to actually stay on this [113:48] meditation thing for a moment. Rick [113:49] Rubin, famed music producer, came on [113:51] this podcast. He also happens to be a [113:53] friend of mine. And right as we sat [113:55] down, he said, "Um, can we do some [113:57] coherence breathing first?" He plays [113:59] it's like a tone. You do some inhale, [114:01] exhale, and you know, he [114:03] >> he likes these transition [114:05] >> breathing exercises are great. [114:06] >> Yeah, these transition tools and and [114:08] they will increase your heart rate [114:10] variability and these kinds of things. [114:11] Um, but I think that one of the most [114:14] interesting and underststudied things in [114:16] our field is task switching. Whether [114:18] it's emotional task switching or [114:20] cognitive task switching like we assume [114:22] the brain operates in step functions [114:24] like oh I'm out on the street I navigate [114:26] traffic I park my car and I come in and [114:27] I podcast and what you're doing at the [114:29] beginning of this lab meaning in on the [114:31] one hand is a meditation but it's you're [114:33] pivoting the brain circuits [114:35] >> toward what comes next. [114:36] >> Yeah. [114:37] >> I don't think we talk enough as [114:39] neuroscientists about the fact that the [114:42] brain doesn't just immediately switch [114:43] over that you're carrying residual [114:45] activity from whatever you were doing [114:47] before. [114:47] >> Yes. There's a there's a cost to that, a [114:49] well-known cost. So, as soon as you [114:50] switch into something, there's a cost [114:52] carried over from the previous task, and [114:54] you're much slower and more difficult [114:56] for the couple of next trials on the new [114:58] task. So, there's always a switching [115:00] cost [115:01] >> which shows you that switching [115:03] >> is hard and some for some reason, and [115:05] there's a couple of theories for why it [115:07] should be hard. There's some residue, [115:08] some sort of inertia being carried over [115:10] previously. There's some reconfiguration [115:13] in the brain required between what you [115:15] were doing in the previous task and the [115:17] new task. But all of those would seem to [115:18] require some effort and it's definitely [115:20] a skill and something that people are [115:23] looking at a lot in brain recordings in [115:25] humans and thinking a lot about how to [115:26] design into AI. That ability to switch [115:30] quickly and knowing how to switch, [115:32] anticipating when to switch is a hugely [115:35] important skill. [115:36] >> Yeah. And we don't teach it like here we [115:37] are talking about emotional [115:38] intelligence, social awareness and these [115:40] kinds of things. And I think most people [115:41] would think, oh, we should sit down and [115:43] look at a bunch of faces and learn to [115:45] detect the subtle cues in faces or we [115:47] should make more eye contact. And what [115:48] I'm hearing today is while some of that [115:50] might be true, most things are pointing [115:52] in a different direction. We had a guest [115:54] on this podcast, DJ Shipley, who's a [115:56] former tier one SEAL team operator. [115:58] That's another high-risisk, high [115:59] consequence world. But then he's out [116:01] now. He's no longer deploying. And he [116:03] talked about his routine for coming [116:04] home. It's like he knows, he's [116:06] rehearsing as he comes out of the car, [116:08] just like as if it were an op, you know? [116:10] I'm gonna hit the door. My daughter's [116:11] gonna come running from this direction. [116:13] My other daughter's gonna come in. Py's [116:14] gonna be in the kitchen. [116:15] >> Dog's gonna come charging. [116:16] >> Yeah. And but he's rehearsed it and he [116:18] knows exactly where he'll set his bag so [116:20] he can scoop his daughter up. People [116:22] either chuckled or I think we're kind of [116:24] taken aback by that until he said, "But [116:27] this is the way that I know I can drop [116:30] everything from the day [116:31] >> and be at my best when I enter that [116:33] environment." And you know, this is the [116:35] kind of a quote unquote like hyper Y [116:37] chromosome version of kind of of home [116:39] and family life, but it was remarkable [116:42] what the comments when we ran this clip [116:44] on social media. The men were all kind [116:46] of like in awe like you have a system, [116:48] dude, and you follow it. And the women [116:49] were like, "Yes, fantastic." Like, "This [116:51] is somebody who's prioritizing how he [116:54] shows up. He's leaving everything else [116:55] outside." Which is a kind of, you know, [116:57] it's a more of a 1950s version of [116:59] >> that skill to switch is super super [117:02] important. It was super important. [117:04] >> It is trainable. It's largely trainable. [117:06] And I think if you have meditative [117:07] exercises, they train exactly that. It's [117:10] a it's a huge switch, right? You're [117:12] switching from like constantly being [117:13] bombarded and dealing with stuff in the [117:15] world to suddenly like putting all of [117:17] that aside and just being inside [117:19] >> and and it has health benefits. You [117:22] know, Richie Davidson, for instance, I [117:23] don't know if if you [117:24] >> Yeah, we had him here. Phenomenal. Oh, [117:26] he's he studied Tibetan monks and [117:28] long-term meditators who've meditated [117:30] 10,000 hours or whatever, which we can't [117:32] afford to do. But he has a lot of [117:33] studies on even for the rest of us, you [117:35] know, short stretches of meditation, [117:38] regular meditative exercises, you know, [117:40] he's done well controlled studies have [117:43] demonstrable health benefits for sure. [117:45] So again, it comes back to this issue of [117:47] variability. Being able to switch and [117:50] having lots of variability and training [117:53] that is definitely beneficial. It's [117:55] beneficial for just basic physiology. [117:58] It's beneficial for emotion granularity [118:00] and emotion regulation. It's beneficial [118:03] for control of thought is when you're [118:05] being externally oriented versus [118:07] meditating. All of those are to a large [118:10] extent trainable skills in variability [118:14] and and control. So the experiment I'd [118:16] love to see done, maybe your lab will do [118:18] this, would be what is the cost of task [118:21] switching if you do or or do not insert [118:24] this five minutes of silence like [118:27] because you're you're spending 5 minutes [118:29] and we know the transition is choppy [118:31] into the next thing that you're doing. [118:32] So there's some overlap there. But by [118:34] introducing the period of silence, you [118:36] reduce the amount of time in order to [118:38] switch your brain over to this new mode. [118:40] Presumably you're seeing positive [118:42] effects in these lab meetings of doing [118:44] >> yeah we should we should do a study it [118:46] would be you know we would have to think [118:47] about the right controls we are looking [118:48] at task switching actually in these uh [118:50] brain recordings in epilepsy patients [118:52] we're looking at single unit recordings [118:54] and how um those representations change [118:57] when you switch between tasks it's it's [118:59] a great study we're just working up the [119:00] analyses now but we don't have the [119:03] intervention that you were just speaking [119:04] about so we don't have half the patients [119:06] are getting meditative training and half [119:08] are not but the extent to which an [119:10] intervention ion like that can improve [119:12] your ability to switch or some other [119:14] concrete metric. I think that's yes, [119:16] those are exactly the types of studies [119:18] that should be done. I think Richie is [119:20] probably doing studies like that. They [119:22] did a a study of 5 minutes of meditation [119:24] per day and showed that people [119:26] experienced tremendous increases in [119:28] anxiety during the initial phase of the [119:30] study, like just having to sit there [119:31] with your thoughts and let everything [119:33] stir. I actually think of short [119:35] meditations like that at least initially [119:38] as another version of the ice bath. [119:40] >> Well, it is and I think when we started [119:42] and you know we have like new summer [119:43] students come in on new people in the [119:45] lab and say okay I don't usually say too [119:47] much. Okay, we're going to just like [119:49] three minutes of silence and everybody's [119:51] like this and these summer students are [119:53] looking around. What's what's going on? [119:55] It's very stressful, right? And if you [119:57] just tell them well just like don't do [119:58] anything. I mean this is obviously [120:00] extremely difficult for young children. [120:02] Don't do anything, right? Just be [120:04] completely silent and quiet for 1 minute [120:07] or 5 minutes. It is hard to inhibit [120:09] behavior. It's really hard to do, but [120:11] it's trainable. It's completely [120:13] trainable. And a big part of it, you [120:14] know, we're in this same conference room [120:16] that David Anderson has his lab meetings [120:18] in, which is why you can always see that [120:19] it goes on for hours and hours. It has [120:21] glass walls and so people are walking [120:24] around outside looking at us sitting [120:26] there in silence pretty wonder not much [120:28] progress being done in that that last [120:29] meeting. So there's that whole social [120:32] perception aspect, but again once you [120:33] get over that and get used to it, it's [120:35] it's very easy to to do these exercises [120:38] and it's definitely a trainable skill [120:40] for sure. [120:41] >> Yeah, we were on the East Coast uh in [120:43] Annapolis um at the Naval Academy. These [120:45] are very accomplished students um almost [120:48] 4,000 of them. And one of the most [120:50] incredible things about that environment [120:52] is everyone goes into the cafeteria for [120:54] lunch and all of a sudden a bell sounds [120:56] and you could hear a pin drop. But [120:59] there's thousands of people around you. [121:01] >> You hear a bell again. [121:03] >> The meal begins. [121:04] >> Walking into the auditorium, it's [121:06] shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, talking, [121:07] talking, talking, talking talking. Boom. [121:09] It's a step function. They're training [121:11] this in themselves. And the other thing, [121:13] no phones. [121:15] >> No one has phones during the day. They [121:16] get I think they get an hour where they [121:18] can access their phones. I I normally my [121:19] my phone it's on right now because you [121:21] guys wanted to text me, but normally my [121:22] phone is off or I don't have a phone on [121:24] me [121:25] >> and and zero social media, not on X and [121:28] not on social, not on uh Facebook. I'm [121:30] not on Instagram. Zero. I just And you [121:34] know, whenever people ask me, they say, [121:36] "Oh, you know, can I hook you up with [121:38] what's that thing? LinkedIn or whatever. [121:40] I'm not on LinkedIn. I don't I don't [121:42] care what LinkedIn." And they're always [121:44] surprised and they say, "Well, why are [121:45] you not on social media?" And I say, [121:46] "Why would I be? I'm already above 100% [121:50] in terms of people emailing me. I don't [121:51] need more. So, I'm Yeah. zero. [121:54] >> Love that you've given yourself [121:56] permission to do that. Um, I put social [121:58] media on a separate phone so that I can [122:00] really track my time on there and I just [122:03] use it only to post, read a little bit, [122:05] and then I'm out. [122:06] >> I just I can't take the mental noise. [122:08] Before we started recording, you [122:10] mentioned that you fortunately [122:12] successfully overcame a bout of illness. [122:15] >> Yes. I'm curious whether the process of [122:17] going through that, the diagnosis, the [122:18] treatment, and then emerging from it, [122:20] thank goodness, healthy, had you at [122:22] times thinking about the science of [122:24] emotions. I mean, that's an emotional [122:26] experience to say the least. You don't [122:28] have to share with us exactly what it [122:29] was, but were there times when what your [122:32] knowledge of the brain's ability to [122:36] process emotions for better or worse was [122:38] a useful tool to you in that context? [122:40] >> I guess so. I mean, you know, only in [122:42] the most indirect sense, but uh I guess [122:45] it's about emotional regulation. Well, [122:47] it's about two things. I think it's [122:48] about emotional regulation. So, you [122:49] know, you know, initially when you get a [122:51] diagnosis that reminds you of your [122:54] mortality is sort of a mixture of, you [122:57] know, fear, sadness, worry, you know, [123:00] all these negative emotions. And so, [123:03] you're regulating that and it's [123:04] interpersonal for sure. So, [123:06] interpersonal emotion regulation between [123:08] me and my wife, us talking about it. So [123:10] that's like a huge part of the process. [123:13] If you're not regulating those negative [123:15] emotions anymore, but you're um you're [123:19] buying into you're getting more other [123:22] emotions like awe, gratitude, [123:25] acceptance, all of these emotions we [123:27] were talking about before that I think [123:29] are largely uniquely human uh that [123:32] really make you appreciate and be just [123:34] grateful for what you have. So that [123:36] whole process of regulating the sort of [123:38] you know immediate stressors and then [123:40] coming to um having more gratitude and [123:43] awe in everyday life. Uh and then you [123:46] know also I mean I think one big [123:48] consequence of anything like that is [123:50] that you uh you have this metacognitive [123:53] perspective on your your lifeline and [123:55] you know where you are, how much time [123:57] you have left and how to value that and [123:59] what to do and what to plan uh and how [124:02] to allocate your time to things that are [124:04] worthwhile. And so in my case one of [124:06] those components was you know signing up [124:08] for this 100 mile ultramarathon starting [124:10] to train for it and then just pushing [124:13] through all of that. So, you know, one [124:15] of the consequences of the of the [124:16] therapy for this was I had lots of joint [124:18] pain and lots of fatigue. So, I tell my [124:21] doctor about that. You say, "That's [124:22] that's great. That means it's working." [124:24] It's like, "Yes, but the side effects [124:26] are preventing me from training for a [124:27] 100 mile race." And so, pushing through [124:30] that, I think it just it makes you [124:32] grateful for what you have and makes you [124:35] just be in awe of the fact that, you [124:37] know, we were briefly talking about [124:39] consciousness before that there's a [124:41] world there at all. You tend to have [124:43] this perspective that physics gives us [124:46] of the way the world works that you know [124:48] the world is going on and when you die [124:50] you get plucked out of that and [124:52] everything else goes on. But from a [124:54] neuroscience perspective it's kind of [124:56] the opposite. You get this sense that [124:58] the whole world is actually a [125:00] construction of stuff in your brain. And [125:02] as you get older little things drop out [125:04] and various people die and you're unable [125:06] to do things and eventually you lose the [125:09] whole world. So rather than thinking of [125:11] death as we normally do as the world [125:14] loses you, the neuroscience perspective [125:17] is the inverse which is you lose the [125:19] world. So you have like you know a [125:21] couple of decades left and then you're [125:22] going to lose everything and that's [125:24] coming. So live it up. [125:27] >> I love it and thank you so much for [125:29] being willing to answer that question. [125:31] And I um throughout today's [125:33] conversation, I I'm struck by the fact [125:35] that your work plays such a prominent [125:37] role in your life and your life in your [125:39] work, even if uh we weren't necessarily [125:41] connecting the dots in that way. The the [125:43] fact that you do practices specifically [125:45] to um tap into your autonomic nervous [125:48] system emotion regulation and at the [125:50] same time the fact that you look at [125:52] neural circuits and and do extremely [125:54] well-controlled studies to explore that [125:56] the mechanics that translate to [125:58] everybody. like this is a um in case [126:00] anyone hasn't told you um and because I [126:02] sit at a unique vantage point both [126:04] having done academic research and now in [126:06] public health communication people need [126:08] to hear this and see and experienced [126:11] scientists like you. So thank you so [126:13] much for coming here today for um being [126:16] willing to open up about some of this [126:18] and frankly for doing the work that you [126:20] do for so many years and such at such a [126:22] high level and I'm so grateful that [126:23] you're writing yet another book. Um, if [126:25] it's not out yet, we can't put a link to [126:27] it just yet, but when it comes out, I'll [126:29] surely get a copy. And even though [126:30] you're not on social media, uh, I'll be [126:32] sure to, uh, to talk about it after I've [126:34] read it because as I did the the prior [126:35] book that you wrote with David. So, [126:37] >> thank you very much, Andrew. It was a [126:38] pleasure being here. We'll stay in touch [126:40] and maybe at some point I can tell you [126:41] that I finished the 100 mile race and [126:42] the book got published. [126:43] >> Excellent. I have no doubt that you [126:46] will. Uh, whether I join you for that [126:47] 100 mile race is a completely different [126:49] story, but thank you so much, Ralph. [126:51] Appreciate it. Pleasure. [126:52] >> Thank you. Thank you for joining me for [126:53] today's discussion with Dr. Ralph [126:55] Adolf's. To learn more about his work [126:57] and to find links to his previous and [126:59] forthcoming books, please see the link [127:01] in the show notes caption. If you're [127:03] learning from and or enjoying this [127:04] podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube [127:06] channel. That's a terrific zerocost way [127:08] to support us. In addition, please [127:10] follow the podcast by clicking the [127:11] follow button on both Spotify and Apple. [127:14] And on both Spotify and Apple, you can [127:15] leave us up to a five-star review. And [127:17] you can now leave us comments at both [127:19] Spotify and Apple. Please also check out [127:21] the sponsors mentioned at the beginning [127:23] and throughout today's episode. That's [127:25] the best way to support this podcast. If [127:27] you have questions for me or comments [127:29] about the podcast or guests or topics [127:31] that you'd like me to consider for the [127:32] Huberman Lab podcast, please put those [127:34] in the comment section on YouTube. I do [127:36] read all the comments. For those of you [127:38] that haven't heard, I have a new book [127:39] coming out. It's my very first book. [127:41] It's entitled Protocols: An Operating [127:43] Manual for the Human Body. This is a [127:45] book that I've been working on for more [127:46] than five years and that's based on more [127:48] than 30 years of research and [127:50] experience. And it covers protocols for [127:52] everything from sleep to exercise to [127:56] stress control protocols related to [127:58] focus and motivation. And of course, I [128:00] provide the scientific substantiation [128:02] for the protocols that are included. The [128:05] book is now available by pre-sale at [128:06] protocolsbook.com. 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And last, but certainly not [129:19] least, thank you for your interest in [129:21] science.