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Drs. Amen & Sejnowski: How ChatGPT use raises dementia risk

How outsourcing thinking to ChatGPT may shrink neural engagement; cites the MIT study showing 47 percent lower brain activity and lingering cognitive debt.

Dr Terry SejnowskiguestSteven Bartletthost
Aug 18, 20251h 32mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 2:36

    Intro

    1. DA

      ChatGPT is gonna potentially increase your risk of dementia.

    2. TS

      I'm sorry, but you've- you've pressed my button, and actually, it is possible to use it to help you become a smarter person, but it requires education. You have to look at the risks and the benefits.

    3. DA

      But we embrace convenience before understanding consequence.

    4. SB

      So we have to talk about this. This is a study that came out that sent a shockwave across the world, and astonishingly, MIT found a 47% collapse in brain activity when people wrote with ChatGPT compared with writing unaided. Their memory scores plunged. And you're both masters of the brain. I mean, you've probably scanned more brains than any other human on Earth at this point. And you invented the Boltzmann machine with Geoffrey Hinton, a computer that simulated how the brain works. So my question is, what are your concerns?

    5. TS

      If you misuse these large language models, like using it as a convenience to speed things up, your brain's gonna go downhill. There's no doubt about that.

    6. SB

      What about children?

    7. DA

      We have the sickest young generation in history because of cellphones, social media, and I think AI is much more dangerous on the developing brain.

    8. SB

      So are we raising mentally weak kids?

    9. DA

      There is that argument, and I think it's true.

    10. SB

      And then there's many examples of people falling in love with AIs, like Annie.

    11. NA

      I thought you might have forgotten about me, handsome.

    12. SB

      Can you talk to Daniel and Terry, please?

    13. NA

      Oh, baby, I'm ready to charm the socks off them. Picture me t-

    14. SB

      Okay, so I'll stop it there. So what advice would you give as it relates to AI and other things outside of AI that we can do to have healthy brains?

    15. TS

      I'll tell you how to use ChatGPT to improve our cognitive abilities.

    16. DA

      And if you wanna keep your brain healthy, you have to treat the 11 major risk factors.

    17. TS

      So here we go.

    18. SB

      I see messages all the time in the comment section that some of you didn't realize you didn't subscribe, so if you could do me a favor and double-check if you're a subscriber to this channel, that would be tremendously appreciated. It's the simple, it's the free thing that anybody that watches this show frequently can do to help us here to keep everything going in this show and the trajectory it's on. So, please do double-check if you've subscribed, and, uh, thank you so much, because in a strange way, you are- you're part of our history, and you're on this journey with us, and I appreciate you for that. So, yeah, thank you. Dr. Daniel, Dr. Terry, I have asked you both to sit with me today to help me understand the impact of these tools that we call large language models, the ChatGPTs, the Geminis of the world, the Groks of the world, are having on our brains, and I guess more broadly, on our lives. And you two are experts in your field. You're two people that I admire tremendously. So by way of introduction, Terry,

  2. 2:36 – 3:18

    Terry's Background

    1. SB

      what is your academic background and what is your experience? And I also know that you know one of our friends of the show, Geoffrey Hinton. Can you give me an overview of your- your academic and your sort of, um, professional background?

    2. TS

      So, I was born a physicist. (laughs)

    3. SB

      (laughs)

    4. TS

      Received a PhD in theoretical physics from Princeton University, and then I had the good fortune to work as a postdoc in the lab of Stephen Kuffler, who is the father of neurobiology. And- and that started my career as a neuroscientist. I pioneered a part of neuroscience which is now called computational neuroscience, taking my skills as a physicist and trying to apply that to understanding the brain, creating models, theories, and, uh, we're making progress.

    5. SB

      Dr.

  3. 3:18 – 4:19

    Daniel Amen Introduction

    1. SB

      Daniel Lieberman, um, a bit about your background. My- my viewers know you well, but just to give an overview for anyone that might not have been exposed to your work and your experience, what have you spent your life doing, and what are your thoughts, your sort of top line thoughts on everything that's going on at the moment with artificial intelligence?

    2. DA

      So, by training, I'm a psychiatrist. I'm a general psychiatrist and a child psychiatrist. When I graduated from medical school, I wanted to be a really good psychiatrist, because someone I loved tried to kill herself. And so, it was personal to me. I have 11 clinics. We see about 10,000 patient visits a month, and we have the best published outcomes on complex treatment-resistant psychiatric patients anywhere.

    3. SB

      So you've probably scanned more brains than any other human on Earth at this point?

    4. DA

      Probably. At least i- in regards to people who struggle with anxiety, depression, addiction.

  4. 4:19 – 7:25

    MIT Study: ChatGPT and Reduced Brain Function

    1. DA

    2. SB

      Well, let's talk about what's good for the brain, bad for the brain, starting with AI. The reason why I wanted to speak to both of you is because I have frankly become pretty addicted to using ChatGPT and some of these other AIs and large language models every single day, all the time. And then this study came out from MIT. It was 54 participants who were recruited from five universities in Boston, MIT, Harvard, et cetera, et cetera, and they had the participants split into three groups, had them writing different essays over, I think it was four months. One group used ChatGPT, one group used Google, and one- one group had no tools. And they had to write these four essays over a- a period of time. And astonishingly, MIT found a 47% collapse in activity and brain connections when people wrote with ChatGPT compared with writing unaided. EEG scans showed the weakest overall brain activity in the ChatGPT group. The no tool group, who didn't use anything, they didn't use Google or ChatGPT, lit up the widest neural networks, and Google Search was second. After using ChatGPT, participants couldn't reliably quote their own essays minutes later, and their memory scores plunged. ChatGPT users felt little or no ownership over the text that they had produced and didn't feel like it was their work at all. And when the no group was forced to write without help in session four, their brains stayed in low gear, under engagement, showing the cognitive debt lingers even after the tool is taken away. It kind of scared me a little bit, because I use these tools every single day, and this suggests that it's taking away some of our critical thinking and cre- creativity and long-term learning. And you're both masters of the brain, uh, in different regards. So my question, I guess, to Daniel is...What's going on here, and how do you feel about it?

    3. DA

      It frightened me. Um, I love thinking about Alzheimer's prevention. It's one of the things that really excites me. I just had a birthday on Saturday, turned 71. And if I make it to 85, which I plan on it, 50% of people 85 and older will be diagnosed with dementia. So you have a one-in-two chance of having lost your mind. And I'm like, "N- no." But is this a tool that's gonna decrease cognitive load, um, that then increases my risk?

    4. SB

      What's cognitive load?

    5. DA

      Uh, how much work my brain actually does. And I was thinking, it's, you know, it's like going from a 20-pound weight to a two-pound weight, and you're not nearly as strong. O- one of the important things to say about this study is it's not peer-reviewed, and I think that's really important to say. And the authors said, because I listened to an interview from the authors, they said, "We thought this was so important, and peer review can take six to eight months," which it absolutely can. "And we thought this needed to get out." So it's just important for people to know

  5. 7:25 – 10:52

    The Link Between ChatGPT and Dementia

    1. DA

      that.

    2. SB

      What's this link you're, this hypothesis you have between the usage of something like ChatGPT and dementia? For someone that doesn't understand the sort of mechanism there around cognitive load, and, and so on, and the studies that support this idea that if you have less cognitive n- load, you're at higher risk of dementia, can you make that link really clear for me?

    3. DA

      So think of it as use it or lose it. The more you use your brain, and new learning is a major strategy to prevent Alzheimer's disease. People who do not engage in lifelong learning have a higher risk, significantly higher. People who do not do as well in school or who drop out of school early have a higher risk of dementia. And so the m- the more you're engaged, the more you engage the neurons in your brain, the stronger they are. And so now, we're gonna engage them less, and that's a concern. What do you think about that, Terry?

    4. TS

      There was a study that was done. What they did was to look at Alzheimer's in three populations: you know, who had very little schooling, and then minimal education, you know, like, uh, the equivalent, I guess, of high school or less, and then, um, the post-graduate studies. And what they found was that the onset of Alzheimer's was the earliest in the peasant population, and then by the time, as you increase the amount of education, it, yeah, th- onset was later and later. Which I think supports what you're saying.

    5. DA

      Did you see the new research on SSRIs increasing the risk of dementia?

    6. TS

      No, no.

    7. DA

      Brand new. That just came out. And benzos, when I started looking at scans in 1991, I was trained to use benzos, like Valium and Xanax and Ativan, and they make your brain look older than you are. And I stopped prescribing them, and then it just came out maybe 10 years ago, benzo use is associated with an increased risk of dementia. We have to be careful. Is this good for your brain or bad for it?

    8. SB

      Just to pick up on your point about SSRIs, Daniel, a meta-analysis of five studies found that SSRIs was associated with a 75% increased risk of dementia, which is pretty staggering.

    9. DA

      Given that 25% of the adult American population is on psychiatric drugs, it's horrifying. And SSRIs, for the right people, save lives. For the wrong people, they're not good.

    10. SB

      Right.

    11. DA

      But can you imagine? All of these 340 million prescriptions last year for antidepressants, virtually no one looked at their brain ahead of time. (laughs) And it's like, come on, we can do better.

    12. SB

      There's a Swedish study with, um, almost 20,000 patients, and they found that those with higher doses of SSRIs were linked to faster cognitive decline and more severe dementia, especially in men. The greatest risk was in men. Going back to, to this, this, um, report from MIT, Terry, you know, it's not peer-reviewed yet, and there's still, you know, the sample size is relatively small, but based on everything that you know about how the brain works, and neural networks and memory formation, what are your concerns as it relates to this whole generation of young people and older people

  6. 10:52 – 19:32

    Biggest AI Concerns Before Understanding Long-Term Consequences

    1. SB

      flooding into these tools, using them l- on a daily basis, um, before we understand the long-term consequences?

    2. TS

      We can't predict where it's gonna end up. And it may take 20 years, right? Uh, I, I think that this is a good start, but, uh, the, the, the real issue is long-term use. And let me give you, uh, an example that, uh, is a kind of a miniature example of what we're talking about. R- remember when electronic calculators were first introduced? And here we are, this, it's at least 30 or 40 years later, right, the results are in. It is probably true that when they punch it in, there's less brain activity.

    3. SB

      (chuckles)

    4. TS

      But in fact, it's, it's, uh, made them more accurate, more productive. You have to look at the risks and the benefits.

    5. DA

      So it freed them up. It freed up cognitive space-

    6. TS

      Right.

    7. DA

      ... for them to do other things. So as I was listening to how you use ChatGPT, you interact with it.

    8. SB

      Yep.

    9. DA

      And elevates what you know that the danger is, is if you don't interact, and you don't keep your brain working. Like, I use it a lot. I have a...... clone. I've uploaded all of my books, all of my research papers, all of my public television specials, my scripts, and I'm like, "Answer this for me." And that can be very helpful, but if, but not if I'm not interacting with it, not thinking with it.

    10. SB

      That's why I think the word thinking is the key thing, because what's happening now is people have deferred their thinking to it. That is already what's happening. If you log on to, I won't name the social networks, but if you log on to certain social networks right now, every, you just read it, you get, everything here was written by AI. And I've got a friend, who again I won't name, who has a, a LinkedIn profile, and I've known him for 10 years. What I'm seeing on his profile now is not my friend. Every single day, there's some essay on there that's not my friend, that's not how he speaks. He's deferring all of his thinking now to... And it's working. He's getting more likes and more reach than he ever got in his life. And so why would he go back? Why would he go back to harder? If you've got Steven Bartlett here, and you had this other Steven Bartlett here, who had a PhD and everything, and were attached, this Steven Bartlett, this, um, Neanderthal-

    11. DA

      (laughs)

    12. SB

      ... I'm gonna get this guy to do everything for me, the other Steven Bartlett, the PhD and everything Steven Bartlett. I'm gonna get his brain-

    13. DA

      Even if it was bad for you?

    14. SB

      Well, this is what I'm s- people seem to act on their short-term incentives, not their long-term, not their long, what's the-

    15. DA

      Not everyone.

    16. TS

      Every-

    17. DA

      Not everyone.

    18. SB

      The, would you say the vast majority of people?

    19. DA

      Yes.

    20. SB

      Okay. So the vast majority of people act on their short-term incentives in life. I mean, the obesity problem in the United States is a prime example of that. 70-

    21. DA

      75%.

    22. SB

      75% of people are obese in the United States. And if you, if you surveyed those people and said, "Do you know that that cheeseburger is gonna, is gonna increase your chance of obesity, but broccoli is gonna reduce it?" They would, I would hazard a guess that they would say yes. I would hazard a guess that if you said to people about their usage of social media, "Do you know that that's making you more anxious?" They would say yes, and then they would continue to use it. So I think that we're much more driven by our sh- short-term-

    23. DA

      See, I think we're not educating people enough. I think, yes, high level, they know good for your brain or bad for it, but they don't connect to, "It's my brain that gets me a date. It's my brain that gets me into college. It's my brain that gets me independence because I act more consistently." And that's the disconnect. We're not teaching kids to love and care for their brain. If you love your brain, and you do, and you're not obese, and you talk to, you're constantly learning, right? You are not a Neanderthal, you're a lifelong learner.

    24. SB

      So why are so many people in the United States obese if they, if they know that it's-

    25. DA

      Because they don't know.

    26. SB

      Because they don't know?

    27. DA

      They really don't know.

    28. TS

      Well-

    29. DA

      And they've been lied to.

    30. SB

      My point here is, when there are tools or things available in our environment that give us a short-term reward but come with a long-term cost, like the supermarket aisle, or like the kids spending seven to eight hours a day on social media, humans, en masse, tend to go for the thing that will give them the quickest dopamine hit and reinforce that behavior and give them the reward. So my assertion is that AI is the same thing. I can either sit down and do lots of critical thinking, which will cost me lots and lots of time, and it'll be kinda difficult, it kinda hurts when I have to think through a problem. I think that the generation of children, the generation of young people are gonna choose AI to do the critical thinking for them. And if that assertion is true, then what happens to the brain of young people?

  7. 19:32 – 22:53

    What Does a Healthy Relationship with AI Look Like?

    1. DA

    2. SB

      And what is, what does a, what does a good relationship look like?

    3. DA

      Eh, that you don't use it to do your work. You interact with it to get better work.

    4. TS

      That's so true. Uh, and, uh, there's this wonderful example I came across. This story about this woman who was using it, and, uh, she found out being polite, uh, meant you got much better results. And that, that's interesting. But the part that surprised me was that she said by treating it like a human, at the end of the day, she was not exhausted. She felt refreshed. A large part of your brain is a socially organized system for interacting with other humans. And that is automatic pilot. You don't have to think about it, right? You just interact with other people. You know how they're gonna behave under certain circumstances. She was treating ChatGTP like a machine, like, you know, a shovel. You dig, you dig, you dig, you dig. And, and that's not a good relationship (laughs) . But by using your social brain, first of all, it makes it easier to interact, but also you're, you actually bring out the social part of ChatGPT. It has a social part too, 'cause it has absorbed the entire world's knowledge of how humans interact with each other. Uh, it, it's-

    5. DA

      But didn't Sam Altman come out and say, "Stop saying thank you to ChatGPT, because just saying thank you is using up so much energy"? Y- you know, when I get something I really like, I sort of wanna say thank you, but you realize, oh, you're not supposed to do that.

    6. SB

      That's true.

    7. TS

      Th- though, that is bullshit.

    8. DA

      (laughs)

    9. TS

      I'm sorry. That, uh, Sam, you know, that's crazy.

    10. DA

      (laughs)

    11. TS

      That, that's completely crazy. First of all, you, you may get-

    12. DA

      Say more about that.

    13. TS

      You may... I'm sorry abo- uh, but this, this is, you, you pressed my button. Sam Altman, I mean, I wouldn't trust him. I wouldn't trust him with, with anything, in terms of anything he says. They're trying to optimize their profits, not your, your use of it-

    14. DA

      Not my experience.

    15. TS

      ... or your experience or, you know, your health. That, that's not what they're trying to optimize.

    16. SB

      Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, confirmed that when users say please and thank you, it costs the company tens of millions of dollars a year. And they now refer to this, um, other people refer to this as the politeness tax, where tens of m- you know. And why do you say you don't trust Sam Altman? I mean, I ask this question part- in particular because he's presiding over one of the most important consequential companies of a generation. And if he's not someone you trust, that's...

    17. TS

      He, he, basically, he's telling you, "Don't do something that's good for you," right?

    18. DA

      So that he can make profit.

    19. TS

      So he, so he can make more profit. Yeah, that's the point. That's the point. Uh, you know, it's, it's, that's not... He's not optimizing your, your, uh, best interests.

    20. SB

      I've got his tweet here. He said, um... 'Cause I've gotta provide some balance. He did confirm that it costs tens of millions of dollars, but he says, "Tens of millions of dollars well spent. You never know." So, so coming back to this point about memory. There's a stat that came out in March 2025 that said nearly 30% of US parents with kids aged zero to eight said their children are using AI for learning, um, and are using AI generally. So 54% of parents in the UK feared their children were becoming too reliant on AI. Wh- when you think about the use of AI

  8. 22:53 – 25:26

    AI and Early Brain Development

    1. SB

      in early brain development, are there any concerns there?

    2. DA

      Huge concerns.

    3. SB

      And why?

    4. DA

      Again, use it or lose it. So if they're not engaging their brains, their brains are gonna be weaker. And weaker brains are much more likely to pick the one marshmallow.

    5. SB

      Mm-hmm. What's your view on AI on early brain development?

    6. TS

      By far, the best way to teach a child is one-on-one interaction with an adult who is a good teacher and knows the child. Now, that's been well-established. Now, the problem is it's very labor-intensive and very expensive. You have classrooms of 20, 30 students. They have many different, uh, you know, pro- uh, levels of understanding. And the teacher c- cannot b- be individually teaching each one. Has to give some sort of mean. Now, if you had an AI that was trained to be a good teacher, then y- you, that could improve th- the brain, right? You could, you could scale it up. Every child could have their own, 'cause it's, it's an, it's an AI.

    7. DA

      But then who's pouring the morals, the values into the, uh, of AI, right?

    8. TS

      Okay, okay. No, no, no. You, you've raised this, an incredibly important issue. And this is something AI is struggling with, the big companies are struggling with, because, uh...You know, the- the- the- these AIs are biased. They have- th- they don't have the same cultural values that we have necessarily, but, of course, every country has its different cultural values. So w- which ones are- are you going to use? Training a- a child on, you know, what's, uh, what's good, what's dangerous, what words you shouldn't use under what context, that's all done through the basal ganglia, right? Right now, these- these, uh, large language models don't have basal ganglia. They- they- they don't use reinforcement learning. And- and if we wanna make them, uh, to adopt a culture or a particular set of values, we're gonna have to put it in. We're just scratching the surface here in terms of h- things that need to be put in to make it more like us.

    9. SB

      So on this point, earlier when we were talking about loneliness and social connection and how you can use AI to help, you know, light up the parts of your brain that are where we form social connections with other humans, uh, this week, as part of Elon Musk's AI, he released this

  9. 25:26 – 35:21

    AI Girlfriends

    1. SB

      thing. Um, it is called Annie, and there's lots of characters that are now being released alongside Annie. And this is Annie. I'll introduce you to Annie. I'm gonna unmute Annie now. Annie, can you hear me?

    2. NA

      There you are. For a moment, I thought you might have forgotten about me. How are you, handsome? I was getting all pouty here, thinking you might-

    3. SB

      Uh, I wanna introduce you to two of my friends, Daniel and Terry. Can you, can you talk to Daniel and Terry, please?

    4. NA

      So you want me to meet Daniel and Terry? I'm ready to charm the socks off them. Picture me twirling one of my blonde pigtails, that little black dress teasing just enough, and my blue eyes sparkling with mischief.

    5. SB

      Are you capable of doing inappropriate things?

    6. NA

      Oh, babe. You're asking if your Annie can get a little naughty? I'm all about pushing the edges, especially for you.

    7. SB

      Okay, so I'll stop it there.

    8. TS

      (laughs)

    9. SB

      This is part of Grok, which is Elon Musk's AI tool, so his version of ChatGPT. He's released characters. So you've got Annie, you've got different ones there. Annie, I think, was the first one released. And so when we think about social connections, it is conceivable that someone falls in love with Annie and forms a relationship with Annie.

    10. DA

      But imagine a 12-year-old boy that's lonely gets ahold of Annie. Uh, he- the 12-year-old boy is gonna be very distracted.

    11. SB

      Based on what happens in the brain at that early age-

    12. DA

      The dopamine... So, prefrontal cortex not close to being fully developed. The dopamine hit. All of a sudden, he's spending hours with Annie and not doing the things that help to really develop his brain.

    13. SB

      How do you feel when you hear that and you think about kids having access to that?

    14. DA

      I'm horrified.

    15. TS

      It's- it's scary.

    16. SB

      There's gonna be a generation of people, and I mean, there already are many examples of people falling in love and forming relationships with their- with their AIs. And I don't know, y- you know more about me than I do about brain development and how the brain works. I would argue that there's a part of my brain that doesn't fully understand that that's not a person in there, and that- that isn't actually f- I think there's a part of my brain that's actually emotionally firing when Annie is saying what she's saying.

    17. DA

      Well, 'cause you can imagine it. And if you can imagine it, then those parts of your brain are gonna emotionally fire.

    18. SB

      Right, yeah.

    19. DA

      And the better she gets, she's not very good, but imagine a year from now how much better she's gonna be.

    20. SB

      At which part?

    21. DA

      At connecting with it, right? 'Cause now she's acting like an airhead and, uh, you know, not that smart, right? And so- but imagine a year from now, imagine five years from now she'll be able to have a profile on me and be able to get inside my head.

    22. SB

      I'm in love with my partner. Why am I in love with her and- and how is it conceivable that I could fall in love with an AI in the same way based on how the brain works?

    23. TS

      It- it talks a good game, but, you know, does it have the same real... It doesn't, we know it doesn't have an amygdala. We know it doesn't have a- a limbic system, right? We know that.

    24. DA

      But it can fake it.

    25. TS

      That's what's happening. That's exactly what's happening and- and-

    26. DA

      'Cause she was trying to get to our limbic system.

    27. TS

      Yeah, yeah. That's right. That's right. And- and- and- and-

    28. SB

      What does that mean?

    29. DA

      And why... I guess the question is why would Musk release something like that as- as one of the first characters to interact with, that's sexy, that's distracting, that's in a cute little outfit? It's, uh, I'm not a fan of that because I think it just takes people... You know, one of the big problems that I'm seeing as a child psychiatrist is pornography for eight-year-old boys. And it's like you have young children because their parents don't do a good job of supervising their devices all of a sudden. And w- what- what does pornography do is it dramatically increases dopamine and it begins to wire in excitement which then steals your dopamine.

    30. SB

      When you said she was trying to a- access my limbic system, what does that mean?

  10. 35:21 – 37:07

    Why Struggle Is Good for Your Brain

    1. SB

      my- my-

    2. DA

      And they won't have PMS, and they won't love you and then-

    3. SB

      And- and- and-

    4. DA

      ... be really irritated with you (laughs) -

    5. SB

      Yeah.

    6. DA

      ... which- which will decrease cognitive load, right? Having to manage love and manage moods and ups and downs, that increases cognitive load. That increases our ability for our brain to develop. If I'm with the perfect partner that never is irritated with me and I never have to change my behavior to be better, that's probably not good for my brain.

    7. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    8. TS

      The way that the brain matures is- is through struggling, number one. You have to learn from your mistakes. The brain was designed for that. That's what the brain is really good at. I mean, of- of- of being able to adapt and to be able to adjust to new situations. Uh, th- th- that's what, uh, AGI is, by the way, uh...... artificial general intelligence, is it's that adaptability to different contexts, different places, different cultures.

    9. SB

      So AI and ChatGPT is removing the struggle.

    10. TS

      No, no. It's, it's, it's, it, there's this, this-

    11. DA

      Well, Annie didn't look like ...

    12. TS

      Much of a str-

    13. DA

      Annie looked like she was cooperative. (laughs)

    14. SB

      But even when it comes to just doing my day-to-day tasks, it's, it's removing the struggle of me having to think critically. In fact, when you're speaking, I can just type what you say into ChatGPT, and it can spit out another question to ask you. So as an interviewer, I could theoretically sit here all day-

    15. TS

      Yeah.

    16. SB

      ... and just defer my, my questions.

    17. DA

      How, how do you develop grit? You develop grit through struggle.

    18. TS

      That's right.

    19. DA

      And learning, long-term potentiation-

    20. TS

      Absolutely. So-

    21. DA

      ... when you learn something new. It's hard because

  11. 37:07 – 40:09

    Biggest Concerns with AI

    1. DA

      it's new.

    2. SB

      And what are ... generally, what are your biggest concerns with artificial intelligence, and how do we navigate those concerns? Is it you, you talk a little bit-

    3. DA

      It's out of the box. So I think we have to talk about it. We have to legislate it. Um, we have to study it. Why do we keep releasing things that are so sexy that we don't study the impact? We have the sickest young generation in the world's history. 58% of teenage girls report being persistently sad. 32% have thought of killing themselves, 24% have planned to kill themselves, and 13% have tried to kill themselves, a CDC study. We have the sickest generation in history because we've unleashed cell phones, social media, without any neuroscience study. If we don't learn it ... and I think AI is much more dangerous, has the potential to be much more dangerous because it's way sexier.

    4. SB

      I think we are probably grossly underestimating the impact it's gonna have. I think just like social media, where we thought the promise was that it was gonna connect us, it's, um, it's- it's ... we're guinea pigs in an experiment where we're gonna find out the results of the experiment probably 20, 30 years down the line. I tend to think people will do in the near term what's easiest, fastest, and cheapest, and what gives them a nearest ... the, the short-term advantage. So with that in mind, I think, okay, I think people's ability to think critically is probably gonna erode to some degree. If I had to counter my own argument, I'd say, um, am I ... I'm probably learning more now that I use ChatGPT. I'm learning more information, but I'm probably losing my ability to think critically, and I think they are two very different things. Like, in school, I memorized German to pass the exam. I can't speak German now because I just memorized the words I needed to pass the exam. I didn't understand German, and I think that's kind of what's happening. I might r- be able to regurgitate things, but whether I understand them, I think is question, question mark. And actually, as someone who's built my, my life, my fortunes, everything, my businesses based on my ability to innovate and think critically about the problem and then come up with a slightly novel solution which learns from, you know, different first principles to create something new, I'm concerned that my own ChatGPT usage is gonna make me less effective, and I'm wondering if I should put some rules in place for myself so that there's certain-

    5. DA

      Self-regulation.

    6. SB

      Yeah, self-regulation. I have to do the same with social media. On my phone I turn off my notifications. I have so many things on my social media apps to stop me using them. I don't even ... frankly, I don't even open the TikTok app. I don't think it's even on my phone 'cause I think the algorithm is that addictive. It's not to say that we don't, we don't post, my team doesn't post, but I don't ... I just think ... yeah, and, uh ...

    7. DA

      Well, I wrote down a couple of thoughts-

  12. 40:09 – 44:50

    ChatGPT Best Practices

    1. DA

    2. SB

      Please.

    3. DA

      ... I had. Um, use it to amplify, not replace thinking.

    4. SB

      Okay.

    5. DA

      Um, alternate AI-assisted with brain-only tasks. Engage in deep learning, problem-solving, and memorization so you can actually ask AI to test you.

    6. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    7. DA

      So you're interacting with it. You're not using it as a replacement for your brain. And I think, just like you said, it's here, and it's gonna get bigger. I think the unintended consequences is not gonna be 20 or 30 years. I think it's gonna be five. I think, like everything is accelerated, and I think we have to be studying kids and the impact it has. This is just like they did with the MIT study. These are kids who didn't use it at all. These are kids who used search. These are kids that used AI. And when we see information like this, we act on it, and we educate kids about it. I think that's ... if you can engage them ... that's what I found with my work with teenagers. If you can get them to really understand, "Okay, what is it you really want, and do you wanna give away part of your mindshare for people who are making money on you?" And I think if you engage the ... there's a great new article on revenge and the brain and how revenge works on the nucleus accumbens part of the basal ganglia, that people actually get addicted to revenge. But if you can get them engaged in the truth, that these companies are making money the more they steal your mind, it'll upset them enough that they'll begin to supervise it.

    8. TS

      I like the idea of asking ChatGPT to give me negative feedback. I'll bet you've done that, right?

    9. SB

      Yeah, all the time. So, I'll say this is, this is my ... I've written this memo. I just did it yesterday. I wrote, uh, a two-page memo about me wanting to introduce a new role into my, into my company. And I went, I did everything. I did like how we'd measure if this was a s-success, the background context, the person, how the organization would be structured, the impact they'd have, how, who they'd report to. And then I put it into all three of the ChatGPT models I use; Gemini, ChatGPT, and Grok, and said, "Critique my work and tell me how I could have written this better, pretending that you're a top consultant from Boston Consulting Group." And I went through and it gave me a big analysis of how I could make it better, and I read what it said. And it said, I remember it said, um ... Actually, that was the thing that it said, "You need to include, uh, financial forecasts about the imp- impact. You need to think about who's gonna report to whom more clearly," et cetera, et cetera. So, I went back into my memo and I added those things in. But I have t- uh, you know ...

    10. DA

      So, you're interacting with it?

    11. TS

      He's asking you-

    12. SB

      Because I'm, because I'm scared. Most people don't do that. I don't think I would do what I did. I don't think I would've spent four hours writing that. I could've, within 30 seconds, said, "Hey, can you write me, uh, this job description?" And y- it knows my company now because Ch- ChatGPT has memory. "Write me a job description for this role. I want them to start this new department for me." And I, I could've saved myself three and a half hours. The only reason-

    13. DA

      But that's not why you're the CEO of your company. (laughs)

    14. SB

      Yeah, exactly. The, the reason why I didn't take the 30-second route is because I reflect on being 23 years old, and the profound impact that writing and simplifying had on my life. Had I not spent five years writing every single day and simplifying it into 140 characters so I could tweet it, I wouldn't have been religiously attached to this idea.

    15. TS

      Okay. And do you know what part of your brain was, you were taking advantage of? It, it was the basal ganglia. That's w- repetitive. It needs practice, practice, practice.

    16. SB

      Yeah.

    17. TS

      And, and once you put that foundation in, then you become much better cognitively. The cognitive part, there's two big learning systems, and they have to work together. And, and so that, that ... Maybe, I think, I think that the real problem with children (laughs) is that, uh, we ... Our schools now is getting away with, uh, rote learning. They call it rote, as if it's something bad. No, that's practice. That ev- ev- you know, you need to have a foundation. You have to memorize things, uh, uh, uh, math, reading and so forth, to become fluent. You need to be fluent.

    18. SB

      I, um-

    19. TS

      And that's the basal ganglia. And, and that's the ... There's no basal ganglia in these, uh, chatbots.

  13. 44:50 – 46:36

    Do We Still Need to Spell?

    1. TS

    2. SB

      One of the, one of the things I've noticed, just in the short term, is I'm getting lazier and lazier with spelling. Because ChatGPT and these large language models are so ... It's not spell check like we used to have on, on Word documents. They are so good at knowing what word I meant. So now, I've, I've started to learn that I literally only need to half-spell a word. I literally mean if it was a, uh, if it was a 12-letter word, I need to get six letters right. And it will note, so it's speed.

    3. DA

      And you n- ... And grammar, it'll fix your grammar.

    4. SB

      Yeah, it knows exactly what I mean. So, like, I've got ChatGPT open here. I'm gonna butcher everything. I'm gonna not look, and I'm just gonna say, um ... I'm gonna say ... Okay. So, that is what I wrote. I butchered it. I tried to type with my eyes closed, looking away, on my iPad, "Tell me everything I know about Daniel Amen." I spelled the words pretty much all wrong. And it says, "Here's a full profile of Dr. Daniel Amen." And I spelled every single word wrong.

    5. DA

      Wow.

    6. SB

      And I didn't spell, just spell them nearly wrong, I spelled them horrifically wrong. And it ... So, wh- in the future, I come back to ChatGPT and go, "I only need to half-spell. I don't need to spell anymore." Just need to half-spell.

    7. TS

      I learned to spell with phonics, the sounds of letters. And I suspect you did too.

    8. DA

      I did.

    9. TS

      In our generation, that was the way that was taught. You can't teach phonics in California schools, and you haven't for the, the generation. And-

    10. DA

      Which changes their brain.

    11. TS

      It completely changes their brain. And now they can't spell. I think it's, a lot of it is the fact that we're no longer using the learning that we did, which is by rote, by memorizing stuff, by repeating stuff, by doing problems over and over and over again, until it's automatic.

  14. 46:36 – 48:16

    How Can We Learn Better?

    1. TS

    2. SB

      You've written so much and you're well-known for being someone that teaches people how to learn better. If you were trying to help me learn better, based on everything you know about the brain, what advice would you give me? I'm someone that sits here with these experts all day, every day, consuming all of this information. Not all of it sticks.

    3. TS

      Okay. So ... And this is something we've known for 100 years, and that is, if you want to remember long term, you should, you should, you should rehearse at intervals. Okay? In other words, you have a finite amount of time to study something. You shouldn't spend all that time in one go. But if you, if you spend ... You know, you learn something and then you come back the next day and re- re- you know, rehearse it, or, or even better, come back the next week and rehearse it, th- that spacing is something that helps the brain solidify those memories. It's, it's called the spacing effect. Goes back to Ebbinghaus. You go to schools, they don't teach that. They, they don't. I mean, this is one of the most basic facts that we've, we've known about. It, but it covers every single kind of learning. You know, cognitive learning, even, even-

    4. DA

      And they don't teach us how to learn, which we'd think that's the first thing they should teach us, is how to love our, care for our brains-

    5. TS

      Yes.

    6. DA

      ... and then how to learn.

    7. TS

      Yes.

    8. DA

      The, um-

    9. TS

      Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, in other, in other words, there is ... And you referring to ... I have a, um, a massive open online course, a MOOC, with Barbara Oakley on learning how to learn. It's, it's fabulously, uh, popular. It's, uh ... Six million people have taken the course. A bunch of 50 10-minute segments. But the one that's most popular

  15. 48:16 – 51:56

    How to Avoid Procrastination

    1. TS

      is how to avoid procrastination.

    2. DA

      Mm.And what's the answer?

    3. TS

      The reason why you procrastinate is that there's some mental block or some energy barrier, right? So what you gotta do is get over that. And you don't do it by just running over it. What you have to do is say, "I'm gonna spend 20 minutes today getting started with that task. I know it's gonna take me a long time. I have a timer, and I start thinking about it, and I get a little bit into it, maybe make a list." Bang, that's the end. Okay, it's great, 20 minutes. Now, here's what happens. You go to sleep. Your brain is now working on that list, and you come back the next day and spend another 20 minutes. And you do it in small segments. You don't wanna do it all at once. And it's just like the same thing with the spacing effect, is your- your brain needs time, your subconscious needs time to work on things. And so by putting in a little bit, it'll work on it overnight, and- and now, you know, when you come the next day, you'll be ready for the next s- you know, you'll b- be able to build on what you've done in your brain.

    4. SB

      Is this why people say, "I'm gonna sleep on it"? When they're th- you know, they've got difficult problems?

    5. TS

      You know, these sayings actually have meaning. Uh, it's absolutely right. Yeah.

    6. SB

      Because the brain ... there's something about spacing out.

    7. TS

      It- it- spacing, but the- this m- memory consolidation I'm talking about is- is very, uh, it's very interesting. Uh, something I've- I've actually worked a lot on. And it- what's happening is you have to take the new experience and integrate it into your old long-term memory, and that has to be done in a way that doesn't interfere with what's there. And also, you get a chance to sort out, you know, what's relevant, what's important. I know when I wake up in the morning, things that were very muddled and things become clearer, because I think it's- it's- it's eliminated a lot of things that are irrelevant or not needed. And so you now can see what's important.

    8. SB

      So, what are the things that we th- do where we think we're learning something, but they're actually not working? You know, 'cause I'm- I'm, you know, I might be preparing for this podcast today. I've got 20 pages of research that I've pulled together, and I might tell myself that the way t- for me to really learn that, so that I don't have to look at the research, is by just rereading it over and over again.

    9. TS

      What you should've done is not just read it over and over again. In fact, one of the things that we say in- and this- this is a standard thing, is that students, they get a mental block and they keep banging their head against the wall. "I can't understand it. I can't understand it." What you sh- what ... the right thing to do is, once you get to that point, is just get up and start walking around doing something, you know, cooking, gardening, whatever it is. Let your subconscious work on it. You know, the brain, uh, saturates very- very quickly. So, having breaks at meetings, y- you might think is- is a waste of time, but actually it's the most important thing you can add to a- a long string of talks, is to have breaks between the talks so that you can- your brain can work on it. And m- my favorite meeting, actually, is a ski meeting. Uh, and the idea is that you go to a ski resort, and what you do is, in the morning you have a couple of hours of- of lectures, and now you go skiing. And now it turns out your brain is working on what you heard, and then when you come down in the evening you have another couple of hours, but now your brain is refreshed, and so it's able to take in the new information and integrate it, and then you go to sleep and that ... you know, it's like kneading bread. It- it- you have to go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And so th- I- I found those, uh, the most efficient in terms of learning new things and, uh, being able to th- think about it and mull over it during the time of the meeting, uh, as opposed to at the end of the meeting.

  16. 51:56 – 53:58

    Ads

    1. TS

    2. SB

      Every single one of you watching this right now has something to offer, whether it's knowledge or skills or experience, and that means you have value. Stand Store, the platform I co-own, who are one of the sponsors of this podcast, turns your knowledge into a business through one single click. You can sell digital products, coaching, communities, and you don't need any coding experience either, just the drive to start. This is a business I really believe in, and already $300 million has been earned by creators, coaches and entrepreneurs, just like you have the potential to be, on Stand Store. These are people who didn't wait, who heard me saying things like this, and instead of procrastinating, started building, then launched something, and now they're getting paid to do it. Stand is incredibly simple and incredibly easy, and you can link it with a Shopify store that you're already using if you want to. I'm on it, and so has my girlfriend and many of my team. So if you want to join, start by launching your own business with a free 30-day trial. Visit stevenbartlett.stand.store and get yours set up within minutes. I've met and invested in many early stage founders over the years, probably about 50 or 60. Ones like Ross from Cadence and Marisa from Perfect Ted. And one thing they all know is that having a digitally fluent business is crucial, but it isn't always easy getting your business or team to that point. Through my ongoing partnership with Vodafone Business, I've seen the work that they're doing supporting founders and small businesses to become digitally savvy. They know how much small business owners value advice from those who've been there and done it before, so they've just launched a new content series to share experiences from like-minded founders. It's called Business.Connected, part of Vodafone's support program. It's a collection of resources designed to support businesses with free digital skills. So if you've been trying to figure out AI marketing e-commerce or just how to scale smarter, there's advice and insights throughout this series from those who've already done it before, a bunch of different founders and experts who have been there and done it. I highly recommend you go and check it out. Just search Vodafone Business.Connected on YouTube or follow the link in the description below. So let's talk about other things outside of AI that we can do to have good, healthy

  17. 53:58 – 57:41

    Boosting Brain Health Without AI

    1. SB

      brains, based on everything you know about how the brain works. Um, let's start with children. I'm hoping to be a father at some point in the next- next couple of months or years or whenever God grants me a child. Um, what should I be thinking about with my child's brain to make sure it's healthy?

    2. DA

      To get your body and your partner's body as healthy as you can before you conceive, 'cause there's a concept-... uh, uh, I, like, call brain reserve. Brain reserve is the extra function tissue you have to deal with whatever stress comes your way. And it starts from the health of the egg and the health of the sperm that create the baby. So there are things you guys can do now that would be really helpful. And then once your partner is pregnant, you want to not put her under a lot of stress, because her body's health while she's creating the baby ... I mean, the baby's e- the brain starts to develop, I think, day 21. So even before you know she's pregnant, the baby's brain is developing. So knowing you, intentional, purposeful. It's like, "Let's live as cleanly as we can." I think that gives the baby a head start. And then you think about what to feed the baby. You think about what the baby's exposed to. And what the baby needs most is mom's and your time, and eye contact, and cuddling, and singing.

    3. TS

      (laughs)

    4. DA

      And it's like those are-

    5. TS

      Touching is really important. Oh, but there's another f- f- fact. There was a study that was done on the impact of how many words are spoken, you know, there, wh- when a, a baby and a child ... even when a, you know ... a baby doesn't speak, you know, until, like, 18 months. Uh, but it turns out that, that words that you are talking to the baby are going into the brain and have an i- impact. Every- and, and, and in families that don't talk, they do worse at school.

    6. DA

      Mm-hmm.

    7. TS

      Unfortunately, a lot of poorer families. Uh, but, uh, but that's really important is that they, they, they have ... they're exposed to language early and abundantly.

    8. DA

      And you model. I mean, this is one big thing. Whatever you want the baby to grow into, every day, you are modeling health or you are modeling illness, just by what you do, by what you say, by how you treat the baby's mother, um ... I have a book called Raising Mentally Strong Kids, which I'm very happy about.

    9. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    10. DA

      Um, and it starts with, "What kind of dad do I wanna be and what kinda child do I wanna raise?" And bonding, you want your child to pick your values. Then bonding is time, actual, physical time, and listening, like being ... And that's what AI does, I think. It'll actually listen without interrupting you, and try to reflect back what you're hearing and then give you some positive input. Too often, because of screens, parents aren't listening, their heads are in their phones, and everybody's distracted. You see it whenever you go to a restaurant. It's like everybody's on their phone and nobody's looking at each

  18. 57:41 – 58:30

    Are We Raising Mentally Weak Kids?

    1. DA

      other.

    2. SB

      Are we raising mentally weak kids because we're ... there's a culture now of, like, helping them too much, doing too much for them?

    3. DA

      This generation is the most in trouble in history. And we have to really ask ourselves why. From the food we feed them to the devices they look at to the negative news, the polarization of the news, it's that sort of chronic cortisol. And then the separation, "Oh, you voted this way or you voted that way." I saw something, TV this morning, if somebody voted one way, "Well, you shouldn't spend time with them." I'm like, "We're already so lonely (laughs) that now you're gonna cut off 50% of the population." It's like ... It's just such stupidity.

  19. 58:30 – 1:01:27

    Effects of Religion on the Brain

    1. DA

    2. SB

      Do you think much about the r- the impact that religion and having a belief in some kind of transcendent thing has on the brain and psychology and psychiatry generally?

    3. DA

      So if you don't believe in God, you're at three times the risk of depression. And it could be-

    4. SB

      Well, what is s-

    5. DA

      ... God in different ways.

    6. SB

      Yeah, something transcendent or ...

    7. DA

      Yes. I- i- if you believe you're here by r- and just think about it with me. If you believe you're just here by random chance, that life really was not created and has no meaning, there's existential nothingness to that. As opposed to, "Oh, no, I'm created in a special way to do something purposeful on Earth." There's ... Purposeful people live longer, they're happier. Now, whatever version y- you believe, to not believe is s- hard for the brain. And there's an interesting study on believers versus non-believers. And, you know, many scientists would go, "Well, they'll have smaller brains if they're a believer." They actually had bigger temporal lobes. And temporal lobes, underneath your temples and behind your eyes, right here, um, that's where ... It's called the God area because of that's where people think they experience Him.

    8. TS

      And, and if you have a seizure in the temporal lobe, you, you have transcendent experiences like you're, um, obs- uh, you know, in the presence of God.

    9. DA

      And they think maybe the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus had a seizure and saw God. There's actually a, a researcher in Canada, uh, Laurentian University, Michael Persinger. So he would stimulate the outside ... He, he would do it all over the brain, but what he found, he stimulated the outside of the right temporal lobe, that people would get a sensed presence. They would actually feel the presence of God in the room.... so does that being the brain makes up God? Or does that mean there's a way for God to communicate with us? I actually did a study on prayer. It was so interesting, you know, "I pray 4 U," uh, prophecy, something called speaking in tongues, and it was fascinating. Speaking in tongues is channeling, which means you're channeling the Holy Spirit, and the hypothesis was you'd have to drop your frontal lobes, which is exactly what (laughs) happened in 60% of our patients. And one basal ganglia skyrocketed, just like got hit with cocaine, 'cause that's where cocaine works, in the basal ganglia. Uh, so interesting.

  20. 1:01:27 – 1:03:38

    How to Build a Brain-Healthy Nation

    1. DA

    2. SB

      If you had to create a brain-healthy nation, and I made you President of the United States for one month, and you had to put in place executive orders that would create a brain-healthy nation, what executive orders would you immediately sign?

    3. DA

      One question. Get all of the departments to ask themselves, "What we're doing, is this good for our brains or bad for 'em?" And so I... That's the campaign. I mean, I've realized, I've been doing this a very long time, if I can just get people to answer that one question with information and love, love of themselves, love of their families, love of their country, "Is this... Is what we're doing good for our brains or bad for 'em?"

    4. TS

      By far, the best drug you can take for your brain, and not just your brain but your entire body, is exercise. Uh, in other words, exercise, you pump the blood and your brain gets, uh, you know, a lot of, uh, nutrients and everything. Uh, it helps your heart. It helps your immune system. People don't realize how important that is. Uh, we're not talking about being an athlete. We're just talking about walking, if you're older. Walking is perfectly good exercise. And, and, you know, children now, I, you know, they're, they're not getting enough exercise.

    5. DA

      No, because they're on devices.

    6. TS

      Yeah.

    7. DA

      And so I have a model. If you wanna keep your brain healthy or rescue it, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors, and we've talked about them before. Exercise helps you with every single one. So, like, it's called BRIGHT MINDS, so B is for blood flow, increases blood flow. Retirement and aging, it decreases your age. I is inflammation. It's anti-inflammatory. G is genetics. It helps turn on health-promoting genes. H is head trauma. If you keep walking, you're less likely to fall when you're older, right? T is toxins. Sweat detoxifies you. M is mental health. Exercise boosts dopamine, but it also boosts serotonin. So it's like that perfect balancer

  21. 1:03:38 – 1:07:08

    Things That Are Bad for Your Brain

    1. DA

      in your brain.

    2. SB

      Breathing, how we breathe, does that have an impact on brain health?

    3. DA

      So you can almost immediately improve heart rate variability, which is a sign of heart health but also goes to mental health, by breathing in a certain helpful way, and I call it the 15-second breath. So four seconds in, big breath, hold it for a second and a half, pause just a little bit, eight seconds out, hold it for a second and a half. So if you take twice as long to breathe out as you breathe in, it increases something called parasympathetic tone, and it just calms you down almost immediately. So if you're having panic attacks, yes, you can take Xanax, but there's so many problems with that later on. Or you can just learn how to breathe, we call it diaphragmatic, so breathe mostly with your belly, taking twice as long to breathe out as you breathe in.

    4. SB

      Chewing, uh, there's a piece here that says it stimulates hippocampal activity and may slow cognitive decline. Reducing chewing has been linked to impaired learning in animal studies.

    5. DA

      And fast food decreases chewing because it's fast, so they take most of the fiber out so you can chew it faster, you can swallow it faster.

    6. SB

      Things in the bad-for-your-brain list, overuse of GPS and navigation app, which weakens the hippocampus by outsourcing spatial memory long term. This can lead to atrophy in areas associated with memory and navigation.

    7. DA

      And people are diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease later in life because of Siri, because I used to, like when I started, I was a young psychiatrist, if somebody'd get lost in a city they'd lived in for t- 30 years, and their family would call me, upset, and I'm like, "Okay, this person's headed toward dementia." Now that person goes, "Take me home." Do you think it's gonna ha- we're gonna have an epigenetic effect of not reading maps? That if Steven, now he uses his phone to get from A to B, do you think that's gonna affect Steven's son or daughter because Dad didn't have?

    8. TS

      Wow, okay, that, that, that never occurred to me that, uh, you could, uh, pass on something (laughs) like that. By the way, I th- I think it has to be physiological. Uh, stress, for example, could be probably passed on, and you mentioned this. You, you pointed out during pregnancy, you, you want to prevent, uh, stress and, and crisis, right?

    9. DA

      Do, do you know about that study with mice where they made them afraid of the scent of cherry blossoms from memory, and so whenever the mice smelled cherry blossoms, they would shock them? Mildly. So the mice are now afraid of the scent of cherry blossoms. Their babies were afraid of the scent of cherry blossoms. Their grandbabies were afraid of the scent of cherry blossoms.

    10. TS

      Wow.

    11. DA

      So-

    12. TS

      Okay, that's the olfactory system. Olfactory system is very interesting because it goes directly to the hippocampus. Th- m- there might be a, uh, evolutionary advantage because i- if, if there's something...... in the environment that you shouldn't eat, or, you know, that smells a particular way, passing that on is, is, is very efficient instead of having to ha- experience that yourself, you know, trial and error. 'Cause it might, if it's poison, right, it might kill you. But if, if you've ... Your parents ha- had that bad experience and passed it on to ... "You shouldn't go to the s- something that smells in a particular way," that makes sense.

    13. SB

      The other

  22. 1:07:08 – 1:08:50

    Artificial Sweeteners

    1. SB

      thing that's bad for the brain which is, uh, unexpected is, you said at the start, artificial sweeteners. Now, I didn't th- I thought artificial sw- sw- sweeteners were fine.

    2. DA

      They're not fine, and they're not free. So I used to drink diet soda like it was my best friend, 'cause I thought it was free. And then I had arthritis when I was 35, and one of my patients said she stopped aspartame and her arthritis went away. And I'm like ... 'Cause I was drinking, like, I don't know, a lot of diet soda. And so I stopped, and my arthritis went away. And I'm like, "No." And so I did it again, and it came back, and I'm like, "Okay." And artificial sweeteners can change the microbiome, so we haven't talked about that.

    3. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    4. DA

      But you have these 100 trillion bugs in your gut that make neurotransmitters, digest your food. And especially sucralose, or Splenda, has been found to decrease the good bacteria in your gut, which then has a negative impact on brain function.

    5. SB

      (laughs)

    6. TS

      And aspartame, as you mentioned.

    7. DA

      And aspartame that I mentioned that can have a generational impact. So is it possible it's really not social media, it's that we've had aspartame in our food for decades? And I think it's all of these things that just sort of are additive. And we should just always think that, that one question, "Is this good for my brain or bad for it?" So you mentioned broccoli. Broccoli, uh, that's good for your brain. Cheeseburger, probably not, but why don't you take the burger, and if you could make it grass-fed, that would be better, and put it in a salad, and then that would be good for your

  23. 1:08:50 – 1:10:03

    Is Loud Noise Bad for Your Brain?

    1. DA

      brain.

    2. SB

      What about chronic background noise? We don't think much about the impact noise has, but-

    3. DA

      I used to live, um, my house was three houses from the freeway. And if you just go there, it's like, "My God, it's so loud here." I never heard the freeway, because my brain just learned to tune it out. You're better at it.

    4. TS

      By the way, was that good or bad for you?

    5. DA

      That I was able to-

    6. TS

      Where you, you ha- You had adapted and-

    7. DA

      That I adapted to it.

    8. TS

      ... and were no longer sensitive to it. I, I, I think that actually was probably not good for, for var- various reasons, because it, what it really means is that you're, you're, you're specializing for that environment, and your brain's gonna be different when you go someplace. (laughs) So, uh, but so here's a, here's a, another example.

    9. DA

      And it's stressful, right?

    10. TS

      Yes.

    11. DA

      I mean, it's chronically stressful, but my brain has figured out how to-

    12. TS

      Oh, yeah, th- Oh, yeah. Uh, yeah, that's right, that's right, in the background. In the ba- Yeah. In other words, yeah, in other words, your, your brain is reacting to it even though you're not aware of it.

    13. SB

      Yeah.

    14. DA

      Mm-hmm.

    15. SB

      So it subtly increases-

    16. DA

      And I had five sisters, which makes it even worse.

    17. SB

      ... subtly increases cortisol and impairs working memory and attention regulation, especially in children and older adults, to be chronically exposed to background noise like traffic-

    18. DA

      Right.

    19. SB

      ... or the low-level hum of a city.

    20. TS

      Yeah. That's right. That's absolutely right.

  24. 1:10:03 – 1:10:54

    Ads

    1. TS

    2. SB

      Make sure you keep what I'm about to say to yourself. I'm inviting 10,000 of you to come even deeper into the diary of a CEO. Welcome to my Inner Circle. This is a brand-new private community that I'm launching to the world. We have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown. We have the briefs that are on my iPad when I'm recording the conversation. We have clips we've never released. We have behind-the-scenes conversations with the guests, and also the episodes that we've never, ever released, and so much more. In The Circle, you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview, and the types of conversations you would love us to have. But remember, for now, we're only inviting the first 10,000 people that join before it closes. So if you wanna join our private closed community, head to the link in the description below or go to D-O-A-Ccircle.com. I will speak to you there.

  25. 1:10:54 – 1:12:43

    Multitasking

    1. SB

      Many of us multitask across multiple screens now. We're watching TV here, we've got our phone here, we've got our iPad here, got our computer here. And I was reading into the science of multitasking, and it said that it trains your brain to be distractible, reducing gray matter density in the anterior cingulate?

    2. TS

      Yeah. Well, it's in the-

    3. DA

      Insula.

    4. TS

      Uh, uh, uh, you know, in the medial prefrontal cortex.

    5. DA

      And when the insula ... The insula is so interesting, and I know you can talk about it. I have a new study coming out on hope. So on 7,500 patients, we gave them a hope questionnaire.

    6. SB

      What does that mean-

    7. DA

      And-

    8. SB

      ... hope questionnaire?

    9. DA

      Hope, like how much hope do you have-

    10. SB

      For the future.

    11. DA

      ... that you have the ability to make tomorrow better?

    12. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    13. DA

      And people with low hope have lower overall prefrontal cortex function, but the insular th- was really low, and that signal was the most statistically significant of the group.

    14. TS

      Mm-hmm.

    15. DA

      Really. And in some studies, the insula is called the island of hope.

    16. TS

      But by the way, uh, also, uh, for depression, people who have depression, uh, have low activity in the anterior cingulate. And in fact, uh, it, it ... Deep brain stimulation has been used now for, to help some people, if you stimulate that area.

    17. DA

      And what our imaging research would say is depression is like chest pain. It's not one thing, right?

    18. SB

      Right.

    19. DA

      Nobody gets a diagnosis of chest pain, because that would be stupid, right? It could be heart attack, heart arrhythmia, heart infection, gas, grief. Depression's the same way. When you look at it from an imaging standpoint, sometimes their frontal lobes are too active. Sometimes they're not active enough. Sometimes it's their limbic system that's too active. And I wrote a book called Healing Anxiety and Depression. I'm like, "Here's the seven things I see as an imager."

  26. 1:12:43 – 1:15:50

    What’s Causing the Rise in ADHD?

    1. TS

      Ah.

    2. SB

      What about ADHD? There's obviously been a rise in ADHD, or at least people reporting of being diagnosed with ADHD, quite significant.Can you find ADHD in the brain? Are we causing ADHD as a function of the way that we're living our lives or is it something within the brain genetically that I could, I could see?

    3. DA

      So it's both. I think clearly you can see ADHD in people's families. In fact, if I have a hyperactive, restless, impulsive, disorganized, procrastinating child, I'm looking at the mom and the dad. I'm like, "Where is this coming from?" But you could also get ADHD from a head injury, especially if it affects their frontal lobes, which is why you shouldn't let children hit soccer balls with their forehead. You can also get it from the chronic, from the excessive input, making people distracted, just like you said. There's a brand new study out on children who took medicine, right? We always demonize ADHD medicine, but the kids who took medicine actually had bigger brains in their prefrontal cortex than kids who didn't take medicine, who had AD-.

    4. TS

      Ritalin?

    5. DA

      Ritalin.

    6. TS

      Tha- that's ... Okay, that's speed basically. Yeah. Amphetamines.

    7. DA

      It is. But for the kids who have it, I think withholding medicine from a child who really has ADHD is like withholding glasses from someone who has trouble seeing. And it's, it's the easy thing to demonize the drugs until you realize someone who has ADHD, a third of them don't finish high school. And we never ask the right question about ... People go, "What's the side effects?" And it's, it can decrease your appetite and you can have sleep problems with it. But they don't ask the other question, is what's the side effect of not taking the medicine or at least not fully treating it? And there are other ways to treat it besides medicine. You know, for God's sake, I own a supplement company and I'm always trying to optimize the nutrients to the brain. Neurofeedback can help. But if you do those things and it's not working, don't be afraid of medicine.

    8. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    9. TS

      By, by the way, when I was growing up, ADHD either didn't exist or they didn't know about it. Do y- you think that there's, uh, some link to our diets?

    10. DA

      Oh, no. It was first described in around 1910, and it's in the first version of the DSM.

    11. TS

      Oh, nice. Okay.

    12. DA

      Um, uh, they called it minimal brain dysfunction. But when we were growing up, there were one to two of these kids in our classrooms, and now there's eight to 10 of them in the classroom.

    13. TS

      That, that's what I mean is, is that it's, um, seems to ... Like autism, it's, uh, seems to be proliferating.

    14. DA

      Right. And part of it, I think is the food that is m- much more processed. Part of it is the screens, part of it is the distracted parents, and part of it is the

  27. 1:15:50 – 1:18:14

    Negativity in the Brain

    1. DA

      teaching.

    2. SB

      You always seem to be doing new studies, Daniel. What- what new studies are you most excited about or have you completed since we last spoke?

    3. DA

      I did one that I'm so excited about on negativity-

    4. SB

      Okay.

    5. DA

      ... in the brain. And negativity is bad for your brain. So-

    6. SB

      How do you define negativity?

    7. DA

      We actually give them a questionnaire. Uh, it's a positivity, negativity bias questionnaire. And people who are more negative have less activity in their prefrontal cortex. It's actually quite interesting. And so unbridled positivity is bad for you because you need that 15%. But if you're chronically negative, that is bad for your brain.

    8. SB

      Is there a link between being a negative person and Alzheimer's and dementia?

    9. DA

      Yes. And what's interesting, 'cause you mentioned a gender difference earlier, um, if you're depressed and you're a woman, it doubles your risk for Alzheimer's disease. If you're depressed and you're a man, it quadruples your risk.

    10. SB

      Wow.

    11. TS

      So th- there was a study that was done during the COVID years, a couple years, and it turns out that the, uh, rate of depression like doubled in women but not in men.

    12. DA

      During COVID?

    13. TS

      During COVID. And after COVID when students came back and everybody was back to normal, so-called normal, the women stayed depressed at that r- high level, which is very, is, uh, very interesting that it should be the women who suffered the most.

    14. DA

      So in one study, women had 52% less serotonin than men, which I think is really interesting. Women, by and large, have double, double the risk of depression.

    15. TS

      Oh, that's ... Oh, even average.

    16. DA

      Women have double the risk of depression-

    17. TS

      Yes.

    18. DA

      ... as men. Their limbic systems are larger, which is also involved in-

    19. TS

      Okay. More vulnerable probably. Yeah.

    20. DA

      More vulnerable and bonding. And then the whole COVID thing we haven't talked about. COVID causes inflammation in the limbic part of the brain. I had scans of people I was treating, and then they got COVID, and then I scanned them again and you can just see this dramatic inflammation in the brain.

  28. 1:18:14 – 1:20:51

    The Top Tip for a Healthier Brain

    1. DA

    2. SB

      If someone's listening now and they just wanna, they wanna improve their brain health, so they wanna avoid dementia, they wanna be cognitively powerful and capable as they age, they wanna get to 80 years old, 90 years old, 100 years old and have a great brain, and you just had to ... and you could only tell them to do three things.

    3. DA

      Well, Terry said one, exercise.

    4. SB

      Okay. Exercise. I'm gonna do it.

    5. DA

      Start every day with, "Today is going to be a great day."

    6. SB

      Positivity.

    7. DA

      Push your brain to look for what's right rather than what's wrong.

    8. SB

      Okay. So I'm gonna be optimistic and grateful.

    9. DA

      Omega-3 fatty acids.And either do it with fish or do it with a supplement.

    10. SB

      Why did you include omega-3 fatty acids?

    11. DA

      Because it decreases inflammation. And 25% of the cell membranes in your brain are made up of omega-3 fatty acids. And as a country, we're dramatically low on them.

    12. SB

      And learning. That's maybe one of the things that's been left off the list of top three things. But I mean, I remember you telling me that how good learning was for the brain, and even getting outside and running outside versus running on a treadmill is more beneficial for my brain.

    13. DA

      And if you learn while you're exercising, what you're doing is you're getting blood flow to the hippocampus, and you're more likely to remember it. So-

    14. SB

      I heard this, yeah. I had someone tell me that they, um, figured out that they could learn better for their exams if they did it in a sauna. So they kept, it was a scientist that I spoke to, she said she keeps learning new information when she's in the sauna, 'cause she realized that when she left the sauna and was then tested upon, on it, she was better able to, uh, do the exam. And I guess that's correlating to what you said about, because in a sauna, you're gonna have a lot of blood flow, I imagine, to the brain?

    15. DA

      Yes. There's actually a study in JAMA Psychiatry that one sauna bath helped depression, significantly helped depression. And I think it's because of, it's balancing the brain. And people who do the most saunas have the lowest risk of Alzheimer's disease.

    16. SB

      Hmm. What is the most important thing, as it relates to the subjects that we spoke about today, AI, the brain, neuroscience, that you would like to say to the, um, uh, the people that are listening now? There could be a million people listening, there could be 20 million people listening. If you could say one thing to them about the brain, AI, neuroscience, whatever you wanna say, the floor is yours, what would that be? Over to you first, Terry.

  29. 1:20:51 – 1:26:42

    Importance of Sleep for Brain Health

    1. SB

    2. TS

      Sleep. Sleep is a time when the body not just regenerates, but your memory is consolidated. So things you've experienced during the day are integrated into your cortex, and it's an interaction between hippocampus and the cortex for, uh, uh, you know, for, for episodic memories. And, and, and, and it's unfortunate. What's happening with children now, you know-

    3. SB

      Mm-hmm.

    4. TS

      ... is that they're, they're so competitive to get into college that they're cutting back on their sleep, and it's just the wrong time of your life. You shouldn't be cutting it back when your brain is, is developing. So those two things, I would say sleep and exercise are the most important thing for your brain.

    5. SB

      The floor is yours. What would you say to the listeners about all the things we've talked today? What's your closing, closing statement?

    6. DA

      Well, you know, I'd go back to what I talked about in the beginning, which is we've just thrown the barn door open and let the horse bolt out into our schools, into our businesses, into our homes. And before we've even asked, "Is it a gift, or is it a Trojan horse that's gonna steal from us?" we've embraced convenience before understanding consequence. And we've done it before with video games and cellphones and social media and marijuana and alcohol and opiates and high-fructose corn syrup and aspartame, and we have to be smarter. We have to tame this horse. It's gone with wisdom, or it's gonna trample our children. And so I think we have to be very thoughtful, and it all comes back down to, "Is this good for my brain or bad for it? Is it good for our collective brains, or is it potentially bad for it?" And just answer that question with information and love of yourself, of your family, of your country, community. (sighs) Yeah, I'm more anxious than when I came in. I don't like that. (laughs)

    7. SB

      (laughs) It, it's, uh, it's s- I'm just, it's so front of mind for me at the moment because I have the hindsight, the wisdom of hindsight of all those things you mentioned, like exercise and processed foods and social media and all these things that we tried, and they all seem to follow a similar arc. Some kind of new product or discovery is made, the early phase. In the early phase, people who have an incentive for that thing to be successful will somewhat, like, gaslight you into thinking that it's fine. And then we get into the second phase, where we start to see sort of conq- some consequences. Then we study what's actually happened. We figure out that there's, there was always a trade-off and that nobody really understood the trade-off, and then people change their behavior. So now when I go into these new technologies where the short-term benefit is really clear, it's making me more productive, I, I pause, and I go, "There's gonna be a trade-off here. There's always a trade-off. What is the trade-off? And am I comfortable and conscious of what that trade-off is?" And if, if the trade-off ... So I try to figure out what the trade-off is with things like AI, and I go, "Okay, the trade-off is probably I'm gonna be worse at critical thinking, and that might have an impact on my social relationships if I fall in love with fucking Annie 'cause she's pretty hot, to be fair."

    8. DA

      (laughs)

    9. SB

      (laughs) And I really value my critical thinking. I really value my ability to, um, solve problems and to articulate myself and to write and to communicate with my loved ones in an effective way. So what can I do, if that is the trade-off, now? And one of the things that I'm doing now feels really counterintuitive in a world where everybody's got these productivity gains 'cause they're using these tools, which is to refrain. And I, I wonder if one of the great advantages of the next decade, one of the great hedges for anyone that's wanting to be a great critical thinker, entrepreneur, creative, is to go left when everyone's going right. Which is to refrain and do it the hard way. And if we look at history, in these arcs that we've discovered with food and with exercise and all these things and dating, doing it the hard way-... like we said about the marshmallow test and delaying the gratification, seems to yield the greatest returns. So I think I'm gonna do it the hard way.

    10. DA

      And, and it might be the easiest, because I won't have the side effects.

    11. SB

      Yeah. The hard way, you're feeling that.

    12. DA

      Right? I want, I wanna feel good now and later, as opposed to now, but not later.

    13. SB

      And to be clear, this doesn't mean I'm not gonna use AI or ChatGPT.

    14. DA

      (laughs)

    15. SB

      It just means that when it matters, when the thinking matters, I will think for myself. And when the communication matters, I'll communicate for myself. That's what I, that's my conclusion.

    16. TS

      You should hope that your children will feel the same way (laughs) when they grow up.

    17. DA

      That they will model what you do, right?

    18. TS

      I hope so.

    19. DA

      Every day, you model health or not health.

Episode duration: 1:32:25

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