How to Improve at Learning Using Neuroscience & AI | Dr. Terry Sejnowski

1. 0:00 – 2:32

   Dr. Terry Sejnowski

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Terry Sejnowski. Dr. Terry Sejnowski is a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he directs the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, and as his title suggests, he is a computational neuroscientist. That is, he uses math as well as artificial intelligence and computing methods to understand this overarching, ultra important question of how the brain works. Now, I realize that when people hear terms like computational neuroscience, algorithms, large language models and AI, that it can be a bit overwhelming and even intimidating. But I assure you that the purpose of Dr. Sejnowski's work, and indeed today's discussion is all about using those methods to clarify how the brain works, and indeed to simplify the answer to that question. So for instance, today you will learn that regardless of who you are, regardless of your experience, that all your motivation in all domains of life is governed by a simple algorithm or equation. Dr. Sejnowski explains how a single rule, a single learning rule drives all of our motivation-related behaviors, and it, of course, relates to the neuromodulator dopamine. And if you're familiar with dopamine as a term, today you will really understand how dopamine works to drive your levels of motivation, or in some cases, lack of motivation, and how to overcome that lack of motivation. Today we also discuss how best to learn. Dr. Sejnowski shares not just information about how the brain works, but also practical tools that he and colleagues have developed, including a zero-cost online portal that teaches you how to learn better based on your particular learning style, the way that you in particular forage for information and implement that information. Dr. Sejnowski also explains how he himself uses physical exercise of a particular type in order to enhance his cognition, that is his brain's ability to learn information and to come up with new ideas. Today we also discuss both the healthy brain and the diseased brain in conditions like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and how particular tools that relate to mitochondrial function can perhaps be used in order to treat various diseases, including Alzheimer's dementia. I'm certain that by the end of today's episode, you will have learned a tremendous amount of new knowledge about how your brain works and practical tools that you can implement in your daily

2. 2:32 – 5:19

   Sponsors: BetterHelp & Helix Sleep

   1. AHAndrew Huberman2:32

      life. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out completely online. I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially, I didn't have a choice. It was a condition of being allowed to stay in school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to one's overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise, including cardiovascular exercise and resistance training, which of course I also do every single week. Now, there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk to about essentially all issues that you want to. Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support or simply directed guidance, what to do or what not to do in given areas of your life. And third, expert therapy can provide you useful insights that you would not have been able to arrive at on your own. BetterHelp makes it very easy to find an expert therapist who you really resonate with and that can provide you the benefits I just mentioned that come with effective therapy. If you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com/huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now, I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Now, the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in terms of the quality of sleep that you get each night. How soft it is or how firm it is, how breathable it is all play into your comfort and need to be tailored to your unique sleep needs. If you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz and it asks you questions such as, "Do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night?" Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I started sleeping on a Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago, and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had. If you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com/huberman. Take that two-minute sleep quiz and Helix will match you to a mattress that is customized for your unique sleep needs. For the month of November 2024, Helix is giving up to 25% off on all mattress orders and two free pillows. Again, that's helixsleep.com/huberman to get up to 25% off and two free pillows. And now for my discussion with Dr. Terry Sejnowski.

3. 5:19 – 11:49

   Brain Structure & Function, Algorithmic Level

   1. AHAndrew Huberman5:19

      Dr. Terry Sejnowski, welcome.

   2. TSTerry Sejnowski5:22

      Great to be here.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman5:23

      We go way back. And I'm a huge, huge fan of your work because you've worked on a great many different things in the field of neuroscience. You're considered by many a computational neuroscience, so you bring mathematical models to an understanding of the brain and neural networks. And we're also going to talk about AI today, and we're going to make it accessible for everybody, biologist or no, math background or no. To kick things off, I want to understand something. I understand a bit about the parts list of the brain, and most listeners of this podcast will understand a little bit of the parts list of the brain, even if they've never heard an episode of this podcast before, because they understand there are cells, those cells are neurons, those neurons connect to one another in very specific ways that allow us to see, to hear, to think, et cetera. But-I've come to the belief that even if we know the parts list, it doesn't really inform us how the brain works, right? This is the big question, how does the brain work, what is consciousness, all of this stuff. So where and how does an understanding of how neurons talk to one another start to give us a real understanding about, like, how the brain works? Like, what is this piece of meat in our heads? Because it can't just be, okay, the hippocampus remembers stuff and the, you know, the visual cortex perceives stuff. When you sit back and you remove the math from the mental conversation, if that's possible for you, how do you think about, quote, unquote, "how the brain works?" Like, at a very basic level, what is this piece of meat in our heads really trying to accomplish from, let's just say the time when we first wake up in the morning and we're a little groggy till we make it to that first cup of coffee or water, or maybe even just to urinate first thing in the morning. What is going on in there?

   4. TSTerry Sejnowski7:11

      What a great question. And, uh, you, you know, the, I have a, uh, uh, Pat Churchland and I, uh, wrote a book, Computational Brain, and in it there's this levels diagram. Uh, and, and it, it, levels of investigation at different spatial scales from the molecular at the very bottom to, uh, synapses and neurons, circuits, neural circuits, uh, how they're connected with each other, and then brain areas in the cortex and then the, the whole central nervous system span 10 orders of magnitude, you know, tenth to the tenth in spatial scale. So, you know, where is consciousness in all of that? So, uh, there are two approaches that neuroscientists have taken. Uh, I shouldn't say neuroscientists, I should say, that scientists have taken, uh, and the one you described which is, you know, let's look at all the parts, that's the bottom-up approach. You know, take it apart and just in reductionist approach, and you make a lot of progress, you can figure out, you know, how things are connected and, and understand how development works, how neurons connect. But it's very difficult to really make progress because, uh, y- quickly you get lost in the forest. Now, the other approach which has been s-successful, um, uh, but, uh, at the end, unsatisfying, is the top-down approach, and this is the approach that psychologists have taken looking at behavior and trying to understand, uh, you know, the, the, the laws of behavior, this is the behaviorists. Uh, but, you know, even people in AI were trying to do a top-down, to write programs that could replicate human behavior, intelligent behavior. And I have to say that both of those approaches, you know, bottom-up or top-down, have really not gotten to the core of answering any of those questions, the big questions. But there's a whole new approach now that is emerging in both neuroscience and AI at exactly the same time, at this moment in history. It's really quite remarkable. So there's an intermediate level between the implementation level at the bottom, how you implement some particular, uh, mechanism, um, and the, the actual behavior of the whole system is called the algorithmic level. It's in between.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman9:41

      Mm-hmm.

   6. TSTerry Sejnowski9:42

      So algorithms are like recipes, they're like, you know, when you bake a cake, you have to have, uh, ingredients and you have to say h- how, the order in which they're put together and how long and, uh, you know, if you, if you, if you get it wrong, you know, it doesn't work, uh, you know, the, the, it's just a mess. Now, it turns out that we're discovering algorithms. We've made a lot of progress with understanding the algorithms that are used in neural circuits, and this, uh, uh, speaks to the computational level of, of how to understand, you know, the function of the neural circuit, but, uh, I'm gonna give you one example of an algorithm which, uh, is, is one we worked on back in the 1990s when, um, Peter Dayan and Read Montague were post-docs in the lab, and it had to do with the part of the brain below the cortex called the basal ganglia which is responsible for learning sequences of actions in order to achieve some goal. For example, if you want to play tennis, you know, you have to be able to coordinate many muscles and a whole sequence of actions has to be made if you wanna be able to serve accurately, and you have to practice, practice, practice. Well, what's going on there is that the basal ganglia basically is taking over from the cortex and producing actions that get better and better and better and better, and that's true not just of the, the muscles, but it's also true of thinking. If you want to become good in any area, if you want to become a, a good, uh, financier, if you want to get, become a good doctor or a neuroscientist, right, you, you have to be, uh, practicing, practicing, practicing in terms of, uh, understanding what, uh, you know, what, what's, uh, the details of the profession and what works, what doesn't work and so forth. And, and it turns out that this basal ganglia interacts with the cortex not just in the back which is the action part, but also with the prefrontal cortex which is the thinking part.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman11:48

      Can

4. 11:49 – 15:23

   Basal Ganglia; Learning & Value Function

   1. AHAndrew Huberman11:49

      I ask you a question about this briefly? The basal ganglia, as I understand, are involved in the, um, organization of two major types of behaviors. Go, meaning to actually perform a behavior, but the basal ganglia also instruct no-go. Don't, don't engage in that behavior and learning a, an expert golf swing or even a basic golf swing or tennis racket swing involves both of those things, go and no-go.... given what you just said, which is that the basal ganglia are also involved in generating thoughts of particular kinds, I wonder therefore if it's also involved in suppression of thoughts of particular kinds. I mean, you don't want your surgeon cutting into, um, you know, a particular, uh, region and just thinking about their motor behaviors, what to do and what not to do, they presumably need to think about what to think about, but also what to not think about. You don't want that, um, surgeon thinking about how their kid was a brat that morning and, um, and they're frustrated because the two things interact. So, is there go/no-go in terms of action and learning, and is there go/no-go in terms of thinking?

   2. TSTerry Sejnowski12:54

      Well, yeah, I- I mentioned the prefrontal cortex, and that part, the loop with the basal ganglia, that is one of the last to mature in, uh, uh, uh, you know, early adulthood. And, you know, what the problem is that for adolescents, it's not the no-go part (laughs) for, for, you know, planning an action just isn't quite there yet, and so often, it doesn't kick in to, to prevent you from doing things that are not-

   3. AHAndrew Huberman13:18

      Mm-hmm.

   4. TSTerry Sejnowski13:18

      ... in your best interest. So, yes, absolutely right, but one of the things though is that learning is involved, and, and this is really s- a, a problem that we cracked, uh, first theoretically in the '90s and then experimentally later, uh, by recording from neurons and also brain imaging in humans. So, it turns out we know the algorithm that is used in the brain for how to learn sequences of actions to achieve a goal. Uh, and it, and it's the simplest possible algorithm you can imagine. It's simply to predict the next reward you're going to get. If I, if I do an action, will I... b- will it be a, uh, give me something of value? And, uh, and you learn every time you try something, whether you got the amount of reward you expected or less, you use that to update the synapses, synaptic plasticity, so that the next time you'll have a better chance of getting a r- a better reward and you build up what's called a value function. And so the cortex now over your lifetime is building up a, a, a lot of knowledge about, you know, things that are good for you, things that are bad for you, like, you go to a restaurant, you order something, how do you know what's good for you, right? You, you've had lots of meals in a lot of places, and now that is part of your value function. This is the same algorithm that was used by AlphaGo. This is the program that DeepMind built. Th- this is an AI program that beat the world Go champion, and Go is the most complex game that, that humans have ever c- uh, played, you know, on a, on a, on a r- regular basis.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman14:58

      Far more complex than chess, as I understand.

   6. TSTerry Sejnowski15:00

      Yeah, that's right. So, uh, Go is to chess what chess is to something like ch- checkers. You know, in other words, the level of difficulty is another, you know, way off, uh, above it because you have to think in terms of, of, of battles going on all over the place at the same time, and the order in which you put the pieces down are gonna affect what's going to happen in the future.

5. 15:23 – 19:14

   Value Function, Reward & Punishment

   1. AHAndrew Huberman15:24

      So, this value function is super interesting and I wonder whether, and I think you answered this, but I wonder whether this value function is implemented over long periods of time. So, you talked about the value function in terms of learning a motor skill. Let's say swinging a tennis racket to do a perfect tennis serve, or, or even just a decent tennis serve. When somebody goes back to the court, let's say, on the weekend, once a month over the course of years, are they able to tap into that same value function every time they go back even though there's been a lot of intervening time and learning? That's question number one. And then the other question is, do you think that this value function is also being played out in more complex scenarios, not just motor learning, such as, let's say, a domain of life that for many people involves some, um, trial and error would be, like, human relationships. We learn how to be friends with people. Uh, we learn how to be a good sibling. Uh, we learn how to be a good romantic partner.

   2. TSTerry Sejnowski16:27

      Right, right.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman16:28

      We get some things right, we get some things wrong. So, is the same value function being implemented? We're paying attention to what was rewarding, but what I didn't hear you say also was what was punishing. So, are we only paying attention to what is rewarding-

   4. TSTerry Sejnowski16:40

      Oh, no.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman16:40

      ... or we're also integrating punishment?

   6. TSTerry Sejnowski16:43

      Oh, this-

   7. AHAndrew Huberman16:43

      We don't get an electric shock when we get the serve wrong, but we can be frustrated.

   8. TSTerry Sejnowski16:47

      What you identified is, um, some v- a very, uh, important feature, uh, which is that rewards... Uh, by the way, uh, you know, w- every time you do something, you're updating this value function, every time, and, and it accumulates. And the, the answer to your first question, the answer is that it's always gonna be there. It doesn't matter. It, it's v- it's a very permanent part of your experience and who you are. And, uh, and interestingly, and, and the behaviorists knew this back in the 1950s, that, uh, you can get there two ways of trial and error. You know, small rewards are, are good because you're constantly coming closer and closer to getting the, uh, the, w- what you're seeking, better tennis player or, uh, being able to ha- make a friend, but the negative punishment is much more effective. One trial learning.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman17:50

      Mm-hmm.

   10. TSTerry Sejnowski17:52

       You don't need to have, uh, z- you know, h- hundred tr- trials to, to, you know, which you need, you know, when you're training a rat to, to, to do some task with small food rewards. But if you, if you just shock the rat, boy, that rat doesn't forget that.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman18:06

       Yeah, one really bad relationship will-

   12. TSTerry Sejnowski18:09

       (laughs)

   13. AHAndrew Huberman18:09

       ... have y- have you learning certain things forever.

   14. TSTerry Sejnowski18:11

       And this is also PTSD.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman18:13

       Mm-hmm.

   16. TSTerry Sejnowski18:13

       Post-traumatic stress disorder is, is another good example of that. That can screw you up for the rest of your life.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman18:20

       Mm-hmm.

   18. TSTerry Sejnowski18:20

       ... so, so, but the other thing, and, and you, you pointed out something really important, which is that a large part of the prefrontal cortex is devoted to social interactions. And this is how humans, you know, when you come into the world, you don't know what language you're going to be speaking. You don't know what the cultural values are that you're, that you're going to have to be able to become a member of this society and ex- as things that are expected of you. All of that has to be come through experience, through building this value function. So, this is... and this is something we discovered in the 20th century. And, and now it's going into AI. It's called reinforcement learning in AI. It's a f- it's a form of procedural learning as opposed to the cognitive level where you think and you do things. Cognitive thinking is much less efficient, uh, because you have to go step by step. With procedural learning, uh, it's automatic.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman19:13

       Can you give me

6. 19:14 – 25:56

   Cognitive vs. Procedural Learning, Active Learning, AI

   1. AHAndrew Huberman19:14

      an example of procedural learning in the context of, um, a comparison to cognitive learning? Like, is there an example of perhaps like, how to make a decent cup of coffee using, uh, you know, purely knowledge-based-

   2. TSTerry Sejnowski19:28

      Oh.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman19:29

      ... learning versus procedural learning-

   4. TSTerry Sejnowski19:30

      Oh, okay, okay.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman19:31

      ... um, it... where procedural learning wins? And I th- I, I can imagine one, but you're the true expert here.

   6. TSTerry Sejnowski19:36

      Well, you know, no, you know a lot of examples, but, uh, my, my... uh, let's just, since we've been talking about tennis, can you imagine learning how to play tennis through a book, reading a book?

   7. AHAndrew Huberman19:45

      That's so funny.

   8. TSTerry Sejnowski19:46

      (laughs)

   9. AHAndrew Huberman19:46

      On the plane back from Nashville yesterday, the guy sitting across the aisle from me was reading a book about, um, uh, maybe he was working on his pilot's license or something.

   10. TSTerry Sejnowski19:57

       Right.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman19:57

       And there... and I, I looked over and couldn't help but notice these diagrams of the, of the plane flying. And I thought, "I'm just so glad that this guy is a passenger and not-"

   12. TSTerry Sejnowski20:05

       (laughs)

   13. AHAndrew Huberman20:05

       ... "and not a pilot." And then I thought about how the pilots learn, and presumably it was a combination of practical learning and textbook learning.

   14. TSTerry Sejnowski20:14

       Yes.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman20:14

       I mean, when you scuba dive-

   16. TSTerry Sejnowski20:15

       Right.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman20:15

       ... this is true. I- I'm scuba dive certified, and when you get your certification-

   18. TSTerry Sejnowski20:18

       Yes, yes.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman20:19

       ... you, you learn your dive tables and you learn why you have to wait between dives, et cetera, and gas exchange and a number of things. But there's really no way to simulate what it is to take your mask off underwater, put it back on, and then, you know, blow the water out of your mask. Like, that... you just have to do that in a pool and you actually have to do it when you need to for it-

   20. TSTerry Sejnowski20:37

       Yes.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman20:37

       ... to really get drilled in.

   22. TSTerry Sejnowski20:39

       Yes. You, you, you d- you, you... uh, it's really essential for things that, uh, have to be executed quickly and, and, uh, expertly to, to g- get that to... you know, really down pat, so you don't have to think.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman20:52

       Mm-hmm.

   24. TSTerry Sejnowski20:53

       Uh, and this happens in school, right? In other words, you, you, you, you have classroom lessons where you're given explicit instruction, but then you go do homework. That's procedural learning. You do problems, you solve problems. And, and, you know, I'm, I'm a PhD physicist, so, so I, I, I went through all of the classes, you know, in theoretical physics, and, um, it was really the problems that really were the core of becoming a good physicist. You know, you can memorize the equations-

   25. AHAndrew Huberman21:25

       Mm-hmm.

   26. TSTerry Sejnowski21:25

       ... but that doesn't mean you understand how to use the equations.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman21:28

       I think it's worth highlighting something. A lot of times on this podcast, uh, we talk about what I call protocols. It would be, you know, like get some morning sunlight in your eyes to stimulate your suprachiasmatic nucleus by way of your retinal ganglion cells. Audiences of this podcast will recognize those terms. It's basically get sunlight in your eyes in the morning and set your circadian clock.

   28. TSTerry Sejnowski21:44

       That's right.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman21:45

       And you can hear that a trillion times. But I do believe that there's some value to both knowing what the protocol is, the underlying mechanisms, there are these things in your eye that, you know, encode the sunrise qualities of light, et cetera, and then send them to your brain, et cetera, et cetera. But then once we link knowledge, pure knowledge, to a practice, I do believe that the two things merge someplace in a way that, um, let's say reinforces both the knowledge and the practice.

   30. TSTerry Sejnowski22:14

       Right.
7. 25:56 – 30:08

   Learning & Brain Storage

   1. AHAndrew Huberman25:56

      to a restaurant for the first time, there are a number of new interactions, right? There might be a host or a hostess. You sit down at these tables you've never sat at. Somebody asks you questions, you read it-

   2. TSTerry Sejnowski26:07

      Right.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman26:07

      Okay, maybe it's a QR code these days, but-

   4. TSTerry Sejnowski26:09

      Right. (laughs)

   5. AHAndrew Huberman26:10

      Um, forever after you understand the process of going into a restaurant, doesn't matter what the genre of food happens to be or what city, sitting inside or outside, you can pretty much work it out. Sit at the counter, sit outside, sit at the table. It's, th- there are a number of key action steps that I think pretty much translate to everywhere, unless you go to some super high-end thing or some super low-end thing-

   6. TSTerry Sejnowski26:35

      Right.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman26:35

      ... where it's a buffet or whatever, like, you know, you can start to fill in the blanks here. If I understand correctly, there's a, an action function that's learned from the knowledge and the experience.

   8. TSTerry Sejnowski26:46

      Yes, exactly.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman26:47

      And then where is that action function stored? Is it in one location in the brain or is it-

   10. TSTerry Sejnowski26:52

       Ah.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman26:52

       ... kind of an emergent property of multiple brain areas?

   12. TSTerry Sejnowski26:54

       E- so, th- th- that, you're right at the cusp here of, uh, where we are in neuroscience right now. We don't know the answer to that question. In the past, it had been thought that, uh, you know, the, the cortex had, uh, were like, uh, countries on, uh, uh, that e- each of which, each part of the cortex was dedicated to one function, right? Uh, you know, there's w- and, and interestingly, you record for the neurons, and it certainly looks that way, right? In other words, the, there's a visual cortex in the back, and there's a whole series of areas, and then there's the auditory cortex in the, here in the middle, and then the prefrontal cortex for social interaction. And, and so it looked really clear-cut that it's modular. And now what we're facing is we could, by, uh, we have a new way to record from neurons. You, optically, we can record from tens of thousands, from dozens of areas simultaneously, and what we're discovering is that if you wanna do any task, you're engaging not just the area that you might think, you know, has the input coming in, say, the visual system, but the visual system is getting input from the motor system.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman28:07

       Mm-hmm.

   14. TSTerry Sejnowski28:08

       Right? In fact, you know, there's more input coming from the motor system than from the eye.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman28:12

       Really?

   16. TSTerry Sejnowski28:13

       Yes. Yeah, Anne Churchland at UCLA has shown that in, in the mouse. Uh, this is, so now we're looking at global interactions between all these areas, and that's where emer- th- uh, real complex cognitive behaviors emerge is from those interactions. And now we have the tools for the first time to actually be able to see them in real time, and, and we're, we're doing that now, um, f- first on, uh, mice and monkeys, but, uh, we now can do this in humans. So I've been collaborating with a group at Mass General Hospital to record from people with epilepsy, and, and they have to have an operation o- uh, for people who are drug-resistant, to be able to, uh, take out, find out where it starts in the cortex, you know, uh, and, and where it is initiated, where the seizure starts, and then to go in, you have to go in and record simultaneously from a lot of parts of the cortex for weeks until you find out where it is, and then you go in a- and you try to, uh, take it out, and, and often that helps. Very, very invasive, but for two weeks we have access to all those neurons in that cortex that are being, you know, recorded from constantly. And so I've used... I started out because I was interested in sleep, uh, I wanted to understand what happens in, in the cortex of a human during sleep, but then we, we realized that, you know, you can also figure, you know, eh, eh, y- uh, people, uh, who, who have these, uh, debilitatin' problems with seizures, you know, they're there for two weeks and they have nothing to do, so they just love the fact that scientists are interested in helping them and, and, you know, teaching them things and finding out where in the cortex, uh, things are happening when they learn something. This is a gold mine. It's, it's, uh, unbelievable.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman30:02

       Mm-hmm.

   18. TSTerry Sejnowski30:02

       And I, I've, I've learned things from humans that could, I could've never gotten from any other species.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman30:07

       Amazing.

8. 30:08 – 32:08

   Traveling Waves, Sleep Spindles, Memory

   1. AHAndrew Huberman30:08

   2. TSTerry Sejnowski30:08

      Obviously language is one of them, but there are other things in sleep that, uh, we've, we discovered having to do with traveling waves. There are circular traveling waves that go on during sleep, which is astonishing. Nobody ever really, uh, saw that before, but, uh, now-

   3. AHAndrew Huberman30:25

      If you were to ascribe one or two major functions to these traveling waves, what do you think they are accomplishing for us in sleep? Are, and by the way, are they associated with deep sleep, slow wave sleep, or with rapid eye movement sleep, or both?

   4. TSTerry Sejnowski30:36

      This, this is, uh, eh, this is, uh, non-REM sleep. This is a jargon, b- this is, uh, during, uh, s- uh, intermediate...

   5. AHAndrew Huberman30:43

      Mm-hmm. Transition states?

   6. TSTerry Sejnowski30:45

      Yeah, transition state. Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman30:46

      Okay, our audience will probably be keep up. They've been, they've heard a lot about slow wave sleep from me-

   8. TSTerry Sejnowski30:50

      Oh, okay, okay, yeah, this is...

   9. AHAndrew Huberman30:50

      ... and Matt Walker.

   10. TSTerry Sejnowski30:50

       This is-

   11. AHAndrew Huberman30:51

       And from rapid eye movements.

   12. TSTerry Sejnowski30:51

       This is light, light slow wave sleep. Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman30:53

       Hmm. And so what do these traveling waves accomplish for us?

   14. TSTerry Sejnowski30:55

       Oh, okay, so in the case of the... They're called sleep spindles.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman30:59

       Mm-hmm.

   16. TSTerry Sejnowski30:59

       They last, uh, the, the waves last for about, um, a second or two. Um, and, and they travel, like I say, in a circle around the cortex. And it's known that these spindles are important for consolidating experiences you've had during the day into your long-term memory storage.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman31:16

       Mm-hmm.

   18. TSTerry Sejnowski31:17

       So, so it's a very important function and if, if, if you take out... See, it's the hippocampus that is, uh, uh, is, is, is replaying the experiences. It's a part of the brain that's very important for long-term memory. If you don't have a hippocampus, you can't learn new things.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman31:33

       Mm-hmm.

   20. TSTerry Sejnowski31:34

       Uh, that is to say that you can't remember what you did the la- yesterday or, for that matter, even an hour earlier. But the hippocampus plays back your experiences, causes the sleep spindles now to knead that into the cortex and, and it, you, it's important you do that right 'cause you don't want to overwrite the existing knowledge you have. You just want to basically incorporate the new experience into your existing knowledge base in an efficient way that, uh, that doesn't interfere with what you already know. So, that's an example of a very important function that these traveling waves have.

9. 32:08 – 34:57

   Sponsors: AG1 & David

   1. TSTerry Sejnowski32:08

   2. AHAndrew Huberman32:08

      I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that includes prebiotics and adaptogens. I've been drinking AG1 since 2012 and I started doing it at a time when my budget was really limited. In fact, I only had enough money to purchase one supplement, and I'm so glad that I made that supplement AG1. The reason for that is even though I strive to eat whole foods and unprocessed foods, it's very difficult to get enough vitamins and minerals, micronutrients and adaptogens from diet alone in order to make sure that I'm at my best, meaning have enough energy for all the activities I participate in from morning until night, sleeping well at night, and keeping my immune system strong. When I take AG1 daily, I find that all aspects of my health, my physical health, my mental health, my performance, recovery from exercise, all of those improve. And I know that because I've had lapses when I didn't take my AG1 and I certainly felt the difference. I also notice, and this makes perfect sense given the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain, that when I regularly take AG1 that I have more mental clarity and more mental energy. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim a special offer. For this month only, November 2024, AG1 is giving away a free one-month supply of omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil in addition to their usual welcome kit of five free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D3K2. As I've discussed many times before on this podcast, omega-3 fatty acids are critical for brain health, mood, cognition, and more. Again, go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim this special offer. Today's episode is also brought to us by David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 75% of its calories come from protein. These bars from David also taste amazing. My favorite flavor is chocolate chip cookie dough, but then again, I also like the chocolate fudge flavored one, and I also like the cake flavored one. Basically, I like all the flavors. They're incredibly delicious. For me personally, I strive to eat mostly whole foods. However, when I'm in a rush or I'm away from home or I'm just looking for a quick afternoon snack, I often find that I'm looking for a high quality protein source. With David, I'm able to get 28 grams of protein with the calories of a snack, which makes it very easy to hit my protein goals of one gram of protein per pound of body weight each day, and it allows me to do that without taking in excess calories. I typically eat a David bar in the early afternoon or even mid-afternoon if I want to bridge that gap between lunch and dinner. I like that it's a little bit sweet, so it tastes like a tasty snack, but it's also given me that 28 grams of very high quality protein with just 150 calories. If you would like to try David, you can go to davidprotein.com/huberman. Again, the link is davidprotein.com/huberman.

10. 34:57 – 42:02

    Tool: Increase Sleep Spindles; Memory, Ambien; Prescription Drugs

    1. AHAndrew Huberman34:57

       As I recall, there are one or two things that one can do in order to ensure that one gets sufficient sleep spindles at night, and thereby incorporate this new knowledge. Uh, this was from the episode that we did with Gina Poo from UCLA, I believe, a- and others, including Matt Walker. My recollection is that the number one thing is to make sure you get enough sleep at night, so you experience enough of these spindles.

    2. TSTerry Sejnowski35:21

       Right, right.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman35:22

       And we're all familiar with the, um, cognitive challenges, including memory challenges and learning challenges associated with lack of sleep, insufficient sleep. But the other was that, um, there was some interesting relationship between daytime exercise and nighttime prevalence of sleep spindles. Are you familiar with that literature?

    4. TSTerry Sejnowski35:40

       Yes, oh, yes.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman35:40

       Yeah?

    6. TSTerry Sejnowski35:41

       No, this is a, this is a fascinating literature, uh, and it's all pointing the same direction, which is that, you know, we always neglect to, uh, appreciate the importance of sleep. I mean, obviously, uh, you're refreshed when you wake up, but there's a lot of things happen. It's not that your brain turns off, it's that it goes into a completely different state, and, and memory consolidation is just one of those things that happens when you're, fall asleep. And of course, you know, there's dreams and so forth. We don't fully appreciate or understand exactly how all the different sleep stages are, are, uh, work together. But, uh, w- exercise is a particularly important, uh, part of, of getting, uh, the motor, uh, system, uh, um, tuned up. And, and that, uh, uh, it's thought that the, uh, just the REM, rapid eye movement sleep, may be involved in that. So, that's a, that's yet another part of the sleep, uh, s- stages. You go through, you go back and forth between, um, dream sleep and the slow wave sleep, back and forth, back and forth during the night, and then at the, when y- you wake up, you're in the, in the, the REM stage. More and more REM, more and more REM. But, you know, that's all observation. But, you know, as a scientist, what you want to do is perturb the system and, and see if you can...... maybe, i- if you had more sleep spindles, maybe you'd be able to remember things better. So it turns out, Sara Mednick, who's at UC Irvine, did this fantastic experiment. So it turns out there's a drug called zolpidem-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman37:17

       Mm-hmm.

    8. TSTerry Sejnowski37:18

       ... which, um, is, is, goes by the, the, uh, name Ambien. You may have some experience with that if you've-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman37:24

       I've never taken it, but, um, I'm, I'm aware-

    10. TSTerry Sejnowski37:27

        It's, it's-

    11. AHAndrew Huberman37:27

        ... of what it is. People use it as a sleep aid.

    12. TSTerry Sejnowski37:29

        Th- that's right. It, it's, it's, it hel- it, it, a lot of people take it in order to sleep. Okay. Uh, well, it turns out that it causes, uh, more sleep spindles.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman37:40

        Really?

    14. TSTerry Sejnowski37:40

        Yeah. It, it, it doubles the number of sleep spindles if you, you know, if you take the drug. Uh, you take the drug, uh, after you've done the learning, right? You do the learning at night, and then you take the drug, and you have twice as many spindles. You wake up in the morning, you can remember twice as much from what you learned.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman38:00

        And the memories are stable over time?

    16. TSTerry Sejnowski38:03

        Yes.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman38:03

        It's, it's like, it's in there.

    18. TSTerry Sejnowski38:04

        Yes. Yeah, no, it, it's j- it, it, it consolidates it. I mean, that's the point is, is that-

    19. AHAndrew Huberman38:08

        Wh- what's the downside of Ambien?

    20. TSTerry Sejnowski38:10

        Okay, here's the downside, okay? (laughs) So people who take the drug, say, if you're going, uh, to Europe and you take it and then you sleep really soundly, but often you, you find yourself in the hotel room and you completely have no clue, you have no memory of how you got there.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman38:27

        I've had that experience without Ambien or any other drugs where I am very badly jet lagged-

    22. TSTerry Sejnowski38:32

        Yes.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman38:33

        ... and I wake up and for a few seconds, but what feels like eternity, I have no idea where I am.

    24. TSTerry Sejnowski38:39

        Oh, yeah, well, that, that, that-

    25. AHAndrew Huberman38:39

        It's terrifying.

    26. TSTerry Sejnowski38:41

        Well, that, that's another, uh, p- problem that you have, uh, with jet lag. Jet lag really screws things up. But this is something where it could be an hour. You know, you, you, you took the train or you, you took a taxi or s- something, and you're i- i- and so here, here, now this seems crazy. How could it be a, a way to improve learning and recall on one hand and then forgetfulness on the other hand? Well, it turns out what's important (laughs) is, um, that when you take the drug, right? Uh, i- in other words, it helps consolidate experiences you've had in the past before you took the drug, but it'll wipe out experiences you have in the future after you take the drug, right?

    27. AHAndrew Huberman39:27

        (laughs)

    28. TSTerry Sejnowski39:27

        You see all-

    29. AHAndrew Huberman39:28

        Sorry, I'm not laughing. It must be a terrifying experience, but I'm laughing because, you know, uh, there's some beautiful pharmacology and indeed some, um, wonderfully useful, uh, pharmaceuticals out there. Uh, you know, some people may cringe to hear me say that, but there are some very useful drugs out there that save lives and help people deal with symptoms, et cetera. Um, side effects are always a concern, but this particular drug profile, Ambien, uh, that is, um, seems to reveal something perhaps even more important than the discussion about spindles or Ambien or even sleep, which is that you gotta pay the piper somehow, as they say.

    30. TSTerry Sejnowski40:04

        That's right.
11. 42:02 – 45:58

    Psilocybin, Brain Connectivity

    1. AHAndrew Huberman42:02

       As long as we're talking about brain states and, um, connectivity across areas, um, I wanna ask a particular question, then I wanna return to this issue about how best to learn, especially in kids, but also in adulthood. Um, I've become very interested in and spent a lot of time with the literature and some guests on the topic of psychedelics. Um, l- let's leave the discussion about LSD aside because do you know why there aren't many studies with LSD? This is kind of a fun one. No one is expected to know the answer.

    2. TSTerry Sejnowski42:28

       Well, it's against the law, I think.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman42:29

       Oh, but there's, uh, so is psilocybin or MDMA, and there are lots of studies going on about those.

    4. TSTerry Sejnowski42:33

       Oh, there are now.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman42:33

       Uh, yeah. Right.

    6. TSTerry Sejnowski42:33

       Yes, it's changed. But when I was growing up, you know, as you know-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman42:36

       Sure.

    8. TSTerry Sejnowski42:36

       ... it was against the law to take these drugs.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman42:37

       Right. So the, what I learned is that the, that there are far fewer clinical trials exploring the use of LSD as a therapeutic because with the exception of Switzerland, none of the researchers are willing to stay in the laboratory as long as it takes for the subject-

    10. TSTerry Sejnowski42:50

        Oh, to come down?

    11. AHAndrew Huberman42:50

        ... to get through an LSD journey. Whereas psilocybin tends to be a shorter-

    12. TSTerry Sejnowski42:53

        Right.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman42:53

        ... a shorter experience. Okay. Let's talk about psilocybin for a moment. My read of the data on psilocybin are s-... is that it's still open to question, but that some of the clinical trials show pretty significant recovery from major depression. It was pretty impressive. But if we just set that aside and say, "Okay, more needs to be worked out for safety," what is very clear from the brain imaging studies, the sort of before and after, resting state, task-related, et cetera, is that you get more resting state global connectivity, more areas talking to more areas than was the case prior to the use of the psychedelic. And given the similarity of the psychedelic journey, and here, specifically talking about psilocybin, to things like rapid eye movement, sleep, and things of that sort, I have a very simple question. Do you think that there's any real benefit to increasing brain-wide connectivity? To me, it seems a little bit haphazard, and yet the clinical data are promising, if nothing else, promising. And so, is what we're seeking in life as we acquire new knowledge, as we learn tennis or golf, or, you know, take up singing or what have you, as we go from childhood into the late stages of our life, that whole transition, is what we're doing increasing connectivity and communication between different brain areas? Is that what the human experience is really about? Or is it that we're getting more modular, we're getting more segregated in terms of this area talking to this area in this particular way? Um, feel free to explore this in any way that feels meaningful-

    14. TSTerry Sejnowski44:28

        Okay, uh-

    15. AHAndrew Huberman44:28

        ... or just say pass, if it's not a good question.

    16. TSTerry Sejnowski44:30

        No, it's a great question, I mean, you have all these great questions and we don't have complete answers yet, but, uh, specifically with regard to connectivity, um, if you look at what happens in an infant's brain during the first two years, there's a tremendous amount of new synapses being formed. This is your area, by the way. (laughs)

    17. AHAndrew Huberman44:50

        Neurodevelopment.

    18. TSTerry Sejnowski44:50

        You know more about this than I do.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman44:51

        Yeah, yeah. That's okay.

    20. TSTerry Sejnowski44:52

        But then you prune them, right? There's the, the second, second phase is that you overabundant synapses, and now what you wanna do is to prune them. Why would you wanna do that? Well, you know, synapses are expensive. It, it's c- it takes a lot of, uh, of energy to activate all of the neurons and the synapses especially, uh, th- because there's the turnover of the n- neurotransmitter. And so what you wanna do is to, uh, r- reduce the amount of energy and only use those synapses that have been proven to be the most important, right? Now, unfortunately, as you get older, you, you ha- the pruning slows down but doesn't go away, so... (laughs)

    21. AHAndrew Huberman45:39

        Mm-hmm.

    22. TSTerry Sejnowski45:39

        The cortex thins and, and so forth. So I think it's, goes in the opposite direction. I think that as you get older, you're, you're, you're losing connectivity.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman45:49

        Mm-hmm.

    24. TSTerry Sejnowski45:50

        But you, you re- interestingly, you retain the old memories. The old memories are, are really rock solid 'cause they were put in when you were young.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman45:57

        They're the

12. 45:58 – 49:36

    Tool: ‘Learning How to Learn’ Course

    1. AHAndrew Huberman45:58

       foundation.

    2. TSTerry Sejnowski45:58

       The foundation upon which everything else is built, uh, but, but it's not totally, uh, one way in, in the sense that even as an adult, as you know, you can learn new things. Maybe not as quickly... By the way, uh, th- this is one of the things that s- surprised me. So Barbara and I have, you know, i- i- looked at, uh, the people who, you know, really were benefitted the most. It turns out that the peak of the demographic is 25 to 35.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman46:29

       Barbara...

    4. TSTerry Sejnowski46:30

       Oakley, Oakley.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman46:31

       Mm-hmm.

    6. TSTerry Sejnowski46:31

       Yeah, she's, she's, she's really the mastermind. She's a fabulous, um, educator and, uh, background in engineering. But what's going on? So it turns out we, we aimed our, uh, uh, our, our MOOC at kids in high school and college because that's their business. They go every day and they go into work (laughs) and they have to learn, right? That's their business. But in fact, very few, uh, o- of the students are actually, uh, you know, they weren't taking the co- why should they? They, they spend all day in the class, right? Why do they wanna take another class?

    7. AHAndrew Huberman47:06

       So this is the, your, um, the, the Learning to Learn class?

    8. TSTerry Sejnowski47:10

       Learning How to Learn.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman47:10

       Okay. So you did this with Barbara?

    10. TSTerry Sejnowski47:12

        So we did so-

    11. AHAndrew Huberman47:13

        Yeah, okay.

    12. TSTerry Sejnowski47:13

        I did it with Barbara and now, 25 to 35, we have this huge peak, huge. So what's going on? Here's what's going on. It's very interesting. So you're 25, you've gone to college, half the people, by the way, who take the course went to college, right? So this, it's not like, you know, filling in for college. This is, like, topping it off. But you're in the workforce. You have to learn a new skill. May- maybe you have mortgage, maybe you have children, right? You can't afford to, to go, go off and, and, and take a course, uh, in, uh, or, uh, uh, get another degree. So you take a MOOC and you discover, you know, "I'm not quite as agile as I used to be in terms of learning," but it turns out with our course, you can boost your learning and so that even though you're, you're not as, your, your brain is, (laughs) isn't learning as quickly, you can do it more efficiently.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman48:05

        This is amazing. I, I wanna take this course. Um, I will take this course. What, um, what sort of time commitment is the course? You already-

    14. TSTerry Sejnowski48:12

        Oh, okay.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman48:12

        ... pointed out that it's zero cost, which is amazing.

    16. TSTerry Sejnowski48:15

        Yeah, yeah, okay, so, uh, it, it's bite-sized videos lasting about 10 minutes each and there's about 50 or 60 over a course of one month.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman48:24

        And are you tested? Are you self-test?

    18. TSTerry Sejnowski48:25

        Yeah, yeah, there, there are tests, there are quizzes, there are tests at the end and th- there are, uh, forums where you can go and talk to other students if you have questions, we have TAs. You know, it's, it's a-

    19. AHAndrew Huberman48:36

        And anyone can do this?

    20. TSTerry Sejnowski48:37

        Anyone in the world. In fact, we have people in India, housewives who say, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, because I could have never had learned about, uh, h- how to, how to be a better learner, and I wish I had l- known this when I was going to school."

    21. AHAndrew Huberman48:49

        Why do more people not know about this Learning to Learn course, although you... as people know, if I get really excited about it...... or about anything, I'm, I'm never gonna shut up about it.

    22. TSTerry Sejnowski48:58

        Well-

    23. AHAndrew Huberman48:59

        Uh, but I'm gonna take the course first because I wanna understand the-

    24. TSTerry Sejnowski49:01

        Y- you'll, you'll-

    25. AHAndrew Huberman49:02

        ... guts of it.

    26. TSTerry Sejnowski49:02

        ... you'll enjoy it. Uh, uh, we, we, we have like 98% approval, th- which is phenomenal. It's, it's sticky, a lot of-

    27. AHAndrew Huberman49:08

        Is it, is it math? Uh, vocabulary?

    28. TSTerry Sejnowski49:11

        No.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman49:11

        No?

    30. TSTerry Sejnowski49:11

        No math.
13. 49:36 – 58:37

    Learning, Generational Differences, Technology, Social Media

    1. AHAndrew Huberman49:37

       Okay, I'm gonna skip back a little bit now with the intention of, of double clicking on this learning to learn thing. Y- you pointed out that in particular in California, but elsewhere as well, um, there isn't as much procedural practice based learning anymore. Um, I'm gonna play devil's advocate here, uh, and I'm gonna point out that this is not what I actually believe, but, you know, when I was growing up, you had to do your times tables and your division, and then, you know, and then your fractions and your exponents and, you know, and you b- they build on one another. Um, and then at some point, you know, you take courses where you might need, like, a graphing calculator, which to some people they're gonna be like, "What the? What? What is this?" But the point being that there were a number of things that you had to learn to implement, functions, and y- and you learn, you learn by doing, you learn by doing. Um, likewise in, in physics class, we, you know, we were attaching things to strings and then for macro mechanics and, and learning that stuff. Okay, um, and learning from the chalkboard, uh, lectures. I can see the value of both, certainly, and you explained that the brain needs both to really understand knowledge and how to implement and back and forth. But nowadays, you know, you'll hear the argument, "Well, why should somebody learn how to read a paper map unless it's the only thing available?" Because you have Google Maps, or if they wanna do a calculation, they just put it into the top bar function on the internet and boom, out comes the answer. So there is a world where certain skills are no longer required, and one could argue that the brain space and activity and time, and energy in particular, could be devoted to learning new forms of knowledge that are going to be more practical in the school and workforce going forward. So how do we reconcile these things? I mean, I'm of the belief that the brain is doing math, and you and I agree, it's electrical signals and chemical signals and it's doing math and it's running algorithms. I think you convinced us of that, um, certainly. But how are we to discern what we need to learn versus what we don't need to learn in terms of building a brain that's capable of learning the maximum number of things, or even enough things so that we can go into this very uncertain future because as far-

    2. TSTerry Sejnowski51:58

       Right.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman51:58

       ... as you know, and I know-

    4. TSTerry Sejnowski52:00

       Right.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman52:00

       ... there's no, neither of us have a crystal ball. So what is essential to learn? And for those of us that didn't learn certain things in our formal education, what should we learn how to learn?

    6. TSTerry Sejnowski52:12

       Well, uh, this is, uh, generational, okay? So technologies provide us with tools. You mentioned the calculator, right? Uh, well, a calculator didn't eliminate, uh, you know, the education you need to get in math, but it made certain things easier. It spent-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman52:39

       Mm-hmm.

    8. TSTerry Sejnowski52:39

       It made it possible for you to do more things and more accurately. However, interestingly, uh, y- students in my class often, uh, come up with answers that are off by, you know, eight orders of magnitude, and that if, that's a huge amount, right? It's clear that they didn't key-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman52:55

       (laughs)

    10. TSTerry Sejnowski52:55

        ... in the calculator properly (laughs) . But they didn't recognize that it was imp- it was a really, uh, uh, far, it was completely way off the beam because they didn't have a good feeling for the numbers. They don't have a good sense of, you know, exactly how big it should have been, you know, order of magnitude. Uh, the basic, you know, understanding. So the, it's, it's kind of a, a there- there's a, the benefit is that you can do things faster, better, but then you also lose some of your intuition if- if you don't have the procedural system-

    11. AHAndrew Huberman53:25

        Mm-hmm.

    12. TSTerry Sejnowski53:25

        ... in place. So-

    13. AHAndrew Huberman53:26

        I'm thinking about a kid that wants to be a musician who uses AI to write a song about a bad breakup that then is kind of recovered when they find new love, and I'm guessing that you could do this today and get a pretty good song out of AI, but would you call that kid a songwriter or a musician? On the face of it, yeah. The AI is helping, and then you'd say, "Well, that's not the same as sitting down with a guitar and trying out different chords and, and feeling the intonation in their voice." But I'm guessing that for people that were on the electric guitar, they were criticizing people on the acoustic guitar.

    14. TSTerry Sejnowski54:03

        (laughs)

    15. AHAndrew Huberman54:04

        You know? So we have this generational thing-

    16. TSTerry Sejnowski54:05

        Yes, and that, that's what I said.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman54:05

        ... where we look back and say, "That's not the real thing, you need-"

    18. TSTerry Sejnowski54:08

        Okay.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman54:08

        "... to get the..." So what, what are the key fundamentals, is really a critical question.

    20. TSTerry Sejnowski54:12

        O- Okay. So th- th- I'm, I'm gonna come back to that because this is how you, th- th- the way you put it at the beginning had, had to do with, uh, whether your, how your brain is allocating resources, okay? So when you're younger, you can take in things, your brain is more malleable. For example, uh, h- how good are you on social media?

    21. AHAndrew Huberman54:36

        I, well, I do all my own Instagram and Twitter, and those accounts have grown in proportion to the amount of time I've been doing it.

    22. TSTerry Sejnowski54:44

        Oh, okay. Okay, okay.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman54:44

        So yeah, I would say pretty good. I mean, I'm, I, I'm not the biggest account on social media, but for a science health account, we- we're doing okay, um, thanks to the audience.

    24. TSTerry Sejnowski54:52

        Okay. Well, th-

    25. AHAndrew Huberman54:52

        Yeah.

    26. TSTerry Sejnowski54:52

        Well, th- well, th- this speaks well for the fact that you've, uh, managed to, uh...... break, you know, the, to get, go beyond the generation gap because-

    27. AHAndrew Huberman55:00

        I can type with my thumbs, Terry.

    28. TSTerry Sejnowski55:02

        (laughs) Okay, there you go. That's a, a manual skill you learn.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman55:05

        That's a, that's a new, new, uh, new phenomenon in human evolution.

    30. TSTerry Sejnowski55:08

        I, I, I, I couldn't believe it. I saw people doing that, and now I can do it too.
14. 58:37 – 1:01:06

    Sponsors: LMNT & Joovv

    1. AHAndrew Huberman58:37

       I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, LMNT. LMNT is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, in the correct ratios, but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree. It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of LMNT dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, I dissolve one packet of LMNT in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I'll also drink a packet of LMNT dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. There are a bunch of different great-tasting flavors of LMNT. I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry, I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try LMNT, you can go to drinklmnt.com/huberman to claim an LMNT sample pack with the purchase of any LMNT drink mix. Again, that's drink LMNT, spelled L-M-N-T. So it's drinklmnt.com/huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Joovv. Joovv makes medical grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I've consistently emphasized on this podcast is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology. Now, in addition to sunlight, red light and near infrared light have been shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health, including faster muscle recovery, improved skin health and wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improving vision itself. Now, what sets Joovv lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy devices is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning they use specific wavelengths of red light and near infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Joovv whole body panel about three to four times a week, and I use the Joovv handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you'd like to try Joovv, you can go to Joovv, spelled J-O-O-V-V, .com/huberman. Joovv is offering Black Friday discounts of up to $1,300 now through December 2nd, 2024. Again, that's Joovv, J-O-O-V-V, .com/huberman to get up to $1,300 off select Joovv products.

15. 1:01:06 – 1:06:52

    Draining Experiences, AI & Social Media

    1. TSTerry Sejnowski1:01:06

       I'm gonna tell you something which is gonna help all of your listeners. My book, uh, ChatGPT and the Future of AI, I went through and I looked at other people's experiences with ChatGPT. I just wanted to know what, what people were thinking and what... And I came across, it was an article on the, I think it was the New York Times, of a technical writer who decided she would spend one month using it to help her write things, her articles. And she said that when she started out, you know, at the end of the day, she was drained, completely drained, and it was like, you know, working on a machine, you know, y- like a tractor or something, you know, you're struggling, struggling, struggling to get it to work. And then she started... said, "Well, wait a second. You know, what if I treat it like a human being? What if I'm polite instead of, you know, being curt?" So she says, "Suddenly, I started getting better answers by, by being polite and, you know, back and forth the way with a human, you know, and s-"

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:15

       So saying, "Could you please give me information about so-and-so?"

    3. TSTerry Sejnowski1:02:18

       Yeah. "Please, I'm really having trouble. No, you know, that answer you gave me was fabulous, uh, is exactly what I was looking for and, you know, and now, now I need you to go on to the next part and help me with that too." In other words, the way you talk to a human, right? If you... an assistant, that you ask-

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:31

       Or is it that she was talking to the AI, to ChatGPT it sounds like in this case, in the way that her brain was familiar with asking questions to a human? In other words-

    5. TSTerry Sejnowski1:02:41

       Yes.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:42

       ... can the... so is the AI learning her and therefore giving her the sorts of answers that are more facile for her to-

    7. TSTerry Sejnowski1:02:49

       Okay.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:49

       ... to integrate with?

    9. TSTerry Sejnowski1:02:50

       I, I think it's both. I... well, the, the, well, first of all, the ChatGPT is mirroring your... the way you treat it, it will mirror that back. You, you treat it like a machine, it will tr- treat you like a machine, okay? 'Cause that's, that's what it's good at. But here's the surprise. Surprise is she said, "Once I re- once I started treating it like a human, at the end of the day, I wasn't fatigued anymore." Why? Well, it turns out that all your life, you inter- you, you interact with humans in a certain way and your brain is wired to do that and it doesn't take any effort. And so by treating the ChatGPT as if it were a human, you're taking advantage of all the brain circuits in your brain.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:35

        Th- this is incredible and I'll tell you why. Because I think many people, not just me, but many people really enjoy social media. Um, learn from it. I mean, yesterday I learned a few things that I thought were just fascinating about how we perceive our own, um, identity according to whether or not we're filtering it through the responses of others or whether or not we take a couple minutes and really just sit and think about how we actually feel about ourselves. Very interesting ideas about locus of, of self-perception and things like that. I also looked at a really cool video of a baby raccoon popping bubbles while standing on its hind limbs, and that was really cool, and social media could provide me both those things within a series of minutes. And I was thinking to myself, "This is crazy," right? The raccoon is kind of trivial, but it, you know, it delighted me and that's not trivial.

    11. TSTerry Sejnowski1:04:18

        There you go. Yes.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:18

        So... but here's the question. Could it be that one of the detrimental aspects of social media is that if we're complimenting one another or if we are giving hearts or we're giving thumbs down or we're in an argument with somebody or we're doing a clap back or they're clapping back on us as it... or dunking as it's called on, on X, on, um, that it isn't necessarily the way that we learned to argue? It's not necessarily the way that we learned to engage in healthy dispute. And so as a consequence, it feels like, and this is my experience, that certain online interactions feel really good and others feel like they kind of grate on me, like, because there's almost like an action step that isn't allowed. Like, you can't fully explain yourself or understand the other person.

    13. TSTerry Sejnowski1:05:07

        Right.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:08

        And I am somebody who, you know, believes in the, in the power of real face-to-face dialogue or at least on the phone dialogue.

    15. TSTerry Sejnowski1:05:14

        Right. Right.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:14

        And I feel the same way about text messaging. I hate text messaging. When text messaging first came out, I remember thinking, "I was not a kid that passed notes in class. This feels like passing notes in class."

    17. TSTerry Sejnowski1:05:27

        (laughs)

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:27

        "In fact, this whole text messaging thing is beneath me." That's how I felt. And over the years, of course, I became a text messenger and it's very useful for certain things, be there in five minutes, running a few minutes late, in my case, that's a common one. Um, but I think this notion of what grates on us and as it relates to whether or not it matches our, our childhood developed template of how our brain works is really key because it touches on something that I definitely want to talk about today that I know you've worked on quite a bit, which is this concept of energy. What we're talking about here is energy, not woo biology, woo science wellness energy. We're talking about we only have a finite amount of energy.

    19. TSTerry Sejnowski1:06:09

        Mm-hmm.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:09

        And years ago, the great Ben Barres sadly passed away, our former colleague and, uh, my, uh, postdoc advisor, came to me one day in the hallway and he stopped me and he said... he called me Andy like you do. And he said, "Andy, how come we get so, so... such a rundown of energy as we get older? Why are we more... why am I more tired today than I was 10 years ago?" I was like, "I don't know. How are you sleeping?" He's like, "I'm sleeping fine." Ben never slept much in the first place but he had a ton of energy. And I thought to myself, "I don't know." Like, what is this energy thing that we're talking about? I wanna make sure that we close the hatch on, on this notion of a, a template neural system that then you either find the experiences invigorating or depleting. I wa- I wanna make sure we close the hatch on that, but

16. 1:06:52 – 1:12:17

    Vigor & Aging, Continued Learning, Tool: Exercise & Mitochondrial Function

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:52

       I wanna make sure that we relate it at some point to this idea of, of energy. And why is it that with each passing year of our life, we, we seem to have less of it?

    2. TSTerry Sejnowski1:07:02

       Y- you know, you ask these great questions and I wish that I had great answers. (laughs)

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:05

       Well, so far you, so far you really do have great answers. They're certainly novel to me in the sense that I've not heard answers of this sort.

    4. TSTerry Sejnowski1:07:12

       Ah, okay.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:13

       Um, so there's a tremendous amount of learning for me today and I know for the audience.

    6. TSTerry Sejnowski1:07:16

       Okay.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:16

       So-

    8. TSTerry Sejnowski1:07:16

       Okay. Well-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:17

       ... so, but let's say you're... somebody is 20 years old versus 50 years old-

    10. TSTerry Sejnowski1:07:21

        Right, right, right.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:21

        ... versus...... what should they do? I mean, we need to integrate with the modern world. We also need to relate across generations.

    12. TSTerry Sejnowski1:07:28

        Oh, yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:28

        Right?

    14. TSTerry Sejnowski1:07:28

        No, this is true. This is true.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:29

        People aren't retiring as much. They're living longer. (laughs) Birth rates are down. But we have to get all, get along, as they say.

    16. TSTerry Sejnowski1:07:36

        So, you know, it, it is interesting, and I think it's true that, uh, we all, as we get older, uh, have, have less of the, you know, the vigor, vigor, if I could use a somewhat different word from energy. Um, we'll come back to that. Uh, but I think there are some who manage to keep an active life. Here's something that, again, in, in our MOOC, we really emphasize.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:59

        Could you explain a MOOC? I think most people-

    18. TSTerry Sejnowski1:08:01

        Oh, okay.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:01

        ... won't know what a-

    20. TSTerry Sejnowski1:08:02

        A MOOC is a-

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:02

        ... what a MOOC is, just for their sake, yeah.

    22. TSTerry Sejnowski1:08:03

        Okay, this is a...

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:04

        Yeah.

    24. TSTerry Sejnowski1:08:04

        They've been around for about, actually started at Stanford, uh, Andrew Ng-

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:08

        Mm-hmm.

    26. TSTerry Sejnowski1:08:08

        ... uh, and Daphna Koller. So they have a company called Coursera. And what, what happens is that you get professors, and in fact, anybody who has a knowledge, uh, or, you know, professional expertise, to, uh, give lectures that are available to anybody in the world, uh, who have access to the internet. And, and, uh, you know, it, it could... Th- there's, there's like probably tens of thousands now. Uh, any, any specialty, history, uh, science, music, you know, you name it, uh, there, there's somebody who's done, you know, who's an expert on that and wants to tell you, uh, because they're excited about what they're doing. Okay, so, so, you know, w- what, what, what we wanted to do was to help people with learning. And so part of the problem is that it gets more difficult. It takes more effort as, as you get older.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:56

        It depletes your vigor more, if we're gonna stay with this language of energy and vigor.

    28. TSTerry Sejnowski1:09:00

        Yeah, yeah, that's right.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:01

        Yeah.

    30. TSTerry Sejnowski1:09:01

        So let's actually use the word energy. As you know, in the cell, there is a physical power plant called the mitochondrion, which is s- supplying us with, uh, ATP, which is the coin of the realm for the cell to be able to operate all of its machinery, right? So, and so one of the things that happens when, when you get older is that your mitochondria run down.
17. 1:12:17 – 1:16:58

    Tool: Cognitive Velocity; Quick Stressors, Mitochondria

    1. TSTerry Sejnowski1:12:17

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:17

       I b- I believe in the notion, and I don't have a better word for it, maybe you do, or phrase for it, is of kind of a cognitive, um, velocity. You know, I sometimes will play with this. I'll, I'll read slowly or I'll see where my default pace of reading is at a given time of day, and then I'll intentionally try and read a little bit faster while also trying to retain the knowledge I'm reading.

    3. TSTerry Sejnowski1:12:40

       Right, right.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:40

       So I'm not just reading the words, I'm, I'm trying to absorb the information. And you can feel the energetic demand of that.

    5. TSTerry Sejnowski1:12:46

       Oh, yes.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:46

       And then, and then I'll play with it. I'll kind of back off a little bit, and then I'll go forward. And I try and find the sweet spot where I'm not reading at the pace that is reflexive, but just a little bit quicker while also trying to retain the information. And I learned this, um, when I had a lot of catching up to do at one phase of my educational career. Fortunately, it was pretty early and I was able to catch up on most things. You know, occasionally things slip through and I have to go back and learn how to learn, you know? Um, and if I get anything wrong on the internet, they sure as heck point it out, and then we go back and learn. And guess what? I never forget that because punish-

    7. TSTerry Sejnowski1:13:20

       (laughs) Punishment.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:22

       ... punishment, social punishment is a great signal.

    9. TSTerry Sejnowski1:13:24

       (laughs) Yes.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:24

        So thank you all, um, for, uh, keeping me...... uh, learning. But I picked that up from my experience of trying to get good at things like skateboarding or soccer when I was younger. There's a certain, um, thing that happens when skateboarding, that was my sport growing up, where it's actually easier to learn something going faster. You know, most kids try and learn how ollie and kick flip standing in the, in the living room on the carpet. That's the worst way to learn how to do it. It's all easier going a bit faster than you're comfortable. It's also the case that if you're not paying attention, you can get hurt. It's also the case that if you pay too much cognitive attention, you can't perform the motor movements.

    11. TSTerry Sejnowski1:14:06

        Right.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:07

        So there's this sweet spot that eventually I was able to translate into an understanding of when I sit down to read a paper or a news article, or even listen to a podcast, there's a pace of the person's voice, and then I'll adjust the, the rate of the audio, where I have to engage cognitively and I know I'm in a mode of retaining the information and learning. Whereas if I just go with my reflexive pace, it's rare that I'm in that perfect zone. So I, I point this out because perhaps it will be useful to people, I don't know if it's incorporated into your Learning How to Learn course, but I do think that there is something which I call kind of cognitive velocity, which is ideal for learning, versus kinda leisurely scrolling. And this is why I think that social media is detrimental. I think that we-

    13. TSTerry Sejnowski1:14:52

        Right.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:52

        ... train our brain basically to be slow, passive, and multi-context cycling through. And unless something is very high salience, it kinda makes us kind of fat and lazy, forgive the language but I'm gonna be blunt here, fat and lazy cognitively, unless we make it a point-

    15. TSTerry Sejnowski1:15:11

        Right.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:11

        ... to also engage learning.

    17. TSTerry Sejnowski1:15:12

        Right.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:12

        And my guess is it's tapping into this mitochondrial system.

    19. TSTerry Sejnowski1:15:16

        Uh, uh, very likely, uh, that's one part of it. Uh, by the way, uh, you know, the way that you've adjusted the speed is very interesting because it j- it turns out that, uh, stress, you know, everybody thinks, "Oh, stress is bad." But, no, it turns out stress that is transient, you know, that is only for a limited amount of time that you control is good for you, is good for your brain, is good for your body. I run intervals on the beach just the way that you d- r- do cognitive intervals when you're reading. In other words, I run, I run like hell for about 10 seconds and then I, you know-

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:50

        Whoa.

    21. TSTerry Sejnowski1:15:50

        ... I, I go to jog and I run like hell for another 10 seconds. And it, it's pushing your body int- into that e- e- extra gear that helps the muscles, the muscles need to know that this is what they've gotta put out. And that's where you gain, um, uh, you know, muscle mass, not, not from just doing the same running pace every day.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:11

        Mm-hmm. Well, your intellectual and physical vigor is, uh, undeniable. Um, I've known you a long time, you, you've always had a slight forward center of mass in your, uh, intellect, and even the speed at which you walk, Terry, dare I say.

    23. TSTerry Sejnowski1:16:25

        Okay. (laughs)

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:26

        You're, for a Californian, you're a quick walker.

    25. TSTerry Sejnowski1:16:28

        Okay. (laughs)

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:29

        Yeah. So, uh, that's a compliment by the way. Um, East Coasters know what I'm talking about, and Californians will be like, you know. Um, why not slow down? The reason to not slow down too much for too long is that these mitochondrial systems, the energy of the brain and body, as you point out, are very linked. And I do think that below a certain threshold it makes it very hard to come back, just like below a certain threshold it's hard to exercise, um, without getting very depleted or even injured-

    27. TSTerry Sejnowski1:16:56

        That's right.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:56

        ... that we need to maintain this.

18. 1:16:58 – 1:27:14

    AI, Imagined Futures, Possibilities

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:58

       So perhaps now would be a good time to close the hatch on this issue of, um, how to teach young people. Everyone should take this Learning to Learn course as a free resource, uh, amazing. Um, as it relates to AI, do you think that young people and older people now, I'm 49 so I'll put myself in the older bracket, should be learning how to use AI?

    2. TSTerry Sejnowski1:17:26

       They are already learning how to use AI. And, uh, again, it's just like, uh, uh, uh, new technology comes along, who picks it up first? It's the younger people. And it's, it's astonishing. Uh, you know, they, they're using it a lot more than I am. And I use it, uh, almost every day, but, uh, I know a lot of students who basically... And by the way, it's a le- it's like any other tool, it's a tool, uh, that, that you, you need how, to know how to use it.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:17:54

       Where do you suggest people start? So, um, I have started using Claude AI.

    4. TSTerry Sejnowski1:18:01

       Okay.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:01

       This was, um, suggested to me by somebody expert in AI as an alternative to ChatGPT. I don't have anything against ChatGPT, but I'll tell you, I really like the, um, aesthetic of Claude AI. It's a bit of a softer, beige aesthetic, it feels kind of Apple-like, I like the Apple brand, and it gives me answers, maybe it's the font, maybe it's the feel, maybe this goes back to the example you used earlier where I like Claude AI and I'm a big fan of it, and they don't pay me to say this, I have never met them, I have no relationship to them except that it gives me answers in a bullet pointed format that feels very aesthetically easy to transfer that information into my brain or onto a page.

Episode duration: 2:34:10