Joe Rogan Experience #1723 - Amishi Jha

Amishi Jha 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music)

Joe Rogan 0:12 Hello.

Amishi Jha 0:12 Hello.

Joe Rogan 0:13 Thanks for doing this.

Amishi Jha 0:14 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 0:15 Um, Peak Mind, huh?

Amishi Jha 0:17 That's right.

Joe Rogan 0:18 Yeah. How long you been working on this?

Amishi Jha 0:20 Um, my whole life. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:21 Your whole life?

Amishi Jha 0:22 But the actual book, couple years.

Joe Rogan 0:24 And the idea of improving all aspects of the way the brain works, is this something that's always fascinated you?

Amishi Jha 0:33 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 0:34 Yeah?

Amishi Jha 0:34 Yeah. The book isn't necessarily about all aspects, but a very important one that drives a lot of other aspects, which is the brain's attention system.

Joe Rogan 0:43 Yeah. That's a thing a lot of people have a problem with today, right? With phones and distractions and screens and nonsense.

Amishi Jha 0:50 Yeah. But it's always been a problem. So, meaning, you can look back to medieval monks, and they report, you know, "I abandoned my family. I've devoted my life to God, and I still keep thinking about lunch when I'm supposed to be praying." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03 Hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:04 So, this is not only a modern problem. It's actually a human problem.

Joe Rogan 1:08 It, what, where does it come from? Is it just a natural function of having a lot of things to think about in the world if you're trying to survive?

Amishi Jha 1:16 What does, where does what come from?

Joe Rogan 1:18 The, then, like-

Amishi Jha 1:19 Distractibility?

Joe Rogan 1:19 ... distraction.

Amishi Jha 1:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:20 Like, if you think about it, if you're a hunter-gatherer, you kind of have to multitask mentally, right? You, you can't just concentrate on picking these mushrooms. You also have to think, "Is that a sound of a branch snapping behind me? Is someone sneaking up on me?" Like, "What's that smell?" Like, you, you have to always be aware of so many different things, it's, it seems almost like a natural part of being a person to be distracted.

Amishi Jha 1:47 Absolutely. Our brain is built for distractibility, exactly for the reasons that you said. It advantages us to be able to not just focus when we want to, but scan as we're, as we're still engaged in a task. And it's, as we, as I just mentioned, it's not really only a modern problem, because oftentimes, even if we are abandoning every other kind of possible external distraction, and we're just by ourselves alone in a quiet room, we can still feel like it's hard to focus. So this capacity that drives kind of a shifting, moving attention, waxing and waning, is something that is built in, baked into the way that our brain functions. And I think that's often misunderstood as a problem. People think, "Oh, no, no, my brain's really busy. My brain gets really distracted," instead of understanding that's just the nature of the brain. If you are alive, awake, conscious, about half of your waking moments, your attention is not gonna be in the task at hand.

Joe Rogan 2:50 Yeah. That's something that people need to learn when they start meditating, that when you meditate, people think, "God, why do I keep getting distracted?" Like, that's just part of it.

Amishi Jha 2:59 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 2:59 You're gonna, you're never gonna be, like, completely zen for long periods of time and just completely full of bliss and enlightenment.

Amishi Jha 3:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:08 No, you're gonna be thinking about cheese and-

Amishi Jha 3:11 (laughs) Lunch.

Joe Rogan 3:11 ... car tires, and-

Amishi Jha 3:12 Yeah, exactly. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:13 ... when is it raining. Yeah.

Amishi Jha 3:14 No, absolutely. I think understanding that, it shifts, it starts to shift your relationship to what you're trying to do in the practice of meditation.

Joe Rogan 3:23 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 3:24 It's not about clearing the mind, and that term gets used a lot. Like, "Just clear it out." Not possible, not gonna happen, not the way that your brain was designed. But then you start understanding that there is a win to be had when it's a practice, like, especially the kind of stuff that I study in my lab, mindfulness meditation, because in the act of knowing where your mind is and training it to come back over and over, you gain a lot. You gain almost, in some sense, the super capacity to have more control in your, not just the way your mind functions, but in your life.

Joe Rogan 4:01 That's where it gets interesting for me, because, uh, do you have sort of a standard protocol that you think people should apply to their thinking, or is it based on where you are in your life, how much you've already done of this? Is every, does everybody's brain vary in terms of how much distractions they have in their head?

Amishi Jha 4:23 Deep question, actually. So, yes, it varies, and, but let's just say the basics are, there's a basic profile. So to disabuse ourselves that your mind wanders, there's something wrong with you or there's something unique about you, that's everybody. But it is the case that, for some people, dur-... not some people. In every group we've studied in my lab, and this is many, many kinds of groups, so from active duty military to first responders to students to athletes, leaders in organizations, I mean, teachers, just goes on and on. If you are experiencing a protracted period of high demand, meaning you gotta get something done, like for students, it'd be during the academic semester, or for athletes, even preseason training. If you're experiencing that kind of high demand for multiple weeks, your attention is going to decline. Your attentional functioning is going to decline. Your distractibility or mind-wandering would be the technical way to describe it, is gonna increase. So that's one thing we need to know. No matter what your sort of set point is, and we do have different set points as individual differences.

Joe Rogan 5:28 Now, when it comes to your own mind, um, when, when you're d- working with these different groups of people and you're putting together this book and you're putting together these sort of, uh, methods and strategies for, uh, taking care of th- th- the, just the weirdness of being a person and the weirdness of the mind-

Amishi Jha 5:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:49 ... d- d- are you gaining something out of this personally by going through all this? Like, is this helping you as well while you're writing all this stuff down, while you're, you know, e- exposing these various techniques that can improve your concentration and your ability to focus on things? Do you find that it's helping you as well?

Amishi Jha 6:07 Well, it's kind-

Joe Rogan 6:08 Or is it, or is it something that you've always worked on?

Amishi Jha 6:10 Oh, no, it's not. I mean, I've always been, I've been a neuroscientist for a long time. I've been interested in the way the brain works for a long time. I started studying attention-... as an undergrad, and went on to do my, you know, graduate work and post doctoral training, and then set up a lab to study attention. And then, (laughs) kind of early in my time of being a professor, I had, like, this kind of acute crisis of attention, and it was around the time I'd just had my, my first child and my husband was in grad school. I was setting up the lab. I lost feeling in my teeth from grinding.

Joe Rogan 6:45 Whoa.

Amishi Jha 6:46 Yeah, it was pretty intense. And then, I, (laughs) I remember one night I was sitting there with my then almost three-year-old, reading a book to him, and, like, this is important to me. I mean, I, uh, this is, like, the only time I really have with him that's supposed to be quality time. Feeling like this is a time I'm supposed to br- really be here for him, reading a book, and he asked me a question. He put a little hand on the book, asked me a question. I had n- I had no idea what he was talking about. And I'm like, "I am definitely not here." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:14 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 7:14 "I am not even here when I want to be. This is what I want to do. I'm not in the middle of doing anything else, but my mind is not here." And it was scary. It was like, "Oh, this is not cool." And then I'm like, "I study this stuff. Okay, just let's go see the literature. How can I find a solution? I can't access my own attention. It's slipping through my fingers." So I literally did. I'm like, "I'm gonna study everything I can." Nothing, I came up empty, and that was also troubling. Like, what do you mean? There's nothing I can go to in the literature that's just like, "Here's the best way to train your attention so that you have better access to your moment-to-moment lived experience"? Kinda empty. And then just to kinda continue the journey, I'm like, "This is, th- there's gotta be something to do." And at that moment, it was not just feeling distracted. It was starting to feel kinda depressed and a little bit anxious too, like sort of this, m- bubbling up of, "Uh, my life is slipping away from me." And at that moment, it was sort of how, funny how

Amishi Jha 8:15 serendipity happens, but a dear colleague of mine, an eminent neuroscientist, uh, who happens to be an emotion researcher, an affective neuroscientist, at that time was at the University of, of Pennsylvania. He was giving a lecture. So, you know, just was part of my colloquium, I went to this lecture, and I'm sitting at the back of the room. He goes through this whole talk. He, he ends his talk by showing kind of two brain images. One is of a brain induced to be in a very negative mood. I mean, usually, you do this by putting people in a scanner and saying, "Think of your worst memories." Like, "Feel bad." You play sad music. And then he did the same thing on the other side, where he showed a brain image of a, of a person induced to be in a positive mood. And he's just trying to make the point that these are distinct brain states. We can track them. They have different functions. But, of course, given my own life circumstances, at the end of the lecture, I kind of shout out from the back of the room, like, "How do you make that brain look like that brain?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:12 (laughs)

Amishi Jha 9:12 I just wanted an answer.

Joe Rogan 9:13 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 9:14 And I don't know if he was rushed 'cause it was the end of the lecture or what, but he, he just kinda calls out, like not even in the microphone. I don't even remember. "Meditation." And I'm like, "What the heck is... Do y- do you know where you are? (laughs) You don't say that." This is in the early 2000s. Meditation was not a thing. We don't talk about it. To me, it was almost as offensive as, like, talking about astrology to physicists or something. Like...

Joe Rogan 9:38 Was it really?

Amishi Jha 9:39 It was absolutely not something I had e- ever heard of-

Joe Rogan 9:42 Amongst academics in, in neuroscience?

Amishi Jha 9:43 ... in an academic neuroscience context.

Joe Rogan 9:45 Really? I did not know that.

Amishi Jha 9:46 Oh.

Joe Rogan 9:46 So when did it start becoming something that was taken seriously?

Amishi Jha 9:50 (laughs) Is it now?

Joe Rogan 9:52 Yeah, I think meditation's being taken-

Amishi Jha 9:53 (laughs) No, absolutely, and I would say a lot of the effort that I've been up to, now we have a field, contemplative neuroscience.

Joe Rogan 9:58 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 9:59 So anyway, so yeah. We'd, we're definitely there. I would say over the last 15 years, there's been a serious uptick in the seriousness taken, and a lot of it is because of these kind of brain imaging studies, where we can put people in scanners and we can track them, and a lot of the work that we've been doing as well. But it really bugged me that he said that, and I was still, I'm very much a skeptic. Like, "Eh, I don't know." But-

Joe Rogan 10:18 Of meditation?

Amishi Jha 10:20 Of just, yeah. And I-

Joe Rogan 10:21 Hmm.

Amishi Jha 10:21 ... I had a chance to talk to him afterwards. He's now become a very sort of dear, m- more closer colleague, and he runs an entire center that's tied to, um, contemplative practice. But at that point, he was just, it was almost like he was also kind of closeted. He had not come out. He was doing some of the initial studies.

Joe Rogan 10:38 He was closeted with meditation?

Amishi Jha 10:39 Well, yeah, because he was just starting to do studies. Again, it was a liability, and when I... I mean, just to fast-forward a little bit.

Joe Rogan 10:45 Really? M- meditation was a liability to discuss-

Amishi Jha 10:48 When I told-

Joe Rogan 10:48 ... in academic circles?

Amishi Jha 10:49 When I told my colleagues that I... And it was a big deal 'cause I'm, like, a traditional hard-nosed academic studying attention. I said, "I'm gonna make this, like, tiny pivot to studying training attention, and I'm gonna use this thing called mindfulness meditation." It was like, first it was, like, silence. Like, "You're committing career suicide, but, you know, you're gonna do what you're gonna," (laughs) "you're gonna do."

Joe Rogan 11:14 People actually said that to you?

Amishi Jha 11:16 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:17 That's so strange.

Amishi Jha 11:19 I mean, I love that you're saying it's so strange, because in some sense, it is the success of this enterprise and the rigor with which we've been do- able to do a lot of research that has caused a type of culture change, which is a pretty rapid pace of causing that-

Joe Rogan 11:36 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 11:36 ... culture change. But for me, when I heard the term, you know, I'm, we can see, I'm an Indian woman. I, of course, knew about meditation. My earliest memories are seeing of my, seeing my dad meditating. And I always thought, "That's great. You know, that's great for them, but I'm, like, a serious Western-trained scientist, and until there's any reason to really think this is a helpful thing, I'm not gonna do it."

Joe Rogan 11:59 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 11:59 But going back to your question, which was about my personal journey with this practice as it relates to writing the book and the work that we're doing. (swallows) You know, um, I started practicing. I went to the Penn bookstore after he said that term, with my own resistance in hand, and found a little book called Meditation for Beginners. I lucked out 'cause I picked a really good book by a really-... influential person. I didn't know anything about this, Jack Kornfield. It's called Meditation for Beginners. It came with a little s- guided CD. And I'm like, "You know what? I'm gonna give this a try." And as I started doing it, I had a lot of, like, light bulb moments, like, how does this guy know what's happening in my mind? How, how does he know that I'm now resisting, or my mind is wandering, or... You know, but the, the instruction was very clearly about attention. So it's almost like, I know this world. I've never seen anybody talk about it from the direct phenomenology of, of the attention system. So I shifted into practicing, and then, like, waking up to the benefits, and then, and then had that pivotal moment where I'm like, "I think I'm gonna study this."

Joe Rogan 13:06 So, is it fair to say that traditional academics study the brain states and study these various phenomenon like lack of attention or hyper-attention, but they don't study how to achieve them? They don't study the various things that can be done, which is... Jack Kornfield, is that his name? Kornfeld?

Amishi Jha 13:27 J- Jack Kornfield. He's a...

Joe Rogan 13:28 He's a... Duncan Trussell's a giant fan, I think, right?

Amishi Jha 13:30 Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:31 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 13:31 And his, and his, uh, Jack's wife, Trudy, is on Duncan's show- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:35 Oh, is she?

Amishi Jha 13:35 ... show often, yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:36 Oh, interesting. Interesting.

Amishi Jha 13:37 So, so, yeah. No. I would say it, it's shifting. The landscape is shifting. But for, from my personal experience, you s- remember, there's, uh, if you just... Not remember, but if you think back to the history of science, we, we as a field, as a scientific and enterprise, started moving away from subjective to objective.

Joe Rogan 13:55 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 13:55 And when you're gonna be objective about something, it's not about your experience with it, it's about what you can look at it through measures that have nothing to do with you.

Joe Rogan 14:02 But that's where it gets weird, because if you're talking about science and you're talking about the mind, there's no way to separate you from the mind. Like, what you do directly influences the way the mind works. So if we're studying the way the mind works, but we're not studying what you do, we're just studying these random states-

Amishi Jha 14:20 No, no.

Joe Rogan 14:21 ... with no w- understanding of how they got there, until meditation's being really explored?

Amishi Jha 14:26 You know-

Joe Rogan 14:27 Is that fair to say?

Amishi Jha 14:28 No, I would say we do a lot that...

Joe Rogan 14:30 I mean now.

Amishi Jha 14:31 Now, now, yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:32 I, I, I mean, I, I mean, like, the way you used to when you were saying that it, you were committing academic suicide by studying meditation. Is that the way they used to look at it?

Amishi Jha 14:39 Even in my own, in my own professional life, we would design tasks that tapped into attention, things that made people pay attention to things, sort of like video games. And then we'd look at the brain responses. We'd understand the way attention is instantiated within our brain. But it was not about my own phenomenological experience with my attention, and how does it feel, and what gets in the way, and what distracts me. Some of that was covered in the kind of clinical realm, like, "Oh, yeah. You ruminate," or, "You've got a unfortunate psychological challenges. You're, you're depressed, that's why you're not able to focus." But these were not worlds that were merging, and a serious look at people training their own minds in this way to result in objective metrics that we could change was certainly not being done. Uh, which is why I couldn't find anything in the literature. So yes, the journey of, uh, the introduction of contemplative practice into science is very, very new. I mean, it had a little bit of a resurgence. Or not resurgence, but introduction in the '70s. Um, and then it really started again with the tools, with tools like brain imaging, where, you know, in some sense, you could be objective. You put somebody in the scanner and say, "Okay, Joe, I want you to, um, do a quick meditation practice for 10 minutes, and I'd look to see what your brain activity looked like."

Joe Rogan 15:52 And what kind of scans are you using? Is it fMRI? Like, what-

Amishi Jha 15:55 We use, yeah, we use a whole bunch of stuff in my lab. Most of the work that I've been doing over the last 10 years or so, because I'm going to military bases and various off-site locations, we don't bring a scanner with us. (laughs) We just have them do attention tasks to see if things like mindfulness training have an impact. So just to answer the question you asked, it was the case that my personal journey woke me up to a whole new scientific endeavor, which is wha- what made me want to bring it to the lab. And I happened to have all these tools, from sort of traditional psychology and cognitive neuroscience, to apply to this new space of mindfulness meditation.

Joe Rogan 16:33 So when you get to this book, Meditation for Beginners-

Amishi Jha 16:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:36 ... what are you doing? Like, what-

Amishi Jha 16:38 Ah. Yeah. A lot of the same stuff that actually we continue to do with all these groups, including what, the kinds of practices that I give. These are not, these are not brand new practices. These are from the millennia-old wisdom traditions, right? In particular, with Jack, the Buddhist traditions. So a foundational practice that he offered was mindfulness of the breath. And he was very clear on what mindfulness, in that sense, meant. It's about taking the sort of present-centered, present-centered attention, without editorializing or, or reacting to it, kind of getting the raw data-

Joe Rogan 17:12 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 17:13 ... of the experience. And so he guided, uh, the participant. And it was actually a recording of a retreat he was leading, so it's just like he's talking to these people that are, who knows how long, maybe a month-long retreat. And he's like, "You're sitting quietly. You're focusing on, uh, just notice your body breathing, and notice what's prominent." So it might be coolness of air. Whatever it is for you, that's where you should be holding, uh, guiding your attention to stay there. And then the next aspect of the instruction was, "When you notice your mind wanders, wan- you know, wanders away from that, bring it back. Repeat." And, you know, he would use these phrases like, "As minds do. It'll wander away, as minds do." Or, "You may s- find yourself resisting," or, "You may s- find yourself in a fantasy." But the instruction was always the same. Regardless of where you were, gently bring your attention back. And so I started realizing, oh my goodness, he's giving us, like, this workout for attention. And given what I knew about the brain systems of attention, my strong hunch was, he's actually tapping into all the main brain systems of attention that exist...... and so now, I wanna check out, let's bring it to lab. Let's give it to people that aren't me, and let's see, does attention actually change with our objective measures of these systems?

Joe Rogan 18:33 And what did you get out of it?

Amishi Jha 18:35 That's the book. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:37 (laughs) So, like, when you were in the lab, was there anything shocking that you learned from seeing how these practices and how, uh, mindfulness, uh, applied, like, what it did to the brain?

Amishi Jha 18:50 So, yes. I mean, and, and I wanna go back to something you said that's tied to what shocked me, which is, is not something, uh, extraordinary. It's just the fact that there was any effect at all.

Joe Rogan 19:03 Mm.

Amishi Jha 19:03 So, so you were asking me, does the field of psychology not care about changing the brain or training the brain? Absolutely, it cares, but the approaches taken were like brain-training games or stimulating the brain, or light and sound devices, or maybe put somebody in a good mood and that'll change their attention. So, we had tried all those in the lab.

Joe Rogan 19:22 When, uh, when you say stimulating the brain, do you mean with, w-

Amishi Jha 19:25 Transcranial magnetic stimulation?

Joe Rogan 19:27 Okay, that stuff's fascinating.

Amishi Jha 19:28 It's, it's all fascinating, yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:30 I was listening to a Radiolab podcast where they were discussing this sniper training course. Have you... Do you know the, the, the course I'm talking about?

Amishi Jha 19:37 No.

Joe Rogan 19:38 It's, uh, it's like a video game where you are, uh, in sort of a virtual reality scenario, where you are, uh... If I'm remembering it correctly, there's, like, bad guys and hostages, and you're supposed to shoot the bad guys and not the hostages. And this woman went through this and was fairly slow, and the, the whole, the thing is, like, 20 minutes. And she did it, and it was like, she wasn't very good at it, and she screwed it up. And then they went through this, uh, transcranial, what is it, magnets that they're using? And it's some, some p- electrical. I think it's called nine-volt nirvana. I think that's the episode of the, um...

Amishi Jha 20:22 Okay.

Joe Rogan 20:23 There it is.

Amishi Jha 20:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:23 Nine-volt nirvana. So she, they put these magnets on her.

Amishi Jha 20:27 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:27 And then she goes through it flawlessly. She does the whole thing, and she, it ends, and she's like, "I thought it was, like, five minutes." And it turns out it was 20 minutes. And she's like, "What the fuck?" Like, "What happened?" And then they look at her score, like, "Jesus Christ, you have a perfect score." Like, she went from being terrible at it to being, like, an expert with th- this brain stimulation. And the entire episode is about all these different people that have developed these, like, personal hacking devices-

Amishi Jha 20:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:59 ... to, to do this transdermal, is it transdermal stimulation? That's what it's called?

Amishi Jha 21:04 Tran- uh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:05 Transcranial?

Amishi Jha 21:06 It's like competitive direct transcranial magnetic stimulation, brain zapping.

Joe Rogan 21:10 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 21:10 Um, yeah. I mean, there's-

Joe Rogan 21:11 How does that work?

Amishi Jha 21:12 Well, I, that's not my expertise.

Joe Rogan 21:13 Oh, okay.

Amishi Jha 21:13 But I'll just tell you that it's fascinating to see that, yes, activating and inhibiting certain parts of the brain. And basically, you're limited because you gotta get through the skull.

Joe Rogan 21:22 Right.

Amishi Jha 21:23 And then you gotta be able to, it'll be just a few centimeters, but if you can place it right or you have multiple coils, you might be able to target different regions. There's a lot of, uh, positive stuff happening with that now. But, rem- uh, just to take you back to where I was, the kind of things that were happening back in the early 2000s, there was not a lot of, um, benefit that we could see over and over again. So, maybe in the acute moment, like you zap your brain and something looks different-

Joe Rogan 21:50 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 21:50 ... was great. But what about eight weeks later?

Joe Rogan 21:53 Right.

Amishi Jha 21:54 You know, what about even two days later? So, so the brain zapping, the actual stimulation stuff, very fruitful enterprise.

Joe Rogan 22:00 In the moment?

Amishi Jha 22:01 Uh, well, in the moment, for sure. But also, other peop- people are learning maybe there's a way you can stimulate, um, repeatedly and get a benefit. But, sort of separate from that, the main thing that was happening at the time I was starting to think about pursuing mindfulness training was, um, brain-training games.

Joe Rogan 22:18 So what do these games look like?

Amishi Jha 22:19 So these are kind of, like, simple video games, attentionally demanding. There's many companies out there that were offering them. You, uh, you know, now we can do them on our phone. They're the kind, they were like the experiments we were doing to evaluate attention, except you, uh, you'd do them over and over again, and the levels would get higher, and people would get better and better at doing them. And then you'd give them sort of, you'd have them do this for some period of time, and then you'd have, you'd change the way the game worked. You'd change the superficial stimuli, or maybe you'd change the demand, or you'd have them do something real world that you think t- is tied to attention and working memory, and there was no benefit. There was no transfer. So, that made the field really take a look at, okay, you know, the brain is smart. (laughs) It will get better at that specific thing, but it's not resulting in a generalizable benefit to attention so that you can use it no matter what you're doing. So, your question was such a good one, which was, what, what's sur- surprised you? So, okay, so I'm sitting by myself in my, you know, in my office, struggling with not being able to feel my teeth. Decide to get this book, start practicing. All of a sudden, my own embodied experience of my, like, life starts shifting. I'm more present with my family. I'm realizing I have more of my attention back. And so I decide to pursue this line of research where we offer the program, a m- mindfulness training program, and there were several available already in the medical context. And I said, "The test is gonna be those same kind of tests that we use to understand attention." It might be remember faces and scenes, or remember numbers and then try to do math problems, or whatever it is. Complex stimuli. Does it transfer? 'Cause nothing else was transferring. So y- you sit quietly, focusing on your breath. Then you come in the lab and do these rigorous tests of attention, and we saw benefits on those tests. We saw it transfer. And that, to me, was very, very exciting. (laughs) 'Cause it was like, you're not doing any, you're not practicing with numbers and, and stimuli on the screen. You're just sitting there with your eyes closed by yourself. You're doing this workout, and all of sudden, it transfers. So, it really opened up this possibility.... um, that we could add to a suite of things like the Radiolab episode you were talking to, that people can do on their own, every day as a mental workout, to advantage their attention, especially for people that are likely to have their attention degraded because high stress tends to degrade attention.

Joe Rogan 24:42 And when you're saying it transfers-

Amishi Jha 24:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:44 ... like how are you measuring this? Like, what-

Amishi Jha 24:46 You're just-

Joe Rogan 24:46 ... what are the results?

Amishi Jha 24:47 The results are, so let me give you an example-

Joe Rogan 24:48 Okay.

Amishi Jha 24:48 ... of one of the kinds of experiments. This is a really basic, um, attention task, and it's something called a sustained attention response task. What we're trying to do in that task is, we're trying to see how people can stay on task and resist their own internal distractibility. Right? So their mind will wander, and they have to keep themselves on this task, really boring on purpose, to do that. So you sit in front of a computer screen. You're gonna see, um, a number show up every half second or so, l- about every quarter of a second. Press a button every time you see a digit on the screen, except when that digit is three. In those cases, just withhold. And people do this, and we find that people have a terrible time doing this, 'cause the f- three only happens like 5% of the time.

Joe Rogan 25:34 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 25:34 So you can imagine, you're sitting there like, press, press, press. The three appears, and you're like, "Oh, shoot. I pressed." (laughs) And when we give this to Marines, they kind of freak out. They're like, "Yes!"

Joe Rogan 25:45 Yeah. (laughs)

Amishi Jha 25:45 "Damn threes." You know, like they really freak out. And, and they're like, "Why can't I just do this?" Because the mind is gets, gets distracted, and it's hard to pay attention. So that task we knew had really good traction in the lab. We could get people to do it. We knew what the brain components were of the, of the experiment itself. And so now, we give that experiment to people. They come in, we give it to them. Then they go through a multi-week mindfulness training program, and we give it to them again. And what we see is, if there's any change in their performance. It's a very stable task. If you give it to people over and over again, usually, no change. And this time, we saw an improvement in that task performance. They were not pressing to z- to the three more often, meaning they weren't making mistakes, and they were less variable. So they were really just there more often, to be able to do the task. That's just a very simple example, but there's many other... We t- we've done many kinds of experiments where we look at these core attentional functions and find improvements. And you know, it's so funny that you mentioned, um, uh, this VR environment from the, the Radiolab episode 'cause now we're doing that. We're saying, we're actually working with soldiers and, uh, you know, mostly military, active duty military, and looking at combat scenarios with these kind of virtual reality environments, immersive environments, and we're seeing how their performance might change for those when they go through a mindfulness training program. That's a project we, we're just in the middle of right now.

Joe Rogan 27:08 When you're saying that this, uh... Oh, I definitely-

Amishi Jha 27:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:10 ... wanna talk about that. But d- when you're saying that this, uh, th- the ability to not hit the number three and that you saw a measured improvement, like how much of an improvement?

Amishi Jha 27:18 10%.

Joe Rogan 27:19 Really? Interesting.

Amishi Jha 27:22 Yeah, 10% when we were looking at people that were practicing a lot. So the first study we did was, um, you know, I didn't... We had no... And just to kind of take you back in time, now you'd say, "Oh, isn't meditation good for your brain?" We had no idea. This was a total sh- shot in the dark. So I ended up... I was like, "If there's ever gonna be an effect, I need to go where people are just gung-ho meditating a lot, because if the signal is tiny and I don't pick it up, I will conclude that it doesn't work. So let's give it the best shot of working." So I ended up partnering with a, a retreat center in Colorado where people were doing mindfulness meditation practices 10 to 12 hours a day.

Joe Rogan 27:58 Oh, Jesus. (laughs)

Amishi Jha 28:00 And that was our first... I was like, "I gotta advantage us," like...

Joe Rogan 28:04 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 28:04 ... it was gonna e- and we saw it. That's where we saw it, and then we brought it back to the lab and looked at medical and nursing students and gave them a more kind of regular mindfulness training program that's about e- eight weeks long, um, and they're practicing about 45 minutes a day. And we saw benefits there too. So then, we've kind of... That's been the progression of my career has been to try to figure out time-efficient solutions for people, 'cause most people can't get away for a month to meditate.

Joe Rogan 28:30 Now, when you're working with these soldiers, did you have a control group?

Amishi Jha 28:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:34 So y- uh, 'cause I would imagine that if you, they get frustrated, they keep hitting the three, they're gonna go, "Okay, get your shit together. Stop hitting the three. Calm yourself down. Figure it out." Did anyone improve without the mindfulness meditation?

Amishi Jha 28:50 (sighs) There's always variability. You know how-

Joe Rogan 28:53 Right.

Amishi Jha 28:53 ... research goes, right? So-

Joe Rogan 28:54 How many people you working with?

Amishi Jha 28:56 I mean, now, we've had hundreds-

Joe Rogan 28:57 But at the-

Amishi Jha 28:57 ... hundreds of people.

Joe Rogan 28:58 At the time, like when you're running these tests with soldiers-

Amishi Jha 29:01 I mean, this, this result, we see over and over again. But yeah, of course, some people will just get better at it 'cause they've strategized.

Joe Rogan 29:07 Did anybody get to the same level of 10% without mindfulness training?

Amishi Jha 29:11 No.

Joe Rogan 29:11 Oh.

Amishi Jha 29:11 But here's, there's another thing I gotta tell you, which is, it goes back to what I was saying, uh, happens under high stress, 'cause, you know, my whole reason for... So, so just to kind of back track, so why do I wanna work with, why am I working with soldiers all of a sudden?

Joe Rogan 29:25 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 29:26 It was like, one of the things that we knew from my lab is, attention is extremely powerful. And we can talk about what it actually is, 'cause we're kinda using it as like a placeholder. It's, uh, actually a pretty deep, um, interesting topic to, to think about what it actually is. It's not just focus. Anyway, we know how it works, but we also were learning that it's extremely vulnerable. And so even in a laboratory context, even with a simple task like the one I was just describing to you, if you, what you do is you take kind of that simple l- uh, digits task, and I put in a negative image every now and then, people start falling apart even more. It's just ex-

Joe Rogan 30:03 What do you mean by putting in, in there-

Amishi Jha 30:04 So you're sitting there. You see number, number. You see a three, you're gonna screw up.

Joe Rogan 30:10 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 30:10 You're gonna press it often. And then, I just added this element of, I'm gonna put in negative or neutral images every now and then, pictures from the news. So all of a sudden, you're doing this task, and you see like some, some very disturbing image, and then, you gotta go back to going, you know, doing the numbers thing. Or you see a neutral image, complex scene. Just doing that small manipulation, adding those things in, s- performance got worse.... L- and so, we knew, we were starting to get this profile of attention is very powerful. It can really impact things. But things like negative images, negative mood, stressful circumstances, threatening circumstances further deplete attention. So, and I was experiencing that, right? I was like, I wasn't, I wasn't in a life or death threat situation, but I was ... I definitely looking back on it feeling a little overwhelmed with all that life required. So, I became very interested-

Joe Rogan 31:02 (laughs)

Amishi Jha 31:02 ... in like, uh, for me, it wasn't consequential, okay, so I didn't read the book to my kid. Nothing happened. Everybody was okay. For many groups, many professions, it's not just that their attention matters, it's that the circumstances that we ask them to perform at their best professionally are the ones that are gonna disadvantage and degrade their attention. And that, like, was a whole category of people. You know, s- military service members, emergency services professionals, first responders. Like, we can't, they can't l- attention is life or death. You can't lapse. You can't-

Joe Rogan 31:38 No.

Amishi Jha 31:38 ... you can't shoot when you shouldn't be shooting.

Joe Rogan 31:41 Right.

Amishi Jha 31:41 So, anyway, that's why I started working with this, these groups. So, you're asking me if people actually stay, anybody got better over time. For the most part, for the control group when we did nothing at all, over a four-to-eight-week interval, usually we picked these intervals that were just preparatory high-stress predeployment training, they're getting ready to go to be deployed, everybody as a group got worse. So, the baseline performance for the military folks and other high-stress groups enduring high-stress intervals was degradation. If you gave the same task to a civilian or even that same kind of person during normal life, they were stable. So, the baseline was degradation. When we gave them mindfulness training, the training group, they were stable over time. They did not degrade.

Joe Rogan 32:28 Even with the negative images and all the other things you were doing when

Narrator 32:30 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 32:30 Well, now we didn't-

Joe Rogan 32:31 ... you gave them?

Amishi Jha 32:31 ... we didn't need to put negative images anymore, because the circumstances were simulate- I mean, they were descriptive of high stress, high threat, negative mood. That was their life, so we didn't have to experimentally look at that anymore. We gave very basic, just numbers, digits, and everybody got worse as a group. I mean, this is now, we're not just talking about military service members. We saw this with, um, football players during preseason training, undergrads. You know, if you probably, business people that are going through sales season. I mean, anything that is ... I mean, think of your own life. Like, anything that is high demand and long, it's gonna degrade your attention.

Joe Rogan 33:11 Mm. Yeah, there's things that we know. Like, I was thinking about this the other day 'cause I was counting some money, and I was thinking, and I was by myself, but I was thinking how frustrating it is when you're counting money if someone starts throwing numbers at you.

Amishi Jha 33:25 Yes.

Joe Rogan 33:25 I don't know why I was thinking that while I was counting money.

Amishi Jha 33:27 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:27 Right? 'Cause I was just-

Amishi Jha 33:28 That probably distracted you too. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:30 It kind of did a little bit, but I was thinking like, "God, how weird is it that it's so difficult to just simple numbers?" Like, if you've got $20 bills, two, four, six, eight, 10. Two, four, six, eight. You, you know, you're piling these $100 bills or $20 bills-

Amishi Jha 33:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:46 ... in the $100 stacks, but if someone comes along and goes, "50, 80, 90, 70," you know, fuck, man. Stop doing that. Like, that really works.

Amishi Jha 33:54 It does.

Joe Rogan 33:54 It works on everybody, but it's so strange. Like, that just, that little external just something that interferes with your rhythm of counting numbers.

Amishi Jha 34:06 Yeah. I mean, that's now you're tapping into like a classic working memory experiment.

Joe Rogan 34:11 'Cause it's not stressful at all.

Amishi Jha 34:12 It's not. It's-

Joe Rogan 34:13 Like, counting $20 bills is not stressful.

Amishi Jha 34:15 But-

Joe Rogan 34:15 But if someone comes over and goes, "90, 110, 120, 45, 60," like, yeah, what the fuck, man? Even if there's no stress on you-

Amishi Jha 34:24 (laughs) Totally.

Joe Rogan 34:24 ... if it's not a competition or anything, it's just, you know, you're trying to count 500 bucks-

Amishi Jha 34:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:28 ... and you can't do it because someone's yelling out numbers. I'm like, "God-"

Amishi Jha 34:32 It's terrible.

Joe Rogan 34:32 ... "how shitty are brains?"

Amishi Jha 34:33 Exactly. But you're really, you're, you're, what you're doing is like when you're counting, you're putting it into something called our temporary scratch space working memory. And like, you're actually saying it to yourself, and that same space is where new perceptual information goes in, and it's messing you up.

Joe Rogan 34:48 Temporary scratch space working memory.

Amishi Jha 34:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:50 That's what it is?

Amishi Jha 34:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:51 What is the terminology? What is it li- what is it supposed to-

Amishi Jha 34:54 So, working memory, I like to think of it as it's not really about the memory part. It's about the working part. So, we've been talking about attention so far. Uh, take attention and think about it over time. So, like, in our conversation right now, you're using your working memory. I'm saying stuff. You're comprehending it. You're probably having a thought, but you're a nice person and you're not gonna just blurt it out. You're gonna probably hold it 'til you see a nice spot. You just used your working memory. It really is this temporary holding pad. I, I sometimes talk about it as like a whiteboard in your mind, but with disappearing ink. It has this very short timeframe. Maybe 30 to 60 seconds max. So, as you're experiencing information, as you're paying attention to it, the white, you write it on the whiteboard, so you're doing this counting task. You're counting your million dollar bills, um, or whatever, (laughs) whatever it was, and, um, and the numbers are going up on the whiteboard. And then somebody else says, "90, 50." Those are also going up on the whiteboard. So, now you're like, "Wait. Which?"

Joe Rogan 35:53 Hmm.

Amishi Jha 35:53 "What's the stuff happening there?"

Joe Rogan 35:55 So, your brain puts things into like a little area where, "I just need to know this for now."

Amishi Jha 36:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:01 And then eventually it's like-

Amishi Jha 36:03 It's like the cache-

Joe Rogan 36:03 ... I'll be done counting and then you're not gonna remember any of it.

Amishi Jha 36:05 You don't want to.

Joe Rogan 36:06 Right.

Amishi Jha 36:06 It's like the cache in your computer. Like, it's just a temporary scratch space, and it's so important. If you don't have that, you're out of luck.

Joe Rogan 36:14 It is.

Amishi Jha 36:14 You use it for everything.

Joe Rogan 36:15 It is.

Amishi Jha 36:15 Decision-making, thinking, planning. Right now, you're using it.

Joe Rogan 36:19 Yeah. It's, it's very odd though that there's so many different kinds of memory, and that there's memories that are like cemented in your head, like really important personal milestones or l- you know, loving memories or, or traumatic memories. But then there's other memories that are just like w- you, you ask someone their name...... and then you immediately forget it.

Amishi Jha 36:37 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 36:38 Like, "Wow."

Amishi Jha 36:38 It didn't get on the whiteboard.

Joe Rogan 36:39 Right.

Amishi Jha 36:40 Or it vanished before you could rewrite it. Like-

Joe Rogan 36:42 That's a weird one. The, the name one is weird.

Amishi Jha 36:45 Yeah. So what do you do if you're trying to... If you meet somebody and you're like, "I gotta remember this person's name," what do you typically do?

Joe Rogan 36:49 I ask again.

Amishi Jha 36:50 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 36:51 I say, "I forgot your name."

Amishi Jha 36:52 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 36:52 'Cause I, I-

Amishi Jha 36:52 You ask again.

Joe Rogan 36:53 ... I have too much on my brain to be dishonest.

Amishi Jha 36:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:56 So if I forget someone's name, I'd say, "I'm sorry, I forgot your name."

Amishi Jha 36:59 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 36:59 And I ju- I'm not trying to be rude, I'm just being hon-... And it... If you're a mature adult human being with a life, like, you have a, like, you know that you do that occasionally.

Amishi Jha 37:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:09 You're like, "Fred? No, Bob. Sorry, Bob. Fuck. Sorry."

Amishi Jha 37:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:12 You know, it's not b- rude, it's just a mistake. It's like a thing-

Amishi Jha 37:16 It's a mistake.

Joe Rogan 37:16 ... that people do.

Amishi Jha 37:18 So Amishi, just to refresh your memory. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 37:20 Yes. You have a very rememberable name. It's a beautiful name, by the way.

Amishi Jha 37:23 (laughs) Thank you. So, you know, here's the thing. Now, that's inconsequential. Like, you're right, you could just make up... You got great social intelligence, you'll be fine. But now let's say it's, it is consequential. There's, like, four servers and somebody you just dealt with is dealing with correcting the order you just made, and you gotta remember their name or something about them-

Joe Rogan 37:40 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 37:40 ... and you gotta keep it in mind. You cannot let it go, 'cause you will suffer because of it.

Joe Rogan 37:45 Right.

Amishi Jha 37:46 So now let's say you're trying to remember, but you know you're not gonna remember this person forever. What might you do to, like, try to keep that in mind? Usually, you rehearse. You just, like, say, you kind of visualize the image, or you kind of say it to yourself over and over again.

Joe Rogan 37:58 But then you're not listening to what they're saying, 'cause you're just trying to remember, "Amishi, Amishi, Amishi." (laughs)

Amishi Jha 38:02 (laughs) Exactly, and it's the same scratch space. It's the same scratch-

Joe Rogan 38:05 (laughs) Right.

Amishi Jha 38:06 ... space. So it ends up working memory is another thing that we test in my lab, and working memory also significantly declines over high-stress intervals.

Joe Rogan 38:14 Mm. Yeah, for sure, right?

Amishi Jha 38:16 And working memory is something... You know, you mentioned, there's all these kinds of memories. But working memory, it, it takes from perception and attention as its inputs, it's what writes it on the board, but also you can call it up from long-term memory. So if I say, "Joe, what was, uh, what did you have for, for breakfast this morning?" You don't have to tell me, but you could do it, right?

Joe Rogan 38:35 I'll go... Yes, I could.

Amishi Jha 38:36 So when... What did you just do? Essentially, you have a long-term representation, or you don't. Let's say you do remember.

Joe Rogan 38:42 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 38:43 You call it up, it gets written on the whiteboard. And now you use your attention to kind of read what's on the wr- whiteboard and say, "Oh, I had a shake," or whatever it was. So it's, it's used for both the input of information and the extraction from our long-term memory. Very, very powerful brain system tied to intelligence, tied to decision-making, emotion regulation, everything. And it starts tanking under high stress.

Joe Rogan 39:05 Did you run any experiments using nootropics, or using, uh, various compounds that are thought to enhance memory?

Amishi Jha 39:14 I did not.

Joe Rogan 39:15 You did not? Interesting.

Amishi Jha 39:17 So... And, you know, I know this is, uh, im- uh, a topic near and dear to your heart, and I would say... It's not my expertise, but I think that what's very interesting about, going back to mindfulness training, is that it really is establishing not just the kinda core strength, but a specific set of processes. So remember back... Let me just sec- unpack that. So, like, even what we were saying about that, those simple set of, uh, uh, practices, like the breath awareness practice that Jack's CD had, I think.

Joe Rogan 39:50 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 39:52 What is that actually training me to do? And, and I said, you know, when we were talking about that, I said, "Oh, it's actually training all these systems of attention." I'd love to tell you, like, a little bit about (laughs) the systems of attention, because my hunch is... And I think those studies with kind of different substances, uh, they can be beneficial, but just like... And I think about you and, like, your martial, martial, uh, MMA expertise, and, like, there's gonna be core strength you're gonna need, but then there's certain moves you gotta practice over and over again to be able to use them in that particular context. And just being strong or agile, in general, is not gonna be helpful. There's, like, a certain kinda move that you need to make.

Joe Rogan 40:28 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 40:28 And that's what I think the suite of mindfulness practices is offering. It's training attention in a particular way. Um, so anyway, so I think that, th- that other s- substances can be great. I... That's not my expertise. But it's really regarding what, what are the vulnerabilities? Why does attention start tanking under stress, threat, and poor mood? And why does it seem like mindfulness training is actually able to protect against that? That takes a deep... That makes us, uh, requires us to get an understanding of, of what the h- the heck attention actually is.

Joe Rogan 40:59 I'm glad you used the analogy of martial arts-

Amishi Jha 41:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:02 ... because I think w- with that analogy, you could also apply the idea of nootropics, because in martial arts, you do have techniques that need to be drilled and worked on over and over again. But those techniques become more effective with a body that performs better.

Amishi Jha 41:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:22 And when you supplement with vitamins and, you know, uh, you make sure that you have a, a satisfying, uh, input in terms of, like, protein and carbohydrates and all, all the things that you need for your body to perform, where your body's not at a deficit, it performs better. And then there's also supplements that you can take that will increase athletic performance and enhance recovery. And those things will also allow you to put in more time in training, which would then yield better results. The way I look at nootropics is the same way. They're certainly not a substitute for mindfulness training, or for concentration, or for breath work, or any of those things, but I think that things like acetylcholine and the v- v- various nootropics that have been shown to increase memory, that I do think they play a part. I, I f- I first found out about 'em back in the early 2000s. There was a, a radio show that I was on in San Francisco, um, and, uh, one of the hosts had this thing called Neuro1. And it was, uh, a product that was developed by Bill Romanowski, he was a football player. And, um...... who's having memory issues. You know, a football player-

Amishi Jha 42:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:36 ... shouldn't take a lot of-

Amishi Jha 42:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:38 ... hits to the head. And so, he developed this, uh, nootropic, and I had never heard what a nootropic was. I was like, "What is it?" And he's like, "Just try it." Sarah Noname, shout out to them. And, um, th- this, uh, guy who was on the, on the show who was taking it gave it to me, and I was like, "Whoa, this gives you, like, a weird sort of, like, alertness." It wasn't, like, speedy, like, uh, like too much caffeine.

Amishi Jha 43:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:02 But it was like, uh, I was cer- I certainly felt like my brain flowed a little bit better. And then I started getting really interested, and there was a bunch of really good ones out there. And we have some that's gum. I don't know if you've ever seen it, but we sh-... I'll give you some before you leave. It's called NeuroGum. I like that stuff a lot. And then there's a product that we developed, my company Onnit developed called Alpha Brain. And what we did is we, we... It's a combination of all the various nootropics that we found to be beneficial-

Amishi Jha 43:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 43:28 ... and we tried to tweak it over a period of time. But those things help. Like, nootropics can definitely... We did two, um, uh, placebo-controlled studies at the Boston Center for Memory, and we found increase in verbal memory, increase in, uh, peak alpha flow state, uh, reaction time. These things, like, can be enhanced through supplementation-

Amishi Jha 43:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:51 ... in a way that you can measure. So I think it's a-

Amishi Jha 43:53 That's awesome, yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:54 Yeah, that on top of meditation and mindfulness. Like, we're trying to achieve peak states, right?

Amishi Jha 44:00 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 44:00 That's the idea.

Amishi Jha 44:01 Yeah, exactly. So I, I mean, it's definitely not, um... I mean, everything you're saying sounds amazing, and I think people should advantage themselves and do what they wanna do to, to do that. So this is not a either/or. It's a potentially, like, an and/also.

Joe Rogan 44:15 No, but I want you try.

Amishi Jha 44:16 But- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:16 'Cause you're a neuroscientist. I'm like, when I t-... When I talk to someone-

Amishi Jha 44:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:20 ... like yourself, I'm like, "I want you to try this and tell me what you think."

Amishi Jha 44:22 Oh yeah, I, I'll, I'll definitely try it.

Joe Rogan 44:24 Yeah. What I, what we have here, we have Alpha Brain here too, right? We have some of that? There we go.

Amishi Jha 44:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 44:28 Well, we have the gum. I want you to try the gum, 'cause the gum is great. We don't have... Uh, by the way, this is not, uh, my company. I don't have anything to do with the gum. This is just something we use.

Amishi Jha 44:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:37 But it's, um, it's great stuff 'cause it tastes like regular gum, but it gives you, like, this little boost, got a tiny amount of caffeine in it. And, um, what's the other, what's the other... Yeah, theanine, right?

Amishi Jha 44:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:50 L-arginine and some b- vit- and some B vitamins. Yeah. This is it.

Amishi Jha 44:54 (laughs) I'm not gonna start chewing it now, but I'm, I'm definitely interested.

Joe Rogan 44:57 (clears throat) Yeah, I t-... I eat that stuff. I chew it all day long.

Amishi Jha 45:01 Cool.

Joe Rogan 45:02 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 45:03 Um, yeah. You know, I think that that's the kind of neat thing about where we're at right now in this moment, that there are, uh, just like you mentioned, like the, the transcranial magnetic stimulation-

Joe Rogan 45:13 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 45:13 ... and, and, uh, substances that we can take that'll enhance us, and it was so interesting. When we were doing, when I was, when I was just starting out this stuff, and I remember, uh, I was like really trying to figure out, not only for people that are, um, have attentional challenges because they're under a lot of stress, right? Are you gonna take some now?

Joe Rogan 45:19 This is, this is Albert. Yeah, so-

Amishi Jha 45:19 Oh, the quality of our conversation's just gonna, like-

Joe Rogan 45:19 I think it should.

Amishi Jha 45:19 ... even deepen.

Joe Rogan 45:19 I'm, I feel ki-... I feel dumb today. I had a-

Amishi Jha 45:19 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:19 ... I had a rigorous workout. Sometimes I come off of a hard workout, I feel dumb.

Amishi Jha 45:19 Oh man, now I'm in for it. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:19 We'll see.

Amishi Jha 45:19 But, but-

Joe Rogan 45:19 I might stay dumb.

Amishi Jha 45:19 (laughs) Well, it's pretty good for dumb. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:19 Well...

Amishi Jha 45:19 You know, I think that, that's the kind of neat thing about where we're at right now in this moment, that there are, uh, just like you mentioned, like the, the transcranial magnetic stimulation-

Joe Rogan 45:24 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 45:24 ... and, and, uh, substances that we can take that'll enhance us, and it was so interesting. When we were doing, when I was, when I was just starting out this stuff, and I remember, uh, I was like really trying to figure out, not only for people that are, um, have attentional challenges because they're under a lot of stress, right? Are you gonna take some now?

Joe Rogan 45:31 This is, this is Albert. Yeah, so-

Amishi Jha 45:32 Oh, the quality of our conversation's just gonna, like-

Joe Rogan 45:34 I think it should.

Amishi Jha 45:34 ... even deepen.

Joe Rogan 45:35 I'm, I feel ki-... I feel dumb today. I had a-

Amishi Jha 45:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:38 ... I had a rigorous workout. Sometimes I come off of a hard workout, I feel dumb.

Amishi Jha 45:43 Oh man, now I'm in for it. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:47 We'll see.

Amishi Jha 45:48 But, but-

Joe Rogan 45:48 I might stay dumb.

Amishi Jha 45:49 (laughs) Well, it's pretty good for dumb. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:53 Well...

Amishi Jha 45:54 But what I was saying is, like, I was also interested in people that have dispositional attentional challenges, like-

Joe Rogan 45:59 Right.

Amishi Jha 46:00 ... ADHD, for example.

Joe Rogan 46:01 What is that? Is that real?

Amishi Jha 46:02 ADHD?

Joe Rogan 46:03 100%?

Amishi Jha 46:05 Attention functions on a continuum.

Joe Rogan 46:07 Right.

Amishi Jha 46:08 So I mean, I'd love to tell you about it. Let me tell you about attention-

Joe Rogan 46:11 Okay.

Amishi Jha 46:11 ... because that'd kind of make me feel like at least we'll be on the same page then-

Joe Rogan 46:14 Okay.

Amishi Jha 46:14 ... as it relates to, uh, what I'm talking about, 'cause even the mindfulness stuff is related to attention. So, attention usually, in the way we've been talking about it, we've been talking about it as focus, right? So, what does that mean to you? Right now, you're laser-focused on me. You've got awesome attention, at least it looks that way. Focusing on me, everything else is kind of fuzzed out. And that, we call, um, the brain's orienting system. So I, I think of it like a flashlight. So wherever it is that you direct your attention, in that way, you're privileging that content. So right now, you're seeing my face with more granularity, hearing my voice with the crispness, more than the air conditioner or whatever Jamie might be saying. You know, like, right now you're focused in on, on, on me, thank you very much. So (laughs) that, that actually does neurally look like it enhances the sensory input. If you focused in on my voice, your neurons as early as your auditory cortex, within a few hundred milliseconds, you're gonna have a clearer understa- comprehension, but even just auditory input's gonna be amplified as a function of, of paying attention. And, you know, just like literally a flashlight, if you're in a darkened space, you know, you value that thing. You... Wherever it is that it points, it actually gives you that privileged information. The cool thing about the flashlight is you can direct it willfully. You can point it. You can also not just direct it to the external environment. I can say, like right now, "Joe, like what's the, what's the sensations on the bottoms of your feet?" Can you f-, can you-

Joe Rogan 47:48 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 47:48 ... sense into that? Were you thinking about it before I said it?

Joe Rogan 47:51 No, I wasn't.

Amishi Jha 47:51 Flashlight got directed to internal bodily sensations. You can pick that up. So, it actually goes to one of the reasons attention even evolved in our brain. We talked about the evolution of distractibility, which was to advantage our survival. But why do we have attention in the first place? Why do we even develop this capacity to focus? And it comes down to the brain had a big problem, which is that there's far more information in the environment than it could possibly process, so it's gotta sub-sample. It's gotta, like, get bits and pieces of what's going on, and attention, just like the flashlight... You know, if you're in a darkened room and you're trying to figure out the landscape, you kinda scan it and kinda put together the image. Same idea with attention. Focus, very important. W- we could talk about this, but I actually wanna tell you about the other two main systems, but just keep in mind that not only can we direct the flashlight, but it can get yanked.

Joe Rogan 48:39 Mm.

Amishi Jha 48:40 So if you're in a darkened room and you hear a weird sound...... you're gonna point to wherever the sound came from. So, that's the double-edged sword of, of this system, is that it's not just about where it goes. Again, very good reasons that we evolved to have that.

Joe Rogan 48:53 Have you ever done any personal experimentation with sensory deprivation tanks?

Amishi Jha 48:58 Oh, I wanna, I definitely wanna talk to you about that. And actually, I think that I have not. I want to.

Joe Rogan 49:03 Ooh, you have to. How do you-

Amishi Jha 49:03 I want to. Um, I just haven't had a chance to go.

Joe Rogan 49:07 (laughs)

Amishi Jha 49:07 So, I will definitely, I definitely want to, but it actually, perfect segue into the second system of attention.

Joe Rogan 49:13 Okay.

Amishi Jha 49:14 Which is the exact opposite of this narrowing and privileging. And the second big system of attention, I use the, the metaphor of, like, a floodlight. It's called the alerting system. The floodlight, unlike the flashlight's narrow, privileging some information over the other, floodlight, broad, receptive, no privileging of any information, allows whatever comes up to come up. The only thing that's privileging is the now. Like, what's important right now? And I was, uh, when I'm driving, I think about this often, you see a flashing yellow light, probably near a construction site or near a school maybe. What does that mean? Pay attention. But it's not like that narrow focus attention. It's like broad receptive, something weird may happen, be ready for it. So, this is, like I said, it's the, this, this system is so important. And probably, and not just probably, I mean, there's a lot of evidence that suggests in things like sensory deprivation, you now are challenging that system, because what is happening is not necessarily from the external environment. So, whatever is the baseline existence within the internal male- milieu, may actually be more salient to you. Because just like the flashlight, where you can direct it internally, externally or internally, the floodlight, you can also direct externally and internally. So, in the absents- absence of sensory input, you're kind of in this receptive state, where everything that's occurring internally, there's an acute and rich awareness of that. Was that match with your experience?

Joe Rogan 50:48 Yeah. The, um, the tank is fascinating, because it's really the only environment where you can achieve almost no input from the body.

Amishi Jha 50:58 Yeah. That's so cool.

Joe Rogan 50:59 Because, 'cause of the warm water, that's the ta-

Amishi Jha 51:02 The weightless-

Joe Rogan 51:02 ... same temperature as your skin, and the amount of Epsom salts in it that make you float. You, uh, you get to this place where you can't tell the difference between the water and the air, and you're just gone. And you can move a little bit, so there is some input. You know, you can feel, like, if you move your head, you'll feel the water on your ears and stuff like that, and you can move your digits. But the reality of that environment is that when you are completely still and just breathing, it's as close to eliminating all external sensory input as possible. And it do- you don't achieve that state anywhere else on Earth.

Amishi Jha 51:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:40 It doesn't exist. So, my experience is that any meditation or any mindfulness training inside the tank is significantly more impactful, much more. Because you really can get to these very bizarre states, like, especially breath work, concentrating on breathing. You get to these, like, really weird, almost s- psychedelic states-

Amishi Jha 52:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:08 ... without any substances at all.

Amishi Jha 52:10 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 52:10 Just, just from the absence of sensory input, and you're allowing your brain to be free of traditional restraints.

Amishi Jha 52:18 Right.

Joe Rogan 52:19 And constraints.

Amishi Jha 52:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:20 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 52:20 You know, it's so interesting, 'cause I mean, I definitely wanna still tell you about the third system of attention. Keep it in my working memory.

Joe Rogan 52:26 Yeah, please, please.

Amishi Jha 52:26 But let me-

Joe Rogan 52:26 What is this? The scratch? What is it called again?

Amishi Jha 52:28 Uh, it's working memory. Um, but w- w- before I do that-

Joe Rogan 52:32 Okay.

Amishi Jha 52:32 ... I wanna say something too, and I really hope we can... I wanna kind of set this up so we can talk about it and have it, uh, together to talk about. But one really cool thing about, uh, that we know regarding another thing that I think we should talk about, which is mind-wandering. So, basically the thing we started out talking about, spontaneous initiation of thought. So, there's a study I was reading which basically said if you want to, in the context of creativity, increase productive novel thought, then you need to be basically in this kind of alerting... The floodlight needs to be on for the generation and acceptance of the, the thought that comes up. And they specifically mentioned that sensory deprivation chambers may be a really great place to get that generative content coming up. You basically have more spontaneous thought in those contexts.

Joe Rogan 53:26 Yeah, I had, um... I never set it up, but I bought one of those, uh, tape recorders that operates on, uh, voice activated.

Amishi Jha 53:34 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 53:34 And I bought, like... I, my, my plan was, like, to Velcro it to the wall, but I never wound up doing it. But it's probably a good idea, because there are times where you come up with these ideas, you're like, "Oh, my God. I gotta write this one down, but I don't wanna climb out of the tank."

Amishi Jha 53:46 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 53:47 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 53:47 Oh, definitely do that. I mean, this is, like this is one of these self-experimentation things. But I was struck by that, especially anticipating coming to see you, and I know that that's something that you've done. But I think as a, uh, let's, let's keep it in mind (laughs) as we talk about mindfulness training, 'cause I think the way you're describing mindfulness, I probably have a different view of what it is, and it might actually connect with what we're talking about with creativity. Um, anyway, so you got flashlight, floodlight, and then the third system is ba- we call it executive control. It's tied to this notion of the whiteboard and working memory. It's essentially the manager. It's like, just like the flashlight is selecting based on content, you know, li- right side or left side, the floodlight is, is selecting based on time. What's important right now? This system is selecting information, 'cause the whole goal of attention is to sub-sample reality. You just have different slices. Is, is that, is that making sense?

Joe Rogan 54:40 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 54:40 The third system, executive control, is, is sub-sampling based on your goals.So what is what most goal relevant right now? That should guide the way that I perceive and act. So this system's job, and the term executive is like the way we talk about executives of a company. The executive's job is not to go in and do every single task, but it's to ensure that the goals of the organization and the behavior of the organization align. And then when it's a mess up, the executive says, "No, fix that."

Joe Rogan 55:09 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 55:10 So this is where things like maintaining the goal, working memory, that's where we put our goals and we maintain them. Inhibiting irrelevant information. It's like, you know, no, you don't need to go think about that right now, right? Like even in the, in, even in the context of a sensory deprivation tank, it's like, yeah, that's great. I probably should remember that, but I can't not experience this right now. It's like goal was experience sensory deprivation, not go write something. So inhibit urges we might have or behaviors we might have, update, new information, update your goal. And even shift, like you were on that goal, but get on that goal. So very complex system. I like to think of it as like a juggler, as just like all the balls are in the air, but it's a manager. It really is doing this. So I, the reason I wanted to tell you that is because, you know, attention is such a topical thing. Like people always say their problems are with attention and you were-

Joe Rogan 56:00 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 56:00 ... asking me about ADD and is it real? Yes, it ends up that we have ... People differ along their set points of all three of these systems. And oftentimes, we see people that not only are, are problematic on any one system, like they're too focused. It's a dysregulation. So either hyperfocus, you can't get the flashlight off, or you're hypervigilant, you can't stop seeing everything as requiring this broad receptive, almost, um, anxiety-provoking level of, of, um, of present moment awareness, or you just can't keep the balls in the air. There's a problem with your, with your juggler. So for sure people vary along these lines, and sometimes they vary in their coordination 'cause these, none of these systems work alone. You know, the, the, the executive control is telling the flashlight where to go. The, the, um, alerting system is telling you what's going on, so you need to know if you need... So there, there's this constant fluidity between these things, so sometimes it's the coordination that gets messed up. And when people's lives are negatively impacted by the way their attention functions, to the point where it's actually causing serious problems, that's when sometimes it gets diagnosed as ADD.

Joe Rogan 57:13 My perception on it, from a personal experience, is that it varies wildly, and that where it varies is, is where my actual interest lies. If I'm actually interested in something, I have no problem with my attention. But like high school, when I was in high school, I remember there were subjects that I just was bored with or the teacher was boring, and I just could not pay attention. It was almost impossible. And I was thinking as I got older and I realized that they were putting kids on Prozac and all kinds of shit for this, I was like, I probably would've got put on drugs if I had the wrong parents. Like, if, if my parents didn't recognize that I just wasn't interested in these things, that it wasn't that there was something wrong with my brain, but I only am capable of concentrating on things I'm interested in, and I don't know why. I, but I don't care because the things that I'm interested, I'm really good at concentrating on. But the things that I'm, I don't give a fuck about, they're like, I don't care. Like, I, I have, I have a amazing capacity to ignore information that I find boring. I just don't, I don't care.

Amishi Jha 58:18 So yeah. I mean, I think that, um, there's a whole world that we could talk about of the, the bioethics of putting children on medication-

Joe Rogan 58:25 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 58:26 ... when they don't fall in line with, uh-

Joe Rogan 58:27 Do you think there's like some sort of an evolutionary reason for that, though? I mean, if we go back to like our hunter-gatherer roots, when you're... Say if you were trying to catch a fish, like you're ready to spear a fish and you're hyperfocused, trying to get right to the right spot, the success or failure, your li- life really depends upon it, because if you get the nutrition from that fish, you, you get to live another day, you thrive. If you don't, you're, you're starving and your body gets diminished. These are real, real life scenarios that we evolved to deal with. So that feeling like... Have you ever gone fishing?

Amishi Jha 59:06 No.

Joe Rogan 59:07 I was, we were talking about it last night with some friends, one of them who, uh, happens to be a, a scientist, and we were saying there's a thing that's, like, in you. When you catch a fish, like your whole body gets excited. Like, "Oh, I got one. I got one." And I'm like, that has to be connected to back when we were, you know, primitive people and that was the only way we gathered food. We had to catch something, and if we caught it, it was a big deal. So you, you get so stimulated by this act of catching a fish, so much so that like there's a whole world of people who catch fish-

Amishi Jha 59:40 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:40 ... and let them go.

Amishi Jha 59:41 Yes.

Joe Rogan 59:42 You know?

Amishi Jha 59:42 The thrill, the thrill of the catch.

Joe Rogan 59:44 It's a weird... That catch-and-release shit-

Amishi Jha 59:46 But-

Joe Rogan 59:46 ... is fucking weird. It's like, you know, fly-fishing.

Amishi Jha 59:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:50 They make ph- fish hooks that don't have a barb in them.

Amishi Jha 59:53 That's funny.

Joe Rogan 59:53 So you can just catch a trout and let it go. I'm like, are you just fucking with these fish? Like, what is this? But meanwhile, like if you say that, they'll get so offended with the gentle art of fly-fishing. Like, no, you're f- you're just fucking with fish.

Amishi Jha 1:00:07 (laughs) Oh, man. But it's the same thing. Let's go back. Let's use fishing for just to go-

Joe Rogan 1:00:11 Okay.

Amishi Jha 1:00:11 ... connect it back to you in the classroom. You're at some place and you're going back to our ancestors, just like you said. You're fishing. You've got to catch the food. Your life depends on it. You don't catch any fish there. What's gonna happen? You're gonna move on.

Joe Rogan 1:00:26 Right.

Amishi Jha 1:00:26 You're gonna be like... You're gonna probably start having not the thrill of the catch, but the boredom and irritation of nothing happening that's of interest.

Joe Rogan 1:00:37 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:00:38 So I see boredom as a really important feedback system. Boredom isn't the cause. Boredom is the result of basically the attention system saying...... opportunity cost. I'm missing out, go somewhere else.

Joe Rogan 1:00:52 Mm.

Amishi Jha 1:00:53 And so boredom is such a good signal, because what it means is, uh, go do something else. It's guiding action. And so often, it's not like you can't focus, it's that, for whatever complex set of reasons, your brain biology is saying, "Try something else, because probably you'll get more reward out of that." And now, that's actually the reason why people missed the three, back on that-

Joe Rogan 1:01:19 Mm.

Amishi Jha 1:01:19 ... experiment. You're sitting there, it's like nothing's going on.

Joe Rogan 1:01:22 Right.

Amishi Jha 1:01:22 And I always think of this every time I walk through security at the airport. The chances of finding a grenade or a bomb in that image, very, very low. But if they screw up, devastating consequences.

Joe Rogan 1:01:36 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 1:01:36 And that's the thing to remember. The, the, um, the reason oftentimes we can't stay on task is because the urge to mind wander away because the reward, the intrinsic reward of the situation is low. But sometimes we still have to stay on it. Like, you don't want a police officer or a soldier on patrol to be like, "This is so freaking boring. I'd rather do something else." They need to be there. You know, oftentimes I'll, I'll ask my military colleagues, "You're standing at attention. Where's your attention?" "I don't know."

Joe Rogan 1:02:08 Mm.

Amishi Jha 1:02:08 Well, let's get our minds at attention, because that's what we need. We, you cannot screw up.

Joe Rogan 1:02:14 Right.

Amishi Jha 1:02:14 Because even if the chances of something bad happening are low, if they happen and you miss it, it's on you.

Joe Rogan 1:02:20 So, when people are bored, it's essentially the mind telling you that you're wasting time here and that you need to find... Like, if it, if you go back to, like, the evolutionary roots of the way-

Amishi Jha 1:02:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:33 ... we've hyper-focused on, like, a fish that you're trying to catch, if you're bored, that discomfort is essentially your mind saying, "This is not productive, and this is not helping us survive."

Amishi Jha 1:02:44 Yeah. It's basically, let's make it even more gr- basic than that. It's saying the reward you're getting here is not com- com- enough to keep you here.

Joe Rogan 1:02:54 Mm.

Amishi Jha 1:02:55 But it starts with something even more basic. The mind starts wandering. You know, like, like-

Joe Rogan 1:02:59 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 1:03:00 ... I- and we did this. Like, if you look over time in this simple task, 10 minutes, people are worse at the end of the task than at the beginning of the task.

Joe Rogan 1:03:07 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:03:08 And if you ask them, if you stop the experiment every now and then and say, "Where was your attention right now? Was it on the task or was it off-task?" The rates of people saying they were off-task gr- go up. So, they're saying they're more and more off-task, their performance is getting worse, they're more variable, and then if you ask them subjectively, "How did it feel to do this task?" "It was so boring."

Joe Rogan 1:03:28 Hm.

Amishi Jha 1:03:28 It was, it's like this is the moment that that kind of calculation is probably being done, then you start finding other things. If there's nowhere to go, it'll go, you'll go internal to your own mind. It's a great place to, to take a little journey somewhere else.

Joe Rogan 1:03:42 Well, that is the other thing I wanna bring up, that boredom itself seems to enhance creativity. And there's been some critiques of modern life in terms of the way we use screens to constantly distract ourselves to the point where we don't really get bored anymore.

Amishi Jha 1:03:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:59 We might get bored, but we're getting enough input that we maintain a certain level of awareness in what we're doing. Like, a- but you'll find yourself, you know, two hours in on Instagram, like, "What the fuck did I do?"

Amishi Jha 1:04:11 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:04:11 "I just, uh, killed two hours."

Amishi Jha 1:04:13 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 Where you're at this, like, instead of at 10, like when you're catching the fish, you're at, like, one or two, but you maintain at one or two and you never get down to baseline. But when you do, when people are legitimately bored, oftentimes that's when creative thoughts come out. And this argument that I've heard multiple times is that we are not bored anymore, so because we're not bored anymore, there's a lot of creativity and there's a lot of ideas that we're missing out on, because the mind doesn't have the chance to wander, which is where many of these great ideas come from, is the mind just sitting there thinking.

Amishi Jha 1:04:49 You're, you're super in sync with everything I write about, frankly, in the book. Because yes, the m- let's, let's go back to that term mind wandering. Your, your, your, whatever you took is definitely kicking in. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:02 I'm still dumb right now. It's not ready yet.

Amishi Jha 1:05:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:04 Another half-hour. Talk to me in a half-hour, we'll be ready.

Amishi Jha 1:05:07 So, okay. So, um, the term mind wandering.

Joe Rogan 1:05:12 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:05:12 Okay? So, technically, when we ask people, are y- is your mind wandering, what we mean is, did your ta- did your attention get hijacked away from the thing you're doing? All right. Technically, that's what we talk about. Off-task thoughts during an ongoing activity. It represents a broader category of something the mind does, it's called spontaneous thought. And it doesn't necessarily have to be thought, by the way. It's just this pump. The brain is constantly ... and there's lots of reasons for that. It's pumping out content. And so when we become, um, task focus, when there is something to do, and the content is still going on, and, and you now move your attention away from the task to that content that's not r- related to the task, you are now mind wandering, and your performance on the task is going to suffer. You're gonna be making more mistakes, you're gonna have all kinds of problems. And, you know, you were saying a moment ago that when you were little, like, you just couldn't focus on things that were boring.

Joe Rogan 1:06:08 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 1:06:08 And that kind of led us on this whole thing. You know, that's awesome that you're here and your life worked out where you didn't have to go back to focusing on those things that are, are boring. But I can guarantee, just like going back and you counting the money you were talking about, there are things we have to do in our life that is gonna be boring, but we still gotta pay attention. Like, even if it's watching your kid at the playground or you're on a, you're on, you know, on some, some ... you're having a conversation with somebody and it's boring. Like, you gotta be able to at least bring yourself back.

Joe Rogan 1:06:36 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 1:06:37 So, the key to all of this, a lot of what we're saying is, it's not so much about not having spontaneous thought, and it's not about even feeling boredom, it's about having an awareness of what your mind is doing in the moment. Where is my attention?... if you can do that, all of a sudden, a lot of things start changing. So, in this case where something boring is happening, you're, you're off, knowing, "Oh, yeah, look, I'm not on the task anymore..." You know, we might call it tuning out. You're actually saying, "I don't care. I don't wanna do that." That's probably what was happening in, in school. It's like, "I know I'm not paying attention in class, and I don't want to. It's really not interesting to me." But you had an awareness of where your mind was. The bigger problem we tend to have, and remember the kind of groups I work with, is that mind, that the mind will wander and people are not aware of it.

Joe Rogan 1:07:28 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:07:28 So now, they're not paying attention to the task at hand, they're not aware of it, and their performance starts suffering. And, you know, it's not about the nature of the task. It doesn't have to be a boring task. Brain surgeons say they- m- their minds wander.

Joe Rogan 1:07:40 Jesus.

Amishi Jha 1:07:40 Like, that's consequential. Judges say their minds wander. Generals say their minds wander.

Joe Rogan 1:07:46 Just part of being a person.

Amishi Jha 1:07:47 It's just part of being a person, but it's consequential. If you miss key information in any of those scenarios, somebody's life is gonna be impacted by that.

Joe Rogan 1:07:55 Yeah.

Amishi Jha 1:07:56 And so, that's one of my interests, is like, how do you... Okay, f- that's a really tricky thing. It kind of goes back to your neuro, nootropics thing. How do you train for that? 'Cause I don't think it's gonna hap- it doesn't happen on its own all that often. How do you train the mind to pay attention to what's happening moment by moment?

Joe Rogan 1:08:14 Are we doing this, sort of, after the fact? Like, should this be something that's a core component of early childhood education, where children can understand why they get bored and what is, what can help them get on track to accomplish goals and give them a feeling of, uh, achievement when they, they do focus and, and recognize that they can bring their mind on track, and that there's a reward for it in accomplishing these tasks? Instead of, like, going back as adults and go, "Why am I so fucked up? How come I can't pay attention to anything?" And go, "Oh, I never learned how to think correctly. I never learned how to harness my attention."

Amishi Jha 1:08:58 I'm in. Right on. Yeah. Absolutely. When-

Joe Rogan 1:09:01 'Cause we really don't teach kids how to think very much, do we?

Amishi Jha 1:09:04 Well-

Joe Rogan 1:09:04 We really just, sort of, show them what they need to learn.

Amishi Jha 1:09:08 You know, even before we talk about thinking, what we don't do for any of us, it's very, very rare, is teach people the value and importance of checking out where their mind is moment by moment.

Joe Rogan 1:09:20 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:09:21 And going back to the people with ADD, the patients that have ADD, diagnosable ADD, their pro- their life is problematic 'cause of th- this, this set of set points they have on all these three systems of attention. Those that have this thing we're talking about, which the technical term is meta-awareness. It's essentially a version of that s- floodlight that I was-

Joe Rogan 1:09:42 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:09:42 ... talking about. Broad, receptive, but you're checking out. Technically, meta-awareness is having awareness of the current contents and processes of your mind, moment by moment. So, first of all, to say, "Oh, yeah, I can do that. I, I can see..." And we do this all the time. We say, "Oh, yeah, look, I'm really..." You were s- you just did it a moment ago. "I'm, my brain's not working right now." Like, you're checking in and you're saying, "Right now, it's not the crispness I want there to be."

Joe Rogan 1:10:06 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:10:07 But you're attuned to it. And so, it may make you do something differently, because you're aware of it. If we're not even aware of where our mind is, there's not a lot of opportunity that we can do anything about it. So, it ends up, if you look at people with ADD that have a lot of problems, their minds wander a lot, meaning they have off-task thoughts a lot, but they also happen to have good meta-awareness, their lifes don't, their lives don't suffer all that much. Meaning that they can, they can have a job and do things that are kind of normal kinds of things. So-

Joe Rogan 1:10:40 D- do you think we're doing a disservice by medicating people when they have that instead of by training them how to focus?

Amishi Jha 1:10:47 You know, (sighs) this is exactly where I'm going. So, that was a question I thought was a legitimate thing to ask. We didn't want to start out by saying, "Stop your medication." So, I involved, we, we re- one of the studies we did in my lab is that we, um, recruited a pe- bunch of people, adults with ADD, and we said, "Just keep on your regular medication reg-"

Joe Rogan 1:11:07 What is the, what, what's the, like, wh- what's the average medication? Like, what are they on for the most part? Did you ask them?

Amishi Jha 1:11:13 I mean, all kinds of things, whether it's Strattera, Wellbuten- Wellbutrin, or Adderall, Ritalin-

Joe Rogan 1:11:18 So, but some of those are, um, SSRIs though, right?

Amishi Jha 1:11:21 There's some, there's combinations of things.

Joe Rogan 1:11:22 Is Wellbutrin an, an SSRI?

Amishi Jha 1:11:25 I'm not, that's not my, neuro-, neuropharmacology is not my thing. You can look it up.

Joe Rogan 1:11:28 Yeah, Jimmy, look it up.

Amishi Jha 1:11:29 But, but the point is that we said, "Whatever your particular medication cocktail is-"

Joe Rogan 1:11:35 Keep it on. Stay on it.

Amishi Jha 1:11:36 "... stay on it." Now, take this eight-week mindfulness training program. And that program was like, we started with a minute of practice, very active practices. So now, it's not sit quietly and focus on your breath. It's go for a walk, feel the sensations of your f- feet on the ground. When your mind wanders, come back. So, we, we worked up to about 12 minutes a day for these adults with ADD. And then at the end of the ex- uh, training program, we said... No, we looked at the objective metrics. Looking better, less mind-wandering for the people that did the practices. But, but when I just inquired, "What's different about your medication use or your mind?" They'd say, "Before, I used to take my Ritalin and then play video games for eight hours. And I did really awesome on the video games, but I didn't finish my homework or I forgot to go to work." You know? Like, they had this raw power to focus, in some sense, with some of the medications, but they didn't have the meta-awareness to know if they were using it correctly.

Joe Rogan 1:12:31 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:12:32 After the training, that was the number one most consistent thing people said. "I was aware of where my mind was. I could use my time better 'cause I was checking in. Where am I right now? Oh, is that tied to where I want to be? Let me redirect."

Joe Rogan 1:12:45 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:12:46 That's also the thing that all of us benefit from with, with mindfulness training, is that not only does it connect to using the flashlight-... it allows us to cultivate that kind of broad, receptive stance toward what is unfolding right now, so that the executive control system can update, shift, or redirect when things are off track. That makes the whole thing function better.

Joe Rogan 1:13:13 Mindfulness is a, a very current term.

Amishi Jha 1:13:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:15 People love to use it. And you said before that we might have a different-

Amishi Jha 1:13:19 Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:13:20 ... definition. So let's define-

Amishi Jha 1:13:21 Sure.

Joe Rogan 1:13:22 ... what mindfulness means.

Amishi Jha 1:13:23 Yeah. So, the way that I use that term is it's a, it's a mental mode, meaning it's a way of making the mind. Mindfulness meditation is a set of practices you can do to cultivate this mode. So what is the mode? Mindfulness as a mode is paying attention to our present moment experience without conceptual elaboration-

Joe Rogan 1:13:46 Conceptual elaboration?

Amishi Jha 1:13:48 ... or emotional reactivity.

Joe Rogan 1:13:50 What's conceptual elaboration?

Amishi Jha 1:13:52 Thinking.

Joe Rogan 1:13:54 (laughs) So being in the moment without thinking.

Amishi Jha 1:13:58 And really, a specific kind of thinking. This thought l- hyperlinking thoughts.

Joe Rogan 1:14:03 Oh, okay.

Amishi Jha 1:14:04 So how can you get more data without the overlay of the story? The editorial ver- you know, don't editorialize right now. What's happening? What's actually happening? Not your story about what's happening, not you thinking about what's happening. What is happening? That's what I mean by it. And when people now do these breath awareness practices, for example, you're focusing on your breath. You're not controlling the breath. That's where I thought there was a little bit of a distinction between what you were saying and what I'm saying. You're doing nothing with the breath. The only reason we use the breath, handy tool. Always changing moment by moment. You're doing it without having to control it. In fact, if you had to actually pay attention to your breath, you'd probably be dead, 'cause you would get distracted.

Joe Rogan 1:14:43 So you don't have a specific breath technique that you're utilizing?

Amishi Jha 1:14:46 You're not manipulating the breath at all. You're not.

Joe Rogan 1:14:50 You're just bre- concentrating on the fact that you are actually-

Amishi Jha 1:14:53 No.

Joe Rogan 1:14:53 ... breathing?

Amishi Jha 1:14:53 No.

Joe Rogan 1:14:54 No?

Amishi Jha 1:14:55 Nope.

Joe Rogan 1:14:55 You're aware of the fact that you're breathing?

Amishi Jha 1:14:57 You're focusing on the sensations of breathing.

Joe Rogan 1:15:01 What's the distinction?

Amishi Jha 1:15:03 Concentrating is a tricky term. It could be, I'm thinking about the fact that I'm breathing. Isn't it so interesting that I have a diaphragm within my, this part of my body that does these muscle movements that allow this breathing to... Thought, thought, thought, thought, thought.

Joe Rogan 1:15:14 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:15:14 It's coolness, tingliness, tension. It's like you're literally staying at the like, the most granular raw data of what's happening, and with that awareness of this is happening right now, you're in that meta-aware mode. And it, and I'm not, by the way, manipulating your breath and controlling it and having a particular box breathing or whatever.

Joe Rogan 1:15:36 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:15:36 Fantastic thing to do.

Joe Rogan 1:15:37 Have you done it?

Amishi Jha 1:15:39 Pranayama, right?

Joe Rogan 1:15:40 Mm-hmm.

Amishi Jha 1:15:40 These breath manipulation techniques that can induce all kinds of very interesting states. Um, so for example,