EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,360 words- 0:00 – 0:12
Intro
- AJAmishi Jha
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music)
- 0:12 – 6:10
Why distraction is human (not just phones): attention evolved to wander
- JRJoe Rogan
Hello.
- AJAmishi Jha
Hello.
- JRJoe Rogan
Thanks for doing this.
- AJAmishi Jha
Absolutely.
- JRJoe Rogan
Um, Peak Mind, huh?
- AJAmishi Jha
That's right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. How long you been working on this?
- AJAmishi Jha
Um, my whole life. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Your whole life?
- AJAmishi Jha
But the actual book, couple years.
- JRJoe Rogan
And the idea of improving all aspects of the way the brain works, is this something that's always fascinated you?
- AJAmishi Jha
Absolutely.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah?
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. That's a thing a lot of people have a problem with today, right? With phones and distractions and screens and nonsense.
- AJAmishi Jha
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)
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
So, this is not only a modern problem. It's actually a human problem.
- JRJoe Rogan
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?
- AJAmishi Jha
What does, where does what come from?
- JRJoe Rogan
The, then, like-
- AJAmishi Jha
Distractibility?
- JRJoe Rogan
... distraction.
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- AJAmishi Jha
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
You're gonna, you're never gonna be, like, completely zen for long periods of time and just completely full of bliss and enlightenment.
- AJAmishi Jha
(laughs)
- 6:10 – 8:14
A neuroscientist’s breaking point: stress, new motherhood, and losing attention
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa.
- AJAmishi Jha
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)
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
"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
- 8:14 – 11:59
Meditation as ‘career suicide’: how contemplative neuroscience became legitimate
- AJAmishi Jha
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)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- AJAmishi Jha
I just wanted an answer.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AJAmishi Jha
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...
- JRJoe Rogan
Was it really?
- AJAmishi Jha
It was absolutely not something I had e- ever heard of-
- JRJoe Rogan
Amongst academics in, in neuroscience?
- AJAmishi Jha
... in an academic neuroscience context.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really? I did not know that.
- AJAmishi Jha
Oh.
- JRJoe Rogan
So when did it start becoming something that was taken seriously?
- AJAmishi Jha
(laughs) Is it now?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I think meditation's being taken-
- AJAmishi Jha
(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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Of meditation?
- AJAmishi Jha
Of just, yeah. And I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
He was closeted with meditation?
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really? M- meditation was a liability to discuss-
- AJAmishi Jha
When I told-
- JRJoe Rogan
... in academic circles?
- AJAmishi Jha
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."
- JRJoe Rogan
People actually said that to you?
- AJAmishi Jha
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's so strange.
- 11:59 – 18:50
Learning the basics: breath mindfulness as an attention ‘workout’
- AJAmishi Jha
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."
- JRJoe Rogan
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?
- AJAmishi Jha
J- Jack Kornfield. He's a...
- JRJoe Rogan
He's a... Duncan Trussell's a giant fan, I think, right?
- AJAmishi Jha
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AJAmishi Jha
And his, and his, uh, Jack's wife, Trudy, is on Duncan's show- (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, is she?
- AJAmishi Jha
... show often, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, interesting. Interesting.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- AJAmishi Jha
No, no.
- JRJoe Rogan
... with no w- understanding of how they got there, until meditation's being really explored?
- AJAmishi Jha
You know-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that fair to say?
- AJAmishi Jha
No, I would say we do a lot that...
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean now.
- AJAmishi Jha
Now, now, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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?
- AJAmishi Jha
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."
- JRJoe Rogan
And what kind of scans are you using? Is it fMRI? Like, what-
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
So when you get to this book, Meditation for Beginners-
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... what are you doing? Like, what-
- AJAmishi Jha
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 18:50 – 24:47
What shocked the lab: mindfulness benefits ‘transfer’ to objective attention tasks
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
When, uh, when you say stimulating the brain, do you mean with, w-
- AJAmishi Jha
Transcranial magnetic stimulation?
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay, that stuff's fascinating.
- AJAmishi Jha
It's, it's all fascinating, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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?
- AJAmishi Jha
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
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...
- AJAmishi Jha
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
There it is.
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nine-volt nirvana. So she, they put these magnets on her.
- AJAmishi Jha
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- AJAmishi Jha
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... to, to do this transdermal, is it transdermal stimulation? That's what it's called?
- AJAmishi Jha
Tran- uh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Transcranial?
- AJAmishi Jha
It's like competitive direct transcranial magnetic stimulation, brain zapping.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AJAmishi Jha
Um, yeah. I mean, there's-
- JRJoe Rogan
How does that work?
- AJAmishi Jha
Well, I, that's not my expertise.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, okay.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AJAmishi Jha
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- 24:47 – 29:11
How attention is measured: the ‘press for every number except 3’ task
- AJAmishi Jha
The results are, so let me give you an example-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- AJAmishi Jha
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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!"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. (laughs)
- AJAmishi Jha
"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.
- JRJoe Rogan
When you're saying that this, uh... Oh, I definitely-
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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?
- AJAmishi Jha
10%.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really? Interesting.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Jesus. (laughs)
- AJAmishi Jha
And that was our first... I was like, "I gotta advantage us," like...
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AJAmishi Jha
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, when you're working with these soldiers, did you have a control group?
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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?
- AJAmishi Jha
(sighs) There's always variability. You know how-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AJAmishi Jha
... research goes, right? So-
- JRJoe Rogan
How many people you working with?
- AJAmishi Jha
I mean, now, we've had hundreds-
- JRJoe Rogan
But at the-
- AJAmishi Jha
... hundreds of people.
- JRJoe Rogan
At the time, like when you're running these tests with soldiers-
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did anybody get to the same level of 10% without mindfulness training?
- 29:11 – 34:06
Stress degrades attention: why soldiers, first responders, athletes, and students tank
- AJAmishi Jha
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?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you mean by putting in, in there-
- AJAmishi Jha
So you're sitting there. You see number, number. You see a three, you're gonna screw up.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- AJAmishi Jha
... 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-
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- AJAmishi Jha
... you can't shoot when you shouldn't be shooting.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Even with the negative images and all the other things you were doing when
- NANarrator
Yeah.
- AJAmishi Jha
Well, now we didn't-
- JRJoe Rogan
... you gave them?
- AJAmishi Jha
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- AJAmishi Jha
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't know why I was thinking that while I was counting money.
- AJAmishi Jha
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Right? 'Cause I was just-
- AJAmishi Jha
That probably distracted you too. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- AJAmishi Jha
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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.
- AJAmishi Jha
It does.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- 34:06 – 39:05
Working memory as a ‘scratch space’: why interruptions derail thinking
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah. I mean, that's now you're tapping into like a classic working memory experiment.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause it's not stressful at all.
- AJAmishi Jha
It's not. It's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, counting $20 bills is not stressful.
- AJAmishi Jha
But-
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- AJAmishi Jha
(laughs) Totally.
- JRJoe Rogan
... if it's not a competition or anything, it's just, you know, you're trying to count 500 bucks-
- AJAmishi Jha
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... and you can't do it because someone's yelling out numbers. I'm like, "God-"
- AJAmishi Jha
It's terrible.
- JRJoe Rogan
... "how shitty are brains?"
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Temporary scratch space working memory.
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what it is?
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
What is the terminology? What is it li- what is it supposed to-
- AJAmishi Jha
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?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
"What's the stuff happening there?"
- JRJoe Rogan
So, your brain puts things into like a little area where, "I just need to know this for now."
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And then eventually it's like-
- AJAmishi Jha
It's like the cache-
- JRJoe Rogan
... I'll be done counting and then you're not gonna remember any of it.
- AJAmishi Jha
You don't want to.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
It is.
- 39:05 – 46:08
Nootropics and brain stimulation: quick boosts vs durable training
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you run any experiments using nootropics, or using, uh, various compounds that are thought to enhance memory?
- AJAmishi Jha
I did not.
- JRJoe Rogan
You did not? Interesting.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm glad you used the analogy of martial arts-
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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.
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- AJAmishi Jha
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... shouldn't take a lot of-
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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.
- AJAmishi Jha
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- AJAmishi Jha
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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-
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in a way that you can measure. So I think it's a-
- AJAmishi Jha
That's awesome, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that on top of meditation and mindfulness. Like, we're trying to achieve peak states, right?
- AJAmishi Jha
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's the idea.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
No, but I want you try.
- AJAmishi Jha
But- (laughs)
- 46:08 – 1:00:07
The three systems of attention: flashlight, floodlight, and executive control
- AJAmishi Jha
So I mean, I'd love to tell you about it. Let me tell you about attention-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- AJAmishi Jha
... because that'd kind of make me feel like at least we'll be on the same page then-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- AJAmishi Jha
... 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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AJAmishi Jha
... sense into that? Were you thinking about it before I said it?
- JRJoe Rogan
No, I wasn't.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Have you ever done any personal experimentation with sensory deprivation tanks?
- AJAmishi Jha
Oh, I wanna, I definitely wanna talk to you about that. And actually, I think that I have not. I want to.
- JRJoe Rogan
Ooh, you have to. How do you-
- AJAmishi Jha
I want to. Um, I just haven't had a chance to go.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- AJAmishi Jha
So, I will definitely, I definitely want to, but it actually, perfect segue into the second system of attention.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- AJAmishi Jha
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?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. The, um, the tank is fascinating, because it's really the only environment where you can achieve almost no input from the body.
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah. That's so cool.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because, 'cause of the warm water, that's the ta-
- AJAmishi Jha
The weightless-
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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.
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... without any substances at all.
- AJAmishi Jha
Right, right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Just, just from the absence of sensory input, and you're allowing your brain to be free of traditional restraints.
- 1:00:07 – 1:13:13
Boredom, mind-wandering, and creativity—and how screens hijack ‘white space’
- AJAmishi Jha
(laughs) Oh, man. But it's the same thing. Let's go back. Let's use fishing for just to go-
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- AJAmishi Jha
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AJAmishi Jha
... experiment. You're sitting there, it's like nothing's going on.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AJAmishi Jha
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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AJAmishi Jha
Well, let's get our minds at attention, because that's what we need. We, you cannot screw up.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- AJAmishi Jha
Because even if the chances of something bad happening are low, if they happen and you miss it, it's on you.
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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."
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- AJAmishi Jha
But it starts with something even more basic. The mind starts wandering. You know, like, like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- AJAmishi Jha
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- 1:13:13 – 1:29:04
Mindfulness defined + the minimum effective dose: 12 minutes a day for 4 weeks
- JRJoe Rogan
Mindfulness is a, a very current term.
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
People love to use it. And you said before that we might have a different-
- AJAmishi Jha
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... definition. So let's define-
- AJAmishi Jha
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
... what mindfulness means.
- AJAmishi Jha
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Conceptual elaboration?
- AJAmishi Jha
... or emotional reactivity.
- JRJoe Rogan
What's conceptual elaboration?
- AJAmishi Jha
Thinking.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) So being in the moment without thinking.
- AJAmishi Jha
And really, a specific kind of thinking. This thought l- hyperlinking thoughts.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, okay.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you don't have a specific breath technique that you're utilizing?
- AJAmishi Jha
You're not manipulating the breath at all. You're not.
- JRJoe Rogan
You're just bre- concentrating on the fact that you are actually-
- AJAmishi Jha
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
... breathing?
- AJAmishi Jha
No.
- JRJoe Rogan
No?
- AJAmishi Jha
Nope.
- JRJoe Rogan
You're aware of the fact that you're breathing?
- AJAmishi Jha
You're focusing on the sensations of breathing.
- JRJoe Rogan
What's the distinction?
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- AJAmishi Jha
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.
Episode duration: 2:22:08
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Transcript of episode WDqWc_ucs-o
