Brain Surgeon: Dream Patterns, Liminal States, & Subconscious Exploration - Dr Rahul Jandial

1. 0:00 – 5:09

   The Importance of Comfort in Your Working Environment

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      You just told me there are left-handed surgical instruments. What's that mean?

   2. RJDr Rahul Jandial0:06

      Um, for left-handed s-surgeons, the, the way some of the graspers click, um, it's released with a maneuver where your thumb pushes something outward.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:16

      Mm-hmm.

   4. RJDr Rahul Jandial0:17

      For left-handed surgeons, that can be sort of clunky, so they make instruments where it's outward for the left-handed surgeon is actually, uh, inward towards the midline, and for the right-handed surgeon, it's this way. So there are left and right, uh, handed instruments for different surgeons. Needle drivers really, where you click onto a needle and it clasps, so you don't have to keep pressure on it, and then you can do your maneuver.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:39

      Mm-hmm.

   6. RJDr Rahul Jandial0:39

      Stake knives also have serrations that lean one way or the other. I just learned that recently.

   7. CWChris Williamson0:43

      I didn't know about that at all.

   8. RJDr Rahul Jandial0:43

      I didn't... I know. I was just looking at it, because I've, I've got a buddy who's left-handed and he's like pointing all this left-handed stuff out in the world.

   9. CWChris Williamson0:50

      Oh, don't use that one. It's gonna cut completely incorrectly. What I did learn was, um, when you have a steak, I mean, I, I have to imagine this is slap bang in the middle of your area of expertise, but you want to never cut with the grain of the meat. You want to be cutting cross-grain.

   10. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:06

       Yeah. So that, that, that takes me to what's beautiful about surgery is like, it's, it's not like LEGOs. It's not like, you know, hammers and chisel. It can be with, you know, orthopedic surgeons and spine surgery. But when you have somebody who can lightly with a p- uh, with a tweezer, a pickup we call it, lift something up and you see some membranes that are holding two planes together. All right, let's say you have two planes of tissue, and they're held together with this fine web of membranes. You lift it up and you take a scissor upside down and you just spread lightly and the membranes fall apart and the tissue comes apart. You're not really trying to tug and pull.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:41

       Mm-hmm.

   12. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:42

       If you do that with finesse, when the patient wakes up, they feel less injury, they feel less pain, less anesthesia, the operation goes better, less blood time. So everybody thinks surgery's all the same steps. "Do these 1,000 steps." No. It's sculpting, it's art. It... there's a finesse to it. And at some point, uh, when you see somebody who's good at something, i- it's, it's like ballet. Y- it's like something's being released. They're not like, "And now I will do this step." And, uh, that's the part I love about it is talent... It's more, it's more talent than smarts.

   13. CWChris Williamson2:12

       I love watching people in between doing the thing that they're supposed to do. So a good example of this is, uh, drummers. If you're ever watching a drummer play live and he loses a stick or he snaps or something like that, and he'll just immediately switch and he'll be playing with one hand and he'll just reach over and he'll grab another one. Or if a guitarist is playing and, "Bing," off goes a pick like that, and you'll watch him. Without even thinking about it, he'll do something, grab a pick from there, roll it between his fingers, and go back. And it's that liminal space. It's... I'm just so comfortable with my working environment.

   14. RJDr Rahul Jandial2:44

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson2:44

       And, uh, that's really cool to see.

   16. RJDr Rahul Jandial2:45

       So that word... That's an interesting word for me, liminal, because, um, that's kind of the thing I've been thinking about a lot. It's not the easiest thing to explain to people, but I think that, um, in nature... Let me, let me give you an example of what I call a liminal space. I was, uh... I used to dive a lot. I gave it up. I had a scary accident. I almost, I almost, uh, ran out of oxygen, uh, real deep, uh, off of Asia- Asian coast there, uh, Palau, and, um, it's... And I was like, "Oh, I've got kids. I'll do this when I'm older." Now I'm older and I'm like, "Ah, I'm, I'm... Gee, I don't have the energy." But the place that I love diving the most was the cenotes of Yucatan, like where it's all flat, maybe the asteroid landed there and killed all the dinosaurs and that kind of thing. But they have caverns, and there, there are river, underground rivers that meet the salt water. So when you go from fresh water to salt water... In our body, salt water is a massive thing that has to do with cognition and balance, and, uh, a lot of fundamental things are controlled just by the salt in our blood and brain. And, but when you're, when you're (laughs) diving and you're in fresh water and then it's called a halocline, and you're now fresh waters meeting salt water, there's like five yards, it almost feels like five meters, where it's blurry. So the transition from one state to another-

   17. CWChris Williamson3:57

       Mm-hmm.

   18. RJDr Rahul Jandial3:57

       ... at chemical, psychological, it doesn't happen in a millisecond. There's a liminal state. And so when you take a look at the brain in 24 hours, I see at least four or five liminal states. When you're falling asleep, it's not a complete, "I am awake and now I'm asleep." There's a little window there, about 15 minutes. Lucid dreaming, when you're asleep, asleep - and I can verify it - and you have a little re- uh, uh, return of awareness, to me those hybrid liminal transition states give us an insight. I mean, it's hard, right? 'Cause I'm, I'm, I'm a brain surgeon. This is... People expect everything from me to be proven. But I'm finding a lot of, uh, insight and understanding from these, uh, different liminal states. And then you can bring narcolepsy in the middle where people suddenly fall asleep.

   19. CWChris Williamson4:44

       Mm.

   20. RJDr Rahul Jandial4:44

       They have interesting thoughts, um, when you wake up. A third of the world feels, you know, sleep paralysis and have, have like these feelings of a goblins s- s- on their chest, enough to where the stories are built around different cultures.

   21. CWChris Williamson4:57

       Mm.

   22. RJDr Rahul Jandial4:57

       So to me, those transition hybrid states of cognition, of feeling, of experience, I think that, that's where the... That's where my head is really at these days.

2. 5:09 – 10:13

   Things You Believe are True But Can’t Prove

   1. RJDr Rahul Jandial5:09

   2. CWChris Williamson5:09

      This might be getting you out of your skis a little bit, but someone as-

   3. RJDr Rahul Jandial5:12

      Go for it.

   4. CWChris Williamson5:13

      Someone asked me this question the other day, and I thought it was such a g- a great question. What is something that you intuit or act as if is true or might believe, but you cannot prove with evidence or science? Is there anything that comes to mind with that?

   5. RJDr Rahul Jandial5:30

      Well, I mean, uh, for me, the, the first thing that crossed my mind was love. It's this... You know, it... the term used to be ineffable, and so like beyond explanation, but you know it's true. Beyond, uh, articulation, but it really motivi- motivates you or touches you. Spiritual experiences, right? Epiphanies, a hunch. Like, these are repeated experiences that people are reporting, right? D- and dreams could fall into that a little bit. But-There are repeated things that we are writing about through history and time. Aristotle w- Aristotle wrote about lucid dreaming. Now that sounds like, "Well, come on, lucid dreaming?" Uh, but it's rigorous, so Aristotle wrote about it thousands of years ago, a return of awareness within a dream, which sounds like how could you ever prove that? And 20, 30 years ago, and increasingly now, lucid dreaming is being proven rigorously in sleep labs. So that, I think that's one example, but what it, when I hear that, what it tells me is, don't deny those insights. D- Don't rely on them blindly. Don't be manipulated by somebody, uh, trying to dazzle you with those kind of things, you know, cults.

   6. CWChris Williamson6:44

      Sexy rhetoric.

   7. RJDr Rahul Jandial6:45

      Yeah, cults. Um, catch you in a vulnerable moment. My patients are vulnerable. The sexy rhetoric isn't just, uh, you know, that this will heal you, but I was, you know, there were, there were a lot of, like, stem cell clinics th- that, that were affecting children's hospitals in San Die- Children's Hospital San Diego is real close to the Mexican border of Tijuana.

   8. CWChris Williamson7:04

      Mm.

   9. RJDr Rahul Jandial7:05

      Uh, eh, you know, we're, we're in Austin, so you're familiar with that, and there, there were patients, uh, families who were going there to get stem cell treatments that were, uh, it's- it wasn't that they were proven. We knew they were a sham. They weren't hurting them, but they weren't helping them, and sometimes, those moms and kids would choose that over therapy that was moderately effective. So I think there has to be some, there have to be some safeguards to vulnerable people being manipulated, yet I'm fully ready to em- embrace intuition, hunch, those kind of things, like where my, my dog has a instinct and hunch that comes from our limbic system that exists within us, uh, sort of the emotional centers of the- o- of the brain, the deeper structures of the brain, that we shouldn't deny those, and creative people learn to tap into those. So the, the challenge for me is always how to liberate our understanding, my understanding, without it getting too woo-woo and leading to fluff and exploitation.

   10. CWChris Williamson8:05

       S- such a good point, man. It's such a good point. I, I really think about this a lot, the, what level of rigor and skepticism should we have without closing ourselves off to alternative approaches to things?

   11. RJDr Rahul Jandial8:18

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson8:18

       And I, I would say I lean on the rationalist, materialist kind of evidency side of stuff. I tend to have a, a real, um, anti-conspiratorial, uh, leaning to me. But that's been to my detriment a lot of the time because I think my, I've probably said no to stuff that my gut would have convinced me of saying yes to. Like my brain has overruled my intuition, and I'm kind of trying to allow that to be tapped into a little bit more and trying to get that to reverse.

   13. RJDr Rahul Jandial8:49

       Well, and so that's interesting. So, um, liminal states, these hybrid states that exist in nature, deltas where salt water meets fresh water, where our waking brain goes to our dreaming brain, that's a cognitive delta, if you will. Uh, uh, that's a theme that I'm working on in my mind. The other thing I'm working on is, is what, what we're discussing now, is that to look at, to look at our capacities as i- as a thermostat. It's a modulation. Inflammation's bad, bad, bad, and I say, "That's not true." We need some inflammation to fight off bee stings and other things. But w- how is that thermostat set right for our lives? We fight off infections, uh, but if the inflammation's too strong, it's like friendly fire. It can cause autoimmune disease.

   14. CWChris Williamson9:35

       Mm-hmm.

   15. RJDr Rahul Jandial9:36

       So rather than saying inflammation's bad or good, that this product is anti-inflammatory, no, I actually need inflammation sometimes. I need stress sometimes. I need these capacities that have kept my, uh, our species going, uh, uh, sometimes. But when they're running rampant without the necessary stimulus for them, then we have to a- identify and use our coping strategies and maneuvers and the things that the wellness industry's presenting to bring them back into the w- uh, ecological validity, which is real world scenario, where should my thermostat be?

   16. CWChris Williamson10:12

       Mm-hmm.

3. 10:13 – 13:41

   Did Freud Get Anything Right About Dreams?

   1. CWChris Williamson10:13

      You mentioned dreams there. Is Freud totally obsolete? Did he get anything right when it comes to dreams?

   2. RJDr Rahul Jandial10:20

      He got one thing right, for sure. Um, and before, before him, it wasn't really clear that dreams were coming from the brain. Uh, that- that's a cool story too, because, um, so he's about 100, 110 years old, but before, he was the one like, "Look, it's your desires gone wild, your dreams are s- it's just freaky time and dreams, and it's..." But it was coming from your brain, and it, it was only, at that time, it wasn't clear that this creature, this human being lying on the ground, mostly limp, body is cool, brain must be off, 'cause they're not moving, so h- how could that inactive f- flesh, how could that inactive, like the hibernating screen on your laptop, right, like how could that conjure up all of that crazy wild adventurous dream state, dream experiences? So it was a guy named, uh, Berger who was looking, he was trying to actually unders- So like, the, the, the old school people who were trying to understand things, they were open to hunch and instinct, and not to say paranormal, but something that they liked exploring things that couldn't necessarily, uh, be fully articulated, but that didn't stop the exploration, the search for the meaning in it. He felt like there was this potential for mental telepathy. And in looking for that, he put stickers on the surface of patients' scalps, and at that time, they were just learning that, like, a wire to a sticker on a, on your scalp didn't, didn't mean you had, you couldn't just, you could just send electricity in, but you could also record. And so he's the first one that came up with the EEG, that later turned into the EKG. An EKG is the three, uh, main nerves on the surface of the heart giving you a squiggle we're all familiar with. Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson12:07

      An EEG is 96 stickers...

   4. RJDr Rahul Jandial12:09

      ... recording the electricity generated by 100 billion neurons that are like microscopic jellyfish, right? It's just a recording of the electrical phenomenon going inside. And when he, when he recorded that EEG, um, he didn't, he let it run and at night, surprisingly, there was still electricity, and that sat for like 20, 30 years. But that was the first time people were like, "Wait a second. The brain is still going off when we sleep?" So much so that at certain parts of the day and certain parts of when we're in our, in our sleep dreaming brain, the electric, the electrical activity is so strong that they call it paradoxical sleep, that while you're asleep, just based on how wild your electricity is, you can't actually tell if you're asleep or awake. It's that hot. So it's not a quiet time.

   5. CWChris Williamson13:02

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   6. RJDr Rahul Jandial13:02

      And so that's what Freud did, was say, "Dreams come to the, from the brain." And now we've come to understand that the brain is always on. It's on a 24 hours roughly cycle. You go into a cave and you get, it, the people in the cave and they're still on a 24 cycle, right? Circadian rhythms. Like we're all built on this rotating planet. Like venus flytraps open and close, tides open and close. We're on a 24 hour cycle, but the brain electrically, physiologically, the amount of glucose usage when we sleep, the brain is not resting. And now that allows us to say, "Well, what is it doing?" The most vibrant thing that the dreaming, sleeping brain is doing is conjuring up dreams.

   7. CWChris Williamson13:39

      Hmm. Okay.

4. 13:41 – 20:50

   Why Do We Dream?

   1. CWChris Williamson13:41

      Why do we dream then?

   2. RJDr Rahul Jandial13:43

      Well, that's a massive question. You know, I mean (sighs) , um, I would say the answer should come from the information we now have. Okay? So it's not chilling out. It's burning hot. And this one, I gotta unpack it a little bit. When, I just said, look, the waking brain and the dreaming brain are equally vibrant electrically, but they must be different. So one of the main things that happens when you go from the waking brain to the dreaming brain state is certain continents in our, in our brain, not like a spot, but a network called executive network. Now they're trying to call it action network, but this is a, a very specific part of the brain of the prefrontal cortex and it needs a little bit of explanation, it's called the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. The frontal lobes are like this, it's kind of on the outside. It's the executive network. It's the conductor that coordinates it all. It's responsible for calculation, processing, quick judgment, not a lot of instinct.

   3. CWChris Williamson14:46

      Mm-hmm.

   4. RJDr Rahul Jandial14:46

      That, and, and it tamps down other regions such as the imagination network and those deeper limbic structures that are our hunch, our, how our, my- my dog can tell when I'm trying to say, "Hey, um, come here." You know, like trying to give him a treat to trap him to put him back in his pen because we're going out for the night. That instinct comes not from the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex or of the prefrontal, uh, cortex. So w- so when you go from the dreaming brain, uh, back to the waking brain or waking brain to the dreaming brain, that region is dampened. It's never on or off. It goes from being like 51% active relative to the imagination network to 49. So the dreaming brain has a dampened executive network and a liberated imagination network and movement regions, uh, and emotional networks. So when we see the shifts a- and as the executive network comes down, it's compensated by the imagination network. So you get that equivalent electrical activity. So when you think of it that way, dreams, why we dream has to be explained with what is going on with the dreaming brain. It's hyper visual, it's hyper creative. It's, uh, it goes into tremendous social situations and my big idea about it is it- it's not what others have said, like, "It's threat rehearsal. If you run from a wooly mammoth in your, in your dream, you're better off if you ever encounter one," or, "It's a nocturnal therapist. We work out our emotions at night." No, it doesn't make... It doesn't fit the complexity. We have PTSD flashbacks. So what I think is happening is certain regions of the brain that are generally tapped down for us to perform the tasks of the day are allowed to be liberated in the safe space of our temporary paralysis of our dreams. Because in the brain, if you don't use certain neurons in certain capacities, they will wither. If I patch a kid's eye for therapeutic purposes, where it lands in the occipital lobe will physically wither. And so I think the wha- we dream to maintain our emotional and creative complexity as a systematic process where the brain takes turns in a 24 hour cycle being executive network dominant and imagination network dominant. So all those f- all those capacity is there for us for the next environmental event we're not prepared for.

   5. CWChris Williamson17:09

      So if you spent your entire day as a caveman logging all of the different fruits that you gathered over the last week and making sure that your cave is clean and working out where you're gonna go to catch the next mammoth, all of that is very executive. It's very top down. It's creative in some ways, but not-

   6. RJDr Rahul Jandial17:29

      Sure.

   7. CWChris Williamson17:29

      ... intuitively creative, but you have maybe not given yourself... The urgent always overtakes the important and the urgent is very rarely going to be a creative pursuit.

   8. RJDr Rahul Jandial17:39

      Task on versus task off.

   9. CWChris Williamson17:41

      Yes.

   10. RJDr Rahul Jandial17:42

       Task on is outward and that's the executive network. Of course, it requires a little imagination and everything to na- That's why it's never completely on or off. And then task off is daydreaming, dreaming itself is the most task off thing and the brain wants to run rampant. I mean, it's wild. If you look at some of the electrical activity, the glucose usage, it is not a quiet time. And so we can't deny that a process that makes us lie down burns that much energy when energy is hard to get.... it is essen- and has lasted through generations and generations, is essential. So my feeling is that any collection of neurons, whether in a dolphin, like dolphins do one brain at a time, well half brain at a time, so they can keep paying attention. They'll, their, they'll sleep one hemisphere at a time.

   11. CWChris Williamson18:36

       Wow.

   12. RJDr Rahul Jandial18:36

       Penguins do like, they do micro naps, they do like 10-

   13. CWChris Williamson18:38

       Flamingos do something weird with sleep as well, right?

   14. RJDr Rahul Jandial18:40

       Well they, all the creatures, they have different ways, but when you get a collection of neurons, they gotta sleep. And what happens when you sleep is not rest. It's a different type of neuronal activity.

   15. CWChris Williamson18:51

       Mm-hmm.

   16. RJDr Rahul Jandial18:51

       The, your body might be resting, your heart might slow down a little bit, the liver's cool, body's cool, but the brain's on fire. And just to, just to put it out there, as a surgeon, when I've moved livers between moms to kids, you c- you could take a piece of liver from the mom and move it to a kid, I've transplanted hearts in training, we're not really reconnecting the nerves again. The, the, the, the bodily tissue is a little bit autonomous. Sleep is not really for the body. I'm not saying that sleep isn't good for you, I'm not saying sleep shouldn't be a performance goal, I'm not saying that. I'm saying, when our bodies sleep, it's our brain that builds the sleep pressure, and when we sleep, what does the brain do that's the most vibrant thing it does? It dreams. So I think dreaming is an essential feature of preserving a healthy brain and healthy mind.

   17. CWChris Williamson19:41

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5. 20:50 – 28:22

   Why are We Conscious of Our Dreams?

   1. CWChris Williamson20:50

      Is, is there something interesting about the fact that we're conscious of our dreams? Because you could imagine a world in which, um, the body shuts down, the brain shuts down, and you don't have any conscious recollection of the fact that this thing happened. It was kind of a, I guess, what you're suggesting is there are certain capacities that the brain needs, and may need in future, that are maybe not quite as common as some other pathways that we use more frequently, and dreaming is one way for us to ensure that those myelin sheaths are kept nice and-

   2. RJDr Rahul Jandial21:26

      Very good.

   3. CWChris Williamson21:27

      ... and, and lubricated, they're moving quite, quite-

   4. RJDr Rahul Jandial21:29

      Accessible when we need them.

   5. CWChris Williamson21:30

      Yeah.

   6. RJDr Rahul Jandial21:30

      They don't wi- they don't wither, they don't atrophy.

   7. CWChris Williamson21:32

      However, the fact that we're conscious of this, the fact that we can recall it, that there is a, a, a phenomenological, emotional experience of going through this, is that bit adaptive in your exp- in y- your opinion, or is that some spandrel side effect like a light bulb that gives off heat as well as light? Uh, what, what do you think about the, the fact that we actually know that we have been through this thing, 'cause I could imagine a world in which you c- uh, retain the capacity without having the experience of being through it?

   8. RJDr Rahul Jandial22:04

      Yeah. That's, uh, it's a massive question, it's a fantastic question. And h- and my opinion is to t- tell a few stories about how, how some of these things happen, so, um, back to liminal states. I, I don't think any process in the brain, waking brain, dreaming brain, is a, is a rigid on-off process. So my, my feeling is, when we remember some dreams, um, they're like solar flares that have leaked into our memory, uh, and we woke up, wake up, we're, we're accidentally sort of holding onto the residue of massive dreaming activity. That's my, my hunch. Um, and, and the way to think about that is, um, the concept of self and autobiographical memory. So when people talk about self, self-worth, self this, the, the c- this concept of self is created by a type of memory, there's procedural memory, tying your shoelaces, semantic memory, stuff our phones record, uh, uh, you know, m- you know, dates and stuff, episodic memory, like the episodes of our life, and the, what happens is, they're stitched together by a capacity called autobiographical memory. And the thought here is from people who have certain types of psychosis, when they can't separate out their dream and waking state, certain patients with schizophrenia, it becomes quite confusing for them. So I think the dreaming process is richly active in all of us. The degree of recall is different between us, and different in different stages of our life. And so when we do remember a dream in the morning, or we wake up and we remember a dream, go to the bathroom and sometimes fall back into the dream, that these are just, uh, sort of the, the residues of a vibrant dream state that is breaking into our consciousness. I don't think that, um, it's by design. I think it speaks to the capacity that we're never fully dreaming, and never fully awake. And the best example of that is not, uh, sleep entry that Salvador Dali, Dali talked about, or sleep exit, we talked about sleep paralysis, but in the middle, certain drugs that we give our patients for Alzheimer's will m- make them have more lucid dreams. So the awareness of the dream state can happen when you're falling asleep...... when you're waking up and you're holding onto some of the dreams, uh, and there are habits you can do to hold onto them more. But also, in the middle of a dream, people can train to lucid dream. I know that sounds like, okay, there's a neurosurgeon talking about that, but it's rigorous. Uh, galantamines and acetylcholine, um, antagonists that we give, uh, to improve certain functions in Alzheimer's patients, and they report it, dose dependent, increase in lucid dreaming.

   9. CWChris Williamson24:54

      Mm.

   10. RJDr Rahul Jandial24:55

       So I think the dream state and the conscious state, they're like two dimmers, and they're overlapping a bit. And so when we remember something in the morning, rather than thinking that it's by design, I think it's sort of like an opportunity to have an insight into ourselves at a very emotional, very visual, very sexual time.

   11. CWChris Williamson25:16

       Yeah, wh- why did dreams often end up being so emotionally intense, do you think?

   12. RJDr Rahul Jandial25:22

       Well, because when you look at the areas that are activated preferentially in the dream state, it's the limbic system, which are the emotional centers. When you look at the, uh, the dreaming brain, the regions that are activated, if you will, it's the visual centers. It's the imagination network. And then equally, you're dampening, you're damping, uh, the executive network so these big jumps of ideas and creativity and associations are not, um, discarded by the executive network-

   13. CWChris Williamson25:51

       Mm.

   14. RJDr Rahul Jandial25:51

       ... as it would be during the day.

   15. CWChris Williamson25:52

       Mm-hmm.

   16. RJDr Rahul Jandial25:52

       It allows for that. Let me give you one specific example that I thought was really fresh when, when I was asked to prepare this book was, um, when you look at thousands and thousands of dream reports, not yours or mine, but like mine feel wild, yours must feel wild, but you start to see that very few people report doing math in their dreams. I'm not saying like, uh, somebody's gonna call in or write in and say yeah, but it's not like nightmares, 100% reported.

   17. CWChris Williamson26:17

       Mm.

   18. RJDr Rahul Jandial26:17

       It's not like, um, erotic dreams, sexual dreams, over 90%, teeth falling out, being chased, flying. These are common dreams, right?

   19. CWChris Williamson26:26

       Mm-hmm.

   20. RJDr Rahul Jandial26:26

       Math is very rarely reported. And what I like is, okay, if I take hundreds of years of patterns of dream reports, basically surveys, or Aristotle's comment about, uh, lucid dreams, now with modern neuroscience, we, they make sense. If the executive network is, is dampened, that does calculation, it kind of makes sense to me that very few reports of math, uh, occ- occ- occur in dream reports. Like that fits. Executive network goes down-

   21. CWChris Williamson26:57

       Mm-hmm.

   22. RJDr Rahul Jandial26:57

       ... reports of math go down. Imagination network is liberated, people report creative and wild dreams. So it ties together what people are reporting for years.

   23. CWChris Williamson27:06

       Why teeth falling out, falling, flying? Y- you know, three dreams that I would guess m- almost everybody listening to this has had in-

   24. RJDr Rahul Jandial27:16

       And before electricity and after electricity, from the h- or from the c- you know, horse and carriage all the way to the electric car.

   25. CWChris Williamson27:22

       Yeah.

   26. RJDr Rahul Jandial27:23

       And w-

   27. CWChris Williamson27:23

       It's not like we needed to wait for airplanes to be there to think that I could fall out of an airplane.

   28. RJDr Rahul Jandial27:27

       Exactly.

   29. CWChris Williamson27:27

       Or for buildings to be sufficiently high that you would fall from a skyscraper.

   30. RJDr Rahul Jandial27:31

       Exactly. So that ... So if we're getting mental health, um, is tied into certain families, nightmare d- one type of dream, nightmares, clusters in families. So nightmare disorder can happen-
6. 28:22 – 35:51

   Why Do We Have Nightmares?

   1. RJDr Rahul Jandial28:22

   2. CWChris Williamson28:22

      Have you got any idea about what makes for universal nightmare ... Is this just something-

   3. RJDr Rahul Jandial28:29

      I got a big, I got a big theory about it. Um, and so, so you know, this book was, um, um, this book was important for me. It was ... I had written a few others. One was, you know, and then Penguin UK in London said they've always wanted a book that looked at dreams and dreaming from a certain perspective of somebody with a, a complicated life story, somebody who's g- had the professor jobs but also could tell a story. And I, I, I really took it, you know, uh, it was, uh, it was wonderful actually. I, it kind of liberated me. Part of that process was me rolling around Dodger Stadium in LA, eh, g- going to pubs in London and sort of throwing this out 'cause I- it had to be for everybody, right? It can't, it's not meant... And the question I would get asked, asked the most, like m- if dream, wait, if dreams are good for us, why do we have nightmares?

   4. CWChris Williamson29:25

      Mm-hmm.

   5. RJDr Rahul Jandial29:25

      It was just sort of a, you got to ... And so that was chapter two. Um, nightmares are, i- it's a tough thing to explain because it obviously like w- why, you know, if, if, why would he, why would he cook that up? And so the way I think about it is, um, you have to look at the mind as, um, something that needs cultivating in children just like walking and talking. And so just like we're not fully formed and we have to be taught to walk and challenged to walk and talk and engaged, at the same time in the mind, there are certain cognitive developments that are happening. So in, they're called longitudinal studies, they, they had families allow their children to be woken up for like 22 years and report like what they're dreaming about different times. And like when they were two or three, like it's just like it's a blanket. It's, it's not very dynamic. It's not, uh, not a lot of movement. And then around four and five, six-Nightmares arrive for every child. It's rare to fi- uh, I did a lot of pediatric neurosurgery, still do. I have three sons-

   6. CWChris Williamson30:40

      Mm.

   7. RJDr Rahul Jandial30:40

      ... in their 20s. They have to be told th- nightmares always arrive in children, healthy children, unhealthy children, some of my patients who, who had, you know, brain injuries. It seems to be a part of the mind's development that's built in. It arrives for everybody and then, almost invariably, very few kids have nightmare disorder. Th- it doesn't linger into the next day and ruin their day like it does for adults. So it's sort of like a wave of thinking that, a species of dreams that arrives, and then around 11 or 12, you have erotic dreams that arrive, whether kids are having sex or not, or teenagers are thinking about sex or not, they arrive. And, and the last one I see as sort of the matur- uh, like adolescence. The brain looks the same, but we change who we are. So I think there are three waves of sort of the development of the mind and what happens around that age of four, five, and six is also the development of something called the default mode network. Like until then, uh, children have a hard time reading minds. They can't tell if smiling uncle means well or m- means harm and that capacity arrives at the same time as nightmares. And so my big hypothesis, it'll be hard to prove, is that nightmares create a sense of self versus other, uh, by having these harrowing difficult experiences, it sort of creates, um, that the world around me is separate from who I am. And this engagement with monsters and different things creates this default mode network that allows us to start to see ourselves as separate from the world around us and to be a little bit more critical in evaluating the threats and the people and their intentions around us.

   8. CWChris Williamson32:19

      Uh-

   9. RJDr Rahul Jandial32:19

      That's my big thesis.

   10. CWChris Williamson32:20

       And that would make sense adaptively because before age four, five, six, kids are so unindependent that the need to be able to distinguish, uh, between I am here and that is something else is kind of pointless because you're not let out of the sight of mom or dad.

   11. RJDr Rahul Jandial32:38

       Yeah. Y- you're in the wrap still. You're very close. You're not being let a- I mean, I think that's a good point. The other point is that, um... that it's just like every, every, every kid has to be told it was only a, it's only a dream, it's only a nightmare, and that there's this, just like we talked about liminal states in the beginning, like in psychosis people can't separate out, uh, you know, uh, awake versus dreaming, um, and that disti- autobiographical memory. We need to know these are awake thoughts and these are dream thoughts, and dream thoughts should not disrupt your awake thoughts. That there are these things that happen in your mind but they're not actually the, the daily steps that link your life together, right? That, in children, um, I don't know if before nightmares they know the difference between, uh, waking thoughts and dream thoughts. Like maybe nightmares inform the child it was only a dream, so that's always been a puzzle to me.

   12. CWChris Williamson33:35

       Mm.

   13. RJDr Rahul Jandial33:35

       Until then, do they not know that what they experienced in their thoughts while sleeping was actually not real?

   14. CWChris Williamson33:42

       Well-

   15. RJDr Rahul Jandial33:42

       Could be discarded?

   16. CWChris Williamson33:43

       I guess that the creativity network in kids is so much more alight even when they are awake. You watch, in the space of an afternoon, a child's a firefighter and a postman and an astronaut and a sports star and a rock star and asleep and then awake again and back to being a postman, and yeah, I dream of being able, I literally do dream-

   17. RJDr Rahul Jandial34:05

       You're amazing.

   18. CWChris Williamson34:05

       ... of being able to have that level of creative access again.

   19. RJDr Rahul Jandial34:08

       And I think so that nightmares are serving something fundamental because they arrive in all of us. It is the universal dream. We can all talk about what, what it, what they serve and the purpose. And the last thing I would say about that, to be a nightmare, it has to wake you up. It's not a bad dream, like you wake up the next day and you're like, "Ooh, that was a rough night." Nightmares have to wake you up, sear your memory to be considered a nightmare. It's the, it's the dream that has to wake you up and be vividly remembered. So I think there's some mental cultivation going on with this process that we all share.

   20. CWChris Williamson34:39

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7. 35:51 – 39:21

   Should We Remember Our Dreams?

   1. CWChris Williamson35:51

      Do you think it's important to remember our dreams? Have they got deeper wisdom to tell us or should we just allow them to be a sandbox that sort of lives on its own?

   2. RJDr Rahul Jandial35:59

      I, uh, I think based on what I've learned, I, I think, I think it's the, it's the ultimate wellness habit that goes, uh, underutilized, you know? Um, because, um... First, uh, and just to give you some examples, that, you know, the sleep entry period, this liminal state where based on measurements we can show you're kind of awake, you're kind of dreaming, sleeping, I mean people like Edison i- in Inception, Inception the movie was, the falling chair was a concept, uh, based o- off of Dali or Edison where they'd be working on some creative project-And, uh, uh, and they'd have, he had a key in his hand, in a little metal basin, and when he'd fall asleep, uh, e- e- on the rock, while rocking on the chair, he'll fall forward, the key would drop, and then he'd write down his thoughts. He felt that there was, uh, something that could be e- extracted from that dream entry, sleep entry state. Lucid dreaming, uh, is something w- you know, we could talk about later, but that seems to be something that people report wellness with, people, athletes, m- people who are visuospatial tend to have more lucid dreams. I think that's an interesting thought that we can, um, uh, we can learn that ability. There's a little bit of sleep disruption about it, and then when we sleep exit, which is a time I use quite a bit, is I have the luxury of not always hitting the alarm, and I take those last five, 10 minutes of thoughts, and I write them down first, uh, before going on social media or looking at my email, and that seems to be an idea generator for me. I think there are sort of those practical elements that you can do, but if, for me, just at a philosophical level, when my brain, with my memory, with my imagination, not somebody else's memory-

   3. CWChris Williamson37:47

      Mm-hmm.

   4. RJDr Rahul Jandial37:47

      ... not somebody else's imagination, runs in a different mode, hyper-emotional, hyper-imaginative, and something leaks out of that that I can hold onto, I think it's worth taking a look at, and even just the process of reflection I, I think could hold some insight. But I would tease that out. It would be that the dreams that leave a strong emotional residue with a s- a central image, um, I think it's okay to say, "Why did I have that dream?" You know, be your own therapist in that capacity, because it's coming from your imagination and your mind. The concrete example I will give is some people who are feeling well, feeling like they're coping well, will have a return, will have nightmares pop up in their lives, which serve as sort of a thermometer, and so the nightmares, uh, if they're progressive, like headaches, occasional nightmare is, is whatever it is, occasional headache is whatever it is, but if there's a progressive uptick in nightmares, that can happen while the patient is having, uh, the person's having such a, a, a fantastic life during the day. So, that can be sort of a, a warning sign or a, a signal that maybe you're not coping well. So, I think we're just starting to get into those features of maybe people's dream life should be part of the vital signs. When I started training, it was like blood pressure and temperature. Now, we ask about pain, we ask about wellness, we ask about living situation at home. I, I don't think, uh, in the world of mental health it would be, it would be a, a stretch to start asking and, and engaging people what their dream life.

8. 39:21 – 41:20

   Do Our Dreams Correlate to Our Overall Health?

   1. RJDr Rahul Jandial39:21

   2. CWChris Williamson39:21

      Are dream experiences predictive of something in health? You mentioned the, an uptick in nightmares across the whole board. Somebody's dreaming more, dreaming less-

   3. RJDr Rahul Jandial39:32

      Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson39:32

      ... they remember it more, they remember it less, more lucid dreaming, less, whatever-

   5. RJDr Rahul Jandial39:35

      Good question.

   6. CWChris Williamson39:36

      ... more nightmares. Are there any correlations between that and someone's overall health?

   7. RJDr Rahul Jandial39:41

      Good question. Th- the dream pattern related with overall health, uh, would be nightmares. Um, so two types of nightmares, pediatric nightmares we talked about, age four, five, six, which I think are cultivating the mind, they don't really r- lead to nightmare disorder where the next day is ruined, and then nightmares in, uh, in adults, they could happen once in a while, that doesn't seem to be a problem, but 4 or 5% have nightmare disorder where it disrupts the next day, and in, in that situation, whether it's in PTSD or whether it's in trauma, or whether you're going through a difficult situation, tracking nightmares, their uptick or their improvement can be sort of a, a measure of how people are doing. But as far as, uh, what I've read about dream recall, dream patterns, that changes throughout our lives. So, uh, a lot of adults say they don't remember many of their dreams. M- my cancer patients, when they get to end of life, uh, they tend to have these th- genre dreams are called end of life dreams, they tend to be of reconciliation, they tend to be more hopeful than you would suspect after getting-

   8. CWChris Williamson40:46

      Mm-hmm.

   9. RJDr Rahul Jandial40:46

      ... surgery and chemotherapy. So, w- your, your dream pa- within our lives, from nightmares to erotic dreams, uh, to the way we dream as adults, to drugs that change the way we dream and how much we remember all the way to end of life dreams, uh, if you don't think you have a lot of dream recall now, that doesn't mean it won't be there for you or it can't be cultivated.

   10. CWChris Williamson41:09

       Mm-hmm.

   11. RJDr Rahul Jandial41:09

       You just have to track dream experiences and e- and, and prevalence throughout a whole lifetime, and you start to see, uh, that they come in waves, which I find, which is, uh, you know, which is interesting.

9. 41:20 – 44:54

   How Real is Dream Interpretation?

   1. RJDr Rahul Jandial41:20

   2. CWChris Williamson41:20

      How real is dream interpretation?

   3. RJDr Rahul Jandial41:22

      I don't think it's real at all.

   4. CWChris Williamson41:24

      (laughs)

   5. RJDr Rahul Jandial41:24

      (laughs) I mean, because I c- you know, I mean, I can't do it for myself, you know? Like-

   6. CWChris Williamson41:30

      So what hope is there of a lady in a shawl being able to do it on your behalf?

   7. RJDr Rahul Jandial41:34

      Well, I mean, I think just we have to look at it conceptually, and I think we were just talking about that. It's my imagination, it's my memory. So like, let's-

   8. CWChris Williamson41:41

      How do you know what this snake means to me?

   9. RJDr Rahul Jandial41:43

      Not just what it means to me, what it meant to me five years ago. I'm not the same person I was five years ago. Like a bridge, let's take, let's take a bridge, for example. For some of my patients, it's, uh, you know, uh, they might be thinking about suicide, or it could be reconciliation with a loved one. It could mean so many things within that context. How can a bridge for you and me mean the same thing? But past that, a bridge for me means very different things within the context of my own life. I don't think a static symbol can, uh, reveal a dynamic mental life.

   10. CWChris Williamson42:17

       Well, this would fit in with your perspective that it's kind of a gymnasium, training ground, sandbox for the mind that-

   11. RJDr Rahul Jandial42:27

       High-intensity training for the mind.

   12. CWChris Williamson42:28

       Yeah. That we, maybe we shouldn't give all that much credence to it. Maybe the brain is just kind of running away with itself, because isn't it strange? People have intrusive thoughts all the time.

   13. RJDr Rahul Jandial42:40

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson42:41

       Uh, they see somebody stood next to the edge of the road and they think, "I wonder what would happen if I pushed them in? I mean, I'm not gonna do it, but..."

   15. RJDr Rahul Jandial42:46

       Mm-hmm. No, yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson42:47

       "I wonder what would happen if I pushed them in. Oh, God, this would happen and that would happen, and wouldn't that be thrilling?" ƒ And you go, "Okay, are you making some sort of inference about the sort of person that you are for having had that thought?" Most people would say, "No, you know, I just have intrusive thoughts that occur during the day." And you go, "Okay."

   17. RJDr Rahul Jandial43:03

       Can't go to jail for thoughts.

   18. CWChris Williamson43:05

       So, your intrusive thoughts when you're awake and conscious are not that indicative of the sort of person that you are, and yet you're telling me that the dreams that you have when you're not conscious are worthy of interpretation, um, that I've never thought of that before.

   19. RJDr Rahul Jandial43:24

       Yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson43:24

       But yeah, we're, we're prepared to give... We're prepared to dissect something which we have way less control over when we're (laughs) asleep. But then on the other side, you know, the devil's advocate position would be there are very few windows that we have into the subconscious. The subconscious can often tell us things about ourselves that maybe we have repressed, not been prepared to feel, and perhaps there is some deeper wisdom to be gleaned from when we're asleep, and wh-

   21. RJDr Rahul Jandial43:53

       I agree with that, but I don't agree that, you know, um...

   22. CWChris Williamson43:59

       The lady in the shawl.

   23. RJDr Rahul Jandial44:02

       I don't agree that it can be, uh, made universal, right? I dream of a bridge. You dream of a bridge, and it's filled with emotion, and it's a vibrant bridge. Okay, go ahead and explore it. You explore it for yourself within the context of your l- your life, and I'll explore it in the context of my life. For me, it might mean suicide. For me, it might mean San Francisco, uh, where I went to college. For you, it might mean something else. So I think the explor- the, the, that the dream residue being a window to our own individual at that moment, subconscious, hyper-emotional, hyper-visual, hypersexual state, yes. But a symbol that captures it, uh, between two people, let alone between your former self-

   24. CWChris Williamson44:52

       Mm.

   25. RJDr Rahul Jandial44:52

       ... I just don't understand how that can happen conceptually.

10. 44:54 – 57:54

    What Do We Know About Erotic Dreams?

    1. RJDr Rahul Jandial44:55

    2. CWChris Williamson44:55

       What about erotic dreams? What, w- what have we come to learn about-

    3. RJDr Rahul Jandial44:58

       I welcome, yeah.

    4. CWChris Williamson44:58

       ... what fuels them?

    5. RJDr Rahul Jandial45:00

       I mean, why not? I mean, the, it's firing. I mean, you know, (laughs) why not? That, I mean, that's, uh, it, it's a, this is... That was chapter three because remember we were talking about, like, I wanted to hit everything up, up, right off the top. Why we dream, nightmares, really? Nightmares? And then erotic dreams. Um, it's fascinating because it's another thing that happens before the erotic act. Kids don't have... Kids have, who have never seen a monster and have a puppy, they'll have nightmares that are wild. I mean, I mean, how would... That's, that's, that's coming, that's descending through our psychological inheritance. Erotic dreams, people have them before the erotic act. It's almost like an instruction guide. And, and what's fascinating to me is the, there's not a lot out there. 90-something percent, when you go from sexual dreams to erotic dreams, over 90% report having them. Uh, the terminologies-

    6. CWChris Williamson46:01

       What's the difference?

    7. RJDr Rahul Jandial46:02

       Well, I don't know. I think it's more inclusive so when you start, uh, when you do surveys in other cultures, they're more willing to sort of say yes.

    8. CWChris Williamson46:09

       Erotic over sexual.

    9. RJDr Rahul Jandial46:10

       Uh, erotic dreams, the term seems to be more... It, it's easier for them to say yes to that.

    10. CWChris Williamson46:14

        Right, okay, because it's sexual-

    11. RJDr Rahul Jandial46:17

        A little less porn vibe.

    12. CWChris Williamson46:18

        Yeah, and it would also imply maybe-

    13. RJDr Rahul Jandial46:20

        Hugging, cu- kissing-

    14. CWChris Williamson46:22

        That they're not being-

    15. RJDr Rahul Jandial46:23

        ... intimacy that's not...

    16. CWChris Williamson46:23

        Exactly. They're not doing it with their partner, perhaps, you know?

    17. RJDr Rahul Jandial46:26

        Well, and then the next thing is when you ask, and, and as we get into more online surveys, this is gonna be great and more people are included, but like 80% report infidelity. And then the infidelities with a small group of people, like a repugnant boss (laughs) or like family, it's weird. The tribe-

    18. CWChris Williamson46:42

        Mm.

    19. RJDr Rahul Jandial46:42

        Uh, the characters in, the characters in, in the, uh, the, you know, the, the cast and crew is narrow.

    20. CWChris Williamson46:48

        Mm.

    21. RJDr Rahul Jandial46:48

        The acts are wild. And so when you take that data, healthy relationships have infidelity dreams, unhealthy relationships have infidelity dreams. That's s- those are sort of the surveys out there, and that, that leads to a lot of cool conversations. But what, from a neuroscience point of view is, um... This is the part that really trips me out, is, um, is that around the time of erotic dreams, even before, uh, you know, the pituitary has dripped the hormones that release all the hormones that cascade in our body that leads to the sort of changes of maturity, is that the s- the s- the same fingertips that do touch can now do caress. And it's not like a new nerve got built in there. Uh, it's the capacity to perceive sensuality changes where the, the sensory nerves land in the brain. It goes to the opposite side to a motor sensory strip in the, in the sensory region. So, around the time of erotic dreams, um, we develop the ability to have erogenous zones, where a light touch on a back can be a turn-on rather than just bumping into somebody in the subway. That capacity doesn't really exist at age six or seven, and no new nerves are being deposited.

    22. CWChris Williamson48:03

        Mm.

    23. RJDr Rahul Jandial48:04

        It's a perceptual change in the brain.

    24. CWChris Williamson48:05

        That's interesting.

    25. RJDr Rahul Jandial48:06

        Yeah, so to me, I, I, I like thinking about b- I don't have an... I don't have any big answers for that. I just want people to walk away from that and say... So th- those ch- those changes, the ability to be aroused, happens around the time of erotic dreams, and often it's before you're actually mature. So it just seems to me again that erotic dreams are (laughs) arriving almost universally in adolescence-

    26. CWChris Williamson48:27

        Mm.

    27. RJDr Rahul Jandial48:28

        ... to prepare for the act of procreation and to create the drive in our mind that, that we later carry out in our bodies, you know?

    28. CWChris Williamson48:34

        Mm.

    29. RJDr Rahul Jandial48:35

        That's, that's the way I see it.

    30. CWChris Williamson48:37

        I wonder whether... Well, I mean, this, this is almost certainly going to have been the case throughout history if you've got a particularly, um, prudish society, Victorian England, uh-
11. 57:54 – 1:01:40

    How Does Porn Effect Our Dreams?

    1. CWChris Williamson57:54

       were getting into. Um, on the ero- (laughs) on the erotic dreams thing, I don't know whether we have enough longitudinal data to work this out. I would be fascinated to see what impact the prevalence of porn-

    2. RJDr Rahul Jandial58:03

       Porn. Oh, yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson58:03

       ... has had in changing the sort of erotic dream of men cycling through even more partners in one sexual fantasy. Um, are they being influenced by what they see on screen? I certainly know that if I read it, well, if I-

    4. RJDr Rahul Jandial58:16

       That's a massive book. Get just 10 years, somebody just needs to rock that.

    5. CWChris Williamson58:20

       I, I like to read, uh, fiction before I go to bed. And I've been... I have an admission to make. I've been getting into chick stuff, a lot of chick stuff. Uh, Freida McFadden, The Housemaid, Housemaid's Tale, um, uh, Alex Michaelides who wrote, uh, The Silent Patient. It's like thrillers, like good-

    6. RJDr Rahul Jandial58:38

       Written by chicks but not necessarily only for women.

    7. CWChris Williamson58:39

       Really good. Read like-

    8. RJDr Rahul Jandial58:40

       Insights come from everywhere.

    9. CWChris Williamson58:41

       ... easy, easy reading, usually a woman in her early 30s that's kind of looked over who fixes some sort of crazy murder thing that happens. That impacts my sleep like fuck, dude. Like, I go to bed and I've got... But it's usually interesting. It's a particular... So you think, okay, if the thing that I read before I go to bed, I'm also watching the Tour de France: Unchained on Netflix at the moment. For some reason, I'm not having many cycling dreams. If these two things are happening, we have to assume that people who-

    10. RJDr Rahul Jandial59:12

        The volume.

    11. CWChris Williamson59:12

        ... use porn a lot-

    12. RJDr Rahul Jandial59:13

        The volume.

    13. CWChris Williamson59:14

        ... how is that not impacting erotic dreams?

    14. RJDr Rahul Jandial59:16

        I, I, I think that's the, I think that's the experiment, uh, that's, uh, that's ongoing. And somebody younger than me will see that that's the opportunity here to look at that. And in this, in the context of dreams, the, i- it's super physiologic stimuli is another concept.

    15. CWChris Williamson59:38

        Mm-hmm.

    16. RJDr Rahul Jandial59:39

        Like, you know, y- y- the, the... You can't look away 'cause it's just so, it's just like a coked up version of something.

    17. CWChris Williamson59:46

        Mm-hmm.

    18. RJDr Rahul Jandial59:47

        And so you may have some finesse and emotional regulation and you may be able to sort of in your own competition of wants to be like, "Oh, I'm not gonna look over there because yes, I feel desire and lust for that, that image." But that pops up once or twice. But when it's just like on loop, uh, uh, and you can't... I'm surprised it's mo- eh, porn addiction is only 5%, all right, given just the super physiologic, uh, stimuli that it is.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:00:14

        Mm-hmm.

    20. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:00:15

        Um, but yes, the impact on dreamscape, the modern world's impact on dreamscape is as big as the when there were rumors that when black and white television went to color that dreams also became to color. There's some urban legend about that. Like, I mean, the world was in color but when, when color magazines and, and, and color TV came out, there are small reports that our dreams were more in color.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:00:43

        Wow.

    22. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:00:44

        So that's a... But the point is whether that, whether somebody can further explore that or not, but right now this is, this is a, this is a PhD thesis for somebody right now if they wanna run it is-

    23. CWChris Williamson1:00:55

        How unsurprising that the things you consume will influence the way that your subconscious works at night.

    24. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:00:59

        But sometimes not.... right? Like the, it's- it's an inconsistent process of feeding your dreams.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:01:05

        Mm-hmm.

    26. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:01:06

        And that's what I like about it, is that you think, like, this, what you're, you think your dreams are only gonna have the thing that you're worried about, and it doesn't. So it has, it's metaphorical, like, you're, you might have a lot of anxiety about, uh, something and then your dream is filled with anxiety. But it's like, it's like Vietnam veterans when they were going through divorces, they would have their PTSD come back. They weren't, they weren't dreaming about fighting with their lovers or spouses. So dreams arise in a way that's metaphorical and requires interpretation, uh, by the person who's having the dream.

12. 1:01:40 – 1:05:47

    Where Does Inspiration for Dream Material Come From?

    1. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:01:40

    2. CWChris Williamson1:01:40

       What do you think that says about where the inspiration for dream material comes from?

    3. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:01:46

       I think it's a constant, it, it's, so, so I think during the day we are, just stay with me now, um, if we took a, if we took a brain and we flattened it out and we said, "Well, there were continents," right? It, it, thinking of the brain as this spot or that spot, sometimes if we injure a certain spot, like a nail, I used to take care, I did a lot of trauma, nail gun injuries, they'd come in with, like, a nail stuck in, you know, or they'd have, uh, a fall and a blood clot would come out. You would say, you'd take out a certain part and they would lose a certain capacity. You'd say, "Oh, this is what does this." It's not like that. It's like Heathrow or London, you know, y- if you have an issue at LAX, it's gonna disrupt something globally, but it's not that LAX does flights. LAX is a hub that controls flight throughout the planet. Similarly, there are spots in the brain hubs that control broad processes throughout the brain. And, and what I like about it is that these injuries have informed us about h- how, how the brain works, and when you have an injury in that dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is these little spots here that are, that's the conductor of your whole brain while you're awake, those people struggle with math. And so we say, "Okay, it plays a role in that." And if you flatten out the brain and you have these different continents and lobes and structures, hypothetically, you have certain parts that are ramped up during the day during executive network. They're, they're not in one area, they're connected by a lot of things, like, uh, like, where is the economy? I mean, is it in the city, is it in Wall Street? It's everywhere, but there are some hubs, so the executive network is one, it's like, like in Las Vegas where Bellagio, where those waterfalls go up, think of the executive network as those neurons and their connections, they're like 51%, they're running shit right now. And the imagination network is 49. And, and when, and when you dream, it- it- it kind of flips, you have 49, 51 hypothetically, okay? But when you're, when the im- when you're s- daytime in this executive network, you're still pulling from imagination to, to run, to get the task done, you're still thinking, "If I went left, if I went right," it's called counterfactual thinking, "If I go this way, last time I got hurt," you know? You're still imagining plus e- executive network, and what- what happens with dreams is when the executive network falls back, your brain uses imagination in its own mental workspace, uh, and the biggest example of that is dreaming. So think of the brain as always on and there's always a, there's always a u- uh, there's always a balance between executive network and imagination network. And, and the examples of am- the most dominant time when your, uh, executive network is happening is under threat when you have to navigate a crisis. And the biggest example of when your imagination network is, is most dominant, let's say 54, uh, to 46, is wha- when you're dreaming. But everything in between-

    4. CWChris Williamson1:04:49

       Mm.

    5. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:04:49

       ... is a dance between ide- you know, of execution and idea. And the, what I like, this is, this is just a side riff, like, they did this thing about analyzing, uh, poetry or book cover designs, and they would put these people in fMRI machines and the idea generation is mostly imagination network. But to figure out if you came up with a good idea, you had to toggle back to-

    6. CWChris Williamson1:05:13

       Mm-hmm.

    7. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:05:14

       ... dominant executive network, otherwise you just, you just got a bunk idea, right?

    8. CWChris Williamson1:05:17

       Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

    9. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:05:18

       And so the, what I don't want people to walk away thinking that we're e- liminal states, that we're all one or all the other, and it's a th- there's a thermostat in our life in how to cope, but there's also a, a balance of, of executive network and imagination network. And there are things creative people do to bring in the imagination network, but, uh, imagination requires executive function, and really great executive function still requires imagination.

13. 1:05:47 – 1:09:07

    How Can We Activate Our Imagination?

    1. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:05:47

    2. CWChris Williamson1:05:47

       What are some of the ways that people who want to activate their imagination network more effectively when they're awake can do that?

    3. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:05:54

       Oof, um, all right, so I, I got some stories for this one. There are some examples that speak to, again, a damaged executive network liberating a lot of imagination. One example is alcohol, it dampens the executive network, and some people feel that they're more creative on alcohol. It, and it's dose dependent, you know, not 10 drinks, not one drink. I mean, alcohol has to be really handled with care. At different doses it makes you feel different things. Uh, number two, frontotemporal dementia that Bruce Willis has, these patients in Alzheimer's clinics, when they have a certain injury to that part of their brain, there are publications if people go on and look it up, they show them in their, like, artistic abilities, they can paint a lot better. Dementia, an injury to the executive network, leads to a liberation of, uh, of- of hidden artistic, like painting, drawing talents.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:06:53

       Mm.

    5. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:06:53

       So those are two examples. Some people get hit with lightning bolts and even if it's one person, the- the electrical shift can release, um, can change that executive network to-

    6. CWChris Williamson1:07:05

       No way.

    7. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:07:06

       Yeah, yeah. I mean, they, they're out there for savants, and people could... So when I say this, I want people to look it up, you know? Uh, uh-And that's also One Flew Over the Cookies- Cuckoo's Nest, where that movie made a portrayal of shock therapy as very negative, and it generally was. But now we create, we send in electricity and create a seizure to break people out of suicidal thoughts and stuff. So-

    8. CWChris Williamson1:07:26

       Mm.

    9. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:07:26

       ...there are a lot of thing, and those people sometimes have more creative ideation. So we know that there are hidden, uh, hidden creative abilities in all of us. And the executive network is, is, is reigning them in to get the task done, to, to drive on the freeway, to be on the tube. So how can we extract those? I would go back to sleep entry, um, where that's a window where Salvador Dali thought you have good idea generation. Sleep exit is also an ide- i- is a time where the executive network hasn't fully come back online, if you will. So your ideas will... I have a lot of ideas during that time, bad ideas, good ideas, but it's an idea generator. And then during the day, what you have to realize is you're not gonna hit... U- undirected thought is, is actually the thought you want when you're trying to be creative. It's hard to have a triple espresso and then drop creative stuff.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:08:19

        Mm-hmm.

    11. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:08:20

        It's, it's the liminal time, waking up, meditating, um, exercising, uh, focusing on something like a flow state partially, but not, you know, not exclusively.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:08:34

        Driving, doing the dishes, playing pickleball.

    13. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:08:36

        But partially engaged. And, and then something, and then some- and then it... You can't demand it. You have to cultivate it and liberate it.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:08:43

        You can't white, you can't white-knuckle creativity.

    15. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:08:45

        (laughs) You can't white knuckle.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:08:45

        It's highly, highly irritating.

    17. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:08:47

        Another espresso. Let's, let's-

    18. CWChris Williamson1:08:49

        Yeah, run it back. Fuck it. Um, yeah, that's, that's certainly something I've found to be true. Um, sitting down and demanding yourself to be creative is a reliable way to ensure that you're not creative.

    19. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:09:01

        You, you have to flirt with it. I mean, that's why it's not-

    20. CWChris Williamson1:09:03

        (laughs)

    21. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:09:03

        That's why it's not a gift everyone has, but it can be cultivated, you know.

14. 1:09:07 – 1:14:39

    Transcranial Electric Treatments

    1. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:09:07

    2. CWChris Williamson1:09:07

       What... You, you mentioned there about some of the transcranial electric stuff. As a neurosurgeony person in that world, what do you make of... What do you, what do you make of this sort of new revolution? I know that, uh, depression-

    3. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:09:23

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:09:24

       ... anxiety, some compulsions are being treated with this now. Um-

    5. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:09:28

       Mm-hmm.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:09:29

       Yeah, what do you, what do you make of this?

    7. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:09:30

       It's real.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:09:31

       Right.

    9. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:09:31

       But it's also very easy to go on Amazon and get one for 4.9- $4.99 where they got the little headband and-

    10. CWChris Williamson1:09:38

        Okay.

    11. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:09:38

        ... pos- being positioned in the same way. So the stuff where it's real is rigorous, it's intense. It's at massive elite centers.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:09:46

        Yep.

    13. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:09:47

        And we can-

    14. CWChris Williamson1:09:47

        Usually 30 days of back-to-back treatment as well.

    15. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:09:50

        Yeah, and they, and not a 30-day refund like on Amazon, right? So it, every time, uh, I, s- neurosurgery was, uh, neurosurgeony was a funny word.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:10:00

        (laughs)

    17. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:10:02

        Um, we have to be able to talk about things like instinct and hunch, because that leads to the fullest capacity, right? Smarts plus instinct. Who doesn't want that? Sports has the best thing, like, you know, under pressure, how people perform. That can't, that can't be white-knuckled either. The, the brain has to be thought about in scale. You cannot answer all of these questions with the brain. Like, people talk about it's like, uh, you can't j- it's not a homogenous organ. It's not a liver. If you dice up the liver at different areas that, and you put it under a magnifying glass, it's the same cell essentially, for the most part. The brain has so many different cell types, so many different architectural components floating inside a, uh, you know, a, a, it's buoyant. It's floating urs- liquid. It doesn't actually sit on the skull, you know? And like, so it's an, it's an ecosystem of little electrical molecular machines, like tiny jellyfish that are spraying electricity and chemicals at each other. And as we talked about before with those stickers, you can record electricity. Um, you can also deliver electricity, and that would be shock therapy. And now what's less disruptive is delivering, uh, using magnets. So for people who are familiar with physics, I'm not, I took all the classes (laughs) to go to medical school, but electromagnetic fields, they, they can influence su- su- each other. So you can pulse a magnet through the skull and it can change the local e- electricity of a certain region. So you can actually, uh, put a magnet on the surface, no incision required, um, and pulse to the motor strip and make somebody's arm move.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:11:39

        (laughs)

    19. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:11:40

        Beca- because back to i- it's an electrical currency that leads-

    20. CWChris Williamson1:11:44

        Yep.

    21. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:11:44

        ... to, uh, dreams, you know? It's measured at night with dreams. It can be, it can be tickled. And so now what Stanford's doing some good stuff with in other places is, well, what if you, uh, w- what if you have obsessive compulsive disorder? Somebody else makes the diagnosis. The term is not used casually, let's say. It's not like, "Oh, I'm obsessed." But somebody really is like, "Man, I turned that doorknob 120 times today."

    22. CWChris Williamson1:12:10

        Mm.

    23. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:12:10

        So they're looking at the, the pulse can be used to dampen the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, or it can be used to heighten. So if you pulse that area every day for 30 days and you dampen it a little bit, and at the same time somebody gets therapy and you do cognitive reappraisal. Like, the, the parts of therapy that I like are some of the ways where you're basically training yourself, uh, and you say, "Hey, that's not dirty. Don't, don't worry about it," or, "That door is locked. You don't need to wash your hands 80 times a day." Like, you're, you're, you've been struggling with that fight the whole time. People with OCD, they know they shouldn't. And now if you pulse that area that's kind of made it, you know, difficult for them to control, that combination is leading to results that we haven't been able to find by just giving medicine.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:13:00

        Mm.

    25. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:13:01

        So it's real, but the thought that you can buy this and then do it for yourself-

    26. CWChris Williamson1:13:08

        Self-administer.

    27. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:13:10

        Yeah. Or wi- with, uh-... with a tech, with a device that looks the same but is not delivering the same technology. But that, that is the future of mental health, is a combination of therapy, magnetic pulsing, occasional medicine, and that as a cocktail. Not just, like, three different types of antidepressants, which were helpful and, for people, but a mixture of talk therapy, a mixture of exercise, talk therapy, magnetic pulsing, all non-invasive. And if you can get a 10, 20% improvement in what we're already, what was going on right now, I think that's fantastic.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:13:45

        Before we continue, if you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like, getting your blood work done is the best place to start, which is why I partnered with Function, because they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians to take the data, put it in a simple dashboard, and give you actionable insights and recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels, your thyroid function and nutrient deficiencies. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more data than you get from an annual physical. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with Function, it is only $500, and right now, the first 1,000 people can get an additional $100 off, meaning it's only 400 bucks to get the exact same blood panel that I use. Just go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modernwisdom.

15. 1:14:39 – 1:20:29

    The Benefits of Awake Brain Surgery

    1. CWChris Williamson1:14:40

       You've triggered dreams while people were awake during brain surgery.

    2. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:14:44

       Yeah. I, I, I love what-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:14:44

       What's that tell us about-

    4. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:14:45

       ... you do. I mean, it's, this is how the, I mean this was a story back in, uh, I noticed it in my 20s when I was in training. So, um, um, so there's this thing, you know, some, some patients benefit from being woken up with, with their skull open in surgery. This, that's just-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:15:05

       How could you benefit from that?

    6. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:15:07

       Because whereas this dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, we kind of know where it is, whereas the movement area, like the hand region, we kind of know where it is, you know, just based on an MRI. It's consistent in you and, and me and others. Language is in a neighborhood, it's in the left temporal lobe, right around here. And there is no, uh, there is no specific address for it, it's just different in, in both of us. And so to figure out, um, where language is so you don't hurt it as you're trying to enter the deep brain through that area, you have to map the brain. And let me, and so what we're trying to do is to get to it... So, uh, the neurons, the bodies of the jellyfish, molecular jellyfish are all on the surface, and then their t- their axons and tentacles converge into the middle of the brain. So the cortex, the canopy, the treetops is where all the, where all the thoughts are happening, if you will. Um, and so what we're trying to do is identify the parts of the treetop right here, the cortex, that when you stun the activity in this tiny little area, it doesn't lead to anyth- any issues with them talking or understanding. And this is a, this isn't just like they'll still be able to text. You can, you can hurt the whole capacity of language. So, uh, the only way to do that is to wake, wake them up in surgery, and there's a, you numb the scalp, you put them under anesthesia, you open the skull, it's like ice fishing, uh, then you, there's a little covering on the brain called the dura mater, it's like a, uh, it's like, um, you know, like a sort of a, a skydiving parachute material. You can pick it up and stitch it at the end.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:16:46

       Mm.

    8. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:16:47

       Uh, uh, you open it up and then there it is. It's beautiful, it's stunning, it's white, speckled with blood vessels. Um, and, um, and then you, then you let them wake up slowly over 30 minutes, uh, you know, the propofol is lightened, and then somebody engages them and you have them count and sing and sometimes even play the guitar. Like, UCLA's got a YouTube video of somebody doing that, like, bigger capacities, right? Um, not just like pinch your finger, but... And so they'll sing, like, they'll sing or they'll count and they'll do it in multiple languages. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. And then you'll, then you'll take a little spot, a little electrical pen, uh, faint as but electricity, and the brain can't feel when it's being touched, it only feels through the nerves it sends out. So when you dissect the brain on an awake patient, they have no idea what's going on. And, uh, you tickle the, uh, you tickle the spot and they, and you stun those, like, collection of neurons there maybe the size of like a tiny pea, and they keep counting, one, two, three, four, five, one, t- and you say, "Okay, I can go through this little piece to the deeper brain and then I won't hurt their language, uh, abilities." So you put a little white piece of confetti on there or a number.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:17:56

       Mm.

    10. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:17:57

        And then you go next to it, and then you'll find areas that cause speech arrests. You'll say, it'll be like, "One, two, three, four," and you'll buzz it, it'll go, "One, two, three, three, three, three, three, three, three." That's for real. You guys can look all that up. That's been going on for 60, 70 years. And you say, "That caused speech arrests." You put a little red piece of confetti. So at the end, the surface of the brain, as you're going deeper, looks like Swiss cheese and you've, you've identified the portals through which you can dissect to take out the deeper tumor, uh, and not injure their language.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:18:27

        Why is language such an important indicator?

    12. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:18:30

        Ooh, that's a big question. I mean, I think it, uh, um, I think it m- it kind of makes us who we are. I mean, it was sort of a, uh, a differentiating thing for, for mammals, uh, i- is language and then all the complexity that comes with language. But it, it is housed in a neighborhood, and unlike the frontal lobes, uh, there's not a lot of redundancy. So the motor strip is the same. Apes, (laughs) you know, humans, the same. Language, it's kind of a fuzzy address. One frontal lobe can be injured with a spike-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:19:09

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    14. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:19:09

        ... with a tumor, and people are mostly fine. I mean, they go home, they drive, they go to work. So there's a maximum ris- redundancy in these...The prefrontal cortex is a, it's a- it's an important word. It's front of the front. It's the, the things that, uh, that pushed our foreheads forward, and it has three very interesting components, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is mostly out here, dorsal, up, lateral. It's just fancy. Then there's an orbital frontal cortex, which is sort of sits above the eyes, and that does a lot of, like, when people are injured there, they can't change their political views, or they don't get, like, social faux pas. Like, there's a lot of complex social things that happen up here with a lot of redundancy. And then language and feelings of spirituality and stimulating here where people, like, have nightmares, smell burnt toast, that's temporal lobe, uh, and that's f- that's a fuzzy area without a lot of redundancy, and then the motor strip is a very precise area. So there, there are different regions you have to learn how to dissect, uh-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:20:11

        Uh-huh.

    16. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:20:11

        ... around and through.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:20:12

        Mm-hmm. And some of them can have a little bit of damage and you still function relatively well-

    18. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:20:16

        And others are gonna get in trouble.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:20:16

        ... and some of them even a tiny bit of damage, and it's-

    20. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:20:19

        Exactly.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:20:19

        ... it's wrecked. Yeah, that's-

    22. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:20:20

        And that's the, that's the craft is how do I get to the deeper brain? Um, how do I, which-

    23. CWChris Williamson1:20:26

        Without damaging anything that doesn't have redundancy.

16. 1:20:29 – 1:22:42

    How Dreams Differ in Brain Injuries

    1. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:20:29

       Yeah.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:20:30

       How do dreams differ in people that have got brain injuries or-

    3. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:20:33

       Hmm, that's a good question.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:20:34

       ... really severe trauma?

    5. RJDr Rahul Jandial1:20:35

       Um, that's a good question. The, um, the range of injuries vary. The range of drugs vary. I couldn't, I couldn't figure out, like, the dreams on drugs was just so wild, I couldn't find a pattern. I mean, you know, people smoke weed, uh, they don't remember much, so are they having fewer dreams or fewer, less dream recall? And then there were stimulants and antidepressants and all the different combinations. I couldn't find a consistent pattern for it to become a chapter. I think that'll be for the next author. And similarly, in brain injury, um, uh, there, there wasn't really a consistent pattern with exception to one. The, uh, the thalamus is sort of like this, uh, the pineal gland that they talk about being the third eye, uh, we- we remove that. Melatonin goes away when we remove that and patients are fine. So I'm not saying that people shouldn't believe in the, that concept and Descartes and third eye, but the pineal gland is essentially a vestig- you know, it's like an appendix. But the central, like the size of an egg, there's something called the thalamus, which is sort of the gate for all the sensations coming up, and it refines the movements going out. When you have injury in that area, uh, they tend to have a lot more lucid dreams, uh, immediately afterwards. So, like, like, it's- it's almost like, uh, there's too much arousal permitted in the sleeping state because the thalamus is injured, right?

Episode duration: 2:05:04