Peter Attia MD249 ‒ How the brain works, Andrew’s fascinating backstory, improving scientific literacy, and more
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,267 words- 0:00 – 0:08
Intro
- PADr. Peter Attia
[upbeat music] Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. [upbeat music]
- 0:08 – 6:43
Exercise under blood flow restriction, lactate utilization & transient changes in the brain function in response to adrenaline and stress
- PADr. Peter Attia
Well, Andrew, awesome to have you here again, but this is the first time we're, we're gonna sit down and do something formal about it as opposed to just play patty cakes in the garage.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Great to be here. I always enjoy seeing you. I always learn from you. And when I train with you, I always, um, enter a new pained state, uh, like this morning with the, uh, uh, blood flow restriction training. I mean-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah, so what did... What did that, uh... How did you enjoy that? Just, I guess, for listeners, what did we do? We, we put the... You, you had done a pretty big workout. You went for a run.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Uh, I hadn't yet gone for a run. I hopped on the assault bike and was just pedaling and warming up, then I started doing some intervals of pedaling harder.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah. Looked like you were working hard.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. And then I hopped off and was headed out for a run, and you said, "Let's pl- put the, uh, blood flow restriction cuffs on and give you a little workout." And I thought, "Oh, we'll do it like last time," and, um, put them on my arms. And I've done that workout before, you do some curls with a light weight with the blood flow restriction cuffs, and it's... Those were extremely painful in the past. Um, this time putting on the legs was less painful in a localized way. It was more of a whole body [chuckles] pain. Uh, so it was more distributed. But pedaling, uh, for two minutes at, uh, 220 watts with the, uh, cuffs on my thighs, you don't feel like your legs are gonna pop. You feel like your whole body is a little bit swollen. But then when you come off of that two minutes and you take the cuffs off, I can't really describe the feeling, but it's, it's somewhere between, uh, bliss, relief, and a, a supercharge. You know, so I took off for a run, I think feeling more energized than I had in a long, long time.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah, it's... I do what I had you do today. I do that two to three times a week at the end of a leg workout. And, um, you're right, it's very different. There is something about the BFR cuffs on the arm, and I, I don't... I suspect it's because there's less fat here and it's easier to compress the vasculature, so you get more distal occlusion.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- PADr. Peter Attia
But I, I agree with you completely. Like doing bicep curls with b- with those cuffs on is... It is really the definition of hell, and it's much more of an deep, awful pain in the legs.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Uh, but anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, I did enjoy it. I, uh, I've noticed because I've now done, uh, the blood flow restriction training three times, today being the third, that when it's done on the upper body, the pain can be very localized and it starts to migrate around in interesting ways. I think I've actually learned a thing or two about the distribution of sensory receptors in the upper body.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Hmm.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Immense pain in the, in the hands, for instance.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And then the moment you think you can't tolerate it at all, it migrates to your shoulder and away from the hands. And, uh, again, with the legs, it's more evenly distributed. But I think as long as people don't try and cowboy it and just t- tie tourniquets, which would be a bad... You'd need the proper blood flow restriction cuffs, obviously. Um, I think it's an incredible training. Can you just remind me what some of the, um, benefits are? Uh, growth hormone increase for, for sure. Uh, minimal soreness despite getting quite a lot of, um, metabolic activity.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah, it's basically less trauma-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- PADr. Peter Attia
... uh, with, with, with more sort of metabolic benefit as well. So the, so the re- one of the reasons I like doing this set I had you do today is, um, I like exposing my legs to lactate, right? So the more lactate you're exposed to, the more MCT the cells will upregulate. So basically you want your cells to become more and more efficient at taking lactate and getting it out of the cell.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And ultimately, right, lactate's an amazing fuel. I mean, you probably know more about its role in neurons, which I think is just starting to become appreciated. We've typically thought of neurons as only accepting glucose and ketones, but I think there's emerging evidence that lactate is a fuel. Um, and then of course the liver can turn lactate right back into glucose via the Cori cycle. So I think the more efficiently our cells can get lactate out and start processing, it's not a poison as we, I think, once... You know, we once thought of lactate as kind of like a bad thing. It's not. It's just, it's bad if you don't know what to do with it.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, my understanding about the distribution of neurons that preferentially use lactate as a fuel under conditions of, let's say, high stress but also just high exertion, doesn't have to be stressful, is that for somewhat obvious reasons, the hypothalamus and areas of the brain stem that control breathing and more primitive functions-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Hmm
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... are going to utilize that fuel preferentially first. And this is actually evident when, for instance, you get into an ice bath or any kind of, um, adrenaline shock environment. The, what little neuroimaging is out there tells us that the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in kind of, um, rule setting and decision making, but really rule and contingency setting, we could talk more about this, sh- essentially shuts down, but doesn't shut down because of lack of electrical activity. It shuts down because there's a preferential shuttling of glucose and lactate to other regions of the brain that just need to keep everything online. So you get into the ice... Uh, uh, translated to plain English, you get into the ice bath, you get the shot of adrenaline, or you get the shot of adrenaline from anything, seeing a car crash or getting a troubling text message, and essentially your forebrain quiets for about 20 to 30 seconds and all the other systems kind of ramp up in terms of survivability, uh, functions. And then forebrain can come online. I think that a lot of people feel hijacked by the autonomic response associated with hypothalamus and brain stem activation. Heart rate goes up, breathing goes up, pupils dilate, tunnel vision. All of that happens immediately, and I think m- most people aren't familiar with those states and, um, the more familiar we can become with those states and the fact that they are indeed transient, the lower the probability we get hijacked by them. So this is classic stress inoculation, but it's, um, nice to see that nowadays a number of people are doing this outside the military and outside of sports training and just teaching themselves to be comfortable with that pulse of adrenaline and doing it through deliberate cold exposure or the c- the, um, uh, blood restriction cuffs, I think once you feel that first shot of pain, like, "How am I gonna make it through two minutes of this?" Um, that's another place where you just keep going and then all of a sudden your brain comes online. The forebrain comes online.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah, that's interesting. So basically for, for, for a layperson like me when it comes to the brain, um, th- the... We basically evolutionary have decided that, that the most advanced part of the brains we can basically sacrifice temporarily for midbrain, brainstem, all of these things that are absolutely essential. And so it's, it's basically a shunting of resources away from a somewhat gratuitous part of the brain that is the most evolved?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, and I think when I say things like the forebrain shuts down, I'm using a broad brushstroke.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah, yeah. You just mean less resources are available
- 6:43 – 13:28
Role of the prefrontal cortex in governing rulesets
- PADr. Peter Attia
for it.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. I mean, the, one of the more powerful set of discoveries in the last few years, it comes from a colleague of mine at Stanford, Nolan Williams, who's in psychiatry and neurology. And um, I think the simplest way to think about it is the following, the, the prefrontal cortex, it's a brain real estate right behind the forehead, is really involved in rule setting for co- by context. So, um, you know, there's this classic Stroop task. You give people a bunch of cards with words or l- numbers written on them in different colors, and then you ask them to read the words or the numbers. It's pretty straightforward. Or you ask them to tell you the colors and ignore what the words say. Sounds easy. Actually-
- PADr. Peter Attia
It's very hard
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... hard to do-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... when going fast.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yep.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And then you start switching back and forth. That is a very prefrontal cortex dependent kind of task. And what does it reflect? It reflects the ability to adjust your ruleset depending on what's demanded of you in the context. So when I walk in here for a podcast, very different ruleset and context than when I'm alone at home or when I'm public speaking or whether or not I'm, even now I'm podcasting, right? Slightly different rulesets being a guest versus hosting a podcast, but completely different sets when you're spending time with your children, your wife alone. So rule setting and context is completely governed by prefrontal cortex, hence the famous case of Phineas Gage, who caught a tamping iron, destroyed his orbitofrontal prefrontal cortex. And-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Why don't you tell that story? It's such a great-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah
- PADr. Peter Attia
... story that everybody learns in neuroanatomy.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. So the, this is a classic story in neuroscience, and I should just mention that, um, because I know that many people out there, especially in the Twitter sphere, um, are obsessed with clinical trials, and clinical trials are wonderful and are m- immensely powerful. But we have to remember, uh, that in medicine and in particular in neuroscience, most of what we know, for instance, about memory comes from one single patient, H.M., the famous H.M. who had hip- bilateral hippocampal damage. That's, uh, th- they deliberately burned out his hippocampi to offset epilepsy, temporal lobe epis- epilepsy. Um, in the case of Phineas Gage, it was a naturally occurring lesion. A, he was a, a railwo- railroad worker, excuse me, um, and they would drive these, these tamps in with explosives, and he caught one coming up through the base of his jaw. It went out through the forehead, somehow missed the critical vasculature, and he survives. This thing literally shot out the top of his head, and he survived, and thereafter, um, he became somebody who did not obey rulesets. Uh, inappropriate behavior. He wasn't necessarily, um, uh, profane, but he didn't behave correctly for the context. Whereas before he was very well-mannered and he adjusted his behavior according to con- so when he's out with beers for friends or working on the railroads, he might speak and behave one way, go home, speak and behave another way, et cetera. Completely lost the ability to, um, switch rulesets according to context. So classic case, um, his skull is preserved. There've been a lot of, um, rumors about h- his behavior that are somewhat correct and incorrect. There's also, for example, um, just one more thing, uh, this was, uh, actually a lyric in a Bob Dylan song, um, Klüver-Bucy syndrome, a syndrome which, uh, bilateral damage to the amygdala, which many people think of as involved in fear. Um, but it's really a defense and kind of alertness system, uh, uh, in the brain is what the amygdala is really involved in. And monkeys or people who have bilateral amygdala damage, they can still experience certain kinds of fear. For instance, um, you drive up CO2, carbon dioxide in their environment or make them breathe pure CO2, they will panic, but they become, um, unafraid of things like snakes if previously they were afraid of snakes, and they become kind of sexually and, um, [lips smack] uh, food inappropriate. So they'll pick up a pen and start to gnaw on it, maybe taste it. Normally, we don't try and taste inanimate objects. Um, and the monkeys would try and, um, copulate with various inanimate objects. And so there's this kind of bizarre lack of context. And the, believe it or not, even though we think of the prefrontal cortex as this very evolved structure-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Mm
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... it is intimately involved with the, with the so-called limbic pathway. It's actually w- what we call monosynaptic.
- PADr. Peter Attia
So it's less evolved than the top of the cortex, the neocortex?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. It's kind of interesting. You know, the, the whole, um, dating of, of cortical areas is a little bit of a controversial thing, but beautiful work by Arnold Kriegstein at UCSF has focused on this using actually, uh, uh, carbon dating-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Mm
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... um, as a way to approach this.
- PADr. Peter Attia
How, how would carbon dating help in that?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. So they've looked at brains from different species, and they're starting to l- I mean, establishing homology from, say, a macaque versus a baboon versus a human. Humans from different, um... You know, the, the thing about, I should just interrupt myself and say the, the thing that's hard about studying the nervous system is that there's, in terms of homology and evolution, is there's no fossil record.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Right.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Like, the, the skull is preserved, but the brain act- you know-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... essentially degenerates and disappears, so you dig up, uh, some bones and there's nothing there. And the two ways that you establish homology, um, actually come from, uh, development. One is developmental position. In general, um, when you look at two different brain areas, like let's say the hippocampus, an area associated with memory in a mouse versus a human, in the mouse, the hippocampus is up near the top of the brain, and in a human it's down near the bottom and you say, "Well, how can those be the same structure?" But if you look during development, they, they start off in the exact same place. It's just that the human brain, because it has so much neocortex, the outer shell, the whole thing starts-
- PADr. Peter Attia
I see
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... moving and moving and moving, and it ends up down there at the bottom. The, the second criteria for establishing homology, um, between species of a given brain area or neuron type is connectivity. And so We know, for instance, that the prefrontal cortex and amygdala are monosynaptically connected. There's just one connection, because ultimately everything's connected to everything, right? You and I are related [chuckles] through some distant lineage-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Wait, let me make sure I, I heard you correctly. You're saying that between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex is one synaptic connection? That's it? It doesn't go through a network?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Correct. There-- If we were to put a anatomical tracer into the amygdala or to the prefrontal cortex, you would see direct connections between those two structures, and you would see connections with intervening structures. Because, of course, ultimately everything in the brain is connected to everything. It just, just like on Google Maps, everything's connected to everything, even if by way of ocean. [chuckles] Um, the, the presence of a monosynaptic, one connection or direct connection, or even a disynaptic where there's an intervening connection but only one, it is an important criteria because what it really says is that it establishes very fast communication between structures. And, you know, the brain is so metabolically demanding in general that, you know, here we're making up just so stories, but we have to assume that evolution doesn't d- and did not introduce a lot of extraneous wiring.
- 13:28 – 24:37
New discoveries about the circuitry between the prefrontal cortex, insula, and amygdala, & the insights gleaned about brain function in different emotional states
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
So when we think about prefrontal cortex, we think, oh, there's this, you know, executive function, complex rule setting, contingencies. It must be very evolved, and indeed it's the region of the human brain that's expanded relative to other primates and other species. But it's involved in some primitive stuff as well, not just by way of connectivity. And this kind of brings us back to the Nolan Williams discovery and point, which is that I don't want to throw out a ton of nomenclature here, but we've got prefrontal cortex for this rule setting and contingencies. You've got things like the amygdala and associated structures, they're kind of threat detection, but are kind of generic. They, they raise heart rate, they raise awareness, they raise-- they change the visual system, and they, they tune your auditory system to localize things as opposed to paying attention to everything in your environment. Imagine kind of a cone of attention at a, the so-called cocktail party effect. You're trying to hear a conversation in particular, not listen to just the buzz and the clinks of the glasses and stuff in the room. Okay. But also in that circuitry with involving prefrontal cortex and amygdala is an area of the brain that is becoming more important to neuroscientists all the time, and important-- and especially to clinicians, which is the insula. The insula has a map of the body surface and the internal organs, and is essentially controlling, at least in one region, interoception, which is our perception of everything that's happening within our body. Our perception that our heart rate has increased or decreased, our perception that our blood pressure is dropping, our perception that our gut feels acidic or full or empty, et cetera. All of the visceral organs are mapped there, and it also-
- PADr. Peter Attia
What's the, what's the physical size of this region?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Ooh, that's a great question. The amygdala's of the insular cortex is, um, is fairly expanded in humans, meaning, uh, I'd have to check, but it's, it's going to be larger than a few millimeters, which in neural real estate, um-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Wait, this is a subpiece of the amygdala or this is-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
No, this is a separate structure.
- PADr. Peter Attia
It's distinct.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
The insular cortex. Yeah.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Okay.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Um, but that's a great question. I, I'd, I'd have to go check the measurements.
- PADr. Peter Attia
But it's that small?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
It's small-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... but it contains a complete map of the internal body surface, and it's in a position, this is really cool, it's in a position to integrate information about the outside world and rulesets and it-- and internal state, and they all converge there. Now, under conditions where we are rested, we are k- feeling rational, we understand the environment, we feel in control of things, the prefrontal cortex leads activation of the amygdala and the insula. In other words, the-- I can say, "Okay, you know, my heart rate's going up a little bit, but I've done a podcast before, I can get comfortable here." Okay? Someone who's never p- done public speaking, however, if they get out on stage and they're feeling their heart rate going up and they're thinking, "Oh my God, I'm gonna pass out," or, "I'm gonna say something ridiculous," and they're panicking, what happens there? Well, Nolan's lab and others have shown that now the insula activity and the amygdala starts leading the ruleset of the prefrontal cortex. The-- In o- other words, the, the coach now becomes the player, right? The trainer becomes the trainee. It, it-- So it's literally an inversion of, of instead of it going prefrontal cortex leads to insula leads amygdala, it's insula and amygdala lead prefrontal cortex. And so the prefrontal cortex doesn't shut down completely under conditions of, say, getting into an ice bath or panic. The prefrontal cortex b- can only access one or two very specific rulesets. You lose flexibility of thinking. And this is kind of a duh when you hear it, but I think the fact that neuroscientists are finally identifying the underlying neurology is very exciting, because what we're talking about is that neural circuits can run in both directions, and we had always thought it was, okay, this activates that, activates that, it's kind of a chain of events. But it can run in the other direction too, and this is why, for instance-
- PADr. Peter Attia
And sorry, just to make sure I understand, 'cause I, again, I a-apologize for my ignorance on this. Um, you're saying that the action potential moves in the other direction, and the neurotransmitters-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
No
- PADr. Peter Attia
... are actually released on the other side of the synapse?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
No, I'm so glad that you asked this question. No. The, the, these, all these-
- PADr. Peter Attia
They're, they have two versions
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... all these structures are reciproc-
- PADr. Peter Attia
They're in parallel
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... they're recipr-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Okay, got it
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... they're reciprocally connected. That's right. So we, we haven't changed anything about the underlying cell biology, about the axon propagating down the axon-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Okay
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... um, uh, the action potential propagating down the axon and transmitter release. It's just that it's a two-way highway.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And suddenly, um, if everything was running north to south when we are in our rational, uh, mind, you know, cre-creativity, all of those things under conditions of, of, of calm, uh, as soon as a certain level of internal discomfort arises, everything starts running south to north. And I think that's exceedingly interesting because it means for i-- first of all, it means that neural circuits are not just, y-you know, the, all the classic lesion data. You lesion a structure, like you remove some prefrontal cortex like the Phineas Gage example, and you can start to see why, huh- You know, that's a cool, like, naturally occurring experiment. I mean, unfortunate for him, but cool for the world because we learned. But it's not a great experiment because you're just getting an impression of what happens when you blow up one city along this map, right?
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
It doesn't tell you anything about the direction of flow of information in and out of that map. And so the more we learn about prefrontal cortex and these other structures like the insula, the more we start to understand that the brain has neurons, of course, and we have what are called receptive fields, which are, you know, basically the, the way in which specific neurons are activated by specific events in the world, either in our bodies or outside our bodies, but that those receptive fields are very dynamic depending on context. And that the brain, while it has all this diversity of response, it's not infinite. We have modes that we sort of fall into bins of when autonomic arousal, that is levels of alertness, um, it doesn't always have to be stress, I mean, in the context of, uh, say, sexual arousal or hunger, the ruleset becomes very, very narrow, right? It- it's, it's find food. It's have sex. It's, um, fall asi- find a safe place to fall asleep. Whereas when we are rested and we have our basic needs met, whatever those may be, then opens up the opportunity to start thinking in new and novel ways. You can think, oh, it's sort of like the Stroop task on, you know, taken to the extreme. It's, okay, you know, we're 2023, um, you know, what is the metaverse gonna look like? What's Twitter? What's gonna happen to Twitter? You know, what, what's gonna happen to the economy? What's gonna happen to public health? Is there gonna be another, you know, m- debacle with, you know, public health communication as it was over the last few years [laughs] , et cetera? And so you can start thinking in the way... What you can start doing is combining different rulesets and evaluating those different rulesets. And this, I believe, is one of the reasons why many people experience their best ideas from doing a lot of structured thinking, but also from, you know, taking a walk, and all of a sudden an idea comes to us, or in the shower, or, um, when we aren't focusing on the implementation of a specific ruleset, it's very clear that the prefrontal cortex has this ability, depending on what else is going on in our body, to k- sort of start swirling and combining these different rulesets. And I, I know you and I are both fascinated by high performance, you with, with F1 and a number of other things, I in some other domains, but, you know, th- this sort of classic laddering up of, you know, unskilled is the start of any, you know, of performance, then skilled, then mastery, and then this thing that we love to observe, which is virtuosity, which is this combining of rulesets in a way that it seems even the, the, the performer didn't even realize was possible. Anyway, I've transitioned to a number of, of domains, but at the very least, what this whole prefrontal cortex, insula, amygdala circuitry is teaching us, again, mainly through the work of Nolan Williams, this is not work from my laboratory, is that when people are in states of calm, and certainly in states of what we consider mental health, things run north to south, prefrontal cortex downward. When people, for instance, people who are depressed have deficits in activation of, in particular, the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and much of their thinking and their life is run from the insula and amygdala up to the prefrontal cortex, and this is why people, um, they believe th- you know, wake up thinking, you know, «I don't know how to accomplish anything today, uh, and there's no point in trying.» Their rulesets are f- seem like they don't work because they are only able to access specific rulesets of thinking. And so the rest of us say, "Well, hey, like, get some exercise and go for, you know, uh, apply for a job, look for a new relationship," but their rulesets are not available to them. It's almost like they can't see the play board in the same way. And so Nolan's lab has been using, for instance, transcranial magnetic stimulation to activate, not inhibit, but activate dors- dorsolat- left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in particular, and seeing that all of a sudden, people are starting to, truly in the moment, new ideas about rulesets are revealed to them. And they-
- PADr. Peter Attia
And is the idea there that if you stimulate and activate and send a current back north to south, it automatically reduces the south to north or just overwhelms it?
- 24:37 – 39:43
Comparing human vision & other senses to animals
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I, I'm very, very open to the idea that the body plays an important role in all things health and perception. But there is something particularly important about the real estate in our skulls, right?
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah, so this is kind of where I want to go, right?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I mean, you could amputate all four of my limbs and, um, that would suck for me, um, but I'd still be Andrew. If you take out one square millimeter of my prefrontal cortex, who knows? Maybe I'd be a nicer guy, but chances are I'm going to be a very different person. Now, that is not true if you remove one square millimeter of, say, a different brain area, um, and I could think of a few where if you put a gun to my s- head and you forced me to do that to myself, um, they'll... I'll tell you one thing. I'll say the last place I would ever allow you to take a square millimeter of neural tissue is my neural retina because there, you know, the, you take one square millimeter of [laughs] my neural-
- PADr. Peter Attia
That's interesting. I would have guessed hippocampus
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... No, there are a few things I'd like to forget. I might ask where they're mapped and then to take, have you delete there.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Okay.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
But in all seriousness, I think the neural retina, um, would be the last place. I guess the peripheral retina. I don't care so much about being able to see out here in my periphery, although that's what you use when you're driving. A lot of people think you use foveal vision, central vision for driving. I hate to tell you this, but there are many people out there driving around right now who are legally blind in their central vision. Are they great drivers? No. Are they decent enough drivers to pass the [laughs] driving test? Th- they are. So a lot of blind people, legally blind people are driving cars.
- PADr. Peter Attia
In other words, you're basically saying you would prioritize vision over any other part of your brain?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Absolutely, except perhaps motor cortex. Um, 'cause I could handle missing one eye, but I... Listen, I, if you look at the allocation of real estate in the human brain, it's very clear that vision and movement dominate most of the requirements.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah, so it's interesting. Uh, movement clearly if you look at, you know, the, the sort of, the, the movement cortex. Also sensation though. I mean the homunculus-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- PADr. Peter Attia
... is enormous, right?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Um, remind me how much real estate... I know the occipital cortex is responsible for vision just on a, on a neuron basis as a percent of total neurons.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Is that the right way to think about it?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Or would you also include the glial cells?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Uh, well, in, um, uh, homage to Ben Barres, the great Ben Barres, my postdoc advisor and your former instructor at Stanford-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah, we'll talk, we're gonna talk about Ben shortly
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... we'll talk about Ben.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Uh, we should include the glia. Um, otherwise the, the glianistas are gonna come after me. But glia obviously are very important cells. But if you were to just say strict, you know, volume-based real estate-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... and you were to say, okay, how much of the human brain is allocated for vision and vision only, but also how much of the human brain includes neurons that are responsive to visual stimuli? So these might be areas of your auditory cortex that are also responsible for vision because, of course, if you hear something over to your left, you tend to look over to your left, so there's integration. They're multi-mode, what we call multimodal neurons. They have auditory and visual receptive fields. They can be activated by auditory and visual cues. You say 40-plus percent, probably 40 to 42% of the human brain has visual response specificity. Incredible.
- PADr. Peter Attia
This is amazing. Y- you've probably heard me talk about this before, but one of the things I enjoy about, um, bow hunting is the ability to observe other species and how they have different superpowers from us. So, um, anybody who's ever been out there with a bow trying to, you know, get an axis deer or an elk will tell you their hearing is incredible, but their sense of smell is next level. It's... We don't have a way to comprehend it. I once heard, might have been Michael Easter, I don't remember, but an author, someone... No, it wasn't. It was actually... I don't remember. Anyway, some- someone once gave this amazing description, which was they were out walking and they came across a carcass that was, I forget what the animal was. It was, like, some animal that had been killed by another animal, but it was mostly still there, and it was rotting, and it was rancid beyond words once they were within, like, 10 feet of it, and the analogy they used is, "This is what we smell like to an elk a mile away."
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Oh, that's such a great way to put it. I need to... Because we always hear, you know, sharks can smell a drop of blood in the water from a mile away, but it's hard to think about that.
- PADr. Peter Attia
It's hard to imagine what that is.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, it doesn't translate to our own map of experience. I have to, um, mention a book, which is a wonderful book that, uh, frankly, I was a little pissed when it came out, um, in the best of ways 'cause I always wanted to write.
- PADr. Peter Attia
It's the book you wanted to write.
- 39:43 – 47:06
A deep dive into vision: evolutionary adaptations, facial recognition & color
- PADr. Peter Attia
the, the olfactory component is really profound, right? Like you walk into a fish market and you want to puke, and five minutes later you're, you've sort of forgotten about it-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
That's right
- PADr. Peter Attia
... and you're looking at the fish.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
That's right.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Um, do we have that profound a, uh, again, I don't want to use the word adaptation 'cause it's not necessarily the right word, but I think just for people to understand. I don't... Is there examples of where we have that visually as well, that strong an adaptation?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. What, uh, there are a couple of them. Um, I mean there's, there's rapid plasticity in terms of adaptation. Um, [lips smack] well, if you go into a fun house mirror type environment, they, they tend to change the, um, that's more of a visual percept- uh, proprioceptive feedback where at first you feel kind of wobbly and then you can move. You're like, "Oh, when I see myself move that way in the mirror, that's not really how I need to respond." But at first you feel a little off balance. Um, they've put, there's very fast adaptation of the sort, like you can put in, uh, gl- this is a wild experiment. You put glasses on somebody that inverts the visual world. That's got to throw off your day. But guess what? Within four hours you're navigating just fine. What happens-
- PADr. Peter Attia
What?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
This is crazy. The receptive fields invert, and all of a sudden you see the world right side up. Now that's wild.
- PADr. Peter Attia
What? You actually see it right side up or you just learn that left is right and right is left?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
No, you, uh, it flips, which is crazy.
- PADr. Peter Attia
In four hours?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, about four hours or so.
- PADr. Peter Attia
What actually happens at the cellular level to enable that?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. The, so th- this has been studied, uh, by, um, Thomas Poggio and, and others, um, and it's still somewhat of a mystery, but this has to do with whether, uh, it appears it's bottom up changes, meaning it shifts in the oculomotor and visulomotor structures of the brain stem-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Hmm
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... communicating with the higher level perceptual centers of, of the cortex. Remember if we were to splay out the, um, from most primitive to most evolved functions within vision, we'd say, and we can make up just so stories of, I always joke, you know, I wasn't consulted at the design phase so I don't know the-
- PADr. Peter Attia
[laughs]
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... I don't know the logic. By the way, anytime someone asks you, you know, why is something this way? The response should be, "I wasn't consulted in the design phase."
- PADr. Peter Attia
"Consulted in the design phase." I love it.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
That's actually a phrase that I, I borrowed from, uh, Russ Van Gelder, who's the chair of ophthalmology at, uh, at University of Washington. So, um, uh, thank you, Russ. But, but it, it captures the fact that, [laughs] you know, anyone who tells you that they were to consult at the design phase or seems to understand why something is arranged a certain way, you can come up with just so stories, but that person might be suffering from delusions of grandeur. So in any event, what we know for sure is that based on genetics and cellular architecture, et cetera, that the primary function of the visual system was not to see and perceive things. It was to recognize when it's daytime and when it's nighttime. Now, we'll get back to this because this is, turns out to be an important mystery that was solved recently. The neurons that, that handle this are the so-called melanopsin intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells. They don't pay attention to shapes. They don't pay attention to much, but they tell the brain when it's daytime and they tell the brain when it's absence of, of light. Okay, this is Satchin Panda, Samer Hattar, all the, all the greats of circadian biology. Matt Walker. This stuff relates to sleep and wakefulness. The next thing is neurons that can sense contrast and motion. More important to me than knowing that, like, your skin is a particular tone is just knowing that you are there and that you are a moving object, as opposed to stationary objects in the room that I just need to navigate around. Okay? So motion and con- contrast and motion comes next. Then comes shape and form. Like, is that a fish that I want to move away from or do I want to, uh, approach and eat? Is it bigger than I am? Is it smaller than I am? These kinds of things. And then comes color of the more traditional sort, although I'll return to this interesting thing about color. And then the final category is specific features of shape, such as your face. I recognize your face, or JFK's face or Marilyn Monroe's face, and indeed-
- PADr. Peter Attia
I like being in the same category as those two really famous faces.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, there you go.
- PADr. Peter Attia
So yeah, there you go.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
As it should be. I mean, there's an area of the brain called the fusiform face gyrus. It lies way up along the visual pathway, meaning very far from the retina, but neurons there are exquisitely tuned to specific faces. In fact, um, if you lesion that area, people become what's called prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia is the syndrome, um, whereby people say, "That's a face. I know it's a face, but I don't know whose face it is." Even-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Would that be true if it's their own?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
[lips smack] I don't know the answer to that, but it certainly gives them, uh, severe deficits in processing, recognizing faces as someone in particular. In fact, Ben Barres, who we both will get back to, had a mild face recognition deficit. I would sometimes walk into his office, he'd say, "Are you Chala?" Chala was a woman that worked in our lab. Now, that kind of question might have been more context appropriate given it was Ben, and that will make sense in a few minutes. Uh, Ben was transgendered, so that he could kind of, uh, maybe his notions of gender and faces were a little bit inter- intermixed. But we don't think that people who are transgendered perceive other people as different genders. But he sometimes would say, "Is that Rich or is that Andy?" He called me Andy. And he'd ask Rich if he was Andy. And so the, the reality is that, um, this brain area controls recognition of facial identity. Incredible, but v- but very high level function.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And just to be clear, there are, uh, you know, extreme examples, obviously a lesion where you can't recognize anybody. But for someone listening to this, um, there are, I'm sure, people who go to parties and they meet somebody and they say, "Hey, Peter," and you're like, "Yeah."
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. Exactly.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And, and it's like, "Yeah, we... Didn't you... We met three months ago at so-and-so's."
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Right. There are also super recognizers. These people are-
- 47:06 – 56:55
Sense of smell, pheromones, & why evolution developed better vision over smell
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And I should just mention while I'm here, you asked earlier whether or not we trait- you know, whether or not our olfaction is diminished. Really beautiful work by a couple, Deeb and Deeb, D-E-E-B, um, Sameer Deeb and his partner, and I can't remember her name, forgive me, um, at the University of Washington, showed that if you look at the human genetics or genomics, that humans traded out diversity of olfactory receptors, that is the ability to, to sense a rich array of scents compared to other animals, for evolution of that long, AKA red photopigment. So trichromacy is of this ability to perceive in the color ranges that we perceive-
- PADr. Peter Attia
And, and, and-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... is a, is a late stage evolution, and we traded out olfactory ability for that.
- PADr. Peter Attia
So the question is why? Is it literally a real estate question? Is it a metabolic question?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I think... Well, a number of things. Well, first of all, I want to be fair to the olfactory system and the vomeronasal system. I mean, smell is incredibly important for humans. Anyone that got COVID and couldn't smell well for a day, like myself, that sucked. I, I mean, I remember biting into a handful of blueberries, and I couldn't taste it well either because, uh, it wasn't the cold-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Oh, sure
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... it's the lack of smell. Those s- taste and smell are, are intermeshed. Um, and I thought, "Oh my goodness, my life isn't over, but this really sucks. This is not pleasant at all. These just take like, tastes like little bags of water, and I love blueberries." Okay, fortunately, my smell came back. We are sensitive to the smell of vomit, disgust- I would hope. Uh, we are sensitive to the smell of our, uh, romantic partners, hopefully not discussed, right? Um, we tend to like that sort of-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Our kids.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Our kids.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
The smell of their heads and in the back of their heads.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah. [laughs]
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
They, they produce all sorts of, of scents. The debate between odors and pheromones, pheromones, pheromone effects in humans are, are present. The-
- PADr. Peter Attia
What's the definition of a pheromone?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, so-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Everybody's heard about it, but I don't know the technical definition
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... a pheromone is a, is a molecule re- so hormone obviously is a, a, not obviously, but hormone is a chemical released in one location in the body that can act at that location and many other locations.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Mm-hmm.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
So-called endocrine signaling. A-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Or, or paracrine if it-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Or paracrine
- PADr. Peter Attia
... acts right next to it, yep
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. A, a pheromone is a chemical released by one organism that can act on the physiology of another organism. Now, there are beautiful examples of this-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Can we capture these? Can we actually say, "Here is the molecular structure of a pheromone that was released from the nape of my child's neck that I can smell and love"?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Okay. Um, the presence of true pheromones, the noun, in humans is still debated because the so-called accessory olfactory system that governs that pheromonal response in other animals has n- there's an organ in the human nose called Jacobson's organ that is thought to be the vestigial pheromonal organ. But so that's debated, but what is absolutely clear is that the scent, right, the p- conscious perception of that scent has dramatic effects on our physiology. There's a direct wiring from the olfactory system. So this is not pheromone effects, these are odor effects, and those are two different things. So the idea of a, a chemical coming off of your child and going through the vomeronasal system-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Mm-hmm
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... and impacting these aspects of self os- oxytocin release, probably dopamine release, all sorts of wonderful things, um, that's debated. What is absolutely clear, though, is that that specific scent clearly is perceived and registered by you and has an impact on your physiology.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And if it's not done via a molecule that's traveling through the air, going through the nares of my nose-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- PADr. Peter Attia
... what is the connection?
- 56:55 – 1:02:39
The relationship between visual input & time perception
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
out space. And now of course I don't know 'cause I wasn't there, but there is something important about that relationship between vision and time perception. At some point in human evolution, whether or not it was through the visual system or whether or not it was through the prefrontal cortical mechanisms, something very special happened for old world primates and us in particular, which is the thing that I really believe sets us apart from all the other animals, the reasons that we are the curators of the earth and not other species, is twofold. One, the duration of time in our lifespan in which we can engage neuroplasticity, the ability to deliberately change our neural architecture through learning.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Mm.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And the other one is time perception. At some point we developed the ability to divorce from memories of the past and experiences in the present and also anticipate experiences in the future. And I don't know because I'm not in the elk's mind or the mind of a turtle, but everything that we know about their sensory life and perception says that, sure, they have memories. This whole notion of a goldfish not having a memory, that's, that's like the stupidest thing I ever heard. First of all, the experiment's never been done, and second of all, like, like, why would... The goldfish has to swim in circles. Who, who decided it forgot? I think that's a myth. So but they can remember food is over there. Animals cache food for the winter and go back to those cache sites. It, it, you know, squirrels have incredible-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... memory of location and landmarks and all this stuff. We do that. We have a memory of past. We have perception of present, but we also can think about how past and present relate to anticipation of future events, and that places us in an incredible, uh, arena of interaction with the natural world where we can make plans, and we can make plans in very specific ways. And so I believe, if I were to hedge a, a guess, I'd say our ability to be so dependent on vision and the fact that our visual system has this aperture, we can in- view broad swaths of our visual environment and when we do that, we back, we carve up time in very broad bins. This is very clear. Think about the plane f- flying slowly. Or we can narrow our visual aperture. I mean, you and I could go outside, find a little ant hill, and we could pay attention to all the micro movements of that and focus on that for a couple of hours. We can narrow our visual aperture. Stress will, or excitement will narrow our visual aperture. Remember the prefrontal cortex. Different rule sets associate with different internal states that also relate to different modes of visual perception. And at some point in human evolution, some ancient version of ourselves figured out how to see into the future. We obviously can't directly see into the future, but to anticipate the rule sets of events that are still yet to come. And other animals, if they do that, they don't seem to actualize on that ability. I always joke, you know, my, I had this bulldog for years and he loved chasing rabbits, but he didn't wake up on New Year's Day and say, "Okay, 50 rabbits this year." And if he did, he never actually succeeded in making a good plan to execute that. So-
- PADr. Peter Attia
How, how could we test that? I mean, I, it seems like that's probably the case. Is there a way that one could test that experiment?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Or test that hypothesis rather?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I don't, I don't know. What I do know is that there are certain states, including dreams, the liminal state between waking and sleeping, when we are completely devoid of external visual input, right? Our eyes are closed. And space and time, this is also true in certain psychedelic states, space and time become un, not normal, right? We, you know, you don't- First thing we learn is objects fall down, not up, right? You know, uh, these are our caretakers. Uh, when I feel stressed, I don't know that I need to have my diaper changed. I just scream, my diaper gets changed, hopefully, right?
- PADr. Peter Attia
[laughs]
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Those are the rulesets that we come into the world with, early rulesets. But then at some point, our rulesets become very constrained by our immediate experience-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... right? And by past experience like, "Oh gosh, that teacher is not nice. That babysitter isn't great."
- PADr. Peter Attia
Right. This is kind of the whole thesis of The Matrix, right?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Right.
- PADr. Peter Attia
It's Neo having to unlearn the constraints of the Matrix.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
That's right. And then at some point, our... And I do think it's these experiences of vision that are outside the realm of normal be- of normal experience that the prefrontal cortex, not us consciously, but the prefrontal cortex learns, "Ah, there's the possibility, for instance, of, um, you know, birds fly. We don't fly. But that, you know, I can throw a stick, you know? But what if I could throw a stick with, you know... I don't know. Somebody hung some leather ornaments on that stick and figured out they could throw it a little bit further and a little, [laughs] little longer," right? I mean, these are the, the real, the real world experiments have to be done in the present, of course. And now what I'm saying is obvious, but, but we're getting-
- PADr. Peter Attia
So you're basically saying the evolution of our species suggests that we were able to do this, and we're not seeing that level of complexity in terms of... I don't wanna use planning because then it becomes a tautology. [laughs]
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- PADr. Peter Attia
But we don't see the complexity and behavior out of other species that we do in ourselves and is, is that-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah
- PADr. Peter Attia
... basically the best explanation?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yes. Yeah. I mean, I... Most animals don't... This again relates to this other aspect of ourselves, which is neuroplasticity. Th- there's something, there's some self-knowledge that we have.
- PADr. Peter Attia
I mean, this is a bit of consciousness, right?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Right. I mean, we're getting a little bit into the abstract, and we're certainly not getting into the realm of laboratory experimentation and having proved any of this.
- 1:02:39 – 1:07:57
Mindset effects: the effect of belief on physiology and performance
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
But if I were to p- if I were to put it simply, I think the evolution of the visual system allowed us to think in different time domains. I think things like dreaming and liminal states give us access to visual experiences that are impossible in regular conscious perceptual states. Impossible, right? I mean, I had a dream the other day where I was in a taxi, and then all of a sudden I was someplace else. I mean, this is not real, right? But the brain can learn things in those states. I mean, the, it can learn about new rulesets, new possibilities of rulesets.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Can that be harnessed, do you think? So let's just assume you... I've given a... This is not a great example. It's just the first one that comes to my mind. Go back to, uh, you know, nobody's run a four-minute mile. Nobody's broken the four-minute mile.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And, um, if Roger Bannister had dream after dream of breaking the four-minute mile, do we have reason to believe that that would've impacted his physiology and belief system in the way that it did when he actually broke the four-minute mile-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- PADr. Peter Attia
... and all of a sudden breaking the four-minute mile became a standard occurrence? In other words, the ruleset got broken in the real world-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- PADr. Peter Attia
... and that clearly demonstrated a path to progress. Do we have evidence that had that ruleset been broken in a dream state it could have had a similar effect for the first individual?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Uh, the best evidence I, I have is the incredible work of my colleague at Stanford, Ali Crum, Alia Crum. I'd love to put you guys in touch and just be a fly on the wall for that conversation. That's what's great about podcasting. We can all be flies on the wall for it. Um, she's worked on these mindset effects, uh, or belief effects. These are different than placebo effects. And the short answer is yes. She's... There are a million examples, so I'll give my three favorite examples. Um, you give somebody a milkshake, you tell them it's a low calorie milkshake. Um, you measure things like their insulin, their glucose response, um, level, levels of satiety, levels of ghrelin, et cetera. You give another group a milkshake. You tell them it's a high calorie shake. You take all the same measures.
- PADr. Peter Attia
You'll see different responses?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Vastly different responses. You give, uh, hotel workers a little tutorial on the fact that, you know, cleaning hotel rooms is boring, but it burns calories and, uh, can lower blood pressure, help you lose weight. They lose on average between 8 and 11 pounds in the following three or four weeks, okay? You don't say anything to hotel workers about all the benefits of, of their work and, um, and the exercise that it includes. You just tell them that it involves a lot of movement, et cetera, et cetera. No, no co- no consequence. There's clearly a mindset effect. And the, my favorite example would be the s- the one related to stress, which is you tell people all the negative benef- all the negative impacts of stress on memory and wellbeing and immune system, or you tell people also true data on the performance enhancing effects of stress. Sharpening of memory capacity, reaction time reduced, which is also true, and you see exactly what people believe and, uh, what they're told and what they believe. You can't lie to yourself, but what you believe about a given practice strongly ph- regulates the physiology. Now, this is, um, interesting to me in terms of the four-minute mile or other things. Like you tell people that, um, the burn of lactate, the, um, the, maybe even the lack of sleep that they had the night before reflects a, a training adaptation as opposed to overreaching and overtraining. You're gonna see very different outcomes.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
In fact, Ali's been, um, cueing me to the idea that a lot of the sleep tracking stuff that you tell people you didn't have a good night's sleep-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Oh, absolutely
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... they feel like shit the next day.
- PADr. Peter Attia
I, I-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
You tell them they had a great night's sleep independent of their sleep physiology.
- PADr. Peter Attia
I, I-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And listen, I, I am as much a proponent of sleep as a, the core of mental and physical performance as, as Matt or anyone else, um, you included, but let's be honest, what you believe about what you've been told has an immense impact on your physiology. And I use this to explain some of the battles around nutrition where you hear like these dweebs over here are saying this online, and these dweebs and goons over here are s- And it's kinda silly af- after a while. Clearly, there are, there's a distribution where facts rule and physiology rules. The laws of thermodynamics are, are intact. But then these belief effects can account for anywhere from According to her, anywhere from about 8 to 20% of the effects of anything, like a food or a, or a behavior... She actually set out in her thesis at Harvard, um, to study the effects of exercise, and her advisor said to her, "I think all the effects of exercise are placebo." And it was kind of a, it was a, it was a prompt to go actually look at that. And she thought, "Well, that's crazy." Alia's a D- former D1 athlete. She's also a trained clinical psychologist, runs a lab at Stanford. She's one of these superhumans. But she said, "Well, that's crazy. No, e- exercise changes blood pressure by way of a number of different physiological mechanisms." But she went and tested this idea that it's all placebo. In fact, that there's a lot that is placebo. So mindset effects are real in terms of physiology. Now, does that allow people to break mental barriers? Well, for certain things like engineering, like sending rockets up to Mars, clearly there's an engineering feat that has to be, um, th- that has to adapt to the physical world. There's nothing obvious about that. I can't just will it into existence. But in terms of what the limits are on human performance and what the limits are in terms of create- creative endeavors, well, that's, I mean, as far as we know, that's infinite. Uh,
- 1:07:57 – 1:16:10
Accessing higher levels of creativity with broadening rulesets and the limiting nature of stress and fear on creativity
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
our good friend Rick Rubin, right, has a book on creativity coming out, and, and I don't wanna k- uh, talk about it 'cause there's no way I could capture Rick's brilliance there. But he and I have had a lot of discussions about this, and it- it's, it's clear that creativity is combining of existing rulesets, but also coming up with completely novel rulesets. And it, this is something that it, for the philosophically oriented or for the neuroscience oriented or psychologically oriented, is a fun space. I mean, when was the last time any of us took a walk and thought, "How do I completely fracture my notions of, of the rules in a given domain-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Mm-hmm
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... and, and think about truly new ones?" It's hard to do. But once you set the, for lack of a better word, the intention around that, I do believe that when you enter sleep states, that the brain tries to solve the most important problems that are happening in your daily life.
- PADr. Peter Attia
I think I talked about this on a podcast with Matt Walker a long time ago. I, I have, um, and I'm sure everybody can relate to this. Um, there's something really beautiful about, uh, singular focus and purpose in life. And for me, some of the, the fondest memories would be in, you know, college and medical school, where, you know, life was remarkably simple. You know, you had no responsibility whatsoever. And wh- when I was an undergrad, I mean, uh, uh, the, y- you know, I don't possess the vocabulary to describe how much I loved mathematics.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
There probably isn't a vocabulary for it.
- PADr. Peter Attia
I- I... Well, I'm sure somebody could, but I, but I, my vocabulary is not advanced enough to put into words the affection and the joy that mathematics brought me. And, uh, the example I gave was I would dream about math problems. And I remember in the real world, I was trying to solve a problem. It was a dumb problem that I had made up to solve, which was I wanted to integrate the volume of a face. And I got stuck on the chin because there's a dimple on this chin that I was trying to integrate. And I, you know, I went to bed, and I actually dreamt the solution. I dreamt the function which needed to be rotated around a, a z-axis to come up with the integral, and I woke up, got out of bed, and solved this problem. And I'm thinking to myself like, "That just doesn't happen anymore," and it probably doesn't happen anymore because I'm so distracted. There are too many things I'm trying to do, [lip smack] and I lack that real sense of purpose. And, uh, I, I don't know. I don't know if you... I'm sure you've-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah
- PADr. Peter Attia
... experienced this in your own life.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that, um, you... So, one way to describe it in the context of the neural architectures that we've been talking about is you have all the necessary rulesets to complete all the demands of your daily life, from parenting to podcasting to running your clinical practice and on and on. And so you know how to toggle between those. You know not to apply one ruleset in the wrong context, and you just go, go, go, go, go. And there's an energetic cost to that. When we are singularly focused on one context, even if it's one conceptual context, you still have the same amount of total neural architecture-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Right. Now it's just concentrated
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... just devoted to that. I mean, I still have images burned in my brain of neural tissue looking, that I was viewing down the microscope. I can close my eyes and still see it. Now, I don't have a v- a, I'm not, um, you know, photographic memory. I don't have a photographic memory. I, I used to have an audiographic memory where I could turn on a recorder in my head, and then I could listen back to those conversations in the evening. A very, uh, dangerous, uh, [chuckles] thing to have. Actually, and, and to get into an argument with me at that time was no good. But the, uh, 'cause I, I could remember what you said, I lost that ability. And I think I lost that ability not because I truly lost it, but I'm thinking about other things now. Now, that was kind of a useless ability, frankly. Um, the-
- PADr. Peter Attia
I don't know. That's not, that, that sounds like a more useful ability than being able to integrate faces.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Well, it helped me learn certain things, but I think ultimately being fairly narrow context and being able to access these, these broader rulesets and come up with new rulesets is incredibly powerful. Now, there are certain states of body and mind that favor this creativity process, if we can call it that. And you said it, um, precisely, which is, and this is not a woo thing, I truly believe that even though our ability to be gritty and to survive allows us to access a number of important rulesets, we know based on the relationship between stress and survival that those rulesets and, and the prefrontal cortex, that those ruleset- sets, excuse me, are constrained, right? So I put you into a dangerous situation where you need to protect your family, you're gonna figure it out. I trust you. I know that. I know you're gonna work it out. But I also believe that there is a state of love that is associated with access to a much broader ruleset and creative ruleset. And how do I know this? Is because it underlies our evolution as a species. The number of different things that you can do to access survival if you're taking care of your family is immense, but the number of different adaptations that you can come up with in order to raise your children to be as happy and healthy as they can be out of love is absolutely infinite. Why? Because it really is there's no other option. You're not fearing death. What you're doing is you're trying to access this landscape of you want them to be as great as they can be. You don't know how great they can be. That's the infinite ruleset. And so the n- not having constraints on what the outcome is, is really the way to access expanded rulesets. Now, this is getting a little bit circular. I have to be careful and, like, check my thinking. I'm sure the philosophers out there are gonna, you know, nitpick this, and I hope they would. But in discussions with Rick about creativity and in discussions with you and other, and o- other folks, it's very clear that the, the accessing these brain centers that have full understanding of internal state and then full understanding of past, present, and future, that is absolutely the best state to be in in order to access expanded rulesets and ever-expanding rulesets. Whereas any time I'm accessing knowledge about internal state, but it's constrained by outcome, I need this not to happen, you've already shut down a number of rulesets, right? So any time... So... And this is why I think in dreaming, we, we aren't constraining our rulesets. We all wish we could, but we're not constraining our rulesets. It could be a nightmare. It could be the best fantasy we've ever had. You can fly, all these things. The rulesets are infinite but constrained by experience. We- we're not aware yet that we can dream about things in a way that does not reflect what we've already experienced. We might be able to. We don't know enough about sleep and dreaming yet. The idea here is that placing one's mind and body into states of, of, you know, and again, I'm sounding squishy here, but love or, um, we could also think... Anything that's doesn't include a but not that is an expanded ruleset, right? So I'm not gonna do this podcast spinning around in my chair or on my head, but the moment I, I decide what's appropriate and inappropriate behavior, I've now started to constrain the rulesets. Okay, so we can go around and around this circle as much as we want or as little as we want, but I think that once people start to understand what places their body and mind into the most relaxed and, quote-unquote, open state for accessing new rulesets, the m- more quickly we can solve problems. That's absolutely clear. And we know this from the laboratory. If I give you cognitive tasks and I just ramp up your level of autonomic arousal, and we do this in my lab, or there are any number of different ways to do this, you can function up to a point, but it's mainly dependent on how well you have performed that thing in the past. I give you something novel, I switch the contingency, I give you the kind, uh, a more advanced Stroop-type task, everybody cliffs. I don't care if you're a SEAL Team Six guy. I don't care if you've run three countries. I don't care if you've parented 12 kids on your own. Your rulesets are constrained. And so I throw something novel at you under conditions of even mild stress, and you break down. I throw something novel at you under conditions of relaxation, and you can pull from what might even seem like ridiculous rulesets, and you can start solving problems. And humans do this exceptionally well. And so I think that
- 1:16:10 – 1:18:30
Stress and fear increase autonomic arousal, limit access to rulesets, and inhibit performance
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
the more we can narrow context, as you said, j- medical school or math or parenting, whatever it is, the more that we can narrow context, even if in the moment, but the more that we can be in a relaxed state and ideally a state of something of wanting not avoiding, the more rulesets we can access, and I think that's where creative solutions come from. I mean, I have to imagine that even though he's a brilliant engineer, that Elon wasn't thinking about going to Mars 'cause he hated Earth. He's thinking about it 'cause he loves the idea of going to Mars. Now, I'm not his psychologist, but I think every major advancement in human evolution has largely been largely from a desire for something as opposed to an avoidance of something else.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Oh, boy, I'd have to think about that. Um, yeah. That, that's interesting, right? I mean, um, although let's, let's think, for example. So, so think of some of the amazing advances in, um, cryptography and nuclear physics in World War II. I mean, you could argue a lot of that was fear-based, right?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, but I would... Yes, I completely agree, but I would argue that the people doing that work, if you were to really sit them down and probe them-
- PADr. Peter Attia
They just loved that they were solving a problem
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... they, they loved it, right? We think of, we got Feynman all around us here, and he played a prominent role in my home and my, my childhood, um, as well. And I mean, the love of what he d- did that came through. Sure, he was working on the bomb, right? But he was also enjoying lock, picking locks and laying out all the, the secrets on the floor of the, of the offices 'cause he loved the playfulness of it, right? I mean, it was love, love, love, love, love, um, delight. I think maybe love is, is t- is too much of a loaded word-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... 'cause it sounds like, oh, love, Andrew's from Northern California. Like, he's spent too much time at Esalen, uh, whatever. Th- that's-
- PADr. Peter Attia
[laughs]
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... not actually my hangout place, even though it's beautiful. Um, that's not really what I'm about. But I think delight is what captures this, like, fascination, curiosity, and thrill of something that we see or experience and want more of. I think delight is probably the better word for it. And I think, um, yeah, I'm sure you can get a lot done out of fear and the need to adapt. Uh, you get a hell of a lot more done out of a genuine desire because you just want more of that thing. So I would argue-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah, I, I-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... the cryptographers were like, were in bliss. Now, they didn't wanna get blown up. That's... And they'd love to save people, but there can be multiple-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... um, multiple purposes behind doing something.
- PADr. Peter Attia
So
- 1:18:30 – 1:24:35
Andrew’s upbringing, early childhood, and tough adolescent years
- PADr. Peter Attia
let's kinda go back 'cause I, I, I feel like there's, there's, there's so much that, that I know a little bit about you, but I don't think I know the whole story. So you grew up in NorCal or So- SoCal?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. So I was born at Stanford Hospital. The joke I have is I was born at Stanford. I kind of hung around skateboarding on campus in, in my youth. Then I, uh, I was trained at Stanford in part, and then, uh, been faculty member, so I'll probably die at Stanford, but hopefully a long time from now. [chuckles] So I was born, I was born in Palo Alto. My dad's from South America. He's Argentine. I have dark hair, dark eyes, speak Spanish, um, and English. And he came to the US on a Naval scholarship. Uh, he was an experimental physicist at UPenn. Met my mother in New York. They, uh, had my... Moved to California, had my sister, um, who's three years older than I am, and me, uh, in the mid-seven- early and mid-'70s. My dad, um, took a job at Xerox PARC, early days of the personal computer, the so-called graphical user interface and, and things like that. Um, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom, uh, was a teacher, and, um-
- PADr. Peter Attia
That was in Menlo Park, was that?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
It was in Palo Alto.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Palo Alto.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I lived, I lived right over the fence from Gunn High School, G-U-N-N.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Mm-hmm.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
A high school that's, um, infamous for having the, a huge number of, of youth suicides.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Suicides, yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Um, fortunately, that's, um, adjusted. A lot of kids of Stanford professors. It's not the Palo Alto High School on the other end of town, so our end of town tended to be a bit more, um, [lips smack] uh, middle and upper middle class. And Palo Alto at that time even had Midtown, which there were some families that were definitely at or below the poverty line, believe it or not. Nowadays it's, you know, Palo Alto's all pretty upper class. Um, so yeah, I had a pr-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Including East Palo Alto?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
East Palo Alto still struggles.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
East Palo Alto still struggles. Great people there, but really struggles. Um, so growing up, it, from birth until about age 12 or 13, it was soccer, swim team, um, tons of kids on my street hanging out. There were all these boys my age, girl- They, they all had older sisters my sister's age. Pretty magical childhood. And, um, and my dad transitioned into theoretical physics, and he was involved in the early days of chaos theory. So we spent a lot of our youth in Aspen in the summers, not 'cause we were part of the wealthy Aspen set, but there's the Aspen Center for Physics. So I grew up running around hearing about, you know, Peter Kaus and, um, and Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann. Those were regular characters in my life, and met, you know, those folks and they were around. A lot of stories about academics. So I was, uh, kind of exposed to the academic world. [lips smack] Um, and then... And, and frankly, it was a pretty cool childhood. We did a sabbatical in Europe and, uh, got real close with my sister because of the sabbatical. I'm still really close with my sister. Um, she's a therapist and an excellent one. Um, not my therapist, but an excellent therapist. And, um, and it was pretty like normal childhood. Wasn't a great athlete, wasn't a great student, but I was always super curious about biology and animals. Like, absolutely obsessed. And my mom used to drop me off at Monet's Pet Shop on California Avenue. For those that don't-
- PADr. Peter Attia
I used to live on California Avenue.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Oh, did you?
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. It was directly across from Draper's Music, which is where the Grateful Dead got their start.
- PADr. Peter Attia
[chuckles]
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Um, and those guys used to hang out there 'cause they were from Menlo Park. The Edge. There was a club, The Edge. You wouldn't find that in Palo Alto now.
- PADr. Peter Attia
[chuckles]
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Um, so it was a pretty healthy upbringing, you know. We didn't have any issues around, like, alcohol or drugs in our home. It was a two-parent home, dinner together every night. Um, but there were some things looming under the surface and, and so everything took a hard turn when I was about 12, 13. Um, my parents divorced, and unfortunately, they didn't read the rule book, or if they did, they broke every rule in the rule book, [chuckles] um, and it was a very high-conflict situation. Um, so my dad moved out. Um, I lived with my mom. My sister went off to, to college. Um, and at the time, I had gotten into skateboarding. Um, I wasn't so much playing soccer and doing other things. And I fell really deeply into the community of skateboarding, which at that time was really underground. It wasn't like it is now. [lips smack] I started hang- Skateboarding's a unique sport because you have interactions with kids of a lot of different ages. So you're hanging out with, like, 30-year-old guys, 20-year-old guys, kids your own age. And a good friend of mine, uh, named Paul Zwanich, was really good at skateboarding, and he started picking up sponsors and turned pro while we were in high school. And we started going up to San Francisco and hanging out at the-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Wait, and you were still in the peninsula?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I was 13, 14 years old, at the kind of famed what's called Embarcadero or EMB crowd. It's, you know, early... For skateboarding, this is a huge deal. It's kind of the golden era of street skateboarding. And there I got exposed to a lot. I got exposed to drugs, alcohol, fights. Um, I got exposed to a lot of kids that just didn't go to school, um, they just didn't go. Um, [lips smack] there were a bunch of, you know, a lot, lot of untoward elements. Also a lot of amazing skateboarding. Just amazing. Got to see... I can throw out names, but the young Danny Way would come through town or Rob Dyrdek would come through town and, you know, these names will be familiar. People, maybe DC Shoes, those guys were involved in that. So I got to see all this stuff. I, in full disclosure, I wasn't a very good skateboarder. I was okay, but I kept getting hurt. I just didn't have the athleticism. I hit puberty late. I had a long arc on my puberty. This is something I someday want to understand, which is I, I think there's a relationship between how long puberty lasts and longevity. I think it makes sense.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Interesting.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Um, anyway, I mean, I, I hit puberty around 14, but I didn't acquire the, um, secondary [chuckles] sex characteristics. I didn't, like, grow. My musculature didn't come in. My, um, physicality didn't develop until pretty late. Didn't grow a beard until college. Couldn't grow... It was weird. But, you know, I, by the other marks of puberty, let's just say, I, I, I hit puberty. [chuckles] Okay. So I had all this upset about my home life. And frankly, it was pretty bad. My mom was struggling a lot. My dad was trying to be in the picture, but there was a lot of conflict between us. In any case, to make... What happened was, uh, something about my behavior cued the school system, probably the fact I wasn't going to school much anymore. Um, I got taken away. I got put into a residential treatment program up on the peninsula. This was not for drug use, alcohol use, or hurting anyone or myself. This was mainly for truancy, and they were really concerned about
- 1:24:35 – 1:34:27
Andrew’s time in a residential treatment program and how he benefited from therapy
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
me. Okay, um-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Did that... Did they require the permission of your parents to do that?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. So I, you know, I remember one day just getting called into the office and, um, they were talking to me, asking me questions about my home life and, um, and I, you know, pretty quickly caught on to the fact that something was gonna happen. And, um, I did every... Let's just say I did everything I could to resist getting taken away, but they, they Took me away and put me under lock and key there. And I remember I wo-
- PADr. Peter Attia
You're what grade?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Uh, that, I think I was in, I was in the ninth grade. So I was in the ninth grade and, um, I was really angry, really upset. Um, uh, yeah, it's interesting. I don't have a ton of emotion around it anymore, but I, I do feel like it was a terrible situation for me to be in because, like, there was... My home life was so bad at that point. Um, I just-
- PADr. Peter Attia
And your sister was already in college?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
My sister was gone. I th- I think the way to capture my home life at that point was there was just no one there. There was no one there, and what was there was really scary.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And what was your mom doing?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Uh, try-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Like, was she working at this point to make up-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Um-
- PADr. Peter Attia
... for your dad being gone?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
She was w- she took a job. Um, she was working. Um, but to be honest, and look, I love my mom, um, and I love my dad, but, um, they just were so focused on their own stuff.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Mm.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Like, I think there was so much anger and resentment between them, and I just basically was kind of running my own life. I was doing whatever I wanted, which is terrible for a 14-year-old. Like, boundaries are great, rules are great. And I had this community of young guys that was an amazing community, learning from some of the older ones, learning some not healthy behaviors, learning some healthy behaviors, too. Um, but I, when I got put away, um, it felt to me super unfair, but I met really... The counselors there were amazing. And I also f- was very lucky that drugs and alcohol were never really my thing. So a lot of kids there were dealing with drug and alcohol issues. I remember when I got there, uh, I remember when I got there, they said, "Listen, um, you know, there are these younger kids here, and, um, they're crazy. They're, like, miswired. And then there are adults over in that other building, and they're crazy. But you guys here, you're not crazy." And I remember thinking, "They have to be saying that to the [laughs] other, all the other buildings."
- PADr. Peter Attia
[laughs]
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
So there was this moment where I'm like, "Is there something genuinely wrong with me?" Like, I didn't... You know, again, I didn't do anything except I was not taking good care of myself.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And did you still leave the facility each day to go to school?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
No.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Or was school within there?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Locked up in a room. My roommate turned out to be a really good guy. He was huge guy. He looked like Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker. And I was remembering, like, I can't sleep. They're coming in doing bed checks, like, three times a night. They, you know, they're frisking us. They're doing cavity searches for did we bring in weapons, did we bring in drugs? You're doing group therapy with all these people. Some of them are talking about terrible molestation experiences, which fortunately I didn't have, you know, um, drug things. And I'm just thinking, like, "Why am I here?" Like, I had no idea why I was there. And I remember at the time, I had picked up one skateboard sponsor, which was Spitfire Wheels and Thunder Trucks. They, they put me on out of sympathy.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Mm.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And the team manager, I'm actually friends with him still, his name is Steve Roogey. Uh, he's not a pot smoker now, but back then he was, which will explain the voice I'll use in a moment.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And I remember you, you literally got one phone call. So I wasn't gonna call my parents. So I called Steve, and I was like, "Hey, Steve, I'm, uh, I'm locked up here. Like, I'm in the peninsula. I'm in Belmont. I don't know what to do." And he goes, "Man." He's like, "You're the most normal guy I know. I can't help you." [laughs]
- PADr. Peter Attia
Right.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And I thought, "I'm really stuck. Like, I'm genuinely stuck. Like, what am I gonna do?" And I remember thinking, like I'm not... I just didn't know where to go. So what happened was I eventually worked the program they gave me. Someone there said, "Listen, just, like, play the game." But eventually I realized, I was like, "They're asking questions that I actually want the answers to, like what's going on in my head? Why am I just letting my whole life go? What's going on at home?" And it turns out that it was just a, it's a, it's a very... I'll summarize by saying what I, what I was dealing with, I can now in retrospect, it was a super traumatic, daily traumatic environment if I was at home, or it was, um, just, like, pure l- pure, pure neglect, right? I mean, just pure neglect. I mean, I, prior to that year, I mean, I'd gone off to skate camp. There was a skate camp in Visalia, and all the other kids, like, went there with their bags and their parents would send them and all that. I just, like, went. We just, like, hung out. We would just get in cars and go. There was... We went to Reno for a week to skate in the nationals. I sucked, but I went anyway. And we were just there, a bunch of kids. We were just parentless kids. So I was part of this huge group of parentless kids that's just gone high school, they, there's a spotlight on me. Whereas I think had I been in an inner city school or something, you know, you probably would've gone under the radar. And it gave me great sensitivity to the fact that, like, you know, growing up, like I'm not gonna... The word gets thrown around a lot, I think these days in the, in the incorrect ways, but it's like I was very lucky. You could even call it privileged, but very lucky to have that, that there was a spotlight on me. It was high signal to noise, [laughs] right? This kid's really crazy. I also was getting into a lot of fights. So I was getting into street fights and that whole mess. And, um, so I eventually got out, and the agreement was I would switch high schools, live with my-
- PADr. Peter Attia
How long were you in this place?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
You know, I, I don't know. It was, uh, a month or more, which was plenty of time, frankly. Um, you know, you're not controlling your food, your sleep. It's all on their plan. [lips smack] Good kids were there. Um, we lost a couple kids. A couple kids killed themselves while we were there. It was, it was-
- PADr. Peter Attia
While there?
- 1:34:27 – 1:43:59
The beginning of positive changes in Andrew’s young life
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
uh, you know, I eventually what happened was I got a, a different girlfriend. Um, I stopped skateboarding. I got hurt really badly, um, and I started getting involved in fitness. There was a, a, a football coach at our school, a Bob Peters.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And, and were you now still k- back at Palo Alto?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I, I got, I went back to Gunn. There was an agreement and it was interesting 'cause I, my hair used to be dyed black. Like, then my hair grew out natural. I started wearing like, not skateboard clothes. I sort of, kind of decided to just kind of be a little less outrageous. Um, but I started Thai boxing, which was great. There was a, um... I got involved in martial arts a little bit. Wasn't very good at it, but it was okay. Started lifting weights. My body reacted like crazy to that. I wasn't on any hormone support. It was just the y- youth thing. I just kind of responded really well to that. I started running. I ran cross country. Started getting really into running and lifting weights, and I still wasn't very focused on school, but I was doing a little bit better. And the girlfriend at the time was a year older, and she had a really good work ethic. And, um, and I started, you know, I would run to her house on Sundays and wash her car. I would, um, I just d- started doing a lot of physical labor and I figured I'd go into the fire, fire service. I was like, "I could do that." Um, and I started taking fire science classes at Mission College. Loved the guys there. It was like workout-
- PADr. Peter Attia
This is while you're still in high school?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I was still in high school. And, um, and I will say that at that young age, I made the mistake of I started dabbling in some drugs. It-- no hard drugs, but psychedelics, which I think psychedelics have their place in the therapeutic context when people are older. But while the brain is still developing, I don't think it's a good idea. So started doing that. Um, [lips smack] you know, my, I, you know, I don't know how much to disclose or not out of respect for other people, but you know, I had a girlfriend early, you know, there was a pregnancy, there was a number of things where, you know, my life still wasn't bolted down. Um, and that was causing problems for me. And, um, but she was very loving and was great, and what happened was she went off to college. [lips smack] She went to UC Santa Barbara. And so my senior year I was going down to visit her, she was already there, and sleeping in the parking lot outside her dorm and hanging out with people there. [clears throat] And so she was like my family. I basically mapped everything onto her. And eventually what happened was I applied to Santa Barbara 'cause I w- I'll be damned if she was gonna be far away from h- from me. And somehow, I do not know how, I got in. I think I barely broke 1,000 on the SAT, but I don't remember studying. And, um, let's just say the night before I was not, uh, putting myself in the most focused, uh, preparatory state. Um, somehow broke a thousand
- PADr. Peter Attia
You didn't, you didn't do the optimized sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress routine to take the test?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
No.
- PADr. Peter Attia
[laughs]
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And if I reveal what I did to take the test, I think it might send the wrong message.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
But anyway, I, so I won't. But, um, but you know, I got into UC Santa Barbara, and I went there to be with her, and let's just say two quarters into it, I had more fights than I did time in class, and by the end of the year, I was basically flunking out.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Tell... Why do you think that was?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I think I was just... had so much fire and so much anger. I think I was just... I... It's interesting, I've never been angry at people. Like, I wasn't angry at anyone in particular. I just had so much, like, fire inside.
- PADr. Peter Attia
I mean, I mean, at the risk of s- stating the obvious-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah
- PADr. Peter Attia
... I mean, it sounds like you were very angry at your parents, and you had good reason to be.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. I was very angry with them.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And, and I assume your therapist, uh, came to a similar conclusion and helped you see that. Um, what were you able to do to try to reconcile or come to peace with that anger at your parents throughout the three or four years in high school where you were presumably getting back enough on track to at least be in a position to apply to college?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. Um, and credit to my high school girlfriend because basically there was no organization in my life except the organization that I wanted her to s- see I was capable of.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And her parents must have loved you.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
They hated me.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Oh, really?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
They hated me.
- PADr. Peter Attia
So they tolerated-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
With, uh-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... her dad-
- PADr. Peter Attia
It's not like you were an adopted son to them
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... listen, her dad recorded our conver- He was like, "This guy's a punk. Why are you with him?" You know, he... And he, he was right. I mean, he was completely right. So these people know who they are. He, he was completely right. He recorded our conversations. He was like, "This guy is complete disaster." Uh, she had a tough home life, really tough home life, and so I moved in in kind of a protective role, too. But, um, you know, she was a hard worker, and her dad was an extremely hard worker. And so I had a lot to prove, and I also was learning that, you know, especially with running and lifting weights and the stuff in the fire service, there was a direct relationship between input and output.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- 1:43:59 – 1:48:12
Andrew’s decision to turn his life around
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
um-
- PADr. Peter Attia
So, so you're in your first semester at-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah
- PADr. Peter Attia
... UCSB and you're getting into fights with townies, with college kids?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Just people. I was never somebody who provoked fights or initiated them, but I was just, somehow it was just finding me, you know? And, and I was not a big drinker, but that town, there's a lot of alcohol intake. So what happened was, at that summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college, there was, um, a house that everyone hung out at, and I decided to stay there for the summer. What, wouldn't go home. What would I do at home? My, the girlfriend and I had split up. We were kind of having our issues. And, um, I was living in the town of Isla Vista with my pet ferret, and I was squatting in a house. I was like, why would I pay? Like skateboarding, you learn how to just kind of squat in places like... So delivering bagels for the Bagel Cafe, and I, we show up at a friend's house and, um, a bunch of guys were stealing some stuff from the house. It was clear they were loading up their cars. So got into this fight with a bunch of guys, and the people I had shown up there with all s- scrambled. They all just took off. And so this fight started r- getting ratcheted up into weapons and like, and, and people hitting each other with skateboards and like, so knives coming out and the whole thing. The police show up. In the end, I was let go, um, because we were, quote-unquote, "protecting our property." Um, and I, actually, I remember one of the police officers congratulated me. He was like, "Good job," or something. I just remember feeling like, this picture sucks. Like, here I am, I'm nine- now I'm now 19 years old, no future in skateboarding. I barely went to class, getting in fights. I'd been thrown out of the dormitory for something stupid related to that. Um, my girlfriend and I are split up. I work at the Bagel Caf- like I, I was like, this, this is it, you know?
- PADr. Peter Attia
And why, at this point, did you, did you think about, hey, I still have this whole thing as being a firefighter potentially? Was that where you were at?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, I, I think at that point I was just like, I don't know, really know what to do. I, I just, I just remember walking back to the place where I was staying and just thinking like, I'm a total screwup. Like, I'm officially a screwup now. I don't care where I was born, I don't care what my parents did, I am officially a screwup. Like, [laughs] it doesn't matter, uh, nothing else mattered. And, and I actually wrote a letter, I still have the letter. Um, I wrote a letter, it was the summer of '94, um, to my mom saying all the things that I kind of felt about the past and what I'm gonna do going forward. And at that point, I really did make a hard left turn. I moved home. I took a leave of absence. I didn't quit UC Santa Barbara, took a leave of absence, moved home, went to Foothill College. My sister was home from abroad after college. We lived at our house. Our mom was there, and this other girl we rented a room to. Um, but I went to Foothill College and just was like, listen to one, I'd listen to myself. I'd say, the one thing I know how to do is memorize information, so I just started focusing on coursework and working out. And from that point on, except for one course in college, I was a straight A student the whole way through. So what happened was, after a q- a quarter there and a summer, I went back to Santa Barbara. I lived in a studio apartment by myself. I got back together with the girlfriend.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And how did you fund this? Did you just take out loans to do all this?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, so my, my education was supported in part, there was some money that, from, uh, fortunately, and here I'm was very blessed, my dad obviously helped. Um, not obviously, but my dad helped. That was great. Um, I remember I didn't want to go back to Santa Barbara. I wanted to go to Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. I wanted to be a journalist or do something related to writing. He said, "No way. I'm not gonna pay for this." I'm like, sorry to people went to Whitman. He was like, "No way. No, no fluff education like liberal arts school. You're gonna go back there where there's some sciences. You're [laughs] gonna do, do something." Anyway, that was, that was my house. And I went back and I just was a machine. It was like Henry Rollins style, just like work out. I listened to Rancid, listened to Bob Dylan, listened to classical music on loop, drank coffee, worked out, ran, studied, worked out, ran, studied. And my goal was to be the, on the far end of the curve. They used to publish the curve for every class outside, and I just became a straight A student. Now,
- 1:48:12 – 2:03:17
A new passion for science and exercise helps Andrew
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
the, the twist in this is eventually I started working in a laboratory. Um, I took a class from a guy named Harry Carlisle, who was teaching about mental health and neuroscience and physiology, brown fat. He had worked a lot in brown fat thermogenesis. I started working in his laboratory on brown adipose tissue. So I went, um, and dopamine antagonists and clozapine neuroleptics and effects on temperature. I was obsessed with physiology and temperature. Meanwhile, I was getting really interested in fitness and supplementation and, um, I tried to run cross country for Santa Barbara, but you had to run a sub 10 two mile. That was way too fast.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Wait, a sub 10...
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Two mile.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Oh, two mile. Got it. Got it.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
That's to walk on, and there's no way I was... These guys were built like whippets, and at that point I was, I'm 6'1", I was, at that point I was about 185, 200 pounds. I was like, no way I was gonna do it. Um, so I was really into fitness still, and I was studying-
- PADr. Peter Attia
How fast do you run two miles today?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I don't know, but my fastest mile ever was in high school. I ran a 4:57 first mile in a three-mile race and then bonked and had to walk off the race. [laughs]
- PADr. Peter Attia
Hmm.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
So basically I failed the race, but that's what adrenaline, it was pure adrenaline.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Hmm.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
It wasn't training capacity. So no, I'm not that fast a runner. I run a couple miles on, um, I do a two-mile run once a week, and I'd be happy with a With a 12 to 13 minute time.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I'd be very happy with that, in fact. Um, so, you know, I started getting really into working in Harry's lab, and he was great. My kind of guy. He smoked cigarettes in the lab.
- PADr. Peter Attia
[laughs]
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
He'd light 'em with a Bunsen burner and smoke-
- PADr. Peter Attia
[laughs]
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... in the fume hood. We'd drink coffee. We were injecting rats with, uh, with, with MDMA. We were studying the temperature-regulating effects of MDMA, and we were studying amphetamines, and I was learning so much neuroscience, and I was like a kid in a candy shop. I was like, "This is amazing." Now, there wasn't any neuroscience at that time. It was called neurochemistry or neurobiology. Um, and I was taking psychology classes also, and they had the degree was called biopsychology. Now, I was a little late to the train, so I was taking biopsychology courses and psychology courses, and then I met a guy named Ben Reese, who is expert in visual system and visual system development, and I started learning about all these retinal specializations. Then I learned there was a guy on campus named Gerald Jacobs who discovered the evolution of vision and color vision. He's a member of the National Academy. I started hanging out with all of these guys, and so my crowd completely changed to a bunch of neuroscience dorks who were, to me, the coolest guys in the world, and in many ways still are. I, I think, I've immense respect for Ben and for Gerald and all those guys, and Harry. And so it was just incredible, and I thought, wow, and I'm learning about all this mental health stuff that I saw when I was locked up, that I saw in my friendship circle, in my family, people who were of anxiety. There was schizophrenia. It's neurotransmitters. It's dopamine. It's, it's norepinephrine. It's not just, you know, Freudian theora- the- theory, excuse me, even though I respect Freudian theory. So I became a monster of school, and then the girlfriend graduated, and we decided to part ways. And-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Wait, the same one that you-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Same one
- PADr. Peter Attia
... did you guys get back together?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
We managed to make it about two more years-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Okay
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... and then, um, for better or for worse, you know. Now, looking back, I think, like, okay, could it have worked out? Probably, maybe, maybe not. It's one of those you don't know. But I was on a mission basically to go to graduate school, and so I don't wanna br- you know, it would take us five hours to go through all this, but at this point it was like no drinking, no drugs. Once a month, I would go out and really tie one on with friends, uh, like really have a blast, slash, you know, drinking too much, not a good idea, period. But at the time, I, that was still in my framework of what I could do. But then I, over time, I was like, "I don't wanna do this."
- PADr. Peter Attia
Now, you're still, with some regularity, talking on the phone to this therapist.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Every week.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And, um, [lip smack] i- I wanna kinda go back to this pivotal moment, but was it that fight that you had that got, where the cops came? Was that r- really... It sounds like a very orthogonal moment.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
100%. Because it was, it was really like the, the, I'm gonna end up dead or in jail, either because somebody kills me or I'm gonna... You know, I'm not proud of this, but okay, when I say, like, knives came out, it didn't mean they were pulled on me. Like, we were, it was everyone was involved in this. And I'm like, listen, I don't wanna k- I don't wanna hurt anyone, so sooner or later, I was gonna end up killing somebody or getting killed or just, you know, I mean, there, or in jail, and I'd been locked up once before. I'm like, this, that's an experience I do not want again. And I realized this is terrible. Like, I, I'm not doing anything well. So that was the moment. And, um, and I had the benefit of, uh, at the time, I was paying Mike Mentzer, the bodybuilder Mike Ment-
- PADr. Peter Attia
The bodybuilder.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Um, uh, I paid him $100 to coach me and give me a program, and he kind of took a liking to me, so we'd have phone calls every once in a while where he was having me read a bunch of, uh-
- PADr. Peter Attia
How did you connect with Mike Mentzer?
- 2:03:17 – 2:08:41
The difference between a postdoc and a PhD
- PADr. Peter Attia
Before we leave that-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah
- PADr. Peter Attia
... give folks a bit of a sense of the difference between a PhD and a postdoc.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah. So during your PhD, you're working closely under the mentorship of one person. That's also true in the postdoc. During the PhD, the, the requirements are learn the basics of the field and be tested on them in the classroom, learn the basics of experimentation and experimental design, and then become expert in one specific area by doing experiments, and then you get your PhD, I always say, by being expert in one very specific area, and you have to know everything about what you did and why, literally down to, like, what specific antibody you used-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah, what reagent
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... where it is in the refrigerator.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah, yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And you need to be able to do everything essentially that's on your papers. Learn the publication process. Learn how to write. Learn to take rejection. Learn to take challenge in the seminar format, all of that, and-
- PADr. Peter Attia
And, and, and, and let's just also talk about, um, what is an expectation in a PhD as far as publication?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
So this varies. I mean, I did very well as a PhD student. We published, you know, four to six first author papers in great journals. One to two would be sufficient if they're good quality papers, and some projects go better than others. I think the key requirement of the PhD is to become a true expert in one area and then to be able to frame how that fits into the context of the field as a whole. Your PhD thesis is given not for saying, "I did this, I did this, I did this," which any technician could do. It's given to you for saying, "I did this, I did this, I did this," and the implications are blank. The implications are blank, and to extend that into the discoveries of past and other laboratories. Once you can do that with some degree of mastery, you're ready to go, and typically that correlates with having one first author manuscript in a good journal, but not always. Sometimes it's two, sometimes it's four. I did my PhD in four years, um, which was pretty quick.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And half of that was in the classroom, half of that was in the lab-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Typically t-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Or dedicated to the lab?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, typically you're taking courses only the first two years. Now, also, there's some weighting here based on peer group. So for instance, I started my PhD when I was twenty-five. I ended it when I was thirty, even though it took me about, uh, four years. Um, I had no children. I was dating, but I wasn't in a committed relationship for most of it, and I literally, I know people talk about this, I literally worked twelve to sixteen hours a day, and I was not in the best health. I lived on Peet's black coffee, Diet Mountain Dew, cucumbers, ground beef, oatmeal, oranges, and love of what I was doing. I just was an-- And creatine. I was-
- PADr. Peter Attia
[laughs]
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And Athletic Greens. Like I was-- It, it's true. I started taking Athletic Greens a long time ago. Oh, no, that was 2005. So 2012, that was as a postdoc was when I started actually taking better care of myself. Um, that wasn't an Athletic Greens plug, but I always say I started taking it in 2012. So that was 2000 to 2004, and I was into vitamins and things like that, but it was just caffeine drive, basic macronutrients. [laughs] I worked out one day a week in the gym, and I ran one day a week because I was-
- PADr. Peter Attia
That's it?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
That's it, and it wasn't good, right? It was really c-- But I was young, so my body didn't fall apart, but it wasn't good. Um, and I prioritized everything around work. So post-
- PADr. Peter Attia
And your, what was the title of your dissertation?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Uh, it was, uh, Neural Activity and Axon Guidance Cue-Dependent Development of Eye-Specific Segregation in the Lateral Geniculate [laughs] Nucleus, which is basically saying there are molecules and there are patterns of neural activity that govern brain wiring. And, um, at the time I was working in, uh, ferrets and cats, um, so carnivore species.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Hmm.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
There wasn't a lot of genet-- And I wanted to move away from that. I've always been an animal lover. I had a pet ferret. I didn't want to work on large animals. I've done some non-human primate work, fetal primates, fetal macaques, um, published a lot there.
- PADr. Peter Attia
How big is an adult macaque? They're still pretty small-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Uh
- PADr. Peter Attia
... aren't they?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
An adult macaque? No, an adult male macaque can be, you know, a couple feet tall.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Really?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Oh, they'll rip a limb off of you if you let them. They carry-
- PADr. Peter Attia
I didn't realize they were that big.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
They carry herpes B, which can kill you.
- 2:08:41 – 2:17:30
Staying in touch with the love of biology and not getting pulled into ambition
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Um, so, so what happened was in 2005 I moved back to the Bay Area. I'm like, "I'm not gonna live in Palo Alto. I live in San Francisco." And I was working in Ben's lab and loving it. I mean, I was in... I was one of many people in that lab. There were 30 people-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Sorry, what year? '05?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
This was 2000 f- uh, I started in 2005 and I finished in 2010. And-
- PADr. Peter Attia
So that just means we overlapped in the Bay Area again.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- PADr. Peter Attia
'Cause, you know, I was there for med school '97 to '01, and then I w- I lived back there in '06 to '08.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Um, so just think, we would've passed each other on 280 or 101-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yep
- PADr. Peter Attia
... and, and not known.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, I lived in-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Isn't that amazing? I lo- I love, I love realizing people that I've become very close to, we cohabitated.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yep.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And I worked in San Francisco, of course. You lived there and I worked there, but yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I was living at Clayton and Parnassus, right near UCSF, the, the old campus, the hospital. And my sister was in the neighborhood and had just adopted my niece, and so I wanted to be there so I could spend time with her, um, 'cause my sister is-
- PADr. Peter Attia
And we spent so much time up there because my wife ran the Coumadin clinic at UCSF.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Okay. Yeah, we were r-
- PADr. Peter Attia
And-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
I was a few blocks from the Haight Ashbury Clinic, obvious- very different clinic.
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Um, but famous 'cause of the Manson thing, and-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Yeah, yeah
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
... if anyone hasn't read, uh, Charles Manson, uh, Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the '60s, a, a lot of history there. But I was commuting down, um, 280, um, working in Ben's lab, loving that. I mean, a huge, vibrant lab. Lab meetings that would last four hours or more. Ben was outrageous. Um-
- PADr. Peter Attia
How big was the lab?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
32 people. Um, and with a, run by a person with a face recognition issue. So you can imagine, like, the, the, it was hilarious. And yet the lab meetings were legendary. People would argue and fight. It was... Ben could be very politically incorrect, which was hilarious, but at the time also was important for us to really have someone challenge us and in these very direct ways. Um, we were all politically correct, but he tended to be pretty outrageous. I mean, Ben said some pretty outrageous things. And, um, and I learned so much from Ben about just staying in tou- he called it the light, but like, or the flame, like staying in touch with the love of biology and not getting pulled into ambition. Now Ben was incredibly ambitious, but he, he just loved biology and I loved biology. And then something weird happened in 2000.
- PADr. Peter Attia
And, and you know of course I had the distinction by just luck by the year I was in it, which was '97, started Barbara Barres was our neuroscience, head of neuroscience and the professor-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Amazing
- PADr. Peter Attia
... and ended the year as Ben.
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Wow.
- PADr. Peter Attia
So he, she to he-
- 2:17:30 – 2:23:16
Andrew starts his own lab, and continues work to overcome his demons
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
and then eventually I got a job at UC San, uh, San Diego. I was picking between a job there and MIT, and my previous experience in Boston, I love Boston, I love the academic community there, but I was like, "I'm a California kid. I'm, like, a skateboarder and punk rocker at heart." I had this one interaction with someone there before in the academic community. I thought, you know, back there, everything's focused on lineage and how old you are and how long you've been around, and in the Bay Area, it's all about the young tech, and youth is really valued. I... If you're, you could be 25 years old in the Bay Area, and if you have a great idea, people don't care- Yeah ... uh, what your... You know, and the East Coast is different, at least at the time it was. It felt different. So I went to UC San Diego, and [lips smack] um, my lab flourished there. Uh, and then eventually I left- So you got to San Diego in '12? Uh, I was hired in, uh, I officially started 2011. Okay. And I left in 2015, mostly because I got hired back to Stanford when, um, Ben was still in the department. Now, the, the weird thread through all of this is that, um, when I was a graduate student- Where did you live in San Diego? Uh, I lived in Normal Heights, um, near, kind of out towards El Cajon. I went from making 40 to $45,000 a year as a postdoc. I started my job, just so people know, I'm, I mean, I'm not shy, professors make about 100,000, 110,000 as assistant, starting at a professor, and I went from having essentially no responsibility. I bought a little house that I could afford, like this little house. Um, I got a bulldog puppy, and I got a laboratory, and I hired a technician that I knew from Davis, and we just went ham. We were just experiments, experiments, experiments. I lived in the lab two or three days a week, brushing my teeth in the sink. My students were like, "What's wrong with this guy?" But we, we, you know, we were very fortunate. We published a bunch of papers in great journals. We were ha- more importantly, we were having a lot of fun doing research. I had all these microscopes. I was like, "My name's on the door. I can't believe this" And I didn't care that my name was on the door. I actually have always thought that labs should name themselves after the work they do- Yeah ... [chuckles] as opposed to the name, um, for a number of reasons. I was having so much fun. It was incredible. Um, I met a woman there that I, you know, I was in a five-year relationship with somebody there that was really wonderful, who also taught me a lot about kind of how to Balance my professional life and my personal life, you know? And despite that relationship not working out, there was a, a lot of important elements of, like, teaching me, like, "Hey, it's good to come home for dinner with me and the dogs every once in a while," and taught me some self-care. Got back into doing some boxing, although I didn't... Tried not to spar too often, uh, as you- you're the fighter, not me. Um, and I loved my time there. But some, uh, the, the challenge along the way, the challenges w- persisted along the way, um, challenges of youth. And, and I think that as much work as I-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Meaning the, the demons of your youth were still rearing-
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah
- PADr. Peter Attia
... some of the emotional, uh, damage?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, I think that the, um... And that would show up in various forms, but I think, you know, my dad and I finally put to rest our, um, challenges in 2007. Um, he had written me a letter, uh, that was expressing some concern and disappointment, um, in the ways we were relating, but mostly concern. Um, and I remember, uh, reading it and thinking, this is when I was a postdoc at Ben's, uh, in Ben's lab, and thinking, like, you know, "He's reaching out. This is years after everything," right? Um, you know, "Maybe it's time to take a look at this." But I wasn't about to try and solve it in a conversation, so I was like, "If you wanna do some work together, like, let's go to therapy. Let's have a conversation in front of somebody who can really, like, tell me where I'm wrong also." And we did f- a total of four sessions, I think, with a really excellent female therapist who, um... And I remember the question was, "Who was gonna pay for it?" And I told my dad, I'm like, "I don't have much money, but I'm gonna go in 50/50 with you on this one." Like, and that was important to me. So we did this, and after four sessions we realized that, um, [lips smack] you know, I think it was the first kinda like true, like, man-to-man conversation we, we ever had. And I realized that, you know, a lot of the things that I would struggle with growing up, he had struggled with, too. Um, you know-
- PADr. Peter Attia
Meaning in his life growing up as well?
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
Yeah, his relationship to his mother, his relationship to himself, um, trying to balance a life in science and ambition, which is tough. I mean, science is not, um, they're not throwing punches at your face. They're not shooting at you. But you're also not wi- winning millions of dollars at the end of a case or cashing out a big IPO. And so the wins are really, like, wins of the heart and wins of discovery. Like, not to sound sentimental, but, you know, the, you get a paper in Science or Nature. I'm blessed to have, you know, more than a few of those. And the first time you get it, you're like, "Shit, will I ever do that again?" So you're a lot like a professional athlete, but your world is tiny, and once you realize that your world is tiny, you have two choices. You can either leave because it's too small, or you can go back to your love of the work. But then you also have to live in the world and have a family and relationships. And so in those conversations, I think I realized, I was like, wow, like, you know, I inherited some real gifts from my dad. Um, curiosity, love of craft. Um, he's certainly driven. My dad's almost 80 now, and he's still firing on eight cylinders. He's excited about cars. He's excited about science. He's excited about movies. He's excited... Like, he's just got so much going there. And, um, [lips smack] we, we resonated. Like, we finally hit that point, and, um, that was good, you know? And, um, again, I think a few times this discussion, I, I unexpectedly have to fight some emotion back. But I think it's that, you know, when they say, like, forgiveness is, um, really the best thing, I think it, it really is. And, um, we're good. We're, we're super close.
- 2:23:16 – 2:30:12
The loss of three mentors leads to deep soul searching
- AHDr. Andrew Huberman
And then in, in that time in San Diego, I went back into just f- full forward center of mass ambition, and it was really only the girlfriend that kept me a little calibrate, and my dog, my bulldog. And, um, and then, and something happened in those years. So when I was a PhD student, I published this paper, uh, second paper I published was published in Science, and I was super proud. I was excited, you know, science paper. And I called Harry Carlyle in San Diego and told him. I was like, "Hey," you know, 'cause he'd known my story, and he kinda took me out of not doing much to gave me a lab to work in. He saw me graduate with honors. I went off to Berkeley. So he was tracking my career and-
Episode duration: 3:03:32
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Transcript of episode OGe1bTccCyg
