Stanford Neuroscientist: Can’t Remember Your Dreams? Your Brain May Be Warning You!

After many, many decades of people debating this, you might have figured out the reason why we dream.

Yes, and it's a simple answer. So if you go blind, the visual cortex at the back of the brain gets taken over by hearing and by touch and by other things. In fact, our colleagues at Harvard did an experiment where they blindfolded normally sighted people, and you could start seeing that takeover happening after sixty minutes. And that's when we realized, wow, the purpose of dreaming is to defend the visual territory from takeover from the other senses. But what fascinates me about brain plasticity and what I've devoted my career to is figuring out the way that we can be the sculptors of our own brains and how it gives us an opportunity to become the kind of person we would like to be.

And can we do that?

Yes. Here's the thing. Your brain peaked at the age of two. Okay, so at the beginning, you've got fluid intelligence, meaning you could learn anything. But now that you have grown up in this world, you've got crystallized intelligence, meaning you know how to drive a car, you know how to operate a cell phone, you know how to run a business. And so your brain doesn't require as much change, which means that the structure of the brain is always degenerating.

So what are the set of actions that will fundamentally change my brain and make me that type of person who's motivated and disciplined and who has high agency and attacks the world?

So this is something I've studied in my lab for decades now, and the key is that-

And what about AI and the social media debate as it relates to brain development?

Well, I happen to be a cyber optimist for young people. I think it's gonna make them much smarter than the generation that came before, and here's why.

Interesting. This is super interesting to me. My team give me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe, and some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of this show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double-check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, as we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you wanna hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of The Diary of a CEO and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. [upbeat music] Dr. David Eagleman, what made you so fascinated about the brain, and why should everybody listening be fascinated about the brain as well?