The Science of Learning & Speaking Languages | Dr. Eddie Chang

(uptempo music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today my guest is Dr. Eddie Chang. Dr. Eddie Chang is the chair of the Neurosurgery Department at the University of California at San Francisco. Dr. Chang's clinical group focuses on the treatment of movement disorders, including epilepsy. He is also a world expert in the treatment of speech disorders and relieving paralysis that prevents speech and other forms of movement and communication. Indeed, his laboratory is credited with discovering ways to allow people who have fully locked-in syndrome, that is, who cannot speak or move, to communicate through computers and AI devices in order to be able to speak to others in their world and understand what others are saying to them. It is a truly remarkable achievement that we discuss today, in addition to his discoveries about critical periods, which are periods of time during one's life when one can learn things, in particular languages, with great ease, as opposed to later in life. And we talk about the basis of things like bilingualism and trilingualism. We talk about how the brain controls movement of the very muscles that allow for speech and language and how those can be modified over time. We also talk about stutter, and we talk about a number of aspects of speech and language that give insight into not just how we create this incredible thing called speech or how we understand speech and language, but how the brain works more generally. Dr. Chang is also one of the world leaders in bioengineering, that is, the creation of devices that allow the brain to function at super physiological levels and that can allow people with various syndromes and disorders to overcome their deficits. So if you are somebody who is interested in how the brain works normally, how it breaks down, and how it can be repaired, and if you are interested in speech and language, reading and comprehension of information of any kind, today's episode ought to include some information of deep interest to you. Dr. Chang is indeed the top of his field in terms of understanding these issues of how the brain encodes speech and language and creates speech and language, and as I mentioned, movement disorders and epilepsy. We even talk about things such as the ketogenic diet, the future of companies like Neuralink, which are interested in bioengineering and augmenting the human brain, and much more. One thing that I would like to note is that in addition to being a world-class neuroscience researcher and world-class clinician, neurosurgeon, and chair of neurosurgery, Dr. Eddie Chang has also been a close personal friend of mine since we were nine years old. We attended elementary school together, and we actually had a science club when we were nine years old focused on a very particular topic. You'll have to listen in to today's episode to discover what that topic was and what membership to that club required. That aside, Dr. Chang is an absolute phenom with respect to his scientific prowess, that is, both his research and his clinical abilities, and he's one of these rare individuals that whenever he opens his mouth, we learn. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Levels. Levels is a program that helps you see how different foods affect your health by giving you real-time feedback on your diet using a continuous glucose monitor. I started using Levels about one year ago, and the Levels monitor allowed me to see how different foods change my blood sugar level or my blood glucose level, which turns out to be immensely important for being able to predict how, for instance, certain foods will affect your energy level, your ability to exercise, your ability to recover from exercise, and how it will affect other hormones like testosterone, estrogen, thyroid hormone, and so forth. The other thing about using a Levels monitor is that it gave me insight into how food and exercise and other activities and even how well I was sleeping or how poorly I might happen to be sleeping impact my blood glucose levels. It even taught me that the sauna, that generating a lot of heat in my body was changing my blood glucose levels, which turned out to inform how I should shift my eating patterns, foods I should eat, timing of eat, and so on and so forth. Really gave me great insight into how all of the important aspects of my health were interlocking and affecting one another, not just how food was impacting my blood glucose. So if you're interested in learning more about Levels and trying a continuous glucose monitor yourself, you can go to levels.link/huberman. That's levels.link/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. I started sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover a few months ago, and it is simply incredible. In fact, I don't even like traveling anymore (laughs) because they don't have Eight Sleep mattress covers in hotels and Airbnbs. One of the reasons I love my Eight Sleep mattress covers so much is that, as you may have heard before on this podcast or elsewhere, in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, you need your body temperature to drop by about one to three degrees, and I tend to run warm at night, which makes it hard to sleep and sometimes wakes me up in the middle of the night. When you sleep on an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can program the temperature of that mattress cover for specific times in the early, middle, and late part of your night so that the mattress stays cool, and as a consequence, you sleep very, very deeply. It also tracks your sleep, so it's paying attention to how many times you're moving, how deep your sleep is. It gives you a sleep score, all wonderful data to help you enhance your sleep, and of course, sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance, which makes an Eight Sleep a terrific tool for enhancing not just your sleep, but all aspects of your life really. If you're interested in trying an Eight Sleep mattress cover, you can go to eightsleep.com/huberman to check out the Pod 3 cover, and you can save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships to the USA, to Canada, the UK, and select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman to save $150 at checkout.Today's episode is also brought to us by InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals. I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term health can only be analyzed with a quality blood test. One problem with a lot of DNA tests and blood tests, however, is you get data back about levels of metabolic factors, levels of hormones, et cetera, but you don't know what to do with that information. InsideTracker makes interpreting your data and knowing what to do about it exceedingly easy. They have a personalized platform where you can go and you can see those levels of hormones, metabolic factors, lipids, et cetera, and they point to specific nutritional tools, behavioral tools, supplement-based tools, et cetera, that can help you bring those numbers into the ranges that are optimal for you. If you'd like to try InsideTracker, you can go to insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plans. Again, that's insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off. The Huberman Lab Podcast is now partnered with Momentous supplements. To find the supplements we discuss on the Huberman Lab Podcast, you can go to live momentous, spelled O-U-S, livemomentous.com/huberman. And I should just mention that the library of those supplements is constantly expanding. Again, that's livemomentous.com/huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Eddie Chang. Eddie, welcome.