No.1 Brain Scientist: Billionaire Brain, Anxiety & Addictions | Vidita Vaidya | FO518 Raj Shamani

26:53You're not able to like balance yourself. That's because the neurons are actually shutting off. And because one by one, they start shutting off in different parts of the brain. Most times people fall asleep before they have reached a really severe state. But it is chronic exposure to alcohol is damaging to the nervous system. There's no question about it. I mean, the science on this is very, very true, right? That you do kill neurons when you expose them to alcohol. So now, if this is a brain, okay, on this, when the alcohol goes, what happens? Does it change something? Does the white thing get something like or nothing changes?

27:30So the alcohol would enter the nervous system through your bloodstream, right? Normally, you're not going to have direct alcohol exposure. It's going to go through the bloodstream and then get to the brain. Once it gets to the brain, you get it. It goes to all over the nervous system. Blood supply goes everywhere in the brain. So there's not a part of your brain that is not going to see alcohol. A lot of how much alcohol we'll get then depends on how well your liver metabolizes the alcohol. So there are people who get drunk very quickly and there are people who will have a larger amount of alcohol and not see the effects.

28:01It depends on the enzymes in their liver and how much alcohol you clear in your liver before it enters your bloodstream in full content, right? So individuals will have different levels of alcohol that their brain sees as a consequence. For example, the Japanese do very badly at metabolizing alcohol. So they tend to have a higher blood alcohol level when they have the same amount of alcohol exposure. So when you have that kind of alcohol exposure, once a neuron sees alcohol, the GABA, there's a neurotransmitter channel, the GABA channel that gets affected. And that actually starts showing increased signal.

28:36Neurons start reducing their firing. So let's say I had a signal that I needed to convey from here to my hand. this hand wants to touch this right so i'm i have a neuron that's carrying the signal to my spinal cord and now i want to move this i want to do the same action but there is alcohol in the nervous system i will struggle first of all i might get somewhere there but i may not be able to precisely touch it and then over time my ability to even move effectively is going to get hampered because the signal itself will decay since the signal producing neuron is not working as well. Interesting.

29:09But does any of my brain parts swell, get strong, get bigger, get smaller? Smaller. Which one? Your hippocampus will shrink. Your prefrontal cortex over time will shrink. Show me where. So in this part of the brain right here is your prefrontal cortex. So if I turn this over, I think I should be able to show you the prefrontal cortex on the other side. Let's See? No? Okay. Here I can see the hippocampus in this section. Right here is a structure called the hippocampus. That structure has been beautifully named after a seahorse, but let's forget why it was called that. But the hippocampus is involved in learning.

29:47It's involved in memory formation. It's responsible for all the memories you build, which are explicit memories, where you grew up, where you live, things that have happened in your life. All these events get recorded in your hippocampus and then passed on to your cortex. Those neurons are very vulnerable. They tend to die more easily. And they are definitely impacted by alcohol. And you get shrinkage. First of the way the neuron looks, it shrinks. Then neurons die. After they shrink, they die. So you lose neurons. And so eventually, if there is chronic and large-scale usage, then over time, you do tend to kill those neurons.

30:22So that hippocampus, which is responsible for your memory, largely, shrink and shrink and shrink and then you start forgetting. That's what alcohol does. Strong alcohol use and alcohol use disorder will definitely take you down that way. Another question, slightly unrelated, but I'll come back because you spoke about hippocampus. Do women have bigger hippocampus than men? They have. No, actually, they don't have. Why do they remember things better? Like there's a whole debate around it. It's very interesting that you're saying this. Well, I mean, are there obvious and overt sex differences between the male and female brain?

30:57Not in the large scale, but in the detail and specific parts of the brain, there are differences. The hypothalamus has clear differences between the male and female brain. But it's like a distribution and the distributions tend to overlap. So if you have a male distribution and you have a female distribution, there'll be people who look identical to each other. You can't say this is very different, but there are individuals, if you look at the means, there are some differences. I think what happens is the way women are socialized, we are socialized to remember details. We're socialized to remember birthdays.

31:28We're socialized to remember events because we become the memory keepers of our families. So if you just look at the home, who's the memory keeper? It's usually the mom. Yeah. She's the one who's remembering everyone's birthday. She's the one who's remembering special date. She's the one who's doing everything to make that day special. I don't think that's biological as much as it is social. It has been strongly socially conditioned. And I think if you took a bunch of men and made it incentivized for them to also remember all of that, they would remember it because they remember, you know, they remember something about their work situation.

32:02Or stock market numbers and stuff like that. It's not like you are inherently, it's just that what you are remembering tends to be different because of what has been put as an emphasis socially. But eventually the nervous system is remembering stuff. So it's not the biology, it's psychology mostly. It's a combination of biology overlaid by social. Got it. Interesting. Okay. So you were showing something. I wanted to show you what you want. Yeah. So that in this, you can really see the white matter and gray matter. Really distinct. There's a white matter. So now it's obvious to you. Now you understand why it's called white matter.

32:38It's actually as simple. Somebody saw it underneath a microscope or in their hand. And they're like, okay, let's call this gray and let's call this white. It's as simple as that. Why not pink matter? So if I leave this brain for long enough and if all the blood is fully cleared from it, it starts looking a bit gray. So here on this one, it might look a little bit more than that. Let's take this one. And in this also, you'll be able to see the white matter and the gray matter. You should be able to see the white and the gray. Yeah. So that's what it was. It was just fixed and you saw it as white and gray.

33:11And that's why it's called white matter. The blood starts drying up. Yeah, the blood is taken out because if the blood is there, you can't see very clearly and study it very well. So you clear out the blood, which is what you do to fix the brain. And then you take a look. And the way I'm again going back to because I'm just curious to know more. What alcohol does to like, well, you explained me about the alcohol, right? Does sugar have similar impact? So sugar is an addictive substance like alcohol. So it hits the same motivational pathway, the nucleus accumbens, the VTA to nucleus accumbens pathway.

33:47That's the dopamine producing pathway in your brain. Same circuit also gets hit by sugar. So it's not your addiction to sugar is also happening through the same circuit. That your alcohol addiction, nicotine addiction, same circuits. Gambling addiction, same circuit. Now, the circuit is vital because without that circuit, you will not survive. Without that circuit, you will not remember that you're thirsty and you need to drink, that you're hungry and you need to eat. So that circuit is absolutely vital for survival. But it's also a circuit that is very prone to getting hijacked. So it gets hijacked.

34:19It gets hijacked by alcohol. It gets hijacked by drugs of abuse. It gets hijacked by sugar. It gets hijacked by gambling. And it can get hijacked by addictive conditions. Interesting. And then they all first affect hippocampus and then the ability to actually perform. They affect multiple parts of the brain, including the hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, accumbens, multiple circuits, so different degrees and expense. And the first thing they do is shrink in? They shrink very often the dendrites. Sometimes they cause an overgrowth of the branches in areas where you don't want an overgrowth. Give me an example.

34:54So, for example, one of the things that they do is actually they cause an overgrowth in the area of the brain that is called the nucleus accumbens where you now are hyper prone to responding to the same addictive substance. Because it gets bigger. Yeah. So it's not just always that it's causing a breakdown of the structure. Sometimes it's causing it to expand. And you become hypersensitive to that. It becomes hypersensitive to the drug. So the same, it can become hypersensitive. It can also become tolerant such that the same draws of the drug doesn't give you the same response. And so now you need to take twice as much to get the same effect.

35:30Which happens most of the time. Okay. So we clear this and we'll get the microscope. Microscope, yeah. So you know the question you asked me, which is, look, it's a rat brain, it's a mouse brain, it's a goat brain, it's a human brain. How can you study a human brain when you're using a rat or a mouse or a goat? Because the building blocks, like I said, are the same. Like if you build a Lego, you can build a small little house with a Lego, you can build a huge plane with a Lego. So in here is the building blocks that I want to show you. So in here is actually a section through the rat brain in which we have stained the neurons.

36:00So you can actually see the individual neurons. So I have zoomed in for you. So if you take a look through this, bring your eyes there. You should be able to see these cells. Keep both eyes open and just relax and look. Okay. Can you see these black-like dots with these large trees? Almost looks like a forest of trees. Right? Like just branches. Branches. That's actually a neuron. Those are neurons in the rat cortex. Okay. Our neurons are remarkably similar. They're bigger. Okay, so if you say this is like 100 micron, which is like a millimeter, it's significantly smaller. So like if you have 100 micron neuron, these cells would be a little bit bigger, our neurons, but they're not drastically different.

36:49And it doesn't matter if it's a goat brain, human brain. Just the dots will be bigger. Yeah, the trees actually might be a little larger as well. But in its, there's a real common architecture to these neurons. they look very similar. So if you want to study how a neuron works how a neuron functions you can't study it easily in the human brain. So we study it in animals where we have the chance to study it well and you can study it in a rat and mouse brain with great detail and great understanding. But when you study the effect of something let's say some medicine, some drugs some psychedelic, some inducing chemicals a rat's brain does it show similar kind of yes like things that as a human brain it does so let's say if you put like a depressed human brain and a depressed rat brain and then you put one medicine which is making both of them happy correct they give you the same they can give you similar responses I will not say same because the complexity of this brain the human brain is definitely more than the complexity of the rat brain interesting thing so and and would you say that rat brain is the closest thing the closest thing to us is the non-human primates so the gorillas and the chimps and the monkeys are the closest because they are our cousins they are first cousins okay okay in the family of life they are our first cousins and it's very obvious if you look at a bunch of monkeys you'll begin to realize that actually in principle this could be humans as well you know there's like relationships you remember who's who's aren't.

38:23Then they remove the lice. That's the way they have. So we also have our ways of grooming each other. A lot of like when you see a family together, people will line up and do chumpy to each other. It's because it's a way of indicating care. It's our language of care. And you see the very similar things in non-human primates as well. So they are the closest to us, but they are much more complex species and they're not the ideal species in which to do research. First of all, they feel a lot. They're like us with a much broader emotional spectrum. And so they come with the challenges that when you want to go inside the brain and look, it's not ethically viable to do these experiments in non-human primates as easily.

39:02That's not to say that nobody has. People do some critical work is done in non-human primates. But they're not the species of choice to study. But why, if monkey is the closest to human, right, why are we reading? Because they're also the closest to human and we identify deeply with them. It's the same way as when we look at the hierarchies of species. Species that exhibit large amount of care and a large amount of nurture are the species that we… It'll be better, right? I understand, but then we probably do it via imaging where we don't have to take the life of the ant. We will not do something that takes the life of the ant, right?

39:40So this is where the boundaries of what one ethically can do. A lot of this can also be studied in the human brain. You can image the human brain. You can image the monkey brain. But you will not take the life when you go in. Because you are using that animal to study. But you have an ethical framework in which you are using those animals. But here's my little complicated question. More philosophical rather. Who set this boundary that taking a life of a rat is ethical versus... I completely agree with you. Taking a life of monkeys is not ethical. If it's animal, it has to be animal. We tend to apply this based on sentience and understanding of consciousness.

40:19We know that we are conscious, right? We now are attributing an understanding of consciousness to other species. Species that are closer to us in the complexity of their brains. Whales, dolphins, monkeys, gyms, gorillas. Their complexity of their nervous system is much closer to us. And so we attribute to them greater understanding of complex emotions and consciousness-like states, which we do not attribute so much to a rat. Now, that may be a little bit of an unfair categorization because rats also show empathy. They can also show altruistic behavior and they do feel. It's not like they don't feel, right?

41:00So there is this awareness that we have. However, somewhere in the history of time, we could have also said, let's just study flies, which also have complex nervous systems. They fly, etc. They have a much shorter lifespan and people do a lot of things we do. We study in worm, we study in fly, but we can't study the mammalian brain in worm and fly. And the mammalian brain is much more closer to us because we are mammoths. So it was a via media. Is it the best solution? No. But it is a via media solution that the community has come up with at the same time saying that there will still be strict ethical oversight over all experiments.

41:37All experiments have like ethical clearances that they have to go through. But it's a very fair question. And it's one which is difficult to deal with and a difficult one to answer. Because in a sense, you're saying we are putting human life as a higher value than the life of the animal that we are taking to be able to study. Right. So there is that sort of a thing. that we are doing. Let's say we have put in human as because every species is selfish and they think their species is the top level species, right? You could see that in multiple other species and animals as well. They would, even they're totally unrelated animals, they'll save their other animals similarly and attack humans, right?

42:12Absolutely. So let's say we put humans at the top because we are humans, we're biased. But how do we decide hierarchy of what are the animals who are going to be worth taking life versus not taking life? Probably in terms of the complexity of their nervous system and the tendency of those species to do a great deal of nurture and care. Right. So when you look at monkeys and non-human primates, there's a lot of community social architecture where they exhibit a lot. They also mourn, very visibly mourn. Elephants very visibly mourn. That is not to say that a rodent doesn't feel that kind of pain and suffering but it's not as visible perhaps but do they do they feel they definitely feel they definitely feel like if a rat watches another animal go through pain it feels it there's something called witness element and there's witness stress and that is experienced even by rodents so two unrelated rats yeah you put both of them in a lab yeah and one rat sees another rat going through extreme pain and torture this rat will feel it will feel it interesting very just I don't know which angle we've taken the podcast but I find it very interesting.

43:24And so goat brain you said you study goat brain because it's the closest in terms of shape and size. We study the rat and the mouse most in my laboratory. So you got today rat, mouse and goat. Why goat? Goat because it'll look most to someone who has never seen a brain like something that they imagine the human brain to look like. So if I have to say here Raj, here's a brain I'm showing you a brain and can you see this and immediately think of something you remember from when you were in school then the goat brain immediately evokes that memory but if I show you a rat and mouse brain you'll say that's interesting but it doesn't look like anything that's why I got the goat brain also so that you may see that the building blocks are similar it doesn't matter which species you're studying this building blocks are very very similar and by studying the building blocks you can understand much about what is happening in our brain okay you were showing me this?

44:18What is this? So now I showed you what the cortex looks like and with a very old kind of technique called Golgi staining and what I'm going to do now is show you what I think I should have in this the wow you did a good job you did that automatically okay let me just see if I can zoom and show you so you know we were talking about grey matter and white matter right so grey matter I told you is the place where all the cells are so now if I want to see the cells? Is there a way I can stain the cells? So in this, there's a nissle stain, which allows you to stain the cell body. What is nissle stain?

44:54It's just a stain that binds to RNA granules inside cells. I still didn't get it. Explain it simply. It's a chemical that will go and bind to a certain kind of a molecule within your cell. And because of that, it'll stain all these cells. And so they end up staining a nice blue. Okay. So you can see them. They'll be dark blue and they look circular because these cells are largely either circular, pyramidal or oval or elliptical. So this is how you find out cells. Yeah, this is in the hippocampus. You study these. So there is like one purple thingy I do, I see and then there's a blue thing. The blue thingy is what you're looking at.

45:31Those blue cells, can you see them all like next to each other? They look like grapes almost next to each other. They're all next to each other and that's the hippocampus. Yeah, exactly. Like blue, blue, blue, blue dots. But then I see this one sort of one thing coming out as well. Yeah, that's an air bubble that has happened. That is not a good slide. So it's a bubble. So ignore the bubbles. I'm just supposed to see the blue thing. Which almost looks like freckles. Yeah, it looks like freckles. It's exactly that. But those are the cells in the hippocampus. That's your memory making structure in the brain.

46:06So these thousands or maybe millions of So inner rad brain. These fractals is memory. That's where your memory is made. So you need the hippocampus to make new memories. So do each one of them actually form a memory in my head? So that's an interesting question. There's a hypothesis called the formation of engrams. And I'll tell you what this engram formation is. It's an idea that's not that new, but it's been something people have been working on very closely in the last 10 years. So let's say I come to this room. Now I have this room in which I see Raj Shamani opposite me. I see it says figuring out.

46:41I have this bottle of water. I'm creating a memory of this moment, of this time, of this individual. And I will now walk away from here. And the next time I come back here, if that memory has been strongly made, it will activate certain cells in my brain that have encoded this memory. So let's say I have cells A, B, C, D, E, F, G in that part of the brain that encode this memory. Then I go away. I'm not coming back here immediately. One week later, you happen to say, why don't you come over to the studio? And I come over and then those same cells get reactivated because that memory has formed.

47:16So that's called an engram. It's the physical map of where the memory is stored in my brain. Now let's imagine I go to somebody else's studio. Now that studio happens to have the exact same table, the exact same whatever, maybe it doesn't have Raj Chaman. It has something very similar. They're very similar. Same color, same structure. They're very similar. And I get a partial activation of the engram. And then I think, oh, maybe I've been here before, which is actually not true. I haven't been there. But because it overlapped so much with something that I already had a memory of, I get this weird feeling of Deja Huw.

47:51Where I think I've been here before, but I actually haven't. It's just that my brain thinks I've been here because there's this reactivation of this engram. So this partial activation of the engram is enough to bring back the whole thing. So our brain is something, it's a pattern completer. It wants to take partial information and finish the information. So it takes a little bit of information, says, I think I've seen this. And now let me finish the whole story in my head. It's like how we don't have the patience to hear the whole story. You start telling me a story and I'm like, but I know where you're going with this.

48:22Now don't finish the story. I understood what you're saying, right? So that tendency of our brain is to try to take shortcuts. We're a shortcut making. We want to finish quickly, quickly. Like, let's get this done and let me get all the information out partially and complete the whole picture because I think I will get it mostly. And 95 % of the time you will get away with it also because you may get it broadly. But sometimes in the detail you will get it wrong. And when you get it wrong in the detail, the only way to correct that is by slowing it down. you have to slow it down take the time to learn it so for example let's say you take an exam let's say you have an exam to do tomorrow and you decide you're going to mug everything that is there today and broadly you may get some part of it correct the next day two weeks later I ask you remember anything you have gotten everything because it was short term short term memory and you have not really learnt it you have just memorized it enough to produce something the next day and vomit it out and then your brain says, now I'm not wasting any space on all this because you have not taken the time to properly learn it.

49:33So what you remember as short term, quickly done, shortcut associated doesn't last. The brain is not wasting too much. So even when you go back into school, the few subjects that you really love and you really learned, you learned well, you'll feel comfortable with. A lot of other stuff you've just memorized. I have no idea. Yeah. Forgotten? You've just vomited it out and it's now blank. Like if somebody asks you, say, did I ever really study that? I don't remember studying this. But do they get stored in these blue dots? They do get stored in the strength of the connections between these two dots.

50:08So those right now you're seeing only the blue dots. You're not seeing the nerve connections between the dots. For that, you need a different kind of stain. The stain I showed you before showed all these fibers coming out, right? So those are the axons and the dendrites. That's where all the connections are made between these cells. Now, if I take my skin cells, they don't have these kinds of branches. They're just cells stuck next to each other. They're epithelial cells. But cells in the brain produce their functions by talking to each other. It's all communication. It's a signal that I send to you and you receive the signal.

50:39I send the signal through my axon if I was a cell. And if you were a neuron also, you were receiving it through your dendrites. So this is how we're communicating. It is in the communication that the memory is eventually strengthened and maintained. Very interesting. So explain me in simple terms as if I have no clue and you're telling me for the first time. In the most layman terms. Okay, don't be scientific. I won't be scientific. So it's like, tell me how memory is formed. And where is it formed? Like what happens? Okay, so there are different kinds of memories. There's the memory of you learning how to ride a bicycle.

51:15Right? Yeah. You learned how to ride a bicycle. That is done. That's a procedural memory. That's a part of your brain. That's a different part of your brain that processes procedural memories. When you learned how to walk, when you learned how to bicycle, when you learned how to swim. That's one kind of memory. How you learned how to dance, maybe a beautiful sequence. These are all procedural memories. They're not memories that you consider the explicit memories. Explicit memories are memories where you and I can describe something. You can tell me yesterday I went out for a meal with this person.

51:47This is what I ate. That's your memory of what happened yesterday. You can also tell me that 20 years ago, this was what I ate in the gully outside my school. And this was how the vada pav tasted or whatever. Those are explicit memories. Now, these are two different classes of memories. They also tend to be processed by different parts of the brain. Now, one memory, the learning how to ride a bicycle. Once you learn how to ride a bicycle, you're not remembering every single time. How did I ride the bicycle? bicycle. You just get on and you ride. It's the same way as you learn how to walk. Every time you're not remembering to walk, I need to move my foot like this, etc.

52:19You just do it. And that's all procedure. But explicit memories are in the retelling of the memory that the memory becomes actually relevant. If I have a memory and I never talk about it ever, over time, the memories will fade. It is in my description of the memories that they get a life. Either openly by my talking about it or by my thinking about it. I can think about it and keep that memory alive as well. So sometimes you close your eyes and you imagine someone you loved, a parent, a family member who's no more, but you can almost imagine their face. And it comes back up because it's a visual memory that you're recreating.

53:00And some people are very visual and they can actually close their eyes and bring back the memory of the person. But those memories are kept alive by your brain or when you talk about something. Explicit. Yeah, those are explicit memories. They are actually formed, all explicit memories appear to be formed involving the hippocampus. So we need the hippocampus for explicit memories. And the way we understood this was actually because of a person called H.M. Okay. H.M. was a guy called Henry Moliacin. He had severe seizures. He just was seizing so badly and there was no medication or treatment for it.

53:36So the surgeon went in and took out the part of the brain that was producing the seizures because the seizures were so severe, he couldn't function. But in the process, the part of the brain that was producing it was the hippocampus. So they took out the hippocampus bilaterally. And now Henry could not make any new memories. old memories which are distributed out of the hippocampus were still there. But all the new memories, nothing new could be formed. So let's say I was a doctor and you are Henry. I come and say, hi, Henry, how are you today? Shall we talk about something? Then tomorrow I come again, I have to introduce myself because you have no idea who I am.

54:09You have made no memory of either me or this interaction. But if I teach you to draw something, you learn it. You get better and better at drawing it because procedural memory is still okay. So that's when we first learned that the hippocampus is so important for forming memory. So our idea of location and space and people and events is encoded first in the hippocampus. Then from there, it goes to being distributed in many different. It's like almost a bank teller machine. You need to have the hippocampus to get the memory. After that, you don't keep everything in the hippocampus. You distribute it.

54:45So you send it to many other parts of the cortex. So now it lives in many different distributed places. And that's why old memories, which are distributed to many locations, tend to be the last to go. So when you have someone who's much older in your family who has Alzheimer's or has cognitive impairments or dementia, they will sometimes remember the most excruciatingly small detail about some old memory, but they don't remember who you are. As recent as what has happened yesterday, they don't remember. It's because that memory is relatively fresh and hasn't had a chance to become an old, stable, consolidated memory that's distributed to many locations in the brain.

55:25True, true. I've seen this live in one of my family members. They went through an episode for about six, seven days where they had this, I don't know if you call it stroke or some sort of episode. where they forgot who the family members were and they were like who's this person but next morning they just and everybody in the family was very shocked that oh maybe they've forgotten everything and now this is end and you know how family reacts first time next morning that person woke up at the exact same time when they wake up they got up they started cooking in an exact proper way as if everything was normal and they served it to the five people who they remembered.

56:14Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. The brain is a very complex. It's like brain like that person's brain remembered how to cook, where the food is, where the salt is, like all of that thing. But they couldn't remember who was this person. It becomes muscle memory. When you dance or you sing or you sometimes even produce some piece which involves movement, you're not thinking that now I have to do this. Then I have to do this. Let's say someone who's been doing Bharatanatyam for multiple years there's so many different dances do you remember which is the next step it's become muscle memory right when we call something becoming muscle memory it's because it's almost as though it's produced automatically so for many people who would be going to the kitchen every day doing the same ritual you know kutofying something doing something that repeated action is almost muscle memory it's not now I have to remember that I have to take this out and then do this so when does this normal explicit memory become muscle memory?

57:11So procedural memories become muscle memories very easily. That's the ones that involve movement. Explicit memories get distributed and don't become muscle memories but they get distributed to multiple parts of your cortex so they become how to put it, they're more stable because they've had time to marinate and distribute to many parts of the brain. So very old memories which are very strong memories tend to get distributed like this. But let me ask you a question. You went to school in Mumbai. I don't know where you went to school. In Daur. In Daur. You had a favorite teacher. Yeah. You remember your favorite teacher?

57:49You remember the person you hated the most in school who was a bad teacher? Yeah. Do you remember all the people who you were neutral towards? No. I don't remember half of their name. I'm finding it hard. Like who were the apart from five teachers who I knew? I don't even know who were the other teachers. Precisely. So this is a good exercise, which one can easily do. that if you go back 20 years, 20, 25 years, sometimes 10 years, who do you remember from a large setting where there were many people? You tend to remember the people you really liked, tend to remember the people you really disliked.

58:18The people you're neutral to, you just forget. So emotionally charged memories. You remember anything that has emotion. Charged good, charged bad, doesn't matter. Negative charge or positive charge? You basically need meaning to remember the memory. It has to matter. Things that don't matter, your brain is not, so for example, you're not going to remember formulae and maths if they're not changing your life every day. If they're changing your life every day you will remember it. But otherwise why are you going to remember? It's just going to go out of your brain Interesting. So but then why are some people or some kids or some individuals are so good with their memory and they remember everything versus some individuals are not So you know there are things where people talk about idactic memory or photographic memory where you actually look at a page and now you remember it and the next day you just remember the page that's some of it is training some of it is inherent capabilities also like for example someone is a really good dancer versus not someone's really good at having eye hand-eye coordination and that's why they can play so there will be some inherent differences but a lot of it is once you discover talent you tend to hone it you tend to hone it when you're good at something and you realize you know this is I'm something that this is actually a positive reward for me because I feel good at it it's a self-perpetuating thing the minute you find something you're good at and it gives you a sense of pleasure and a sense of reward that you have done well at it you tend to go and repeat it so are you telling me that if there is a kid okay in a family and let's say two kids who have exactly same identical biology and brain okay two kids one kid you tell that kid again again you're dumb you can't remember everything again and again every day for a year and one kid you keep telling every day that you're intelligent you remember everything okay you're such a brilliant kid you have sharp memory and you remember everything regardless of what they do if you keep telling them you think the one you're telling nice things will end up becoming better at memory than versus not 101 % there's no doubt about it because the kids would the stress associated with continuously being negated and continuously being told you're incapable has a clear impact.

1:00:36I'm not saying it will be black or white, but there's no question that if you started with two individuals with identical capability and then the environment pushed one to have positive reinforcement and the other to have continuous negative reinforcement, there's no doubt that you will drive a differential. And can they do that in adults as well? To a lesser extent, but absolutely to a lesser extent, because the brain is much more plastic and much more open to change in a younger nervous system. So your first 25 years of your life, that's a window in which there's much more plasticity than in the second 25 and the last 25.

1:01:13It's downhill after that first 25. It moves in the other direction. So plasticity is reducing in the range of what it can do. So when I say plasticity, it means the ability of your brain to change, to effectively change in response to environment. Our brain is a, like I said, its job is to take in information from the environment and make change to be able to adapt better to the world. That's what it does. Interest. Very, very interesting. But tell me how, okay, coming to high achievers, okay. And this is the most fascinating thing which I, which I love doing, right. So I observe a lot of athletes.

1:01:50And just for the fun of it. Like how do they perform? How do they come to the show court? What do they do in practice? And all the videos I can find out. There's one identical thing you will find out in I think thousands of Olympic athletes. And you will see. Probably you know it already. When you look at all the runners or anyone. The moment there is like this. The gun, right? The body moves. Have you seen it? It's a prep. It's a prep. It's an internal prep of the brain before anything actually happens. So what I was seeing, I was looking at this one runner whose race was next. Okay, and he was in the stand and he was watching.

1:02:30This is Olympic going on. And I think it was like a 400 meter race and next was 100 meters, something like that. This guy was standing here. The race was there and they put a gun trigger for that race. But this guy in the stand, he was like in a resting mode. His body moved. Totally understand. And like just his body took a reaction. So why did that? Like what is going on? How has it become muscle memory that a gunshot, which will probably scare some people or make them nervous or make them prep. This guy can't think of anything and just moving like this. That's because that entire sequence has probably been practiced in his mind over and over and over again.

1:03:12it's the same with someone like a concert pianist which is if you are hearing so i'll give you a this is a good example because a concert pianist is actually a good way of so you know when you move your fingers in a particular way those individual fingers have representations in the brain and so that part of the brain is getting active as you're moving that finger and even before you move the finger there's something called the premotor which is before the sequence starts you imagine it yeah and you start playing now let's say i'm a concert pianist and you are playing the same sequence i'm not even moving my fingers i'm listening in the audience i'm playing out the whole sequence in my premotor cortex because i know how the sequence will be played i have practiced it so much that you're playing the music even before you hit the key will activate my brain to start producing the exact same sequence and this is something called mirror neurons we We have the capability of imagining another's actions.

1:04:10And before they perform the action, we predict what they're going to do. So this is a prediction system that we have, which is rather unique and special to primates. So primates tend to have this mirror neuron system really developed where we actually predict the other's action, which helps you, right? It's a shortcut. Let's say you and I are sitting. if I have a good idea of how you're going to behave, what you're going to do, then it makes this conversation so much easier. It flows because I'm predicting what you're going to do. And that's what we're doing in all social interactions. We're mimicking the other person's potential action by imagining what they likely will do.

1:04:50And we tend to do this better with those whom we understand better. So you're Indian, I'm Indian. We have a common shared vocabulary of an understanding of our country, our culture. So it's an ease. Let's say you stick me with someone from like Indonesia and they don't speak English or they don't speak Hindi or they don't speak whatever common. We will struggle initially because our ability to predict the other person's actions has gone because cultural context has moved away. This is why we find it easier to hang out with our own. The problem with that is it also comes with a negative of that, which is that we have an implicit bias to preferring people who sound like us, look like us, behave like us and we find it harder to deal with individuals who don't sound at all like us, who behave very differently from us and that sometimes can create a bias.

1:05:41Interesting. I'll tell you three processes of ultra high achievers. Tell me what's going on in their brain because all three of them have won tremendously thousands of times in their life. One is Michael Jordan. One is Michael Phelps. and the third is napoleon all three they have different process because you said that things that we experience and things that we do they either become procedure memory or explicit memory and when they when we keep repeating it again again the stories in our brain again again it ends up becoming a very strong memory right that's how we end up winning or losing in some sort okay or perform that affects our ability to perform a task yeah so all three people so michael jordan what he does he would imagine in his brain throwing a basket right so he he says this that everything in life happens twice one inside your brain and then in reality so it has already happened so he would practice the whole match yeah that i'm throwing this he would visualize it right so that's one process second is michael phelps what he used to do for years since the time he started training till he actually ended up winning almost every race in the world right every night before sleeping he used to see himself winning not the process so michael jordan is looking at process i'm getting the pass from here i'm doing this phelps is only seeing himself winning like this is what i won after winning i've done this after like right before winning i'm like my this is how my water is and he would see himself winning in different situations like if my water broke like if my goggles broke and water got in how do i win if let's say i get stuck if my latest like start is late i'm a win it's just winning and the third process is napoleon before every big battle he would sit down and he would imagine himself losing that what are the ways that I can die today yeah it's a survival right it's a thing that so he would just see himself dying from all the ways and that's why he will never die like he would win almost because he's eliminated in his head these are the maybe 23 ways today I'm going to die and I won't I'm going to protect myself I'm going to protect from those 20 things all three different ways all three are somehow actually practicing memory in your head to end up winning what is going on in their brains is it all three different things they're activating different things the same likely activating different things the one that you could the first example of michael jordan he's activating every single circuit of practice either the real practice or the created practice in his nervous system so he's highly process driven it's like i'm going to remember how it feels to shoot the three-pointer, etc.

1:08:36How am I going to do this over and over and over again? And clearly, the love of the game is obvious in him. He has inspired multiple people to fall in love with the game as well, right? So I think that is very process-oriented. Michael Phelps has also got insane bodily advantages. That span, I mean, there's a reason he was the albatross. There's the span itself, so there's a physical advantage. But it's interesting that he's imagining the, so it's almost like a positive reinforcement. His goal is that I want to win that race. And he's reinforcing that positivity in him over and over again. But clearly not simultaneously saying that if I don't win this, I give up.

1:09:11That doesn't seem to be part of the dialogue. It's I'm going after this and I'm going to go after this no matter what the circumstance. My goggles break, you know, something isn't working perfectly. I'm still going to give it everything I've got. So the thought of losing doesn't occur. What is going on in his brain? Absolutely. So in a sense, he's just ideating the outcome for himself, right? This is like, I'm convinced I'm going to do this. largely turned out to be correct. I mean, someone can ideate this and it may not work out because they have not done the work. It's also Michael Phelps. I mean, I could sit here and say, I also want to win the Olympics, but if I get into the pool, I will not even cross the...

1:09:46So that's... There is a realistic element to his ideation. It's not just a pipe dream. It's someone who's performing at the top of their game and then he's saying, I'm going to ideate the best outcome possible. So that's very realistically based. It's not a total pipe dream. But human beings have done this over and over again. I mean, there are examples of saying, I want to go to the moon. We wouldn't have believed we could have gone to the moon or gone to the other side of the moon and even seen anything. And we've done that, right, as a species. So clearly, pushing yourself that it is possible to do what feels like the impossible is one way of motivating yourself to get to that goal.

1:10:25In the case of Napoleon, I think he's, based on this description, would be performing out of fear. It's a, how do I survive? And those were survival circumstances. If you don't have that instinct, you are going to be dead on a battlefield, especially a battlefield unlike the ones of today and of that era. So I think that's operating out of a fear mentality. And certainly every description of him in history indicates that it was a man who would use every possible manipulative tool available to him in his arsenal to ensure that he survives. So it was one who was a pragmatist almost in a sense. How do I not be the one who's taken out on this battlefield?

1:11:08It's that approach. They're very different. I don't think the first two are operating from fear. the last one I think is operating from fear but is still successful despite that because of the kind of situation it's in but which one is the one that gets the sustained admiration is also interesting from our species it's also interesting right no one after 50 years no one after 50 years no one but Napoleon is more than 50 years so it's interesting because it's also because they had influence on the writings these guys don't have an influence on the writings so we can't history is always written by the winners that's always unfortunately the case history is also written by dominant voices you know culturally it's always been written by dominant voices so so one is operating out of process one is operated operating out of ideating a situation for himself and one is out operating out of fear are they operating from different parts of their brain likely what what is activating in case of Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps and Napoleon?

1:12:11So I would imagine that in the procedural situation, you're activating the circuits that control that action. Let's say you're imagining a three-pointer over and over and over again. You have a sequence, a muscle sequence that gets activated. Your motor cortex gets activated, then your spinal column, then you have to get your position of your body just right. And you've practiced it so many times that you can probably think that sequence out without doing it. And if you keep activating that and then you practice it multiple times. It is eventually, when you're in that situation, it's almost automatic.

1:12:44It feels almost automatic. So you're actually driving probably the procedural memories I was telling you. So is it different? It's this part of the brain. So in this, it is invisible, but there's a region here which underneath this, so you're now cutting through half the brain like this. Underneath this, there's a region called the striatum. the striatum and the basal ganglia circuitry are what do the procedural learning that's the circuit that's activated in Michael Jordan's brain when he's doing that and that activates the cerebral cortex premotor and motor from the motor cortex it goes all the way down through the spinal column all the way to the muscles of his arms and back eventually driving the release of the ball right so it's that sequence and the sequence is multiple neurons connected with each other that get activated that now you're doing it without shooting the ball and you're doing it repeatedly over and over again that's how eventually also you improve that circuit so you can drive a circuit by thinking it through over and over again and so in some sense that's also how you memorize something that's also how you learn something over a period of time so you can also do it for procedural memory as well just by thinking about it he's actually getting better okay and with With Phelps, what is he activating?

1:14:03With Phelps, he's likely activating his prefrontal cortex to override negative outcomes. So his limbic cortex would say, what the heck would happen if my goggles broke halfway through and I have water in my eyes, right? So now that's a negative outcome. He's activating probably the prefrontal cortex, which would then say, despite that negative outcome, you are going to be able to do this. So you're driving circuits in the brain that are giving you control over the responses that would happen if an emergency should happen in the water. Let's say your goggles do break. Everybody else has goggles and they're getting to their goal.

1:14:39You now have to function with something that has given you a handicap in that situation. How do you not let that handicap become a serious handicap? So you've ideated and imagined that handicap already before it occurs. and you've allowed yourself to say, if this were to happen, this is how I will handle it. Right? So in some sense, think about it like, let's say you, I mean, now let's think of a simple exam. Let's say you're going for an exam. And you have an exam for which you've studied, but you're now convinced yourself you'll forget everything you've studied. And when you go into the room, everything will come out of your brain and you will not be able to write a single word because you're so nervous.

1:15:17How do you prepare yourself for that possibility that you tell yourself that if that was to arise, how am I going to calm myself down so that I can at least handle one or two? So if you practice this to yourself, you would say in my entire paper, there'll be at least one question I can answer. It's a hundred mark paper. I can't answer all hundred. I'll find one question I can answer. Should I feel so nervous, I will find the one question I can answer and answer it. And you've prepared yourself before that situation to tackle that. Hopefully then you say, okay, I answered one question. Maybe the second question I'll find in my hundred, which I can still answer, Even if I can answer it very well, I can answer.

1:15:52That should have brought your calmness in enough that it will give you some room to tackle what would have been impossible. Otherwise, you've been paralyzed by the hardest question and not even attempted one. So it's in a sense preparing yourself for the worst possible outcome that I forgot everything. How will I handle such a situation? It's like when you go on stage and you have a fear of public speaking and a paralytic fear of public speaking. you will never be able to get over that unless somewhere you calm yourself by saying if I have to do this I will look at the one friendly face in the audience that is smiling back at me and I will talk like I'm having a conversation with that one person imagine the rest of the room there's nobody so you tell yourself what you will do should that situation arise and I think that is that is Michael Phelps's strategy which is that should something go wrong this is how I'm going to handle it so if in every brain in every human being largely there is a voice which is saying that you are going to win there's a voice which is saying this is not for you you will up you will mess up you will forget everything and as you're not born for the look at your situation and there's this voice which is actually killing you down like the little voice right so just by thinking about winning again and again with 20 different bad situations in your brain can actually kill this voice?

1:17:14I think it can help control it. I don't think it can kill the voice. If that voice is there and it has been nurtured and believe me, many people nurture the voice. Either you nurture it or other people in your life nurture that voice, which is to say that something isn't doable, something isn't possible, it's improbable. Why are you even bothering to try? So either you will do it or someone in your circle will do it. it may exist. But if you tell yourself that I'm going to give it the best possible shot that I can, then in principle, you can control that voice. I don't think you can get rid of it completely because it's likely a little bit inherent.

1:17:54And some of it is also survival. Like let's say tomorrow I want to climb Mount Everest, but I'm scared of heights. Then I may not necessarily be the best person to climb Mount Everest. So it is also protecting me that that little voice is also telling me, you know maybe this you just watch somebody climb mountain and maybe you don't attempt to do it right this is not your cup of tea but it is also the same voice that's telling me don't take on this research problem because this is too difficult for you to ask and that then I have to silence because I that then harms my ability to ask that research question I want to push that boundary of knowledge I want to try that even if it's going to be possibly a failure I don't want to not try I want to give it the shot that I have.

1:18:37Then I have to silence that voice. So that voice sometimes is protective and sometimes it's saving you from doing something you shouldn't do. And sometimes it's just a deterrent and it's not letting you move forward. So you have to have the ability to control it to that degree. Yeah. Interesting. And in the last case, which was Napoleon's case, where is he operating from? I think he's operating from the amygdala. So this is the hippocampus. Right in front of the hippocampus is this almond-shaped structure called the amygdala, which is your fear, threat, safety, emotion processing center. It's a vital center.

1:19:15Without this, you don't survive because you won't. Fight or flight. Yeah, absolute fight or flight. Like if you're in the middle of some prairie and some lion comes to eat you up, you need to run or hide. Right? One of the two. So the amygdala is vital for processing threats. It's also a structure that is critical for you to detect safety. It's not just a threat processing center. It also does safety detection, emotional detection, emotional valence of memories, importance of memories. I think he's operating from there because using that, he's saying, I'm going to eliminate everything that might potentially allow me to not survive.

1:19:52And I'm going to find all the safety things that are going to help me survive this. So it is operating from your limbic nervous system, this part of your what people like to call the reptilian brain. But basically, it's your survival processing emotion threat detection system, which evolution has maintained in all mammals. Because without that, you don't live to tell the tale. But then you also have been given this massive cerebral cortex, which you can see the size of the cerebral cortex in the rat brain. That was that smooth structure issue. And you can see this huge cerebral cortex in the human.

1:20:27What that has done is it's given you ability to do top-down control of all these circuits. That's your positive voice that's going to tell you, I'm not going to be a victim to this set of circumstances as well. It's the same circuit that's telling you, 10 people told me I'm incapable of doing this. I'm going to tell myself I'm going to try. It's still that very circuit. So this huge expansion has come with some massive benefits for us as a species. so we should use it. You know, this is where poetry, philosophy, creativity, et cetera, emerges. So now explain me. If somebody is watching this, okay, and they want to find out what kind of winner they can be.

1:21:08Because in theory, all three winners activated a different part of their brain and kept telling them that story based on probably their personality or their biology or the structure of their brain or social environment, right? Right. How can I find out which one will work for me? I would say go for the most sustainable. And the most sustainable is when you fall in love with doing something. You have to like what you do. That is the single most sustainable way of the long-term likelihood that you will achieve something. But can I find out? Can I find out that do I love? Yeah. Like what do I mean?

1:21:51Like, you know, can I find out as an individual that do I love fighting my fears? Do I love being process driven because I love the process? Or do I just love being delusional about just winning because all three processes? I think you can figure it out. If you watch your patterns of behavior and look back at what you did and what were your moments where you really felt that you got to some goal. Let's say you set some goal and you achieved it. And over a life of 20, 30 years, you'll be able to figure out where that goal was achieved in a way that you felt, hey, I not only enjoyed the process, I also loved the goal that I eventually got.

1:22:32And what was it that took me to getting there? And what's the pattern of behavior I have used? My suggestion is not to function from fear. The last, in my opinion, is the worst of those three examples. You will get paranoid. Because you will just, you will get to a set goal, but you will make, you will fry your brain in the process. And I'm not so sure that that's worth it. Because the costs of that eventually catch up and they tend to catch up as you age. Because if you continuously drive your fear circuit and your stress response pathways, you will eventually drive your brain towards a state which is not a very healthy state.

1:23:09The Jordan and Phelps examples are far better examples because they're not operating from fear. they are different styles no question about it but they are not operating from fear so I would say long term sustained success cannot come from fear this would be my general view that fear is not a good driver of that can you tell me like a framework or a question or an exercise for me and my viewers to ask ourselves right now so that we can find out at least largely or closely which process will work for us okay I would first say find out what you thoroughly have enjoyed doing. Okay, so first you have to find out what you really enjoy doing.

1:23:50And when you enjoy doing it, sometimes it leaves you feeling happy enough to want to share it with other people and to talk about it. Let's say you read something and you were so excited by it because you read it that you had to share it with three, four people immediately and say, you know, I read something so interesting or I did something that was so interesting and I want to share it with people I care about. So that's one good way to start pinpointing at least five things that you really genuinely enjoy doing and sustainably can want to share it with other people. What do you love pontificating about?

1:24:23Pontificating is a good thing. Yeah, I mean, like I love pontificating about the brain. So clearly I love the brain. So this is it. You like talking about something. So you find out what that is. Two, you find out whether you're willing to do the work. That's the sustainability. Are you willing to do the work? Because you can enjoy something transiently, but if you're not willing to put in the effort, it's not going to sustain. It doesn't matter whether you're a Michael Phelps or a Michael Jordan. In both those cases, those examples do not work without a ton of effort. so effort and process is eventually the long-term way of sustained achievement so I would say are you willing to put in the work what will you put in the work for if you have to do this over and over again day in and day out for hours at a time will you be able to do this and will you be able to sustain it or are you going to get so bored and so put off that you're going to quit that's the second question that you have to ask and three I think you have to ask that if you didn't get the outcome that you wanted?

1:25:29Would the process have given you enough joy?

1:25:34That's the hardest question to answer but that's the question that's worth answering. It's a very difficult one. It's a very difficult one but it's the one that will sustain you because the outcome is a byproduct. The process is eventually what you have to do. When you started, did you know you were going to be successful? I knew I would. You knew you were successful. When your first podcast did you know you would be successful? I'll make it. Because that's because you were convincing yourself. But did you like the process independent of the outcome? Exactly. That answers the question, right? You were happy to talk to all kinds of people over and over again because you enjoyed that process.

1:26:11The question I asked myself that if I knew that I will win and will be able to make something out of it. The question was, if I'm not able to do it for 10 years, will I still be happy? And the answer was yes. So that's a great question because you just answered that question, which was if I did the process for 10 years and at 10 year point, I had still not hit the outcome I wanted. I'd have been happy those 10 years were spent doing that because I enjoyed those 10 years enough. That answers it. That's precisely it. Can you, if independent of the outcome, will you be able to sustain what is required of the process?

1:26:49if you are able to do that, you'll do the hard work. It'll also get to the goal because if you do this well enough, eventually you'll get to the goal. You eventually get to the goal. I think what happens is people become supremely outcome focused, very quickly, are not willing to do the process and want the results yesterday. Where yesterday, I want to win yesterday, but I'm not willing to do any of the work that is required. To be Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps, you have to do a lot of work. a lot of work you can't become just Michael Jordan Michael Phelps by saying today morning I'm going to wake up and I will be able to do that and I have to put in the work of course in those cases because you're looking at athletic ability there are skills that are required but in many things skills are required and you need the skills but without the process and without doing the work there is no no way fair okay so if you open up let's say a billionaire's brain let's say I don't know Elon Musk okay and you open up a brain of a 25 year old or a 35 year old who's here at his home feeling stuck it's like i'm not able to do something i don't like my life will their brains be identical or different so no brain is identical to any other brain so let's start with that even if you take identical twins who have the same genetic makeup their brains are not identical partly because your brain is continuous it's like a blueprint okay let's say I'm an architect and I build a building okay now I have all of these rooms one above each other they're all identical in terms of the shape of the room everything is in the same place but then I decorate each room completely differently the interior decorators come in room it doesn't look like each other even though the kitchen is always in the same place the bathroom is in the same place the bedroom is in the same so if I look at your brain my brain Elon Musk's brain anyone's brain the prefrontal cortex is always here.

1:28:46It's not going to be in this part. Your temporal lobes are always going to be here. Your cerebellum is always good. So the locations will be the same, but in the detail, they will vary quite a bit because experience is educating the blueprint. So like the interior decorator is decorating the rooms differently. Life experiences are teaching the brain to readjust the way it looks in its detail. So the neurons, dendrites, the strength of the connections, what pathway is particularly strong in one individual versus another is continuously being educated by life. No one lives the same life. Even two identical twins growing up in the same household don't live the same life.

1:29:26Because right from in utero, when they're in their mother's tummy, their nutritional access is not identical. So even though genetically they're clones of Egypt, they're not getting the same nutritional access. They will not have the same life experiences. So already there is that much difference. OK. So certainly from someone who is perhaps at the lowest point in their life where they feel they have no hope, their brain is going to show certain structural changes that are associated, especially if they have a condition like major depression or anxiety or any of these. There are some structural changes that are happening.

1:30:03There are biochemical changes happening in the brain. So there is a different neurochemistry in this brain from someone who is perhaps at the top end of their game. where they're continuously challenging their nervous system, etc. Also, what histories of food you have eaten, what histories of drugs you've taken, what histories of life experiences you've had are going to change your brain. So it's not going to be identical, no. But you won't be able to tell like... Which one's a billionaire brain versus which one. But is it like some part of the brain will be bigger or smaller just because I get dopamine by winning, sure winning, or versus I get dopamine by just losing or maybe I don't get dopamine at all.

1:30:45No, it's not going to drastically vary. Unless there's, for example, I mean, where the variation comes, which is very visibly obvious, is if you look at an addict's brain, 101%, you'll be able to tell that there is a history of addiction. If you look at an individual that has gone to severe trauma, like a post-traumatic stress disorder, etc. There are physical architectural changes, volume shrinks, the hippocampus shows a shrinkage. So you can see that. Someone who has chronic alcoholism, Yes, you can tell that that brain has had that kind of alcohol or cocaine or heroin abuse. There are clear, obvious structural changes that I think you can make up.

1:31:20But in the detail of whether someone is terribly motivated versus not, you're not going to necessarily pick that up very easily from looking at the brain. Just an MRI. Yeah. You may pick it up if you start looking at the intensity of specific receptors. So for example, people have done these studies in animals that have a social dominance hierarchy. So there is the alpha at the top of the hierarchy. Then there are individuals at the lower end of the hierarchy. When you look at individuals on that hierarchy, their dopamine receptor and the striatum looks slightly different from each other. So yes, once you move to that level of detail, you might pick up subtle differences.

1:31:59In the broad, no, but in subtlety, yes. Interesting. So explain me what is going on in someone's brain when they are probably 25 or 35. And every day they go do their work, they come back home. And before bed, they are feeling like something's missing. Is there something which is going wrong in my brain? Or is it like what's going on? Why do I feel like, am I not living up to my potential? I'm stuck. I'm not living the life that I want to live. Or maybe there's something missing. Like I'm not enjoying that. That's a common feeling. It's not an unusual feeling. I mean, a lot of people feel like they're stuck in a rut where this doesn't feel right.

1:32:50Now, let's take away the requirements of food, shelter, clothing. for which when those are your essential requirements, you don't have the luxury to quit or luxury to switch gears sometimes, right? Sometimes those become so important that you don't have the chance to say, I'm quitting this and doing something else. But if you repeatedly feel this way, you're feeling that you're stuck in a rut and this is not where you should be, then it's probably your system telling you that this may not be the right fit, either the right fit of a job or the right fit of a situation or the right fit of a relationship even.

1:33:22It can be all of these situations that can make you feel like this doesn't feel right. Our body has n number of ways of telling us when we feel, even when we are not feeling well, your body has a way of telling you, oh my God, I'm going to catch a bug. As in, you already know you're feeling tired and you're going to fall sick. So I think these are signals that your body gives you. Some of them are worth responding to. Some of them are not worth responding to. Let's say you have a situation where food on the table is vital. You cannot, don't have the luxury of responding to this. The next day, meal will not come.

1:33:53So you have no choice in that moment. These are, you know, it's like you can't philosophize when you don't have the opportunity. Right. So from that perspective, let's put that aside. But otherwise, in a 25, 35 year old who says, let's say Roti Kapda Makaan is largely sorted as in you will survive. Then this is a signal your body is telling you that this is not the right fit of something not being right. Because I know so many individuals, probably some of them watching right now, is everything in their life is going great. yes okay it's they have a great job or they have great work and they have great relationships like with their family everything's good they're in shape they go to exercise once they come back home they still feel like there's something missing maybe they don't have a hobby maybe they don't have nice work or meaningful i don't know they'll find out some way to tell themselves that there is something missing and it's a large field like there are in fact i would go ahead to an extent and tell you that in last one year if I've met 100 friends of mine 95 of them have been feeling this way and it has nothing to do with their achievement level yeah because like I said achievements only gonna fill this much of your but all 95 like how this entire generation is feeling I'm surprised I think part of it we can do this like right now outside and people will say that they're missing something I totally get it it's partly it's because Because the world that your generation occupies, and I consider myself an older generation, is a more complex social world.

1:35:30It's a way more complicated social universe than the one we had. Our worlds were narrower, smaller, easier to manage, easier to navigate. And there was much more room for heterogeneity. I like the word heterogeneity because all outcomes are possible. You could live life broadly. And there was also a much more ability to make peace with one's circumstances. And circumstances sometimes are in one's control. Sometimes they're not in one's control. I think the present generation feels scales of pressure that are significantly harder than our generation felt. See, we try to find meaning in our life or purpose in our life.

1:36:11And if you don't feel meaning and you don't feel purpose, and it comes from many different things. But if you don't feel it, that can create a massive sense of vacuum, right? And it's not obvious what is going to make meaning and what is going to make purpose. It's very individual. And for each person, where their sense of meaning and purpose will come from is very, very different. One of my all-time favorite books is Viktor Frankl's A Man's Search for Meaning. All-time favorite, right? Because it tells you when everything is stripped away. And that is literally what happened in the Holocaust for him.

1:36:42Everything was stripped away. Where do you find meaning when everything is gone, when everything has been removed? So very profound book. But in a sense, it's coming back to the deep existential questions that people like to shove underneath the carpet. Because life and its productivity will go on. But the existential questions as a species we have always grappled with. And you can only shove them under the carpet to a certain degree and extent. At some point, they do come up. and so it's like if the lack of meaning in the things that you do i would rather say lack of intentional meaning in things that you do is causing you to feel that there's something missing there's another thing which our generation does a lot and it's probably have become one of the biggest problems that we are going through at this point like right now every single person who's watching this must have checked their phone 20 times even during the conversation before after it also they're going to scroll through it maybe 225 times in the day and yet when they go to bed they're going to regret it they're going to regret they're going to regret scrolled yes they're going to regret the fact that they had to check their phones probably 150 times a day and and they do do the same thing again tomorrow.

1:38:07Tomorrow, they'll tell themselves that I don't want to use my phone this much but they'll end up using it again and at night when they are with their phone they're like, okay, tonight I'm not going to use it. 5 minutes in, 20 minutes in, 30 minutes in and then when they're putting it they're still going to regret and they're going to feel sad about it. What's happening to my willpower that I tell myself that I'm going to put that phone and not touch it and yet I go there and touch it again and again. Is this something in my brain or willpower? Like what is going on? It's not even that. It's your habit formation.

1:38:39It's habits. Like our brain also forms habits. Habits are good. Some habits are very good. They're vital. Your brain is designed to form habits. In fact, many habits help you to get to whatever goal you want to. But like I told you, the habits also involve that same basal ganglia, dopamine pathway circuit. And it's the same circuit that's involved in habit formation. The underlying part of that circuit is involved in addiction and motivation and reward. So habits form many times because they're rewarding. Some of them are horrible. Like there are people who will take out one hair and pull it out while they're studying and then they end up with one bald patch in the middle of the head because they literally pulled out all the hair from that one spot but it's a habit that they're finding hard to break.

1:39:22Much the same way is a habit. And it's a reinforced habit because it's also giving you a dopamine hit. One, it gives you a social reward many times. It can also give you social punishment but let's say the social reward is a larger fraction than the social punishment. Because you're getting that social reward of a sense of intimacy, a sense of connection to something, you're following someone, you have an intimate understanding of their lives which you should not have if you were not a part of their life because it's now publicly available. You follow, then you get interested, then you follow even more, then you want to know even more And then you have this illusion of intimacy that has now been created.

1:40:06It's also rewarding that same dopamine reward circuit, that same pathway. It's the same circuit that gets activated by gambling. So it's not as though that pathway is only activated by alcohol, heroin, nicotine and sugar. It's activated by gambling. It's also activated by this kind of inviterate addiction to social media. Right. So it's the same thing. And what do you say when you say this is the last time I'm going to smoke? it's the same breaking of a habit right why do they always say once an addict always an addict or a recovering addict they're saying that because you are a recovering addict you're consciously breaking a habit but it's not an easy habit to make much the same way this is also not an easy it's an easier habit than nicotine and alcohol so let's be clear about that it's an easier habit in some ways than gambling and the number of people playing poker now with like large amounts of money is not small right so gambling is clearly an addiction but social media while on the scale may not activate the circuit to the same extent is in the same family okay it's in the so breaking that habit is hard but what is the exact mechanism which is defeating my willpower because i want to quit a lot of people say that they want to quit it's the same thing that's defeating your willpower when you find it hard to quit smoking it's the same thing that's defeating your willpower when you decide this is the last drink I have, even though you're an alcoholic and you know it's ruining your liver, you still can't, right?

1:41:30It's not because it's a moral failing in your, you have decided I'm not going to do this. But that is hard to override the circuit. So let me put up. And what is that? I'll give you a sense of it. So this pathway, which goes from the VTA to the nucleus accumbens, produces dopamine. Okay, so dopamine that comes out from the VTA, is dumped out in the nucleus accumbens. The level of dopamine that happens with a natural reward. And I will give you food, sex, or social interaction are all natural rewards. They produce a certain amount of dopamine. This is the range where you will be with something like cocaine and heroin.

1:42:04This is a range you will be in something with alcohol and nicotine. And this is the range you will be with gambling itself. You're in a factor difference. Now, once you get used to that level, this level ceases to be pleasurable in the same way. Because your now gain has been adjusted it to some extremely high level this is one of the hard things it is to take yourself and wean yourself off that and the relapse rates are very very high much the same way you can have a relapse rate for this one so you can say i'm going to block my phone for one week i'll not touch it you might get antsy and literally jittery and want to use your phone you could try that but then over a period of time you will find yourself going back to it you slide back into that old habit because it is providing a hit.

1:42:49It's providing a certain degree of a reward. And in that sense, it's pleasurable. So our brain would find it hard to give up repetitive activities that provide a certain degree of pleasure. You control that by using your cortices, in particular, your prefrontal cortex. It's this part of your brain that does the decision making that says, I'm not going to doom scroll in the middle of the night. That's the part of your circuit that tells you I'm overriding this. Now, how well that circuit is working, how good, so this is variable. Not every person is going to be like impossible to break the habit.

1:43:29But unless you train that circuit early on to postpone gratification, to postpone fast and quick rewards, continuous addiction to fast and quick rewards, it's going to be hard to be able to postpone gratification. There was a reason why in the old days they made you do certain exercises of postponing gratification. Fasting, for example. Not an easy thing for most people to do. Not an easy thing. If you have to fast for 24 hours, it's not an easy thing. You'll thirst, hunger, A, B, C, D requirements, right? But when you fast for a few hours, it's more not about the fasting. It's more about do you have the mental willpower to do that fast.

1:44:13It's training your brain. It is training your brain to say, I can go without food for the next 12 hours. And most cases in 12 hours, unless you have a serious underlying health condition, 12 hours of fasting is not good. It's doable, right? It's doable. It was a training exercise for the brain in a sense. We don't have too many training exercises for the brain that allow us to postpone gratification. So it's like a muscle that you need to grow in a sense. When you go to the gym and do an exercise, you're growing a muscle. Much the same way if you're training your brain to do certain things, you need to do them repeatedly.

1:44:50So tell me top three exercises which I can do to improve my willpower. I think one of the things that you can do is tell yourself that you take a task and that task has a little bit of a challenge and it requires you to complete it. And I'd give you a challenge which is a hard one like one of the challenges for the brain which is hard to do is learning a new language most people will quit very quickly because it's a hard ask been there done that very hard to learn a new language but it's a skill set that will demand a certain amount of discipline from your brain the second one is learning a new instrument like learning a musical instrument again hard ask because you will suck at it in the beginning you will not produce anything It'll sound like a cat that is being killed or something.

1:45:39But if you do this repeatedly, it builds. So it's essentially discipline requiring activities that are the things that help with willpower. Things that force you to do something which you don't really love to do, but you're doing it to get to a certain goal are great ways of driving up your willpower. Because they're basically teaching you the discipline of postponing gratification. You're not going to get a reward right away. You're still doing it, right? You're still telling yourself, I will go and study for that one hour, learn the language, Duolingo, whatever it is. But it's pushing your brain to be more plastic.

1:46:13Willpower is what? It's essentially saying, can I override a circuit that is so dependent on this cue by using surely my mind to say I'm not going to do this. But is there any one more exercise which can be like easier thing to do? Okay, so not learning a new language. Language, learning a new instrument. that can be two what's the third? I think learning anything new which is hard for you it needs hard it cannot be easy because this is not easy so you're training your brain to take on harder tasks tasks that require a little bit of a demand in any case that is singularly the best thing you can do for your brain pushing your brain to learn new things and try new things is the best way we know currently of getting the brain to work much more optimally.

1:47:06And also that helps significantly with the aging associated degenerative changes that kick in post 35, 40. Right? Everything is going into decline after that. So the best way we know currently from everything that we understand is using our brain for harder tasks, not for simple tasks. Interesting. So would you say, because I read, I have this habit that even if i'm not reading or learning something today with which i mostly make up a point that at least 30 minutes or one hour i'll read something or learn something new but on the days when i'm absolutely tired or not feeling like i'll make a point that i will at least learn one new word so i have this dictionary right next to my bed and i'll open randomly and read some word like i will make it a point so does that just doing that on an everyday basis actually is improving my willpower.

1:48:02Of course, it is. Just that. Yeah, because it's an ask and it's a task and you've set yourself that and you're telling yourself. Just one word. But you're holding yourself accountable. It's the accountability also, right? It's, if it's, it is one word. Now, the thing is, if you learn that one word and never use it ever again in your life, then it's not much value. Oh, no, no. But you learn a word and then you say, how do I employ that word in my vocabulary? How do I utilize this? How do I put this into usage? When you're using that word and that actually is an ask, It's a smaller ask than learning a language or whatever.

1:48:34But it's a good ask. Every building block step is a way in that direction. It's like if you had to play some game on your phone. Sudoku is a good game to play for a reason. Because it requires you to do a little bit of analytic thought right there. Crosswords are great ways to stretch your brain a little bit. so there are there's no question there are games on things which are going to push you a little bit more than candy crush right so no harm if you're going to have to be on that object then pick something that stretches you a little bit right there's this app that was actually set up by these guys at um in california a bunch of neuroscientists called lumosity but they did it for this reason to see that okay now people are anywhere going to be on their phone like you can't stop them then on the phone can we give them something that is like a neuroscience gaming ask which forces your brain to utilize things like set shifting you know rapid rapid quick adjustment of the brain which is a training exercise can you put the brain through this if nothing else at least you will push your brain to being slightly more effective at certain tasks interesting what's the name of that it's called lumosity lumosity it was generated by a bunch of neuroscientists but they did this for this reason because people are anyway on their phone we are not going to be able to get them to a book or you know out into nature very easily if they are there how do we utilize this time I found out about these concepts like couple of years ago the concept called neurobics and I found it very fascinating just like doing little things exactly like just doing little things which are not my general way of doing things It's great.

1:50:21I think it's been two years that now I've been doing, like some morning I do brush with my right hand, evening I do it like from the left hand. Then now I was like, I want to add another layer. So in my 45 minute of walking, 10 minutes I do back walk. That's actually very interesting. So like I try to find some ways. Totally different muscle set than you're used to when you walk forward compared to what you use when you're walking backward. So yeah, I mean, it's certain. So that's procedural, right? So now you'd be using a set of pathways that are involved in procedural learning, but you're doing it in a very different way.

1:50:57And it's training definitely different circuits in your body. So there's the brain, like I said, is an experience incorporating organ. So garbage in is garbage out. There is a reason why we often use that term. If you are really feeding your brain with just absolute nonsense, then over time you should not be surprised if what emerges out is not of very high caliber. It's an opportunity. That's not to say that there isn't room for absolute relaxation and whatever. There is. But there is room also for trying to do things which really do enrich your brain. There is room. And it is true. You're using the term neurobics.

1:51:38But basically that's what it is. You're using exercises that stimulate your brain. and cause it to expand beyond its normal working range. So the more you do it, the better you will get with controlling. And the more control you have, the better willpower you will have. Yeah. And I think doing harder things is the way to do it. Too easy doesn't really give you... I agree. Yeah. The hard things are the ones that push you to say, can I really now push my limits a little? Yeah. Like I had severe phone reels addiction. Like not even, forget reels, like just checking notification. Even if there's no notification, I'll check up like 50 times to see if there's notification or no.

1:52:22And I think one thing which definitely helps because here I don't have any phone. So I just switch it off. But then I found out that after the podcast or before the podcast, I would like constantly be on my phone. So I stopped. I started engaging that on my activities which I do every day during those activities I won't use my phone and like slowly now it has become like I don't care you're setting up rules I'm setting up rules exactly like my environment is setting up like the moment I enter gym I used to be on my phone like all the time even in the gym now my phone is with my trainer he doesn't give me until the session gets over see this is this is good because you're creating rules but then you have to follow said rules right so that's what it is and sometimes people don't follow rules you can follow rules and reward yourself there that's another way of like getting yourself over that initial hump you set a rule and you say if i have achieved the rule today then i have room for a specific reward of course your reward can't be some crackpot like 20 hours of scrolling it has to be nothing to do with the thing that you're trying to fix but it can be something very specific it could be like i will buy myself a new book i will buy myself something something that you want as a little reward for yourself for having followed that rule in the beginning.

1:53:36Over time, the rules will become easier to follow and then you just get better at. So just environment and rules. Okay. There's another thing because we were talking about phone scrolling. There's one more thing which is very interesting for me to understand. It's the word which is now I'm going to say is very loosely used these days. It's called anxiety. Right? It's like everybody there are two people there are two types of people okay so one is like everybody has anxiety no matter what they're going through they say that they have anxiety and then there's another set of people who are like oh it's just in your head correct you know so one dismissive of it yeah so one is dismissive of it other is full time every emotion is anxiety so they're two completely different people now it's become polarized situation so explain me simply like what is anxiety and what is anxiety attack where in body is anxiety what do i go through and what is not anxiety so anxiety so there's fear right which is the underlying basis eventually for why people develop anxiety fear is an essential emotion for any species it teaches you how to survive it's like the very basic thing of knowing that when you go into a park and there happens to be a tiger loose you should not be wandering around otherwise you will be tiger you know whatever meal of the tiger so that fear is a genuine fear in response to some survival evoking threat anxiety is when there is no obvious threat you can't see a threat nobody else can see a threat your body is responding like there is a tiger okay so in this room right now there is no tiger.

1:55:24So you and I should not be having a full-fledged fear response. But if we are anxious, we respond in the same way we would if there was a real big threat in the room, right? Which means what? My palms will sweat. So I get a galvanic stress response. My mouth will dry. So all the saliva will drive up. My sympathetic nervous system increases, which means my heart rate goes up. So I can clearly see a shift in my pulse rate. So it's going up. I can feel palpitation sometimes. This is a milder end of things. But your body is responding like there is an immediate threat. So your threat perception system and your threat response system is responding inappropriately to the cues.

1:56:07That system is vital for your survival. You don't have it, you don't survive. But now there is no need for me to freak out in this room. There is no tiger. Why am I responding this way? It's because my body perceives threats which are not overtly obvious to anyone else. But for my body, it feels like a complete threat. So when a person says, I'm feeling anxious, they're feeling anxious about some event or something which you or I may not agree is an anxiety provoking event. So all the people who are the ones who are saying, why are you feeling anxious are the ones who think, but what is there to be anxious about this?

1:56:43There's nothing to be anxious about. They're dismissing that threat because it's not an obvious threat. For that person, it feels like a profoundly obvious threat. Right now, you can't deny that it feels like that for the person because if they are actually having a panic attack, they will feel like they're having a heart attack. It's literally as bad as a heart attack, a severe panic attack. Your body is going through literally that feeling of massive catecholamine release. Your heart is literally in your throat. You feel your throat begin to clench. You have full hands sweating. It's a full physiological reaction which will likely get you into the emergency room because you feel like you're having a heart attack.

1:57:24Then you go in there and the person says, but there's no cardiac issues. It is a full-fledged panic attack. So your body has reacted like there is a crisis. Now you can't tell that person you imagined it because every parameter shows that they have not imagined it. But there is no obvious threat. Right? So now this becomes a question about how do you and when you get this chronic form of anxiety, it may or may not come with panic attacks. In some cases, it may have panic attacks. In some cases, it just may be chronic anxiety where you chronically are feeling anxious. No panic attack, but chronic anxiety about not obvious threats.

1:58:03Obvious threats are easy. Someone has had a familial loss. Someone is going through a real major divorce, something. You can see the thing that is driving the anxiety. No obvious external threat and yet the person is severely anxious. Denying it would not be right because that person feels it. But also the question of now, how do you handle imaginary or perceived threats? How do you scale back threats which are not really a crisis to a manageable level? Some of it is medication. So people would give an anti-anxiety treatment and there are plenty, but they're not very good ones. They're all symptomatic.

1:58:43They handle the symptoms, but they don't handle the underlying condition. Often takes therapy, a combination of medication, and the ability to detect what are your triggers to be able to watch for what is happening. But yes, we live in a much more complex world in which perceived threats are much larger than what they were in the past. Partly because we, you know, our body was beautifully dressed, designed to deal with acute stress. It does very well with acute stress. It doesn't do well with chronic social stress. And currently all threats, almost 90 % of them will fall into the category of chronic social stress.

1:59:26That's the category that is a category that tends to cause these sorts of, it's social and it's chronic. It could be something as simple as having a bad relationship with your boss. You walk into work, They've not even said anything to you. Their eyebrow has moved a little bit and there has been a little bit of a displeasure on their face and it has totally thrown your day off, your week off, your month off. And that's all it was. You have not been fired. Nothing has happened. But it's such a bad relationship that you feel such a sense of impending doom almost. And so, yes, you have the full-fledged anxiety reaction.

2:00:06Where in brain it reacts It's when a boss yells at me and I feel, I don't know what I feel, but whenever a boss yells at an employee, where do they feel it in the brain and what goes on in the brain? Well, if you're feeling strong stress, the first place will be the hypothalamus. This part of the brain, the hypothalamus that gets activated as a stress circuit. It activates your pituitary, which is this organ, which releases the hormone that will drive, releases something called ACTH. Don't worry about the name. That goes to your adrenal glands, which sit on either side of your kidney and they secrete cortisol.

2:00:44Now, cortisol is your stress hormone that goes all over your body. The job of cortisol is actually very clear. It's supposed to shut down your digestion, shut down your reproduction, reorient your glucose to your muscles. And this makes sense because if I had the tiger in front of me, I will have to run away or I will have to hide. I have to do two things, which means my glucose cannot be going everywhere. It needs to go to my muscles. I need to get out of here. I need to hide or run away. So this system is beautifully evolutionarily designed to give you fast, quick escape, fight or flight. Fight is useless with a tiger, so you flight.

2:01:18So you escape and that cortisol is vital in that. In addition, you will release from the adrenal glands adrenaline, which causes your heart rate to go up, causes your full sympathy, your pupils will shift in size, you know, tongue saliva will dry up. All this is good because right now you're not worrying about digestion or reproduction. But now imagine this is happening when the boss shouts at you. And if your boss shouts at you every day in the week, every day in the week your body is responding like there is a tiger in the room. Same response, right? But no control over the situation. You can't run away from it.

2:01:52You're stuck with this person. So you have a full-fledged immune response plus a hormonal response. To the extent that you're immune, there is a reason why we see so many immune reactions, disrupted immune reactions as well because your stress pathways have gone haywire. Now this individual if they don't get irritable bowel syndrome and they don't get gut dysfunction it's inevitable now if you keep doing this day in and day out day in and day out then your systems are going to be like what is going on? My digestion is shut down my reproductive pathways are shut down all this is shut down because I'm having this huge fight or flight response to this one individual who I don't have control over.

2:02:34So either you have to create some boundary and tell the person that I do not appreciate the way you're communicating to me. Go to HR, find a way to manage that or find a way to manage your own responses where you don't react that way. Where you say, okay, yeah, he's shouting, but that's his problem. I'm not going to have a full fledged body reaction to this. So yes, we are driving our pathways like this. And now imagine that that happens with how many likes you get on social media. That is chronic social stress. Give me two, three examples. So one was boss. One was boss. Another chronic social stress is let's say your world is, you're a teenager.

2:03:11Your world is right now your crew of people who are your age, who currently mainly you interact with on whatever, Instagram, etc, etc, etc. You are being socially bullied by the popular kids in the class or in the whatever, right? You are now being ostracized socially, chronically socially ostracized. It's not overt. Nobody's saying anything, but they're just not including you in anything. And you've been pushed out and pushed out and pushed out till you feel isolated. And let's say you post a picture of yourself or something, having a good day, it's your birthday. Nobody in your classroom likes it.

2:03:50That's a social attack. That's a social attack. So someone just basically made you feel bullied on social media. That produces the same biological response. You will have the same underlying biochemistry happening in your body. Now that's happening for something you can't control. It's a threat that is not in your hands that you have no control over. Unless you can get yourself out of that situation. hopefully find a bunch of people who genuinely care about you and invest in them and forget about these bullies. But that's not easy to tell a teenager to do who's suffering through that, right? You have to first acknowledge what they feel.

2:04:27And that's where I say to naysayers who dismiss someone, don't start with the dismissal because you have not walked their shoes. True. You haven't walked their shoes. And before you tell them, oh, why are you even reacting? You're overreacting. Take the time to consider the possibility that for them it's a huge response. Panic attacks get people into the ER for a reason. Because it literally feels like a heart attack. And can this happen inside a family as well? Of course it can happen. Chronic social stress can be caused by family members? How? Give me a situation. Most common situation. Most common is emotional abuse and emotional invalidation of another individual.

2:05:08Let's say every single day someone is told that you're incapable. You will never achieve anything. Look, again, you've disappointed me. Look, this is all you're capable of doing. Why should I expect any better of you? I'm just saying these words, not raised voice, not anything. But if this happens 24-7, day in and day out, that's emotional abuse. That's essentially telling and denigrating another person of their inherent identity and chronically attacking them on anything. So that is absolutely a strong stress. So we look at physical abuse and we see it. So we view this as an obvious form of abuse, domestic abuse.

2:05:48But emotional, sustained emotional abuse, where you denigrate the other person's inherent identity and capability day in and day out, is also a form of abuse. And that is a massive social stress. It happens in families all the time, unfortunately. The very people you expect to be your cheerleaders saying you can go achieve everything that you want, that you are capable of, you know, climbing to the top of whatever Mount Everest doing, whatever you need to do. Other people are telling you you're not capable of doing it. That's a hard thing for anybody to solve. And that is something that happens early, in particular, those kinds of stresses when they happen to children change their life histories forever.

2:06:33And that's scary. So that first 10-15 years of life, if this happens in that first decade and a half of life, that has very long lasting consequences. In fact, the damaging consequences of that are often across the whole lifespan. So does this anxiety, like where does it happen? Does it happen inside my body or brain? Both. Where does it attack first? So the first place you will feel it is actually in your hypothalamus, which activates the release. But the other place you'll feel it is in your heart and in your gut. The two places you first feel it, you say, I don't feel okay here. So one of the things that people often feel is that they have to go to the loo because they have to use the restroom because they literally have to take it all out.

2:07:17That's a fear response. That was a classic old fear response, which is a sympathetic nervous system getting activated. You dump out everything that's in your digestive tract. or you may feel like puking or you may feel like taking it out, right? So these two things happen. Your heart rate goes up. Your palms start sweating. Your mouth dries. By then, the cortisol has nicely peaked in the first 15, 20 minutes. And that's going everywhere in your body saying, muscles, come on, get the glucose. But you have nothing to run away from. You're sitting in your office quietly having this full response, but you don't have anything to do with you shut down your reproduction type.

2:07:53Immune system, all your immune cells start surveillance underneath the skin imagining that you will be eaten. So if you were to like if you were really out in the savannah or wherever where one tiger was going to come and bite you or a lion was going to come and attack you you would need to repair the wounds right. So you send all your immune system into hypervigilance mode saying let me see if there is a cut or anything anywhere so that I can protect this person. The cuts are only like invisible. So first his brain then his heart. Why heart? because the first thing you have to do is get everything to every part of your body.

2:08:29What's going to get the stuff to your body? Even your hormones to get to your body, your heart pumps it to every part of your body. Glucose, if you need to get to every part, you need to increase the rate at which the stuff is pumping this information everywhere. So your heart rate going up is the biggest indicator of first indicator of stress. In fact, you can just do that. If you do a small mental math test, which is for most people mildly stressful, and you just follow your heart rate, you will see a clear bump up. Interesting. Yeah. Most people. So if you do this tiny experiment, you can take somebody in front of you and you say, I'm going to give you mental math.

2:09:06You have to solve these things. I will throw a question at you. In five minutes, you have to solve them. I'm just going to watch your heart rate. Most people will have a nice, unless they're a mathematician who loves doing mental math. But you will see this quick bump up in heart rate. And more often than not, you will also see a galvanic skin response. So mild amount of sweat. Which is what they are detecting with light detectors and stuff. That's what you are looking at. You are looking at whether galvanic skin response, the ability to conduct a signal is changed because sweat will be a better conductor.

2:09:37Interesting. I didn't know that light detection was mostly done through sweat. It's also done through the basically galvanic skin response to see if you sweat when you are asked a question that you have to then fib. Fascinating. Okay, you touched something where you said, in a kid, when they're growing years, right? If something like this happens, chronic social stress, where they've been negated, they've been told incapable or whatever, childhood trauma, stuff like that, right? There is, I was reading about something, right, that when you go through a certain level of stress or let's say a trauma or some problematic situation in your childhood, there are chances that in your early years of growth, let's say 20, 25, when your career growth is happening, it can actually be adaptive.

2:10:34like it can be good for you but then the same things actually become maladaptive there's no free lunch eventually it catches up with you at the age of 40 it becomes maladaptive explain me this what is happening that something today that is helping me become better is actually going to kill me at the age of 40 or someone who is at 40 or 35 doesn't know looks fine and nice but there's something catches up yeah so the thing about stress and the thing about cortisol is it's very interesting it also has a sort of bi-directional relationship with the brain so at the lower levels of cortisol like let's say there's a mild stress it's a mild acute stress and you make a little bit more cortisol it actually improves your learning it improves your attention it improves a bunch of things and this is not surprising let's say you have to perform for something a little boost of cortisol.

2:11:31That's actually helping you. So there's something called eustress, almost like a beneficial mild stress, right? It's in the working range of normal amount, a little bit of stress. Preparing for an exam, preparing for a public speaking event, preparing for a performance, bit of cortisol. So that's the good eustress of things. Then there's a very high cortisol. Very high cortisol sends everything haywire, including degradation of memory, hippocampal damage, neurons die, dendrites atrophy, lots of damage in the brain. Now, what happens in individuals that have had a history of early trauma is that that period of time is actually almost like a prediction device for what your future is likely to be.

2:12:13There's something in the early development, it's a period called critical period. It's almost as though your brain is saying, aha, so this is what my world will feel like 20 years down the road. So the experiences that happen in that early window have a disproportionately larger impact on your brain than experiences in the adult brain. So in the young childhood adolescent window, an experience which is negative and a strong series of experiences that are negative, you are preparing for the likelihood that more negative experiences are going to come. So your entire HPA system is hyperactive. It's like it's prepared with all alarm bells to go.

2:12:52It's so primed. And at the same time, the ability to shut off this pathway has gone down. So you have this hyper primed system and the ability to control it has become less. So now this individual has a survival advantage if they were really in the forest with a wild, which you can see, like it would almost benefit you because you'll be like, there's a tiger. Even before the tiger comes, you might be prepared and get out of there. So the system is prepping for the possibility that it has to be hypervigilant. The problem is, so there's a beneficial effect of it. It will also give you boost in memory sometimes a little bit better performance in stressful situations.

2:13:33So more often than not, when you see people who've had early adversity, they may handle adult adversity better because they have already had a series of experiences in which their body is prepped to handle stress in adult. the problem with this is chronically when you keep doing this to your brain over a lifespan your brain is seeing way more cortisol than it should see it's like bathing the brain with cortisol continuously no matter what happens right so now as you age and you hit middle age life your hippocampus starts shrinking in volume all your inflammation markers in the periphery have gone haywire so they are much higher than they need to be.

2:14:11So your CRP, GDF-15, all your interleukin, cytokines, all have. You're basically aging faster. Now what? Evolutionarily, you've protected the individual through their reproductive years, which is their young adulthood. You've protected them. Then the body collapses later, it collapses later. It's almost like you've done everything you could to adapt but adaptation is costly so my and this is this thing so you know almost all my blood tests everything is great my cortisol is higher yeah but i don't feel any stress i feel normal human being how much higher though a little bit not like a lot not like a lot not off the charts it's it's there but it's almost every time it's slightly on the higher side it's always on the higher side.

2:15:04Also it matters when they're testing. I mean whether it's morning or evening and you should just keep an eye on that because morning is when your cortisol peak would be. But if let's say 500 people are getting tested and on the benchmark I'm getting higher. So it's always higher. But I don't feel stressed at all. But in most high performing individuals who are driving themselves inherently at the higher end of their capability, cortisol might be slightly higher. Now the question is what level of cortisol starts battering. And like I said, at the lower end of a higher cortisol, there's actually some beneficial effects.

2:15:42And then it starts catching up on the body over a period of time. I think the thing one can do, and this is what people are talking about, is how do you increase your parasympathetic nervous system and reduce your sympathetic tone? So your sympathetic nervous system is your fight or flight system. It's the let me go to war today so I can survive tomorrow. That's your sympathetic nervous system. Your parasympathetic nervous system is your rest and digest system. So these are your two. And they're two like literally in continuously working in concert. But we spend a lot of time on the sympathetic nervous system because that drive also gives us the adrenaline.

2:16:23It gives us the rush. It also helps us become goal oriented, etc. There's value to the sympathetic nervous system. You don't do enough for the parasympathetic at all. Slowing it down is this side, right? Slowing down your brain, slowing down your body, slowing down your breath, slowing down everything is not a primary focus, especially in your young adult. It's the last thing you think. Even when you're thinking about exercise, it's always cardiovascular. It's always how do I increase my cardiovascular output? How do I get my VO2 max? Exactly. how am I going to do this so you're so oriented towards I feel attacked that part of the system you're getting so much attention this part is ignored it's never the focus so who's sitting and saying let's do shavasana for like half an hour today it's not a big deal people are like if I do shavasana for five minutes I fall asleep nothing wrong with that but to be able to bring this part of your system into good tune is a great thing I struggle with it.

2:17:29I also have a hypersympathetic overdrive. My sympathetic nervous system is much higher in function because adrenaline, drive they're good things but they come with their costs. So because both of us are like that, our brain is aging faster than others? Possibly to a certain degree but we may also be doing other things to protect it because you're also continuously learning and you're also continuously using your brain to try different things and that's protective. So it's never, unfortunately none of this is this and then this is the automatic outcome right because you're it's compensated by other things but certainly if somebody was to give you and me advice they may say why don't you spend in your week at least two three hours that are focused on your parasympathetic nervous system so so i my performance coach actually tells me that because my cortisol is high and it's like only on the border it is actually a good thing that's probably a thing which is helping you do what you're doing because so he works with a lot of other athletes as well so he's like I've seen this across it's inevitable it's your body is being driven but there is room in that to work the other pathway so that you can find a quick way even if you have a cortisol so the thing that a cortisol level doesn't tell you that means your baseline is high it doesn't tell you how quickly you come back to baseline going up and how quickly you come back that's a vital indicator because it's your quick ability to respond and come back to baseline quickly that gets messed up that becomes a problem because you go up and then you just stay up stay up stay up step and don't come down then the body gets a lot more cortisol than it should be seen yeah so he was i'll just i'll tell you the full thing right so he was and he was comparing it comparing mine with someone else and he was explaining me how they used to work with one of the football players and captains right from the part of europe and i was like he was a world cup winning captain and he tracked there as well so what they found out was his cortisol was always perpetually high as well and the fascinating thing was not only on the match days which is okay but on the practice day also it was up so it worked great but then he was explaining me that after winning that one world cup his motivation died so he couldn't actually like he suddenly broke or something happened where his cortisol and everything was normal he was much calmer person but everything just collapsed and that that i i found it weird like how somebody who's always been high performing always cortisol high stress is high let's go run run everything just falls apart and then i showed this to a neuroscientist and neuroscience so they gave me the same explanation that you need to learn how to be more calmer or else this certain collapse will come in your life where nothing will motivate you anymore.

2:20:23And I was like, this is a fair thing. And that gets me to the next question is that this happens in day-to-day life as well with a lot of people that suddenly very high-functioning individuals in their 30s or 40s, they suddenly break. They burn out. Why does it happen? They've been high-functioning individuals. Because there's a cost. And I think if you've not learned, there's a biology to this, right? That our systems are meant not to be driven at 100 % all the time. If you drive a system at 100%, any car also driven at 100%, you'll have to go and take it back to the mechanic to do some repair, etc.

2:21:03We're not giving any time to ourselves for downtime, genuine downtime, where you switch off, you learn how to relax, You give yourself time for genuine leisure. Genuine leisure. Even our holidays have become about achievements. It's like the next one, why am I going to tick off this box, right? It can't be that. There has to be room for sitting in a room with a book relaxing. Or literally quieter activities. There's a reason why people talk about things like knitting and all coming back. Because it slows the nervous system down. like the repetitive action of doing something like painting pottery stuff with your hands why are there people going towards these as hobbies now because it brings your heart rate down it brings a certain semblance of regulation in and you realize that you can slow things down slowing it down we are on hyperdrive all the time that's a little dangerous it does come with its cost because if you are at 24 even when you look at people who are looking at improving their health quality they're also doing it like a task which is like i'm going to have x number of supplements i'm going to do this this is what i'm going to do now i've run this much then i will do this marathon then i will do this then there's no room in this to breathe it's just let's go go go go go how does this work the system will at some point say i'm done either it will say i'm done and you'll give you a signal and you should listen to the signal or it will say I'm done when you're not listening and then you'll have a collapse.

2:22:34So high functioning individuals because they're always on on on on run run run they will collapse at one point because they're not giving themselves time for leisure. They may. Because if you go non-stop with no room for down time I don't think any system is designed for that kind of sustained 24-7 productivity efficiency at all costs. It comes with that cost. It may not come with a burnout necessarily. It can come in other ways. It comes out as weird idiosyncrasies where you see people who behave and you're thinking, why is this person behaving like this? They have lost their mind almost. Why are they behaving?

2:23:13Or they will be, you know, really control freaks with other people, etc. So it emerges in aberrant behavioral forms. It doesn't always have to result in a burnout, but it does emerge. in behavioral issues almost every high individual high performing individual i know of they've either gone through it or they're going through it and they don't even realize it yeah it's a very common side effect of driving yourself 24 7 yeah like every it's it's almost funny that i always i'm a very reflective person i reflect a lot right and every time i meet someone really remarkable and impressive. Someone who's built billions of dollars.

2:23:56Someone who's achieved gold medals after gold medals. Someone who's just done like something remarkable in the world, right? You meet them and if you dig deeper for like 20-30 minutes and I tend to do that because of my podcast, right? Of course. After that I come back I'm like, this is an abnormal behavior. I have never come back and be like, this is such a golden human being. I'm like, I respect them because they've achieved something and I come back with like, this is an abnormal behavior. Every one of them has some abnormal behavior. It's unfortunately a side effect of being hyper-focused.

2:24:31I think hyper-focused on one-dimensional, uni-dimensional thing in life comes with the side effect that it will come with some of these things. Interesting. Yeah. So if I'm hyper-focused, there is some behavior that probably people who are close to me would be facing the cost of it. Causes some aberration for sure. because it's and I'm not even aware of it yeah most often we are not aware of it we all do it in some way it shows up in some aberrant form people tolerate it largely it falls in the realm of tolerated you know idiosyncrasies and in fact eccentricities which you say indulgently oh this is not bad you know I understand where this is coming but sometimes it's not it results in people behaving really strange so that's where I think there is room for and that's why I was telling you about about this winning versus losing argument which we started with that I don't like the binary I don't like it being two bins only because the risk of two bins only means that everyone who falls in the bin that is not officially considered quote unquote winning is then defined as losing and my worry with that sort of a binary outcome is that it comes with too high a cost on too much of humanity and we have played into this idea we played into it as cultures we played into it as societies, we played into it as the level of individuals.

2:25:53And when we look across time in history, what is a winner and a loser in large cultural landscape time? I mean, one today, somebody's a winner, tomorrow the same person is a loser. So, you know, I mean, culturally, if you look at civilizationally, there's no civilization that hasn't gone through these troughs. Even individuals go through this all the time. I mean, you're never going to be at, you know, all-time peak, yeah. Exactly. So, given that there has to be room for more diversity and there has to be more room for outcomes and perhaps one has to reframe that understanding a little bit more broadly.

2:26:30Because when one does that, I think one creates room for multiple outcomes, multiple ways of existing in this world. Currently, our tendency with people is to expect them to be the best version of themselves as many times as they can. And that's a hard ask to sustain in a 70, 80 year lifespan. Let's say people live 80 years. So what happened? It's just guaranteed not going to happen. Like it's a certainty. So now the question is, how do you distribute this across at 70, 80? Nice. How do you distribute it? And what do you also prioritize? The point you made, which is how do I learn to be a great friend?

2:27:16Can I make that one of my priorities? And one of my, not winning bin, one of my positive. Let's make it a positive versus not so positive. Not even negative. You know, something which is like something you can invest in. We very rarely will somebody say that one of my ambitions and goals in life is to be a great friend to someone. that's not touted as a great goal shouldn't it be one of the biggest goals we have I mean we were just talking about it is really a goal worth aspiring towards true true but it's not a priority on our current list of achievements fair you have my last two questions one is I didn't touch it and I don't know where I'm going to put it but I really wanted to know there's a lot of chatter around the world about psychedelics which is so drugs help your brain grow how okay so drugs like life experiences interact with your brain and change your brain some drugs cause neurons to atrophy dry shrink some drugs depending on what receptors they work on can actually cause neurons to grow out new connections and grow new synapses that's not very surprising because there are things in your own body neurochemicals in your own body that can cause neurons to grow and there are also neurochemicals that cause things to shrink.

2:28:39So, if your body can have a cortisol that causes neurons, many neurons to shrink, and if your body can also have a growth factor that causes neurons to grow, much the same way, many of these substances, several of which are plant derived and from the external world, also have the capability of changing the brain, both causing damage and promoting repair. So, that idea is an old idea. As long as we as human beings have walked on this planet, we have used drugs from plants to treat ourselves, right? Something as simple as an aspirin, which is something that we all think about and take routinely, starts with an origin, which is a plant-derived origin.

2:29:18In India, Ayurveda is inspired by a repository of traditional Indian knowledge that has come from plants, largely from plants, right? So the idea that something that comes from plants can have this. So these are also psychedelics are also molecules that come from either plants or fungi. They happen to have the property of modulating a particular serotonin receptor in the brain and associated with that, they also increase growth factors. And that seems to have something called a psychoplastogenic effect, which means that neurons grow new connections, make new synapses, etc. That may not necessarily always be good.

2:29:59It may come sometimes be good, sometimes not, right? Now, traditionally, people have used these for thousands of years in the Amazonian forest. The shamans have used them, etc. Now, we have a rediscovery and a red desire to explore them because we currently have genuinely a mental health crisis in the world. The number of patients who have anxiety disorders, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder is large and growing. And the complexity of the world we are creating, this is only going to go higher rather than in the other direction. So given that and because most drugs that are currently used, antidepressants, etc., they work only on two-thirds of the population.

2:30:38One-third doesn't even respond to any of the drugs that are there. Okay. And they work slowly. So when a patient starts on an antidepressant, you don't know if it's going to work for at least three to six weeks. So you have a patient, you're giving a drug, you don't know if it's going to work. And six weeks later, you'll find out if it has worked at all. Otherwise, you'll have to switch drugs. So it's really not a good situation in terms of quality of available medication. So that's why there's been a desire to reinvestigate psychedelics. But we are in a very delicate juncture right now for two reasons.

2:31:12One, because recreationally these drugs have been abused. And because they've been recreationally utilized, there are lots of recreational narratives which are often biased towards the positive. without being aware of the complexity of these drugs and their challenges. And because of that, that is moving faster. The recreational narrative is moving faster than the careful, clinical, research-associated narrative. What kind of drugs you mean? Like, give me one or two names. Ayahuasca, psilocybin from magic mushrooms, LSD from lysergic acid diethylamide, which is a synthetic psychedelic. These drugs have been utilized for recreational abuse, in a sense.

2:31:52And that narrative of its quote unquote beneficial effects has moved faster than the clinical research has moved. So now the worry with this is you need to do the careful clinical research. You need to do the preclinical research. You need studies on rats, mice, monkeys, humans. You need all of that to understand both the usefulness, the potential harmful side effects, the potential beneficial effects. Carefully and systematically you have to study this. before you can rush into saying, hey, these may be potentially of use. If you don't do this and you rush fast in here, you will have negative reactions because these drugs are, there are a class of drugs called psychotomimetic drugs, which means they produce hallucinations and they produce altered states of consciousness.

2:32:38The other thing that you know produces hallucinations are states like schizophrenia. Okay, so they are drugs that are, that's why they're called psychotomimetic. They mimic the psychosis-like state. you can have negative reactions. You could have a psychotic break, right? This is a worry. You can't do this without carefully doing this. And if you take your time to do it carefully, you may even be able to synthesize new drugs that don't have the trip and don't have the psychosis element or the psychedelic part, but have the beneficial parts. But you have to take your time. This is a 10, 12 year, 15 year investment of time.

2:33:15And part of the problem is because patients want drugs that work and they want them fast, they may be tempted to recreationally try something which may actually have a negative effect. So this is why we are at this very delicate juncture where it's important to study them. It's important to study them well. And it's also equally important to not rush them into the clinic and have a situation where there is a problem. But then a lot of people who are taking, let's say, LSDs or mushrooms just for recreation and going for a trip they tend to take it and they come out very happy that oh I had a great trip etc etc and then they forget about it and probably six months later they do it again right so they're not even like probably addicted to it the way they are addicted to let's say some people would do like maybe a weed or cocaine or some other stuff right so it doesn't look like that they're super addictive no they're not so they're not addicted to so I've not met anyone who's like addicted to because they don't hit the mental tegmental area in the same way as a cocaine heroin nicotine or alcohol so they're not on that scale addicted so let's say LSD and mushrooms are not on that scale but people are taking it without any care without any stuff which I don't really worry about so what is happening like why majority of them tend to enjoy it even without even when they take it without care so there's no side effect at least looks The thing is we tend to hear the narratives that are positive more than we hear the narratives that are negative.

2:34:49Also, keep in mind that all of these retreats that give them have a financial interest in your hearing the positive narratives over the negative. Absolutely. So there is a financial interest element here as well, because obviously for them, they are making money from this. There are negative narratives. Maybe their fraction is smaller, but the negative narratives are genuinely scary as well. And yes, there's no doubt that these molecules can induce states which are fairly powerful. And some of those come also with the beneficial effect of giving you a mood modulatory effect, which could actually kick a person out of a state of PTSD or a state of chronic major depression.

2:35:33But we cannot go based on anecdotal. And right now, that's where we are. in the narrative recreational space, it's anecdotal. You need to do this carefully and you need to do this with large enough numbers. You need to have it in a cultural context like ours. One of the things that I've been doing is talking to people at Nimhan saying India needs its own policy. We can't not have our own policy of how we're going to do this. We currently, they're banned because they're all substance. They're all, you know, schedule one substances. So they're banned. So anyone accessing it, it's illegal. But we need a thought through policy of our own clinical trials.

2:36:11The U.S. has moved fast with their clinical trials. So has Switzerland, so has Australia, Canada, many places across the world. We are yet to take a call on what we are going to do with our own clinical trials. And there is a set setting element where the cultural context will matter. So we have to find a way that it works in our society and culture and see if it's appropriate in our context the same way. Which we are not doing at the moment. We are not. But my question was only that more anecdotes come, more stories are that people have enjoyed it, doing it. People always. And it doesn't look like they've gone through any negative, you know, experience.

2:36:52That's not true. So you would argue that there's enough? There is enough cause for concern that I would not, especially in individuals that have a family history of either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, I would say this is contraindicated. Right? It was absolutely contraindicated because there have been examples where it has caused a psychotic break. And people have ended up with a psychosis-like event under the influence of these drugs. So anyone, let's say, right now listening to this is hearing stories from their friends that ayahuasca is one of the best experiences or, you know, they did some mushrooms or they did some, I don't know, some random psychedelic drug like LSD or stuff like that and they are incentivized or motivated or maybe just lured towards trying it because some of their friends or some story or some social media influencer did it right what would you tell them I would say no plain and simply as simple as that I would not I mean and why because the other side actually gives an explanation that you will reach an altered state and get clarity in life and all that I would so first I would say that I that that these are molecules that have potent effects on your brain and they don't only have short-lived potent effects, they have long-lived potent effects on your brain.

2:38:12Very often these people are the same people who are worrying about eating organic vegetables and eating healthy food only, etc. And they're very worried about what they put into their body, but they're not worried about it when it comes to a drug of this scale, which has the potent ability to change networks in your brain, right? So I would say that if it was someone who had clinical depression and they really wanted to, they were not responding to any treatment, then I would say see a psychiatrist and see if you can be part of a clinical trial. That would be one way to do it. In India right now, that's not a possibility.

2:38:46But people abroad are doing it. Anyone else, I would say. A normal human being. There's nothing going on. I would say, you know, these are really potent drugs. They rewire your brain not just for the short term, but often for the long term. And that direction in which it's exactly going to rewire is not obvious and it's not in your control. It's a risk that I'm not sure one should be so willingly signing up for. So rewiring of brain will happen, but you don't know if it's going to be negative or positive. I don't know which way it will go. So rewiring of brain is possible with drugs. You decide which direction.

2:39:24I mean, it's a bit of a Russian roulette in that sense, right? So I would say, why are you doing this? I mean, you know, we're still far away from fully understanding the long-term consequences of these drugs. Everything that we have looked at indicates long-term effects. In animals, in humans, long-lasting rewiring of circuits, long-lasting synaptic changes in neurons. I don't know if I would just be you know on a for the pure recreational value of trying something new I mean you could try many other things also right so you could try what do you try it? have you tried it? I have not I have zero interest but I'm like as I told you because you're so curious about brain have you ever has it not crossed your brain like you should maybe try ayahuasca maybe I don't know what has crossed my mind is the following which is that if you can have altered states of consciousness that respond to a molecule like this and inherently your brain has the capability of experiencing altered states of consciousness.

2:40:26Yeah. And there are other ways to tap into it. And those exercises I find particularly interesting. I've always found meditation an extremely interesting exercise to train your brain with. That's my chosen path because I think that there is much more room to direct where you will go than you do it molecularly with an external agent. So I would say that there are, I mean, it's opening your mind to the possibility of what all can happen with your nervous system. I would find other ways to do this. True. Not the drug. For me, this is my altered state of life. Absolutely. Like, I love that. I'm on such a different high when every time I'm doing a podcast and a conversation.

2:41:09No, I fully understand that. And for me, I mean, I work with psychedelics. I work with giving psychedelics to rodents, looking at the effects on the brain. And I think they are very powerful molecules and they should be studied and potentially they may become relevant in the clinic. Either them or some downstream work that comes from them. So they will move at some stage, I think, into the clinic. But I think for a person who is just a regular human being, who has no requirement at that moment for drugs that are treating a psychiatric condition, perhaps these are very important molecules and maybe you want to give them a bit of a wide berth.

2:41:42I was, you know, I was shamed for not doing it once. Really? Yeah, so I was in Colombia in Cartagena. And I was there for one retreat, like a conference sorts. And after the conference, the third day, they had a beach day. Like that was half day the conference ended and they had like pool party or beach day. And they were doing this gratitude practices, etc. They made us stand in like four or five groups. Okay, so one group, let's say 12 people, 14 people group. and they were the guy in the middle was an instructor who was apparently this retreat coach therapist whoever like some healer kind of person right was a very charismatic and charming personality by the way would hand over like shrooms to everybody and chocolates which has something mixed in it they would give it in pairs ask people to stand in front of each other and then ask them to do like one to like some exercises like take it then do some exercises tap tap tap like for five minutes the whole ritual went in people stood said some gratitude something and then they all went in water and came back running and then you would see like so many people were completely different who were loud they went so in that like I I backed out like I'm not doing it so my partner was the one who was assigned like not my partner but like the one random person who was supposed to be like who me and that person were supposed to take yeah like the pair we were supposed to take it together was trending yeah and they like shamed me like why the hell are you here why this is like everybody just went in that zone it has a little bit of the risk of becoming a cult it looked it looked like we're starting a cult this is my worry with it this is my worry that when you are studying molecules of this nature that if you become cult-like in your view of whatever they do, then you're not giving it the respect that it deserves to find out what its positive, negative, all effects are, right?

2:43:48I'm worried about that cult-like aspect of it. This is what worries me. It looked like they had like a full ritual they were following and then the whole part, I would see different phases of like three days I spent with those guys and I would see different personalities. Few were okay, but few were on a different trip. Absolutely. absolutely they're very potent molecules and I was heavily shamed for three days like next two days two more days I mean I have been asked this question by multiple people and my response was very straightforward I have no desire to tweak with my nervous system unnecessarily I mean you know it's a complex enough organ I have no need to unnecessarily tweak with it there's no need I'm not going and tweaking my nervous system and in my head the explanation was I don't drink alcohol because I don't want to get addicted.

2:44:38There's no way on earth I'm doing this. I don't drink alcohol either. And my point is precisely that. I have no desire to kill. My neurons will die anyway because life is going to kill some neurons along. I have no desire to accelerate the process and cause additional neurons to unnecessarily die. There is no desire for that. And you know, what I find interesting though is that these molecules open the possibility of... So somebody did a really nice, interesting study recently where they looked at deep breathing and whether the network activity in the brain with deep breathing is similar to what it is with psychedelics.

2:45:14And it is. And that tells you that essentially the network in the brain, activity of the network in the brain goes to a particular state, but there are many ways to also get to that state. The thing is, all those other ways require work. Yeah. Process, right? It's not a fast solution. You induce and then boom. And that's transient, right? That's transient. So Swami Vivekananda said this, actually, someone had asked him, say, if I can take this drug and I can see God, then why do I have to do all these rituals or whatever, meditation, etc. So his point was actually very interesting. I might not say it as well as he said it, but what the point was that, okay, yes, you may take the drugs and have access to this mystical universe.

2:46:00But when you come back, you will just be the same person you were. But it's when you do the work. It's the work that transforms you. Yes, you get that access, but it is the work that has transformed you. that process is not something you can eliminate and that is not to be sneezed at right so the meditative work takes work true you have to sit breath work takes work it takes work you have to sit with it you can't just say i'll just get wherever you it will take time to get to that location and that work is worth it for the brain true true here's the last question how does a happy brain look like you know you're asking the hardest question ever for two reasons.

2:46:43One, we have spent most of our time focusing on how a sad or a fearful or an anxious or an unhappy brain looks. In animal models and in humans, we have a much better understanding of which part of the brain produces fear, which part responds to stress, where extinction of fear memories happens, where stress responses are controlled. We have far lesser understanding of which part of the brain is involved in the production of joy, contentment, happiness. If you ask me to point out now, show me the part of the brain where contentment or acceptance or resilience or joy reside, I will struggle. And not just I will struggle, most other neuroscientists will struggle because we don't have a location.

2:47:33Much the same way if you tell me where does consciousness reside, I will also struggle. partly because those are things we still don't understand joy and happiness being an absolutely good example the closest we are coming is we beginning to understand where empathy may be regulated right so it's in the insula and those parts of the brain the insula is this this area so those emotions we're beginning to explore but happiness contentment and joy you're asking the hardest questions. So you as a neuroscientist, you're telling me you have no clue how a completely happy brain looks like. No, because first of all, to study happiness in a rodent is a hard ask.

2:48:15It's a very hard ask. Even to study happiness in a non-human primate is a hard ask. What we do know is some parts of the brain that get activated when you are in a state of feeling happy. But those are many distributed circuits. There's not one location in the brain where you can say ah, this circuit gets activated, you will be happy. There are many distributed parts of the brain that are activated when you say you are experiencing joy or experiencing happiness. Happiness and joy are not the same, but still. But we have a much better, if you tell me which circuit produces fear, I can tell you.

2:48:48Yeah, you told me already. It's right there, right? If you tell me which part of the brain is involved in fear production or even motivation, reward, addiction, I can point it out. We have disproportionately understood the negative emotions and where they sit and reside in the brain as compared to the positive. Wow. I expected a very different answer. I wish it was a different answer. It's hopefully a motivation for all your podcast viewers, maybe some amongst your gang of podcast viewers will be future neuroscientists and they'll say how is it that after so many years of studying the brain, here's a person who can't answer this question.

2:49:28Is it more because of Freud's influence? No, it's just a consequence of the fact that negative emotions have been easier to study because they're easier to read out. And there's an obvious readout that is evolutionarily conserved. Very strongly. Fear has been evolutionarily conserved across species. It's easier to study. joy is a difficult one to study first of all it's hard to pinpoint any your fear my fear the responses are similar your joy my joy are not identical absolutely very very different very difficult to figure out much more distributed much more variant much more heterogeneous not conserved across species the same way hard hard question wow what an end to the podcast very hard question but thank you so much for spending time with me it was so much fun thank you it was a lot of fun I thoroughly enjoyed it that was great fun

2:50:32nice to meet you

2:50:36can we get sanitizers as well yep is that the first time you've ever cut yeah like first time I've seen a brain what cut you did very well that was actually a very steady hand it went smooth because I was expecting that I might end up puking are you serious? like for real I was not able to take the I told you know my olfactory yeah you can smell you can smell it it smells like how hospitals smell it smells you have a little bit of that formaldehyde little bit of hospital but little more than that like I don't know what it smells like thank you so much for watching this episode to the end now you have to do three things Number one, subscribe to this channel because as much as you subscribe, we will get guests to you better.

2:51:24Number two, please tell us what we did wrong and what we did good so that we can learn from this feedback and create more better experience. And number three, you have to share this episode with someone else because one conversation is enough for changing someone's life. I'll see you next time. Until then, keep figuring out. Thank you.