Episode 579: Dr. Masud Husain: Motivation, Memory, and the Truth About Aging Brains

28:23So there's different neurochemical systems. There are different circuits in the brain which use dopamine or serotonin. But does it manifest similarly? I don't think so. Yeah. So serotonin. You don't think so? No, I think serotonin, the effects of serotonin, for example, are not necessarily in terms of reward, but in terms of what we call aversive responses. So something that you learnt is actually not very rewarding, unpleasant, costly in some way. And serotonin has an impact on behaviours where you need to have an aversive response. is truly complicated in terms of how we map these neurochemical systems onto different components of motivation.

29:05So one thing we've tried to do is to deconstruct motivation. Say, okay, if motivation isn't simply about willpower, what are the potential components of motivation? One of those things I mentioned to you is this thing about working out whether the reward is worth the effort. It turns out that's really important. But you could imagine that someone would look inert. They wouldn't do anything. If they had a problem, for example, in deciding, thinking about the potential choices for behavior, you know, it's a sunny day outside. What could you do, Jen? I mean, you could probably come up with 20 potential alternatives, right?

29:39About, yeah. But imagine if you couldn't, if you couldn't even think of one, right? If the brain system that would generate those choices just was not able to do this. How much of this is genetic? Oh, I don't think we know about that at all. Like if your mom has it, do you get it? There's no evidence for that in this way. Really? Yeah. You know, they can be biases. But things like, for example, Alzheimer's disease is just a very common disease as we get older. Yeah. There are unusual genetic causes of Alzheimer's disease which run in families. Like what? Well, there are mutations in what we call presenilin 1 or presenilin 2 or amyloid precursor protein.

30:24They all affect amyloid, that protein that builds up in the brain. So it's like the thing that actually affects the chemical is what then affects, that makes you get the Alzheimer's. Early. Not the genetic, so right. Well, the gene mutation means you're going to get it early. But I'm just explaining that actually that genetic component is quite rare. We also know there's a gene called APOE, and having the APOE4 genotype puts you at a higher risk of developing Alzheimer's. So in that way, there could be familial risks. But in general, the vast majority of patients who develop late-onset Alzheimer's disease, we have not been able to pin down a genetic cause.

31:09Do most people, what's the percentage of elderly people that eventually get Alzheimer's or dementia? Well, it depends on the age. Yeah, what is the age? Tell me. If you're going to 80, you're getting towards 20%, 25%. And if you're going older and older, those percentages keep increasing. So as you get older. Yeah. And of course, there are other causes of dementia, like vascular dementia, that can occur with if you have high blood pressure or smoke or diabetes. Those things affect the blood vessels in the brain, and slowly you begin to accrue enough pathology, vascular pathology, that you will develop vascular dementia.

31:50Sometimes, unfortunately, people can get both Alzheimer's and vascular changes in the brain and have a mixed dementia. That's just the increased risk as we get older, because our brains weren't designed to live this long. We are living a huge amount of time. So that's why there's a 20%, around approximately 20 % of people after age of 80 get it. Yeah. And the numbers increase thereafter. Can you reverse cognitive decline or Alzheimer's, dementia? Is it true? So if we just stick to Alzheimer's, the latest clinical trials show that there are drugs which mop up amyloid in the brain, and they can make a small difference to the trajectory of decline.

32:36But it is a very, very small difference. And therefore, it's been very controversial because the FDA approved it. People have been saying that that approval was based on a level of evidence which was not really sufficient to do this because it has huge implications. The treatment, It's intravenous, this drug. What's it called? One of them is something called lakanumab, for example. So it's a lakanumab. It's a monoclonal antibody which mops up the amyloid. But, I mean, on the positive side, here is proof of principle that it could make a small difference. When you say small, 2%, 5 %? Yeah, it's probably of the order of 1%, that kind of level.

33:17Okay, it's very little, though. Yeah. So would it change someone's quality of life, though, if it's only 1 % or 2 %? And that's exactly what people are saying, that that probably isn't going to make any huge difference. So why are you putting somebody through this? But on the other hand, 30 years ago, I can remember being a junior doctor, seeing people doing deep brain stimulation surgery in Parkinson's disease, putting in electrodes into the brain to try and help Parkinson's disease patients who were not necessarily responding so well to medication. And I used to think at that point, why are these doctors doing this to these poor patients?

33:51Because there were complications of surgery. But now, things have improved so much in the techniques, they can make a huge difference to some people with Parkinson's disease. So I think we have to be open-minded to the possibility that even if something looks a bit odd and maybe making small changes, differences at the moment, in the future, this kind of investigation could open up whole new other ways of treating. So I guess my question is, you can't reverse Alzheimer's. We haven't got any evidence that we can reverse Alzheimer's. You know, there are people out there who say it is reversible.

34:31Yeah. I've yet to understand how and how this happens. I called this guy a couple weeks ago, this man, who is a gerontologist and neuroscientist, and he's fairly known. And I was telling him about my mom. He's like, oh, have you tried red light? Have you tried giving her a triple dose of creatine? Like all these things, right? Like all these things. And I went to my mom's doctor and he's like, you have got to be kidding me. Like, this is nonsense. You really think that, you know, like maybe it can help you prevent it, like maybe a percentage, you know, years before. But to think that putting a red light on someone's head and giving them some creatine is going to reverse it is wishful thinking.

35:23I think it is, yeah. And we don't have the clinical trial evidence for that. On the other hand, one thing we do understand is… So why do people say that? Where are they getting this from? I didn't say it. I know you didn't. I'm not blaming you. I'm not blaming you. Listen, someone from Oxford is not going to be saying that, I can promise you. Yeah. On the other hand, we've got to realize that people are very different. So these clinical trials just take… Is there any evidence of this? Not for the things you've mentioned, yeah. What is there evidence of that has been able to move the needle one or two percent in habits?

35:57Forget about medication, but in habits. Is there anything that people can do habitually to help them first, pardon my question, to prevent it, prevent Alzheimer's? And B, to stop it from getting worse? Right. So now we're going back to the thing that we were talking about before. Yes. What are the physical things you can do? Yeah. And what are the other kind of social things you can do to help? Purpose, isolate, purpose. Curiosity. Curiosity. Keeping a close, big connection with people, as well as all those physical risk factors, you know, making sure your blood pressure is under control, you're doing physical exercise, you're eating well, and not drinking too much alcohol.

36:37Other things are important too, like deafness. You know, when you're beginning to lose hearing, you become socially isolated. So there's a whole raft of these things, and the evidence is that they might actually make a difference in prevention. So if you put all those things together, it could make a big difference in prevention if you are currently healthy.

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38:22So if someone were to read your book, right, that you wrote, trying to get the, I want to make sure that I properly, our brains, ourselves. What are the top three themes that people will learn about? The book is really about how people with brain disorders reveal something about how our brains work, how our brains create our identities, our personal identities. So who we are as a person is really the product of our brain functions. We've talked about motivation today, but there are many different brain functions, perception, attention, how we build concepts, how we behave in terms of whether we're impulsive or not, for example.

39:04Those control mechanisms that we have to stop us being impulsive. So there are many different brain systems that produce us, our personal identities. But the other important thing here is our social identities, because we're also defined by our connections to other people, our affiliations to different groups, you know, our religion, place we grew up, where we went to school or university, the kind of job we did. But I also argue in the book that even our social identities really are a product of our brain's abilities to make those social identities. Imagine if you had to go off and live in a different country.

39:45with a different language. In order to integrate into that society, your brain has to be curious enough and able enough to start learning this language, to understand the customs, the humor, the way things work in this, to be accepted. So to be socially accepted, we do a lot of stuff with our brain. And so the argument in the book is personal identity and social identity is created by our brains. It's an emergent property of the brain. The self is something that's created by the brain. And it's something we take for granted. It's only when things go wrong that we begin to realize, my goodness, the way I see the world, the way I perceive the world, the way I attend to things, how motivated I am, or the concepts that I've developed about how things work, how societies work.

40:34If any of those, if one of those goes wrong, it's revealing how myself has changed, how my identity has changed. So that's what the book is about. But once this starts to happen, of course everything's going to start changing, right? But are you even aware of it to know that it's changing? Some people are, but there are some brain disorders, like something we call frontotemporal dementia, where people lose insight. They don't actually understand that they're behaving abnormally. They can't see what's wrong with behaving the way they did. You know, There's a patient in the book called Sue who's walking down the street and seeing a woman in a short dress thinking that's inappropriate and shouting out, that's not going to be good for you, love, because you look terrible in it.

41:23Now, we might think that, but we never say that, right? Our control systems are making sure that we don't blurt out something we're thinking. But in someone like Sue, those systems which would normally inhibit you and me from doing that are no longer functioning. So she's a changed person in that way. I find it interesting because you're talking a lot about how, you know, it's not people just perceive that when you get dementia or Alzheimer's, that it's just people just assume it's like your memory is the one to go. But a lot of times it's actually not even the memory. It's all these behaviors that you're saying.

42:01I'm learning it with my own mother. It's all this other stuff, the confusion. There's no logic behind anything you're doing. But they still know who you are. That's very common. Does it stay like that or does it eventually? It's one of the most, you know, it's a thing that can last for a long time. Also, knowing who they are is also something that can last a very long time. But obviously we get to a point where there is so much neural damage that it's not really viable in terms of them being able to represent who you are. What made you study this so thoroughly and really specialize in this? I mean, it's the bit of medicine that we know least about, right?

42:50We know about the heart. We know about the lungs. We know about your big toe. So the brain is just an amazing organ that we're just barely touching the surface of. You're asking me these questions, and I'm trying to give you the state of the art. But I'm also completely open explaining that we don't know much of this stuff. So that's what's really attractive about it. And obviously, if there are diseases that affect the brain, they have an enormous influence, not only on the people who suffer from them, but on the families. They have a huge impact on the families. So this is where we can make the biggest inroads.

43:26What are some of the most surprising things that you've kind of turned, like you've kind of learned about or that you found in your research that would surprise most people? Well, I think this area of motivation is probably the biggest area that I've got into. Thinking that you could try and deconstruct motivation into components. We talked about a couple of them. one, can you come up with the potentials for things you could do today, right? And if you can't, you could be very... Yeah, the motivation part. But it's really important because, you know, although we're talking about people with brain diseases, there are important takeaways for how we live our lives in people who don't have brain diseases, right?

44:11So one thing we've learned is people think, for example, there's too it's too much effort to do this so i won't do it so how do you make it easier how do you make the activation energy to start right in in people our kids our friends who are our colleagues how do you do it well one way to think about it is try and break down the problem into smaller parts try and make it so that it's not one big thing to do try and reduce it the other thing that I've found useful is start. Don't think you have to do a perfect job right from the beginning. If you start, you can become more motivated, right? Even action can lead to more motivation.

44:53And, you know, I'm also a big believer in routines because, you know, if you have those routines, it means when I'm having my coffee, I will do this or nine o 'clock in the morning, I will do this. Writing the book, it was really difficult because I'm a full-time neurologist. I'm a researcher. I'm an editor of this journal. I don't have a lot of time. But I would say you have to turn up to the screen, 6 a.m. It could be rubbish you're writing for an hour, but you're going to write it because this is the way to make sure it happens. And of course, sometimes it is rubbish that we write. But just starting means you get it off on the page.

45:33Well, I was going to say, because what was kind of stopping me in my tracks, You're talking about how high performers, when they get some issues with their cognitive abilities, they have the biggest crash, right? Because they have all these systems in place versus people who are more like type B personalities. So then like maybe it is actually not good to be so tightly wound. Seriously, with all these systems and routines and mechanisms in place to perform at such a high level. because once those are gone, it's actually you have a bigger chance of having, you know, the opposite, the bigger swing happens.

46:10Like the pendulum will swing even further. It's kind of like I'm going to give you, you can answer that and I'm going to say something after, you know? Well, I mean, it depends on how long you're planning to live, Jen, you know? I don't know. Hopefully much longer, you know? I would rather be really productive, very good at what I do when I'm able to, rather than think about what I'm going to be like at the age of 80. No, but what I, yes, 100%. But what I think is interesting is we're doing all these hacks, you know, to like live longer and be like, you know, to have our brains be at like at such a peak state forever.

46:52Meanwhile, like at the end of the day, from what I get is like, if we, if the high performers can crash, are the ones who crash the most severely, I'd rather just maybe not, what am I doing to myself? Well, it's a choice, but, you know, our forefathers, the generations before us, they weren't even, this is a luxury to be talking about this. It was survival for them, you know, making enough money to work, do all these things. Okay. So we are in a luxury position where we're thinking, contemplating, how am I going to do this? Which hack am I going to use? True. Okay. So I have a bunch of questions.

47:26I haven't even asked any of my question questions yet. But like, what would you say, I'm going to ask them to you and then you can just answer them as quickly as you can, like as concisely as you can. Because there's so much information. Yeah. And I know we're kind of, we're tight on time kind of. So here we go. Okay, what's the biggest misconception people have about how the brain actually works? Hmm. Well, probably it's to do with things like these dopamine bursts and detoxes that people are doing. I think in the current generation, that's probably the biggest misconception. Talk about that again in a way that, so you said that earlier, that like people think that if you're on your social media, people are getting these bursts of dopamine.

48:08That's actually not in the literature or research doesn't back that up. Yeah, there's no real evidence for that. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do. It's a bad habit to keep scrolling. Yeah. But there's no evidence that we can link that to dopamine. So what can we, what does that do to our brain then? If it's not about that, people just scrolling, doom scrolling forever, what is that doing? So it's developing a habit. It's developing a habit. And that habit, once you develop habits, it's very difficult to get out of them. We've been talking about trying to develop good habits like routines.

48:41Right. Start. And by the way, I'm a big routine person, obviously. So don't get me wrong. I'm still going to do it because it makes me feel good. So I'm talking about doom scrolling is probably a bad habit. that for most people, they realize it's a bad habit, that they shouldn't be doing it as much as they can, but they're brought back to it. But there's no evidence that it's dopamine that's bringing you back, that you're thinking, I'm lusting after dopamine. What is it? What is bringing us back? We don't necessarily know what that is, but no one's measured something that says, this thing is the thing that's bringing you back.

49:16And it's definitely no evidence that it's dopamine. So we don't know. You know what I like about you? is that there's no nonsense. So a lot of times people will be like, they'll say, oh, well, it means it's this. But you're just saying plainly, I don't know. There's no research. We don't know what it's called. We don't know why people are doing it. It's not the dopamine. It's kind of unknown. It's okay to not have the answer. You're just being honest. Yeah, exactly. I love that. If you could teach everyone one thing about their brain, what would it be? It has much bigger capacity than you think.

49:50I wish when I was a kid, someone had told me, whether it was teachers or parents or whatever, that actually you can do much more. And we sometimes just limit ourselves because we're constrained by the fact that we think we can only do this much. And usually it's in one area. I've learned that brains are capable of multitasking in a way that most of us wouldn't even think about doing. Well, there's a lot of conversation around that, right? Some people say multitasking is really not great. Some people think it's excellent. So you think multitasking is… In the way they mean it's not good, it means switching from one thing to another very quickly.

50:33Because there is a cost. There's something we call a switch cost. Okay. From going from one cognitive problem to another, right? So going, let's say you're doing a math problem, and then you're having to translate something in French if you're at high school or something. There is a cost because it takes time to switch from doing one kind of problem solving to another. I'm not talking about switching very quickly. I'm talking about the ability to take on different types of problem. And I had no idea that I could be capable of doing that when I was younger. Well, does multitasking make your brain sharper or less sharp?

51:08Because you constantly have to do the switcheroo back and forth, and then neither task that's done well. Oh, well, I'd like to think I'm doing them perfectly. Good to know, yes. But no, I have a very demanding life where, you know, one moment I'm seeing a patient and doing a clinic for three hours. I'm not talking about switching straight away. And the afternoon, I'm doing a research study, or I'm reading papers about something that had been submitted to the journal that I edit, or I'm having to deal with some university problem that's arisen. And I quite like it. I quite like the fact that these are different types of problem.

51:45What about ADD then? Would you say that people who have ADD, do you think ADD is a myth? Do you think it's actually something true in the brain? I don't think it's a myth. I think it is something that some people have. Whether it's being overdiagnosed is something we could argue about. I'm not a specialist in that area. So I don't think I can be qualified to say whether the levels of diagnosis have risen because it's a genuine thing or not. The evidence from good studies, research studies, is, yeah, there are differences in the brains of people who develop ADD compared to people who don't. We can also measure those differences, particularly in the ability to sustain attention.

52:26People with ADD are far more variable in their distractibility, their ability to sustain attention. That's one of the key markers is that they're just variable in their response times. Let's do something very simple like pressing a button if you see a flash of light. We are very consistent. If you don't have ADD, if you do have ADD, you're far more variable. I don't think there's any doubt. Well, it's the multitasking piece that you were just talking about, right? Like I feel when you have ADD, you're much easier. It's kind of like par for the course. like multitasking and jumping from one thing to another.

52:58Like I've noticed a lot of entrepreneurs have a lot of, that's an ADD is a very big piece of that. Do you not know, like do you notice that? Yeah. And you could argue that some people who are very creative have that ability to jump, right, from this problem and suddenly think, actually, I can sometimes also use principles in one area and apply them to another area. That's another important ability to be able to do. Seeing something you've learned in this particular area might actually be helpful for you to solve a problem in a completely different area. So I think there are people who have ADD, who are very creative, who are very able, and also do this thing about having lots of problems to solve.

53:41So I guess my question was more, you were kind of touching upon it, like since everyone's now being diagnosed, self-diagnosed or clinically diagnosed as someone who has it, do you see that the research, is there anything to back that the brains are chemically different than people who don't have ADD? Yeah, there are research studies which show that, either in terms of brain activation. And it turns out it's the areas of the brain include the basal ganglia we were talking about, as well as the frontal and parietal regions of the brain, which seem to work differently in people with ADD. And that maps onto our ideas also of the attention networks in human brains.

54:20We were talking about circuits for motivation, there are also circuits for attention. and those are affected in ADD. There are also some people with ADD who are apathetic and we assume that that's because the brain circuit for motivation can also be affected in these people. So I hope I'm getting this concept across that we have circuits in the brain which do different things. They can be affected by different disorders, whether it's ADD or we were talking about stroke or neurodegenerative illnesses like Alzheimer's disease. It's what affects those circuits and how they're affected leads to the manifestation of the cognitive deficit or the behavioral deficit.

54:59Okay, now with AI, right, because everyone now is relying on AI to do tasks that they would otherwise not have been able to do, writing emails, putting together sales strategies, decks, building websites. Are our brains actually getting lazier? Is that actually a thing that can happen? I think if you can lose... Like, what happens to our brains if we're just, like, not using them? That's why they said when you're getting older, it's important to do crossword puzzles and stimulate your brain. I agree. And in general, I think that's what the evidence might suggest. But I'm going to be, you know, boring and say to you, we don't know if AI is going to make our brains so ineffective effective at doing the things that we used to do very well.

55:44I mean, you remember using maps to navigate. Well, that's what I'm saying. I don't even need to be a neuroscientist to figure this one out. That's what I'm saying. I can't remember my own phone number, let alone any other phone numbers at this point, because I haven't had to. Yeah. But whether you'd be bad at it if we started all over, right? Whether you now had to use the physical map to navigate. Yeah. I have no clue. Well, we can give it a try. My brain's atrophied. I think, again, I'm no neuroscientist from Oxford, but I would imagine that if you don't use it, you lose it in general. It's like my muscles, if I'm not working out, even for a week, I feel it.

56:27I'm not as strong. I'm not as toned. But the question would be, could you regain it? Chunky. Could you regain it, those skills? Muscle memory. yeah could you regain it you know but if we actually do it so what i'm concerned about like what i think is interesting is like when we were kids we had to remember like memorize our friend's phone number or we just wouldn't be able to call them we had to read a map we had to do all these things and like we trained our brain constantly like does that mean that the generation that's like my children right now who don't need to remember a phone number who don't have to do all these basic things are they going to have like a lazy brain no i don't think so i mean or they start learning new things.

57:09New things, of course. Okay, like what? Tell me. Yeah, well, the new technology, like how to use... How to use Snapchat? Wonderful. They can use Snapchat. TikTok. Great. They're going to be brilliant. They're going to be professors at Oxford because of it. Hardly. No, no. I mean, I don't think there's any reason to fear that human cognitive abilities are going to be killed. Because this is what everybody said when any new technology came along, right? Yeah. I mean, listen, you can learn how to prompt better. Like, basically, It's like now it's about, oh, do you know how to prompt AI to get the answer and the information you need?

57:43Like, OK, so but so there's different things to be learning, so to speak, in technology that will keep our brains activated. But in the end, we're trying to solve problems. And if you don't solve problems well, you'll screw up and people will notice. And you'll, you know, so we have to learn new techniques to solve the problems of the modern world. And your kids are going to be able to do that. That's that's going to happen. okay i understand that cultures have changed in technology right human culture has just gone in leaps and bounds i still think it's really important like that's why we're just becoming a lazy culture right like we don't even go to the grocery store we order our food we don't cook we just use postmates like everything's become so easy i agree with you that like it's like what We could just all sit at home all day, 24 hours a day, watch TV, order our food.

58:36Our society is becoming a very lazy, unless you make a very consorted effort to not be, which is why these habits and routines and creating structures where you do things are put out there, or else it's very easy to become literally a plate of mush. I'm remembering the recommendation you quoted right at the beginning of the show that you have no filter. Yeah, well, it's true. Well, listen, I haven't even started yet. I don't have any filter. That's 100 % true. But I just feel like this is like obvious stuff. But like the case, let me just move on from there. Because I have questions I think are what you kind of touched upon too, which were which I think is very important, which is people who are lonely, who feel isolated, who have no purpose.

59:25This is when your brain really starts to decline. So I really want to talk about that because I think that's become so prevalent. And, you know, what I see because of social media, because of what we just talked about, is our society has made it so easy not to socialize, not to deal with people. Including the tech. Yeah, I'm saying tech has actually made it easier. Like in some ways, yes, they've taken the burden off of repetitive tasks, taken the burden off of, you know, sending an email with thinking about what to say. because if I use ChatGPT, I sound smarter. Meanwhile, I'm more stupid because I use ChatGPT and I wouldn't have thought of it.

1:00:04But the alternate side of that whole thing is with that technology comes a lot of isolation and loneliness. So my question really is this. What actually happens to the brain when it feels lonely? And why do relationships have such a profound impact on our health and longevity? So I think the evidence for that comes from psychology rather than from neuroscience, because we don't have enough evidence in doing this. But the psychology suggests that it's really important in terms of even simple things like communication abilities. So if you are isolated, you lose the ability to have a conversation in this way.

1:00:50A hundred percent. From everything simple from turn-taking in this conversation to being curious enough to take that conversation beyond the simple, hello, how are you? Right. How are you doing? To take it to something where you're actually discussing a current event or something that you've both read or something like that. That's a really important part of this. And it seems that that makes people feel well, that the ability to have those kind of interactions with other individuals gives you a boost in terms of your feeling of being well. Now, exactly what is happening in the brain when that happens, we don't know.

1:01:30We don't know. Okay, so can loneliness actually impair your decision making then and your cognitive performance? I think that's completely possible, yeah. And the cognitive performance for sure. Yeah. in terms of everyday decision making i'm not sure about the evidence for that okay is there the is there a best now these are going to be very rapid fire so just best exercise for the brain yeah i think i would say aerobic exercise it would be better you'd be if you can do 30 minute exercise two or three times a week where you're actually sweating and you're getting your heart rate up that's probably the most important thing to do but But give me something specific.

1:02:10Would you say what's better, weight training or walking for your brain? If you had to decide, I'd go walking or running. Running because it actually elevates your heart rate. Yeah. Okay. Would you say Pilates or Stairmaster? Stairmaster, yeah. Because you're against. So you like the things that are much more rigorous. It has to be physical. Rigorous. For your brain to be activated. I could have told you that, but I'm glad that a professional is saying it. Best food for cognition? I'm not sure there is much evidence, apart from the fact that, you know, you shouldn't, you need to keep that cholesterol level at a reasonable amount, because cholesterol is one of these important factors which affects the vascular risk factors of the brain.

1:03:00So it's interesting you say that, because if you're a biohacker, they say, oh, that's nonsense, and that cholesterol is actually good for you. Oh, cholesterol is important in the sense that lipids, fats, are important in terms of making the neurons. No, but like, you know, like it used to be when, again, when I was younger, right? Butter was like the antichrist, right? Butter and like eating too much saturated fat, like red meat. Now it's like talked about to be like the panacea for health and wellness. What do you say? In all of these things, you have to have a, you know, you've got to be reasonable about this stuff.

1:03:35I eat butter, I eat red meat, but I'm just saying people who have a raised cholesterol level have a higher risk of developing vascular changes in the brain and therefore a higher risk of developing vascular dementia. So people who say, oh, you need to eat blueberries and a lot of omega-3s for salmon, I guess, does it do anything? Will I actually? I don't know the evidence that it does anything. Really? Because for 30 plus years that I know, people are like, oh, you need to eat your wild salmon and you need to eat your blueberries and you need to have this for your brain. It might make a difference, but I don't know the evidence that it makes a difference.

1:04:13You haven't seen the evidence? No. Oh, wow. Okay. I'm not sure anyone's seen the evidence. Well, then where did this all come from? It's interesting. Rhetoric that's just out there. Yeah. Things take fashions, as you said. Okay. So one brain myth you wish would disappear. Well, I don't want to go back to the dopamine one for you, but I would say that one myth is that you have a limited capacity to do things. I think, as I said, you have far bigger capacity than you think. One most underrated brain habit? Sleeping well. That's a brain habit. yeah so if you don't sleep well i mean people know this already does that does that actually create over time like a sleepy brain you know excuse the pun but like does it actually like weaken your brain function over time so in a real way not just like oh yeah i didn't sleep well so i'll be like groggy and annoyed tomorrow you know so the extremes are people who do shift work and And those people have a higher risk of developing all sorts of diseases, diabetes, obesity, and also cognitive impairment to some extent, right?

1:05:19But even less extreme, when we don't sleep well, we have impaired cognitive performance the next day. Well, yeah, I meant it more chronic, like not just because everyone's wearing, of course, I'm wearing my aura ring. It just gives me more stress than anything else because I'm always like, did I sleep okay? Did I not sleep okay? A third of the people who come to see me in my clinic with memory problems have either problems with poor sleep, anxiety, or low mood. So it's got to the point where they're really worried about their memory or other abilities, and they're coming to seek advice. But we can actually reassure them that it's not something like dementia that they're developing.

1:06:00It's these things, if they could improve those things, sleep better, become less anxious, perhaps improve their mood. A lot of these things, though, I find are like, a lot of times it's like life that's happening, right? Like if someone is anxious and not sleeping well. Of course, it's not their fault. And it's like, okay, it's very easy for a professional. But like, well, just don't lower your stress and sleep better. Well, yeah, that's great for you to say. But if you have like, you know, a sick child or a sick parent and you're financially struggling and you have all these problems, It's very hard to get those things in check.

1:06:37I completely understand, but we don't put it like that. I'm not going to say that. Oh, I know you're not. I'm just saying it's funny how, of course, these things will make it easier. That's why. Right. But it's also reassuring for someone to think, oh, my goodness, it's not because I'm developing dementia. It's lifestyle. It's something that I might be able to do or a doctor may be able to help me with, right? Well, what I was going to say is, if you're experiencing these things for a long enough period of time, does it become an actual chronic problem? It can be. Or can they reverse itself? That was like the bottom line.

1:07:08Yeah, sometimes it becomes so chronic that it's very difficult to reverse naturally, unless some environmental change happened. You know, there were things that were making you really… You make$10 million, and you're like… Well, that isn't always… You mean Prince Charming or whatever, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I guess that would be great. But for most people, as you age and life becomes hard, it's very easy to be like, oh, yeah, well, just sleep better when it's really kind of not an easy thing for most people. There are ways in which you could do it, right? But first of all, identify that it's a problem.

1:07:40Ambien? I'm joking. Yeah, identify it's a problem first, right? I know. So, all right. Well, listen, I appreciate your time. I mean, you're obviously a fountain and a wealth of information, given where you are and what you're doing. Can you tell people where to find you and if they want to know more about you, what they can do? Sure. We have a website. If you go to masudhussain.org, M-A-S-U-D-H-U-S-A-I-N.org, you'll find the kinds of research we do. The books I've published, the papers we've published, and other resources. Well, I really appreciate you coming on here. Thank you very much. You guys, grab a copy of his book if you want to know anything or more about your brain.

1:08:24And wait, you don't even have a copy here. I was going to show it for the camera, but that's okay. We can just basically, it's called Our Brain Ourselves. And that's it. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks. Thank you very much. Don't forget to subscribe. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.