Dr. Kay Tye: The Biology of Social Interactions and Emotions

28:00And of course, I don't know the answer. We haven't done that particular study yet. And I don't know of that specific study having been performed. But my prediction is that it's not just going to do much because I believe that a key component of what I would consider social contact heavily depends on having some interbrain synchrony, some interaction in that is synchronous. And I think with social media, sometimes there can be an engaging dialogue that plays out in near real time. But generally speaking, it's asynchronous. You're looking at things that are happened that you're not a part of. You're excluded from all these things.

28:39They happen in Australia yesterday. And I'm on there saying, cool, love it. And then the person's already asleep. Yes, exactly. So that's what you're using asynchronous. asynchronous like that. We're not experiencing things at the same time. It's not a shared experience, you know, that in terms of that having that bond necessarily. And so I've never actually been asked about how the amygdala process is social media. I guess I think what happens is, you know, the amygdala is just responding to stimuli. It's sending up bottom up signals. You know, it's a caricature of bottom up and top down processing.

29:13Let's give an example that I'm walking down the street and all of a sudden, I hear like a really ferocious dog barking. I'm going crazy. And then I get super scared. And then I realize, okay, there's a fence. So the amygdala detects, you know, heard the dog barking. And the dog barking. And you know, I'm freaking out. Then my prefrontal cortex realizes there's the front. And it looks very sturdy. This fence looks stable. And then I'm relaxing and I'm resuming my walking normally, you know, I think that's sort of the dance that our brain is doing when we have top down and bottom up information that we're trying to stay focused.

29:46So for me, I think when I'm on social media, there's so many stimuli that that are evoking responses and to be completely transparent. And I know this is not something that everybody else does or can't do or is necessarily what's best for them. But I work very hard to control input from the top down in terms of I really, really limit the amount. I basically don't check email or go on social media. I would say I'm on social media or email less than one hour per week. Basically per week per week. I'll have to say to that is a congratulations. We'll talk about social media again in a second. But as a professor, email once a week.

30:32I've heard of people scheduling their times for email responses. But once a week, that is awesome. I have people who helped me get through it and then you're so productive. What's important? But otherwise, I just whenever I do my own email, I say yes to all these things. Then I make all these plans. And then I have too many trips and responding fragmented fragmented and it's just, you know, overcommitting. And I think I know my limits. Sometimes it's difficult for me to be in my amygdala mode responding to stimuli and yet letting my prefrontal cortex do its thing. So I've set some very heavy prefrontal cortically selected limits of the input I put in so that my brain can function and be clear.

31:14I can't be creative. I can't have a piffonies. If there's all this clutter of like writing this person back and blah blah blah blah. It's just, you know, I love it. I shout wipe squeegee squeegee the brain down so that we can actually grow something beautiful and new. Well, and I want to reemphasize what I said in my introduction, which is that I mean, you are oh, so productive. And when I say productive, I don't just mean productive like plug and chug you, you, the work you've done is incredibly creative. You transformed our understanding of what this famous structure, the amygdala actually does.

31:50I mean, you've made so many important discoveries as a consequence of presumably other things, but including wiping away all this incoming and clutter. As you said, controlling the top down inputs, I have to ask just from a practical standpoint, during that one hour a week, are you reading every email that came in? Are you just being very selective about which you know, so you're not opening most email. No, I don't open most emails. No, I just I search for the ones that my assistant identifies as the one I need to open. There's like a list of things that I'd be interested in. And then we'll go through the list.

32:25And then, you know, sometimes it requires me to go and find the email and respond to myself. Because that just and then I would do that for 10, you know, 10 minutes a day or something. Do you recommend out of there as soon as I can. Do you pass on this advice to the people that you train? I think it depends on what resources and what's your what's your job right now. Right. So I think as a trainee, I definitely did my as a professor. I did my own emails, but at a certain point, I was just never getting to the bottom. And then it would just stress me out, make me feel overwhelmed. And what is my job?

33:02My job is to number one, be a stable core of a sustainable research program. And that just requires me having a lot of mental health and well -being and clear -mindedness. And I need to be able to come up with creative ideas. I need to be able to sprint when there's a deadline. And I just can't exhaust my system with unnecessary. I would call them quadrant four in the time management quadrant. If you're familiar with this, you know, what is it? Important urgent. Yes. Certain things are urgent but not important. Some things are urgent. And some things are neither important nor urgent. That's most emails are and like if you read time management literature and you have the luxury to have someone else help you or something that's like so well trained to be really good at catch a chapter and things that are important.

33:52And you know, sometimes I miss emails, but emails are not the way my trainees would reach me. They would reach me in a different way. And then emails are for everyone else that I didn't give my number to, you know. I feel so honored to have you in your contact. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens, now called AG1, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012. So I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens once or usually twice a day is that it gets to be the probiotics that I need for gut health.

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35:08And they'll give you a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's Athletic Greens .com slash Huberman to get the five free travel packs and the year supply of vitamin D3 K2. I think this is wonderful advice for people to hear. We have a future guest on this podcast named Cal Newport. He wrote the book Deep Work and he has another book called The World Without Email. He's a computer science professor at Georgetown. He talks extensively about the tremendous career but also relationship and life value of doing essentially what you're describing. Although I do think that you represent the extreme of what I've become aware of in terms of people that can limit the amount of time on social media platforms and email.

35:54Anyway, I just want to say congratulations. I just want to say that again. I think even if people don't reduce to one hour per week, I think that making some effort toward reducing the amount of incoming as you said controlling the top down inputs to the amygdala but also to the rest of the brain involved in creative processing, etc. So we actually do have agency. It's tough sometimes to build up that discipline. So you're doing a tremendous service by sharing that somebody as successful as you does this presumably a successful in part because you do this. Could we by extension say that many people since billions of people are on social media are likely triggering the activation of their amygdala clouding out other more potentially productive activation of their neural circuits by sort of just making themselves freely available to the to the thoughts and words and impulses of others.

36:52I mean, to me, it seems the answer would be yes, but I'd like to know what you think. I mean, I think and there's something we've said there's definitely been moments where I've, you know, gone deep into social media and spent more time in a certain burst, right, that is isolated. I think that there's a lot to be learned from social media. So to actually to bring it back to one point you mentioned earlier. On social media, sometimes people just want accolades and sometimes there's a lot of friction. One of the reasons I stay on social media, even though I'm making this big effort to sort of declutter my consciousness is because of that feedback, especially when you know for someone like you, I imagine this has got to be super true.

37:37And even for me, at a certain point of my career, it just felt like people don't want to tell me bad news to my face as much anymore. Everybody's so positive all the time. And, you know, what they, what are they really thinking and social media allows you the protection of anonymity to say what you really think without consequence essentially. And so on the one hand, the consequence free nature of being able to just say things can be very dangerous. But at the same time, for me, I really value just being able to receive it. I'm, you know, I'm a big girl. I can filter out what I want when I get all the inputs.

38:21But if I don't receive the inputs, sometimes it's hard to learn from the feedback I'm not getting. So even sometimes feedback is given and I'm not very nice way. I can still create a model for someone else that has this perspective that I can take with me. And that can be another perspective I can honor easily in the future because I have this theory of mind for someone someone would get upset about that. You know, that's something that could be harmful to people who are, you know, have this theory of mind. So I think it's super valuable from that perspective. And that's why I continue to use it.

38:57Great. Yeah, I really applaud that as well. I always read my teaching e -vals because they're anonymous. And yes, I do wonder, you know, what grade the different people who gave different e -vals. You know, God, I don't know that information. I sometimes wonder, did they attend the class or are they just angry? They didn't do well on the exam. But that really represents the small fraction of feedback that I'm that I wonder about. Most of it. That's valuable to me is the, hey, you know, liked the course, but these parts really sucked for us or he ever meant or this part was completely unclear or completely hated the way you blank, blank and blank.

39:38Because that feedback is something I can really work with to improve. So I think, of course, e -vals are similar to what you're describing. I think there's value there. If I were to just look at the positive feedback and then ignore the negative feedback and write those people off, then I don't think I could improve as a teacher. Actually, I always encourage comments and feedback and suggestions in the YouTube comments for this podcast for that reason. And I do read the comments. I go through and I read and a few of them sting. But you know, the positive feedback is great too. Sometimes it's more of this please.

40:11Or less of that please. I think there's information in that. So I think it sounds like you've been doing all of these things naturally. So actually, since I've had my research group, my lab, we do an anonymous lab survey every, it's supposed to be about every 18 months and then it's a whole long process of going through it. And it's just evolved. I think it's the fourth or fifth time we've done it. And so it's now, I think it's like 70 questions. It's so many questions. Maybe we should trim it down. But it ends up being hundreds of pages of text, you know, short answer, sometimes long answer. So I think it's just a three -year feedback from anonymously from people my lab, my lab is pretty big.

40:52So it's, you know, I'm not even trying to really guess who is saying it. It's just feedback. And it takes me months to go through with it and get all the feedback. And it is so useful. I mean in a class, the amount of content that you have, it's restricted to this very specific time and space. Whereas when you're mentoring someone over the course of years, there's a lot of different There's a lot of different points of of content and interaction and you know, you're in the lab all 40 hours a week or whatever and you know going trip meeting here. There's just a lot of different different ways to improve and ways that we've never you know, I haven't had any training in how to be a Really great mentor and so I'm getting that training now.

41:37I'm making my own course and my mentees are my teachers and I really am grateful for the the tutelage that they provide for free in this anonymous lab survey Sometimes it makes me cry, but sometimes it makes me feel really good about something that I'm doing that's working and In any case it makes me feel that I have ground truth I guess I still don't know but when people say things that sting It makes me feel like they're saying what they really think and they're not holding back. It doesn't you know and and bad news feels Like reality and so that is very Something about that is rewarding just to feel like I have reality rather than I'm getting something else You know that the model doesn't quite fit very unsatisfying with the model doesn't quite fit So I love the word ground truth.

42:27There's something so beautiful to that and I resonate with what you're saying Let's go back to social interaction something that your lab is doing Lots of work on nowadays and maybe we could shift to the sorts of social interaction that most of us are familiar with the Sitting across the table having a coffee with somebody that taking a walk with somebody Maybe a phone call. Yeah, maybe a tough conversation maybe playful you know You know unscripted conversation Maybe a meal at a holiday dinner, you know, there's a huge range there What what do we know about the value of social interaction? At the level of sort of core biological needs I get the level of neural circuits and maybe even hormones I mean, you know most people have heard of oxytocin I think the love hormone, but it's there's so much more there for people to understand and know about you know How important is this thing that we call social interaction and how bad do things get when we're not getting the right kinds of social interaction?

43:36You know, I think this is this is a great question and I'm glad that it's become something that has been Recognized at a more global and national scale just the importance of having social support in our lives for help for our well -being But social isolation or even just perceived loneliness has immense health consequences for all social species so shortened lifespan increased mood disorders increased actually morbidity and mortality for diseases like cancer or heart disease that you know Might not be what we would normally think and so I think Understanding how each of those processes is Happening those mechanisms are far from being worked out But the the correlational evidence is undeniable.

44:33We're now taking this into the lab really for the first time and so Something so simple as social isolation. How can we don't know way more about it and? I'm someone who stumbled into the field of social isolation by accident prior to the pandemic and And so I'll just say look, you know the whole story on why there's such a gaping hole in our knowledge as a neuroscience community about social isolation really comes from Harry Harlow's work this original work of maternal separation that Was undeniably cruel it caused irreparable damage to these baby monkeys and they never recovered and sorry to interrupt I apologize.

45:15I'm just striving to not interrupt in my life, but I but so that people are on on board Could you just briefly describe the Harlow experiments? Yes, so they're very famous experiments where they separated Baby monkeys from their moms and then had either a wire Sort of thing holding a bottle so okay. What do you miss most about the mom? Is it the wire is it the food or is it the the the comfort and then they had So they had a wire thing with with the milk bottle versus you know blankets and cuddly soft things and and the the baby monkeys would go to the cuddly soft thing But you know a blanket is not a replacement for a mother nobody's saying that it is and and through these experiments There was extended maternal separation and it's it's it was deemed cruel um There was permanent irreparable damage when you when you rehoused these monkeys they never re -socialized normally They had lots of different mental and physical health Problems and I think in humans we know that you know solitary confinement is considered torture um, you know social isolation is a difficult thing to study in in a lot of conditions and We stumbled onto it by a completely accident Through working with the postdoc a former postdoc in my lab jillian Matthews who was a graduate student um Doing an experiment on it was just trying to figure out if these dopamine neurons Would also respond to cocaine the way v8 these sorry these ventral tegmental area dopamine neurons were known to respond to cocaine Want to see if these other dopamine are respond to cocaine.

46:54So sort of a incremental study So when you do these cocaine studies you you inject the animal with cocaine or saline And they'll leave the naive animal in the cage and then you take brain slices record from the neurons and look at the synaptic strengths and so You know the expected outcome sort of was that these dopamine neurons would be similar to other dopamine neurons that showed In you know long lasting potentiation after a single dose of cocaine But what happened instead was that yes, there was Potentiation in the cocaine. There's also potentiation in the saline animals relative to the naive group And this was a huge puzzle What was this and it turned out through many many different experiments?

47:39That it's actually because when you inject animals with cocaine You're separating them from the group's they act all that's crazy And those are just what the way people do the experiment. So you inject them with saline you separate them The naive animals just stay there. So with their other later needs I see so the control group the saline control group is actually a social isolation Condition so by accident this control group that didn't make sense was how we stumbled on to so then we tried a novel cage It's not the novel cage. It's the it's the social isolation and so That is how we became a lab that studied social isolation.

48:14It was complete accident. We weren't sure what What we were looking at and then We minute we found these neurons and we manipulate these neurons and they produced Um something very different than other dopamine neurons which normally if you stimulate dopamine neurons these ventral tegmental area mid brain You know, it's like 90 % of the time when you you hear we'll talk about dopamine neurons They mean these ones and they're the ones where you press the lever stimulate the nerves will press the lever thousands of times You know and they love to be stimulated. Yes, and if you're a human and you do cocaine you most people love cocaine They want they're very pro social when they're okay on cocaine and so That's what dopamine neurons were thought to be doing but these other dopamine neurons in the dorsal raffa That I will also say is in the brain stem near to an aqua duct where you could detect signals from the body Um, but these other dopamine neurons in the raffa They when you stimulate them animals don't like it.

49:12They will not work for reward They actually will move away from a space to where they're being stimulated You know condition place and real -time place a version I don't like the feeling of these neurons being activated. Please stop it and yet They would be pro social and so for a long time this was super confusing. We couldn't understand it and then Just because at the same time we had a A hunger study going on in the lab. We just thought about it like I can eat food because it's delicious And I I want to eat the yummy treat or I can eat because I'm super hungry I feel shaky. I'm just gonna eat this nasty fiber bar.

49:49I thought of my back pack So I'm so desperate and I need like I need my blood sugar is dangerously low You know, and so there's two reasons that you can eat and one of them is uncomfortable hunger is not comfortable You don't it's not a good feeling to be hungry and so we thought about this and that's kind of how we Circularly came around to thinking I think we've discovered the loneliness neurons Essentially and so what is loneliness and loneliness is this unposence need state of wanting social contact that would have this pro social effect as well and so That's basically the very serendipitous loop delute way that I came to be um How loneliness is represented in the brain?

50:36Amazing before we talk a bit more about these loneliness neurons and some of their inputs and outputs in the brain How has the discovery of these neurons? Perhaps change the way that you Organize your day and week in life right if at all For instance, are you more aware of how much time you spend alone versus with others? Are you More careful or discerning about who you spend your time with? You know, I ask this um Because you know there's so many examples for me in the neuroscience literature where you know I learned something new about how the brain works and I think oh yeah, you know It makes a lot of sense why my sleep isn't great You know it turns out that light exposure to the eyes at particular times of day really sets the whole body and brain into particular rhythms that You know explain why I was a little depressed when I was in graduate school staying up all night doing experiments And I'd sleep much of the day and feel like I was getting eight nine hours.

51:41I don't get eight to nine hours now, but um You know, and when I wake up early for me personally there's a bit of an anti -depressant effect as long as I slept the night before season affect disorders rail right so you know, I think as new information comes online um At least for me it's it's changed the way that I organized my life to to In subtle or or in not so subtle ways. So the idea that there are neurons in the brain that encode loneliness the absence of social contact Does that have you thinking? You know after a few days of managing the lab With which as you point out you have a very large lab lots of social interaction, but it's work contact social interaction.

52:22Does that Has that led you to think hey, you know, we should go out to dinner as a lab or I should spend time with somebody who's not in science Or I should spend time by myself because I've had too much social interaction I'm not asking for strict protocols here. I'm just wondering if you're willing to get um like play in the sandbox of this with me a bit um how this information perhaps has shaped Some of your choices you personally and you end up being very clear. I'm not asking you to dictate what other people do Has it changed your social life? So it's really interesting that you ask this question and now that you for you know Now that you're asking it this way um I I mean of course when I learn new things I I um Take them and implement them into my life, but To be honest in in the cycle of of You know learning and studying and being curious and I actually think where I Reside more is when something's going on with me My research program you know research as a research it becomes what the re dictates what the research program evolves into And so for example, so I've just had started studying loneliness Um a few years before the pandemic hit and then the pandemic hit and it was just a step function like change I went from I'm never alone unless you call being in an uber alone Um or being on a plane and and and just you know constantly people in my office even when I'm going to bathroom Some's waiting for me outside like you know, I'm not it's like I'm hurrying in the bathroom I'm never alone.

53:57There's like four people in my bed kicking me in the face I'm just you know There's just so much social contact and then boom You know there would be A day I wouldn't see another you know just the Not zero, but it was just extremely sudden drop of social contact when there's no more work and you know It was just that that period of time and It was it was very depressing. It was just this huge. I felt like I was in freefall and It made me you know at first it was really Disruptive and I was worried about myself, you know And then at some point I adjusted to it and then I got used to working I got started a garden like I got on the you know, I got you know I just started a different life pattern that involved a lot of alone time and you know something An alone time personal life a grew where there wasn't any Space for anything to grow before and then I became comfortable with it And so then I start thinking about that.

54:55That's really where the idea of social homeostasis was born this idea that okay Why is it with acute social isolation? Humans monkeys mice You know you Acutely isolation the individual from the social group you reintroduce them to the social group Rebound of pro social interaction. Oh so happy to see you. There's like all these affiliative interactions It's a burst of affiliative interactions whereas with chronic social isolation in humans monkeys mice even flies You reintroduce into the social group and you get Territorial behavior aggression avoidance anti -social behavior Or just you know sort of a very different negative valence response to the exposure to the group And so This Maybe people brushed it off for a long time is just oh it's confusing those literature is inconsistent or maybe there's one model that makes it all Makes sense that is social homeostasis where you know you're used to getting this at a certain point And so my effector system gets activated.

56:04I I detect that I'm alone. It's I want more the deficits detected Then my effector systems gets activated this and then I start spinning all the systems that try to get me back into contact I'm calling my friends. I'm texting my friend. I'm if I'm a mouse I'm making ultrasonic vocalizations. I'm exploring outside of the burrow and then you know If my friends don't call me back. They're like sorry. We don't want to see anyone till end of COVID by you whatever it is You know you it's it's not working my correction efforts are failing Or maybe a certain amount of time we don't know Then I give up I stop I stop calling I stop going out.

56:37I just make a different life You know you the the the the don't you don't leave the burrow whatever it is and there's in in animals and humans At least behaviorally there's a near step function like drop off of Attempts to you know you can see a sort of date Oh, then they just give up on dating after this one, you know, whatever happens There's some some straw that breaks the camel's back and then this person doesn't want to date anymore Or doesn't want to go out anymore whatever and and what is that so that adaptation Then you're at a new baseline. You're you're expecting now. You're new normal I'm expecting to have a gardening day at home alone not seeing anyone and then and then much people come over It feels like a surplus.

57:15So my previous optimum You know reintroduction to the social group Is now feeling like a surplus and overload over stimulated and that's I think something that a lot of people experience this whip lash of Going into the pandemic and coming out of it different people to different levels. It depends on how Much you you know isolated while you were in the pandemic, but I think thinking about your social Set point as being flexible and dynamic was a new concept to me and then in my mind the question is what is The part of this process that is causing all these harmful health consequences like short and lifespan mood disorders etc Is it the initial detection that I'm missing something and a factor system activation Because if that was the case, maybe I want to band -aid that you know, maybe I want to get a pet get a get a get a zoom buddy I don't know what you know, you would have different prescriptions and advice to give people if that were the case versus you Would give almost opposite advice if the thing that's causing it is the the Set point adaptation then you want to you want to save it off versus if you wanted to accelerate getting into the set point Which is better?

58:26You know, is it the adaptation or is it you know kind of trying to fix it and so in one case you would want to ease off the The having the set point happen the set point transition happen and the other case rip it off like a bandaid called turkey just adjust and then you'll be fine You know, then you won't worry about it then you won't be lonely anymore because you'll just be comfortable being alone You know people talk about cognitive flexibility And I think it's it's sort of like that, but it's social flexibility. I want to be able to be alone I also want to be able to be in a large group and be comfortable And so I think what I've done if anything to change my lifestyle To accommodate these new insights I've had is is to consciously Create dynamic social experiences lots of social experiences.

59:16Yes, but also protecting alone time Which I never did before I just just gave it all away and you know, I realized that having that just made my Social homeostatic system feel more elastic and flexible and resilient and less like a crisis if something you know I'm very comfortable being alone. I'm super comfortable on skin now and it requires Investing in that relationship. I like how you framed earlier. I think we were not not recording it but the relationship with yourself as being a very important relationship and when I think about Brain states You know We don't know this yet But my working model would be that different individuals We have represent their identities and whenever they're present It creates a unique ensemble of that combination of people being present And being alone is also a unique state that cannot be achieved I have the brain state of being alone.

1:00:12I cannot achieve it if anyone else is around And that's just what you know, that's kind of the working model I have I think what you're saying is essential for people to hear because um, it makes sense that loneliness would hurt Um, it makes sense that some people are more extroverted Which I think is defined as getting energy from social interactions and resetting energy through social interactions as opposed to introverted Which by the way folks introverts like myself do enjoy social interaction. It's just that we reset through More um, solo or one -on -one time than we do in larger groups That's my understanding of the introversion extroversion literature We can revisit that but this notion of social homeostasis is I think so key uh important enough that I think we probably want to redefine it as many times or restate it rather as many times as it's necessary Because I believe what you're describing is the same thing that one would experience with food if we eat a lot We're consuming I don't know 3500 calories a day and then um, suddenly we only have access to 1800 calories a day there's it feels like a deficit because indeed it is whereas after some period of time at 1800 calories a day 2200 calories a day feels like relative abundance relative abundance um When the pandemic hit ice certainly um was unhappy about the state of affairs in the world of course um But I recall feeling like oh my goodness.

1:01:42I finally don't have to commute 90 minutes in each direction To Stanford because I lived in the east bay at that time um I felt like I had time to do things I hadn't done in a long time And thanks to zoom I was able to get certain things done not others Then after about six straight months when I realized that this is gonna carry on for a while I remember feeling quite lonely and making some efforts to repair that I think social media not to harp on social media um could do either one of two things and I don't know which in the context of social homie estasis Either going on instagram and seeing a lot of familiar faces and comments and accounts Could make me feel like I'm getting some social interaction such that then when I close that app and Move to my work at my desk or something which these days is mostly done solo um That I would feel like I had social interaction Or perhaps it's the equivalent of um calories That um then makes me feel more isolated when I'm not in the app perhaps I find it to be distinctly different than Like the experience I had last night of Going to dinner with someone I know quite well sitting down and having a open -ended conversation and deciding to close out the night Only when we realized you know we got to get up tomorrow for work.

1:03:09So when are separate ways um There's something that felt very sating about it So I wonder in this context of social homie estasis Whether or not the analogy of social interaction to cap caloric intake We could Is there another dimension to it where it's not just the total number of calories or the total amount of Social interaction but the quality of social interaction the type of social interaction that actually feels like nourishment As opposed to just calories. I love where you're going with this and and so um When we wrote this review the first time we know we're It's conceptually in this idea of Of how your social set point can change based on if you're acutely isolated or chronically isolated and um The why axis is the quality slash quantity of detected social contact which is so fuzzy and you know There's it's it's again one of the most challenging Frontiers of this field because How even if we measured every single component that the brain can detect of the social the social contact so much of it is about expectation You know like if I think I got a gesture If if I get a nod from the president I'm like oh my god did the president just nod at me.

1:04:26That's so exciting versus if I get a nod from my partner I'm like oh my god. Are they mad at me? What's going on? Why why did I just get a nod right? It totally matters the gesture You need the identity. There's many different cognitive systems that need to all plug in to this wheel um To make it spin so I think that Uh that is one of the the I think that's going to keep us busy for a while but In terms of your question about social media and when you switch from you know getting social media feedback and then doing work Um, I think I think it really depends. I mean social media is such a Large category you can have many different types of responses Generally, I think the bounds so you know when you say social media versus a real -life interaction where you're with someone Maybe you're touching maybe you're not touching but even if you're having conversation Um, you have interbrain synchrony you are Having a lot of interbrain secret you're in the same place If you but you can have interbrain secret even on the phone right just a voice call is actually a lot more interbrain synchrony than Then messages.

1:05:35I think I think text messages can bring a lot of anxiety and there's been a lot of commentary about that um And same thing with with with social media. I think the the thing about social media that is perhaps um the most Harmful or net negative. I think it's in terms of I when I'm thinking about social nourishment if I you know sort of making that term up on the fly here but um It's it's almost a withdrawal when social media is Posted it's not to you. It's to everyone and you could be one of the people that receives this message But it's not even worth to you. I'm not even talking to you and I'm doing something that's without you Otherwise you'd be in this picture and not reading on social media listening to whatever So it's like by almost exclusively you're you're posting about activities that you're being excluded from And someone's not even really talking to you unless they're de - you know direct messaging you But then I call I kind of consider that different category if it's like a one -to -one communication Social media to me is is a blast right?

1:06:37It's not it's just you know catching up with someone on social media I don't really see the merit of it because I'll just catch up with them when I catch up with them and their kids will just be like way older but you know I don't know I'll actually really catch up with them then just see pictures of you know I don't know I feel mixed about it Because it's not a real connection and it doesn't for me say to my social appetite to Catch up with to look at someone else's profile on on social media That doesn't actually do anything for the the connection I I don't know but I seriously doubt tons of oxytocin is released when I You know follow someone's feed about their vacation.

1:07:18So I don't know I would I think that it definitely matters the quality and Social media is is different than real -life interactions for many reasons I really appreciate your willingness to explore in this in this context. I think Your mention of the fact that real -life interaction involves interbrain synchrony Could be by text scaling out from that by phone FaceTime or something akin to that video video chat um on social media there is comments back and forth Although that's time consuming and it's difficult because there's an enmity people are in different places different time zones If you don't know someone it's different context so I'm really Thanks to what you're describing.

1:08:08I'm really starting to think about social media as so different than in -person social interactions or by phone or video chat social interactions and how those would Differentially impact social homeostasis and it's leading me at least to conclude that at least for me That most social media interactions would create more hunger as opposed to a Sading of of the need for social interaction. It's um have to be careful with the analogies here But since I can do this I was almost going to make an analogy between Port pornography In -person sexual intimacy. I suppose there's something in between where people could talk by phone But we don't want to explore this in any kind of salacious way and then sexual intimacy with With emotion with positive emotion, right?

1:09:01Those there's a scaling factor there and I'm not pat I'm not putting Judgment or valence. I'm certainly not that's not my place as a good friend of mine says I'm not a cop, you know, I'm not telling people what to do. They can't do But it's so interesting to think about these These circuits within us that create these What you and I in our field call a pettative the desire for or aversive the desire to move away from Type responses and how so much of our life Aside from you because you're regulating your social media and you're uh and your email intake But so much of life now is offering us the opportunity to um tickle these circuits or even hit them hard with a sledgehammer But we're not thinking about these homeostatic mechanisms of whether or not they're creating more hunger for or more Satisfaction from yeah, and I cannot emphasize enough how critical this is and I think that's because You know, I'm somebody who does spend a fair amount of time on social media a lot of my work exists on social media YouTube etc And I would hope that the work that we're putting into the world with this podcast is creating a Association or the desire for information rather than a hunger for more.

1:10:11I do hope that but I recognize that educational material on social media represents that the tiny tiny fraction of what's there so social homeostasis I think is a term that if people haven't already stamped into their mind They should be stamping into their mind and and dr. K tie deserves credit for that. I don't uh, I will say that so you don't have to um I've heard you say before you wrote in a review Something akin to social contact is either positive or negative when it's deficient or in excess, which is I think what you're Describing is is social homeostasis is that right when we talked about the quality and quantity um, there's Just in terms of contact just amount of contact There's such a thing as just the right amount There's something to think it's too little there's such a thing is too much.

1:11:05There's overcrowding right it doesn't matter who it can be your family It could just sometimes it's like a lot Your family depends do you know that do you know the famous Ram Das quote no think you're enlightened go spend a weekend with your parents No over no disrespect mom and dad I know right um but um I think with quality it matters so much like I was sort of saying before you know the same gesture from the president or my partner It's gonna feel very different to me whether that was a slight or uh, you know It's just it's relative to what is appropriate for our rank for our prior history of relationships for You know the the environmental context and so I think with social media in general and I agree social media is great for a lot of things I mean I and I I think that Having a podcast like this that is accessible to the public makes Research more sustainable so I have a lot of things to say about science communication that I'm very You know grateful for but In terms of social media think about the mutual investment when you are Interacting with someone on social media.

1:12:11What are they investing in this connection? So if I put out a post about my vacation that is public I'm investing point Zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one percent of my bandwidth to make contact with you You know what I mean and so it's it's scales up from them if you're making a voice call with someone You're giving them at least most of your attention for the time that you're on the call That's a lot right whereas you know so so just thinking about the investment is another component There's the real -time component and then there's the the investment component. Who is it coming from it matters if you're anonymous I really I cannot tell What this means you know a compliment from a not or a hate hate comment or a love comment from a anonymous person I don't know to do this you know like I just literally don't know how to You know it doesn't really and it doesn't really do anything for me because I don't know how to interpret it It's almost you know uninterpretable without this other dimension that my brain is Has evolved to look for I think so that's you know speculation But I think social media is is operating in a way that that is not Ethological and not designed to make us feel better.

1:13:24It's just designed to make us want to use it And I think have a lot of this comes down to things that are relative you know, there's the famous There's the famous observations if ever mom monke sees another monkey get a cucumber It's happy with the cucumber, but if a monkey sees the other monkey get grape monkey wants great You know you want you want to keep up with the Joneses you want what if you see someone else having something Suddenly it feels like a loss that you don't have it that you didn't even think that of this thing that you needed right And so I think social media is exposing you to a lot of things that you don't you know that It's it's like this this parameter space you didn't have there's all these things you didn't know you were missing that you didn't Need to miss out on and so we have this whole project now I have two projects one that's looking at social isolation and following What happens with social isolation across the time course to try to understand is it the amount of time or is it the amount of effort that you put into correcting That deficit that that makes you leads you to the giving up you know kind of state change And another project that is about the quality of social contact specifically social exclusion So a different kind of deficit you're with your other animals, but there's this this you know, it's four animals that have our cage maids and Three animals are one side able to drink a chocolate milkshake and the other animals excluded and this one excluded animal Will go up against the the divider and you know look frantic and you know exhibit lots of behaviors that we would associate in humans with fear of missing out trying to reunite with the group trying to get the attention of the group trying to get over there a lot of attending looks frantic and studying what we think is actually going on and so I think that I think coming up with paradigms to try to probe Social isolation and we don't even know what behaviors animals exhibit when they're lonely This is this is a challenging field because there's no Number of lever presses that you know, there's no there's no script to follow and there's no trial structure and so for a neuroscientist neuroscientists were trained to be rigorous about our statistics because of the stochastic nature of neural neural activity and You know, how do we process things without a trial structure?

1:15:52How do we Be statistically rigorous when the animal is just free floating deciding whatever it wants to do And so that is kind of the Crucible that my lab is is working through right now to establish pipelines and techniques and ways to quantify social behaviors and peel off all the layers I love where your lab is headed Which it just means we're gonna have to have you back on here again at some point in the future to get the answers to those questions that you're now addressing I've long thought that We really know how we feel about somebody when something good happens to them or for them And I never quite understood this at the level of mechanisms.

1:16:35How could I it's not what my lab studies But you know, I think that there's a natural sort of empathy if one is a healthy empathic person to seeing a member of our own species and hopefully also to Observing the members of other species um, you know Experiencing some discomfort. What we don't like that nor should we so another human is in emotional pain Right, um, you know the whale or the cry of loss is like one that just I think for any person who's empathically tuned is just like Or an animal you hear an animal in pain like goodness. I mean I'm not here to diagnose sociopathie, but if that doesn't evoke a At least some sort of response of like oh gosh like what I wouldn't do to remove that pain that their pain is your pain empathy That seems like a very reflexive circuit or at least I would hope so um But When somebody experiences something positive I think it's normal and healthy To have a um a graded set of responses if it's somebody that we really love We may not even know them we think yeah like you're just a reflexively happy for them Somebody that we dislike I think there's a more natural tendency to be like oh, you know, right?

1:17:57You know as as opposed to if that person were in pain I would like to think that even if you one didn't like them that you would think like oh that that sucks I'm really sorry to hear that um So I feel like there's some asymmetry in these empathic interactions. They're both empathy one has negative valence Pain the other one has positive valence another member of our species or other species receiving reward and we can delight in that I mean I I'm almost embarrassed to admit how many ferret and otter and raccoon accounts I follow because I love seeing them eat I love seeing that a little hands of the raccoon.

1:18:32There's some great raccoon accounts by the way um And I delight in it. I like delight in it. I want to see the raccoons win. I don't know why I just I love animals And so I suppose that's why um So do you think that they're that we are asymmetrically wired for this empathic attunement? Can we observe that in other animals? I realize this might not be squarely in the wheelhouse of what your lab is focusing on But I think it relates enough to the topics that we're covering today that just you know if you'd like to speculate On what might be going on there? Yeah, I can definitely speculate something that we think about a lot But again, you know, there's some there's some level of this which is semantics I think of empathy as being defined as being able to understand Another animals emotion and also taking it on so I think um something that's a little bit different than emotional contagion Right, I see a panic.

1:19:26I'm in a group of pan it's not the same thing as as as empathy um Empathy's often used in in sort of certain contexts like feeling sorry for someone and it's maybe different if for feeling happy for someone and This is something I was just talking about with one of my graduate students the other day. Why is there is is there an asymmetry In in empathy for positive and negative or is it just what we've studied? It's easier to study this So there's a number of you know, we don't know the answer, but I guess another Conceptual framework to put out there. I'm not saying it's correct It's I think just a a good tool for debate But um, it's not so much that there's Good people and bad people and that good people are empathic and bad people aren't uh, so you know, that's quite so simple I guess the way I think about it is whether you view this other social agent as having aligned Goals or agendas as you or are they adversarial?

1:20:25So if they're if they're in in your alliance whatever that means broadly defined versus adversarial You would have a different feeling and you know, it's you see this I guess I was just I was watching this okay. This is just sort of oversharing But this is a podcast not a primary research journal. So I can just say things right so I watch some trash TV Sometimes and you know these reality competition shows where it's like then you vote the two best friends into elimination And they have to they have to eliminate each other My mother Lisa this day But you know, then the best friends and they like like they you know, and then it's basically Mutually exclusive either you can care about your friend and feel bad not wanting to send them home or You you kick it you just you know you it's game time and you you you compete and so you can see different individuals Wrestling with these two brain states and and how to like what to do but They are essentially, you know my my my speculation is that viewing someone as a competitor and They're an adversary.

1:21:27They are standing in the way of me getting what I want You empathy goes down. It's like inversely correlated to empathy if you are viewed as a competitor So things that would contribute to you creating a model or an in a social agent It is an adversary as opposed to an a potential ally is Really what it's going to come down to to the degree that you feel empathy, you know like you the second someone You realize someone's out to get you no empathy No, no and no more empathy for this person who I just realized is out to get me or something like that or you know In the case of being isolated for a long period of time you've learned to exist on your own now Maybe everyone's your competitor adversary, you know, I'm none of you guys are really helping me do my day Like I don't really need you guys for anything.

1:22:12So so I mean this food or what you know, I think it's just becomes different When you're part of an ecosystem and you realize that you know, there's consequences and there's there's Every action that you take you know every active altruism will be recognized and there you know there's there's a There's some score being kept in your when you're part of a society and um, and then when you're when you're not there's known there's there's none of that and so I think the degree to what you're integrated in society It's almost like the extracellular matrix, you know, this is a really this isn't out there analogy But you know when you think about synapses being made connections between people There's also all the support material that facilitates certain patterns and certain connections from happening or not happening and and I think That's it's it's stuff that we haven't quantified yet, but it doesn't you know, I think those things should be studied Years ago I worked with at risk kids and and a fair number of them had just arrived um From a region of the world that had undergone dramatic socio -political evolution and change and it was remarkable because we would put out a tray of food to eat and then the the format was everyone would serve themselves and then you could Go get more food if if you if everyone finished um and a couple of these kids that had come from these very deprived environments um Would just take it More than their their share it was clear that by taking that other kids weren't gonna get any and um and I remember telling them Listen, we all have to eat more less equal parts and then we can there is more we can get more and I'll never forget this kid's response.

1:24:04He just turned to me and he said you can't hit us And I said that's true. I can't hit you and he's and he said so I'm just gonna take as much as I want and this took several weeks Actually to work out right good um because of course I would never hit him and um But everyone's is adversary everyone's is adversary and it was remarkable to see the evolution of these Kids across that it was about three and a half weeks um at which point they actually became incredibly um Good at sharing um, but it took a lot of work It was almost as if even though they knew more Trays of food could arrive yeah I'm not limitless But there was there was an abundance of food yeah in the moment they were they were solving for that short horizon moment Yeah, and it and here we're talking about human beings capable of speech and expression of emotion etc And he understood the fundamental rule which was I couldn't hit him therefore he could basically do what he wanted without That consequence And the main consequence huge space right exactly and um and I remember you know It was it was so striking.

1:25:10I'll never forget that and the evolution to a different more um altruistic state was wonderful Especially because of what I think what it did for him But but I'll never forget thinking this is a human being who is essentially functioning like an animal Like an animal. I mean I had a bulldog mastiff and he was kind to other dogs if there were unattended to toys at the dog park he was gonna pick them up and he put him right in front of himself And this was down San Diego and he'd sit with them right in front of him And I'm like costello. You're not gonna play with all those toys But another dog came and and he wouldn't he would just sit in front of them But another dog would come and try and take one of those toys and he would he had these giant mitts And he would just boom stand it out and drag it back And so it seems that there are these very primitive circuits about a resource allocation and protection of resources that in the absence of understanding that there's a much bigger landscape Like costello eventually figured out like tugs a fun game Although most dogs couldn't play tug with them.

1:26:12There are a few that good. He's a 90 pound bulldog He's just a knack like this But you know to see this in a human being Was just so striking. I just as you're describing this. It's like this adversary versus neutral versus uh Friend It is just so striking and it's got to be You know that that the brain as complex as it is. I've often wondered And our colleague Marcus Meister once said that you know circuits in the brain Can broadly be divided into these sorts of circuits into yum Yuck and met Which is far too simplistic right but whom I'd argue with the great Marcus Meister Um, and I'm not going to but it's sort of interesting We sort of been our responses into yes Okay, let's cooperate or yes, let's cooperate you're summarizing failance.

1:27:02Yeah or or no way no chance like mine Yeah versus like Me And um, you know as complexes I'd like to think the brain is and we are I mean, maybe when it comes down to behaviors and how we interpret input and our decision -making Um, maybe it's really all about feelings of safety and feelings of um Relatedness. Yeah, I think it's also about the Eric experiential statistics That you have been exposed to so this this boy who says you I'm gonna take all this food because you can't hit me I mean we don't know but the the picture that grows out of my imagination is this boy's had a lot of experiences of people hitting them A lot of experiences of not enough food And not a lot of experiences of strangers being nice to them You know like not a lot of people that you could trust that's the that's the experiential statistics that would fit this model Someone like like you who's coming in being like oh no, there's more for I'm gonna give you guys more food for free You know, I'm gonna give you even more food for it's you know It the experiential statistics are you've come from a world of abundance where people are generous You know generosity being you've learned Being generous can make you have a lifelong friend and all these amazing opportunities that make your quality of life that food is Never gonna think about food again.

1:28:22It's about the relationships because that's your experiential statistics And so I think this is such a profound concept about about neuroscience and the brain about our social structures and how they form what makes a structure a Galaitarian or despotic Right like how how can we as individuals take a structure that is is One format. Let's say despotic hierarchy and evolve it into something that's more egalitarian and What are what are the the the levers and what are the parameter spaces that we can pull on and I think these are questions that I mean, it's hard to think of what could be more important but that perspective of Thinking about from experiential statistics.

1:29:12I think really supports You know the need of of Of diversity have it bringing in people to academia who had very different Experiences experiential statistics different biases of what they're gonna think is interesting to work on and study and obviously in every every sector of our society. So I think um How can we get more diverse sets of experiences represented At each decision -making body that really matters Yeah, amen to that and also to be able to understand that differences in background experience require that we Earlier you mentioned theory of mind this ability to get into the mindset of others and sort of assume or Presume certain mindsets in order to hopefully create a more benevolent environment for everybody um You know it requires um You know realizing that some people's Social interactions are you know have been terrible or traumatic or um You know it requires a departure from self essentially requires this empathy or something like empathy um In all directions right.

1:30:32I mean in all directions it requires that everyone at least makes some effort to try and understand that I do wonder and maybe someone would put on the comments on youtube. Maybe it maybe you're aware um k of whether or not kids are being trained In that beautiful period of time of life where neuroplasticity is so robust Although does continue to the right life -span it is especially robust early in life to um To be In a healthy way empathically attuned to be able to have theory of mind more robust theory of mind Yeah, so I think it's it's really for I mean I'm so I'm a parent I have two kids that are in public school and I think their public school is rated, you know It's fine, but we will say we're feeling all right and um but but at the school they definitely do get education about um more holistic health and Emotional regulation I think and and considering others um that's been that's that's a big focus of the school And I think that's actually really important.

1:31:39I I mean You know again, I'm I'm super biased from from my upbringing But my kids are gonna learn math whenever it's time to learn the math. They'll learn it whenever they need it You know whenever they need it they're gonna learn it in a couple I don't know a couple weeks and figure it out Do the thing and most of the things that they learned they're gonna forget them and then have to relearn them So what are the things that you're gonna really need to know no matter what you choose to do and I think regulating your your own emotions and and engaging other individuals in a healthy sustainable way that You know and I mean sustainable in terms of the longevity of the relationships and I think those are the things that end up really mattering so I think um also This question about Exposure to abundance and scarcity is really interesting to I mean, I don't know if that's a direction.

1:32:33We want to go into so please Well, I think you know this whole you know, it sort of sounds sort of new age you when I say you know Abund the abundance mindset right um, I mean you see this in people who are like Recently divorced or newly single for whatever reason like is the world a place where like finding um partnership is is relatively Straight forward with some work involved Where's it like there's only one person on the planet for you and they might be dead already right like um Is there put if someone else's business takes off maybe someone you went to college or high school with Where their lab is doing really well?

1:33:07You're seeing them, you know tremendously successful that maybe they made a hundred million dollars in a new in a company acquisition Do you immediately feel like oh those are Resources that I don't have Even though I'm not in that business Or do you see it as wow that there must be a lot of money out there that um that people could earn and and potentially make I really you know prescribe and believe in this abundance versus scarcity mindset framework Um, I think there's absolutes like the example we just talked about this the the kid that you know There's just not food. There's scarcity of food fact, you know Of course there are individuals that experience scarcity of various different needs But many of us we reach a threshold of abundance and then it becomes relative We have everything we absolutely physiologically need if we're not comparing ourselves to anyone else But then once we were enter the social arena Comparison is essential.

1:34:05Why do we compare ourselves to others? It's it's In grain because social status is something that we need to attend to a large part of our our brain is devoted to Representing our relative social rank what's our place with a social network? What's the dynamic? How do we fit into the social landscape and comparison? I think is just a way to do that That's that's been evolutionarily conserved perhaps for less of a good purpose at this point because So many of our basic survival needs are met for the large majority of of humans on the planet today Not for everybody of course, but So yet what is the percentage of humans who feel that they have everything that they desire?

1:34:46How many people feel like they don't want for anything and you know, it's interesting because having things doesn't make you Have an abundance mindset Having abundance does not is not sufficient to give you the mindset of abundance That's such an important statement I mean just it I don't think they could be restated enough Um You've studied social rank Uh People hear social rank and hierarchy and I have to guess that At least some neurons in their amygdala and other areas of the brain get buzzing because as soon as people hear social rank They I think Naturally started thinking like well where am I in this social rank and um, how do I feel about how that rank is You know established and and all sorts of interesting and important questions um Some people get very angry that there are billionaires on this planet Especially given that in most major cities You don't have to go very far to see people who have very limited resources so Social rank is something that um, I think exists in every little niche You know, I work and maybe even in the family there's social rank um, I have a sibling.

1:36:04I remember um Who got more of a of a piece of cake like even a slight difference in that? Well, you know was something that my older sibling would point out um because she was more effective at getting the slightly larger piece of cake Because I was until I was you know big enough to defend for myself um and my friends with larger sibling Pools in their family. It was especially competitive. Yeah, I don't know if you've ever gone to a meal with somebody who had a lot of siblings They fast they they Different resource allocation methods then if they were an only child versus one sibling There there's a variation here.

1:36:40I'm generalizing but um, but yeah, let's talk about social rank What do we know about how social rank is organized in the brain? How we perceive our own social ranking and um Yeah, the what's the what's the modern science on this stuff? I find it fascinating I'm not scared of any topic while most any topic and I think this is one that that affects us all Yeah, I mean, I'll first say that social rank is something very specific to a certain type of hierarchy that assumes a linear hierarchy which Sometimes forms, but oftentimes there's different types of hierarchies that are flatter or more amorphous It's not really clear who's who's the alpha on the playground.

1:37:17I don't know. There's this click here. There's you know They can be dynamic right right it's dynamic. It's not always Organizes such but um If you get animals into a sort of small space um You will see in many species especially with in the males forming a linear hierarchy and um We wanted to explore this and so I think one of the biggest challenges with studying social rank and this is something we've struggled with as well Is how do you control for the individual identity versus the uh The actual rank so what I mean by this is let's say there's a study that says um That you know neurons in a certain brain region Fire to animals of different ranks according to the rank fire most of the alpha less less less less less down to the rank You know Does that does that tell us that this brain region encodes social rank Maybe in a loose sense and I'm sure that when rank issues come up a lot of the brain lights up for different Different reasons, but for example Let's say the amygdala would respond more to the alpha maybe because it encodes social rank but maybe also because Whoever is the dominant is the one who's most likely to have consequences and so all of my interactions with the alpha are relatively high consequence and so I'm sort of stressed out whenever I'm talking about alpha paying attention and you know, you remember all the interactions you have with your boss more so than you know someone else There's an attention hierarchy subordinates attend more to dominance and so there's it's almost hard to make this comparison because it's not all flat like the the clean experiment which We are still trying to do it's it's difficult to do the perfect experiment would be if you take an individual and change the rank so for example um I like to use this example with Barack Obama So just indulge me.

1:39:11I know that this is from a while ago But once upon a time I met Barack Obama for a very brief moment when he was president and and maybe there's some neurons that light up Oh, wow, you know There's the Barack Obama slash president neurons But if they are identity neurons once he was no longer president If I was to be presented with Barack Obama Then they would still fire If they were rank neurons then maybe after he was no longer president I just these neurons fire to whoever is president now and so I think that Experiment is very difficult to do and has not been done, but we're working on it right now um in uh Another experiment where we take animals and they're living in groups And we rank them all and then we Rehoused them so everybody has a rank that they start with then we put all the alphas together put all the betas together Etc.

1:40:00So that everybody forms a new rank then you have animals that went up a rank went down a rank or stayed the same for every group And so that's something that we're looking at right now. So initially You take a pool of animals and then let's say you got your number one two three four just for sake of simplicity Let's say I take the number four Lowest in that hierarchy, but now I make them the top of a new hierarchy. That's right. That's right Got it and so it's really preliminary and we'll see what happens, but we're investigating It seems that when you take alphas Intermediates or subordinates and put them together into new hierarchies It takes them different amounts of time and the dynamics are very different informing the new hierarchy And so in any kind of predictable way that you're willing to share or suggest too early I think it's too early, but I'll just say I guess it seems like the The Intermediates might be taking the longest amount of time to form the hierarchy They don't know where they sit in the hierarchy.

1:40:58They are they were flexible or something whereas the dominance They're gonna do get out and then you know we're gonna we're gonna bet there'll be defeat. It's quick The fight doesn't last that long so boardenets, you know You know we have to still observe this is all still You know being we'll see if everything replicates, but Certainly the dynamics are different what the exact readouts we you know We're working on what the features are what key features to them to see But it's kind of uncanny because these are genetically in bred animals That are all housed in these should be all everyone should be the same Theoretically, but this makes me think that during certain developmental periods rank is shaping your Long -lasting development I think it's a simple similar phenomenon perhaps to the older child the younger child phenomenon where you know If you're the oldest you go into the world and you have lots of different rules you might be the bottom You know you're gonna play on sports teams and be in different classes and all these jobs, but the the the leadership Desire slash potential skill Seems to be correlated in a very non -scientific way You know the number of presidents that's often oldest or only children this type of thing It's a loose correlation.

1:42:14There's a lot of other reasons why it might not be behavioral But there's sort of you know fluffy fluffy correlations about that. I think there's something to it though When plasticity is happening you're This this becomes your most familiar state Of assuming a certain role and that attractor state deepens with more time spent there I find that's fascinating. I've also observed and I think I've seen a few papers on I don't know how rigorous these papers are that um youngest Or let's just say not oldest siblings Um here we're setting aside single the children that don't have any siblings, but that youngest siblings Do tend to quote -unquote break the mold more in terms of socio and cultural norms of the family they they venture further in terms of um Experiences and value systems.

1:43:09They're often seen as um having had fewer constraints than the older sibling Which may or may not be true But that the youngest siblings often will Take on risk yeah that older siblings won't yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's certainly been my observation more non conformist right I mean i'm a younger younger brother of an older sister But and then but then there was times in our childhood where she was out of the house and I was at home just with my mom So so that sort of changes things but and this is very dynamic I realized we're playing here in an enacavaluced space But yeah, but I find social ranks tough to be super interesting I grew up in a big pack of mostly boys That's just kind of how it worked out in my neighborhood at the time um And it was very interesting because it was very clear.

1:43:53It was a dynamic hierarchy where if we were skateboarding certain kids were alpha if we were playing soccer other kids were alpha if we were doing anything artistic um if it was uh kind of geeky knowledge and and nerdy stuff um, you know, then you know Might have been somebody else who had the knowledge um and had the information that people wanted So I think dynamic hierarchies are really interesting and I think um get us out of that sort of more standard alpha Like kind of chess beating telling your own what to do dictatorial model I mean, and this is now fully out of any science landed into speculation opinion land But I think that type of structural structure where When you're doing different tasks different individuals become the alpha or the leader because it's based on competence It's very healthy.

1:44:42I think structures where you have locked down This is the this is the hierarchy where someone's the boss of you because of this one skill But then there's all these other skills that they're not as they're they're not superior to you know They just they don't know don't outrank you at and and so how do you work all that out And so I think that's also something about keeping score like what is what is the rank right and so we did this experiment What we designed a task Um animals are trained that a queue predicts reward delivery only one animal can get it at a time It's just a very narrow place.

1:45:17So if one animal's getting it you can't get it then um We would have and four animals that are cage mates Four mice that are cage mates and we would have two of them do get out at each point And they we know the ranks the ranks are stable They have a rank one two three four in the cage and everybody does a round robin ones versus two's ones versus three two Yeah, they well they do a round robin in this reward competition task their food deprived You know, and we we present rewards. What's the what happens? And so subordinates do win some of the times even their dominance win more all the you know they consistently win more And we found that three frontal cortical neurons you could represent very stably and decode Which animal was dominant?

1:46:06Flat regardless of the trial and then when you looked at Whether we could decode competitive success meaning who was going to win that next trial? So there's a new trial every 30 or 40 seconds And so But 30 seconds before which is as far as we can measure because then we're like kind of into the previous trial as soon as the last trial And even before the next trial and you can predict above chance So significantly Which animals going to win the next trial just based on the firing pattern of prefrontal cortical So you can predict winners and losers you can predict And understand where they are in the hierarchy as well based on the act activation of neurons prior to the battle that's right recording from the By analogy, it's like recording from the prefrontal cortex of two.

1:46:49Let's take business competitors or martial arts competitors And you can predict who's going to win based on the pattern of firing in their brains prior to the competition That's right and so That suggests all sorts of things number one. It doesn't mean these competitions are independent There's something about the state of the animal and when we looked at is it just whoever won the previous trial that did not account for this and so I thought that was really interesting But when you look at the decoding accuracy for dominance versus subordinates about Who will win the next trial for dominance?

1:47:25It stays pretty flat. It just has to do with I think this is my speculation of our data That you know, they they either are engaged or they're not engaged The subordinates the decoding accuracy is above it's above chance But then it shoots up Somewhere around closer to the queue presentation and so my speculation about that is that the subordinates are looking at the dominance They're looking the dominant doesn't look like they're just not like they're gonna go for it. Okay. Oh, they're they're looks like they're turning away I'm gonna go how many go so it's it's not like they're both going out full every time It's it's a calculation which trials.

1:48:00Oh, he's not paying attention You know, it's like when you're driving in traffic and you're trying to find the the moment to cut over and you're waiting for the person who's like texting and they're just there's a big space and then everybody's just getting in right here You know, you can just see you're like looking for clues about the state of love, you know of competition And then and then the dominance they are not looking at the subordinate. They're just doing whatever they Feel like doing it's like there's a I think there's that one scene in madmen where something happened in the work environment and And it was clear someone's account didn't sell or something didn't work out for one person versus the other and I think one of the character says to Don Draper who's clearly one of the alphas in that work environment by virtue of yeah role and and position Says, you know, you know, I sometimes think about the way that you blank blank blank and blank and you goes on this brief tirade about how upset he was and And draper says Well, I don't think about you at all And then the elevator I believe closes and it really cemented his status in the office as somebody who's really not paying much attention to what other people are doing He's just making decisions according to what's going to be best for the firm and in some cases for himself and in some cases both So I think that's essentially what you're talking about Yeah, I think it's um It's kind of the nature of the structure.

1:49:20That's what makes you the alpha is your you you have You have other things that are occupying your attention and Your your visionary status hopefully if you're you know a productive successful alpha and for a sustainable You know group and then everyone else is they don't need they don't need to have the big picture They don't they don't you know it's it becomes the reinforcement schedule is different I'm just looking for validation am I am I playing my role? Okay, it's a very different mindset. I think you know as a Scientist when you're a trainee Sometimes you're a supporting member on a team where you're getting instructions someone's telling you what to do versus the moment where you get your own project And maybe you're working by yourself.

1:50:02Maybe there's no one to command, but no one's telling you what to do That is to me one of the biggest Thresholds to step over when you're becoming a scientist or an investigator is the first time where You just do something and like try and experiment No one told you to do and it feels super weird. It feels like you're sneaking around or something and and then you know, I think I think um In today's Mentorship chain sometimes that that happens too late. I think if we could have that experience happen earlier um, I think that would only be good for For the future of research I agree. I was very fortunate that my graduate advisor um told me look I'm gonna help you but I'm going to have two kids while you're in the lab and I'm not gonna be around a lot So you're gonna have to figure it out don't burn the lab down don't kill yourself with any of the poisons in the lab and then my postdoc advisor The late and great Ben Barris um largely treated the postdocs as As junior professors from an early stage and I remember thinking he can't control the experiments I'm gonna do this is up to me and he and and a great number of us who were training with him at that time went on to have her own lab So I think um That there's really something important to that model and of course we're discussing the research field But um this could be exported to any number of different fields because of what Those mentors were essentially training us to do was to um To assume the role that we would eventually have as opposed to be subordinates um Do you watch chimp empire?

1:51:42So actually um just this week yet yesterday and the day before before this uh and postdoc interview who Worked with the chimps on chimp empire visited and interviewed him in my lab and um talked about his work So I have not seen chimp empire but it's at the very top of my to do list. Oh god So good. I don't want to spend the next 20 minutes talking about it But you see all sorts of interesting um Behavior route very relevant to human behavior hierarchies. Yes, but also um altruistic behavior um alopathic grooming I mean in in chip culture um as I've learned from the show assuming it's accurate um That who grooms who is very important um And there's all sorts of interesting maneuvers that subordinates make and there's all sorts of interesting displays of vigor that the alpha makes to remind people That they are the alpha and then As they age or make mistakes of judgment The subordinates also will feign Deference they'll be like oh yeah, you're the alpha.

1:52:48You're really tough and secretly they're plotting to replace the alpha um So whether or not we're talking about a scene from madman or we're talking about chimp empire We're talking about research laboratories or um or any other landscape kindergarten I think these circuits are active in all of us and the sooner that we acknowledge those and try and find um ones that generalize to the the goodness of as many uh members as possible Um, we're not doing our task but clearly you're doing the task so okay social rank is something that uh we need to acknowledge no doubt um Which actually leads me to what might seem like a desperate topic but um One that I know we're both very interested in and that you're focusing on now, which is psychedelics Because one of the interesting things about psychedelics is their capacity to increase neuroplasticity um, but also some of the psychedelics and I realize MDMA is not a classic psychedelic but they Are classified as empathogens they increase empathy for self and others.

1:53:48So um What are you looking into with psychedelics which psychedelics and um Yeah, what brought you to the study of psychedelics and by the way i've done Participated in clinical because people will wonder i have participated in clinical trials for psilocybin and MDMA i don't recommend people do psychedelics recreationally I do think they hold great promise for the treatment of depression and trauma But people need to be careful there are certain people who Could not and should not take psychedelics because it would be genuinely unsafe for them Psychologically, especially young people so there's my disclaimer and um, but they are fascinating compounds.

1:54:27So um I guess i've always been interested in psychedelics. I think i wrote my undergraduate thesis about It's just about hallucinations produced by psychedelics psychotic breaks and REM sleep and schizophrenia just comparing What is the common thread when our brain creates a reality that is not objectively there and psychedelics of course is A way that we can experience that and remember and recall it in a way that's very difficult with REM sleep and sometimes just psychotic breaks um Obviously schizophrenia is not something that you can transiently Give yourself and have that experience. So i think having the ability to move into other brain states Is what makes it so attractive?

1:55:15I think the other component is the the plasticity you can you can have an experience and perhaps the first hand Experience is You have an epiphany that you take with you it's life changing and You know your life habits are completely different for long -lasting Way after this singular experience is is kind of one of the things that makes it so different from all of the other therapeutic treatments that we've got or most of the other ones i'd say um and so for me you know right now there's a lot of work going on Exploring psychedelics is a therapy for various different conditions disease states Um, I think that's great.

1:55:57I think it's really important work. I'm glad a lot is being done on that I think my focus is Is to turn over some rocks that might not have been turned over yet and just to get really down at a quantitative rigorous mathematical level of what is a hallucination? For example When I ask this question what is a hallucination? I'm interested in the actual cellular mechanisms. Are we just You know we think about neurons having signal to noise and Neuromodulation as changing that are we just changing the signal to noise ratio and then pattern completing all the noise And that's what a hallucination is we just you know take that's we're just reinterpreting noise and putting Sort of existing maps everything's fitting to a existing mold or map that we've already got that then appears as some hallucination um or is And and you know maybe just have to be hallucination There's also obviously some various different thresholds of the psychedelic experience Um, but all these clinical statements is the human self reported um qualitative descriptions of the psychedelic experience things like Be having just more positive outlook being Uniting one itself and other like a sort of you know clarity of the world um More labile and thoughts more flexible thoughts uh We are trying to just create Actual ways to test them.

1:57:32So for example this idea about what is what is going on in your mind when you When you're having a psychedelic experience all of these different states might feel more labile It's maybe the transition probabilities between different brain states of like happy sad that you nostalgia You know, maybe it's just all looser And so you can access everything because the transition probabilities are just high Another possibility is that and maybe it's dose dependent at a certain dose you go into Another brain state and so previously We've done this in the same project. I was just telling you about rank um We were recording for pre -frontal cortical neurons and looking at all the behaviors and so the behaviors for Representing social rank we don't know what they are so we use computer vision to extract A bunch of behavioral motifs and then tried to understand what's the best model that would predict You know what the animal's gonna do next Not just wins and losses, but all the subtle gestures are we gonna fight are we gonna give it up?

1:58:31Are we gonna back off and predict the behaviors from pre -frontal cortical activity and the best model that we found was something called Head and Markovian model which essentially just means that there are hidden states You might think of them as moods You might give them some other name, but I'll all use moods loosely. It's not perfect But um, that's kind of one way that helps me think about hidden states where you have certain statistics of behaviors That you would produce if I'm sad there's certain things I'm gonna do It's a different statistics than when I'm happy different probability of going surfing if I'm sad or happy or you know Things like that So we basically found that there are a certain number of hidden states And so if you are on psychedelics with that change the number of states or just the transitions between them We also found in our prefrontal cortical representation that there's a certain distance of the representation of self and other in this You know dimensionality reduced Activity space.

1:59:28So for mumbo jumbo that just means there's a representation of self and other there's some quantifiable distance in in abstract You know terms in the brain and we can quantify if those representations get closer together and merge of self versus other self versus other so that's something that we would want We would be looking for if you are putting psychedelics on these are those are questions that I'm interested in that are under construction So right now We're recording from Animals while we're giving them psilocybin Using neural pixels recordings so recording from thousands of neurons um in prefrontal cortex and other parts of cortex because the you know the shank goes for lots of places and looking at how um animals respond in a Conflict task so there's there's trials where there's a queue that predicts reward a queue that predicts shock Then there's some trials where both cues are presented and both outcomes are presented and the reason for this conflict trial is that Actually if you give you know moderate to low doses of psilocybin or most drugs honestly animals can do this You know even on lots of different drugs most people can still Eat food and avoid getting hit by this truck.

2:00:44I mean their exceptions of course, but generally speaking you know There's a lot of different brain states where you can still do these these essential functions pretty robustly But it's about what happens in the more ambiguous zone What happens when there's a conflict and and what do you do? How do you when they're when it's a little gray I think that's when you can see a shift in valence assignment. So that's something that we've been looking for and trying to see if You know in clinical studies They're exploring set and setting As maybe the factors that have in the past historically given very unpredictable outcomes for psychedelic therapies Um, it's possible that it's set in setting.

2:01:28It's also possible that there's individual variability It's possible that there are biomarkers that can predict which individuals would be well suited for this type of therapy And so those are also things that we're interested in. I find this so fascinating and I just want to applaud you again for taking on these hard Questions these are fairly high -level questions Certainly, there's a lot of clinical trials exploring psychedelics like psilocybin and their rule and treating mental health And there's at the same time a real dearth of studies exploring mechanistically how these compounds are working I mean, um, I do want to tip my hats all the folks that have explored Dendritic changes and you know, so cellular changes in the level of neurons and and on and on but in terms of these I'm like higher -level states of Self -worth versus other recognition In psychedelics You know, those are tough questions that need to be addressed mechanistically and it's clear you're doing that Um, I think this um this notion that you're testing of whether or not psychedelics reveal more Accessibility or lability as you described it of between different states like oh wow I can actually move from sad to happy There's a there's a route for that and you can experience that as opposed to just being told that Hey, when you're feeling sad feel your you know the field of psychology especially pop psychology is in a real Crisis right now in my opinion because we're told that feel our feelings But then we're also told to not react to our feelings which sounds great But if those feelings get intense enough that's very hard for most people to do So it's feel your feelings, but don't stay with it.

2:03:01You know what? They there's the cathartic model You know like feel your feelings and get them out screaming and etc. And then there's the the no You know, you the more you engage in neural pathway the stronger that neural pathway gets and therefore you're just gonna feel more anger There's a lot of conflict right now in terms of the popular psychology Version of this where as the clinical fields I think have an understanding that hasn't been translated I think one other thing about psychedelics that is interesting is that the transitions Into states is also more labile like if you start feeling a little sad You know, there's the potential to feel very very sad and to go into a state of sadness of an intensity You've never experienced before which by the way could be therapeutically beneficial I think there's some evidence for that provided there's adequate support before During and after those sessions But I think most people feel When they're not on psychedelics will feel emotions that are uncomfortable and we'll do all sorts of things to try and avoid those emotions So I'm not speaking as a clinician here, but I just again, I think what the the The range and specificity of questions that you're asking about psychedelics.

2:04:08I find so exciting another Reason I'll say that you just we want to have you back to to discuss those findings when that when they come out Let's talk a little bit about you. Okay I've known you for a while, but to be honest I think this is the longest conversation we've ever had which is one of the reasons I love doing this podcast I get to sit down with colleagues and have intellectual slash other conversations of substantial depth that I wouldn't have the opportunity to have elsewhere I know enough about you however to know that um you've been involved in various things I can say peripheral to science, but you have other interests as well as I recall You have been a yoga instructor or you've been involved in the kind of wellness fitness Community industry tell us about that and then I'm also curious about How you structure your day your routines given that you're a parent of two young children you run a very large laboratory operating at the very highest level um And of course you value important things like relationships and relationship to self and health and all these sorts of things so Not to make it too open -ended, but Tell us of tell us of your interests and and of your relationship to wellness and fitness and well -being Yeah, um, I guess I think You know, I everybody comes to their they're calling in in some what feels like a path that you could have predict But when you look at it outside, I guess both of my parents are a professor So it doesn't look super surprising that I'm a professor But that's not how it felt to me when I was in high school.

2:05:47I was a total rebel I just threw parties at my house my parents were there. Sorry everybody's listening It's not I don't recommend that but I just cared about I just cared about having fun and sports and um I think School wasn't Maybe challenging enough for me at that time. I didn't necessarily recognize that That was what it was but um I've always enjoyed being really active and that's what makes me feel good. It's I I definitely agree with Stuff you've said on your podcast about Having exercise routines in the morning that really influenced the rest of your day I didn't always exercise in the morning at different phases, but um Yeah, after I was in undergrad I took some time to travel around Australia back back around Australia Live in some very remote places spend some time living in a tent Then I was a yoga instructor um Then I I went to grad school in the Bay Area.

2:06:48I had a very active uh hobby of I was a semi professional break dancer. It was very into break dance really Really competitive break dancers are in the Bay Area. Yes, we did um You know halftime shows or I guess technically third quarter time out shows at Oracle Stadium for the Golden State Warriors I was the one girl who could do a win mill so they would use me the Okay, win mill so let's get a fine footage of this. Yeah. Yeah. There's some you know a very mediocre footage of me break dancing um And I was just really into it But I think that's where my work -life balance Passion comes from I talk about it a lot.

2:07:24I think about it a lot and people say to me all the time well Is this really true? Why do you why do you preach all this work -life balance stuff when you know You must have been a work of hall gets on point in your life and I think You know When I was younger, I definitely didn't like the idea that you had to only be one thing I wanted to be so many things I couldn't decide it was a huge challenge. I was gonna be a writer I was gonna be a yoga instructor. I was gonna be I never really thought I was gonna be a professional dancer I just wasn't good enough and there's not careers to be made from dancing really.

2:07:56It's very difficult, but um You know had a lot of other interests and I wanted to prove I don't know who I wanted to prove it to I think myself at first and then eventually it made me maybe feel like I should maybe prove it to Everyone that you can have a very whole life and not sacrifice everything You don't have to choose between family and career or personal life you can have them all you just have to decide that it's a priority and Own that and make those choices on on a daily basis and comes down to time management and so it's been a very Even though it looks like oh cages likes to have fun and how all these other hobbies it's it's Important because I think that we need more role models in especially in academic science where People bring their whole selves to their job and even though your job is a very specific thing Because you have a role as a mentor and you know, I suppose the mentor apprenticeship relationship has evolved Then there's I've you know lots of comments about that too In academia I still think ultimately when when I was working in someone else's lab and I definitely looked up to them.

2:09:10They were the role model obviously. I'm looking at yes, they're science I'm looking at how they make this all work. How are you how are you doing this? How how do they live their lives and how do they approach? Balancing at all and so I guess I just wanted to put some more data points on the on the scoreboard where people are Having lots of hobbies and other non -work activities while still making meaningful contributions And it doesn't make you less of a hum less of a scientist or less of a person because you're a whole human If anything Perhaps it makes people better scientists. Yeah, did your exploration of of yoga and or break dancing in form Anything about your your research or was it really about resetting Your mind and body and healthy ways so that you could return to the lab feeling excited about returning to the lab I think I've always been of the mindset where sometimes things don't go well in a certain arena and it's It doesn't feel good to have all your eggs in that basket Stuff goes wrong sometimes experiment doesn't work sometimes you find something out you lose the whole data It's you know bad news happens in the lab and I think just want to diversify your portfolio so that your happiness portfolio is not entirely based on your accomplishments at work I think we just want to have more Elements and the same thing goes for you know at one point when I was really into dancing I got a very serious injury and it took this huge part of my life away from me I'm so glad I had work.

2:10:44Thank God. I have you know I have something I can do else and I just think having a lot of different parts of your life make you more flexible more creative more awake more engaged and You know when I don't I definitely have been a workaholic when I was a postdoc and assistant professor period Definitely did not make enough time for myself to have a richer a rich personal life at certain points and Very quickly I just withered away into a shell of a human a shell empty shell of a the person I used to be and it's noticeable Everybody can feel it you can't pretend You know everyone that works with you feels it eventually and so I think that's a big thing and so As I've taken feedback from my anonymous lab surveys and other other forms of feedback and just reflecting It's clear I you know taking your lifestyle and to and having agency over designing your lifestyle to be Ideal for you is super important.

2:11:47So a typical day for me might look like Um, okay the last work day. I'd say I woke up actually so it was early high tide So I got to wake up in the dark pack on my back Go surfing and then get home before surf see my friends in the water and I think surfing is a lot of things It's exercise. It's a cold plunge. It's photons some of your favorite things Maybe a little bit meditative maybe some social community then and I you know go every time at the same day So there's the same group of people Then I go home Make the kids or snacks breakfast drop them off at school Then I go to lab and then run lab meeting um and Have meetings most of my day when I'm at work is spent meeting with people Drawing on a whiteboard mostly meeting with my trainees Is what I'd like to spend most of my time on of course there's other stuff that gets in the mix like administrative whatever and then Come home at a pretty early hour pick up my kids make dinner and then go to sleep kind of early kind of boring these days That's my typical day sounds exciting to me sounds exciting to me um I think if one more to stay up late then one feel sleep deprived if they wake up early If you wake up late you're missing out on the early morning sunrise the surf all of that I've never surfed actually once I paddled out once when I was in college and there was no surf so it would paddle back in but Keep hearing about this surfing thing and um people seem to love it That's one of my concerns is that if you fall in love with it you're gonna spend a lot of time out in the ocean, right?

2:13:21Clearly it's all serving you well and Uh, must be wonderful to be a child in your home. I can imagine how much fun it is and how interesting it is um, you mentioned several times um Mentorship and trainees and it's clear that uh Re -shapeing um The landscape of Science for the next generation coming up is something that's of real passion to you um, I take great uh pleasure in asking this because um, you know It wasn't long ago that you and I were graduate students and postdocs and more or less the same vintage right and As the case people retire people die. This is the reality of life and People move up up the ranks as you have um So what are some of the things that you're most Passion about in terms of shaping the future of science um in particular research science, but maybe more broadly and um What are you doing about it?

2:14:23I think that um Science the academic culture has evolved and and I guess I should start by just saying first I As I was driving over here. It's just a beautiful drive and I'm just thinking It is so cool that we get to do this for a living isn't it amazing that Studying whatever I find interesting to me is something that I can you know have a secure job for and then just thinking about cool Ideas and directions and talking about it stuff that I would do for free is is really my job And I I just am so grateful to have that and um, I think there are a lot of beautiful sides of academia That sometimes don't get the airtime that they deserve and of course there's a lot of doom and gloom There always has been when I was a graduate student There's lots of doom and gloom in the ether.

2:15:18There's plenty now um, I think perhaps it has become a little bit more dire Um the plight of academia right now There's been a nation -wide drop of postdocs in general. There's just a mass exodus away from academia to industry And I think that reflects the changing environment and so um, I guess When I was a graduate student I had this book in my desk drawer called advice for young investigator in my Ramone Kahole Which is a great book It's then it's a quick read. It's got some wins the whimsical anecdotes and some some some important insights I think um also a lot of misogyny very much glamorizing work workaholic tendencies and you know There was definitely a picture of a scientist this was the way to succeed Other options not really offered and and I really struggled with that.

2:16:13I had a lot of imposter syndrome coming up through I mean I Someone asked me when when did I when did I stop having a post -recentrum? I think maybe 2021 You know very recently. I think I spent 20 years of my career having a post -recentrum wondering if I was good enough If I was gonna make it am I gonna do I have what it takes and constantly doubting and questioning it um And I think that It would have been nice to to Not feel so alone at that period of of my career So I think some of the things that were described in this original book Um were really important for academic research to be born as a thing Like how do we make this be a thing that you can get paid for?

2:16:59You know, how do we make this be a job that people get to have and then at this point I think most people would agree we need science science is important. We want to we want to We benefit from science um and I think At this point it's not so clear that we need elitism as much as we did before it's not Um, we're we're looking at a crumbling academic culture where where We're struggling to retain people and you know, that's it's not it's not a great sustainable dynamic I think trainees are not getting compensated well enough or treated treated well enough that It's an attractive choice And so I think we need to sort of make a change and nothing wrong necessarily about about the intentions that were set Hundreds of years ago, but things change and where where we are now and things are changing very quickly So um I I guess I get to make one of my childhood dreams which is to to write a book come true um in I get in one of the benefits of social media.

2:18:05I did have a tweet kind of you know Just sort of spontaneously ranting about about how this book is problematic and it's very much agonistic And maybe we need another book for other types of people um and that makes people feel more included And so and this tweet went around and it's not I didn't expect you know, I didn't expect anything to come to this I'm just You know living my daily life and then my DM suddenly had Literary agents and a book deal and then okay, I'm now. I'm writing this book and so I'm not me about halfway through But I think the the goal of the book I don't really have time for this project to be honest But it's such an important project to me um I think that I I want to See academia be uh one of the healthiest places Why is it second only to the military in the Provasiveness of sexual misconduct and you know things like yeah, yeah Yeah, did you know that so actually you know factoid is academia is The military is worse in terms of sexual misconduct retaliation issues that occur But academia second and I and it makes you wonder what are the parameters that make This type of abuse so rampant.

2:19:30I think one of the obvious ones is the clear ranks how stable the ranks are how the power structure Um of academia and the military very Fixed not super debatable not difficult to smooth these the ranks are you know, they're there and the power structure is very skewed and those are the ingredients that Facilitate abuse and so I think In the military I could see a very good argument for why that hierarchy that strict rigid hierarchical structures necessary There's not time for making mistakes get it but with academia There's there's time there's where what do we we're not you know, it's not a war We're we're just studying stuff that we think is cool Why is such a rigid hierarchy with such devastating consequences necessary?

2:20:25I would argue maybe it's not and I think I've been spending a lot of time thinking about this for myself. I've been I found this professional leadership coach. I I love and just thinking about Sustainability how do we make an a sustainable ecosystem and It's not something you find in a lot of leadership management Literature that I that I've been exposed to so I'll take I'll take a note from from the podcast and say if anyone knows of literature that talks about developing sustainable ecosystems within leadership and management. I would love to hear about that in the comments, but um, I think that's a big hole People think about making things stable the power structure should be stable But actually being flexible on dynamic is what gives systems resilience and and flexibility To to survive and right now You all the cracks in in the towers of academia are showing and it's time to To see if this is are we going to adapt and survive or are we going to crumble?

2:21:36There's a lot to unpack there and I'm grateful that you're drilling into all of that with I'm sure the same rigor and Attention to asking the really critical questions that you have in your lab Certainly I observe the landscape changing very rapidly. I think there's also a lot to be learned and to explore that exports to other professions. I certainly believe that the more first -time opportunities to experience the beauty of doing research and biology in particular because that's what I'm familiar with The more likely that we are as a field of research and science to make more fundamental discoveries In other words the more people that get the experience of trying science Doing exploratory research science the more likely we are to pull from that pool and then that pool There will be people of competence Talent and also gifted like which is it you know sort of like increase the the size of the net Yeah, and the net of course is netting something very specific which is you and I both know that While training certainly matters knowledge is important That ultimately you know love of craft and passion And just being tickled by that research bug once that neuron that you know gets tickled that let's us see something for the first time or know something Um down the microscope.

2:23:06We're in a you know data plot or something. There's there's really no going back So I you know I want to be very clear that I loudly applaud your efforts to extend The experience of research to people and earlier you were telling me that you're doing this that many of the people in your lab are first -time Researchers They didn't come through the pedigree of research Yeah, I know we do a lot of outreach about 25 % of my lab this summer was first -time research experiences and so Um, we've been really privileged to have the bandwidth to support that Um, I will say though. I mean on the same tip.

2:23:43I think What you've done with this podcast is incredible. You've made millions of people who didn't have access to science or neuroscience Be fascinated with neuroscience and now imagine what if every person that listened to this podcast and thought This is a great podcast. I wish I could do some neuroscience. It could do it with some You know, not full -time. What if they could contribute in any just whatever level that they wanted to that's so much more contribution that we're Currently missing out on because there's so many barriers to be able to contribute to science and I think Removing the ones that are really there as well as the ones that are just perceived to be there is so powerful But I mean the podcast is Up up, you know proof the proof is in the pudding the proof is in this podcast How many people could fall in love with science if they were given a chance to Well, thank you for that.

2:24:36It is indeed a labor of love for me and um and there are opportunities Maybe we'll provide a link to a couple of them where uh certain projects and neuroscience are crowdsourcing data analysis is actually quite fun There's the cactone project where you can trace neurons. It's actually very very pleasing can do it while listening to podcasts or a book Kids can do it. You're you're tracing these neurons basically filling in lines is like a coloring book And you're contributing to the parcelation of understanding the structure of the brain. Yeah, including the human brain and without that crowdsourcing Um, it's just not gonna happen I mean there are efforts to make machine learning do it and to do it through AI But that there's a lot to be gained from having actual humans do this that those technologies don't quite yet approximate So we'll provide a link to to some of those projects, but This in k doctor tie of course um I want to thank you so much first of all For coming here today and sharing so much knowledge and also being willing to go into some places that were um By virtue of my questions a little speculative and and really think about those and and and address those through the lens of Of deep mechanistic understanding of how these circuits work and to make it clear to people um Your enthusiasm for science is infectious in the most positive sense of the word and I know that so many people are going to benefit from from your knowledge and also from the work that you've been doing in your laboratory You know, I've seen your star rise and it's um still going going going and it's just remarkable and extraordinary But I must say not at all surprising so um That and your advocacy work and for all you do and that you're doing um, I just on behalf of myself and everyone listening I just want to extend a genuine and really heartfelt thanks.

2:26:25Thank you Thank you so much and it's been such an honor to be on the Huberland podcast It's legendary so thank you so much for having me absolutely. We'll do it again Thank you for joining me for today's discussion all about the biology of social interactions with dr K tie to learn more about her work and to follow her on social media Please see the links in the show note captions if you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast Please subscribe to our youtube channel That's a terrific zero -cost way to support us in addition Please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and apple and on both Spotify and apple you can leave us up to a five star review Please check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode That's the best way to support this podcast if you have questions or comments about the podcasts Or topics or guests that you'd like to suggest for the Huberman lab podcast Please put those in the comment section on youtube.

2:27:18I do read all the comments If you're not already following me on social media I am Huberman lab on all social media platforms So that's instagram twitter now called x linkedin facebook and threads and on all those platforms I discuss science and science related tools some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman lab podcast But much of which is distinct from the content covered on the Huberman lab podcast again That's Huberman lab on all social media platforms if you haven't already subscribed to our monthly neural network newsletter Our neural network newsletter is a zero -cost newsletter That includes podcast summaries and protocols as short one to three -page PDFs For instance, we have zero -cost protocols for improving sleep for improving dopamine function For deliberate cold exposure for fitness for learning and neuroplasticity and much more To sign up for the newsletter simply go to Huberman lab calm go to the menu tab scroll down to newsletter and supply your email Again, the newsletter is completely zero -cost and I want to emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with dr.

2:28:21K tie and last but certainly not least Thank you for your interest in science